Nice timing, Loretta Lynch
[UPDATE: If you want to watch/listen to the relevant part of Lynch’s remarks, go here.]
Violent threats against Muslims are Loretta Lynch’s biggest fear as a prosecutor:
With terrorist attacks in Paris and a shooting spree in California prompting alarm on the part of many Americans, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Thursday that her “greatest fear” is that expressions of anti-Muslim sentiment will lead to attacks on Muslims in the U.S.
“The fear that you have just mentioned is in fact my greatest fear as a prosecutor, as someone who is sworn to the protection of all of the American people, which is that the rhetoric will be accompanied by acts of violence,” Lynch told a dinner hosted by a Muslim civil rights organization. “My message to not just the Muslim community but to the entire American community is: we cannot give in to the fear that these backlashes are really based on.”
During her remarks to the Muslim Advocates dinner, Lynch did not address the mass shooting at an office party in San Bernardino, Calif. Wednesday in which 14 people were killed.
The dinner at which she made the remarks occurred yesterday. The shootings occurred early on Wednesday. Lynch also “said she was troubled by legislative proposals to cut off the admission of refugees from Syria and other countries considered prone to Islamic radicalism.”
Here is Lynch’s earlier statement on the San Bernardino shootings.
[ADDENDUM: In Lynch’s statement about San Bernardino, she ends with this:
Because we’re at the point where these issues have come together really like never before in law enforcement thought and in our nation’s history and it gives us a wonderful opportunity and a wonderful moment to really make significant change.”
The word “wonderful” is particularly troubling in this context. Also note the old Rahm Emanuel saying: “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”]
[ADDENDUM II: Commenter “Ann” informs me that the quote on which I was relying in the first “ADDENDUM” to this post was actually a misleading truncated quote. Loretta Lynch did not say that the terrorist attack on Wednesday was a “wonderful opportunity” to address certain things. The longer quote was the following, and the context was a previously-scheduled meeting on the topic of “Incarceration and Poverty.” So my guess is that the “wonderful opportunity” remarks were related not to the terrorist attacks, but to the original purpose of the conference:
But I do want to express not only my deepest condolences, but I also ask that you join me in standing with our colleagues, our friends, our partners in San Bernardino who are suffering with this, and add all of our thoughts and prayers to them at this time; along with them and also the brave public safety officials who have put themselves in harm’s way to stop this assault and to save others. So I thank you, Ms. Jarrett, for that moment of silence and I thank all of you for your continued support as we move forward with this investigation.
Now of course, today’s announcement is of a matter really of equal seriousness, but of long-standing concern. I’m really pleased to be able to be here today. I’m actually thrilled that this event is being held here today, now, at this time. We’re at a point where these issues have come together really like never before in law enforcement thought and in our nation’s history. And it gives us a wonderful opportunity and a wonderful moment to really make significant change.
So I’d say that, although the body of the post stands, the first ADDENDUM should be discarded.]
[ADDENDUM III: Of course innocent Muslims residing in this country should be defended against crimes, violent or otherwise. It is certainly a valid concern. But, as in the months after 9/11, the number of such attacks is relatively low and the majority seem to be offenses such as vandalism and “intimidation” rather than serious violence to the person. That a backlash against Muslims would be Loretta Lynch’s greatest fear at this point is a troubling priority.
By the way, the latest FBI report on so-called “hate crime” statistics in the US found that Jews are the most frequent targets. In 2014, for example (the most recent year for which I could find more detailed information), the numbers on religiously-motivated hate crimes were as follows, as reported by the FBI:
Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,092 offenses reported by law enforcement [in 2014]. A breakdown of the bias motivation of religious-biased offenses showed:
58.2 percent were anti-Jewish.
16.3 percent were anti-Islamic (Muslim).
6.1 percent were anti-Catholic.
4.7 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.
2.6 percent were anti-Protestant.
1.2 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.
11.0 percent were anti-other (unspecified) religion
The Jewish population of the US is estimated to be about 2.2%. The Muslim population of the US is difficult to know and estimates differ, but in 2010 it was thought to be approximately .9%. Although it is logical to assume it is somewhat larger now, even if we use that 2010 figure it appears that Jews are still proportionately more likely than Muslims to be the victims of actions motivated by hatred of their religion.]
This bothered me immensely. It continues along the same line of thinking that kept Farook’s neighbor from reporting the strange goings on at his house. Americans should NOT be chastised for being suspicious of people and their actions…especially if they are of middle eastern descent. It’s a no-brainer to keep an eye on strange behaviors of middle eastern men/women in this day and age. DUH.
Why the assumption on her part that all Americans are ready to pounce on any Middle Eastern person that walks past them? The idea that we are all secretly racists, but hold back because of decorum, is just ridiculous and judgmental.
I judge people on their ACTIONS and if their ACTIONS warrant reporting to the police, I will do it. White, black, hispanic, whatever.
Apparently it goes beyond that;
“Loretta Lynch Vows to Prosecute Those Who Use ‘Anti-Muslim’ Speech That ‘Edges Toward Violence'”
“The day after a horrific shooting spree by a “radicalized” Muslim man and his partner in San Bernardino, California, Attorney General Loretta Lynch pledged to a group of Muslim activists that she would take aggressive action against anyone who used “anti-Muslim rhetoric” that “edges toward violence.”
Conveniently, Ms Lynch fails to define what speech “edges toward violence”. I would guess that it is any speech she deems ‘Islamophobic’. Certainly that will be CAIR’s position.
Bring it on Ms Lynch.
I wonder if they will prosecute Ann who writes at the Refugee Resettlement Watch blog
I don’t know anyone who wants to do violence towards anybody.
We all just want to know what are our options when a muslim pulls out the prayer rug during takeoff of a plane?
My wife and I were discussing this this morning. Recently I was at a community center and this careless woman was emptying sugar packets into her coffee cup and the sugar was spraying everywhere. Then she did the same with the creamer packets.
I said something. I said, “you dropped a lot of sugar on the floor and table here.” Then when she did it to the creamer I said quietly, “you dropped some creamer there”.
She didn’t say anything in reply. I informed the community center person and they didn’t do anything about it.
The lady came back because she wanted to fix a coffee for herself – the previous coffee was for someone else. She carelessly did the same thing!!! I said to her quietly again that you are putting even more sugar and cream on the table and floor.
She finally replied, “you don’t need to worry about that, I am a personal trainer here”.
I walked back to my wife confused – I’ve never seen such behavior.
I think we’ve hit the cultural salad bowl where we can’t pick out the blue cheese dressing and the blue cheese dressing is covering everything.
My wife is Mexican. She is sensitive, nice, caring, clean, etc. How do we live in a country where we aren’t even allowed to say to somebody that you can’t put the prayer rug down when we are taking off in a plane?
Was there, perhaps, rhetoric that accompanied the San Bernadino acts of violence?
And should you not have fear of THAT, Ms. Lynch?
My wife was saying that she wouldn’t want to be on the plane anymore. But what do you do? What are you allowed to do? I’m just a Virginia boy who naively tried to get along with everyone. I converted from liberalism to conservatism in 1991 but with a strong sense of compassion. I believe that the safety net needs to be stronger for the elderly and almost non-existent for the able-bodied. We’ve diluted the safety net.
We are giving $250,000 per refugee family of 4 over a 5 year period. That’s not blankets, food and shelter. That’s creating a dependent class of people. That’s not good policy. That’s not policy born of LOVE. uh oh. Loretta Lynch will prosecute my butt for saying that!!!
Baklava Says:
December 4th, 2015 at 1:34 pm
What are you allowed to do?
Book:
1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed
As the wheels turn …
And Trump is NOT the answer.
His methods is not persuasion or building a case articulately. His method of name calling is building negatives fast. Yes Trump has his supporters but not enough to overcome the negatives.
I believe in Carson and Carly Fiorina. Jeb and Kasich to me are the problem in the Republican party. Attacking me as non-compassionate or saying, “it’s not who we are – and not what we do” with respect to the refugee situation is over the top.
Jeb and Kasich do not look at me as compassionate.
Carson went over there and found that MOST of the refugees just want to go home. That’s leadership. Not acting like you are more compassionate but being more compassionate.
You can’t have blue cheese dressing covering everything. Not everybody likes that.
ugh. I trying to keep from being despondent over the Loretta Lynch news.
How about she dedicate resources into the San Bernardino massacre? That was hate!
Surreal.
According to the FBI, the shooters home was not being “investigated” any more.
So the landlord took off plywood.
The media SWARMED in and then the media found passports, social security cards, drivers licenses and of course many other things.
But why didn’t the police or FBI care about those items?
Baklava:
Do you have a link for that information? It seems very odd.
http://mashable.com/2015/12/04/san-bernardino-shooters-apartment-journalists/#ClzBit1SNgqj
“Up against the wall! Up against the wall, motherfucker!”, sang Grace the anthemist. Get to it Loretta [“whatever they say we are we are”] it’s your power now.
You don’t believe in the power of magic words to bring about the world we dream? What’s wrong with you?
Self-creation and simultaneous self-realization because … just because. Who needs another reason?
G6Loq: I’d recommend Robert Drews’ “End of the Bronze Age” which has been out for a number of years, but is a scholarly work, yet popular read.
If one were to make comparisons however, I would, as I have before, compare our current situation to the late Classical period. Many of the same phenomena actually. Falling birth rates, a widespread embrace of hedonic nihilism, and an active undermining of the civilization by many, including influential females, who are highly antagonistic toward the civilization that makes their cossetted and self-indulgent lives possible in the first place.
My guess is that among the progressives, they hope that humanity can somehow evolve out of sexual roles before masochistic liberalism and radical feminism (as we now know them) saw off the branch that currently supports them.
It’s a kind of race against time. Can they transform all (surviving) humanity into something else, before they lose the protection of those whom they locally seek to subvert?
As long however as some conservative idiots will still step up to defend Amanda Marcotte types from being slaughtered in the street by a Muslim, I’d say they have a pretty good chance of pulling it off. Or pulling the whole thing down at the least.
Ms. Lynch should be concerned with inner city, young black males murdering people.
Here’s what else Loretta Lynch said about the San Bernardino shootings: “. . . it gives us a wonderful opportunity and a wonderful moment to really make significant change.”
I am sure the families of the dead are thrilled.
To be fair to Lynch, that linked Russ Limbaugh quote did some editing, and the “wonderful” wasn’t meant to refer to San Bernardino. The San Bernardino attack was mentioned at the very beginning of her talk at a White House Convening on Incarceration and Poverty. She then went on talk about the main topic and that’s when she used the “wonderful opportunity”. The full remarks are here.
My husband turned on France 24 Tv earlier. It was full of Ibrahim Hoover from CAIR worrying about Islamophobia and everyone else worrying about our lack of gun control laws. This was from France, where they have gun control as well as mass shootings by terrorists. And they showed that WaPo chart of all the mass shootings in America, never bothering to say that if a ghetto gangster shoots 2 people and is then taken out by a cop, this still counts as a mass shooting. I’ve had it.
In addition to everything else, I’m working on my turkey fest. Do you know that the Euros don’t measure cream etc in liters or milliliters, but in grams. You have to guess at how much you will need for a recipe if you don’t know what a half cup of cream weighs. This drives me nuts.
Sorry, I see that wasn’t a Limbaugh quote, but a “Rush Transcript”. The rest of my comment remains the same, though.
We have been in this hall of mirrors before. People in the victim group are considered more likely to be dangerous than people in the group the perpetrators come from.
I will note again that this is about competiton fr power in America. In a sense, Loretta Lynch is correct that those who are breathing heavily about Muslims are more dangerous than Muslims – to her power, anyway. She is defending the power of her group. That the terrorists kill liberals as well as any other Americans does not enter into it for her. They are expendable, so long as the tribe holds power.
“It’s a kind of race against time. Can they transform all (surviving) humanity into something else” DNW
Human nature is not subject to ‘transformation’. Any ‘solution’, essentially in opposition to reality, can only make things worse.
Caroline Glick: America’s pathological denial of reality
Baklava:
“Carson went over there and found that MOST of the refugees just want to go home. That’s leadership.”
The challenge of Carson’s finding is its implication: The alternative to bringing them here is the solution of intervention over there that’s sufficient to secure their home over there.
The 1st step of the solution is securing the kind of safe zones that the US enforced in Iraq between Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom pursuant to UNSCR 688 and Public Laws 102-1 and 102-190. The next step is defeating the terrorists with a campaign akin to the COIN “Surge” that defeated AQI. Reaching a consensus on the Assad regime falls somewhere in those steps.
Securing their home over there requires a dedicated military commitment on the ground with the ‘strong horse’ type of American leadership. But currently, a taboo disqualifies the ‘strong horse’ type of American leadership that’s needed.
The problem is the Republican candidates, including Carson and Fiorina, have been unwilling to break the taboo by de-stigmatizing OIF and setting the record straight to re-normalize the ‘strong horse’ type of American leadership that manifested with OIF.
oh no Eric. I’ve heard extended interviews with Carly on Hugh Hewitt. While the legacy media does not give her the headlines from that – it’s factually incorrect to say she hasn’t worked to destigmatize OIF. She was articulate on the matter.
Ben Carson says things on the same plane – but I think he’s working to keep the positives up and the negatives from not building and that rhetoric might turn off some low information voters. He’s playing it careful.
Ann: Thanks, I’ll fix it in a little while.
I want to call readers’ attention to ADDENDUM II and ADDENDUM III.
Will Lorreta Lynch start with koran, hadith sunna in her concerns of “Speech That ‘Edges Toward Violence’?”
Or is this a one way street to protect Islam and muslims?
jack:
Take a look at ADDENDUM III.
By the way, a lot of blogs on the right are stretching what Lynch said. She never said she’d prosecute “hate speech.” She said she is concerned about hate speech that encourages violent action, and the action will be prosecuted. It was a way-too-subtle distinction she was making, but I believe she made it and did not say she’d be prosecuting speech.
There’s video of Lynch at that Muslim Advocates dinner up at CSPAN now. Starting at the 44:26 point, she lays out her four main issues as attorney general and the first one she lists is national security and terrorism.
I agree with you Neo
Could it be that Moooslemism is a form of societal sepsis?
I am appalled that our Dear Leaders should be so very concerned about protecting a (pseudo-) religion that proclaims, “Kill the Christian! Kill the Jew!”
A “religion” that has global domination as part of its mission statement. Which means it advocates the overthrow of the American Republic. Which means it is illegal under present law.
We accept this crap. We will get what we deserve. Actually, we already have what we deserve in Obama and Lynch. The world is becoming the Planet of the Apes.
Thank you, Ann, for the clarification.
DNW Says:
December 4th, 2015 at 2:20 pm
Well said.
It’s been my contention that this whole moooslime crap is made possible by the females in our midst.
We know how verbal and insistent they can be but in this case … cooing!
Strange since as a man all I have to do in case of defeat is grow a beard and throw my ass in the air five times a day … them chicks will be graded by boob size, bagged and sold into slavery.
Twilight zone!
The Loretta twit is now telling me what I can or cannot say …. perfect.
Double twilight zone.
Thing is, until the womyn rise up and put an end to it there is nothing much we can do ….
Lynch appears to be unaware that in 2011, the administration, through Sec. Clinton’s State Dept., curtailed processing Iraqi asylum seekers for six months. Why? The FBI had broken a ring of Islamic jihadis in Kentucky who were posing as Iraqi refugees. It made perfect sense back then and created no ripples. Why does this cause such controversy now?
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-kentucky-us-dozens-terrorists-country-refugees/story?id=20931131
Oh, Ms. Lynch, didn’t you hear the CAIR director tell us that America is partially responsible for these attacks because her foreign decisions in the ME anger Muslims?
No “offensive” or “inflammatory” free speech needed to stir jihadi desires to massacre a bunch of citizens. Apparently we are are already justifiable targets for their (unquenchable?) Muslim rage simply by being Americans.
Also, former Congressman Joe Walsh had a direct, unvarnished response to Lynch’s free speech-defying nonsense:
http://hypeline.org/joe-walsh/
Anybody see a patter here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_and_other_violent_events_by_death_toll#Terrorist_attacks
I bet Ms. Lynch doesn’t.
Lynch…
Unfortunate last name in the context.
A woman makes the threat!
Remarkable in the context.
A minority woman at that.
Outstanding given the perceived oppression context.
Tar, feathers, rail….
Here are the Republicans who let this dimwit leftist in:
Ayotte, Cochran, Collins, Flake, Graham, Hatch, Johnson, Kirk, McConnell, Portman.
The vote was 56-43, with Cruz abstaining.
Cruz!
Cruz did not abstain. He missed the vote due to a scheduled commitment.
He said he knew there were enough RINOs to confirm her so his vote didn’t matter. He did vote no for cloture, and once that passed, her confirmation was a foregone conclusion.
MEET THE PRESS APR 23 2015: Why Ted Cruz Missed the Loretta Lynch Vote
You wouldn’t happen to be a Trump fan, would you, G6?
hmmm… Wish he hadn’t pulled this caper.
Apparences matter.
I am a Cruz fan at this point.
Note: womyn don’t like him. He’s short and has a squeaky voice ….
G6loq:
More unsourced propaganda from you in this thread to go with the unsourced propaganda in the other thread. And I’m just as tired of it here as I was of it there.
You write: “I am a Cruz fan at this point. Note: womyn don’t like him. He’s short and has a squeaky voice”
First of all, I happen to like him, and when I last checked, I was still a woman.
Joking and personal example aside, however, the statistics don’t bear out your assertion.
Cruz is slightly more popular with Republican women than with Republican men in this recent poll.
In this recent poll, most of the Republican candidates do somewhat worse with Republican women than with Republican men. But Cruz, Carson and Christie are about equal with men and women, and Fiorina and Huckabee do slightly better with women. Trump does considerably worse with women.
By the way—and this isn’t about Cruz—there were some other interesting female responses on that poll. For example, way more women than men thought terrorism is a very important issue in the next election (62% women to 49% men). More women also thought that for foreign policy and deporting illegal immigrants, as well as health care and climate change (although the numbers were very small for both sexes in that latter category who thought climate change very important—nor did it say whether they believed in it or not).