President Trump is signing two Executive Orders to protect the meaning and value of American citizenship after Trump v. Barbara:

The executive orders,Continuing to Protect the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship and Ending Birth Tourism, limit the scope, targeting future births in four categories:

– Either parent of that person is an alien enemy, defined to include any member of a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
– Either parent is a foreign government employee working on behalf of a foreign government.
– Person is born in a territory or territorial waters of the United States where citizenship is not conferred by Federal statute.
– The entry of any foreign national into the United States via a nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth on American soil or any effort by any foreign national to facilitate the entry of any foreign national into the United States via a nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth on American soil.

I haven’t a clue how this would fare in a Court challenge. Legislation would do better, I think, but is probably impossible to pass at this point. Jonathan Turley gives his opinion here:

I will add that I believe that part of the goal is to simply discourage birth tourism, to maker it an iffier, more difficult, and more costly process. This might make the numbers go down significantly.

The post Trump gives limiting birthright citizenship another try appeared first on The New Neo.

The FBI opened a criminal probe specifically targeting Donald Trump in May 2017, alleging the newly elected president may have been acting as a Russian asset when he fired then-Director James Comey even though the bureau’s own evidence overwhelmingly showed at the time there was no collusion with the Kremlin.

Internal memos newly declassified by the White House show the investigation – codenamed “Oxferd Comma” – was launched in the immediate aftermath of Comey’s May 9, 2017, firing and was predicated on an allegation that previously released memos show the bureau’s own agents had mostly dismissed. …

… [T]hat decision proved anything but nonintrusive: it prompted the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller by Rosenstein and a nearly two-year probe that hampered the start of the Trump presidency even though Mueller’s team, like the FBI before it, was unable to substantiate any collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election. …

The memos are being released as federal prosecutors in Fort Pierce, Fla., reportedly investigate whether the FBI, DOJ and intelligence agencies engaged in an ongoing conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Trump and his supporters through repeated criminal investigations that lacked evidence of wrongdoing.

So this is about possible charges against the investigators. That raises the question we often ask: will anything come of it? It would be a very difficult thing to prove, although note that this investigation is currently not in Washington DC but in Florida. That may give it at least a fighting chance.

I have little doubt that such a conspiracy existed and that it did much damage. But I also think that many Americans don’t think that happened; in a sense, the conspiracy was rather successful in the court of public opinion. And some of those who do think it happened are happy that it happened. They belief it’s necessary to “cut down every law” in order to get the nefarious Trump.

[NOTE: What is this “Oxferd comma” thing? I know what the Oxford comma is, although I don’t use it. But Oxferd? Here’s an explanation:

Former acting Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark alleged the code name was deliberately altered to make records of the investigation harder to find.

“The FBI under James Comey and Christopher Wray was hopelessly corrupt. To penalize President Trump’s firing of Comey, they created a ridiculous investigation into Trump on the theory he was a witting or unwitting Russian agent,” Clark, who serves as vice president of litigation at the Oversight Project, told Fox News Digital.

“They called it OXFERD C0MMA (note the zero for the second ‘o’ and the misspelling of the University). The FBI managers thought this was clever. They imagined themselves as Blofeld in a James Bond movie deviously defeating the Freedom of Information Act,” Clark added, referring to the James Bond supervillain.

I hadn’t even noticed that zero for the O in “comma.” It appears only as “comma” in the first article I linked.]

The post You may be tired of Russiagate, but Russiagate isn’t tired of you appeared first on The New Neo.

An announcement by Vance – just the tip of the fraud iceberg?:

“Just since the beginning of the Fraud Task Force that I started under the president’s leadership and direction, we have identified $230 billion of fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American people, and we have halted already $56 billion of that,” Vance told the gathered Cabinet, according to multiple accounts of the meeting.

President Trump, who presided over the meeting, wasted no time tying the findings to his predecessor’s administration, telling those in attendance that the level of corruption and fraud uncovered [from] the Biden years was unprecedented.

Once the payments go out, though, for the most part the money can’t be clawed back. An ounce of prevention is worth a tremendous amount.

More:

The scope of the $230 billion figure is broad, encompassing improper payments, systemic waste, and alleged criminal fraud spanning multiple federal agencies. According to reporting on the matter, the total includes tens of billions of dollars tied to fraudulent or delinquent pandemic-era small business loans, improper Medicaid and Medicare billing claims, unauthorized government contracts, and improper disbursements across state-administered welfare programs.

Of course – and especially if the money is gone for good – prosecutions must follow, as well as convictions, or this will continue. It will most certainly continue anyway if Democrats come to power.

It’s not as though we didn’t already know that government programs invite fraud. But the scope of it is absolutely massive, and we probably are uncovering only a small amount of it. Quite the swamp worthy of drainage.

[NOTE: Here’s an article appearing in the NY Post that focuses on the adult day care industry in New York’s Asian community. It is alleged to be rife with fraud. From the piece:

An investigation by The Post found seniors in a typical scheme get $500-$1000 a month in daycare kickbacks while the facility pockets upwards of $3,000 a month per patient.

According to city and federal data, Flushing’s SADCs billed a total of $733M from 2018-2024, the latest year for which spending figures are available.

From Dr. Mehmet Oz:

“Due to a lack of proper state oversight, these centers have become cash cows for criminal syndicates, who use kickbacks and other illegal practices to steal millions from Medicaid. When Flushing, Queens, alone accounts for roughly 14% of all social adult daycare spending in New York state, it’s pretty obvious that these centers aren’t popping up solely to fulfill a legitimate need in the community,” he told The Post.

There’s much much more at the link.]

The post The fraud total is up to $230 billion appeared first on The New Neo.

Commenter “Brian E” commented by describing a local school shooting and the tragedy that ensued, and added: “Having seen the aftermath relatively close up, it’s hard to have infringement of personal liberty as the hill to die on.”

Later, he added:

I agree with Neo, he [the killer’s father, Colin Gray] should have been charged with negligence, not homicide– but I do think the sentence needs to be serious enough that people change their behavior on how they store their firearms.

Many or perhaps most laws that restrict liberty are rationalized as being necessary and/or desirable in order to protect the innocent. The problem is how far to go, because at a certain point the infringements become unconscionable, and perhaps they don’t even prevent the behavior. These are constant issues, and not just in the field of gun control.

Arguments about the protective benefit of a restrictive law are nearly always used to justify infringements of personal liberty . There are terrible tragedies that appear to be preventable through restrictions on personal liberty. In the case of Colt Gray (the 14-year-old murderer) and his father Colin (who failed to lock up weapons), however, there was no law in Georgia that required such a locking-up. I see the harsh verdict in the Colin Gray trial as an attempt to rectify that, ex post facto, without actually passing such a law. In the service of this effort, another law – one I see as inappropriate to the facts of the case – was pulled into service in order to label one person, the father, as responsible.

The desire to turn back the clock and undo what happened – an impossibility, of course – is part of the motive behind this. The other desire is the one stated by Brian E, which is for the sentence “to be serious enough that people change their behavior on how they store their firearms.” But I doubt that will happen; people think they’re safe and their family is safe, and they don’t foresee what is an extremely unlikely act: that of their child committing mass murder with a gun found around the house. Or, for many who do foresee or at least imagine such possibilities, they either are already locking up their weapons or not owning them in the first place.

In addition: where does this assigning of responsibility stop? In the Colt Gray case, why not the mother, the school, the police? They all had roles and all failed to fulfill them effectively enough to prevent the murders; some were even arguably negligent (the school, for example). And one could argue that the school authorities possessed more training than Colt’s father Colin had, more resources than he had, and supposedly more objectivity about Colt than he had. For that matter, why not blame the school for not using metal detectors?

There’s also an assumption that if the guns had been locked up Colt couldn’t or wouldn’t have killed people. I agree that it almost certainly would have been more difficult for him to do so, but it still could have been accomplished. He could have used a knife. He could have used explosives. He could have bought a gun on the black market or stolen one. Where there’s a will …

If a state or city wants to require people to lock up their guns, it can do so. If someone fails to follow the law, impose the penalty for violation of that law rather than twisting another law around in order to punish someone you have designated as the one to blame even though everyone is to blame.

SCOTUS has ruled on how much can be required of homeowners regarding gun storage – that is, it has ruled on what cannot be required. The case was District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) (see this):

Provisions of the District of Columbia Code made it illegal to carry an unregistered firearm … The Code also contained provisions that required owners of lawfully registered firearms to keep them unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or other similar device unless the firearms were located in a place of business or being used for legal recreational activities. …

[Heller] sought an injunction against the enforcement of the relevant parts of the Code and argued that they violated his Second Amendment right to keep a functional firearm in his home without a license. The district court dismissed the complaint. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed and held that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep firearms in the home for the purpose of self-defense, and the District of Columbia’s requirement that firearms kept in the home be nonfunctional violated that right.

So the appeals court ruled that the requirements were too strict and effectively disarmed people, making it impossible to use their guns for self-defense. The case ultimately went to SCOTUS and its ruling was 5-4, which is about as close as it can be. The ruling divided along the usual political lines. The majority basically agreed with the need for self-defense and claimed the 2nd Amendment protected that right, whereas the dissenting minority went with the “militia” interpretation and did not think this case unduly limited the right to bear arms because that right only applied to militias or militia-equivalents. SCOTUS has since declined to rule further on the issue of laws about gun locks in the home, which leaves those laws standing. I believe the idea at present is that some restrictions are okay as long as they preserve the right to self-defense.

NOTE: Once again I am reminded of the chilling poem by A. E. Housman, “The Culprit.” Regarding the Gray case, the poem is somewhat ironic, because Colin the father is being punished (15 years), although the son Colt still drew the harsher sentence (life without parole):

THE CULPRIT

The night my father got me
His mind was not on me;
He did not plague his fancy
To muse if I should be
The son you see.

The day my mother bore me
She was a fool and glad,
For all the pain I cost her,
That she had borne the lad
That borne she had.

My mother and my father
Out of the light they lie;
The warrant would not find them,
And here ’tis only I
Shall hang so high.

Oh let not man remember
The soul that God forgot,
But fetch the county kerchief
And noose me in the knot,
And I will rot.

For so the game is ended
That should not have begun.
My father and my mother
They had a likely son,
And I have none.

The post Regulating guns in the home: how far to go? appeared first on The New Neo.

I’ve written about the Crumbley case quite a few times; please see this. And I wrote about the Gray case before, too; see this post. I haven’t changed my mind, either. My position remains that although the parents could have been charged with negligence of some kind, manslaughter or murder should not have been charged.

Colt’s father Colin Gray was found guilty by a jury, however, and now has been sentenced to fifteen years (one of the charges was second-degree murder, defined in Georgia as “causing a child’s death through cruelty to children”). His son, Colt – despite having been 14 when the crime was committed, was nevertheless charged as an adult and has been sentenced to life without parole in a separate procedure before the same court. His having been charged as an adult doesn’t seem to have affected the jury’s decision on his father, however.

More:

[Judge] Primm’s sentence [of the father, Colin] was far closer to the defense’s request than the prosecution’s.

Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence Colin Gray to 80 years in prison.

“He is the reason four people are dead, seven were injured and countless others were traumatized, and he is the reason a 16-year-old boy was sentenced two days ago to the rest of his life in prison,” Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said in court Thursday morning.

The father is the reason? Certainly, he is a contributing reason, but hardly the reason.

More:

Hobbs, the defense attorney, asked for a 20-year sentence, with 10 years served in prison and the rest on probation. Gray has already served just under two years in custody since his arrest a day after the shooting.

“Was it enough, what Colin did? Obviously not. The jury has said so and Colin accepts that,” Hobbs said. “But it was not nothing, and it was not indifference.” …

Ismael Angulo, whose brother Christian was killed, called the defendant a “complete failure of a father.”

“He made a choice to buy that rifle, he made a choice to ignore every red flag, and because of his choices, my little brother Christian and three others … are gone, and so many others will carry permanent scars for the rest of their lives,” he said.

Terry McElhannon, the grandfather of Taylor Jones, who was wounded in the attack, pointed an accusatory finger directly at Colin Gray while speaking.

“Why are we here today? It’s because of him,” he said, his arm extended. “His action and his neglect are responsible for what happened here. Though he did not shoot the gun, he bought the bullets.”

Victims and their families are very sympathetic and their stories are tragic. Of course they are extremely angry at Colin Gray and want him punished. But that doesn’t mean he is guilty of either murder or manslaughter, although a jury agreed that he was. The idea seems to be that it should be possible to prevent acts such as this if a parent is smart enough, aware enough, good enough, and has enough foresight to know that his son will kill. It’s a judgment call, and Colin Gray showed poor judgment.

More from the judge in Gray’s sentencing, explaining why he gave the number of years he did:

“Mr. Gray committed crimes, but his crimes are tethered to the crimes committed by his son, and that makes the situation a little unique,” Judge Nicholas Primm said in announcing the sentence.

“It matters that you didn’t have actual knowledge that Colt was going to school to do that. It matters that you didn’t intentionally commit a crime. It matters that you didn’t plan an attack. It matters that you didn’t seek to harm anyone. It matters that you didn’t pull a trigger,” he said.

There are actually some internal family issues here that I think were absolutely key in this man’s conviction, but should not have been:

In a two-week trial in February and March, Barrow County prosecutors argued the boy’s father acted with “criminal negligence” and was a proximate cause of the shooting. His defense team argued he was unaware of his son’s violent plans and had taken steps to get him help for his mental health struggles.

The state’s case included emotional testimony from students and teachers, police interviews with Colin Gray, photos showing unsecured firearms and ammunition in a bedroom closet, and testimony from the teen’s mother, grandmother and sister about Colt’s spiraling mental health.

It’s that last sentence I’m talking about. The father didn’t think the son was in so much trouble, and failed to properly secure the weapons. But the rest of the family differed, either back then and/or certainly now. What’s more, there’s no love lost between the two sides of the family:

Marcee Gray, the defendant’s estranged wife, testified their son had anxiety, was easily agitated and suffered panic attacks. She said it was “very obvious” he needed professional help, but her husband “just didn’t want to deal with it.”

Here’s what Colin Gray said:

The defense called just one witness: Colin Gray himself. He said he had scheduled counseling at school for Colt’s mental health issues and did not ever perceive his son as a threat.

“He’s a good kid,” the father said through tears. “He wasn’t perfect, nor was I, but to do something that heinous, I don’t know that anybody can see that kind of evil. The Colt I knew, the relationship I had, there was this whole other side of Colt I didn’t know existed.”

In a tense cross-examination, he acknowledged multiple firearms were stored in a closet, unsecured and unlocked, and he said Colt sometimes kept the rifle in his bedroom. He struggled to explain why Colt did not attend school for his entire eighth-grade year, according to school records. Colt attended Apalachee High School for only a few days before the attack.

I repeat that this sort of thing makes him negligent in leaving the firearms unlocked. But it’s easy to shrug off what a teen says, or teen angst, which is rather common. I believe the father when he says it never occurred to him that his son was capable of murder despite the warning signs. And I don’t think most parents of 14-year-olds can conceptualize their children as being capable of “that kind of evil.”

Colin Gray was certainly guilty of bad judgment:

Colin Gray also admitted he was aware that his son had been physically violent, had a photo of a school shooter on his bedroom wall and had texted a few weeks before the attack, “Whenever something happens, just know the blood is on your hands.”

But the police had interviewed Colt regarding a report of a previous threat, he denied making it, and the police were unable to prove anything.

But what of the mother’s contribution?:

Marcee Gray, the teen’s mother, was not charged in the case. She had lost custody of Colt because of her struggles with drugs and alcohol and did not possess the firearms, Smith said.

“We found what she did to be morally reprehensible. We do not believe she is a good mother, in my opinion,” he said. “But at the end of the day, she did not have custody of Colt, she did not have proximity to Colt, and she was not the one that provided him the firearms.”

Hey, why not charge her with murder anyway, for creating a disruptive family environment through her drug and alcohol abuse and her separation from the child, setting the scene for her son’s violent outburst and obvious anger control problems? I don’t really mean that seriously; but where does the finger-pointing stop?

Colin Gray’s attorney had argued that she bore some responsibility, too:

Brian Hobbs, one of his attorneys, argued his client should not be severely sentenced for his son’s crimes, and asked that he receive 10 years in prison.

“That is not lenience,” Hobbs said. “Ten years in a Georgia prison for a man who never intended to harm a single human being is among the most severe sentences ever imposed on a parent in American history for the act of the child.”

Hobbs also suggested that the teenager’s mother, Marcee Gray, bore more responsibility than his client for fostering his obsession with school shooters. Marcee Gray has not been charged in connection with the shooting.

“Fostering his obsession with school shooters?” Not sure what the evidence was for that, but it’s certainly of interest.

While we’re at it, how about charging the school, which was also negligent? Or the police who could not substantiate that the son made the threat? Here’s the part I’m referring to about the school’s negligence:

Colin Gray’s trial also revealed the shooting was nearly prevented. The morning of the shooting, school officials and resource officers went to intercept Colt after he made several concerning comments. But in a stranger-than-fiction mix-up, they confused him with another student named Kolton Gray.

Negligence on the part of the school?

I believe that one problem in this case is that Gerogia lacks a child access prevention law, so Colin Gray couldn’t be charged with violating one.

More about the actions of the school and of the family on the fateful day:

On the morning of the shooting, a call was made to Apalachee High School threatening to target five schools, of which Apalachee would be the first. The source of the threat was never determined.

During his first period class, Colt Gray asked his teacher how the school would respond to an active shooter. The teacher additionally noticed his backpack was “unusually heavy”. The teacher reported these concerns to administrators and other school staff via email. Gray’s second period algebra teacher, in whose class the shooting would later begin, was not informed about the email from his first period teacher.

At 9:42 a.m., Colt Gray texted his father Colin Gray, “I’m sorry, it’s not ur fault … ur not to blame for any of it. [sic]”. Upon receiving Colt’s texts, Colin called Colt’s maternal grandmother, who was with Colt’s mother at the time. Colt’s mother then attempted to reach Colt by phone and text message, but failed to do so.

Sometime after the second period algebra began at 9:45 a.m., Colt Gray left the classroom after requesting and obtaining a pass to see the school counselor. Around that same time, a different student in the class with the surname Gray and a similar first name also asked for permission to leave. Both Colt and the similarly-named student headed towards the same bathroom. …

At 9:50 a.m., Colt’s mother called the school, warning of an “extreme emergency”, and urged the school counselor to check in on her son. The school counselor told her that Colt had talked about a school shooting that morning.

School resource officers, alerted to Colt Gray’s comments during his first period class, began looking for him. They found the bathroom Colt was hiding in, but incorrectly escorted the similarly-named student to the front office instead. While Colt continued to hide in one of the bathroom stalls, school staff continued to search for him for twenty minutes.

Colt Gray allegedly exited the bathroom wearing yellow gloves, carrying a backpack and holding a white posterboard around his torso. A rolled-up poster, poster tube, or posterboard was used by Colt Gray that morning to conceal his rifle, which he carried in his backpack.

At 10:02 a.m., Colt Gray texted his mother, “I’m sorry”. At 10:18 am, she texted Colin Gray, suggesting he leave work and saying: “They’re going to need you at the school”.

The shooting followed.

[NOTE: This seems relevant, too:

Social-emotional learning and anti-bullying programs don’t reduce the risk of school violence, says a leading researcher. What’s remarkable, writes Hechinger’s Jill Barshay, is that Ron Avi Astor, a UCLA professor, spent years advocating for policies he now thinks are ineffective, and is willing to say so. “We were wrong,” he said at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

On the advice of Astor and others, schools have invested heavily “in social-emotional learning, restorative justice, trauma-informed care, counseling and other efforts to make schools safer and more welcoming,” Barshay writes. …

School shooters aren’t responding to bullying or trauma, Astor told Barshay. They crave notoriety. “Most of them are suicidal, and they decided to be homicidal so that they would be remembered,” he said.

Initially the story on the Columbine shooters was that the two teenage perps had been cruelly bullied in school, and that that was their motivation. That was not the case; their intent was to kill as many people as possible (many many hundreds), and there was also suicidal intent involved but it was very secondary. They actually had plans to get away, but killed themselves instead.]

The post On parental responsibility: Colin Gray, father of teen murderer Colt Gray, sentenced to 15 years appeared first on The New Neo.

I also defer to Alan Dershowitz on the subject of Fauci’s taking the Fifth even regarding possible federal crimes, as described in this comment (the actual article by Dershowitz is behind a paywall). I’m not sure about this part, though:

Fauci almost certainly has useful information that would help in this process. The best thing for our nation and for the world, would be to give Fauci total immunity and question him about everything he knows without giving him the right to refuse to answer questions on the ground that his answers might tend to incriminate him.

Can Congress give immunity against state prosecution? I wouldn’t think so. Perhaps, however, it can give immunity for anything said during a Congressional investigation, even if a state decides to prosecute?

The post Fauci and the Fifth appeared first on The New Neo.

From Matt Taibbi, as quoted at PJ Media:

In sum, a Berlin-born man of Lebanese descent [the attacker] left Germany last year to join the ISIS militia, failed to reach Mauritania, failed to reach Syria, got arrested and sentenced in his family’s home country of Lebanon for ‘incitement to religious and sectarian conflict,’ then successfully returned to Germany to be arrested again,” Taibbi writes.

“He was convicted for planning a serious act of terrorist violence, but released despite a Prosecutor’s request for a ‘longer, non-probationary sentence for the juvenile’ — the 21-year-old juvenile — and put into ‘deradicalization counseling,’ which was about to report him for being ‘inscrutable,’ evasive, and a threat,” Taibbi continued. …

“Instead of examining border control policies that welcome back terrorist offenders so they can immediately be put into a criminal justice system that bars long sentences for 21-year-old ‘juveniles,’ or a probation policy that thinks it can counsel people out of religious fanaticism, the [New York] Times points the finger at a chancellor who refused to fly a Pride flag over parliament,” writes Taibbi.

So apparently it’s the right’s fault, of course.

Germany is in big trouble if it continues down this path. But Germany is hardly alone.

How was the suspect killed? Here’s the story:

“According to current findings, he is said to have rushed toward our emergency forces with a stabbing weapon, after which police firearms were used,” the Berlin Police said in a post on X, confirming that the confrontation occurred at approximately 6 p.m. local time Sunday. It went on to say that resuscitation efforts at the scene proved unsuccessful.

Is “a stabbing weapon” some sort of circumlocution to avoid naming the forbidden thing?

German authorities seem to think that their locating the suspect in such a timely fashion is something to brag about. But I would think that preventing him from being able to do this in the first place would have been much better. And in this case, this man already had fully demonstrated his dangerousness and should and could have been either deported or imprisoned. But it didn’t happen.

The post The jihadi attack on the German gay pride festival appeared first on The New Neo.

The Madison police officer who shot and killed Corey Ruiz should face criminal charges, civil rights attorney Ben Crump said Friday, after protests erupted in anger over videos of their struggle.

“They not only tackled him, not only tased him, not only kicked him, but you saw they shot him three times in his head and other parts of his body,” Crump said.

He spoke at an emotional news conference with Ruiz’s mother, siblings and 13-year-old daughter, Kah’liyah Aliomar.

Crump again.

What is left out? This:

Ruiz, 38, was killed on a busy city street Wednesday, just a couple of blocks away from his daughter’s home and along the route she walks to school. Police say Ruiz pulled a knife during a struggle with four officers, injuring one of them. That officer then fired the shots, according to police.

There is video, but it’s not from the police, it’s from a cellphone, and it does not show the incident from the police point of view. Madison is one of the few municipalities where the use of police videocams has been repeatedly blocked:

But unlike nearly every other similarly sized city, Madison doesn’t require its police to use body-worn cameras, so there is no footage from the officers’ perspective. Over the last decade city officials have repeatedly debated adopting the cameras — at times creating subcommittees and doing studies on the idea — but local officials have primarily blamed budget concerns and political inertia for the ongoing stalemate.

Another common source of opposition, identified in a 2021 feasibility study, came from community groups worried the cameras would be used to surveil and criminalize marginalized groups. Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said Thursday that she expects the new budget that takes effect in January to include funding for body-worn cameras.

I wonder how the protestors address the fact that the police officer was stabbed. Perhaps they deny it happened. Or perhaps they think a little stab wound isn’t so much; police should just let themselves be knifed.

More:

Wisconsin court records show Ruiz had been in and out of jail over the past decade for mostly misdemeanor offenses including disorderly conduct, drug possession, auto theft, battery and invasion of privacy. He was also convicted of felonies including possession of cocaine and marijuana, robbery, strangulation, resisting an officer and causing bodily harm.

“People are saying he’s a criminal. So what? He had a family, he had me,” Aliomar said, breaking down into tears.

A person can be a dangerous criminal and also have a family. In fact, most criminals have families. The two things are unrelated.

More:

Police said they were at the street to investigate reports that someone was trying to enter parked cars, something Crump said amounted to only the suspicion of a low-level property crime.

Well then, no need for the police to be there at all, right?

And then you have this sort of thing:

Nearly 500 people marched from the intersection of Williamson Street and South Baldwin Street [in Madison] — where the 38-year-old was shot three times on Wednesday during a struggle with several police officers — to the Madison Police Department headquarters on Friday.

Video showed some demonstrators stopping traffic and confronting at a female motorist who insisted she was an “ally” during a streetside struggle session.

“You’re going to sit there and watch it all go by and you’re going to think about it, c–t!” one yelled at the helpless driver.

“I am 100 percent an ally of the community,” she pleaded with the protestors who surrounded her car.

“I have lived in this neighborhood for 27 years. F–k the cops. I wanted to join the protest!” she said. “This guy calling me a c–t doesn’t help anyone’s cause.”

She added: “I’m an ally. I wanted to join the protest. I want to be part of this.”

That may read like a Monty Python skit, but it’s very real.

Also this:

“White silence is violence!” protesters chanted at others sitting outside [at a restaurant] enjoying their dinner.

A few hours later, a pair of protesters hit a car window when the driver refused to stop for their procession.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation held signs reading “jail killer cop. Kiel Peterson. Justice for Corey Ruiz.” …

One woman held up a sign that read: “Corrupt cops deserve to die too!! …

“You’re gonna say the same thing you all say every time a black body gets shot down in this city!” [a] man, who identified himself as Carlos Jackson, shouted. Jackson then launched into a tirade about corruption, revolution and “Zionists.”

It all comes back to the Zionists, right?

I wonder who funds the so-called “Party for Socialism and Liberation.” Here’s the Wiki entry:

The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is a communist political party in the United States. PSL formed in 2004, when its members split from the Workers World Party.

PSL describes itself as a revolutionary socialist party in the Leninist tradition, because the party believes that only a revolution can end capitalism and establish socialism. PSL pursues this goal by participating in local protests, running candidates in elections, and conducting political education. …

PSL does not release membership numbers. In 2019, PSL reported branches in “some 90 cities” or “nearly 100 cities”. In 2022, PSL reported an “organized presence in over 100 cities”. In 2024, PSL reported being “in over 50 cities”.

PSL is a democratic centralist party, which means that “all members, including those who disagree, are duty bound to publicly defend and carry out” all PSL decisions.

So, “liberated” party members are not allowed to disagree with the Party of Liberation.

It’s no real surprise to learn that they are heavily involved in pro-Palestinian causes:

Since 2023, PSL has organized numerous rallies in favor of Palestinian liberation, including many of the Gaza war protests in the United States.

In 2024, PSL and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) organized a protest outside of Ohr Torah synagogue in Edison, New Jersey, in opposition to the synagogue holding auctions for property in illegal Israel settlements in the West Bank. A minor scuffle ensured. …

In May 2025, Elias Rodriguez killed two employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. Rodriguez was a former PSL member. PSL stated that they “do not support” the shooting. …

In May 2026, PSL campaigned with Hasan Piker on behalf of Cori Bush in Missouri. In June 2026, PSL campaigned for Seattle socialist Kshama Sawant.

This group seems to have its finger in a lot of pies. The group also unites with some of the “woke right” in blaming the US and NATO for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It also supported Assad in Syria. More here on its campaign against Israel and Jews, which turns out not to be peripheral but rather central to its purposes:

[The party] incorporates virulent anti-Zionism as a core organizing principle.

PSL has been involved in anti-Israel organizing since its establishment in 2004, ramping up its activity significantly following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror massacre against Israel. In the first 18 months after Hamas’s attack, PSL sponsored or co-sponsored over 1,700 anti-Israel rallies around the U.S.; the majority of these rallies featured antisemitic rhetoric, as well as expressions of support for Hamas’s attack, belligerent calls to “smash Zionism,” and flags and other materials of U.S.-designated terror groups and more. Some PSL events also included on-the-ground harassment.

The party legitimized Hamas’s attack in an October 7, 2023, statement as a “bold counter-offensive,” said “the actions of the resistance” were a “morally and legally legitimate response to occupation” and called to cut off all U.S. aid to Israel.

One of the group’s members is Jodi Dean, who is still a professor at Hobart teaching courses such as Feminist Theory as well as Communism. Shortly after 10/7 she wrote this:

The images from October 7 of paragliders evading Israeli air defenses were for many of us exhilarating. Here were moments of freedom, that defeated Zionist expectations of submission to occupation and siege…The paragliders who flew into Israel on October 7 continue the revolutionary association of liberation and flight.

Helping to shape young minds.

But the reason I went to that ADL link was to find out about funding of the group. This is all I discovered:

PSL offers little organizational transparency and does not release membership numbers. …

PSL’s funding sources are also unclear. The group claims not to take money from foundations or corporate sources. Members are expected to contribute to PSL’s major annual fundraiser, the National Fund Drive.

The article discusses the funding of an affiliated group, The People’s Forum (there are many many affiliated groups; it’s really a huge web):

The PSL-affiliated group is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that receives funding from various sources. In 2022 and 2021, for example, The People’s Forum received $21,539 from the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation and $8,350 from CodePink, a virulently anti-Zionist group, respectively. In 2018, The People’s Forum received $3,015,000 from the United Community Fund (UCF), a grantmaking body primarily associated with Neville Roy Singham, an American businessman who has been accused of having associations with the Chinese Communist Party.

UCF has given most of its grants to The People’s Forum and the left-wing research institute Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. The People’s Forum’s Manolo de los Santos is also a researcher at Tricontinental.

In the fiscal year ending 2022, The People’s Forum had revenue of $4,428,869, significantly more than 2021’s $486,926. …

In 2023, the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) granted The People’s Forum $26,894. AFGJ is an Arizona-based organization that serves as a fiscal sponsor to several progressive and anti-Israel initiatives, including Samidoun, which is labeled as the international fundraiser of the U.S.-designated terror group the PFLP, and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

And this utterance by a speaker at one of the many meetings organized by the group says a lot about their point of view on the relationship between capitalism and Israel:

As far as organizational activity, The People’s Forum convenes numerous panels, protests, events, and other “educational” experiences, many of which are virulently anti-Israel.

At one such event, De Los Santos said: “When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”

Whether or not that has any logic isn’t especially relevant. It has logic to a large group of very dedicated leftists.

When I began this post I did not expect it to end up with anything to do with Israel. And yet here we are. To the left, these things are all related – or at least can be described as related to a mostly ignorant and willing group of mostly young people.

The post And now there’s Corey Ruiz (or, do all leftist roads lead to Israel-hatred?) appeared first on The New Neo.

Investigators were probing whether the suspect Raul Morales, 51, was motivated by hate, though Tisch also said “the initial investigation suggests that mental health may have been a factor.”

I don’t doubt both were possibly true: that the perp was indeed motivated by “hate” and that “mental health may have been a factor.” The questions are really legal ones: will this be charged as a hate crime and is there enough craziness to have caused diminished responsibility under the relevant laws? One especially strange element of the stabbings is that the perp yelled the Arabic phrase but does not seem to be either an Arab or a Muslim.

Ah, but not so fast:

[In the shared apartment of Raul Morales] … writings of Marx were found. New York Post reported New York Post reported that two Qurans, a Jehovah’s Witness Bible and a book on Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara were also found.

I suppose he had roommates who might be able to shed some light on things. That article also indicates that he was charged with this: “two counts of second-degree attempted murder as a hate crime and one count each of first-degree assault as a hate crime, second-degree assault as a hate crime, and attempted first-degree assault as a hate crime.” So apparently they’ve decided that yes, “hate” was a motivation.

I’m not keen on “hate crime” as a separate category, by the way – in general, not just for this particular crime. But as I said, I have little doubt that hatred was part of it. There’s an atmosphere of hatred towards Jews in New York, although for this particular perp, who also targeted an Asian person, it doesn’t seem to have just been towards Jews. I’ve noticed that some of these random killings have targeted Asians as well, and that’s been going on for quite some time.

More:

Language in the criminal complaint says that a witness saw Morales near a synagogue West 83rd Street saying “justice for Islam” …

He also has a criminal record for drugs in the 1990s.

Mamdani had a few perfunctory words to say after the crime, but it’s pretty obvious where his own heart is. And it’s not with the victims. His entire stint as mayor so far has featured a subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle fanning the flames of Jew-hatred, and for those inclined in that direction (and/or having mental problems) it acts as a releasor for aggression. See this:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is a “no room for hate” hypocrite: His obsessive Israel-bashing — and the ravings of his rabid pro-Palestinian besties — encourages antisemitic violence.

Tuesday night, he released an incendiary video repeating (again) a litany of lies about Israeli’s war of self-defense against the Hamas terrorists and urging mass demonstrations when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next comes to town.

Thursday, an attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” stabbed two men — a Jew in a yarmulke and an Asian — on the Upper West Side; the mayor responded with noises about hate and mental illness.

But it’s not generic hate that encourages such targeted bloodshed, however unstable the perp might be: It’s very specific incitement that points the violent at a chosen class of victims.

And in the comments to that article I see something I very often see when such topics are discussed: “Maybe they shouldn’t have voted for him. Crazy, huh?” But the Jews of New York voted overwhelmingly for Cuomo in the primary and in the election as well.

The post Mamdani and violence against Jews in New York appeared first on The New Neo.

A year.

At least, that’s RFK Jr.’s estimate. And that’s just Medicaid.

For example, from Kennedy:

“We found a hotel room with 29 hospices in it. I mean a hotel, every room was a hospice, and none of them had any patients. They were just addresses.”

“The guys who own them, they were Estonians and Armenians and people from Eastern Europe who were getting the patient numbers. They were stealing them from doctors’ offices.”

“They were also going into poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles and they’d say to the people, ‘We’ll give you this $375 flat-screen TV. You give us your patient number and we’re going to enroll you in this hospice. You don’t ever have to go. We’re just going to enroll you,’ and then we’ll charge Medicaid $6,000 a month forever. And the guy never dies, of course, because he was never sick.”

“We didn’t get a single call from a congressman or from a business owner saying, ‘Oh, you shut down my hospice and all these patients are on the street.’ None of them, because they were all crooked and they knew they were crooked.”

John Hinderaker, who wrote the post, adds that in Minnesota (his home state), it is estimated that “at least one-half of the total spending on 14 Medicaid programs went to fraud.”

I always knew there was some fraud, and that it wasn’t a small amount. But no, I didn’t think it was as large as that. Even worse, I think I had assumed that the fraud was at least somewhat difficult to detect. But that turns out to be wrong, too. It was ridiculously easy to detect, particularly in the computer age which we’ve been in for decades.

So why was it not detected? Is it a case of astoundingly colossal incompetence? Possibly, but I don’t think so. It’s more likely to be a case of winking at it in order to gain the support of those who participate in it – who are not limited to members of immigrant communities, but those communities seem to be over-represented in the fraudster population.

[ADDENDUM:

I was looking up earlier posts of mine on heath care fraud, and much to my surprise I found one from 2017 that contained that same $100 billion a year figure. I certainly hadn’t remembered that. Please take a look.]

The post We knew there was Medicaid fraud. But THIS much fraud? appeared first on The New Neo.