A woman named Eliza Fletcher was forcibly abducted while jogging in the early morning in Memphis, and her suspected killer has been apprehended, with a wealth of evidence to tie him to the violent crime, including video of the abduction itself.
One of the many disturbing things about this crime is his history:
Court records show Abston, 38, is a previously convicted kidnapper: He pleaded guilty to especially aggravated kidnapping and robbery in 2001. He was sentenced to 24 years and 11 years in prison, respectively, although it is unclear how long he remained incarcerated and if he served his sentences concurrently…
Abston previously pleaded guilty to kidnapping local attorney Kemper Durand around 2 a.m. May 25, 2000, walking up behind him with a gun and forcing him to get into the trunk of a car, local paper the Memphis Flyer reported at the time. Abston was a minor when he kidnapped Durand and brought him to an ATM to withdraw money.
And here’s an article written not long after Durand’s kidnapping – yesterday I was able to access it, but today for some reason I get an error message. However, I recall it mentioned that at the time of the Durand kidnapping Abston already had a long history of prior juvenile offenses, many of them violent.
Abston obviously has been a very dangerous person for most of his life and certainly was not rehabilitated in prison, and just as obviously although the criminal justice system managed to keep him off the streets for quite a few years, once his time was up within that system, he reverted to his old ways and upped the ante by killing his victim. However, even back in 2000, when he abducted Durand, it was only by chance that Durand was rescued and the court had reason to imagine that if that hadn’t occured, Durand would have been murdered. However, there was no way to prove it and Abson only was sentenced for the crime he actually had committed, not the one he may have intended.
I wonder if anything different might have been done to prevent the murder of Eliza Fletcher. I don’t think, given Abston’s actual crime, there was any way to have justified an even longer sentence, but obviously one might have been in order. The problem is whether the criminal justice system is able to distinguish incorrigible likely-repeat-offenders such as Abston from those who, after serving a long term, don’t go on to commit additional violent crimes.
We don’t know much about Abston’s behavior while in prison, but that could be a clue. Did he get time off for good behavior, or was he making trouble all the time? He obviously didn’t serve the entire 24 years, and he seems to have served the 11 additional years concurrently.
At The Federalist, Margot Cleveland has seven very interesting observations about Judge Cannon’s written decision ordering a Special Master to review the documents seized in the MAL raid. Here are three of them I want to highlight.
The first concerns a letter sent by the NARA archivist to Trump’s lawyer back in May, after Trump had claimed executive privilege for some documents and the acting archivist Debra Steidel Wall had consulted with the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, and then had decided not to honor Trump’s claim of privilege. Here’s what Cleveland writes:
Monday’s order highlighted a key sentence in that same letter and that went less noticed by the press: “NARA will provide the FBI access to the records in question, as requested by the incumbent President, beginning as early as Thursday, May 12, 2022” (emphasis added).
This language indicates that Biden did not merely defer to the NARA but asked the NARA to give the documents to the FBI. Of course, deferring to the NARA’s judgment equated to Biden authorizing the hand-off to the FBI, but this passage suggests a more direct connection between Biden and the investigation into Trump.
Biden has denied any connection or even any knowledge, of course.
This subsequent point of Cleveland’s is connected:
In opposing Trump’s request for a special master, the Biden administration argued that Trump lacked the right to assert “executive privilege” against the current executive branch. The court concluded that the Biden administration’s “position arguably overstates the law,” noting that the Supreme Court has not “rule[d] out the possibility of a former President overcoming an incumbent President on executive privilege matters.”
“Further, just this year,” Cannon continued, “the Supreme Court noted that, at least in connection with a congressional investigation, ‘[t]he questions whether and in what circumstances a former President may obtain a court order preventing disclosure of privileged records from his tenure in office, in the face of a determination by the incumbent President to waive the privilege, are unprecedented and raise serious and substantial concerns.’” To protect former President Trump’s ability to raise a question of executive privilege, then, a special master should review the documents and make an initial assessment, the court concluded.
And in my opinion that should have been done at the outset, either prior to the raid or immediately afterward. Apparently for some unknown reason, however, Trump’s lawyers didn’t file to do this immediately; perhaps it took them a while to research the law on it, or perhaps it was something else. And then the judge took a long time after that to issue the ruling.
To me the behavior of the DOJ is just another indication that the left doesn’t ever expect to lose power. It’s my impression (as far as I know, anyway) that one of the reasons this issue has not been adjudicated before – of a later president who is hostile to the previous president waiving privilege for the former president for matters involving that former president’s administration – is that no previous president has attempted to do so. And if that’s correct, it seems rather obvious to me that no president would want to set that precedent for fear that a subsequent president hostile to him would respond in kind. Each president would seem to want to preserve his own right to assert executive privilege for himself.
That’s why it seems to me that the Biden administration doesn’t ever expect to encounter such a scenario because they don’t ever expect a president from the other side to take office, and even if such a thing were to somehow happen, the DOJ would remain firmly in the left’s hands.
More from Cleveland:
Another revelation from Monday’s order concerned the amount of personal material the FBI seized. “The Government’s inventory reflects a seizure of approximately 11,000 documents and 1,800 other items from Plaintiff’s residence,” the court wrote. Of the material seized, the court said approximately 100 documents contained classification markings. But the FBI also seized some 500 pages of material potentially protected by attorney-client privilege, medical documents, correspondence related to taxes, and accounting information.
That the FBI seized Trump’s passports, articles of clothing, medical records, and accounting and tax documents during the raid of Mar-a-Lago highlights both the breadth (and lack of particularity) of the search warrant and the potential for the Biden administration to use the search as a fishing expedition.
I have a sense that politically, culturally, socially, things are *not* going to be ok. Things are *not* going to work out. The America that we knew is not going to survive. The people who will populate the new America do not have the foundation of fundamentally American thinking that we had even when we rebelled against it. Part of the crisis for me is that many or most of my own family are among these new people.
There is no place for people like me in the new America. We will be marginalized and subjugated. I’m old, and I tell myself that I won’t be around, and my descendants will live in a different world and there’s nothing I can do about it. That’s not much help though.
Sometimes, though, I remind myself I’m not the best prognosticator, and that feelings are not facts. I don’t know what the future will bring. I don’t know whether this thing will somehow turn around.
It doesn’t feel that it will turn around, though. But isn’t this partly just what older people often feel? Is that part of this phenomenon? I do know that a lot of my liberal friends don’t seem like happy campers, either. They seem to have a sense of general foreboding, although it’s probably about different things. But it’s not always well-articulated, and I think some of it has to do with a gut feeling of not understanding the forces that have been set loose in the world today.
Here’s a compendium of statements to read, many of them from ancient times, in which old people carp about how society is degenerating and things were falling apart. Of course, sometimes they were correct.
NOTE: The title of this post comes from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats, a poem I’ve quoted several times before on this blog. Here it is again:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
In my opinion, this ruling comes way too late. The DOJ has had plenty of time to go through the documents and other seized items, if they had enough people working on it – and I am pretty sure they threw enormous numbers into the effort, because that’s how determined they are to get Trump for something:
Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon has granted Donald Trump’s Motion for Judicial Oversight of the FBI/DOJ handling of records and other things seized during the Mar-a-Lago Raid.
The Order entered today provides, in relevant part (emphasis added):
“Pursuant to the Court’s equitable jurisdiction and inherent supervisory authority, and mindful of the need to ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity under the extraordinary circumstances presented, Plaintiff’s Motion [ECF No. 1] is GRANTED IN PART. The Court hereby authorizes the appointment of a special master to review the seized property for personal items and documents and potentially privileged material subject to claims of attorneyclient and/or executive privilege. Furthermore, in natural conjunction with that appointment, and consistent with the value and sequence of special master procedures, the Court also temporarily enjoins the Government from reviewing and using the seized materials for investigative purposes pending completion of the special master’s review or further Court order.”
Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated. And that’s where MAGA Republicans are today.
But there is no indication that so-called “MAGA-Republicans” believe that all elections they lose are the result of cheating. In the 2020 presidential election, however, there was reason to believe it based on the loosening of the rules for voting and the way some of the votes in key states came in. But underlying all of that was the unverifiable nature of mail-in voting, which became very common in 2020 with the excuse of COVID, and enabled possible fraud that would be undetectable, thus undermining general trust in elections.
Democrats will never admit that – unless it’s they who lose the election.
Actually, there’s plenty of reason to say that it has been the Democrats who – both in 2000 (which was a bona fide photo finish election) and in 2016 – cannot accept defeat and must charge cheating. To refresh your memory:
Joe Biden would also dump Kamala Harris as his VP. She said in 2020 that it was "absolutely right" that Trump is "an illegitimate President who didn’t really win" in 2016. pic.twitter.com/3lCFkvNi4T
I had forgotten this resolution that was introduced in the Missouri House, if I ever even knew about it in the first place. It’s got some good reminders in it, as well:
WHEREAS, House Speaker NancyPelosi indicated that the 2016 election for President of the United States was illegitimate by stating, “Our election was hijacked. There is no question” in her Twitter comments to the nation;
WHEREAS, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated on numerous occasions that President Donald J. Trump and members of his family likely colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election; and
WHEREAS, in January 2017, Senator Tim Kaine appeared on MCNBC’s “Morning Joe” where he stated, “What we’ve got to do is fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets, fight online, fight at the ballot box, and now there’s the momentum to be able to do this”;…
WHEREAS, on November 17, 2018, Senator Richard Blumenthal told MSNBC host Chris Hayes “the evidence is pretty clear that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians”; and
WHEREAS, on January 14, 2020, Nancy Pelosi spread further debunked conspiracy theories and discord by tweeting: “American elections should be decided by the American people, not by the Russian Government. Retweet if you agree”; and…
WHEREAS, in August 2020, Representative Ayanna Pressley stated, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that, “you know, there needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives”; and…
WHEREAS, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has referred to the Senate as a “kangaroo court” whose impeachment votes are illegitimate; and
WHEREAS, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has issued threats against individual justices of the Supreme Court of the United States in such a virulent manner…
WHEREAS, these actions are clear and convincing evidence of a long-term pattern of disrespect for the rule of law and disdain for the democratic process; and
WHEREAS, these statements by Democrats in Congress have been unchecked by Democrat leadership, allowing conspiracy theories of Russian interference, Russian collusion, and an “illegitimate” presidential election to grow, leading to a probe into these debunked theories that cost taxpayers millions of dollars…
During his first news conference since March, Biden refused to say the country’s upcoming elections would be free and fair or that the results would be legitimate, unless Democrats’ voting reforms were passed.
“I just wanted to clarify: A moment ago, you were asked whether or not you believed that we would have free and fair elections in 2022 if some of these state legislatures reformed their voting protocols,” a reporter said. “You said that it depends. Do you … think that they would in any way be illegitimate?”
I’m not saying it’s going to be legit,” Biden responded. “The increase in the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed.
He later denied that’s what he meant. Oh, and there was also this from Biden in May of 2019, shortly after he announced his candidacy for the 2020 race:
After a woman [during a visit by Biden to New Hampshire] claimed she had a “very severe case of what’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and that Trump is an “illegitimate president in my mind,” Biden responded: “I absolutely agree.”
Vice President Kamala Harris’ newly appointed communications director Jamal Simmons insisted more than once that George W. Bush’s first presidential election victory was “illegitimate,” according to resurfaced statements and tweets.
While Simmons repeatedly noted that he behaved respectfully toward Bush, his insistence that the 2000 election was stolen pairs awkwardly with the Biden administration’s furious response to former President Donald Trump’s insistence that widespread voter fraud cost him a second term — a claim the White House and many top Democrats have labeled the “Big Lie.”
I could go on and on and on – but really, I could save myself the trouble, because this video provides a host of incontrovertible evidence:
Remember the “Resistance”? Not the people who during WWII opposed the Nazis, but the other – self-styled – “Resistance,” the enormous number of Democrats who declared loudly and often that Trump’s 2016 election was illegitimate, and many of whom went on to try to frame him with lies such as the Steele dossier. And yet Biden and other Democrats who denied and denied Trump’s 2016 election (some of them even denying Bush’s 2000 election) have the gall to accuse the “MAGA Republicans” of what they themselves have repeatedly done. And those same Democrats had even less evidence to go on – except, of course, for the evidence they themselves manufactured.
[NOTE: This is a slightly edited version of a previous post.]
Labor Day is the bookend standing at the opposite end of summer from its holiday beginning, Memorial Day.
July Fourth is summer’s early peak, with the promise of long light-filled days ahead. But Labor Day is summer’s last gasp, the moment I dreaded as a child because it marked the end of vacation and the start of the school year. Spiffy new clothes, a shiny bookbag, freshly sharpened pencils, and the promise of the beautiful autumn leaves’ arrival were nice. But they couldn’t make up for the fact that a new school year was beginning. Where oh where had the summer gone?
And it goes even more quickly these days.
Here’s wishing you all a Happy Labor Day, despite the difficult times. Barbecues, picnics, the beach, just hanging out in your yard, whatever you desire and whatever you decide. And for the historically-minded among you, here’s some information on the origins of the holiday.
Young people probably have no idea about that happened back then. But those of us who are older certainly remember. It was stunningly shocking at the time, and even worse because it occurred in Germany at what was supposed to be a peaceful and happy venue, the Olympics. As events unfolded, the almost unbelievable extent of Germany’s mishandling and incompetence and even perhaps malevolence was eventually revealed, but I think most people are still unaware of its extent.
This video (it can’t be embedded here, but it’s easy to watch if you click on the link) is a talk given by Simon Reeve, who is the author of a book entitled One Day in September. The entire video is fascinating, but the first half hour or so is an especially good summary of the entire Munich event. The details are harrowing and the description of Germany’s role infuriating.
Or, if you’re unfamiliar with the events, a simple way to learn the main facts is to watch the powerful award-winning documentary “One Day in September.” Those of you who were around in 1972 can relive the horror, including some details you’ve probably forgotten; those who were not around back then can familiarize themselves with a day that put Palestinian terrorism on the Olympic map and the world map.
…Munich was one of the most successful attacks in terrorist history. As Bruce Hoffman, a leading authority on terrorism points out, “The premier example of terrorism’s power to rocket a cause from obscurity to renown…was without doubt the murder of eleven Israeli athletes seized by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games…
Most of the world had forgotten the Palestinians existed before the attack at Munich. Within two years of the massacre…Yassar Arafat was being feted by world leaders and invited to address the General Assembly of the United Nations…
It’s also difficult and immensely frustrating to watch the film and relive the incident step by step as an observer; the impulse is to reach out and change history. The film also (in my opinion) is too graphic in some of its photos of the victims, so be forewarned on that score.
One particularly outrageous element of Germany’s role in the incident involves the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 651. If you haven’t heard that aspect of the attack’s aftermath, here’s a summary:
The hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 615 was an act of Palestinian terrorism that occurred on 29 October 1972 and aimed at the liberation of the three surviving perpetrators of the Munich massacre from a West German prison.
When the Lufthansa airplane was seized by sympathisers of the Black September Organization during the Beirut-Ankara part of a multi-stopover flight from Damascus to Frankfurt, the West German authorities complied with the demand of having the prisoners released. They were handed over at Zagreb Airport, and the hijacked aircraft was flown to Tripoli, where all hostages were released. The liberated Munich attackers were granted asylum by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
For its actions, the West German government was criticised by Israel and other parties. Allegations were made that the hijacking had been staged or at least tolerated with theories of a secret agreement between the German government and Black September – release of the surviving terrorists in exchange for assurances of no further attacks on Germany.
See this for more information on why it is suspected that the hijacking was accomplished with the co-operation of the German government.
Another point that’s often made – and that Reeve mentions as well – is the idea that the Israeli response of killing Palestinian terrorists was motivated by revenge. I believe that is a common misunderstanding:
In a February 2006 interview,[84] Zamir answered direct questions:
Was there no element of vengeance in the decision to take action against the terrorists?
No. We were not engaged in vengeance. We are accused of having been guided by a desire for vengeance. That is nonsense. What we did was to concretely prevent in the future. We acted against those who thought that they would continue to perpetrate acts of terror. I am not saying that those who were involved in Munich were not marked for death. They definitely deserved to die. But we were not dealing with the past; we concentrated on the future.
Did you not receive a directive from Golda Meir along the lines of “take revenge on those responsible for Munich?”
Golda Meir abhorred the necessity that was imposed on us to carry out the operations. Golda never told me to ‘take revenge on those who were responsible for Munich.’ No one told me that.
In a way it feels like less than fifty years have passed, but in a way it feeks like more. The world seemed a lot more innocent back then – at least to me – and the Munich Olympics massacre was one of the events that disabused us of that notion.
I had the enormous good fortune to see Baryshnikov dance in person many many times, and he fully lived up to all the hype. To this day, I have never seen a more exciting and yet Apollonian dancer – an unusual combination – and I’ve seen many of the greats. Even though the following clip discusses the extreme height of his jumps, in person they were even more impressive, with extraordinary ballon (the ability to appear to pause in the air at the height of the jump). I think some of his jumping ability came from the strength of his thigh muscles in relation to his more slight torso. He could act, too, and had tremendous charm as well as masculinity.
Baryshnikov also had total command of attack, which is the ability to make a movement forceful, quick, sharp, and distinct so that it “reads” very clearly and powerfully all the way to the last row of the audience. It’s a question of timing and emphasis, and takes great strength and musicality.
The video says he was 5’5″, and if you look his height up online some sites even say 5’6″ or 5’7″. But I don’t think he actually was more than 5’4″. I might be wrong, but the reason I say that is that I once stood next to him; we were both in ballet slippers, and 5’4″ is my estimate of his height. At any height, though, onstage he was a giant:
Starting tomorrow, concealed weapons will no longer be permitted on subways, in bars, and the following sensitive locations. pic.twitter.com/RKExUOBlrT
SCOTUS had struck down New York’s earlier restrictive concealed carry law, so in July the legislature passed another one, which took effect on September 1. This is what Hochul is referencing; she’s not just doing this by executive decree:
The [newly-passed] laws contain strengthened background checks and firearm safety and live-fire training for individuals seeking to obtain concealed carry permits; prohibit concealed carry permit holders from bringing their firearms into sensitive locations, including Times Square, bars, libraries, schools, government buildings and hospitals, among others; and require renewal or recertification of permits every three years. The Governor also announced a new Gun Safety Website to provide the public, gun owners, and gun dealers with a comprehensive information about all of the new requirements under state law.
“In response to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down New York’s century-old concealed carry law, we took swift and thoughtful action to keep New Yorkers safe,” Governor Hochul said. “I refuse to surrender my right as Governor to protect New Yorkers from gun violence or any other form of harm. In New York State, we will continue leading the way forward and implementing common sense gun safety legislation.”
I have no objection to requiring training of various kinds. It’s the restrictions in “sensitive locations” that are the problem. Unless every single one of those locations has an entrance protected by armed guards and metal protectors blocking entrance by all gun carriers, legal or illegal – and of course that is not going to be the case – the laws protect no one except “bad guys” intent on flouting them.
It seems obvious that a gang member or a thief or a murderer is not a law-abiding citizen, and gun laws mean nothing to such a person.
“We will be posting signage at every entrance into Times Square informing those traveling through that the area is a gun-free zone and that licensed gun carriers and others may not enter with a gun unless otherwise specially authorized by law. As mayor of New York City and a former police officer, my top priority will always be the safety of all 8.8 million people who call this city home, so while the Supreme Court decision may have opened an additional river feeding the sea of gun violence, we are doing everything we can to dam it and keep New York the safest big city in America,” he added.
I don’t see why this law would have any effect on the “river feeding the sea of gun violence,” except to increase it. In addition, a lot of New York’s increased violence – for example, pushing people onto subway tracks, or beating them up – does not feature guns.
Hochul said this:
We don’t need guns on our streets. We don’t need people carrying guns in our subways. We don’t need people carrying guns in our schools. We don’t need people carrying in our places of worship. We don’t need them carrying them into bars or restaurants. Because that only makes people less safe,” Hochul said Wednesday.
You may not need them, but you will get them, because criminals are not deterred by laws such as this. Earth to Hochul, Adams, and the New York legislature: there is a black market in guns, and criminals engage in it. As long as criminals have guns and armed police are not always around, to disarm the law-abiding citizens seems like madness.
However, there’s a clue in Hochul’s statement that legal concealed carry “only makes people less safe.” I would amend that to “it makes some people feel less safe.” When I see a sign that a certain area I’m about to enter is a gun-free zone, unless it’s protected by the aforementioned metal detector with an armed guard (courtrooms are a good example), I don’t feel the least bit safe. I feel like a sitting duck. But I am pretty certain that a sizeable number of people do feel more safe when they see signs like that. It is a kind of safety-theater, a pretense of protection.
As governor and then before that lieutenant governor, Hochul has state trooper protection as security. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume she’s not planning to disarm them.
