Why don’t they just stone Chauvin to death and get it over with?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m sure they would find plenty of eager participants.

What am I talking about? This:

The DOJ is now planning to indict [Chauvin] and the three other cops involved in Floyd’s death on civil rights charges, a source told the Tribune.

The federal investigation into Floyd’s death is separate to the state’s case which led to Chauvin’s trial and conviction last week.

[The federal case] has been running in parallel with federal authorities presenting evidence before a grand jury of 23 citizens who will decide if there is probable cause to bring charges against the disgraced officers.

The three other cops – J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao – face trial together on August 23 on state charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder and manslaughter. They deny those allegations, and were fired from their jobs at Minneapolis PD in the wake of Floyd’s death.

The Minnesota AG’s Office wants to also add a charge of aiding and abetting third-degree murder to each of their cases.

Now, the DOJ wants to indict Chauvin on federal civil rights violations over both Floyd’s death and a 2017 incident where he knelt on a black 14-year-old boy’s neck for nearly 17 minutes.

Kueng, Lane and Thao would only be indicted over Floyd’s death.

A knee on the neck of a 14-year-old for 17 minutes. What a vicious, racist brute – right? Lost is the fact that the Minneapolis police listed that hold in its recommended ways to subdue resistant offenders (it has since been removed from the manual, post-Floyd). Lost also are these other facts, which I would consider salient [emphasis mine]:

Prosecutors detail the Sept. 4, 2017, arrest in the court filing, saying Chauvin and another officer named Wells responded to a domestic assault call in which the mom said she’d been assaulted by her son and daughter.

After 33 seconds of talking to the boy, telling him he was being arrested, both officers grabbed him and when he resisted, Chauvin hit him with a flashlight twice, at which point the boy called out for his mom and said they were hurting him, prosecutors say.

Chauvin then asked the other officer to Taser the boy, but he didn’t have one, so Chauvin applied a neck restraint that caused the boy to lose consciousness and go to the ground, prosecutors said. The officers handcuffed him behind his back while Chauvin knelt on him for about 17 minutes until after paramedics arrived and they put him in an ambulance.

During the time Chauvin’s knee was on his back, the boy – whose ear was bleeding – repeatedly told officers he couldn’t breathe and asked to be placed on his back, which didn’t happen, prosecutors said.

Another thing that didn’t happen was that being in that position for 17 minutes didn’t seem to physically harm the 14-year-old at all, much less kill him.

More, this time about what happened in some of the early stages of Chauvin’s recently-concluded trial, when the prosecution tried to introduce that incident with the 14-year-old, as well as other incidents in which Chauvin had used neck restraints, into evidence (the judge refused to allow the evidence) [emphasis mine]:

Chauvin’s attorney Eric Nelson responded to the state’s motion [to introduce video of the incident with the 14-year-old], arguing the video shouldn’t be admissible because the force Chauvin used in the 2017 arrest was in line with the department’s policy on dealing with uncooperative suspects, adding that Chauvin’s use of force was “reported to supervisors and cleared.”

“The state makes a point of noting that the suspect was rolled onto his stomach and cuffed while Mr. Chauvin used his knee and body weight to pin the suspect to the floor. As noted previously, this is how MPD officers are trained to handcuff individuals — particularly suspects who are resisting,” Nelson wrote, adding that there is “no marked similarity” between this incident and the Floyd incident.

The Minneapolis Police Department has since changed its use of force policy. In June, after Floyd’s death, it banned chokeholds and neck restraints.

I also looked at the court document filed by Nelson in Chauvin’s trial. It turns out there were eight incidents in which Chauvin used some form of neck restraint to subdue suspects, and it makes for very interesting reading if you want to learn the sort of thing police officers often encounter in the course of their jobs. In the document, the arrest of the 14-year-old is labeled “Incident 6”:

In each of the above incidents, as shown supra, Mr. Chauvin used takedown and restraint techniques taught and approved by the MPD. His “modus operandi” was simply that of a Minneapolis Police officer performing his duties and reacting as the circumstances, in which he was present and where the State’s attorneys were not, dictated. The State’s attempt to characterize these incidents as evidence of some kind of ill intent or common scheme of violence that is somehow unique to Chauvin is specious, at best. Finally, in each of the above incidents, the State attempts to characterize Mr. Chauvin’s use of force as “unreasonable” or “beyond what was needed.” Mr. Chauvin reported his use of force to the department in each of the above incidents,and in every single one, it was determined by a supervisor that Mr. Chauvin’s use of force was reasonable in the circumstances and authorized by law and MPD Policy. In essence, to the extent that his use of force was at all questioned — of which the State has offered no evidence — Mr. Chauvin was “acquitted” by MPD supervisors of applying force in a manner that was either unreasonable or unauthorized.

What appears to be happening here – and this is really not news – is that more or less normal and approved police behavior has been criminalized in light of changing political winds, and that criminalization will be applied ex post facto. The police are being continually stripped of the right to defend either themselves or others – and that includes the “others” who call them for help against violent attackers.

But we also can assume that, had the police not intervened and another attack occurred, that would probably be considered actionable as well.

Oh, and one more thing – that unnamed 14-year-old? He is described as having been 6’2″ and having weighed 240 at the time of his arrest by Chauvin. That’s more or less the size of George Floyd, who is reported to have been 6’6″ in life and 6’4″ at autopsy, weighing 223 pounds; and Michael Brown, who at 18 (when he was shot by Officer Wilson) is reported to have been 6’4″ and to have weighed 292 pounds.

The fact that the arrestee in “Incident 6” was 14 years old makes him sound like a small child, which he most definitely was not. In contrast, Derek Chauvin is 5’9″ and weighs 140. Having an officer of relatively diminutive stature (or a female officer who might not only be of small stature but of weaker upper body musculature) is obviously a potential problem in each encounter with a resistant suspect.

Not having seen the video of Chauvin’s encounter with the 14-year-old juvenile, I can’t even offer an opinion about whether his use of force was appropriate or not, except to note that it was cleared by his department – and to add that, had he not restrained this assailant and had the mother or anyone else been assaulted while Chauvin was there, I have little doubt there would be a hue and cry about that.

Open thread 4/29/21

The New Neo Posted on by

This might put a smile on your face. It certainly put a smile on mine to see and hear this particular group of singers all together. The song was written by Larry Gatlin and Barry Gibb, and the video was apparently recorded in June of 1985:

The Bee Gees have said many times that when they were children and starting to sing, Roy Orbison was a huge favorite of theirs. His first big hit was in 1960, when Barry would have been around 13 and the twins 10. Barry looks happy as a clam to be standing right next to Orbison and hearing him sing a song Barry helped to write.

Arizona is finally getting a “full forensic audit” of the 2020 voting – but so what?

The New Neo Posted on by

This is why voter fraud pays – it takes all this time to start a full audit, and even then it only is happening in Arizona because it has a Republican Senate that ordered it and persevered in the face of opposition:

[Arizona Senate President] Fann noted that the Arizona State Senate and auditors don’t have a particular expectation of the findings.

“We are performing the full forensic audit to either dispel our voter’s concerns, or if a problem is uncovered, we must fix the problems before the next election,” she said.

“We have never accused anyone of fraud or misconduct, whether it be the hardware, software, or actions of personnel.

“We hope there is no intentional illegal tampering but, if found, we will turn the information over to the state and federal attorney generals for their further legal action, and we will proceed to make the appropriate corrections.”

How on earth could anyone object to that? You know how:

Fann said the state’s Republicans have faced “sabotage” by Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors and that the process has been hindered.

“The Maricopa BOS has refused to allow us to perform the audit at their facilities,” Fann said, “and has gone so far as to refusing to even answer simple questions such as ‘how are the ballots sequestered?’

“It’s taken the Senate two and a half months to win in court to uphold our right to issue subpoenas for election materials and another 6 weeks of researching to select the audit team to perform the full forensic audit.”

Maricopa County is, of course, the location of Phoenix. About the results of the 2020 election there:

Until 2020, it was the largest county in the country to vote Republican. Since 1964, Democrats have held the margin within single digits only four times–in 1992, 1996, 2016, and 2020. In 2020, Joe Biden became the first Democrat in 72 years to win the county, which in turn, resulted in Arizona flipping to the Democratic column for the first time since 1996, and only the second time since 1948. Furthermore, Biden became the first presidential candidate to win more than one million votes in the county. T

Here are the Maricopa County election results as of November 9; I couldn’t find any updates after that, and don’t know if there were any. It’s interesting – the results were more or less the opposite of what happened in 2016, when the vote total was 1,450,268 and Trump won by a margin of 44,454. In 2020 there were 2,007,763 votes cast, and Joe Biden won by a margin of 46,775. That means that the number of voters 2020 represented a 38% increase over the number in 2016 (I hope I did the math right; doing this quickly). So in 2016 Trump’s margin represented 3%, whereas in 2020 Biden’s margin of victory represented 2.3%.

That certainly may be exactly the way the voters cast their ballots there in 2020. But we don’t know, and a proper audit ought to reveal the answer. However, so far I have seen no reason to believe that whatever Maricopa County submits for audit now represents ballots and/or machines that have been handled properly post-election. I also note that it doesn’t seem that this audit will focus on the absentee ballots and envelopes – signature verification and the like. The article certainly doesn’t mention it, nor have I seen anything that does (if you can find such articles, please give links in the comments). Without the ability to go over signatures as well as match envelopes to ballots – something I strongly doubt is even possible at this point – the audit has little meaning.

Recently I wrote a post about a law that has been considered by the Tennessee legislature, requiring the addition of watermarks to the official mail-in ballots. I believe that many kinds of fraud are possible with the system we have in place today and yet much of it is virtually undetectable, even if it were to be investigated in a timely fashion (which also is not going to happen). Watermarks would be a start, but in that same post I described some of the safeguards the British use, which include the following:

Each postal ballot pack contains inside the cover envelope a ballot paper, two envelopes (“A” and “B”) and a postal voting statement. Postal ballot papers contain the following design, security and identification features on the reverse:

–an official mark (e.g. a watermark or an official stamp)
–a unique identifying mark (e.g. a barcode which is different for each individual ballot paper)
–a unique identification number

When issuing each postal ballot paper, the officer marks on a list (called the corresponding number list) next to the postal ballot’s unique identification number the elector number of the voter to whom the postal ballot is sent, and then makes a mark next to the voter’s name in a separate list of postal voters. The unique identification number of the postal ballot paper is also marked on the postal voting statement sent within the postal ballot pack. The local authority name and address and the name of the constituency/ward are printed on both envelopes “A” and “B”. Once all ballot papers for an election have been issued by the returning officer, the corresponding number list is sealed in a packet which can only be opened upon the order of a court when an election result is challenged.

I’d like to know more about how the system actually works in the event of a challenge, including how voters’ vote secrecy is protected. But at least I can see a way in which such a system might yield information that could uncover mail-in ballot fraud, unlike our current system which seems unable to do that no matter when an audit is conducted. However, it’s almost certainly moot, because the legislatures even in red states don’t seem to be considering anything of the sort in terms of comprehensive fraud prevention.

“Defounding America”

The New Neo Posted on by

I recommend reading this article by Myron Magnet, which is a summary of how we got where we are today in terms of the loss of autonomy and the growth of federal control, as well as the extreme change in our social culture. We find the usual players – Wilson and his “living constitution,” FDR and his federal steering of the economy, and LBJ and the welfare state – but it’s an overview that ties it all together and in the process explains much of the conservative viewpoint.

An excerpt:

Lyndon Johnson was an impatient man, and, when the Civil Rights Act didn’t produce instant magic, he abruptly changed focus in one of the most wrongheaded presidential speeches ever. “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ ” he declared in June 1965, oblivious to his words’ imputation of racial inferiority. If clearing away bars to black opportunity hadn’t sparked success, then—by God!— he’d give black Americans their Great Society by sheer federal force. He would provide “equality as a fact and equality as a result,” he vowed. They didn’t have medical insurance? Medicaid would lay it on free, at triple the estimated cost. Bad housing held them back? He’d raze the slums and build them new high-rises that, instead of uplifting their residents, soon became crime-ridden new slums. Aid to Dependent Children was stingy? He’d pay the National Welfare Rights Organization to agitate for richer payments, matching those of a minimum-wage job—and he’d fund legions of “public-interest” lawyers and “community activists” to press bureaucrats and judges to funnel yet more tax money to the minority poor. The outcome: starting in 1964, as the War on Poverty began, every index of social pathology among the minority poor—crime, drug use, illegitimacy, welfare dependency, and school dropout—streaked higher for three decades.

FDR was right: welfare proved “a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” It wasn’t mainly a question of economic incentives, though social thinkers since Tocqueville have observed that the more poor relief a society provides, the more paupers will proliferate, as the slothful choose handouts over work as the sums equalize. What’s more important is the spiritual dimension that FDR noted. Individuals forge their characters in the work they do, discovering and refining what skills and virtues lie within them, bettering their communities, supporting their families, and making a meaningful life even in the most humble job. It isn’t government that “liberates [man] from the enslaving forces of his environment,” as LBJ claimed. It is man himself who grapples with the conditions life sets and, in the process, molds an identity. To be fed like gerbils in a cage by the seemingly extraterrestrial hand of the state is to be cut off from humanity’s wellsprings.

LBJ had only five years in the White House. But the words FDR’s treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau used to sum up the New Deal apply just as aptly to the War on Poverty: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. . . . I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . . And an enormous debt to boot.”…

While the Sixties’ War on Poverty failed, its Culture War succeeded. Today, the bosses of America’s institutions are cultural-revolution veterans or their acolytes, and, as their own students and children survey the arid acres of housing projects, where generations of lives have improved not one whit as lbj’s dream turned to ashes, and the dumbed-down campuses where affirmative action kids still struggle and complain, they are reviving all the mistaken 1960s notions and launching a renewed assault on America’s culture that marks the third stage of the dismantling of the Founders’ republic…

Race is the soul of Culture War II. It explains everything…

Much more at the link.

Magnet, by the way, has an interesting background for someone with his point of view:

Magnet graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1962. He holds bachelor’s degrees from both Columbia University (1966) and the University of Cambridge, as well an M.A. from Cambridge and a Ph.D. in English Literature from Columbia University, where he also taught for several years.

Black cop: the heart of the matter is lies

The New Neo Posted on by

This article appeared recently in The Federalist, based on an interview with a black police officer (his employment was documented by the periodical):

In my opinion, the anti-cop narrative began with the Obama administration. He made negative law enforcement comments, and in controversial cases would show up to the deceased’s funerals (which were later justified as lawful shootings). The Dallas five were killed under Obama and he didn’t show any respect toward them.

That was true of so many of our recent destructive developments. Obama was an innovator of sorts. Riding on his own popularity and the favorable press he knew he would receive, he slowly introduced behavior that was unusual for a president, as well as prejudicial and partisan, and did it in a manner that most people didn’t notice or that was framed as praiseworthy.

More [emphasis mine]:

…[W]e’ve been on this slippery slope since the start of the BLM [Black Lives Matter] movement. That’s where things really started to take a serious turn. We were already nose diving, and Floyd’s death is just more fuel to the fire.

All these cases involve a false narrative of police racism, from Trayvon Martin to Rayshard Brooks to George Floyd, causing tension and a divide between law-enforcement and the community.

I would add that they involve not only a false narrative of police racism but also a false narrative of police brutality. Those paired narratives have been so powerful that even when the truth does come out eventually – usually in a courtroom setting – it makes almost no impression. In the past, with the Zimmerman trial, the Freddie Gray case, and the Darren Wilson (Michael Brown) grand jury, the truth finally prevailed in court if nowhere else.

But the false narrative lived on elsewhere, almost undiminished, and that narrative finally triumphed even in the courtroom the day the verdict was handed down in the Chauvin trial. Not only that, but the Chauvin trial has made it more difficult for officers to get a fair trial in the future, by demonstrating and escalating the threat to both witnesses and counsel for the defense.

All of this makes it harder for officers to respond effectively to crime. From the article:

But what used to concern us was bringing in the suspect safely and prioritizing how we’re going to defend ourselves if need be, and get home to our family. But now it’s, “I don’t wanna go to jail. And if this dude has an underlying medical condition I don’t know about and he decides to fight or he is on drugs or he strokes out on me, a jury might send me to jail for this.” It changes the kinds of calls we respond to…

The academy has lowered their physical fitness standards and we have dropped ours completely. Now if you’ve got a pulse and some experience? We will take you. Because that’s how bad we are hurting for bodies. Of course, the lowering of standards does not increase the odds that things are going to be done right. So it will perpetuate the problems.

That’s one of the goals of the left, to cause chaos and ultimately build demand for a federal police force. And the press, which could act as a check by printing the truth, is all in on the lies.

Open thread 4/28/21

The New Neo Posted on by

Regarding the discussion on yesterday’s Oscar thread, about the original cast of “Guys and Dolls” – yes, the role of Sky Masterson was played by Alan Alda’s father Robert (born Alfonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D’Abruzzo). He had a good voice that was actually a bit like Sinatra’s, and Alda’s versions of the songs from the show are the ones I was raised on. For me, the movie is markedly inferior (I’ve written in this post about the problem I find with Sinatra’s Nathan Detroit).

Here’s Alda singing “Luck Be a Lady”:

Another false narrative about January 6th

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: See UPDATE below.]

It seems the only truth in the original Democrat/MSM narrative about the deaths associated with the DC rally and the Capitol incursion on January 6th was that five people died, two of cardiovascular events, and that one – Ashli Babbitt – was shot by a Capitol Police officer. Early on it was reported that one woman, Roseanne Boyland, had been trampled to death by the crowd, but much later we learned that she had actually died from amphetamines.

And then of course Officer Sicknick was supposedly foully murdered by fire-extinguisher-wielding rioters who bashed him in the head and caused his death. Later we learned none of that was true, and that he had died from two strokes and had never been hit in the head at all, nor was bear spray a cause of his death.

The bear spray angle had been seized on by the Democrats/MSM after the fire extinguisher story fell through, as a way to continue to blame the pro-Trump crowd for Sicknick’s death. In line with the bear spray narrative, two men who had supposedly sprayed Sicknick and several other Capitol Police officers with bear spray were arrested and imprisoned, even though leftist rioters had often been allowed to get away with similar offenses against police. But now we’re learning something new about that incident [emphasis mine]:

Julian Elie Khater, 32, of State College, Pennsylvania, and George Pierre Tanios, 39, of Morgantown, West Virginia, are charged in spraying the chemical irritant at Capitol police officers Brian Sicknick and Caroline Edwards, as well as Metropolitan Police Department officer Damian Chapman.

However, during the hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gilead Light acknowledged to Hogan that bear spray was never used, despite video clips presented earlier in the case.

“It does appear the bear spray that Mr. Khater was holding 10 minutes earlier was not used,” Light said, saying empty mace containers were recovered from Tanios and Khater’s homes.

However, Light maintained purchasing and carrying the bear spray showed intent: “Why else would you bring bear spray — it’s an uncontested fact there’s no bears in downtown D.C.”

Is carrying bear spray and not using it now considered a crime? What about defensive purposes, including defense against leftist demonstrators if encountered?

Counsel for the two men pointed out that the officers might even have been sprayed by irritating spray wielded by other officers, since there was a high wind at the time, and that defendants Khater and Tanios had been sprayed with pepper spray by officers just a few moments earlier.

Nevertheless, I doubt that Khater and Tanios will be released. If they’d been on the left they never would have been imprisoned in the first place, but if they had been, they would be released now. We have a two-tiered justice system. But at least some of these things are coming out now, because of the legal process – not that most people will ever follow the story. I predict that the vast majority will continue to believe the initial more incriminating reports – and that’s no accident. That’s what the MSM does best – plant a dramatic anti-Trump anti-right narrative, and assume it will stick in people’s minds even if facts later disprove it.

UPDATE: This article has made the situation a little more clear, although some confusion remains:

At Tanios’ detention hearing in West Virginia, the phrase “bear spray” was brought up 20 times, according to a transcript. An FBI agent who testified at that hearing danced around the question of whether it had been deployed, saying the investigation was “ongoing” and that the canisters hadn’t been submitted for forensic analysis. But prosecutors did say the cans “appeared to be intact.”

Khater’s attorney Joseph Tacopina needled prosecutors at Tuesday’s hearing by saying the bear spray “turned out not to be bear spray,” and argued that it was a “defensive” pepper spray.

The muddled narrative has played out while Khater and Tanios fight for their release from jail.

“Muddled” is an understatement for this “narrative.”

More [emphasis mine]:

Federal judges previously ruled that they’re too dangerous to let out, but they’re challenging those decisions. Holding a defendant in jail before trial is not meant to be a punishment, and defendants are presumed innocent of the charges. But pretrial detention is used when someone is deemed to be a potential danger to the public or might not show up for future court hearings.

Attorneys for Khater propose that he be released under a $15 million bond and put under house arrest because he has no history of violence, no engagement with extremist groups and didn’t go inside the Capitol. (He was still charged with entering restricted grounds because he was in an area that had been blocked off ahead of time and wasn’t open to the public on January 6.)

Fifteen million dollar bond – utterly astounding, with no criminal or extremist record and essentially no offense except perhaps defensive pepper spray and trespassing. And the trespassing was not even within the Capitol building; it was on some blocked-off grounds.

Does anyone care what Joe Biden has to say about masks?

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday a friend of mine mentioned that Biden was going to make some announcement today about masks, and I chuckled and asked, “Who cares?”

This is what Biden said today on the subject:

President Joe Biden, speaking outdoors without a mask and touting what he called the “stunning progress” made in the fight against COVID-19, on Tuesday echoed new CDC guidance that fully vaccinated Americans can now go without masks when outside in many cases.

“Starting today, if you’re fully vaccinated, and you’re outdoors … and not in a big crowd, you no longer need to wear a mask,” Biden said, speaking on the White House grounds on a sunny spring afternoon.

Stop the presses, folks.

Before this announcement, was anyone who was fully vaccinated actually wearing masks outside when gathering with other vaccinated people? If so, I’ve certainly not encountered any. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been at three social gatherings featuring small-to-medium groups of people where all were vaccinated. The first one had about ten people and was held outside. The second and third had six people and twelve people, and were both held inside and involved (among other things) hugging when saying hello and sitting at a table for a regular meal. Not a single person had a mask on at any point, and most of them were over the age of 60 and therefore at higher risk than younger people would be.

What’s more, all of them (except me and one other person) were Biden voters and lifelong Democrats. So I think we can safely say that even Biden voters are not waiting for The Word from either Biden or the august CDC. And if they’re not, then who is? Do any of you know anyone who might be?

I realize there’s always a slight risk of contracting the disease, but this is true no matter what you do, short of becoming a totally self-sufficient hermit. And that has other risks.

I have never personally experienced a government more utterly disconnected from the reality of people’s lives and yet seemingly immune from serious criticism in the MSM. Oh, I’m aware that such governments have existed, although not in my lifetime in this country. But that’s what we have now, and most of the people I know seem perfectly fine with it and even relieved.

But they aren’t listening to Biden or waiting for his pronouncements on anything. He seems irrelevant to them. And really, isn’t that a realistic assessment? I don’t think he’s steering this ship, although I think he’s onboard with the direction in which it’s heading.

John Kerry: up to his old tricks

The New Neo Posted on by

Unfortunately, there is nothing surprising about this, to anyone who’s followed John Kerry’s illustrious career from the days when he met with the North Vietnamese in 1970 in Paris.

Here’s today’s story:

The New York Times is taking criticism for “burying” a report that former Secretary of State John Kerry told Iran that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times.

The story focuses on leaked audio of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaking candidly about Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful branch of Iran’s Armed Forces and a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. However, 21 paragraphs into a 26-paragraph story, the Times dropped a major revelation.

“Former Secretary of State John Kerry informed him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times, to his astonishment, Mr. Zarif said,” Times reporter Farnaz Fassihi wrote.

The Biden administration has said that when Kerry said this it was in the public domain already. Kerry himself has said that Zarif was lying and that Kerry never said any such thing. Sounds a tad contradictory.

What’s more:

There are two possible explanations here. Either John Kerry is lying or Zarif is lying because the tapes say what they say. This isn’t some anonymous claim made up by a political enemy and because of that, Kerry doesn’t get to play both sides of the fence on this. Given that, let’s assume Zarif is lying and that Kerry never actually shared intelligence with him.

If that’s true, then Kerry has just backed himself into a corner. He can’t simultaneously say not to believe Zarif, the supposed “moderate” in Iran, while at the same time stumping for a return of the Iran deal and lauding his previous work on that front. That extends to the Biden administration as well because they have chosen to employ Kerry as some kind of climate czar. If they are going to not fire Kerry and instead buy his denials here, then they are now in the position of enforcing the assertion that Iran is led by liars who can’t be trusted.

I suppose that might be true if anything in the Biden administration followed the rules of logic or was judged by the rules of logic. But I’ve seen little evidence so far that that’s the case.

The Oscars were last night?

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, they were, and I only got the news today. I haven’t seen more than a few movies in the last ten years, and the Oscars have become something I would go out of my way to avoid. But until today I didn’t even know they were happening last night.

I used to post some of the fashions, though, just for fun. I don’t even have the urge to do that today. But here’s a link to some of the fashion good, the bad, and the ugly.

Witness intimidation: the message is clear

The New Neo Posted on by

We’re familiar with the fact that jurors in the Chauvin trial would naturally and almost inevitably feel that anything but a guilty verdict would spark more rioting and destruction, not only in their home town of Minneapolis but around the country. This had to have affected their decision, whether they admitted to it or not and were even aware of it or not.

Also, once the small number of expert witnesses for the defense was revealed compared to the large number of expert witnesses (most of them volunteers who testified without pay) for the prosecution, it also became clear that a lot of people were probably afraid to testify for the defense, even if they might otherwise have done so. To testify for the defense in a case that raised so much nationwide furor as well as riots and threats would be to make oneself a target.

And that’s exactly what has occurred. Now we have this chilling demonstration of what they had to fear:

The Maryland’s Attorney General’s Office said Friday it believes there should be a review of “in custody” death reports produced by the state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner during the tenure of Dr. David Fowler, nine days after Fowler testified that an ex-Minneapolis police officer was not responsible for the death of George Floyd in police custody.

The announcement came less than 24 hours after the attorney general’s office received a letter from the former medical examiner of Washington, D.C., Roger A. Mitchell, signed by 431 doctors from around the country, saying Fowler’s testimony and conclusions were so far outside the bounds of accepted forensic practice that all his previous work could come into question…

Due to pending litigation, the office declined to comment on whether Fowler’s testimony in Chauvin’s murder trial influenced its decision to conduct a review.

The office will review all cases from 2003-2020, which falls under Fowler’s tenure. He retired in 2019 after 17 years as chief medical examiner to go into private consulting practice. He was considered one of the foremost medical examiners in the country and served on national boards.

But he has testified in some high-profile cases in ways that the woke don’t like, so he’s fair game.

But actually, it was one of the state’s expert witnesses who testified to some preposterous things during Chauvin’s trial. The following foregone conclusions from video certainly would appear to be “outside the bounds of accepted forensic practice”:

Tobin [a physician who was an expert witness for the prosecution] also demonstrated an amazing ability—or, at least, claimed an amazing ability—to make precise biological determinations from cell phone and body camera video. For example, Tobin claimed to be able to tell the precise instant when Floyd suffered brain damage as a result of low oxygen levels (it was when Floyd abruptly kicked out a leg).

He could discern precisely what was happening within Floyd’s body, despite there being no physical manifestation of those processes either while Floyd was alive or upon medical examination after Floyd had died. Indeed, he claimed to discern the exact moment that Floyd died, by the expression on Floyd’s face: “One second he’s alive, and one second he’s no longer.”

I don’t think a single one of those 451 doctors would have any quarrel with Tobin’s testimony. But that’s not even the point. The real issue is that it is up to the court to decide if an expert witness is expert enough, and up to the jury to evaluate the truth and applicability of his or her testimony. The sort of punitive look-back investigation these doctors are recommending and that the AG of Maryland seems to be interested in performing is an obviously partisan case of intimidation of witnesses in any politicized trial in the future.

That intimidation has already occurred, even prior to this announcement, and I strongly believe it was already operative in the Chauvin trial. But this news makes it even more overt and obvious. This is the sort of thing we’re familiar with in nations known as banana republics, in addition to other tyrannical regimes around the world.

Most Americans should be very incensed about this development. But I doubt most Americans even know about it. I also think that the leftist indoctrination and/or dumbing down of people in this country has reached the point where I’m not at all sure most people would object or even see what’s wrong with this. And if that’s the case, it’s the biggest problem of all.