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.
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.
Here’s the link to last week’s post-verdict discussion of the Chauvin trial. William Jacobson and Andrew Branca of Legal Insurrection were the panelists.
Here’s a highlight video:
Here’s the complete talk:
If you prefer reading, you can find a transcript of the highlight video here at Legal Insurrection.
David Horowitz, a man I’ve written about many times before and who is a political left-to-right changer and prolific writer, also opines on the Chauvin verdict:
Headed by Antifa and Black Lives Matter and supported by every so-called “Civil Rights” organization, the Democrat Party and its malignant leadership – Biden, Harris, Pelosi and Schumer, this lynch mob has been on the attack against law enforcement a decade and more. Their threat, No “Justice” No Peace, is a threat that more cities will be attacked, more people will die – perhaps even Chauvin case jurors – if the verdicts they want aren’t delivered. This is a criminal movement with a criminal mission: to substitute its own vigilante justice for America’s justice…
The hope [many people have] expressed was that this corrupt verdict would bring social peace. Justice be damned.
It won’t. For the Black Lives Matter and Antifa fascists the issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution. The lynch mob doesn’t give a damn about George Floyd or black lives. They haven’t got the slightest interest in the justice or injustice of any case, this one included. Their attitude is: How can we use this case to advance our real agenda which is overthrowing the American political and economic system and instituting a totalitarian state?
They’re doing a very good job of it so far, I’d say.
Better late than never, right?
…is the title of a Bee Gees song that’s not one of my favorites. So, why am I talking about it? It’s because the official video for the song both amuses me and fascinates me.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not a bad song. It’s a pretty good song. It’s one of their later efforts, created in 1997. “I Could Not Love You More” is a type of song I’ve never been all that keen on: the power ballad. This one’s about love – surprise, surprise – but about happy, fulfilled, reciprocated love. It’s probably the sort of thing people like to play at weddings.
The video’s a mixture of three themes. One is the ocean, with shots of turquoise blue water, children jumping into the water and swimming, and sea mammals cavorting, all very hypnotic and relaxing and emphasizing the hypnotic relaxing power of the Bee Gees’ music and voices.
Theme number two is a staple of music videos from that era – what I call the perfume-ad couple. A man and a women, both beautiful but obviously models, mime being in love. I don’t believe them for a minute. Are we supposed to envy them or identify with them, or both? Are they the prospective parents of the ocean-swimming children who will come along in a few years?
And then there are the Bee Gees themselves, doing what they seem to like to do in several videos I’ve seen: walk down a street. Slowly. Here, though, they’re not young any more – Barry is 50 and the twins are in their late forties. They’re dressed all in black, and the street looks like something out of an old Western. Is this the Frank Miller gang coming into town at High Noon to shoot Will Kane?
No, they’ve come to sing a love song instead. Their first entrance interrupts the perfume-ad couple, who are standing in the street of that old Western town for some odd reason.
But it’s the ocean scenes I especially like, with their mesmerizing effect that enhances the music and is enhanced by it as well. Even then, I wouldn’t be writing about this video if it weren’t for one particular moment that gets me every time. It occurs at around minute 2:44. Barry has just finished singing the phrase – while standing in that Western street – “I could not love you….more.” His voice has gotten softer and slower, and you might even think the song had reached its end although it’s a little early for that. Barry sings what seems like it might be the final word (“more”) – when suddenly kaboom! There’s a loud drum roll and simultaneously the scene changes to the ocean as a large sea creature (dolphin?) leaps out of the water.
It sounds corny, and it is. But I love it. No matter how many times I see it, it always surprises and delights me.
You may not experience anything at all like that. You may even think it odd (or worse) that I do. But here it is:
That’s a question I’ve asked myself for quite some time.
I’m not talking about leftists; I’m talking about so many people I know who are not especially into politics; you might call them leftist-enablers. They tend to read the NY Times or the Boston Globe and listen to NPR, and vote Democratic Party almost reflexively. Their numbers are legion and they may even constitute the bulk of the Democratic Party, for all I know.
Years ago, I thought that they would become alarmed at some of the developments that alarmed me. The targeting of conservative groups by the IRS was one such thing. The promise Obama made – and broke – about “you can keep your doctor” under Obamacare was another. But there were so many more, each escalating bit by bit by bit.
But nothing seemed to upset them or act as a red flag. Either they didn’t read about the things that bothered me, or they didn’t believe it happened quite like I said it did, or they didn’t quite see what the big deal was.
So at what point will they become alarmed? Perhaps when they or someone they know and love is targeted by the left? Maybe not even then.
I am reminded of a post I wrote long ago about a writer who was originally from Iran. Although she was actually on the left, some of her story seems apropos. Here’s a portion of that post:
Nafisi married early, at eighteen, and attended college at the University of Oklahoma during the 1970s. Her plunge into political activism was as casual (and as literary) as it was leftist:
“I joined the Iranian student movement reluctantly. My father’s imprisonment and my family’s vague nationalist sympathies had sensitized me towards politics, but I was more of a rebel than a political activist–though in those days there was not much difference between them. One attraction was the fact that the men in the movement didn’t try to assault or seduce me. Instead, they held study groups in which we read and discussed Engels’s Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State and Marx’s The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In the seventies, the mood—not just among Iranians, but among American and European students—was revolutionary. There was the Cuban example, and China of course. The revolutionary cant and romantic atmosphere were infectious, and the Iranian students were at the forefront of the struggle.”
So, revolution was a mood, an essence, something infectious in the air—rather like bacilli, as it turns out. Nafisi describes the group as markedly Marxist in philosophy and in style, sporting “Che Guevara sports jackets and boots…and Mao jackets and khakis.”
For Nafisi herself, romanticism and literature seem to have been the primary motives, passed somehow through the alchemy of her homesickness and transmuted into political activism:
“I insisted on wearing long dresses outside the meetings…I never gave up the habit of reading and loving ‘counterrevolutionary’ writers—T. S. Eliot, Austen, Plath, Nabokov, Fitzgrerald—but I spoke passionately at the rallies; inspired by phrases I had read in novels and poems, I would weave words together into sounds of revolution. My oppressive yearning for home was shaped into excited speeches against the tyrants back home and their American backers.”
Once in Tehran, Nafisi began to realize that the unsettling airport scene had been only the tip of the iceberg. She soon came to bitterly regret the mindless revolutionary zeal of her youth, and to realize that her revolutionary dream had turned into a nightmare, as they so often do:
“When in the States we had shouted Death to this or that, those deaths seemed to be more symbolic, more abstract, as if we were encouraged by the impossibility of our slogans to insist upon them even more. But in Tehran in 1979, these slogans were turning into reality with macabre precision. I felt helpless: all the dreams and slogans were coming true, and there was no escaping them.”
Although the revolutionaries back in Oklahoma and elsewhere had been decidedly leftist, the revolution they helped birth was a restrictive theocracy. One of the most interesting portions of the book describes how those leftists, at least in the early stages, managed to rationalize and excuse such clear signs that things had gone sharply awry as the imposition of the veil and the subjugation of women.
Nafisi was not one of those excusers, however; she describes her horror at the relentless approach of the suffocating clasp of the mullahs, a chill embrace undreamt of in her leftist days in Oklahoma.
And it got worse, much worse; there are many passages in the book that reminded me uncannily of what it must have been like for French revolutionaries to have watched the unfolding of the Reign of Terror (those who survived, that is), not to mention Stalin’s ex-comrades viewing the purges of their ranks:
“In later months and years, every once in a while Bijan [Nafisi’s husband] and I would be shocked to see the show trials of our old comrades in the U.S. on television. They eagerly denounced their past actions, their old comrades, their old selves, and confessed that they were indeed the enemies of Islam. We would watch these scenes in silence…I turned and ask Bijan, Did you ever dream that this could happen to us? He said, No, I didn’t, but I should have.”
“No, I didn’t, but I should have.” What quiet words of chilling despair! And indeed, one wonders how it was that smart people could have been so dumb; by the mid-to late-1970’s, when Nafisi and her friends were supporting a leftist revolution in Iran, surely the jury was no longer out on the fact that this was a road that would lead to the revolution swallowing its own as well as many others. But we see such a phenomenon again and again, as history repeats itself in its winding, twisting path.
In Nafisi’s case, she seems to have been mainly a romantic, interested in literature almost to the exclusion of other topics—such as history, apparently. Unfortunately for her, she had to learn the lessons of history the hard way, from personal experience. And so, too, did her revolutionary Iranian comrades-in-arms, unfortunately for them—and for us, and for the world as well. They could never have guessed at the trajectory their lives would follow from those long-ago days of sartorial playing at being revolutionaries, sporting Che and Mao jackets, to their final moments in the executioner’s chamber.
Recently I read that the Tennessee legislature is considering requiring watermarks for absentee ballots:
Big Tech and Corporate America may face more difficulty funding the elections process under the “Tennessee Election Integrity Act.” In part, the act would require funding from nongovernmental entities to be approved by the Tennessee General Assembly if in session, or the Governor, House and Senate Speaker, Secretary of State, Comptroller of Treasury, and the General Assembly Treasurer. Additionally, an amendment to the act announced on Tuesday would make it more difficult to produce fraudulent absentee ballots.
In short, the amendment to the bill would require non-electronic absentee ballots to be watermarked by local election commissions. That way, county election officials could verify the validity of the ballots upon receipt. Ballots without the watermark would be discarded.
I can’t find much information on whether other US states use this method, but it seems like a good idea. When I read it, I was reminded that several months ago I read what Great Britain does to ensure the integrity of its mail-in ballots. Their system seems considerably more secure than ours:
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 numberWhen 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.
So ballots there have a watermark, barcode, and an ID number.
And if I understood that passage correctly, it seems as though there is also a way, if an election is challenged, to go back and match ballots to envelopes again. There’s a great deal more at the link if you care to read it.
Real swords. Every now and then you’ll see sparks fly. Literally:
We’ve discussed Critical Race Theory many times on this blog. But it’s easy to forget that it’s still not exactly a household word, even though it’s been dominating so much of the current turmoil, and has found its way into schools both private and public. It’s one of the most dangerous and divisive philosophies that has ever hit this country, and people need to learn what it is and why it needs to be fought.
Here’s the article. It’s long, but that’s true of just about any treatment of CRT, and this one is shorter than many. There’s really no time to spare in getting the word out.
And here’s something that is another example of the increasingly strong federal hand in education as well as the far-leftist race-based commitment of the Biden administration:
The Biden Department of Education has quietly proposed a new rule prioritizing the use of federal tax dollars for K-12 schools that replace traditional education with “culturally responsive teaching and learning” – more commonly referred to as critical race theory. This is the most significant move by the federal government to redefine the nature of state-funded public schools in U.S. history.
Although the current effort to push public schools receiving federal funding to adopt a detailed indoctrination agenda may feel new and overwhelming for parents, the truth is that the Biden attempt is simply the last phase in a decades-long effort to control local schools and press the progressive agenda on our children. With the power of taxpayer-funded purse strings, the federal government sends a message to public schools that if they want financial aid they must “teach” critical race theory and prioritize its ideologically anti-American, anti-traditional agenda over traditional education.
There have been recent voices in the realm of private schools to push back against this trend. At least parents there have the power of the purse. Public schools are more vulnerable to federal pressure. And although parents can theoretically pull their children out of public schools, that requires money or time – money for a decent private school (if one is even available) or time to homeschool. The feds are counting on the idea that most people either have neither or are unwilling to follow through on this – or will even remain ignorant about what their children are being taught.
Fundamental transformation of America – and something that most people who voted for Biden probably did not anticipate. But they should have.
[NOTE: And while we’re at it, please read this article on an EO recently signed by Biden. It could be one of the most dangerous and far-reaching tools the left has designed recently, giving it tremendous power. It all depends on how it’s used, and whether a successful challenge can be mounted against it.]
…makes it even more clear that the police officer who shot the knife-wielding 16-year-old Bryant was doing what was unfortunately necessary to prevent a potentially fatal stabbing.
I predict that this story will be one that fades relatively quickly. Various people have tried to save it – “he should have shot the knife out of her hand”; “knife fights are just commonplace teenage hijinks” – but their efforts are so ridiculous that even some on the left are having more than the usual trouble fully embracing them. Instead, I believe that the BLM crowd will go on to the next incident to hype, and attorney Crump will find another ambulance to chase.
There are real issues here to explore, such as why the dead girl was in foster care, what lead to the situation escalating, what might have been done to prevent it. But they are questions that have nothing to do with the police. The police are a convenient scapegoat for the left, because the reality of the situation would require more self-searching and more actual thought.
Alan Dershowitz thinks the case might be reversed on appeal:
The conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on all counts in the death of George Floyd “might be reversed on appeal” — likely by the U.S. Supreme Court — and it “should be,” Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax TV after Tuesday’s ruling.
“The judge himself said this case may be reversed on appeal, and I think it might be reversed on appeal,” Dershowitz said on Newsmax TV’s “Spicer & Co.” Tuesday, shortly after a jury in Minneapolis returned guilty verdicts against Chauvin on counts of second- and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter…
“A new appeal will be filed immediately, because he’s in jail now, pending appeal,” said Dershowitz, explaining that there are “two levels of appeal” in Minnesota but most likely, the case will go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The nation’s top court, he added, “holds the best possibility for the defense of getting this conviction reversed, on the grounds that the judge himself suggested the statements made by people outside the courtroom essentially intimidating jurors and telling them that if they don’t come to the ‘right verdict,’ there will be violence and consequences and their own lives may be affected.”
Meanwhile, Judge Peter Cahill, who presided over the case, will likely sentence Chauvin to a “very substantial sentence,” said Dershowitz, and that “might be the equivalent of life imprisonment” for the former police officer, who is now 45 years old.
Well, Dershowitz knows a lot more about criminal law than I do. But I don’t think there’s any chance of reversal by SCOTUS, although I think there should be.
The sad and horrible truth – at least, as I perceive it – is that the Supreme Court justices are subject to the same fear and pressures (and politics) as the jury, Judge Cahill, and the Minnesota higher court. In fact, SCOTUS is subject to even more pressure than they are, because of the overt Democrat threat of court-packing.
In addition, I don’t see Justice Roberts ever voting for anything so controversial, whatever the merits might be. Among other things, he simply doesn’t have the courage and tends to take the path of least resistance. And although some of the other justices do have the courage, I don’t think it’s enough to make a majority. I think they may even refuse to hear the case, actually.
As far as Chauvin’s sentence goes, I’m a little surprised that Dershowitz thinks it will be that long. Other attorneys who have written on the subject think it will be less than that, because the sentences would ordinarily run concurrently. Then again, the prosecution is alleging aggravated conditions for the crime, Cahill is running scared, and the mob has made it clear they will only be appeased by the most severe sentence – and even then they won’t really be satisfied.
[NOTE: Also see this article on Judge Cahill’s errors during the trial. I doubt any of them will matter on appeal, either.]