Shooter in the newsroom

The New Neo Posted on by

When mass murders happen, there are usually three stories.

The first is the shooting itself and the violent ending of innocent lives.

The second is the story about the story, told by press and pundits before they know much of anything at all. That second story strongly tends to have a strongly political angle in which the opposition is cast in the role of the villain.

The third story reflects upon the first two, and that’s the sort of essay I’m writing now.

These facts rather quickly became known about the Annapolis shooting: the perp had a longstanding (beginning in 2011) beef with the Capitol Gazette, the newspaper whose office he entered yesterday and killed five people. The paper had published a story about his harassing a woman he knew, and he had sued them for libel and lost (his case had no merit at all; their story was true). After that he also ranted about it all and threatened them online for years, so much so that police had investigated him in 2013, although they were unable to gather enough evidence to charge him.

It is reported that he specifically targeted his victims, and although that may generally be so, I doubt it was true of all of them since one of the dead was a recent hire who had worked in sales.

And in no surprise whatsoever, the left and many journalists have taken the opportunity to blame Donald Trump (see this) for causing this shooting, despite its obvious genesis in events that have zero to do with Trump, and despite the seemingly complete lack of political interest expressed by the perp at any point, then or now.

It quickly emerged that this was “just” a psychopathic crackpot who finally turned extremely violent after simmering for years in the vicious stew of his own rage.

What can be done about people such as this? (I’m talking about the shooter, not the journalists). I don’t know. Most harassing, angry psychopaths do not turn violent but instead continue to engage in more petty undertakings. But some do end up killing people. The Annapolis shooting wasn’t a case in which, on hearing of the murders, everyone ever connected with the newsroom wondered who could possibly have done such a thing. Instead, this was a case in which the former editor had seen the strong possibility of violence, long before the shooting occurred:

“He waged a one-person attack on anything he could muster in court against the Capital,” Tom Marquardt, the newspaper’s editor and publisher until 2012, told the Los Angeles Times in a phone interview.

“I said during that time, ‘This guy is crazy enough to come in and blow us all away,’” Marquardt said, adding that he and other newspaper officials had fretted over how to stop Ramos’ harassment. He even kept a file on Ramos for years after leaving the paper…

As he spoke to The Times, Marquardt’s voice grew tense as he recalled his fear of Ramos, and how he’d felt powerless to do anything to stop the harassment.

“If it’s him, I’m gonna feel … responsible for this,” Marquardt said. “I pray it’s not him.”

But of course it was him.

And yet despite all that foreknowledge, nothing was done to stop the shooter. Civil commitment is hard to accomplish and usually of short duration, although it probably would have been appropriate. The police couldn’t arrest him because he hadn’t done enough yet. There doesn’t seem to have been an armed guard posted at the newspaper, which also might have been in order. And either no one on the staff was armed or whoever was armed didn’t have enough time to react.

RIP.

Kids ? dog

The New Neo Posted on by

I often have reservations about YouTube videos that show kids, because there really can’t be any informed consent. Then again, they are often so adorable that I watch them.

Here’s a case in point. There’s something a bit exploitative as well as slightly cruel going on here, but the girls are so heartwarming I couldn’t help but like it. The younger one is all emotion, the older one all cold reason. Both mount very good arguments against what seems to them like the arbitrary meanness of their parents:

Kids + dog

The New Neo Posted on by

I often have reservations about YouTube videos that show kids, because there really can’t be any informed consent. Then again, they are often so adorable that I watch them.

Here’s a case in point. There’s something a bit exploitative as well as slightly cruel going on here, but the girls are so heartwarming I couldn’t help but like it. The younger one is all emotion, the older one all cold reason. Both mount very good arguments against what seems to them like the arbitrary meanness of their parents:

Kids ? dog

The New Neo Posted on by

I often have reservations about YouTube videos that show kids, because there really can’t be any informed consent. Then again, they are often so adorable that I watch them.

Here’s a case in point. There’s something a bit exploitative as well as slightly cruel going on here, but the girls are so heartwarming I couldn’t help but like it. The younger one is all emotion, the older one all cold reason. Both mount very good arguments against what seems to them like the arbitrary meanness of their parents:

Judicial reasoning: and then there’s Janus v. AFSCME

The New Neo Posted on by

The Supreme Court finished up the liberty trifecta with Janus:

…[H]as there been a bigger win for small-government, real-life conservatives over the past few decades than the Janus v. AFSCME ruling? The decision not only fortifies the First Amendment by explicitly finding compelled speech unconstitutional, but also calls out the Left’s authoritarian political machinery, which has been holding many American communities, school systems, and workers hostage for decades.

“It is hard to estimate how many billions of dollars have been taken from nonmembers and transferred to public-sector unions in violation of the First Amendment,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority. “Those unconstitutional exactions cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely.”…

The Janus ruling also stipulates that employees must now affirmatively opt-in — rather than having to opt out — of unions before having to pay fees.

But in a dissent,

“The First Amendment,” writes Justice Elena Kagan, “was meant for better things. It was meant not to undermine but to protect democratic governance — including over the role of public-sector unions.” The idea that the court should decide who deserves First Amendment protections, or that those protections should be contingent on the vagaries of “democratic governance,” whatever that means, is as corrupt as any of the dumb things Trump has ever said about free expression. The Supreme Court is built to withstand the whims of democracy, of majoritarianism, not to surrender to them.

The strange thing about the cases decided recently is that they don’t deal with difficult, complex, or esoteric legal principles, as so many SCOTUS cases do. These particular ones are relatively simple and easy for the layperson to understand.

A bit of personal reflection here. I’m not a practicing lawyer and never was, but I graduated from a well-known law school (long ago) and have more than a passing familiarity with law, legal reasoning, and appellate opinions. When I was in law school and read those opinions and dissents, I often leaned one way or the other in terms of the way I thought the case ought to have turned out. But I usually found the reasoning on both sides to be fairly convincing and fairly tight, especially in SCOTUS cases. Sometimes an opinion would be a bit of a stretch, but it was still recognizably smart. Only a few were what I’d call bad in the quality of their reasoning, even if I disagreed with the outcome.

But that quote from Kagan seems to me to be a travesty. The protections in the Bill of Rights were meant to act as a check on the tyranny of unbridled democracy. That’s a basic, basic principle of our system of constitutional law and our history.

Does Kagan not understand that? Of course she does. But when people desire a certain outcome they can convince themselves of almost anything. Perhaps lawyers are especially good at that.

[NOTE: Likewise, the travel order case Trump v. Hawaii features dissenting opinions that are simply awful in terms of their legal reasoning. I don’t usually say that, even about opinions with which I disagree, but that case should have been a 9-0 decision in Trump’s favor. The dissenting justices stretched the law to the breaking point:

The dissenters, led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, try to get around this by claiming that the law has no rational basis. But they do so, as Roberts notes, “by refusing to apply anything resembling rational basis review.” What they are really doing, as Roberts writes, is expressing their disapproval of the order and their opinion of the man issuing it. They “challenge the entry suspension based on their perception of its effectiveness and wisdom. They suggest that the policy is overbroad and does little to serve national security interests. But we cannot substitute our own assessment for the Executive’s predictive judgments on such matters,” the chief justice concludes.

There is a difference between thinking something is a bad idea (and you could easily argue that the travel ban is a bad idea) and claiming it has no rational basis and is therefore void. The plaintiffs, the district court, the Ninth Circuit, and Sotomayor are committing a cardinal sin of jurisprudence: coming up with the answer they wish was true and working backward to invent a legal justification for it.

But even if they are correct that the travel ban order is terrible, that does not mean it is illegal or unconstitutional. We in this country are governed by laws, not by a judge’s personal morals.]

The left is in deep mourning about Kennedy’s resignation

The New Neo Posted on by

It occurs to me, on reading many many reactions from the left to Justice Kennedy’s resignation, that the left had gotten to thinking that the Court was theirs, and that any change towards conservatism was illegitimate. Against the march of history.

And that would have been true even if a more conventional Republican politician than Trump had won in 2016.

At least for the most part, the Court has moved to the left pretty much ever since the administration of FDR. So SCOTUS decisions that were made on very iffy legal grounds (such as Roe v. Wade, where it found a new right that had never existed before) have now become part of the “rights” that the left feels it is owed by law.

So there is a great deal of moaning and gnashing of teeth on the left, as well as statements of fear that we’ll now be going back to some horribly dark and oppressive ages. Some of this fear is actually sincere, I think, and some is a strategic stirring up of fear in Democratic voters in order to motivate them to go to the polls in November.

This NY Times editorial is very typical, and actually on the restrained side compared to some. The editors think that conservative justices threaten Americans’ “most cherished rights and protections”—but the Times sees those rights as abortion rights and the like, rather than the protection of basic liberties such as freedom of religion and of speech. It’s those latter rights, embedded in the Constitution, that conservative justices are bent on preserving—and that liberal judges (and the Times editors) are bent on undermining if it suits the cause of the left.

The editors also add the following deeply misleading passage:

The Supreme Court is designed as a countermajoritarian institution, and operates as a crucial check in a democracy based on majority rule. Still it is hard to swallow that this court is about to solidify a deeply conservative majority, despite the fact that in six of the last seven presidential elections, more Americans have voted for a Democrat than for a Republican.

That last sentence ignores the fact that in the last seven presidential elections, Republicans won three of them because of the electoral college, which determines the winner because it also “operates as a crucial check in a democracy based on majority rule.” And of course the Times chose to start its count with the election of Bill Clinton, which followed three elections won by Republicans.

Well, keep dreaming, NY Times. The left may find a way to stop a conservative-majority SCOTUS from happening, of course. Or the GOP’s very own RINOs may do the same. But at the moment, conservatives can savor the very strong possibility that for the first time in a very long time the Court will act to preserve the Constitution.

Well that didn’t take long: is socialism the future of the Democratic Party?

The New Neo Posted on by

According to Ocasio-Cortez’s mom, her daughter would like to be president. That’s not really surprising or noteworthy coming from a mother. The 28-year-old clearly is interested in politics and ambitious, so why not dream big?

But this article isn’t from a relative of Ocasio-Cortez. It’s an op-ed in the Guardian entitled “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represents the future of the Democratic party”:

Voters have had enough of Democrats who sell out the working class in the name of moderation that only serves those with money and power.

(Actually, isn’t that why Trump got elected—voters were tired of politicians from both parties who fit that description, and he was perceived, despite his own wealth and power, as a champion of the working class and a populist?)

But I digress. More from the Guardian:

Many voters, particularly young people, understand the time for incrementalism and moderation is long over, and ended for good when a race-baiter who empowers white supremacists and oligarchs stormed into the White House.

It ended with the kids in cages, the attacks on immigrants and all people of color…

In retrospect, Crowley as a future speaker was a laughable proposition. Ocasio-Cortez represents the future of the Democratic party.

The author of the piece is someone named Ross Barkan, who is “a journalist and candidate for the New York state senate.” I think he’s a bit premature, but perhaps only a bit. A victory in New York City, against a lackluster incumbent opponent, with a voter turnout of something like 10% in an off-year in a district so heavily Democratic that the winner of the Democratic primary is virtually assured of victory in the general, does not a national trend make. Not yet, anyway.

However, I agree that Ocasio-Cortez represents a very real phenomenon in the Democratic Party, and “trend” is not a bad word for that phenomenon. It’s a cliche for moderate Democrat political-changers to say that they didn’t leave the party, the party left them by veering more and more to the left over time. With the rejection of Joe Lieberman more than a decade ago, and its emphasis on anger and identity politics, the Democratic Party made its enormously leftward drift obvious even before Ocasio-Cortez was old enough to vote. The recent rise of Bernie Sanders, as well as the hysteria of the anti-Trump wing, has only made it more clear.

Does the future of the Democrats belong to the telegenic, young, leftist firebrands? Perhaps. Youthful voters seem more and more amendable to their message. Potential problem for the Democrats, however, is that youthful voters go out into the world, get jobs, have families, and tend to turn more to the right as time goes on, although they are replaced by a new crop of youthful voters. But reality checks do not favor socialism.

Yesterday was the ninth anniversary of commenter FredHJr’s death

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The following is a slightly revised version of a post that has appeared previously on this blog.]

Unbelievable that it’s been nine years since commenter FredHJr died suddenly and tragically. As time passes, the number of readers here who don’t remember Fred must necessarily increase, so for those of you who don’t know who FredHJr was, please see this and this, as well as these.

Fred’s death was extremely tragic for his family. But it was tragic for this blog, too, because he was an invaluable and irreplaceable member of our community, a “changer” who knew a lot about the Left, and a keen observer of politics, history, religion, culture—of life itself. I still think about him often, wondering what he’d have to say about everything that’s happened in these last nine years.

Every year on the anniversary, I offer some excerpts from his many comments here. Continue reading →

A young socialist topples powerful incumbent Crowley in NY’s 14th Congressional District

The New Neo Posted on by

In a sign of where the Democrats have been headed lately, 28-year-old socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has defeated 10-term Congressman Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th District.

Ocasio-Cortez is not only a young Hispanic woman, she’s remarkably telegenic (in other words, beautiful). I have no idea whether that latter fact made a difference, but my guess is that it didn’t hurt:

Joe Crowley, her opponent, wasn’t just a member of the House. He was one of the members of the House who was a contender for Pelosi’s job. Both Crowley and Ocasio-Cortez are progressives, but she is of the Bernie Sanders socialist wing and he is more mainstream progressive (if there is such a thing).

New York’s 14th District was redrawn in 2012:

The district includes the eastern Bronx and part of north-central Queens. The Queens portion includes the neighborhoods of Astoria, College Point, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Woodside. The Bronx portion of the district includes the neighborhoods of Morris Park, Parkchester, Pelham Bay, and Throgs Neck as well as City Island. Before redistricting for the 2012 election, much of this area was in New York’s 7th congressional district.

The district’s ethnicity now is strongly Hispanic:

18.41% White
11.39% Black
16.24% Asian
49.80% Hispanic
0.45% Native American
3.71% other

Ocasio-Cortez is not just young, socialist, and beautiful, she is also Hispanic, which would probably give her an advantage over Crowley. Crowley also made a big boo-boo by not appearing for a debate with her in the Bronx. I certainly don’t have my finger on the pulse of the 14th, but I can’t imagine that it enhanced his clout with the voters.

Crowley had a lot of money, but his opponent used social media to her advantage as well. What’s more—in a reliably Democratic district where to get the Democratic nomination is tantamount to winning the general election—Crowley had never before faced an opponent in the Democratic primaries. So I think he got rusty, accustomed to sailing to sure victory after sure victory.

It is a curious fact—curious to me, anyway—that the voter turnout in this primary was awful:

On Tuesday, fewer than 28,000 votes were cast in the 14th district, which has more than 710,000 residents and 292,000 active voters.

That’s abysmal. It may be that Crowley supporters thought he was safe and stayed home. But they have no one to blame but themselves. Low turnout ensures that only activists get to decide the outcome of an important election.

Justice Kennedy: those retirement rumors turn out to have been correct

The New Neo Posted on by

Justice Kennedy has announced that he will be ending his Supreme Court tenure in July.

It seems pretty obvious that Kennedy has timed his retirement in a way that will maximize the GOP hand in choosing his successor. There’s a Republican president, of course, who has pledged to nominate conservative justices from a list he submitted while still a candidate, and the Senate is in GOP hands. Whether the latter situation will remain true after November of 2018, it will be true until then, and the GOP will be in charge. Their majority is slim, however, and they need to unite on this.

In his last few votes on the SCOTUS bench, Kennedy was consistently conservative, although he’s spent much of his time on the Court as a highly influential and somewhat unpredictable swing vote. However, the timing of his retirement makes me wonder whether, at the end, he felt the need to ensure a conservative successor.

Many on the right (I include myself in that group) felt that the 2016 presidential election was especially important because it would probably have a large effect on the composition of the federal court system in general, and the Supreme Court in particular. This turns out to have been correct. And McConnell’s delay of the Garland nomination and facilitation of the Gorsuch appointment looms large, as well, as does his ending of the filibuster for SCOTUS nominations.

The Court has been instrumental in determining the course of the nation, and can either support liberty or undermine it. I believe the Kennedy retirement will support it. I certainly hope it does.

Democrats are seething, but they also see this as an opportunity to spin the news in a way that they think will ultimately benefit them. Naturally, they say it’s a catastrophe that all decent people must fight, because it imperils the very foundation of of the country and all its values, as well as the progressive agenda:

And then there’s the classy De Niro-style approach:

Their anger is understandable. One of the many reasons they counted on and looked forward to a supposedly-inevitable Hillary Clinton win was the opportunity to shape the Supreme Court for decades to come. It is a bitter pill to swallow that that opportunity was lost for now, and lost to the likes of Donald Trump.

NIFLA v. Becerra: free speech or pro-life

The New Neo Posted on by

A whole lotta law news today, isn’t there?

In another SCOTUS decision, the Court ruled in NIFLA v. Becerra that a California law requiring crisis pregnancy centers (pregnancy counseling clinics usually run by pro-life Christians) to post notices that “California has public programs that provide immediate free or low-cost access to comprehensive family planning services (including all FDA-approved methods of contraception), prenatal care, and abortion for eligible women” was an unconstitutional violation of free speech. The vote was the familiar 5-4 and once again came down to the swing vote of Kennedy siding with the conservative wing, and all the liberal justices dissenting.

Headlines in the MSM dealing with the decision tend to emphasize that this is a win for pro-life clinics (see this, for example), whereas conservative media seems to have more of a focus on the free speech aspects (an example is this). The former is a political emphasis, whereas the latter is a constitutional and legal one.

Here’s the legal reasoning of the majority:

Though the law related specifically to abortion, free speech was the fundamental issue at stake. This being so, the vote should not have been a narrow one. Alas, four of the Court’s justices were so hell-bent on promoting the manufactured right to abortion that they were prepared to jettison a real, preeminent, foundational liberty.

Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion cast the case more clearly, noting that there exists no such category in America as “professional speech” and concluding that to invent one would “give the States unfettered power to reduce a group’s First Amendment rights by simply imposing a licensing requirement.” In a short concurrence, Justice Kennedy dispensed with the idea that the First Amendment is outmoded. The viewpoint discrimination inherent in the FACT Act was “a matter of serious constitutional concern,” Kennedy concluded, and the law served as “a paradigmatic example of the serious threat presented when government seeks to impose its own message in the place of individual speech, thought, and expression.”…

As Justice Thomas noted, the state government could very easily have accomplished its supposed purpose — ensuring that California women are aware of the low-cost abortion program — without needlessly conscripting pro-life centers into its effort. “[California] could inform the women itself with a public-information campaign,” Thomas observed. “California could even post the information on public property near crisis pregnancy centers. . . . Either way, California cannot co-opt the licensed facilities to deliver its message for it.”

Instead, the state intentionally targeted pro-life health centers and insisted that they violate their beliefs by facilitating a procedure they believe to be immoral. No other health centers were subject to the law’s requirements — which, we rather suspect, was the point.

The is the correct decision, and it protected free speech far more than it affected abortion rights one way or the other. It’s also another decision that almost certainly would have gone the opposite way had Garland been appointed to the Court instead of Gorsuch. On such a narrow thread our liberties depend.