Category Archives: Crime

Black Criminality Is Not Part Of The One-Sided ‘Conversation’ On CNN

Crime, Justice, Law, Race

“Any candid debate on race and criminality in this country would have to start with the fact that blacks commit an astoundingly disproportionate number of crimes,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley in “Race, Politics and the Zimmerman Trial”:

Liberals in general, and the black left in particular, like the idea of talking about racial problems, but in practice they typically ignore the most relevant aspects of any such discussion.
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Political Diary editor Jason Riley on why black civil rights leaders focus on white racism instead of personal responsibility. Photo: Getty Images

Any candid debate on race and criminality in this country would have to start with the fact that blacks commit an astoundingly disproportionate number of crimes. African-Americans constitute about 13% of the population, yet between 1976 and 2005 blacks committed more than half of all murders in the U.S. The black arrest rate for most offenses—including robbery, aggravated assault and property crimes—is typically two to three times their representation in the population. The U.S. criminal-justice system, which currently is headed by one black man (Attorney General Eric Holder) who reports to another (President Obama), is a reflection of this reality, not its cause.

“High rates of black violence in the late twentieth century are a matter of historical fact, not bigoted imagination,” wrote the late Harvard Law professor William Stuntz in “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice.” “The trends reached their peak not in the land of Jim Crow but in the more civilized North, and not in the age of segregation but in the decades that saw the rise of civil rights for African Americans—and of African American control of city governments.”

The left wants to blame these outcomes on racial animus and “the system,” but blacks have long been part of running that system. Black crime and incarceration rates spiked in the 1970s and ’80s in cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia, under black mayors and black police chiefs. Some of the most violent cities in the U.S. today are run by blacks. …

The homicide rate claiming black victims today is seven times that of whites, and the George Zimmermans of the world are not the reason. Some 90% of black murder victims are killed by other blacks.

“Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes? We’ve got to face that. And we’ve got to do something about our moral standards,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told a congregation in 1961. “We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can’t keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves.

MORE.

Still more in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.”

CNN’s Activist-Anchor Don Lemon: Stupid And Sanctimonious

Affirmative Action, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Intelligence, Journalism, Propaganda, Race, Racism

I am not sure what is worse about Don Lemon, CNN’s deeply stupid host, who held the fort (or the funny farm) during the weekend of George Zimmerman’s acquittal; his racial agenda or his retardation.

Below is an example of a Don-Lemon conducted exchange. Lemon is not working with much (he cautions against drawing a “false equivalent” …), but, like “Judge Glenda Hatchett,” who doesn’t know what constitutes an aggravated assault, Lemon retains his plumb position as activist-anchor.

On July 14, Lemon told a commiserating co-anchor that, and I paraphrase, “People accuse you of having an agenda when in fact you are a journalist, trying to make them see certain things beyond their biases.”

The job of a journalist is to report the facts, not to nudge viewers into the politically pleasing opinions that are held by the cognoscenti at CNN.

But there is something way worse than Lemon’s blatant, aggrieved black-man schtick; Lemon’s stupidity is worse than his sanctimony.

In the transcript below, Lemon doesn’t challenge the guest with whom he agrees; he cheers her on with giggles. David Webb in the opposition is only half the man he is on Fox News, which is a shame:

“So let’s bring in our panel now. I have a feeling that we’re going to have to separate all of these guys. Attorney and TV host Mo Ivory joins us from Atlanta, along with diversity and inclusion expert Buck Davis. In New York, we have radio host and New York City Tea Party co-founder David Webb.

So, Mo, I’m going to start with you first. How does President Obama’s statement affect the fallout from the Zimmerman verdict, if at all?”

MO IVORY, ATTORNEY/TV HOST: Sure, Don. I think the statement gives us a little bit of comfort, and he is the president of the United States and we want to hear from him. We need to hear from him. It’s especially comforting after saying that Trayvon could have been his son. He would have looked like him. I wanted to hear him say something. So it brought me some comfort, but just a little bit because I’m still angry, I’m still upset. I’m trying to process this verdict and figure out where we go from here. So it’s a wonderful thing that he did that but —

LEMON: What are you angry about, Mo? Mo, mo, mo.

(CROSSTALK)

IVORY: — that a murderer got away with murder? No, David, what am I angry about? That you’re asking me that question.

LEMON: No, it’s Don! It’s Don. It’s Don.

IVORY: Ok, Don, I’m angry because a murderer got away with murder. I’m angry because in our system, George Zimmerman’s brother Robert just said that Trayvon had plans for George Zimmerman, and that that rhetoric is going on. A boy was walking to the store and he was getting a snack and he got murdered. And a murderer got away with it yesterday. That’s what I’m mad about.

LEMON: Do you have to be mad about it? Because, listen. People don’t like verdicts all the time. And do you think it’s productive to be angry? I mean, maybe it’s not the right emotion that you’re — I don’t know —

IVORY: No, Don. It’s the right emotion. No, it’s the right emotion. I’m angry about it. I’m angry that we live in the society where this kind of thing can still happen. And that we’re having this conversation like, oh my gosh, I don’t even understand why people are pulling a race card.

You don’t have to pull the race card. It’s out. We live with it everyday. We wake up and it’s out. We go to work and it’s out. We get in our cars and it’s out. We go to trials, and the race card is out. Nobody has to pull it because it lives outside in America every day. That’s why I’m angry. And I think everybody, not just African- Americans, everybody should be angry a 17-year-old boy was murdered in cold blood and the murderer is free.

LEMON: Okay. All right. Mo, let’s get in – Buck, I promise you’re going to get to talk this time. Mo, why are you shaking your head in disagreement here? David? David?

DAVID WEBB, NYC TEA PARTY CO-FOUNDER: Well, look. I understand outrage over not getting the verdict you want. If Mo would actually reach back to the legal premise that exists here which is Skittles is not a crime, walking is not a crime, a hoodie is not a crime. Again, this is a terrible tragedy. But the incident that happened happened —

IVORY: No, shooting somebody in their chest.

WEBB: However, let me finish.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Let him finish. Let him finish.

WEBB: Because a young black man was just murdered in Chicago for refusing to join a gang.

LEMON: Wait. Hold on. David, David, David, David, David, David, David, David, David.

(CROSSTALK)

IVORY: What kind of a comparison is that?

LEMON: Stop both of you. Mo! Mo! Stop. David, stop. David, do not do that false equivalent. That is not —

WEBB: No, I’m not trying to equivocate. But the outrage —

LEMON: Yes but listen.

WEBB: I’m not comparing —

LEMON: Crime happens all the time, and because a crime happens, it does not mean that you should shift the focus from what happened here. Let’s stick to this particular plan.

WEBB: Okay. On this issue —

LEMON: We’re talking about this case.

IVORY: Thank you.

WEBB: On this issue, then, the system played out. Again, we needed to see due process, not outside agitation. He was tried. The jury was picked. They were selected. They had a jury that made a decision on second-degree manslaughter – on second-degree murder. On the manslaughter charges, they acquitted him. The system worked.

Now, if you don’t like the verdict, I can understand that. But to take it beyond that into the continued hyperbole of it’s race – in the dark, rainy night with a hoodie on walking away from him and with a 911 call to back it up, he couldn’t even identify him clearly. So he wasn’t racially profiling him. This is a tragedy, and a travesty is when you get to the point where race becomes the overwhelming issue rather than the justice system.

BUCK DAVIS, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION EXPERT: David —

IVORY: The justice system is broken.

LEMON: OK, all right, hold on, guys. You have to let me lead this conversation. So, you have two people of color. I assume you’re both African-American. Excuse me for assuming that.

IVORY: I am. I’m not sure about David.

WEBB: I’m a black man. I’m an American. That’s what it is.

IVORY: Oh, okay. Keep with that.

LEMON: Okay. So – (LAUGHTER) girl, you are crazy. So, you have two people —

UPDATED: The Affirmative Action Legal Idiocracy (Not Guilty!)

Affirmative Action, Crime, Critique, GUNS, Intelligence, Law, Race

Glenda Hatchett, of the CNN brain trust, is a cretin. She not only appears not to know the law, but has a hard time with analytical and deductive thinking. This has not stopped the woman from becoming a Judge, and the host of the indubitably lucrative “Judge Hatchett.”

It is a shame that the July 12, CNN transcripts cannot convey the look on Judge Alex’s face when Hatchett ventured the following:

HATCHETT: “… I did have an interesting question today. Someone said to me, well, judge, why didn’t George just pull his gun and say, ‘I’m the neighborhood watch, stay where you are until the police gets here.’ I mean, he’s the one who has the gun. Why didn’t he do that?”

Judge Alex Ferrer shot back:

FERRER: “He doesn’t have a right to do that because that would be an aggravated assault. … he would have [no] legal right to pull a gun on somebody who’s not committing a crime.”

[SNIP]

The entire Zimmerman case is about two individuals who were not committing crimes, and had a perfect right to be where they were when their paths intersected. This simple fact Judge Hatchett failed to grasp. Hatchett thinks that holding up an innocent individual with a weapon is a legal crime-preventing option.

The hours with Don Lemon, July 13, were as harrowing intellectually, when yet another black legal analyst suggested perfectly seriously (everyone nodded) that we know the Zimmerman jurors are intelligent, because they are … women. (Don Lemon is a piss-poor primetime reporter for CNN, and a pillar of the Thing Jack Kerwick calls the “Racism Industrial Complex (RIC).”)

UPDATE: The jury followed the law, adhered to the Justice’s instructions, and acquitted George Zimmerman. Not guilty. It is as it should be.

On Breitbart.com,” Read “Guilty Until Proven Innocent: How the Press Prosecuted Zimmerman While Stoking Racial Tensions.”

The Zimmerman Zoo

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Justice, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Race, Reason, The Courts

B37 is a Zimmerman juror who is known to have said that “the best use for newspapers was lining her parrot’s cage.” A wise woman, both in her choice of companion and cage-liner. In “The Evergreen State’s Profligate Oink Sector,” I marveled at the pabulum published by my local press. How did I know? “I line my parrot’s cage with its pages.”

Parrot lady aside, poor George’s trial is a zoo. Some of the most telling coverage came courtesy of CNN, where a male lawyer—clearly focused on the law and the facts of the case—argued with a slew of females. These included Anderson Cooper and attendant attorneys and judges to whom the concept of applying the law to the facts was foreign. Instead, these agitators and activists, all (except AC) having officiated in the legal system, had convicted Mr. Zimmerman because of a political narrative concerning racism that had been woven into the case by a prosecution answering to special interests, and not the law.

For example, the “Instructions read to jury by The Honorable Debra S. Nelson, Circuit Judge” laid out the law quite clearly. On CNN, Sunny Hostin, a former (very scary) prosecutor turned CNN commentator, doesn’t like the law, so she declared these clear instructions confusing, and tried to suggest that the letter of the law is bound to be ignored by reasonable jurors.

Hostin, like other tele-lawyers, is oriented towards a desired outcome.

If they follow the Judge’s instructions, the jurors should exonerate Zimmerman.