Cameron Todd Willingham & The Witchdoctors Who Killed Him

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Law, Pseudoscience

As it has been practiced for decades, arson investigations were more voodoo than science, and “arson sleuths” were often dabblers; “old-timers” who lay claim to a “a body of wisdom,” passed down from one old timer to the next arson investigator. The problem? An innocent individual, Cameron Todd Willingham, was “executed for the arson murder of his three young daughters,” in Texas, in 2004, based on this hocus-pocus.

Many arson investigators, it turned out, had only a high-school education. In most states, in order to be certified, investigators had to take a forty-hour course on fire investigation, and pass a written exam. Often, the bulk of an investigator’s training came on the job, learning from “old-timers” in the field, who passed down a body of wisdom about the telltale signs of arson, even though a study in 1977 warned that there was nothing in “the scientific literature to substantiate their validity.”

In 1992, the National Fire Protection Association, which promotes fire prevention and safety, published its first scientifically based guidelines to arson investigation. Still, many arson investigators believed that what they did was more an art than a science—a blend of experience and intuition. In 1997, the International Association of Arson Investigators filed a legal brief arguing that arson sleuths should not be bound by a 1993 Supreme Court decision requiring experts who testified at trials to adhere to the scientific method. What arson sleuths did, the brief claimed, was “less scientific.” By 2000, after the courts had rejected such claims, arson investigators increasingly recognized the scientific method, but there remained great variance in the field, with many practitioners still relying on the unverified techniques that had been used for generations. “People investigated fire largely with a flat-earth approach,” Hurst told me. “It looks like arson—therefore, it’s arson.” He went on, “My view is you have to have a scientific basis. Otherwise, it’s no different than witch-hunting.”

On September 7, 2009, the New Yorker’s David Grann wrote a lengthy expose, “Trial by Fire,” in which he asked, “Did Texas execute an innocent man?”

On March 9, this year, Maurice Possley, of The Marshall Project, all but confirmed that yes, Texas executed an innocent man.

Read the horror story of Cameron Todd Willingham, who “insisted upon his innocence in the deaths of his children and refused an offer to plead guilty in return for a life sentence.”

And the update.

UPDATED: The Farce Of ‘Black Arrests’ In Ferguson

Crime, Propaganda, Pseudoscience, Race

Ann Coulter channels Steve Sailer, who compared the arrest rates of blacks in various left wing precincts like the “People’s Republic of Santa Monica, CA”: “the black arrest rate in Santa Monica is three times as high as the black arrest rate in Ferguson, Mo.”

More than three times higher:

More Steve Sailer.

UPDATE (3/16): Facebook Thread:

Myron Robert Pauli: 631/1000 – that’s 63% of the entire black population although probably many are the “usual suspects” getting arrested multiple times per year! Still an enormous number. Pretty high even for whities. The arrest rate in North Dakota (evil Republican state with lots of gun owners) is 24/1000 – although apparently the oil boom is bringing in more crime. Utah also has low crime but the crime rate does not correlate that much with RED (Idaho and Utah) vs BLUE (Vermont, Maine, and Minnesota have low crime) as much as the absence of a certain population which perhaps Steven Sailer can point out – see enclosed picture.

Myron Robert Pauli: … and the District of Columbia is # 1 … with Ward 8 being the most criminal in DC (interesting fact is that a certain research lab in Ward 8 has more patents than the rest of the Department of Defense put together – but that Lab has a barbed wire fence and guards – presumably to keep the “Russians” out!!) … – just don’t get lost can have your car break down if you are coming to visit Naval Research Lab! Still, it seems rather odd that gun-friendly Idaho has lower crime than such as a paradise as the District of Columbia with its anti-gun laws… after all, don’t we get taught that guns cause crime????!!!

Michael Savage On Hillary Saga, Selma & A Soulless President

Barack Obama, Conservatism, English, Hillary Clinton

Michael Savage read my mind. I’ve been ruminating on the visceral hatred the liberal media harbor for Hillary Clinton, and have come to Savage’s excellent conclusion: “It’s because they want Elizabeth Warren to run. To them, Hillary isn’t liberal enough.”

“Savage added ominously, ‘If you think Hillary is bad, Elizabeth Warren is even worse.'”

To this I would add only that the media took the same tack with Barack Obama, once they anointed him as their man. The exact dynamics were at play, showcasing that while there was a “red/blue split in the Democratic Party that had become a gash”; there is no such schism in the media.

This from the June, 2008 column, “Mindless Monolith: Media Pick Obama”:

The top Democratic dogs finally got their way: Senator Clinton, who lost her party’s delegates but won the people, will concede the Democratic nomination. Media pack animals are also on top of the world.
From the AP’s Charles Babington to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to Wolf Blitzer and his “best political team on television”: They had all worked their hearts out for Obama. …
… By now the red/blue split in the Democratic Party had become a gash. Clinton was getting the red, Reagan Democrats—seniors, whites, blue collar and rural voters. “Barack Obama,” in the words of another veteran news guy, the always-edifying William Schneider, “was winning the blue Democrats: young voters, upscale urban professionals, well-educated liberals and African-Americans.”
Red versus blue meant left versus right. Those who own guns voted for Hillary; those who don’t, and think you should not, voted for Obama. One more thing: Because they’re older, more blue collar, and more conservative …

Also via Kathy Shaidle’s WND, TALK RADIO WATCH column comes an overview of the rest of what the talkers on the right said this week. Kathy, no doubt, mined the best of the week. Other than Savage, there is nothing new, interesting or important in anything said by this lot. See for yourself.

Savage’s thoughts on Obama’s Selma speech are also insightful, contrast as they do with the milquetoast assessment at National Review. OK, not milquetoast, but fawning. If anything, NR writer Quin Hillyer—who echoes Chris Cillizza’s sentiments on the Selma speech—is the fine writer he claims Obama is. The paragraph Hillyer excerpts is vintage Obama in its hackneyed simplicity.

Back to Savage on Selma and on a soulless man (courtesy of Kathy): “’Obama’s Selma speech was a new low point in the American presidency,’ Savage said at the top of the week. Comparing it to ‘classic Soviet propaganda,’ he went on to say, ‘I’ve diagnosed what’s wrong with this man and his presidency: Obama doesn’t have a scintilla of forgiveness in his soul.’”

Racism And The Millennial Brain Rot

Education, Intelligence, Pseudo-intellectualism, Race, Racism, Reason

Racism and the Millennial brain rot is the topic of the current column, “Millennials: A Menagerie of Morons,” currently on WND. An excerpt:

… Hysteria and heightened emotions are the hallmarks of the Millennial Mind. They can “whip up a false sense of mass outrage” with ease. The Spectator’s Brendan O’Neill calls these walking dead dodos “The Stepford Students.” They sit “stony-eyed in lecture halls or surreptitiously police beer-fueled banter in the uni bar. They look like students, dress like students, smell like students. But their student brains have been replaced by brains bereft of critical faculties and programmed to conform. To the untrained eye, they seem like your average book-devouring, ideas-discussing, H&M-adorned youth, but anyone who’s spent more than five minutes in their company will know that these students are far more interested in shutting debate down than opening it up.”

Black, liberal and bright—oops; I committed a “microaggression”—comedian Chris Rock recently confessed that he avoids doing his stand-up routine in front of millennial audiences. “You can’t say ‘the black kid over there.’ No, it’s ‘the guy with the red shoes.’ You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.”

In the Orwellian universe in which your kids are suspended, words speak louder than actions. Drunken youths sang a nine-second ditty while white—they did not defraud, steal, vandalize, beat, rape or murder anyone; they merely mouthed ugly words.

Unkind cuts, however, called for an exorcism. On cue, a petrified Waspy man, OU President David Boren, proceeded to perform the rituals that would soothe his unhinged charges. While Boren failed to fumigate the fraternity, tear his clothes; rub earth and ashes on his noggin and dress in sackcloth—he did shutter the doors to the dorm and board up its windows. A vice president of diversity was appointed. Soviet-style investigations launched, and summary expulsions sans due process carried out.

Tyranny, as we know, strives for uniformity.

In synch with their pedagogic pied piper, University of Oklahoma students gathered for prayer vigils, marches, demonstrations and lamentation. Burly athletes wept. One Oklahoma football lineman “decommitted,” or was committed.

This menagerie of morons—this institutionalized stupidity—would be comical were it not so calamitous, as shown by the research commissioned by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. …

… Read the rest. “Millennials: A Menagerie of Morons” is currently on WND.