Tag Archive for ‘Crime’

Clean Jim, Dirty Harry, and Barry the Beer-Drinker

The conservative press lost no time in converting the Henry Louis Gates affair into a morality play that pitted a loose-lipped race-baiting President against a squeaky clean policeman with an excellent record in what is politely termed “minority relations.”

Jim Webb’s Attack on the American Gulag

On June 11, Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia introduced his bill to set up a bipartisan National Criminal Justice Commission. “We find ourselves as a nation,” Webb declared, “in the midst of a profound, deeply corrosive crisis,” vis., “the national disgrace of our present criminal justice system” and “the disintegration of this system, day by day and year by year.”

Beware the Hate Crime Bill’s Unintended Consequences

How will a court know whether a violent act was committed because of hatred or because of sexual lust or the need for money? As case law is made, the likely direction will be to eliminate intent. The issue will be resolved by whether the attacked person is a member of a protected class. The mugger who beats as well as robs a victim who turns out to be homosexual or Jewish will have committed a hate crime.

The American Criminal Injustice System

Law and order conservatives think that the only miscarriages of justice are effected by liberal judges and liberal parole boards who can’t wait to release dangerous criminals to prey on the public. The absurd idea that the justice system doesn’t make mistakes about those it convicts, except when they are let off by liberals, has made it impossible for innocent people wrongfully convicted to be paroled.

The United States: A Country Without Mercy

The Christmas season is a time to remember the unfortunate, among who are those who have been wrongly convicted.

In the United States, the country with the largest prison population in the world, the number of wrongly convicted is very large. Hardly any felony charges are resolved with trials. The vast majority of defendants, both innocent and guilty, are coerced into plea bargains. Not only are the innocent framed, but the guilty, as well. It is quicker and less expensive to frame the guilty than to convict them on the evidence.