Some Brief, Grand Sweeping Pronouncements on the George Zimmerman Trial

Both sides have rested their cases, and the judge is getting ready to send the George Zimmerman murder case to the jury, which is the perfect time to make grand sweeping pronouncements without the burden of a jury verdict:

1. Seventeen years old, or not, Trayvon Martin was an idiot to launch into his "I'm a bad ass street thug" routine when he did. It's nighttime. It's raining. OK, there's someone following you. You know what us creepy-ass crackers do in similar situations? We get the hell home with our skittles and Snapple. For all the talk of Trayvon being the son the president never had, Trayvon is actually much more of a universal figure than his defenders realize: a bored suburban teen bouncing between his divorced parents, spending his days texting, smoking pot, playing video games, and dressing like his favorite musicians. I just described 25% of the kids from my lily-white high school. If any of them had turned and started beating up Zimmerman, they would have ended up shot just the same.

2. Sorry, George, I know you didn't hunt down and kill Trayvon Martin like so many civil rights hustlers tried to claim, but you still killed someone. Ever heard of a warning shot? Or, staying in your car? Even if you're acquitted on all charges, I would be the first one to tell Trayvon's parents to sue your a**, and I think they would win something. Treyvon, needless to say, contributed greatly to his demise, but you will, I think, find yourself with a wrongful death judgment against you in civil court.

3. Of all the racial issues raised in this case, the effort to deny and define Zimmerman's Hispanic heritage was bizarre. There was the previously unheard formulation "white Hispanic." What's next? Are we going to call Barack Obama a mulatto? Are we going to bring back the black Irish? Then, there were the media outlets that dubbed Zimmerman a "self-identified" Hispanic, as if he were a wanna-be. Have you seen his mom?! She seems pretty damn Hispanic! I don't even understand how anyone, including Treyvon could have thought of Zimmerman as being white. Sorry, he looks like someone from a Latin American background. Just bizarre.

4. All of this is happening when the American murder rate is driven by black-on-black (or black-on-someone-else) crime. If our community organizer president wants to do some good, he might want to look into this, but don't count on it. As others have said, the murderousness of blacks against other blacks and some whites is one of the great taboos of the our era.

Gun Fury: Newtown Parents In Washington

I wasn't going to do this, but the efforts of some (not all) of the Newtown parents to guilt-trip Americans into surrendering their Second Amendment rights have really crossed a line. Here is "Newtown mom" Francine Wheeler giving the president's weekly address:

Francine Wheeler blinked past her tears, looked straight into the camera and asked Americans to push for tougher gun laws, drawing on courage she said comes from the memory of her 6-year-old son, Ben, murdered in his first-grade classroom in Newtown, Connecticut. 

"His boundless energy kept him running across the soccer field long after the game was over," said Wheeler, describing her son during what is usually President Barack Obama's weekly Saturday address to the nation. 

"He couldn't wait to get to school every morning," she said, her voice breaking, her husband David beside her, sighing and swallowing hard. 

The address was the culmination of a week of emotional pleas in Washington from families of the 26 people killed by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14. 

"To us, it feels as if it happened just yesterday," Wheeler said, recounting the horror of waiting at the firehouse after the shooting "for the boy who would never come home." 

The massacre has spurred Obama to propose new restrictions on guns - politically difficult measures in a country where constitutional rights to own guns are defended by powerful lobby groups like the National Rifle Association. 

Obama brought the Newtown families to Washington on Monday aboard Air Force One after he gave a speech in Connecticut urging action on his plans.

I'm sorry, but does Wheeler, or anyone else, honestly think her pain over losing her son is not something that would be shared by any decent parent in her position, even the dread Wayne LaPierres or Ted Cruzes of the world? What happened to Ben Wheeler and his classmates was awful. Just awful. I couldn't stand to watch news coverage of the event. Don't even get me started on the political ghouls like Michael Bloomberg and Diane Feinstein who leaped for the cameras before lunchtime on that terrible Friday morning, seeing an opportunity to "win" a political argument they had lost years ago. But, Wheeler's pain is universal. It has nothing to say about gun control, background checks, or the other ephemera that the Senate is debating. 

We're not supposed to attack Wheeler and her cohort, but I have to ask what was the point of her presentation. She addresses nothing about the substance of the pending gun control bills, or how they might or might not be constitutional. I don't even know if the murder of her son has changed her views on gun control. She's an upper-income woman from suburban Connecticut. Odds are, she didn't like guns before 12/14/12, and would have supported the president's efforts at anytime, regardless of her circumstances. 

And, let's talk about the president and his "efforts" to address Newtown. What's he done? Made some speeches denouncing the opposition and acting like he - the president of the United States - is being thwarted by dark forces led by the NRA and/or Mitch McConnell. I can't do anything! he seems to moan. Bullsh*t. There's plenty he could do above and beyond his flurry of executive orders. (how's it going implementing those, btw? Did he ever follow through on his order to himself to nominate a new ATF chief?) The president is, after all, the president. He runs the executive branch! He could get out there and actually go after the bad guys he claims to want to put of business: the criminals committing gun crimes and the gun runners making illegal weapons sales. He could lead a national "conversation" about violent video games and movies. He could get behind an effort to resolve the vexing mental health questions that arise from these events. (and address the unspoken question of whether psychotropic drugs have played any role in the psychoses of mass killers). 

But all Obama's doing right now is making Republican Senators squirm on Meet The Press, and that might be all he accomplishes because - and this is the biggest joke - everyone knows that whatever legislation manages to pass out of Congress would not have stopped Adam Lanza or anyone else from committing mass murder. 

Is that what Ben Wheeler's blood is going to buy? The temporary discomfort of some RINO's who probably secretly agree with his grieving mother anyway? 

As an example of how a president who is serious about solving a seemingly intractable problem, look at how the Reagan Administration waged the War On Drugs. Sure, there was some legislating involved, especially with the notorious mandatory sentencing laws; but the president didn't sit around waiting for Congress to act. The Justice Department and other cabinet departments were mobilized to focus on drug interdiction and prosecution. On the PR side, there was Nancy Reagan's earnest and effective "Just Say No" campaign, along with a million PSA's culminating in the famous "This is your brain on drugs" commercial. We can sit around arguing how effective all of this was,  but there is no doubt that an executive branch committed to a particular policy can throw a lot of resources around in a hurry. 

So is Obama prosecuting gun crimes? No. In fact, such prosecutions have declined under his watch. How hard would it be to call Eric Holder and tell him to turn this around? About as hard as Ronaldus placing a telephone call to Ed Meese I would imagine.

Is the Obama administration going after gun runners or underground dealers? Are you kidding? They ran the biggest gun running operation in history! Plus, I just don't think there are any sort of large-scale underground gun dealers out there, anti-gun propaganda notwithstanding. Why would there be?

Is the Obama Administration producing PSA's about gun safety? (Moms & Dads, don't leave your freaking weapons lying around! Especially when you know your son is a nut!) Of course not, and they are demonizing the one organization out there that does, the NRA, which produces a wealth of gun safety information.  

When is the First Black President going to use his bully pulpit to address the perpetrators of the vast majority of gun crimes: young black men? 

It's not as if these would be controversial. Wayne LaPierre, at his much maligned post-Newtown press conference called on the president to do the above, and more. The NRA wants criminals rounded up and sent to prison whether they are Adam Lanza or anonymous South Side wanna-be's. They just don't want law abiding citizens to be hassled along the way. 

Most important, maybe, the president might want to take a look at his rhetoric, and that of his fellow progressives, over the last 4 years. A lot of it has focused its vitriol on the wealthy and well-to-do, always with the subtext that their wealth is somehow misappropriated. Who did Adam Lanza target, after all? The children of the 1% whom we are told are responsible for all that is wrong in American society. Children who were born into what many on the left consider the white power structure. 

Sure you can say Adam Lanza was crazy or evil, but why couldn't have this been a political act, no different than a Palestinian blowing himself up at a school bus stop? 

I know there's a show biz aspect to politics, but this "Mrs. Wheeler Goes To Washington" routine is so bogus you can practically see the wires and the blue-screen. No one doubts her pain and anguish. How could you? But, she is going as a human shield to shut down debate, a phenomenon first identified by Ann Coulter years ago. We're not supposed to criticize her, yet she is flying around in Air Force One and is being shuttled to meetings with numerous Senators by lobbyists and a former "strategist" for Bill Clinton. (among his noble bits of strategy was navigating Slick's bimbo eruptions. Why would you want to shake hands with this guy, let alone let him shepherd you around Capitol Hill?) Are Americans supposed to watch this soap opera and collapse on to their fainting couches en masse? Apparently. 

The GOP will always be the Stupid Party, but Democrats are crafting arguments designed to appeal to stupid people. I'll take honest stupidity any time. 

Folklore Implosion: The Chris Dorner Saga

We're finally getting some clear-headed reporting about the Chris Dorner - uh, spree? saga? rampage? - as a counter-point to the nutty "He's like Denzel Washington" commentary we were hearing from the left. According to Dorner's enthusiastic supporters, he declared war on the "racist" "troubled" LAPD in an effort to clear his name. Let's see how the modern day folk hero did:

1.) Dorner claimed his first victims on Feb. 3. 

Monica Quan, 28, was an assistant women's basketball coach at California State University, Fullerton. She was also the daughter of retired LAPD Capt. Randal Quan — the man who had represented Dorner in his disciplinary hearings. 

She lived in an Irvine condominium with boyfriend Keith Lawrence — a former basketball player and University of Southern California cop whose shoes and buckles she had stayed up until the wee hours polishing when he was at the police academy. On Jan. 26, Lawrence, 27, had strewn the apartment floor with rose petals, gotten down on one knee and proposed, according to the Los Angeles Times. 

Just over a week later, at 9:10 p.m., Quan and Lawrence were found slumped in their car in the parking lot of their condo complex. They were fatally shot. 

2.) The next day, Feb. 7, Dorner struck again. 

Around 1:30 a.m. two LAPD officers assigned to protect one of the people named in Dorner's manifesto spotted him in the Riverside County community of Corona. During a shootout, one officer was grazed on the forehead. 

A short while later in nearby Riverside, SWAT team Officer Michael Crain and trainee Andrew Tachias were in the middle of a graveyard shift. 

The 34-year-old former Marine had served two tours of duty in Kuwait before joining the Riverside force in 2001. As a Marine, Crain had once taught urban warfare tactics, but on this day he had no time to react. 

The two were waiting at a stoplight when someone — believed to be Dorner — raced up and opened fire on them. Tachias, 27, was critically wounded; Crain was pronounced dead at a hospital. 

3.) Jim and Karen Reynolds were in the process of refurbishing their condo near Big Bear, working on it off and on through the winter season. They had last been there on Feb. 6 and weren't planning to come back until Valentine's Day, but decided to check in early after learning that Dorner's truck had been abandoned nearby. 

When they walked into the upstairs living room Tuesday morning, Dorner was waiting for them with his gun drawn. He had been there at least five days — within shouting distance of a command post set up by the people hunting him. 

"Stay calm," he shouted. When Karen Reynolds turned to run out, he grabbed her from behind. 

Karen Reynolds said Dorner was calm and "very methodical" as he instructed them to sit, then tied their hands and legs. 

"I don't have a problem with you," he told the couple. "I just want to clear my name." (just like in a movie!) Dorner moved the couple to a bedroom and shut the door. 

When they felt he had gone, Karen Reynolds managed to get to her feet and, with her hands still tied behind her back, open the door. To her amazement, Dorner had left her cellphone on the living room table. 

She picked it up and dialed 911. It was 12:22 p.m. Tuesday. 

4.) Rick Heltebrake was driving the perimeter of a Boy Scout camp he watches over when Dorner — his bulletproof vest bristling with rifle magazines — emerged from the tree line. 

"I don't want to hurt you," Dorner said in a calm, businesslike voice as he pointed his rifle at the 51-year-old Heltebrake. "Start walking and take your dog." 

Heltebrake sensed that Dorner, who stole his truck, was on a mission, and that he wasn't part of the agenda. Suni took his 3-year-old Dalmatian and walked away.
Heltebrake had just called police when he heard gunfire. 

5.) Not far up the road from where Dorner had left Heltebrake, some game wardens spotted the white truck speeding erratically. Dorner opened the window and fired. 

According to sheriff's department officials, MacKay and his partner followed where they believed the truck had gone. They were unaware that Dorner had crashed it. They spotted tracks in the snow leading to a cabin and got out of their cruiser. 

The pair stopped about 30 yards from the cabin to devise a plan when shots were fired. Neither deputy had a chance to return fire. Both were hit multiple times. A doctor told Loftis death for MacKay came instantly or in "just seconds." 

Collins survived but has undergone multiple surgeries. A SWAT team arrived quickly and laid down covering fire to allow the officers to be airlifted.

Anyone see anything unusual in that narrative? Namely that he didn't kill, or even come within 20 miles of, a single member of the LAPD?! Instead, he shot a young woman and her black (take that Darrell Gates!) fiancee, killed a suburban officer, killed a rural county sheriff, kidnapped a late middle-aged couple, and terrorized a guy walking his dog. He wasn't even operating in LA! His victims were in Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties.* It's no wonder the LAPD is re-opening the Dorner termination. A guy this wily and cunning should have been promoted to chief!

You also have to love the "controversy" that developed after the cabin he died in caught fire. The San Bernardino Sheriff had to practically apologize and announce that, no, his department did not set fire to the cabin. Dorner was the guy with the problem, but everyone else, especially the heads of the various jurisdictions where Dorner committed his murderous acts, had to crawl before the TV cameras. 

And, once again, leftists were able to pick the scab of the "racist" LAPD and its "troubled" history, even though the department looks to have been fully justified in firing this jerk. Makes you think that maybe the LAPD is "racist" only because they go to where the criminals are: namely the ghettos and barrios in the City of Angels. 

That Dorner had a reasonable political justification for his crimes is, of course, silly. But, that doesn't mean there wasn't a political element at work. The man was clearly not insane. He was acting too methodically and pragmatically to be crazy. Instead, he was angry, and the roots of his rage - as expressed in his manifesto - were the imagined "racist" slights he had endured. But, he didn't suffer from any institutional racism keeping him down. He was brought down by his own lies, caught making up a self-aggrandizing "whistleblower" story about LAPD brutality (by a lady cop!) Still, a guy can take himself pretty far telling himself that he lives in a racist society; just ask Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whose politics inform every page of Dorner's manifesto. 

The fact is that the people on the left live to whip up the sort of frenzied anger that Dorner exhibited. If you've got the president of the United States railing against the 1%, don't be surprised if some of his more excitable followers take up arms in that spirit.

The final word properly belongs to one of the few who survived a direct encounter with Dorner:

Loftis is having trouble imagining life without his friend. Coming to grips with the depth of Dorner's betrayal is even harder. 

"He got the best of us. He took one of the best that we have," he said ruefully. "He lost a job because he didn't deserve it, and he takes these officers' lives, really, for nothing. It was stupid and senseless."

Amen. 

* even the notorious incident where some cops shot two women delivering papers happened in Orange County. 

MS-13 3000: Edwin Ramos Judged Guilty of Murder

It's the end of the line for MS-13 member, and illegal alien, Edwin Ramos, as a SF jury found him guilty of murdering a man and two of his three teen-aged sons:

A man with a long gang history was convicted Wednesday of the mistaken-identity murders of a San Francisco father and his two sons, the culmination of one of the most notorious crimes in the city in recent years. 

Edwin Ramos, 25, at first was still as the San Francisco Superior Court jury returned guilty verdicts on three first-degree murder counts in the killings of Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16. Soon, however, he began to cry.

Ramos was the beneficiary of one of the dumbest "only in San Francisco" initiatives ever: the practice of intentionally refusing to notify the Feds whenever a juvenile illegal alien was arrested. Here's how Ramos used his multiple second chances:

Ramos was not in the United States legally at the time he was identified as one of three alleged MS-13 members who beat up a man on a Muni bus in the Mission District in 2003. Prosecutors told the jury that Ramos and his colleagues had been "checking" passengers to determine what gang they were affiliated with. 

Instead of referring him to federal authorities for possible deportation, San Francisco juvenile authorities placed Ramos in a shelter and later released him to his mother in April 2004. 

Four days after his release, he assaulted a pregnant woman and her brother, and was sentenced to the city's Log Cabin Ranch for felony attempted robbery. He was released in February 2005, again without city juvenile authorities reporting him to federal immigration officials. 

The Juvenile Probation Department had ordered employees not to report minors to immigration officials under the agency's interpretation of San Francisco's sanctuary policy, which barred city officials from cooperating with deportations.

The widow Bologna tried and failed to sue the City, so this guilty verdict will have to do. Reading her reaction only hints at the shattered lives in the wake, not only of Ramos's violence, but also of the destruction that results from the dangerous policy preferences of liberals

Tony Bologna's widow, Danielle, who was in court for most of the trial, wept throughout the session and sobbed hardest when the court clerk read the names of her husband and sons. 

"Yes, yes, God," she cried as she heard the verdicts. 

Her son, Andrew Bologna, now 21, was the only survivor of the shootings in the Excelsior neighborhood on a bright Sunday afternoon, June 22, 2008. Tony Bologna was driving his sons home from a family gathering in Fairfield when, prosecutors said, Ramos mistook at least one of the young men for a Mission District gang rival and fired from another car. 

"He didn't get me," Andrew Bologna whispered to his mother in consolation Wednesday. 

Several members of the Bologna family, including Danielle and Andrew, wore white T-shirts with "Finally justice is served" on the front and the victims' names on the back. 

Outside court, Tony Bologna's mother, Lena Bologna, cried as she said, "All I kiss at night are the pictures of my son and my two grandsons."

"He didn't get me." There's a lot of pain and absence in those words. Oh, and the surviving members of the Bologna family are now in the witness protection program. The City did a lot more for Ramos than they ever did for innocents like the Bolognas.


I wish I could say the architects of this fiasco are out of office, but instead former DA Kamala Harris is now the State Attorney General, while Mayor Newsome is Lieutenant Governor. They were running against the sort of Republicans who don't like "negative" campaigning, so the Ramos scandal never came up. Great job. 

If You Must Go, Then Go Quietly: George Zimmerman's Former Attorneys

There's been a lot of bizarre behavior with the Treyvon Martin case, but special mention should be made of George Zimmerman's now-former attorneys, who made a big show of resigning from the case the day before Zimmerman was charged with second degree murder: 

The lawyers for George Zimmerman, the member of a neighborhood watch group who killed an unarmed teenager, said they were withdrawing as his legal counsel, a surprise twist in a case that has riveted the nation. 

"We've lost contact with him," attorney Craig Sonner said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon. "He's gone on his own." Mr. Sonner said the last time he had communicated with his client was on Sunday. Since then, Mr. Zimmerman hadn't returned phone calls, text messages or emails, he said. 

Mr. Zimmerman fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., in February and later told police he acted in self-defense. Mr. Martin's family, however, says Mr. Zimmerman was the aggressor. State and federal investigations are under way. Mr. Zimmerman hasn't been charged with any crime. 

The attorneys cited a number of purported actions on Mr. Zimmerman's part that they said they found troubling, including his contacting media and the special prosecutor investigating his case without alerting them.
...
The lawyers also said they had received information that Mr. Zimmerman had spoken off the record to Sean Hannity of Fox News, without alerting them. They were unaware of what their client discussed with the news anchor, they said. Fox News is owned by News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal....The "final straw," said Hal Uhrig, Mr. Zimmerman's other attorney, was that Mr. Zimmerman contacted Ms. Corey's office, also without notifying the lawyers. Mr. Uhrig said clients should never speak to anyone, let alone a prosecutor, about their case without an attorney present.The lawyers said they had gone to great lengths to set up a website where supporters could send donations to their client. Yet the lawyers said they learned on Monday that Mr. Zimmerman had set up his own website—therealgeorgezimmerman.com—without consulting them.

There's a lot of bad attorney behavior on display here. First of all, who calls a press conference to announce to the world that you are resigning from the case? If you are going to resign, then resign. More important, they trash their client as they head out the door, making him seem like a fugitive on the run, rather than what he is: someone who probably can't walk down the street in Central Florida without fearing death at the hands of a member of the mobs whipped up by the "civil rights" community. They even manage to hint at Zimmerman's location. Ridiculous. 


And, worst of all, this press conference was the first time I'd ever heard of these guys. Zimmerman's already been tried and convicted in the media. His desperate family and friends have taken to the airwaves to defend the man. Zimmerman himself has set up a website, one that (shudder) his former attorneys did not approve of. Uh, fellas, maybe Zimmerman and his few supporters are doing this because you guys aren't doing your damn job. The one thing a defense attorney is supposed to do is defend their client, and I have seen no indication that either of these guys has done so. Instead, it looks like they've been hiding under a desk, not wanting to be associated with this case, and took the first chance to noisily "resign" (I'd call it abandon) from the case on the eve of Zimmerman's indictment. 


Zimmerman has already retained new counsel, Mark O'Meira. You may have heard him on the news last night, as he gave a quick press conference in the wake of the newly filed 2nd degree murder charges. Hopefully, Zimmerman will be better represented this time around. 

Sanctuary City: Another Illegal Immigrant Mass Murderer In San Francisco

The last big San Francisco mass murder was the Bolagna murders, where a local butcher and his teenage sons were murdered by Edwin Ramos, a MS-13 thug who also turned out to have been an illegal immigrant protected by the District Attorney's office. 


Now, there's been another spectacular act of mass murder - five Asian-Americans brutally murdered in their home with some sort of blunt instrument - and you'll never guess the immigration status of the accused murderer: 

The suspect in last week's slayings of five people in San Francisco was ordered deported in 2006 after he served a prison term for robbery and assault, but immigration authorities had to let him go free because his native Vietnam would not take him back, officials said Monday. 

Binh Thai Luc, 35, of San Francisco was released under the terms of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said undocumented immigrants must be released after six months if their country of origin won't allow them to return, according to officials with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. 

Luc is the only suspect to have been arrested in the killings in a home near City College of San Francisco. A source familiar with the investigation said authorities suspect the killer or killers may have been trying to collect on a gambling debt.

"Incredibly" (scoff) Luc had repeated run-ins with the law, but no one could quite figure out how to keep him separated from law-abiding folk.

Immigration officials had been eager to deport Luc after he was sentenced to an 11-year, 4-month term at San Quentin State Prison for a 1998 conviction for robbing a Chinese restaurant in San Jose at gunpoint, according to agency spokeswoman Gillian Christensen. 

Federal agents took him into custody when he was released from prison on Aug. 2, 2006, after serving eight years, and a judge ordered him deported a month later. 

"However, because Vietnamese authorities declined to provide appropriate travel documents, Luc ultimately had to be released because of the Supreme Court's ruling" in a 2001 case, Zadvydas vs. Davis, Christensen said. 

Officials at the Vietnam Consulate in San Francisco could not be reached for comment.

I guess this isn't San Francisco's fault, per se, as it was loser federal immigration officials who let Luc go (and the smarter-than-they-look Viet Namese who refused to take him back). Still, you have  to ask yourself what grand principle is being upheld when an obvious member of the criminal element is allowed to remain in the US indefinitely. I note that Luc's status is that of "undocumented" so it's not like he needed to kill someone to be deported. 


Oh, and I'm sure Luc won't be getting the death penalty either...because SF is special that way.

Strike Up The Band: The "Cause" Finds the Treyvon Martin Matter

Everyone and their dog has weighed in on the death Treyvon Martin. The details of his shooting are murky and ambiguous, but that hasn't stopped the Democrat-media complex from treating this as another episode in the "War Against Blacks" (the War Against Women having not worked out as well as they like). I can't improve on Powerline's response to this:

Anyone who spends time looking at crime statistics will discover the basics of race and crime before too long, but you better be careful not to talk about them in polite society. They are protected by a taboo even stronger than the Victorian taboo against public discussions of sex, but with good reason. The facts are painful. No one can take joy in publicizing them. 

Murder is the crime which has the greatest “clearance rate,” i.e., it is the crime most frequently resolved and prosecuted. We know a lot about the victims and perpetrators of the crime of murder. 

Murder is largely an intraracial crime. Almost all murders of blacks are committed by other blacks. 

Blacks as a group commit murder at a rate astronomically higher than other groups. The rate of murder committed by blacks exceeds that committed by whites by approximately seven times. See, e.g., Heather Mac Donald’s essay “Is the criminal-justice system racist?” 

If race hustlers like Al Sharpton really had the interests of the black community at heart, they would devote themselves to doing everything in their power to have violent black criminals separated from the community of law-abiding black citizens. The criminals are serial tormentors of law-abiding members of the black community.

What's really depressing is how tired all of this civil rights caterwauling is. The last big civil rights moment was in the early-to-mid Nineties when Rodney King and OJ were never out of the news. The same old faces - Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, Spike Lee(!) (where's Chuck D?) - are back, spouting the same old lines about prisons, crime, and white people, as if black on black crime is a chimera and the KKK has never stopped riding. Interestingly, there aren't any new faces in the ranks of the professionally aggreived, except one: the president of the United States. But, the news media and their Democrat allies are running around in a state of high dudgeon as if this were the worst thing happening in the world right now. 


Sorry, it's not. 


The president says this is a moment when we should reflect on where we are as a society.


No it's not. 


Kids the same age as Martin are killed everyday. Just a few weeks ago, some loser in Oakland was sentenced to life in prison for killing two teen aged black girls in the back of a van. The reason? They had seen him shoot a guy and (cue ominous music) the killer didn't want any witnesses. He would have gotten away with it too, except there was yet another guy in the van he didn't shoot, and who promptly called the cops. Where was Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama, et al? Oh, sorry, the shooter was Hispanic (and likely illegal) while George Zimmerman is a "white Hispanic."


There is a crime wave against black youth, but the killers are other blacks, and occasionally Hispanics. Rather than put on his Brave Civil Rights Barricades Face for the ambiguous sake of Treyvon Martin, the president would show some real bravery by focusing the presidential attention on the real killers. 

Body Count: Man Killed Near Occupy Oakland Camp

The Occupy Oakland encampment has been the most violent of the Occupy (This Space) Movement, what with all the rioting and blockading. But even Oakland's socialist mayor may not be able to tolerate these folks now that someone has been killed there. 

A young man was fatally shot Thursday evening just yards from the Occupy Oakland encampment outside City Hall. And before the ambulance had even pulled away, people were debating whether the killing was somehow linked to the month-old gathering. 

The man, whom several Occupy campers said they did not recognize, was shot in the head at about 5 p.m. outside a BART station exit in Frank Ogawa Plaza, at 14th Street and Broadway. He was taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland, where he was pronounced dead, said interim Police Chief Howard Jordan. 

Jordan - speaking to reporters over protesters who shouted, "This is not Occupy Oakland" - said two groups of people had gotten into a fight that ended when someone pulled out a gun and fired. Witnesses said they heard four to six shots, and saw several young men flee. No arrests have been made, and the dead man's name has not been released. 

The shooting happened in a busy section of downtown Oakland adjacent to the Occupy an encampment where drug use is prevalent, and where devoted protesters have increasingly struggled to control fights and robberies and deal with mentally ill homeless people.

Yep! Nothing but wide-eyed idealists trying to make a better world!


The excuses are flying, of course. The shooting happened next to the encampment, not inside (although the fight that preceded the murder seems to have started in the encampment). Everyone says they've never seen the victim before. Plus, murders happen in Oakland every day - well, every three days - and the open-air drug market in the area has been there for years, although I'm not aware that anyone was ever killed before. Btw, Oaklanders are always trying to think of ways to improve their city's image. My suggestion: get rid of the open-air drug market right next door to City Hall.


The shooting does seem to be drug related, but that doesn't get the Occupiers off the hook. There is quite a drug scene out there. The Occupation itself is almost like a Bizarro World version of the "broken windows" theory of policing. In this case, the Occupiers have created a thuggish, low-level air of criminality through their rioting and pig-headed refusal to leave Ogawa Plaza. Is it any wonder that a criminal element has joined the group? The Occupiers themselves are criminals. 


Oakland's hapless mayor is making noises about clearing out the Plaza again. Looks like any police she might send in will be dealing with even more violence than before. 

San Diego Confidential: Tabloid-Ready Deaths In SoCal

Odd doings in one of California's Sprekel's Mansions as first a pharmaceutical company's CEO girlfriend, and now his son, have died under mysterious circumstances. How long can Nancy Grace stay away?

The 6-year-old son of Medicis Pharmaceutical Corp. founder and Chief Executive Jonah Shacknai has died from injuries suffered in an accident in his California home last week, two days before Mr. Shacknai's girlfriend was found dead at the same property.

The news came in a joint statement late Sunday from the 54-year-old Mr. Shacknai and his ex-wife, Dina, the mother of Max Shacknai. In the statement, they asked that the public respect the privacy of the families and expressed gratitude for "the tremendous outpouring of support provided during this very difficult time."

Medicis makes dermatological and aesthetic drugs, including acne treatment Solodyn as well as Dysport, which competes with Allergan Inc.'s Botox. The Scottsdale, Ariz., company had $700 million in revenue last year.

Max was severely injured after falling down the stairs at the Shacknais' California home last Monday. Two days later, his father's 32-year-old girlfriend, Rebecca Nalepa, was found dead in a case that authorities described as bizarre and unusual. Ms. Nalepa was discovered nude with a rope around her neck, hanging from a balcony off the main house, with her hands and feet bound.

Authorities have said there is no investigation into Max's fall in the house and there has been no connection made between the two incidents.

Uh, you guys sure you want to stick with the "no connection" line of investigation?

The son's fatal injuries occurred before the girlfriend - who has been identified alternatively as "Rebecca Nalepa" and "Rebecca Zahau" - died, but the boy managed to linger for a week. Apparently Nalepa/Zahau was alone in the house with Max when the boy fell down the stairs, while Shaknai's brother was alone in the house with Nalepa/Zahau when she died. The police say they are "comfortable" in knowing Shaknai's location on the days his son and girlfriend suffered their fatal injuries, so that wraps that up, I guess. Anyone comfortable with a 6-year old being left alone with his dad's girlfriend? The obvious suspect in Zahau's death is the brother who was "living in a guesthouse" - can you say wastrel sibling? - while all of this was going on, but right now no one knows if the girlfriend's death was a homicide or a suicide.

All of this looks, not just mysterious, but also convenient with two deaths in the home of someone who wasn't there, and whom the police are going out of their way to handle with care. After the DSK fiasco, it's probably best to not send a prominent person out for a light perp walk, but I hope the police aren't leaving anyone off of their list of suspects.