Japan hung (hanged?) three convicted murderers, bringing the number of executions performed this year to ten. In contrast, Texas has only executed one prisoner in 2008.
Japan is making their move this year, as it only executed 9 in 2007, while Texas dispatched 26.
And here I am living in a whimpy state that hasn’t killed anyone this year, and only 2 last year.
Disclaimer: Before y’all go and get mad at me, I must admit that I am actually against the death penalty. Just havin’ a bit of fun, here.
2006 was a record year in terms of known lawbreakers. Two million offenders were either in jail or prison, 4.2 million were on probation, and nearly 800,000 were on parole. for a total of 7.2 million people in the American criminal justice system.
The cost to taxpayers, about $45 billion, is causing states such as California to reconsider harsh criminal penalties. In an attempt to relieve overcrowding, California is now exporting some of its 170,000 inmates to privately run corrections facilities as far away as Tennessee.
"There are a number of states that have talked about an early release of prisoners deemed non-threatening," said Rebecca Blank, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank. "The problem just keeps getting bigger and bigger. You're paying a lot of money here. You have to ask if some of these high mandatory minimum sentences make sense."
Meanwhile in Ohio, Joseph Groth has been sentenced to eight years in prison for attempted murder and felonious assault after he stabbed his wife multiple times, hospitalizing her for over a month. Groth was paroled in 1983 after serving one year for the killing of his first wife, Eva, in 1981.
There are four times more crime in the capital of Norway than in New York, with a 20% increase in robberies over the last year alone. The Oslo police are blaming the increase on an influx of East Europeans.
Click on the picture below to hear the recording of the 911 call from a Pasadena, Texas man when he called the cops about two burglars breaking into his neighbors house. For those of you who haven't heard about this, you can read the news story. In part:
He grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun and called 911, Lambright said.
"Uh, I've got a shotgun," he told the dispatcher. "Uh, do you want me to stop them?"
"Nope, don't do that," the dispatcher responded. "Ain't no property worth shooting somebody over, OK?"
Horn and the dispatcher spoke for several minutes, during which Horn pleaded with the dispatcher to someone to catch the men and vowed not to let them escape. Over and over, the dispatcher told him to stay inside. Horn repeatedly said he couldn't.
When the men crawled back out the window carrying a bag, Horn began to sound increasingly frantic.
"Well, here it goes, buddy," Horn said as a shell clicked into the chamber. "You hear the shotgun clicking, and I'm going."
A few seconds passed.
"Move," Horn can be heard saying on the tape. "You're dead."
Boom.
Click.
Boom.
Click.
Boom.
Horn redialed 911 and told the dispatcher what he'd done.
"I had no choice," he said, his voice shaking. "They came in the front yard with me, man. I had no choice. Get somebody over here quick."
There is all kinds of debating going on about whether this guy was right to do what he did, so I might as well add my voice.
A 61-year-old retiree willing to confront two young thugs is no coward. You can hear in his voice that he doesn't want to go out, but that he feels compelled to. He's had enough of thievery and people hiding scared in their houses. He takes action.
God bless him.
As to the validity of the shoot. He warned them, "Move [and] you're dead." They advanced on him. He shot. That sounds like a good shoot, although exact logistics need to be determined (there was an awfully long pause between the second and third shot). Horn's attorney is, of course, claiming self defense.
As to the circumstances. The castle doctrine in Texas was recently expanded precisely because the citizens of Texas were tired of rampant crime. This is the zeitgeist in which this incident takes place. That is important in determining state of mind.
As to Joe's actions. The most foolish thing he did is tell the 911 dispatcher that he was going to go outside to kill those two guys. This denotes premeditated intent. If I were sitting on the jury, however, I would take it a different way: I think Joe was trying to tell himself that he would be capable of such a thing if it became necessary, to hype himself up. You can hear the trepidation, if not real fear, in his voice as he prepares to go outside to do what is right.
Bottom line: a citizen tries to stop a crime. That is not only the purview of the police, but the duty of every citizen. When this citizen attempted to stop two men from committing wrong, they charged him and he felt his life was in danger. He shot.
God bless him.
Joe will have to live with this the rest of his days. I'm glad it wasn't me. But at this point, I'm equally glad there are citizens like Joe Horn willing to stand up for right.
Guy "finds" surface-to-air missile launcher in a shed (he swears he doesn't know how it got there — maybe it wasn't even his shed). Guy trades it for a pair of tennis shoes in an Orlando guns-for-shoes program. Click link for pic.
Mmmm, could this be a whole new spin off for Cash in the Attic?
[Guy says he took it to three dumps trying to get rid of it but they wouldn't take it. Damn, I'd have given him more than a pair of tennis shoes for it!]
HT to Gizmodo.
I still contend that GW has been a near-disastrous president on the domestic front: bigger government, uncontrolled borders, no Social Security reform, no cohesive energy policy, no real and lasting improvements in education.
But one of the few places that Bush has made a difference, a will continue to make a difference for years to come, is the appointments that have been made to the Supreme Court.
Legal Times writes:
The first full term of the Roberts Supreme Court was a blockbuster, with major rulings on abortion rights, school integration and campaign finance reform.
The Court's conservative wing was victorious in most of the key cases, leading many commentators to view the term as a historic turning point.
The above introduces a transcript of a discussion of the court. Even though it requires registration to access the transcript, it only costs an email address and is worth the trouble. Among other things, the participants point out that:
Best quote:
I think more liberal members of the legal community are dismayed, are basically giving up, saying, "Maybe we should shut the Supreme Court down. Is it really all that necessary?"
And for that, I thank W.
HT to non-blogging Fourth Horseman.
Fox News informs us that the FBI can activate the microphone in your cell phone and listen to your conversations, even when your cell phone is turned off!
We're carrying our bugging devices around with us. How did we get to a place in which it is OK for the FBI to use your own cell phone to bug your house, but the "right to privacy" invented by the courts is used to support abortion.
HT to Health Knowledge Blog via Digg.
14 years ago three 8-year-old boys were savagely murdered, their naked bodies bound with their own shoelaces found in a drainage ditch in West Memphis. 3 youths that became known as the West Memphis 3 were convicted of the murders in a trial filled with Satanic overtones and public outrage.
The investigation was sloppy, the only confession coerced and the trial filled with inconsistencies (Freedonian has a nice summary if you can ignore the anti-Christian ranting, the complete story can be found in Court TV's Crime Library). The entire affair has been the subject of 2 films (with another on the way) and 3 books, and numerous celebrities support retrial.
The retrial may be on its way: DNA from one of the murdered boy's step-father, Terry Hobbs, has been discovered on the rope used to tie one of the boys. Terry Hobbs confirms that an investigator for the defense told him that one of his hairs had been found in the knots of the shoelace used to tie victim Michael Moore.
On the other hand, is a single hair enough for a retrial? No way, especially as police chief Mike Allen thinks the hairs presence is due to "normal transference".
Still, the mother of one of the boys expresses her doubts:
Pam Hobbs said she “chose to believe all those years” that Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley were guilty, despite her realization during the trials that the prosecutors “didn’t have anything” and persistent doubts afterwards that the defendants “were smart enough or hateful enough to have done it by themselves and clean it up.”
Whether you believe the death penalty is a deterrent or not, I can't get past those cases in which the system simply makes a mistake. Which is why I still don't support the death penalty.
In this case, the only one of the West Memphis 3 that sits on death row was a budding sociopath that has an IQ that makes Paris Hilton look brilliant and a history of mental illness. But there is evidence enough to show that a terrible miscarriage of justice took place in West Memphis 14 years ago, ruining the lives of three young men. As Court TV's writer puts it:
The fight to have the guilty verdict reversed would require that the judicial system, intrinsically bureaucratic in nature, look within itself and acknowledge its own weaknesses and shortcomings. Any admission of its own failure will only occur under extreme public pressure and outrage at the injustice which has occurred. It takes time for such a process to occur, statistically at least ten years. Jessie and Jason have a lifetime, but whether Damien’s time will run out before this slow process is complete is yet to be seen.
After a small slew decisions today, the WaPo has come to the conclusion that the Supreme Court Leans Conservative:
Four of the five cases announced today were decided by the conservative majority led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., as the divisions that narrowly but decisively split the justices on social issues were on full display. . . .
Today's decisions added to the court's rising number of 5 to 4 votes this term, substantially higher than last year's total. A few of them favor the court's liberal wing, but conservatives are on a recent roll.
Predictably, the Red Rag NY Times is up in arms about the decisions, printing a small slew of articles and editorials in protest. Indeed, the editorial spells out the Times' view in no uncertain terms: Three Bad Rulings.
Whether the rulings are "bad" or not depends entirely on one's point of view.
The court upheld the right of a principal to suspend a student who promoted drug use by creating a banner that proclaimed, "Bong Hits 4 Jesus". In light of the lack of discipline in our public schools, I don't know that a restriction on children's free speech is uncalled for.
The court split hairs in ruling that tax money could be funneled to faith-based initiatives if the source was the executive office rather than congressional decree (which is prohibited by precedent). But the unspoken conclusion is that precedent may be overturned by this court if the proper case presents itself. In other words, a bad precedent created by a liberal court may be overturned in the future.
But the high point of the day had to be the loosening of restrictions on free speech as a result of the Constitution-shredding McCain-Feingold. The court ruled that the only advertisements that can be kept off the air in the days before an election are, in the words of Chief Justice Roberts, "susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate."
Describing and then dismissing the rationale for the advertising restrictions, Chief Justice Roberts used a phrase that seemed to sum up the new majority’s view toward campaign finance regulation. “Enough is enough,” the chief justice said. . . .
It may be only a matter of time before the court reconsiders its 2003 decision upholding the constitutionality of the entire law, or at least expands its Monday decision to strike down any restriction on advertising. Three of the five justices in the majority, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, declined to sign the chief justice’s opinion because it did not take that step.
Even before the last election I was vocal in my feelings that Bush's domestic policies are little short of disastrous. But the conservatation* of the Supremes offsets that a little.
* Shakespeare made up over 3,000 words. Allow me this one.
Update: Liberal spin is gearing up on this one. Check out this headline: Supreme Court Sides With Administration, Corporations In New Decisions.
Once again, the gun instead of the criminal is being made the focus of crime and punishment.
Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin will join other Law Enforcement from around Tennessee Monday as part of a state wide effort to make your streets safer.
Their goal is to drum up support for the new Crooks with Guns legislation. Chief Godwin and other lawmen from around the state are fed up with the number of guns that fall into the hands of criminals.
Yeah, like the three machine guns, two semiautomatic handguns and two 12-gauge shot guns that were stolen out of a SWAT van in Memphis. (To be fair to Memphis police, the SWAT van belonged to some Raleigh, NC cops who were just passing through.)
"This weapon right here is an s.g. 551 6-hour 223 fully automatic it will shoot one round burst three round burst 20 round burst, this weapon right here is capable of firing 550 600 rounds per minute," says Director Godwin.
Uh-oh, big scary gun! Must be bad!
Just how many of those weapons right there have been used in crimes? Not exactly the weapon of choice for the average Mapco holdup dude, is it?
And not relevant to the conversation other than the fact that it is just the kind of prop needed to make headlines and scare little old people into voting for the $70 million that will be required to pay for the results of the Crooks With Guns legislation.
State Senator Mark Norris (usually one of my favorite politicians) is co-sponsoring the bill and claims that similar legislation in NY state "cut crime by 58 percent."
"We're trying to crack down on violent criminals to quit coddling criminals," says Norris.
Now we're talking!
The bills cover crimes from illegal firearms to gang violence. It also adds extra prison time to repeat offenders who commit crimes with a guns.
Hey Mark, how about extra prison time to every repeat violent offender? I don't care if someone uses a .22 popgun, an everyday screwdriver or (in the case of a rapist) a body part, violent assault is a dehumanizing, invasive, scary experience. A repeater offender shouldn't get a chance to keep on doing it, no matter what the weapon of opportunity turns out to be.
Let's quit blaming the gun and start focusing on the criminal.
I keep hearing that the administration's foreign wiretap program is "unconstitutional". These people should take a stroll over to the Volokh Conspiracy's page on this subject.
Eugene Volokh on the Fourth Admendment issue:
The administration presumably takes the position that the President does have such power in cases involving foreign evidence collection, and that the NSA surveillance is such a case. The Supreme Court has never resolved the question, so it's an open constitutional issue. Nonetheless, between the border search exception and the open possibility of a national security exception, there are pretty decent arguments that the monitoring did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Maybe persuasive, maybe not, but certainly open and fair arguments under the case law.
In other words, the jury is still out. Now here's Eugene Volokh on the First Admendment issue:
So the court's First Amendment conclusion, if it's correct, would be correct only if the court is right to say that the program violates the Fourth Amendment, and that a violation of the Fourth Amendment in such a situation yields a violation of the First Amendment. Perhaps the court is correct here, but it's important to recognize that the First Amendment holding is derivative of the Fourth Amendment holding, rather than being a fully independent basis for the decision.
So if the Fourth Amendment stands, so will the First.
But most interestingly, Eugene Volokh tells us how convoluted the legal issue really is in this bit of logic:
If the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act prohibits the NSA program (my reading is that it does), the Authorization for the Use of Military Force doesn't implicitly authorize what FISA forbids (and it's at least quite plausible to say that it doesn't implicitly authorize it), and the Congress has the constitutional power to constrain the President this way (and again it's at least quite plausible to say that it has such a power), then the NSA program is illegal.
Hardly a straight-foward issue. And to confuse the issue, here's something from Dale Carpenter:
I am one of those who believes that the NSA program is not authorized by the AUMF, that it violates FISA, that FISA is a constitutional exercise of congressional power, and that therefore the NSA program is both illegal and unconstitutional. I have written so here. But I am less sure this is an issue courts should review, and even less sure that this case is one they should review.
Finally, Orin Kerr writes about why we should care about the poor scholarship of the decision -- a must read (and not only because it includes a slap at a bit of liberal hypocrisy).
Technorati tags: Foreign Wiretaps, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Eugene Volokh, Dale Carpenter, Orin Kerr, NSA Surveillance, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, Authorization for Use of Military Force, AUMF, Activist Judges, Need for Judicial Reform.
Judge Anna Diggs-Taylor has ruled that the wiretaps being used to fight the War on Islamofacism is unconstitutional. Attorney Bryan Cunningham (former federal prosecutor under Clinton) tells us why her ruling is little more than a series of blunders.
First, the judge did not hold any hearings and thus did not hear any evidence. Moreover:
Worse, the judge clearly failed to do enough homework to understand the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act itself, much less the Fourth Amendment. She gets basic provisions of the statute itself wrong . . .
More worrisome still are the judge’s breathtaking mistakes in analyzing the Fourth and First Amendments—errors that would earn our first-year law student an “F.”
There's much more, like this (my favorite line):
Her reasoning, to the extent one can follow it, is little more than one would find in watching a surreal “Schoolhouse Rock” episode.
Heh. Almost as funny as the cartoon from Cox & Forkum.
Cunningham is hardly alone: everyone who is anyone has taken up the cry. Example, this brutal bit from Mark Levin Fan in which he takes the decision apart:
Are there no limits to which activist judges won’t go to advance their political and policy agendas? Answer: No. I wrote an entire book about it. And U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, appointed in the twilight of the Carter administration, is the latest in a long list of disgraceful lawyers who abuse their power.
Volokh Conspiracy's Orin Kerr is puzzled over the lack of analysis and suspects that "this opinion is important more for its political impact and its triggering of appellate review than for any analysis in the opinion itself."
Eugene Volokh says that it is a "seemingly angry, almost partisan-sounding opinion" while PowerLine calls the ruling pathetic.
Damnum absque injuria observes that "Jimmy Carter is the gift that keeps on giving." In this case, a pro-terrorist judge.
Patterico has an excellent roundup and predicts:
I have now read the opinion. It is one of the most embarrassing pieces of garbage I have ever read. The idea that a sitting federal judge wrote such a shoddy piece of junk in a high-profile case should make even the most rabid Bush-hater squirm. ...
And tomorrow, the media will shun expert analysis that would reveal these glaring deficiencies in her “reasoning.” Count on it.
Patterico seems to be wrong, as even WaPo calls the ruling a judicial misfire.
Technorati Tags: Legacy of Jimmy Carter, Wiretaps, War on Terror, War on Islamofacism, Judge Anna Diggs-Taylor, Reasons for Judicial Reform.
Nagin had sought the troops after five teenagers in an SUV were shot and killed in the city's deadliest attack in at least 11 years. Police said the attack was apparently motivated by drugs or revenge. Also, a man was stabbed to death Sunday night in an argument over beer.The city is only half the size that it was before Katrina, yet they have a police force 79% of the pre-Katrina size. And they are already losing control.
Crime has been creeping back into the city: 17 killings in the first three months of 2006, and 36 since the start of April.There have been 53 murders in the city this year (by comparison, Memphis — with twice the current NO population — reached 80 a few days ago), and the rate is increasing. It sounds like gangs are moving back in and establishing new turf boundaries.
Tell me again, why are my tax dollars being used so someone else can live on the coast at below sea level?
Some highlights:
The police have noticed there have been several burglaries and/or thefts in a neighborhood where the perpetrators are stealing lawn mowers which are left in an open garage, carport, or in an easily accessible area. An email is sent to the people in that neighborhood alerting them to crimes and reminding them to fortify their home.That would give me a chance to hide in my attic with a shotgun with my garage door open and lawnmower on display.
After a slew of "whereas", H. Res. 547 reads:
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that--Lawmakers voted 320 to 91 for the resolution and I'm proud to say that my congressman voted for it.
- the fundamental right of parents to direct the education of their children is firmly grounded in the Nation's Constitution and traditions;
- the Ninth Circuit's ruling in Fields v. Palmdale School District undermines the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children; and
- the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit should agree to rehear the case en banc in order to reverse this constitutionally infirm ruling.
"Campaigns and media figures are going to have this in the back of their heads. 'Am I too close to this, am I talking about this too much? Should I be having lunch with this guy from the campaign?' " said William Maurer, executive director of the Institute for Justice Washington Chapter, which represents I-912 in the case. ...How many bloggers are actively involved in getting political candidates elected or push select legislation? Am I going to have to start reporting the number of hours I spend on a particular issue? Where does it stop?The plaintiffs argued that KVI hosts John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur were actively involved in the initiative and used their shows to promote the measure.
Does Michael Moore have to report his activities? Does anyone have to try and estimate his time and report it because it supports their cause? Where does it stop?
Somewhere, our Founding Fathers are grieving.
The result was the brutal murder of the 21-year-old girl:
Critics point to the death of Melnitchenko as symptomatic of larger problems that plague the system aimed at stopping domestic violence in San Francisco, saying that McAlpin should have been in state prison, not free.Uh, ya think?
Not to mention the fact that because this happened in San Francisco, the girl would find it impossible to get a gun and a permit so she might defend herself from the maniac that the government was unable to control.
It was just the end of last month that a federal judge said the Pentagon can no longer host Boy Scout events in response to a 1999 lawsuit by the ACLU.
By 21 July Senator Frist proposed legislation that clearly states that the Pentagon can spend millions in support of youth programs, including the Boy Scouts.
Frist said it "removes any doubt that federal agencies may welcome Scouts to hold meetings, go camping on federal property or hold scouting events and public forums" on government property.Just five days later there were 53 cosponsors and the measure passed with a vote of 98 to 0. Boxer, Kennedy, Kerry, Clinton, Feinstein — they all voted to poke a finger in the ACLU's eye.
The measure is an amendment attached to a massive military spending bill. On the House side:
The House in November overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding resolution that recognized the Boy Scouts organization for its public service efforts and condemned legal efforts to limit government ties to the organization that has 3.2 million members.The "Support Our Scouts Act of 2005" actually names the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, YMCA, YWCA and a dozen other organizations and has language that covers just about every other possibility:
No Federal law (including any rule, regulation, directive, instruction, or order) shall be construed to limit any Federal agency from providing any form of support for a youth organization (including the Boy Scouts of America or any group officially affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America) that would result in that Federal agency providing less support to that youth organization (or any similar organization chartered under the chapter of title 36, United States Code, relating to that youth organization) than was provided during the preceding fiscal year.Mark in Mexico says:
It also terminates or reduces federal funds to any state agency that denies the Scouts equal access to public facilities, forum, or programs. It appears to be a direct slap in the face to the ACLU and a challenge to "see you in court."HT to Bill O'Reilly who calls it a "stunning" defeat for the ACLU.
Though Barnaby was acquitted of attempted kidnapping and child abduction charges stemming from the November 2002 incident, he was convicted of unlawful restraint of a minor -- which is a sex offense.For the rest of his life, Barnaby will have to register with authorities as a sex offender. He won't be allowed to live near a park or a school. His name and address will be posted on the internet.
"This is the most stupid ruling the appellate court has rendered in years," said Barnaby's Chicago attorney, Frederick Cohn. "If you see a 15-year-old beating up your 8-year-old and you grab that kid's hand and are found guilty of unlawful restraint, do you now have to register as a sex offender?"The awful consequences of this ruling on Barnaby is bad enough, but rulings like this have diluting effect on the stigma associated with sex offenders. As rulings like this become more common, people will begin to doubt the validity of the label.
It also makes us bad neighbors. Why would I risk contact with any of the children in my neighborhood? At some point you have to think that getting involved is a very bad idea.
Firearms registration has been a part of life in England since the 1920s, but beginning in 1997 new laws were enacted which become more and more restrictive. 95% of all handguns were banned and the remainder (.22 caliber) had to be stored at gun clubs. Several months later a total ban on handguns was passed along with a buy back, which netted more than 100,000 handguns from the homes of otherwise law-abiding citizens.
But the government's war on guns didn't stop there. Over time abuse of power became commonplace and police presence in the home became more and more intrusive:
Under regulations implementing Britain's 1997 Firearms (Amendment) Act, gun club members must now register every time they use a range, and must record which particular gun they use. If the gun-owner does not use some of his legally-registered guns at the range often enough, his permission to own those guns will be revoked.That was the situation in 1999. Since then not much has changed. Laws on the books include:Having control over rifle and handgun owners through a licensing system, the police began inventing their own conditions to put on licenses. The police practice was not entirely legal, but it was generally accepted by a compliant public....
After the 1996 Dunblane shootings, some police forces began performing spot checks on persons who already held Firearms Certificates. Apparently the home searches were done to make sure that the firearms really were locked up.
Parliament never granted the police home inspection authority, nor did Parliament enact legislation saying that a hardened safe is the only acceptable storage method. However, that is what the police in many jurisdictions require anyway. In fact, many gun owners who bought safes that the police said were acceptable are now being forced to buy new safes because the local police have arbitrarily changed the standards. In many districts, an "acceptable safe" is now one that can withstand a half-hour attack by a burglar who arrives with a full set of safe-opening tools.
Sometimes the police require the purchase of two safes: the first one for the gun and the second one for separate storage of ammunition. A Briton (p.424)buying a low-powered, £5 rimfire rifle may have to spend £100 on a safe. Likewise, a person with five handguns (before the 1997 ban) might have been ordered to add a £1000 electronic security system.[109] Added to the cost of the illegal requirement for hardened safes is the escalating cost of Firearms or Shotgun Certificates. Home inspections are expensive for the police, and thus the cost of Firearms Certificates or Shotgun Certificates has been raised again and again, far above the rate of inflation, in order to cover the costs of the intrusive inspections, as well as the cost of many gross inefficiencies in police processing of applications.[110] The net effect of the heavy security costs is to reduce legal gun ownership by the less wealthy classes, as in the days of Henry VIII, Charles I, who was later beheaded during the English Civil War, and James II, who was driven out of the country by the Glorious Revolution.
But they did just that in England and Scotland and Wales. Over time the owners of antique pistols and shotguns that had been in the family for generations have been forced to give up their cherished possessions. Sports shooters gave up their handguns and have had to be happy with rifle shooting.
And for what? The result has been a sharp increase in gun crimes, particularly in the early years as the criminal element came to realize the advantage it had against a defenseless citizenry, with an explosive 35% increase in the 2001/02 year:
The dramatic rise in gun crime had to stop eventually as the crime market became increasingly saturated, and indeed we now see that the growth has slowed considerably, with less than a 1% increase from 2002/03 to 2003/04.
Yet the latest Home Office report contains some disturbing statistics (page 79):
Even worse, figures from the third quarter of 2004 indicate a return to the high growth rate of gun crime with a 5% higher rate than the previous year's third quarter. Furthermore, there has been a huge surge in shootings across London this year with a dramatic increase in the number of young teens carrying and using handguns, some as young as 14:
The teenage gunmen are suspected of being behind a rise of as much as 146 per cent in gun crime in some London boroughs in the months since April, during which Met Police figures show a 10 per cent rise capital-wide.The worst boroughs report stunning increases in gun crime:One senior detective on Operation Trident, combating armed black drug gangs, said: "The gunmen are getting younger and younger. These kids are less disciplined than older gunmen and more volatile. The terrifying thing is they are getting hold of these guns and they are more willing to use them than older criminals."
| Borough | Increase Since April | # incidents this year | # incidents last year |
| Haringey | 146% | 69 | 28 |
| Lambeth | 70% | 61 | 36 |
| Islington | 93% | 31 | 16 |
| Wandsworth | 88% | 32 | 17 |
And in spite of the total prohibition on handguns, the pistol remains the criminals weapon of choice with 58% of firearm crimes in 2001/02 being committed with a handgun (figure 2.3). As one ex-cocaine dealer put it, high-calibre firearms are as easily available as toothbrushes.
The experiment in the UK is a failure in every respect. It clearly demonstrates that prohibition fails to keep guns out of the hands of anyone except the law abiding citizen. Indeed, the most restricted weapon -- the handgun -- is the weapon most used by the criminal element. Gun control has not only failed to fix the problem, it has failed to keep guns out of the hands of an entire new, younger generation of thugs.
In addition, police have abused their authority and treated the gun owner as the criminal while utterly failing to stem the tide of gun crime.
Next week, Crime in Britain Part 2: Yobs and ASBOs.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned the conviction of onetime accounting giant Arthur Andersen for destroying Enron Corp.-related documents because of flawed jury instructions.In other words, the company may have been guilty of attempting to conceal evidence from the government by shredding documents, but we may never know for sure. And sorry to the more than 28 thousand people thrown out of work when the US Justice Department went after your company, resulting in it basically going out of business (there are fewer than 200 employees today).In a defeat for the U.S. Justice Department, the unanimous high court ruled that the jury instructions failed to convey properly the elements of what constitutes a conviction for corrupt persuasion.
Reactions from the 'sphere:
Let's hope that this ruling causes the Justice Department to think twice before they embark on another witch hunt simply to help prove the Bush administration isn't in the pocket of the corporate "fat cats."
The Government may retry the case, and a second, properly instructed jury may yet convict the company. But for a firm that always maintained it did nothing wrong, today's decision is vindicating.
The Justice Department is going to have to convict Arthur Andersen again (deservedly so) and it will cost the taxpayers another couple of million dollars. Too bad they couldn't have done it right the first time.
One wonders how far this will go. For instance, best-selling writer and journalist Oriana Fallaci is standing trial in Italy on charges that she defamed Islam in a recent book:
In "La Forza della Ragione," Fallaci wrote that terrorists had killed 6,000 people over the past 20 years in the name of the Koran and said the Islamic faith "sows hatred in the place of love and slavery in the place of freedom." ...Given the liberal make-up of our judiciary, are they to consider the thought-police practices of ultra-politically correct Europe?Grasso's ruling homed in on 18 sentences in the book, saying some of Fallaci's words were "without doubt offensive to Islam and to those who practice that religious faith."
U.S. District Judge William L. Osteen ruled in May 2004 that the display "will not produce an excessive entanglement of church and state."Finally, some good news coming out of the court system.The appeals court agreed, noting that "In God We Trust" has appeared on the nation's coins since 1865 and was made the national motto by Congress in 1956. The motto also is inscribed above the speaker's chair in the U.S. House of Representatives and above the main door of the U.S. Senate chamber.
"In this situation, the reasonable observer must be deemed aware of the patriotic uses, both historical and present, of the phrase `In God We Trust,'" Judge Robert King wrote. The court said the inscription would be unconstitutional if it served a religious purpose.