Category: crime and punishment

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Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom

Against the Regime

NYC, vaccine, little boy, police

Recently, a tyke and his mommy were booted from a Big Apple Applebee’s because the little boy lacked a vaccine passport.

That is, the mother possessed no proof that her son had been vaccinated against the disease of the day.

Now, parents have every right to refrain from getting their kids injected — especially given the low risk that kids will become seriously ill from COVID-19 and the non-negligible risk of harm from vaccine side effects.

But such considerations didn’t prevent a gang of police — no students of Mayberry’s Sheriff Andy Taylor — from ordering the expulsion. (There’s video.)

Residents of New York City’s vaccination regime can at least move to another town. People elsewhere, in larger jurisdictions — Austria, Australia, England — face greater difficulties escaping pandemic tyranny. But, like us, they can protest and they can sue.

In England, a group called Big Brother Watch is challenging the COVID Pass Scheme imposed by the government of Boris Johnson. Their lengthy “pre-action letter” argues that no evidence exists that the passes will reduce the spread of the virus and that the scheme is “unnecessary and disproportionate.”

Amidst so much “information” under dispute, we know three things.

One, for all the suffering and death it has inflicted on the most vulnerable, the current pandemic is hardly the Black Death. It isn’t even the Spanish flu.

Two, being “vaccinated” against COVID-19 does not prevent one from becoming infected or from infecting others.

Three, shutting down society also inflicts suffering. Great suffering. As must shutting down whichever segments of society decline Draconian mandates.

Maybe the scourge of tyranny isn’t the best balm for the scourge of COVID-19.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom judiciary Regulating Protest

No Longer Compelled?

Adam Germain

In October, Pastor Artur Pawlowski, who had been jailed during the pandemic for holding church services in Calgary, Alberta, was ordered as one condition of his probation to always append a statement of official government doctrine to his own public uttering of opinions about pandemic policy.

According to the October 15 ruling by Alberta Justice Adam Germain, when “exercising [their] right of free speech” to speak against lockdowns and vaccines, Artur Pawlowski, his brother Dawid, and Whistle Stop Café owner Chris Scott must also recite a disclaimer.

It reads, in part: “I am obliged to inform you that the majority of medical experts favour social distancing, mask wearing, and avoiding large crowds to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Most medical experts also support participation in a vaccination program.”

Pastor Pawlowski told Fox News that he would “not obey this court order” to self-denounce, and he likened the issuing court’s proceedings to the judicial proceedings of the Soviet Union.

“This crooked judge wants to turn me into a CBC reporter or CNN reporter, that every time that I am in public, every time I’m opening my mouth, I am to pray their mantra to the government.”

On November 25, Justice Jo’Anne Strekaf of Alberta’s Court of Appeal lifted this order compelling specific speech, which Justice Germain pretends is compatible with freedom of speech. Whether this latest ruling is permanent depends on what happens at a June 14, 2022 hearing.

Until then, at least, the creepy order has been suspended.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Frisco Findings

San Francisco, theft, shoplifting, progressive, crime, law

Bravely risking damage and scorn, San Francisco engaged in a grand sociological experiment: testing whether or not we might all be better off “essentially ‘legalizing shoplifting.’”

Before announcing the conclusion of this daring research, let’s review.

“Shoplifting cases are all too common in San Francisco,” explained the UK’s Daily Mail, “where charges of property theft less than $950 in value was downgraded from a felony to a misdemeanor in 2014 — meaning that store staff and security do not pursue or stop thieves who have taken anything worth less than $1,000.”

After a Neiman Marcus department store was looted back in July, NBC News described it as “only the latest to give an impression of lawlessness running rampant. .  . .”

The ever-so-sensitive re-calibration of the justice system has not been helped by the abundance of examples of mass theft putting stores out of business — all going back at least a year or two.

“As the number of burglaries soar,” informed KPIX, the city’s CBS affiliate, “San Francisco residents say they feel unsafe.”

Finally, following last Friday’s episode of robbing and vandalizing stores in Union Square, city authorities decided to end the research. 

Mayor London Breed told her fellow ‘City by the Bay’ guinea pigs the study’s shocking conclusion: Brazen theft is “detrimental to our city.”

“What happens when people vandalize and commit those level of crimes in San Francisco,” her honor elaborated. “We not only lose those businesses, we lose those jobs.”

And then, she applied her hypersonic kicker: “We lose that tax revenue that helps to support our economy that helps to support many of the social service programs that we have in the city in the first place.”

So, there you have it. Theft is bad. Cuz taxes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Of course, Mayor Breed’s most talked-about approach to getting crime under control has been more deliberately screwing up the city’s already snarled traffic to make it more difficult for looters to flee. Courage.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Democrats: Dissonance on Self-Defense

Kenosha, fire, Rittenhouse

The Kyle Rittenhouse case, which I talked about on my podcast, This Week in Common Sense, reveals a deep divide.

One side thinks young Mr. Rittenhouse is guilty because he clearly sided with property-owners by cleaning up graffiti, putting out fires, caring for the riots’ victims . . . and carrying a big, scary-looking rifle; the other points to the facts of the altercation between Rittenhouse and the three men he shot, judging the shootings self-defense.

On Monday, the lead prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger, insisted that “You lose the right to self-defense when you’re the one who brought the gun,” despite that not being Wisconsin law. Rittenhouse also wasn’t the only one with a gun.

While the prosecution tried to undermine self-defense by declaring that Rittenhouse had instigated the whole scene, the media relentlessly feeds a general prejudice against the idea that citizens should be armed and for the notion that we must rely upon the police alone. 

Dissonant with this, however, were the months of leftists excusing, when not cheering, “protests” turned violent in which not only property was destroyed, but people were killed. To top off this cultural license to mayhem, progressive mavens pushed the opposite of state protection: let the mob run riot.

Followed by “defund the police.”

The leftist/statist argument seems to be: You mustn’t protect yourself with deadly force, instead relying upon the state — except when we (the left) riot, then no protection for you!

This is a recipe for civil war or tyranny or both. 

Not civil peace.

Meanwhile, as Rittenhouse’s jury deliberates, everyone assumes that leftists itch to take an acquittal as another excuse to riot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Constitution-Free Zones?

police, freedom, constitution

Depending on the constitutional provision we’re talking about, probably every state is (or is at risk of becoming) a “Constitution-free zone.”

The present case: a court ruling that a dissident judge says is turning Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi into Constitution-free zones with respect to the crimes of federal officers.

On February 2, 2019, Texas mechanic Kevin Byrd was almost shot at by Ray Lamb, a Homeland Security agent. Lamb was not acting in self-defense. Byrd had been asking questions about a car accident in which the mother of his child was injured. A drunk driver was involved: Lamb’s son.

Called in by Byrd, the police initially detained Byrd, not Lamb. Fortunately, the assault had been videotaped, and Lamb was soon arrested instead. Unfortunately, the police let the matter drop.

Byrd sued in federal court. But he was stymied by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that federal officials like Lamb have absolute immunity, not merely qualified immunity, from prosecution for things like shooting at innocent people.

The Institute for Justice is now representing Kevin Byrd in the litigation. The hope is to get the U.S. Supreme Court to accept the case for review and then determine that, no, federal officers are not entitled to terrorize at will and without legal consequences just because they’re feds.

Fingers crossed. 

The Supreme Court hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory lately when it comes to holding police and other officials accountable for wrongdoing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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“He’s Got a Weapon!”

trans, protest, Dave Chappelle

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.

—Voltaire

Our enemies are ridiculous. So why do they seem to be winning?

For today’s lesson, catch the pro-trans protests outside the offices of Netflix. Trans activists and a few of Netflix’s own trans employees were protesting the occasion of the online streaming giant’s “platforming” of comedian Dave Chappelle, whose latest special, The Closer, took a few digs at the huge influence that the tiny trans “community” has on American cultural and political life. 

Chappelle referred to the way J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, was treated online for defending biological women, declared himself a feminist on “Team TERF,” and talked about a trans friend of his who committed suicide after defending him online in a previous comedy special trans-fracas. 

Did Chappelle say something untrue? Unfunny? Doesn’t matter. What he said, protesters proclaimed, was hurtful.

Each of us will judge all that in our own way. But we should be able to agree on one thing: the way the small protest mob treated one counter-protester was not truthful but very ridiculous. 

Relevant details: a man attended the event holding aloft a sign saying “We Like Dave” on the obverse and “Jokes Are Funny” on the reverse.

A protester on the trans side of the divide tore up his sign, leaving him holding the naked stick, then shouting, “He’s got a weapon!” The crowd echoed, “He’s got a weapon!”

Activists these days often say “speech is violence” and “words are weapons.” Here, they violently rob a man of his speech and declare what’s left of his attempt a literal weapon. They think they are clever. But they are merely ridiculous.

Not funny like Dave Chappelle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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