Good News: Prosecutors Look To Treat Illegal Alien Crimes Different From Actual Citizen Crimes

By William Teach August 1, 2017 – 6:54 am

It’s oh-so-special that illegal aliens who commit crimes are potentially being treated differently than if a U.S. citizen commits the same crime. Because the rule of law or something. We can see lawsuits against district attorney’s offices, cities, counties, and states coming

A Deal to Avoid a ‘Life Sentence of Deportation’

The drunken-driving case seemed straightforward, the kind that prosecutors in Seattle convert into a quick guilty plea hundreds of times a year: a swerving car, a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit, a first-time offense that caused no injuries.

The only complication was the driver. A 23-year-old undocumented immigrant studying at the University of Washington, she had gained some assurance against deportation through a federal program for people who had entered the country illegally as children. If she pleaded guilty to driving under the influence, the punishment any Washington resident might face could be compounded by a more permanent penalty. She could lose her protected status; she could be deported.

Which, for the prosecutor, presented a difficulty: Was this what justice should look like?

Well, yes. The illegal alien in question made a choice to get drunk and then drive. No one forced her to do so. She had to know there would be consequences.

Now that President Trump’s hard line has made deportation a keener threat, a growing number of district attorneys are coming to the same reckoning, concluding that prosecutors should consider potential repercussions for immigrants before closing a plea deal. At the same time, cities and states are reshaping how the criminal justice system treats immigrants, hoping to hopscotch around any unintended immigration pitfalls.

In other words, they are looking to make accommodations that they wouldn’t make for citizens. Or people who are lawfully present in the U.S. on visas.

“There’s certainly a line of argument that says, ‘Nope, we’re not going to consider all your individual circumstances, we want to treat everybody the same,’” said Dan Satterberg, the prosecuting attorney for Seattle and a longtime Republican, who instituted an immigration-consequences policy last year and strengthened it after the presidential election. “But more and more, my eyes are open that treating people the same means that there isn’t a life sentence of deportation that might accompany that conviction.”

With that in mind, his office allowed the student to plead guilty to reckless driving instead of driving under the influence. The deal, which included three days of community service and two years of probation — milder than the standard driving-under-the-influence penalty of 24 hours in jail, a few days’ community service and five years’ probation — did not jeopardize her protected status.

So, every person who was convicted of drunk driving can now sue to have their penalties reduced in Seattle (and, yes, there are some Republicans who are utter squishes on illegal immigration). Interestingly, the Times is actually doing Journalism on this, including exactly the argument I’ve made

If he made accommodations for an immigrant, (county attorney in Cochise County, Ariz) Mr. McIntyre said, he felt that he would also owe a citizen in similar circumstances the same option, “because is he not being, essentially, negatively impacted by his U.S. citizenry?”

Exactly.

But reducing criminal penalties can help immigrants by keeping them out of jail, which can make it more difficult for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to find them, or by preserving their options in immigration court.

In other words, there are games being played with the criminal justice system in order to protect illegal aliens who commit crimes above already being unlawfully present. This is the point where the federal system should jump in and charge prosecutors and district attorneys with things like prosecutorial misconduct and violations of immigration law, such as 8 U.S. 1324, providing shelter to an illegal alien.

Luke Larson, the deputy prosecutor on the case of the Washington State student charged with drunken driving, said several factors favored a milder charge, including her strong academic record and lack of a criminal history.

Something they most likely wouldn’t do for a U.S. citizen. Things like this tend to rear up and bite people in the posterior.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Tropical Storm Emily Brings Out The Typical Climate Nutters

By William Teach July 31, 2017 – 3:09 pm

First, we get this

(USA Today) Tropical Storm Emily formed Monday morning just west of Tampa, and is expected to move inland across the state, the National Hurricane Center said.

As of 11 a.m. ET, the storm was approaching the mouth of Tampa Bay, the hurricane center said.

Emily’s maximum sustained winds were near 45 mph. Little change in strength is forecast until landfall occurs later Monday. Tropical-storm force winds extend up to 60 miles from the center of the system.

These are the types of things that have been happening since before Mankind existed. But, of course

https://twitter.com/LeftonPost/status/892022841142648832

Read More »

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If All You See…

By William Teach July 31, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is a world where the seas are rising and the ground is being turned into desert, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is 357 Magnum, with a post on insurance vs health care.

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Plastic Bottles Are Almost As Dangerous As Hotcoldwetdry Or Something

By William Teach July 31, 2017 – 10:42 am

Here we go

Planet’s addiction to plastic bottles ‘as dangerous as climate change’

A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20% by 2021, creating an environmental crisis some campaigners predict will be as serious as climate change. EURACTIV’s partner The Guardian reports.

New figures obtained by The Guardian reveal the surge in usage of plastic bottles, more than half a trillion of which will be sold annually by the end of the decade.

The demand, equivalent to about 20,000 bottles being bought every second, is driven by an apparently insatiable desire for bottled water and the spread of a western, urbanised “on the go” culture to China and the Asia Pacific region.

By 2021 this will increase to 583.3bn, according to the most up-to-date estimates from Euromonitor International’s global packaging trends report.

Most plastic bottles used for soft drinks and water are made from polyethylene terephthalate (Pet), which is highly recyclable. But as their use soars across the globe, efforts to collect and recycle the bottles to keep them from polluting the oceans, are failing to keep up.

Now, here are my issues: first, plastic getting into the environment in this manner is a real environmental concern. I’ve harped about this many times. People just throw their plastic bottles, bags, etc out, and besides despoiling the landscape and waterways, they create an environmental mess (it’s well worth reading the rest of the article).

Second, why the need to even mention ‘climate change’? In fact, in the article itself, climate change is only mentioned once, in relation to the headline. Yet, the proliferation of plastic pollution is a real issue, a read danger, and it doesn’t help in making the comparison. It can mean people simply tune out when read the headline.

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Hot Take: Opposition To “Government Schools” Is Linked To The Confederacy

By William Teach July 31, 2017 – 7:57 am

Do you have a problem with government run schools? Do you worry that they have serious issues, like being more about indoctrination than teaching? That they are rigid in thought, waste taxpayer money, are chock full of nutty progressives, and that it’s darned impossible to get rid of bad teachers? That there are political agendas, no accountability, wasted funds, and one size doesn’t fit all? Well, that makes you part of the Confederacy, a racist, bigot, and so forth

What the ‘Government Schools’ Critics Really Mean
The roots of the phrase lie not in libertarian economics but in Confederate rebellion.

It’s right there in the subhead, you haters, you

When President Trump recently proposed his budget for “school choice,” which would cut more than $9 billion in overall education spending but put more resources into charter schools and voucher programs, he promised to take a sledgehammer to what he has called “failing government schools.” That is harsh language for the places most of us call public schools, and where nearly 90 percent of American children get their education. But in certain conservative circles, the phrase “government schools” has become as ubiquitous as it is contemptuous.

What most people probably hear in this is the unmistakable refrain of American libertarianism, for which all government is big and bad. The point of calling public schools “government schools” is to conjure the specter of pathologically inefficient, power-mad bureaucrats. Accordingly, right-wing think tanks like the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Heartland Institute and the Acton Institute have in recent years published screeds denouncing “the command and control mentality” of “government schools” that are “prisons for poor children.” All of these have received major funding from the family of the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, either directly or via a donor group.

All government is not bad. Nor do all libertarians and conservatives think government is bad. It’s about what government does that can be the problem, like, say, when the county school board decides that one child will be sent to a traditional schedule school on the other side of the county, meaning they have to get up very early in the morning to catch the bus, while the other will be sent to a year round school. And the parents have little to no say about this, and just have to deal with it. That is not hyperbole. That is something that happens around Wake County. Though, it got a lot better once Republicans briefly took over school board. There is still very little a parent can do about where their child is sent, though.

The libertarian tradition is indebted, above all, to the Chicago economist Milton Friedman, who published a hugely influential 1955 paper, “The Role of Government in Education.” A true believer in the power of free markets to solve all of humanity’s problems, Friedman argued that “government schools” are intrinsically inefficient and unjustified. He proposed that taxpayers should give money to parents and allow them to choose where to spend education dollars in a marketplace of freely competing private providers. This is the intellectual foundation of Ms. DeVos’s voucher proposals.

That makes sense, does it not? Empowering the parents. Not so fast

But the attacks on “government schools” have a much older, darker heritage. They have their roots in American slavery, Jim Crow-era segregation, anti-Catholic sentiment and a particular form of Christian fundamentalism — and those roots are still visible today.

If you think it can’t get any nuttier, this is the NY Times allowing an anti-Christian bigot, someone who is virulently against an displays of religion in public, and is behind a host of other far, far left Progressive beliefs, attempt to smear people who think that the public education system is failing the children. She ends with

When these people talk about “government schools,” they want you to think of an alien force, and not an expression of democratic purpose. And when they say “freedom,” they mean freedom from democracy itself.

Apparently, wanting choice for your kids in how they get educated is anti-democracy or something.

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El Paso Times Blames U.S. Government For Illegal Alien Deaths

By William Teach July 31, 2017 – 7:34 am

Apparently, because we have an actual border with Mexico, and attempt to protect it, and stop people coming across it illegally, the U.S. is to blame, along with Mexico

Mexico, U.S. share blame for tragedies: Editorial

Recent drownings in the Rio Grande and neighboring canals in El Paso aren’t an isolated tragedy. Like the deaths of 10 migrants in a truck in San Antonio, they are the result of grievous failures by the Mexican and U.S. governments.

So far this year, more than 230 migrants have died or gone missing while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the International Organization on Migration. This month has been the deadliest, with 83 dead or missing through July 24.

There are a few more paragraphs, discussing the human smuggling, and how people just want better lives (I’m betting the editorial board of the El Paso Times wouldn’t be quite so accepting of illegals and their “plight” if they were camping out in the board member’s back yards, which goes for all the other USA Today network papers, such as the Abilene Reporter-News, who picked this up), along with some blame aimed at Mexico for not doing something about the smugglers and gangs, till

But the U.S. government, through its jumbled and ineffectual immigration policies, also shares significant blame for these repeated border tragedies.

Political leadership has refused for years to fix what everyone recognizes is a broken immigration system. An emphasis on “border security” efforts has been unmatched by any efforts to address economic and political realities that drive people to leave their homes for the difficult life of a migrant.

What, exactly, is broken in our immigration system where the government, tasked by the Constitution with stopping outsider invaders, attempts to stop people from crossing the border illegally? Other than that they can’t stop them all, of course. The editorial sure seems to be taking the position that the border should simply be open and anyone who wants to cross it should be able to do so.

Tens of thousands of migrants head to the United States in search of work each year, with many employers willing to hire them at a time of 4 percent unemployment in this country. But lack of political will has prevented the United States from creating any viable legal path to connect migrants and employers, increasing the power of the human smugglers in Mexico and Central America.

Those employers are willing to employ them at a fraction of the minimum wage. Most are actually skill-less people who do not speak our language, do not know our customs, and come from backwards nations.

Increased border security efforts have caused the traffickers to move their human cargo through ever more dangerous means, such as crossing swollen rivers.

See? How dare the U.S. government protect its borders!!!!!1!!!!

The xenophobia and political weakness has led the United States to create a de facto immigration policy that places human lives in increasing danger. That also is a stain on a great country.

By crying xenophobia, they are advocating for open borders. I recommend that all the editorial board members allow illegals to come live at their home

It’s crazy to blame the United States because people choose to break our laws. However, there is one caveat: the editorial board forgot to assign blame to Barack Obama, who created a situation where illegals thought they could get away with ignoring our immigration laws.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Court Declares Officials Can’t Block People On Social Media

By William Teach July 30, 2017 – 3:44 pm

Remember the whole issue about a few whiny unhinged tools attempting to sue because President Trump blocked them on Twitter? Well, there’s this, via Hot Air

I first wrote about a lawsuit brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University a couple of months ago. As you may recall, it involves a group of people who had been blocked on Twitter by President Trump after some of their “constructive criticism” (read: trolling) apparently generated enough spam in his mentions column to be noticed. This was somehow interpreted as a First Amendment violation, leading to the pending lawsuit.

While the entire premise sounds like some sort of parody stolen from the pages of The Onion, we may have an early indication of how the courts will be treating such questions. This case doesn’t deal with the President, but instead an obscure fight involving the Board of Supervisors in Loudoun County, Virginia. The board’s chair apparently blocked a constituent, Brian C. Davidson, on Facebook (for a period of 12 hours before unblocking him) and deleted a post of her own which contained a comment from Davidson. The results from the initial hearing at the federal district court are disappointing to say the least. (Slate)

Davidson sued, alleging a violation of his free speech rights. As U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris explained in his decision, Randall essentially conceded in court that she had blocked Davidson “because she was offended by his criticism of her colleagues in the County government.” In other words, she “engaged in viewpoint discrimination,” which is generally prohibited under the First Amendment.

Jazz Shaw has much more, well worth the read. As for me, I’m just wondering if deputy DNC chair Keith Ellison will unblock me, or if I should sue him

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If All You See…

By William Teach July 30, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is a world going to desert from too much heat in the winter, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Evil Blogger Lady, with a post explaining what Fusion GPS is.

It’s Australian week on IAYS!

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Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

By William Teach July 30, 2017 – 9:05 am

Happy Sunday! A gorgeous mid-summer day. Lots of sunshine, the temps are down a bit, and the hummingbirds be humming. They seem to love my Dodgers hat. This pinup is by Gil Elvgren, with a wee bit of help.

What’s happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Instapundit covers the SJWs at Apple taking the easy route when it comes to protecting freedom of speech
  2. The Daley Gator notes race baiter Al Sharpton trying to defend Irish honor
  3. Vlad Tepes covers the EU’s fateful choices
  4. The Other McCain notes how much money Twitter is losing
  5. The Last Tradition discusses the fix being in on the Awan probe
  6. The First Street Journal wants to hold them accountable for illegal alien crimes
  7. Raised On Hoecakes notes taxes killing small businesses
  8. Powerline covers the Obamacare drama not being over
  9. Pacific Pundit discusses another Islamist terror plot broken
  10. Neo-neocon covers the difference in parental rights between the US and UK
  11. MOTUS A.D. features FLOTUS Friday, comparing and contrasting
  12. Moonbattery discusses when diversity is not P.C.
  13. Maggie’s Farm has a solar eclipse preview
  14. Legal Insurrection notes what people are fixated on, and it’s not Russia Russia Russia
  15. And last, but not least, Jihad Watch notes a legal loophole which could benefit Officer Noor after the shooting

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page. While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your “Pinups for Vets” calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list.

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NY Times: The Next Mass Extinction Is Coming From Carbon Pollution Or Something

By William Teach July 30, 2017 – 7:48 am

Over the past 10 years, the Cult of Climastrology has been working hard to compare the tiny increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide to previous periods, particularly those which featured mass extinctions. This outline of doom has become more prevalent over the past 4 years as they have dramatically increased their scary prognostications in an attempt to make people fearful enough to stop tuning their cult out. Now, we have the NY Times giving a platform to Peter Brannen, who writes about world ending doom quite a bit, but, get this, isn’t a scientist, but, just a journalist. This is the lead opinion piece this morning in the Opinion section

When Life on Earth Was Nearly Extinguished

It has been called the “Great Dying.”

The planet’s most profound catastrophe struck 252 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, killing 90 percent of life in the ocean and 75 percent on land. The fossil record nearly goes silent and remains startlingly impoverished for millions of years: trees disappear, bacteria replace coral reefs, insects hush. What looks like fungus spikes in the fossil record, perhaps the sepulchral rot of a dying world.

It was as close as earth has ever come to being sterilized altogether, and would take 10 million years for the planet to fully recover, setting the stage for the eventual rise of the dinosaurs.

“The End-Permian mass extinction is unique in earth history,” said Seth Burgess, a geologist with the United States Geological Survey. “Nothing else is as severe, and it’s not even close.”

Yeah, it was pretty bad, but, hey, it gets worse!

A growing body of evidence suggests that this ancient apocalypse was brought on, in large part, by gigantic emissions of carbon dioxide from volcanoes that erupted across a vast swath of Siberia. Today the consequence of quickly injecting huge pulses of carbon dioxide into the air is discussed as if the threat exists only in the speculative output of computer models. But, as scientists have discovered, this has happened many times before, and sometimes the results were catastrophic.

In fact, most scientific research shows that it was a combination of the massive volcanic release, reduced oxygen levels, and increased methane levels. Some even suggest that there was one or more strikes from a comet or asteroid that caused the event.

This month the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology published a special issue that explores a growing body of evidence that past volcanic releases of carbon dioxide may have helped drive many of the most extreme die-offs in earth history.

Of course it does. Because climate change doom from carbon dioxide is all the rage.

Though volcanoes in Siberia had already been erupting for around 300,000 years, Dr. Burgess’s work indicates that it wasn’t until the magma started burning through fossil fuels on a colossal scale that the mass extinction began. The carbon dioxide was delivered to the atmosphere just as effectively as by any coal-fired power plant or minivan muffler today.

Wait, did the life present at the time have fossil fueled vehicles and planes?

Today humanity plays the role of that primeval Siberian supervolcano, burning through the world’s ancient stores of carbon, long buried underground in the form of oil, coal and natural gas. Though there were likely other killers afoot in the Great Dying — like ozone-destroying halocarbons, acid rain and a heavy dose of toxic heavy metals raining from the volcanic smog — it was the chemistry-warping pulse of carbon dioxide that has attracted the most suspicion for its role in nearly ending the world. And we have only to look at the modern ocean to see why.

Not mentioned in this unhinged rant, nor, quite frankly, most others that precede it, is that atmospheric CO2 was over 3,000ppm. And, yes, it did jump big time. But, so did the methane levels while the oxygen levels dropped. This is all per reconstructions. But, hey, chemistry-warping carbon pollution because you drove a fossil fueled vehicle to work.

As you can expect, the rest of the screed is all about man-caused dooooooooooom, attempting to scare people into giving up their money and freedom while empowering Big authoritarian government. They just never get the idea that trotting out stories of doom, especially trying to say we’re on our way to the next mass extinction, just doesn’t help their cause.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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