We have been discussing the national debate over hate crime laws and the standard for investigating particular cases but not others as in the recent case out of Cincinnati. A new controversy has erupted in Chicago where a woman, Susan Pedersen, says that she was attacked in her car with her children in a black neighborhood by a mob yelling that she did not belong in the neighborhood. She is white. However, two alleged attackers were charged only with misdemeanor criminal damage to property. While the case has received relatively little attention and more details would be helpful, critics have charged that a black driver surrounded by a white mob in such a circumstance would have resulted in both a state and federal hate crime investigation. There is also a question of how the police and prosecutors have charged this case generally as a property damage case even without the alleged racist motivation of the mob.
The attack occurred near the University of Chicago where I went to school. The mother had just dropped a friend off at the University of Chicago when she stopped at a red light and found her car surrounded by several dozen young people. She says that they were yelling racial slurs about her being white and smashing her windows with the children screaming inside. The group even reportedly used a bicycle to smash the window when their fists did not suffice.
As I have mentioned in prior blogs, I often heard accounts of white students and family members entering into some nearby neighborhoods and being surrounded and even roughed up due to their race. One of my sisters and a friend once went into such a neighborhood by accident and two African-American officer pulled them over to tell them that they could not stay in the neighborhood because they would likely be targeted due to their race. Likewise, when I was in college, I drove off campus and was similarly confronted at a red light by about five men who told me to get out of the neighborhood and tried to open my door while calling me racial names. For the record, this was one of only a couple times that I have faced such racial anger and I would not attribute that conduct to the vast majority of neighborhoods with predominantly African-American populations.
There are obviously countervailing stories of African-Americans facing the same response in some white neighborhoods. Some of those cases have received national attention and resulted in hate crime prosecutions or special enforcement efforts.
The question is when such crimes should be defined as hate crimes if they are motivated by race. It is not clear why some cases are immediately characterized as possible race cases and subject to federal intervention while others are not. Conversely, some have criticized the hate crime laws more generally because of what is perceived as undefined standards in enforcement as well as the ability to charge crimes directly linked to the conduct like assault. The laws also raise free speech issues in some cases.
My greatest concern is that an attack on a mother and children in a car is viewed by the police and prosecutors as simply a misdemeanor property offense and not assault or other crimes. Even if this is not to be investigated as a hate crime, it was clearly an assault on this family if the account is true. Thus far, the police and prosecutors appear to be undercharging this offense as a purely property offense in my view. Even removing the race element, there is still a car with broken windows and a terrified family who merely appear to have driven down the wrong street. Of course, if there are additional facts that have not been reported like some traffic dispute or altercation, we should be told about it. If this mother’s account is true, the handling of the case seems deeply troubling.
Source: ABC
I hated Billy Mumy.
Not denial Karen, I’m dismissing your sources as worthless.
Translation: I don’t want to hear anything that counters my narrow world view so I will put my fingers in my ears and go LA LA LA LA…..can’t hear you until I am fully comforted. Trigger warning! Trigger warning! Incoming facts that conflict with pre programed ideas. Instead of reasoning, I will deny deny deny. Danger Danger. Does not compute
“Only an idiot would introduce voting rights on a Chicago thread. These thugs can vote 2-3 times in every election.”
And the ghosts of thugs can vote in Chicago.
He has a valid point.
PCS,
You’re like the Supreme Court.
I. Annie means Inga and Inga means I. Annie.
And never again will any party be able to argue that Inga is I. Annie or that I. Annie is Inga. Or that they aren’t and that she isn’t. It’s OK. We rely on the Supreme Court cuz they, and only they, can understand all of that which came previously before that last final segment which came subsequently from somewhere unknown.
(The Supreme Court has finally, argued itself, spinning like a Tasmanian Devil, with infinite, nebulous convolution, into the “dunce’s corner”).
It’s no wonder there are such smart people in the law business.
It takes a lot of intellect to balk tackwards and to talk backwards.
Doublespeak is hell but
Newspeak is a m————!
Funny thing; the American Founders wrote in clear, concise English words and phrases.
To wit,
1. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of…”
2. “…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
See. It’s easy.
You don’t need a prestigious Harvard Ph.D to understand English.
Not denial Karen, I’m dismissing your sources as worthless.
The extreme rant reveals a great degree of lameness. Those who are against moving forward in order to solve problems, known as evolution, are the anchor that ties America down. There is every sort of anchor out today. The lack of anything but pure vitriol illustrates the hopelessness of their positions; unfortunately there are enough of them, not a majority but enough.
I see someone in the 2/10 group is in complete denial that 8/10 Americans support voter ID.
Either all ID laws are racist or none are. You cannot apply one set of standards to voter ID and then ignore them altogether for everywhere else ID is required – drivers licenses, passports, etc. You know, anywhere else that proving who you are is important. Is proving who you are not important to vote?
You can find any number of politicians with something to gain clamoring to the crowd that voter ID laws are out to get them. But that changes nothing. Proving identity and combating fraud is important in voting, banking, driving, and many other aspects of living in America.
There are programs that help the poor get ID and get to the polls in every state. Another manufactured crisis that benefits politicians looking for votes so they can get rich off taxpayer dollars.
Only an idiot would introduce voting rights on a Chicago thread. These thugs can vote 2-3 times in every election.
“The people are nothing but a great beast…
I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.”
-Alexander Hamilton
Ben Franklin, “…a republic, if you can keep it.”
To vote in 1789, it was required that the citizen be a European male, aged 21 with 50lbs. Sterling
or 50 acres.
Those are rational criteria, folks.
Ben Franklin, 2015, “…a republic, if you can take it back.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/why-voter-id-laws-arent-really-about-fraud/
Why voter ID Laws aren’t really about fraud.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/us/a-voting-rights-legacy-of-the-1960s-heads-to-court-in-north-carolina.html?_r=0
““This is our Selma,” said William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina N.A.A.C.P., of the election changes in the state. His group brought the lawsuit, alongside the League of Women Voters, a group of college students and the Department of Justice.
The plaintiffs in the case, North Carolina N.A.A.C.P. v. McCrory, claim not only that the changes have an illegal discriminatory result but also that they were devised to suppress black and Hispanic voting. The changes “fall with special force on North Carolina’s black citizens,” the Justice Department said in its brief, and “that unlawful result is no accident.””
******************
If you think Voter Supression laws aren’t important to African Americans and Democrats you really do live in an alternate reality.
http://www.lawyerscommittee.org/projects/voting_rights/page?id=0025
Voting Rights Litigation.
LOL, Rasmussen and The Washington Examiner.
8/10 people support Voter ID:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/poll-8-in-10-back-voter-id/article/2565542
No. Voter ID is not a racist plot. It’s just as common sense an approach to combating fraud as requiring ID at a bank or when pulled over by police.
8/10 people realize this. 2/10 people don’t and comment on this blog.
I regularly drive with my wife through African-American neighborhoods in Houston, Texas. We are both considered “whites”. I have never had any problem. Never. If any words are exchanged they are usually “good morning”.
I read a very good book, The Warmth of Other Suns several years ago. It chronicles the lives of several black people who leave the Jim Crow south and move to the big cities of the north and west. What evolved for these good people, and millions of other good people, was they were forced to adjust to a culture that was growing more depraved by the decade. All of the cities have Dem monopolies. Now, many 2nd and 3rd generation are moving back south, you know the red states. Hmmm.
Olly,
Was it “principled,” two weeks past, when the corrupt Supreme Court, as an act of insurrection, arbitrarily and insidiously modified the English language and the U.S. Constitution?
“High Crimes and Misdemeanors” shall be prosecuted by the Congress through impeachment and the Senate through conviction.
It is the inescapable duty of the legislative branch to “right the ship” no matter the storm.
This is a complete fraud presented for the benefit of the author.
The words “equal justice under law” are not in the Constitution.
“Equal Justice” is an arbitrary construct and unconstitutional modification generated by an individual, having nothing to do with the founding documents.
Equal justice under law is a phrase engraved on the front of the United States Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. It is also a societal ideal, not dissimilar to those conjured in the Communist Manifesto, that has influenced the American legal system.
The phrase was proposed by the building’s architects, and then approved by judges of the Court in 1932. It is based upon Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, and has historical antecedents dating back to ancient Greece.
Never was America intended for the collective but for the freedom of the individual. The collective psyche was proposed, in stark contrast and diametric opposition to the American founding documents, in 1848.
The Declaration of Independence stated that “all men are created equal…” not the outcomes of their lives.
Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
forgotwhoiam,
While I believe Obama should be forever linked to the reason why that requirement was written into our constitution, it still requires principled people to actually enforce it. They do not exist, at least not in sufficient numbers to put the rule of law above the rule of men.
Olly
“I recall a time that people didn’t even call Obama their President, as if he wasn’t elected by 53% of Americans voting, twice.”
———-
Olly, a point of clarification:
Obama is not eligible for the office of the presidency. The Constitutional requirement for parents (plural) born in the country, defined in the Law of Nations (below), includes the requirement that the father be a citizen.
To wit:
The Washington/Jay Letter, 1786, raised the requirement for the presidency to
“natural born citizen” from “citizen” as a “strong check” against foreign
allegiances by the “Commander In Chief.”
************************************************************************************************
Section
1, Article II, U.S. Constitution
“No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States,
at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the
Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who
shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years
a Resident within the United States.”
***********************************************************************************************
“Law of Nations”
“…born in the country, of parents who are citizens…it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen…”
Law of Nations
Chapter 19
212
“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.”
———-
Ben Franklin
Letter 1775
Benjamin Franklin in 1775 thanks Charles Dumas of the Netherlands for sending
him 3 more copies of the newest 1775 edition of Vattel’s Law of Nations
Another founder of our nation and framer of our Constitution, Benjamin
Franklin, was also quite familiar and well versed with the writings of Vattel.
He had his own personal copy prior to the advent of the Revolution. And in 1775
he wrote to Charles Dumas an editor and journalist in the Netherlands and
thanked him for sending Franklin 3 copies of the newest edition of Vattel
(published in French). Franklin commented to Dumas that his personal copy was in
heavy demand by the other delegates to the Continental Congress meeting in 1775.
Dumas was the Editor for the newly published 1775 edition of Vattel’s Law of
Nations (in the original French) in the Netherlands. Franklin and most of the
founders were fluent in French which was the diplomatic language of that time.
Dumas also made comments in his writings to Franklin about Vattel’s enlightened
writings and vision for a new form of government for a nation where the people
were sovereign and the unique opportunity for its application to the affairs in
America in the colonies splitting from Great Britain. The words found in our
Declaration of Independence mentioning the “Laws of Nature” and the phrase
mentioning unalienable rights such as “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness”
are right out of Volume 1 of Vattel. As are the words of seeking a more perfect
union in the Preamble of our Constitution were also inspired by the teachings
and writings of Vattel who wrote that government should always be striving to
perfect itself to better serve the people. Thus it is quite evident that the
founders read and used Vattel extensively. Here is a reprint of the letter from
Franklin to Dumas thanking him for sending the books.
It really only matters that we can all agree that this attack is a result of racial hatred. If that is acceptable then we should all agree it deserves equal justice, equal news coverage, equal attention from the President and his justice department. All evidence points to one political party/ideology/philosophy that is refusing to acknowledge the call for equal justice. If you can cite ANY evidence this “hate” crime and all other “hate” crimes are receiving that equal attention noted above then PROVE it. Nothing will quiet the finger-pointing quicker than that sort of proof.