WhackyNation

… But the New Orleans Democrat who faces racketeering, bribery and miney laundering charges still is going to run for re-election.  Hey, why not?  He’s a Democrat; and breaking the law doesn’t lose you your base.

According to Reuters:

The sister of indicted Democratic Rep. William Jefferson pleaded guilty to concealing a crime on Wednesday, the fourth relative of the Louisiana lawmaker to become entangled in the family’s legal troubles.

Federal prosecutors in New Orleans recently charged the three other relatives with conspiring to steal more than $600,000 from organizations they set up to help at-risk and disadvantaged youth.

I wonder if the sister will turn state’s witness?

The United States is already facing a national crisis in crime and most of its political leaders don’t seem to be aware of it, even though the statistics are out there to command the nation ‘s attention. The crisis has been extended from many directions and has been exacerbated almost overnight by the seemingly unstoppable influx of illegal immigrants.

Although observers haven’t commented on it at length, the illegal flood of newcomers isn’t restricted to the Mexicans, who are crossing our borders almost at will and with comparatively little to hinder them. Other illegals are coming in in record numbers from Asia, from Central and South America, from Africa, and from the Middle East.

In the meantime, Congress has been talking around the subject, as if it might simply go away as a problem, if we ignore it. Indications are that the Democrats won’t do much about it, even though they have taken over control of both houses of Congress.

At the same time, another phase of the crisis in crime has unfolded in America, thanks to the leniency of the courts in sentencing or even refusing to sentence criminals. And in those cases in which lengthy prison terms should be meted out, many judges are paving the way for criminals to repeat their offenses, because they are given such light sentences.

The situation in the Seattle area, for example, is one that is duplicated in most other American urban areas these days. In at least three recent instances, law-enforcement officers have been killed by convicted felons with long criminal records but who were released after only a short period in prison. It has come to be known as turnstile justice, in which the culprits are being freed after terms.

Aiding and abetting the crisis in crime are departments of correction and parole boards whose members are pesky do-gooders and suckers for a tear-jerking story or the machinations of a specially skilled defense lawyer. None of these people are called to explain their actions when one of their too-quickly-freed criminals kills yet another innocent person or a law-enforcement officer.

Gangs of illegal immigrants have infested California and other states, and the incidence of crime is soaring out of control. In addition, the illegals are raiding the U.S. treasury and federal government programs for freebies to which they shouldn’t be entitled. California especially is sinking fast economically, thanks to the fact that it now has more than 30 million new immigrants, most whom entered illegally.

It is a crisis that cannot be countered with words and empty actions on the part of Congress, state legislatures, or even law-enforcement agencies. With relation to home-made crime, our judges need to be told by the public that they must “get tough” to jail dangerous criminals and keep them there, or else. The “or else” should include the recall of the over-lenient judges or the selection or election of judges who will get tough.

Congress must step up and enact laws to force the deportation of all illegal immigrants and to demand that those applying for citizenship must learn the English language or face deportation. It’s too late for wishy-washy inaction.

Hat tip to I am Coyote.  The Oregonian has an interactive map overlaying crimes on the Max line.  Click and weep.  Considering how Seattle liberals are soft on criminals, I’m now glad only Seattle is getting light rail.

Bravo to the black community of Philadelphia! Seven thousand black men showed up in answer to a call by the police chief and civic leaders to start patrolling the streets of the city to put a stop to the epidemic of murders that have plagued Philadelphia — most of them involving black males in black neighborhoods.

Not since the massacres in Los Angeles’ Watts District has a black community answered a call for action to quell a murder rampage. In Philadelphia, 406 murders were recorded primarily in the black community in 2006, and this year the murder count is already up to 300, with more than two months to go.

Blacks have already begun to patrol the streets day and night to put a stop to the carnage and to enlist everyone in the black community to join the fight against crime. The call for black patrols came in desperate appeals from the police chief and other city leaders when normal police actions failed to stem the tide of murders.

Many whites have joined the blacks in patrolling the streets, which is as it should be. The action by Philadelphia’s 7,000 blacks should be noted by black communities in all American cities from coast to coast. Together, blacks and whites can put a stop to murders everywhere — and keep it that way.

The 7,000 volunteers in Philadelphia will carry no weapons while on patrol. Also, it was reported that none of the volunteers will have the power to make arrests. Instead, they will be trained in conflict resolution and mentoring, according to a dispatch from the Los Angeles Times and Reuters News Agency.

As the Baltimore Sun put it, “At neighborhood orientations, the volunteers will learn how to direct residents to education, jobs, and services, such as drug treatments. The training sessions have already begun and they will continue throughout the next few weeks. Volunteers are expected to be sent into the streets on three-hour patrols within the next 30 days.”

Earlier efforts to quell criminal actions and murders have failed to curb the murder epidemic in the past. However, civic leaders and the police are confident that the newest attempt has a much better chance to succeed, mainly because so many black men have responded to the calls for street patrols.

Equally important is the fact that the leaders of the black community have joined the latest call for action and have complimented the black volunteers, as well as the whites, for responding in such great numbers. Also, the black leaders have counseled their followers to quit blaming all but themselves for the murder rampage.

That alone would be a good place for black communities in other cities to start their campaign to emulate their fellows in Philadelphia. Now, what I believe is needed is for the President and congressional leaders to call for a national movement to reflect what is now happening in what has long been called the City of Brotherly Love.

Portland is having a bad problem with crime along its light rail route and within blocks of the train stations.

In seeing a presentation on crime from a police officer speaking to a business group he had a map showing the incidents by clusters.

According to the police officer as well as the map the highest crime neighborhoods in Portland all are one block deep off of lightrail.

Considering that Seattle’s mayor has a soft touch for criminals and a like-minded police chief, do you think things will turn out any better for the Emerald City?

Before we spend upteen billions of dollars on the light rail folly for Puget Sound, do we really want the dangerous crime that comes with it?

 MaxRedline documents that even police are fearful of riding Portland’s Max at night.

Is this what we want here?

It’s been a few years now, but, like a bad dream, I can’t help remembering a monster some called the last of the major Mafia bosses, the boss of bosses. He was John Gotti, who stood for much of what I have despised and fought against in my 55 years as a crime-busting newsman in both the print and broadcast media.

Although I knew that, like a huge octopus, the Mafia would simply grow another “arm” and call him “Capo,” I actually cheered when he was convicted in a spectacular New York trial and sent to prison. The sensational trial unwound like one of those Hollywood crime movies — and, fortunately, ended like one, too.

I grew up in Cleveland’s Little Italy, and I saw monsters like Gotti at work — killing, robbing, stealing, threatening, and bribing public officials and police. One day, while still a youngster walking to school, I reached a corner about two blocks from the school grounds. A long, black limousine turned the corner with a squeal, stopped, and let out two men carrying machine guns.

They spotted three men seated on stools inside a coffee house protected only by two massive windows on each side of an entryway. On cue, they lowered their machine guns and methodically sprayed the three men inside, shattering glass that spread on the outside walkway and inside, as well. The three men died instantly, and the limousine drove off at high speed, its marauders safely inside.

I’ve never been more frightened in my life. Later, I was advised by family members that it would be a good idea to forget what I saw, because my life would be in immediate danger if I dared offer my services as a witness. ‘Twas ever thus in the lives of the innocents who resided in Little Italy.

Some time later, I also remember the terrible day that Mafia henchmen, also traveling in a long, black limousine, hurled bombs through the front windows of my Uncle Jim’s small grocery store in the heart of Little Italy. The reason? He had “forgotten” or refused to pay the protection money he “owed” the Mafia.

You can see why I cheered the guilty verdict against Gotti. There were many heroes in the case against the boss of bosses. Among them were members of the jury that defied the brutal Mafia tradition of quick murders and who refused to buckle under to the threats of the mob.

Among the other heroes were New York’s brave district attorney and the many FBI agents who converted Salvatore Gravano’s confessions into a completely successful prosecution. But, most of all, I remember this: The FBI could never have nailed Gotti and others like him in the Mafia without its highly sophisticated, new electronic recording devices.

It was the very same type of technology that some tearful do-gooders have insisted is a threat to our privacy and that law-enforcement agencies have no right to use. I was reminded of their protests just recently in the Bush administration’s decision to use our high technology to ferret out the evildoers who are in league with terrorists inside and outside the U.S.

Within legal constraints, our law-enforcement investigators and agencies should use every invention available to get rid of all the Gottis — and terrorists — of this world.

Cities across the nation are reporting increasing difficulties in finding housing for serious sex offenders, who are released from prison after serving the time meted out to them by a judge. The new problems have arisen because so many cities are closing off certain areas to the offenders and forcing them into tents, trailers, or onto the streets.

The cities can hardly be blamed for their restrictive new laws regarding offenders. Parents of children that have been victimized by the offenders, as well as the parents of all other families with youngsters, especially girls, have descended upon city lawmakers to enforce the rigid new housing rules.

It has become an extremely serious issue that must soon be faced with stronger measures and the realization that these serious offenders cannot really be cured or kept from repeating their offenses, as psychiatrists have been trying to tell the people of America for some time.

What, then, should the cities — as well as the states and even Congress — do to solve the problem? Heeding the psychiatrists advice, I think serious, habitual sex offenders, who have a record of molestations, rapes, and even bodily harm or murder to youngsters, particularly to young girls, should be put away for life in special camps or communities far removed from the cities’ neighborhoods.

In fact, I believe those who have committed a long string of sex offenses and show no sign of correction should be put away permanently in the special camps or communities, or even sentenced for life in jails or prisons with no possibility of being released by a parole board.

Is that a harsh proposal? Of course it is. But have you ever sat on a jury deliberating a case in which a sex offender with a long record of abuses is on trial for the rape of a 7- or 8-year-old girl or even her murder after the offense was committed? Or have you followed such cases in newspaper or TV/Radio reports?

If you have, you have witnessed the behavior of a true demon, a sex offender who is incorrigible and who, if permitted back into society, will simply repeat his offense at the first opportunity. When will we accept the pronouncement by psychiatrists that these fiends cannot be cured of their deadly disease?

It seems to me that we are faced with a major decision regarding the hopeless sex offender. If we continue to permit them to remain at large in our neighborhoods, we will have to lock up our children to keep them safe. Wouldn’t it make more sense to lock up the proven offenders instead?

I’m not talking here about the onetime offender, who made a serious mistake, paid the price, and was declared cured of his folly by reliable doctors and psychiatrists. I am talking about the offender with a long record of crimes and who will never be cured. Put him away, safe from our children!

Whenever another criminal trial comes up in which the defense attorney has already announced he or she will enter an insanity plea, I cringe because I know it will be another case of confused judgment, no matter how the jury rules.

I say to myself, well, here we go again.

In American courts, we continue to rely on a cumbersome system that confuses decisions of guilt with the issue of insanity. For some reason that escapes me, we invest jurors with no background or experience in psychiatry with the responsibility of making decisions only a reputable psychiatrist is capable of making.

Many criminals who are truly insane or who feign insanity are given lenient sentences or are adjudged innocent and freed solely because a jury decides the criminal “didn’t know what he was doing” or “was not in his right mind” when he fired the gun or wielded the dagger or hatchet in a slaying.

In Washington State, as in most other states, the legal definition of insanity has been boiled down to finding out whether a defendant knows the difference between right and wrong. It’s an unfair and an inefficient and dangerous oversimplification. Analysis of the ailing mind requires a much more profound examination.

In many cases, judges, who also lack the expertise to make a judgment that should be left to psychiatrists, are as confused as the jurors and, in some of the trials I’ve covered, advise the jurors to consult each other to determine whether a defendant is sane or insane. Ridiculous!

In those cases, the judges have then asked jurors to come up with a unanimous decision — after they have “consulted each other,” of course. I don’t believe the law in any state permits criminal convictions by consensus. If it did, it would mark an extraordinary revision in the judicial code.

For years I have been appealing for a new approach in our courts to all cases in which insanity becomes an issue or is used by a defendant as a defense. That approach is already at work in a few European countries, most notably Holland and Denmark. In those nations, a person pleading insanity must first submit to a trial in which psychiatrists determine whether he or she is truly mentally ill.

If he or she is adjudged insane, he or she is then committed to an asylum for treatment until cured or for a lifetime, if that is the case. If the defendant is adjudged to be sane, he or she is then tried on the criminal charge and no mention of insanity is permitted in the subsequent trial.

Finally, and most important of all, I believe we must devise better methods of discovering and treating ailing minds — BEFORE they erupt into tragic behavior. That means we should teach families, employers, school teachers, all law-enforcement officers, and probably all of society how to detect the first danger signs of mental illness.

And then we should do something about the ailing members of society to try bringing them back to sanity before they become desperate and dangerous.

The Republicans are calling for a special seeion to toughen sexual predator laws and both Governor Christine Gregoire and House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler are open to it.

Hmmmmmm.

Maybe Republican leadership made a mistake.

As badly needed as the anti-predator laws are needed, a special session, by law, must be called for a 30-day session and not the two days as suggested by the Republicans.  Once called into session, any bill can be dropped.  Nothing is off the table.

Do we trust that the Democrats won’t drop any new “emergency” spending bills to augment the budget?  Will Senator Moonbeam push for an impeach Bush resolution.

A special session could end up letting the Dems run free in the candy store.

I hope you don’t mind if I get a little personal in this commentary. I grew up in Cleveland’s Italian community, usually referred to as Little Italy. There, at least 99 percent of the people were warmhearted, loving, honest, robust souls eager to help a friend or neighbor at any time of the day or night. They were beautiful people.

The other 1 percent lived a rather shady life of loan-sharking, gambling, and murder. I saw the Mafia operate firsthand, and I learned to hate it, just as my mother and father, both of them immigrants from Italy, did. They and our relatives and friends spoke frequently of the murderous passions of the Italians they knew to be linked to the Mafia, but they did it in hushed tones, as if members of that clandestine mob had rigged the houses with listening devices — which, in many instances, they may have.

As a boy, I saw gangland murders in broad daylight, police payoffs, and gun-slinging intimidation. An uncle refused to pay protection money at one time and lost his grocery to a Mafia-planted bomb in the dead of night. It very nearly cost him his life, too. He resumed payments immediately and was permitted to rebuild his grocery.

My parents helped build up in me a rage against hoods and chiselers that has never subsided. However, they, like all the Italian-Americans in the neighborhood, were careful never to criticize the Mafia mobsters in public. One never knew whether a tipster for the mob was present.

Little wonder, then, that I decided to devote much of my life as a newsman to a personal crusade against all factions within the foul world of organized crime. When I finally made it to a position in which I could do something about it, I didn’t hesitate. As managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, I led a brilliant staff of reporters in an investigation that exposed a Mafia-like crime system within Seattle’s city government, the prosecutor’s office, the sheriff’s office, and the police department. Fifty-five of them were indicted in a cleanup.

But, it seems, the honest Italian-Americans’ work is never done. Most of them wince when the Mafia attracts headlines or air time. For years, the news media seemed anxious to pin the “Italian” label on a gangster or racketeer — but to forget the same label when an Italian-American did something of a distinguished nature.

Maybe all that changed, at last, when a fellow named Antonin Scalia became the first Italian-American to be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. And, much to my amazement and great satisfaction, the print and broadcast news media said, loud and clear, that the new justice was an “Italian-American.” Three cheers for justice, American style!

When Scalia was nominated by President Ronald Reagan back then in the mid-1980s, you may have noticed a smile — and a touch of relief — on the faces of all those friends of yours whose names ended in “a,” “i,” “e.” or “o.” Maybe you also heard one or two of them saying, “He’s one of our boys, by gum!”

By the same token, I’m certain that at least one justice on the bench of the highest court in the land is committed to the cause of eliminating organized crime in America.

Mainstreamer Representative Skip Priest (R-Federal Way) is holding a news conference in his home town at 1 PM today to call for a special session of the legislature to deal with lax and outdated sex offender laws.

“Our state has some effective sex offender laws on the books – but others are outdated and incapable of properly protecting the public. Our goal is to identify weak laws, discuss them with the public, and collectively propose solutions,” said Priest. “There are thirteen known registered sex offenders living within five miles of where the news conference will be held – which is a public park. In King County, there are more than 400 sex offenders with no known address. This problem is everywhere and the time to act is now – not later.”

The news conference will be held at Celebration Park and a pulic forum will be held at 6PM at the Federal Way City Hall.

Republicans  are calling for the scheduled Assembly Days on September 27th and 28th to be turned into a Special Session.  Legislators routinely meet several times a year outside of normal session to handle interim business.

“It’s clear that certain sex offenders are falling though the cracks of our system and the public wants answers and solutions – not excuses. People are demanding action now – and they deserve nothing less. That’s why we are creating a legislative package that we think the public will support,” said House Republican Leader Richard DeBolt. “Public safety is an immediate and vital responsibility of state government. We hope Democrats will not only be receptive to our ideas, but also put forth some reforms of their own. We look forward to that process.”

Besides addressing tougher laws against sex offenders, legislators need to take another look at the State Patrol.  Three successive Democrat governors including Christine Gregoire have slowly changed the agency from a true police and detective agency to a cadre of traffic cops.  Lawmakers must strengthen the Patrol by adding more detectives who can not only chase down sex offenders who fail to register but also fight drug trafficking and other crimes.

Yet another serial killer who should have been a candidate for execution will escape with his life as prosecutors put more emphasis on finding more dead victims than in carrying out real justice. This time the escapee is a longtime predator, rapist, and killer named Terapon Adhahn, and his victim is an innocent little girl, Zina Linnik.

Another among many cases that come to mind is that of the Green River killer, Gary Ridgway, who raped and killed 48 young women and who said in his confession that the number of victims was at least 60 or more. Like Adhahn, he helped lead law-enforcement officials to the bodies of some of his victims — and, in return, he was let off the hook and given life in prison, instead of execution, as a “gift” for his help.

Both men and others like them in the past have, in recent years, have been spared the death penalty by prosecutors who have been more interested in finding other slain victims than in following through with real justice. I think these prosecutorial deals for the sake of clearing up other murder cases is an abominable practice and should be discontinued.

Not only are law-enforcement officials letting these beastly killers off the hook. They have given other killers the message that all they have to do to avoid execution is to promise the cops that they are willing to lead them to the places in which the killers have buried or disposed of some of their victims.

I don’t think the tradeoff is worth it — not by a long shot. And I’m positive that the families of the victims deplore it, as well. In fact, I have said in other commentaries in the past that I would like to see a new practice adopted in the cases of proven killers. Instead of consigning them to death by injection or by hanging, why not let the families perform the act and dispose of the killers in whatever fashion they should choose? That would really give them the justice they seek.

I realize that those who are opposed to the death penalty for cold-blooded murderers have had some influence on law-enforcement officials and even the courts. Their argument has been that execution is “inhumane” punishment. I think they are wrong and should revise their thinking.

The term, inhumane punishment, is misleading and misunderstood. I believe it is far more humane to put a murderer through one or two minutes of pain that ends his life than to commit him to life behind bars for the remaining 40, 50, 60, or more years of his life.

Furthermore, murderers don’t deserve the enormous cost of keeping them fed, given medical attention, and keeping them entertained for those 40, 50, 60, or more years. And taxpayers shouldn’t be saddled with that expense either.

With the tragic death of the 12-year-old girl this week, I’m not only reminded of how Speaker Frank Chopp allowed Jessica’s Bill to be sissified this past legislature, but how Governor Christine Gregoire has further emasculated the State Patrol.

Starting with Democrat Governor Lowry, continuing with Democrat Governors Gary Locke and Gregoire, the State Patrol has been transformed from a crime fighting police agency to a cadre of traffic cops.

In the current budget, for instance, monies for the the Patrol to fight drugs, mostly imported by illegal aliens, was reduced.  As a result, several detectives have transferred out of the Anti-Drug Unit.  They were probably issued radar guns.

Imagine instead, a real police agency with capable detectives … and one that not only went after the drug pushers but also the sex offenders who skip from one county sheriff’s jurisdiction to another.  That’s what most Republicans want, but Democrats don’t.

Under permissive Democrat leadership these past two decades our schools and streets are not as safe for our children, let alone ourselves.   The headlines in the papers prove that.

And Chopp and Gregoire?  Weak sisters, both of them.   They’re responsible for weak state laws and weak state law enforcement.

That’s why we can’t let the voters forget how the Chopp and his Democrats weaked Jessica’s Bill and how Gregoire emasculated the State Patrol.

The Shark reveals that the murder suspect of a 12-year-old Tacoma girl faced “immigration problems,” was a registered sex offender AND a registered voter.  Good reporting.

Should America adopt a nationwide policy of “tough pocketbook justice” against both the sellers and the users of illegal dope and drugs? Thanks to the precedent set several years ago by a New York Supreme Court justice, Lewis Douglass, I would say to every judge in the U.S.: “Go for it!”

It was more than 15 years ago that Justice Douglass won his way into my personal book of heroes with his brilliant, logical idea. It could be the turning point in our war against drugs, a war we have been losing. Unfortunately, few other jurists have taken their cue from the New York justice and helped turn the tide in that ongoing war.

Justice Douglass’ novel solution was to fine a convicted drug dealer millions of dollars, the amount depending upon the cost, treatment, and hospitalization of drug users he had supplied. Although his anti-drug-dealer formula has yet to find its way into other courtrooms around the U.S., one must hope that the pattern is set and that the Douglass solution will become the status quo.

Thus far, the justice’s brilliant concept has remained alive in New York State and has become one of the strongest victim-compensation laws in the nation. Under that law, criminals’ assets are seized and they are forced to make restitution to those they have victimized — and, if they can’t pay it, their prison time is automatically extended.

There is hope that Washington State, at least, may follow suit. It has a new law that is not as strong as the one fostered by Justice Douglass, but at least it attempts to cover some damages owing to the drugs peddled by the drug dealers.

In Washington, as in New York, the way has simultaneously been opened for a parallel course in law and litigation that seeks punishment of the user of illegal drugs and dope. It is a natural followup to the law inflicting severe punishment upon the drug peddlers and their cohorts.

Justice Douglass’ judgment incorporates the old adage of making the punishment fit the crime. Since nothing else seems to be working in most other states to banish the terrible drug scourge, maybe hitting the dealers where it hurts will finally slow the flow of dope and drugs — and finally right a terrible national wrong.

Now, it seems to me that it’s up to Congress to take the next important steps in the war on drugs and dope. First, it should borrow a page from the Justice’s book and pass legislation that would make it national and local law for courts to punish drug and dope dealers by requiring them to pick up the tab for illness and injuries sustained by persons to whom they have sold their foul stuff.

Then — and this is an old refrain of mine — it should make the so-called “War on Drugs” more than just a slogan by punishing nations from which and through which the foreign drug lords are routing their carloads of cocaine, peyote, heroin, marijuana, and other illegal substances to and through the U.S.

We should cut off all trade with nations that do not eradicate the drug trade and also impose sanctions against them, similarly punishing other nations that do not honor our sanction action. Only with such stringent curbs will we ever win the real War on Drugs.

I spent part of the weekend in Portland with my kids for Father’s Day.  I had a great time with my daughters and son-in-law.

But I was appalled by the garbage in the streets.

I have known Portland for 34 years.  I have never seen Portland filled with so much garbage, litter and trash as I did this weekend.

I saw diapers with feces, used condoms, garbage bags and common, everyday litter on the streets.  My daughter told me the diaper at 12th and SE Belmont has been there for two weeks.

My daughters feel unsafe.  Rapes, muggings and vandalism have occured in their neighborhood.

Public Health and Sanitation as well as Public Safety has never been worse in my memory.  This is what you get with left-wing city politics.  In an egalitarian society, everybody is brought down to common misery.

Portland is going to hell very quickly.  Socialism is destroying it.

Is this the Vera Katz legacy?