Ann Coulter is a lawyer: It shows in her expert comments about the Central Park jogger case

The city of New York released thousands of documents from the 1989 Central Park rape case last week, provoking more weeping and gnashing of teeth over Donald Trump’s full-page ads in four New York with the headline: “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!”

Newspapers removed the ads soon after that attack.

His ad never mentioned the Central Park rape, but talked about New York families — “White, Black, Hispanic and Asian” — unable to enjoy walks through the park at dusk. Of muggers and murderers, he said, “I no longer want to understand their anger. I want them to understand our anger … They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.”

According to the media, the five convicted boys were innocent — and Trump would have executed the poor lads! Apart from the “innocent” moniker, the rape victim miraculously survived and there was no murder, so this is nonsense.

But let’s look at how “innocent” they were.

On April 19, 1989, investment banker Trisha Meili went for a run through Central Park around 9 p.m., whereupon she was attacked by a wolf pack looking for a “white girl,” dragged 100 yards into the woods, stripped, beaten with a pipe and a brick, raped and left for dead.

By the time the police found Meili, she’d lost three-quarters of her blood. Her case was initially assigned to the homicide unit of the D.A.’s office because none of her doctors thought she would make it through the night.

Of the 37 youths brought in for questioning about the multiple violent attacks in the park that night, only 10 were charged with a crime and only five for the rape of the jogger: Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson and Korey Wise. All five confessed — four on videotape with adult relatives present and one with a parent present but not on videotape.

Two unanimous, multicultural juries convicted them, despite aggressive defense lawyers putting on their best case.

But the media have a different method of judging guilt and innocence. They don’t look at irrelevant factors, such as evidence, but at relevant factors such as the race of the accused and the victim.

Unfortunately for Meili, she was guilty of white privilege while her attackers belonged to the “people of color” Brahmin caste. So, after waiting an interminable 13 years, the media proclaimed that the five convicts had been “exonerated” by DNA evidence!
DNA evidence didn’t convict them, so it couldn’t exonerate them. This was a gang attack. It was always known that another rapist “got away,” as the prosecutor told the jury, and that none of the defendants’ DNA was found in the jogger’s cervix or on her sock — the only samples that were taken.

While it blows most people away to find out that none of the suspects’ DNA was found on Meili, the whole trick is that they’re looking at it through a modern lens. Today, these kids’ DNA would have been found all over the crime scene. But in 1989, DNA was a primitive science. The cops wouldn’t have even looked for such evidence back then.

The case was solved with other evidence — and there was a lot of it.

On the drive to the precinct, Raymond Santana blurted out, “I had nothing to do with the rape. All I did was feel the woman’s t–s.” The cops didn’t even know about a rape yet.

Yusef Salaam announced to the detective interviewing him, “I was there, but I didn’t rape her.” Even if true, under the law, anyone who participated in the attack on Meili is guilty of her rape.

Two of Korey Wise’s friends said that when they ran into him on the street the day after the attack, he told them the cops were after him. “You heard about that woman that was beat up and raped in the park last night? That was us!”
Taken to the scene of the crime by a detective and a prosecutor, he said, “Damn, damn, that’s a lot of blood. … I knew she was bleeding, but I didn’t know how bad she was. It was dark. I couldn’t see how much blood there was at night.”

Wise also told a detective that someone he thought was named “Rudy” stole the jogger’s Walkman and belt pouch. The jogger was still in a coma. The police did not know yet that a Walkman had been stolen from her.

Wise told a friend’s sister, Melody Jackson, that he didn’t rape the jogger; he “only held her legs down while Kevin (Richardson) f—ed her.” Jackson volunteered this information to the police, thinking it would help Wise.

The night of the attack, Richardson told an acquaintance, “We just raped somebody.” The crotch of his underwear was suspiciously stained with semen, grass stains, dirt and debris. Walking near the crime scene with a detective the next day, Richardson said, “This is where we got her … where the raping occurred.”

Santana and Richardson independently brought investigators to the precise location of the attack on the jogger.

Recall that, when all these statements were made, no one — not the police, the witnesses, the suspects, or their friends and acquaintances — knew whether Meili would emerge from her coma and be able to identify her attackers.

Sarah Burns, who co-wrote and co-directed the propaganda film “The Central Park Five” with her father (whose reputation she has now destroyed), waved away the defendants’ confessions — forget all the other evidence — in a 2016 New York Times op-ed, explaining: “The power imbalance in an interrogation room is extreme, especially when the suspects are young teenagers, afraid of the police and unfamiliar with the justice system or their rights.”

Burns has studied the trial transcripts so closely that she called the prosecutor by the wrong name in her op-ed. Far from trembling and afraid, as Burns imagines, the suspects were singing the rap song “Wild Thing” for hours in the precinct house, laughing and joking about raping the jogger. One of the attackers said, “It was fun.”

When a cop told Santana that he should have been out with a girlfriend rather than mugging people in Central Park, Santana responded, “I already got mines,” and laughed with another boy from the park. One of the youths arrested that night stated on videotape that he heard Santana and another boy laughing about “how they ‘made a woman bleed.'”

But none of that matters. Again, the victim was a privileged white woman (bad!) and the perpetrators were youths of color (good!). So the media lied and claimed the DNA evidence “exonerated” them.

This allegation was based on Matias Reyes’ confession to the attack. His DNA matched the unidentified DNA on the jogger, proving nothing, other than that he was the one who “got away.” He is also the “Rudy” who stole her Walkman, as Wise said at the time. Reyes admitted he took it. How did Wise know that?

A cellmate of Reyes claims he said that he heard a woman screaming in the park that night and ran to join in the rape.

The “exoneration” comes down to Reyes’ unsubstantiated claim that he acted alone. Years of careful investigation, videotaped confessions, witness statements, assembling evidence, trial by jury and repeated appeals — all that is nothing compared to the word of an upstanding citizen like Reyes, a violent psychopath who sexually assaulted his own mother and raped and murdered a pregnant woman while her children heard the attack through the bedroom door.

That’s the sum total of the “exoneration”: the word of a psycho.

Noticeably, Reyes faced absolutely no penalty for his confession — the statute of limitations had run out years earlier. Before he confessed, Reyes had been moved to Korey Wise’s cellblock. He requested a transfer on the grounds that he feared retaliation from Wise’s gang. All he had to do was confess — with no penalty — and announce that he acted alone. The Social Justice Warriors would take it from there.

Not even a monster’s self-serving “confession” can explain away the five attackers’ other crimes that night — vicious beatings that left one parkgoer unconscious and another permanently injured.

The SJW verdict: Award the criminals $41 million. Trump’s idea: Punish them.

And you still can’t figure out how he became president.

SOURCE






Another charming devotee of the religion of peace

An 18-year-old is behind bars after he ripped out his 74-year-old relative's eyes with his bare hands, police said. Mahad Aziz, of Rochester, Minnesota, faces a felony charge of first-degree assault in the horrific crime.

Authorities arrived at Rochester Square Apartments on Friday to check on a noise complaint around 2pm.

It was there that they found Aziz straddling his relative in a pool of blood. The elderly man's eyes were missing and most of his teeth were knocked out.

Aziz later told investigators that he had not used any weapons against his relative, only his hands, according to KTTC.

The 74-year-old man's eyes have not been found.

Authorities said Aziz was combative with police and had to be put in handcuffs at the scene.

Because he was initially non-verbal, officers took Aziz to the hospital for a mental health evaluation before he was booked into the Olmsted County Adult Detention Center.

The victim was semi-conscious when police arrived and did not sustain life-threatening injuries, but will likely be blind for the rest of his life. 'You lose your eyes, it's not...there's no replacement,' Rochester Police Capt John Sherwin said. 'Obviously this is an injury that is going to change this man's life.'

It was for this reason that the department handed down the rare first-degree assault charge.

'It's a permanent injury that's disabling,' Sherwin said. 'A permanent loss of bodily function. And obviously that applies in this case.'

It remains unknown what motivated the fight. Authorities have not disclosed how Aziz and the 74-year-old man are related or the victim's name.

'There's a lot of things that we don't know,' Sherwin said. 'Mainly due to the circumstances of the assault.'

'The injuries sustained by the victim makes it difficult to, at least during our initial investigation, find out exactly what happened.'

SOURCE





Dems Who Opposed Citizenship Question on Census Want to Ask About Sexual Orientation

Consistent principles are alien to Leftists

The same Democrat senators who strongly opposed a citizenship question on the U.S. Census have just introduced legislation that would require the Census to ask people about their sexual orientation and gender identity.

Senators Kamala Harris (Calif.) and Tom Carper (Del.), both members of the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee, on Tuesday introduced the Census Equality Act, which would require the decennial census to include sexual orientation/gender identity questions no later than 2030; and the separate American Community Survey (ACS) would have to include those questions no later than 2020.

The senators say they want to make sure the approximately 10 million Americans who identify as LGBTQ "are properly counted" and represented in data collection efforts. They believe that LGBTQ undercounting results in "an inadequate distribution of resources and social services, including Medicaid, Section 8 housing vouchers, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)."

“The spirit of the census is that no one should go uncounted and no one should be invisible,” Harris said in a news release announcing the The Census Equality Act. “We must expand data collections efforts to ensure the LGBTQ community is not only seen, but fully accounted for in terms of government resources provided. This information can also provide us with better tools to enforce civil rights protections for a community that is too often discriminated against.”

“We have a responsibility to ensure the information collected by the census accurately reflects who we are as a society and that everyone is counted fairly,” Sen. Carper said. “While long overdue, I am proud that this legislation finally calls upon the Census Bureau to add a question to the Decennial Census and American Community Survey on sexual orientation and gender identity -- so that all Americans can be represented equally and have their voices heard.”

In March, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced that a citizenship question would be included in the 2020 decennial census questionnaire to help enforce the Voting Rights Act.

Sens. Harris and Carper were among the Democrats strenuously objecting to the citizenship question.

In a March 30 letter to Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, Harris, Carper and other Democrats said they were "concerned that the addition of the citizenship question is tainted by improper political considerations.” They said such a question would "depress participation of immigrants and U.S. citizens in mixed-status households who fear how government will use the information."

The Harris-Carper news release dated yesterday includes comments from homosexual activists, including Rea Carey, executive director for National LGBTQ Task Force. “The Census Equality Act will put the Census Bureau back on the path it initiated two years ago to count LGBTQ people,” she said. “We call on members of Congress to support a full, fair, and accurate Census by becoming co-sponsors of the Census Equality Act and opposing efforts to add an untested citizenship question to the Census.”

SOURCE





Lessons for Italy from Australia

by Giulio Meotti

Four years ago, the Australian government sparked criticism after it ran an advertisement aimed at discouraging asylum seekers from traveling illegally to the country. "No Way", the poster read. "You will not make Australia home. If you get on a boat without a visa, you will not end up in Australia. Any vessel seeking illegally to enter Australia will be intercepted and safely removed beyond Australian waters".

It was an extremely tough message, but it worked. "Australia's migration rate is the lowest it's been in 10 years", said Peter Dutton, Australia's Home Affairs Minister. Speaking last week on the Today Show, Dutton added that the drop was about "restoring integrity to our border". The Australians are apparently happy about that. A new poll just revealed that 72% of voters support Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's immigration policy. Australia, a Western democracy, has for years, tried to deal with a migration crisis from the sea.

"Europeans think it's easy in Australia to control our borders, but they're just making up excuses for doing nothing themselves," said retired major general Jim Molan, co-author of Australia's asylum policy.

In 2013, Tony Abbott was elected Prime Minister under the slogan "Stop the boats". "Stop the boats" is now also the slogan of the new Italy's new Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, who, since the formation of a new government last month, has been totally focused on curbing immigration from "the world's most lethal" route: across the Mediterranean.

It would seem that the best possible model for Europe to implement is a skills-based immigration system to curb the illegal one.

Last year, EU officials came to Australia for help. At a recent summit, European Union member states agreed to copy the Australian model of turning back the migrant boats and sending them to third-countries, to centers there run by local authorities, on the model of the Manus Regional Processing Centre in Papua New Guinea, which was used to house migrants turned away from Australia. Italy is now looking to create similar reception centers on the southern border of Libya.


The Manus Regional Processing Centre in Papua New Guinea, where Australia used to send illegal immigrants turned away from Australia. It was formally closed on October 31, 2017. (Image source: Australia Department of Immigration and Citizenship)

François Crepeau, the U.N. special rapporteur on migrant human rights, urged Europe not to view Australia as a model; he labelled the idea "cruel, inhuman and degrading". Stopping migrants from dying at sea, however, is the opposite of cruelty; it is humanity. "We have got hundreds, maybe thousands of people drowning in the attempts to get from Africa to Europe", Abbott said. The "only way you can stop the deaths is in fact to stop the boats".

Australia's Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, explained that "we are not going to accept people who have sought to come to our country illegally by boat". Humanitarians, as Abbott put it, were helping them in the name of a "misguided altruism".

Under the government of Australia's former Prime Minister Julia Gilliard, in May 2013, Australia excised even the mainland from its migration zone. This meant that migrants might be sent to the detention facilities abroad even if their ships landed.

The Australian model is not only based on keeping the borders safe and prioritizing highly-skilled immigrants. It also revolves around the idea of a cultural legacy that migrants have to embrace. Prime Minister Turnbull says he wants a test, for immigrants, of "Australian values", including questions on whether it is acceptable to strike your spouse, ban girls from education, or carry out female genital mutilation (FGM). In multicultural Europe, the same test would be taboo. Turnbull has called to "defend" these Australian values. Preserving the nation-state and its cultural Western tradition, he says, is necessary to assimilate the migrants. "My long experience in Australian politics has been that whenever a government is seen to have immigration flows under control, public support for immigration increases, when the reverse occurs hostility to immigration rises" former Australian Prime Minister John Howard wrote.

As Italy is now dealing with boats from Africa trying to reach its shores, it might be helpful to remind the public that Australia also started with the "Tampa Affair": In 2001, Australia prevented a Norwegian boat, which had rescued hundreds of asylum-seekers in the Indian Ocean, from bringing them to Australia. It is called, "the boat that changed it all". The immigration minister at the time, Philip Ruddock, warned Australians that 10,000 people from the Middle East were preparing to embark boats from Asia to Australia. The Australian government ignored a request by the United Nations to let the refugees set foot on their island. Public opinion stood behind the government. Since, several decades ago, the first wave of "boat people" from Vietnam (1976–81) was received by the Australian public with sympathy, new arrivals quickly became a matter of increasing concern, as is happening now in Europe. Since then, Australia's policy to solve its own migration crisis has been, "no resettlements, no boats".

Following the Tampa Affair, the defining elements of Australia's future policy were put into place:

"Islands were excised from the Australian migration zone to prevent asylum seekers lodging visa applications; detention centres were set up on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island and the tiny and bankrupt republic of Nauru; and a reluctant Navy was engaged to intercept and turn back vessels containing asylum seekers".

Italy faces a new potential wave of 700,000 migrants currently in Libya. The Italian government should now follow Australia's example.

It is with a heavy heart that I am making these suggestions. It must be crushing to live in a country where governance might be questionable at best, and economic opportunities limited, if that. People know they are risking their life in search of a better break. But if the West is not to be overwhelmed, these problems seriously need to be addressed.

Illegal immigration is bad for Europe -- and bad for migrants, as well.

SOURCE

*************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

***************************