That being said, The Donald could dramatically impact the odds were he to heed the advice of Andy McCarthy, who, writing at NRO, reminds us even the longest conspiracy prosecution begins with a single conviction:
“New Year’s Eve gets people thinking about resolutions. Alas, when a year passes, a mothballed prosecutor finds himself thinking about the statute of limitations. As 2018 beckons, it has me thinking about Paul Combetta — the Platte River Networks technician who used the “BleachBit” program to destroy thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails when they were under congressional subpoena and preservation orders.
It is not just the tick-tock of the criminal clock that has me thinking about Combetta — about how much longer his obstructive destruction of government files in March 2015 could still be subject to investigation and prosecution. The statute of limitations is five years. Time’s a-wastin’, but there could still be a live case for a while. The other reason Combetta leaps to the front of the mind is…Robert Mueller.
…I’m thinking it’s a good time for the Justice Department, under new management (the Trump-appointed management that hired Mueller), to show Paul Combetta how it works.
Let’s review a few(incredibly compelling)key facts…
…Should there be a wholesale reopening of the Clinton investigation? I believe so, but that bridge can be crossed later. For now, how about simply reopening the Combetta investigation?“
Which again begs the question why on earth hasn’t it yet happened?!? After all, does not Trump directly control the activities of the Executive Branch, which includes the DOJ and FBI?!?
The only reasonable explanation we can offer is what we observed of Trey Gowdy in our Tales From the Dark Side section accessible via link #3 at the top of the page: while Republicans talk a good game, words are all they ever to seem to offer…particularly when it comes to holding Washington apparatchiks accountable for their crimes.
Speaking of crime, or in this case the decrease thereof, again courtesy of NRO, Heather Mac Donald offers this note of caution:
“Cop critics who assiduously ignored the 20 percent increase in the national homicide rate over the previous two years have suddenly become enthusiastic purveyors of crime statistics. Fueling their newfound interest in crime data is the announcement that the New York City homicide rate is at a near-60-year low. That homicide drop shows that proactive policing is irrelevant to crime levels, say these policing skeptics. The New York Police Department’s reported-stop activity plummeted earlier in this decade as a result of a groundless trilogy of racial-profiling lawsuits against the department. Yet crime in New York ultimately continued its downward trajectory. Therefore, proactive policing like pedestrian stops is unnecessary, these cop critics say.
Their arguments are specious. (Not to mention deliberately deceptive.)
New York City’s formerly high-crime neighborhoods have experienced a stunning degree of gentrification over the last 15 years, thanks to the proactive-policing-induced conquest of crime. It is that gentrification which is now helping fuel the ongoing crime drop. Urban hipsters are flocking to areas that once were the purview of drug dealers and pimps, trailing in their wake legitimate commerce and street life, which further attracts law-abiding activity and residents in a virtuous cycle of increasing public safety. The degree of demographic change is startling. In Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, for example, the number of white residents rose 1,235 percent from 2000 to 2015, while the black population decreased by 17 percent, reports City Lab. In Bushwick, Brooklyn, the number of whitesrose 610 percent over that same decade and a half; the black population was down 22 percent. Central Harlem’s white population rose 846 percent; the black share dropped 10 percent. In 2000, whites were about three-quarters of the black population in Brownsville-Ocean Hill; by 2015, there were twice as many whites as blacks. In 2000, whites were one-third of the black population in Crown Heights North and Prospect Heights; now they exceed the black population by 20,000. The Brooklyn Navy Yards has now been declared the next cool place to be by the tech industry. Business owners are moving their residences as well as their enterprises to the area.
This demographic transformation has enormous implications for crime. A black New Yorker is 50 times more likely to commit a shooting than a white New Yorker, according to perpetrator identifications provided to the police by witnesses to, and victims of, those shootings. Those victims are overwhelmingly minority themselves.When the racial balance of a neighborhood changes radically, given those crime disparities, its violent-crime rate will as well. (This racial crime disparity reflects the breakdown of the black family and the high percentage of black males — upwards of 80 percent in some neighborhoods — being raised by single mothers.)
After
The high-crime areas of Baltimore and Chicago have not been gentrified. Baltimore is experiencing its highest per capita murder rate for the third year in a row…
…Libertarians and the anti-cop Left have also seized on this year’s 33 percent drop in gun murders of police officers to declare that there has been no war on cops. Tell that to officers in the streets who lived for three years under the pall of the ubiquitous false narrative that policing is systemically racist and that cops are engaged in an epidemic of racially biased police shootings of black men. Tell it to officers who encountered acute levels of hostility during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, like the Chicago cop who said that he had never experienced so much hatred in his 19 years on the job. The war on cops was always predominantly a rhetorical one. But last year, at the height of the anti-cop frenzy, gun murders of officers rose 53 percent.
Back then, the cop-haters assiduously ignored that increase. Now, however, they are trumpeting this year’s drop in gun murders.
It is too soon to know definitively if the animus toward officers has fallen and if any such fall is behind the welcome drop in officer slayings. But without question, there has been a sea change in rhetoric and policy from the White House. Trump and Sessions do not take every opportunity to accuse the cops of systemic and lethal bias — yet when the facts warrant, the Sessions Justice Department has vigorously prosecuted and denounced cops who violate their oath of office. Sessions and Trump have repeatedly voiced their support for law enforcement, without coupling that support with a denunciation of phantom police racism.
Equally important, the mainstream media have lost interest in their anti-cop narrative.They now lack an echo chamber in the White House, and focusing on Trump’s alleged misdeeds is an all-consuming activity.That shift in rhetoric may have saved some officers’ lives this year. But the drop in gun murders of officers this year hardly disproves the fact that the Obama administration ramped up a demoralizing and unjustified war on the cops during its second term.“
Let alone the fact Bill de Blow-me-o could hardly exert a positive influence on anything…including his own political career. Or The Obamao for that matter.
In a related item, as FOX Newsrather incompletely informs us…
“Three suspects have been arrested in connection with an attempted robbery at NASCAR team owner Richard Childress’ Lexington, N.C., estate home on December 17. Childress, who was in the house with his wife at the time and was alerted to their presence when they set off an alarm, chased them away by firing a handgun at them before they could steal anything. Childress is the second vice president of the National Rifle Association.
Davidson County Sheriff David Grice said “the only reason [Childress] and his wife were here today was because of God and the Second Amendment,” according to The Charlotte Observer…”
For those wondering why we view this FOX report as rather incomplete, it states Childress ran the tree yutes off…
Meet Messrs. Victorin, Hines and Spinks.
…”before they could steal anything”…as if they were adolescent thieves bent on a bit of irresponsible but harmless burglary. Seriously?!? Such a description is hardly in keeping with the fact…
“The armed burglars had their faces covered, but the ‘military-style’ guns they were carrying matched the description of three that were stolen in nearby Winston-Salem two days prior and were later connected to the incident…”
Call us a radical, but we find it hard to believe anyone who steals ‘military-style’ guns in preparation for a home invasion intends on leaving any witnesses.
Which brings to mind one of our favorite scenes from Dirty Harry:
Here’s to Richard Childress for refusing to be a victim.
Meanwhile, back in the nation’s capital, as this item from George Lawlor relates…
“Tens of thousands of federal employees earn more money than any U.S. governor, according to a new report that reveals some eye-popping stats on government spending for the federal workforce.
…According to the report, the number of federal employees making $200,000 or more increased by 165 percent between fiscal 2010 and 2016. Federal employees making $150,000 or more grew by 60 percent, with the number making more than $100,000 increasing by 37 percent in the same time period.
The group put its figures in context by comparing these plush payment packages with those of America’s governors. “Nearly 30,000 rank-and-file federal employees who received more than $190,823 out-earned each of the 50 state governors,” the report said.
According to the “Mapping the Swamp” report, a total of 406,960 federal employees made six-figure incomes in fiscal 2016 – that’s roughly one in five federal employees. “There is a new ‘minimum wage’ for federal bureaucrats – at 78 departments and independent agencies, the average employee made $100,000 or more,” OpenTheBooks said in a statement.
In fiscal 2016, the United States Postal Service and the Department of Veterans Affairs employed more than half of federal employees. USPS employed 32 percent of all disclosed federal employees, totaling 621,523 people on the payroll; and the VA employed the second-most employees with 372,614. (Proving once again quantity is wholly unrelated to quality!)
The analysis is incomplete, however, as there are a number of federal employees who have not disclosed their salaries.
…Federal employees also are given considerable paid-time-off. According to the report, on average, federal employees are given 10 federal holidays, 13 sick days, and 20 vacation days per year.“If each employee used 13 sick days and took 20 vacation days in addition to the 10 federal holidays, it would cost taxpayers an estimated $22.6 billion annually,” the report said.“
As reader Ed Harvey observed, “What a racket!”
No kidding; no risk…can’t be fired…no real requirement to produce.
It’s news like this which increasingly leads us to ally ourselves with those who…
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