Crime in the U.S. was lower in 2025, but problems still exist

March 10, 2026

The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) report of crime levels in 2025 is positive. Here are some takeaways:

* “Reported levels of 11 of the 13 offenses covered in this report were lower in 2025 than in 2024; nine of the offenses declined by 10% or more. 

* “Looking at changes in violent offenses, the rate of reported homicides was 21 percent lower in 2025 than in 2024 in the 35 study cities providing data for that crime, representing 922 fewer homicides. There were 9 percent fewer reported aggravated assaults, 22 percent fewer gun assaults, and 2 percent fewer domestic violence incidents last year than in 2024. Robbery fell by 23 percent while carjackings decreased by 43 percent.” 

* “When nationwide data for jurisdictions of all sizes is reported by the FBI later this year, there is a strong possibility that homicides in 2025 will drop to about 4.0 per 100,000 residents. That would be the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900, and would mark the largest single-year percentage drop in the homicide rate on record.”

That, of course, is very good news, and a checkmark for the Trump administration and its focus on crime. Unfortunately, despite the good news from the CCJ, murder in this day and time is not as unusual as we might like it to be, and as it should be. 

There are still far too many murders, and over the last several years a troubling trend has developed: Murdering someone because you don’t like them, what they do, or their ideas.

What, exactly, is the definition of “murder?” That term is — as are so many these days — frequently misapplied to incidents involving someone’s death. Britannica online defines it this way: “murder, in criminal law, the killing of one person by another that is not legally justified or excusable, usually distinguished from the crime of manslaughter by the element malice aforethought.”

The murders of two people fairly recently draws attention to this irrational event.

Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk and UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson were senselessly murdered. While suspects have been charged and legal proceedings are ongoing, neither suspect has confessed or been found guilty. However, while it imperative that the guilty parties are convicted and appropriately punished, this trend must be halted. The murders of these two people for the reasons that have been identified are senseless and inexcusable — one because of his beliefs and the other for the job he held. 

This behavior is related to many other things that people do for no good reason, or perhaps no reason at all. It represents a failure of that person to have learned proper and acceptable behavior, and the failure of families and our culture to instill the concepts of basic humanity.

There is also some weird behavior associated with these senseless murders, such as how many people agree with why these two people were senselessly murdered, and support their deaths.

Looking at the two victims of this horrendous stupidity, what happened in these two examples?

Charlie Kirk co founded Turning Point USA (TPUSA) — a conservative student organization — in 2012 and served as its executive director. He supported several conservative positions, including opposition to abortion, gun control, DEI programs, and LGBTQ rights, and became aligned with Christian principles. 

He believed that it was important to speak to those who held different views. At his public appearances, he would ask for comments, and in a calm and thoughtful manner present his differing ideas, which often were effective to those who had different views. But he was murdered for that on a college campus on September 10th last year.

On December 4, 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in a targeted attack on a Manhattan street just before 7:00 a.m. Luigi Mangione was arrested and charged with the crime days later. The investigation turned up a manifesto of Mangione’s expressing anger toward corporate America, and reflected the intense public frustration over health insurance coverage denials that had developed. So, a man was murdered because he was associated with a particular type of company.

While violence in 2025 was lower than before, political violence has been on the rise over the last few years. In America, whatever your politics are, how radically different they may be from that of others, any level of political violence is a highly inappropriate and unacceptable response.

What is behind these senseless and unjustifiable acts of violence and inhuman behavior is essentially the mere dissatisfaction with contrary ideas. But why is it the chosen action in these situations to commit violence or other negative actions against someone simply because they have different ideas than you, or because they are involved in a business that you don’t like?

People must learn to deal with such differences, like Americans used to do. The freedoms our Constitution guarantees us make that necessary. The idea of free speech is to have a variety of ideas from which we as a people select our pathway, not one dictated set of ideas.

We cannot allow political passions to produce violence.

Democrats missing the boat on immigration and the economy

July 29, 2025

Millions of illegal aliens crossed into the United States over the four years of the Biden-Harris administration. They settled in blue cities and states, for the most part. This was because the blue cities and states welcomed them.

Why would those living in, and running blue cities and states want illegal aliens in large numbers living among their citizens, given the costs of feeding and housing them, and the other problems that they bring with them, like murders, rapes, robberies, etc.?

One explanation is that the basis for how many representatives a state has in the House of Representatives, and votes in the Electoral College depends upon how many people — not just citizens, but all people, including illegals and other non-citizens — reside in a state. Illegal aliens help gain additional representatives and electoral votes.

Many on the left will laugh at that assertion, claim it is some sort of MAGA tactic, or just right-wing misinformation. But there are at least a few Congressional Democrats who support this idea.

Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York is one. She admitted in comments over the last few years that she wants immigrants to enter the United States to help Democrats with redistricting.

The original comments from Clarke came in 2021 during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, and again in a 2024 post on X. Back in 2021, she fussed at Republicans who opposed Haitian migrants.

“I’m from Brooklyn, New York,” she said during the hearing. “We have a diaspora that, that can absorb a significant number of these migrants and that, you know, when I hear colleagues talk about, you know, the, the, the doors of the inn being closed [and] no room in the inn, I, I’m saying, you know, I, I need more people in my district just for redistricting purposes.”

Now that we have Donald Trump in the White House, many of the illegals are being caught and deported, and others are self-deporting. Also, the blue states, especially New York and California, are having problems and are losing businesses and residents.

Beginning back during the COVID-19 pandemic, progressively strong states have been seeing a heavy exodus of citizens leaving due to high crime rates, heavy taxes, and government overreach.

Looking for safer streets, economic and personal freedom, thousands are heading for better places like Florida, Texas and Tennessee. These states are projecting gains in congressional seats, with Texas expecting to gain three, and Florida looking for at least two.

This heavy exodus of citizens to red states has caught the attention of at least one blue state governor: California’s Gavin Newsom. He is threatening to call a special legislative session in an emergency effort to redraw district lines. California Republicans now hold only nine House seats, and Newsom hopes to replace between two and five of them with Democrats.

This process is customarily done once every decade. Whether Newsom’s effort to gerrymander more Democrat representatives, if it comes to pass, would be legal or not remains to be determined. It seems that some Democrats have no limits on how far they will go to stop Donald Trump.

It must be noted, however, that red state Texas is considering the same thing to build its Republican majority.

While the left wants to encourage illegal entry to the country and to their states to help them get and hold a majority in the House of Representatives and in Electoral voting, they still do not understand about taxation and prosperity. 

They want to punish the wealthy with absurdly high tax rates, never understanding that high tax rates are harmful to the economy, not just the wealthy.

Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts support a return to 50%, 60% and even 70% tax rates. The left believes that lowering tax rates is just a method to benefit the rich, who they maintain do not pay “their fair share.”

However, why would it ever be fair or even sensible to collect half, or up to 70% of what someone — anyone — earned?

Economist Stephen Moore suggests that those Democrats and others who believe in this plan would be well served to read Arthur Laffer’s latest book, titled, “Taxes Have Consequences.” Laffer, known for the Laffer Curve, and his co-authors show that over the last 100 years, every time tax rates have been cut, three good things have happened: 

* Tax revenues have risen.

* The economy has improved.

* The rich have paid a higher share of the tax burden.

Think about it: If we have a smaller, less costly government that is efficient and restricted to constitutional functions, we will need less tax income to pay the bills. And, people will be able to keep more of what they earn, and use that money to buy the things they need and want. 

The more American citizens — both rich and not rich — spend their hard-earned money on the things they want to purchase is a true benefit to the economy. That will help increase businesses and a growing business sector means more jobs and generally better pay.

Democrats are working against principles of the United States

September 12, 2023

Big city Democrat mayors have brought attention to themselves through poor policy decisions. Folks like Chicago’s former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, D.C.’s Muriel Bowser, and New York City’s former Mayor Bill de Blasio, are among those who have distinguished themselves with dramatic failures.

After de Blasio’s horrible tenure as New York City’s mayor, many people thought that nearly anyone would be an improvement. And so, when the news that the person elected to succeed him was a former police captain with 20 years of service, many were encouraged. The possibility of another Rudy Giuliani was shining brightly.

Alas, Eric Adams has not lived up to those positive expectations. 

He has struggled with the difficult task of dealing with 110,000 illegal aliens in his city, and he has been openly critical of this nation-wide problem.

He has correctly said that this crisis may well destroy New York City. But he criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for sending some of the millions of illegals coming into Texas to other places, like New York City, calling him a “madman.”

Adams, you may remember, proudly supported the sanctuary city/state concept. Yes, he would welcome a few illegal “migrants,” while Texas and other border states have had to contend with millions of them. And now that he’s faced with a tiny fraction of what Texas has to deal with, he is outraged.

He went so far as to criticize former President Donald Trump for starting this influx. Trump, however, was the guy who was building a border wall to slow or stop the invasion of illegals, and started the “Remain in Mexico” idea, which kept asylum seekers in Mexico until their hearing date. These things Joe Biden cancelled when he became President.

Trump pushed for dramatic changes to the immigration system, but he faced opposition from Congress and the courts. The rush began after Trump left office, and Adams darned well knows that.

Why will Adams not correctly identify the real cause of this dangerous nationwide crisis? Could it be because he supported Joe Biden for President, and continues to support him?

And, why is it illegal for Texas to protect itself and its citizens from this invasion of millions of illegals by using buoys in the Rio Grande River to discourage illegal crossings? This is the responsibility of the federal government, but it refuses to secure the border, against the intent and instruction of the U.S. Constitution, and then sues the state for trying to do the federal government’s job and protect itself.

On another topic, Democrats in California’s State Assembly recently passed a bill that would require judges in child custody cases to consider whether a parent has affirmed a child’s “gender transition” by making “gender affirmation” an equal part of a child’s “health, safety, and welfare” under state law.

The bill, AB 957, passed the Assembly by a vote of 57-16 along party lines, and the state Senate also passed the bill along party lines by a 30-9 vote. And Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to sign the bill into law. 

The bill was written by a Suisan City Democrat Assembly member, Lori Wilson, whose child identifies as transgender, and was co-sponsored by State Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco.

Parents could actually lose custody of their children if they refuse to participate in a child’s transgender efforts. Under the bill’s mandates, they will have failed to provide for the “health, safety, and welfare” of their child.

Somehow, in the minds of California Democrats, adults who are parents could run afoul of this bill if it becomes law for disagreeing with their elementary school, middle school, or high school child on whether they are mature enough to understand what is going on, and in opposing the child’s decision on what to do about it. 

And in their effort to protect their child from making a life-altering and potentially dangerous decision, they will be considered guilty of failing to provide for the child’s health, safety, and welfare. Do we have logic anymore?

Parents are responsible for their children’s lives, from the beginning until they go out on their own. Not the government, not the school system, not classroom teachers. Encouraging children to transition, and teachers, administrators and school boards hiding it from their parents, should be a felony.

Efforts by the left to replace parents and rule over the development and indoctrination of the youngest generation is un-American. But of course, the ultimate goal of the left is “to fundamentally transform the United States of America,” as then-presidential candidate Barack Obama said several years ago.

Fearing another term as president for Donald Trump, Democrats are trying to get everyone to believe that Trump is as evil as Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Hussein, Castro or Vlad the Impaler. 

Interestingly, to prevent Trump from running in 2024 the Democrats are employing the same tactics to put him in jail or otherwise keep him off the ballot as those tyrants they compare him to employed against their citizenry.

And isn’t it interesting that the crimes that Trump is accused of committing happened years ago, but no action was taken until the campaign began for the 2024 election?

As they say, elections have consequences, but offer opportunities

October 18, 2022

Voting in the midterm election of November 8th has already started, with early voting underway in some states. Exactly how the election will turn out is being debated, with predictions of Republican gains in Congress and statehouses, but is truly unknown at this point.

There are several issues that command the interest of voters. Those include the economy/inflation, the rising crime problem, abortion, education, immigration and voting policy.

A survey by the Pew Research Center in August placed the economy at the top of the list, with 77 percent of the registered voters polled ranking it first. Coming in fifth was voting policies, ranked first by 59 percent of those polled.

We all remember the chaos over the security of the 2020 election, but that one was not the only election that has been questioned. Four previous presidential elections have been seriously questioned, dating back to 1876 when Samuel Tilden ran against Rutherford B. Hayes. Amid much controversy, Hayes squeaked out a 185-184 majority in the Electoral College.

A bribery scandal marred the 1888 election between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. Ultimately, Cleveland lost the race. More recently, the 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon had some of the closest results in presidential politics. Kennedy won by just 100,000 votes.

And then there was the election of George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000. With Bush receiving just 527 more votes than Gore, a U.S. Supreme Court decision ultimately led Gore to concede the race to Bush.

There was also a lot of chatter about the 2016 election between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton, with many Democrats, including Clinton, complaining about the outcome. Many of these same Democrats were highly critical of Trump’s complaints about the 2020 election, which put Joseph R. Biden, Jr. in the White House.

The complaints by Trump and his supporters did not produce a change in the results of the election. And there is not going to be a discussion of that election here today.

However, it is appropriate to note that in many, if not most, elections, there are those who question the results, and there is the fact that in most elections voter fraud does exist, as well as other irregularities. The real issue is, to what extent do fraud and irregularities influence the outcome?

A very important issue in any election is the security of the process. 

Every eligible voter’s vote must be counted, and no ineligible votes can be counted. And while removing obstacles that make it a little inconvenient for people to vote is important, that is far less important than making the process as secure as possible. A little inconvenience in return for vote security is a small, but necessary price to pay.

In-person voting, where prospective voters go to the polling place, show their photo ID and are verified, and vote on paper ballots that are counted by honest poll workers, is generally considered the most secure method. Voting by mail is considered the most vulnerable to fraud, because the ballots are sent out and returned through the mail or in special ballot return boxes. This process makes the ballots available to being intercepted from home mailboxes and the boxes set up for ballots to be returned, and fraudulently used by those wanting to control the outcome.

And, states must insure that voting procedures are not changed by election officials or poll workers, etc. Only action by the state legislature may legally change election procedures. In 2020, five states did not abide by this requirement, perhaps for the best of reasons during the pandemic. But the law is the law, and it must be followed.

The country is in far worse condition than when Biden took office, and the problems that have resulted are causing much discomfort among Americans, both voters and non-voters.

Inflation has surged by double digits — 13 percent — since Biden first entered the White House. Higher prices of products like gasoline and food have put thousands or millions in financial distress.

Illegal immigration has killed people trying to cross the Rio Grande, thousands more who have mistakenly taken fentanyl brought across the border by illegals have died, as have others at the hands of illegal aliens who crossed the border, which is, for all intents and purposes, wide open.

Crime in many U.S. cities has spiraled out of control, as “progressive” prosecutors, judges, and others have eased up on punishing criminal behavior, refusing to prosecute some crimes and to jail criminals for some violent crimes, and generally catering to criminals, to the detriment of their victims.

This election and the 2024 General Election offer opportunities to reject the incompetence of the Biden administration, and to return life in America to where it was only a short time ago. Elect people who want to restore common sense to government, to use America’s resources to benefit Americans and the world, and move toward cleaner energy at a sensible, normal pace.

The policies of the radical left Democrats have created chaos, and put the lives of Americans at greater risk than ever before in our lifetime. It’s time to put a stop to that.

How is Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan working out for us?

Joe Biden’s been in office almost one year. How is his “Build Back Better” plan working? How long should it take to make a pretty good situation better?

Inflation is skyrocketing. “Prices for U.S. consumers jumped 6.8 percent in November compared with a year earlier as surging costs for food, energy, housing and other items left Americans enduring their highest annual inflation rate in 39 years.” So said the Associated Press earlier this month. Prices of some products have doubled, and others have more than doubled. 

Among reasons, the AP said, are that “Employers, struggling with worker shortages, have also been raising pay, and many of them have boosted prices to offset their higher labor costs, thereby adding to inflation.” And, while many workers have gotten raises, inflated prices often negate the higher wages they now have.

A CNN report in December said that “Biden now sports the lowest net economic rating of any president at this point through their first term since at least Jimmy Carter in 1977.”

“In the latest CNN/SSRS poll, Biden comes in with a 44 percent approval rating to 55 percent disapproval rating among registered voters on his economic performance.”

One bright spot, however, is that jobs are being added at a high level, despite all the negatives in the economic data.

Many goods are in short supply, as ships sit off the coast waiting to unload for many days longer than normal. Yes, other ports have expanded or opened up to assist with the problem, but a long and broad list of supplies are still backlogged, including some foods, baby supplies, men’s and women’s products, and other things people need. This is a good reason to start again producing many goods in the U.S.

While lower taxes and government spending support a strong, positive economy, we are seeing both higher taxes and more government spending being enacted and proposed. Biden and Congress had their way on two spending bills, adding more than $3 trillion to the National Debt.

And legislation that Biden supports will move control over elections to the federal government, changing a process that was initially controlled by the states by design of our Founders.  This will eliminate “the most popular and proven safeguards that preserve Americans’ confidence in democracy,” according to Real Clear Politics.    

How are Biden’s plan for ending the pandemic going? "I am not going to shut down the economy, period," Biden said. "I'm going to shut down the virus; that's what I'm going to shut down." Yet, there have been more Covid deaths in 2021 than there were when he criticized how the pandemic was being handled in 2020. And this after he inherited Covid vaccines produced in record time.

Gasoline prices, which were under $2.00 in most places last year, are now near or above $3.00 everywhere, and as high as $5.00 a gallon in some places in California. 

Biden shut down the XL Pipeline here at home that would have moved oil more safely, quickly and less expensively than trucks, but he approved a pipeline that benefits Russia. In addition to negatively affecting US oil production and distribution, shutting down the XL Pipeline also put many Americans out of work.

Crime has gone through the roof in several cities/states. Is that Biden’s fault? No, he didn’t start it, but he hasn’t done much if anything to stop the crime wave. 

His Attorney General, Justice Department and the FBI, instead of focusing on the factors that lead to increased crime, are focused elsewhere: replacing state and local law enforcement in watching parents who are complaining about schools and school systems that indoctrinate their children. And, yes, indoctrination in schools does happen.

The federal governments involvement in keeping an eye on parents, and agents presence outside of school board meetings, serves as intimidation to parents, who are now afraid to speak out on a subject they have every right to speak on.

The debacle in rushing out of Afghanistan left 183 people dead, including 13 American military personnel. In the rush to leave, we abandoned thousands of Afghani allies and Americans trapped there, and a fortune in military equipment, which is now in the hands of the Taliban.

The New York Post reported, “The Taliban has seized US weapons left in Afghanistan worth billions — possibly including 600,000 assault rifles, some 2,000 armored vehicles, and 40 aircraft, including Black Hawks, according to reports.” A more sensible plan for leaving without chaos was ignored.

The southern border is essentially non-existent. The border catastrophe has allowed tens of thousands of illegal aliens to cross the southern border easily, without being controlled by authorities, without anyone knowing whether they are vaccinated, or if they are drug dealers, gang members or child smugglers, etc. 

And while people are allowed to enter the country illegally without being checked for vaccinations, American citizens cannot go do many things, like get on an airliner, without showing evidence of up-to-date vaccinations!!!

All of this bad news in his first year in office calls for Biden’s three-B plan to be renamed: “Biden Blunders Bigly,” or “Building Backward Better” are two possibilities.

America’s crime wave is a direct result of liberal policies

One of the most serious and most common stories these days is that crime is rampant in many cities across the U.S. 

Twelve major cities have new homicide records. These cities are: Albuquerque, New Mexico; Austin, Texas; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Portland, Oregon; Rochester, New York; St. Paul, Minnesota; Toledo, Ohio; and Tucson, Arizona.

This high crime situation follows the violence-ridden summer of 2020, where people protested the killing of George Floyd by a police officer. There were riots and criminal activities in several cities, which also featured the popular, but baseless, claims of systemic racism and extensive police brutality against people of color.

This criminal activity is the direct result of liberal policies toward crime and criminals. Many of those in positions of power deliberately did not uphold the laws to protect both public and private property.

Author and activist Tammy Bruce released a book in 2003 titled, “The Death of Right and Wrong - Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values.” Looking at what is happening in America recently, she must be recognized for accurately seeing into the future.

Early in the book, Bruce wrote, “The Left has had to restrict individual freedom of thought and deed in order to destroy the concept of judgment and undermine notions of right and wrong that have been held nearly universally for millennia.”

The accuracy of her predictions is borne out by such plainly obvious foolishness as: 

• Defunding the police, where city boards have voted to cut funding for police departments.
• No cash bail for many crimes, where those arrested for the designated crimes are merely released into society after a court appearance.
• Prosecutors refuse to prosecute many crimes, which leaves perpetrators unpunished for their harm to society.
• *Suggestions by the soft-on-crime faction to close federal prisons.

Today, we see people whose duty is to uphold law and order by prosecuting criminals through the legal system deliberately not doing their job.

George Gascón may be the most notorious of the renegade prosecutors. Born in Cuba in 1954, he is now the district attorney of Los Angeles County. Prior to this, he was a practicing attorney and a police officer, and previously served as the district attorney of San Francisco from 2011 to 2019. 

To win his current position, Gascón defeated District Attorney Jackie Lacey, who had been targeted by Black Lives Matter as being pro-police. Lacey is the former San Francisco district attorney who “authored the controversial Proposition 47, which is being blamed for the violent crime wave in Los Angeles because it downgraded many felonies to misdemeanors,” according to the Washington Examiner. Gascón has dutifully followed in those footsteps.

To give some idea about his perspective on crime and criminals, Gascón once said that “arrest is traumatic and dehumanizing” to those arrested. A forthright prosecutor would understand the obvious reality that if you don’t want to be traumatized and dehumanized, don’t commit crimes. But not Gascón.

The predictable result of these policies is very symbolized by what happened at the Waukesha, Wisconsin Christmas parade.

The man accused of driving his SUV into participants and observers of the Christmas parade, killing six and injuring dozens of others, had a substantial criminal record, had been arrested days before, and was set free after paying a small bail fee.

Darrell Edward Brooks Jr, was arrested 21 days prior to the Waukesha attack for hitting his ex-girlfriend with his car during a domestic dispute. Charges for that case include second-degree recklessly endangering safety with domestic abuse assessments, a felony; disorderly conduct with domestic abuse assessments; misdemeanor battery with domestic abuse assessments; and obstructing an officer. He was released on only $1,000 bail two days before the Waukesha attack.

Police officers who are charged with upholding the laws, and arresting law-breakers are frustrated with the leniency being forced upon them. Los Angeles, California is a good example.

Last week, Jamie McBride, the head of the LA Police Protective League, which represents LAPD officers, told Fox 11 News that crime was a big problem in the city, and he would urge people to stay away.

“It is so violent, we are telling people don’t visit because we don’t think we can keep you safe right now,” he said.

Referring to the new lax policies, McBride said, “Right now, you can literally go out, do whatever you want, commit crimes, and you’ll be out [of jail] faster than the officers can finish the report,”

Rachael Rollins, whose nomination as U.S. attorney for Massachusetts was recently approved by the U.S. Senate, had a list of 15 crimes she thought should not be routinely prosecuted in her previous position, including trespassing, drug possession, disorderly conduct, minor in possession of alcohol and resisting arrest.

Yes, these are somewhat minor crimes. But failure to prosecute them is a dis-service to victims, and sends a bad message to the criminal element.

These soft-on-crime ideas are foolish in the extreme, and weaken the very foundations of our country. Ultimately, if not stopped, America will be destroyed from the inside, and turned into another failed country like Cuba and Venezuela. Restore our proven system and save America.

America’s future is in doubt. It is under attack from within.

In past weeks this column has addressed the increasing weaknesses, outright failures, and attacks on once-stable components of our culture and our nation.

The deteriorating education system, particularly at the college level, but increasingly at the K-12 levels, has resulted in millions who have not learned about their country and its history. Lots of them have instead been, and are being, indoctrinated with distinctly un-American political ideology. And some professors and teachers willingly abandon their professional integrity to do this.

The latest big push is to fight what some call the “systemic racism” of the United States by seeking to convince members of one race that they are inherently evil, and members of the other races that they are perpetual victims.

News journalism is becoming more and more agenda driven. Relevant and important stories are often not presented by many news sources. Some who play the part of journalists will pass items off as news that are manipulated to benefit a political agenda. Some items presented are misinformation and are not researched for accuracy, because they advance the political agenda, as written. 

In the political sphere, where dishonesty exists, loyalty to partisan agendas has replaced forthright service to the American people for many office holders. The “progressives” are working hard to change things so that they will be in power forever.

The broad benefits to our culture of the two-parent family, and its educational and stabilizing effects on children, have been seeping away over recent decades. In 1960, 87.7 percent of children under 18 lived with two parents. In 2020, was 70.4 percent, almost 20 percent lower.

Concerns for protecting people’s oversensitive feelings have replaced responsible behavior as the guidepost for living a good and productive life. Efforts to make everyone equal in terms of outcomes — equity — to protect feelings, defy nature. Some people are simply stronger than others, faster than others, smarter than others, etc. It’s part of being an adult to accept our strengths and deal with our weaknesses.

The rise in violent crime in many American cities reflects the lack of appreciation for life, and the failure of families and schools to teach basic humanity and life lessons to millions of young people. Lots of these under-educated people are now adults.

An example of what results when families and schools fail is this: An adult male recently brought a pregnant 12-year-old girl to a hospital in Tulsa, OK because she was in labor. He told the people there that he was the father of the baby-to-be. He had no apparent recognition that impregnating a child of 12 is a crime, not to mention its immorality. 

This situation of improperly trained youth has been made worse by enacting truly foolish ideas. The idea of defunding the police is responsible for much if not most of this new pandemic of criminality, as police officers retire, quit, or back off of doing their job because they no longer have the backing of the local government.

And soft-headed “progressive” prosecutors who do not prosecute the accused, and the equally silly idea of no bail and immediate release of persons arrested for serious crimes, invite those criminals to hit the streets and commit more crimes. Every day criminals released or not prosecuted are availing themselves of this foolishly provided opportunity.

The rising acceptance of socialist, communist, and Marxist ideals results from the failure of families, and the education system, which is increasingly shoving un-American ideals down the throats of the young people it is intended to help learn important subject matter, like English, math, science, geography, the arts, and real history.

Today, many without a solid background in American history say they prefer socialism, because they apparently don not understand how it has failed every time it has been tried, with Venezuela and Cuba as current shining examples.

The southern border crisis is dramatic evidence of what happens when goofy “progressive” ideals replace the sensible and successful design of our federal government. Each day tens of thousands of people enter the country illegally, with the permission and assistance of the government, and not just from Cuba or the Northern Triangle countries, but also from Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Haiti, Colombia, Turkey, Russia, and China.

As the government continues to strongly encourage vaccinations to fight Covid, and hint at renewed restrictions, thousands of illegal immigrants are ushered across the border and transported around the country with no concern about how many of them are infected with the virus.

A friend sent an email of a Facebook post, which read, in part: “I was born in 1942, almost at the midpoint of the 20th century – the American century. America’s prestige and influence were never greater. 

“Thanks to the ‘Greatest Generation,’ we won a World War fought throughout most of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. We reduced Germany to rubble and put the rising sun to bed. It set the stage for almost half a century of unprecedented prosperity. We stopped the spread of communism in Europe and Asia and fought international terrorism.”

Today, America is a mere shadow of that great nation. And many of its people are working hard to change it further.

The emotional whitewashing of history is an enormous mistake

The tragic and indefensible killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd at the hands of city police officers created understandable emotions of pain and anger in the country.

We have all witnessed the resulting peaceful protesting of police brutality against citizens. But in many cases protests turned into violent, dangerous rioting, and now rising anti-slavery emotion has spawned tearing down statues associated with that dark period in American history, and condemnation of other things reminiscent of that period.

While these efforts have strong support, other people see them as wrong; as trying to whitewash history, instead of leaving these statues and other things to remind us of the evils of slavery, now gone from America for more than 150 years.

If slavery was a mistake of our nation — and it was — so is trying to erase every last vestige of it. We learn from our mistakes, so that we don’t make them again. But if there is nothing to remind us of our errors, at some point in the future we may again travel down those paths.

Through the years people have made important, illuminating comments about such situations.

One of the most relevant is this one: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” — George Orwell, 1984

Two more are from a current source, the brilliant Thomas Sowell: “Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination.”

And: “Emotions neither prove nor disprove facts. There was a time when any rational adult understood this. But years of dumbed-down education and emphasis on how people ‘feel’ have left too many people unable to see through this media gimmick.”

HUD Secretary Ben Carson said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” recently, “We’ve reached a point in our society where we dissect everything and try to ascribe some nefarious notion to it,” he said. “We really need to move away from that. We need to move away from being offended by everything, of going through history and looking at everything, of renaming everything. I mean, think about the fact that some of our universities, some of our prestigious universities, have a relationship with the slave trade. Should we go and rename those universities?

“It really gets to a point of being ridiculous after a while,” Carson said. “And, you know, we’re going to have to grow up as a society.”

And then there is this: “The modern Left: they cancel ‘Gone with the Wind’ ... and then burn Atlanta.” — U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, R-TX.

Other targets include brand names that have been part of American life for decades, without hurting anyone: Eskimo Pie, Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix and syrup, Uncle Ben’s rice, Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, and Cream of Wheat breakfast mix. These brands are considering changing their names and/or appearance due to pressure from the change culture.

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, recently ordered the removal of four portraits of former Speakers. “As I have said before, the halls of Congress are the very heart of our democracy,” she wrote in a letter requesting the removal of the portraits, “there is no room in the hallowed halls of Congress or in any place of honor for memorializing men who embody the violent bigotry and grotesque racism of the Confederacy.”

The portraits are of Robert M.T. Hunter of Virginia, Howell Cobb of Georgia, James L. Orr of South Carolina and Charles F. Crisp of Georgia. Crisp served in the Confederate Army, but entered politics after the Civil War in the 1870s. The other three were in Congress before the War, and then held high civilian office in the Confederacy.

Pelosi has been in Congress for a lifetime, and is Speaker of the House for the second time. Why did the presence of these four previous Speakers’ portraits not drive her crazy before now?

But let’s not ignore the other side of this coin. The advocates of whitewashing unpopular items from our history sometimes goof.

Along with the statues of Confederate luminaries, the cleansers of history also wanted to remove the statue of Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was in fact the leader of the Union Army that defeated the Confederates, and became the President of the United States after the War from 1869 to 1877. Yet, the cancel culture wants his statue destroyed.

And then there are objects that fit the definition of things that they want removed, but maybe after thinking about it, they might change their minds.

A Facebook tweet reads: “Yale University was named for Elihu Yale. Not just a man who had slaves. An actual slave trader. I call on @Yale to change its name immediately and strip the name of Yale from every building, piece of paper, and merchandise …”

The idea of whitewashing history is not a good thing.

The debate over the death penalty in the United States begins anew

Since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College to win the presidency, and especially since Trump was sworn in, the news has been filled with all manner of items, some of them silly, nit-picking and embarrassing for the media, and others of varying degrees of importance and interest.

Among the actual news items was the choice of the excellent Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court and the battle that ensued to confirm him; the Syrian air base strike and the MOAB bombing of an ISIS tunnel/cave installation in Afghanistan; and more recently the situation in Arkansas where the state intended to execute eight death row inmates in the 11 days remaining before the end of April when one of the drugs used in executions reached its expiration date.

This latter development produced quite a lot of comment, most of it negative from opponents of the death penalty.

The death penalty is sanctioned through the 5^th and 14^th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and each death row inmate had been convicted and had many years to appeal their sentence or conviction, so why so much controversy? Many were horrified not about the death penalty itself, but that Arkansas would conduct so many executions in such a short period.

The death penalty is a matter of long, spirited debate, notwithstanding its constitutional and Biblical validations.

The religious aspect is important in the United States, since among the volumes of things former President Barack Obama misunderstands about America is its still-strong religious nature. Of the 35,000 participants from all 50 states polled in a 2014 Pew Research Center study of Religion and Public Life, Christians accounted for 70 percent of participants, and more than 75 percent claimed some religious affiliation.

While our government is not founded on any set of religious beliefs, people with religious beliefs have been a major segment of the population since the nation’s founding, and their beliefs heavily influenced the founding principles, and that influence still exists today.

Many Christians, along with people holding other religious beliefs, and still others who do not cite religion at all, object to the death penalty on its failure of compassion. “How can religious and other compassionate people indulge in such a barbaric act?” the argument goes.

Steve Stephens, a 37-year-old black man, was having trouble with his girlfriend, so naturally he decided the solution was to randomly pick out someone to kill. After mentioning the woman’s name to 74 year-old Robert Godwin Sr., also a black man that he came upon while searching for a victim, he shot and killed the unsuspecting and totally innocent Godwin.

Stephens’ stupid and vicious murder highlights this issue. Many believe that someone who intentionally and deliberately murders another person and inflicts shock and grief on that person’s family and friends somehow is entitled to the compassion the murderer sadistically denied the victim(s).

One religious argument against executions is that it denies the criminal the opportunity to repent and even use his/her experience to try to turn others to religion and away from crime.

Others believe, however, the condemned deserves no consideration or compassion when his or her justice is rendered. “Should not that person suffer at least as much as the victim and those close to the victim?” this argument goes.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1972 allowed the resumption of the death penalty, its use has dropped off substantially. While 31 states still legally allow executions, ten of them have executed no one in the last ten years, and 26 have executed no one in the last five years.

Several reasons are cited: the possibility of executing an innocent person; botched executions; a decline in the crime rate; and the cost of fighting those opposing the imposition of the death penalty in capital cases.

There are five legal methods of execution – firing squad, gas chamber, hanging, electrocution, and lethal injection – and lethal injection is the hands-down preferred method. Much of the opposition to the other four comes down to how “unpleasant” each of those methods is to the condemned, with lethal injection normally being the least uncomfortable. However, even lethal injections sometimes cause suffering to the condemned.

There is an on-going debate over whether the United States should have a death penalty. Another debate centers on making the execution as easy on the condemned as possible.

Perhaps this represents a true expression of compassion, or maybe it is one more step toward making executions so difficult and expensive that eventually it will be abandoned, in favor of keeping vicious criminals alive and relatively comfortable in prison for the rest of their lives at a tremendous cost to taxpayers.

As long as there is a death penalty, someone who is absolutely proven guilty of committing a capital crime and sentenced to death should collect his or her just reward in a reasonable amount of time (which will be in fewer than 10 or 20 years), as efficiently as possible, and as inexpensively as possible. If it hurts a little, or a lot, too bad.

Of all factors involved, the concerns of the criminal come last.

Is this the end of Liberalism in the United States of America?

Have you noticed how unhinged many liberals have become since Donald Trump won the presidency? Of course you have; you can’t miss something that extensive and that crazy.

Many liberals, perhaps most, reside moderately to the left of the political center; but this is about the radicals who hang on by their fingernails to the left-most edge of the political spectrum, about to slip off into undisputed madness.

These leftmost folks have disentangled themselves from the general rules of common courtesy and civility where some may properly disagree with the ideas of others in a polite and accepting manner. These radicals are not just disagreeable but are becoming more militant and demanding, and want not to persuade others to their ideas, but to force their acceptance.

Whereas more reasonable folk hold the position that if they think smoking is a bad thing, they don’t smoke, or if they don’t think red meat is a good thing, they are vegans, or if they believe guns are always and forever dangerous and never suitable for personal ownership, they don’t buy a gun. The leftmost, by contrast, want to totally ban tobacco, red meat and guns, and will do their best to bring those bans to reality.

Protesting is protected speech in America, and we honor that right. But increasingly those protests sponsored by liberals turn to violence and destruction in their infantile temper tantrums of whining and foot stomping, demonization and name-calling. Demonstrating the character of those radicals, a Trump golf course in California and his Washington hotel have recently been vandalized. And if liberals think some group deserves special consideration and you don’t agree, you are called racist, misogynist, Nazi, fascist, immigrant-hater, etc.

And now, things are happening that are so bizarre that they can only be accurately described as deliberately dishonest, or just dumb. California Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters actually said on MSNBC’s “Hardball” four days before the inauguration that Trump ought to be impeached. She implied that Trump had gotten campaign information from Russia, such as the names he called Hillary Clinton and others, and therefore he should be impeached, after he becomes president. Obviously, a president can be impeached only for wrongs committed while in office. Shouldn’t a long-time congressional representative know that?

On ABC’s “Good Morning America” David Wright attributed the timing of Trump’s U.S. Attorney purge to Fox News host Sean Hannity, noting the purge occurred one day after Hannity called for it on TV. These requested resignations are standard operating procedure when the new president is of a different political party than his predecessor, and any network news reporter ought to know that. Yet somehow because Hannity mentioned it on his show shortly before it occurred, it was Hannity that “ordered” the action, and Trump would not have done it otherwise. Fake news?

And it is much worse than those examples. Some liberals have sunk to a level below mere opposition. It is anti-Americanism: not the loyal opposition, but the disloyal political enemy. Among the more serious infractions is that appointees and holdovers from the previous administration apparently have leaked sensitive information to the media, which have eagerly reported these things, potentially breaking laws and committing treason.

While this behavior has been on the increase for a while, the election of Donald Trump has been like a dose of steroids, as if his election lifts the barriers to illegal and unethical behavior. People seem to have forgotten that, like him or not, Trump is the duly elected president, and while much of the opposition merely makes things more difficult for him, some of it puts the nation’s stability at risk.

Shelby Steele, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, evaluates these changes in liberalism as follows: “The recent flurry of marches, demonstrations and even riots, along with the Democratic Party’s spiteful reaction to the Trump presidency, exposes what modern liberalism has become: a politics shrouded in pathos.”

He remembers how things were during the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, “when protesters wore their Sunday best and carried themselves with heroic dignity,” and bemoans today’s liberal marches, which he described as “marked by incoherence and downright lunacy — hats designed to evoke sexual organs, poems that scream in anger yet have no point to make, and an hysterical anti-Americanism. All this suggests lostness, the end of something rather than the beginning. What is ending?”

He continues, “Our new conservative president rolls his eyes when he is called a racist, and we all — liberal and conservative alike — know that he isn’t one. The jig is up. Bigotry exists, but it is far down on the list of problems that minorities now face.” Reaching back into his own experiences, he notes, “I grew up black in segregated America, where it was hard to find an open door. It’s harder now for young blacks to find a closed one.”

Calling current liberalism “an anachronism,” Steele goes on to explain that what we have today is not liberalism, but “moral esteem over reality; the self-congratulation of idealism.” And he concludes with the post mortem: “Liberalism is exhausted because it has become a corruption.”

Trump’s focus on crime could help Chicago

Unless you live on another planet you have heard of the dangerous conditions in Chicago, where the level of violence is and has been at a crisis level for years. Chicago, like other major cities, has rampant crime despite strict gun laws, and the Windy City has one of the higher murder and shootings rates in the country.

On a per capita basis, Chicago does not attract much attention, because of its large population. Based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s last count in 2010, the estimated population in 2016 was 2.7 million, so its murder rate per 100,000 residents isn’t that large. But Chicago still wins a dubious prize for its total number of homicides and shootings.

Data compiled by the Chicago Tribune staff shows that in 2016 there were 4,368 shooting victims in the city, and 762 homicides. Things don’t look much better for 2017: as of Jan. 28, there were 268 shooting victims, which is a little lower than January 2016. But last January was the third lowest month for shootings in 2016, so things could easily get worse.

At least 39 people were shot across Chicago over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend, leaving 10 dead. Six people were shot while attending a memorial service for a shooting victim last week.

Greg Zanis, a retired carpenter, creates wooden crosses for each person killed by gun violence in Chicago and places them in a grassy lot in the city’s Englewood neighborhood. Last year was the deadliest year for gun violence in 20 years, so Zanis was busy, with 762 homicides, up from 496 in 2015.

Some shooting deaths result from action by police officers, but most shootings do not involve police, and are attributed primarily to gang violence. Yet the deaths involving police officers attract much more attention than the far greater number of shootings and murders that do not involve the police. Data taken from the Independent Police Review Authority shows that in 2016 police were involved in only 11 of the 762 total shooting deaths. Police also wounded 14 people. The chance of being killed by a Chicago police officer is only 1.4 percent.

However, in the high-crime minority communities, there is an almost automatic reaction to blame the police in shooting deaths when they are involved, despite the fact that in the vast majority of cases the victim either initiated the incident, or resisted or fought against a proper action by police.

These knee-jerk reactions arise before details are known, and are based upon emotions and prejudice, ginned up by people who try to pass the blame to police, rather than face up to the reality that the victims have brought their fate on themselves through criminal behavior.

This false narrative survives even after police have been determined not to be at fault, and is responsible for protest demonstrations and hatred and mistrust of police. The effect too often makes police reluctant to patrol in the neighborhoods where these confrontations have occurred and are most likely, but where police presence is most needed, which, of course, makes matters worse.

Street violence has increased in the administration of Democrat Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who served as President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff from 2008 to 2010, and was elected mayor in 2011. In addition to having failed to get control over the crime-ridden city, Emanuel has opened Chicago to illegal aliens, proclaiming, "Chicago has in the past been a sanctuary city. ... It always will be a sanctuary city,” and celebrated when Obama scapegoated Chicago’s police as he exited the White House earlier this month.

In response to the continuing dangerous circumstances in minority neighborhoods President Donald Trump, a major critic of Chicago’s violent living conditions, has said that he might “send in the Feds,” leaving folks wondering just what that means. Some interpreted it to mean he would federalize the Illinois National Guard, while others thought he meant to dispatch federal law enforcement. Neither is likely, given the eroded but still existent protections from such overreaches provided by the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.

It’s more likely he intends to use federal assets in a more acceptable manner, such as providing federal intervention if requested.

Citing Mayor Rudy Gulliani’s action in New York City, National Review’s Andrew McCarthy suggests that approach could work in Chicago, noting that the “U.S. penal code is better equipped to deal with street crime today than three decades ago.” McCarthy, however, acknowledges that the feds cannot totally solve Chicago’s problems.

“In Chicago, federal law enforcement could make a difference by using and building on task-force arrangements with the CPD and state police,” he wrote. “High-crime areas could be targeted over a sustained period for investigations of narcotics trafficking, firearms offenses, violent crimes in aid of racketeering (racketeering can include street-gang violence and drug conspiracies), and extortionate interference with commerce by violence or threats. A healthy percentage of the cases developed … could then be indicted in federal court, where the penalties are stiffer and surer.”

Emanuel has failed to reduce crime in his city, but he is amenable to receiving assistance. Perhaps Trump’s focus on big city crime will pay off.