Rand Paul: We Must Demilitarize the Police

Anyone who thinks race does not skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention, Sen. Rand Paul writes for TIME, amid violence in Ferguson, Mo. over the police shooting death of Michael Brown 

By Senator Rand Paul

(Time) The shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown is an awful tragedy that continues to send shockwaves through the community of Ferguson, Missouri and across the nation.

If I had been told to get out of the street as a teenager, there would have been a distinct possibility that I might have smarted off. But, I wouldn’t have expected to be shot.

The outrage in Ferguson is understandable—though there is never an excuse for rioting or looting. There is a legitimate role for the police to keep the peace, but there should be a difference between a police response and a military response.

The images and scenes we continue to see in Ferguson resemble war more than traditional police action.

Glenn Reynolds, in Popular Mechanics, recognized the increasing militarization of the police five years ago. In 2009 he wrote:

Soldiers and police are supposed to be different. … Police look inward. They’re supposed to protect their fellow citizens from criminals, and to maintain order with a minimum of force.

It’s the difference between Audie Murphy and Andy Griffith. But nowadays, police are looking, and acting, more like soldiers than cops, with bad consequences. And those who suffer the consequences are usually innocent civilians.

The Cato Institute’s Walter Olson observed this week how the rising militarization of law enforcement is currently playing out in Ferguson:

Why armored vehicles in a Midwestern inner suburb? Why would cops wear camouflage gear against a terrain patterned by convenience stores and beauty parlors? Why are the authorities in Ferguson, Mo. so given to quasi-martial crowd control methods (such as bans on walking on the street) and, per the reporting of Riverfront Times, the firing of tear gas at people in their own yards? (“‘This my property!’ he shouted, prompting police to fire a tear gas canister directly at his face.”) Why would someone identifying himself as an 82nd Airborne Army veteran, observing the Ferguson police scene, comment that “We rolled lighter than that in an actual warzone”?

Olson added, “the dominant visual aspect of the story, however, has been the sight of overpowering police forces confronting unarmed protesters who are seen waving signs or just their hands.”

How did this happen?

Most police officers are good cops and good people. It is an unquestionably difficult job, especially in the current circumstances.

There is a systemic problem with today’s law enforcement.

Not surprisingly, big government has been at the heart of the problem. Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies—where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement.

This is usually done in the name of fighting the war on drugs or terrorism. The Heritage Foundation’s Evan Bernick wrote in 2013 that, “the Department of Homeland Security has handed out anti-terrorism grants to cities and towns across the country, enabling them to buy armored vehicles, guns, armor, aircraft, and other equipment.”

Bernick continued, “federal agencies of all stripes, as well as local police departments in towns with populations less than 14,000, come equipped with SWAT teams and heavy artillery.”

Bernick noted the cartoonish imbalance between the equipment some police departments possess and the constituents they serve, “today, Bossier Parish, Louisiana, has a .50 caliber gun mounted on an armored vehicle. The Pentagon gives away millions of pieces of military equipment to police departments across the country—tanks included.”

When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands.

Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.

This is part of the anguish we are seeing in the tragic events outside of St. Louis, Missouri. It is what the citizens of Ferguson feel when there is an unfortunate and heartbreaking shooting like the incident with Michael Brown.

Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.

The militarization of our law enforcement is due to an unprecedented expansion of government power in this realm. It is one thing for federal officials to work in conjunction with local authorities to reduce or solve crime. It is quite another for them to subsidize it.

Americans must never sacrifice their liberty for an illusive and dangerous, or false, security. This has been a cause I have championed for years, and one that is at a near-crisis point in our country.

Let us continue to pray for Michael Brown’s family, the people of Ferguson, police, and citizens alike.

Paul is the junior U.S. Senator for Kentucky.

Link:

• Rand Paul: We Must Demilitarize the Police

Mystery priest appears at Missouri accident scene, is being called an angel

By Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY

Emergency workers and community members in eastern Missouri are not sure what to make of a mystery priest who showed up at a critical accident scene Sunday morning and whose prayer seemed to change life-threatening events for the positive.

Even odder, the black-garbed priest does not appear in any of the nearly 70 photos of the scene of the accident in which a 19-year-old girl almost died. No one knows the priest and he vanished without a word, said Raymond Reed, fire chief of New London, Mo.

"I think it's a miracle," Reed said. "I would say whether it was an angel that was sent to us in the form of a priest or a priest that became our angel, I don't know. Either way, I'm good with it."

Carla Churchill Lentz, mother of the teen who was critically injured, said emergency workers have told her there is no way her daughter should have lived inside such a mangled car. Of the priest, she said, "I do believe he certainly could have been an angel dressed in priest's attire because the Bible tells us there are angels among us."

The scene unfolded Sunday morning. Katie Lentz, a sophomore at Tulane University, was driving from her parents' home in Quincy, Ill., to Jefferson City, Mo., where she has a summer internship and planned to attend church with friends. The Mercedes she was driving collided with another vehicle on a highway near Center, Mo. The accident crushed Lentz's vehicle into a ball of sheet metal that lay on the driver's side, Reed said.

Reed's team and emergency workers from several other jurisdictions tried for at least 45 minutes to remove the twisted metal from around Lentz. Various pieces of equipment broke and the team was running out of choices. A helicopter waited to carry Lentz to the nearest trauma center. Though Lentz appeared calm, talking about her church and her studies toward a dentistry degree, her vital signs were beginning to fail, Reed said.

"I was pulled off to the side by one of the members of the" helicopter evacuation team, Reed said. "He expressed to me that we were out of time. Her condition looked grim for her coming out of that vehicle alive. She was facing major problems."

At that point, Reed's team agreed to take the life-threatening chance of sitting the vehicle upright so that Lentz could be removed from it. This is dangerous because a sudden change in pressure to the body can be critical, he said.

That's when Lentz asked if someone would pray with her and a voice said, "I will."

The silver-haired priest in his 50s or 60s in black pants, black shirt and black collar with visible white insert stepped forward from nowhere. It struck Reed as odd because the street was blocked off 2 miles from the scene and no one from the nearby communities recognized him.

"We're all local people from four different towns," Reed said. "We've only got one Catholic church out of three towns and it wasn't their priest."

Reed and the other emergency workers were on their knees. The priest of about medium build, maybe 6-feet-tall, stood above them.

"This priest approached Katie and began to pray openly with her," Reed said. "He had a bottle of anointing oil with him and he used that."

Another firefighter who had been watching said it appeared as if the priest also sprinkled Reed and two other emergency workers nearby with oil.

Everything happened quickly after that. Twenty emergency workers pulled together and sat the car upright, Churchill Lentz said. Katie Lentz's vital signs improved and a rescue team from a neighboring community suddenly appeared with fresh equipment and tools. Lentz was removed and rushed to the hospital.

With Lentz gone, the rescue team prepared to clean up, Reed said.

"We all go back to thank this priest and he's gone," he said.

Initially, they assumed he had to get to his home church to lead Sunday services. But then they looked at their photos of the scene.

"I have 69 photographs that were taken from minutes after that accident happened - bystanders, the extrication, our final cleanup - and he's not in them," Reed said. "All we want to do is thank him."

Meantime, the Missouri State Highway Patrol reports a 26-year-old male was arrested Sunday on charges of DWI, failure to drive on the right half of the roadway and second-degree felony assault. He was treated and released from a local hospital, according to the report.

The Facebook page of Lentz's mother, Carla Church Lentz, indicates Lentz is on the mend despite suffering two broken femurs, a broken tibia and fibia, broken left wrist, nine broken ribs, a lacerated liver, ruptured spleen and bruised lung.

Churchill Lentz said her daughter has undergone two surgeries at Blessing Hospital in Quincy, Ill., and will undergo two more, but has been upgraded from critical to serious and is doing well.

"She sustained a lot of injuries, however, her face is beautiful, her teeth are perfect, she is sunshine, and everyone who's contacted us - those emergency personnel, the Missouri State Patrol, the deputies, the firemen - they are all saying the same thing, she never cried, she never screamed, she would just say, 'pray for me and pray out loud.' "

Link:

• Mystery priest appears at Missouri accident scene, is being called an angel

Which Babies Should Get the Death Sentence?

By Terry Jeffrey

(Town Hall) Americans witnessed a remarkable drama this week when some of our most exalted politicians frantically scrambled to reassure voters that they, too, believed that the United States ought to permit the deliberate killing of at least some innocent human beings.

They apparently did so to persuade the public they are caring, compassionate and -- above all -- reasonable people.

The drama started when Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee in the U.S. Senate race in Missouri, expressed his view that no innocent human being ought to be deliberately killed.

However, that was not the only thing Akin expressed.

"What about in the case of rape. Should it (abortion) be legal or not?" Charles Jaco of KTVI in St. Louis asked Akin in an interview broadcast over the weekend.

"Well, you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well, how do you slice this particularly tough ethical question," said Akin. "It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. You know, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."

Akin's answer had two distinct parts. In the first, he made a claim about the physiological likelihood of a rape victim conceiving a child as the result of the criminal act committed against her. In the second, he made a policy statement about whether aborting such a child ought to be permitted.

The first part of Akin's answer was worse than gratuitous. It made a claim he could not back up and did so in language that itself raised questions.

But what about the second part of Akin's statement -- that rapists ought to be punished but not children conceived through rape?

Is this a logical, morally defensible, even laudable and courageous position?

A good place to find the basic premises for conducting that analysis is on the website of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. It includes a statement explaining Romney's position on abortion.

"Mitt Romney is pro-life," says the first sentence of this statement. "Mitt believes that life begins at conception and wishes that the laws of our nation reflected that view," it further says. "Because the good heart of America knows no boundaries, a commitment to protecting life should not stop at the water's edge. Taking innocent life is always wrong and always tragic, wherever it happens," it also says.

"Americans have a moral duty to uphold the sanctity of life and protect the weakest, most vulnerable and most innocent among us," it concludes. "As president, Mitt will ensure that American laws reflect America's values of preserving life at home and abroad."

Now, I have not quoted here every word from Romney's campaign statement on abortion. But the term "rape" does not appear in it anywhere.

So, here is the syllogism a logical person might begin to construct from what Romney's campaign say about Romney's position on abortion: 1) "Life begins at conception," 2) "taking innocent life is always wrong and always tragic, wherever it happens," 3) "Americans have a moral duty to uphold the sanctity of life and protect the weakest, most vulnerable and most innocent among us," and 4) "Mitt will ensure that American laws reflect America's values of preserving life at home and abroad."

Therefore?

Given Romney's premises, what would be the logical position for Romney to take on whether American law should permit the taking of an innocent human life conceived through a rape?

"Gov. Romney and Congressman Ryan disagree with Mr. Akin's statement, and a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape," Romney campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg told multiple news organizations on Monday.

This has been Romney's position ever since he declared himself pro-life. "I am pro-life," Romney wrote in a July 26, 2005, op-ed in the Boston Globe. "I believe that abortion is the wrong choice except in cases of incest, rape and to save the life of the mother."

So, if abortion is not the "wrong choice" in cases of rape, what kind of choice is it?

Who exactly benefits when the government permits the deliberate killing of an innocent child conceived through rape?

"And in the quiet of conscience, people of both political parties know that more than a million abortions a year cannot be squared with the good heart of America," says the abortion statement on Romney's website.
Do those same consciences think permitting the deliberate killing of some innocent children can be squared with the good heart of America -- as long as it is only certain categories of children, such as those conceived through rape?

Rep. Todd Akin's substantive position that we should protect the right to life even of those conceived through rape -- who are themselves a second victim of that evil act -- is not only in keeping with the good heart of America, it is plain and simply right.

Link:

• Which Babies Should Get the Death Sentence?

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Mitt Romney: Jesus Will Reign in Missouri and Jerusalem

Mitt Romney believes that Jesus will reign in Missouri and Jerusalem.  Set to start at 15:33:

And on abortion, "the (LDS / Mormon) church does not say that a member of our church has to be opposed to allowing (abortion) choice in society.." - Mitt Romney

Are You a Producer or Parasite? Democrats - Party of Parasites Sign Draws Fire

David Jungerman farms 6,800 acres of river bottom land in western Missouri.

He’s not the kind of guy who posts on Twitter or has a Facebook profile.

So when the 72-year-old Raytown man wanted to speak out politically, he used what he had handy: a 45-foot-long, semi-truck box trailer.

He planted the trailer with its professionally painted message in his Bates County cornfield along heavily traveled U.S. 71 about an hour south of Kansas City. He wanted lots of people to see it.

They did. Including at least one with a good case of outrage, matches and a can of gas.

On May 12, Jungerman’s trailer was torched. The Rich Hill volunteer fire department responded. A week later, it was set afire again. The firefighters put it out again.

Then flames erupted in an empty farm house that Jungerman owns.

“They don’t like free speech,” said Jungerman. He put out a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

The sign is harder to read now because some of the letters are charred; the trailer tires burnt to nothing.

“Things are getting a little out of hand out there,” said Chief Deputy Justin Moreland of the Bates County Sheriff’s Office.

Local Democrats don’t want to be linked to the arsons. Jungerman has every right to speak his mind, said Kay Caskey, a Bates County Democrat and wife of longtime state Sen. Harold Caskey.

“Obviously our country is in disarray now because of economics, jobs and foreclosures,” she said. “We are hurting as a country. But there are too many people who want to tear it down instead of build it up. Yes, there is anger out there, and we are a long way from Washington.

“This man has a right to do what he did, but around here some people might wonder at what point do you cross the line?”

Jungerman said he didn’t mean to direct his sign at local Democrats. Many of those are old-fashioned Harry Truman Democrats, he said.

“They’re more conservative than many Republicans,” he said. “I should have put an ad in the paper to explain that. No, I meant the national Democrat parasite base that is sucking this country dry. The ones that just take from the government and not give anything back.”

Jungerman says he’s not even a die-hard Republican. He voted for Claire McCaskill when she won a U.S. Senate seat in 2006.

He put the sign out to make a point, but also to stir up some fun.

“You should have heard the truckers talking on the CB radio,” he said with a chuckle. “One would like the sign and another would tell him to pull over up ahead so he could whup him.”

Jungerman grew up on a farm, but got tired of the tail of a Jersey milk cow hitting him in the face so he told his father he was going to town to get a job.

Are You a Producer or Parasite? Democrats - Party of Parasites Store

“I’ve worked 80 to 90 hours a week ever since,” he said.

He’s a staunch believer in personal responsibility. In 1990, he and his daughter confronted four teens they caught fishing in a pond on their Raytown land. The boys called them names and threatened them, Jungerman said, and one spit on Jungerman’s daughter.

Jungerman pulled a snub-nosed .38-caliber and held them until police arrived.

The police, however, arrested him, took his Rolex watch and threw him in jail. The next day when he made bail, police did not return the watch. They said they didn’t remember him having one.
He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor gun charge.

Five years later, against advice, he sued the city of Raytown for the value of the watch. He represented himself in a three-day trial that he won. But the judge overturned the verdict and the jury’s award of $9,175.
Jungerman appealed, won again and got his money.

Today, he owns a baby furniture company called Baby-Tenda Corp. at 123 S. Belmont in Kansas City’s Northeast area. He manages to get down to his farmland two or three times a week.

His problem now is that corn is looking good. Soon, it will obscure his trailer sign from highway traffic.
“Well, I would have pulled it out of there by now if they hadn’t burned the tires off.”

• Missouri man's incendiary sign on U.S. 71 draws fire
• Are You a Producer or Parasite? Democrats - Party of Parasites Store

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie Donate $1 Million to (Catholic) Hospital

From The American Papist:

"Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and his family donated $1 million to a Missouri hospital over the weekend.

Brad's bro, Doug, announced the generous contribution to St. John's Hospital in his hometown of Springfield Saturday. The money will establish an endowment fund to pay children's cancer specialists, the Springfield News-Leader reports.

The hospital's cancer treatment unit will be renamed the Jane Pitt Pediatric Cancer Center, in honor of Brad's mom, who is passionate about children's issues...

The endowment fund will also go toward building a new pediatric unit, a 10-bedroom hospital-based Ronald McDonald house and doubling the size of the neonatal and pediatric intensive care units..."

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