Tag Archive for FBI

We All Deserved It

I AM OUTRAGED!

Whomever is telling the truth, Christine Blasey Ford or Brett Kavanaugh, is NOT the issue. The Senate Judiciary Committee has treated both of them unfairly.

Ms. Ford was not allowed to present witnesses who would be subpoenaed to substantiate her claims under direct questioning  and oath. Yes, some submitted short statements, but, as any attorney will tell us, that doesn’t bring out as many facts that in-person, under-oath questioning does.

Judge Kavanau may have benefited from those witnesses, because they may have contradicted each other or said something to prove his side when under the heat of direct questioning. He, too, did not present in-person witnesses which could have bolstered his side of the story.

On both sides, a thorough FBI investigation would have uncovered truths, half-truths, and inconsistencies. Or a history that made one or the other or both suspect. That’s their job–the job they’ve done for accusations made in past nominations. But the Judiciary Committee decided to take on most of that task themselves.

Remember that this is a committee that is supposed to be non-politically biased, like a court. Yet they were drowning in political accusations, blame, and verbal fights. Both sides had political motives. So how could they make an unbiased decision, especially without knowing the whole story that an FBI investigation would foster?

Why are both parties being harmed? Neither has actually had their day in court. Neither is vindicated. Neither has had their good name cleared. Both have had themselves and their families go through a demeaning experience in these hearings. These are people, not pawns.

And our country loses, because we’ve added a person to the highest, most important, citizen-protecting court in our land who will always be surrounded by a cloud of suspicion as he makes serious decisions that affect our lives.

Why would a delay of a couple of weeks–with a vote still before the November elections–have been a bad thing?  Both of these people, and America, deserved it!

 

Why Hate

The FBI just came out with a report on hate crimes in the U.S. in 2016.  They cited 6,121 cases during the year, BUT those were the ones that were reported and rose to the legal level of being criminal incidents.  How many more were there, I wonder. Far too many.

So why do people commit hate crimes to begin with? The FBI broke it down into three major categories: 57.5% were motivated by race, 21% by religion, and 17.7% by sexual orientation.

Are we so afraid of people of different races and religions and sexual orientations other than our own?  Are they, simply because of those differences, out to get us? Of course not. So why are we out to get them?

Something to think about.

Muslims, 9/11, and 2015

I thought maybe we were learning to respect each other more and starting to replace fear of the unfamiliar with understanding.  Then I saw that, according to the FBI, last year the number of hate crimes against Muslims was the highest it’s been since 9/11.

And that was pretty much BEFORE the negativity of the recent campaigns and the unrest that is following,  I dread the 2016 statistics, almost as much as I’m heartsick about all the innocent lives touched by unjust anti-Muslim sentiment.

 

CA, Immigration, Violent Crime, and People who will Save Us

I don’t like outsiders coming into California and telling me what’s wrong with my state, especially when they haven’t done their homework.  I’m galled by Donald Trump’s telling us how bad the violent crime is in California and attributing it to our immigrants.

According to the CATO Institute’s Immigration and Crime–What the Research Says, “Between years 2000 and 2005, California cities with large inflows of recent immigrants tended have lower violent crimes rates [emphasis mine] and the findings are statistically significant.  During the same time period, there is no statistically significant relationship between immigration and property crime.”

The American Immigration Council  says this in The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States: “For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime [emphasis mine]. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education.”

CNN reported in Immigrants and Crime–Crunching the Numbers that “numerous studies going back more than a century have shown that immigrants—regardless of nationality or legal status—are less likely than the native population to commit violent crimes or to be incarcerated. A new report from the Immigration Policy Center notes that while the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. more than tripled between 1990 and 2013 to more than 11.2 million, ‘FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined 48%—which included falling rates of aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. Likewise, the property crime rate fell 41%, including declining rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary.’”

A GAO (U.S. Government Accountability Office) report shows an increase in immigrants arrested, but for immigration violations, traffic violations, and drugs, not for violent crimes.  “Based on our random sample, GAO estimates that the criminal aliens had an average of 7 arrests, 65 percent were arrested at least once for an immigration offense, and about 50 percent were arrested at least once for a drug offense. Immigration, drugs, and traffic violations accounted for about 50 percent of arrest offenses. About 90 percent of the criminal aliens sentenced in federal court in fiscal year 2009 (the most recently available data) were convicted of immigration and drug-related offenses.”

I did my own bit of homework, all by myself.  Trump and others like him have teams of people to do it for them.  But they don’t care about the truth; they care only about sound-bites and riling us up against each other so they can jump in and say, “Trust me. I’ll save you.”

Go away and leave California alone.  We don’t need your type of “saving”!