RICHMOND, Va. (AP)- Virginia Democrats say they are looking to make a transformational change to the state’s criminal justice system – just a few months after taking a far less ambitious approach.
The killing of George Floyd and widespread protests over police violence have prompted lawmakers and their allies to promise sweeping changes to a criminal justice system many advocates have long said doles out disparate treatment to minorities.
“I think we’re all tired of the incremental change that has failed us and failed our community members for so long,” Portsmouth Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Morales said on a conference call recently organized by Senate Democrats. “We want to do as much as possible as quickly as possible.”
It’s a far cry from earlier this year, when criminal justice reform supporters were disappointed when many of their proposals were put off for a year or sent to a commission for study.
Democrats controlled the Virginia’s state legislature for the first time in a generation and passed landmark legislation hailed by many of their allies, including environmentalists, women’s rights groups, and gun-control supporters.
But criminal justice reform supporters said lawmakers were too timid, passing some minor reforms but punting on major issues. That includes bills to end solitary confinement, abolish the death penalty and make it easier to expunge criminal records for misdemeanor and nonviolent felony convictions.
But after Floyd’s killing sparked nationwide protests lawmakers pledged to make criminal justice a key part of a special session scheduled in August. The session was initially set just to focus on state budget shortfalls due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Lawmakers recently began to hold hearings on criminal justice proposals that have been suggested by the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, the Democratic Senate Caucus and a group of liberal-leaning county prosecutors.
Those proposals include banning choke holds, giving prosecutors unrestricted access to all reports and disciplinary records of police officers and downgrading the charge of assault on a police officer from a felony to a misdemeanor in cases where the officer is not injured. Those who want to change the law say the assault charge can be misused and overused by police, sometimes when they fear they will be accused of using excessive force. The current law carries a mandatory minimum sentence of six months behind bars.
John W. Jones, executive director of the Virginia Sheriff’s Association, said he’s worried what kind of message passing that law would send about keeping police safe. He also said he’s nervous lawmakers will enact bad policy by trying to do too much too fast. A particular concern is a push to weaken immunity provisions for law enforcement officials from lawsuits.
“I’m really concerned about some of these really important issues being rushed through without due process,” Jones said.
Other proposals Democrats and their allies support include requiring that most warrants are served during the daytime, and that a judge, not a magistrate, approve any no-knock or nighttime warrants, proposals that are aimed at preventing cases similar to Breonna Taylor, who was fatally shot by police conducting a no-knock warrant at her home in Kentucky earlier this year.
I was engaged yesterday in a serious discussion with a white police detective lieutenant with over 20 years of experience in law enforcement, including as a street cop in the violent portions of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, on this question of why are we seeing day after day after day stories of white police officers using what are called “choke holds” on people of color, as they are now called, or call themselves here min America.
What the **** is up with that, was my question.
His answer was interesting.
First off, he said that with respect to George Floyd, no cop, including himself, could or would even try to justify that, which is why the cop who killed him is up on murder charges.
And yes, he was well aware of the back story there with respect to George Floyd and the cop who killed him, while another cop, an African-Americasn or person of color, looked on and watched.
So, why the choke holds?
Which he answered with a question back to me – HOW DO YOU RESTRAIN SOMEONE WHO IS VIOLENT AND IS TRYING TO BITE YOU OR SPIT ON YOU WITHOUT VIOLATING THEIR EVER-INCREASING STACK OF CIVIL RIGHTS THAT THE INNOCENT AND NON-CRIMINALS AMONG US WHO ARE THEIR VICTIMS SIMPLY DO NOT ENJOY?
What is the proper answer to that question he asked me?
Is there a polite way to do it?
Do you plead with the violent person to be nice and simply put on the cuffs?
Do you tell them when they are violent after committing a crime and don’t want to get arrested that you are sorry you bothered them, and simply walk away?
And wouldn’t that be an abdication of their responsibility to society to enforce the law?
What is the answer, he wanted to know.
As to the so-called “chokehold,” it is very basic self-defense that if you control a person’s head, you control their body, so that when you have someone violent trying to spit on you or bite you, or is fighting with you and trying to grab your weapon, and you need to protect yourself, you do what basic self-defense teaches you and you control their head.
Now, and this is a person who was commended for going up on a fire escape WITHOUT a weapon to confront a violent person with a gun holding a hostage who managed to use reason to talk the person into giving up the weapon and the hostage, when the person is restrained and the cuffs are on, the time for the so-called chokehold ends, which like all things is a matter of judgment.
So let’s take away the chokehold, he said.
And he referenced New York City where it is now a misdemeanor for a cop to restrain someone violent with anything at all that can be construed by a politician as a “chokehold,”
What then?
And his answer was, you simply go back to the more efficient and effective method of beating them down with a billy club.
OR YOU SAY “***** IT,” SOCIETY IS NO LONGER WORTH PUTTING YOURSELF AND YOUR CAREER AND YOUR SAFETY AND FUTURE IN JEOPARDY TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF SOMEONE WHO IS VIOLENT AND PREYS ON THE SOCIETY THAT SAYS IT WANTS YOU TO KEEP THEM SAFE?
What say you, Democrats?
The ball is firmly in your court now!
So which answer do you want?
Do you want to protect society?
Or do you want to protect the criminal element that is your political base?
No-Knock warrants put cops in the crosshairs. If someone breaks in another man’s home they asking to be shot. How easy it would be for a crook to announce that he is a cop as he breaks in.
Drug dealers have been robbing other drug dealers for years now breaking in like that.
Criminals should take the latest Democrat lunacy to heart. If you are going to rob or attack someone who is the easier target, a well armed, well trained conservative or a wimpy bleeding heart liberal Democrat? Criminals are lazy and usually look for soft targets. It is not too hard to discover where the best pickin’s are. So enjoy your crazy marxist democrat liberalism and open your home to the BLM, Antifa Mob. They really want to meet you.
Look at that, another racist coward that doesn’t have the balls to sign his name, what a surprise.
You got a problem?
I’m not the one hiding his racism under a screen name. So no, I don’t have a problem. I sign my name when I post publically because I am not ashamed of my opinions.
You should be…
Thinly veiled threats of violence. How predictable.
Sorin, just curious here – it’s both obvious and apparent that you hate America and everything it stands for, at least in your estimation, and that you hate Americans, as well, and I can accept that.
So why?
Why on earth did you go to all the trouble of coming here to become a citizen of a nation you detest along with its people?
Because the streets are paved with gold?
Because all the women are whores?
Because it’s easy pickings over here?
If I hated a place and the people in it, I sure as hell wouldn’t waste time going there to settle.
So I’m curious as to why you bothered to come here, where you are so unhappy.
And maybe some of what you think is an air of superiority among older Americans like myself goes back to the fact that unlike Romania, we were not with the Nazis during WWII, nor did we have Fascist political forces such as the Iron Guard in power over here during that war.
We were on the other side of that conflict, against the fascists, not with them.
Does that serve to color our viewpoint?
I would say so.
Sorry that offends you, but such it is.
And have a glorious day, Sorin, and oh, yes, welcome to America!
“Sorin, just curious here – it’s both obvious and apparent that you hate America and everything it stands for, at least in your estimation, and that you hate Americans, as well, and I can accept that.”
As usual Paul, you twist anything anyone says into your xenofobic rants. No, I don’t hate America and Americans.
“Why on earth did you go to all the trouble of coming here to become a citizen of a nation you detest along with its people?”
A combination of reasons. I was young and naive and seduced by the Hollywood movies. I was also initially living in progressive areas where racism and xenofobia were not rampant. The economy was booming and the need for computer experts was immense.
“If I hated a place and the people in it, I sure as hell wouldn’t waste time going there to settle.”
Well, I would certainly not come now. As far as why I am staying, I still hope what’s happening now it’s a phase that was enabled by trump. That the racists and extreme right folks they will crawl back in the holes they crawled out if. It’s also logistically difficult for me to move to another country now, but I am not discounting
“And maybe some of what you think is an air of superiority among older Americans like myself goes back to the fact that unlike Romania, we were not with the Nazis during WWII, nor did we have Fascist political forces such as the Iron Guard in power over here during that war.”
We Romanians didn’t invade a continent, killed or marginalized the indigen population , kidnapped millions of people from another continent to use them as slaves and have a history and culture that goes back thousands of years. So there is that.
“And have a glorious day, Sorin, and oh, yes, welcome to America!”
Thanks, I will.
Thanks for your reasoned response, Sorin.
However, if you bothered to really study history, you would discover that Americans like me, Sorin, didn’t invade a continent, kill or marginalize the indigenenous population , kidnap millions of people from another continent to use them as slaves.
Before 1776, Sorin, and I’m surprised that wasn’t covered in your basic lessons to become a citizen, and by the way, welcome to America, make yourself feel at home, there were no such things as “Americans.”
The term “Americans” did not come into existence as a descriptive term until at least that date, if not long after, given people in this country back then identified with their state, not the newly-founded nation.
Given that reality, it was not the “Americans” who invaded this continent, unless you are referring to WWII and us having the temerity to invade France and Italy to suppress the fascists in Germany and Romania, which I suppose as a Romanian, you would harbor some grudges about.
The people who “invaded” this country were called Dutchmen, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, who incidentally did a real number on the indigenous population, Germans and Swedes, and Italians and Irishmen, and Scots, and I apologize if I have left anybody else out of that list.
And it wasn’t Americans like me, Sorin, who “kidnapped” kidnap millions of people from another continent to use them as slaves.
Who “kidnapped” those people to use them for slaves were powerful tribes of Black Africans like the Ashanti (Akan people), who sold them to the Muslim Arabs and the Portuguese, and the English to use as slaves, as well as themselves.
The Akan, for example, good Black folks all, no whites among them to sully their blood, waged war on neighboring states in their geographic area to capture people and sell them as slaves to Europeans (Portuguese) who subsequently sold the enslaved people along with guns to the Akan in exchange for Akan gold.
Akan gold was also used to purchase slaves from further up north via the Trans-Saharan route.
The Akan purchased slaves to help clear the dense forests within Ashanti.
The Akan went from buyers of slaves to selling slaves as the dynamics in the Gold Coast and the New World changed.
If you want to pin the blame for slavery on someone, Sorin, which I don’t mind, not owning others as slaves for myself, blame it on the ones truly responsible, which is the Black folks in Africa, like the Akan.
And by the way, Sorin, and this should cheer your heart, in 2006 Ghana finally apologized to the descendants of slaves for the role the Ashantis had played in the slave trade.
So there is a start, anyway.
And again, Sorin, if you ever bothered to really study history to learn something, as opposed to merely reading the horse**** poured out by anarchist losers like Howard Zinn, you would know that who marginalized the Native Americans was themselves.
Who exterminated the Hurons, Sorin?
Was the Iroquois, was it not?
And who exterminated the Adirondacks?
Iroquois again.
And the Mahicans, Sorin, who exterminated them?
But that really ***** up your narrative, doesn’t it, the fact that people in life, regardless of skin color, bear responsibility for their own actions and those of their forefathers, when it is so much more convenient to lay that blame over onto white Americans like me.
Slavery (Romanian: sclavie) existed on the territory of present-day Romania from before the founding of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in 13th–14th century, until it was abolished in stages during the 1840s and 1850s, and also until 1783, in Transylvania and Bukovina (parts of the Habsburg Monarchy). Most of the slaves were Roma. Particularly in Moldavia there were also slaves of Tatar ethnicity, probably prisoners captured from the wars with the Nogai and Crimean Tatars.
The slaves were owned by the boyars, the Christian Orthodox monasteries, or the state. Initially, they were used only as smiths, gold panners and as agricultural workers, but when the principalities became more urbanized, increasingly more of them were used as domestic workers.
The abolition of slavery was carried out following a campaign by young revolutionaries who embraced the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment. Notable among them was Mihail Kogălniceanu, who drafted the legislation related to the abolition of slavery in Moldavia. In 1843, the Wallachian state freed the slaves it owned and by 1856, in both principalities, all the categories of slaves had been freed.
Following the abolition, there were attempts (both of the state and private initiatives) to sedentize the nomads and to integrate the Roma people into the Romanian society, but they had a rather limited success.
That’s a whole lotta moralizing for a mere 9 year head start, there big guy. And tell me, how is TODAY to be a ROMA in Romania?
“Slavery (Romanian: sclavie) existed on the territory of present-day Romania from before the founding of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in 13th–14th century, until it was abolished in stages during the 1840s and 1850s, and also until 1783, in Transylvania and Bukovina (parts of the Habsburg Monarchy). Most of the slaves were Roma. Particularly in Moldavia there were also slaves of Tatar ethnicity, probably prisoners captured from the wars with the Nogai and Crimean Tatars.”
Well I’ll be damned, somehow I didn’t know that. I guess Romanians were just as bus assh**** as Americans were.
As far as current day gipsy situation, it’s …. complicated. Most Romanians I now, won’t discriminate against a Roma person that is integrated in society. But there are many who are not and I have no idea what the solution is.
I actually wonder the same thing about all people who do not wish to assimilate….no mater where they were born or what a piece of paper says that they belong here or there. If you can not stand for our anthem, love this country, and be American (not a hyphenated-american), well…
GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR COUNTRY. PERIOD!
Sorin, just curious here – it’s both obvious and apparent that you hate America and everything it stands for, at least in your estimation, and that you hate Americans, as well, and I can accept that.
So why?
Why on earth did you go to all the trouble of coming here to become a citizen of a nation you detest along with its people?
Because the streets are paved with gold?
Because all the women are whores?
Because it’s easy pickings over here?
If I hated a place and the people in it, I sure as hell wouldn’t waste time going there to settle.
So I’m curious as to why you bothered to come here, where you are so unhappy.
And maybe some of what you think is an air of superiority among older Americans like myself goes back to the fact that unlike Romania, we were not with the Nazis during WWII, nor did we have Fascist political forces such as the Iron Guard in power over here during that war.
We were on the other side of that conflict, against the fascists, not with them.
Does that serve to color our viewpoint?
I would say so.
Sorry that offends you, but such it is.
And have a glorious day, Sorin, and oh, yes, welcome to America!
“I actually wonder the same thing about all people who do not wish to assimilate….no mater where they were born or what a piece of paper says that they belong here or there. If you can not stand for our anthem, love this country, and be American (not a hyphenated-american), well…
GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR COUNTRY. PERIOD!”
Like your ancestors “assimilated” into the native Indian culture when they got here? Yes, we’re doing the exact same think your hero ancestors did. We come and change the country the way we see fit. We make it better. Maybe I should say, we make it great. Again. For real, unlike the MAGA crowd pining for the 50s.
Those Indians could not protect their loved ones or their land, so it was taken from them. The Krauts and The Coolies would have loved to have taken our homes in the 40s. You sir will take nothing but a crap.
USA 2 time World War Winner!
Some other user posted this comment almost word for word. So either you can’t think for yourself and steal other people’s posts or you write under pseudonym. Either way, I see no value in debates with you, here or elsewhere. I’m certainly not giving you my phone number as you requested in some other post.
You Sir, are a Coward and a foreign coward at that.
“You Sir, are a Coward and a foreign coward at that.”
That hurts me so bad… Some faceless right wing dude on the web, most likely posting under a pseudonym as I can’t find any other references to this name outside of cape Charles mirror, thinks I am a coward. I don’t know how could I possibly go on with my life.
Any Time…you would do well to look over that log before you leap.
From here on out let us stop this back and forth. Should you wish to discuss anything further leave a number where you can be reached. No need for moderation. But as you are a liberal, you would call the cops the minute we hung up.
Okay, Sorin, way to go – stand up for your rights as an American citizen.
So, you’re going to make America great, again?
When was it “great” before?
The 1820s?
The late-1800s into the early-1900s when anarchists like the one who murdered President McKinley were a dime a dozen in this country?
Is that the “greatness” you are going to bring us back to?
You think that maybe if you try, you might get some push-back from people who don’t want to be taken back to those times, or to have more anarchists today revive them?
Or do you think that this time, the masses will finally see the light of day and rise up to support you?
As to the time of “greatness” progressive immigrants like yourself brought us to in the past, a time of “greatness” for anarchists you want to restore in the United States of America today, Leon Czolgosz, an American steelworker and anarchist, a “progressive” in America today, who joined a moderate working man’s socialist club, the Knights of the Golden Eagle, and eventually a more radical socialist group known as the Sila Club, where he became interested in anarchism, stood in line and counted the people between him and the president of the United States.
Nondescript, dressed in a dark suit, and wearing an innocent expression, Czolgosz looked younger than his 28 years.
Now, as to your making America great again scheme, the Knights of the Golden Eagle was a very progressive fraternal organization founded in Baltimore in 1872, the original objectives of which were to help its members find employment and aid them while unemployed.
For those times, Sorin, I am sure that you would agree that these were some of the most progressive people on the face of the earth with that policy, which I find admirable, myself, helping those who need a hand up, not a hand-out!
As to how really great those times were, as a model of the greatness you and your fellow travelers want to restore here in America, to as you say “We come and change the country the way we see fit,” membership in the moderate working man’s socialist club, the Knights of the Golden Eagle, was open to white males over 18, without physical or mental handicaps, who were able to write and support themselves, were law-abiding of sound moral character and of the Christian faith.
Now, seriously, Sorin, immigrant or not, who can be against any of that?
And if that is the greatness that you are promising, why I think the majority would truly be with you in your crusade to restore that time of greatness when progressive working men’s socialist clubs like the Knights of the Golden Eagle, which was open to white males over 18, put a premium on those who were without physical or mental handicaps, and who were able to write and support themselves, and who were law-abiding of sound moral character and of the Christian faith.
As to rituals, which as you know, are very important to the kind of group cohesiveness you are trying to restore here in America, the Knights’ ritual, which you should seriously work to restore, worked three degrees, based on the history of the Crusades: the first degree accented the pilgrim and taught the candidate fidelity to God and man; the second degree used the medieval knight as its role model to teach the member to revere religion, fidelity, valor, charity, courtesy and hospitality; the third degree was based on the figure of the crusader and it “equipped the member against the evil of his enemies.”
Can you imagine what kind world it would be, Sorin, if you succeed in your own crusade, which I am for, to teach modern society in America to revere religion, fidelity, valor, charity, courtesy and hospitality?
Getting back to Czolgosz, just like your fellow progressives today who are rioting and looting and burning in the name of a better tomarrow for us all, he believed there was a great injustice in American society, an inequality which allowed the wealthy to enrich themselves by exploiting the poor.
Like your fellow progressives today, he concluded that the reason for this was the structure of government itself.
Then he learned of a European crime which changed his life: On July 29, 1900, King Umberto I of Italy had been shot dead by anarchist Gaetano Bresci.
Bresci told the press that he had decided to take matters into his own hands for the sake of the common man.
So, he had waited for more than two hours in 82-degree heat on September 6, 1901, for his turn to shake hands with President William McKinley, who was visiting the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.
Speaking of making America great again as it was back then, it was the first year of the new century, a perfect time to reflect on the nation’s rise in world prominence and to speculate on the future.
Talk about white supremacy and American exceptionalism thanks to immigrants like yourself who brought us starving natural-born masses the hot dog and hamburgers with Budweiser beer to wash them down with, the exposition, a world’s fair that celebrated the Americas’ industrial progress and achievement, had attracted visitors from around the world.
The event was more than halfway through its six-month run when President McKinley, the most popular chief executive since Abraham Lincoln, arrived.
McKinley’s final public appearance in Buffalo was an afternoon reception in the Temple of Music, an ornate red-brick hall on the exposition grounds.
Since being elected president in 1896, McKinley had been notorious for discounting his own personal safety at public appearances, and he had repeatedly resisted attempts by his personal secretary, George Cortelyou, to cancel this event.
Cortelyou had argued that it wasn’t worth the risk to greet such a small number of people, but the 58-year-old president refused to change his mind.
‘Why should I?’ he asked.
‘Who would want to hurt me?’
Cortelyou, always nervous about public receptions, tightened security as best he could.
The people who wished to greet the president at the Temple had to file down a narrow aisle under the scrutiny of a special guard provided for the occasion.
Outside, mounted police and soldiers controlled the massive crowd seeking entrance.
Just months into his second presidential term, McKinley — who had easily won reelection in 1900 — had made the most significant speech of his presidency the day before, announcing a policy of reciprocal trade agreements with foreign nations to encourage improved markets for American goods.
It marked the culmination of a decade-long evolution in thinking for the long-time isolationist and exemplified his statesmanship in recognition of changing times.
McKinley’s star first rose on the national scene some 10 years earlier as the Republican Party’s staunchest advocate of protectionism.
He believed that high tariffs discouraged the importation of foreign goods, thereby helping keep prices high for American goods and producing profits for industries and high wages for workers.
Using protectionism as his platform for election to the U.S. House of Representatives and the Ohio statehouse, where he served two terms as governor, McKinley established himself as his party’s standard-bearer.
According to biographer Margaret Leech, McKinley ‘carried to Congress an emotional conviction that the solution for all the country’s economic ills was to make the already high tariff rates higher still.’
By 1900, however, he saw reciprocity as a means for commercial expansion and a way to promote world peace.
McKinley was a veteran of the Civil War and retained vivid memories of the bloody conflict.
As president, he was reluctantly drawn into the Spanish-American War of 1898.
At first he downplayed stories of Spanish atrocities against Cuban nationals.
But the yellow journalism of competing newspaper publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer fired passions after the battleship Maine exploded and sank in Havana’s harbor.
Big business, looking to expand markets, added to the inexorable forces pushing the president toward war.
Spain proved little challenge though, as American forces easily defeated the outnumbered and out-gunned army and navy of the Old World power.
Talk about invading a continent, Sorin, as the victor, the United States gained Puerto Rico, Wake, Guam, and the Philippines.
The Pacific Islands were particularly significant as they established an American presence in a new hemisphere.
Moreover, the United States annexed the Hawaiian Islands that summer.
American business concerns became ecstatic over the prospects for expanded influence overseas.
But not everyone supported the president.
Hearst in particular continued to publicly criticize him.
The condemnation reached a low point on April 10, 1901, when the publisher’s Journal printed an editorial that declared, ‘If bad institutions and bad men can be got rid of only by killing, then the killing must be done.’
Although Hearst had been responsible for many attacks on McKinley, he maintained that the editorial had been published without his knowledge.
He ordered the presses stopped, but a number of newspapers were already on the streets.
On September 5 an estimated 50,000 people, including Leon Czolgosz, had listened to the president’s speech.
‘Isolation is no longer possible or desirable,’ McKinley said.
‘The period of exclusiveness is past.’
‘The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem.’
‘Commercial wars are unprofitable.’
‘A policy of good-will and friendly trade relations will prevent reprisals.’
The New York Times, remarking on the president’s about-face, wrote, ‘Unquestionably the President has learned much in the last few years.’
Unfortunately, America’s move toward imperialism had done little for the common workingman.
Already frustrated by years of economic depression that began with the Panic of 1893, and by the lack of progress toward more humane working conditions, American workers wondered why some of the vast wealth of the industrial boom wasn’t trickling down to them.
Millionaires like railroad king Cornelius Vanderbilt, oil baron John D. Rockefeller, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, and banker J.P. Morgan had accumulated unprecedented private wealth and were known to spend more on an evening’s entertainment than a coal miner or tradesman could earn in a lifetime.
Such ostentatious displays bred discontent.
Rubbing salt in the wound, the industrialists routinely relied on the government to help squelch worker uprisings.
Employee unions had progressively become a more dominant force in American life during the last quarter of the nineteenth century as they sought to improve working conditions.
Strikers had clashed violently with police and the military in Chicago’s Haymarket Riot in 1886 and again in the Pullman strike eight years later, leaving scores of people dead in the streets.
In 1892, Pinkerton detectives in Homestead, Pennsylvania, suppressed a steel strike and protected scab laborers.
The government had sided with management against workers in each instance.
And here is where the contributio9n of immigrants from Europe like yourself comes into the story of American history as it happened, to wit:
A more dangerous element — anarchism — exacerbated the situation when it arrived from Europe.
Anarchists brought a more radical philosophy to the scene, maintaining that any form of government exploited and oppressed the people.
They believed that one way to combat government was to eliminate those in power.
Since 1894, anarchists had assassinated four European leaders — President Sadi Carnot of France, Empress Elizabeth of Austria, King Humbert of Italy, and Spanish statesman Cnovas del Castillo.
In the United States, an anarchist had attacked industrialist Henry Clay Frick, in part for his role in the failed Homestead strike.
For some individuals with little or no formal education, few skills, and no hope of improvement, anarchism offered a natural outlet for their frustration.
Cleveland resident Leon Czolgosz fit the profile perfectly.
Poor, reclusive, and often unemployed, he had been born in Detroit to Polish parents in 1873.
He left school after five and a half years and worked at various jobs and later drifted to Chicago and became interested in the socialist movement.
The interest continued in Cleveland, where he took a job in the city’s wire mills.
Two weeks before he traveled to Buffalo, Czolgosz attended a lecture given by the nation’s most notorious anarchist leader, Emma Goldman.
She spoke of the struggle between the classes and why the time had come for action against government.
Surrounded by his entourage inside the Temple of Music, McKinley enjoyed the opportunity to meet his admirers.
Host John Milburn, the exposition’s president, stood on the president’s left, so he could introduce acquaintances to McKinley as they approached.
Secret Service agent George Foster, the president’s chief bodyguard, usually held that position, but he found himself five feet away from the president and standing opposite him.
To McKinley’s right stood Cortelyou, who looked into the face of each person as they came close to his boss.
He intended to signal the guards to close the doors after 10 minutes to stop the parade of well-wishers and then rush the president on to his next appointment.
President McKinley greeted each person with a warm smile and a handshake, pausing briefly to exchange words with any children who had accompanied their parents.
The line moved quickly.
Many in attendance held cloths to dab the sweat from their foreheads on the warm, humid day.
As the waiting people shuffled forward, Foster noticed one man in line who had his right hand wrapped in a handkerchief.
Foster wondered if it covered an embarrassing injury.
McKinley saw the man’s apparent disability, and he reached to shake his left hand.
Suddenly, Leon Czolgosz thrust his bandaged right hand into the president’s chest.
Onlookers heard two sharp popping sounds, like small firecrackers, and a thin veil of gray smoke rose up in front of the president.
McKinley looked confused and rose up on his toes, clutched his chest, and leaned forward.
Members of his entourage moved to support the slumping president and help him to a nearby chair as the blood spread across his white vest.
‘Be careful how you tell my wife,’ McKinley said, his strength already waning.
Foster and others pounced on the assailant, knocking him roughly to the floor as he tried to aim his revolver for a third shot.
McKinley managed a weak, ‘Don’t let them hurt him,’ when he saw Czolgosz being pummeled beneath a mass of angry guards.
As the pandemonium continued, aides rushed the president to a hospital on the exposition grounds.
One bullet had struck his sternum a glancing blow, causing only a superficial wound, but the other had penetrated his abdomen, a potentially fatal injury.
Dr. Roswell Park, the exposition’s medical director and a surgeon with an international reputation, was performing a cancer operation in nearby Niagara Falls.
Rather than wait for his return, the doctors present believed it imperative to act immediately, and they decided to operate as soon as prominent Buffalo surgeon Dr. Matthew Mann arrived.
At 5:20 p.m., an hour and 13 minutes after the shooting, President McKinley went under the knife.
As he slipped into an ether-induced sleep, he murmured the Lord’s Prayer.
Operating conditions were far from ideal, and professional lapses occurred that in retrospect probably raised an eyebrow or two, but the grave emergency required snap judgment.
At one time doctors had to reflect the waning sun’s rays onto the patient with a mirror because of inadequate lighting.
An anxious crowd awaited word of the president’s condition.
At 7:00 p.m. the physicians released a statement detailing the extent of McKinley’s injuries and describing the surgery, during which they had searched for but could not find the second bullet.
Summing up, they said the president’s ‘condition at the conclusion of the operation was gratifying.’
‘The result cannot be foretold.’
‘His condition at present justifies hope of recovery.’
While initial reports were optimistic, as they would be for the next six days, one presidential adviser felt an uneasy foreboding.
Secretary of State John Hay had already experienced the assassinations of two presidents — the first as a personal secretary to Abraham Lincoln and the second as a personal friend and confidant of James Garfield.
Called to Buffalo from Washington, Hay reportedly told his escort that the president would surely die.
But the secretary of state’s fear was an exception.
The optimism of other reports prompted cabinet officials to return to their duties elsewhere.
Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, who had rushed to the president’s bedside when he received news of the shooting, left Buffalo ‘with a light heart’ and joined his family on vacation in the Adirondacks.
The president improved daily, and he felt strong enough on the morning of September 12 to receive his first food orally — toast and coffee.
McKinley’s spirits were good, but by afternoon he began to experience discomfort, and his condition rapidly worsened.
Within 36 hours Hay’s prediction came true.
Gangrene, unseen, had been forming along the path of the bullet for nearly a week.
Some 40 years before penicillin became generally available, McKinley had been doomed the moment Czolgosz fired his revolver.
The president died in the early morning hours of September 14, surrounded by a small group of family and friends.
That afternoon Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president of the United States.
As doctors had removed the president to John Milburn’s house after surgery, another spectacle was playing out across town at police headquarters, where the anarchist’s life was in as great a peril as McKinley’s had been.
Police brandishing rifles and soldiers with bayonets transported the assailant through an angry mob of thousands who called for Czolgosz’s head.
Now an estimated crowd of 30,000 stood ready to rush the station to drag the prisoner from his cell.
‘Kill him!’
‘Lynch him!’ they demanded.
One observer commented that the ‘roar of the crowd was never to be forgotten by anyone who heard it.’
Buffalo Police Superintendent William Bull’s quick action probably saved the prisoner’s life.
Bull and his men, some of them mounted, used nightsticks to beat back the surging crowd and eventually managed to cordon off the street and surround the police station three deep, a daunting presence that discouraged mob action.
District Attorney Thomas Penney interrogated the would-be assassin inside the station.
Czolgosz readily confessed.
A self-described anarchist and disciple of Emma Goldman, Czolgosz said he had acted alone.
‘I killed President McKinley because I done my duty,’ he explained without emotion.
‘I didn’t believe one man should have so much service and another man should have none.’
From his cell across the street from city hall, Czolgosz must have heard the caisson carrying McKinley’s remains roll slowly through the streets of Buffalo on September 16 on its way to the train station for its journey to Washington, D.C.
There the president’s body was placed under the Capitol dome in the same chamber that once housed the remains of Lincoln and Garfield, before completing its trip for burial in McKinley’s hometown of Canton, Ohio.
Czolgosz was indicted and arraigned on September 16, and the trial commenced one week later in Buffalo’s city hall.
The accused, resigned and unrepentant, pled guilty, but Judge Truman C. White, one of the most experienced of New York’s supreme court justices, instructed the court clerk to enter a plea of not guilty in accordance with New York state law.
Loran L. Lewis and Robert C. Titus, the two retired justices of the state supreme court appointed to serve as defense counsel, didn’t hide their disgust at having been handed the assignment.
District Attorney Penney focused on the medical aspects of the president’s wound and death.
During cross-examination, Dr. Herman Mynter, one of the attending physicians, discussed why the doctors did not find the second bullet.
He explained that given McKinley’s weakened condition, further search risked killing him on the operating table.
Doctors did not find the bullet during the autopsy, he noted, because the McKinley family did not want the body mutilated.
The prosecution then established beyond any doubt that the defendant had committed the crime.
Czolgosz’s signed confession and interrogation immediately after the shooting confirmed his guilt.
The only hope for a not-guilty verdict remained with the question of the defendant’s mental state, a matter of much newspaper speculation in the weeks preceding the trial.
The prosecution and the defense had engaged six psychiatrists to examine Czolgosz, but the alienists, as they were then known, found no evidence of insanity.
Defense counsel never even raised the issue until closing arguments, and then only weakly.
In fact, defense counsel called no witnesses on Czolgosz’s behalf.
In fairness, though, the defendant refused to discuss the matter with either attorney, leaving them little on which to base a defense.
The state rested its case after just one and a half days, and the judge issued his instructions to the jury.
In 30 minutes they returned with the expected verdict — guilty in the first degree.
The trial had been a model of expediency, but it hardly represented an example of a strong defense.
By today’s standards it would likely result in a mistrial on appeal.
But in 1901, given the crime’s dastardly nature and a public calling for blood, defense counsel did not file an appeal.
The following month, the state of New York carried out Czolgosz’s death sentence at the penitentiary in Auburn.
The warden received more than 1,000 requests for invitations to the execution, but he allowed only 26 witnesses in accordance with state law.
Prison officials also rejected two morbid proposals — one from a museum curator to buy the corpse for $5,000 and another from a kinescope operator for $2,000 to film the condemned man’s walk to the death chamber.
On October 29 the executioner threw a switch and sent 1,700 volts of electricity through Czolgosz’s body.
Officials were afraid that removal of Czolgosz’s corpse might cause a spectacle, so they secured the family’s permission to inter it in the prison cemetery.
Prison guards doused the body with sulfuric acid to render it unrecognizable.
At Czolgosz’s request, the prison chaplain did not conduct a religious ceremony.
In spite of death threats made towards McKinley during his presidency, he had been protected by the most casual and primitive security.
The president had often walked unattended in Canton and strolled alone on the White House grounds without George Foster in attendance.
After his death — the third presidential assassination in 36 years — Congress stepped up security for United States presidents by directing the Secret Service to add the protection of the president to its duties.
Two years later, Congress enacted legislation that made presidential protection a permanent Secret Service responsibility.
That, Sorin, is from an article written by Wyatt Kingseed that originally appeared in the October 2001 issue of American History magazine, which is a great magazine for school children here in America.
So my thought coming out of all of that which really did happen here in the country, thanks to a radical philosophy brought here from Europe by anarchist immigrants, is if you are going to make America great again, beware what year you use as your model.
If William Johnson had not come from Ireland to live among the Mohawks it is reasonably certain that North America of today would not be an English-speaking continent.
In that case it is very probable that two strong nations — one French, one English — would have developed, with incessant warfare which would have greatly retarded American development and the progress of civilization the world over.
In 1746, Johnson, long a favorite with the Mohawks, was adopted as a chief of the tribe.
Stone says of Johnson and his friendship with the Mohawks: “Familiar with their language and manners, he assumed their garb and mingled among them as one of their own people.”
“He entered readily into all their athletic exercises, their games and all the varieties of their pastimes — prompted, it is likely, in part by his love of the picturesque and of wild adventure and, in part, it is but just to believe, by the sincere affection he had imbibed for the race.”
– History of the Mohawk Valley: Gateway to the West 1614-1925, Chapter 38: Sir William Johnson and the Mohawk Valley — 1738-1748.
Slavery got started here because the English settlers couldn’t get enough indentured servants to tend the tobacco fields ( not cotton).
See, the first indentured servants finished their contracts and then became farmers themselves, expanding westward through the Chesapeake region. A couple of decades later, suffering a severe labor shortage in the home country they turned to the closest source of forced labor……………………Native Americans.
That’s right, Indians traded slaves for weapons well before the Africans got in on the action.
So, ALL THE RACES are to blame for slavery. Seems to me we should all take a Mulligan and move on.
But you can’t because division is the mother’s milk of leftist ideology.
“But you can’t because division is the mother’s milk of leftist ideology.”
Seriously, is this coming from someone who voted for Trump? Have you heard ANY of his campaign speeches?
All races kept slaves all throughout history.
Most of the American slaveships and American slave-markets were run by Jews. But no one blames modern Jews. Because if anyone today says anything was “run by Jews”, they’re immediately dismissed as a crazy anti-Semite, regardless of whether or not it’s true.
When the Trans-Atlantic slaveships docked at African slave-markets to buy slaves, they bought slaves who were already slaves. It was Arab Muslims and Black Africans themselves who captured members of rival tribes and took them to the coastal slave-markets to sell to the Whites and Jews. White people didn’t go into Africa and kidnap free black people. They barely needed to get off their ships to buy slaves, it was like buying McDonalds at a drive-through. The slaves were already at the slave-market in chains, ready to go.
In the 16th – 18th century, Africans enslaved 1.5 million White Europeans in the Barbary Slave Trade. African Muslims raided up the coastlines of Europe, particularly the British Isles but even as far as Iceland, kidnapping and enslaving White European Christians. The men were galley slaves, and the women were sex slaves. This was more brutal than working on a plantation or as a domestic servant.
Native Americans and Jews owned Black slaves too, but no one seems to assign a collective guilt to modern Native Americans and Jews for their slavery. In fact, Jews were the biggest slave-owners in America per capita.
Whites were the first people to stop slavery in modern times, whereas slavery still continues in Africa to this day. In Mauritania slavery was only made a punishable offense in 2007!
Less than 2% of Whites in America ever owned slaves
Only 5% of the black slaves transported across the Atlantic actually went to the modern U.S. Most in fact went to Latin America to serve Hispanic slave-owners. But we don’t look at modern Hispanics as evil slave-owners.”
Liberals have one color.
Speaking of Blacks, Africans were the first to sell their kin into slavery while 28% of free Blacks in the US owned slaves, in much higher proportion than free whites.
10-15 million African slaves were shipped to the New World, but only 6% (400,000) to North America. The vast majority went to South America, yet countries like Brazil don’t get hit with slavery guilt.
1.5 million Whites also fell victim to white slavery in the 19th century, trafficked into prostitution. Jewish traders were instrumental in this, being the dominant slave traders for centuries as per H. D. Brackman and others. This is why slave auctions weren’t held on a Sabbath.
Jews were also the main slave traders bringing Blacks to the US. Aaron Lopez is notable: in Newport, the biggest slave trading hub, “for over 50 years over 50% of bills of lading, concessions, receipts, port clearances carried his signature.”
In all, Jews of Newport owned 300 slave ships. Of 128 slave ships docked one year in Charleston, over 120 were undersigned by Jews of Newport & Charleston. Jews were also over twice as likely to own slaves than non-Jews.
Nonetheless, slavery is projected onto and laid entirely at the feet of White men by a Jewish-dominated MSM & Hollywood. There’s also much (buried) evidence to suggest Whites were in America before Amerindians. Look up the Lovelock Cave skulls, the Solutrean hypothesis etc.
Renegade Tribune: Destroying the Anti-White Arguments
IHR: Tony Martin
I don’t like Trump, I didn’t vote for Trump, I wouldn’t vote for Trump, and I don’t support him in anyway as an individual, but I have never heard Trump making an issue about the BLACK folks in America being slaves, as if slavery in America never really ended and continues today.
The only ones I hear singing that song are the BLACK folks, the progressives, and the Democrats as in the Washington Post story “Republicans signal to Trump to back down on defense bill veto threat over renaming Confederate bases” by Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian, on 2 July 2020, to wit:
Meanwhile, the Congressional Black Caucus, emboldened by the national reckoning over racial injustice, rolled out an expansive list of legislative priorities to push the conversation even further.
The group is seeking a vote on legislation that would require a national commission to study and come up with possible reparations for slavery.
In the meantime, more forceful objections to some of the Black Caucus’s other legislative priorities are likely, as the group of several dozen black lawmakers seeks to leverage the moment to lock down policy wins.
Even some moderate Democrats, for example, have privately expressed concerns about voting on reparations legislation amid the economic meltdown caused by the pandemic, which they note is hurting many Americans of different racial groups.
Some Republicans have a more visceral reaction to the idea of compensating the descendants of slaves.
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) appeared perturbed, giving a dismissive “psst” sound and initially saying the question wasn’t even worthy of a comment.
“It’s ludicrous,” he said of reparations.
“There’s not a single person in this country that was a slave …”
“If you want to talk about slavery, there’s human slavery in this world right now going on, right now: human trafficking is huge, sex slavery, there’s domestic workers in this country that are probably enslaved …”
“How about we look forward to figure out how we can move this country forward, provide opportunities for all Americans?”
“How about we just take race out of the equation.”
Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), sponsor of the reparations bill, argued Wednesday that her proposal merely would set up a 13-person commission to study the issue.
Any payments for slavery would come from the government, not from individuals, because “slavery was government sanctioned,” she said.
“We understand that the disparities that are so stark, that are reflective of the brutality, or the cruelty, the fundamental injustice and humanity of slavery, have never been answered,” she said, later adding. “it was a government sanction that denied African Americans their equality …”
“This is … the American government’s responsibility to pay her debt.”
end quotes
Yes, Sorin, it is all the fault of white people in America.
No BLACK person in Africa bears any responsibility whatsoever, which takes us the the Wall Street Journal article “Reparations for Slavery, Shelved for Decades, Is on the Election Table” by Joshua Jamerson on 13 April 2019, where we had more of the same song, as follows:
The Rev. Al Sharpton asked Democratic presidential candidates the same question at his New York conference last week: Should the U.S. government research how to make amends for centuries of enslavement and oppression of African-Americans?
One by one, the candidates said yes.
“There’s a direct connection between exclusion in the past and exclusion in the present,” Pete Buttigieg—the mayor of South Bend, Ind., who is white — told a mostly African-American crowd gathered in a Manhattan ballroom.
“That’s exactly why we need a rigorous, serious study.”
Studying reparations for slavery has moved from theoretical fodder for essayists, economists and historians into the mainstream of Democratic politics, a phenomenon owed to top-tier presidential candidates embracing the idea and the single bill in Congress addressing it.
end quotes
Slavery is a mainstream issue for Democrats, Sorin, who are about 30% of the population, and yet they feel they have the right to keep jamming that slavery thing down our throats day after day, as if we are today responsible for all that happened in the past, before we or any BLACK person living today was even born, which is HOG****, plain and simple, and I frankly am sick of hearing about it.
Slavery is over.
Those who had slaves are dead.
End of story.
And if these people want reparations, let them go to the African countries like Ghana that are ultimately responsible for them being slaves in the first place.
Indeed I have listen to them in the entirety.
Have you?
Or are you satisfied with the edited clips offered up on MSNBC?
The HORROR of Mr. Trump –
“We will state the truth in full, without apology: We declare that the United States of America is the most just and exceptional nation ever to exist on Earth.
We are proud of the fact that our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, and we understand that these values have dramatically advanced the cause of peace and justice throughout the world.
We know that the American family is the bedrock of American life.
We recognize the solemn right and moral duty of every nation to secure its borders and we are building the wall.
We remember that governments exist to protect the safety and happiness of their own people. A nation must care for its own citizens first. We must take care of America first.
We believe in equal opportunity, equal justice, and equal treatment for citizens of every race, background, religion, and creed. Every child, of every color, born and unborn, is made in the holy image of God.
We want free and open debate, not speech codes and cancel culture.
We embrace tolerance, not prejudice.”
So reminiscent of old Adolph, heh?
The fact that nearly every European war, which embroiled England in its bloody horrors, also carried the British-American Colonies into the conflict, probably strongly tended to eventually make the American people feel the necessity of Independence.
European quarrels brought on King William’s war and Queen Anne’s war and now, in 1744, British America was again involved with New France in these foreign differences, which brought disaster and death to the French and English colonists on these shores.
A contest had arisen between Maria Theresa, Empress of Hungary, and the Elector of Bavaria, for the Austrian throne.
George II, King of England, took the part of the Empress, while Louis XV, King of France, took the opposite side, as was usual in the European quarrels which involved these two monarchs.
Louis thereupon declared war, on March 31st, 1744, against George, and English and French colonists butchered each other on the distant shores of the Atlantic, in the futile Colonial warfare which followed.
Aside from the one American-British success, King George’s war was a long-drawn-out period of apprehension of attack on the northern frontiers, varied by a border warfare of the most savage kind, in which French and Indian war parties came down from Canada and massacred and burned in many frontier sections.
The Provincial military policy was feeble throughout the war, the chief cause being the irrepressible conflict between the native American assemblys and the imported English governors.
These quarrels were carried on even during the most dangerous periods and endangered the lives and property of the men, women and children of the frontiers, of which that of the Mohawk Valley was the most exposed.
This friction between royal governor and popular assembly was one of the many causes which brought on the War of Independence.
– History of the Mohawk Valley: Gateway to the West 1614-1925, Chapter 38: Sir William Johnson and the Mohawk Valley — 1738-1748.
Speaking of our ancestors being assimilated into the native Indian culture when they got here, a topic I have been interested in for over sixty years now, the Lachine massacre occurred when 1,500 Mohawk warriors launched a surprise attack against the small (375 inhabitants) settlement of Lachine, New France, at the upper end of Montreal Island on the morning of August 5, 1689.
In their attack, the Mohawk warriors destroyed a substantial portion of the Lachine settlement by fire and killed or captured numerous inhabitants.
European accounts of the Lachine massacre come from two primary sources, survivors of the attack, and Catholic missionaries in the area.
François Vachon de Belmont, the fifth superior of the Sulpicians of Montreal, wrote in his “History of Canada”:
After this total victory, the unhappy band of prisoners was subjected to all the rage which the cruellest vengeance could inspire in these savages.
They were taken to the far side of Lake St. Louis by the victorious army, which shouted ninety times while crossing to indicate the number of prisoners or scalps they had taken, saying, we have been tricked, Ononthio, we will trick you as well.
Once they had landed, they lit fires, planted stakes in the ground, burned five Frenchmen, roasted six children, and grilled some others on the coals and ate them.
end quotes
There is some assimilation native Indian culture style for you, Sorin!
How would you have liked to be invited to dinner to be their main meal?
Give ‘Em Hell Boys, Give ‘Em Hell!!!!!!!!!
Paul Plante says
JULY 29, 2020 AT 9:51 AM
Sorin, just curious here – it’s both obvious and apparent that you hate America and everything it stands for, at least in your estimation, and that you hate Americans, as well, and I can accept that.
So why?
Why on earth did you go to all the trouble of coming here to become a citizen of a nation you detest along with its people?
Because the streets are paved with gold?
Because all the women are whores?
Because it’s easy pickings over here?
If I hated a place and the people in it, I sure as hell wouldn’t waste time going there to settle.
So I’m curious as to why you bothered to come here, where you are so unhappy.
And maybe some of what you think is an air of superiority among older Americans like myself goes back to the fact that unlike Romania, we were not with the Nazis during WWII, nor did we have Fascist political forces such as the Iron Guard in power over here during that war.
We were on the other side of that conflict, against the fascists, not with them.
Does that serve to color our viewpoint?
I would say so.
Sorry that offends you, but such it is.
And have a glorious day, Sorin, and oh, yes, welcome to America!
‘as I can’t find any other references to this name outside of cape Charles mirror”
What exactly, are you looking for?
I told your ignorant a$$ to leave a phone number. I do not live my life on social media platforms. I use this to keep my proverbial foot up liberal a$$es and pluck the raw nerves they have hanging out.
You sir, have been called out. Sh!t or get off the pot.
“What exactly, are you looking for?
I told your ignorant a$$ to leave a phone number. I do not live my life on social media platforms. I use this to keep my proverbial foot up liberal a$$es and pluck the raw nerves they have hanging out.
You sir, have been called out. Sh!t or get off the pot.”
with such elegant posts and eluquence I don’t how am I able to resist the temptation to talk to you on the telephone. Yet I will somehow find the strength since if rather not have hate calls in the middle of the night or who knows what else you can think of to “pluck the nerves”.
You sir are a bully, a racist and generally speaking the sort of human I have zero interest in conversing with. I’m only engaging with you here to counterbalance the racist , extreme right crap you are putting out there.
You never answer a question any way…
Why don’t you leave a phone number for us to call you?
tokenny, welcome to Sunday mornings at the Cape Charles Mirror where you are most definitely a part of the show!
What would a person like you, who can’t post it’s real name want to talk about? Who is ‘us’?
Are you a Siamese Twin? or Bi-Polar? Run along and take up for the minorities.
Sounds like you’re suddenly a little shy there Stuart. I look forward to introducing myself over the phone.
I think it would be so much easier if you provided your number. You have asked so many of us to provide our number, it must be difficult to remember them.
Stop hiding behind the false bravado of the keyboard. The bad-ass routine is so transparent it’s laughable.
Have I ever told you that you are a hoot, tokenny?
It’s a fact!
You’re a natural at it!
You do realize you don’t post your name, right?