From the “duh!” file comes this: statistics suggest that Arizona, Texas and California are dealing with increased crime rates due to their high illegal immigrant population. Yes, some of that is attributable to arrests of aliens because they are in the country illegally.

But there are other crimes, many of which are drug-related. Furthermore, illegal immigrants and smuggling organizations have been linked to some specific violent crimes in Arizona. Local officials frequently cite the rash of kidnappings in their state in defending the new law. The Department of Justice’s latest National Drug Threat Assessment says there were 267 kidnappings in Phoenix last year and 299 in 2008. The report said the victims usually have a connection to immigrant smuggling groups or drug traffickers.

The report also showed that assaults against U.S. law enforcement on the southwestern border are on the rise. The report found that the number of attacks on Border Patrol agents increased 46 percent to 1,097 incidents in fiscal 2008. The report said the assaults were mostly related to immigrant smuggling.

It’s a fair article, so read it all for the other side. It is, after all, from Fox News.

Technorati Tags: Illegal Immigration, Illegal Aliens and Criminal Activity, Law Enforcement, Arizona

Just how far up Loon River do you have to go in order to get rebuked by the most liberal court in the land? Michelle Malkin tells us:

Hell has frozen over. Pigs are sprouting wings. The left-leaning 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has removed a moonbat judge from the botched LAX millenium bomber case and ruled that his sentence was too short, unreasonable, and in blatant violation of federal sentencing guidelines.

Read Michelle’s post for the full story. It’s rare that you enjoy reading about the Ninth this much.

Technorati Tags: Ninth Circuit Liberals, Judicial Reform, Michelle Malkin, Terrorist Loving Liberal Judges

The connection between poverty and crime has been accepted fact since the 1960s. Even I, a reformed liberal, still bought into it. But crime has dropped during the worst recession in living memory. With over 7 million jobs lost in an economy in trouble, crime is the lowest since the early 1960s. This, my friends, changes everything.

Heather MacDonald lays out the implications of this social phenomena:

As New York Police Commissioner in the mid-1990s, Mr. Bratton pioneered the intensive use of crime data to determine policing strategies and to hold precinct commanders accountable—a process known as Compstat. . . .

The Compstat mentality is the opposite of root causes excuse-making; it holds that policing can and must control crime for the sake of urban economic viability. More and more police chiefs have adopted the Compstat philosophy of crime-fighting and the information-based policing techniques that it spawned. Their success in lowering crime shows that the government can control antisocial behavior and provide public safety through enforcing the rule of law. Moreover, the state has the moral right and obligation to do so, regardless of economic conditions or income inequality

Exactly.

Read it all.

Technorati Tags: Crime in America, Economy, Myths Propagated by the Liberal Machine, Throwing Off the Shackles of the 60s, Die Hippies Die

Community Organizer B. Hussein Obama’s hometown of Chicago has had a deadly death toll this summer: 125 shot and killed, which is almost double the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period. Another 247 people were shot and wounded within the city limits (map here).

"Gang and gun violence continue to be the dominating threat on our streets," Bond said in an e-mail. "Up to 60 percent of the shootings are gang related. More than 90 percent of the offenders have criminal histories and up to 80 percent of the victims have criminal histories."

Personally, I reject all calls to pull out of the Chicago quagmire and abandon the citizenry. It is time to beef up the troops and start treating gang members like terrorists. Guantanamo has plenty of room.

Not to mention maybe giving the law abiding citizens that are held hostage in their homes the right to carry arms. Oh wait, that right is granted by God and enshrined in the constitution.

Obama and his cohorts just "organized" the citizens out of thinking that they still have that right.

HT to non-blogging Patriot Pat.

Japan hung (hanged?) three convicted murderers, bringing the number of executions performed this year to ten. In contrast, Texas has only executed one prisoner in 2008.

Japan is making their move this year, as it only executed 9 in 2007, while Texas dispatched 26.

And here I am living in a whimpy state that hasn’t killed anyone this year, and only 2 last year.

Disclaimer: Before y’all go and get mad at me, I must admit that I am actually against the death penalty. Just havin’ a bit of fun, here.

2006 was a record year in terms of known lawbreakers. Two million offenders were either in jail or prison, 4.2 million were on probation, and nearly 800,000 were on parole. for a total of 7.2 million people in the American criminal justice system.

The cost to taxpayers, about $45 billion, is causing states such as California to reconsider harsh criminal penalties. In an attempt to relieve overcrowding, California is now exporting some of its 170,000 inmates to privately run corrections facilities as far away as Tennessee.

"There are a number of states that have talked about an early release of prisoners deemed non-threatening," said Rebecca Blank, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank. "The problem just keeps getting bigger and bigger. You’re paying a lot of money here. You have to ask if some of these high mandatory minimum sentences make sense."

Meanwhile in Ohio, Joseph Groth has been sentenced to eight years in prison for attempted murder and felonious assault after he stabbed his wife multiple times, hospitalizing her for over a month. Groth was paroled in 1983 after serving one year for the killing of his first wife, Eva, in 1981.

There are four times more crime in the capital of Norway than in New York, with a 20% increase in robberies over the last year alone. The Oslo police are blaming the increase on an influx of East Europeans.

Click on the picture below to hear the recording of the 911 call from a Pasadena, Texas man when he called the cops about two burglars breaking into his neighbors house. For those of you who haven’t heard about this, you can read the news story. In part:

He grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun and called 911, Lambright said.

"Uh, I’ve got a shotgun," he told the dispatcher. "Uh, do you want me to stop them?"

"Nope, don’t do that," the dispatcher responded. "Ain’t no property worth shooting somebody over, OK?"

Horn and the dispatcher spoke for several minutes, during which Horn pleaded with the dispatcher to someone to catch the men and vowed not to let them escape. Over and over, the dispatcher told him to stay inside. Horn repeatedly said he couldn’t.

When the men crawled back out the window carrying a bag, Horn began to sound increasingly frantic.

"Well, here it goes, buddy," Horn said as a shell clicked into the chamber. "You hear the shotgun clicking, and I’m going."

A few seconds passed.

"Move," Horn can be heard saying on the tape. "You’re dead."

Boom.

Click.

Boom.

Click.

Boom.

Horn redialed 911 and told the dispatcher what he’d done.

"I had no choice," he said, his voice shaking. "They came in the front yard with me, man. I had no choice. Get somebody over here quick."

There is all kinds of debating going on about whether this guy was right to do what he did, so I might as well add my voice.

A 61-year-old retiree willing to confront two young thugs is no coward. You can hear in his voice that he doesn’t want to go out, but that he feels compelled to. He’s had enough of thievery and people hiding scared in their houses. He takes action.

God bless him.

As to the validity of the shoot. He warned them, "Move [and] you’re dead." They advanced on him. He shot. That sounds like a good shoot, although exact logistics need to be determined (there was an awfully long pause between the second and third shot). Horn’s attorney is, of course, claiming self defense.

As to the circumstances. The castle doctrine in Texas was recently expanded precisely because the citizens of Texas were tired of rampant crime. This is the zeitgeist in which this incident takes place. That is important in determining state of mind.

As to Joe’s actions. The most foolish thing he did is tell the 911 dispatcher that he was going to go outside to kill those two guys. This denotes premeditated intent. If I were sitting on the jury, however, I would take it a different way: I think Joe was trying to tell himself that he would be capable of such a thing if it became necessary, to hype himself up. You can hear the trepidation, if not real fear, in his voice as he prepares to go outside to do what is right.

Bottom line: a citizen tries to stop a crime. That is not only the purview of the police, but the duty of every citizen. When this citizen attempted to stop two men from committing wrong, they charged him and he felt his life was in danger. He shot.

God bless him.

Joe will have to live with this the rest of his days. I’m glad it wasn’t me. But at this point, I’m equally glad there are citizens like Joe Horn willing to stand up for right.

Guy “finds” surface-to-air missile launcher in a shed (he swears he doesn’t know how it got there — maybe it wasn’t even his shed). Guy trades it for a pair of tennis shoes in an Orlando guns-for-shoes program. Click link for pic.

Mmmm, could this be a whole new spin off for Cash in the Attic?

[Guy says he took it to three dumps trying to get rid of it but they wouldn't take it. Damn, I'd have given him more than a pair of tennis shoes for it!]

HT to Gizmodo.

I still contend that GW has been a near-disastrous president on the domestic front: bigger government, uncontrolled borders, no Social Security reform, no cohesive energy policy, no real and lasting improvements in education.

But one of the few places that Bush has made a difference, a will continue to make a difference for years to come, is the appointments that have been made to the Supreme Court.

Legal Times writes:

The first full term of the Roberts Supreme Court was a blockbuster, with major rulings on abortion rights, school integration and campaign finance reform.

The Court’s conservative wing was victorious in most of the key cases, leading many commentators to view the term as a historic turning point.

The above introduces a transcript of a discussion of the court. Even though it requires registration to access the transcript, it only costs an email address and is worth the trouble. Among other things, the participants point out that:

• In terms of divisiveness, the Court this term, in one-third of its docket, divided 5-4, where a single vote made all the difference. That number is the highest that it’s been in a decade . . .
• John Roberts had said in his confirmation hearings that one of his goals was to get clear decisions, and by and large, with the exception, actually, of the race cases, the Court managed to do that.
• In terms of ideology, for the 24 5-4 decisions, the highest percentage by far, 13 of those cases, were decided by a conservative majority. That is to say, Justice [Anthony] Kennedy and everybody to the right of him: Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas.
• Six of the [24 5-4 decisions] were decided by Justice Kennedy joining the more liberal members of the Court. That is the second-lowest number of wins for the liberal wing of the Court in the last 10 years, and so it fared pretty poorly
• In the 24 5-4 decisions, [Justice Kennedy] was in the majority in all of them, every single one. In the 72 cases decided this term, he was in the majority in 70.

Best quote:

I think more liberal members of the legal community are dismayed, are basically giving up, saying, “Maybe we should shut the Supreme Court down. Is it really all that necessary?”

And for that, I thank W.

HT to non-blogging Fourth Horseman.