Why Has the Right Let the Floyd Cops Fry?
Last Wednesday, the attorneys for former Minneapolis police officer Tou Thao filed a motion that should
The tumbrils are rolling in Minneapolis
have been headline news on the right side of the internet. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. No surprise. For the past year, conservative media and political leaders have been shockingly quiet about the flagrant assaults on due process surrounding the death of George Floyd.
Feeling they had to say something about the Derek Chauvin verdict, the Republicans in Congress seemed to take their cues from Pontius Pilate. “I think the jury did its job,” said Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst all too typically, “and I would – I did not follow, of course, all the parts of the trial, but I would say that given the information they received, they did their job, and I guess I’m in agreement.” The sound of hands being washed echoed throughout Capitol Hill.
Thao was Derek Chauvin’s partner. A nine-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), Thao is the son of Hmong parents who fled the communists in Southeast Asia only to find the commies’ ideological heirs dictating justice in the riotous streets of Minneapolis.
Putting the Edge on Small-Town Living
Loy Edge, front and center
Small towns, once seen as suffocating, are increasingly seen as liberating. Many Americans this past year were shocked to see how eagerly public officials in metropolitan areas seized whatever power they had at their disposal to control elements of civic life that, until very recently, were thought of as being beyond state control.
In general, rural areas resisted the rush to regulate. With each passing day, their resistance seems to have been the more prudent course—emotionally, spiritually, and certainly economically.
As a result, Edge argues, there is a “megatrend of people wanting to re-experience basic American values,” and a growing belief that those values can still be found in small-town America. Having driven across Missouri a few times this summer on Route 36—no more I-70 for me—I get what Edge is aiming at.
Floyd Defendant Accuses State of ‘Prosecutorial Misconduct’
Tou Thao, one of the four Minneapolis police officers charged in the “murder” of George Floyd, filed a motion on Wednesday accusing the State of Minnesota of “prosecutorial misconduct stemming from witness
coercion.” If Thao’s accusations are true, and they certainly seem to be, the State has allowed this trial to drift irredeemably far into the brave new world of mob rule.
The charges center on the testimony of Dr. Andrew Baker, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner. Baker conducted an autopsy on Floyd on May 26, 2020, the day after Floyd’s death. As yet unaware of the politics of the case, Baker reported his findings honestly, namely that “[t]he autopsy revealed no physical evidence suggesting that Mr. Floyd died of asphyxiation. Mr. Floyd did not exhibit signs of petechiae, damage to his airways or thyroid, brain bleeding, bone injuries, or internal bruising.”
Three days later, the State filed its initial complaint against Derek Chauvin. According to the complaint, quoted by Thao, “The full report of the ME is pending but the ME has made the preliminary findings. The autopsy revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.”
It appears that prosecutors came quickly to the realization that without a charge of asphyxia, they could not accuse Chauvin of Murder-2nd Degree. As of May 29, he had been charged only with Murder-3rd Degree and Manslaughter-2nd Degree, and neither of those charges would have satisfied the largely peaceful protestors busily burning down America
Enter Dr. Roger Mitchell, stage left. A former Medical Examiner of Washington D.C. and current chair of the pathology department at Howard University College of Medicine, Mitchell spoke with Dr. Baker before Baker finalized his findings on June 1. Unsatisfied with the conversation, “Mitchell decided he was going to release an op-ed critical of Dr. Baker’s findings in the Washington Post.”
According to Thao’s motion, Mitchell called Baker to give him a heads up on the Post article and warned him, “You don’t want to be the medical examiner who tells everyone they didn’t see what they saw,” adding that “neck compression has to be in the diagnosis.”
The left opens Pandora’s box on ‘Asian hate’
No sooner did Georgia police arrest white guy Robert Aaron Long for the murder of eight people than my woke neighbors posted in their yard a “Stop Asian Hate” sign nestled right next to the “Black Lives Matter” sign.
My neighbors, I am sure, were – and likely still are – unaware of the irony of these twin postings. Wiser souls in the woke movement, however, understand they have opened a Pandora’s box on “Asian hate” that was, from their perspective, better left closed.
What Derek Chauvin Ought to Tell the Judge
It is a job like no other for a more disturbing reason. If lawyers make mistakes, they might get disbarred. If doctors make mistakes, even lethal ones, they might get sued. If cops make mistakes, they get arrested. In April, not far from here, police veteran Kim Potter shot a resisting suspect. Although the shooting was undeniably an accident, Potter was promptly arrested and charged with second-degree manslaughter.
America’s Dreyfus
Unlike other professionals, cops cannot expect equal justice under the law. White cops like Potter clearly run more legal risk than non-whites, at least when the suspect is black. The mobs demanded Potter’s arrest, and they got it. In Washington, on January 6, a still unnamed Capitol Police officer shot and killed an unarmed white female Air Force veteran without warning. The mobs were silent. So were the media. The officer went unpunished. That is not equal justice.
Michelle Claims to ‘Live in Fear,’ Barack Actually Does
On Friday’s broadcast of “CBS This Morning,” Michelle Obama made the delusional claim, one among several, that “many of us still live in fear as we go to the grocery store, or walking our dogs, or allowing our children to get a license.” Had Michelle attributed that fear to a wariness of black drive-by gang bangers or street muggers, it might have made some sense. But her fear, she implied, was of racist police.
New book is available for pre-sale. Release date is July 6.
Barack Obama knows better, but he has lived in fear as well. That fear deformed his presidency and sent the nation spiraling down a lethal rabbit hole that has benefitted no one more than the Mao-loving matrons of BLM. Not surprisingly, as I learned in researching my forthcoming book, Barack Obama’s Promised Land: Deplorables Need Not Apply, there is no one Barack fears more than wife Michelle, his personal emissary from the world of authentic African-Americans.
Derek Chauvin did not murder George Floyd
A law school grad and an (inactive) member of the bar in three states, Dr. John Dunn has been a lecturer in medical-legal matters for more than 35 years. He has followed the case from the beginning, studied the videos and reviewed the autopsy report. “Asphyxiation was not the cause of George Floyd’s death,” he tells me. “It was cardiac arrhythmia during an episode of excited delirium, a well-known cause of sudden death that was the subject of an extensive research project and monograph by the American College of Emergency Physicians, published in 2009.”
How the Left Turned Chauvin Into a Racist Killer
“Systemic racism,” said Joe.
The only question for debate really is whether Chauvin was a bad apple or a symptom of a rotten barrel. Ignoring the fact that three of Chauvin’s fellow officers will soon face trial for the same death, Biden, Harris, and their media allies came down firmly on the side of systemic rottenness. To confirm their suspicions, the White House sent Attorney General Merrick Garland to Minnesota to root out the rot.
Before weighing in further on the issue, however, Biden and his ventriloquists need to ask themselves one fundamental question: How exactly did a city with a liberal mayor and a black police chief in a state with a liberal governor and a black liberal attorney general breed a crew of racist killers, three of whom are non-white?
How Chauvin’s conviction frustrates the radicals
“Guilty on all counts?” One can almost hear the more astute radicals saying in Minneapolis. “What good does Derek Chauvin do us in prison?” Even a lesser charge would have given them a license to riot. While the angry young mill about in the streets not quite sure where to place their anger, the Democratic leadership blathers on about “systemic racism,” indifferent to the fact that the left controls every system in America more influential than My Pillow.
Then too, the fact that a jury was quick to send a white police officer to prison, possibly for life, for the incidental death of a black career felon suggests that the “system” is not terribly supportive of its “racists.” As to the easily frightened right, including the more “responsible” conservative media, they exhausted their moral energy defending Dr. Seuss. A century ago, as today, fear drove much of the reporting on the Sacco-Vanzetti phenomenon.
Where Have You Gone, Atticus Finch?
In the archives of legal fiction, two characters best embody historic liberal self-perception. One is attorney Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird fame. The other is Juror #8 in the 1957 film, 12 Angry Men. Today, each is an endangered species.
Atticus was once the left’s role model. Now the mob is.
In his defense of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of rape in 1930s Alabama, Atticus ignored public opinion. He stared down the mobs intent on extra-legal justice and protected his ”mockingbird” as best he could. The unlikely mockingbird today is former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. As Chauvin learned quickly, if he did not know it beforehand, today’s vestigial liberals identify not with Atticus but with the mob.
