Not Too Late

As Fox News White House correspondent, Peter Doocy is often an annoyance to President Biden or his press secretary, past or present. He was no different on Thursday night when, following up on the President's  response to a question of his, Doocy asked "how bad is your memory and can you continue as President?"

The President sarcastically responded "my memory is so bad I let you speak."

What in the name of the Almighty was he talking about? No one laughed because, obviously, it was neither funny nor clever. And it made no sense.

Biden was responding to yesterday's release of the Special Counsel, who has investigated the classified documents found in the President's Delaware home (garage, offices, and basement den) and his office at Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C. in December of 2022 and the following month. Robert (not Ben) Hur, appointed to the position by Attorney General Merrick Garland, had served as US Attorney in Maryland during the Trump administration. Recommending that Biden not be prosecuted

"It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness," Hur wrote. In the report, he said that during interviews Biden couldn't remember when he was vice president, and had to ask when his first term ended and began. The report added that Biden did not remember, "even within several years," when his son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.

Still, Democratic Party operatives were anxious to spin furiously:

Let's be clear--the special counsel isn't a dummy and we should be very careful not to take the bait after Comey pulled this in 2016. Hur, a lifelong Republican and creature of DC, didn't have a case against Biden, but he knew exactly how his swipes could hurt Biden politically.

— Jim Messina (@Messina2012) February 8, 2024

 

This matter is substantively, significantly different than Comey/Clinton. Hur is not the Attorney General, but a special counsel who was given the task of investigating the retention of documents and making a recommendation to the Attorney General. He

"uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified information after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen," the report said.

"These materials included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden's handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods," said the report.

The FBI reviewed 33,000 Clinton emails individually and found only three emails- later corrected to one- which contained a lower-case "c" in the middle of a paragraph. Not even classification experts would recognize that as "classified" without a header which would immediately expose the report as classified.

Nonetheless, Comey announced to the nation on July 5, 2016 that "Hillary Clinton and her colleagues" were "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information." As of that date, every Democratic primary (or caucus) had been held and Mrs. Clinton already had, safely, declared herself winner of the nomination. She was the presumptive- and certain- Democratic nominee. Whether or not there was interest, there no longer was the opportunity for any primary voter to change his or her vote.

 

By contrast, this is only January and only one party-sanctioned primary (South Carolina) has been held. There is still plenty of time to prevent the Hur report from having a significant effect on the general election- if the candidate is not Joe Biden.

He has mistaken Mexico for Egypt and the deceased Helmut Kohl for Angela Merkel, failed to recall when he became Vice-President or vacated the office, confused the war in Ukraine and Iraq, forgotten the year of death of the beloved son he often refers to with great pride... and more. It doesn't suffice that he will be running against Agent of the Devil Donald Trump, with his own, severe, cognitive problems.

Opinions of Donald Trump are largely baked-in. Therefore, if the President's condition gets progressively worse- as is likely- and Trump's condition also declines, voters will be alarmed only by Biden's deterioration. Moreover, in the unlikely event Biden is re-elected, it he probably would not be able to finish out his second term, either through death or incapacitation. And given the 25th Amendment, that would be a tragedy.

 

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Some Are Not So Lucky

Credit to D.C. Johnston for referring to Paul Whelan. It is unknown, though, whether Tucker Carlson has been a "useful idiot" or rather strategically shopping a pro-Putin line for fun and profit or perverse ideological preference.

Tucker -- a useful
idiot in Kremlin speak -- meant to say:

I'm happily letting a murderous dictator use me as his propaganda tool - while real American journalist Evan Gershkovich of the @WSJ
languishes in prison - because I'm desperate for attention, a coward and a stooge. https://t.co/bqtkmjd6fe

— David Cay Johnston (@DavidCayJ) February 6, 2024

The term probably originated from a 1996 book written by a Yuri Annenkov, who was  commissioned in 1921 to paint a portrait of Vladimir Lenin and who after the dictator's death was given access to the personal papers of the dictator.  He allegedly found that Lenin had written

To speak the truth is a petit-bourgeois habit. To lie, on the contrary, is often justified by the lie's aim. The whole world's capitalists and their governments, as they pant to win the Soviet market, will close their eyes to the above-mentioned reality and will thus transform themselves into men who are deaf, dumb and blind. They will give us credits . . . they will toil to prepare their own suicide.'

Only Tucker Carlson himself knows whether he has willingly become dead, dumb and blind or instead understands what Vladimir Putin is up to and approves. In January, a Russian court ordered that the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich

be extended until 30 March which means the Wall Street Journal reporter will spend over one year behind bars as he awaits trial.

Mr Gershkovich, his newspaper, and the US deny the espionage charges.

US officials have called for his immediate release.

"The grounds for Evan's detention are baseless," the American embassy in Moscow tweeted on Friday. "Journalism is not a crime. We continue to call for Evan's immediate release"...

It is the fourth time his detention has been extended and as a result he will continue to be held in Moscow's Lefortovo prison. Mr Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty...

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the US and Russia were discussing Mr Gershkovich's possible release, and were working to find a "mutually acceptable" outcome.

The US government has designated the reporter as being "wrongfully detained", a status which requires it to work to free him....

Alsu Kurmasheva, who works for US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, is accused of failing to register as a foreign agent and is facing a jail term of up to 15 years.

And then there is former US Marine Paul Whelan, who was given a 16-year prison sentence in 2020 after being arrested in Moscow in 2018 for suspicion of spying. When Whelan was not part of a prisoner swap in December of 2022, President Biden claimed that his Administration "will never give up" on securing release of the Michigan native.

However, Whelan's brother termed the failure to get the Michigan native released a "catastrophe for Paul." Last December, the prisoner accused President Biden of a "serious betrayal" by, as the New York Post put it, "abandoning him in a brutal Russian prison on bogus spying charges." Whelan maintained "they've basically abandoned me." 

That contrasted sharply with the case of Britney

Griner, who was arrested at a Moscow airport in February on drug charges and later sentenced to 9 years in prison, was released as part of a prisoner exchange between the US and Russia for notorious convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout.

The swap, which took months to negotiate and has drawn mixed reaction in the US for not also including fellow detainee Paul Whelan, occurred at an airport tarmac in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.

Shortly after the swap was successfully completed, US officials connected Griner to her family. That call “was as moving as it was unforgettable” to hear Griner speak on the phone with her wife, Cherelle, who was present for an Oval Office meeting, Secretary of State Tony Blinken said.

“Their strength, their resilience, has been nothing but short of inspiring,” Blinken said.

Blinken said nothing of the strength or the resilience of the Whelan family nor of the family of Evan Gershkovich, who had been arrested eight months earlier while reporting on the Russian war on Ukraine. 

Ultimately, the Administration got Britney Griner back because it wanted to get Britney Griner back. It could have been because of her gender, race, sexual preference, or profession. Most likely it was the latter, the clamor from the WNBA to rescue. the women's professional basketball star. "With each case," Paul Whelan maintains, "my case is going to the back of the line." But without Griner's qualifications, every case seems to go to the back of the line.

Something Carlson stated may apply to this situation. "There are risks to conducting an interview like this, obviously,." he says of his attempt to lend credibility to the Soviet dictator. And while there are great risks dealing with Vladimir Putin, the risk in leaving behind anyone but a Britney Griner is very much limited for an American President.

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Choosing Friends Unwisely

The pre-presidency Joe Biden has returned

Americans know that blaming a group of people based on the words of a small few is wrong.

That’s exactly what can lead to Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate, and it shouldn’t happen to the residents of Dearborn – or any American town.

We must continue to condemn hate in all forms.

— President Biden (@POTUS) February 4, 2024

.

What's it all about, Alfie (or Joe)?

On Groundhog Day, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece, written by executive director Steven Stalinsky of the Middle East Media Research Institute, entitled "Welcome to Dearborn, America's Jihad Capital."   Outside of Detroit, Dearborn- at 54% of its overall population- has the largest Arab-American population per capita in the USA.

The column reportedly precipitated a surge in hostility to Muslims. Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud, son of immigrants from Lebanon, was not amused, tweeting that it "led to an alarming increase in bigoted and Islamophobic rhetoric online targeting the city of Dearborn." (ABC) He ordered increased police presence at the locations of critical infrastructure and at houses of worship. 

The Wall Street Journal is typically behind a paywall and "Welcome to Dearborn" is not freely available. Evidently, though, as indicated by the Times of India, Stalinsky made pointed to legitimate concerns of the Department of Homeland Security about Dearborn, albeit with no smoking gun. Notably, Prior to his tweet, Hammoud had condemned the piece as "reckless. bigoted, Islamophobic."

More notably, Stalinsky challenged Hammoud to cite inaccuracies, and Hammoud has been conspicuously silent- or, rather, inconspicuously silent as no one has defended the author nor slammed the mayor. (It is too hot to handle.)

And there is a lot to criticize about Abdullah Hammoud, even if it has escaped the attention of President Biden. On the night of October 7, 2024, the Mayor- who has an extremely intimate and personal knowledge of bigotry- tweeted (in full)

Israel’s decades of illegal military occupation and imprisonment of Gaza make peace impossible and tragic violence inevitable. Israel has trapped millions of Palestinians in Gaza in what is recognized by the international community as the world’s largest open-air prison. Failure to recognize this context is the inability to comprehend what is unfolding overseas.

It is outrageous that our elected leaders from both parties continue to support this brutal occupation and in the same breath call for peace. This is not leadership, it is hypocrisy. What they are really calling for is not peace, but a return to the status quo of daily violence and humiliation against Palestinians, which many in the U.S. accept as normal. True peace requires justice. It requires the end of a racist apartheid system that criminalizes Palestinian existence. If our elected officials were truly interested in peace, we would hear their voices condemning the bulldozing of Palestinian homes, the torching of olive trees, the theft of water, the vandalism of mosques and churches, the violent theft of land, the illegal detention of Palestinian children, and the calls from Israeli leaders to “erase” Palestinians entirely.

Hypocrisy is sending billions of tax-payer dollars to Ukrainians fighting for their homeland and championing their armed struggle as “resistance,” while condemning even peaceful forms of Palestinian resistance, such as boycotts, as illegitimate.

I condemn the killing of all innocent civilians, no matter their background. Ending this violence requires ending the occupation. Peace and permanent occupation and apartheid cannot coexist. I urge global leaders to work towards a just and lasting solution that upholds the dignity, rights, and aspirations of all people.

Israel did not occupy Gaza. If it had done so, there would not have been the extensive tunnel network built by Hamas to store those weapons used against Israel, which did not "imprison" Gaza. Apartheid does not exist in Israel. Nor is the nation racist, with many of their whose residents not clearly racially differentiated from Palestinians. Nor are Palestinian homes being bulldozed in Gaza- and if Hammoud were referring to the West Bank, he should have said so rather than conflating Gazans with Palestinians elsewhere in the Middle East. Hammoud is deeply dishonest.

Of course, the Mayor is something much worse, even worse than one who obviously hates Jews. Claiming to "condemn the killing of all innocent civilians," he did not mention "Israelis" not "Hamas," instead promoting a false equivalence by adding "no matter their background"- on October 7.

The twelve sentences which follow Abdullah Hammoud's first sentence serve only to reinforce the Mayor's fondness for terrorists, at least of the Arab variety. Therein, he defended the terrorist attack which had occurred only hours earlier, labeling it "inevitable" because of "Israel's decades of illegal military occupation and imprisonment of Gaza." He would not say mass murder by Hamas was wrong, referring only to "tragic violence," as if it had been some act of God- a tornado, flood, earthquake, or even something positive.

There are liars and bigots everywhere, as Abdullah Hammoud demonstrated, yet we already knew.  More important than the head of one town, albeit a large one in a swing state, is the President of the United States of America, who is not a liar or bigot but is feckless.

In June, 2020 Kamala Harris at a presidential debate lectured Joe Biden for having decades earlier opposing school busing for racial integration. During a commercial break, Biden "muttered to fellow candidate Pete Buttigieg "Well, that was some f-king bullsh-t." The following week, Jill Biden on a conference call with supporters, evidently remarked "With what he cares about, what he fights for, what he's committed to, you get up there and call him a racist without basis? Go f-k yourself."

Nonetheless, Joe Biden selected Harris to be a heartbeat from the presidency. 

The "kick me" sign on the President's rear remains. Now the anti-Jewish, pro-terrorist mayor of Dearborn, Michigan accuses Biden (and others) of "hypocrisy" and of "not being interested in peace."  President Biden's response to the pro-Hamas public official is to do as he wished: condemn "Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate." 

Grow a pair, Mr. President. You're going to need them to defeat Donald Trump.

 

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Patsies

This is how you do it.

Or rather, this is how it should be done.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd

Austin was diagnosed with prostate cancer early in December and had surgery on Dec. 22. On Jan. 1, he was taken by ambulance to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after experiencing extreme pain due to complications from the surgery and was admitted to the intensive care unit.

He transferred decision-making authorities to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, but did not tell her why. And he did not tell Biden and other top officials about his diagnosis, his surgery or hospitalization until several days after was was in the ICU.

Having returned to his office in the Pentagon on Monday, three days later Austin stated at a news conference

I want to be crystal clear. We did not handle this right. And I did not handle this right.  I should have also told my team and the American public, and I take full responsibility. I apologize to my teammates and to the American people.

Austin may have added "I apologize" only because reporters and others don't understand that uttering the word "apologize" does not constitute an apology. Moreover, "take full responsibility" is utterly meaningless in a world in which "take responsibility" substitutes seamlessly for "don't blame me."

By contrast was an "apology" issued by the head of Facebook/Meta, who appeared Friday with representatives of social media companies Discord, TikTok, Facebook, and Snap at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing pithily titled "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis."  Mark Zuckerberg was asked by arguably the Senate's leading grandstanders, Josh Hawley of Missouri, "would you like to apologize to them," referring to the families present there who have had a loved one committed suicide or been exploited by social media.  The mainstream media was conned.

CNN: Zuckerberg also stood up and apologized to families of children harmed by social media who attended the hearing, saying, 'I’m sorry for everything you have all been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.'”

The Washington Post: Zuckerberg responded to the onslaught of grief by rising from his chair in an extraordinary moment to apologize after pressure from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to admit Meta’s wrongdoing.

NBC News: "Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized Wednesday."

AP News: "Zuckerberg has accumulated a long history of public apologies."

CNN: "Zuckerberg also stood up and apologized to families of children harmed by social media who attended the hearing, saying..."

The Hill: "Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg turned his back to senators during a Wednesday hearing to stand and apologize to parents of children who have died or were seriously harmed after suffering abuse through social media."

CNBC: One expert considered Zuckerberg’s testimony “powerful' "especially when he turned to apologize directly to families who blamed the toxicity of social media for the loss of a loved one."

Al Jazeera: "This apology adds to a long list of apologies Zuckerberg has issued since he launched Facebook in 2004 when he was 19 years old."

Reuters: "Meta CEO Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday apologized to families at a U.S. Senate hearing about the impact that social media has on children."

PBS: "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg began a two-day congressional inquisition Tuesday with a public apology for a privacy scandal that has roiled the social media giant he founded more than a decade ago,"

Kansas City Star: "Zuckerberg then stood up, turned to an audience holding up pictures of their loved ones, and apologized."

Also, The Guardian:

Zuckerberg said that he was "sorry for everything you have all been through." He did not admit what that was; did not indicate that Facebook/Meta was responsible for whatever it was; did not concede that he or his platform had made any mistake. This was not Zuckerberg's first rodeo, 

That is not an apology. (If an apology had been issued, Meta's attorneys would have been apoplectic.) I, too, am sorry for the parents' loss, just as we all are sorry when a tidal wave, earthquake, or other act of God takes the lives of human beings. Probably, too, is Zuckerberg sorrow for all those casualties. He didn't apologize for those events, either, nor should he have.

When news media get played for suckers and mistake the ordinary for the extraordinary, they fail to recognize the remarkable, even extraordinary, when they encounter it.  "I did not handle this right.  I should have also..." is a way of assuming responsibility and admitting wrongdoing, which is all too uncommon.

 

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The Haley Way

Here we go again.

In a New Hampshire town hall gathering in late December, Nikki Haley was asked about the cause of the Civil War. When the presidential candidate failed to mention slavery, the questioner responded "In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery.’” Haley in turn responded "What do you want me to say about slavery?"

It turns out that exclusion from Haley's answer of the role of slavery should not have been astonishing, nor even surprising. After what most of us thought at the time was a gaffe, then-candidate Ron DeSantis said that Haley “has had some problems with some basic American history.”

American history, and probably also civics.  Appearing with the obviously humble host Charlemagne tha God

"if Texas decides they want to do that, they can do that," Haley said in an interview with the radio show "The Breakfast Club."

"If that whole state says, 'We don't want to be part of America anymore,' I mean, that's their decision to make," Haley said, though she also noted, "Let's talk about what's reality. Texas isn't going to secede."

Asked if she still believes that states generally have the right to secede, a sentiment she expressed on camera during her initial run for governor of South Carolina, Haley said that "states have the right to make the decisions that their people want to make."

"I believe in state's rights, I believe that everything should be as close to the people to decide," she said.

This is Nikki Haley being Nikki Haley, consistent if nothing else.  When Haley initially was asked about the Civil War, she did not explicitly mention states' rights. However, this has always been the intellectual rationale for secession of southern states from the Union. And here we have the supposedly normal and moderate rival to Donald Trump arguing "if that whole state says 'We don't want to be part of America anymore,' I mean, that's their decision to make."

Well, no, it's not the state's decision to make. Conveniently, it was action by the State of Texas which resulted in a ruling by the United States Supreme Court in 1869 which confirmed that a state cannot simply call it quits.  The Texas firm Zadeh has explained

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the state of Texas issued bonds that were purchased by George W. White and others. The bonds were guaranteed by the state of Texas, but after the war, the state claimed that the bonds were invalid because they were issued during a period when Texas was not a part of the United States.

White and the other bondholders sued the state of Texas, arguing that the state had not legally seceded from the United States and was therefore still responsible for its debts. The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court.

In a 5-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of White and the other bondholders, holding that Texas had never legally seceded from the United States and remained a part of the Union. The Court also held that the Constitution did not provide for the right of secession.

The decision in Texas v. White had significant implications for the post-Civil War Reconstruction period and helped to establish the supremacy of the federal government over the states.

The firm added "It also had important implications for the country's understanding of the relationship between states and the federal government."

Evidently, that's no longer the case, at least for someone who managed to be a governor and ambassador to the United Nations, seemingly without learning civics. 

Haley would be justifiably confident that virtually no one will accuse of ignorance someone assumed to be knowledgeable and intelligent. Sidney Blumenthal, a former advisor to President Clinton and to Hillary Clinton, maintained "the unexpected incident (in New Hampshire) showed Haley to be slight, frightened, and cowardly. Her deeper problem is that she is a slave to her party" who "keeps trying to pass the southern test."

Jaime Harrison, current Democratic National Committee chairman and South Carolina party chairman during Haley's term as governor, saw Haley's act close-up. When she couldn't, or wouldn't, give a straight answer about slavery's role, Harris advised us "Time to take off the rose colored Nikki Haley glasses, folks."

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Deplored, Not Deplorable

No, we wouldn't.

“about 10 members of Israeli special forces dressed in civilian clothes went to the third floor [of the hospital], where they killed the men using weapons fitted with silencers”

In any other country, we’d call this a government death squad.
Sheesh. https://t.co/q8yYUBOqSg

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) January 30, 2024

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The raid was carried out by soldiers in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, upon a suspected Hamas terrorist cell which the IDF reportedly expected "to carry out a terror attack in the immediate period." 

There are thousands of tweets from Hasan and others condemning the Israeli Defense Forces for air strikes which kill many civilians- indiscriminately, in the warped mind of many- in Israel's fight against Hamas. Obviously, an air strike would have been ridiculous in this situation and a targeted operation was the only viable alternative- yet, even this is denounced.

It also should bring to mind a celebrated occasion in recent American history.  Exactly four years after the assassination on May 1, 2011 of Osama bin Laden by Seal Team 6, Robert O'Neill reminisced at the 9/11 Memorial Museum:

A foot and a half in front of me was Osama bin Laden. And I shot him twice, and then once more. And it didn’t really sink in; the wife sort of came at me and there was like, two-year-old kid there. So I pulled her over to the bed and grabbed the kid. And I remember thinking to grab the kid because he had nothing to do with this. I don’t want him to be afraid. So I picked him up, put him with the wife. I turned around, other SEALs were coming in the room, and I kind of stopped there and looked at them

. … [One of the SEALs] was looking at me, and said ‘Are you OK?’ I said ‘What do we do now?’ And he laughed and put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, ‘Now we go find the computers.

And I shot him twice, and then once more. It wasn't as humane as taking him prisoner, just as killing those three suspected Hamas terrorists wasn't the most humane approach by the Israeli soldiers. Seal Team 6 was so popular, respected, and unquestioned that a movie celebrating the liquidation of Osama bin Laden was made. And no one flinched.

This is not Red Coats vs. Patriots in the American Revolutionary War, trench warfare of World War I, nor a World War II of Normandy and other invasions of one nation by another. In the Middle East, an attack can come from anywhere at anytime against anyone, civilian or combatant. Israel did not make the rules, does not like the rules, but must play by the rules.   This is a very dangerous neighborhood, and Israel did not make up the rules. That is what it did at the hospital in Jenin and at times, it has no choice. 

  

            

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Common Error

In the wake of the execution by nitrogen hypoxia of Kenneth Smith, convicted of the premeditated murder in 1988 of Elizabeth Sennett in Alabama, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch pens a thoughtful column but bad tweet.

This is not a good example of decrepit morality:

A nation's use of the death penalty is a pretty good barometer of its morality

The barbaric nitrogen gas execution of an Alabama man wasn't just cruel and unusual but a warning of the violent America of troops, razor wire that looms ahead

My new column⬇️https://t.co/Co34vOo2en

— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) January 28, 2024

 

Bunch notes that the USA executed more individuals in 2022 than all but four nations, "trailing only a rogues' gallery of (mainland) China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt" (parentheses mine but you already knew that). Nonetheless, if the use of the death penalty is a pretty good barometer of a nation's morality, the USA is a very moral nation, indeed. 

The super-woke ("Latinx," anyone?) Death Penalty Information Center reported that twenty-nine states have either abolished capital punishment or paused executions and that in 2023, only five states executed a person(s) and only seven states sentenced anyone to death. It's the ninth consecutive year in which fewer than thirty people have been executed and fewer than fifty individuals sentenced to die. Moreover, of the twenty-one in the latter category, four (4) were black- so good luck to all those who argue that imposition of the penalty is racially biased.

Only nine (9) states in 2023 either executed an individual and/or sentenced someone to death in 2023. For those keeping track at home (obviously not including Bunch), that means that 41 states and the District of Columbia, with or without legalized capital punishment, avoided putting to death anyone who intentionally murdered another living, breathing human being. For anyone opposed to capital punishment, that does not qualify as astonishing immorality.

It's hardly surprising, though, that one would mistake what he consider a nation immoral in part because of a very occasional action of the government in less than 20% of its jurisdictions. That's what occurred in the summer and autumn of 2020 after the brutal murder of a black man by a white police officer in one city in one state prompted the mobilization of millions of Americans to protest the perception of constant oppression by law enforcement of blacks across the country.

That perception, borne of a failure to differentiate among cities, among states, and among regions disturbingly went almost completely unchallenged by media and political figures, the vast majority of whom knew better. Almost four years later, we have not learned from that major error and an execution considered unfair and inhumane in one state is attributed equally to every place; in Bunch's phraseology, a "nation's use of the death penalty."

 

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