The uselessness of the death penalty in Pennsylvania

I get it: the family are outraged at the murder of Temple University Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, but let’s tell the truth here: a death sentence in Pennsylvania is virtually meaningless.

Family of slain Temple Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald seeks the death penalty for his alleged killer

“It meets every threshold of the death penalty,” Joel Fitzgerald said of the crime.

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, January 23, 2024 | 11:35 AM EST | Updated: 1:21 PM EST

The family of slain Temple University Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, who authorities say was shot and killed by 18-year-old Miles Pfeffer last year, said Tuesday that Pfeffer should be sentenced to death if convicted.

Shortly after seeing Pfeffer in court for the first time since his arrest 11 months ago, Fitzgerald’s family gathered outside the courthouse and called on District Attorney Larry Krasner to seek the death penalty in the case.

“What we’d like to see is this person to go through the pain that our son went through, to go through the suffering that our family is going through,” Joel Fitzgerald, a former Philadelphia police officer, said of his son’s alleged killer.

Well, that will never happen. Even if executed, the current method is lethal injection, where the Commonwealth would put condemned men to sleep like an unwanted kitten in the shelter; they aren’t going to shoot him and let him bleed to death. Mr Pfeffer’s family might suffer as the Fitzgerald family have, but they’ll suffer just as much if their precious baby boy is locked behind bars for the rest of his miserable life.

“It meets every threshold of the death penalty,” he said. “We’ll be waiting with bated breath to hear from the district attorney to see what they decide.”

Ellie Rushing of The Philadelphia Inquirer has already told us the answer the Fitzgerald family will almost certainly receive:

Krasner has long said he opposes the death penalty, and last year — just two days before Fitzgerald was killed — Gov. Josh Shapiro said the death penalty should be abolished in Pennsylvania.

The Governor does not have the authority to commute a death sentence on his own; he has to receive a recommendation for clemency from the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute a sentence or pardon a crime. Yet, despite a current death row population of 127 souls, no one has actually been executed this century.

There have been three executions in the Keystone State since the restoration of capital punishment, two in 1995 and one in 1999, but look at the chart: all three were what the Death Penalty Information Center labels “volunteers,” men who voluntarily dropped all of their appeals just to get it all over. Even if Larry Krasner did press for a death sentence, which he will almost certainly do not do, and even if Governor Shapiro signed a death warrant, which he has said he will not do, Mr Pfeffer, if convicted and sentenced to death would have an uncounted number of appeals. I’d point out here that Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, signed almost fifty death warrants during his four years in office, 2011 through 2015, but not a single one was carried out.

So, what’s the purpose of sentencing a man to death when everyone knows it won’t be carried out? It’s better to sentence Mr Pfeffer to life without the possibility of parole rather than set up a situation in which he has dozens and dozens of appeals, drawing out any possible execution for decades, costing the Commonwealth untold thousands of dollars in additional expenses, and bringing Mr Pfeffer a little more publicity every time his appeal goes to court. Realistically, it’s better to just let him languish in prison for the rest of his miserable life, as forgotten by almost everyone as he can be.

Marissa Fitzgerald and her mother- and father-in-law said they were upset that the preliminary hearing had been delayed four times, something they said was a “privilege” extended to Pfeffer.

All four rescheduled appearances were requested by Pfeffer’s defense lawyers, not prosecutors. Joel Fitzgerald said prosecutors should have pushed for an earlier hearing.

The newspaper article noted that Mr Pfeffer has been jailed without bail since his capture at Riverside Correctional Facility, so it’s not as though he gained any real benefit. But in a murder case like this one, judges are going to be extremely careful not to do anything which would be grounds for appeal.

If Mr Pfeffer really is the murderer, he’s unlikely to see the sky as a free man again.

Awww, what a shame this is! Democratic Socialists of America go all in on their support for Hamas, and donations dry up.

One thing to remember: those who are marching in support of the ‘Palestinians’ and Hamas tend to be younger, and poorer, and are usually not the kind of people who contribute to candidates and political organizations. Had I actually thought about this before, I would have guessed it, but now that it’s been brought to my attention, I do have a smile on my face while I type and drink my coffee.

From National Review:

Democratic Socialists of America in ‘Financial Crisis’ following Brash Support for Hamas

by Haley Strack | Monday, January 22, 2024 | 8:53 AM EST

The Democratic Socialists of America are in a “financial crisis” that will require seven-figure budget cuts and staff layoffs to correct.

News of the DSA’s financial condition surfaced as the group leads anti-Israel protests nationwide; including a pro-Hamas rally held in New York just one day after Hamas’s October 7 massacre.

“The current deficit will force us to make 7-figure budget cuts. This will require us to make painful decisions that will impact all levels of the organization. … Given our current financial state, we do not believe we can have a healthy, democratic, and effective organization while spending the amount we currently do on staff,” Alex Pellitteri, Kristin Schall, and Laura Wadlin, members of the DSA 2023-2025 National Political Committee, wrote in a proposal published last week.

For those of you who might be stymied by National Review’s paywall, you can read it for free here.

Awww, I just can’t put into words how saddened I am that the DSA will have less money to spend on trying to destroy the United States. And it pegs the irony meter that the Democratic Socialists are being hit hard by the capitalist economy. 🙂 As the New York Post’s Carl Campanile put it:

The situation appears to be a case of an organization that blindly seeks utopia and professes support of the working class clashing with reality — forcing it to have to balance a budget like the rest of America and even contemplate layoffs hated by labor unions.

Further down:

Many American progressives believe that DSA has abandoned its domestic political commitments to go all in on the pro-Palestinian cause, executive director Zioness Amanda Berman, told the New York Post.

On the matter of Israel, DSA dissented from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Senator Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.), two of the country’s most prominent progressives, in the days following Hamas’s attack. Instead of condemning the mass rape and murder of Israelis, as Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders did in October, the DSA said on October 7 that “today’s events are a direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime—a regime that receives billions in funding from the United States.”

“After Hamas’s brutal invasion of Israel on October 7, DSA doubled down on their strategy of going deep and long on antisemitism, thinking it might get them out of the hole,” Berman said. “Instead, this depraved idea dug them even deeper. True progressives, whether in the grassroots or in political leadership, will continue rejecting this extremist group and its hateful ideas in the name of true justice and equity, including for Jewish Americans.”

American Jews tend to be politically liberal and are overwhelmingly Democratic voters:

  1. Jewish adults are more likely to identify as Democrats (50%) than Republican (17%) and are more liberal in their political views (43%) than conservative (22%).
  2. Compared to the overall US electorate, Jewish adults are more likely to be Democrats (50% versus 31%) and liberal (43% versus 26%).
  3. When including independents and Others who lean toward the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, the disparity in party affiliation between Jewish adults and all US adults increases. Sixty-three percent of Jewish adults identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, compared to less than half (45%) of US adults.
  4. Among age groups, Gen Z Jewish adults include the lowest percentage of Democratic identification (43%) and the highest percentage of independents (43%). When including Democratic/Republican leaning, a greater percentage of Gen Z adults identify as Democrats or lean Democratic (65%) compared to older Jewish adults (61%).
  5. Jewish women identify as Democrats or lean Democratic at a greater percentage than Jewish men, similar to the pattern among all US adults, though to a larger degree.
  6. For both Jewish adults and all US adults, those with a college degree have higher rates of liberal identification and are more likely to identify as Democrats or lean Democratic.
  7. Just over one third of Hispanic and Black/other non-Hispanic Jewish adults identify as liberal, though 70-80% identify as Democrats or lean Democratic.

Look at that fourth numbered bullet point: the very group on which the DSA depend most philosophically are also the group which identify less with a political party have the lowest percentage affiliation with political groups. And the DSA have just trashed their brand with other liberals. Why it’s almost as though the baristas living ten to a two-bedroom fifth-floor walkup on 96th Street and the unemployed gamers and incels living in their parents’ basements spend their allowances on things other than political contributions.

No one wants to live next door to a landfill

I have long said that the conquering Israelis should have expelled every last Arab from the territories they conquered in the Six-Day War of 1967. It would have been a horrible humanitarian disaster, but such would have left the Jewish State with shortened, more defensible borders, and the displaced Arabs would not have been living under Israeli occupation. If Israel was not willing to expel the Arabs, then they should have just annexed what they wanted — primarily all of Jerusalem, the eastern part of which was under Jordanian control prior to the war — and left the Arabs to live in their own state in 1967.

The Israelis somehow thought that the Arabs would slowly emigrate, rather than live under occupation, but in that, they forgot Jewish history, how very few Jews fled Europe even faced with pogroms, discrimination, murders, and even the Third Reich. We’ve all heard about the Jewish refugee ship, the MS St Louis, turned away from ports in Cuba, the United States, and Canada, but out of millions of Jews in Nazi Germany, the ship carried only 937 passengers. Most European Jews thought that they could ride out the storm of Naziism, with some casualties, but mostly their communities and their people would survive intact. It was simply outside their paradigm that the Nazis really did intend to kill them all.

Knowing that part of their history, the Israelis of the late 1960s should have realized that the ‘Palestinian’ Arabs could, and probably would, do the same thing, try to ride out the storm at anchor.

From The Atlantic:

Some Palestinians Want to Leave Gaza. Let Them.

No one should be trapped in a war zone.

by Joshua Krug | Monday, January 22, 2024 | 6:00 AM EST

Recently, I reached out to a prominent Palestinian activist to learn about his experiences in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. He told me that his apartment had been destroyed, and that he lives in a tent with his family. They are under the near-constant threat of bombings, are often hungry, and are worried about starvation and sickness. He wants to leave the enclave—but right now, he can’t.

Several other Palestinians I’ve talked with also want to leave Gaza, and have also encountered closed borders. They of course want the violence to stop, and do not want to be permanently shut out. But above all, they want to be safe. (And I have withheld their names to protect their safety.)

An article in The Guardian this month featured a U.K.-based Palestinian who said his family members were killed in Israeli air strikes and echoed the above sentiments: “I’m not sure why no schemes have been introduced, nothing to evacuate people. I don’t even hear humanitarians talk about this any more.”

Alas! The Atlantic now requires readers to either subscribe or “start a free trial”. Fortunately, the article is also in my msn.com, and can be read for free here.

I am an American Jewish academic based in Germany, and I oppose the forced relocation of Palestinians from their land. Gaza is central to Palestinian history, and I would like people there to survive and thrive right where they are. Still, life—rather than land—should be the ultimate value, a simple fact often lost in the heated debates around the current conflict. I hear calls for a cease-fire and for the surrender of Hamas, but almost never for a safe path out of an active war zone. Palestinians deserve a state of their own, and the opportunity to take refuge outside a war zone rather than serve as martyrs for “the cause.”

There are never calls for “a safe path out of an active war zone” because none of the neighboring nations want the ‘Palestinians.’ Letting the ‘Palestinians’ leave concomitantly means having a place for them to go, and none of their neighbors want people they consider to be murderous trash living in their countries.

The Six-Day War is within living memory in the Arab states, but so is Black September. ‘Palestinian’ guerrilla fighters under Yassir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization escaped east of the river into Jordan used the Hashemite Kingdom as a base to attack Israel, but their presence and politics were leading them into calling for the overthrow of Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy and King Hussein. Finally, open warfare broke out between the PLO and Jordanian forces.

Jordan and the other Arab nations get it: admitting large numbers of ‘Palestinians’ means a very probable eventual attempt to overthrow their governments.

Egypt says a mass exodus from Gaza would bring Hamas or other Palestinian militants onto its soil. That might be destabilizing in Sinai, where Egypt’s military fought for years against Islamic militants and at one point accused Hamas of backing them.

Egypt has backed Israel’s blockade of Gaza since Hamas took over in the territory in 2007, tightly controlling the entry of materials and the passage of civilians back and forth. It also destroyed the network of tunnels under the border that Hamas and other Palestinians used to smuggle goods into Gaza.

With the Sinai insurgency largely put down, “Cairo does not want to have a new security problem on its hands in this problematic region,” (Riccardo Fabiani, Crisis Group International’s North Africa Project Director) said.

(Egyptian President Abdel Fattah) el-Sissi warned of an even more destabilizing scenario: the wrecking of Egypt and Israel’s 1979 peace deal. He said that with the presence of Palestinian militants, Sinai “would become a base for attacks on Israel. Israel would have the right to defend itself … and would strike Egyptian territory.”

“The peace which we have achieved would vanish from our hands,” he said, “all for the sake of the idea of eliminating the Palestinian cause.”

President el-Sissi regards Hamas as just another part of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical group Egypt has long attempted to suppress.

The ‘Palestinians’ have created trouble wherever they’ve gone, and the other Arab nations really want no part of them; to put it bluntly, they see the ‘Palestinians’ as trash. And nobody wants to live next to a landfill.

Homeless People Are Dangerous

I’m adapting the title of this article from Robert Stacy McCain’s series “Crazy People Are Dangerous,” because the ‘suspect’ in this case almost certainly is crazy. Really, don’t you have to be a bit nuts to pull out a knife and start stabbing someone else?

Philly DA charges man with assault for stabbing in SEPTA’s 15th Street Station

Jason Howard, 33, was charged with aggravated assault and related crimes for allegedly stabbing another man around 4 a.m. Thursday.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Friday, January 19, 2024 | 2:58 PM EST

A 33-year-old man who authorities say stabbed a man in the back multiple times in the 15th Street SEPTA subway station on Thursday morning has been charged with aggravated assault and related crimes.

Jason Howard attacked the 28-year-old victim after a confrontation around 4 a.m., a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office said Friday.

Both men were experiencing homelessness and likely taking shelter in the subway station when they apparently got into an argument and Howard pulled out a knife, authorities said.

I do so love the newspaper’s stylebook, which tells us that both the victim and (alleged) perpetrator were “experiencing homelessness,” rather than just saying that they are homeless. CBS News tells us that they were “unhoused.”

The following video report is from Fox 29 News, because The Philadelphia Inquirer would never, ever publish photos or other material which would show the image of the suspect!

Police reviewed surveillance footage and a SEPTA police officer later spotted Howard at the station, wearing the same clothing as the assailant in the video, as he stepped off a train on the Market-Frankford Line, said SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch. Philadelphia police arrested Howard on the 1500 block of Walnut Street shortly after, he said.

The Market-Frankford Line, huh? I’ve suggested before that it should be called the MF Line, because nothing good happens on it!

The Transit Police recovered a knife from the suspect, though it has not been reported whether that knife was the one which was used to stab the victim. Mr Howard is currently being held in lieu of $275,000 bail, something which a homeless man is unlikely to have or be able to raise.

We have previously noted that the city is far behind on its payments to privately-run homeless shelters, and it’s January, so yeah, the “unhoused” will seek shelter from the bitterly cold wind chills.

Former District Attorney Seth Williams tweeted, “Why drive when @SEPTA is so easy today! @SEPTAPHILLY“, and a lot of people replied with comments about how unsafe the system is. It wasn’t just this stabbing; Tyshaun Welles, an apparently good kid, was killed at the very same SEPTA station, allegedly by Quadir Humphrey, who just started shooting, apparently not aiming specifically at young Mr Welles, but just because he’s a thug with a criminal history who decided to be stupid.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a federal government agency that, with a name like that, shows how serious the problems are just by its existence, reported that, in 2022, 21% of “individuals experiencing homelessness” reported having a serious mental illness, and 16% reported having a substance use disorder. They also reported a 16% increase in “individuals experiencing chronic homelessness between 2020 and 2022,” which tells us just how much President Biden’s claims that the economy is doing just great are lies.

Let’s be honest here: homeless people are dangerous! With a (probably underestimated) 21% being seriously mentally ill and others besides that 21% — though there is certainly some overlap in these percentages — being alcoholics and junkies, that’s a lot of people you do not want to be around.

This is serious stuff. New Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins has promised to clean up the blatantly public drug market and the homeless encampments in Kensington, but that leads to the obvious question: if she kicks the homeless out of their camps, where will they go? One of the obvious answers is that they’ll go into the SEPTA train and subway stations!

Mrs Mullins is absolutely right: Kensington has to be cleaned up, but it’s not just that neighborhood. Kensington’s Allegheny Station is right along the MF Line, and the junkies will go where they know.

SEPTA needs increased ridership, and a $1.00 fare increase, to pay its bills and a city concerned about ‘climate change’ wants more Philadelphians to use public transportation, but Philly can’t get there if SEPTA stations become nothing but shelters for homeless junkies and crazy people. Over seventy years of unbroken Democratic Party and trade union rule has turned the City of Brotherly Love into what it is today. Mrs Mullins should be given a chance to do what she promised, but the problems in Philly are far greater than anyone is willing to admit.

Why do you peons hate Mother Gaia? The Plebians are not doing what the Patricians have demanded!

Fresh off the stories of the demands at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the hoitiest and the toitiest get to use their private jets to take their mistresses to a very upscale Swiss ski resort and lecture us about global warming climate change, it seems that the people are just not doing what they’ve been told!

Ford cuts production of F-150 Lightning EV, adds jobs at Bronco and Ranger plant

  • Ford is increasing production of its Bronco SUV and Ranger pickup, while cutting production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning, the automaker said Friday.
  • The announced cut to Lightning production comes a month after CNBC and other media outlets reported Ford would slash planned production of the pickup roughly in half this year.
  • The automaker will be reducing production of the Lightning at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan to one production shift from two, impacting approximately 1,400 employees.

Continue reading

Well, of course that’s it!

It was just a single sentence in a Newsweek article on the #woke — whom I regard as just boneheadedly stupid — boycotting an event because Bethany Hamilton was competing:

Bethany Hamilton’s Transgender Remark Sparks Boycott of Women’s Event

by Matthew Impelli | Wednesday, January 17, 2024 | 12:17 PM EST

Bethany Hamilton, picture from her Facebook page.

Pro-surfer Bethany Hamilton’s past comments about transgender individuals in sports have sparked a boycott of an upcoming women’s event in Wisconsin.

Over the past several months, there has been ongoing controversy surrounding the inclusion of transgender individuals into different sports categories. At least 20 U.S. states have imposed legislation that bans transgender women from competing in female sports categories, with many conservatives arguing that transgender women have an advantage over biological females.

On Tuesday, WLUK-TV in Wisconsin obtained a letter signed by dozens of community members in Oshkosh criticizing a decision by the Women’s Fund of the Oshkosh Area Community Foundation to name Hamilton as a keynote speaker for the 2024 Power of the Purse event. Continue reading

After 72 uninterrupted years in power, Democrats have kept Philly our nation’s poorest big city

The city of Philadelphia has been governed by Democrats for decades: the last Republican mayor left office while Harry Truman was President of the United States. The Democrats of today, in complete charge of the City of Brotherly Love, have talked a great, great game of taking care of the poor and downtrodden, yet it has to be asked: having talked the talk, have they walked the walk?

Some Philadelphia homeless shelters have gone months or years without being paid by the city

The Office of Homeless Services spent $15 million more than it was budgeted over the last four years, but some nonprofit leaders say during that time, they experienced severe delays in payment.

by Anna Orso | Wednesday, January 17, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST

It was the Monday after Thanksgiving when officials at Gloria’s Place, a West Philadelphia homeless shelter that’s operated for five decades, learned their contract with the city wouldn’t be renewed due to a lack of funding, and the seven families in its care would need to find shelter somewhere else.

That came after Gloria’s Place had for ten months housed dozens of children and adults referred to them by the city — but were not paid the more than $400,000 the city owed them.

Yup, it’s another one of those Philadelphia Inquirer articles limited to subscribers only. I subscribe so that you don’t have to. Continue reading

It was -4.1º Fahrenheit on the farm this morning.

When I arose, at 7:05 this morning, it was 14.1º Fahrenheit outside. No wind is showing, but there’s a possibility that the anemometer is frozen in place; I’ll tap it loose when I go outside.

I have previously noted that we have backup heat here on the farm, with a propane fireplace, something we installed during our 2018 remodeling project, because our primary heat is an electric heat pump. The thermostat for the fireplace was set at 64º F, so that it would come on if the primary heat failed overnight, but shouldn’t come on as long as the heat pump was engaged. Guess what: even though the primary heat was on and working, the fireplace still came on, which tells me that the heat pump was unable to keep up! Heat pumps work by extracting heat from the atmosphere around the outside condenser, but when there’s not a lot of heat to extract, they lose efficiency. Continue reading

Killadelphia Yet another senseless shooting takes the life of an innocent person

We have previously reported on the shooting, allegedly by the-17-year-old Quadir Humphrey, which struck a 16-year-old victim in the head. We also noted:

(I)F the reports I’ve seen on Twitter are correct, the victim has a “non-survivable brain injury” and is “now brain dead,” so the charges will surely be upgraded to murder.

More information has now been made public:

The 16-year-old shot at SEPTA station will not survive, mom says

Quadir Humphrey, 18, and Zaire Wilson, 16, will likely be charged with murder.

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, January 16, 2024 | 2:26 PM EST

The 16-year-old who was critically wounded in a shooting on the subway platform last week will not survive his injuries, his mother said Tuesday.

Tyshaun Welles, a sophomore at Frankford High School, has been on life support since Thursday night, when he was shot in the head by a stray bullet after two teens opened fire at the City Hall SEPTA station, said his mother, Racquel Bango. Continue reading