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Notes -
Two culture war bombs in the upper midwest this week
In May 2025, a woman in Rochester Minnesota uttered the N-word at a child who tried to steal from her, and then again at an adult who confronted her about it while recording with his phone. Both the child and adult are Somali. The video, uploaded to Youtube, went massively viral.
The woman was charged with three counts of disorderly conduct. One of the charges was dropped, the other two just went to trial. After a four day trial and 10 hours of deliberation, the jury found a guilty verdict for one of the charges.
The defendant's lawyer is claiming misconduct by the court and intends to appeal.
Our nation's few remaining principled free speech advocates do not approve of this. This verdict will likely be appealed and may, at minimum, result in Minnesota's disorderly conduct statute being nullified with regard to offenses that are limited to speech and no other disruptive behavior.
In a somewhat ironic twist, apparently the guy who recorded the viral youtube video at the center of all this, was arrested for gang raping a child in 2022, and had those charges dropped "in the interests of justice" by the same prosecutor's office that this year thought it was in the interests of justice to throw the book at somebody for saying a naughty word. What a funny world we live in.
Bomb number two: Police in Madison, WI, responding to reports that someone was casing vehicles to break into, confronted a suspect, who fled, resisted arrest, and finally attacked one officer with a knife, causing that officer to respond with lethal force.
Activists are very clearly trying to turn this into a reprise of the George Floyd moment, including transporting the raised fist monument from Minneapolis' "George Floyd Square" to Madison. The area around the shooting has been barricaded by activists. Activists stormed a police press conference, seizing the podium to deliver a rant about Zionism.
State representative and gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong has thrown her lot fully in with the activists. Whether this helps or hurts her electoral chances will remain to be seen.
Madison's "Independent Police Monitor", who has also thrown her lot in with the activists, is confused about why the Madison Police Department are not involving her in their investigation of the incident.
Attorney Ben Crump, whose list of cases is a who's who of law-enforcement-related racial grievances, is representing the family of the deceased.
And the deceased? Over 40 arrests, multiple felony convictions, including a history of assaults on police officers. (No way to link directly to this, but go here and search for Corey Ruiz).
It never ceases to amaze me how the left is so consistently able to mobilize itself in the defense of the worst people in the world.
I don't know to what extent one is allowed to fed-post anymore, it's been a while. But... Why do Americans have guns?
The same thought occurs when the British folk are getting wrangled through their activist court system. But they don't have guns or if they do they certainly lack the bravado of the online American that would like to maintain that things like grooming gangs could never happen on his watch. Despite very similar things already being a thing, like Aurora Avenue in Seattle.
But even then, how on earth can these judges get away with this stuff? The injustice is just off the charts
It's hard to mobilize people who believe in the rule of law into doing extralegal things.
The key insight here is that sufficiently inconsistent "rule of law" is no longer rule of law. "I would prefer rule of law. Let me know when it's available again."
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"In the interests of justice" isn't a judge thing, it's prosecutor-speak. That's the language they use when they file a motion to dismiss a case. It's intentionally vague because it can mean many different things.
It could be "there is new evidence indicating this defendant is innocent and we fucked up badly by charging him," "this case is going to fall apart because the victim is no longer cooperating," "the victim disappeared so we need more time to try to locate them and maybe we'll refile if they're found," "there is now a newly elected DA who doesn't want to waste time on a case this small," or "this case is now politically toxic and we want it to go away." Or dozens of other options.
Judges don't question the motion because regardless of the true reasons, if a prosecutor doesn't want to pursue a case, then practically speaking it's dead because there has to be a prosecutor for the case to proceed. The judge grants the dismissal (usually without prejudice meaning it can be re-filed if necessary) and everyone goes to work on other cases.
Right, I should add judges and lawyers.
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