Baltimore Police Commissioner Darryl De Sousa apologized for “200 years” of police behaviors during a stage appearance at a hip-hop concert on Wednesday, according to WJZ-TV.
De Sousa was joined on stage by Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh.
What did he say?
During his brief speech, De Sousa explained his regrets over the way Baltimore police historically conducted their civic duties.
“I want to take about 20 seconds to apologize for all the things the police have done dating back 200 years,” he said. “Two hundred years ago all the way to civil rights. All the way to the ’80s where crack was prevalent in the cities and it affected disproportionately African-American men. All the way to the ’90s. All the way to the 2000s when we had zero tolerance.”
“I want to take the time to apologize for what policing did and I promise you we’re going to make a change in the future,” he added.
The crowd generally did not react well to De Sousa’s apology. While some concertgoers applauded his remarks, Instagram videos featuring De Sousa’s short speech documented other concertgoers shouting profanities and booing in response to the commissioner’s apology.
On Thursday, Gene Ryan — president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #3 — said that he didn’t think De Sousa’s apology was appropriate.
“I’m not sure that a blanket apology covering 200 years is appropriate,” Ryan said.
“Law enforcement was created to protect and serve the citizenry despite race and that is what we strive to do, daily,” he added. “Are we perfect? No, of course not, but as a profession we work very hard to care for all of our citizens.”
Washington, D.C., council member Trayon White was taken on a private tour of D.C.’s Holocaust Museum, as part of his apology tour for previously saying that the Rothschild family controlled the weather.
But after making some bizarre comments, he left early and waited on the sidewalk outside the museum until his aides finished the tour.
Why did White get in trouble in the first place?
In a Facebook video posted on March 16, White said:
“Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation. And D.C. keep talking about, ‘We a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.”
The Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish family, are a favorite target of conspiracy theorists who accuse them of being behind major world events and even having the ability to manipulate the weather. “Resilient cities” is a term used in one of these weather-based Rothschild conspiracy theories.
At first, White defended his video, responding dismissively “the video says what it says” when questioned about it by The Washington Post. He later deleted the video and said that he “did not intend” to be anti-Semitic.
What happened at the Holocaust Museum?
As part of what essentially amounted to an apology tour, White and some of his aides were taken on a private tour of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. The Washington Post described what happened next:
“The photo, taken in 1935, depicts a woman in a dark dress shuffling down a street in Norden, Germany. A large sign hangs from her neck: “I am a German girl and allowed myself to be defiled by a Jew.” She is surrounded by Nazi stormtroopers.
“D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) studied the image. ‘Are they protecting her?’”
After his tour guide corrected him and informed him that they were “marching her through,” White doubled down on his original assumption, insisting “marching through is protecting.”
The tour guide had to explain again, “I think they’re humiliating her.”
White continued to make comments that showed a baffling lack of understanding about the Holocaust. In front of a photo of a Nazi firing squad executing Polish Catholic clergy, White asked, “were they actually manufacturing these weapons?”
Where did the council member go?
Partway through the tour, White disappeared. He texted Rabbi Batya Glazer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington who had organized the event and had been on the tour with him, saying that he had to leave for an event in his ward, but that he’d see her outside the museum.
Left on their own, White’s aides apparently lacked knowledge about the Holocaust just as he did. At an exhibit about the infamous Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, one aide asked if it was similar to a “gated community.”
The rabbi quickly corrected this bizarre question. ““Yeah, I wouldn’t call it a gated community. More like a prison.”
When the tour finished and the group went back outside, White was still standing on the sidewalk nearby. He gave no explanation as to why he had bailed on the tour early, but described it as “an awesome experience.”
“This opportunity has given me the chance to meet a lot of great Jews, a lot of people. A lot of good Jews that I’ve never had the chance to meet before,” he said.
John Stuart Mill, the 19th century political philosopher, said that “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
Ayn Rand, the enigmatic 20th century quasi-libertarian theorist, once noted that “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”
The average millennial student activist, otherwise known as a snowflake, has a different reaction to that conundrum: “Your rights end where my feelings begin. And when you hurt my feelings with your speech, I’m going to find far more corporeal ways to punish you.”
It’s interesting to see just how political discourse on the individual has developed over three separate centuries. And by developed, read: completely gone to pot.
Take, for instance, the case of Burgess Owens. Owens, a 10-year veteran of the NFL who retired in 1982, played for the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets. According to TheBlaze, the former safety is also an outspoken conservative who’s spent his post-playing days talking faith and politics.
Given that Owens, 66, is an African-American entrepreneur, he seems like the ideal speaker to bring to a college campus to discuss the challenges that black business owners might face. In fact, his appearance at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in March seems, on face, to be one of the most profoundly uncontroversial college speeches one could give.
“I grew up in the Deep South during Jim Crow segregation laws,” Owens told the crowd.
“I can tell you how racism looks, how it feels, and what it means. You guys today can go anyplace you want to — any restaurant, any college. We just had a (black) president for eight years guys, elected by Americans. There is nothing you cannot do today based on your tenacity. Can we guarantee success? No. We shouldn’t. What we guarantee is the opportunity to work for it.”
Do you think these students’ behavior was uncalled for?
“If I can tell you as someone who came through the days of segregation, we have never had it as good as we do right now,” he added. “If all you’re hearing is how bad things are, day in and day out … you’re going to believe bad things.”
Alas, I had forgotten Owens is African-American and conservative. That admixture produced the usual assortment tolerant campus activists convinced that a successful black man simply isn’t diverse enough to speak on their campus — and he shouldn’t be telling them that hard work is the key to success. Thus, the Q&A portion of the speech went… well, predictably.
“What was your name again?” one student asked.
After Owens repeated his name, she responded, “Thought it was Tom.” Ah yes, the good ol’ racist standby, Uncle Tom. It was used early, and one assumes it would have been used often had the Q&A not eventually been shut down. As the woman stormed out, Owens managed to get in the last word.
“There goes our biggest problem,” he said. “The minute you start calling names, you’ve already stopped the debate. You’re not looking for answers. You’re looking for ways of insulting, and that’s not how Americans do it.”
The next questioner was even more aggressive, trying to grab the microphone away from the moderator that was holding it. “I had the mic. You took the mic away from me. I’m talking. I’m asking a question,” he said.
When the student went on a lengthy rant about “xenophobic” speakers being brought to campus, the moderator decided to cut it short, as typically happens during these Q&A sessions. That’s when audience members began yelling “let him finish!”
And campus activists weren’t done yet. One white male, who ended up shouting about “structural racism,” asked, “Why is it OK to bring people to talk against their own people?”
Nothing Owens said had anything to do with “talking against his own people,” but never mind! He incited enough outrage among the perpetually outraged that the Q&A session eventually had to be shut down.
For those interested, here’s the entirety of the speech and aftermath in five easy parts:
Just this February, The Washington Post wrote an article about George Washington’s rules of civility under the pretense that President Trump was trampling them. Among those rules of civility: “Let your Conversation be without Malice or Envy,” “Wherein you reprove Another be unblameable yourself,” “Detract not from others,” “Be not apt to relate News if you know not the truth thereof” and “Always Submit your Judgment to others with Modesty.”
For whatever reason, Post writer Fred Barbash couldn’t find the time to work his way on up to the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York to visit the William and Hobart Colleges to report on a distinguished black entrepreneur getting called an “Uncle Tom” and shouted down by a retinue of fanatics who — without knowing the truth thereof — derided him as a racist and a race traitor. But at least they submitted their judgement to him with modesty, albeit at a solid 80 decibels.
Diversity of opinion is the one kind of diversity that nobody on the left seems to countenance, particularly in the orbit of academia. Nothing in Owens’ remarks represented hate speech or bigotry. What’s worse is that this lack of intellectual diversity seems to be narrowing on so many vital issues where the freedom to express oneself — without fear of the heckler’s veto — is of paramount importance.
If this trend continues, the most threatened and smallest minority — the individual — is in grave danger of losing their right to speak openly about their beliefs, their faith and their experiences.
Barack Obama may be under the illusion that his eight years in office were scandal-free, but reality is rearing its ugly head once again. Over a year after the 44th president left office, yet another accusation of bias is shaking the Obama administration’s not-so-perfect legacy.
At the center of the latest scandal is a scathing report from the Office of Inspector General, which has come out as part of the investigation into disgraced former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
“On Friday, April 13, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Justice issued a report on McCabe, detailing how he had ‘lacked candor,’” even under oath, on four occassions that dealt with a leak to the Wall Street Journal,” CNS News summarized.
“For this misconduct the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility recommended that McCabe be fired,” that outlet continued. This by itself isn’t new information, but additional details that are part of the report are now raising questions about the entire Obama administration.
There is strong evidence that during the run-up to the 2016 election, Obama’s team improperly pressured McCabe and other FBI officials to drop their inquiry into the Clinton Foundation, the Bill and Hillary-backed organization which has been accused of making shady pay-to-play deals.
“McCabe told the OIG that on August 12, 2016, he received a telephone call from PADAG [Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General] regarding the FBI’s handling of the CF Investigation,” stated the government report.
Remember, this is not mere speculation from a random news outlet, but the official report from the inspector general within the Department of Justice.
Andrew McCabe, who has since been fired by Jeff Sessions and is certainly no ally of the Trump administration, told the DOJ panel that he was deeply bothered by the Obama team’s efforts to push him away from the Clinton Foundation investigation, which came at the height of the presidential election.
Do you believe Obama officials colluded to drop the Clinton Foundation investigation?
“McCabe said that PADAG expressed concerns about FBI agents taking overt steps in the CF [Clinton Foundation] Investigation during the presidential campaign,” declared the inspector general report.
“According to McCabe, he pushed back, asking ‘are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?’ McCabe told us that the conversation was ‘very dramatic’ and he never had a similar confrontation like the PADAG call with a high level Department official in his entire FBI career,” the DOJ document explained.
It’s difficult to come to any other conclusion than this: People within the Obama administration, perhaps even the attorney general, ordered McCabe to drop his investigation into the Clinton Foundation because it would hurt Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.
That’s exactly the conclusion reached by J. Christian Adams, an attorney with experience within the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
“This is a top-level DOJ official who called the FBI and said shut down the Hillary (Clinton) Foundation investigation,” he told CNS News.
“What kind of Justice Department do we have, that a couple weeks before the election, that presidential political appointees are calling the No. 2 guy at the FBI, essentially saying, give Hillary a pass?” Adams continued. “That’s in the OIG report! That’s the real bombshell!”
For all the left’s rabble-rousing about “collusion” and “obstruction of justice” directed at President Trump, there is growing pile of evidence that it was Barack Obama who was using these very tactics.
If the Office of Inspector General report is accurate, then the Obama administration’s actions were at least unethical, and very likely criminal. One thing is clear: The American people deserve answers.
On Friday, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) publicly announced via Twitter that he supported the decriminalization of marijuana, but in doing so, made a startling claim: that he believed in allowing states to decide what was best for themselves.
If you want to catch a glimpse of the horrific, dystopian implications of socialized medicine, you need not skim through a science fiction novel. Simply look overseas to Europe, where yet another sick child has been sentenced to death by a U.K. death panel. First Charlie Gard and now this.
Now that California has legalized marijuana for recreational use, the potheads now want Amsterdam-style pot lounges in several cities, stretching the new law to its limits.
According to the L.A. Times, the city of West Hollywood, long known for pushing the social boundaries, is looking to allow marijuana lounges as seen in Amsterdam.
After news broke Thursday afternoon that the FBI Inspector General was recommending the Justice Department file criminal charges against the Bureau’s fired deputy director, Andrew McCabe, NBC Nightly Newscompletely ignored the major development. On Friday, NBC’s Today show wasn’t much better, only managing nine seconds of coverage to the story, just a single sentence.
At the top of the morning show’s 7:30 a.m. ET half hour, during a news brief hyping the release of some of former FBI Director’s James Comey’s salacious memos about private conversations with President Trump, co-host Hoda Kotb barely added this line about the legal trouble for Comey’s one-time deputy: “This as federal prosecutors weigh whether or not to prosecute disgraced former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for misleading investigators.”
To put things in perspective, the show devoted over five times that amount coverage, 50 seconds, to a fan learning Beyonce’s dance moves.
At least the Today show covered the story, even if viewers could blink and miss it. CBS This Morning skipped it all together. Only a couple seconds in the broadcast’s Eye Opener video montage at the top of the program acknowledged the criminal referral. Thursday’s CBS Evening News only gave a paltry 42 seconds to topic, which apparently the network thought was plenty.
On Friday, ABC’s Good Morning America provided the most time to McCabe’s legal jeopardy, a whopping 49 seconds. After co-host Robin Roberts asked Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas about the criminal referral, fellow co-host George Stephanopoulos sought comment from legal analyst Dan Abrams, who warned: “I think that’s a dangerous situation for Andrew McCabe….You know, Andrew McCabe needs to be concerned.”
If it were really such a “dangerous situation” then why did the supposed news program think it only warranted 49 seconds?
That 49 seconds was only slightly less than the mere 1 minute 2 seconds ABC’s World News Tonight offered to the story on Thursday evening.
The networks have not wanted to touch the McCabe story because it harms their narrative of slamming the President over the Russia investigation. Even when they have begrudgingly acknowledged the FBI official’s downfall, it has been the bare minimum amount coverage, with a emphasis on downplaying the news or even suggesting that McCabe is a victim.
Here is a transcript of GMA’s total coverage of McCabe on April 20:
7:04 AM ET [7:04:27 – 7:04:52, 25 sec]
(…)
ROBIN ROBERTS: And Pierre, Comey’s former deputy director is now facing the potential of criminal charges?
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Ex-FBI Director Facing Potential Charges McCabe’s Case Referred to Federal Prosecutors]
PIERRE THOMAS: That’s right, Robin, the Justice Department’s Inspector General is asking the U.S. Attorney’s office here in D.C. to decide whether Andrew McCabe, who was recently fired, should be prosecuted for misleading investigators. McCabe has denied those allegations, but now faces the prospect of a possible criminal investigation by the very agency he once led.
(…)
7:08 AM ET [7:08:17 – 7:08:41, 24 sec]
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Meantime, the referral of Andrew McCabe to the Justice Department, prosecutors?
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: McCabe’s Case Referred to Federal Prosecutors; Could Ex-Deputy FBI Director be Indicted?]
DAN ABRAMS: Yeah, I think that’s a dangerous situation for Andrew McCabe. This is a separate office. This is the Department of Justice handing it off to a U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., which in theory investigates this independently. They’re gonna look at it, determine do they think that the misleading to the level of a crime. You know, Andrew McCabe needs to be concerned.
There’s a revolutionary new way to walk through the forest. V-e-r-y slowly.
Take a few steps. That’s far enough. Now sit down and talk it over with the person next to you, for a long time.
It’s a New Age thing in Sonoma County. Walking very slowly through the forest — while thinking about walking very slowly through the forest — is a full-blown movement. It could be a paradigm. The people who do this call it “forest bathing.” It doesn’t involve actual bathing, the kind with water. It’s figurative bathing. You soak in the wonders of the forest. Take your time, a whole lot of it. And bring a cushion.
About a dozen of us forest bathers were sitting on the ground the other morning at Quarryhill Botanical Garden, in Glen Ellen (Sonoma County), to find out what it was all about. We had taken an hour to meander from the parking area 50 yards down a manicured garden trail overlooking a vineyard. The idea was to look closely at absolutely everything. Examine all twigs. Inspect all leaves. If you see an ant, stop and take it in. Get up close and personal with your ant.[…]
Such sentiments are quite at home coming from Clifford, 63, of Santa Rosa. The longtime Zen meditation student worked as a traditional Sierra hiking guide and a mental health counselor before getting into the forest bathing trade about six years ago, adapting it from a similar Japanese practice.
Clifford has turned his slow walks into a cottage industry. He leads $50 forest bathing treks for newbies. He teaches $3,400 forest bathing workshops for wannabe leaders. He lectures and writes. From Sonoma County, the spiritual home of forest bathing, he flies around the world in jets to tell people they’re moving too fast.
After news broke Thursday afternoon that the FBI Inspector General was recommending the Justice Department file criminal charges against the Bureau’s fired deputy director, Andrew McCabe, NBC Nightly News 