Philadelphia’s Top Prosecutor Pursues ‘Social,’ Not Actual, Justice

Larry Krasner said he wouldn’t prosecute certain offenses and the bad guys got the message.

District Attorney Larry Krasner speaks to the media in Philadelphia, March 6, 2019.PHOTO: MATT ROURKE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Michael White didn’t deny killing Sean Schellenger. He admitted to police and at his trial that he plunged a knife several times into Schellenger’s back during a July 2018 scuffle in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square. Numerous witnesses and a cellphone video confirmed what happened. Yet in October 2019 a jury acquitted Mr. White, a 22-year-old college student, of voluntary manslaughter. Many, including the victim’s family, blame Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s soft-on-crime district attorney.

Mr. Krasner is one of a new crop of “progressive prosecutors” who have won election in liberal cities. They include San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin, who was raised by Weather Underground radicals Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn because his own parents were in prison for participating in the murder of police officers. Mr. Krasner was a virulent critic of law enforcement before running to become the city’s top prosecutor. During a 30-year career as a defense lawyer, Mr. Krasner gained notoriety for filing 75 lawsuits against Philadelphia police. In a 2017 campaign video he said “policing and prosecution are both systematically racist,” and he called poverty and crime consequences of “mass incarceration.”

Mr. Krasner’s candidacy was laughed off until George Soros dumped $1.7 million into the campaign. At his primary election night victory party, Mr. Krasner smiled while his supporters chanted, “No good cops in a racist system!” and “f— the FOP!” (the Fraternal Order of Police). He has refused to prosecute certain gun and drug crimes and ordered the 300 prosecutors in his office to seek lighter sentences. These moves have confirmed the suspicions of many Philadelphians that Mr. Krasner is more interested in coddling the city’s criminals than he is in providing justice to the victims of crimes.

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Radical changes imposed on our military by progressives, begun in earnest during the Obama administration, are negatively impacting our combat readiness and jeopardizing the lives of our men and women in uniform and, ultimately, our national security.  In Stand Down:  How Social Justice Warriors Are Sabotaging America’s Military, author James Hasson elucidates how Barack Obama fundamentally changed military culture to make our nation less secure. Hasson, a former Army captain, Army Ranger School graduate, and Afghanistan veteran, argues that military readiness was sacrificed for identity politics and progressive rhetoric. He lists examples such as policies that established “safe spaces,” prohibited “micro-aggressions,” denigrated “hyper-masculine” traits, implemented unwise “green” standards and injected “social justice” guidelines in military operations.

In his revealing book, Captain Hasson describes how Obama’s military appointees, mainly progressive ideologues lacking military experience and hailing from academic, political, and the private sectors, were placed in charge of seasoned combat generals with decades of combat experience.  The priorities, experience, and philosophies of the officers and appointees couldn’t have been more disparate. 

Many senior military staff members suffered in silence at Obama’s attempt to use the military as a “laboratory for progressive social engineering,” according to Hasson.  Exemplifying this shift was the naming of Navy ships after Leftist political heroes. Socialist labor-activist Cesar Chavez and slain gay-rights advocate Harvey Milk — who left the Navy for being gay — were among those who Ray Mabus, Obama’s secretary of the Navy, announced would have ships named after them.  This practice flew in the face of the hallowed Navy tradition of naming ships after presidents and war heroes.  

Obama, who, Hasson says, took pride in his lack of military knowledge and experience, made widespread changes to personnel policy, budgetary expenditures and resource allocations that harmed readiness, training and troop safety.  Obama’s transgender policy of “mixed genitalia in the bathrooms,” took precedence over established military culture.  Soldiers were judged by the gender they wished to be rather than their biological sex.  Obama essentially used the military to lead social change in American society rather than preserving time-honored traditions that emphasized troop cohesiveness and readiness. 

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“American citizenship is eroding”

November 2019  • • Victor Davis Hanson

The following is an abridged version of a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 2, 2019, during the College’s 175th anniversary gala. Videos of this and other speeches delivered during the gala are available at fourpillars.hillsdale.edu.

Today many condemn the idea of nationalism by connecting it to race hatred (e.g., white nationalism). But historically, the modern nation-state has proven uniquely suitable to preserving individual rights. The American nation in particular was successful in uniting individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds, and creeds into one people based on shared principles, a unique physical space, and a common national story. Our nation is the best example in human history of positive nationalism.

The key to this benign nationalism is American citizenship, based on an understanding of American exceptionalism and formed by the American melting pot. But today, our citizenship is eroding and, along with it, American nationalism in the positive sense is disappearing.

American citizenship is eroding in three ways.

First, we are blurring the line between mere residents and citizens. We have between 45-50 million non-native-born residents in the U.S. today—the largest absolute number we’ve ever had. There’s no legal problem with the 30 million of them who have green cards or have acquired citizenship—although even 30 million is a challenge for the American melting pot to assimilate and integrate.

But we also have, according to a recent Yale and MIT study, about 20 million people who are here illegally. In regard to them, the classical ingredients of American citizenship—the right to leave or enter the country as one pleases, for example, or to vote in elections, or to reside here as long as one pleases—are being blurred.

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Muslim Women Make History In Virginia Elections

November 6, 2019

Democrats Ghazala Hashmi, Abrar Omeish, Lisa Zargarpur and Buta Biberaj ― four Muslim women ― made history in Virginia’s elections on Tuesday.

In a surprise victory, Hashmi unseated incumbent Republican Glen Sturtevant for a state Senate seat; Omeish clinched one of three vacant seats on the Fairfax County School Board; Zargarpur was elected to the Prince William County School Board; and Biberaj, in a tight race, defeated Republican incumbent Nicole Wittmann to become Loudoun County’s new commonwealth’s attorney.

Hashmi is the first Muslim to be elected to the state Senate, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. (Two Muslim men ― Democrats Ibraheem Samirah and Sam Rasoul ― currently serve in Virginia’s General Assembly.)

Celebrating her win, Omeish said she was the youngest woman at age 24 and the first Libyan American to hold elected office in Virginia’s history. She also made claim to being the first Muslim woman to be elected in the state ― an honor she would share with Hashmi, Zargarpur and Biberaj.

All four were supported by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The women’s victories were part of the blue wave that swept Virginia on Tuesday. Democrats successfully flipped both houses of the state legislature. The election has been described as a possible “watershed” moment for the once-conservative Southern state.

“Today we sent a message that the status quo is no longer accepted,” a victorious Hashmi wrote on Twitter.

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