Because @EWErickson Is Right

Posted on | January 27, 2014 | 27 Comments

Well, Abortion Barbie does have a vocal fan club. Might be larger except for the open season on anyone under 40 weeks.

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) January 27, 2014

Greta Van Susteren went off on Erick Erickson’s criticisms of Texas Democrat Wendy Davis. Love ya, Greta, but you’re wrong.

Everybodyknows Erick and I fell out in 2011 when he endorsed Rick Perry after I’d already gone all-in for Herman Cain. This happens. But if hating Wendy Davis is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

When Texas Progress listed the “Top Ten Worst Comments Made by Conservatives About Wendy Davis,” I was Number One on the list.

Got your back here, Erick. We’re good to go.

The sobriquet "Abortion Barbie" is only offensive to people who are pro-abortion. @EWErickson @Katiescarlet2 @AmPowerBlog @TwitchyTeam

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) January 27, 2014

Category: Abortion, Texas

Prosecutor: Teachers Would Not Help Investigate Predator Who Molested Boy

Posted on | January 27, 2014 | 63 Comments

Matthew LoMaglio, 37, pleaded guilty to molesting an 8-year-old boy who was a student at the elementary school in Rochester, N.Y., where LoMaglio taught gym classes. On Jan. 14, LoMaglio was sentenced to four years in prison, but the prosecutor said many of the criminal’s colleagues did not cooperate with the investigation:

Many in the community were also surprised and disappointed that more than 20 educators wrote to the court in the pre-sentencing phase, expressing support for LoMagio but little or no sympathy for the young victim.
“Some of the people (on the school staff) who were cooperative told us there was talk at school, sort of like ‘Are you for the teacher or for the student,’” Kyle Rossi, the assistant district attorney who tried the case against LoMaglio, told EAGnews. “It was very disappointing to make contact with teachers who wouldn’t give us the time of day until they were instructed to.” . . .
But building a case against LoMaglio was not easy, because a significant number of teachers and other school employees who had worked with the gym teacher over the years refused to cooperate with police and prosecutors during the investigation, Rossi said.
“I would say that many teachers and administrators at several schools where this guy had taught wouldn’t talk to us at all,” Rossi said. “We ran into cold shoulders all the way around. They would say things like ‘nothing happened here’ and ‘I don’t know anything, I don’t want to talk about anything.
“One person even told a police investigator ‘don’t call me again.’ Some were even rude.” . . .
“It was problematic for us. No one was volunteering to help. There were people who complied – they were cooperative because it was a police investigation – but nobody was excited to participate. There were teachers who simply refused to speak to us.”
Rossi said he was also troubled by the 22 letters the court received from various teachers, expressing support for LoMaglio. He said he is not authorized to turn over the letters to the public or divulge the names of the teachers who wrote them.
Some of the letters were written on school district letterhead. . . .
“These are people entrusted to work with children and they show no compassion for this kid.”

If this pattern sounds familiar, remember how the Michigan teachers union sided with convicted molester Neal Erickson. Besides, people who are against male teachers having sex with young boys are obviously just a bunch of right-wing homophobic bigots.

Category: Crime, Education, Gays, Sex

In The Mailbox, 01.27.14

Posted on | January 27, 2014 | 14 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I’m adjusting to a new schedule at the tax mines and thank you for your patience while I try to get my sleep & blogging cycles straightened out. Rule 5 Monday will be posted tonight and Live At Five will return tomorrow morning.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Proof Positive: “Harry POTUS” SOTU!
Doug Powers: Granholm v. Granholm – Super PACs Apparently No Longer A Threat To Our Democracy
Twitchy: “It’s Gross!” What Are Viewers Sick Of Seeing During The Grammys?

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Rand Paul’s Paleolibertarian Patrimony
American Thinker: Reince’s Solutions Miss The Mark
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Schumer Wants To Cede Congressional Authority To The President
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Abortion Barbie – The Pink Knight Returns
Conservatives4Palin: Obama’s DHS Chief Says Illegals Have “Earned The Right” To Be Granted Amnesty
Don Surber: The Circle Of Bucks
Jammie Wearing Fools: How Many Schmucks Does It Take To Defend Debbie Wasserman-Schultz?
Joe For America: Teachers Covering For Colleague Accused Of Child Molestation
Pat Dollard: Secret Abortion Fees Hidden In Obamacare Premiums
Protein Wisdom: Gun Flight – Ruger, Smith & Wesson Quit California Over Stamping Requirement
Shot In The Dark: Shut Up Or Get Cut Up
The Jawa Report: Al Qaeda’s Official Forum Having A Bad Day
The Lonely Conservative: NY Teachers Come Out Against Common Core
This Ain’t Hell: Sheriff Joe Puts Inmates On Bread & Water
Megan McArdle: No Babies, No Stimulus

Category: Linkagery

Woman Sold Her Kids for Sex

Posted on | January 27, 2014 | 47 Comments

Natisha Hillard, 25, got paid by Christopher Bour, 39, to have sex with her kids.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel of human depravity:

A Gary, Ind. woman admitted this week that she sold a baby eight times to a Gary man for sex . . .
Natisha Hillard, 25, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Hammond to one count of selling a child for sex and two counts of allowing a child to take part in child pornography . . .
Hillard admitted . . . that she met Christopher M. Bour through a dating service in 2011 and that they agreed to meet at her place. That was when Bour started asking her about two children she had access to, both girls, who were 4 months and 3 years old at the time.
The crimes lasted from September 2011 until February 2013 . . .
She . . . can be seen on images found on Bour’s computer showing him sexually touching the child with Hillard in the background.
She also let Bour take sexual pictures of the older child at least once, Koster said.
Koster said that Hillard told law enforcement after she was arrested that she agreed to sell the children to Bour because she needed money and that Bour paid her extra for the last encounter to be alone with child.

Just a woman selling her babies for sex. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Category: Crime, Sex

Maryland Mall Shooter: Tea Party Extremist? No — Teen Skateboarder

Posted on | January 27, 2014 | 78 Comments

Darion Marcus Aguilar, 19, has been named as the gunman who killed two people Saturday at the Columbia mall near Baltimore:

Why Darion Marcus Aguilar shot two people to death and then killed himself is still a mystery to police. They’re investigating who the 19-year-old man was and whether he even knew the people he shot Saturday.
“I know there’s a lot of interest in the motive for this, and I have as much interest in that as anybody,” Howard County Police Chief Bill McMahon told reporters Sunday.
He said there was still no known relationship between the shooter and his victims, though he did not rule out the possibility that there was one.
Police said that Aguilar showed up at The Mall in Columbia in a taxi and stayed in a “generally confined area” before going to Zumiez, a shop that caters to skaters, on the second floor.
There he fired six to nine shots, killing 21-year-old Brianna Benlolo and 25-year-old Tyler Johnson before turning the shotgun on himself.

The Daily Mail has more background:

Howard County detectives have seized a diary from the home of Aguilar which expressed unhappiness with his life.
The Prince George’s County Police Department said it received a missing persons report for Aguilar at about 1:40 p.m. Saturday, more than two hours after the mall shooting. Officers went to Aguilar’s home to speak with his mother about 5 p.m. and saw Aguilar’s journal. The portion the officer read made him concerned for Aguilar’s safety, the department said.
Police began tracking Aguilar’s phone and soon discovered it was at the mall.
Howard County Police Chief William McMahon said the journal expressed general unhappiness, but he did not give any specifics about the writings. . . .
His dumbfounded mother described him as ‘a gentle, sweet kid’ who has never been interested in guns. . . .
‘If you were to go in his room you would see what a gentle sweet kid he was,’ she said, adding that he was a vegetarian because he was concerned about animal welfare.
‘I don’t know what happened, I really don’t. It’s so unusual, you can talk to any of his friends and find out what a gentle person he was.
‘I don’t know, he’s never had a gun before, never been interested in guns or anything like that. I just don’t know what happened, I just don’t know what happened.’
The woman, who didn’t give her name, told reporters she didn’t believe her son knew his victims, contradicting earlier local radio reports that he had dated Benlolo. . . .
His friend, Ellis Cropper, told ABC News that Aguilar worked at a local Dunkin Donuts where he’d just got a promotion and was planning on enrolling in college.
‘Darion was a good kid,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what happened … Darion is quiet, kept to himself. Nice, normal, calm demeanor.’ . . .
Aguilar graduated in 2013 from James Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring, said Dana Tofig, a Montgomery County schools spokesman.
A person who attended the high school with Aguilar told The Associated Press that he was an avid skateboarder. . . .
Benlolo’s grandfather, John Feins, said in a telephone interview from Florida that his granddaughter had a two-year-old son and that the job at Zumiez was her first since she went back to work after her son’s birth.
‘She was all excited because she was the manager there,’ he said.
He said he had spoken with his daughter, Brianna’s mother, earlier in the day, but didn’t know who the gunman was or whether the person knew his granddaughter.
‘It’s senseless. It’s totally, totally senseless,’ he said.
He described his daughter’s family as a military family that had moved frequently and had been in Colorado before moving to Maryland about two years ago.

To summarize: This was a senseless crime committed by someone with no discernible political motive, but who was definitely not a right-wing Tea Party extremist, and therefore liberals will quickly forget it, except to use it as a statistic to advocate gun control, despite the fact that (a) Maryland has fairly strict laws that limit concealed carry, and (b) the shooter used a shotgun, the very weapon recommended by Vice President Joe Biden.

UPDATE: Pat Dollard noticed this quote buried wwaaayy down deep in a Washington Post article:

But the news did not entirely shock another Blake classmate, Aaron Gayadeen.
“He was always a little bit crazy,” Gayadeen said through Facebook messages. “To be honest I am a little in shock that it was him but I’m not too surprised. .?.?. He would always talk about what it would be like to stab someone but he would always gimme a weird look then laugh and say ‘just kidding.’?”
Gayadeen said Aguilar would make these remarks in jest during spare time in a pre-engineering class, an elective they took to graduate. “He would be like, ‘I wonder what it feels like to stab someone. A knife piercing thru someone’s skin.’?”

Professor Donald Douglas gets straight to the point:

Well, this doesn’t fit the far-right tea party Second Amendment profile.
A black dude with an Hispanic surname.

Category: Crime, Maryland

FMJRA 2.0: A Few Minutes After Trancefer

Posted on | January 26, 2014 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Let’s Slut-Shame @WendyDavisTexas!

Rule 5 Sunday: Under The Wire

Latina Actress Blacklisted for Supporting Republican Candidate

B.A. in Special Snowflake Studies

Florida Boys Gone Wild?

The #JusticeForDrV Madness: ESPN Offers Belated ‘Condolences’? Really?

Wendy Davis Used The Roman Alphabet. Isn’t That “Honesty” For A Democrat?

Glenn Beck’s #LGBT Agenda?

‘Helpless and Hopeless Creatures’

Journalist @CalebHannan Exposes Sociopath and Is Accused of Transphobia

FMJRA 2.0: Rock Show

Gay Teen Porn Star Robert Marucci’s Mom Endorses the Florida Way of Life? UPDATE: Brevard Lifts School Suspension

Available: Girlfriend, Slightly Used

LIVE AT ~~FIVE~~SEVEN: 01.10.14

Does Christie Add Desirable Gravitas To The Republican Governor’s Association?

LIVE AT FIVE: 01.23.14

‘Revenge Porn’ Mogul Busted by FBI in Computer Hacking Conspiracy

Another Brett Kimberlin Lie?

Federal Court Upholds Bloggers’ Rights

Mexican Murder Suspect Is Finally Deported After 13-Year U.S. Crime Spree

The ObamaCare ‘Death Spiral’ Debate

Stand By For GOP Disaster On ObamaCare

MSNBC: Trolls Under a Bridge

Ode To Global Warming Wankery

Take Paul Krugman’s Money

In The Mailbox: 01.20.14

David Zirin, Marxist Sports Blogger

LIVE AT FIVE: 01.21.14

Islam’s Terrorist African Caliphate

NYC Elementary School’s ‘Lunatic’ Principal Who Can’t Spell ‘Gratitude’

Warner’s Political Scalp Won’t Cover Much, But VA Should Take It Anyway

Florida, the Crazy State: Brevard Students Rally to Defend Gay Teen Porn Star

Good News, Good News, Bad News

LIVE AT FIVE: 01.22.14

ObamaCare Is Doomed

You May Be Right. I May Be Crazy.

The Real Problem With the American Left: Tedious Douchebags Like Brian Beutler

Suspect in Custody After Lockdown at Southern Adventist University

Parents Charge ‘Double Standard’ in Texas Teacher Sex Crime Case

Republican Scandal Week

She Killed Three Men for ‘Fun’

The Dahlia Lithwick Theory Fails

He Liked ‘Young Nude Boys’

Hard To Remember The Last Time I Was Excited By A Privacy Policy

Remember Alicia Gray?

Posted on | January 26, 2014 | 13 Comments

Sure, you remember: She’s the Alabama teacher who got caught boinking a 14-year-old boy and then, through her church, released a YouTube video admitting that, hey, boinking 14-year-olds is wrong.

As if being subjected to harsh sarcasm (and also sentenced to jail) weren’t punishment enough, Alicia Gray’s video attracted the attention of Liberty University law professor Boz Tchividjian, who says her “responses clearly demonstrate that most child sexual offenders are extremely self-serving and dangerously manipulative”:

The “I’m just not that person anymore” response: This is when offenders claim that they have recently “accepted Jesus” and are not the same person that committed the sexual offense.
The “I understand” response: Sexual offenders often attempt to convince others that they understand the harm that they have caused to the victim.
The “I was inappropriate” response: Sexual offenders often label their abuse in non-abusive language in order to minimize the gravity of their offense.
The “I am the victim” response: Sex offenders often attempt to gain sympathy by portraying themselves as a victim of their own weaknesses and struggles.
The “make the victim feel guilty” response: Within the church, it is not uncommon for perpetrators (and others) to infer that the trauma victims experience as a result of the abuse is due to their own spiritual weaknesses.

Read the whole thing. Narcissism and self-pity — the sense that they are entitled to your sympathy — are at the core of the messed-up personality of people like this. Alicia Gray wants people to think that, despite her actions, she is really a nice person who just made a mistake. Of course, that “mistake” involved her 28-year-old mouth and a 14-year-old boy’s penis, but who are we to judge?

The attitude of complete non-judgmentalism urged upon us by liberals is tantamount to moral irresponsibility. Sure, the church exists to minister to sinners, but there is a clear line between that ministry and offering easy absolution for grievous wrongs.

My “ministry,” such as it is, involves a lot of harsh sarcasm.

Many are called, but few are chosen . . .

(Hat-tips: Wartburg Watch and S.J. Reidhead on Twitter.)

Category: Crime, Education, Sex

Carts and Horses, Causes and Effects

Posted on | January 26, 2014 | 118 Comments

Complex causation in human behavior means that social science often isn’t very scientific. Not every variable can be measured with such accuracy as, for example, annual income and years of education, and things which are not measured tend to be neglected as factors in social science. Researchers don’t usually find correlations by accident, and they never find correlations except in measurable data, so that a certain level of inaccuracy and error is inevitable.

All of this is necessary preamble to an Atlantic Monthly article by Matthew O’Brien with this provocative headline:

Why Is the American Dream Dead in the South?

Uh, it’s not. The research O’Brien cites refers to the chance that someone whose parents are in the bottom 20% of the income distribution can rise to the top 20% of the distribution.

Stipulating that the data in the study is complete and accurate, and that everything in the analysis is legit — well, why is there a bright spot on the resulting map in the vicinity of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but no corresponding bright spot near Athens, Georgia? Why does rural Arkansas look like a beacon of upward mobility, while the bustling economies of Atlanta and Charlotte produce no such effect?

Most of all, why does the map referenced by O’Brien show that impoverished Appalachia offers more opportunity for advancement than any of the more prosperous surrounding flatlands?

To use a social science term: Your data is obviously fucked up.

Look, O’Brien: I don’t want to start a fight, but if somebody tells you West Virginia is a glory land of economic opportunity, this is obviously somebody who never set foot in West Virginia. I don’t give a damn what they tell you after that, their credibility is shot.

With the strange mixture of credulous certainty and interventionist enthusiasm that behooves a writer for the Atlantic, however, O’Brien proceeds to draw conclusions from this research:

The researchers found that the larger the black population, the lower the upward mobility. But this isn’t actually a black-white issue. It’s a rich-poor one. Low-income whites who live in areas with more black people also have a harder time moving up the income ladder. In other words, it’s something about the places that black people live that hurts mobility.

Ri-iiiight.

Something like the poor being isolated — isolated from good jobs and good schools. See, the more black people a place has, the more divided it tends to be along racial and economic lines. The more divided it is, the more sprawl there is. And the more sprawl there is, the less higher-income people are willing to invest in things like public transit.
That leaves the poor in the ghetto, with no way out for their American Dreams. They’re stuck with bad schools, bad jobs, and bad commutes if they do manage to find better work. So it should be no surprise that the researchers found that racial segregation, income segregation, and sprawl are all strongly negatively correlated with upward mobility

So, if this is about “sprawl” that “leaves the poor in the ghetto,” why a vast expanse of low mobility in the rural South, where there are no ghettos (because there are no major cities) and where there is no suburban “sprawl” (because there are no suburbs)?

Do you see what I mean about “credulous certainty”? If you begin with the assumption that the researchers have accurately measured something meaningful — West Virginia, land of opportunity! — and then start blabbering that “the researchers found” this, that and the other correlation, you’re likely to end up making all kinds of foolish arguments, as Matthew O’Brien eagerly does:

The American Dream is alive in Denmark and Finland and Sweden. And in San Jose and Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh. But it’s dead in Atlanta and Raleigh and Charlotte. And in Indianapolis and Detroit and Jacksonville. Fixing that isn’t just about redistribution. It’s about building denser cities, so the poor aren’t so segregated. About good schools that you don’t have to live in the right (and expensive) neighborhood to attend. And about ending a destructive drug war that imprisons and blights the job prospects of far too many non-violent offenders — further shrinking the pool of “marriageable” men.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

You have no clue, O’Brien. “Building denser cities” in rural South Georgia? “Ending a destructive drug war” in Eutaw, Alabama? The American Dream “alive” in Pittsburgh but “dead” in Charlotte? You’re attempting to “solve” a problem you haven’t even begun to understand, and in the process making yourself a public nuisance.

UPDATE: Thanks to Eric Mertz and other commenters who looked over the Harvard study and spotted obvious issues. Here is an excerpt that clearly points toward the basic problem:

We characterize intergenerational mobility using information from de-identied federal income tax records, which provide data on the incomes of more than 40 million children and their parents between 1996 and 2012. . . . In our baseline analysis, we focus on current U.S. citizens in the 1980-1982 birth cohorts { the oldest children in our data for whom we can reliably identify parents based on information on dependent claiming. We measure these children’s income as mean total family income in 2011 and 2012, when they are approximately 30 years old. We measure their parents’ income as mean family income between 1996 and 2000, when the children are between the ages of 15 and 20.

Not to put too fine a point on it, this is insane. That is to say, what percentage of people reach the top 20% in income by age 30? Most people’s incomes peak in their 40s and 50s. Many 30-year-olds are just a few years out of college. Mertz promises a more complete analysis Monday at his blog, and we’ll wait to see what he finds. But my basic common-sense hunch — the alleged superior mobility of West Virginians — tells me something is wrong here.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Economics, Science

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The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Because @EWErickson Is Right

Prosecutor: Teachers Would Not Help Investigate Predator Who Molested Boy

In The Mailbox, 01.27.14

Woman Sold Her Kids for Sex

Maryland Mall Shooter: Tea Party Extremist? No — Teen Skateboarder

FMJRA 2.0: A Few Minutes After Trancefer

Remember Alicia Gray?

Carts and Horses, Causes and Effects

THE FULL METAL JACKET REACH-AROUND AWARD

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

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