Author: Doug Santo

Geologist | Author | Photographer
Posted on

Headline of the day

Mainstream Media Found GUILTY on All Counts of Lying About Kyle Rittenhouse

A close second:

Never Trump Contributors Quit Fox News in a Huff to Protest Tucker Carlson

Posted on

This will make your day…

What a sweet heart.

Posted on

The next Democrat and liberal media hero…

Suspect in Waukesha ‘mass casualty incident’ identified as career criminal Darrell E. Brooks

“…Brooks is a career criminal with multiple priors and was released from jail two days prior to the incident after posting a $1,000 bail for three misdemeanors and two felonies. He has a history of resisting arrest, obstruction, battery, statutory sexual seduction, strangulation and suffocation, property destruction, illegal firearm possession, bail jumping, domestic violence, drug related charges and is a registered sex offender…”

Posted on

Jed Babbin on the Democrat’s and media’s response to the Rittenhouse verdict

Rittenhouse, Racism, and Gun Control

“…It will be virtually impossible to bring federal civil rights charges against Rittenhouse because he was not acting “under color of law,” i.e., functioning as a sworn police officer or an official of a local, state, or the federal government. The rifle he used was not transported over state lines, so the FBI apparently has no criminal jurisdiction over him. But Biden’s remark that he is “angry and concerned” about the verdict may be enough for Attorney General Merrick Garland to try to charge Rittenhouse under federal law.

For liberals there are only two acceptable explanations for the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse: racism and (or) the lack of gun controls depriving private citizens of their Second Amendment rights. MSNBC’s Joy Reid managed to combine the two. She said:

“I think we have to keep in mind, when we’re watching the criminal justice system at work, that it was designed to do exactly what it did today. Gun laws helped to enhance the design to allow this verdict to happen today. This country was built on the idea that white men had a particular kind of freedom and a particular kind of citizenship that only they have that gives, you know, from the slave catchers on, the right to inflict violence in the name of protecting property. That’s like the foundational creation of the United States.”

Reid’s mindset is common among liberals including Biden. During the campaign in September 2020, Biden said Rittenhouse was a white supremacist. MSNBC, CNN, and the rest of the mainstream media followed suit. That, as we’ll see in a minute, should have legal consequences for Biden and many among his media cohort.

Racism? Kyle Rittenhouse is white. The two men he shot and killed — and the one he wounded — were all white. Yet President Biden and too many other nitwits in Hollywood, the media, professional sports, and among the hoi polloi Democrats insist that Rittenhouse is a white supremacist despite the lack of a scintilla of evidence that he is or was.

The liberals’ insistence that the law, the trial, and its outcome are tainted by racism is risible. But, to them, it has to be true because they have only two frames of reference, racism, and gun control. The accusation of racism was a major theme in the 2020 election and will be in the future — probably with less success — because that’s one of only two issues that the Democrats and the media care about…

And

…At least twenty-five states’ laws say that if a someone is lawfully present he has no duty to retreat from an attacker. Florida’s “hold your ground” law goes further, providing that “a person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

Rittenhouse was legally present at the incident and was retreating from a crowd that was threatening him with bodily harm. One of the attackers he killed was pointing a pistol at him and another was trying to beat him with a skateboard. One of them had earlier threatened to kill Rittenhouse and then tried to take his rifle from him. Rittenhouse rightly feared for his life in these attacks, making it his right to defend himself from imminent harm or death. Much to the chagrin of his prosecutors, the jury acquitted him of all remaining charges, saving the judge from his obligation to declare a mistrial due to prosecutorial misconduct. 

That misconduct was evident throughout the trial. One of the prosecutors — in the presence of the jury — remarked on Rittenhouse’s silence as evidence of guilt, which drew a harsh rebuke from the judge because it effectively said that Rittenhouse had no Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. In another instance the prosecution withheld a high-resolution copy of the video from the defense and showed it at trial. The jury apparently took the video into account when it reached its verdict of acquittal. 

Withholding evidence from the defense, as anyone who attended law school knows, is a violation of the Brady v. U.S. Supreme Court ruling which ensures that the defense is entitled to any evidence the prosecution has whether or not the prosecutor believes the evidence to be exculpatory. The judge could have declared a mistrial on the basis of the Brady violation alone.

But the gun controllers don’t care about the facts of the incident or the law that governs it. They — like Reid and O’Rourke — only care about the outcome…”

Posted on

There should a method by which corrupt or incompetent prosecutors can be held to account by the public. Kyle’s Law.

Lessons from Kenosha

“…The only thing surprising about the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict was how long it took the jury to reach it. As should be obvious to anyone who understands the law and had the merest familiarity with the facts of the case, Rittenhouse should never have been charged in the first place.

The American Bar Association establishes criminal justice standards for lawyers, among which are those pertaining to prosecutors. Standard 3-4.3(a) of the Prosecution Function reads as follows: “A prosecutor should seek or file criminal charges only if the prosecutor reasonably believes that the charges are supported by probable cause, that admissible evidence will be sufficient to support conviction beyond a reasonable doubt, and that the decision to charge is in the interests of justice.”

Given this standard, and given the evidence they produced at trial, the Rittenhouse prosecutors either ignored the standard or proceeded to trial unfamiliar with the state of their evidence. In other words, they were either corrupt or incompetent, and a case can be made that they were both…

And

…Sadly, the news media are no longer staffed by people who see their mission as informing the public of verifiable facts. Instead, today’s newspaper writers and electronic media reporters are proud purveyors of “narratives,” the details of which are crafted in the tonier enclaves of New York City and Los Angeles. The employees of these outlets are ideologically aligned and virtually interchangeable with one another, reflecting the tastes and inclinations of those predominating in those same tony enclaves on the east and west coasts.

The narrative applied to Kyle Rittenhouse was that he was a “white supremacist” and a “vigilante” with no connection to Kenosha and no conceivable motive to be there other than a malevolent desire to shoot “peaceful protesters.” None of this was true, yet these claims were repeated endlessly on CNN, MSNBC, and in countless print pieces. And, lest we forget, as committed as these news outlets are to advancing the narrative, that commitment is subordinate to their desire to expand their audience. Nothing short of international warfare achieves this purpose better than the type of widespread social upheaval and racial unrest seen after the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha…”

Related:

KYLE’S LAW – STOP POLITICALLY MOTIVATED PROSECUTIONS OF SELF-DEFENSE

Posted on

Glenn Greenwald on the ignorance and stupidity of many media outlets commenting on the Rittenhouse trial

Posted on

Toronto rejects medical tyranny

Posted on

Israel appears to be having significant issues with the vaccines…

I can’t vouch for this video.

Posted on

Kurt Schlichter on the meaning of the Rittenhouse prosecution

Free States Must Defend the Right to Self-Defense

“…The motive behind the atrocious shredding of our social contract represented by these charges and the lying prosecutors is clear. The idea is to neutralize citizen pushback against leftist stormtroopers, to make us afraid to do what we have an inalienable right to do and defend ourselves. Right now, no matter how clearly justified you are, no matter that the rap sheet of the scumbag you defended yourself against includes burglary, domestic violence, and/or the anal rape of little boys, you must weigh the potential of losing your livelihood and freedom against defending yourself and others. At best, you might face years of legal nightmares (criminal and civil) and media crucifixion.

This is exactly what they want, and the purpose is to stop you from exercising your right to self-defense. But there is no reason that anyone in one of the free red states should ever have to worry that saving your own or others’ lives will ruin yours. The criminals and rioters started this. We have a right to finish it and then to go on with our lives thereafter in peace.

Where Republicans are in power, they must act decisively to lift the fear from citizens and put it back on the criminals, where it belongs. If the GOP can’t do this, if they can’t or won’t secure our ability to not be murdered, what the hell use are they?…”

Posted on

KYLE’S LAW – STOP POLITICALLY MOTIVATED PROSECUTIONS OF SELF-DEFENSE

Attorney Andrew Branca

“…in cases like Rittenhouse and the Trayvon Martin case, prosecutors for personal gain have brought criminal charges which are not evidenced nor winnable and should suffer the consequences for the prosecution’s inability to disprove self-defense by a majority of the evidence.

The penalty for such a jury finding he proposes is this:

If the jury agrees the prosecution failed to meet even this very low threshold, the defendant is immediately entitled to compensation for any losses resulting from this unfounded prosecution.

And that compensation shall be made both by the state generally and by the prosecutor personally.

First, the state generally:  A self-defense defendant who qualifies under Kyle’s Law would be entitled to monetary compensation from the state for legal expenses, lost wages, and all other economic costs associated with the unjust prosecution. (Washington state already has a statute that does precisely this, §9A.16.110, but it is the only state that does. This needs to expand to every state.)

Second, the prosecutor personally: A self-defense defendant who qualifies under Kyle’s Law would be entitled to monetary compensation from the prosecutor personally for mental distress, emotional pain & suffering, lost economic/ business/educational opportunities, reputational damage, and so forth, plus any legal costs incurred to secure this compensation — and that means the suffering of both the defendant himself AND his immediate family. (No state currently has such a provision of law.)

Further, if the State seeks to reimburse the prosecutor for this damage award, that reimbursement also becomes the property of the self-defense defendant.

Only by holding the state generally and the prosecutor personally both responsible for such cases of unjust persecution of self-defense cases can we keep these victims of violent attack from also becoming victims of an assaultive justice system…”

Posted on

Estimated 500,000 in Melbourne reject medical tyranny

Related:

Posted on

German study – The higher the vaccination rate, the higher the excess mortality

Prof. Dr. Rolf Steyer and Dr. Gregor Kappler, 16 November 2021

English translation pdf

Posted on

Europeans reject medical tyranny

Violence breaks out at Brussels anti-vaccine protest in Europe’s latest day of rage: Fury over rules banning unjabbed from bars sparks clashes hours after Germany revealed COMPULSORY vaccinations are ‘unavoidable’

    • Nearly 40,000 protesters descended on Belgium’s capital Brussels to protests against anti-Covid measures
    • Germany set to follow Austria’s example in making vaccinations compulsory amid a fourth wave of pandemic
    • France is also facing worrying number of cases, with fifth-wave Covid infections rising at an alarming rate
    • Violence erupted in Vienna as 10,000 protesters took to the streets after new lockdown was announced
    • Dutch protesters also gathered in Amsterdam, The Hague and Breda to demonstrate against measures
    • The Netherlands entered a partial lockdown on Saturday, sparking a furious backlash against the government
    • Austria on Friday reimposed a full winter lockdown and neighbouring Germany warned it may soon follow suit
Posted on

America’s liberal elites are broken

Kyle Rittenhouse and the hysteria of the elites

“…Under extraordinary pressure, the jurors showed us the quiet wisdom of the people.

America’s liberal elites are broken. They are now totally deranged and detached from reality. That’s become brutally clear in the past 24 hours. While we all knew it was coming, the collective media and political meltdown over the acquittal of 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse has revealed a ruling class so warped, so unprincipled, so governed by partisan prejudice, that it essentially lives in a parallel universe…”

Doug Santo