How Much Death Must One Deal to Get Life?

President Obama recently commuted the sentences of 46 criminals convicted of drug offenses; 14 were serving life sentences. In doing so, he said:

“Over the last few years, a lot of people have become aware of the inequities in the criminal justices system. The fact that we spend more than $80 billion a year incarcerating people, who oftentimes have only been engaged in non-violent drug offenses. Right now ... people all across the country are coming together with ideas to make the system work smarter, work better, and I’m determined to do my part wherever I can.

“That’s one of the reasons I am commuting the sentences of 46 prisoners who were convicted many years or in some cases decades ago. These men and women were not hardened criminals. But the overwhelming majority had been sentenced to at least 20 years. Fourteen have been sentenced to life for non-violent drug offenses. So their punishments didn’t fit the crime. And if they’d been sentenced under today’s laws, nearly all of them would have already served their time.

“I’ve made clear to them, that reentering society is going to require responsibility on their part, and hard work, and smarter choices.

“I believe that at its heart, America is a nation of second chances, and I believe these folks deserve their second chance.”


On Sunday, this newspaper published an op-ed written by Scott Reeder -- with whom I usually agree. In it, he sounded a good deal like President Obama.

“Growing up ... in Galesburg, I would look out my bedroom window at night and see ... the prison lights. I wondered why folks were locked up there. Many were there for drug crimes and other non-violent offenses. When it comes to drugs, wealthy and middle-class folks end up in rehab and low-income ones end up doing time. ...

“Prisons are taking a devastating toll on our state’s inner cities.”


On Monday, the lead editorial in this newspaper from the Seattle Times tells us it’s “Time to overhaul America’s criminal-justice system.”

“President Obama has seized on the righteous issue of mass incarceration ....
“Since the start of the war on drugs ... the population in state and federal prisons has exploded more than 500 percent.

“The lifetime likelihood for a white male to go to prison is 1 in 17; for black men, it is 1 in 3.
“If you’re a low-level drug dealer, or violate your parole, you owe some debt to society... But you don’t owe 20 years. You don’t owe a life sentence.”

The penalties in Illinois are higher for controlled substances than they are for cannabis.
They are also higher for delivery than they are for possession. Due to word limits, I am setting out only the lowest and highest penalties (not intermediate ones).

                                                  Cannabis Possession and Delivery

Possession of more than 30 grams but not more than 500 grams of any substance containing cannabis is a Class 4 felony, punishable by 1 to 3 years.  (three years in Illinois, with good-time credits means nine months). Probation is the statutorily “preferred”  sentence.

Possession of more than 5,000 grams of cannabis is a Class 1 felony punishable by four to 15 years.  (Probation preferred disposition).

Delivery of more than 10 but not more than 30 grams of cannabis is a class four felony, punishable by one to three years. (Probation preferred disposition)

Delivery of 5,000 grams of cannabis or more is a Class X felony, punishable by six to 30 years.  (Class X felonies carry no good-time credits; probation not possible).

                                                 Cocaine Possession and Delivery

Possession of more than 15 but not more than 100 grams of any substance containing cocaine carries 4 to 15 years. (Probation preferred disposition)

Possession of 900 grams or more of any substance containing cocaine carries 10 to 50 years. (No probation)

Delivery of 1 gram or more but less than 15 grams of any substance containing cocaine carries 4 to 15 years. (Probation preferred disposition if less than 5 grams. No probation, if more)

Delivery of 900 grams or more of a substance containing cocaine carries 15 to 60 years. (No probation possible)


Thirty grams is roughly 1 oz., 500 grams is roughly 1 lbs. and 5,000 grams is roughly 10 lbs.


In the years I was on the criminal bench, I don’t ever recall sending a true first- offender to prison for a Class 4 felony possession of cannabis. They got probation.


And generally, if they had no other record, they got more probation if the violated the first probation by getting caught with more cannabis. We realized that it cost about $30,000 a year to send a convicted criminal to prison.

But often, the first-time cannabis offender had a prior record of other crimes. And it is not honest to call a guy with two prior burglary convictions a first-time offender simply because this is his first conviction for possession of cannabis.

Similarly, when a guy on probation for cannabis possession got re-arrested and shipped to prison for pistol-whipping a rival drug dealer on a street corner, it is at best a half-truth to say he was  imprisoned for a non-violent drug offense.

It is asserted that “Prisons are taking a devastating toll on our state’s inner cities.” I would suggest that drug trafficking and the related violence is taken an even greater toll. The Chicago gangs are fighting and killing people over who controls the drug traffic. A lawyer friend of mine, now a judge, once told me that when people get “hooked on crack, it becomes their God.” Delivery of a drug of that sort is a non-violent crime in name only. Is it worse to destroy a person by selling him crack cocaine than it is to shoot him? Cocaine destroys not only the user, but the lives of spouses and children.

It is said that, the “lifetime likelihood for a white male to go to prison is 1 in 17; for a black male, it is 1 in 3.” But if 1 in 3 black males (or 1 in 17 white males) are going to prison, doesn’t that at least mean that 1 in 3 black men (or 1 in 17 white men) have committed a crime that a judge -- white or black -- deems proportionate with incarceration? 

And while drug treatment was an option for the “rich,” it was also available for the indigent.

The president says he believes that his 46 criminals serving 20 years to life “deserve their second chance.” To do what? Live good lives, or resume their lives of crime? And how does someone get 20 years or life for a first-time non-violent drug offense? How much “death” do you have to “deal” to get “life?”

And if it costs 80 billion to incarcerate, what will it cost the public in property and destroyed lives if we empty the prisons of the so-called non-violent drug offenders? Chicago is the poster child.

Posted: Friday, July 31, 2015 11:00 pm

By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015

John Donald O'Shea

Same-sex Marriage Ruling Carries Risks

"President Obama now says that it is important for him to affirm that same-sex couples should be able to get married. As such, for him, 'marriage' is now nothing more than a union between any two consenting adults. So, then, what is the President’s position on polygamy? Is it  'evolving,'as well? If so, why is the number 'two' sacred? If 'consent' between 'adults' is the key, what’s wrong with consensual polygamy?" -- John Donald O'Shea,  May '12,  "Is polygamy a constitutional right?"

The U.S. Supreme Court in Obergeffell v. Hodges (2015) has now held that two people of the same sex have a constitutional right to marry. Do you see any problems with that holding? Risks?

If fundamental liberty requires that any two (competent) consenting individuals must be allowed to marry, how can there be a bar to the marriage of three -- or more -- (competent) consenting adults?

What constitutional principle demands that any two consenting adults must be allowed to marry, while at the same time denying the same fundamental liberty to three or more consenting adults?

If the sex of the partners is irrelevant, and if all that is required of the two people is their consent, how can three or four — or more — consenting adults be barred from practicing polygamy?

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in Obergeffell, largely ignores those questions.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in dissent, however, squarely addresses the polygamy (plural marriage) question, with emphasis on the “historical aspect of marriage being between a man and a woman for over a 1,000 years.”

“One immediate question invited by the majority’s position is whether States may retain the definition of marriage as a union of two people.

“Although the majority randomly inserts the adjective ‘two’ in various places, it offers no reason at all why the two-person element of the core definition of marriage may be preserved while the man-woman element may not.

“Indeed, from the standpoint of history and tradition, a leap from opposite-sex marriage to same-sex marriage is much greater than one from a two-person union to plural unions, which have deep roots in some cultures around the world.

“If the majority is willing to take the big leap, it is hard to see how it can say no to the shorter one.”
The chief justice then examined the majority’s justifications for same-sex marriage, and shows they would also justify polygamy.

“It is striking how much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage.

“If ‘there is dignity in the bond between two men or two women who seek to marry and in their autonomy to make such profound choices,’ why would there be any less dignity in the bond between three people who, in exercising their autonomy, seek to make the profound choice to marry?

“If a same-sex couple has the constitutional right to marry because their children would otherwise ‘suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser,’ why wouldn’t the same reasoning apply to a family of three or more persons raising children?

“If not having the opportunity to marry ‘serves to disrespect and subordinate’ gay and lesbian couples, why wouldn’t the same ‘imposition of this disability,’ serve to disrespect and subordinate people who find fulfillment in polyamorous relationships?”

So if two consenting adults have a constitutional right to marry, why not three? Is two more sacred than three? More constitutional? If the states can’t constitutionally define marriages as being “between a man and a woman,” what constitutional principle  would allow same-sex marriage, but bar polygamy?  Is the harem now legal in America?

Justice Kennedy, speaking for the majority, also gives a fourth justification: “With respect to this asserted basis for excluding same-sex couples from the right to marry, it is appropriate to observe these cases involve only the rights of two consenting adults whose marriages would pose no risk of harm to themselves or third parties.”

But to say there is no risk of harm to third parties is absurd. Already a baker in Oregon has been assessed $135,000 in damages for failing to cater a same-sex marriage. If that verdict stands, Justice Kennedy’s assertion that the right of two consenting adults poses “no risk of harm to third parties,” comes from five judges wearing blinders.

Nor does Justice Kennedy fear for the First Amendment religious rights of people opposed to same-sex marriage.

“Finally, it must be emphasized that ... those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate ... that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to  teach the principles ... central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure.”

Justice Kennedy reassures Americans that may still believe and teach that same-sex marriage is wrong. But do you see any assurance that Americans can still engage in the free exercise of their religion -- also guaranteed by the first Amendment -- by refusing to participate in or assist in a same-sex marriages?

Certainly the Oregon Labor Commission didn’t. How else do you explain their $135,000 damage assessment? What about contentious objectors? Does not the free exercise of religion guarantee the right not to participate -- to contentiously object? To not seemingly approve?

Make no mistake: I am not opposed to people or their legislators permitting same-sex marriage. That’s called democracy. The issues raised by Justice Roberts and the Oregon damage award spotlight the folly of judges deciding public policy questions and creating new constitutional rights under the guise of interpreting  the constitution.

Posted: Friday, July 17, 2015 11:00 pm, QCOnline

By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015

John Donald O'Shea

Marriage Ruling, Constitutional Law or "Putsch?"

               " ...  nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or  property, 
               without due process of law; nor to deny to any  person within its 
               jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
                                                                      -- U.S. Constitution, 14th Amendment




On June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, held “[T]he right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person. Under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty. The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry.”

Regardless whether you favor or oppose same-sex marriage, this decision is terrible constitutional law. (Note: I am discussing only constitutional law; not whether same-sex marriage is right or wrong.)

My test of whether something is constitutional or not, is answered by this simple question:

If the people who ratified the constitution, and later approved the 14th Amendment in 1868, had known at those times that the Constitution and the amendment would subsequently be given the interpretation that the five judges in this case gave it, would they have ratified the Constitution or approved the 14th Amendment?  In ratifying the 14th Amendment, did the American people ever, for an instant, dream that the word “liberty” as used in the amendment encompassed the right of same-sex couples to marry?

In a democracy the people -- not the judges —-- have a right to rule. Our Constitution, and our state constitutions, give the people and their elected representatives the power and the right to make the laws. The judges have a sworn duty to support the Constitution; not to rewrite it. There is nothing more destructive to the concept of constitutional government  than five unelected judges ignoring the intent of the people who ratified the Constitution and amendment, and giving it their own more enlightened modern-day interpretation.

When judges “discover” a heretofore unknown constitutional right, they strip the people and their  elected representatives of power to decide the question for themselves.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, author of the majority opinion writes:

“The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth
Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions,
and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of  all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning. When new insight reveals discord between the Constitution’s central protections and a received legal stricture, a claim to liberty must be addressed.

“The right to marry is fundamental as a matter of history and tradition, but rights come not from ancient sources alone. They rise, too, from a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives define a liberty that remains urgent in our own era.

“The right of same-sex couples to marry that is part of the liberty promised by the Fourteenth Amendment is derived, too, from that Amendment’s guarantee of the equal protection of the laws.”


So would the people who ratified the Constitution (or the 14th Amendment) have done so, if before they voted to ratify, they had been told that someday five judges  -- armed with “new insights” -- would say the word liberty as used in the Constitution includes the right of same-sex couple to marry?

Stripped of all legal gobbledygook, what Justice Kennedy really means is that the people who wrote the Constitution and the 14th Amendment were too benighted to understand that that liberty — as they used the term — meant the right (liberty) of people to contract same-sex marriages and that it was the duty of five 21st-century judges with new insights and a better formed understanding to fix that omission, even if it meant unelected judges ignoring the intent of the American people who ratified the Constitution, and later, the 14th Amendment.

In his dissent, Justice Anontin Alito excoriates what he labels “judicial hubris.”


“But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch. The five Justices who compose today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003. They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a “fundamental right” overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since.

"They see what lesser legal minds -- minds like Thomas Cooley, John Marshall Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Learned Hand, Louis Brandeis, William Howard Taft, Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson, and Henry Friendly -- could not. They are certain that the People ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to bestow on them [i. e., the five unelected judges composing the majority] the power to remove questions from the democratic process when that is called for by their ‘reasoned judgment.’ These Justices know that limiting marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason; they know that an institution as old as government itself, and accepted by every nation in history until 15 years ago, cannot possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance or bigotry. And they are willing to say that any citizen who does not agree with that, who adheres to what was, until 15 years ago, the unanimous judgment of all generations and all societies, stands against the Constitution.”

Today, many Americans are ecstatic. But if five judges can redefine “liberty” to encompass same-sex marriage, tomorrow five other judges can redefine “person” to exclude blacks and fetuses, as they did in the Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade opinions. Today’s benevolent oligarchy, can all too easily become tomorrow’s tyranny.

By the way, “putsch” means “a violent attempt to overthrow a government.”



Posted: Friday, July 10, 2015 11:00 pm - QCOnline
By John Donald O'Shea




Copyright 2015
John Donald O'Shea

Save the Polar Bears, Murderers; Abort the Fetuses

         

More than 50 million fetuses have been aborted in America. Does anybody care? Can minds be changed?

On May 6, 2015, the New York Times, citing the New England Journal of Medicine, wrote,

"A study of thousands of premature births, found that a small minority of babies born at 22 weeks who were medically treated survived with few health problems. ...  Leading medical groups had already been discussing whether to lower the consensus on the age of viability, now cited by most medical experts as 24 weeks."

The U.S. House recently passed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, to restrict abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy. Should it pass the Senate, the president -- who has opened the borders to save Central American Children --  threatens to veto it.

In the encyclical Laudato Si, Pope Francis has now tied saving the planet with saving unborn children:

"Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification for abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings ... if we fail to protect a human embryo? ... If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away.”

So, will what doctors, Congress and the pope have to say change any minds?

Are humans -- including fetuses -- animals? The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animal's website inanely makes clear that the questions are irrelevant.

"PETA does not have a position on the abortion issue, because our focus ... is the alleviation of the suffering inflicted on nonhuman animals. … And just as the pro-life movement has no official position on animal rights, neither does the animal rights movement have an official position on abortion."

You would think the ACLU might care. After all, its Capital Punishment Project works toward the repeal capital punishment. Indeed, the ACLU claims,

"The death penalty in America is a broken process. … Death sentences are predicted not by the heinousness of the crime but by the poor quality of the defense lawyers, the race of the accused or the victim, and the county and state in which the crime occurred. From 1976 to 2015, 1,392 executions occurred in the United States, and 995 of them took place in the South. Time and time again, we have proven that the criminal justice system fails to protect the innocent and persons with serious mental disabilities and illnesses from execution. … Every method of execution comes with an intolerably high risk of extreme pain and torture.”

The ACLU states that in the U.S. during a 30-year period, there were 1392 executions; since Roe v. Wade there have been more than 50 million fetuses executed. It claims, "Death sentences are predicted not by the heinousness of the crime.” But the death sentence can be imposed only for a conviction of murder; are not all murders heinous by definition?

The ACLU is concerned about "the poor quality of defense lawyers.” But the murder defendant at least gets a lawyer -- unlike the fetus. And why is the race of the victim and the county and state involved of more consequence to a murderer than to a fetus?


The ACLU argues "the criminal justice system fails to protect the innocent."  Is the fetus less innocent than a murderer?


Is application of the death penalty in a murder case, after innumerable appeals,  more random than an abortion performed on a mother's whim?

What is the ACLU's position on late-term abortion?

"The ACLU opposes the so-called Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 … because it outlaws safe abortion procedures and thus threatens women’s health and reproductive rights. ...  it bans safe and common abortion methods used in the second trimester of pregnancy, well before fetal viability. It also lacks an exception to protect women’s health.”

But the act would also ban abortions on "viable" children, and third-trimester abortions. Are a mother's health and reproductive rights more important than the rights of a child not to be exterminated?

According to National Right to Life organization, during a partial birth abortion,

"The abortionist punctures the base of the baby’s skull with a surgical instrument, such as a long surgical scissors. ... He then inserts a catheter (tube) into the wound, and removes the baby's brain with a powerful suction machine. This causes the skull to collapse."

How many abortions are really necessary and performed to save the life or health of the mother?

Do churches really care? The pope has jumped aboard the planet-saving bandwagon, linking abortion with saving the planet. How many of those who march carrying placards demanding that we save the planet, whales and lab rats give a damn about saving unborn babies, who are scientifically
demonstrably human? How long has it been since you heard a homily condemning abortion? Urging the congregation to vote against a party or candidate who is pro-abortion?

I have previously argued that the fetus is unquestionably  -- as a matter of science -- more than a part of it's mother. It unarguably also carries its father's DNA. Ipso facto, it is a human being, distinct from both its mother and father.

The world condemns Hitler because he treated Jews as subhuman, and the slavery of the antebellum South because it regarded blacks as subhuman. We are appalled at the carnage of the Islamic State, which treats non-Muslims as subhuman.

So,  why does a convicted murderer have more human worth and evoke more compassion than an innocent fetus?

If we kill our children, how can our nation claim the high moral ground? Today, in America, more opprobrium attaches to kicking a cat.


If morality is not dead in 21st century America, then how can we ignore the pope when he asks, "How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings … if we fail to protect a human embryo?"

Posted: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 11:00 pm QuadCitiesOnline

| Updated: 11:00 pm, Tue Jul 7, 2015. 

By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015

John Donald O'Shea

Magna Carta and "Divine Right" of Judges

Monday marked the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta -- the Great Charter -- by King John of England. John was forced to sign the document by his rebellious barons.

Magna Carta is generally regarded as the first successful attempt to subject the English king to the rule of law. Prior to it, kings regarded themselves as above the law -- ruling by divine right. Magna Carta is also the first attempt of the English people at constitutional law; it is the sire of what we call "due process."

Only three of Magna Carta's 63 paragraphs remain part of English law today. But two have found their way into our U.S. Constitution:

-- "39. No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or have his property seized or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

-- "40. To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.

Paragraph 39 essentially appears as our 5th Amendment in the following words:

"No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

Similar language appears in the 14th Amendment:

 "... nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

Magna Carta's Paragraph 40 also appears as: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury"

Similar language appears in the constitutions of every state.

But what was unique about Magna Carta, and what makes it fairly describable as the first constitutional law, was that for the first time a mechanism was written into the document to enforce the King's compliance with his written promises:

"For the better allaying of the quarrel that has arisen between us and our barons, we have granted ... these concessions, and desirous that they should enjoy them ... forever, we give ... them ... security: namely, that the barons shall choose five and twenty ...,  whomsoever they will, who shall be bound with all their might ... to cause to be observed, the ... liberties we have granted .... to them by this ...  Charter, so that if we, or ... any one of our officers, ... shall have broken any ... of these articles ... and the offense be noticed by four barons,  ... the four barons shall repair to us ... and, laying the transgression before us, petition to have that transgression redressed without delay.

"And if we ... shall not have corrected the transgression ... within forty days, ... the four barons ... shall refer that matter to the rest of the five and twenty barons ….

"Those five and twenty barons shall, together with the community of the whole realm, distrain and distress us in all possible ways, namely, by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, and in any other way they can, until redress has been obtained."

Paragraph 39 guaranteed what lawyers and judges call "procedural due process" --  that no freeman would be destroyed except by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land (and not by the king's whim!). The specified procedures involved were (a) lawful judgment of peers, and (b) by the law of the land.

Magna Carta did not grant either the barons or freemen any new rights. It guaranteed only the traditional right of all free men not to be destroyed by the king --- absent a trial by the freeman's peers, pursuant to  the law of the land. American's refer to that guarantee as "procedural due process"  -- the "process" (procedure) that is "due" in the matter.

To the English barons, not being destroyed meant not being subject to capital punishment, imprisonment, ruinous fine, seizure of their property or banishment. That was the original meaning of due process under the 5th and 14th amendments. "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. ..."

To the barons, "liberty" meant freedom from being destroyed except after trial by their peers, by the law of the land.

Around the middle of the 19th century, however, our Supreme Court  began to give liberty an expanded meaning beyond freedom from imprisonment.

The court held that Dred Scott's master had liberty to take his slave into a free state, without Scott becoming free. Employers had economic liberty  to make contracts with their employees that required employees to work 16 hours a day without government interference. In the 20th century, women were accorded absolute liberty (at least during the first trimester) to abort fetuses. This redefinition of liberty has been called "substantive due process."

Traditional "procedural due process" continues to exist to guarantee that people in America will not be executed, imprisoned or fined without a trial by their peers, in accordance with the law of the land. But "substantive due process" is judge-made law, fashioned by the judges to guarantee other non-traditional rights not mentioned by the Constitution, but which the modern judges feel should have been.

Substantive due process effectively amends the Constitution in the manner other than that prescribed by the Constitution's Article V amendment procedures. That substantive due process is nothing less than a judicial usurpation of power is best proven by the fact that the Dred Scott decision, and the economic due process cases of the 19th century have long since been repudiated by the court, the Congress and the nation.

Substantive due process is the power of judges to behave like the divine right of kings, and rewrite the Constitution to correct the errors and omissions of the founders.

Posted: Friday, June 19, 2015 11:01 pm QuadCitiesOnline

By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015

John Donald O'Shea

Can US Negotiate with 'Religion of War'?

Can President Obama and his State Department negotiate with the Islamic State? In the 1930s, successive British Prime Ministers (Baldwin and Chamberlain) knowing the carnage of World War I, operated on two premises:

1. No sane man would lead his nation into a second world war; and

2. Every man -- even Adolf Hitler -- had his price.

Following is a passage from William Manchester’s “The Last Lion,” the second volume of his biography of Winston Churchill. Thereafter, I set out excerpts from an audio message from the leader of the Islamic State (ISIS), Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

As you read, ask yourself if negotiation with Al-Baghdadi is possible.

“The first allied response to the Nazi regime had been prompted by the universal loathing among decent men of modern war’s senseless slaughter. But revulsion is a frail foundation for a foreign policy. As Hitler’s belligerence became clearer, [Prime Minister] Baldwin, Chamberlain and their fellow appeasers in England ...  assured one another that he would fight the Russians and leave them alone. But wishing didn’t make it so, and they should have known that; Baldwin himself had described Hitler as a ‘lunatic’ with whom ‘you never can be sure of anything,’ adding that ‘none of us knows what goes on in that strange man’s mind.”’ Therefore, in the autumn of 1936, he called his fiddlers three -- Samuel Hoare (now the First Lord of the Admiralty), Lord Halifax (Lord Privy Seal), and Neville Chamberlain (Exchequer) -- and moved toward what they thought was firmer ground.

“It was quicksand. Their new mantra was diplomacy -- negotiation as an alternative to war. Britain’s honor, they told the public, would be preserved; the negotiating table, not the battlefield, was where differences between England and Germany would be resolved. They were convinced that Hitler had his price. ... Devoted to peace, they could not understand that the ruler of Nazi Germany disdained negotiations, enjoyed bloodshed -- including German blood -- and therefore preferred military conquest.”

On May 14, 2015, ISIS’ Al-Baghdadi, (or someone pretending to be him — if he is dead as some believe) broadcast the audio message,  “March Forth Whether Light or Heavy.” Transcribed and translated it runs some 16 single-spaced pages. Here are excerpts, to help you understand what American is dealing with.

“Allah ... said fighting has been enjoined upon you while it is hateful to you.

“ ...  so let those fight in the cause of Allah who sell the life of this world for the Hereafter. And he who fights in the cause of Allah and is killed or achieves victory — We will bestow upon him a great reward ...

“ ... those who are killed in the cause of Allah — never will He waste their deeds. He will ... admit them to Paradise ...

“So where are you, O Muslim, in relation to the command of your Lord, who commanded you to fast in one verse, and commanded you with jihad and fighting in dozens of verses?

“ ...  your Lord has made jihad for the cause of Allah obligatory upon you and has commanded you to fight His enemies so that He may forgive your sins, ... take from among you martyrs, purify the believers, and destroy the disbelievers....

“Whoever thinks that it is within his capacity to conciliate with Jews, Christians, and other disbelievers, and for them to conciliate with him, such that he coexists with them and they coexist with him ... has belied the explicit statement of his Lord... , who says, {And never will the Jews or the Christians approve of you until you follow their religion}.

“O Muslims! Do not think the war that we are waging is the Islamic State’s war alone.  ... It is the war of every Muslim in every place, and the Islamic State is merely the spearhead in this war. It is but the war of the people of faith against the people of disbelief, so march forth to your war O Muslims. March forth everywhere ....

“O Muslims, Islam was never for a day the religion of peace. Islam is the religion of war. Your Prophet ... ordered ... war until Allah is worshiped alone. He ... said to the polytheists  ‘I came to you with slaughter.’ He fought both the Arabs and non-Arabs. ...  He himself ... took part in dozens of battles. He never for a day grew tired of war....

“His ... followers carried on similarly. They did not ... abandon war, until they ... conquered the East and the West. The nations submitted to them, and the lands yielded to them, by the edge of the sword....

“America and its allies from amongst the Jews, Crusaders, Rafidah (Shiites), secularists, atheists, and apostates claim that their coalition and war is to aid the weak and oppressed. ... Indeed, they lie...
“O Muslims, the apostate tyrannical rulers who rule your ... Two Holy Sanctuaries (Mecca and Medina), Yemen, Sham (the Levant), Iraq, Egypt, North Africa, Khorasan, the Caucasus, the Indian Subcontinent, Africa, and elsewhere, are the allies of the Jews and Crusaders. Rather, they are their slaves, servants, and guard dogs, and nothing else.”

So, can we negotiate with this guy?  Does he mean it when he says, “Islam was never for a day the religion of peace. Islam is the religion of war?”

Can we strike a bargain with him, without converting to Islam, submitting to live under Sharia law, and watching him “slaughter” anyone who chooses to remain a Christian or a Jew?
Our President tells us that Islam is a religion of peace.

Al-Baghdadi tells us Islam is a religion of war; and that for a Muslim, conciliation and coexistence with Christians and Jews is impossible. And he reminds the faithful “Muhammad spent his entire life making war.”

So which view of Islam is true? Mr. Obama’s, or ISIS’ al-Baghdadi’s or both? And how does a man who doesn’t want war, negotiate with a hate-animated bigot who does?

Posted: Friday, June 12, 2015 11:00 pm - QuadCities Online.com

By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015

John Donald O'Shea

No More Dead Cops! Ends Don't Justify Means!

“What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!”  --  Million Marchers in Murray Hill neighborhood of New York City, Dec, 13, 2014 (youtube.com/watch?v=dj4ARsxrZh8)


On Saturday afternoon, Dec. 20, 2014, New York Police Officers Wenjain Liu and Rafael Ramos were shot and murdered as they sat in the marked police vehicle. The suspect in the shooting, then shot and killed himself.

On Saturday, May 2,  NYPD Officer Brian Moore was shot in the head and murdered as he sat in his unmarked police vehicle, by a man with an extensive criminal record.

On Wednesday, May 13, a man with a history of paranoia and schizophrenia, was shot after he attacked a New York policewoman with a hammer as she approached him on the street. The man is suspected of attacking four other people with his hammer two days earlier.

On Saturday night, May 9,  two Hattiesburg, Miss., police officers  were shot and murdered when they tried to effect a traffic stop. Four suspects have been arrested.

So it appears, the anarchists who paraded and chanted in New York that they wanted dead cops are having their way. This, in the name of a “more just society.” This in the name of “civil rights.” This is a perfect example of what occurs when politicians and people in a neighborhood accept the despicable proposition that the ends justify the means.

But what would happen if those who hate cops, got their way, and there were no more cops. What if the people of New York awakened one morning to find that all the cops had vanished? That seems to be happening in Baltimore.

Who does the citizen call for help when motorcycle gangs race down their New York residential streets at 60 mph when there are no cops? Mayor Bill de Blasio? President Obama? The U. S. Attorney General? MSNBC?

And who does a family call when shots are fired at them from a speeding vehicle, killing a 2-year-old child on his porch in his mother’s arms?

And who will come to the aid of a young woman being attacked by a would-be rapist? The neighbors? Did they come to the aid of Kitty Genovese when she was stabbed to death by Winston Moseley near her home in Kew Gardens, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens on March 13, 1964? Some 38 of them heard at least some of her cries for help.

How far would the Ferguson, Mo., riots have spread had there been no cops?
How about the Baltimore riots?

Who does a 70-year-old widow call when in the middle of the night she hears glass breaking in her basement? And who is going to provide armed security in a local high school when a deranged student armed with automatic handguns enters the school with intent to commit murder? The Marines? An unarmed female teacher? An elderly janitor?

When a war breaks out between two rival motorcycle gangs over who will control drugs distribution in a neighborhood, and bullets are flying down city streets, and nine are killed, who do you call when there are no police?

In my 26 years on the bench (eight and a half in the criminal division). I got to meet more cops in a week than the average person meets in a lifetime. I came away with the highest regard for officers including Perry Jackson and Mary DeVine of the Rock Island Police Department, Kenneth Hanger of the Moline Police Department, Dick Fisher of the Rock Island County Sheriffs Department and the Secret Service’s William Albrecht.

Like doctors, lawyers and all other men and women, some police officers are smarter than others, some are more diligent, some have better dispositions, and some were quicker to use force. Perhaps I have forgotten, but in my years around the courts, I can recall only a very few being charged with criminal offenses or fired for misconduct (and a few others who perhaps should have been). That being said, not one of them deserved capital punishment, either at the hand of the law, the mob or a vigilante.

For a New York mob to call for dead cops is something that every American -- from the president to the lowliest citizen -- should find despicable and un-American.

If it is legitimate for a mob to howl for dead cops, why can’t the same or the next mob demand dead congressmen or bureaucrats? And if the end justifies the means -- if cops, including innocent cops -- can be assassinated --  murdered -- to make a political statement, why not nuns, Republicans and Democrats?

And if it is fair for the mob to kill cops in furtherance of its notions of achieving a more just society; why can’t cops murder  protesters as their means squelching the sort of riots and looting we have seen in Ferguson and Baltimore? Wouldn’t such noble ends justify those means?


Without respect for the law, and those who work to uphold it,  and without a realization that the ends don’t justify the means, America degenerates into Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria -- into a Middle-East hell hole!

Posted: Friday, June 5, 2015 11:00 pm.  QuadCitiesOnline

By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015

John Donald O'Shea