☕️ ATHENS MAN ☙ Monday, February 26, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Laken Riley murder in Athens exposes media malfeasance; law-defying judge removed in Illinois; spooks cast themselves as victims of 'misunderstanding' with Trump; new ex-globalist; Monday vid; more.

Good morning, C&Cers, it’s Monday! Are you ready for another amazing, 2024-style week? Today’s roundup includes: Athens nursing student murder shatters corporate media;  Illinois commission removes judge who became a law unto himself; intelligence community worried that a re-elected Trump might be unhappy with it; another legacy globalist shuffles off this mortal coil; and your funny Monday clip.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥 While the grotesque parody of incompetence that is Secretary Mayorkas was busily reassuring credulous reporters that the border is totally secure, corporate media was spinning like a psychotic top, throwing sparks, billowing black smoke, desperately racing against the clock to concoct a coherent cover narrative that could possibly distract the public from concluding Joe Biden’s many failures are going to get us all killed — or worse — after an illegal Venezuelan migrant was arrested Friday for the horrifying rape and brutal murder of Laken Riley, 22, a young UGA nursing student slain while she was out for a jog on campus.

The accused, José Antonio Ibarra, 26, jumped the border back in September 2022, without showing any papers or passing through customs. That kind of First Class free entry is, apparently, a privilege reserved for ganged-up criminals. You try entering the U.S. without showing your papers sometime and let me know how it works out. You know, in a few years. After you get out of jail.

Anyway, that we know of, U.S. authorities were given at least three chances to stop José before he killed somebody. They failed every single time. The feds first found José near El Paso, Texas, but released him into the general population citing poorly-defined “further processing” under loose Biden asylum rules. José was then arrested at least twice while he was hanging out in New York City, including for a very serious charge of endangering a child, but each time was immediately released without bail, with authorities rushing under local sanctuary-city rules to get José out before any federal deportation process could start up.

Athens police also arrested José’s brother, Diego, charging him with having a fake green card. The University of Georgia had hired Diego to work in the school cafeteria, in spite of his fake green card, his face tattoo, and in spite of the the awkward fact that he’d been arrested in September for drunk driving without a license and separately for shoplifting, and then skipped all his court dates. Guess what happens if a citizen skips their criminal court date?

But it was almost like Diego was sure nothing would happen. For some reason.

The University of Georgia apparently had no problem with any of Diego’s red flags and hired him anyway where he was well positioned to closely observe students just like Laken.

All these sad facts are well known, or else they will be soon, although you have to push through a lot of corporate media noise to find them. Yesterday, Elon Musk called out the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for burying the lede by blandly referring to José as an “Athens man.”

Perhaps in self-defense, albeit weakly, the Journal-Constitution published an online op-ed this morning headlined, “OPINION: Death of student in Athens highlights America’s lax immigration policies.”

You don’t say.

A bigger story is developing; a story about the shameful and reprehensible way the corporate media is handling these sad facts. The big papers — the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post — are simply ignoring Laken’s murder, hoping to wait it out until all this offensive anti-immigrant racism is obscured as the news cycle trundles onward. The young nursing student’s horrifying death is being better covered by the alphabet networks, but you can still scour the headlines until your eyes bleed without discovering anything about Jose’s immigration status, his criminal record, or his government-granted immunity from ordinary prosecution.

In some truly shocking examples of irresponsible journalism, some platforms are twisting themselves into politically-correct pretzels in a desperate effort to avoid mentioning the inconvenient immigration facts. Like the Associated Press, which even tried to spin Laken’s murder as sports news:

Now remember, this is the same exact corporate media that mercilessly mocked President Trump in 2018 for correctly warning it was a bad idea to let undocumented illegal migrants run around because it increases the risk of violent crime. At the time, media lampooned Trump’s warnings, labeling them as Trump’s racist “Mexican Rapist Claim”:

President Trump probably should not hold his breath waiting for any apologies. But he was obviously right. And all of corporate media was badly, murderously wrong.

🔥 Speaking of the Associated Press, it ran a much better story yesterday headlined, “Illinois judge who reversed rape conviction removed from bench after panel finds he circumvented law.” The story is a great example of how bad judges can be removed.

On Friday, the Illinois Courts Commission officially removed Adams County Judge Robert K. Adrian from the bench, wordily explaining Judge Adrian had “engaged in multiple instances of misconduct” and “abused his position of power to indulge his own sense of justice while circumventing the law.” The Commission wrote a very detailed opinion, which you can read at this link if you are interested in how this sort of legal process works.

The basic, very sad facts are as follows: Drew Clinton had just turned eighteen when he attended a graduation party with some other high-school students at someone’s house. The attendees drank alcohol, and some swam in the pool in their underwear. The victim, 16, got drunk and went inside to sleep. She woke up with a pillow pressed over her face, with Drew on top of her, engaged in sex. She pushed him off, and Drew went and played video games. An arrest and prosecution followed.

At the trial’s conclusion, Judge Adrian initially found Drew guilty of rape. But the judge balked during the sentencing hearing, refusing to impose the state’s mandatory four-year prison sentence for raping a minor, explaining that Drew was too young, the party too unsupervised, and that Drew’s five months of time served was already enough. Then, after prosecutors challenged him, Judge Adrian reversed himself, amending his original trial verdict to not guilty — so as to defeat the mandatory sentencing requirement. (Later he made things even worse by scolding one of the prosecuting attorneys in open court for “liking” a critical social media post, and by changing his story when answering the Commission’s questions.)

Over the last few years, I’ve been asked many times how the judicial system polices itself. This is a great example. Removing a judge is rare but it does happen. More important, judges are well aware of the possibility of their removal. I’m not exactly sure how common it is, but five years ago, I was called to testify before a similar Florida commission about a judge I’d practiced before, who was also ultimately removed.

Judge Adrian’s story seems particularly timely in light of events unfolding in Fulton County. Something to think about.

🔥 Oh no! Politico tried to gin up some sympathy for U.S. intelligence community and the FBI this weekend with a completely tone-deaf story headlined, “The prospect of a second Trump presidency has the intelligence community on edge.” I bet it does.

According to Politico, the nation’s top spooks and some FBI agents are fretting about a potential Trump re-election. They worry that Trump might harbor a few hard feelings towards them, you know, over a few regrettable misunderstandings.  They feel uneasy that Trump might not trust their intelligence assessments anymore since he might be viewing a few of their past decisions in the wrong light. Hilariously, the spies cited in Politico’s article are apprehensive that a re-elected Trump might do something reckless, like “reorganizing” them and thereby — get this — politicizing the spy agencies.

Don’t. Make. Me. Laugh.

For example, Trump-hater Fiona Hill, who Trump appointed as his Russia advisor during his first term but who is now a rabid Never-Trumper, explained how horrible things will be if Trump manages to get re-elected:

“He wants to weaponize the intelligence community. And the fact is you need to look with a 360 degree perspective. He can’t just cherry pick what he wants to hear when there are so many U.S. adversaries and countries that don’t wish the U.S. well,” said Fiona Hill, a top Russia adviser on the National Security Council in Trump’s administration who has regularly criticized his policies. “If he guts the intel on one thing, he’ll be partially blinding us.”

Um. Just saying.

Poor Fiona. One suspects she (she?) is more concerned that Trump knows a lot better who his enemies are now. Over halfway through the article, it finally gets around to mentioning a little detail called Russiagate, and muses over how Trump might still be smarting a little over the way the intelligence agencies, directed by Obama and Clinton, had persecuted him and lots of other citizens helping his campaign using a fake, made up dossier that the FBI never really intended anybody to believe, no; the story just sort of got away from them, that’s all.

Citing a long list of anonymous “intelligence community” critics, Politico eventually confessed to its biggest fear: that Trump might actually get around to punishing some deep state crooks:

“Trump intends to go after the intelligence community,” another former senior intelligence official said. “He started that process before and he’s going to do it again. Part of that process is to root out people and to punish people.”

Talk about being tone-deaf. Punishing people and rooting out the intelligence community is exactly what most of the country desperately wants. They want those things so much that, hilariously, this article could be a Trump campaign ad. What the Intelligence Community is probably really worried about is that, if Trump gets re-elected, he’ll enjoy a popular mandate to punish political partisans and root out the traitors deeply embedded in the intelligence community.

They seem to know that the media can’t save them this time. After everything that’s happened, most folks will either completely ignore or even delight in corporate media’s predictable, hysterical rants about how horrible Trump’s stable-cleaning is for democracy.

It’s just the opposite. Rooting out deep-state traitors is what is necessary for democracy.

And never forget, there’s a little lost Crossfire Hurricane binder out there somewhere and it is sure to turn up sooner or later…

🔥 The UK Independent ran a sickly-sweet story about the latest deceased globalist this morning headlined, “Lord Jacob Rothschild: Financier dies aged 87.” No cause of death has been released for the controversial super-oligarch. He was old, but spry, and well looked after. Maybe it was just his time, who knows.

I have no further comment, except to say it feels like some kind of era is ending and there sure have been a lot of these elderly oligarch types dying and getting sick lately.

🔥 This short clip from Ricky Gervais’s series was making the social media rounds yesterday and seemed appropriate for this morning’s post somehow. Ricky’s genius lies in saying the things that we all want to say but think we just can’t get away with saying. (Note: the clip includes Ricky’s average level of profanity.)

CLIP: Ricky Gervais delivers truth to guilt-manipulating donation hounds (0:40).

It’s fictional, so it’s not quite as compelling as if he’d really done it. But maybe the clip’s appeal sprouts from Ricky’s taking the direct approach and rejecting the dystopian illogic of “protecting people’s feelings.” We could use more of this kind of plain talk in a lot of places these days.

And maybe what society really needs at this point is a lot less obsessive emoting and a few more hurt feelings.

Have a magnificent Monday! And I will catch you back here tomorrow morning for another delightful installment of Coffee & Covid.

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