Important headlines for April 17th – Broward School Violence & The Comey Show
Bottom Line: Stories you shouldn't miss and my takes on them.
Broward School Violence: The Rest of the Story Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations
Excerpt: Broward County, Fla., school officials portray as a great success their Obama administration-inspired program offering counseling to students who break the law, instead of having them arrested or expelled. They insist that it played no role in February’s school massacre by Nikolas Cruz. They also claim that in fact juvenile recidivism rates are down and school safety is up, thanks to the program.
The evidence tells a far different story.
Broward County juvenile justice division records, federal studies of Broward school district safety and the district's own internal reporting show that years of “intensive" counseling didn’t just fail to reform repeat offender Cruz, who allegedly went on to shoot and kill 17 people at his high school. Records show such policies have failed to curtail other campus violence and its effects now on the rise in district schools — including fighting, weapons use, bullying and related suicides.
Meanwhile, murders, armed robberies and other violent felonies committed by children outside of schools have hit record levels, and some see a connection with what’s happening on school grounds. Since the relaxing of discipline, Broward youths have not only brazenly punched out their teachers, but terrorized Broward neighborhoods with drive-by shootings, gang rapes, home invasions and carjackings.
Broward County now has the highest percentage of “the most serious, violent [and] chronic”juvenile offenders in Florida, according to the county’s chief juvenile probation officer.
Before the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the program’s most supportive community partner – the county sheriff’s office – privately worried that school-based deputies were overlooking increasingly dangerous threats. It warned that violent felons on probation were getting “several chances to reoffend” under the school program and those who put their victims in the hospital after attacking them on school grounds escaped arrest through the program.
Hot Take: I've interviewed Broward School Superintendent Robert Runcie on this topic (related to the Promise Program) and he vehemently denies any policies that have created less safe schools. I'd imagine we'd hear something similar in response to this follow-up investigation but as I like to say there are two sides to every story and one side to facts. As this process is playing out we're learning more of them...
The president is not above the law - New York Times
Hot Take: Agreed. Neither is the Secretary of State, the FBI Director or the Attorney General. So why is it that there's no expressed interest in seeing justice on what could prove to be the biggest conspiracy since Benedict Arnold (and I'm not joking). Here are the co-conspirators in the FISA warrant scandal as illustrated by the Nunes memo:
James Comey
Andrew McCabe
Sally Yates
Dana Boenta
Rod Rosenstein
Christopher Steele
Bruce Ohr
Only Bruce Ohr's involvement (which included his wife working with Christopher Steele at Fusion GPS) was even attempted to be addressed by the Democrat's response to the Nunes memo. So, where's the justice and desire for it here? And keep in mind this doesn't even address the Lisa Page/Peter Strzok FBI scandal. And since we're on the topic of Presidential justice... There's also the potential that President Obama was in the know based on texts from Page and Strzok. But the law only matters if you can take out those you don't like evidently...?
Until tomorrow...