TYRE NICHOLS’S DEATH RAISES HARD QUESTIONS ABOUT RACE AND POLICING - By Gerard Baker
One understandable but inadequate take on the killing of Tyre Nichols is the idea that we should feel some satisfaction that justice works. Five police officers beat a young black man to a pulp, rendering him lifeless on the street and he dies three days later. The men are all quickly fired, arrested and charged with murder. Thus, the panglossian says, the majesty of the law at work. Awful as it was, there is no larger lesson here beyond man’s unending capacity for inhumanity to man. A terrible crime is committed, quickly investigated and resolved, and the wheels of justice are swiftly set in motion.

Message for New Jersey Gun Owners
New Jersey is a good example of how bad things can truly become for firearm owners. On a scale of 0 to 10 (0 = total prohibition; 10 = to total freedom) New Jersey scores a zero (0). As you might expect, in some cases, Gov. Phil Murphy has made matters worse for lawful gun owners.
References:
[1] Firearm Laws in New Jersey. Excerpt from 2022 Traveler's Guide to the Firearm Laws of the Fifty States.
[2] Sportsman’s Warehouse. How to Legally Drive Firearms Across State Lines, 2021. (YouTube)
[3] “Firearm Owners Protection Act.” In Wikipedia, January 19, 2022.

CLIMATE CHANGE, 5G & THE INTERNET OF THINGS
“The digital transition as it is currently implemented participates to global warming more than it helps preventing it. The need for action is therefore urgent.” - The Shift Project Report on the Environmental Impact of Information and Communication Technologies, 2019 <Click here>

FCC AND BIG TELECOM MAKE US "THE DUMMIES"
Big Tech and its Federal Communications Commission (FCC) toadies have used a fraudulent test to license cell phones, wireless technology and now 5G to push a technology that causes catastrophic biological damage. <Click here>

NEW JERSEY RANKS LAST IN TRANSPARENCY AND OPEN GOVERNMENT
According to a 2016 US News and World Report study, New Jersey RANKS LAST in Transparency and Open Government.  <Click here>

A MESSAGE TO POLICE
The point of this article isn't to judge whether cops are justified in doing what they do. This article has nothing to do with police training. And this isn't just about American cops. This is about the perception that we, the public, have of you when you perform the following actions. It doesn't matter if you disagree with these perceptions, because right or wrong, they exist. The point of this article is to simply let you know that we're watching, and this is how we see things. <Click here>

HOW SOME COPS USE THE BADGE TO COMMIT SEX CRIMES
Research on "police sexual misconduct" — a term used to describe actions from sexual harassment and extortion to forcible rape by officers — overwhelmingly concludes that it is a systemic problem. A 2015 investigation by the Buffalo News, based on a national review of media reports and court records over a 10-year period, concluded that an officer is accused of an act of sexual misconduct at least every five days. The vast majority of incidents, the report found, involve motorists, young people in job-shadowing programs, students, victims of violence and informants. In more than 60 percent of the cases reviewed, an officer was convicted of a crime or faced other consequences.<Click here>

Book Review of The Soprano State: New Jersey's Culture of Corruption
“New Jersey is arguably America’s most corrupt state, and it is not an achievement  to be proud of, as Bob Ingle and Sandy McClure starkly demonstrate. Only the people  of the Garden State can stop the jokes—both the ones elected into office and the  ones told about the crooked truth of political life there.”  —Dr. Larry J. Sabato, author of A More Perfect Constitution and director of the Center for Politics, University of Virginia.
The Soprano State details the you-couldn’t-make-this-up true story of the corruption that has pervaded  New Jersey politics, government, and business for the past thirty years. From Jimmy  Hoffa purportedly being buried somewhere  beneath the end zone in Giants Stadium in  the Meadowlands, through allegations of a  thoroughly corrupt medical and dental university, through Mafia influence at all levels,  to a governor who suddenly declares himself  a “gay American” and resigns, the Garden State might indeed be better named after the HBO mobsters.
Where else would:
• A state attorney general show up after  police pulled over her boyfriend, who was  driving without a valid license?
• A state senator and mayor of Newark (the  same guy) spend thousands of dollars of  taxpayers’ money on a junket to Rio days  before leaving office?
• A politically connected developer hire a prostitute to tape sex acts with his own brother-in-law and then send the tape to his sister?
- Only in the Soprano State

THE POLITICS OF FATHERHOOD - By Stephen Baskerville, Howard University
Perhaps most startling is that by some accounts <New Jersey Family Courts> claim to be exempt from the U.S. Constitution. Family courts describe themselves as courts of "equity" or "chancery" rather than "law," implying they are not necessarily bound by due process, and the rules of evidence are not as stringent as in criminal courts. As one father reports being told by the chief investigator for the administrator of the courts in New Jersey, investigating a complaint in 1998: "The provisions of the U.S. Constitution do not apply in domestic relations cases since they are determined in a court of equity rather than court of law." A connected rule, known as the "domestic relations exception," prevents federal courts exercising constitutional review over family law cases.<Click here>

N.J. JUDGES TOLD TO IGNORE RIGHTS IN ABUSE TRO'S, New Jersey Law Journal 140 (24 April).
Since the Legislature has made domestic violence a top priority, municipal court judges are instructed that they can do their part by issuing temporary restraining orders pronto.
"Throw him out on the street," said trainer and municipal court judge Richard Russell at a similar seminar a year ago, 'give him the clothes on his back, and tell him, 'See ya' around.'"
This napalm approach to implementing the domestic violence statute has some state judges talking. No one disputes the presumption in the law of granting a TRO, and there have been no serious court challenges to the statute's ex parte provisions. <Click here>

BAY AREA CITY BLOCKS 5G DEPLOYMENTS OVER CANCER CONCERNS
The city council of Mill Valley, a small town located just a few miles north of San Francisco, voted unanimously late last week to effectively block deployments of small-cell 5G wireless towers in the city’s residential areas.<Click here>

CONGRESS TO CONSIDER BILL REQUIRING POLICE TO REPORT THEIR MISCONDUCT SETTLEMENTS
Last year, officials in Prince George’s County paid $20 million to the family of a handcuffed man who was killed by a police officer. In Washington, city officials paid out $40 million to victims of police abuse between 2016 and 2020. Chicago paid more than $709 million to police victims in a recent eight-year period. Taxpayers absorb the costs of those payouts annually. But the settlements and judgments are reported sporadically, hiding the effect on city and county services that are often raided to pay the costs of police misconduct, and the long-term debt it creates. So two members of Congress from Virginia, Sen. Tim Kaine (D) and Rep. Don Beyer (D), have introduced a bill that would require law enforcement agencies to report all police-related judgments and settlements, including financial costs and court fees, to a central database maintained by the Justice Department.<Click here>

HOW TO READ THE OPINION OF A COURT
What is an Opinion? When a judge hears a case and arrives at a judgment, an explanation or analysis of the reasoning behind the decision is frequently written. The analysis, called an opinion, is then published in the “Reporter” for the court. Significant decisions are published also in other Reporters. <Click here>

INCOME INEQUALITY IN NEW JERSEY: THE GROWING DIVIDE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
In the aftermath of national reaction to police actions in Ferguson, New York City, Cleveland, and other municipalities across the country, many seek to understand what led us here. Distinct from the particulars of specific police encounters, the outcries express a widely shared sense of injustice and inequity, in a word unfairness. Income and wealth inequality can serve as fairness indicators in the minds of those without resources. This sense of fairness constitutes the core of why most Americans—and New Jerseyans— believe that inequality matters.
The report examines the current state of income inequality in New Jersey, using the most recent available Census data. It finds that income inequality has continued to increase even after the 2007-2009 recession. Mirroring much highlighted national trends,1 New Jersey income inequality has worsened markedly since the advent of the new millennium.<Click here>