Quick Hits

Another horrifying failure of the justice system, because the left has decided, post-George-Floyd, that black people are immune to criminal law.

A Louisville father is demanding answers after a repeat offender, who had been released early from a 14-year prison sentence under "shock probation," allegedly broke into his home, kidnapped his wife and two sons at knifepoint, and forced them to help rob a local bank.

"It's pure shock... your heart feels like it falls out of your body," Brandon Strong told "Fox & Friends" Tuesday as he recalled the terrifying moment he learned what had happened.

"It's a call you never expect to get as a father, a husband or even a human."

Armond Langford reportedly entered Strong's home and forced his wife and two of his three children to drive him to a nearby PNC Bank.

Langford fled the scene after robbing the bank, sending police on an hours-long manhunt before he was apprehended. Strong's wife was transported to the hospital and treated for stab wounds.

Langford boasts a lengthy track record, including 19 robberies and one burglary. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison in February 2024 but was released six months later when Judge Jessica Green granted him shock probation, according to a local report.

Shock probation is a legal provision that allows a judge to release an offender early from prison, often after serving just a few months of a longer sentence, and place them under strict probation supervision.

The idea is that the initial "shock" of incarceration will be enough to deter the individual from committing future crimes.

So "shock incarceration" is like Michael Scott's fake firing? You put a hardened criminal in jail for a few weeks and then let him out, saying "just kidding."

And that's supposed to teach people that breaking the law has serious consequences? Demonstrating that crime has no consequences and that the law is basically a practical joke is supposed to teach people to respect the law?

We're willing to try almost every "reform" except for the ones that work, like locking up repeat violent criminals, huh?

Langford is now in custody on a $1 million bond, but questions are mounting about why he was free in the first place.

Strong slammed the court system for the release and directed a message to the judge.

"It's squarely on you. This is something that was not a surprise to anyone... it's a pattern. This is something that's stemming back nearly a decade. This guy is robbing people, he's robbing businesses, and you stamped this for him to be rehabilitated based on what?

Sherrod Brown, who was just defeated for Ohio senator after serving for 18 miserably leftwing years, is going to run again, hoping to recapture the seat.

After losing his re-election bid in 2024, three-term Ohio Democratic senator Sherrod Brown will be launching a new bid next year to return to his position, according to a report.

Brown's plans to run for Senate were shared with local media by three Ohio labor leaders who said that Brown had confided in them directly about the plans. Other Ohio Democrats also expressed to the outlet that they had heard of Brown's plan from members of his inner circle, and the reporting follows news that Brown has been interviewing campaign managers for his upcoming bid.

Brown was ousted in 2024 by MAGA challenger and current freshman Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, who came out victorious with 50.2% of the vote, compared to Brown's 46.4%.

Despite the brushing defeat, Democratic Party Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, has reportedly lobbied Brown to run for months.

If selected as the Democratic Party's candidate, Brown's likely GOP opponent would be Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, who was appointed to fill Vice President J.D. Vance's seat after he left for the White House. A 2026 special election will decide who will serve out the remainder of Vance's term, which lasts until 2029.

An Arizona leftist state senator is doubling down on doxxing ICE.

Last week, Arizona State Sen. Analise Ortiz, vulgarly defended her actions after she admitted to alerting illegal immigrants to ICE presence in her district. The Glendale leftist, who also is accused of doxxing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, shook her fist at "fascists and white supremacists in power in Arizona," and claimed she had a right to interfere in federal immigration law enforcement activities.

"Yep. When ICE is around, I will alert my community to stay out of the area, and I'm not f***king scared of you nor Trump's masked goons," the lawmaker wrote in response to the conservative social media site Libs of TikTok outing Ortiz for "actively impeding and doxxing" ICE.

But "alerting" her community could very well tip off some very dangerous people who represent a clear and present danger to the community at large.
'Will be Investigated'

In a statement, Arizona State Senate President Warren Petersen said he has referred the matter to U.S. Attorney, Arizona District for investigation. And Petersen told The Federalist last week that an ethics complaint has been filed in the Senate against Ortiz "and will be investigated through the course of the normal complaint process at the legislature."

Ortiz has since doubled down on her defiant rhetoric, asserting her speech is protected under the First Amendment.

"I am not intimidated by this because what I did was simply alert my community to stay away from an area where ICE could be to keep themselves safe," she told ABC15 Arizona in an interview.

I missed this last week: Marks & Spencer is apologizing to a mother after a transgender employee offered to help her fourteen-year-old daughter... in a bra fitting.

The retailer said it was "truly sorry" after the mother complained that her 14-year-old daughter had felt uncomfortable when they were approached by a trans shop assistant in the lingerie area of the shop, where they were hoping to have a bra fitting.

Although the staff member was polite, the mother said she felt it was "completely inappropriate" for her daughter to be approached by a "biological male" in that section.

In a complaint to M&S, she told the retailer: "Imagine her horror, then, when the person to approach us and ask if we needed help was a transgender 'woman', ie, a biological male.

"This is obviously the case: he is at least 6ft 2in tall... My daughter recoiled, so I politely declined the offer and we left immediately. She was visibly upset and said she felt 'freaked out'."

Yes, she should be. This is an autogynephile who is sexually excited by larping publicly as a woman and attempting to cadge his way into women's intimate places.

Via John Sexton, who notes that M&S will not instruct the transgender to stop offering to cup 14-year-old girls' breasts, but will merely make sure an actual woman is available to help them if they specifically ask for a woman.

The group Sex Matters says this is not sufficient:

Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns for the human rights charity Sex Matters, which campaigns for clarity about biological sex in law and life, said that M&S needed to "rethink its priorities".

"This is what happens when a business centres the feelings of men who identify as women, even at the expense of their own customers. It is entirely inappropriate for a man to approach a teenage girl in a lingerie department.

"Being dressed in women's clothes doesn't change that. It's extraordinary that a man would regard himself as entitled to do such a thing; most men know how unwelcome that would be.

This was the whole point of the "trans women are women" psyop: to deny anyone the ability to say "But, your know, in reality, this is an adult man offering to help select and fit a bra for a fourteen year old girl."

See, you can't see that, because trans women are women. And if this transgender wants to go in the dressing room with your teenage daughter and play Bra Fashion Show, well, you have to accept that. Because, I repeat, trans women are women.

Via David Strom: You won't believe this, but Obama, who claimed that accusations that he was a socialist were racist conspiracy theories, is now embracing Zohran Mamdani, who now admits he's a socialist (in order to avoid admitting the truth, that he's a Marxist communist and Stalinist.)

The innumerate DEI columnist Mara Gay writes:

In the days after it became clear Zohran Mamdani had won New York City's June mayoral primary, much of the Democratic establishment began to panic.

Former President Barack Obama, the last Democrat to captivate the party's base, got on the phone. In a lengthy call in June, Mr. Obama congratulated Mr. Mamdani, offered him advice about governing and discussed the importance of giving people hope in a dark time, according to people with knowledge of the conversation.

Others in Mr. Obama's orbit have also shown a keen interest in Mr. Mamdani and his campaign. Jon Favreau, who served as Mr. Obama's speechwriter, and Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser, have been in communication with the Democratic strategist Morris Katz, among Mr. Mamdani's closest aides.

David Axelrod, who served as Mr. Obama's chief campaign strategist and senior adviser, was also curious. Last month, he stopped by Mr. Mamdani's campaign headquarters, then in the Flatiron neighborhood of Manhattan, to meet the candidate and his staff, and see things for himself.

"What I found when I went over to that office was a familiar spirit that I hadn't seen in a while of just determined, upbeat idealism," Mr. Axelrod told me. "You may not agree with every answer he's giving, or every idea he has, but he's certainly asking the right questions, which is how do we make the country work for working people?" He said Mr. Mamdani's ability to inspire young Americans, who feel economic uncertainty acutely, was critical and something the party at large needed to reckon with.

Mr. Axelrod was introduced to Mr. Mamdani by Patrick Gaspard, another Obama insider. Mr. Gaspard -- Mr. Obama's 2008 national political director, and later the U.S. ambassador to South Africa -- has been serving as an informal adviser to Mr. Mamdani.

The interest from the closely guarded world of Mr. Obama and those around him is the clearest sign yet that Mr. Mamdani is likely to be embraced by the Democratic mainstream, whether the party's leaders and donors like it or not. It comes at a time of dueling visions among voters, Democratic politicians and donors over the future of the party.

Some key figures within the Democratic establishment have reacted -- at least publicly -- to Mr. Mamdani with a sense of suspicion or even alarm. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, has yet to endorse the Democratic nominee, even though Brooklyn, which he represents, voted for Mr. Mamdani over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by a nearly 20-point margin. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, also of New York, said falsely in a radio interview with WNYC in June that Mr. Mamdani had made "references to global jihad." Ms. Gillibrand later apologized for those remarks. As The Times reported, the pollster Mark Penn even met with President Trump to brief him on polls showing that Mr. Cuomo could be competitive in a one-on-one race with Mr. Mamdani; one of Mr. Penn's firms has worked for a pro-Cuomo super PAC.

It seems very possible that Obamaworld views Mr. Mamdani differently: not as a threat or a liability, but as a promising figure in a Democratic Party with a pressing need for fresh blood.

Is anyone in the media going to start asking Democrats about their century of lying about not being socialists?

Or are we supposed to believe they just heard about socialism for the first time and so this is a sudden conversion rather than a predilection long hidden?

Democrat Cultists have a fever: More socialism, more profanity, more political violence, and a nation filled to the brim with illegal aliens from sea to shining sea.

The Democratic Party is hideously unpopular heading into next year's midterms. This is a problem for the small faction of Democrats who think the party should prioritize winning elections over throwing performative tantrums and other theater kid nonsense. It's less of a problem for the Democrats who are actually leading the party right now and setting the agenda for 2026. They are loud, obnoxious, profane, and passionate in their defense of illegal immigrants and other criminals. Rules? They don't believe in rules.

"There are no refs in this game," said Beto O'Rourke, the thrice-failed candidate for governor, president, and U.S. Senate, at a rally in support of Texas Democrats who fled the state to avoid doing their jobs. "Fuck the rules, we are going to win. Whatever it takes." O'Rourke has emerged as one of the Democratic Party's most prominent leaders after his political action committee paid for the private jet that took the fleeing Democrats to Illinois earlier this month. This week, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton asked a judge to order Beto's arrest after the obnoxious Columbia grad violated a court order by continuing to raise money to support the fugitives.

O'Rourke, who flamed out of the 2020 primary after yelling profanely about abolishing guns, has also urged Democrats to fight harder in defense of the illegal immigrant community "that makes this country so goddamn great." When Democrats reclaim power, he said, they would "drive that car like we stole it" to end deportations and approve a sweeping amnesty bill for unlawful residents.

It's a message echoed by some of the most fashionable Democratic candidates across the country. Zohran Mamdani, the widely celebrated radical socialist vying to be the next mayor of New York City, has vowed to block federal immigration agents from operating in the city and described his efforts to secure taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal immigrants as one of his "greatest victories." Omar Fateh, another radical socialist running for mayor of Minneapolis, recently said one of his top priorities would be protecting "our undocumented residents" from a "hostile federal government."

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D., Texas), the potty-mouthed diva who has become a rising star thanks to her public tantrums and phony accent, has argued that illegal immigration was "not a crime." She most recently went viral for calling Donald Trump a "piece of shit" on her nationwide publicity tour. Vulnerable Democrats are enlisting Crockett to help them raise money for the midterms. Antonio White, a former Treasury official in the Obama and Biden administrations, penned an op-ed in The Hill this week urging Democratic leaders to follow Crockett's lead. "She is the base. She is the moment," he wrote. "Whether you like her delivery or not, she's speaking a language people understand--and that's exactly what this party needs."

posted by Ace at 06:40 PM

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