Don't Judge Someone by "Their Worst Day"

 7/15/26 KTSP:

Gov. Tim Walz is defending his vote to pardon a man convicted of molesting a 10-year-old child more than 20 years ago.

Last week, the Trump administration deported Tou Lue Vang despite a pardon approved by Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson in their role on the Board of Pardons...

Walz questioned whether Vang’s removal improved outcomes in Minnesota.

“I guess the question I would as is, did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?” Walz said.

I think Walz just had his "worst day." 

Vang defended his multi year molestation of a 10-year-old as part of his culture.  

The Butcher's Tale

By Helmut Walser Smith. This is what historians call "post hole history." To say that is a very deep dive is an understatement. The sources are interrogations, court transcripts, and census records associated with Konitz, a small town in what was then German East Prussia. 

The crime was horrendous: an 18-year-old boy was suffocated or strangled and then dismembered expertly and wrapped and tied as though he was coming from a butcher. Bad enough, but rapidly this turned in the popular imagination of the town into a Jewish sacrifice of a Christian for blood to make matzohs. Antisemitic journalists soon arrived to throw liquid oxygen on a gasoline fire. 

This book examines not only the crime itself but how the assumptions of the locals spun this positively medieval blood libel into a widely believed story. While some local prosecutors pursued the blood libel idea, responsible aristocrats and bureaucrats recognized it as an absurd claim and provided troops to protect Konitz's Jewish community when local police were overwhelmed by numbers. Amazingly enough, it did not turn into a pogrom.

He examines in detail the underlying questions of how neighbors turn against neighbors and why the blood libel persisted into remarkably recent times in Europe, in spite of strong papal opposition.  Much of this discussion is not spectacularly interesting to me, but as detective story, it works well. 

Fortunately, Democrats are looking for other ways to demonize the Jews; blood libel is even too much for MSNOW.

New Jersey Assault Weapon & >10 Round Magazine Ban Overturned by 3rd Circuit

3rd Circuit heard an appeal by New Jersey to a district court ruling that the Second Amendment protects AR-15s but not LCMs (magazines greater than ten rounds). To my shock and pleasure they broadened the ruling to protect all the militia appropriate firearms as well as the LCMs. And yes, this is a case on which i worked. 

My Wife Was Skeptical of the View From Our Yard

 So I asked Google Earth:

Pool in New House

 

Buyer For Caldwell House Finally

I was hoping to close here before close on new house but it will only be a week or two of short-term financing.

I Took The Girls For Their First Ride in the Cadillac (Driving Miss Rosie)

This got scrambled first time. A potential, and eventually actual buyer, wanted to see the house and Mom's Taxi was not home, so I loaded our Springer Spaniels in the back seat and away we went. Lillie tried to climb into the front seat, but I explained that she could not drive and she lay down in the back. Both girls calmed down and saw quietly in the back seat, without sedatives, sometimes looking out the window. I explained to my wife that Rosie and I could split driving shifts.  She was not convinced. The first prairie dog or pronghorn antelope along the road and we would driving after it.

The more I drive my CT5, the more impressed I get with the electronics. The SuperCruise lane change capacity at first disappointed me. I turn the turn signal on and I have to turn it off after the lane change completes. 

A few weeks back, I watched a YouTube video about features present in many cars that are not explicitly in the manuals and are very nice. One is that on many cars, if you turn the turn signal stalk just a little, it turns on the blinker just long enough to warn those in that lane, "I'm coming over." (In the 1960s, I repaired the blinkers on my 1964 Chevy Malibu wagon, and saw the very curious mechanism to implement that in plastic, without electronics.)

So I did the brief warning mode. SuperCruise did the lane change with no need to turn off the blinker. Very nice. It also will do uncommanded lane changes to get around road hogs. I do not understand how it makes this decision but it is possible to tell it to not make uncommanded right lane changes,  I have never seen it make a dangerous decision on this.