When news broke that the head of Iowa’s largest school district was in ICE custody as an alleged illegal alien, the response from all quarters was disbelief. A school superintendent undergoes intense vetting, and every rung on the career ladder requires background checks. How could such a man possibly have slipped through?
Anyone hoping the full story might provide a sensible explanation was quickly disappointed. The more you dig, the more absurd it becomes. Although we don’t yet know the full truth about his immigration status, there is already plenty in his record that raises red flags about the biographies he’s offered. Ian Andre Roberts’ life reads less like a CV than a pitch for a Hollywood script in the classic tradition of the charming conman.
Roberts worked hard at his presentation. He cultivated a flamboyant look – tight suits in loud colors and patterns, topped with his signature cloth flower in the lapel and flashy sneakers. His social media feeds feature professional portraits, sometimes shirtless, sometimes in trousers so tight they left little to the imagination. He spoke in smooth clichés, delivered with a Caribbean accent that lent a whiff of exoticism to Iowan ears.
And then there is his “life story” – or rather, his competing life stories. All reliable evidence points to Guyana as his birthplace, where he was schooled until the early 1990s. Yet in interviews he sometimes claimed to have been born and raised in Brooklyn, the child of a single mother. That contradicts his own statement that she immigrated only in the 2000s, by which time he was already in his 30s. Even his age shifts – legal records say 1970, while Roberts himself has variously given 1973 or 1978.
Ironically, the most colorful elements of his tale appear to be true. A retired police commissioner in Guyana confirmed that Roberts graduated from officer training and joined the country’s police force. He was a standout runner in college in the United States and even represented Guyana in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. But once you reach other aspects of his life – degrees, awards, academic achievements – the truth grows hazier.
On LinkedIn he lists seven universities, but curiously omits mention of any degrees. Elsewhere, he claimed several master’s degrees and a doctorate in education from Morgan State University in 2007. He began styling himself “Dr.” as early as 2012, yet records show he did not actually receive an Ed.D. until 2021, from an online institution widely regarded as a diploma mill. His official Des Moines biography boasted of being named “Principal of the Year” by George Washington University – an award the university says it has never given. And this is only a sampling of the inconsistencies.
Why did no one bother to check before offering him a $300,000-a-year post? Why did no one even question the contradictions? The honest answer is race and ideology. In the current climate, pressing a man with a Caribbean lilt about where he was born is deemed a “microaggression.” Anyone schooled in the catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion knows better than to question the “lived experience” of someone like Roberts.
And Roberts, to his credit as a conman, gave them exactly what they craved. He embodied the DEI narrative: a black immigrant who rose from poverty to academic brilliance, to Olympic heights, to leadership in education. In Iowa – one of the whitest states in America – the all-female school board glowed with pride when they announced his appointment in 2023.
Spike Lee coined the phrase “Magical Negro” to mock Hollywood’s fondness for the saintly black character who redeems white protagonists. Roberts filled that role in real life. He promised not only to raise test scores but to cleanse Des Moines of its original sin of racism. He was their redemption, offered with a winning smile and a résumé that, if partially fictional, was at least inspirational.
And now, exposed, he is still defended. Rather than express outrage at being deceived, his supporters rally. Some protests bear the fingerprints of unions and activists, but much of the outcry looks organic. People insist he was kind, inspiring, a role model. But the essence of a successful con is that people fall for the charismatic conman and cling to the illusion. Mark Twain’s old adage still holds true – it is easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled.
The broader lesson is not merely that one smooth talker tricked his way into a prestigious office. It is that our institutions have made themselves especially easy prey. DEI ideology discourages skepticism, instructs people to rank themselves by race, and warns the “privileged” against questioning the “oppressed.” That ideology creates a golden opportunity for a resourceful grifter.
The officials who hired Roberts failed in their basic duty to fact-check his résumé. They failed because their ideology told them not to ask questions. They preferred the fairy tale. But in the real world, when you believe in fairy tales, no wand appears at the end to make the story come true. You are left with failing schools, squandered money and the humiliation of realizing that the man hired to redeem you was simply playing the oldest role in the book – the conman who knew exactly what his audience wanted to hear.
Category: Law
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Was Dr. Roberts the school board’s ‘Magical Negro’?
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Des Moines school superintendent is not a victim of ICE
When the superintendent of Iowa’s largest school district was detained by ICE on Friday, the story startled parents, educators and anyone paying attention to the integrity of our institutions. Dr. Ian Roberts, a man with a final deportation order, allegedly fled law enforcement, leaving behind a vehicle containing a loaded handgun, a fixed-blade knife and thousands in cash. Yet for months, he led thousands of children, set policy for an entire district and enjoyed the prestige and authority that comes with public office.
The question society must ask is unavoidable: How did someone with an outstanding removal order rise to the top of a school district? How did a man technically in violation of federal law gain the trust of an entire community?
This is not merely the story of one man flouting the law. It is a story about systemic failure, a window into the erosion of public trust and a lesson about what happens when the rule of law becomes optional. Immigration law is meant to maintain order, fairness and accountability. When enforcement is selective – ignored for some while ruthlessly applied to others – the system itself loses credibility. That credibility is the backbone of a functioning society, yet in Roberts’ case, it was nowhere to be found.
The first failure lies in bureaucracy. A final deportation order is the result of a legal process that should have barred him from holding public office. Yet somehow, the vetting systems that are supposed to catch such issues failed completely. ICE did not notify the school board, and the board apparently did not discover his legal status during the hiring process. Ordinary Americans face background checks and employment verification at nearly every stage of life. They show identification to get jobs, pay taxes and secure professional licenses. Yet here, in a position of immense public responsibility, the system looked the other way.
When bureaucracies fail, it is the public who suffers. The lesson is clear: if the government cannot enforce the law at the leadership level, why should citizens expect enforcement anywhere else?
The second failure is in public trust. Schools are institutions that require adherence to rules, standards and moral leadership. Parents entrust their children to teachers and administrators expecting competence, integrity and respect for the law. If children are told to follow rules while their superintendent ignores one of the most consequential laws in the country, the message is destructive. Hypocrisy at the top does not stay at the top. It trickles down, eroding respect for rules, authority and the social contract itself. Parents should be able to assume that the adults in charge of their children operate by the same standards they demand of everyone else. When that assumption is violated, confidence in the entire system collapses.
The third, and perhaps most important, issue is selective enforcement. Justice cannot bend based on convenience, identity or social standing. Rules should apply equally to all citizens, regardless of occupation, ideology or demographic profile. Yet in practice, the powerful and politically sensitive are often shielded, while ordinary citizens are held to the full force of the law. That is the definition of selective justice, and it is corrosive to the idea of America as a nation of laws rather than a nation of preferences.
The pattern is easy to recognize. If a white conservative school leader had a firearm charge and a deportation order, the media and progressive activists would demand immediate resignation. There would be op-eds and social media campaigns insisting on accountability. In Roberts’ case, there is caution, hesitation, even implicit deference. Identity, status and perceived ideological alignment appear to confer immunity. This is not about prejudice; it is about principle. Justice that applies to some and not others is not justice at all.
Some observers are already framing Roberts not as a man defying a lawful order, but as a victim of ICE. This is identity politics in action: shielding misconduct because the individual occupies a “preferred” category. Conservatives understand that such selective leniency corrodes both public trust and the legitimacy of the law. Excusing wrongdoing based on identity, occupation, or political sympathy is not compassion – it is hypocrisy. And hypocrisy, once institutionalized, becomes a cultural norm, weakening the foundations of governance and public life.
The Iowa case is a flashpoint, but the lessons extend far beyond Des Moines. First, immigration enforcement must be consistent and credible. The law cannot be optional, or it ceases to function as law at all. Second, vetting and accountability mechanisms in public institutions must be strengthened. Leadership positions, particularly those entrusted with children and taxpayer resources, should not be available to anyone operating outside the bounds of the law. Third, society must confront the corrosive effects of double standards. Parents, students and taxpayers deserve institutions that are honest, lawful and accountable – not institutions that bend the rules for elites or shield them from consequences.
Dr. Roberts’ arrest is more than a scandal; it is a mirror of the erosion of authority in public institutions. Selective enforcement teaches children and adults alike that rules matter only when convenient. It undermines respect for leadership, weakens bureaucracies and erodes confidence in the system of laws meant to protect everyone equally. Conservatives understand that respect for the law is the foundation of liberty. When that foundation cracks, the consequences ripple through every corner of society.
This is the real story from Iowa: a superintendent detained by ICE should be an anomaly, a cautionary tale about the consequences of ignoring the law. Instead, it reveals a pattern in which rules bend, oversight fails and selective justice becomes normalized. America cannot survive as a nation of laws if enforcement is optional, particularly for those in positions of authority.
Until these principles are restored, public trust will continue to erode, and the next child, parent or taxpayer will see that rules matter only if you are powerless enough to be held accountable.
Dr. Roberts’ case is a stark reminder: justice that applies only to some is no justice at all. Until the law is enforced consistently, America’s institutions – schools, government agencies and the legal system itself – will continue to crumble under the weight of favoritism, bureaucratic failure and selective leniency. -
Did Ilhan Omar marry her brother?
In as Trumpian a fashion as it gets, the president has rekindled the years-long debate: Did progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) marry her brother?
Shortly after conservative icon Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood by a deranged leftist, Omar reposted a video on X that called Kirk a “reprehensible human being” who was “spewing racist dog whistles” in his “last, dying words.” Republican lawmakers saw an opportunity to censure the “Squad” member and remove her committee assignments. The motion failed by a 214-213 vote.
Nevertheless, some conservatives are demanding Omar’s denaturalization and deportation to Somalia. Denaturalization is allowed in cases of “concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation.” To be clear, Omar will not be denaturalized, nor deported.
But amid Omar-gate, President Trump fumed that she was “SCUM,” derided her “Country of Somalia,” and asked, “Wasn’t she the one that married her brother in order to gain citizenship???”
The accusation is nearly a decade old, prompted in part by court filings and a trail of murkier evidence.
Public records show that Omar entered a religious marriage with a man named Ahmed Hirsi in 2002, separated in 2008, and then legally married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009. Elmi, a British citizen who
The marriage with Elmi ended in 2011, but they did not obtain a legal divorce until 2017. In that same period, Omar reconciled with Hirsi, had another child with him, and even filed joint tax returns with him in 2014 and 2015, despite still being legally married to her alleged brother.
In 2020, the Daily Mail quoted an old friend of Omar, Abdihakim Osman, who claimed Omar herself had described Elmi as her brother – and admitted she married him to get the papers he needed to study in the US. Osman claimed Elmi was introduced around Minneapolis as family, and that Omar told him explicitly she was helping her brother get student loans. Omar has flatly denied this, dismissing the story as “baseless,” but has refused to provide documentary evidence to settle the matter.
In 2018, one conservative outlet discovered archived Instagram posts from 2012 that appear to show Ahmed Elmi calling Ilhan Omar’s daughter his “niece.” In 2015, photos from a London trip placed Omar alongside Elmi and relatives, all appearing under the shared surname “Elmi.” But these posts are no longer available and cannot be independently verified.
The Star Tribune tried to confirm Elmi’s identity but ran into the same problem: Somali records are difficult to obtain, and Omar herself declined to clarify.
While this scavenger hunt remains incomplete, what is beyond doubt is that Omar’s life today bears little resemblance to the humble origins she once invoked.
Ilhan Omar was born in Mogadishu in 1982, the youngest of seven children. Her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, was a colonel in the Somali army who brought the family to a Kenyan refugee camp before they eventually resettled in Minneapolis, where Omar grew up in public housing and later entered politics.
She built her brand as the daughter of refugees, a progressive outsider weighed down by student debt – the antithesis of a silver spoon Congressman. But her most recent financial disclosure revealed a net worth as high as $30 million — a staggering increase of 3,500 percent in a single year.
The source of that fortune is her most recent husband, Tim Mynett. His venture capital firm, Rose Lake Capital, ballooned from under $1,000 in 2023 to as much as $25 million by the end of 2024. The firm’s board is stacked with powerful names, including former senator and ambassador to China Max Baucus.
Rose Lake Capital’s website once bragged about structuring “legislation” before that word was quietly removed. It now claims $60 billion in assets under management. Around the same time Rose Lake took off, Mynett’s California winery, eStCru, jumped from being worth just $50,000 to as much as $5 million. Both companies have faced lawsuits alleging fraud, which have since been settled.
The overlap with Omar’s official role is clear. After the launch of Rose Lake, Omar formed a congressional US-Africa Policy Working Group. She and Mynett have since appeared at events promoting investment in Africa – exactly the kind of opportunity Rose Lake now pursues. At face value the arrangement is indistinguishable from influence-peddling.
The same Omar who has scorned politicians for leveraging their office for gain now appears to be doing it herself, handsomely. In America, the socialists have a funny way of always cashing in.
So, back to Trump’s accusation. Did Ilhan Omar marry her brother? As it stands, it’s impossible to say one way or the other. Omar continues to deny the allegation as baseless.
What is certain is that Omar has prospered enormously in America, moving from refugee housing to the halls of Congress to a personal fortune worth tens of millions.
That story is perhaps the greater indictment. The congresswoman who speaks endlessly of justice and equity appears to have mastered the very Washington tricks she pretends to loathe. -
Why is Apple hosting an assassin’s app?
ICEBlock is an app that uses real-time information to pinpoint the location of ICE agents in the field. Launched in April in response to Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, it now boasts more than one million users across the country.
Among them, until recently, was self-styled “anti-fascist” sniper Joshua Jahn, who killed one person – a detainee – and critically injured two more at an ICE facility in Dallas. The FBI has discovered that Jahn used the app, or one like it, to track his intended victims. In a handwritten note, Jahn, who took his own life, wrote, “Hopefully this will give ICE agents real terror.”
ICEBlock claims that its purpose is to help illegal immigrants evade arrest by alerting them to the presence of ICE agents. But its far more wicked use as an assassin’s tool has for a long time been all too easy to predict with the left’s prolific and incendiary rhetoric around “Nazis” and “fascists,” the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the new record-high of left-wing terror attacks.
And it is almost inevitable that another targeted attack based on data from the app will happen again.
That’s because Apple is still hosting ICEBlock and apps like it on its App Store. The big tech platform that notoriously removed the conservative social media app Parler for far more nebulous claims of harm after Jan. 6. seems perfectly content to aid future would-be assassins. Apparently, Big Tech is more worried about censoring conservative grannies for wrongthink than it is actual real world violence.
ICEBlock was developed by Joshua Aaron, a tech bro and former indie musician from Texas. It allows activists to drop a pin on a map wherever they spot ICE agents, which then sends a notification to all other users in a five mile radius.
“We don’t want anything being discoverable,” Aaron said in a gushing profile for CNN earlier this year. “And so, this is 100 percent anonymous and free for anybody who wants to use it.”
Of course, ICEBlock would never explicitly incite violence, it would like you to know. Upon log-in, a legal disclaimer states, “Please note that the use of this app is for information and notification purposes only.”
Aaron says he’s the good guy, someone who wants to “fight back” against the rising tide of Nazism in America. He only cares about “keeping people safe,” he told The Guardian in another fawning interview.
And playing the victim in an interview with USA Today, he claimed it was “insanity” to link his app with the Texas shooting and that the DOJ was merely “trying to bully [him].” Indeed, he has seemed much more concerned that his wife was let go from her job as a forensic auditor at the Department of Justice because of her ties to the app.
Most tech founders would sell their first-born to mirror ICEBlock’s growth: it boasted just 20,000 users in June, but as of September Aaron says there are 1.1 million active users across the country – all of whom seem perfectly happy to help would-be assassins find their next victim.
The app has come under fire from both ICE agents on the ground as well high-ranking Trump officials for putting a very real target on agents’ backs.
“The DOJ’s looking at it, and they need to throw some people in jail,” Border Czar Tom Homan said of ICEBlock over the summer.
But little if anything beyond some angry letters and statements has so far been done.
With the implicit endorsement of mainstream media and big tech, ICEBlock has enjoyed a stamp of institutional legitimacy along with all the impunity that affords. But the days of normalizing leftist agitators with a wink and a nod are over.
Aaron can cry peaceful resistance as much as he wants, but violent attacks against ICE agents become inevitable in a climate where they’re deemed Nazis and any lunatic is free to track their real-time movements. Denying this reality beggars belief; anyone who does so is stupid, or more likely, lying, and indifferent to violence against agents.
Attorney General Pam Bondi warned Aaron to “watch out” in July, but it’s time for her office to initiate a real crackdown. Whether through cultural or government pressure, Apple must no longer allow apps like ICEBlock to proliferate, and the full force of the federal government must be used to scrutinize Aaron’s activities. Or these attacks are only going to keep happening.
This isn’t a matter of free speech, but a matter of very real harm as we saw in Texas.
Yet it’s an even deeper question of what kind of country we want to live in: one where ICE agents are seen as brownshirts for enforcing basic U.S. law, or one where law, order, and common sense receive the unanimous respect necessary for a functioning nation?
We can’t have a country without borders. Those who claim otherwise have enjoyed more than enough time dominating the Overton window, and deserve to go back to the fringe. -
James Comey is not above the law
Days before the five-year statute of limitations was due to expire, the long arm of the law finally has caught up with the slippery former FBI Director James B. Comey. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, has indicted Comey for leaking and lying about his role in the Russian hoax that President Trump’s enemies tried to hang around his head like a noose even before he was inaugurated in 2016.
Count one of the federal indictment charges Comey with making a false statement during a September 30, 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Specifically, Comey claimed he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding FBI investigations into President Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The indictment describes this Comey claim as a false statement.
Count two of the federal indictment charges Comey with obstruction of a Congressional proceeding, “by making false and misleading statements before” the Senate Judiciary Committee on the same date.
The subject of the hearing, of course, was the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation, prompted by a Democrat operative, of the Trump campaign’s purported ties to Russia during the 2016 election as well as the Bureau’s failure to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private server to store secret government communications. Career prosecutor and special counsel John Durham conducted a three-year investigation into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane, and he concluded the investigation was so ill-founded it should never have been initiated.
In a press release, FBI Director Kash Patel stated, “Today, your FBI took another step in its promise of full accountability. For far too long, previous corrupt leadership and their enablers weaponized federal law enforcement, damaging once proud institutions and severely eroding public trust… Nowhere was this politicization of law enforcement more blatant than during the Russiagate hoax, a disgraceful chapter in history we continue to investigate and expose.”Comey responded on Instagram this evening, “I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial.”
Critics already have begun recycling arguments that (i) the President is persecuting his political opponents, just as they viciously hunted him for over a decade; (ii) Lindsey Halligan, the newly minted interim U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virgina, overrode the recommendations of career prosecutors in seeking this indictment; and (iii) Comey’s alleged crimes amount to applesauce.
The chutzpah of the President’s critics who invested vast resources in weaponizing the justice system against him, coast to coast, could not be overstated. True, he has a penchant for speaking his mind in ways that sometimes frustrate even his supporters, but the President simply had no role before today’s grand jury.
It is also true that someone in the orbit of the U.S. Department of Justice leaked information to the press that suggested one or more career prosecutors displayed skepticism regarding bringing Comey to justice. Leaks are loathsome, and may be criminal, when coming from a source within the leading law enforcement agency in the nation, as this very case demonstrates. Regardless of the internal politics that swirled within the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the final decision was not made by line prosecutors, the U.S. Attorney, or even the Attorney General of the United States. The final vote on Comey’s fate, at this stage and at trial, remains in the hands of the American people. Today, a grand jury, not a politician, indicted Comey.
Recognized as early as the Magna Carta in 1215 A.D., the grand jury has long served as a cornerstone of Anglo-American law. A grand jury consists of sixteen to twenty-three U.S. citizens registered to vote who generally serve 18-24 months. At least twelve members of the grand jury must vote in favor of an indictment before a true bill is returned. Service requires a serious commitment. The defamation that twelve to twenty-three randomly selected voters would trade their integrity so cheaply reflects ignorance of the careful process that marks grand jury deliberations, an outsized regard for the influence of any given public official on a private process, and a very jaundiced view of American justice.
This brings us to the actual substance of Comey’s alleged crimes. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe publicly and repeatedly claimed that Comey had authorized him to leak information through high-ranking FBI officials to The Wall Street Journal about FBI investigations. Comey denied authorizing the leak. The question before the petit jury that will decide Comey’s fate at the trial he very clearly now seeks is the same question with which Senator Ted Cruz confronted Comey at that now infamous Senate Judiciary Committee hearing nearly five years ago: who is lying? Once again, the American people will decide, based on the facts and the law. And as Attorney General Pam Bondi reminded us this evening, “No one is above the law.” -
Trump, Soros and a weaponized DoJ
In 2013, the IRS targeted the Tea Party and other conservative organizations for special scrutiny. Four years later, the federal government reached a settlement and the IRS apologized. Is it about to be déjà vu all over again?
The Trump administration is embarking upon a major campaign against leading liberal organizations. The first shot came in late August when President Trump demanded that the liberal billionaire George Soros and his son, Alex, be charged under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act for supporting violent protests across America. The libertarian CATO Institute, a redoubt for decades of free speech advocates, promptly observed that “the call to prosecute may be bluster.”
Wrong.
The New York Times reports that a new Justice Department directive suggests targeting Soros and his Open Society Foundations for a gallimaufry of sins, including arson and material support of terrorism. Like his ally Viktor Orbán, who has demonized Soros, a survivor of the Holocaust, as a dangerous international banker who poses a threat to Hungarian sovereignty, Trump appears intent on quashing him by whatever means necessary. Whether he will succeed is another matter.
Over the past several months, Trump has been systematically targeting what he sees as his internal foes. They include his former national security adviser John Bolton, New York attorney general Letitia James, and former FBI head James Comey. So fixated is Trump with prosecuting James and Comey that he drummed out longtime Republican prosecutor Erik Siebert from his post in Virginia, replacing him with Lindsey Halligan, a confidante with no experience as a prosecutor. Presumably, she has been installed to do Trump’s bidding, which is to ensure that Comey is busted for lying to Congress. The prosecutors in the Virginia office have already indicated that insufficient evidence exists for an actual conviction, but that is a mere detail for Trump. Trump’s approach seems redolent of Stalin’s henchman Lavrenti Beria who declared, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”
But even with Trump’s elastic interpretation of legality, it may prove difficult to persuade a grand jury of the malfeasance of Soros or James or Comey. The cases appear to be more than a little rickety. Comey is a drip, but hardly the type to try and bamboozle Congress. It was his moral vanity that prompted him to declare that the FBI was reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails on the eve of Election Day – a move that helped push Trump over the top in 2016.
How the inexperienced Halligan is supposed to proceed in the face of defiance from her own prosecutors is a pertinent question. For its part, the Open Society Foundations avers that the accusations directed against it are “politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.”
As the Trump administration gins up lawfare, it is also putting the American military in its gunsights, so to speak. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has summoned several hundred generals and admirals to meet at a military base in Quantico, Virginia, where they will be told… what? Speculation ranges from mass firings to a speech from Trump demanding their personal loyalty.
Trump does not wish to govern America. He wants to rule it. He is upping the ante almost by the day as he targets his real and perceived foes.
Still, he is encountering opposition, whether it is from Soros or from Senator Ted Cruz who recently likened Federal Communication Commission head Brendan Carr to a mob boss for trying to evict Jimmy Kimmel from the airwaves. The Economist has pronounced that Trump is trying to silence his critics, but “he will fail.” Will he?
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Don’t execute my mother’s killer, I forgive him
I was 11 years old in 1997 when Geoffrey West shot and killed my mother, Margaret Parrish Berry, while robbing the Attalla gas station where she worked. Mr. West was sentenced to death. His execution date is set for tonight, September 25. He is due to be killed by nitrogen gas. But I do not want the state of Alabama to kill him. That won’t bring my mother back; it will only add to the pain I have lived with since the night she was shot. I believe there is a better way.
My mother was the person I loved most in the world. Her absence, and the senseless way she died, has cast a long shadow over my life. Even so, the weeks since I learned that Governor Ivey set an execution date for Mr. West have been some of the most unsettling I can recall. My dearest wish is to meet with Mr. West. Yet, it’s not clear who has the power to make that happen or how to ask them directly.
I was a child when Mr. West took my mother’s life – old enough to understand what had happened but too young to process it. I had no say at the trial, and I’ve had no say since then. No one from the Alabama attorney general’s office called me in April to say they had requested an execution date. No one from the governor’s office called in July when Governor Ivey set it. If my wife hadn’t stumbled across an article on Facebook, I’m not sure when I would have learned.I believe in the teachings of Jesus and in His words on the Mount, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15). My faith teaches that every trial we endure brings us closer to salvation. It teaches submission to God’s will.
I believe that in seeking to execute Mr. West, the state of Alabama is playing God. I don’t want anyone to exact revenge in my name, nor in my mother’s. I believe life without the possibility of parole is just punishment. I believe there is an ending to this story where Mr. West and I find comfort in each other and in the healing power of forgiveness.
I want to tell Mr. West that I forgive him. And I want to ask questions, both about what happened that night and about who he is as a man. In some ways, I suppose I just want to be in a room with him. Through his legal team, Mr. West has agreed to my request. Even in what may be the last hours of his life, he is willing to spend time with me and reckon with the harm he caused. I believe that speaks well of him, despite the deadly mistake he made the night he killed my mother. I know that she forgives him and that she would want me to sit down with him.
The criminal justice system is not built with victims’ needs, wishes, and well-being in mind. I know that as well as anybody, because what is being done in my name is not what I need or want. I know that clemency is a lot to ask for. But having spoken with a restorative justice specialist who is also in communication with Mr. West, I feel hopeful there could be a future where he and I might sit down together. Where we might pray together.
But time is working against us. Whether or not she can see her way to granting clemency, at the very least I hope Governor Ivey will grant a reprieve, which she has the authority to do. That time would allow Mr. West, his family, and mine to engage in vital healing conversations. I need time to heal.
I have observed the process around other executions in Alabama. I know the attorney general would welcome me at Holman Prison to watch as Mr. West is killed. I know I would be invited to speak at a press conference afterward. But that is not what I want. When I go to Holman, I want to speak with Mr. West heart to heart. I want to tell him I forgive him, that my mother forgives him, and that God loves him.
My life has been very hard. I hope that Governor Ivey will see her way to granting me this measure of comfort, and I pray that she will find it in herself to spare Mr. West’s life.
This commentary first appeared on Alabama Reflector, part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. -
After Comey, who’s next?
Cockburn has awakened from his Russiagate slumber with the news that the Trump administration is seeking to file charges against former FBI director James Comey in federal court within the next few days. The statute of limitations on Comey’s September 30, 2020 testimony about ties between Russia and Trump’s second campaign for president is about to expire, meaning we’re set to re-litigate the Mueller Report. While we’re at it, why not take a look at Solyndra, yellowcake uranium, Whitewater, Iran-Contra, Watergate and Credit Mobilier?
Russiagate is a bit more current, though, and Trump is flinging his prosecutors all over the room. There’s no guarantee that a grand jury will deliver a Comey indictment, but if it does, it will unload a whole clip of blasts from the past onto the headlines. John Bolton, the warmonger with the walrus mustache, already woke up one recent summer morning to a raid of his home office. The feds say they found classified documents in his possession, though the content of those documents remains, unsurprisingly, classified.
Former National Security Agency director Mike Rogers, who once said he didn’t have “sufficient access” to intelligence regarding Russia and that he wasn’t “100 percent comfortable” making claims, should be safe. Not so James Clapper, former director of National Intelligence, and former CIA director John Brennan. Clapper, who always did enjoy talking to Jake Tapper, is now a “national security analyst” for CNN, while John Brennan delivers what Cockburn is certain are completely unbiased political takes for MSNBC. Cockburn isn’t sure exactly what they’ll be saying about a potential Comey indictment in the coming days, but it’ll likely be many thousands of words of blather along the lines of “not my movie.”
Also returning from the dead letter office into the sights of the Crossfire Hurricane will be former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, charged with investigating Hillary Clinton’s email server and Russia election interference back in the previous decade. Strzok and Page provided the smoking gun, according to an Office of the Inspector General Report. Page texted Strzok, “Trump’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” and Strzok replied, “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.” Page resigned. The FBI fired Strzok, who sued the FBI for wrongful termination, but a court threw out that suit this month.
Now we’re set to revisit the FBI comedy duo of Strzok and Page, and all their greatest hits. What did James Comey know, and when did he know it? Did he lie? Was it an accident or on purpose? Trump has installed one of his personal lawyers, Lindsey Halligan, as the US attorney for Eastern Virginia, withdrawing the nomination of Erik Seibert because “two terrible SLEAZEBAG Democratic Senators supported him.”
“I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell.” Halligan, 36, has been part of Trump’s legal team since 2022 and was present for the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid. She also twice attempted to become Miss Colorado in college.
Comey, for his part, hasn’t posted a tweet since June, which was when Mysterious Press posted his latest legal thriller FDR Drive. The book’s major theme is internet extremism on, you guessed it, the right. It got a nice review from Publisher’s Weekly. Cockburn suspects that Comey is about to live his own real-life legal thriller, but he’s not going to be able to choose the ending.
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The Dallas shooting was a political act
Although we are still learning the details of the lethal assault on the ICE facility in Dallas, we already know some important things, thanks to transparency from the Dallas police and the FBI. We know the shooter’s name; we know he committed suicide as police closed in; we know he fired indiscriminately at the ICE facility, killing at least one detainee but no ICE officers; and we know the assassin had a political motive, encoded on unfired rifle shells. He hated ICE.
We also know exactly what politicians from each side will say. They’ve said it so many times before. The Republicans have a much stronger, more convincing message here than Democrats.
Republicans will say, “This targeted violence against law enforcement and immigration officers has to stop. We have to do more than condemn it. We need to understand that the violence is not just a series a unconnected incidents. We have to name the sources behind it. If the violence is organized, we have to find and prosecute the organizers and the funding sources. We think it is fueled by vile rhetoric, a lot of it from elected Democrats and still more from their media allies. Their fulminations inflame passions and fuel violent demonstrations and deadly attacks. We know that some of this violence is organized. We need the FBI to find out who is doing that and who is funding it. And we need the Department of Justice to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”
Democrats will respond, “This is just more senseless gun violence. We need to talk with each other, not shoot at each other. All of us condemn this violence. Of course, we bear no responsibility for any of it. So, both sides need to calm down.”
Democrats are losing this argument. Polls show voters strong favor Republicans on both law-and-order and immigration enforcement. Democrats’ response rings hollow with voters because it ignores their reasonable demand for closed borders, strict immigration enforcement and better protection against urban violence. Democrats are seen as opposing all those.
If voters support those positions, why do Democratic politicians find it so hard to fall in line? Because the party’s activist base and its left-wing donors would crush them in the primaries, before they reach the wider electorate in November. They would also face the obvious question: why are you changing your positions now, after years of saying just the opposite?
The Democrats’ milk toast calls for “public calm” and “civil discourse” ring hollow because they come after the party’s leaders lacerated Trump’s border policy and ICE enforcement, after “blue” cities and states have declared themselves sanctuaries, unwilling to cooperate with ICE, after Gov. Gavin Newsom demanded “no masks” on ICE agents (“What are they afraid of?” The answer came in Dallas.), after Democratic leaders repeatedly condemn President Trump as a fascist and dictator, and after their party commits itself to an open-borders, anti-deportation movement. Their cry of “don’t blame us” comes after Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson called “jails and incarceration and law enforcement… a sickness.” They come after months of nightly violence against ICE and federal government facilities in Portland, Oregon, with the city leaders refusing to send police to quell the violence or punish the perpetrators. They come after Senator Chris Van Hollen sat down for drinks with a deported illegal immigrant who is charged with a long string of despicable criminal acts. This week, Van Hollen used a Senate hearing to excoriate Secretary of State Marco Rubio for enforcing a strict visa policy and screamed over Rubio when he tried to answer.
This deep political divide cannot explain why the shooter in Dallas acted as he did. It doesn’t mean politicians in Washington helped him pull the trigger. But it did shape the context in which he acted and will shape how the public interprets it. They will see the killing, correctly, as a deliberate attack on law enforcement. They will see it, correctly, as a political act, something the gunman made clear by writing anti-ICE messages on his shells. They will connect the latest shooting to other recent acts with political motives, like the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the conviction of President Trump’s would-be assassin in Florida.
Republicans will emphasize that these recent assaults have come from the left and need to be quashed – firmly and immediately. For now, the Democrats are left with bland platitude, torn between their angry base and the voting public. All they can say is, “Give peace a chance.”
It’s not a winning message. In a time of political violence, the public is demanding order. The Republican challenge is to deliver on that demand without crashing through the constitutional boundaries. -
Crimes that aren’t crimes in New York
There were lots of shocked people when state terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione – the man accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson – were dismissed on Tuesday. I wasn’t one of them.
As the partner of a homicide victim and an advocate for victims for more than 20 years, I’ve seen firsthand how New York’s penal code is a disaster. It doesn’t just fail victims; it rewards predators. It protects the violent. It gives them loopholes and light slaps on the wrist. And then we all act surprised when killers like Mangione benefit.
Here’s a reality check that most people don’t know: punching someone in the face is not considered assault in New York. It’s classified as “harassment” – not even aggravated harassment. Stabbing someone isn’t attempted murder. It’s “assault.” Let that sink in. A fist to your face? Harassment. A knife in your gut? Assault. The absurdity writes itself.
And the list goes on.
Take strangulation and choking – one of the clearest predictors of homicide in domestic violence cases. For years, choking someone unconscious was only a misdemeanor unless there was visible injury. Bruises fade, but the trauma is permanent. New York eventually patched this embarrassment with a strangulation statute, but prosecutors still find ways to plead it down.
Child abuse is just as bad. Kids with broken bones, brain injuries, or who are beaten within an inch of their lives often see their abusers charged with misdemeanors – unless the child dies. So in New York, a dead child finally gets justice. A brutalized but living child? Sorry, that’s not serious enough.
And let’s not forget sexual assault. For decades, New York required proof of “forcible compulsion.” Translation: if you were too drunk, drugged, or coerced to fight back, your rape didn’t “count.” Prosecutors would downgrade or toss cases because the victim couldn’t prove physical force. That isn’t justice. That’s state-sanctioned humiliation.
This is the real problem. Instead of lawmakers fixing these grotesque loopholes and making charges fit the crime, we’ve spent the last decade on so-called “social justice reforms.” What do these reforms actually do? They close prisons, release violent repeat offenders, and unleash the hell George Soros envisions upon society. They put the rights of criminals before the lives of victims.
And don’t expect this to change under one-party Democrat rule in New York. Why would it? These are the same “progressives” who can’t bring themselves to stand with victims, who bend over backwards to excuse predators, and who look the other way when mobs of New Yorkers actually protest in support of Mangione and donate millions to his legal defense. Yes, you read that right: in today’s upside-down culture, terrorists and murderers get sympathy marches while grieving families are told to move on.
Raise the Age. Bail Reform. HALT (Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act). Less Is More. Each of these social justice experiments has one thing in common: they serve offenders, not the innocent. The victims – people like me, like Brian Thompson’s family, like countless others – are an afterthought.
This is a depraved indifference to human life.
But here’s the good news: all hope is not lost. Thank God federal charges are in play. Thank God President Trump’s Department of Justice still believes in protecting the innocent and fighting for real justice. If it were left to Albany, Mangione would be treated like a misunderstood soul rather than a cold-blooded killer.
The path forward is obvious. Lawmakers need to stop writing laws that coddle predators and start rewriting penal codes and sentencing guidelines. That’s exactly what our Victims Rights Reform Agenda calls for: charges that fit the crime, penalties that fit the damage done, and a justice system that remembers its purpose is to defend the innocent, not excuse the guilty.
New Yorkers are living in a nightmare created by their own politicians. The only question is: how many more families have to be destroyed before voters wake up and demand justice? And is there any hope of that happening when crowds are actually protesting to free Mangione and pouring millions into his legal defense?