#hotair.com

Cook County, IL includes the city of Chicago and has a population of more than 5 million people. It’s a big job to manage all of the court dates for the county and that’s especially true in the midst of a pandemic. Traffic cases in the county have been moved entirely online in the form of Zoom meetings, but many people aren’t getting the message.

In fact, some people are getting the wrong message in the form of court date notifications telling them to show up at the courthouse. But when they get there they find themselves waiting for hours in a line that stretches for several blocks. When they finally get to the front of the line they are informed that traffic cases are handled online and while they were waiting in the line, they missed their online court dates.

When local news outlet WGN first reported about this two weeks ago, a spokesman for Cook County Court Clerk Dorothy Brown didn’t respond to a request for an explanation. But at a minimum, Brown’s office should have been aware by that point that the notification system wasn’t working well and that the media was taking notice.

Yesterday, roughly two weeks later, WGN came back to the story and found that the situation was still a mess. There is still a line of people showing up at the Daley Center for traffic court only to find out traffic court is online only at the moment. And one of the people they had interviewed for their earlier story finally received a notice about the online court date. The court date was July 7 but on the back of the postcard the date it was mailed was July 16. This particular man had driven three hours each way and waited 3 hours on a line to find out he’d missed his online appearance.

WGN finally got a chance to speak to Court Clerk Dorothy Brown about why all this was happening and her response was, shall we say, very interesting. Brown said the only reason she was being asked was because WGN “felt like this black woman’s office had to have done something wrong.”

Brown continued, “Regardless of what I say today, this story will probably come out very negative for my office as it always has come out over the last 20 years, continuing to perpetuate the internalized, mediated and institutionalized types of racism directly onto me.”

Again, it’s worth noting that WGN’s initial story barely mentioned Dorothy Brown and the people they interviewed on camera, who were irritated at the confusion about how to deal with traffic tickets, were black. But somehow, asking the person responsible why this is happening is institutional racism?

“I’m confused why it’s racist to ask about all the folks who have been confused and drove down to the Daley Center for court appearances that they didn’t have to attend,” the WGN reporter asked.

Brown apologized for the confusion and then the interview took another strange turn. About those postcards that were mailed after the court dates, Brown said “a few” like that went out but claimed it was not “in error.” She claimed her office was “fully aware” some cards were past the court date but had decided it was best for people to get a late notice than no notice.

You remember that guy who was hauled off by the police right after the Charlie Kirk shooting?  You know, the old guy whose pants fell down? The one who "confessed" to the police that he shot Kirk as he lay dying?

…

It turns out that, while he did not shoot Kirk as we know or participate in the planning, he wanted to help Tyler Robinson escape and become a "martyr" for the cause. 

…

As I wrote earlier today, one out of four very liberal people admits that they support political violence, and here is a perfect example. As the blood was draining out of Charlie Kirk's body before his eyes, many decided to take the fall so that the revolutionary killer could escape. 

…

One of the more prominent liberal magazines is named "Jacobin," after the French Revolutionaries who perpetrated "The Terror." The most common liberal logo is the raised fist, and Antifa are the brownshirts of the radical left, and many liberals insist they do not exist. 

…

For an idea, not an organization, they sure have "all the hallmarks" of an organization. The claim is absurd on its face that Antifa doesn't exist. They say that to get plausible deniability.  George Zinn is hardly the only person in that crowd to have celebrated Kirk's death. We have seen tens of thousands of leftists, including teachers, professors, lawyers, judges, journalists, podcasters, nurses, and surgeons, expressing glee that Kirk was murdered, and many who put out hit lists of other conservatives who should be next. 

…

It now appears likely that, at the very least, Antifa and transgender individuals had prior knowledge of Kirk's assassination, and Robinson expected help in escaping. The exact circumstances have yet to come out, but there are at least 7 people who posted online that something big was coming at the event. 

…

We should no longer be surprised that a radical leftist jumped at the chance of helping Robinson escape. Revolutionary violence it at the heart of leftism, and has been since the French Revolution.  As I have pointed out before, the origin of the term "left" as a political description refers to the seating arrangements at the French National Assembly during the Revolution, where the radicals sat on the left side of the aisle. Major revolutionary movements since then have looked to the French Revolution as their guiding light. 

…

Hasan Piker is one of the most vile left-wingers on the internet.   No, I am not referring to his views, but his open calls to violence.  So imagine my (non) surprise when I saw that, of all people, The New York Times handed over some of the most valuable real estate in journalism--the Opinion Page of The New York Times--to him to give us a lecture on freedom of speech and peaceful disagreement. 

…

Hasan Piker is not just a radical leftist. A man with millions of followers on social media platforms, he preaches that 9/11 was justified, that Jews are "pigs," and that conservatives should be gutted and have their blood running through the streets. 

…

This, from a newspaper where there was a newsroom revolt over publishing an Op/Ed by Tom Cotton, and which fired the editor who approved it. The newsroom erupted because, and I quote, Cotton's words made them feel "unsafe." 

…

Piker? Apparently, he makes them feel safe, and what makes them feel safe is living in a bubble where Hasan Piker can celebrate 9/11 as justice and advocate for the murder of capitalists, calling for their blood to run in the streets.  You can't hate the media enough.  Millions of ordinary people still don't understand who the media really are. The Times, which has bragged about its fact-checking abilities, published an obituary of Kirk that attributed to him views that he spent time criticizing. After a time, they appended a correction, of course, to cover their butts, but is it really possible that nobody watched the video from which they were quoting?

…

Tonight’s forecast: Angry with a chance of “fiery-ness.”

…

Let me remind you that the terrorist(s) known as Jane’s Revenge explicitly called for violence on the evening the Dobbs decision was handed down in a statement posted last month. Title: “Night of Rage.”

…

Allegedly, protesters outside the Court this afternoon were circulating Clarence Thomas’s home address:

…

“Violence is a legitimate and appropriate response to oppression.”

Some of the rhetoric from lefty politicians today has also been spicy. Not “burn down the Supreme Court” spicy or “break down Clarence Thomas’s door” spicy, but delegitimizing the Court and winking at disobedience of the ruling. Here’s one well-known member of the “party of norms” not worrying much about respect for the Court as an institution:

…

And here’s the lieutenant governor of California talking vaguely about “defiance,” enough so that a confused Katy Tur felt obliged to ask her if she was encouraging lawbreaking. No, came the reply, although the follow-up was vague:

…

During the course of the madness that promoted “defunding” or abolishing the police, there was an emphasis placed on replacing police in some circumstances with “community safety” workers who would supposedly act as unarmed “violence interrupters” and reduce the number of lethal use of force incidents by police officers. In Baltimore, Maryland’s violent gang territories, an existing organization known as the “Safe Streets Program” gained a lot of attention and municipal support in this effort. The goal of the program is to deploy former gang members (or “former”) into areas controlled by the gangs to negotiate nonviolent resolutions to conflicts. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen with other proposed “violence interruption” programs in major cities, sending someone with a clipboard out to resolve a beef between gang members isn’t always effective. That was sadly this case this week when one of Baltimore’s Safe Streets workers was shot to death along with several other people on the East side of Charm City.

…

Just to be clear, I am not an opponent of the Safe Streets Program and this murder was particularly appalling, even in a city where murders are literally a daily occurrence. Tragically, the murder rate in Baltimore is still higher than what you see in Kabul, Afghanistan during any given week. If they can find people who are able and willing to go out there and talk some of the gang bangers back off the edge instead of settling their beef with illegal firearms, God bless them. They need to be willing to try anything at this point.

…

But this killing also underscores the fact that violent crime, particularly when we’re talking about gang violence, sometimes requires a legal, violent response. The Baltimore Police have been cut down in numbers and in a type of retreat ever since the Freddie Gray riots. The city’s government has spent more time trying to prosecute its own cops than the gangs that have largely retaken control of the streets in many parts of Baltimore. When law enforcement is viewed as being weakened or ineffectual, the gangs move in to fill the power vacuum.

This story is interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is the topic itself. The NY Times has looked closely at a number of pre-natal blood tests designed to show if a developing baby has one of several genetic abnormalities. These tests were originally designed to detect Down syndrome but over time testing companies have claimed their tests can detect other, rarer genetic problems known as microdeletions. However, the analysis by the Times found that in the vast majority of cases the results offered by these tests are false positives.

It is clear some of the tests are in widespread use. One large test maker, Natera, said that in 2020 it performed more than 400,000 screenings for one microdeletion — the equivalent of testing roughly 10 percent of pregnant women in America…

The analysis showed that positive results on those tests are incorrect about 85 percent of the time…

Some said the blood screenings that look for the rarest conditions are good for little more than bolstering testing companies’ bottom lines.

“It’s a little like running mammograms on kids,” said Mary Norton, an obstetrician and geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco. “The chance of breast cancer is so low, so why are you doing it? I think it’s purely a marketing thing.”

When contacted by the Times about the results of this analysis, several of the largest companies refused to be interviewed. A pregnant woman who receives a positive on one of these tests is supposed to have a follow up test to make sure the test results were accurate. However, those follow up tests require a large needle to collect amniotic fluid and include a small risk of miscarriage. They are also expensive, several times more expensive than getting an abortion. So in reality, some women choose to have an abortion without a follow up test.

A 2014 study found that 6 percent of patients who screened positive obtained an abortion without getting another test to confirm the result. That same year The Boston Globe quoted a doctor describing three terminations following unconfirmed positive results…

In interviews, 14 patients who got false positives said the experience was agonizing. They recalled frantically researching conditions they’d never heard of, followed by sleepless nights and days hiding their bulging bellies from friends. Eight said they never received any information about the possibility of a false positive, and five recalled that their doctor treated the test results as definitive…