Carie Charlesworth: Forever the Victim

     In 2012, Carie Charlesworth, after having divorced her husband who had abused her for years, lived in Spring Valley, California with her two sons, ages nine and eleven, and her twin seven-year-old girls. Carie's ex-husband, 41-year-old Martin Charlesworth was under a court restraining order that prohibited him from contacting his former wife. (Martin did have child visitation rights.) Carie earned $37,000 a year as a second grade teacher at the Holy Trinity Catholic school in El Cajon, a town not far from San Diego.

     Carie Charlesworth's troubled life took a turn for the worse in January 2013 when Martin, in violation of the restraining order, went to the school's parking lot in an effort to contact his ex-wife. Alarmed school official responded to Martin's presence by locking down the school and calling the police.

     Police officers rushed to the elementary school where they arrested the ex-husband for violating his restraining order. Shortly thereafter, Martin pleaded guilty to the charge of stalking in violation of the domestic court mandate. The judge sentenced Martin to a year in jail minus time served. He was also given four years probabion.

     According to Martin Charlesworth's attorney, he had gone to the school that day to discuss child custody issues with his ex-wife. In speaking to reporters, the attorney said, "He just wants what's best for his children and Carie." In addressing the media, Carie Charlesworth said that based on her ex-husband's past behavior, she was afraid for her safety when he showed up at her place of employment.

     Shortly after the January lockdown, the principal of Holy Trinity placed Carie on paid administrative leave. But in June 2013, an official with the San Diego Catholic diocese informed the 39-year-old teacher that she would not be offered a teaching position for the upcoming school year. In the letter containing this devastating news, the diocese administrator justified the decision by pointing out that according to public records, Martin Charlesworth "has a 20-plus year history of violence, abuse and harassment of people--mostly women--and he has continued the pattern to the present."

     In June 2013, Martin Charlesworth was released from prison.

     Thirty Holy Trinity parents held a rally outside the school in support of the diocese's decision to discontinue Carie Charleworth's employment. These parents felt that her presence in the school, given the nature of her relationship with her violent and unpredictable ex-husband, endangered their children.

     Carie Charlesworth, in discussing her situation with a reporter, said, "I followed all the things they tell domestic abuse victims to do. Now I feel I was the one who got punished. This is why other victims do not come forward."

     Following her dismissal, Carie Charlesworth championed legislation to insure that no other woman would experience what she had been put through by her employer.

     In July 2013, after being out of jail less than a month, Martin Charlesworth was arrested for contacting his wife in violation of the terms of his probation. Before the judge, Charlesworth admitted his violation and in return was allowed to continue on probation.

     On October 1, 2013, police officers arrested Martin Charlesworth again when he broke the terms of his probation and his ex-wife's protection order. This time the judge sentenced him to five years in prison.

     In October 2013, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law that protected victims of domestic abuse from losing their jobs. A month earlier, she filed a lawsuit against the diocese contesting her dismissal. (In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that religious organizations can claim ministerial exemptions from employment discrimination laws.)

     As of April 2020, Carie Charlesworth's lawsuit against her former employer remained unresolved or unreported.

Sex For Rent

     On April 24, 2020, United States Attorney General William Barr, in a memorandum to U.S. Attorneys across the country, instructed federal prosecutors to pursue cases involving landlords accused of coercing their COVID-19 era tenants into giving them sex instead of rent money. "This behavior is not tolerated in normal times, and certainly will not be tolerated now, "the attorney general wrote.

     The federal Fair Housing Act protects tenants from sexual harassment by landlords which includes taking sexual advantage of women who cannot afford to pay their rent. (Women who voluntarily offer landlords sex in lieu of rent is, under the laws of most states, are acts of prostitution. These cases, however, are never prosecuted.)

     In Hawaii, the state has an organization called the Commission on the State of Women. According to Khara Jabola-Carolus, the executive director of the agency, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, ten cash-strapped female tenants have accused their landlords of soliciting sex in lieu of rent. Jabola-Carolus said more cases of this nature have been reported during the pandemic than in the past two years.

     In Chicago, Illinois, Sheryl Ring, the legal director at Open Communities, a legal aid fair housing agency, reported that her organization has seen a threefold increase in housing-related sexual harassment cases since the coronavirus shutdown. According to the legal director, "landlords have been taking advantage of the financial hardships many of their tenants have in order to coerce them into a sex-for-rent agreement which is absolutely illegal."

Banning Homeschooling: Are They Your Children or Children of the State?

     Due to the coronavirus pandemic, 50 million children are not attending school. Many of them are being homeschooled by their parents or guardians.

     In the May-June issue of Harvard Magazine, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, in her eighty-page article entitled "Homeschooling: Parents Rights vs Child Rights to Education and Protection," asserts that giving parents more access to their children through homeschooling is harmful to them. "I think it's always dangerous, she writes, "to put powerful people [parents, not teachers] in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority." For this reason Professor Bartholet wants to ban homeschooling.

     The professor argues that in normal times--when the vast majority of children are being taught in public schools--teachers are the ones who most frequently report child abuse to child protective services. According to Bartholet's thinking, mass homeschooling will increase incidents of child abuse, noting that none of the fifty states requires homeschooling parents to be checked for prior reports of abusive behavior. "The issue is," she writes, "do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages 0 to 18?"

     In Bartholet's concern for protecting America's children from their parents, the Ivy League professor doesn't seem bothered by the mediocracy of public education. Moreover, she fails to acknowledge how corrupt teacher's unions exert their power to protect pedophile teachers and coaches. Instead of firing sexual predators, and alerting the police, school administrators, under the influence of teacher's unions, simply transfer these sex offenders to other schools. This practice is so common it even has a name: "passing the trash."

     Journalist Kelly Marcum, in an April 23, 2020 article in The Federalist, wrote that behind Professor Bartholet's "veneer of concern for children's welfare," lies her real agenda: "disdain for Christians and conservatives."

     According to Kelly Marcum, Professor Bartholet is not concerned about failing school systems and the serious problem of student bullying. Academic curricula and bullying are the principal reasons most parents cite for pulling  their children out of public schools. And she is obviously not concerned about the intense left-wing political indoctrination students are exposed to in lieu of a straightforward education.

     In authoritarian societies, children are essentially raised and indoctrinated by the state. Parents have little control over how their children are brought up. These kids are treated as children of the state. If parents in these countries dare contradict the political teachings of the government, they are often turned in to the state by their own children. In America, this form of collectivism, outside of academia, is rejected by citizens who want to maintain control of their children. Parents want to have a say over what is being taught in government run schools. Many believe that over the years in America, parents have been losing control of their children to a massive and powerful public education bureaucracy.

     For "social justice" collectivists like Harvard professor Elizabeth Bartholet, when it comes to teaching and indoctrinating America's children, the state knows best. 

Celebrity Journalism: The Rise and Fall Story

     When ordinary people commit crimes, abuse drugs and alcohol, and kill themselves, it's local news. When celebrities or former celebrities do this, it's entertainment. O. J. Simpson's popular culture legacy will not be football. Marilyn Monroe will not be remembered for her film career. Oscar Pistorius, the South African "Blade Runner", after being convicted of killing his celebrity girlfriend, become even more famous. His case entertained millions of people for more than a year.

     Celebrities are manufactured personas. These people have relinquished ownership of themselves to the public. In that sense they are not real people. They exist for our amusement and entertainment. We celebrate their successes and triumphs, and revel in their misery. Ripe for exploitation, celebrities need fame like the rest of us need oxygen. When they don't get it, they whither away and die. Sometimes they take things into their own hands by committing suicide.

     Country western singer Mindy McCready's prolonged substance abuse, law enforcement problems, and domestic turmoil provided celebrity journalists with a lot of material. The girl from Cleburne County, Arkansas made it big in Nashville with her 1996 debut double-platinum album, "Guys Do It All The Time." She spent the next 16 years trying to replicate that success. During this time, McCready struggled with drugs and alcohol as well as a volatile love life. She never regained the fame she had lost.

     In 2004, McCready pleaded guilty to filling out fraudulent prescription slips for the addictive painkiller OxyContin. A judge in Nashville sentenced her to three years of supervised probation. In May 2005, after her ex-boyfriend, Billy McKnight was charged with attempted murder for allegedly breaking into her Herber Springs home outside of Nashville, police arrested her for driving under the influence. A couple of months later, the singer was found unconscious from a drug overdose in the lobby of a Pinellas County, Florida hotel.

     In September 2005, McCready, pregnant with Billy McKnight's child, was hospitalized after attempting suicide by drug overdose. Police arrested her eighteen months later for misdemeanor battery that occurred during a fight with her mother. In September 2007, McCready spent a year in jail for violating her probation from the 2004 OxyContin sentence. A year later, she was back behind bars for falsifying her community service hours in connection with the 2007 case. The country western singer attempted suicide again in 2008.

     In 2009, Mindy McCready was talked into becoming a cast member in VH1's reality TV series, "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew." (Dr. Drew is Dr. Drew Pinsky.) The series was ostensibly about giving viewers insight into the serious problem of substance addiction, and the importance of professional treatment. On the show's third season, McCready appeared with, among other "celebrity" cast members, Dennis Rodman, Tom Sizemore, MacKenzie Phillips, and Heidi Fleiss.

     Fans of this exploitation of fallen stars must have found the program reassuring. While their own lives were far from perfect, they were at least better off than McCready and the other human disasters showcasing their flaws and failures. After former "Celebrity Rehab" cast members Mike Starr, Joey Kovar, Rodney King, and Jeff Conaway died young, VH1 canceled the series after five seasons. But the spirit of the show lived on in the non-celebrity version called "Rehab with Dr. Drew." The freak show also spawned a pair of spinoffs, "Sober House," and "Sex Rehab", a series about people addicted to sex.

     After her stint on "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew," McCready's life continued to spin out of control. (Apparently the TV counselor didn't do her much good.) She had more arrests, drug overdoses, and attempted suicides. In January 2013, McCready's boyfriend, David Wilson, the father of her 9-month-old son, shot himself to death on the front porch of her Herber Springs, Tennessee home. On Sunday, February 17, 2013, McCready, on the same front porch, used a gun to take her own life.

     By dropping the curtain on her own show, McCready gave her audience a tragic ending to a sad story. It won't be long before the public forgets that she ever existed.    

The Edward Williams Murder Case: The COVID-19 Effect

     So-called social justice advocates do not, in general, like the idea of jails and prisons. These self-righteous do-gooders do not believe non-violent criminal offenders should be put behind bars. They don't think these crimes are worthy of incarceration even though the criminal law calls for prison sentences in non-violent crimes such as theft, burglary, stalking, drug trafficking, felons in possession of guns, vandalism, pornography, perjury, forgery, arson, property hit and run, and other crimes against property, morality and public order. The vast majority of crimes committed in this country are non-violent.

     These soft-on-crime proponents have used the COVID-19 crisis to further their agenda of emptying our jails and prisons. Because the general public does not support lighter sentencing for non-violent criminals, taking advantage of the pandemic is the only way these criminal justice sob sisters can achieve their goals.

     In Los Angeles County, at any given time, the jail system holds 17,000 inmates awaiting trial. Since early April 2020, the sheriff of Los Angeles County, citing the potential spread of the coronavirus, has released 4,000 suspects of non-violent crimes.

     Aware of the reality that merely because a person who is in custody on suspicion of a relatively minor offense does not mean this person is not a major criminal, the sheriff warned citizens there would be increased crime in their communities. This meant law abiding citizens in southern California who had lost their jobs to COVID-19, were essentially imprisoned in their homes, and were prohibited from buying guns to protect themselves, had to worry about being victimized by people who should be in custody.

     On March 19, 2020 in Hillsborough County, Florida, a local judge authorized Sheriff Chad Cronister to "release any pretrial detainee [jail inmate] arrested for a municipal or county ordinance, a misdemeanor offense, a criminal traffic offense [DWI, reckless driving, property hit and run], or a third-degree felony offense." The stated justification for springing these prisoners: "To protect the inmates, deputies, and staff working within the jails."

     So, due to COVID-19, public safety was no longer a law enforcement priority. Safety was now about protecting inmates and government employees. Inmates, instead of infecting each other, had the freedom to disobey social distancing and other public health guidelines, get sick, and infect law abiding citizens. This, of course, makes sense to social justice advocates who blame society for turning people into criminals.

     One doesn't have to be clairvoyant to predict what happens when suspects awaiting trial for "non-violent" crimes are prematurely turned loose. Take the case of Edward Williams.

     On March 19, 2020, 26-year-old Edward Williams was one of 164 Hillsborough County jail inmates set free. Williams, a resident of Tampa, had been arrested on March 13, 2020 on charges of heroin possession, a third-degree felony, and possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor offense. While these are relatively minor crimes, Mr. Williams was not a minor criminal. He wasn't some businessman who got drunk and wiped out a telephone pole.

    Edward Williams had an extensive criminal history involving 35 criminal charges that included theft, burglary, drug possession, drug sales, and firearm violations. His five convictions involved felony charges reduced to misdemeanors pursuant to plea bargains. The fact he had tattooed his face suggested he wasn't preparing himself for gainful employment.

     On Saturday night, March 20, 2020, the day after Sheriff Cronister opened the jail doors, a Hillsborough County 911 dispatcher received several calls regarding shots fired in Progressive Village, a low-income housing community in suburban Tampa.

     At the crime scene, deputies found a man lying on the sidewalk who had been shot. Paramedics rushed the victim to Tampa General Hospital where, a short time later, he died.

     On Sunday, the day after the fatal shooting, Hillsborough deputies arrested Edward Williams on the charges of second-degree murder, illegal gun possession, violently resisting arrest, and possession of heroin. The charges stemmed from the murder of the unidentified victim in Progressive Village.

     Following Williams' arrest, the "non-violent" criminal was back in a Hillsborough County jail, this time under a $280,500 murder bond.

Joe Biden's List of Favorite Books

Joe Biden recently referred to COVID-19 as COVID-9. Not surprisingly, the list of his favorite books include: Catch 21, Two Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Stalog 18, The Postman Rings Trice, A Tale of Three Cities, Slaughterhouse-Six, Fifty-One Shades of Grey, and Eight Days in May.

A Nation of "Heroes"

America is a nation of "heroes." There are tens of thousands of them. Television news readers and commentators often refer to all military personnel, law enforcement officers, and firefighters as heroes. Now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, even grocery store cashiers have been referred to as heroes. There are, of course, true war heroes, brave cops, heroic firefighters and health care workers on the front lines of the coronavirus battle. But all of them? If everybody is a hero, then no one is. In the fields of education, literature, science, business, law, and journalism, there are real heroes, too, but we seldom hear of them. I guess there are even political heroes, but at the moment, none come to mind. If there is one segment of American society where there are no heroes and a lot of heels, it is the media.

Governor Whitmer, Tear Down That Wall

     Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, on March 23, 2020, issued an order that "all public and private gatherings of any size are prohibited." A few days later, the governor extended the order directing residents to stay in their homes until May 1, 2020. The order barred citizens of Michigan from "buying nonessential items or traveling between residents." (Big government politicians like the power of determining, for everyone under their rule, what is essential and what is not. These people think that government leaders know what's best for their subjects.)

     As a result of the most aggressive--one could say oppressive--COVID-19 related order in the country, people who live in Michigan cannot visit their vacation cottages while residents from outside Michigan can travel to their summer homes in the state. (This is what happens when we let government types think for us.)

     Under Whitmer's decree, Michigan residents cannot go out and purchase paint and garden equipment but they are allowed to buy lottery tickets.

     If Americans sit back and continue to allow government officials like Whitmer control their lives, the day may come when we no longer live in a free country. If we're lucky, we may still be allowed to buy lottery tickets. 

Vandalism: A Pathological Crime

      A pathological crime is a crime that, to a rational person, doesn't make any sense. Acts of vandalism often fall into this category. Most vandals are either mentally ill, emotionally unbalanced and/or acting under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Some of them are dangerous.

     At seven o'clock on Friday morning, April 10, 2020, health care workers at the New York-Presbyterian Hudson Valley Hospital in Cortlandt, New York, upon completing their overnight shifts, found that someone had slashed 22 tires in the hospital parking lot.

     Later that day, officers with the New York State Police arrested Daniel Hall, a 24-year-old from Peekskill, New York. Booked into the Westchester County Jail, Hall faced charges of criminal mischief in the second degree, auto stripping, and possession of a controlled substance (PCP) in the fifth degree.

     The magistrate set Daniel Hall's bail at $1,500.

     A spokesperson announced that the hospital would pay the costs of repairing or replacing the 22 tires the vandal had slashed. 

Attack Journalism in the Era of Fake News

Decency and justice requires that before the accusation of a serious crime of moral turpitude is made public by the authorities or the media, there must be, at the very least, enough evidence to support an arrest of the accused. This is particularly true if the accused is a public person of excellent reputation whose career depends on his or her high character. This also applies if, due to the passage of time and vagueness of the accusation, it is extremely difficult for the accused to establish his or her innocence. Just because an accused is presumed innocent in law does not mean that person will be presumed innocent by the public at large. Shame on any politician or journalist who intentionally violates this basic tenet of human decency. Stirring up public anger and resentment through unproven crime accusation puts everyone at the mercy of an angry, politically motivated mob. This has happened in the McCarthy era, the McMartin Preschool Child Abuse Case, the Memphis Three Murder Case, and the JonBonet Ramsey Case. And as politics in America has degenerated into what Vincent Foster once called "blood sport," and objective journalism has been replaced by fake news, the unfounded accusation has become the politician's weapon of choice.