Last year, Texas governor Greg Abbott announced his plan to pardon a convicted, unrepentant murderer at the first opportunity. On May 16, Abbott fulfilled his threat, terminating Daniel Perry’s 25-year sentence and putting him back on the streets of The Lone Star State.

The occasion merits an Imminent Threat Alert concerning “imminent threats to safety or life” as codified in the US Emergency Alert System.

In 2020, Perry — after announcing his obsessive desire to murder protesters multiple times on social  media — ran a red light to put his car into the middle of a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters, then murdered libertarian activist Garrett Foster.

Perry later claimed that he acted in “self-defense,” even though he admitted in to police that Foster, who was carrying a rifle (as he was entitled by right to do), never pointed that rifle at him.

A jury didn’t buy the bogus self-defense claim, but Abbott saw an opportunity to “own the libs” by pleasing people who don’t like Black Lives Matter protesters. Hence the pardon.

So now Texans have a known and unrepentant murderer  loose among them, and those Texans have no reason whatsoever to believe that he won’t treat the pardon as license to murder again.

Fortunately, Texans also have a “stand your ground” law which, in theory at least, should protect them from Perry even more than it protected Perry (the assailant, not the victim, when he murdered Foster). It provides that “a person is justified in using force against another when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect the actor against the other’s use or attempted use of unlawful force.”

If you happen to see Daniel Perry approaching you on the street, what could possibly be more reasonable than to believe that a man who has murdered before, then received a pat on the back and a get out of jail free card from the governor himself, is about to murder you too … and to react accordingly?

The world would likely be a safer place today if Garrett Foster had been able to get his rifle up in time to defend himself from Perry. Texas would certainly be a safer place today if a soft on (Republican-base-pleasing) crime governor hadn’t turned Perry loose.

Be safe out there, Texans. Avoid Perry if you can. Put him down like the rabid dog he is if you must.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

It’s graduation time in America! By which I which mean: it’s “problematic” commencement speech time in America!

For a couple of days, the big story (if commencement speeches can really be said to constitute news)  was the Duke University student walkout on comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s talk, less because of anything he had to say than because they regarded him as too “pro-Israel.”

But, as we’ve seen over the last five years, the Kansas City Chiefs almost always find a way to win.

Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker’s speech at Benedictine College took place the day before Seinfeld’s outing, then methodically marched down the news cycle field to score.

While I’ve browsed an account or two of Butker’s speech — in summary, he seems to think women belong in the kitchen, LGBTQ people belong in the closet, and Joe Biden belongs somewhere other than in the White House — this is one of those rare opinion pieces where studying the material misses the point.

I don’t care what Harrison Butker thinks about politics. I don’t care what Harrison Butker thinks about religion. I don’t care what Harrison Butker thinks about women or gender and sexual minorities. I’d rather not even know what he thinks about those people and things.

Harrison Butker’s job involves kicking a football through a goalpost to score points in a game. He’s good at that. VERY good. He saved the Chiefs’ bacon in several games last season and kicked the winning field goal in Super Bowl LVIII, after a Super Bowl record kick (57 yards) earlier in the game. He boasts the second best career field goal percentage of any kicker in NFL history.

That’s all I want from the guy. If he runs around babbling nonsense at college graduates in the off-season, that’s his business, so long as he avoids injury and comes back this fall to kick more footballs through more goalposts.

I watch movies featuring actors whose politics and/or personalities I might find odious (Sean Penn, James Woods, and Kevin Spacey come immediately to mind). Why? Because I love good movies and great acting.

In the mid-1990s, I saw REM live in concert at Sandstone Amphitheater (now Azura) outside Kansas City. The band’s singer, Michael Stipe, vocally supported gun control, which I oppose. I bought the ticket and enjoyed the show anyway. Why? Because they were hands-down the greatest American band of the time, that’s why.

If I engaged with Harrison Butker on political or social issues,  I’d care about Harrison Butker’s deep thoughts on political and social issues.

But I engage with Harrison Butker as a Chiefs fan watching a Chiefs player kick footballs (and opponents’ rear ends). And he delivers the goods.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Will Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. participate in either of the two presidential election debates thus far announced by the Joe Biden and Donald Trump campaigns?

How about independents Cornel West and Afroman, Green party candidate Jill Stein, Constitution Party candidate Randall Terry, and whoever receives the Libertarian Party’s nomination over Memorial Day weekend?

The answer, at the moment, looks like a soft “no” for RFK Jr. and a hard “no” for everyone else.

Criteria for inclusion in the June 27 debate on CNN include polling a minimum of 15% in at least four “high-quality national polls,” and being on the ballot in states disposing of at least the 270 electoral votes required to win the election.

Interestingly, RFK, Jr. is closer to meeting that latter qualification than either Joe Biden or Donald Trump at the moment. He’s already on the ballot in six states and has turned in petition signatures for ballot access in five more. The grand total for Biden and Trump combined is zero states. Until and unless they’re actually nominated by their respective parties in July and August, well after the CNN debate, they won’t be on the ballot anywhere.

Kennedy’s campaign director, Amaryllis Fox, tweets that “We anticipate fulfilling all participation criteria” by the June 20th deadline.

But rules (or at least CNN policies) are, it seems, only for the little people. Axios reports that the Trump campaign claims CNN promised them “RFK will not be on that stage,” while the Biden campaign says its own criteria require “a 1:1 debate.”

Meanwhile, RFK Jr. himself claims — fairly, it seems to me — that “Presidents Trump and Biden are colluding to lock America into a head-to-head match-up that 70% say they do not want.”

He also claims that they’re doing so “because they are afraid I would win.” Probably not. RFK Jr. has a slightly better chance of becoming president than you or me, but that’s like saying someone who buys two lottery tickets has a better chance of winning the billion-dollar jackpot than the guy who just buys one.

The real fear for Biden and Trump isn’t that RFK Jr. might win the election. Rather, it’s that small but decisive numbers of voters might abandon one, the other, or both of them for a third option, with an unpredictable impact on which of the two “big players” wins.

Their “collusive” response, right out of The Naked Gun: “Alright, move on, nothing to see here.”

While presidential debates may feel like they’ve been around forever, the first general election debate — featuring John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon — occurred only 64 years ago.

After the League of Women Voters refused to rig debates to include only the two “major” party candidates, those “major” parties created the Commission on Presidential Debates in 1987 to do the rigging themselves. Trump and Biden dumped the CPD this year and went to direct personal election-rigging.

Why the “Hey, Rube!” collusion? Because the debates are really just  circuses, and “major party” carnies always stick together against outsiders — including the voting public.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY