It was a talking point issued by the Broward County Sheriff for days: stop saying that we made contact 39 times with the Parkland school shooter. It’s JUST NOT TRUE, they said:

pic.twitter.com/yTPCDJMU2C

— Broward Sheriff (@browardsheriff) February 25, 2018

The clear implication is that they were called (and responded) only 23 times.

Well, it turns out that they responded to more than 23 calls. They also responded to more than 39. Records show that sheriff’s deputies responded to at least 45 calls about the shooter before the shooting. BuzzFeed (of all places) has the story:

Broward County sheriff’s officials said in a statement late Saturday that they responded only to 23 calls involving suspected Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz or his family over the years, but records obtained by BuzzFeed News show at least 45 responses since 2008.

The number of calls made over the years involving Cruz or his family, according to the call records, are nearly twice the number publicly disclosed by the department.

Remember, as Jennifer Van Laar told us, that the sheriff had specifically disputed Dana Loesch at the CNN town hall when she said there had been 39 visits:

DANA LOESCH: And he had already taken bullets and knives to school. He had already assaulted people. He assaulted his parent. He assaulted other students. Thirty-nine visits. And this was known to the intelligence and law enforcement community. Now I’m not, look, I’m not saying that you can be everywhere at once. But this is what I’m talking about. We have to follow up on these red flags. Doesn’t that not meet the standard?

SHERIFF ISRAEL: You’re absolutely not the litmus test for how law enforcement should follow up. You’re wrong. There weren’t 39 visits. Some of them were GOA [Gone on Arrival], some of them called from other states…

I guess Sheriff Israel will try to parse language: “call” vs. “response” vs. “visit.” Is his “defense” going to be that they got 45 calls but made contact with him in just slightly over half of those calls? Is that going to be his position — that almost half the time they got calls, they just never followed up to make contact? Hopefully it is easy to see that such a “defense” is only a further indictment of the failures here — not to mention a game of numbers-playing that is anything but forthright and honest with the public.

The sheriff could do with a less haughty attitude and a little more openness.

He might also consider offering his resignation.

[Cross-posted at RedState and The Jury Talks Back.]

[guest post by Dana]

Because Republicans, like Democrats, eat their own when they dare to break ranks.

Last November, when Donald Trump was close to marking his fist year as President of the United States and the public had recently learned about a credible accusation of sexual misconduct against GOP-backed candidate Roy Moore, in which he allegedly sexually assaulted a 14-year old girl decades earlier, I wrote a post that discussed the dangers of party loyalty. Specifically, the kind of party loyalty that demands we turn a blind eye to that which we readily condemn when it happens on the other side of the aisle. The kind of party loyalty that begets a moral bankruptcy resulting in there no longer being any daylight between Democrats and Republicans, thus making it impossible for either side to hold the moral high ground. Democrats have Bill Clinton, the GOP has Donald Trump:

The worst example of party loyalty is when a sexual predator’s bad behavior is brushed away, rationalized, overlooked, or worse: acknowledged as being rooted in truth, or altogether true but dismissed anyway because supporting the party trumps everything else – especially when an election is involved. And even if the opponent is as morally pure as driven snow, better to have an accused sexual predator in office than one from across the aisle.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) yesterday, Mona Charen, Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, was on stage participating in the #UsToo: Left out by the Left panel discussion, and was asked about her concerns for today’s feminism. Her answer triggered audience members, and prompted a vigorous push back from those offended at Republicans being called out for their hypocrisy:

I’m actually going to twist this around a bit and say that I’m disappointed in people on our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women who are in our party, who are sitting in the White House, who brag about their extramarital affairs, who brag about mistreating women. And because he happens to have a R after his name, we look the other way. We don’t complain. This is a party that was ready to endorse — the Republican party endorsed — Roy Moore for the Senate in the state of Alabama even though he was a credibly accused child molester. You cannot claim that you stand for women and put up with that.

Charen was soundly booed for her criticism of the party and calls for consistency. She was likewise booed for questioning why CPAC would invite far right French politician Marion Maréchal-Le Pen. Out of concerns for her safety, three security guards escorted Charen out of the building. This at the largest annual gathering of conservatives.

Once upon a time, it would have been a given that Charen’s observations would have been robustly supported by Republicans. But as it now stands, this is Trump’s party, and what once was is no longer. Charen herself said as much today :

What happened to me at CPAC is the perfect illustration of the collective experience of a whole swath of conservatives since Donald Trump became the Republican nominee. We built and organized this party — but now we’re made to feel like interlopers.

I was surprised that I was even asked to speak at CPAC. My views on Trump, Roy Moore and Steve Bannon are no secret. I knew the crowd would be hostile, and so I was tempted to pass.

But too many of us have given up the fight. We’ve let disgust and dismay lead us to withdraw while bad actors take control of the direction of our movement. I know how encouraged I feel whenever someone simply states the truth, and so I decided to accept CPAC’s invitation.

Like the Republican Party, CPAC has become heavily Trumpified. Last year, they invited alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos (and withdrew the invitation only after lewd tapes surfaced). This year, in addition to the president and vice president, CPAC invited Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen and niece of National Front leader Marine Le Pen.

…

While there were reasonable, mainstream Republican speakers at CPAC, the lineup also featured demagogues like Sheriff David Clarke Jr. While he oversaw the Milwaukee County jail, one pregnant prisoner was repeatedly raped, and several prisoners died in the space of just six months. One was a mentally ill man who was denied water for seven days. No matter. The sheriff was cheered by the CPAC crowd.

Charen also explained why she was compelled to speak before what she knew would be a hostile audience:

I’d been dreading it for days, but when it came, I almost welcomed it. There is nothing more freeing than telling the truth. And it must be done, again and again, by those of us who refuse to be absorbed into this brainless, sinister, clownish thing called Trumpism, by those of us who refuse to overlook the fools, frauds and fascists attempting to glide along in his slipstream into respectability.

I spoke to a hostile audience for the sake of every person who has watched this spectacle of mendacity in disbelief and misery for the past two years. Just hearing the words you know are true can serve as ballast, steadying your mind when so much seems unreal.

For traditional conservatives, the past two years have felt like a Twilight Zone episode. Politicians, activists and intellectuals have succumbed with numbing regularity, betraying every principle they once claimed to uphold. But there remains a vigorous remnant of dissenters. I hear from them. There were even some at CPAC.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

It is the second Sunday in Lent. The title of today’s cantata is “Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen” (I will gladly carry the Cross). The performance features Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, a nice choice for a cantata composed entirely for the bass (at least until the final chorale). Fischer-Dieskau’s intelligence and uniquely recognizable voice make this a very special performance:

It’s hard for me to listen to this man sing without chills running down my spine. What greater evidence could there be of God’s existence than a piece like this, and a voice like his to sing it?

Today’s Gospel reading is Mark 8:31-38:

Jesus Predicts His Death

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

The Way of the Cross

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

These are words that stick with you long after the reading is done, and the very title of the cantata shows it to be a perfect pairing with the reading. For a reading in which Jesus says: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must … take up their cross and follow me,” no music could accompany the message better than a cantata titled “I will gladly carry the Cross.” The text of today’s cantata is available here, and the opening aria contains these words:

I will gladly carry the Cross,
it comes from God’s dear hand,
and leads me, after my troubles,
to God, in the promised land.
There at last I will lay my sorrow in the grave,
there my Savior himself will wipe away my tears.

Happy listening!

[Cross-posted at RedState and The Jury Talks Back.]