Crime

If, like his character in the “Taken” franchise, Liam Neeson has a “very particular set of skills,” it doesn’t include recognizing his own hypocrisy. While the hyper-violent “Taken 3” was pulling down $39.2 million at the box office its opening weekend, Neeson was in Dubai railing against guns.

At 4:45 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, the New York Times, teasing an item entitled "‘Dangerous Moment’ for Europe, as Fear and Resentment Grow," tweeted that "The Paris terror attack seems certain to accelerate the growth of anti-Islamic sentiment in Europe." Consistent with a long-established nasty habit, the opening sentence of the report by Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold has since been…

Correction: This post originally referred to Variety as the publication involved. It was Vanity Fair, and the text below has been corrected to reflect that. At the Daily Beast on Tuesday, Vicky Ward, who profiled Jeffrey Epstein for Vanity Fair Magazine in early 2003, revealed that she and Graydon Carter, the publication's editor, were aware of and had specific details about the convicted…

Nearly two years ago, someone planted and detonated a bomb in the crowd at near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three people were killed and more than 260 injured. Police killed one of the suspects in a shoot-out and, after more shooting, captured his brother in a boat in someone’s backyard. Jury selection began yesterday in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and ABC, CBS and NBC on Monday…

One would think tabloidish news shows like Good Morning America would be interested in the hot story of a former acting director of cybersecurity for the Department of Health and Human Services being sentenced to 25 years in jail for child pornography – the kind of vile stuff that includes the rape and murder of children. But you would be wrong. Timothy deFoggi, 56, formerly of Germantown,…

“Americans are still free,” wrote blogger Hunter, “to criticize overaggressive police actions which repeatedly and systemically end up killing black men and boys for no discernible reason…so put on your goddamn big-boy uniforms and deal with it.”

During his MSNBC show All In on Monday, Chris Hayes put up his best defense of far-left New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio against criticism from NYPD officers and their union, lamenting that de Blasio has been subject to “brutal attacks” over the past few weeks while praising him for a drop in crime during 2014. At the start of a segment about the drop in crime and a changing of tactics, Hayes…

In the final three paragraphs of a "Year in Review" item at the Los Angeles Times on December 31 (HT Patterico), reporter Matt Pearce joined the long list of journalists who have failed to properly characterize the evidence in Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri in August. You had to know that distortions were coming based on the rest of the article content which preceded it. The most…

In the interest of getting all supposedly relevant information out there for the public to see, the New York Times amassed an extraordinary array of journalistic resources — three reporters, three who "contributed reporting," and two others who "contributed research" — to what they must have thought was an important, underappreciated element of the saga which ended with the brutal ambush murders…

Prospective 2016 Democratic presidential contender Gov. Martin O'Malley decided to close out 2014 with an announcement that he would be commuting the death sentences of four Maryland death-row inmates who were in a virtual state of limbo -- eligible for execution but unable to be executed due to the state lacking an appropriate protocol for lethal injections.  Reporting the story in the January…

Let's say that a Republican or conservative governor or big-city mayor (yes, there actually are quite a few) was in a heated dispute with his state's or city's police union. Let's further say that this official decided that his or her best method for whipping up support was to order the staff to (ahem) "ask" GOP legislators or council members to issue public statements of support while bashing…

Peter Dreier, who teaches at Occidental College, writes that “for decades, the NRA has fought every effort to get Congress and states to adopt reasonable laws that would make it much less likely that people like was [Ismaaiyl] Brinsley would be able to obtain a gun.” Dreier claims that even though the NRA’s “arguments are bogus,” it “has the money, and a small but committed hard core of members,…

Although many of the images are striking and well worth viewing, there's also a dose of the liberal politics of the New York Times on display in its "Year in Pictures" in today's paper.  The very first photo sets the Times' tone, depicting a Ferguson demonstrator with hands up confronted by a heavily-armed phalanx of police. But it is the commentary accompanying another photo that really gives …

Earlier this evening, Clay Waters at NewsBusters noted the New York Times Editorial Board's blistering attack on Gotham's finest. The Times editorial insisted that the NYPD has "squandered" its presumptive respect in its treatment of Mayor Bill de Blasio since a bi-racial grand jury's December 3 decision not to indict officers on the scene in July when Eric Garner died on Staten Island. This is…