Newsweek: on Crime
Cory Booker:
$1,000 reward for crime tips leading to gun recovery
The reason we had four years of double-digit reductions in shootings is that we approached crime as more than just a police issue. We have the first-ever pro bono legal service for ex-offenders.
We have one-stop centers for youth coming out of prison; we have a fatherhood program that's gotten a lot of national attention. If you think someone's carrying an illegal gun, all you do is call a tip line.
You get four digits, you call back and see if we've made an arrest--we don't need a conviction, we just want to recover the weapon--and then, if we have, you get another four digits that you can use to get
$1,000 from a number of local banks. It's just those eight digits, no questions asked.
Source: Andrew Romano interview in Newsweek
Dec 20, 2010
Don Blankenship:
Served sentence, called himself a "political prisoner"
Blankenship was convicted on one charge of conspiring to violate federal mining safety regulations, a misdemeanor. He was acquitted on felony charges. Prosecutors claimed that the former CEO's safety efforts at the company were a "fa‡ade."
He was sentenced to one year in prison for the crime. The former executive maintained his innocence, and while serving time in a prison near Bakersfield, California is said to have described himself as an "American political prisoner" in a blog post.
Source: Newsweek magazine on 2020 presidential hopefuls
Oct 22, 2019
Neil Gorsuch:
Police tasers aren't excessive force, even if person killed
In 2013, the 10th Circuit threw out a lawsuit against the city of Lafayette, Colorado, and its police. The parents of Ryan Wilson, a 22-year-old who died after being stunned with a Taser as he ran from officers, brought the suit.
Gorsuch ruled that an officer didn't use excessive force when he hit Wilson in the head with the stun gun--and killed him--in 2006. The court upheld a District Court's decision that the officer had qualified immunity.
"We sympathize with the Wilsons over their terrible loss," Gorsuch wrote. "Given the direction we have from the Supreme Court and this court's precedent, and in light of the state of the law as of 2006, we cannot say the district court erred in its
decision to grant qualified immunity." The Supreme Court, he said, "has directed the lower federal courts to apply qualified immunity broadly" to protect all officers except "the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law."
Source: Newsweek magazine on SCOTUS confirmation hearings
Jan 27, 2017
Samuel Alito:
Casinos not responsible for drunken gambling losses
While gambling in Atlantic City, a man chose to accept from the casino many free drinks. That, he said, was why he lost "substantial" sums and why he sued the casino, charging that it "intentionally and maliciously enticed him" on numerous occasions.
Judge Sam Alito was unpersuaded.Alito noted that New Jersey courts have not made servers of alcohol liable beyond injuries resulting from drunken driving or accidents or brawls in a bar. Alito saw no evidence of a legislative intent to make casinos
liable for giving alcohol to gamblers. Alito also cited the lower court's opinion that making casinos liable for losses incurred by drunken gamblers "could present almost metaphysical problems of proximate causation,
since sober gamblers can play well yet lose big, intoxicated gamblers can still win big, and under the prevailing rules and house odds, ‘the house will win and the gamblers will lose' anyway in the typical transaction."
Source: George F. Will, Newsweek, "Three Samples of Alito"
Nov 21, 2005
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
Release Sirhan Sirhan; doesn't believe he shot RFK
He believes Sirhan Sirhan, the 79-year-old man serving a life sentence for killing his father, ought to be released, whether or not he's guilty as a "frail old man who has no memory of what happened that day". For the record, though, Kennedy
also doesn't believe Sirhan fired the fatal shot as the court found. Kennedy says that his view is based with interviews with all those involved and on ballistic evidence. Others reject it as yet another conspiracy theory.
Source: Newsweek on 2023 Presidential hopefuls
Jul 20, 2023
Page last updated: Sep 29, 2024