Ralph Cipriano: In Philadelphia, The Dead Still Vote

 Ralph Cipriano at Bigtrial.net offers his take on corruption and voter fraud in Philadelphia. 

On Aug. 18, 2012, Police Officer Moses Walker was robbed and shot to death as he was walking to a bus stop after he finished his night shift at the city's 22nd Police District. 

But according to city voting records, that didn't stop Walker from voting in the 2018 general election. 

On July 8, 2012, Police Officer Brian Lorenzo was riding his Highway Patrol motorcycle when he was killed by a drunk driver going the wrong way on I-95. 

But after he died, according to city voting records, Lorenzo miraculously voted in the 2016, 2017, and 2018 general elections. 

On Sept. 17, 2017, Gerard Grandzol, a community activist, was shot to death in front of his two-year-old daughter during a robbery. 

But according to city voting records, that didn't stop Grandzol from voting in the Nov. 7, 2017 and 2018 general elections. 

Lisa Deeley, chairwoman of the city Board of Elections, did not respond to a request for comment; neither did board Vice-Chair Al Schmidt, or Secretary Omar Sabir.  

The commissioners were busy counting some 350,000 mail ballots in the presidential election, where Philadelphia and the Keystone State may have a big say in determining who becomes president. 

Schmidt told WHYY this morning that when it came to counting the votes, "It's more important to do it right rather than meet artificial deadlines." 

"We're pushing out the results as quickly as we can. We're not holding back," Schmidt told WHYY.  

Voter fraud in Philadelphia is nothing new.  

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

 https://www.bigtrial.net/2020/11/in-philadelphia-dead-still-vote.html#more 

My Washington Times 'On Crime' Column On A Look Back At Ray Bradbury's Crime Stories

 The Washington Times ran my On Crime column on Ray Bradbury’s crime stories. 

Ray Bradbury, who was born in 1920 and died in 2012 at the age of 91, wrote 400 short stories and nearly 50 books in his lifetime. He is best known for his novels, such as “Fahrenheit 451,” “The Martian Chronicles” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” as well as other science fiction, fantasy and horror stories. 

He is perhaps less known for his crime stories. 

It is fitting then that “Hard Case Crime,” a publisher of hard-boiled crime fiction ranging from lost and out of print masterpieces to novels written by today’s practitioners of the crime genre, has published a collection of his crime fiction during the Ray Bradbury Centennial. 

“Killer, Come Back to Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury,” features 20 short stories from the master storyteller. 

“I … took all these pages and put them in my talking box. That was the box where my ideas lay and spoke to me early mornings … so my stories got written.” In the early 1980s, Ray Bradbury used his imaginary talking box to compose “Death is a Lonely Business,” an experiment in autobiography that emerged from decades of suspense crime stories told through unexpected plot twists and vividly dark metaphors,” Jonathan R. Eller writes in the introduction. “If you want to know how Ray Bradbury developed the power to write this late-life novel and its sequels, you must read through the tales gathered here in ‘Killer, Come Back to Me.’”  

Mr. Eller noted that selecting the stories for the collection was a challenge that was eagerly embraced. He wrote that an earlier collection, “A Memory of Murder,” selected a number of the stories from Ray Bradbury’s Popular Publications magazine sales of the mid-1940s. 

“ ‘Hard Case Crime’ publisher Charles Ardai, Bradbury’s long-time agent Michael Congdon, and I eventually reached across a far broader span of time to bring together the best early stories with the latter tales that document Bradbury’s best crime suspense efforts written in the 1950s and early 1960s,” Mr. Eller writes. “In the process, we harvested three of Bradbury’s noir-era tales that had evaded the earlier collection entirely: “The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl”; our title story, “Killer, Come Back to Me”; and “Where Everything Ends,” the long-unpublished source text for Bradbury’s milestone 1985 detective novel, “Death Is a Lonely Business.” 

The title story is about how the girlfriend of a deceased gangster finds and grooms a man into a replica of her late killer boyfriend and stands behind him as he takes over a criminal gang. Other clever and well-written stories are about a ventriloquist’s dummy, a child who insists she hears a voice coming from a grave, and a time traveler.   

You can read the rest of the column below or via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/nov/3/a-look-back-at-ray-bradburys-crime-stories/

Note: The above photo of Ray Bradbury was taken by Alan Light.

Trump Vs. Biden On Policing, Criminal Justice: Where They Stand

Stephanie Pagones at FoxNews.com offers a piece on the views expressed by the presidential candidates on policing and the criminal justice system. 

A series of months punctuated by protests that, at times, devolved into unrest or riots have highlighted differences in the beliefs of President Trump and Democratic contender former Vice President Joe Biden when it comes to the role of law enforcement and criminal justice in America.

Protests following the deaths of multiple Black individuals nationwide, such as George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn., Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky., and, most recently, Walter Wallace Jr. in Philadelphia, Pa., have called for police to be defunded or changes in police policy. 

Trump, while campaigning last week in Arizona, expressed outrage over the violent protests in Philadelphia that followed Wallace Jr.'s death. 

“I can tell you, Biden and Harris stand with the rioters and the vandals,” Trump said of Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, during a campaign rally. “I stand with the heroes of law.” 

Meanwhile, the Biden campaign issued a joint statement in which Biden and Harris said that Wallace's was “a Black life that mattered.” 

But where do Trump and Biden stand on the larger issues of policing and criminal justice reform? Public statements, debate comments and their own websites shed some light on the topic.   

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/trump-vs-biden-on-policing-criminal-justice-where-they-stand 

Babylon Bee: Business Owners Boarding Up In Case Democrats, The Party Of Love And Tolerance, Loses

 The Babylon Bee takes a satirical look at today’s elections.

U.S.—Business owners in Democrat-controlled cities are boarding up in preparation for an onslaught of mostly peaceful demonstrations should Trump win the election Tuesday.

The real concern is that the party of love and tolerance loses the election.

"We just want to make sure our businesses will be safe from the sudden outpouring of peace, love, and tolerance," said one frightened business owner in Los Angeles as he frantically boarded up his hookah lounge.

You can read the rest of the humor piece via the below link:

https://babylonbee.com/news/business-owners-boarding-up-in-preparation-for-onslaught-of-peaceful-protests 

‘Living Like A King’: Former Navy Official Who Demanded Bribes From Corrupt Contractor ‘Fat Leonard’ Gets Prison

Kristina Davis at the San Diego Union-Tribune offers a piece on yet another U.S. Navy man on his way to prison for taking bribes from a corrupt contractor called “Fat Leonard” in the large-scale bribery and fraud Navy scandal. 

Brooks Alonzo Parks, a naval logistics petty officer serving in the western Pacific, was often quite specific about what he thought he deserved in exchange for the insider information he was leaking to military contractor Leonard Francis. 

One time, it was a case of Hennessy Pure White cognac. 

Another, it was a $4,000-night room at the Ritz-Carlton in Singapore. 

“It feels good living like a KING on an E-6’s salary!!!” Parks wrote in one email to Francis’ company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, referring to his military pay grade. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/courts/story/2020-10-30/parks-sentence-fat-leonard-francis?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EBB%2011.02.20&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Military%20-%20Early%20Bird%20Brief

 

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine piece on the Fat Leonard scandal via the below link: 

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2017/03/my-piece-on-fat-leonard-us-navy-bribery.html 

The Late Sean Connery Was The Greatest James Bond, But He Was Much More

With Sir Sean Connery passing at age 90, the tributes to the great Scot actor are flying across the printed press and the Internet. 

Yes, he was the first and best film actor to portray Ian Fleming’s iconic character James Bond (American actor Barry Nelson first portrayed Bond in a poor TV adaptation of Casino Royale), but he was much more. 

He offered many other fine and memorable roles in such films as The Hill, The Offense, The Great Train Robbery, The Molly Maguires, The Rock, The Anderson Tapes, The Hunt for Red October and many other great films. 

Kyle Smith at the New York Post touches on three other Sean Connery films, two of which are favorites of mine, The Man Who Would be King and Robin and Marion, and a film I didn’t care for, The Untouchables, but agree that Sean Connery was great in his role. 

Sean Connery may have been the ultimate British adventurer-rogue, but when I think of great Sean Connery portrayals, my mind goes right to Danny Dravot, aka “The Man Who Would be King.” 

Connery and Michael Caine had the time of their lives playing two scrappy British sergeants out to retrace the steps of Alexander the Great and conquer Afghanistan in the exhilarating 1975 John Huston film based on Rudyard Kipling’s novel. At one point Danny and Caine’s Peachy Carnahan are trapped on a mountain with no possible means of escape. And what do they do? They have a laugh about all the good times they’ve known. A big, roaring, boisterous laugh. Such a laugh that the two men touch off an avalanche which creates a bridge of snow over a chasm that allows them to escape. That was Connery and Caine throughout their careers — two working-class blokes bluffing themselves to one great big merry laugh of a life. 

… Two other great death scenes displayed Connery’s range, his emotional warmth, his vitality: in “Robin and Marian” (1976), in which Connery plays Robin Hood at the end of his life and an incandescent Audrey Hepburn plays his lady fair in what turned out to be her final great performance, on his deathbed Connery’s Robin delivers an indescribably beautiful farewell: “I love you. More than all you know. I love you more than children. More than fields I’ve planted with my hands. I love you more than morning prayers or peace or food to eat. I love you more than sunlight, more than flesh or joy.” 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://nypost.com/2020/10/31/sean-connery-showed-us-the-way-things-ought-to-be-done/ 

Navy SEALs Rescue American Hostage Philipe Nathan In Nigeria

Jon Levine at the New York Post offers a piece on the Navy SEAL Team 6 rescue of an American hostage in Africa. 

An American citizen kidnapped in Niger last week was rescued in neighboring Nigeria by US special forces. 

“Last night, our Country’s brave warriors rescued an American hostage in Nigeria,” President Trump said in a congratulatory tweet Saturday. “Our Nation salutes the courageous soldiers behind the daring nighttime rescue operation and celebrates the safe return of yet another American citizen!” 

Philipe Nathan Walton, 27, was taken by armed captors from his farm in the southwestern region of Massalata. The attackers demanded a $1 million ransom from Walton’s father. Authorities do not believe the abduction was terror-related, but there was a risk Walton’s captors could have sold him to terrorist groups operating in the region. 

The “precision” hostage rescue was conducted by SEAL Team Six, which killed six of Walton’s seven captors, according to ABC News. 

“They were all dead before they knew what happened,” a counterterrorism source with knowledge of the rescue told the network. No US soldiers were injured during the mission conducted by the same SEAL squad famous for killing Osama bin Laden. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://nypost.com/2020/10/31/navy-seals-rescue-american-hostage-philipe-nathan-in-nigeria/