Felonious Bunk

Via Home Depot.

Via NPR:

On Fox News this week, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf admonished state and local leaders there and elsewhere for failing to restore law and order, and he touted the administration's response.

"We've seen about 300 arrests across this country regarding civil unrest and protest, violent protesting, I'd say criminal protesting, criminal rioting," Wolf said. "About 100 of those have been in Portland specifically, and I know the Department of Justice has charged about 74 or 75 individuals in Portland there with different federal crimes."

Question to Radio Yerevan: Is it true that there have been around 100 arrests in Portland, Oregon for what Chad Wolf would regard as criminal protesting or criminal rioting, with 74 or 75 being charged with different federal crimes?

Answer: In principle, yes, but

• first of all, the (illegally) acting secretary's views on what constitutes criminal protesting and rioting may not be an actual thing;
• second of all, of the 74 federal cases brought in Portland over the ongoing unrest as of 28 August, only 23, or 28.3%, were for felonies—there were 11 citations (equivalent of a traffic ticket), and 42 misdemeanors, including 19 class C misdemeanor cases of failing to comply with a lawful order (such as an order to disperse), and a similar number of class A misdemeanors, typically for non-physical assault on a federal officer, such as yelling at him or "pretending to throw an object"; and
• third of all, since most of the 20 serious felonies involved physical assaults on federal officers such as hitting a deputy US marshal with a baseball bat or hitting a deputy US marshal with a hammer (there are also some arson cases, which is very deplorable), it seems clear that if there had been no federal officers sent to Portland under the (illegally) acting secretary's orders, there would have been virtually no federal crimes at all.

That last is my observation, not NPR's.

You could make the same case for the horrible killing of Patriot Praying Aaron J. Danielson in Portland last week, which seems indeed to have been perpetrated by that "100% antifa" guy, Michael Reinoehl, now slain himself by police in what looks like a justified self-defense on the cops' part. 

Antifa law is made like sharia, by any anti-fascist imam in good standing who wants to issue a fatwah, so I'd like to take the opportunity to say that Reinoehl should not have been carrying a firearm on either occasion, and you can take that as official (strictly speaking, nobody should be carrying a baseball bat or a hammer either, but maybe you need to be prepared for a pickup game or spot of emergency carpentry).  Nevertheless, the Patriot Prayer shouldn't have been there either, and certainly shouldn't have been heavily armed (Danielson was openly carrying a loaded Glock at his waistband when Reinoehl popped out of a parking garage and shot him, though the evidence suggests he never drew it; he may have pulled a can of "bear attack deterrent" on Reinoehl, though, since the medic who attended Danielson found such a can, struck by a bullet, alongside an expandable metal baton, on the pavement where Danielson lay):

“You have this kind of culture where the right-wing vigilantes, though much smaller in number, are better armed and are calling for violence,” said Joseph Lowndes, a professor of political science at the University of Oregon. Whenever they appear, they are inevitably confronted by Antifa or other anti-fascist movements in Portland, and, he said, “you end up with this cycle of continuing confrontations.”

And if they hadn't been there, looking for a fight, and probably intent on generating video for Trump campaign ads, nobody would have been killed.