Tyler Barriss, the suspected serial SWATter who was arrested after a hoax phone call to police led to the death of Andrew Finch in Wichita, Kansas, has now been charged with manslaughter:

The Los Angeles man at the center of what is believed to be the first fatal “swatting” incident in the U.S. has been charged with manslaughter in connection with a hoax phone call that led to a deadly shooting in Kansas, records show.

Tyler Rai Barriss, 25, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and interference with law enforcement, according to court records made public Friday. Barriss has also been accused of making a false alarm, a felony.

Authorities allege that a dispute over an online video game led Barriss to call a Wichita, Kan., police dispatcher and falsely claim that he had shot his father and was holding two other people hostage inside a Wichita home on Dec. 28.

But Barriss was in Los Angeles, not Kansas, and there was no hostage situation. When Wichita police responded, a man, later identified as Andy Finch, 28, emerged from the front door and was fatally shot by an officer.

. . . .

If convicted of involuntary manslaughter, Barriss could face up to 11 years and three months in prison, depending on his criminal history, Bennett said.

I think he should have been charged with murder. But this is better than the lousy “making a false alarm” charge that he was extradited for. I hope they didn’t screw it up by not charging the manslaughter before the extradition.

If you’re new to this story, you can read my post about this deadly SWATting here, as well as my own account of having been a SWATting victim in the past. I published the audio of the SWATting call and the body cam footage of the shooting here.

The post Suspect in Deadly Kansas SWATting Charged with Manslaughter appeared first on RedState.

Maybe I’m just getting desensitized to Trump’s schtick, but I’m having trouble getting alarmed by his “s**thole countries” remarks. First off, yesterday’s now-famous meeting was in the Oval Office and there were eight lawmakers in the room. Unlike his previous televised immigration spectacle, yesterday’s meeting was behind closed doors and I’m sure it was intended to get more substantive results. It seems to me there are ground rules before going into such meetings, and the conversations are typically not reported with any detail, but that was not the case here. Or am I wrong? Doesn’t bawdiness and basic jackassery usually just stay in the room? Or was his “s**thole countries” comment just too salacious to stay quiet about? I mean, it was mostly men in the meeting and they’re not above some salty language and jokes.

Second thing, Trump’s “s**thole countries” comment can be interpreted in more than one way. Maybe in his mind Haiti, El Salvador and most of the African continent really are s**tholes, or maybe not. Maybe he was referring to the s**thole governments running the aforementioned nations. By that measure, add Venezuela to the “s**thole” list. Maybe Trump, inarticulate fella that he is, was talking in shorthand. The Dominican Republic shares the same island as Haiti, and its socioeconomics are good enough for Trump to have invested there (a hat tip to the Soros-funded scowlers at Center for American Progress). Costa Rica is not a s**thole and but a couple hundred miles from El Salvador. I suspect Trump intended to mean governments that are s**tholes, not entire nations or peoples.

Third, on the topic of temporary protected status and the umbrage taken by the Left, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, goes like this: “You keep using that word, temporary. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The Obama administration didn’t know the word’s meaning for certain, given that “temporary” for El Salvador is eighteen years. The folks on temporary protected status are here by mutual agreement and by our good graces. They do not have the right to be on American soil, which is another concept that frustrates liberals to no end.

The post Thoughts On “S**thole Countries” and the Man Who Used The Phrase appeared first on RedState.

Because of course he’s defending this.

As our nation’s diplomats are in panic mode, rushing about to try and smooth over the ruffled feathers of those nation’s Trump insulted with his “Sh*thole” comment, the greater damage may only be realized in days ahead.

The world is already on edge, given Trump’s penchant for saying all the wrong things at all the wrong times. They don’t know if he can be counted on, or not.

Now he insults a great many of our allies.

As Erick Erickson pointed out last night, Haiti was one of the nations that sided with the U.S., when the United Nations voted to condemn the announcement of moving our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Norway – the place Trump wants to see more immigrants from – voted against us.

Just some perspective.

Earlier today, our ambassadors to Botswana and Senegal, along with the top U.S. diplomat in Haiti, were all called to explain to their hosts what Trump meant and why he would say such a hostile thing.

The Trump White House was in damage control mode, taking to TV interviews to explain how this was all 47^th upside-down, backwards chess.

According to the Associated Press:

Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein, in charge of U.S. public diplomacy, said Trump has the right to “make whatever remark he chooses,” calling it the benefit of being president. He said Trump’s comments notwithstanding, it was diplomats’ obligation to send the message to other countries that the United States cares “greatly about the people that are there.”

I think they probably missed that message.

“Will they have to work extra hard to send it today? Yes, they will, but that’s OK,” Goldstein said. “That’s part of the responsibility that they have. It doesn’t change what we do.”

I don’t think any of them expect to work this hard.

Meanwhile, rather than really taking into consideration why people might be deeply offended by all this, the president is trying to gauge the public outrage and explain himself to associates and friends, in private.

As his comments, disclosed by participants in the meeting, ricocheted around the world, Trump made calls to friends and outside advisers to judge their reaction to the tempest, said a person who spoke to Trump but wasn’t authorized to discuss a private conversation.

He wasn’t apologetic, the person said. Instead, Trump blamed the media for distorting his meaning, arguing his description of “shithole” was not racist but rather a straightforward assessment of some nations’ depressed conditions. Trump also said he believed he was expressing what many people think, according to the person.

Yes. How dare the media distort the meaning of what he said by reporting it.

And we’ve heard the argument that he was talking about the depressed condition of those nations. Nobody is denying that part. And as we’ve seen from his hateful supporters, he was expressing what many think. The world is full of awful people.

What he apparently has missed is that when you use that term while talking about human beings, you give the impression that your belief is sh*thole countries produce sh*thole people.

It’s offensive, and he has no idea why, which is probably the worst part.

Ambassador James Jeffrey, the former U.S. envoy to Turkey and Iraq under Bush, said the ramifications of Trump’s remarks extended far beyond the countries he insulted. He said the “shithole” comment, in particular, would rattle European nations who fear a return to the xenophobic world view that devastated the continent during World War II.

“Where this is going to hurt us is with the Europeans when we turn to them for other things that require a you-just-have-to-trust-us kind of thing, like right now on Iran,” Jeffrey said. “It makes it very hard for them to go out on a limb with things he’s asking them to do.”

And many nations that voted to condemn us with the U.N. now feel quite justified in their vote.

Trump could do his image so much good if he would come forward to explain those remarks.

If he said the remarks were made in frustration and came out wrong, apologized, said he’d practice more self-control and sensitivity in the future, he probably wouldn’t win over everybody, but it would definitely be better than leaving things as they are, now.

The post Trump to Friends After “Sh*thole” Comment: Wha? What Did I Say? appeared first on RedState.

The biggest political crisis facing the Congress in the next 90 days is how to resolve the Dreamer issue. Dreamers are those illegals allegedly brought to the United States before they were 16 years old and have lived here continuously since 2007. It might effect as many as 700,000 individuals and is emotionally charged because they are the only group of illegals who can be considered victims in their own right. Many of them–allegedly–have never known any home but the United States, don’t speak the language of the home country, etc. What makes the problem so difficult is that if citizenship is in the plan, then it will not be a one-time thing for this group of illegals. It will be part of US immigration law which means we have just created a magnet for illegal immigration.

There are competing visions for how to fix this problem. The worst possible solution is that being proposed by the so-called Gang of Six. This is a group of six senators–Jeff Flake (R-AZ.), Dick Durbin (D-Douchebag), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Robert Menendez (D-Free Hookers). This line-up should scare the living hell out of anyone who is actually concerned about controlling illegal immigration.

What they are offering: #1.6 billion for a border fence and $1.2 billion to enhance border security. Important note: none of this money goes to ICE for interior enforcement, for E-verify, or for immigration judges, or for anything else that is not on the border.

What they are demanding:

Amnesty for all persons who fall within the DACA eligibility guidelines regardless whether they have registered. This seems to me to reward people who didn’t care enough about being in America to cooperate when they had the chance, but that’s just me.

Dreamers would get conditional permanent resident status and after two years of work or military service they would become full-fledged resident aliens.

Dreamers would be eligible for citizenship after 10 years of residency.

Some criminal convictions would be waived if “in the national interest.”

Dreamers would have to pay federal tax liability. Not sure how this works as many, if not most, have probably been working using a fake social security number. I read this as some meaningless sop thrown to us rubes by slick guys who think they’re getting one over on us.

It gives “temporary” protected status to the families of Dreamers. This should be a deal breaker because it sets up yet another one of these fights a couple of years from now when another Gang of [fill in your favorite number] decides it is totally immoral that the families of Dreamers not be allowed to dream themselves into resident alien status. While I am broadly sympathetic with the plight of the Dreamers, the idea of rewarding illegals for being, well, illegal makes me gag.

They claim to end chain migration (yes, I know, saying chain migration or anchor baby makes you a racist) by forbidding Dreamers from sponsoring their parents. This is just another shiny object to distract you. They can still sponsor non-Dreamer siblings and the proposal is sort of a form of chain migration itself as it allows their parents to stay.

It increases the number of spouses and children of green card holders who are eligible for their own green cards.

It revamps the visa lottery system by awarding half the slots based on merit. The other half go to persons with temporary protected status…like the parents of Dreamers.

They are being too clever by half. They had the chance to make a small tweak of the immigration system to fix a single problem. They couldn’t do that. They chose to increase the number of recipients of an amnesty from about 700,000 to probably close to 2 million. They had a chance to show they could bargain in good faith and they chose not to.

This is a terrible deal.Trump has indicated he’s not interested in what they’re selling and let’s hope he’s convinced to stay that way.

The post The White House Is Not Hot on the Gang of Six Dreamers Plan Because It Sucks appeared first on RedState.

Sean Hannity opening monologue @00:06
Sara Carter Mark Meadows And Jim Jordan on Controversial Trump dossier @08:43

U.S. House Rep. Martha McSally (R – Az.) made her long-expected official announcement that she is running for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Jeff Flake this year.

In her campaign announcement video, the retired Air Force colonel and fighter pilot — and the first woman to fly a combat mission — said the national Republican Party needs to “grow a pair of ovaries.”

While McSally, 51, spoke out against Donald Trump in 2016, calling his comments in the Access Hollywood video “disgusting,” she’s adopted a more Trump-friendly rhetoric in recent months.

“Like our president, I’m tired of PC politicians and their BS excuses. I’m a fighter pilot and I talk like one,” McSally says in the video.

There’s a gamble in McSally taking this take in a state where Trump won in 2016 by less than 4 points. However, with “Chemtrail Kelli” Ward and disgraced former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio splitting the “Trump faction,” McSally could appeal to more moderate and traditional conservative Republicans in the state.

McSally doesn’t mention either of her primary opponents in the video.

The post GOP Senate Candidate Tells Party to “Grow A Pair Of Ovaries.” (Video) appeared first on RedState.

Democratic leadership very much wants Vice President Mike Pence — who you may remember was publicly lied to by Michael Flynn regarding the former Trump adviser’s contacts with Russia during the Trump team’s transition into office — to testify before Congress in the Russian collusion investigation. Mike Pence’s answer?

Cool story, bro. But no.

The request seems to stem from Democratic lawmakers’ belief that, because Pence was tapped to head the transition team shortly after the election, replacing Gov. Chris Christie once he fell out of favor with President Trump, the Vice President should be compelled to tell what he knows.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, put it this way: “There are some serious questions that Vice President Pence should answer: What did he know and when did he know it?”

In late November, Mr. Blumenthal sent the vice president a letter asking him a series of questions about Mr. Flynn and dealings he had with foreign governments during the transition.

“I write to you because, as chairman of the Trump transition team, you were responsible for overseeing Mr. Flynn,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote to Mr. Pence.

Mr. Pence’s office received the letter but isn’t planning to reply, a person familiar with the matter said.

For his part, Pence, through an administration official, said he is unlikely to comply with requests to testify because he sees no precedent that would mandate his testimony. In his capacity as leader of the transition team — which, remember, is the reason Dems give for wanting his testimony to begin with — he was focused “much more [on] trying to build out a cabinet and get people in front of the president so that he could make a decision about who would be joining the cabinet,” a senior White House official said.

Pence’s determination that he is under no mandate to appear before Congress in the Russian collusion investigation is exacerbated by the fact that Democrats, in the minority in both the House and Senate, will have to receive support from Republicans to compel any witnesses to appear.

Pence declining to testify may be a sign they won’t get much cooperation from their co-legislators across the aisle.

The post Mike Pence to Dems: Sorry, But I Won’t Be Testifying on Russian Collusion appeared first on RedState.

A report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released Thursday reveals that segregation in public schooling is still disturbingly prevalent, with black and latino students often schooling in subpar conditions.

The commission said inequities are caused by the fact that schools are most funded with state and local tax dollars. More than 92 percent of funding comes from nonfederal sources, according to the Education Department.

The resulting imbalance renders “the education available to millions of American public school students profoundly unequal,” the commission said.

For instance, the authors said, 33 percent of high schools with high black and Latino enrollment offer calculus, compared with 56 percent of high schools with low black and Latino student populations. Nationwide, 48 percent of schools offer the rigorous math course.

On average, school districts spend around $11,000 per student each year, but the highest-poverty districts receive an average of $1,200 less per child than the least-poor districts, while districts serving the largest numbers of minority students get about $2,000 less than those serving the fewest students of color, according the study.

The authors called on Congress to create incentives for states to adopt equitable funding systems, to ensure adequate funding for students with disabilities and to increase federal funding to supplement local dollars for school districts that are underfunded.

“The reality is that the United States does not offer the educational opportunity that is consistent with our ideals,” commission chair Catherine Lhamon told the AP. “That’s appalling and it’s dangerous and all of us need for it to change.”

As someone who has worked in the education system and has had children in both inner city and suburban schools, I can anecdotally back up the notion that segregation is still a huge problem. Certainly, income levels and the dependency of public schools on tax dollars play a large – if not the largest – factor in the disparities. Our current suburban schools want for nothing. Our former inner city school didn’t have air conditioning and the playgrounds were more like a graveyard of trash and outdated equipment.

Commission chair Catherine Lhamon is absolutely correct to describe this situation as “appalling and dangerous”. She wants an “equitable” funding system to help catch up lower-income districts.

Like many people who rely on the government for their livelihood, Lhamon’s solution to the problem is just more money. However, more money isn’t necessarily the issue. For instance, some of the lowest performing school districts in the nation (Detroit, Chicago) receive the most dollars per student. In a response to actress Jenna Fischer’s concerns about school funding I outlined a gigantic problem with our current system of funding. Nearly every state in the country is increasing the number of off-site administrators at a rate that vastly outpaces the increase in student population. In fact, in Louisiana the student population actually decreased even as the administrative hires increased significantly.

We don’t have a money problem, we have a spending problem.

There is a solution that, though unfortunately the solution pits the people in government who think they know what’s best for us against…well, US.

School choice.

If you do a web search on “school choice” and “desegregation” you’ll come up with all kinds of opinions and vague reports of choice increasing segregation. Without even bogging you down in statistics (which are still fairly sparse as choice programs are quite new and reliable data is still being collected), one only needs to apply common sense to the equation to see that choice in education can absolutely lead to greater diversity in schools and also a greater diversity of programs to choose from.

Why are inner city minorities stuck in failing schools? One reason is that if they don’t live in the right district, they aren’t allowed to send their child to other public schools that might be thriving. It’s illegal. If you can’t afford to move to the suburbs or pay for a private program, you’re stuck where you are and your child becomes a tennis ball in the never ending lobbing match between teacher’s unions and the government budget office.  If zip code is the determination of the quality of your public education, maybe we should just get rid of the zip codes.

By allowing parents the freedom to choose what school in their area is best for their child, we are allowing them to escape their zip code without having to make an unaffordable move to a place they may not really want to be anyway. We desegregate by making education about the particular needs of a particular student rather than a geographical location.

An argument often used against this idea is that it might trigger some sort of “white flight”. However, the problem with this logic is that it doesn’t take into account that everyone will have a choice. A voucher program (just one of many options in the school choice universe) would mean that Mary’s kid from Compton could go to the same school Barb’s kid from Beverly Hills decided to “flee” to…be it public or private. It evens the playing field by simply letting parents determine their child’s educational options rather than a nameless, faceless bureaucracy.

Another argument is that this system would drain money from the public schools. This is one of the more ignorant arguments. Most people aren’t aware that in choice systems, the public schools still receive up to half of the funding per student who chooses a different school. They’re actually making money on the proposition by not having to service the pupils they’re being paid for.

Unsurprisingly, the Department of Education under Betsy DeVos agrees with me.

Education Department spokeswoman Liz Hill said the commission’s findings underscore the need for reform. Promoting charter schools, voucher programs and other forms of school choice are key goals of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

“This is further proof that too many children, simply because of where they live, are forced to attend schools that do not provide an equitable education,” Hill said in a statement. “Secretary DeVos has made clear her mission is to ensure every child has the opportunity to attend a school that offers an excellent education that meets their individual needs.”

Whether channeling more money to schools in underserved communities will help improve the quality of education is a subject of academic debate.

 

Giving parents more control over their educational dollars also discourages administrative budget abuses. There is less room for horseplay and outright thievery.  

When we give parents and students options, segregation becomes a non-issue. School populations become determined by the needs of those schools claim to serve instead of bureaucratic entities who never set foot in a classroom in any given community.

It’s a simple solution only made complicated by greed and those who wish to maintain the status quo.

The post A New Report Says Public Schools are Still Very Segregated…Here’s How to Fix That appeared first on RedState.