No! Because it's not a flyover state. It's New York. It's Governor Andrew Cuomo. And the prisoner was part of a famous incident in the history of American radicalism.
I'm reading — in the NYT — "Judith Clark, Getaway Driver in Deadly Brink’s Heist, Is Denied Parole/The decision came despite a commutation by Gov. Andrew Cuomo for Ms. Clark, 67, who was convicted in a 1981 crime in which a guard and two police officers died."
Here are paragraphs 2 and 4:
Speaking at the funeral of the former Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin in March, he went further.Cuomo had the power to order her immediate release, but chose a lesser exercise of power, which only made her eligible for parole and left it to the parole board to decide whether she'd get out.
“It was a hard political decision,” Mr. Cuomo said. “I could hear Jimmy’s voice saying, ‘She made a mistake — we all do. She learned, she paid the price, she spent her life in a cage, and she is now different. Jesus would pardon her. Who the hell made you better than Jesus?’”
Was Jimmy that specific about how Jesus would handle the case? Was Jesus?
The linked article includes a recent snapshot — supplied by Clark's daughter — of Clark posing — I'm not kidding — with 2 Labrador Retrievers.
From the article's description of the murders:
[In a 2012 interview, Clark] said that as a new mother, she was nervous about the plot, but she agreed to be the getaway driver, fully aware of what she was doing. As she sat in a car in a parking lot of a mall in Nanuet, her associates approached the Brink’s van. Gunfire erupted. One guard was killed; another was left in a pool of blood."Gunfire erupted" is a classic hiding of human agency. And then one guard "was killed" and another guard "was left." The dead guard was Peter Paige.
Later, the fleeing group encounters a roadblock and kills 2 police officers, Edward O’Grady and Waverly Brown.
At the time of her trial, Ms. Clark was still inflamed by her beliefs, and she represented herself. She expressed no remorse, telling the jury that revolutionary violence was a “liberating force.”The daughter — the one who supplied the photo with the dogs and who was the baby who made her mother nervous about joining the "liberating force" — is quoted saying "My mother did not kill anyone, and it’s hard for me to understand who is served by making her die in prison, which is what decisions like this eventually amount to."
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41 comments:
it’s hard for me to understand who is served by making her die in prison, which is what decisions like this eventually amount to."
I agree. She should have been executed years ago.
Jesus! What a pack of fools.
She picked the wrong Liberating Force use. But maybe she should get a second and third chance to experiment with the proper uses for erupting gunfire.
But she was not a real freedom fighter. She made her attack on the FED's third rail... money.
"My mother did not kill anyone, and it’s hard for me to understand who is served by making her die in prison, which is what decisions like this eventually amount to."
Let me help. "Justice" is served.
Just my opinion, but I think this woman was lucky she wasn't raised by her violent hippie mom.
I always thought Marley's ghost was fiction.
Did she repent?
“It was a hard political decision,” Mr. Cuomo said. “I could hear Jimmy’s voice saying, ‘She made a mistake — we all do. She learned, she paid the price, she spent her life in a cage, and she is now different. Jesus would pardon her. Who the hell made you better than Jesus?’”
Wow, there must be a word or phrase for this - accessing the will of a divine being via reading the mind of a dead person. Double clairvoyance? Mind-reading by proxy? First- and second-order telepathy with channeling-the-dead bonus?
To pile on with AA, you really can say the stupidest shit imaginable in public, and the press won't call you on it, if you're a Democrat.
But we knew that.
I think she should die in prison and prison is where Cuomo probably should be and it might still happen.
Well, to use the Left's favorite Jesus sound byte:
"Judge not ..." Matthew 7:1 KJV
I put in a call to Jesus's people this morning, asking for his reaction to the story, but he hasn't gotten back to me.
Isn't Jesus a convenient authoritative passive actor.
Apply Him when you want.
Ignore Him when inconvenient to listen and follow.
He's all about forgiveness (which He is), but never about Devine law and individual duty, unless you need to criticize your political opponent, in the which case He's right there - a big stick - waiting to be used on your enemies.
Jesus loves me unconditionally.
Well, certainly He does. But our ability to daily feel that love is not unconditional. Our ability to benefit from and share it with others, and to be directed and motivated by that love, is not unconditional.
I have found that when I have experienced deeply that forgiveness and redeeming love, it causes me to want to do more to amend for my sin, not less. I want to do all I can to restore and repay those that I injured, not avoid the hard work of remediation and restoration.
Obviously some things can't be restored and made whole by a human, like a life taken. (Gee, I wonder if that has a correlation to the severity of the sin in God's eyes.). So how do we signal as a society that we understand this. How do we give a person who killed, a chance - an opportunity - to feel the joy that they've done all they possibly can do to restore all those who were injured?
She chose poorly. Very poorly.
Releasing her would be another poor choice. I think.
Or, we can release her and pretend reality never happened.
This leads... Where?
"it’s hard for me to understand who is served by making her die in prison, which is what decisions like this eventually amount to."
Other, previous decisions amount to it as well.
" prison is where Cuomo probably should be and it might still happen."
They could spend some time together and compare Jesus quotes.
I would have executed her years ago but that's just my opinion.
""Gunfire erupted" is a classic hiding of human agency. And then one guard "was killed" and another guard "was left."" Good observation. The prog narrative must be served, always.
"Cuomo had the power to order her immediate release, but chose a lesser exercise of power"
So the governor pardoned her but did not pardon her, making him slightly better than Jesus – while trusting that the parole board (way the hell better than Jesus) would protect his political bacon.
As to the particulars of this case: presumably there were things the parole board looks for in parole-worthy prisoners, and didn't find them here. Clark has set herself a very high bar as a result of her youthful activities. More dogs probably aren't going to help.
I suspect the recent war on cops by Black Lives Matter has played a role in the parole board decision. People are more sensitive about sending a message about killing cops these days.
At least BLM has accomplished something useful.
I am shocked Ann did not use this opportunity to again roll out that photo of her sitting under the Mailer/Breslin poster demonstrating that she was once somewhat pretty.
No one has mentioned (I'm going to get technical here) what an asshole Jimmy Breslin was.
I know it's sometimes very hard to understand Jesus, many people in his day couldn't or wouldn't, and many people since...
But why is it that no one calls these shysters out on their BS?
"Jesus said so"
"Oh wow, you are so smart Governer Lepetimaine, I mean governor Cuomo"
Politicians really and honestly understand Jesus, even Hillary and Chelsea do:
http://www.lifenews.com/2016/02/11/chelsea-clinton-i-left-the-church-when-i-was-6-because-it-opposed-abortion/
I love phrases like "it conflicted with how I read the Bible". Translation: "that understood and natural reading is inconvenient to my lifestyle, so I choose to claim I read it another way. I can't read it another way, but I claim that so I can still virtue signal by referencing Jesus in a general feel goody non-denominational way (did I leave out any groups but the deplorables?).
To pile on with AA, you really can say the stupidest shit imaginable in public, and the press won't call you on it, if you're a Democrat.
But we knew that.
We've known that since 1965 and Griswold.
"My mother did not kill anyone . . ."
It is comments like this, deflecting any real responsibility for the intentional killing of three human beings that helps explain why parole should be denied.
As for Jesus, absolutely he would forgive any truly contrite wrongdoer no matter how heinous their crime. He didn't endure that scourging and abuse and horrific crucifixion for nothing. He did it to take all of that evil and justice duly imposed on the wrongdoer on himself instead. Why? Because God loves all his children, even the bad ones.
Indeed, we see Jesus explicitly forgiving a criminal from the Cross as that criminal hanged beside him and, in his last breaths, expressed his contrition and remorse and said that he and the other criminal were being rightly punished for their offenses.
All that being said, however, in forgiving that criminal next to him, Jesus did not then say to the Roman guard, "Hey, this guy is forgiven. You should take him down from his cross now."
I was recently reading about one of those Arkansas killers who are scheduled for execution. He raped and murdered a woman under especially heinous circumstances. But that wasn't the crime for which he has been scheduled for execution. For the rape/murder he had been sentenced to life without parole. He managed to escape from prison and killed four people while on the run. His execution for the original crime would have served a useful purpose.
“I could hear Jimmy’s voice saying, ‘She made a mistake — we all do. She learned, she paid the price, she spent her life in a cage, and she is now different. Jesus would pardon her. Who the hell made you better than Jesus?’”
So, Jimmy Breslin speaks for Jesus? Amazing, if true.
I wonder if Jesus wanted to pardon Timothy McViegh but just forgot to tell Jimmy Breslin. .
The new politician excuse: "Jesus made me do it".
BTW, Jesus told Cuomo that all the pro-choicers should get out of New York State.
In the linked story in the NYT, and in the story it links to, you continue to see a lot of deflection and statements from various people minimalizing culpability and calling the sentence unfair and unjust.
And while there is some feelings of guilt by Clark about the killings (mostly in the context of the impact on her relationship with her daughter), there is no indication that she has renounced the radical ideology behind the deadly violent "revolutionary" activities she and her group were involved in.
These factors also explain why parole was denied, even if while in prison she has been kind and helpful to others and did nice things like training dogs.
Another story about those good ol' days. This is why I take antifa a bit more seriously than some. Those seventies assholes could do a lot more damage today with instant communication and info available on the internet, not to mention non interference from police.
Gary Thomas, prosecutor paralyzed in 1970 courthouse shootout, dies
Now that I think about it, wasn't Cuomo's move, dumping responsibility onto the parole board, more of a "What Would Pontius Pilate Do" move? "Hey, I've got the clean hands here. Parole board, see ye to it."
Paco,
Yes, exactly!
Cuomo is a fucking coward.
This is another good argument for capital punishment -- if a murderer is executed parole will not become an issue.
Reminds me of the 1907 Tiflis Bank Robbery, featuring early appearances by Lenin and Stalin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1907_Tiflis_bank_robbery
The 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, also known as the Yerevan Square expropriation,[1] was an armed robbery on 26 June 1907[a] in the city of Tiflis (now Georgia's capital, Tbilisi). A bank cash shipment was stolen by Bolsheviks to fund their revolutionary activities. The robbers attacked a bank stagecoach and surrounding police and military using bombs and guns while the stagecoach was transporting money through Yerevan Square (now Freedom Square) between the post office and the Tiflis branch of the State Bank of the Russian Empire. The attack killed forty people and injured fifty others, according to official archive documents. The robbers escaped with 341,000 rubles (equivalent to around US 3.4 million in 2008).
Normally I hate comparing an ordinary crime to a famous Communist or Nazi crime, but I'll make an exception here because the Brinks truck robbery seems to be obviously modeled on the Yeravan square robbery, by people who modeled themselves on the Bolsheviks.
Interesting parallel:
The 29-year-old Stalin was living in Tiflis with his wife Ekaterina and newborn son Yakov.[10] Stalin was experienced at organizing robberies, and these exploits had helped him gain a reputation as the Centre's principal financier.
This is the "render unto Caesar" part.
Thanks for that, Full Moon. I had not remembered that. What a hero that guy was, and not just that one day,
Governor Cuomo has been communicating with dead newspaper columnists (make that dead hack newspaper columnists)? So seances really do work?!? And we've been poking fun at 19th century people like Arthur Conan Doyle at this time.
Cuomo is a jerk, but everybody knows that.
"My mother did not kill anyone, and it’s hard for me to understand who is served by making her die in prison, which is what decisions like this eventually amount to."
My response to the daughter would be that her mother made it possible for the murderers to commit murder, and that's just as bad.
The daughter fails to understand that the almighty state capturing, trying, and sentencing her mother is why the daughter is still alive. Without the state administering justice on a set schedule with set sentences for different crimes, justice would revert of friends and family. And the families of the dead guards and dead police officers would have hunted down Judith Clark at home, and dragged everyone out of the house and slaughtered them in revenge. Including the daughter.
What the state meted out isn't always justice, but it's far better then the alternative.
While we are talking about assholes, perhaps some of the habitual commenters might enlighten me about the 9:03 AM contribution by once written, twice...
What kind of warped personality writes that in a comment thread? Better to ignore as a particularly awkward bit of trolling, or use as grist for a discussion about internet weirdos?
I'm not inclined to rise directly to the bait. I assume that Ann is quite aware, and Meade only too happy to remind her, that not only was she quite hubba hubba in her youth, but that the hubba has matured and refined rather than diminished.
Still, common decency and chivalry seem to prompt some sort of response. Forgive me if mine is clumsy.
Thoughts?
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