I have been spending a great deal of time in downtown Los Angeles lately, moving back and forth between the Central Criminal Courts Building and the Men’s Central Jail. If you keep your eyes open in that neighborhood, you start noticing something everywhere. Young people, mostly Hispanic kids, walking around with backpacks full of spray paint like painters carrying their brushes. Look closely and you realize graffiti is not just one thing. There are really two kinds. One kind is careful, deliberate, and surprisingly beautiful. Real artwork. Colors layered on top of colors. Shapes and lettering that clearly took time, patience, and skill. The other kind is the territorial kind. The quick tags that mark the invisible borders of street gangs. That type is less about beauty and more about staking a claim. But the artists. The real ones. They treat the city like a canvas. Any blank wall, bridge column, or stretch of fence becomes an invitation. And sometimes they place their work in pla...

It is long past time for President Trump to pardon three people who told the American people the truth. Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning. Let us remember the scandal they exposed. Our own government quietly built a surveillance machine that vacuumed up the phone calls, emails, and digital communications of millions of Americans. No warrants. No probable cause. Just a sweeping dragnet that stomped all over the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Apparently the Bill of Rights had become optional. This is the sort of mass spying Americans used to associate with regimes we congratulated ourselves for defeating. East Germany did it. The Soviet Union did it. Police states do it. But when Washington does it, suddenly we are supposed to nod politely and call it “national security.” Then along came three people who refused to play along. Snowden revealed the machinery. Manning exposed the inner workings of the war machine. Assange published the documents ...

  Yesterday before my LA criminal trial I’m working resumed, there was a violation of probation hearing for a black 19 year-old offender who was represented by the public defender.  He  was out of jail on his own recognizance     He was 6 foot four 260 pounds of failure and violence.     I don’t know what his original crime was other than it was violent.     He had a long rap sheet for other crimes.     He had failed recent drug test after drug test.     His appearance was that of a big bully. The judge read from social service and psychiatric reports that disclosed the following.     He had graduated from a Los Angeles public high school.     However, actual testing revealed that he only had a reading comprehension at a third grade level.     What’s the shocking?     No, it was another solid indictment of our teachers union and the public schools in Los Angeles.     Adding...

I  have to admit, it’s almost entertaining watching today’s Democrats twist themselves into knots trying to condemn Trump for finally taking out Iran’s ruling regime. For 47 years that government has trafficked in threats, proxies, bombings, kidnappings, and never ending open chants of “Death to America.” And what did we do? Press conferences. Negotiations. Pallets of cash. Diplomatic yoga. Since every administration since Jimmy Carter’s treated Tehran like a misunderstood exchange student instead of a regime that seized our embassy brutalized and held American embassy workers hostage for 444 days. 444 days.  That was an act of war. Yet instead of responding with force, decade after decade we tried to bribe, flatter, and “engage” people who murdered our citizens and burned our flag for sport. We wasted years in diplomatic circles while they funded terror networks, expanded influence, and played the long game. Meanwhile, their sympathizers our Democrats and apologists found...

Watch Iran. Really watch it. Millions are in the streets begging for basic liberty. Facing them is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with rifles loaded and consciences unplugged. They have already killed thousands of protesters. They will do it again tomorrow if ordered. That is what regimes do when cornered. Gun control did not begin as a public safety seminar. It was a tool. The Nazis used it. Communist regimes used it.  Fascist governments everywhere understood one thing very clearly. Disarmed citizens are much easier to rule. The American Bill of Rights is not self executing. It is not magic parchment. It works because there is a final check behind it. The Second Amendment is that check. Remove it and the rest becomes decorative. Iran’s protesters can chant all night, but unless the Revolutionary Guard splinters or refuses orders, the math does not change. The side with the guns writes the ending. Here in the United States, we are told that more restrictions are common ...

  The current war against Iran was totally unnecessary. WAS. Past tense. This disaster was born in 1979 when the so called Islamic Revolution rolled in and the mullahs decided kidnapping American diplomats was a smart opening move. They terrorized and held our embassy staff hostage for 444 days.  They turned the United States into a global punchline. President Jimmy Carter had a choice. Crush a fragile regime that had just shown its fangs, or sit at a table and beg for cooperation. He chose the table. Endless negotiations. A rescue attempt that collapsed in the desert. The message to Tehran was simple. America hesitates. America negotiates. America bleeds slowly. Tehran learned the lesson. For nearly five decades the regime metastasized. Terror proxies. Assassination plots. Missiles. “Death to America” as a slogan repeated like a national anthem. Then along comes Joe Biden, who decided that handing billions to the same regime was somehow strategic genius. I lot of the ...