“Vang’s actions 20 years ago were awful, but so were the violent protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan.6, 2021, and those folks received Presidential pardons.”
—–The Minnesota Star, cheering on Gov. Tim “Knucklehead” Walz’s sick decision to pardon a serial child rapist in an attempt to foil efforts to deport him.
No one can trust a news source capable of putting such illogical, unethical garbage in print. Defense by non-sequitur! “Sure, he raped a child repeatedly for years, but Jeffrey Dahmer ate people!” There is no basis for comparison between the J-6 rioters, all citizens and jailed, some for a couple of years, for a single act, and a non-citizen who never spent a day in prison despite pleading guilty to multiple child rapes. The Star’s bizarre logic doesn’t even rise to the level of the worst of all rationalizations, Rationalization #22, The Comparative Virtue Excuse, or “There are worse things.” Is the idea that Walz trying to let a child molester stay in his state is good because Trump’s pardon of the rioters wasn’t? What is the Star trying to say? Do the editors even know?
Then the Star’s grand finale is to quote with approval another one of Walz’s idiotic outbursts. “Taking them out with no due process”? Vang received a final order of removal in October 2006! There was due process to spare.
Not for the first time, I find myself wondering how the once great state of Minnesota came to such a precipitous decline in values and common sense. Once represented by the likes of Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy, it is led by a principle-free, incompetent fool, with an addled newspaper like the Star warping the news to disguise his incompetence. Minnesotans used to be smart, creative, rational. They had standards, they had pride. What happened? Now they are sitting by while their state’s #1 paper applauds their Governor for pardoning a child rapist, and one who made it clear that he doesn’t think raping children is anything to get upset about. Americans are just weirdly prudish about such things!
So the citizens of Minnesota just nod their heads as their governor first pardons the man who rapes little girls and pays them to keep quiet, because Kamala choice’s to be VP wants to foil efforts to remove criminal non-citizens. They keep nodding as that governor describes years of multiple rapes as the rapist’s “worst day” [Vang didn’t think they were bad days at all], and nod some more as the Star calls Walz a hero for trying to inflict a sexual predator on their state permanently.
What is that? Brain damage? Hypnosis? Insanity?
I just don’t understand.
Ethics Alarms 
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court cited the letter of the assault survivor? WHAT?
And, of course, there’s Keith Ellison too. What a tri-fecta!
Once again, this incident isn’t just unethical, it rises to the level of EVIL ….
Great questions, and I’m sure the editors couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer any of them. But I’ll take a shot at it: the editors at the Star are just as rotten as the political system that is running that state (into the ground)…and President Donald Trump.
It’s tragic when current governor Walz makes former governor Ventura look and sound like Thomas Jefferson.
It’s been said and written a million times, but the willingness of past Republican Presidents (and the GOP in general) to cave to the Democrats’ shrieking and constant accusations – whether it be racism, homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny, or any number of other buzzwords – acted as a “restraining force” on the revealing of the Left’s true mindset and intention. The GOP’s acquiescence and desire to get along kept all of us from seeing – really seeing – what the other side was like.
President Trump has caused nearly all restraints to be removed, and now we see the Democratic Party just as it is, in its unvarnished, unfettered, unrestrained, 100%-pure form.
…a party that not only allows known predators and rapists into the public with full pardons, but defends and even celebrates it.
That’s ugly.
I am having a hard time with this particular case. The general trend I have seen over all these immigration clashes tends to be: first, the deportation was fully justified, while second, the Democratic reaction to the deportation is overblown, and third, the Republican reaction to the Democratic reaction overstates the Democrats’ (official) concern. In other words, if politicians just shut up and let ICE do its job, events would be a lot quieter, and Democrats would appear less supportive of heinous criminal behavior, and Republicans would appear less heartless.
In general, I have to support every effort to ensure that deportations have all their i’s dotted and t’s crossed. Even in the face of overwhelming numbers of illegals that our system cannot process in any timely fashion, I will approve (even if I find it frustrating) taking time to make sure the person being deported is really here illegally and deserving of deportation. And while I approve of deporting illegals generally, I also believe prudence dictates targeting the easy, low-hanging fruit, simply because of the resource challenges.
In the case of Tou Lue Vang, this seems to be one of those low-hanging fruit. Due process had been observed. He had committed a crime that society views as the worst crime possible to commit. Removing him from the country should have been uncontested. Instead, the Democrats stepped on a rake. Walz and his team pardoned Vang over the objections of prosecution. Prosecution indicated that the victim’s family was pressuring her not to cooperate with the case, which means her family was somewhat complicit in Vang’s abuse.
(As a note, I have heard stories that are absolutely horrifying about abuse that not only occurred from family members, but were facilitated by family members. Fathers who handed daughters over to uncles for abuse. Parents that prostituted their children out. So it is entirely possible the victim was handed to Vang by her parents. I also found out from the same article I linked to that Vang later married his victim’s sister. I would suggest there is something very unhealthy going in that entire extended family.)
Prosecution also noted that while Vang expressed remorse for his crimes, he only cited how it impacted his family, not how his abuse impacted his victim. Prosecution also pointed to the fact in the original case, he blamed his victim as just as culpable, dismissed the abuse as no big deal, and bribed his victim to keep her from revealing the abuse. The board ultimately granted the pardon based on the victim providing a letter approving Vang’s pardon and saying she had forgiven him. As tepid as her statement was, and couple with how her family pressured her not to cooperate with the original investigation, I find it difficult to believe that such a forgiveness letter itself wasn’t coerced.
However, having now cast all kinds of speculative aspersions on the family, I can also believe that Vang had an inappropriate fixation on his victim that has since been broken, in part because of his conviction, and in part because of his marriage. These could have lined him out, perhaps evidenced by going twenty years without further crimes (that we know of). There’s a great deal of research into the patterns of sex offenders that show that the longer one goes without offending, the less risk there is of reoffense, and if one was younger than 25 at the time of offending, there is a good chance that maturation will also greatly decrease the risk of reoffense. In addition, stable family and work life also lead to a decrease in risk.
Now for the deportation, my understanding (which is always open to correction) is that Vang was in the country legally as a refugee, but his conviction lost him his legal status, and he should have been deported. However, that deportation was stayed, and he remained under federal supervision until 2019. But I believe the threat of deportation remained a reality, and it became an urgent matter as Trump ramped up deportations in general. Vang appealed for a gubernatorial pardon, which if this article is correct, would qualify Vang for deportation relief, as the reason for his deportation was based on his conviction. The current statues state that
So, in theory, the pardon would make the case that Vang was no longer subject to deportation, but he would have had to still reopen his case to have the grounds for deportation dismissed. It may be the case that Vang was still in the process of filing to have his deportation order dismissed when he was deported. If any of this is incorrect, what I’ll say next doesn’t hold up. But if Vang had legal means to have his deportation dismissed, and was not permitted to make use of those channels, one could argue that his deportation did deny him due process.
What is abundantly clear, though, is that the true human matters in this case have been obscured by politics. I don’t believe for an instant that Walz and his board are genuinely concerned about Vang, Vang’s children, Vang’s victim, protecting society, or any such thing. This appears to me to be entirely politically motivated, with Vang only receiving a pardon — not for any rehabilitation he did or did not demonstrate — in order to interfere with a Trump initiative. It has all the hallmarks of the way Democrats operate: a nuanced case where they can throw a wrench into the axles of Trump’s administration, yet have plausible deniability in case they are challenged about their motives. After all, the board has the cover that the pardon does not grant instant relief from deportation for Vang, so they can make it seem independent of the deportation issue, all the while wink-wink-nudge-nudging their political allies at how they stymied Trump.
But this also seems to strike to the increasing tone-deafness of the Democratic party, who can’t seem to understand that their stances in so many cases are running counter to general opinion? Now, I can understand being willing to fight for the undesirables to ensure they have proper legal recourse, and doing the right thing in such circumstances does have to run against the general opinion. But we’ve seen that the Democratic party doesn’t play by those rules, in the way they blacklist anyone who dares legally represent a Trump ally, dox conservatives (like DataRepublican) for providing conservative analysis and opinions, and cancel anyone, conservatives if they can, but even liberals who stray from the ranch, for holding improper opinions. So what in the world would make the Democrats go to the mat for a convicted sex-offender? The only conclusion I can reach is they are so fervent to stick it to Trump that they don’t realize or don’t care how badly this looks at a national scale.
So back to my original three points: the deportation of Vang was absolutely justified, until his politically-motivated pardon made the waters murky. Democrats have been crying foul over this, but their crocodile tears only come after they have muddied the waters. And the Republican outrage actually seems pretty grounded, given the way the Democrats have manipulated this case. But I can’t understand this, from the standpoint that if the Democrats want to actually retake the House and Senate, the Machiavellian calculation should have led them to abandon Vang to his own devices.
I’ll post this later today as an obvious Comment of the Day. Thank-you.
As a side note, it seems clear to me that Democrats assumed that letting so many illegal into the country would be a fait accompli, because the “due process” of getting them out would be too expensive and burdensome. At the risk of finding a rare exception when two wrongs make a right, I am tempted to applaud the Trump Administration’s determination to take short-cuts whenever possible, because it is the only way to fix the problem.
AND I just realized that you have another COTD that had stalled on the runway, from 7-10. My apologies.
No need for apologies, Jack. I know you’re busy, and I still am awed by how much you’re juggling and still supporting this blog!