Hi everyone!
Last night, a guy who used to play high school football, who was just fired from his security job at Caesars in Las Vegas, drove across the country with an AR-15 in a BMW, braved congestion pricing in midtown Manhattan, walked into a skyscraping office tower on 51st and Park, and opened fire. He shot a cop to death. He went up to the 33rd floor. He shot five more people, killing four of them, then shot himself in the chest.
He left behind a suicide note saying that he believed he had CTE, the kind of brain injury that football players get. He played high school football and in his back pocket the note asked that his brain be studied for that condition. The only way to tell if that condition is present is through a post-mortem brain examination. It's believed that he was targeting the NFL, which has offices on the 5th floor of that building, but he ended up taking his life on the 33rd floor, where there's a realty company.
51st and Park isn't a bad neighborhood, it's a seriously good one. It's rich. It's where money is made. It's not a place where you'd expect someone to show up and start firing. Although let's be honest, people can show up and start shooting anywhere anymore in these United States. We have this feeling that we are safe in places where we have been safe. And of course that's a fallacy.
I'm sure everyone was just dying to know how socialist Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani felt about the whole thing, so he posted from Uganda, where he's still celebrating his wedding. He offered sympathy for the slain officer and said he's grateful for the "first responders." Social media was quick to point out that he hates police, has said outright and repeatedly that he wants to defund them, and said "queer liberation means defund the police."
As for that mob attack on mostly white people at a music festival in Cincinnati, five alleged assailants have been charged but it turns out that more than 100 people were standing around watching while men beat a woman unconscious—along with other beatings—and only 1 person thought to call 911. The Cincinnati police chief went on an unhinged tirade about how the whole thing was social media's fault. When can we stop putting fools in charge of police forces?
In the New York Post today I wrote about this crazy new admissions qualifier for college applicants—a Zoom call where you are judged by your peers. It's basically a cross between The Hunger Games and Survivor but the real purpose of it is to be a work around for affirmative action.
These schools just will not be told that they can't be racist against whites and Asians. They really think that skin color is more important than merit, grades, academic achievement, or scholarly potential. Prioritizing identity over accomplishment is not how we do better, it's how we do worse. One cannot serve the master of merit and identity at the same time. I don't know why we never seem to learn this.
Also, the columnists over at Human Events have been killing it lately. We have had such strong columns that I urge you to take a peek and check some out. Yesterday's columns are linked below, and the new batch will be out by 11 am on humanevents.com