Tea at Trianon: Drunk-driving Cases Dismissed in Manhattan

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, April 10, 2023

Drunk-driving Cases Dismissed in Manhattan

From New York Post:

Drunk drivers are getting a free ride in New York City. Nearly half of all drinking-and-driving offenses in Manhattan were tossed out of court last year – as dismissal rates soared over five times higher than they were before state lawmakers enacted a controversial evidence reform law in 2020, records show. Of the 262 drunk-driving cases handled by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office in 2022, 128 – or 49%—were dismissed on technicalities or for other reasons. In 2019, the office, then led by Cy Vance, handled more than double the amount of DWI and other drunk-driving cases, yet only 55 — or 9% — of the 589 were tossed. Critics blamed the startling statistics on the new “discovery” law overwhelming New York’s criminal justice system – which even the soft-on-crime Bragg concedes is a huge problem for prosecuting traffic offenses. (Read more.)