When members of Congress try to take their show on the road, supposedly to “investigate” something, it really is a show. They’re not investigating anything. At most, they’re asking a few carefully selected people some questions, often on a public stage, and then holding the position they held from the start.
They’re public officials, not investigators. It’s mostly a chance to get out of Washington on the taxpayer’s dime.
But sometimes, they illustrate a serious problem, not through their own actions so much as someone they’re talking to tipping their hand.
Recently, this happened in Philadelphia, where members of the House Judiciary Committee traveled to supposedly try and get a handle on the violent crime issue.
That’s where things got interesting.
Witnesses invited by the majority to testify included Terri O’Conner, whose husband was killed by a criminal with a long record who had been charged with multiple crimes in the previous years, including carrying a firearm without a license. That criminal remained free for various reasons, including prosecutors’ decisions not to seek jail time for parole violations and to drop a drug charge, she told the committee. She teed off on DA Krasner’s dereliction of duty to protect city residents.
“We have a district attorney who says crime is down. Well obviously if you don’t prosecute criminals, of course, it appears that way. How many second, third, fourth, and even more chances are to be given?” she said. “My husband could still be here today if these men were prosecuted the way they should’ve been and behind bars.”
The parents and widow of Temple University Police Sergeant Christopher Fitzgerald – who was killed in 2023 – were also among those who attended the hearing and spoke. “He is part of the problem,” said Joel Fitzgerald, Officer Fitzgerald’s father, said of the district attorney. “He opens that door. He creates the recidivist opportunities.”
“My daughter-in-law Marissa is now a widow and must now raise their children as a single mother. This defendant broke a two-parent home, leaving our grandchildren fatherless,” added Pauline Fitzgerald, Officer Fitzgerald’s mother.
Following the hearing, the district attorney had the audacity to criticize the victims and their families who spoke. He ridiculed them, saying, “I was not able to watch this hearing. I was actually doing my job, which is to fight crime, but it appears my job is also to fight stupid,” said DA Krasner. “What you are seeing there is political theater.”
The problem, of course, is that Krasner stands accused of not doing his job.
He, like so many other Soros-backed district attorneys, has a history of not prosecuting people for any number of crimes, including violent ones, then complaining about how violent crime is getting ridiculous and pointing the finger elsewhere.
For example, Krasner has a long history of blaming guns and gun rights activists for Philadelphia’s problems, all while failing to prosecute people like the killers mentioned above. Now, he’s claiming that pointing out his failings is “stupid” and “political theater.”
Now, I’ll grant that there was some political theater involved. Congress taking its show on the road is always going to be political theater to some degree or another.
Yet the problem is that Krasner didn’t actually dispute the claims. He couldn’t. There’s no way he can claim that people with an arrest history as long as an anaconda without prosecution then killing someone isn’t somehow on him.
So, he implies that stupidity is afoot and that he must combat it.
Well, there’s stupidity, to be sure, but it’s in the person of one Larry Krasner. Not only does he seem to think turning cell doors into revolving doors is a good idea, he thinks we’re too blind to notice when one of those put back out on the streets murders innocent people. He also is stupid enough to think he shouldn’t be held accountable for his failures.
Oh, he most definitely should be.
