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Eating itself from within. The post The band Neil Peart thought destroyed themselves: “They became damaged” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

I’ve been in academia long enough to remember the dark days of presidential rankings by groups like Political Science Quarterly and the New York Times. These “surveys,” particularly the one done by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., made you want to scream. Academic political scientists pride themselves in conducting scientific surveys with large enough sample sizes to gain accuracy of, say, plus or minus 1-3 percent on a political question. But leave it to left-wingers — about 80-90 percent of the professoriate — to stack the deck with a small group (a few dozen) of likeminded left-wing academics to “rank” presidents from best to worst. Predictably, the likes of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson and Woodrow Wilson would show up among the top, while Republicans like Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge were bottom dwellers. These surveys were nothing but surveys of the sympathies of left-wing academics. They didn’t tell you a damned thing about the reality of best and worst presidents. They told you about the biases of professors. And yet, predictably, the liberal press touted these “studies” as if they deserved to be chiseled on Mt. Rushmore. In more recent decades, this has mercifully changed, as groups like the Wall Street Journal and C-SPAN have gotten into the game. C-SPAN includes a much larger and more balanced group of historians and biographers. I’ve participated in the superb C-SPAN survey from the beginning; it’s the most serious, unbiased of them all. Full disclosure, I’ve also participated in the newest such survey — by Prager University — which likewise sought out authorities beyond the progressive professoriate. PragerU has posted a compelling ranking. It asked 155 scholars for their assessment of each and every president, using a scale of 1-10 to judge various criteria. To be sure, those surveyed slant to the conservative side, but there’s still more diversity in this group than anything by the Schlesinger jokers. The results are very interesting, and most of those reading this column will appreciate them. Lest I be accused of a Republican bias, I should add that I’ve always favorably rated FDR’s successor, Harry Truman, as well as fellow Democrat John F. Kennedy. For starters, the PragerU top three presidents are: 1) George Washington, 2) Abraham Lincoln, and 3) Ronald Reagan. These happen to be my top three. They embody the greatest achievements of the nation’s first three centuries. Washington is truly the father of the country. What he did to establish the nation and the presidency was without parallel. As PragerU’s Richard Lim notes, “Washington’s refusal of a crown forever changed the definition of leadership.” It all could have collapsed under Washington from the outset, but because of his knowledge, understanding, temperament, selflessness, and more, the American founders’ “great experiment” was established. Of course, it could have fallen apart a century later under Abraham Lincoln, who ensured it endured amid the bloodiest conflict the nation ever experienced. No president can compare to what Lincoln went through, unto death itself. He gave his life to preserve the literal United States of America. The long battle of the century that followed — superseding the intervening war against Nazism — was the fight against communism, which ran from 1917-91. The man most responsible for that victory was Ronald Wilson Reagan. And beyond that triumph, what Reagan did in added areas merited bestowing him the title of best of the 20th century. His countrymen so appreciated him that he was reelected by winning 49 of 50 states and the Electoral College 525-13. Reagan twice won California, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and even liberal Massachusetts. The only state he couldn’t win in 1980 or 1984 is the bizarro Minnesota. Reagan was widely beloved. The PragerU results reflect that, as should any legitimate presidential survey not corrupted by left-wing hackery. Readers here will be stunned but love to see that Calvin Coolidge is ranked 4 in the PragerU survey. Leftist historians would never place him so high. Coolidge was a conservative in the classic sense, committed to conserving order and limiting government. He was not a revolutionary. The left prefers its presidents as activists, as advancers and expanders of what Woodrow Wilson called the “administrative state.” Coolidge represented what leftists seek to reverse. The PragerU survey also has Dwight Eisenhower high on the list at number 6. Indeed, Ike is consistently ranked near that spot in modern surveys. He is at long last getting the respect he deserves. Among the worst presidents of the 20th century are three liberal Democrats usually hoisted atop surveys by leftist professors: FDR (usually placed in the top three), Wilson, and the odious LBJ. Readers here will be pleased to see that in the PragerU survey these three rank unimpressively at 20 (FDR), 37 (Wilson), and 35 (LBJ). These men did great harm. Yes, FDR was the president during World War II, and his leadership there was crucial. For that reason, I’ve personally ranked FDR higher in my evaluations. However, he did too many awful things to merit being rated among the three best men to run this country. (I would need to write an entire book laying out my litany of grievances against FDR. As a shorter read, see the chapters on FDR’s shocking blindness toward communism, the USSR, Stalin, and more, in my 2010 book Dupes.) Lest I be accused of a Republican bias, I should add that I’ve always favorably rated FDR’s successor, Harry Truman, as well as fellow Democrat John F. Kennedy. In the PragerU survey, Truman is 12 and Kennedy is 18. I would argue that Truman, despite key faults, merits the top 10. (Kennedy does not.) Finally, what I like most about the PragerU survey is the trio of incompetents bringing up the rear. I’ll preface them with a few observations: I’ve been torn recently over who I would rank as the worst president ever. I was convinced no one could outdo Jimmy Carter. The man was an unmitigated disaster. We’re still dealing with colossal messes bequeathed by Carter in places like Iran and Afghanistan. (READ MORE: Jimmy Carter’s Iran.) Then came Barack Hussein Obama, who brazenly vowed to “fundamentally transform” the United States of America. Despite a presidency of little to no positive accomplishments, liberal scholars in the C-SPAN evaluation conjured up enough points to shoehorn Obama in the top 10, tainting an otherwise excellent survey. It was quite the spectacle. (READ MORE: Rating the Presidents—and Obama) Alas, then came Joe Biden, the appropriately named “Sleepy Joe,” who for four years sleepwalked through the presidency. He did nothing. He was a paragon of incompetence. His lack of a hand on the wheel, with the nation governed by whoever held the presidential autopen, created chaos at home and abroad. His total mental disengagement led to real destruction. When Jimmy Carter died at the end of the Biden presidency (ironically), and I told people that I thought Carter was America’s worst president ever, they said to me incredulously, “I know Carter was bad, but surely Biden is worse.” That judgment seemed hard to argue with. Well, for those thinking along these lines, you’ll appreciate the PragerU worst of the worst. Among the 42 presidents, Joe Biden sits in the basement (akin to the spot where he campaigned from in 2020). He’s number 42. Obama is 38 and Carter is 39. (Andrew Johnson is 40 and James Buchanan is 41. We could argue with those.) Overall, an interesting list, and a fun discussion. And you can join in. Click the link at the site to do your own evaluation. A good exercise for Presidents Day. READ MORE from Paul Kengor: Foul, Potty-Mouthed, Woke Women Indiana U’s Historic Season      

Five years ago, two-thirds of Virginia voters passed a referendum that ostensibly eliminated partisan gerrymandering from the congressional redistricting process that follows each decennial census. This amended the commonwealth’s constitution such that redistricting would thence forth be carried out by the Virginia Redistricting Commission (VRC) rather than state politicians burdened by conflicts of interest. This bill of goods was sold to the Old Dominion’s voters as “election reform” by a very expensive public relations campaign run by various Democrat-affiliated activist groups. It was obvious that the VRC would be jettisoned when it no longer served Democrat interests. Sure enough, the moment the Democrats gained a governing trifecta they set about neutralizing the VRC. Just days before the 2025 general election, they passed a resolution whereby the commonwealth’s constitution would be amended again to allow a mid-decade redraw by the legislature. They obviously intended to radically gerrymander the districts, ignored various procedural rules, state laws, and its constitution. Consequently, Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley enjoined the scheme. The Democrats appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, which ignored all the irregularities and lifted the injunction on Friday. This is how Virginia’s former Attorney General, Jason Miyares, described the situation in the Wall Street Journal: Defenders of the new amendment passed in January argue that the Virginia redistricting dispute is merely an extension of national political battles dating back years, including those during the Trump presidency. That argument misses the point. Whatever one’s views of national politics, Virginia voters have spoken clearly by amending the constitution to remove redistricting from partisan control. That constitutional decision — not any national political reason — governs what may lawfully occur in Virginia today … Yet legislative Democrats are attempting to do precisely the opposite of what Virginians wanted: drawing congressional maps behind closed doors. Before the Democrats began meddling with the district map, the partisan make up of Virginia’s congressional delegation was relatively balanced, with 6 Democrats and 5 Republicans. The new map is an abomination. The Old Dominion will end up with 10 Democrats in the House of Representatives and a single Republican — if it survives the ongoing litigation. This brings us to one of the weirdest features of this already bizarre ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court. Friday’s ruling didn’t touch on the merits of the case. All it did was lift the injunction. The deadline for reply briefs is April 23, two days after the voters are being asked to go to the polls in order to undue their 2020 decision to end gerrymandering and create the VRC. I wouldn’t dream of leaving my grandchildren alone with Virginia’s current governor, much less the psychopath who masquerades as its Attorney General. As Breccan F. Thies points out in the Federalist, “There appears to be three potential outcomes: The referendum fails and the case would likely not be heard; the referendum is approved and the court agrees with Democrats, allowing the gerrymander; the referendum is approved and the court agrees with Republicans, throwing it out.” This third contingency would result in chaos. If the referendum is approved by the voters and the court retroactively rules that the special election wasn’t legitimate after all, the Democrats will go nuts. They will inevitably accuse the Virginia Supreme Court of corruption. While its seven justices are nominally nonpartisan, four are seen as Republican leaning, while three are regarded as Democrat leaning: Virginia is one of only two states where the legislature elects Supreme Court justices. Because the state has had divided control for much of the past quarter century, the balance of the court’s justices were appointed by bipartisan compromise. The court’s current seven members include one justice who was elected when Democrats had sole control of the General Assembly, three when Republicans controlled both chambers and three when control of the legislature was split … Political and legal experts in Virginia agree the state Supreme Court is not overtly ideological, with many describing it as “small-c conservative,” leaning heavily on tradition and precedent. If these justices truly rely on “tradition and precedent,” it’s hard to see how they can rule in favor of Gov. Abigail Spanberger and her accomplices in the General Assembly. Traditionally, the legislature controlled the redistricting process that follows each decennial census. Then, in 2020, the voters were swindled into creating the VRC in order to eliminate partisan gerrymandering. Now, the voters are expected to answer this question on April 21: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?” I spent the first 38 years of my life in Virginia. In those days, statewide elections were almost always between moderate Republicans and Democrats. There was, of course, some political skulduggery. Yet it was so conventional that no one much cared. That was before the invasion of the bureaucratic property snatchers and the grotesque creatures who lead the “teacher’s” unions. Now, the Old Dominion has become a pit of political vipers. I wouldn’t dream of leaving my grandchildren alone with Virginia’s current governor, much less the psychopath who masquerades as its Attorney General. If the Virginia Supreme Court does the right thing in this gerrymandering case, I’ll be surprised and relieved, but I wouldn’t bet on it. READ MORE from David Catron: The SAVE Act: Why Are Senate Republicans Dithering? The Abigail Spanberger Bait-and-Switch Peaceful Protestors Don’t Carry Loaded Pistols

If you live long enough, you can trace the river of history apart from the smaller tributaries and streams. You’ve watched it rise or fall according to the acts of men. You’ve seen great leaders bend it where it wasn’t going, and bad leaders redirect it into the shoals. And you can tell what will lead to greatness and what will end in disaster. Which is how I know Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech last Saturday at the Munich Security Conference was not only the finest of this century, but the most potentially consequential. “America is a child of Europe,” Rubio said early in the speech. “The source of our culture, laws, and faith. He then implied what we older observers understand — that Europe and Britain are on the brink of falling like the Roman Empire that once occupied those very lands, due to the suicidal choices of their leaders. Unchecked migration that erodes national identity, policies that prioritize abstract global ideals over the concrete well-being of citizens, an overreliance on supranational structures … have contributed to a sense of decline in parts of the West. The initial mistake was embracing the anti-nationalist philosophy that Soviet communism had implanted. It metastasized in the West even after Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher defeated the source, dragging a resistant Europe with them. And post-Reagan America — beginning with his weakling Vice President — had started down the same drain. That infamous wall that had cleaved this nation into two came down, and with it an evil empire, and the East and West became one again. But the euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion: that we had entered, quote, “the end of history;” that every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood. The former state’s toxic ideology was spread by the Useful Idiots controlling academia, media, and major parties in the West. They attacked the two most formidable forces that stood against them — faith and family. In Europe and Britain, native childbirth and church attendance have dropped to almost nothing. And in their place, a new religion took hold, which Rubio named and condemned. To appease a climate cult, we have imposed energy policies on ourselves that are impoverishing our people, even as our competitors exploit oil and coal and natural gas and anything else — not just to power their economies, but to use as leverage against our own. By repeating “we,” Rubio included the misled turn-of-the-century America. He recognizes how progressivism damaged the country, by hailing abominations like abortion, transgenderism, misandry, and anti-whiteness. For a while, they controlled all information, quashing any contradictory truth. Two tough men put an end to this in the United States. Britain and Europe have not been so fortunate. They’re being destroyed from within by the enemy their leaders welcomed, as historically literate observers knew would happen more than a decade ago. In a pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people. Rubio did not mince words of warning to the audience. Yet he maintained a hopeful tone throughout. “To those who say the transatlantic bond is fraying: I say look around this room. We belong together. Our histories and our fates will always be linked. When Europe thrives, America is safer and more prosperous. When America leads with strength, Europe has a reliable partner.” One of the greatest cultures of all time has turned into an Orwellian nightmare, where police arrest and harass citizens for protesting … the rape of young girls. Rubio concluded his speech to a standing ovation, signaling how far and fast the Trump Administration has shifted geopolitics away from the Left. And Europe may yet rise to the occasion. The continent has enough strong Christian leaders and traditionalist forces to deplete the by-invitation Muslim invasion. While socialist Spain just legalized up to half a million majority Muslim migrants, Italy’s Georgia Meloni is sending warships to blockade migrant boats. “There is an ongoing process of Islamization in Europe, which is very far from the values of our civilization,” Meloni said. Not coincidentally, the former Soviet bloc — Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic — have taken a similar hardline stance, openly elevating Christianity over Islam. Viktor Orbán (accent mark over the a), PM of Hungary: “Christianity is Europe’s last hope … If all this continues, in the big cities of Europe there will be a Muslim majority.” Robert Fico, PM of Slovakia: “Islam has no place in Slovakia.” Miloš Zeman, ex-President of Czechia: “Islam is an anti-civilization…. Multiculturalism is a fiction.” Which leaves the once Great Britain. One of the greatest cultures of all time has turned into an Orwellian nightmare, where police arrest and harass citizens for protesting Muslim crimes, primarily the rape of young girls. It may have one last hope for salvation — the new Restore Britain party led by Rupert Lowe, whom Elon Musk endorsed. “Britain is a Christian country, built on Christian values, with Christian traditions,” Lowe said. “Those supposedly ‘leading’ us would do well to remember that.” Secretary of State Rubio certainly will. READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: The Kids Will Be All Right A Fountainhead for the Screen Art The Washington Toast

As Gerald Baker wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal, the biggest threat to modern journalism is the journalists. He pointed out that bias and incompetent reporting are the major causes of media distrust these days. But while those factors are highly important, they aren’t the entirety of the news business’ failure. Is that anything new? No. As Eric Burns describes in his book Infamous Scribblers — the term George Washington used to characterize the reporters of his day — American journalism began on the shakiest of ground. Mr. Burns begins the book by writing: “It was the best of times it was the worst of journalism, and it is no small irony that the former condition led directly to the latter, that the golden age of America’s founding was the gutter age of American reporting.” In Burns’ book he writes how Sam Adams was making stuff up about the British to sell his broadsheet newspaper. And Burns goes to some length to explain how Washington was beset by nagging reporters. Does it all sound familiar? Nothing much has changed since the Revolutionary War. We thought, back in the 1960s and 1970s, that we lived in an age when reporting could be relied upon. My family lived in the New York City suburbs and we had the New York Times, the Herald Tribune, the Daily News — to mention only a few — and Walter Cronkite or the Chet Huntley-David Brinkley partnership were on television every day telling us, in Cronkite’s words, “that’s the way it is.” It was a treat for me, as a kid, when my father brought home the New York Times and we read it together. But the news was always infested with politics and now it is even more so. What should be the role of the reporter or broadcaster? It should be only to describe facts, not inject their opinions. The answers to the who, what, where, when and why questions should be all that mattered. The real question is what relationship a reporter should have to the government. The reporter should be a skeptic of everything the government does and be an adversary of the government. Those alliances are all that are found in modern (or ancient) journalism. Media outlets such as this one and others are supposed to be writing commentary, not news. But ABC, NBC, CBS, and major newspapers entirely take sides on political issues which they should not do. Even Fox News does that in most of its stories. It is a market that fights for readership every moment of every day. Even successful media outlets such as Fox News play to their readers in simple terms. In April 2025 the Media Research Center, which tracks media bias against conservatives, found that 92 percent of major news stories about President Trump in the first hundred days of his second term were negative. That study resulted from a review of 1,841 statements made by journalists, anchors, reporters, and experts on ABC, CBS, and NBC, dismissing any non-partisan guests. It also analyzed 899 stories aired during evening news broadcasts from January 20 to April 9, finding that 1,692 of the statements were negative. Clearly, President Trump brings much of it on himself. He responds to any slight even from show business nobodies and athletes. If we believe that the president brought about, say, 40 percent of those statements and stories, how do we account for the other 52 percent? It cannot all be Trump Derangement Syndrome, but that plays a large part in coverage of Mr. Trump. It’s more than TDS. The fact is that reporters, like most people, are intellectually lazy. They follow the herd and, in what passes today for newsrooms, the herd rules the day. When the Washington Post announced it was laying off hundreds of its staff, the announcement brought an old fear back into the news business. It’s a fear that burdens people who aren’t doing their jobs and aren’t pleasing the market for news. It is a market that fights for readership every moment of every day. Even successful media outlets such as Fox News play to their readers in simple terms. Fox has succumbed to the “click bait” theory of news broadcasting and, as a result, it has become little more than a tabloid like you can find at supermarket checkout stands. Newspapers try for a “scoop,” a story that beats the competition to get the “news” out. But newspapers — and many other media outlets — are not popular. Only a few houses in my neighborhood have newspapers delivered every day. Too many people rely on social media for news, which is notoriously inaccurate. Even the best reporting is infected with politics. I read The Economist because it is the best-written news magazine in English on the planet. But I have to filter out its dedication to the cause of “climate change” and its hatred of Mr. Trump. Good news coverage begins with good editors. As I discovered when I was the editor of Human Events almost two decades ago, the greatest power an editor has is in what he chooses not to cover. I deep-sixed stories that I thought weren’t newsworthy or didn’t fit our agenda. That covered a lot of ground. We concentrated on bringing conservatives into the limelight and, for a time, we were monstrously successful. But, again, we were writing with an agenda, which the major news outlets shouldn’t be. But it nevertheless comes down to reporting. However journalism is taught in college and high school, there’s no substitute for stories that do not answer the basic questions of who, what, where, when, and why. Even journalism schools don’t teach good grammar and a dedication to the five basic questions. There’s no answer — other than market forces — to compel newspapers and other media outlets to better editing and reporting. It has always been thus and there’s no cure for it. READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Two Regimes, One Reality From Outrage to Agreement: Trump’s Greenland Gambit Trump and Greenland: A NATO Test

The legacy media and liberal celebrities have overwhelming praised Bad Bunny’s Superbowl performance.  When longtime member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, Steve Van Zandt, noted that without subtitles, the music was not inclusive, he was harshly criticized. For example, John Melloncamp tweeted, “I don’t know what Bad Bunny is saying, however, I do know he is standing up for Puerto Rico and I am stranding up for him. His halftime show was great.” Facing this pressure, Van Zandt deleted his tweet. The lack of subtitles was due in part to Bad Bunny’s position. When his selection was announced, he told reporters, “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn [Spanish].” But it also reflected how uncomfortable listeners would have been with some of his lyrics, particularly his opening song, “Titi Me Pregunto.”  It tells the story of a man crudely bragging about his sexual conquests: Ey, auntie, asked me if I have a lot of girlfriends, a lot of girlfriends Today I have one; tomorrow I’ll have another, hey, but there’s no wedding, there’s no wedding, auntie Auntie asked me if I have a lot of girlfriends; he, a lot of girlfriends Today I have one; tomorrow I’ll have another … Let the ones I already f*cked smile … I have a Colombian who writes me every day And a Mexican I didn’t even know about Another one in San Antonio that still loves me And the ones from PR are all mine A Dominican who is a hottie, a hottie One from Barcelona that came by plane And says that my penis is fire … Many want my baby They want to have my firstborn, hey And take the credit I’m bored already. I want a brand new vagina, heh A new one, a new one, a new one, a new one, a new one (ey) Strikingly, there was not one liberal media mention, let alone criticism of these misogynist lyrics, even though the Superbowl is a family event witnessed by millions of children. Interestingly, this was one of his biggest hit singles, just as Cardi B’s WAP (Wet Ass Pussy) was five years earlier. As I wrote at the time, her video begins with an over voice chanting, “There’s some whores in the house.”  We are told: “I don’t cook, I don’t clean, but here is how I got my ring.”  To make the sex-for-money narrative clearer, Cardi B shouts, “Pay my tuition just for a kiss,” and later, “He’s got some money then that’s where I am headed.” One can find many criticisms of wokeness but the damaging effects it has had on the personal values of young people may be the worst. It also presents female sexual liberation in the worst image for women: one should embrace painful rough sex: “Never lose a fight, but I’m looking for a beating” and “You can’t hurt my feelings, but I like pain.” The actor Russell Brand pointed to its similarities with gangsta rap and concluded, “It’s … ultimately a sort of capitalist objectification and commodification of, in this case, the female.” Indeed, not only does it demean women as whores, embracing rough sex, and presenting them in semi-nude seductive poses, it several times uses the n-word to give the video the same presentations found in those gangsta rap songs of a decade ago. Just as with Bad Bunny’s performance, liberals applauded her song and presidential candidate Joe Biden embraced her.  The Huffington Post wrote, “WAP is making people uncomfortable because it’s about female pleasure.”  For Vox, WAP is solely about showing how liberated women can unabashedly enjoy sex; “looking for a beating” is just “a guarantee of endurance from her vagina.”  This is an interesting rationale but what about “I like pain”? Indeed, both responses ignored the reference to whores, the use of the n-word, and the sex-for-money narrative that runs throughout the song. Fittingly, Cardi B appeared in Bad Bunny’s halftime show wearing “a nude off-the-shoulder corset with a ruffled skirt by Zimmermann.” For many, “Tito Me Pregunto” and “Wet Ass Pussy” promote sexual degeneracy.  They do more than simply exalt a hedonistic lifestyle. They disparage marriage and religious beliefs, values that are increasingly becoming staples of progressive thought.  This is why it was fitting that the alternative halftime show was to “celebrate faith, family, and freedom,” according to Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet. The sexual liberation that fans of these songs are promoting glorifies a “hook up” culture where sexual fulfillment is divorced from friendship and personal feelings for partners. It also raises pressures by focusing on individual sexual performance and sexual fulfillment aspirations. Not surprisingly, these factors have a negative impact on the desire for sexual relations. Between 2010 and 2024, “sexlessness,” defined as having had no sex in the past year, doubled from 12 to 24 percent among young adults. One can find many criticisms of wokeness but the damaging effects it has had on the personal values of young people may be the worst, especially if one believes that the nuclear family is the cornerstone of a healthy, morally-driven society.  Thus, Bad Bunny’s halftime performance showed the dangers of contemporary so-called progressive thought. READ MORE from Robert Cherry: New York City Policing at a Crossroads The Gaza Famine Myth: Refuting NYT’s Kristof’s Libelous Claims False Claims Made by Globalist Anti-Israel Forces Robert Cherry is an American Enterprise Institute affiliate and author of the soon-to-be released book, Arab Citizens of Israel: How Far Have They Come? (Wicked Son Press, March 2026).

Keion White, defensive lineman for the San Francisco 49ers, has emerged from surgery after being shot in the ankle at a Super Bowl party early Monday morning on Mission Street in downtown San Francisco. White had reportedly been involved in an argument about rapper “Lil Baby” and according to police an “unknown suspect” shot the 49er. This was not the first time a 49er had taken a bullet. On the afternoon of August 31, 2024, 49ers draft pick Ricky Pearsall was shopping near Union Square when a man approached and demanded his watch. Pearsall wasn’t giving it up and in the ensuing struggle took a gunshot in the chest. The bullet hit no vital organs and Pearsall survived. Police quickly apprehended the shooter, who was not named. “Police in San Francisco have identified a 17-year-old boy” in the shooting of Pearsall, NBC news reported. According to CNN,  “a 17-year-old boy attempted to rob Pearsall at gunpoint as he was walking alone at around 3:30 p.m. PT, when an altercation broke out between the two, resulting in both of them suffering injuries.” Anyone under age 16 could rob and murder the entire 49ers team … serve time only in juvenile prison, and gain release at age 25. People concerned about crime might spot a problem here. A male criminal suspect of 17 years merits description as a “juvenile” or “teen.” The “altercation” did not just “break out.” In the face of obvious danger, Ricky Pearsall bravely fought back. A gunshot to the chest is a “wound,” not an “injury,” which implies some sort of accident. This was an armed robbery. The 17-year old could not legally own a gun, so California’s myriad gun laws did not prevent the criminal from acquiring what news reports called a “semi-automatic firearm.” Gov. Gavin Newsom, former mayor of San Francisco, and state attorney general Rob Bonta, did not condemn the shooter or denounce the attack on Pearsall as “gun violence.” No photos of the shooter appeared, and he was described as a high-school senior from Tracy, California, some 70 miles from San Francisco. In 2016, California’s  Proposition 57 took away prosecutors’ ability to try juveniles as adults. San Francisco district attorney Brooke Jenkins told reporters, “there are five crime types for 16 and 17-year-olds, for which we would consider potentially seeking to transfer them to adult court. Attempted murder is one of those charges. And so again, it was for consideration.” In September 2025, judge Denise de Bellefeuille ruled that the assailant would be tried as a juvenile. At this writing, no word of any trial or sentence, and the shooter remains unidentified. In California, violent criminals can rob and shoot people like Ricky Pearsall with complete anonymity, but there’s more to it. In September 2019, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1391, which bars all prosecution of those under 16 in adult court. Anyone under age 16 could rob and murder the entire 49ers team, be tried only in juvenile court, serve time only in juvenile prison, and gain release at age 25. At this writing, Gov. Newsom and attorney general Bonta have issued no official statement on the shooting of Keion White, and the suspect has yet to be identified. READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: WHO is Gavin Newsom? Canada, California, and Chinese Electric Cars A Different Midterm Milestone Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.