Earlier this week, Lt. Brian Rice, the highest ranking officer charged in the death of Freddie Gray, was acquitted of all charges. You may recall that Gray’s death triggered days of rioting in Baltimore last year. Lt. Rice is the third officer to be vindicated, while a fourth case resulted in a hung jury.

Recently, we’ve shared some stories about black police officers, even in this charged atmosphere, doing the right thing and resisting the race baiting of radical, extremist groups. Another hero who is not getting enough attention is Circuit Judge Barry G. Williams, who has presided over the Freddie Gray cases.

In each case, Judge Williams, a black man, has not only dismissed the charges against the officers, he has been very critical of the prosecutors. For example, in the case of Lt. Rice, Judge Williams said the state not only failed to prove its case, but relied on “presumptions or assumptions,” adding that the court “cannot be swayed by sympathy, prejudice or public opinion.”

Compare this judge to rabble-rousing Black Lives Matter activists or left-wing public officials who tolerated rioters. We need more dedicated public servants like Judge Barry Williams!

Sadly, while one officer got his life back this week, another has lost his life. Captain Robert “Dave” Melton of the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department was shot and killed yesterday while responding to a call about a drive-by shooting. According to reports, Captain Melton never managed to get out of his vehicle before he was killed.

At a press conference, Kansas City Police Chief Terry Ziegler said, “Our blue-line got a little thinner yesterday with the loss of Captain Melton… The hate and anti-police speech have to stop, because the consequences are real.”

Tough Times In Turkey

With so much going on right now, you can be forgiven for overlooking the recent attempted coup in Turkey and what it means going forward. But let me put in these events in the larger context of what is happening in Middle East.

We are fighting the Islamic State, based in Iraq and Syria, and Turkey has been off-and-on cooperative. But at the same time, Turkish President Recep Erdogan is an Islamist who is building his own caliphate, hoping to recreate the Ottoman Empire. (Just check out his palace!)

Erdogan is systematically stripping the institutions that have been built up since the 1920s — especially the military — that have made Turkey a secular, rather than an Islamic state. He has now used this coup attempt, which some think may have been a false flag, to arrest tens of thousands of people in the military, educational and judicial establishments.

He has accelerated his move to Islamize Turkey and further consolidated his power. Erdogan has won a couple of elections and now he is wiping out his opposition. This is not terribly surprising coming from a man who once said, “Democracy is like a train. You get off once you have reached your destination.”

And because every despot believes he can kick America without consequences, Erdogan cut off power to a major U.S. airbase in Turkey.

Little To Show For Lost Lives

A key House panel has been investigating Planned Parenthood’s barbaric business practices involving the sale of aborted baby body parts. Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business, and other apologists for the abortion industry claim these sales are done in the best interests of medical science. Really?

According to a recent report published by the House Select Investigative Panel On Infant Lives, led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), decades of research — in fact, nearly a century of research — involving fetal tissue “has not been directly linked to a single medical cure.”

Consider this excerpt from the report:

“Some might object that while fetal tissue research has not directly resulted in medical cures, it has helped advance the overall body of scientific knowledge and thereby assisted in producing cures. It is impossible to determine whether this claim is true, and if so to what extent. Yet the fact is that no one can point to a single medical advancement that critically depended on the use of fetal tissue…

"Almost 75 specific vaccine formulations have been approved by the FDA for use in the United States and not a single one has been produced using freshly isolated human fetal tissue.”