NC to introduce Iryna's Law; vandalizing Kirk memorials (09-22-2025--Hour3)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio and Charlotte. And if you want exclusive. Content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. As we always do on Monday's, well mostly always, we chat with Ap Dylan. She is a reporter for the North State Journal at sjonline dot com. She's also the publisher of a substack newsletter you can get that. I highly recommend it. It's called more to the Story, Ap. How are you today? I'm doing okay. How are you doing? I'm doing okay as well. So today is the legislator's coming back, right today? Is it all right? So we already got a half the press release here from the Speaker of the House, Destin Hall. The headline on this is called Legislative Leaders unveil criminal justice reforms following the murder of Arena Zarutzka in Charlotte, and so They've got a lot of things going on here, So what are the I guess what are the highlights of this this proposal that jump out at you. Well, they're calling it arena of law for one thing, and for another thing, it's going to sort of rejigger what they consider to be violent offenses that would require a judge or magister to impose certain conditions for pre jaw release. So like a first time offender, their only options are secured bond or house arrests with electronic monitoring. For second offense or any subsequent event, the only option would be secured bond and house arrests with electronic monitor you. Know, like both. Right, So it's they also have to start considering, you know, when someone's brought before them, they have to look at their history too and consider that in fact of that in before they decide they're going to let them go, which in the case of Arena Zariska, it would have been, you know, a no brainer. The guy had been arrested over fourteen times. Right and had already like exhibited these these schizophrenic episodes. In fact, that was why he was most recently in front of the judge because of the nine to one one the misuse of the nine one one call. Yes, and specific to Zerusa's case, this thing also the spell awfully is going to make it a capital selony if the victim is killed using public transportation will be considered an aggravating factor where they can seek death penalty. And that leads to another provision in there, which isn't going to let the courts let death penalty appeal fit quote indefinitely. Yeah. There, he says they must be heard within two years of finally, and continuances will not be granted unless the judge finds extenuating circumstances. So I expect that's going to that's a big change. Yeah, And if this thing gets passed into law, I expect that to be litigated, yep, because I mean, we have the death penalty in North Carolina, but we effectively don't have the death penalty any longer because everything's just been sitting, right. It's just been sitting or pardons, right, Yeah, as we saw with outgoing Governor Racooper. The bill also is going to let the chief Justice of the Supreme Court, that would be for the chief just district Court judge to initiate quote suspension proceedings from magistrates, which again ties right back to the case in Charlotte, because apparently the magistrate who you know, just let this guy walk, it's just killer walk, basically didn't have any kind of relevant background for her being a magistrate. Right, So there's that issue, you know, And that's one of the things that people are amazed to find out, is the lack of credentials, if you will, which look, I don't even know if you know, like requiring people to be lawyers to become magistrates. I don't even know if that fixes the problem, because there's a whole bunch of radical lefties that are lawyers, and if they get into these positions, they'll just keep doing the same thing. This is really the problem, is that you have an ideology that animates so many people in the justice system, and so you can't get at the problems because you can't construct sort of, you know, a series of laws unless you're going to take the matter completely out of these officials' hands and say this is now required, like somebody comes in front of you and this is what you have to do. Unless you get that specific with every single charge, in which case, then do you even need the magistrates, you know, right, I mean. If the research is going to be done anyway, it could just go right before the judge at that point. There is money in this thing too. It directs one million for a North Carolina collaborate, for the North Carolinic Collaboratory to study mental health and the justice system, alternative execution methods, house arrests, stuff, that kind of thing, and they want reports on those due in twenty twenty six and again in twenty twenty seven. And then it has money in their two million in recurring and non recurring funds. The mixture there for ten additional assistant district attorneys and five legal assistants for Mecklensburg County's Judicial District twenty six, which and honestly money would be retroactive to July one, so they can hire them now. Right, And honestly, it's about time, like it's it's seriously, he's. In there that the bill rescinds the Governor's Task Force for Racial Equity Criminal Justice. Yeah. Well, also it's about yes, which like that would like And honestly, that's that's already it's already been the part of some Republican campaign adds against Roy Cooper, and I expect it will continue to be so in light of this, and I think, you know, the murder of Arena Zarutzka followed by the murder of Charlie Kirk, created this moment where sort of like people have been you know, people have been awakened to what's going on, and it's like, this is this is not acceptable any longer. What is what has become of this country? What has become of our society. They've watched the responses from people, and this is the I think the pendulum starting to swing the other direction. Yeah, I think so too. I think so too that. I think that, you know, people are at the point now where they're being told, oh, but crime is down, so don't believe you're lying eyes you know, when you're being ripped off, when you're getting carjacked, or your house is broken into her you know, someone's murdered on a train. I think that I think we're there, you know, whether or not the numbers actually bear that out. People do not feel safe right well. I mean, look just what last week. I think Thursday afternoon during lunchtime in uptown outside or it's the fight started inside of a restaurant and then went out into the latt of arcade area, this little alleyway of restaurant. Yeah, and just a guy just murders somebody right there on the sidewalk in the middle of the lunch rush. And yeah, so like, you can talk about crime stats being down, but when you've got yet another murder and then this comes on the heels of the four year old who was you know, murdered during a four guys running around stealing cars in various counties and shoot at a town home and kill a four year old. It's like and and every one. Of these, uh, all the suspects, they've got rap sheets that go back years, and people are like, we're just we're sick and tired of it. This has got to stop. It's a small percentage of people committing the vast majority of these crimes. You know who these people are. And for some reason, we have again officials that just keep letting people back out onto the street with low bond or no bond, And it's just and people are just fed up with it, I think, And maybe the governor will sort of read the room and sign some of this stuff into law, but I don't know. It's Josh Stein so we'll see. Well, I mentioned Charlie Kirk there. You wrote up a couple of things on Charlie Kirk and the response and some of the actions that have taken place. You've got a quick hit that you put up on your sub stack about this resolution that was up at the US House of Representative So what happened up there? Yeah, that was last week. It was a resolution I think Nancy Mays might have put it for, but don't quote me on that one. I'd have to go back and look, actually I don't think it was, sorry now that I'm thinking about it, but it was a resolution that was supposed to honor the life with Charlie Kirk, but also can m his assassination. And ninety five of the two hundred and fifteen Congressional Democrats voted yes. So some voted yes. Yeah, that's good, but the remainder fifty eight voted no, thirty eight voted president, and twenty two didn't vote at all. So I mean you might as well count the voted president as. Nos, right, but without the courage to vote. Now, the majority of the Democrats voted it down. It did pass anyway, but there were some interesting reactions to that Congressman Mark Harris here from North Carolina wrote on exit less than half of the Democratic caucus voted to honor Charlie Kirk and condemned political violence disgraceful. So that got me thinking, all right, well, who in North Carolina House members? How did they vote? So I looked at the Democrats and then Reholicans. All were voted yes, of course, and the North Carolina Democrat congressional members Don Davis and NCO one and Debora Ross and NC two they both voted yes. Valerie Fushi and NCO four voted no, and Alma Adams and NC twelve voted president president. Yeah, oh there's your answer. Yeah. Well, and I've heard people drawing parallels to the assassination of the was it the Minnesota Speaker of the House, Melissa Hortman I think was her name, and you know, oh where were you know Republicans outrage over this when in fact they did pass a resolution condemning her death. And yeah, every single Republican voted for it. Right, and it was unanimous. Yeah right, But I mean it's not really even the same thing. No, it's an elective official, this is a this is a young man. You know, he's thirty one years old whose whole job was going out debating people. Yeah, yeah, no, it's uh. And then there finally there's the story out of unc Wilmington, another rock story, another spirit rock that has a message commemorating Charlie Kirk and this is uh, this is too much for radical lefties on campus, and so they have have to deface it, right. Yeah, they defaced it with blue paint less than twenty four hours. Then since it was put up, and there's sort of a loose policy in place at UNCW that you're not supposed to paint over a spirit rock within twenty four hours of being painted, and normally somebody puts the day and time on when they painted it so that someone knows not to paint over it. Well, that wasn't good enough, and a young woman led the charge. Her name was. Let's see Sophia'szambrano, Zophiazambrano. She's a dean scholar at the University of North Carolina Womanton, which means she's guiding money to go there. Nice and she said that she was going to be famous, I know, sorry, she's going to be iconic for doing this, and that her friends in Chapel Hill would be so proud of her. And that wasn't the last time it was painted over, though. It was painted over at least twice after that, and just most recently, I saw yesterday evening that it had been posted, you know, painted over again. UNCBOG member Woody White had posted on X pictures of the rock painted black with Antifa messages and a Saintanic cult them blot. Hmmm, so you know, subtle, very subtle. Yeah, I mean, this back and forth with the rock, it's just it's just awful. Yeah, you know. They they painted it over again after she did it like blue with the big words that's the no empathy and another and a bunch of stickers on there that said Trump is a trader and f bomb Trump. M hm, well there's there's also on the no empathy version f Kirk as well. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. So this is the the Party of love and kindness and tolerance. There's no hate in this house for whatever. Well, I guess we should be grateful that we're not seeing the tattoo showing up in North Carolina yet. I don't know if you've seen that or not yet, but I believe it was the libs of TikTok account posted image of a person bragging about getting their Charlie Kirk tattoo, and when you look at it, it's an image of him literally being shot. Did they put it? Did they put the tattoo on their neck? No, they had it on their arm. But you yeah, that's nice. That's permanent, boy. Yeah, exactly. Let's hope you wear long sleeves on any future job interview you go on, AP, good to hear from me. Thanks for the work you're doing. You will not be here with us next week, but we'll catch up with you in another two. Great. Thanks all right, thanks AP. That's AP Dylan. She is a reporter at the North State Journal NSJ online dot com and at Substack. More to the story is the name of her newsletter. All right, so you've heard me talk about Creative Video for almost a year. But did you know they. Also offer a game changing app for businesses that reward their teams with incentive trips. Well, they do. It's called Incentive Trip Kit. If you want a business or work at one that offers these incentive trips, this is a must have. It maximizes the impact and value of these motivational trips. It's a super easy to use app built just for your group, with private messaging, shared photos, important trip documents, even a find the group locator just in case somebody gets separated. And when I say it's private, I mean it. No personal emails, no phone numbers, no ads, no account sign ups. Everyone uses one shared login, so it's super easy, no hassles. 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So this wasn't anything that I had any experience with these spirit rocks that get painted. Number one. Okay, so I recognize that I. Don't know all the rules and the processes and procedures and all of that. It seems to be like sort of a new thing. And I say new probably within the last twenty twenty five years. I never noticed it before that, but. But I don't know. We had this problem arise at Arderie Kel High School locally, where somebody painted a message for Charlie Kirk and then the school was like, oh, that's vandalism. We are investigating. It's like, well, they signed their names to the thing. But if you're going to allow Black Lives Matter messaging then and you've already opened up the gates there. You've already said we're allowing political messaging to appear on these rocks. Because the BLM stuff was political messaging. It is no different than a memorial to Charlie Kirk. Zero difference Okay, that's that's first as it relates to the UNC Wilmington Spirit Rock painting and painting over it. I don't know what rules they've got going on over there. But here's the thing. It's just in poor taste. It's rude, it's transgressive, it's antagonistic. Okay. And my bias here is that when I was when I came back from my first year in college, I arrived home back in New York to the news that one of my high school friends died, and so immediately upon return, I was attending his funeral, and the way we tried to honor him afterwards was not a but it was a big banner. So when I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's, and before he died, my mom and my dad took care of him as he got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments and not much support for caregivers and family. But things are different today because of the work of so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina. It's a great organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot to me. I participate in the annual Walk to end Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year and it's called once again Pete's Pack. You can sign up and you can join the team and walk with us. It's on October eighteenth that truest field. Sign up at alz dot org slash Walk and then you could search for my team name Pete's Pack. There's also a link at the petepod dot com. There's also a link in the description of this podcast. Also, I'll be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh, and so you can make a team and join that one too, or make a donation and helped me hit my goal of five thousand dollars. If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can go to alz dot org slash Walk for all the dates and locations. Were closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me? For a different future, for families, for more time for treatments. This is why we walk now. When I started saying this story before the break, when I returned home. It was the last summer. The only summer that I. Actually went back home during college to live was this summer after my freshman year, because then the next year I moved off campus and never got a job and never went back home up to New York. And when I went back home to New York high school, friend of mine named Jimmy Vega was with a bunch of my other friends. They were all they had gotten out of school. He was in the Merchant Marine Academy and they had gotten out like a week prior, and so he had gone by my house and was, you know, hey, when's Pete coming back? And my mom was like, oh, he'll be back next week. And before I got home that weekend, before he and some of their other friends they had gone up to I grew up on the south shore of Long Island. There are a lot of barrier islands and such that are along that south shore, and there are a lot of bridges, and one of the things that the kids would do would be to jump off some of these bridges that were like, you know, thirty forty feet above the water. And he, along with three other guys, they all jumped off of this bridge together, and Jimmy never came up and he died. They don't know how, but he hit the because he was a very good swimmer. The theory was that he jumped in and he hit something and it killed him. And so I get home a couple of days later, have the funeral and all of that, and so while we are all grieving the loss of our friend, we decide we're going to do a banner. We got an old bed sheet, we painted messages and stuff on it, and then we went to the bridge and hung the banner off the side of the bridge. Was that illegal? Absolutely? It was illegal. I don't think anybody ever really considered it at the time. We didn't think, oh, this is against the law. We just knew this was a popular place that people jump off the bridge into the water, and this is where Jimmy died, and so we wanted to put it put it there, and so we did. And while we after we had hung it there, a law enforcement officer arrives sees what we're doing. And I don't know if he was Suffolk County. I don't know if he was like a park ranger or something like that, because there are a lot of parks there. It's the beaches are different up in New York. They're they're actually parks, they're not like public access whatever. So he could have arrested us, He could have given us citations, told us to take it down. He could have done any number of things. But he knew the story because it was front page of the paper. Long Island News Day made the front page, and he turned his spotlight from his car like the window mounted lamp, and he turned it onto the UH onto the banner for us because it was nighttime when we when we hung it up, which I guess actually now that I'm thinking about it, indicates we probably did. Know it was not illegal. The fact that we went at night to do it. See like there there is a certain amount of grace that you should afford people, even if you don't agree with what they're doing. And if you don't agree with kids painting a rock to memorialize somebody that they respected, that they agreed with, that they liked, that they got some meaning from his words. Stop acting like a narcissistic sociopath and defacing their memorial. You can do it after the twenty four hours or whatever the protocol is at Wilmington. Let them have their moment. They're in grief, they are grieving. Allow them to mourn in this simple, small way. There will be time for you to paint over it with some other message that you want other people to see, like nastiness and evil and darkness. You know, the school's going to let you do that. There's no need for you to do it right now. But it is indicative and representative of a mindset that is rotting too many people's brain that you cannot engage with me on the merits of your arguments, and so you will try to stop me from speaking. That is what has become very very clear. Look, people in radio, in my line of work, we've been aware of this mentality for a very long time. Okay, we have been subjected to this kind of you know, boycott, cancelation, whatever you want to call it. We have been subjected to this stuff for a very long time. But with the rise of digital media, everybody now has a platform. There are a lot more people that are now becoming targeted in the way that radio hosts on particularly conservative talk radio stations, have been targeted for thirty years and it's not healthy. And now it is widespread because everyone has their own essentially digital radio station or show, and so just this small little thing, if you can just restrain yourselves for twenty four hours, maybe two days, let them have their painted rock game on Week one. Starts now, and every touchdown brings you closer to a payout. With Draft Kings sports book and official sports betting partner of the NFL, this isn't just football, it's first touchdown fireworks. Anytime. TD rushes live bets that ride every momentum shift. At DraftKings, every play is your next shot to win. Will the Panthers win? Will we even get a touchdown? New customers bet just five dollars and get three hundred dollars in bonus bets instantly, plus get over two hundred dollars off NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV. 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C Sportsbook dot DraftKings dot Com, slash Promos NFL Sunday Ticket offer for new subscribers only and auto renews until canceled. Digital games and commercial use excluded. Restrictions apply additional NFL Sunday Ticket terms or at YouTube dot com slash go Slash NFL Sunday Tickets Slash terms Limited time offer from ap Dyllan's piece at her substack. More to the story about the painting over of the UNCW rock, the unc System Board of Governor's member Woody White responded to the video of the student pouring paint all over the U memorial to Charlie Kirk Woody. White is an attorney by trade who lives and works in Wilmington, and in his statement he says, for too long, on many American campuses, left wing activists were emboldened by weak and effeckless leadership that allowed one sided conversation to own public spaces, squelch and censor opposing points of view, and rule in a quasi fiefdom form without much competition. Conservative students feared reputational damage for expressing themselves, feared receiving poor grades from liberal professors if they chose to speak up in class, and in some cases, feared for their safety as more and more militant students said it was okay to commit violence over political disagreements. But then things started to change. Conservative students slowly began to emerge from the shadows and speak up with more frequency about their beliefs and desire for more thought diversity. A growing number of campus and system leaders began to support these efforts, and the tide began to turn. Then, six days ago, a young man died on a college campus in Utah while expressing his own beliefs, and the pendulum accelerated its swing, as evidenced by what happened at UNC Wilmington. The painting over of Spirit Rock near the Amphitheater and the rude disregard by left wing activists of the unwritten rules of when and how to appropriately express their own points of view is indicative of the depth of the problem. Where once action such as this went unaddressed or campus leaders just looked the other way. Now a growing number of students, like the young people standing up for Charlie Kirk this morning, we're doing, are saying enough, and we are witnessing conservative students show up with their own buckets of paint and their own messages, and this infuriates those who had previously enjoyed a monopoly with regard to activities like this. He's exactly right. It is the law of their monopoly on the public square, and they don't know how to react. It is the same thing I've been saying this for years, which is that because of the protection that the left enjoys by owning the cultural institutions, they have grown intellectually flabby. There is no limiting principle on leftism it can never go too far. Ever, and so when they control the institutions and people start objecting to some of the things like, hey, don't be showing my six year old cartoon porn in order to advance transgenderism, for example, right, and they have no response, there's no logical, rational response to it, and they're not persuading people. And so what do they do? Shame, browbeat, attack, silence. Right, these are the tactics that we have been calling out for over a decade North Carolinians. We've sort of been at the forefront of some of this stuff with the HB two fight. But in the act of suppressing anybody that disagrees with you, you have not learned how to formulate an argument. You have not learned how to rebut you have not learned how to make a case. And so you're not persuading anybody. You have, as I said, you have grown intellectually flabby. And this is the result. You're lashing out because you're not equipped. It's impotent rage. That's all you've got left. That's it. What do you White statement goes on to say, regrettably, there's a small contingent of students on every campus that do not want civil interaction, do not care much for codes of conduct or authority, and instead wish to spread chaos, anarchy, and use the threat of violence to silence those with whom they disagree. Again, not a new problem. I'm old enough to remember when guys like Ben Shapiro would go to a college campus and would need one hundred, one hundred and fifty armed police officers in order to quell violence. Why because they didn't want to hear what he had to say. This is, you know, the era of the trigger warnings, and I'm about to talk about something that you might disagree with. So if you need a safe space, we've set up cry closets in the campus library that you can go off and weep in. Right, resistance to pressure builds strength. And if you don't realize that now of all times, like it should be quite clear at this point, the people who have the stronger arguments are the ones who have been facing resistance. You guys talk about, oh, you're the resistance, you are not. You know how I know that Because you're not strong. You're not strong in your arguments. That's how I know you're not the resistance. You're just a contrarian. By the way, White says, these views have no place at UNCW or anywhere else in the system, and those students should conform their behavior to the rules or be expelled. I quite agree. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to vpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.