Renee Good and Justine Damond

Good morning! Today is Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. Thanks for being here.

Today in history:

1773: First public museum established in the North American colonies in Charleston, S.C.

1803: U.S. Senate approves Thomas Jefferson's nomination of James Monroe and Robert Livingston to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans from France.

1812: First cargo arrives in New Orleans by steamboat from Natchez, Miss.

1836: HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin reaches Sydney

1906: Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 100 for the first time (100.26).

1908: A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.

1913: After using other pseudonyms over the years, Josef Dzhugashvili signs his name as Stalin, meaning "man of steel," in a letter to the newspaper Social Democrat.

1933: U.S. Congress recognizes the Philippines' independence.

1939: Marvel Comics was founded.

1944: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and French General Charles de Gaulle begin a two-day wartime conference in Marrakesh, Morocco.

1948: Mahatma Gandhi begins his final fast.

1949: Arthur Godfrey and his Friends premieres on CBS.

1959: Berry Gordy founds what would become Motown Records.

1963: "Go Away Little Girl" by Steve Lawrence peaks at #1.

1966: Batman debuts on ABC.

1969: Atlantic Records releases Led Zeppelin’s debut album.

1971: All in the Family debuts on CBS.

1974: Steve Miller’s“The Joker” hits #1.

1995: O.J. Simpson’s trial for murder begins in Los Angeles.

2017: President Barack Obama, in a surprise presentation, awards Vice President Joe Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a move that still leaves Americans wondering why.

Birthdays today include: Author Charles Perrault (Mother Goose), author Jack London (Call of the Wild), Hermann Goering, singer Ray Price (“For the Good Times”), Glenn Yarborough (Baby, the Rain Must Fall), Tim Horton, The Amazing Kreskin, boxer Joe Frazier, blues vocalist Maggie Bell, Ann Althouse, Rush Limbaugh.

* * *

I mentioned at some length yesterday the ongoing tension over the justified shooting of Renee Good.

Today, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most of you have never heard of Justine Damond. So I’m going to relate to you part of her story for comparison.

Back in July of 2017, Justine Damond was a 40-year-old Australian-American woman whom Minneapolis Police Department officer Mohamed Noor fatally shot after she had called 911 to report the possible assault of a woman in an alley behind her house. This occurred less than a month before her wedding.

The mayor of Minneapolis highly praised Noor when he started with the force. I suspect the sharper among you are already picking up on why you’ve never heard of this woman before now.

In the initial MPD investigation, Noor refused to speak to investigators. In April 2019, Noor was tried before a jury on charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. Noor claimed self-defense. The jury convicted Noor of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, but he was acquitted on the charge of intentional second-degree murder. His sentence was 12 and a half years in prison, after which the Minnesota Supreme Court overturned his third-degree murder sentence. This eventually caused Moor’s sentence to be reduced to 4 and three-fourths years with credit for time already served. He was released in late June 2022 and was ordered to remain on supervised release for two and a half years.

CBS News reported at the time that the police chief, Janeé Harteau, resigned on July 21, at the request of then-mayor Betsy Hodges.

"Justine didn't have to die. Based on the [Bureau of Criminal Apprehension] information, this should not have happened. We're talking about the actions of one individual," Harteau said one day before she resigned. 

Damond’s family sued the city, saying her civil rights had been violated. The city settled, before it got to trial, for $20 million.

I will suppose that some of you will have already started drawing some comparisons to the incident with the attack against ICE officers by one Renee Good in that same city, just last week. One factor that doesn’t line up, of course, is that the left has been silent in one of those instances and quite loud in the other.

I dare to suggest that if the cop in the Damond case had not been a Somali immigrant as he was (say, if he had been, for example, a heterosexual white male), the left would have been screaming for the cop’s head — and gotten it. Of course, following the conviction, the press rushed to the Somali-American Police Association, which issued a statement after the verdict, claiming that racial bias contributed to Noor's conviction. The press took this at face value.

But because Donald Trump has ICE going into cities to do the job they’re supposed to have been doing all along, and since the left hates Trump, there are all kinds of protests and shouting going on over the Good shooting, unlike the Damond shoot, by a Somali national.

Oh, there were protests locally, but ONLY locally. The Damond incident wasn’t even briefly mentioned outside Minnesota. It certainly didn’t get the wall-to-wall national coverage that the Renee Good shooting got. The reasons should be obvious.

So the next time you see stories about protests surrounding Renee Good, remember Justine Damond. When you do, ask yourself, whose political goals are being served by the volume 11, screaming about one, and comparative silence about the other?

Parting shot: (pardon the unintentional pun) Why is the anti-gun left blaming the ICE officer instead of blaming the gun itself, as is its usual ploy?

Thought for the day: The grass is always greener over the septic tank. 

I'll see you tomorrow.

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And as always, your comments are welcome.