Virginia Cops & CPS Punish Mom for Letting Son Take a Walk

0:00Welcome to the 3 Martini Lunch. Grab a stool next to Greg Korumbas of Radio America and Jim Garrity of National Review. 3 Martini's coming up. So glad you're with us for the Thursday edition of the 3 Martini Lunch. It's going to be quite a ride today, so buckle up and enjoy it along with us. Jim lets head out first to Nebraska for a... In some ways, if you really squint good because we're learning about this ahead of election day, but for the most part, it's bad and crazy. But Dan Osborne is this quote-unquote independent who keeps running and the Democrats keep pulling back their candidates in favor of the independent, but he's totally not their guy despite the fact that he's getting money through the normal ways the Democrats make money. He wants to abolish, I see wants to... He's pro-borshing all that stuff, but there's apparently some audio that was recorded of Dan Osborne explaining how in Nebraska, he can't really say what he really thinks about certain issues because he wants to win.

1:02I have people recording me, so I can't say... I want to abolish eyes, I can't say those words. The state is made up of 50% Republicans. 26% Democrat, 24% Independents. So my win numbers, mathematically, I have to get probably 10 to 15% of Republicans to win this race. How am I going to do that? By... Say, oh, I love trans people and they should be able to play in sports like... No, Jane, that's not how I win. That obviously needed more bleeps than an Andrew Dice Clay special during primetime on Comedy Central back in the 80s, but Jim, you know, we always tried out the old Dennis Green phrase, he is who he thought he is. This is a Democratic candidate, but he can't say the things that most Democrats would say because it's a red state. The question is, will it work against Senator Ricketts? Hopefully not. If I'm Pete Ricketts, I'm putting that all over the airwaves to let people know that, like, look, the Dan at Osborne that is being sold to you is not the Dan Osborne you're

2:03going to get if you elect him to the Senate. I've alluded to this in past episodes. I've never just come out and said it, and I guess now I kind of feel like there's no point in hiding it. So I was on a panel for the Washington Post back in 2024 talking about the Senate outlook. And I had said something about, you know, the Democrats are going to have a tough time that just aren't enough competitive races. And I should say it was at that point fellow columnist Jen Rubin who said, oh, don't kind of out the Democrats picking up a seat in Nebraska. Now, of course, back then, Dan Osborne was an independent wink, wink. And I remember at the time I had not heard anything indicating that the race out there was competitive. And, you know, being enough of a professional was a part of the, it feels a certain degree of mortification if there's a competitive Senate race out there, and I've completely missed it. And so I kept looking for it. And I really couldn't find any evidence that Osborne was going to be putting that race into play. And I kept looking for the other thing is like there was just not a lot of polling out there.

3:05And the polling that was out there was conducted by the Osborne campaign. But I went back and I checked like this. So, you know, was Deb Fisher, you know, more vulnerable and usual? I suppose so. You know, there was one poll that was independent. It was done in, you know, mid to late October. That had her up by two. Okay. And that's Nebraska. That's a little, you know, much more competitive than expected. And then the economist and you got did one about a couple of days later. And that one had Deb Fisher up by seven. So I looked at that and I was like, I don't really see it like, you know, Osborne might be in the running for like a beta or work award, in which, oh, you kept it closer. You covered the point spread. Great news for all the Vegas odd makers. But basically, you want to win the race, not just, you know, cover and end up Deb Fisher one by six point six percentage points. So yeah, more competitive than usual, but really not, not, you know, down to the wire or anything like that. And my sneaking suspicion is we will get something like that again. I think Dan Osborne is turning into one of these figures that Democrats just, they want to believe what we used to be able to say about Texas.

4:08We'll see how the Texas Senate race shakes out this year. The polling out into breast and the goodness is there's more polling out there this cycle. The bad news is that almost all of it has been affiliated with the Dan Osborne campaign. But here's, I'm just looking at the New York Times now does the real clear politics gig of just putting together all the polls. I'm going to show you, I'm going to read to you the outcomes in the last seven polls. Rickets by one, Rickets by one, Rickets by seven, Rickets by nine, and now we're up to like May, right? Then Osborne by five, Rickets by 16, and even. So the last three polls are giving you an option of either it's even or Osborne by five. If Forbes was the cat was still in the race, Rickets would be ahead by 16. But nonetheless, the Osborne campaign say Dan Osborne is doing great. Color me a little bit skeptical. Yes, it's not a great year for Republicans. But Nebraska's a pretty Republican leaning state. We'll see how this shakes out. But this is just one of those things where now that Rickets can say, look, Dan Osborne is trying

5:10to tell you he's a moderate. Here he is on tape saying, bleeping, I can't, I have to bleep, pretend to bleep, be a moderate. I'm clearly a bleeping hard left bleeping progressive. And once I'm in the Senate, I'm going to bleep, bleep this bleep as hard as I bleep, and be very careful about the language for the rest of this episode. This is not the most family friendly episode of three Martini lunch you're going to get. It is all bleep though. So you have to have that going for you. But the Democrats have this thing of pretending that the independent isn't their chosen candidate, which is hard to pull off when you've convinced the Democratic nominee in Nebraska to pull out of the race as soon as she won the primary, they've also convinced the Democratic nominee in South Dakota to get it out so they can get behind the independent there against mic rounds. And they're really super duper, duper mad at the Democrat for not getting out in Montana because they have an independent candidate there as well. And she's messing up their plans by not getting out. So, you know, if you're trying to hide your support for the independent, the Democrats

6:13are really bad at it. Remember Bernie Sanders isn't independent. Right. It's exactly so. Anyway, I don't know why they pull this off or go this strategy because it's so obvious. But like you said, it is a little bit closer than if the Democratic stayed in in Nebraska. So hopefully it won't work. And now that we've exposed them or some people have exposed them or exposed themselves, that'll make it easier for Nebraska voters as well. Greg is going to say to quote Bill Murray and Ghostbusters too, you don't want him exposing himself. I'll tell you what else you don't want exposed. You're personal information and it's easier to find online than you think. Your name, your phone number, your email, your home address, data brokers, they collect and sell it all, making you an easy target for scammers and identity thieves. And that's where incogni comes in. Instead of filling out manual opt out forms and cogni handles removal requests across more than 420 harmful broker sites and automatically resubmits requests every 30 to 60 days to keep brokers from re-listing your data. For even broader protection, incogni's unlimited plan includes an exposure scanner that will

7:16search the wider web and surface your exposures all in one dashboard. You choose the links that you want removed and incogni's human privacy experts will manually handle the takedown, the requests for you. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you. Yes, that's true. So go to incogni.com slash 3 ml and use the promo code 3 ml to get 60% off an annual plan. That is incogni.com slash 3 ml promo code 3 ml backed by a risk free 30 day money back guarantee. Alright, Jim, next, the insanity that's happening not that far away from us in Virginia. It's down on the Williamsburg area, which is about 2 to 2 and a half hours away, depending on traffic sometimes 3. But a mother of 5 was convicted last week of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Her offense, this is according to Reason Magazine, her reason.com, allowing her 5-year-old son to walk about half a mile by himself in their gated community.

8:18Until recently, Carrie Ann Parkinson lived in Williamsburg, Virginia. She and her husband Dallan moved there from Utah so Parkinson could attend William and Mary Law School. In June, when she was preparing for the bar and also happened to be 8 months pregnant with her 5th child, she and her then youngest Sam went for a bike ride as they often do. They stopped for her son's favorite activity collecting goose feathers from the path near their community pond. When they got home, he asked if he could walk back and get some more. Parkinson said, yes, it's a short walk along a sidewalk separated from the street by 10 feet of grass. Sam would have to cross two streets with crosswalks, which he'd seen him do safely hundreds of times, including six times that morning. Off he went, she made lunch. A passerby saw Sam in alerted security. One of the community's security guards escorted the boy back and gave Parkinson an earful. Pretty soon there were three cop cars, just as many cops, a security vehicle and two child protective services workers at Parkinson's door. CPS ended up investigating her for abuse and neglect. The cops, meanwhile, charged her with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

9:20CPS found the allegations substantiated and placed Parkinson on the state's child abuse and neglect registry where she will remain for seven years. The ordeal reached its nadir last week when a judge convicted Parkinson of the delinquency of a minor charge, a first degree misdemeanor. This comes with a sixth month jail sentence. The judge did suspend that pending good behavior and compliance with CPS's conditions. Parkinson assumes this means she will not be able to volunteer in her kids' schools, which might actually be benefit. But she fears it could also mean she will not get her law license. Jim, we've had five-year-old kids. Our kids are significantly older than that. Now I would not probably let them walk alone half a mile at five years old. When we were growing up, our parents told us to go ride your bike, hang out with your friends, especially in the summertime, be back for dinner, that kind of thing. So I don't necessarily agree with the decision she made, but the idea that CPS and the cops had to get involved here, this is way too much nanny status.

10:21Three cars, three police cars responding to this, making me suggest this is a quiet day in that community. Again, I have been accused of being a Vulcan in my lack of emotional response to news stories that are often hyped in a way to generate this. I would like to have asked the prosecutors, what was the delinquency? Because it's contributing to the delinquency. How was this five-year-old harmed? How are they delinquent? How are they going astray in society? All they were doing was walking home. Right now, I think you and I would agree. Five strikes us along the young side. It's one of those things where I think if you and I were in law enforcement, why is this five-year-old kid? You might say to the mom, hey, five-year-old is a bit young to have your kid walking around the neighborhood unattended. Just be careful or something like that. I have noticed in our often political debates, there are two settings when someone is accused of a crime. No one is above the law. This is what you say when someone you don't like has been accused of a crime and or is

11:25convicted. Or this is a police state. This is a witch-hod. This is clearly law enforcement and prosecutors are being unreasonable in this. The no one is above the law. Kind of makes this argument that the law must be applied and if you break the law, if you violate the law, any kind of circumstances, you must face the full consequences of it. There can be no recognition of any extenuating circumstances. There can be no understanding of the context. The law must be applied. People say if we have a speed limit, it is conceivable that maybe I drive a car, but I drive faster than the posted speed limit. But it's questions like so people, there's a question. When you get pulled over, the cop has the opportunity to decide, is this someone I want to write a ticket for or can I let them off of the warning? Now, if the cop is systemically saying I'm going to write tickets for everyone, but if it's pretty girl, I'm going to let her off of the warning. That does make us feel a little bit like there's an inappropriate standard being applied. If you were, all of one race was getting one treatment, all of another race was getting

12:28another treatment, then you'd say, okay, there's something in violation of the spirit of the law going on here. But we give cops discretion about whether or not they're going to charge someone or let them off of the warning. Prosecutors all the time, I get to present it with cases and they have to decide, is this a case that we can convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime was committed here? And can we sustain that conviction upon appeal? Or are there evidence missing? Are there cases where the defendant is very sympathetic? And let's say you're a president and your testimonies just blatantly false in a whole bunch of ways, but you're getting up into your 80s and the jury is going to say, oh, this is a person with memory issues, as the case with Joe Biden. Prosecutors are entirely reasonable to say, you know what? I think a crime got committed here, but I have a real tough time proving it or I can't prove it. The jury is going to be sympathetic to the defendant. I'm not going to bring charges. In this case, it is just very hard to believe that Carrie and Parkinson is some sort of menace to society. And that she belongs on the child abuse registry list and that she possibly doesn't get her

13:32law degree and all of that stuff. Her five year old walked around the neighborhood alone. Yeah, you and I could argue about the wisdom of this. Kid was not hit by a car. Kid was not abducted. Kid was not. Oh, no. The kid did not go on a terrible crime spree. The five year old did not rob a liquor store. Again, I'm looking for that delinquency here and I'm not seeing it. So this just seems utterly ridiculous. There are days I have my disagreements with the libertarians. But a reason magazine does a really good job of spot-winding cases like this, of which the police state has gone absolutely out of control. Hopefully the attention will increase pressure for a better outcome for her and her family, but just deeply frustrating on multiple levels, Greg. Just a good thing that geese aren't some protected species. Or else the feathers would lead to some sort of kicking down the door in the rate of the house. Agreed police. The EPA. Yeah, that's exactly right. But you know what I say when someone says we should protect the geese? Boo hiss. Because by the way, geese poop everywhere. Do we just observe that when you're every sporting field, every school ground playground,

14:34geese? I feel like they have this amazing capacity to generate waste. So almost like the federal government. They're just mean too. And they're so aggressive. Yeah, they just get them out. I'm not a big fan of the geese at all. But yeah, absurd work here by the police, absurd work by CPS, this judge. None of this should have ever gone past anything. Let the kid get the feathers and come home. And his mom was probably making lunch for him. But anyway, coming up, Susan Collins tells you out loud what she's not going to talk about. All right, Jim, let's head up to Maine, another competitive Senate race there. Of course, Susan Collins and her team, I'm sure just taking reams of opposition research to the shredder over the last several weeks here that since Grandpa Latter's got not of the race. And now they're digging up for Troy Jackson. And there's been some stuff in his record violence back in like the late 80s and so forth, including towards his current, I don't think he called her common law wife or partners.

15:41There's the term the left loves to use with all these things. They're not married. Oh, and by the way, they're second cousins. This was a martini back when this was revealed several weeks ago. But Susan Collins, no, no, I'm not. I'm not talking about that. Should the circumstances of his personal life and his, the mother of his children be relevant to this key and things after a game, do you think? Well, I'm not going to bring up the fact that the mother of his two children is his second cousin. I don't know whether people know that or not. I'm just going to talk about the issues, Jim. If others want to talk about incest involving my opponent, that's their business. But I'm going to stay on the high road. Susan Collins sits on a throne of skulls of all of her former opponents. I, you know, like again, I suppose it's theoretically possible that Troy Jackson wins this race. But you know, as I'm fond of pointing out six years ago, Susan Collins trailed Saragitian in every single poll and then one by nine on election day.

16:42So I think either polling is really bad in Maine or Susan Collins just has this very quiet base of support that doesn't come out. But I also think again, there's a little iron ladiness to her. There's that nice lady persona hides the ability to not just pull out the shift but to twist it. And so I don't know, but it feels like we're watching Catherine Hepburn say, you know, I'm not going to bring up the fact that he bangs his cousin like a screen door in a hurricane and just this degree, like this amazing ability to say this should be on the issues, not the fact that he's doing this with his cousin. You know, like there's, there's an art to that. There's an ability. She doesn't come across as nasty as she's bringing it up. Now, Jonathan Martin of Politico mentioned you just brought it up. But there's this kind of this like again, she's her whole persona of being the main nice lady who's, you know, never the table pounding, you know, shouting type. Again, I, but it is just a question of whether this is as harmful to Troy Jackson as

17:43we, it seems I don't know whether this is the sort of thing that, you know, mayners are good. Oh my God. It feels weird. What the heck? Or whether, you know, post grand platinum, if, if neither cousin is a Nazi, doesn't this seem pretty normal? I don't want to know what normal is after grand platinum, but, you know, going to be another tight run. They also have ranked choice in Maine. So if Susan Collins is going to win, she either need to get to 50 on the first one or get really darn close because my guess is that the lefties are going to end. Even some independence not have her as the second choice. But we'll see all of that unfolds. But yes, I mean, he did bring up the subject and she's like, oh, I'm not going to bring that up. Interestingly handled there. Okay. Well, we talked about a little bit about how life was for kids in the 80s, you know, be home by dark for dinner and just don't get into trouble with the rest of the day. But some people want us to believe that the 80s were a terrible time. How dare they? All right, Jim onto the chaser now and Ryan Reynolds.

18:49He is going to be in a new movie called May Day on Apple TV. He stars as a US Navy pilot who builds a friendship with an eccentric XKGB agent obsessed with 80s American culture. This according to variety. And so on the red carpet, Ryan Reynolds has asked about that time of the 80s and, oh, the nostalgia has blurred the lines of how awful it is. And just like Dan Osborne, Ryan Reynolds can't keep the F bomb out of his comments. And the 80s was a brutal, brutal time for people. It was a f***ing mess. And like, you know, people forget that it was like that was a tremendous strife, political tensions everywhere. You know, we're still like pretty fresh off like a Cuban missile crisis, which is only like what, 15, 20 years before. So you know, it's a tumultuous period. But you look back at it now and you're like, oh, yeah, top gun. Cocaine. Like, no, it was like a really scary. Yeah, Cocaine wasn't a good thing about the 80s. Ryan Reynolds, I think that tells us a little bit of a window into your world.

19:52But, you know, the 80s had its challenges, of course, Jim. The Soviets were still, you know, pretty strong. There were terrorism. We had the Iranian hostage crisis bleeding into the early 80s. There were definitely challenges. But compared to the tumultuousness of the 70s, you know, the eight years of Ronald Reagan creating mourning in America, the pub culture was awesome. The music was awesome. Like we said, there was so much freedom as a kid. And none of it ended up on social media. It was awesome. So I've enjoyed a great deal of Ryan Reynolds' work. So I'm a little disappointed to hear this. I also point out though that like a lot of Hollywood celebrities, sometimes they're very open about their politics, sometimes they're less outspoken. And I think up until now, Ryan Reynolds hasn't been particularly outspoken in his political views. But I kind of noticed that, you know, when you ask the question on the red carpet, some, you know, celebrities are very good at deflecting and not getting, not taking the bait. Others not so much. But when Reynolds says this was time of great violence and great strife, we should point

20:53out that March 12, 1988, 2am, someone kicked in a door at a home grab. And then the guy kicked another man by the throat and punched him in a dispute over a girlfriend. The perpetrator of that, of course, was Troy Jackson, who we talked about the previous martini. And the woman in question that they were fighting over was his cousin. And I understand the man who was attacked was Ryan Reynolds. So all of a sudden, this all fits together. It makes sense that why Ryan Reynolds would think of the 80s, you know, it was not Ryan Reynolds. But the first two parts of that are true. Look, you know, it's a portion of the reason you and I have such great nostalgia for the 80s. The fact that we were kids and teens then. And yeah, like that, you know, like, you know, we didn't have to pay more, you just said. We didn't, you know, like life was simpler and easier, other than like maybe bullies and stuff like that. You know, was there probably, you know, were there problems in the 80s? Sure. You know, this was the era as he mentions cocaine. This was when you know cocaine was turning into crack. This is when there was a much higher crime rates compared to that, even with the COVID

21:54research. Sure, the 80s had their problems. But there was a reason, the interesting is like you look back at the overwhelming tone in the pop culture of that era was remarkably positive, was remarkably churry optimistic. I don't know if you want to say there was a Reagan effect or other things, economic boom, whatever it was it was going on. Americans are feeling pretty good about themselves. And I think it says something that you see this wave of 80s nostalgia, stranger things, things like that. I feel like there's a sense that we have lost that. It was also with the internet coming along in the mid 90s or so. It was one of the last areas of the monoculture, one of the last time Reagan was able to keep up with what was going on because he was watching prime time television and saying where's the beef referring to different strokes and Nancy Reagan was able to do those things. Like being in tune with the same thing that everybody else was watching was kind of an interesting power that I think is just you don't you can't do it because we no longer have the monoculture and everyone's watching a million things in a at once. This is much longer than we usually do in our chaser segments, so I'll wrap it up.

22:55But there's possibility we could do some sort of like entirely 80s focused episode of this. Just talking about the legacy of the 80s and why Ronald Reynolds is not remembering it all that accurately. No, well, he's from Canada too. So keep in mind the 80s in Canada might not have been that great. There's under Pierre Trudeau. Maybe it was a nightmareish terrible time back then. Yes. No doubt. Pop culture back then you had movies that were unabashedly anti-communist and very much pro-American. You know, you had high school kids. Wolverines fending off the Russian invasion in Red Dawn. You had Rocky single handedly starting the beginning of the end of the Cold War by knocking out of Vondraggo. And of course the Bears were World Champions right in the middle of the decade. So I mean, what's not to love? Well, I was going to observe that you know, you could say, oh, well, if it's militarism and this excitement of American, you know, aren't you learning, you know, to trust the state? Aren't you just saying that the military industrial complex is a good thing? But Greg, I'm going to observe that let's say your father gets taken hostage in some

23:57generic Middle Eastern country. Iron Eagle taught us that as long as you have Louis Gossett Jr. as your mentor, you can just steal a US combat plane and do it yourself. And that's the American spirit. We're not going to wait for the government to save hostages. We're going to steal planes and do it ourselves. This individual responsibility and that was the message of the 1980s. That was awesome too. Amazing. Two planes. You can do the job in two planes. Anyway, Jim, have a great day. I'll talk to you again tomorrow. See you tomorrow, Greg. Jim Garrett, a national review. I'm Greg Carumbus of Radio America. Thanks so much for being with us today. Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast if you don't already. Tell your friends about us as well. Thanks also for your five star ratings and your kind reviews. Please keep those coming. Get us on your home devices. All you have to say is play three Martini launch podcast. Close both on X. He's at Jim Garrett. I'm at Greg Carumbus and follow the three Martini launch on Facebook and Instagram. Have a great Thursday. Join us again Friday for the next three Martini launch.