Idaho House passes bill blocking cities and counties from regulating knives
Opponents worry bill would require municipal performing arts centers to allow knives

The Republican-controlled Idaho House of Representatives voted Tuesday to pass a bill banning cities and counties from restricting knives, despite concerns raised that passing the bill would force municipal performing arts centers to allow knives at public concerts and performances.

Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Coeur d’Alene, sponsored House Bill 620a. Redman said knives are a form of arms that are protected.

“This bill would enact a state knife preemption law, which would prevent political subdivisions in the state from regulating the possession, sale, transfer and manufacture of knives,” Redman told legislators Tuesday at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise. “Idaho has (a) preemption law that protects firearms from local regulation, and we need to do the same for knives. It is important to remember that knives are arms too and protected by the Second Amendment. By protecting these we are doing the same as we are protecting the firearms.”

Under the bill, “any city, county, or other political subdivision of this state shall not enact any ordinance, rule, or tax relating to the transportation, possession, carrying, sale, transfer, purchase, gift, devise, licensing, registration, or use of a knife or knife making components in this state.”

Under Idaho state law, political subdivisions include cities, counties, municipal corporations, health districts and irrigation districts. House Bill 620a includes exceptions that would allow public schools, charter schools, court houses, law enforcement facilities, prisons, jails, other involuntary confinement facilities and political subdivisions that regulate child care to regulate knives.

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Meet The Group Threatening Americans’ Freedom You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

If you were to ask 20 of your smartest friends, co-workers, and family members what they know about the Uniform Law Commission (ULC), it’s unlikely any of them would have much, if anything, to say. Most Americans have never heard of the ULC, even though the organization has become one of the country’s most influential groups.

If you were to call your state lawmakers, however, you’d likely get an entirely different reaction. Virtually every legislator in America is familiar with the ULC, and most — Democrats and Republicans alike — have a positive opinion of the group. That’s largely because the ULC has a long history of working closely with legislators to develop and revise the Uniform Commercial Code, a complex state law passed in all 50 states.

The purpose of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) is to ensure that commercial and financial activities are regulated as similarly as possible throughout the United States. Without the UCC, conducting business in multiple states would be extremely difficult and costly.

Because the Uniform Commercial Code is so complicated, legislators have trouble understanding and altering it. They depend on the Uniform Law Commission, which is mostly composed of lawyers and academics, as well as the ULC’s partner organizations, to help them. As a result, the ULC has become so important to state lawmakers that it receives much of its funding from state appropriations. That means you, the taxpayer, are footing the bill for the ULC.

For much of the 20th century, the ULC played an important, nonpartisan, uncontroversial role in helping states adopt uniform laws. But in recent decades, the group has become increasingly more radical. It now regularly pushes policymakers to adopt legislation that undermines the rights of individuals and enhances the power of governments, large corporations, and financial institutions.

Take, for example, the disturbing model bill titled the Public-Health Emergency Authority Act (PHEAA). The ULC drafted and formally approved PHEAA in 2023, and it’s now asking legislators to pass it into law.

In the event that a “public health emergency” breaks out in the future, the PHEAA would effectively turn governors across the country into all-powerful quasi-dictators.

Under the ULC’s public health emergency bill, governors would have the right to seize control of virtually every part of their citizens’ lives. They could, for instance, regulate the “zoning, operation, commandeering, management, or use of buildings, shelters, facilities, parks, outdoor space, or other physical space, and the management of activities in those places.”

They would also have the authority to single-handedly regulate public-health-related “testing, isolation, quarantine, movement, gathering, evacuation, or relocation of individuals.”

Governors could further kill, relocate, and manage plants and animals in the state, as well as suspend “a provision of any statute, order, rule, or regulation if strict compliance would hinder efforts to respond to the public-health emergency or pose undue hardship or risk.”

The ULC would also grant governors the right to conduct unlimited “surveillance, monitoring, or assessment of the public-health emergency or any of its effects.”

And although the ULC’s bill suggests establishing a time limit on the initial duration of a declared “public health emergency,” its bill would also allow governors to renew an emergency with minimal oversight from legislatures, and to do so for an infinite number of times.

Emergency power isn’t the only troubling part of the ULC’s agenda.

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Making sure we don’t? OK by me!


Missouri senator proposes bill blocking red flag gun laws, which Missouri doesn’t have

Less than a month after the mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl victory parade, a Missouri Senator looks to pass legislation further loosening the state’s gun laws.

State Sen. Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, sponsored the “Anti-Red Flag Gun Seizure Act,” which would prohibit the confiscation of firearms from individuals who are deemed to be a threat to themselves or others. His bill was heard by the Senate Transportation, Infrastructure and Public Safety Committee on Wednesday.

“I think we all agree we have a right to keep and bear arms,” Hoskins said. “Unfortunately, some anti-Second Amendment groups can weaponize the red flag laws to quiet their opponents. We have the Second Amendment to protect the First Amendment and a right to due process.”

Although Missouri does not currently have any red flag laws in place, along with 30 other states, Hoskins means for his legislation to serve as a preventative measure against their enforcement, should they be enacted.

“We’ve seen the federal government weaponize the Department of Justice against political opponents, so it is happening,” Hoskins said. “We don’t want that to happen in Missouri.”

Speaking in support of the bill was William Bland of Liberty, a board member of the Western Missouri Shooters Alliance. He spoke on behalf of the group to say that they felt red flag laws were unconstitutional and a “bad idea.”

“If a person is believed to be a danger to themselves, or others, taking away their firearms does not remove that danger,” Bland said. “It is easy enough for a suicidal individual to swallow a bottle of Tylenol pills, or harm themselves or others with a kitchen knife or some other weapon.”

He said that red flag laws often deprive some individuals of their firearms because they live with someone who is considered dangerous to themselves or others. In other cases, he worries that red flag laws could be used to take revenge on a person by falsely claiming they are dangerous in order to get their guns taken away, although he offered no evidence of this happening in actuality.

Speaking in opposition to the legislation was Kristin Bowen, a Boone County resident and volunteer for Moms Demand Action, a group that advocates for public safety measures relating to gun violence.

“Missouri already has some of the weakest gun laws in the country and our legislature has spent the past decade gutting our common sense public safety laws, while simultaneously resisting attempts to make our communities safer,” Brown said.

Brown cited a report from Everytown Research and Policy that showed Missouri’s rate of gun deaths have increased 59% from 2012 to 2021, compared to a 39% increase nationwide.

“Constant heartbreak cannot and should not be our reality in Missouri,” Brown said. “Instead of taking steps backward, our state needs to be taking steps forward by passing laws that would keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals and provide our communities with the support that they need to adopt local solutions to gun violence.”

Missouri has few regulations surrounding the sale, ownership or carrying of a firearm. State law also prohibits local officials from superseding its gun laws, although it does allow for cities to create local ordinances requiring permits to carry firearms. [this is incorrect]

In 2021, Missouri lawmakers passed and Gov. Mike Parson signed into law the “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” sponsored by now U.S. Rep. Eric Burlison, which attempts to bar federal gun laws from being enforced in the state. Police who try to do so could face a $50,000 fine.

The act is being challenged in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in October, and the law remains on hold while the appeal is active.

It is unclear if Hoskin’s bill has any traction this year, as lawmakers near the halfway point of the legislative session. No vote was taken on the bill during Wednesday’s hearing.

The Missouri House decided to stop pursuing the passage of two bills expanding firearms access following the mass shooting in Kansas City last month, including one that would have exempted guns and ammunition from state and local taxes and another that would have allowed guns on public transit and in churches, while also lowering the age to get a concealed carry permit.

Following the shooting, Democrats in the Missouri House of Representatives filed nearly 40 identical resolutions seeking the ability to enact local gun laws that supersede those at the state level.

There are currently initiative petitions filed that seek to accomplish the same goal, though it is unknown where those stand in respect to getting enough signatures to make the ballot this year.

It’s like the senile dolt believes if he repeats it enough, it’ll be come real


Biden Doubles Down on AR-15 Ban in State of the Union Speech

Headed into a tough re-election bid, President Joe Biden signaled he would stay the course on his aggressive push for new gun restrictions during his speech to the nation on Thursday.

The President laid out his view of how the country is fairing and his agenda for a potential second term. Part of that agenda is to pass new gun restrictions. Biden indicated passing and signing a new ban on popular firearms such as the AR-15 and other so-called “assault weapons” was at the top of his priority list on that front.

“I’m demanding a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” Biden said in his State of the Union address.

The comments echo the President’s previous State of the Union speeches.

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Gun Owners Of America Comes Out Swinging Against John Cornyn After He Announced Bid For Senate Leader

Gun Owners Of America (GOA) shared their concerns Thursday with Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn after he announced his intention to run for Senate Republican Leader, just one day after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would be stepping down as leader in November.

In an exclusive phone call with the Daily Caller, Aidan Johnston, the Director of Federal Affairs for GOA, said Cornyn is not a Conservative pro-gun leader, mentioning pieces of legislation that Cornyn has supported in the past, which Johnston described as gun control.

“The United States Senate deserves a conservative pro-gun leader, and John Cornyn is not that person, it seems. I’ll say every time a gun issue comes up: He’s right there with a compromise. And that’s not leadership. That’s just capitulation to gun control. Americans deserve someone who will refuse to compromise with their God-given Second Amendment rights. And unfortunately, John Cornyn is, always, always, always cutting deals with our Second Amendment,” Johnston told the Caller.

“I mean, as far back as, 2007-2008 John Cornyn was not standing up to object to gun control when the Veterans Disarmament Act passed, otherwise known as the NICs Improvement Amendment Act. But then you’ve got the Fix NICs Act, the followed successor to that 2008 bill,” Johnston continued. “The Fix NICs Act, which passed in 2017-2018. And that bill was supposed to only pass coupled with concealed carry reciprocity, but it was squishy Republicans in Congress that let the two bills be separated, and they passed the gun control and not concealed carry.”

He then slammed Cornyn over the Safer Communities Act, which he cosponsored with Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy. The compromise package was negotiated between Cornyn and Murphy in the Summer of 2022 and created an “enhanced background check” for adults under 21. The bill also expanded the definition of who is a gun dealer and thereby required to conduct a background check. Under that new system, one single gun sale in a calendar year could lead to people having to get licensed as a dealer and having to conduct background checks.

“But I do think that the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which John Cornyn is the co-author with Senator Murphy, it was an omnibus gun control, this is the biggest gun control that has passed Congress in decades. Like we’re talking funding for Red flag gun confiscation laws, which, by the way, have been used in a scandal to bribe pro-gun states without red flag laws into enacting them.

We’re talking about a de facto wait period for 18- to 20-year-old adults before they can purchase a firearm and it opened the door, which we warned him [Cornyn] about, to backdoor universal background checks. And now the ATF is initiating a rule to institute background checks without a new law,” he added.

“Well, we warned Congress, we warned, John Cornyn, about all these consequences of the bipartisan Safer Communities Act that said he supported that bill anyway and now gun owners are living under the consequences of that. This is not the time to take someone who compromised with our Second Amendment and put them in charge of the Republican Party, whose platform claims to defend the Second Amendment.”

McConnell said he will serve out his Senate term, which ends in January 2027, “albeit from a different seat in the chamber.”

Meanwhile, Cornyn spoke with former President Donald Trump on Wednesday and has started calling individual GOP senators for their support.

The Caller contacted Cornyn’s office about GOA’s opposition to him as leader, to which they did not immediately respond.

Biden Convinced Media He Was ‘Powerless’ To Fix Border Crisis. Then He Changed His Mind.

The Biden administration let it be known on Thursday [the 22nd] that the president is considering taking executive action to address the crisis at the southern border. News outlets appeared impressed.

Axios called the leaked White House plan to limit asylum claims President Joe “Biden’s Bold and Risky Border Move.” Politico declared it a “sweeping new approach.” The New York Times put four reporters on the story.

It was an abrupt pivot for the mainstream media, which have long repeated Biden and his Democratic allies’ claims that he is all but powerless to slow the unprecedented flood of migrants into the United States.

FLASHBACK: After congressional Republicans earlier this month killed a Democrat-backed border bill, the White House denied GOP claims that the president already has the power to deal with the crisis.

“Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends,” Biden said.

The media rushed to prove him right:

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Louisiana lawmakers advance bill allowing concealed carry without permit

Republican state Senators in Louisiana advanced legislation Thursday that allows adults 18 years and older to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

The Senate approved that bill, along with another that would provide a level of immunity from civil liability for a person who uses a concealed gun to shoot a person in self-defense, The Associated Press reported.

The bills were passed during a special session that was called to address violent crime in the state. They now head to the House, where the GOP is in the majority.

State Sen. Blake Miguez, the sponsor of the bill, S.B. 1, thanked his fellow Senate Republicans for passing his bill in a unanimous vote.

“This important legislation will bring stronger #2 self-defense rights to Louisiana similar to those enjoyed by citizens in neighboring states,” he posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) has signaled he intends to sign the bills if they reach his desk, the AP reported.

The state currently requires holders of concealed carry permits to be fingerprinted and pay a fee, which advocates of the bill say is unconstitutional, per the AP.

According to the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, 27 states allow people to carry a concealed weapon without having a permit.

In another post online, Miguez said the bill will “empower” citizens with “the means to protect themselves and their families from violent criminals.”

While Miguez and other Republicans argue they should be able to conceal carry weapons without a permit to protect themselves from criminals, Democrats say it could lead to more gun violence, the AP noted.

The special session began Monday and will address the state’s crime issues. In 2021, Louisiana had the highest violent crime rate in the country, Landry said in a speech Monday.

Louisiana lawmakers, Governor Jeff Landry want more gun rights for self defense to deter crime

Louisiana’s Legislature is likely to expand gun rights for law-abiding citizens during a three-week Special Session called by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry designed to crack down on crime that begins at the Capitol Monday.

Two bills have been filed to allow adults 18 and older to carry concealed handguns without the training or permits that are required now. A third has been filed that would provide a level of immunity from civil liability for someone who uses a concealed handgun to shoot a person in self defense.

Previous efforts to expand concealed carry either stalled in the Senate or were vetoed by former Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, but Landry included the issue in his Special Session order, signaling his support.

“I want my four granddaughters to be able to put a pistol in their purses to protect them from murders and rapists,” McCormick said in an interview with USA Today Network. “I feel confident with this governor and Legislature we will see a (concealed carry) bill passed.”

Erath Republican Sen. Blake Miguez, a world class competition pistol shooter, is also carrying permitless concealed carry legislation with Senate Bill 1 and the legislation to provide immunity for concealed carry shooters with Senate Bill 2.

“Government is not here to place barriers to our constitutional rights,” Miguez told USA Today Network. “Criminals already carry concealed handguns without government permission.”

When asked how expanding concealed carry rights would reduce crime, both lawmakers said it would give criminals pause.

“It fights crime by allowing innocent individuals to defend themselves, putting them on equal footing with vicious criminals,” Miguez said.

“When criminals don’t know if you’re carrying it makes them more cautious,” McCormick said.

Supporters of the legislation refer to it as “constitutional carry” because they believe the Second Amendment already grants that right. Louisiana allows for constitutional carry now but requires a permit and training.

“It puts law-abiding citizens on equal footing with criminals,” Kelby Seanor of the National Rifle Association has said. “It removes the burden to exercise a constitutional right.”

But opponents, like those from Moms Demand Action and the Louisiana Chiefs of Police who testified against the bill last year, said concealed carry without the training and permits required now make the streets more dangerous for citizens and police.

Louisiana is already an “open carry” state, which means people can carry visible firearms without a permit or training.

Twenty-seven states already permit a form of concealed carry without permits, including all of Louisiana’s neighbors.

 

The week Biden lost the New York Times: Liberal paper’s Editorial Board unleashes astonishing broadside warning of ‘a dark moment’ as it runs back-to-back opinion pieces knifing the elderly president after damning special counsel report.

Joe Biden is incapable of assuring voters he can handle another presidential term, his team has ‘no plan’ on how to deal with his senile behavior, and he should simply ‘not be running for re-election,’ according to New York Times authors.

Anxieties from the liberal Times’ Editorial Board and opinion writers show how worried they are that ailing Biden may not be able to beat ‘bad man’ Donald Trump this year.

The back-to-back opinion pieces knifing the elderly president, 81, over the weekend comes after a Justice Department report ripped into his handling of classified documents and portrayed him as a forgetful old man.

The 388-page report by Special Counsel Robert Hur confirmed he would not be charged – but it said that was because a jury would probably conclude he had ‘diminished faculties’ and was a ‘well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’

Biden’s lack of enthusiasm on the campaign trail, coupled with his doddering public appearances and ‘crotchety grandpa’ attitude, are huge concerns during this ‘dark time’ in his presidential tenure, according to the left-leaning broadsheet paper.

‘He needs to do more to show the public that he is fully capable of holding office until age 86,’ the Times board stated on Sunday.

The back-to-back opinion pieces knifing the elderly president, 81, comes after a Justice Department report into his handling of classified documents was released

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Will the Clock Run Out on Grisham’s Anti-Gun Agenda?

We’re less than a week away from the 30-day legislative session coming to a close in New Mexico, and despite an onslaught of gun control bills backed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and supported by most Democrat lawmakers, so far no anti-gun measures have been sent to her desk.

That’s almost certain to change in the next couple of days, with a 7-day waiting period bill poised for final passage in the state Senate, but it’s beginning to look like time might run out before the bulk of her anti-gun agenda is approved by lawmakers in both chambers.

“We’re getting late in the session; we only have a week to go,” Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, said in an interview Thursday. Chandler has her name on two gun bills — one to make it easier to take guns away from people who might threaten themselves or others, one to go after gun sellers whose weapons end up in the wrong hands — that have stalled and may not get restarted, she said. Both are in a holding pattern just outside the landing field known as the House floor.

It could be difficult to get either bill through the House and then over to the Senate for vetting and support, she said, for one reason: “They are going to be racing against the clock.”

That clock is ticking away, and those bills are among more than 750 pieces of legislation introduced in this year’s session. They are fighting for attention against a raft of bills that have nothing to do with crime or guns, including approving a budget for the coming fiscal year.

In short, it’s priority time, and a lot of things are going to be left stuck behind in the mud.

What you will see now, said Sen. Pete Campos, D-Las Vegas, is a focus on the budget and capital outlay bills, meaning “some of the other issues will fall by the wayside, and they won’t have a chance to make it.”

Still, he said he expects long Senate floor sessions Friday and Saturday in an effort to move some bills forward, including gun-related legislation.

“Gun safety and gun issues will take up quite a bit of time,” he said in an interview.

Rep. Gail Armstrong, R-Magdalena, also expressed optimism some crime bills can make it.

“I think we’ll be on the floor a lot, I think we can still do it,” she said.

On the other hand she, like most Republicans and some conservative Democrats, is less enamored of supporting any new gun laws that, as they see it, violate the right to bear arms.

“I don’t want any of the gun bills [to get through],” she said in an interview.

The Democrat-controlled House and Senate haven’t rejected any of Grisham’s gun control bills, though they did water down the waiting period from 14 business days to 7. Even if the legislature only sends a couple of 2A-infringing bills to the governor she can always call a special session and bring lawmakers back to Santa Fe to finish the job. And even with many of her anti-gun priorities stuck in a holding pattern, there’s no guarantee they’ll continue to be bottled up until the session is gaveled to a close.

Albuquerque pollster and political analyst Brian Sanderoff said at this point in the legislative game, if it becomes clear a bill does not have the support of the majority of the Legislature or the strong support of a committee chair, it will likely “die just because time is running out.”…

Sanderoff said it is premature to assume any bill cannot be driven to the finish line in the last week of the session. He said if Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, and Democratic lawmakers in both parties want a bill to succeed, “there is still time to get it through the legislative process.”

It’s far too early for gun owners to celebrate. Honestly, even after sine die Second Amendment supporters need to be wary, because a special session may very well be on the table. Grisham threatened to bring legislators back to Santa Fe to work on multiple gun control bills last year, but eventually backed down when it became clear that her agenda didn’t have the support to pass. I’m not sure the same political calculus exists this year, given that many of her suggested gun control measures have cleared legislative committees along party lines and without any objections from her fellow Democrats.

We’ll be talking more about what might happen in the waning days of this year’s session on Monday’s Bearing Arms Cam & Co, but right now the most important takeaway is that gun owners need to keep up the pressure on lawmakers to say “no” to Grisham’s gun control package and any other infringements on our right to keep and bear arms… or to at least keep those bills sidelined until the session draws to a close. We can deal with a special session if and when the governor calls for one, but for now the goal should be to get to sine die with the Second Amendment still intact.

A Simple Moment of Weakness
Reconnecting with History—Special Installment

The President’s job—and if someone sufficiently vain and stupid enough is picked he won’t realize this—is not to wield power, but to draw attention away from it.” —Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

My phone buzzed early in the evening. A message from one of my paid subscribers telling me about an impending press conference by one of my least favorite subspecies of humanity: a politician. She requested that I watch the conference and give my take on the potential historical significance of the event and/or share some history that might inform her understanding of the event.

This is not my idea of a “good time.” I would literally rather explain the evolution of torture techniques during the Spanish Inquisition—that, at least, would have a flavor of the lurid to leaven the horror on display.

Nevertheless, I allowed myself to be convinced. I need to keep my paid supporters happy (and yes, if you’re a paid supporter, I will pay attention to your requests for topics—I may not always fulfill them the next day, but they will go into the hopper. I’m an honest intellectual whore: I know how to sing for my supper). Besides, the event in question turned out to be a lot more important than I was hoping it would be. So here we go.

The Immediate Context

To get us all on the same page, here’s the skinny:

During his years as Vice President, Joe Biden appropriated a bunch of classified documents, some of which wound up in file boxes in his garage. On the face of it, this seems an even more egregious a violation of the official documents handling laws than did former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email server (a matter on which the DOJ declined prosecution) and former President Donald Trump’s stockpiling of maybe-declassified-then-reclassified-but-maybe-not documents in his part-time residence at Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida (for which he is currently being prosecuted).

The special prosecutor’s report on the Biden matter dropped today. You can read it here. You can read a Twitter thread digesting it here (warning: partisan account).

Tucked among the pages were an implied justification for declining to prosecute (the administration cooperated with the investigation, and without obstruction charges in the mix the rest becomes harder to prosecute) and a startling explicit justification: President Biden, the most powerful man on the planet, is incompetent to stand trial.

Relevant excerpt from the prosecutor’s report
Another relevant excerpt

Biden held a press conference in response:

It did not go well.

You can watch it for yourself here:

 

Even as Biden declared himself competent and his memory sound, he forgot the name of the church from which his son’s memorial rosary was procured, he mixed up the President of Egypt with the President of Mexico, he inadvertently (if subtly) changed American foreign policy with regards to the current war between Israel and Hamas, he seemed unsure for a fleeting moment whether his dead son was, in fact, dead [3m11s], and he claimed responsibility for the crimes of which the special prosecutor had just declined prosecution (even while denying they took place and dissembling about their nature).

In my lifetime so far, I have seen seven Presidents. If I were to evaluate them by competence (Note: This is NOT a comment on the policies or politics of any of these men), I’d characterize them thusly:
Two of them were pretty-okay (Reagan and Bush 1), one was not politically astute (Carter), and then there was the parade of the most incompetent, self-involved, and corrupt dip shits ever to occupy the Oval Office, each one worse than the last (Clinton, Bush 2, Obama, and Trump—the first two of these were, at least, capable of holding productive conversations with other people in government, despite their inability to be consistently interested in the actual prosecution of their own avowed policy agendas).

Even if he hadn’t done so before, Biden revealed in this press conference that he is, hands down, the least-fit occupant of the Oval Office in the history of the Republic (which, in light of his four immediate predecessors, is a hell of an accomplishment).

What Happens Now?

In a “normal” world—which is to say, the artificial world my generation was taught about in our high school history classes, which is far from normal—Joe Biden would be removed from office tomorrow, on 25th Amendment grounds, by his own party. The party itself would not lose power, as they still control congress and would still control the White House, and they would head into the November Election from a position of moral strength: “We care so much about the country that we will remove this good man who isn’t up to the job anymore.”

Failing that, he would be impeached by his own party.

And, failing that, he would be locked out of a brokered Democratic Convention and not allowed to run for a second term.

But that “normal world” is long gone.

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Sen. Chris Murphy: the people we care about most

A gaffe is commonly defined as when a politician inadvertently tells the truth and/or reveals his true intentions. During this election season, we’re seeing a bumper crop of gaffes, and not all by Joe Biden. Sen. Chris Murphy, among the most rabid Democrat/socialist/communist (D/s/c) congress critters, dropped a classic:

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Wednesday that the Democratic Party’s push for a path to citizenship in border legislation has failed the people they “care about most” in this country, “undocumented Americans.”

MSNBC host Chris Hayes asked Murphy about the border security bill and said, rather than pushing for a path to citizenship in border legislation negotiations like the party has in the past, Democrats were using Ukraine funding. 

“Well, I mean, Chris, that’s been a failed play for 20 years. So you are right that that has been the Democratic strategy for 30 years, maybe, and it has failed to deliver for the people we care about most, the undocumented Americans that are in this country,” Murphy said.

Oooops. Murphy said the quiet part out loud.

“This is also not 2013 any longer, when we ran that play last. Back then, there were a couple hundred people showing up every day applying for asylum. Today, on some days, there are 8,000. And the reality is that the bulk of this country does not think that’s right or sustainable and wants us to change the reality at the border,” the Democratic senator added. 

Ah! That’s why the failed border bill allowed in a minimum of two million a year: Murphy and the other D/s/cs are honoring the will of the electorate! That would be the electorate they’re trying to import, not actual Americans.

Murphy said there was a temptation among Democrats to run the “same play” they always run, but added they had a responsibility to adjust to what the country wants, because the play has not worked.

Which “play?” Ignore the law and illegally allow millions upon millions into the country, or pass a bill that ignores the law and illegally allows millions upon millions into the country, but pretends they’re not doing that and blames Republicans?

“Now this bill still had in it some very important things for migrant rights, including a right to representation and earlier work permits, and the biggest expansion of visas in 30 years. It’s not a pathway to citizenship, but it is something substantial for people that actually care about migrants,” he continued.

Of course. “The people we care about most, the undocumented Americans that are in this country,” have rights, which trump the rights of American citizens because they’re “migrant rights.”  I think that’s the Ninety Third Amendment…or something.

Hayes asked Murphy if he was “proud” of the bill they put forward and wondered if he believed this would improve things at the southern border.

I think you are watching the issue of migration take down left and center-left governments all around the world right now. I think we’re at the point where if we didn’t bring some sense of order to the border, if we didn’t make a big down payment on reform to the asylum system, we were gonna have a really hard time holding on to a consensus in this country that we should keep legal immigration pathways alive,” Murphy responded during his media appearance.

Wait a minute. Didn’t Murphy just say: “the reality is that the bulk of this country does not think that’s right [illegal immigration] or sustainable and wants us to change the reality at the border?” And now we have to maintain “a consensus in this country that we should keep legal immigration pathways alive?!” I’m sure that’s Republican’s fault too.

“And so, I am of the belief that this is a moment where you had to show some big bipartisan momentum and progress on the border, or you would never, ever have the ability to try to rescue the undocumented Americans that desperately need to help,” he added.

“Undocumented Americans.” “Migrant rights.”  Americans don’t want illegal immigration, but they’re worried about losing their consensus to keep illegal immigration alive. We must “rescue the undocumented Americans that desperately need to help.”

Well, at least Murphy is consistent about one thing: the people about which he, and the D/s/c Party, most cares are illegal immigrants, including terrorists, people with communicable Third World diseases, members of the Chinese military, few of which intend to assimilate, and many of which wish us deadly harm. And aren’t “undocumented Americans” everybody in the world not an actual American? I wonder if Murphy is purposely saying that?

What’s truly disconcerting is how many Black and Hispanic Americans are going to vote for whoever the D/s/c candidate is in November. Count among them millions of illegals, and the dead, who virtually exclusively vote D/s/c. Maybe that’s why Murphy cares so much for those folks.

Special Counsel Finds Biden Is Too Old to Be Charged in Classified Docs Scandal

“Your Honor, my client was clearly too drunk to have made it anywhere near I-25 from that maze of one-way streets in downtown Denver, and cannot be held accountable for how he or his car might have been found trying to enter the highway from the off-ramp.” —The World’s Best Defense Attorney back in my younger days

Some legal defense moves are so unscrupulous that it would take a high-caliber lawyer to think of them and a true scoundrel to implement them. I’m looking at you, Johnnie Cochran, in your $4,000 suits, with a combination of awe and horror.

But that’s just trial law. Where things get really very quite seriously unsettling is the even twistier world of special counsels, where Washington agrees to investigate Washington insiders using Washington insiders who pinky swear that everything will be on the up-and-up and that the truth will be brought to light and justice will be served — no matter which Washington insiders might be punished or suffer public shaming as a result.

Then the Washington insiders all pour one another stiff portions of 21-year-old single-malt scotch and have a good laugh at our (literal) expense.

The latest example of just that comes from the Department of Justice™ headed up by Biden administration crony Merrick Garland.

ASIDE: I swear this actually just happened. When I started to type “Department of Justice,” a moment ago, I quickly corrected myself after typing “Derpartment.” I wish I’d let it stand with a [sic] at the end.

As you’re probably aware, the Biden administration was doing one of those pinky-swear investigations of itself because of that time Biden accidentally left boxes and boxes of classified doc in his garage with his Corvette. At first, Biden was prompted to tell people that his garage is a secure location because, unlike the Trump compound on many well-guarded acres at Mar-a-Lago, Biden’s garage door has one of those twisty lock handles on it.

That garage is practically a SCIF, they claimed.

That excuse held about as much water as my wife when she was 40 months pregnant and had to pee from just looking at a faucet, so Garland appointed pinky-swear special counsel Robert K. Hur to look into whether he should find some special excuse for Biden’s mishandling of classified documents immediately or if it would be better to draw it out longer so they’d have a chance to truly savor that bottle of Glenfarclas.

That was in August. Today, we have the Mother of All Justifications — and it has me laughing harder than it has Biden’s reelection campaign team breaking out in hives. Here it is from Hur’s findings:

We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.

Never mind the weasel language about how Biden would present himself to a jury because an “elderly man with a poor memory” is how he presents himself to members of the press, gathered audiences, and various deceased foreign dignitaries from countries he gets mixed up sometimes.

Remember those reports from a month or three ago that Biden was getting all upset about the public perception that he’s too old and feeble for the job? Yeah, his own DOJ just used that as the reason Biden can’t be held accountable for storing classified documents next to the case of 40 Weight Motor Oil and expired boxes of Fix-O-Dent.

But don’t you worry. I don’t think anyone in Beijing or Russia or Tehran pays much attention to what goes on in the Biden White House. So you can rest assured, Jack, that when the fella from that place, you know the one, tries to threaten Corn Hole with the asufutimaehaehfutbw that old Joe Biden is gonna make sure they feel the trunalimunumaprzure like the what was I saying?

And you can take that to the bank and smoke it.

BLUF
In other words, look at how consistently inconsistent AI already is in its biases, without the intervention of powerful government actors. Imagine just how much more biased it can get — and how difficult it would be for us to recognize it — if we hand the keys over to the government.

A Tale of Two Congressional Hearings (and several AI poems)

We showed up to warn about threats to free speech from AI. Half the room couldn’t care less.

Earlier today, I served as a witness at the House Judiciary Committee’s Special Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which discussed (among other things) whether it’s a good idea for the government to regulate artificial intelligence and LLMs. For my part, I was determined to warn everyone not only about the threat AI poses to free speech, but also the threats regulatory capture and a government oligopoly on AI pose to the creation of knowledge itself.

I was joined on the panel by investigative journalist Lee Fang, reporter Katelynn Richardson, and former U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic Norman Eisen. Richardson testified about her reporting on government funding the development of tools to combat “misinformation” through a National Science Foundation grant program. As FIRE’s Director of Public Advocacy Aaron Terr noted, such technology could be misused in anti-speech ways.

“The government doesn’t violate the First Amendment simply by funding research, but it’s troubling when tax dollars are used to develop censorship technology,” said Terr. “If the government ultimately used this technology to regulate allegedly false online speech, or coerced digital platforms to use it for that purpose, that would violate the First Amendment. Given government officials’ persistent pressure on social media platforms to regulate misinformation, that’s not a far-fetched scenario.”

Lee Fang testified about his reporting on government involvement in social media moderation decisions, most recently how a New York Times reporter’s tweet was suppressed by Twitter (now X) following notification from a Homeland Security agency. Fang’s investigative journalism on the documents X released after Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform has highlighted the risk of “jawboning,” or the use of government platforms to effectuate censorship through informal pressure.

Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed that it seemed like we were having (at least) two different hearings at once. Although there were several tangents, the discussion on the Republican side was mostly about the topic at hand. On the Democratic side, unfortunately, it was overwhelmingly about how Trump has promised to use the government to target his enemies if he wins a second term. It’s not a trivial concern, but the hearing was an opportunity to discuss the serious threats posed by the use of AI censorship tools in the hands of a president of either party, so I wish there had been more interest in the question at hand on the Democratic side of the committee.

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South Carolina Senate Advances Permitless Carry Bill, Expanding Gun Rights

The South Carolina Senate recently passed a significant piece of legislation that could greatly alter the landscape of gun rights within the state. The bill, nicknamed the South Carolina Permitless Carry bill, seeks to allow individuals to carry concealed handguns without the need for a permit. This move aligns South Carolina with a growing number of states that have adopted similar “permitless carry” laws.

The Senate’s decision came after six days of intense debate, highlighting the contentious nature of gun control discussions in America. The Permitless Carry Bill strengthens the Second Amendment rights by eliminating the permit requirement for law-abiding citizens wishing to carry concealed firearms. This measure not only enhances personal freedom and self-defense but also respects the constitutional rights of South Carolinians.

Critics, however, express concerns over public safety and the potential risks associated with more individuals carrying firearms without undergoing the training and background checks that a permit process typically entails. They fear that this could lead to increased incidents of gun violence and accidents, particularly in situations where disputes may escalate into shootings.

Despite these concerns, the bill received strong support within the Senate, passing with a notable majority. This legislative action signifies a clear shift towards expanding gun rights in South Carolina, reflecting a broader trend observed across several states in the United States.

It is important to note, however, that the bill’s passage in the Senate is just one step in the legislative process. It must still be approved by the South Carolina House of Representatives before it can become law. If enacted, the bill will allow individuals who are legally eligible to own a firearm to carry it concealed in public spaces without a permit, subject to certain restrictions.

As South Carolina moves closer to potentially adopting permitless carry, it joins the ranks of states reevaluating their stance on gun control and the requirements for carrying concealed weapons.

The South Carolina Permitless Carry represents a pivotal moment in the state’s legislative history. Whether viewed as a victory for gun rights advocates or a cause for concern among public safety proponents, its impact will be closely watched by both supporters and critics alike.

Did Obama Just Get Trump Off the Hook?

Just when you thought 2024 couldn’t possibly get any weirder — yes, I know it’s still only January — a secret Barack Obama memo could prove the undoing of special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump.

America First Legal — whose suit against the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “unearthed new docs showing that the deep state knew the risks of mass mail voting in 2020 but censored these criticisms as ‘disinformation’” — has another bombshell today.

“A secret Obama memo, the Presidential Information Technology Committee (PITC), regarding control of Presidential records could change everything in the DOJ’s politicized prosecution of Trump,” the organization announced Tuesday on Twitter/X.

By executive fiat, Obama created the PITC following a 2014 Russian hack of the president’s Executive Office computer network. The committee “includes representatives of the Departments of Defense and DHS, among others” and “established the President’s exclusive control over information resources and systems provided to the President,” according to America First Legal.

More:

Because the memo relied upon the Federal Records Act’s definition of “information system” as resources organized for the “use” and “disposition” of “information”, the memo gives the President exclusive control over information he receives.

This is relevant to what a President may reasonably believe about information given to him while in office.

Second, and related, if information stored on the PITC network formed the basis for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of former President Trump, that evidence should have been disclosed to the former President and may be relevant to his liability.

America First goes on to explain that “Obama’s PITC memo may have created a reasonable belief in President Trump that he, in fact, had such authority” to “possess or retain… classified documents.” That’s contrary to Smith’s 37-count indictment against Trump for “willful retention of national defense information; conspiracy to obstruct justice; withholding a document or record; corruptly concealing a document in a federal investigation,” among other charges.

It’s always been my understanding that as the chief executive, the president enjoys unlimited authority to declassify information — with a wave of the hand, wafting burning sage over the documents, or just by thinking about it really hard.

The issue of retaining documents is where the issue might get trickier, but as America First Legal noted, these new revelations are consistent with the organization’s “whitepaper contending that the President of the United States has absolute authority over presidential papers.”

Going further, “if the records Trump allegedly destroyed are still preserved within the EOP or the U.S. Department of Defense as part of PITC-created information systems, then other claims in the indictment may be baseless.”

If America First’s analysis is correct, Trump is on sound legal footing on possession of whatever documents he kept at Mar-A-Lago, and whatever he may have destroyed could have been just copies of what is still on the PITC systems authorized by none other than Barack Obama.

Somewhere in an 8,500-square-foot home in Washington’s tony Kalorama neighborhood, a former president must be seething.