Category: Uncategorized

July 29

587 BC – The Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar the Great, sacks Jerusalem and destroys the First Temple.

904 –After a short siege, moslem Saracen raiders under Leo of Tripoli sack Thessaloniki, the Byzantine Empire’s second largest city, and plunder it for a week.

1148 – The Siege of Damascus ends in a decisive crusader defeat and leads to the disintegration of the Second Crusade.

1567 – The 4 year old James VI is crowned King of Scotland at Stirling.

1871 – The Connecticut Valley Railroad opens between Old Saybrook, Connecticut and Hartford, Connecticut in the United States.

1899 – The First Hague Convention, which a part of is the ban on the use of expanding and soft point bullets, is signed.

1907 – Sir Robert Baden-Powell sets up the Brownsea Island Scout camp in Poole Harbour on the south coast of England which is regarded as the foundation of the Scouting movement.

1914 – Professor Irwin Corey is born in Brooklyn.

1921 – Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the  Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party)

1957 – The Tonight Show – Tonight Starring Jack Paar premieres on NBC with Jack Paar beginning the modern day talk show.

1958 – President Eisenhower signs into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

1959 – The first congressional elections are held in Hawaii as a state of the Union.

1965 – The first 4,000 troops of the  101st Airborne Division arrive in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh Bay, beginning the increase of forces ordered the day before by President Johnson.

1967 – Off the coast of North Vietnam the USS Forrestal catches on fire in the worst U.S. naval disaster since World War II, killing 134.

1967 – During the fourth day of celebrating its 400th anniversary, the city of Caracas, Venezuela is shaken by an earthquake, leaving 500 dead.

1976 – In New York City, David Berkowitz (a.k.a. the “Son of Sam”) kills 1 person and seriously wounds another in the first of a series of shootings.

For a long time friend

San Jose Mayor: Yes, the Constitution Even Applies to Your “Kingdom”

The mayor of San Jose must have the same ailment as Governor Newsom because he, too, thinks his position grants him authority far beyond his legal scope.  While Newsom has bestowed upon himself kingly emergency “COVID” powers, Mayor Sam Liccardo thinks he can singlehandedly circumvent the Constitution.  How clever of him to require all gun owners in his city to carry liability insurance!  How very progressive.

He may think he’s first at bat in trying to force this policy, but he’s not.  The idea’s been around a while and it’s not been successful for the simple reason that it’s dumb as a box of rocks.  Not only is it an unworkable scheme (impossible to underwrite) – but it’s unconstitutional as well.

Requiring someone to carry liability insurance for participating in a Constitutionally guaranteed right such as the 2nd Amendment is no different than steamrolling the 1st Amendment by mandating the media carry such insurance.  At times, does not the written word result in extraordinary damages? Hasn’t the media fanned the flame of violence, leading to loss of livelihoods, property and yes, even lives?  Yet, to require the media to carry liability insurance is patently absurd – just as it would be for requiring the same of the ordinary American citizen who owns a gun or two.  Even though much of what the media turns out these days is nothing short of garbage, they are justly covered by our Constitution. This is one of the key reasons America is America and what differentiates us from the rest of the world – we have enumerated rights that are protected – fake news or otherwise.

In an op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, David B. Rivkin Jr. And Andrew M. Grossman get right to the heart of this particular matter:

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All of those new Virginia gun control laws didn’t stop homicides from hitting highest level in decades. Should be some kind of clue there.

Homicides in Virginia hit highest levels in two decades

Virginia’s murder rate climbed to its highest level since the late 1990s last year, according to crime statistics released by the Virginia State Police this week.

Police reported 537 homicides in 2020, up from 455 in 2019, bringing the rate per 100,000 residents to just over six — a number last seen in 1998 as the crime wave that peaked earlier in the decade began to taper off, according to FBI reports.

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[Wyoming Legislature] Committee revives controversial gun bill in surprise vote

The Joint Agriculture Committee Tuesday revived a controversial gun rights bill on a split-second, unannounced vote moments before the committee adjourned in a move lambasted by critics for its lack of transparency.

The bill, last session’s Senate File 81 – Second Amendment Preservation Act, would prevent agents of the state from enforcing any federal law or regulation that restricts a citizen’s right to carry firearms. A heavily amended version of the legislation passed the Senate by an overwhelming margin in March, but died without a hearing in the House when it failed to meet a key procedural deadline.

Tuesday’s measure passed on a 7-4 vote.

Freshman Rep. Robert Wharff (R-Evanston) told committee members Tuesday he believed if the bill had been assigned to the Agriculture Committee during the session, it would have advanced to the floor, where he said he believed it had the votes to pass. The Joint Agriculture Committee is considered by many the Legislature’s most conservative committee, and has colloquially been known over the years as the “Guns and Ag” committee, according to committee member and former gun rights lobbyist Sen. Anthony Bouchard (R-Cheyenne).

Nullification bills like the Second Amendment Preservation Act have become popular with many Republican-led state legislatures in recent months as they prepare for anticipated federal gun restrictions. Despite previous court rulings that have found similar laws in states like Kansas to be unconstitutional, more than a dozen state legislatures have considered some form of nullification legislation, with Missouri passing a version in its most recent legislative session.

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A Federal Judge Denied NRA’s Bid For Bankruptcy. What Happens Next?

The NRA’s attempt to file bankruptcy and reorganize in the state of Texas has been denied by a federal judge in the Lone Star State, who issued a ruling on Tuesday afternoon that the Second Amendment organization’s move was not “filed in good faith both because it was filed to gain an unfair litigation advantage and because it was filed to avoid a state regulatory scheme.”

The judge’s decision means that New York Attorney General Letitia James’ attempt to dissolve the organization can continue in New York, where the National Rifle Association has been chartered since 1871.

The NRA was quick to release a statement following the judge’s decision, in which the organization vowed to “continue to fight on all fronts in the interests of its mission and its members.” Here’s the text of the full statement.

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Yes, Biden Is Swindling Americans: White House Staffer Lets the Cat Out of the Bag

The myth of the “moderate” Joe Biden stubbornly refuses to die — partially because the Democrats and the legacy media are working overtime to keep it breathing. From day one, Biden has aimed to erase his predecessor’s legacy, rejected Republican efforts to pass clean bills on COVID-19 and infrastructure, and inflamed the culture war on abortion, transgenderism, and race. He even called Georgia’s new election integrity bill “Jim Crow on steroids.”

Yet, somehow, Democrats and the legacy media continue to twist the limits of deception by branding this firebrand a “moderate.” This weekend, a White House staffer confessed that this is a key part of Biden’s strategy.

“[A]t his hundred-day mark, Biden is the most liberal president we’ve had — and the public thinks he’s a moderate,” an unnamed White House staffer told New York Magazine. “That’s a winning strategy to me. They’re willing to accept that you’re gonna write this piece as long as they know that swing voters in Colorado aren’t gonna read it.”

This gobsmacking admission comes nine paragraphs into Olivia Nuzzi’s article about “How the White House Polices Language in Washington.” Nuzzi’s piece focuses on how the Biden White House responded to the president’s recent gaffe in which he admitted there was a “crisis” on the southern border in contradiction to his administration’s messaging that there was no “crisis” on the border.

Nuzzi noted that the word “crisis” “suggests spiraling, breakdowns in the system, and the people who work for the new president happen to love systems.”

This is the return to normalcy: The professionals are back in the building — hyper-sensitive and type A — and Washington sure feels tense. “We are just not going to get pulled down in the muck of right-wing-driven arguments about word choice,” Psaki said. Semantics debates, she added, keeping with the swamp imagery, are a form of “crocodile wrestling.”

Yet the Biden administration does focus on word choice, intently. Conservatives have merely raised complaints about the White House’s intentional strategies.

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 Defounding America.

************

But, though the traders and Tea Partiers didn’t quite understand it, the federal government long ago had turned from the shield of individual liberty into a vast engine of redistribution. That transformation could occur because the Framers’ Constitution was body-snatched by the doctrine of the “living constitution,” which—as Woodrow Wilson first formulated it—saw the Supreme Court sitting as a permanent Constitutional Convention, making up laws as it went along, heedless of the 1787 scheme’s checks. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal used Wilson’s doctrine as a license to remake America’s economy and society. Once the Supreme Court buckled to FDR’s threat to pack it and started voting his way, the justices allowed an utterly foreign governmental structure to devour the Framers’ republic from within, until it broke out of the shell as something altogether different.

Not that FDR was entirely frank about his transformative enterprise. Where Wilson had dismissed the Framers as obsolete relics in a Darwinian age, Roosevelt claimed to extend their great work even as he undid it. In his second inaugural address of 1937, he hailed the 150th anniversary of the Constitutional Convention, which had “created a strong government with powers of united action sufficient then and now to solve problems utterly beyond individual or local solution”—a wildly false characterization. Chastened by America’s near-loss in the Revolution, the Framers sought to create a government strong enough to protect national and individual independence but not so strong that, given mankind’s inherent power-hunger, it could become what they called an “elective despotism.” So they limited that power to such clearly enumerated tasks as raising an army, a navy, and taxes; coining and borrowing money; and regulating foreign and interstate commerce. All other matters they emphatically left to “individual or local solution.”

They certainly didn’t mean to put the whole U.S. economy under federal regulation. But as FDR later admitted, when he took the oath to defend the Constitution just before delivering the 1937 address, he had wanted to shout, “Yes, but it’s the Constitution as I understand it.” The New Deal’s main thrust, after all, was precisely to take total control of the economy, under the ruse of federal power to regulate interstate……

BLUF:
Share of Americans who favor stricter gun laws has declined since 2019

Amid a Series of Mass Shootings in the U.S., Gun Policy Remains Deeply Divisive
Declining support among Republicans for ban on assault-style weapons, national gun registry

Link to PDF

In an era marked by deep divisions between Republicans and Democrats, few issues are as politically polarizing as gun policy. While a few specific policy proposals continue to garner bipartisan support, the partisan divisions on other proposals – and even on whether gun violence is a serious national problem – have grown wider over the last few years.

Today, just over half of Americans (53%) say gun laws should be stricter than they currently are, a view held by 81% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents but just 20% of Republicans and Republican leaners. Similarly, while nearly three-quarters of Democrats (73%) say making it harder to legally obtain guns would lead to fewer mass shootings, only 20% of Republicans say this, with most (65%) saying this would have no effect.

The new national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted from April 5-11, 2021 among 5,109 adults, finds that 73% of Democrats consider gun violence to be a very big problem for the country today, compared with just 18% of Republicans who say the same. The current partisan gap on this question is 11-percentage-points wider than in 2018 and 19 points wider than in 2016.

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March 18

1241 – After consolidating the invasion of the Kievan Russia to the east, the  Mongols of Genghis Khan under the command of Subutai Bahadur, invade Poland, overwhelm Polish armies in Kraków and plunder the city.

1644 – The Third Anglo-Powhatan War begins in the Colony of Virginia.

1766 – After only being in effect in the American colonies for a few months, due to great protests, “No Taxation Without Representation”, the British Parliament repeals the Stamp Act. The protests by the colonists are generally considered to be the prelude of events that finally resulted in the Revolutionary War and American Independence.

1865 – At Washington City, Georgia, the Congress of the Confederate States adjourns for the last time and disbands.

1874 – King Kalākaua of Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trade rights.

1937 – A natural gas leak explodes at the New London School in New London, Texas, killing 300 people, mostly children.

1959 – The Hawaii Admission Act is signed into law, with statehood for Hawaii coming into effect on August, 21.

1965 – Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2, becomes the first person to walk in space.

1968 – The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency.

1990 – In the largest art theft in US history, 12 paintings, collectively worth around $500 million, are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

Actually, I don’t care all that much for political kabuki theater, no matter the party, but this is just one more indication that Joe isn’t all there.

What Happened to Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address?

Have you been wondering what happened to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address?

Generally, the State of the Union address is delivered in late January to early February.

So, again, we go back to that question: where’s Biden’s speech?

What’s sort of interesting about this question is that Joe Biden himself apparently indicated to reporters that it would be in February, that he wanted to talk about COVID relief, according to Axios.

Some media seem to have had it tentatively scheduled for Feb. 23, as you can see from these screenshots.

Check the dates:

 

 

BLM even had an event scheduled, based on that tentative scheduling.

 

One would think the AP and PBS had some reason to pick that date and not just pull it out of the air.

But when questioned, Jen Psaki said there were no plans for Biden to address the joint session this month and that despite what Biden had said and the tentative scheduling some media had, she claimed it “was never planned to be in February.”

Fox News’ Chad Pergram reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says there won’t be an address until the COVID deal is done. In other words, Biden is giving up the opportunity to talk about the virus and the bill until after it’s passed? Alrighty, now.

Politico is now suggesting that it might be March, which as they observed would be the latest in “decades.”

As we previously reported, Biden hasn’t even had a solo press conference with the media yet. By this time, both Barack Obama and Donald Trump had done solo pressers. When Jen Psaki was asked about that earlier this week, she refused to give the media a date as to when he would be doing one, but said he would do it at some point in the future. Not exactly what you would call leadership in a time of pandemic.

February 25

1836 – Samuel Colt is granted a United States patent for his revolver firearm.

1843 – Royal Navy Captain Lord George Paulet takes it on his own authority to occupy the Kingdom of Hawaii in the name of Great Britain.

1932 – Adolf Hitler obtains German citizenship when he is appointed a Brunswick state official by Dietrich Klagges, a fellow Nazi. As a result, Hitler is able to run for Reichspräsident in the 1932 election.

1933 – CV-4 USS Ranger, the first purpose built aircraft carrier to be commissioned by the US Navy, is launched from Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co, at Newport News, Virginia, sponsored by Mrs. Lou Henry Hoover wife of the President.

1951 – The first Pan American Games are officially opened in Buenos Aires by Argentine President Juan Perón.

1991 – At a meeting in Budapest, the membership decides to disband the Warsaw Pact.

The rest of the article?
Boilerplate Blah Blah Blather, not worth the time to copypasta.
Read it if you want, but that one line under the link pretty much says it all.
More meetings than action? Acknowledgment that his campaign promises to use Executive Orders for gun control was fraudulent propaganda. There is very little he can do as President to exert control on the domestic side of the equation and they all know it.

Biden considers regulating ‘ghost guns,’ other executive actions to curb gun violence
The president’s movement on guns has, so far, been more meetings than action.

February 23

303 – Roman emperor Diocletian orders the destruction of the Christian church in Nicomedia, beginning eight years of persecution until emperor Constantine became sole ruler and converted to Christianity.

532 – Byzantine emperor Justinian I orders the building of a new Orthodox Christian basilica in Constantinople – the Hagia Sophia.

1455 – Johan Gutenberg publishes a Bible, printed, for the first time, with movable type.

1778 – Baron Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben arrives at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania to help to train the Continental Army.

1836 – The Siege of the Alamo begins in San Antonio, Texas.

1870 – Mississippi is readmitted to the Union.

1886 – Charles Martin Hall produces the first samples of aluminum from the electrolysis of aluminum oxide.

1903 – Cuba leases Guantánamo Bay to the United States “in perpetuity”.

1905 – Chicago attorney Paul Harris and three other businessmen meet for lunch to form the Rotary Club, the world’s first service club.

1927 – President Calvin Coolidge signs into law a bill establishing the Federal Radio Commission, later the Federal Communications Commission.

1927 – German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg writes a letter to fellow physicist Wolfgang Pauli, in which he describes his Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Mechanics.

1942 – The Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-17 under the command of Commander Kozo Nishino, bombards the Ellwood oilfield, near Santa Barbara, California inflicting minimal real damage and no casualties, but causing mass panic among the population.

1945 – On the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, 1lt. Harold G. Schrier, executive officer of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marine Regiment, 5th Marine Division,  leads a combat patrol up Mount Suribachi, and on reaching the summit raises a U.S. flag, which is later replaced by a much larger flag, the raising of which is both photographed and filmed for posterity.

On the Philippine island of Luzon, troops of the U.S. 11th Airborne Division, along with Filipino guerrillas, free all 2,147 allied civilian and military  captives of the Los Baños internment camp.

1954 – The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine begins in Pittsburgh.

1983 – The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency announces the buy out and evacuation of the dioxin contaminated community of Times Beach, Missouri.

2008 – The U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit bomber Spirit of Kansas crashes on takeoff from Anderson Air Force Base, on Guam, MI, with both pilots safely ejecting, the first operational loss of a B-2.

2019 – Atlas Air Flight 3591, a Boeing 767 freighter, crashes into Trinity Bay near Anahuac, Texas, killing all 3 on board.

The number now is Eighteen (18)

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte Signs Permitless Carry Legislation Into Law

HELENA — Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a major ‘constitutional carry’ bill Thursday that will let Montanans carry concealed firearms in public settings including banks and bars without a permit, in addition to limiting university system officials’ ability to restrict firearm possession on college campuses.

The measure, House Bill 102, has been described by proponents as a way to enhance Montanans’ Second Amendment rights and promote public safety by making it easier for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves from criminals. Opponents have argued that making it easier for Montanans to keep guns close at hand won’t necessarily promote public safety.

“Our Second Amendment is very clear: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” Gianforte said at a bill signing ceremony Thursday afternoon. “Every law-abiding Montanan should be able to defend themselves and their loved ones.”

The measure allows concealed firearm possession without a permit by default in most places in the state, with exceptions including secure law enforcement facilities, federal buildings, courtrooms, and K-12 schools. Property owners and tenants would have the ability to expressly prohibit firearm possession in private homes and businesses.

Additionally, the measure forbids the state university system from restricting firearm possession on campuses beyond requiring gun owners to have safety training akin to a hunter’s education course and safety measures such as requiring that firearms be transported in cases and stored with gun locks. The university system will also be allowed to forbid gun possession by students who have been formally disciplined for substance abuse or “interpersonal violence,” and prohibit possession by attendees at football games and other events that are supervised by armed security guards.

The university system provisions of the new law take effect June 1. Its other provisions are effective immediately.

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