Category: Crap For Brains

Another pissant wanna-be tyrant, shilling for those BloombergBucks.
But it is so nice when pictures for positive ID are provided.

the need for that assault weapon ban. Not one on the buying of weapons in the future. One on ALL military style assault weapons in American hands now. Buy them back and make the penalties so severe that no one will be tempted to keep one

We aren’t doing enough to address gun violence

C.J. Mikkelsen is a retired Lieutenant/paramedic for Dallas Fire Rescue in Dallas, Texas. He was born and raised in Michigan and is glad to be back in his home state.

CJ Mikkelsen

Mark Barden’s face looks out from my phone imploring me to contribute to Sandy Hook Promise to stop gun violence about every three minutes while
I swipe it away as soon as that five second countdown ends. But it bothers me when I do it.

Yes, I’ve contributed. “I’ve done my part,” I say to myself.
But have I? Have we, as a society?

Do we protect our most vulnerable citizens, our children, like we should?
So many of us go on ridiculous rants about drag queen story hour or share posts about the “Sound of Freedom” movie on our Facebook page. We’re all about “saving the children” as long as all it takes is a painless couple of clicks of a mouse.

Sorry, folks. I can’t let it go and fade into the background.
I know, I’ve written about gun violence and I’m supposed to have moved on to the next big topic. Something keeps bringing me back to guns. It’s either Mark Barden’s face or another tragic mass shooting or something as mind-boggling as an article about a mini-AR15 that a company is marketing to children less than eight years old.

America is, according to Everytown Research & Policy, (The Impact of Gun Violence on Children and Teens | Everytown Research & Policy) killing or maiming our children at a rate of 53 each and every day of the year.

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BLUF
America needs only look to the recent past to see how the federal government handles a “public health crisis.”…  The tendency of the government to assume police-state authorities is enough to warn Americans when their elected officials want to invoke a “public health crisis.”

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS PROPOSES PUBLIC HEALTH GUN CONTROL REMEDY

Vice President Kamala Harris believes gun control is a public health issue, giving Americans more reasons to be wary of gun control efforts.

The problem is, crime isn’t a disease, as much as gun control advocates want to treat it as such. Criminal activity is a behavior and science has yet to bring about a medical remedy that prevents an individual from committing crimes. That’s not stopping Vice President Harris from tossing out debunked data, purposefully confusing suicides with criminal firearm misuse and conveniently glossing over the Biden administration’s failures to address the real problem of crime.

“I — as Vice President of the United States, I am acutely aware of the fact that gun violence is the leading cause of death of the children of America,” Vice President Harris told Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund’s Annual Gun Sense University Conference in Chicago last week. “It’s — it’s the number one cause of death — not some disease — well, although this is a form of a disease, to be sure.  Gun violence is the leading cause of death of our children.”

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Another in the ‘You Can’t Make This Up’ category.
I advise a different sort of ‘loud noise maker’, something along the lines of that lady’s .357.

Police in Democrat-Run Oakland Urge Residents to Use Airhorns if Targeted by Criminals

Police in Democrat-run Oakland, California, are urging residents to use airhorns as a way of sounding an alarm when criminals strike amid a surge in crime.

Crime has risen to a point where police are not only advising the purchase of airhorns but also the placement of “security bars to…doors and windows,” CNN noted.

Burglaries in the city are up 41 percent “and robberies by more than 20 percent.”

Mayor-elect Sheng Thao speaks during a press conference at City Hall in downtown Oakland, California, on November 23, 2022. (Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/East Bay Times via Getty Images)

Oakland resident Toni Bird indicated that she followed the advice of police and now has three airhorns.

Bird said, “The types of crime that we’re seeing feel much more violent and the consequences feel much more severe. And it feels like the people that are being targeted are people who are vulnerable.”

On Sunday, July 30, 2023, a 75-year-old Oakland woman was home alone and armed with more than an airhorn when two alleged armed intruders entered her home.

The woman had a .357 Magnum revolver, which she used to fire one shot at the alleged intruders, KTVU reported. The alleged intruders fired multiple shots then fled the scene.

The woman was not injured and her daughter described her as “Superwoman.”

Getting it gooder and harder in the San Francisco Bay Area

In the San Francisco Bay Area, we are seeing a lot of social media videos, both homebrew and news reports, of people responding to the breakdown of law and order with heartrending stories about what a nightmare they live in.

Here’s the crying woman who was assaulted by a drug-addled bum as she carried groceries, scared to death to leave her house after dark:

 

While the breakdown of law and order affects single white women, don’t think it doesn’t affect anyone else. Fact is, blacks and minorities are the hardest hit. It would be fascinating to see the New York Times finally have a story to hang on to that famous knee-jerk headline interpretation of events any time anything negative happens.

Imagine that — preferring to take one’s chances with the Chicom rulers instead of the lawless chaos of San Francisco. It certainly affirms writer Robert Young Pelton’s observation that the foremost human right is personal security.

The sense of doom and misery is all over, rolling in in daily reports, — not only can one not walk out at night in either San Francisco, or Oakland, one can’t walk out and around in the waterspanning transport beneath the two cities either:

The tales of misery continue and continue.

City officials, such as San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, as well as now-ousted district attorney Chesa Boudin, pretty well are in denial about a problem. Breed says it’s bad press, while Boudin said it was all in people’s heads, pulling out a data salad to “prove” that crime was not so bad and claiming that feeling unsafe was only a “feeling.” What an insult to the young woman who was assaulted by the vicious foul-mouthed bum outside the grocery store.

Others, such as San Francisco wokester supervisor Hillary Ronen, claim the mayhem and chaos and insecurity is “a national problem” so the city’s ruling class can’t be held accountable.

Still others say the solution is more money for homeless “programs” including more shelter space:

But there’s no question it’s about city leadership. In the non-city run Presidio park area, which is administered by the federal authorities, things are different:

The astonishing thing here though, is that we never see the city shift from left to right, and very rarely do we ever see voter holding anyone accountable.

The first white young woman in the TikTok video, based on what’s been written by others in the comments section, apparently votes progressive will continue to do so.

I can’t tell how the distressed black Oakland woman seeking to flee plans to vote, and it’s possible she may vote differently than most black voters in Oakland have in the past, but black voters in general are the progressive bloc’s most reliable voter base, and that’s countrywide. Odds are higher that she won’t change the way she votes when she finds safe haven elsewhere.

When we talk about a broken political system, it may be that people who are unable to change their voting patterns no matter what happens to them, even if they are driven out of their cities or terrified of going out at night, may be what makes it broken. The one instance of change that we did see — the ouster of Boudin a couple years ago — was driven by Asian voters in a small turnout election, where a liberal alternative was available, and Silicon Valley money was behind the effort.

Maybe the only way for anything to change in the city is for a law-and-order progressive, or at least someone who can fool the public long enough that that is what he or she is, until she can get into office. New York’s Eric Adams got in this way — and he hasn’t made things much better. That, too, creates a looping broken system.

Anything that can’t go on, though, won’t. For decades, shareholders and board member in companies refused to rock the boat — but somehow that eventually changed, and perhaps that dynamic may repeat in the Bay Area’s failed blue cities. Maybe it is a very long, extended process and we are still upstream of the falls.

But that it doesn’t happen with significant speed is a political paradox that voters cannot hold their elected officials accountable and demand results by voting them out. They just make TikTok videos to complain about the mayhem, or else just flee the city, their progressive voting patterns intact.

It cries out for some kind of real sociological study as to why this strange dynamic is happening — whether the videos suggest change in the air, or just more of the same complacency and paralysis and satisfaction with failed solutions. Right now, I don’t know the answer to this, but you can bet a lot of people are beating their brains out on the political to find out exactly why.

Uvalde shooter’s cousin arrested for alleged threats ‘to do the same thing’

The cousin of Uvalde mass shooter Salvador Ramos has been arrested after allegedly threatening to follow in his footsteps.

Nathan Cruz, 17, faces a felony charge of making a terroristic threat to the public and a misdemeanor charge of making a terroristic threat to a family member.

According to KSAT, police in San Antonio, Texas arrived on scene Monday after receiving a tip from a member of Cruz’s family. The caller, later identified as his mother, stated that Cruz had told his sister he wanted to “do the same thing” as Ramos. She added that he “threatened to shoot her in the head and stated he would ‘shoot the school’.” Cruz, whose family home is situated across the street from an elementary school, allegedly highlighted the fact that classes would be “starting soon.”

Cruz’s mother also disclosed that she had heard him speaking on the phone with a man earlier Monday morning, and claimed that during the conversation, he “attempted to acquire an AR-15 through an illegal private sale.”

As CNN reports, Cruz’s mother was “especially concerned” because he was “currently on probation [and] was intoxicated at the time.”

Following his arrest, Cruz was transported to Bexar County Jail, where his bond was set at $160,000. He “denied making any threats.”

It has been more than a year since Ramos shot his grandmother in the face before carrying out the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that took the lives of 19 children and two adults. First responders were criticized for their lack of action, which allowed Ramos to enter the school, barricade himself in a classroom, and kill mercilessly. He was ultimately shot dead by a law enforcement officer, but only after perpetrating the attack.

In the months since, members of Ramos’ have spoken out, offering their apologies and questioning what they could have done to prevent the incident. Ramos’ father even went so far as to say, “He should’ve just killed me … instead of doing something like that to someone.”

Kabuki Theater

Don Beyer

Rep. Don Beyer (So nice when they provide pictures for PID)

Democrats demand 1,000% excise tax on ‘assault weapons,’ high-capacity magazines
Democrats failed to move the same idea when they controlled the House last year

More than two dozen House Democrats put forward legislation Friday that would slap “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines with a 1,000% excise tax, a change that would raise the price of a $500 weapon to $5,000 in a bid to reduce access to guns across the country.

Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., and 24 other House Democrats introduced the legislation Friday. It’s the second time Democrats have put forward the idea.

Beyer and 37 Democrats proposed the same idea last year when Democrats controlled the House, but it never moved.

The text of Beyer’s new bill was not out as of the weekend, and it was unclear if any changes were made from his 2022 version. His bill from last year imposed the tax on any magazine or related device that can accept more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The same 1,000% tax would be imposed on any “semiautomatic assault weapon,” which last year’s bill defined as a semiautomatic rifle or pistol with a fixed magazine of 10 rounds or more or that have other various features.

Under that rule, a weapon that normally costs $2,000 would force customers to pay more than $20,000, a change Beyer argued last year could help “curb the epidemic of gun violence.”

“Congress must take action to stem the flood of weapons of war into American communities, which have taken a terrible toll in Uvalde, Buffalo, Tulsa and too many other places,” Beyer said then. “Again and again assault weapons designed for use on the battlefield have been used in mass shootings at schools, grocery stores, hospitals, churches, synagogues, malls, theaters, bars and so on.”

The National Rifle Association has argued gun control advocates invented the term “assault weapon” to “deliberately confuse the public and advance the political cause of gun control.” The NRA says the term “assault rifle” applies only to automatic weapons, while gun control advocates are looking to put controls on semi-automatic weapons.

Fully automatic weapons discharge rounds continuously while the trigger is pulled, and the NRA has said these weapons are used by the U.S. armed services but are not easily obtained by the public, unlike semi-automatic weapons that fire just a single round.

Beyer’s new bill was introduced a day after more than 100 Democrats told House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., they are “disappointed” that House GOP leaders haven’t moved any legislation this year to curb gun ownership in America.

“As Members of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, we call on you to schedule votes on gun violence prevention legislation as soon as possible this year,” they wrote in a public letter to McCarthy.

“Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children in America since 2020. Last year, 1,686 children were killed and another 4,485 were injured by gun violence,” the letter added. “Despite this preventable carnage, the House has yet to vote on even one gun violence prevention bill.”

Iowa Leaps Into Controversial State Digital ID Scheme
The latest state to push the contentious technology.

Amidst rising concerns surrounding digital privacy, the state of Iowa has taken a controversial leap into the world of digital identification with its new Iowa Mobile ID app. The app, now available on both Google Play and the Apple App Store, provides a new platform for users to verify their age or identity, a move that critics argue risks personal data security.

While it purports to supplement the conventional physical ID card, the fact that users are advised to still carry physical cards has raised eyebrows. The question arises – is the convenience of the app worth the potential privacy risks, especially considering its digital nature doesn’t entirely replace the physical card?

The process of creating a digital ID, while simple on the surface, has elicited concerns. Users are asked to upload images of their driver’s license or state-issued ID, and also capture a moving selfie for facial recognition. Critics argue that this gathering and storing of biometric data may present significant privacy implications and potential security vulnerabilities. Even the use of a PIN password system, while enhancing security to an extent, isn’t foolproof against potential hacking attempts.

One contentious point is the creation of a scannable QR code, which carries the user’s information. Although businesses are not compelled to accept this mobile form of ID, any who do will have access to this encoded personal information. As it’s a new technology, there may also be a delay in widespread acceptance, presenting both practical and privacy issues.

The app, developed by French identity verification firm IDEMIA, states that it stores user data within the state’s record system and the user’s device. The company further insists businesses can only access user data with explicit consent. But the concerns remain. Critics wonder whether the current privacy measures are truly sufficient to protect the sensitive data of millions from potential misuse.

The launch of the Iowa Mobile ID comes after a decade-long journey, filled with delays due to compliance with digital ID management regulations. Interestingly, while intended to be among the early adopters of Apple’s mobile ID program, the initiative has only expanded to Maryland and Colorado so far. This slow adoption could suggest a broader hesitation in the face of potential privacy issues.

Federal judge bizarrely contends that most firearms can be banned without violating the Second Amendment

Last month, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton tossed out a lawsuit challenging Connecticut’s ban on concealed carry in state parks, ruling that the plaintiff in the litigation didn’t have standing to sue because there was no credible threat of him being arrested or prosecuted for violating the ban. That was an exceedingly odd decision, but it kept the ban in place (at least for now), which counts as a win as far as anti-gunners are concerned.

Now Arterton has followed up with another legal doozy, rejecting a preliminary injunction against the state’s newly-expanded ban on so-called assault weapons and large capacity magazines by declaring that the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence allows for bans on commonly-owned weapons, and that “only a ban on firearms that are so pervasively used for self-defense that to ban them would ‘infringe,’ or destroy, the right to self-defense” would violate our right to keep and bear arms.

Under Arterton’s interpretation of Heller, McDonald, Caetano, and Bruen everything from bolt-action hunting rifles to single-barreled shotguns could be banned without calling into question the right to keep and bear arms; presumably leaving only some (but likely not all) handguns protected by the Second Amendment’s language.

Unlike the broader category of handguns at issue in Heller and Bruen, the record developed here demonstrates that assault weapons and LCMs are suboptimal for self-defense.

A set of statutes that bans only a subset of each category of firearms that possess new and dangerous characteristics that make them susceptible to abuse by nonlaw abiding citizens wielding them for unlawful purposes imposes a comparable burden to the regulations on Bowie knives, percussion cap pistols, and other dangerous or concealed weapons, particularly when “there remain more than one thousand firearms that Connecticut residents can purchase for responsible and lawful uses like self-defense, home defense, and other lawful purposes such as hunting and sport shooting.”

Well hang on there. If, according to Arterton, only those arms that are “pervasively” used in self-defense cannot be banned, then firearms most commonly used for lawful purposes such as hunting and sport shooting have no protection whatsoever under the Second Amendment, regardless of whether or not the state of Connecticut still allows them to be sold.

You can read Arterton’s lengthy dissertation for yourself here, but I’ll caution you before you start that her opinion reminds me of the apocryphal quote attributed to W.C. Fields; if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with bullsh**. Arterton definitely left me scratching my head on multiple occasions, such as her rejection of the use of FBI crime statistics that point to rifles of any kind being rarely used in homicide because the data supposedly “provides limited relevant insight” since they “these statistics do not track what types of firearms are used with enough precision to determine whether they are assault weapons.” Arterton, meanwhile, blithely took the state’s “expert” John Donohue of Stanford University at face value, though Donohue has maintained that the individual right to keep and bear arms was created by the Supreme Court in Heller and was not a pre-existing right protected by the Second Amendment in 1791.

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It’s apparent he’s nothing but a puppet. The question is; who are the real one pulling his strings?

The Flashcard Presidency: Biden’s Aides Scramble to Diffuse Narrative That He’s a Total Mess

Joe Biden collapsed at the US Air Force Academy’s commencement, an event that even his aides privately worked to ensure never happened again. They’ve developed a plan to make the president look vigorous and mentally sound to conduct his duties as president. And yet, the man devolved into a mumbling, soporific mess during his White House meeting/photo-op with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

NBC News had a lengthy piece about the Biden staff’s protocol to keep the president looking spry in the public’s view. As it was in 2020, the main concern is that Biden is both too old and too senile to be president. That narrative has grown as more public episodes of mental degeneration have presented themselves. Though buried in the piece, Biden’s staff and a former cabinet secretary, Marty Walsh, tried to relay how Joe is still working into the late night hours and how if you hugged him, you’ll see he’s healthy like a rhino. The problem is the piece goes give the impression that Biden’s aides know a mental foul-up is bound to occur again. The man will stumble even with flashcards to remind him to make certain points during meetings and speeches and a shorter staircase to Air Force One to ensure he doesn’t fall.

Even with no major primaries or debates on the Democratic side, the rigorous schedule a national campaign takes once a Republican nominee is selected will take its toll on a man who thinks railroads can be built over oceans (via NBC News):

Biden’s answer to voters who question whether he’s up to the rigors of a second term is simple: “Watch me.” The trouble is, voters are watching, and what they’re seeing is hardening impressions that it’s time for him to step aside, polling shows. Apart from being the most taxing job on the world stage, the presidency is also the most public, and signs of advancing age are tough to miss. 

Faced with life’s unbending reality — no one gets any younger — Biden’s advisers have been trying to blunt concerns about his age since his 2020 campaign. The challenge gets trickier by the day as the oldest president in history embarks on one last race against a Republican Party eager to pounce on every miscue. 

Any misstep is bound to be magnified when voters are already prone to believe Biden should consider retirement. Biden aides aren’t promising that he won’t stumble again. 

“Physically, he’s quite frail and he falls off his bicycle, or whatever,” said a former Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk more freely. “He doesn’t have the stamina levels of an Obama or a younger president. People worry about his physical frailty and running from age 82 to 86” — the age Biden would be at the end of a second term. “That is really old by European standards. Really, really old. We don’t have anyone that age.” […] 

Biden’s use of the shorter staircase, which, of course, reduces the risk of a televised fall that goes viral, has more than doubled since Biden’s tumble at the commencement ceremony, according to an analysis by NBC News. In the weeks prior to tripping onstage, Biden used the shorter set of stairs to get on and off the presidential aircraft 37% of the time. In the past seven weeks he’s used them 84% of the time, or 31 out of the 37 times he’s gotten on and off the plane. […] 

The White House did not directly answer a question about whether Biden was using the shorter staircase to minimize the chance of a fall. An aide said the choice comes down to the weather, the airport and whether the press wants a photo on the tarmac with official greeters. (There was no rain Thursday when Biden took the shorter staircase at Joint Base Andrews.) 

Biden seems to be preserving his energy in other ways. It’s customary on foreign trips for the president to schmooze with other leaders at dinners once the meetings are over. Less formal and structured than the events preceding them, the dinners offer a chance for leaders to bond, talk through differences or amplify a point. On two recent international trips, Biden has chosen to skip the nighttime socializing. […] 

Other age-compensating measures are logistical, and probably familiar to many who’ve reached a certain stage in life: extra-large font on his teleprompter and note cards to remind him of the points he wants to make in meetings. […]

With Biden, displays of frailty are bound to get more scrutiny given the propensity of many voters to believe he shouldn’t run again. 

Advisers recognize this dynamic as well as the political cost of the next awkward moment. 

They gave a collective groan when Biden fell at the Air Force Academy, knowing the episode wouldn’t soon be forgotten. It turns out the sandbag had been camouflaged so that it would blend in, making it easier to miss, a senior White House aide said. 

“It happened in seconds,” another aide said, “but it’s going to be in front of us for months and maybe years.” 

Federal judge blocks Biden’s controversial asylum policy in a major blow to administration.

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked President Joe Biden’s controversial asylum policy, delivering a major blow to the administration, which has leaned on the measure to drive down border crossings. The judge put the ruling on hold for 14 days for a possible appeal.

The ruling against the Biden administration could have major implications on the US-Mexico border, where crossings have plummeted since the rollout of the asylum policy, among other measures. A Justice Department spokesperson told CNN that the department plans to appeal.

“The Justice Department disagrees with the district court’s ruling today in the East Bay case and intends to appeal the decision and to seek a stay pending appeal. We remain confident in our position that the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule is a lawful exercise of the broad authority granted by the immigration laws,” the spokesperson said.

Judge Jon Tigar of the California Northern District Court previously ruled against a similar policy under the Trump administration and expressed skepticism that there was any daylight between Biden’s policy and the Trump-era one during a court hearing last week. Administration officials have rejected the comparison to Trump-era rules.

The Biden administration has rolled out a series of measures to try to stem the flow of migration and manage the situation along the US-Mexico border but is facing multiple lawsuits from Republican states as well as advocates, posing a risk to Biden’s border plans.

Tigar’s ruling stems from a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union among other immigrant rights groups over a new asylum rule that largely bars migrants who passed through another country from seeking asylum in the United States, marking a departure from decades-long protocol.

The Biden policy, like the Trump-era one, garnered wide condemnation from Biden allies, including Democratic lawmakers and immigrant advocates when it was rolled out. “To be clear, this was not our first preference or even our second,” an administration official conceded at the time, adding that the onus is on Congress to pass reform.

The ACLU applauded the ruling in a statement.

“The ruling is a victory, but each day the Biden administration prolongs the fight over its illegal ban, many people fleeing persecution and seeking safe harbor for their families are instead left in grave danger,” said Katrina Eiland, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, who argued the case. “The promise of America is to serve as a beacon of freedom and hope, and the administration can and should do better to fulfill this promise, rather than perpetuate cruel and ineffective policies that betray it.”

The Justice Department is expected to appeal the ruling. If the Justice Department moves ahead with an appeal, the case will go to the Ninth Circuit, which twice affirmed Tigar’s rulings on similar policies under Trump.

During last week’s hearing, Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni argued that the rule has exemptions and that there are other lawful pathways that have been made available to migrants seeking to come to the United States.

Migrants who secure an appointment through the CBP One app to present at port of entry, for example, are exempt. While there are some exceptions, the rule generally applies to migrants who unlawfully cross the US-Mexico border. It doesn’t apply to unaccompanied migrant children.

Blocking the rule, Reuveni told Tigar, would “potentially undermine the ability to negotiate” with countries who have partnered with the US to manage the flow of migration.

Eiland, who argued on behalf of the plaintiffs, said the rule put migrants in harm’s way and that the regulation itself doesn’t provide any additional pathways. “There are no carrots that the rule itself actually offers,” she said.

Administration officials have pointed to a dramatic drop in border crossings since the end of a pandemic policy, known as Title 42, that allowed for the quick expulsion of migrants, as evidence that the administration’s approach, including increased deportations and tougher penalties.

In June, US Border Patrol arrested nearly 100,000 migrants along the US southern border, marking a decrease from May and marking the lowest monthly border encounters since February 2021, according to US Customs and Border Protection data.

But the Biden administration has continued to grapple with unprecedented mass movement of people in the Western hemisphere, which is the outcome of the coronavirus pandemic decimating conditions in the region.

The shifting migration patterns has put a strain on federal resources, as border authorities have encountered an increasing number of Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans. The US is largely barred from deporting migrants from those nationalities back to their home countries because of strained diplomatic relations.

Tigar concluded that the programs that provide migrants an avenue to apply to lawfully migrate to the US are specific to certain nationalities and not meaningful options for all asylum seekers.

“The Rule therefore assumes that these exceptions will, at the very least, present meaningful options to noncitizens subject to the Rule. Parole programs are not meaningfully available to many noncitizens subject to the Rule. Though other parole programs exist, the Rule generally relies on the parole programs for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, Venezuelan, and Ukrainian nationals. These programs are country-specific and ‘are not universally available, even to the covered populations,’” he wrote.

He also said that the government violated a law known as the Administrative Procedures Act – which sets certain guidelines for how agencies can roll out policies – in its implementation of the asylum rule.

“To justify limiting eligibility for asylum based on the expansion of other means of entry or protection is to consider factors Congress did not intend to affect such eligibility,” Tigar wrote. “The Rule is therefore arbitrary and capricious.”

Our society’s ‘top brains’ have gone mad — and dysfunctional politics is the result

“Suppose we got it all wrong and the real crazies are the TV people in nice suits and $300 haircuts?”
That’s an observation by Richard Fernandez on Twitter, and he has a good point.

There’s a lot of craziness in the air these days.
But for the most part it seems to be flowing from the top down, not bubbling up from the bottom.

It wasn’t farmers and factory workers who came up with the idiotic COVID responses — nor was it they who originated the more or less criminal idea of conducting “gain of function” research on making dangerous viruses more dangerous.

It wasn’t shopkeepers and bus drivers who thought the way to deal with burgeoning urban crime was to get rid of police and release criminals without bail.

It hasn’t been landscapers and auto mechanics championing the notion that a child in the single-digit age range can make a lifetime choice about his or her genitalia or maintaining that even criticizing that idea is itself a species of “violence.”

Ordinary Americans haven’t been claiming the way to promote free speech is to censor people or the way to end racism is to classify everyone by race and consequently treat them differently.

It’s not the working class that wants to “save the planet” by blocking traffic, starting forest fires or banning pickup trucks or gas stoves (though private jets remain surprisingly free from criticism).

All these crazy ideas and more are the product of our allegedly educated and intelligent overclass, the experts, policymakers and media types who in theory represent the thinking part, the brains, of our society. But there’s something wrong with these people — the “brains” of our society are basically crazy. Crazy is when you believe and do things that obviously don’t make sense or fit with the facts.

It’s important to have an intellectual class.
Exactly how important is open to question — in his recent book “How Innovation Works,” Matt Ridley argues that most 19th- and 20th-century innovations actually came from tradespeople and industry, not academics doing abstract research — but important enough.
The COVID lockdown scolds killed people — but they still have no shame

There are dangers to an intelligentsia, though.
Communism and Nazism started as intellectual movements; so did such fads as eugenics and lobotomies.
The Tuskegee Experiment wasn’t the product of racist Klansmen but of the curiosity of credentialed public-health experts.

In a 1999 essay, Neal Stephenson wrote that “during this century, intellectualism failed, and everyone knows it. In places like Russia and Germany, the common people agreed to loosen their grip on traditional folkways, mores, and religion, and let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. Those wordy intellectuals used to be merely tedious; now they seem kind of dangerous as well.”

It’s gotten worse.

Ideas can be dangerous; playing with them can be like gain-of-function research with viruses — if they escape into the general environment, disaster can ensue.

Guardrails like custom, religion and moral traditions made such disasters less likely, but we have spent basically my entire lifetime weakening those guardrails.
At the same time, our ruling class has become less diverse and more prone to groupthink.

A century ago, the people running our government, our economy, our academy and our media were varied.
Now they’re all members of the same class, educated usually at the same elite institutions, incestuously intermarried and driven by class solidarity.

As J.D. Tuccille recently wrote regarding the press’ supine attitude toward government censorship, today’s journalists “love Big Brother”: “Prominent reporters and powerful officials know each other, share attitudes, and trust each other.”

Agriculturalists know that in a monoculture, diseases spread rapidly because the entire crop is identical.
In a social and intellectual monoculture, groupthink ensures that bad ideas spread the same way.
This is especially so because our ruling class has substituted reputation for achievement.

One can be a successful CEO if the company does badly, so long as it pursues the right political goals.
Journalists, bureaucrats and political operatives routinely fail upward because they play to their peers.
The result is that any crazy idea can flourish if it’s stylish. And it’s gotten more dangerous, probably because social media allow so much self-herding behavior by elites.

Dissent is instantly ostracized before it even has a chance to be considered.

A decade ago, the crazy ideas I listed earlier would have been seen as beyond the pale of civilized political discussion. Now they’re all endorsed by leading American institutions.
That’s the hallmark of dysfunctional politics, and dysfunctional politics is what we have.

Thank God that the Joint Chiefs are not in the Chain of Command and are simply ‘advisers’ to the President.

More judges trying their hardest to slow down what SCOTUS did to gun control laws.

Federal Judge Upholds San Jose Gun Ownership Tax, Insurance Mandate

San Jose’s first-of-its-kind gun ownership insurance mandate doesn’t violate the Second Amendment, according to a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Beth Freeman ruled against the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) last Thursday. She found the California city’s requirement that gun owners pay a fee to a yet-to-be-determined anti-gun-violence charity group and obtain insurance is constitutional. She ruled the regulations stand up against the Supreme Court’s new history-based test for gun laws and did not infringe on residents’ rights.

“The City has demonstrated that the Insurance Requirement is consistent with the Nation’s historical traditions,” Judge Freeman wrote in NAGR v. San Jose. “Although the Insurance Regulation is not a ‘dead ringer’ for 19th century surety laws, the other similarities between the two laws would render the Ordinance ‘analogous enough to pass constitutional muster.’

The ruling is a win for gun-control advocates who are looking for ways to restrict firearms even in the wake of 2022’s New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. It allows the city to continue to attempt to implement its unique requirements, which have been scaled back significantly from when they were first introduced. The decision also boosts the odds that lawmakers in states, such as New Jersey, who’ve sought to copy the restrictions might survive court challenges as well.

Judge Freeman, an Obama appointee, also ruled the gun ownership fee was not a tax for the purpose of California law and did not need voter approval because it goes to a non-profit rather than the government.

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Sen. Chris Murphy Targets Military Gun Owners In Defense Bills

It takes a certain amount of brazenness to put the responsibility of defending the nation on a young American and then, in the next breath, demand they forfeit those freedoms they are literally willing to die to protect.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is never one to disappoint, though. His latest legislative move is to put a target on the back of every service member as someone who cannot be entrusted to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Military members already sacrifice many of their freedoms to protect the United States. Sen. Murphy, who has never served a day in uniform, doesn’t think that’s enough.

Sen. Murphy thinks Second Amendment freedoms for those in uniform is, well, too much freedom.

Gun control isn’t anything new to Sen. Murphy. He’s made a career of attacking the Second Amendment and the firearm industry. That’s made him the darling of gun control groups but now he’s putting the Second Amendment rights of military gun owners in his crosshairs.

Sen. Murphy introduced an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which empowers our government to fund and support our nation’s military. As a “must-pass” bill, it naturally attracts thousands of amendments for pet projects every year. Most of those are ruled out of order, or not defense related, so they can’t be attached to the bill.

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