Category: Crap For Brains

Just to remind everyone, the Supreme Court, in the Heller decision, ruled mandatory gun lock crap like this unconstitutional, and the McDonald decision incorporated 2nd amendment protection on the states.

CA city bans guns in private homes unless locked up, disabled

Gun owners in Dublin, Calif., are banned from keeping firearms in private homes unless they are kept in a locked container or disabled with a trigger lock after the City Council unanimously approved the new regulation last week.

Pleasanton Weekly reported that the ordinance goes farther than existing California laws that apply if children live in a household or if a member of a household is prohibited from having guns. It goes into effect next month.

“What we’re doing in this case is just expanding that definition beyond those two scenarios — children in the home or criminal record — and applying it to all households,” said City Manager Linda Smith.

The ordinance will be added to the Dublin Municipal Code, stating, “No person shall keep a firearm within any residence unless the firearm is stored in a locked container or disabled with a trigger lock.”

Exceptions to the ordinance include when a gun is being lawfully carried or when it is in the control of a law enforcement officer.

According to councilmember Shawn Kumagai, the regulation “will state clearly to our community that we embrace a culture of gun safety” and “safe gun storage helps to prevent unintentional and intentional injury and death of minors, helps prevent gun suicide, and deters gun theft.”

Twenty-two cities across California have implemented similar regulations, including Oakland, Berkeley, Moraga and Sunnyvale.

“It’s not about taking gun rights away from people at all whatsoever, it’s about educating, it’s about making sure that we do our part, and have an awareness out there,” said Councilmember and mayor-elect Melissa Hernandez.

Hernandez said she believed in “not only just saying it but actually doing something,” adding that the city may provide trigger locks for residents, in addition to potentially granting funding for public gun safety awareness.

Prior to voting for the new regulation, Councilmember Arun Goel said gun safety was an issue he held “near and dear to my heart.”

Goel said his son committed suicide, adding that education is needed but “part of what I’ve always been about is, when we take an action of such a nature, it should be for the fundamentally correct things, not just for stipulation of trying to do something perfunctory or lip service.”

“Systematically I agree with it, and so I’m kind of in a little bit of a confusion standpoint,” Goel said. “We can agree on safety but in the reality, how much of these are issues from lawful gun owners vs. unlawful gun owners.”

I often think about giving these over-educated morons exactly what they’re asking for. Then I consider that it would also mean that there will be no one to enforce gun laws….decisions, decisions.

Ivy League librarians demand a ‘world without policing’

A group of 13 “abolitionist librarians” from Ivy League universities who call themselves “AbLA Ivy+” is demanding that their colleagues “immediately begin the work of divesting from police and prisons.”

The Association of Research Libraries released a statement in support of “protests against police brutality” in June. It called on “leaders of libraries and archives to examine our institutions’ role in sustaining systems of inequity.”

The statement demands that “material resources are procured and highlighted to chronicle the history of white supremacy, oppression of marginalized peoples, and the laws and policies that create systemic inequities” as well as attention to hiring those “who identify as Black, Indigenous, and people of color.”

In a more recent statement, AbLA Ivy+ claims that while these actions should be “applauded,” they “have not gone far enough.” The group wants Ivy League librarians to “explicitly name policing itself as the problem” and take actions that will lead to the “complete abolition of law enforcement.” Continue reading “”

‘Hillbilly Elegy’ critics show they still despise ‘deplorables.’

Elites won’t allow any sympathy for poor whites

Netflix’s new adaptation of JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” is devastating for the left’s political narrative. How do I know that? Because so many leftists are trying to keep people from watching it.

Critics complain that the movie has too many noble country folk — though neither Vance’s 2016 memoir nor the film version is exactly focused on nobility as such. They even gripe that the autobiography of a white guy from the hill country doesn’t have any major black characters. Well, yes.

For a film made out of a bestselling book by a well-known liberal filmmaker (Ron Howard) and featuring Glenn Close, Amy Adams and Gabriel Besso, the movie seems surprisingly controversial. And why? Because, as I mentioned above, it’s devastating for the left’s political narrative. Continue reading “”

President-elect Joe Biden has issued a dire warning about the spread of the coronavirus over the next two months, predicting as many as 250,000 deaths.

Biden, who has warned of a “dark winter” ahead, did not offer details to back up his assessment, which is far bleaker than projections by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other experts. His transition team did not immediately respond to a request to clarify the remarks.

Biden made the remarks Wednesday in a livestreamed roundtable with workers affected by the pandemic, making an appeal to Americans to take the virus seriously.

“We’re likely to lose another 250,000 people dead between now and January,” Biden said. “You hear me? Because people aren’t paying attention.”

He added: “You cannot be traveling during these holidaysas much as you want to.”

Isn’t that a great attribute to have in a President?

BLUF Options:

Joe Biden is knowingly engaged in fear-mongering by using numbers that have no basis in reality, and the press won’t call attention to it.
Joe Biden has trouble with numbers — plausible since Joe Biden’s room-temp IQ has been a well-established fact in Washington for nearly 5 decades.
Joe Biden has dementia which makes the words he speaks meaningless in his own mind as they tumble forth from his mouth.

Pick a number.

Either the “Fear Mongering” Will Persist or Dementia Has Destroyed Joe Biden’s Ability to do Simple Math

I’ve not written much on the disgusting and wholly fallacious fear-mongering of the Democrats/media in general and the Biden campaign in particular.

From nearly the very beginning — having been “trapped” for the first couple weeks away from my family and with nothing but time on my hands to read and learn — I’ve long known that the number of “deaths” CAUSED by COVID-19 would be wildly exaggerated in that once there was a financial incentive to “ID” COVID-19 deaths every other categorized “cause of death” would dramatically decline while COVID-19 “caused” deaths would skyrocket, as that would promote the narrative in the press/campaign that the Trump Administration was incompetent.  It was simply a given, and the claims would be impervious to actual facts — like tens of thousands of people, mostly elderly, die each year from all types of other viruses because their bodies are not able to fight off the infection.  People who might have died mere weeks faster while suffering from “end-stage” cancer are being classified as COVID-caused deaths if they were infected prior to passing.  Morbidly obese individuals who were walking and talking strokes and heart attacks waiting to happen become COVID-caused deaths because they become infected with a virus that has a 99% recovery rate.

And now we are in the middle of a “second surge” that is being blamed on government policies, guidance, and/or unwillingness of people to follow the same when the truth of the matter is that back in March and April infectious disease efforts predicted the virus would begin to spread more rapidly AGAIN in Oct-Nov. when cool weather returned, people went indoors more, and the “cold and virus” season got underway.

It’s a virus.  This time of year is called the “cold and virus” season for reason. Continue reading “”

New York: Voluntarily Waive Your Gun Rights…Legally

Maybe this one shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it does. A group of New York Assembly Democrats – Amy Paulin, D-Scarsdale, and co-sponsored by Jeffrey Dinowitz, Fred Abinanti, Richard Gottfried, Assemblywoman Fahy, Rebecca Seawright, Assemblyman Englebright and Assemblyman Dickens – have proposed legislation that would make it possible for New Yorkers to voluntarily waive their gun rights.

Well hello, 2020, you’ve done it again.

The Post-Journal reports:

If approved, anyone would be able to file a voluntary waiver of their right to purchase a gun. The State Police would then request photo identification to verify the person’s identity before accepting the form. Waivers would include an alternate individual to be contacted if the waiver is revoked.

No sooner than 21 days after filing a waiver, an individual would be able to file a recovation of their waiver.

But don’t worry, it won’t be made some sort of mandatory deal or anything . . .

Waivers would not be able to be required as a condition of employment or for benefits or services. The proposed law also states no records required by the registry law would be subject to disclosure and would remain confidential for matters of health care, employment, education, housing, insurance, government benefits and contracting.

Right.

Is this just New York? Well . . .

Washington and Virginia have recently enacted legislation, and nine other states, including Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin, have introduced similar bills in the legislatures.

 

Plans to disarm Portland State campus police on hold after too many quit.

Portland State University announced in August its plan to disarm campus police officers by replacing their firearms with tasers, but those plans have been put on a temporary hold.

The plan to disarm officers was announced earlier in 2020 after rallies and protesters at PSU called for justice for Jason Washington, who was killed by officers in 2018. Campus Reform reported on the efforts of PSU students and staff to disarm officers in 2019.

Campus Police Chief Willie Halliburton stated that in order for unarmed officers to be safe, the school would need two officers for every shift, which hasn’t been possible due to the retirement or resignation of several officers.

In a video message addressing the issue, Halliburton stated, “I am fully committed to transforming this police agency into a unit that will achieve these goals. We’ll do this without carrying weapons while on patrol.” Continue reading “”

What a Biden Administration Means for Border Security

  • “Whenever Obama was in there, drug cartels were so bad that it didn’t seem like anybody was fighting the drug cartels… the cartels ruled everything. They ran the dope, they trafficked the young girls, and there were so many more killings.” — Border resident, US Southwest.
  • “Trump had more Customs and Border Patrol agents at the border. Cattle crossings from Mexico were checked, inspected and limited. The cartels have used cattle to move dope for years. Now they’ll go back to moving cattle and laundering money back through the crossing here [Santa Teresa, NM] with less law enforcement. It will be a serious step backwards.” — Border resident, US Southwest.
  • The Americans paying the very high price for Biden/Harris reckless open borders policy are in border communities. Biden’s reversals spell doom for overloaded (and closed) hospitals, schools, public housing, and courts. Remember: Biden (and the rest of the Democratic presidential field) promised free healthcare to all illegal aliens.
  • U.S. Customs Service Officer Patricia Cramer, president of the Arizona chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union, revealed in an interview that persons crossing into the United States from Mexico are not health-screened in any way. No temperature taken, no cursory visual exam, nothing.
  • Remember: In “COVID-world,” you cannot go to the gym, and you must “social distance” in absurd ways — but the border is open, and no one is screened.

A Biden administration means two dramatic and dangerous reversals on Trump policies that will endanger the American public: 1. Termination of President Trump’s signature 2016 campaign issue — The Wall; and 2. Loosening of immigration restrictions.

“There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, No. 1,” Biden told National Public Radio earlier this year. “I’m going to make sure that we have border protection, but it’s going to be based on making sure that we use high-tech capacity to deal with it.”

Biden is not really promising any border protection at all. It sounds good, but it is a hollow falsehood. Most of the American public does not know about or has forgotten the $30 billion dollar disaster known as “SBInet.” We have been down this “high-tech virtual wall” road before. The only winners were defense contractors. The virtual wall does nothing to deter or prevent unlawful entry across the border. It merely provides surveillance and recording of the illegal activity. Thousands of hours of video recordings of such crossings are available on the internet right now. Technology contractors are encouraged that a Biden administration would like to continue watching and recording millions of people entering the country illegally. Continue reading “”

Joe Biden Still Can’t Seem to Complete a Sentence

Allow me to do my best in transcribing. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it. I’ll pick it up where he says “that’s a fancy way of saying” because that is where he goes on to make up new words and get confused.

“That’s a fancy way of saying, governors, governors need to be able to get fundiiiiing when they dispo- when they disp- they need the, the uh and and bring, bring their national guard into play. And National Guard’s gonna have to play this, it costs a lot of money.”

Was That A Toy Gun In Your Living Room?

How bad has the anti-gun hysteria gotten among some in our educational system? So bad that a grade-school student from Colorado Springs, Colo., was recently suspended for having a toy gun—in his own home!

Isaiah Elliott, who is 12 years old, was home last August participating in an online class. His school was closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Isaiah was sitting on his living room couch with his laptop computer. He was next to a friend who was also doing online class work with a different teacher. During his second-period class, Isaiah’s art teacher noticed the friend was holding a “gun” and asked Isaiah to move it off screen.

Isaiah then took the green toy pistol—which had the words “ZOMBIE HUNTER” emblazoned on one side—from his friend and placed it out of the teacher’s sight.

Afterwards, the art teacher informed her superior that a student had what looked like a gun. The school official called the police.

“They said they called the police for my son’s safety,” said Dani Elliott, Isaiah’s mother. “But, if they were so concerned about him and if they really thought his life might be threatened, why didn’t they call me immediately? And why did the police take four-and-a-half hours to get to our house?”

As was widely reported by local and national news media, Widefield School District 3, Isaiah’s school district at the time of this incident, repeated its “student-safety” mantra to explain the school’s reaction. The district also claimed Isaiah had violated school policy by bringing a “facsimile” firearm to school. Because of this, he was suspended for five days.

“But he was not at school,” said Elliott. “He was in our living room. Apparently, they have the right to dictate what goes on in our own home, over a Nerf gun no less!”

Elliott did receive an email from the school about an hour after the incident. She called the school and told them it was a toy gun. Bodycam footage (available on the internet) shows an El Paso County Sheriff’s office deputy at the school to take the complaint from school staff. The video shows one staffer admitting it was most likely a toy gun as they laughed over the incident.

“It really scared Isaiah when the deputy sheriff showed up,” said Elliott. “And I believe the school suspended my son to save face, to pretend they actually had some policy in place to cover this. They don’t. It’s our home, not the school building.”

Elliott soon pulled Isaiah out of the Widefield School District 3 and put him into a new school. Continue reading “”

“Defund the police” and the damage done.

“DEFUND THE POLICE” AND THE DAMAGE DONE: Remember the debate over the meaning of the phrase “defund the police”? Repeated over and over on the progressive left, it seemed pretty clear — it meant that cities should no longer fund, and thus effectively abolish, their police forces. But some Democrats worried that embracing such a radical proposal might hurt them politically, so they suggested that it actually meant re-directing some, but not all, funds from police to things like mental health treatment and affordable housing. Nothing too radical.

Every time Democrats thought they had limited the political damage done by a literal interpretation of “defund the police,” some progressive voice would mess it all up. For example, in June, the New York Times published an op-ed headlined, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police.” Continue reading “”

Texas Anti-Gunners File Many Bills

At least 16 gun control bills have already been filed for the upcoming Texas Legislative Session beginning in January, setting the stage for a contentious battle over the gun rights of private citizens.

One of the bills is HB 196, filed by Irving State Representative Terry Meza.  Her bill would remove a homeowner’s legal right under the Castle Doctrine to use a firearm in the defense of their homestead against an intruder.  Meza believes homeowners are too quick to pull the trigger during a home invasion, and HB 196 would essentially gut that provision from the Castle Doctrine.

“I’m not condoning stealing, it is against the law, “Meza says, “but it’s not an offense that is punishable by death.”

Meza claims she’s already become the target of intense scrutiny online.

“People are already attacking me on Facebook saying I’m against the 2nd Amendment,” she says.

Meza says a homeowner would still be able to defend their life, but using a gun would be illegal, thus placing the homeowner in legal jeopardy.

Critics point to what is often a slow response time from police, and argue that there’s very little time to determine whether a person who has broken into a home is there simply to steal, or to commit acts of violence.

Other gun control bills awaiting the next session include:

  • HB 152 and HB 245 would ban the private sale of firearms at gun shows;
  • HB 238 would eliminate the state’s firearm preemption, allowing local governments such as the Austin City Council to pass local gun bans and regulations as they see fit;
  • HB 201 would ban Campus Carry;
  • HB 127 would ban the open carry of long rifles;
  • HB 236 would overhaul the 30.06 and 30.07 signage requirements to make it much easier for a business to ban a legal and licensed gun owner from entering;
  • HB 118 would eliminate family members from being able to transfer firearms among each other, instead requiring a federal license application to process each transaction “at an undetermined fee”;
  • HB 164 and HB 395 relate to Red Flag laws, allowing the removal of a person’s firearm without due process;
  • HB 185 would legally require homeowners to keep all guns locked inside of a safe at all times;
  • HB 231 raises the legal age required to purchase semi-automatic rifles and shotguns;
  • HB 172 and HB 241 would ban the transfer or possession of certain “commonly owned semi-automatic firearms”;
  • HB 178 and HB 234 would ban the sale or possession of any magazine that holds more than ten rounds.

The vast majority of those gun control bills are not expected to pass muster when state lawmakers reconvene.

Portland Anarchists Attacked A Democratic Party HQ And Suddenly Vandalism Isn’t Cool Anymore

The LA Times published a story today highlighting a growing divide between two strains of activists in Portland. On one hand you have the mostly white Antifa groups who have adopted Black Lives Matter as their own cause and are holding protests/riots nearly every night. On the other hand you have black activists who sometimes hold their own protests and who increasingly believe the anarchists are doing more harm than good.

But the most revealing thing about this story may be the tone and the timing. For most of the summer, Portland anarchists were cool. But suddenly the LA Times wants us to know that maybe these anarchists are just in it for the wanton destruction:

The day after President-elect Joe Biden delivered his victory speech, telling the nation it was time to heal and unite, a clandestine Twitter account — @safePDXprotest — summoned Portland anarchists…

Word spread through the group that the target tonight would be the local headquarters of the Democratic Party.

Somebody started beating a drum as a chant broke out: “F— Joe Biden!”

Then the anarchists marched into the upscale neighborhood, intent on destruction.

News flash from the LA Times: These anarchists are bent on destruction! Yes, and it’s curious that prior to the election President Trump was saying so and I didn’t see a lot of articles agree with him. I guess this is one of those now it can be told situations. Suddenly the anarchists just aren’t cool anymore:

Continue reading “”

The Chump Effect
Progressive policies penalize those who play by the rules and shower benefits on those who don’t.

Last January, a small but telling exchange took place at an Elizabeth Warren campaign event in Grimes, Iowa. At the time, Warren was attracting support from the Democratic Party’s left flank, with her bulging portfolio of progressive proposals. “Warren Has a Plan for That” read her campaign T-shirts. The biggest buzz surrounded her $1.25 trillion plan to pay off student-loan debt for most Americans.

A man approached Warren with a question. “My daughter is getting out of school. I’ve saved all my money [so that] she doesn’t have any student loans. Am I going to get my money back?”

“Of course not,” Warren replied.

“So you’re going to pay for people who didn’t save any money, and those of us who did the right thing get screwed?”

A video of the exchange went viral. It summed up the frustration many feel over the way progressive policies so often benefit select groups, while subtly undermining others. Saving money to send your children to college used to be considered a hallmark of middle-class responsibility. By subsidizing people who run up large debts, Warren’s policy would penalize those who took that responsibility seriously. “You’re laughing at me,” the man said, when Warren seemed to wave off his concerns. “That’s exactly what you’re doing. We did the right thing and we get screwed.” Continue reading “”

I wonder if they know the street they’re playing in is a ‘two way’ street.

CNN Gets in on the List Game, Targeting ‘Enablers’ of Trump’s Election ‘Defiance’

In the past few days, Democrats and their allies in the #NeverTrump movement have started the ominous practice of compiling blacklists of Trump supporters or those who refuse to immediately trumpet Joe Biden’s contested and as yet unconfirmed victory in the November election. CNN, perhaps afraid of falling behind, ran a report listing every single Republican senator who has refused to congratulate Biden so far. At the bottom on the screen, the outlet singled out the president’s dastardly “enablers” who dared to stand up for Trump’s right to raise legal challenges in response to serious concerns about potential fraud.

On Tuesday, CNN published a list of 49 Republican senators guilty of the unspeakable crime of waiting for the final confirmed election results. The chyron screamed, “TRUMP’S DEFIANCE FUELED BY ENABLERS LIKE BARR, MCCONNELL, FOX.”

Continue reading “”

Social Elites Call for Dangerous Gun Data Changes

It seems antigun billionaires think there’s nothing a few dollars and manipulation of government data can’t fix. Arnold Ventures, ran by former Enron trader John and Laura Arnold, is a billionaire philanthropy organization that wants to save us from ourselves through their deep pockets. More specifically, they seek to restrict the freedom to keep and bear arms

Arnold Ventures wishes to paint a grim picture that firearms are an epidemic much like political activist and gun control billionaire Michael Bloomberg. John and Laura Arnold have commissioned the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago to construct and convene a panel of medical professionals to organize a wishlist of dangerous and overreaching proposals. These demands are detailed in the Blueprint for a U.S. Firearms Data Infrastructure. With major changes possible in Washington, D.C., it is crucial to not only examine the large, sweeping gun control proposals but also to look at the less attention-grabbing proposals, like changing how the government collects, shares, and presents data. Gun control advocates in Congress are already turning to items on this wish list in their latest proposals, including the misleadingly titled, “ATF Improvement and Modernization Act.” Continue reading “”

When you read BS like this:

Robert B. Reich: Can Biden heal America when Trump and his allies don’t want it healed?

Remember he first wrote this:

And if you still think they are after anything but revenge, think again as he still is writing stuff like this:

Weaponizing the bureaucraps against political enemies seems to be a time honored tradition with demoncraps.

 

What do we do? The solution is simple. And so self evident it needs no further explanation. Of course, I haven’t said it would be easy.

Hating Your Mama Over Politics.

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

Smartphones were introduced in 2007; social media soon followed. Whenever I talk to middle school and high school teachers, I hear the same thing: there is nothing that competes with the power of social media to socialize young people (or rather, un-socialize them) — and it is tearing these kids up inside. 

That’s young people — but what about the elderly woman who leaves her husband because he voted for Trump? What’s her excuse? What about the man in his twenties to cuts his mother off because she voted for Trump? What about the middle-aged man who turns family members against each other by going to holiday gatherings and not shutting his big fat mouth about how the “Demonrats” are going to be the death of us all?

What do we do about a person like this?:

Bandy X. Lee isn’t some nobody. She is a Yale University psychiatrist and holder of a master’s of divinity degree from Yale. And she believes that Trump supporters can only be persuaded to abandon their support for the sitting President of the United States by having some immense trauma visited upon them, along the lines of the firebombing of Dresden.

How does someone come to believe that their countrymen need to be treated that way — need to see their cities leveled! — because of their politics? Again, I remind you: this isn’t some fringe nut, but a Yale-trained psychiatrist and religious thinker. This is the kind of elite figure who will usher in soft totalitarianism because she does not think her fellow Americans are simply wrong, but evil.

This is how freedom fails. When parents let their children get their heads filled with the mush of marxist professors let loose in our schools, colleges and universities.
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”—Ronald Reagan

Kids today: 4 in 10 call Constitution ‘outdated,’ OK with silencing speech.

Free speech, support for the Constitution, and even having a variety of friends are taking a hit on America’s campuses as college undergraduates appear to be adopting a “my way or the highway” attitude.

A new survey of campuses developing the nation’s future leaders shows an antagonistic approach by students to views they don’t agree with. And worse, a majority feel that they can’t express a view different from those of their professors.

The survey for Yale University’s William F. Buckley Program, provided to Secrets, is the latest to show the fading of thought diversity on campuses and shrinking support for the First Amendment and the Constitution overall. Continue reading “”

WHAT’S WRONG WITH ANONYMOUS SOURCING? all you need to know:
The New York Times’ “Anonymous”? The the “senior administration official” was actually just a staff guy out in the bureaucracy.

New York Times’ Miles Taylor Op-Ed Shows Everything Wrong With Anonymous Sources
If The New York Times was willing to lie about its anonymous source for their high-profile information operation, imagine the lies they’re willing to tell about all the other anonymous sources they use.

Two years after the New York Times published an op-ed from what they described as an anonymous, principled conservative “senior administration official,” it turned out to have been written by a low-level bureaucrat who later worked for tech giant Google and gave money to far-left Democrats.

Miles Taylor revealed he was the author of the highly hyped op-ed headlined “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” He claimed to secretly work to thwart Trump’s policy goals as the elected president of the United States.

While constitutional scholars worried about implications of such unaccountable thwarting of the will of the people, most media focused instead on identifying who “Anonymous” was. The New York Times assured readers that when it said “senior administration official,” it meant someone “in the upper echelon of an administration.”

Not A Senior Administration Official
People took seriously the New York Times’ claim that the anonymous writer was in the upper echelon of an administration. In “13 people who might be the author of The New York Times op-ed,” CNN followed the New York Times’ lead by offering the names of actual senior administration officials, such as Don McGahn, Dan Coats, Kellyanne Conway, Kirstjen Nielsen, John Kelly, Jeff Sessions, James Mattis, Nikki Haley, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump. Chris Cillizza also suggested it might be Fiona Hill or Melania Trump.

He also wrote of the Times, “They aren’t publishing an anonymous op-ed from just anyone in the Trump administration. They especially aren’t publishing one that alleges a near-coup … If some midlevel bureaucrat in the Trump administration comes to the Times — or has an intermediary reach out to the Times — asking to write a piece like this one without their name attached to it, the answer would be an immediate ‘no.’” He added:

Given all of that, it’s telling that the Times was willing to extend the cloak of anonymity to this author — especially, again, because of the stakes and the target. This is not a decision made lightly. That the decision was made to publish it should tell you that this isn’t some disgruntled mid-to-upper manager buried in the bureaucracy. This is a genuine high-ranking official. A name most people who follow politics — and maybe some who don’t — would recognize. The Times simply wouldn’t do what it did for anything short of a major figure in Trump world.

In fact, they were willing to do it for a very low-level political appointee. Taylor has been billed as “chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security,” but he didn’t have even that position that nobody knew existed when he wrote the op-ed and was described as a senior administration official.

Continue reading “”

The Biden-Harris Antipathy toward Guns Portends Trouble for Law Enforcement
Thankfully, under our system of federalism, state legislatures can ward off such executive overreach.

It comes as no surprise former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris are campaigning on promises “to end our gun-violence epidemic.” The leftward drift of the Democratic Party on most policy questions, including lawful firearm ownership, has been made explicit in its 2020 party platform. The presidential nominee’s campaign “issues page” takes it several steps further, promising to pass or incentivize all manner of gun restrictions.

In addition to the lack of evidence supporting these initiatives and their dubious constitutionality they all share one principal problem: The federal government — the helm of which Joe Biden seeks to occupy — has very little authority in this domain. In order to accomplish these policy aims, state and local law-enforcement agencies would need to be pressed into service.

Biden has already had his wrist slapped in this regard. His website touts his “shepherding” of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Among other provisions, the bill required that local chief law enforcement officers (CLEOs) perform background checks on prospective firearm purchasers.

Jay Printz, sheriff of Ravalli County, Mont., brought suit against the United States, stating that the federal government had no authority to compel state and local officials to execute federal law. In Printz v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed, holding that despite the increasingly expansive interpretation of the “necessary and proper” clause, Congress cannot enjoin state officials to do its bidding. As a result, the mandate was subsequently ejected from the Brady Bill.

Harris’s understanding of the Second Amendment within our system of federalism is even more stunted. As the attorney general of California, she signed on to an amicus brief claiming that governments have complete authority to wholly ban handguns — an assertion that has been repeatedly rejected by courts and historians alike. During her presidential run in 2019, she promised to enact her preferred elements of gun control via executive orders, none of which were within the realm of executive control. Paradoxically, she is seeking to leave the one body that could enact substantive reform without so much as ceremonially filing legislation to do what she is promising. Continue reading “”