Editorial O’ The Day

Amy Curtis THREAD TIME

THIS what this has ALWAYS been about: guys like Tom spent YEARS forcing milquetoast candidates on us, candidates who didn’t care about the voters they supposedly represented.

So when Trump came along, the fed up electorate turned their backs on the so-called “experts.”

The🐰FOO
@PolitiBunny
Aug 26
A thread where Tom explains why it’s more important to punish the right than save the country from communism.

After the Bush years (yay, endless war and suppressive surveillance state!) they gave us John McCain and Mitt Romney.
Guys who never met a Democrat they wouldn’t compromise with.

“XZY issue isn’t the hill to die on!” screamed guys like Tom and their preferred politicians. Meanwhile, the Left ran roughshod over the political landscape.

“Just shut up and take it!” said guys like Tom. “I’m the expert here!”
After years of this, Trump came along.
Brash, crass, and completely not like the jerks the Washington Generals of Punditry demanded we settle for time and again. It wasn’t perfect, but it was different.

Having been kicked in the head repeatedly by guys like Tom, voters decided to say * it. Why should we listen to pundits who don’t really give a * about anything other than rubbing elbows in DC?”

This made Tom SO MAD. How dare the little people he constantly sneers at defy him!
He’s the EXPERT!
How dare they pretend to know their lives and needs and political preferences better than him!
He wouldn’t set foot in their hometowns, but he knows how to run them!

So rather than take two minutes for some introspection — to realize maybe voters wanted something other than a rehash of Romney or Bush or McCain — Tom lashed out.
“I bear no responsibility for how we got here, even though I’m the self-proclaimed expert!”

Since 2016, the entire raison d’etre of guys like Tom has been to punish the voters for defying him.
That’s it.
He — and many of his cohort and colleagues — are out for revenge.
It’s not more complicated than that.

Tom and friends don’t give a * if you can’t afford food. If you lose private health insurance. If Kamala Harris wrecks the country. In their eyes, we *deserve* it for not obeying them.
They, at least economically, are insulated from it.
This is a middle finger to US.

But the Left — once Tom and crew stop being useful — will destroy them.
The Left always does.
In his conceit and arrogance, Tom thinks he’ll either avoid this by being a good foot soldier or the right will forgive and forget.

We won’t. But we’ll vote for Trump to stop Kamala.And Tom will benefit from that.
He’ll still be a spiteful, ungrateful prick.
But he’ll also continue to enjoy not paying insane capital gains taxes.

My vote for Trump is not *for* him. It’s *against* Kamala and it’s also *against* guys like Tom who — after years of * candidates and “compromises” — STILL think they can tell me how to run my life.
It’s against guys who have the audacity to admit this entire thing is about punishing us for not kissing their rings.

Guys like Tom deserve nothing but contempt and scorn. When Karma comes a-knockin’, it’ll come HARD.

Enjoy it when it does.

Rosen: Surgeon General misleads on gun violence

In a July speech advocating for more stringent gun control, President Biden claimed that “More children are killed by a bullet than any other cause of death.” That’s surely an alarming and tragic statistic but a very misleading one. The use of the word “children” is deceptive, emotionally bringing to mind infants, toddlers and kindergartners. Legally, a “child” can be as old as 17, or even 20 in some states, including those with felony convictions and gangbangers in inner cities, like Chicago.

According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control, “In 2022, Black children and teens were 20 times as likely to die from firearm homicides compared to their white counterparts.” And the great majority of those deaths are black on black shootings by teenage gangsters, not little kids. And statistically, the kinds of diseases that fatally afflict the elderly in great numbers are rare among youngsters, skewing the causes of death toward guns.

Recently, Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General of the United States, issued a public declaration that our country is experiencing a “gun violence crisis.” Conversely, according to the FBI, nationwide homicides decreased by 13% in 2023 despite public perception to the contrary as reflected in a November 2023 Gallup poll that found 77% of Americans believed crime was increasing.

That apparent discrepancy can be explained by terminology, definitions and spin, especially skewing the impact of suicide, which the Surgeon General conveniently includes in his definition of gun violence. Suicides with the use of a gun account for 56% of all gun deaths. But an act of violence is something you inflict on someone else, not on yourself. Let’s say you’re suffering from severe depression or unbearable pain from a terminal illness, and you rationally chose to end your life, this could be viewed as an act of self-compassion. It’s not gun violence. If you hanged yourself, instead, would that be “rope violence?”

The disconnect between the overwhelming public perception of rampant crime in the U.S. today and misleading statistics to the contrary are tied to the definition of crime. It’s true that the homicide rate per 100,000 population has gone down over the past 30 years. But suicide is not the same as homicide and the public perception of rampant crime goes way beyond “homicides.” It covers pervasive crimes like car thefts, vandalism, rioting, burglaries, muggings, squatting, or flash mobs looting retail stores with impunity.

Even worse are the cybercrimes bilking the elderly of their life savings. To say nothing of the hordes of illegal aliens criminally crossing our southern border — who then compound the felony by not showing up for their court dates with the forbearance of the president of the United States and his secretary of Homeland Security.

When prosecutors in Democrat-controlled states refuse to charge trespassers, rioters, petty criminals, and radical insurrectionists who construct illegal encampments and occupy buildings on college campuses their crimes go unrecorded in the crime stats. The political activists who harassed and besieged the homes of conservative Supreme Court Justices whose rulings they disagreed with violated federal law, but they were allowed to persist by politically-motivated Democrat officials in Washington.

The Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms for whatever reason he or she desires. While the number of guns in this country has more than doubled in the past 30 years, the decrease in the homicide rate over that period indicates that law-abiding Americans intend those guns for justifiable personal defense or deterrence, as well as for hunting or sport shooting. These days, you’re taking on undue risk by not owning one. Those intent on crime will legally or illegally obtain guns regardless of gun control laws that unreasonably burden the rest of us.

Although he wears a quasi-naval uniform and carries the three-star rank of Vice Admiral, the Surgeon General of the United States is not a sea-going admiral. As the “Nation’s Doctor,” he’s an administrator not a practitioner (and he doesn’t make house calls). He’s a bureaucrat who commands more than 6,000 public health officers of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and his purview is the physical and mental health of all Americans.

His diagnosis of “gun violence,” which inflates the numbers by including suicide, and his prescription to ban legal so-called “assault weapons” are outside his expertise and authority. In the immortal words of a real Admiral, David Farragut, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

Kamala Harris promises freedom in her campaign, but American liberty is at risk
Kamala Harris is attempting to rewrite her big-government record and test the power of a fawning media to convince Americans not to believe their lying eyes.

Kamala Harris has adopted “freedom” as a campaign anthem, proclaiming in her first campaign ad: “We choose freedom.”

This may be a new low for campaign propaganda and gaslighting.

Freedom from what—thinking and making choices for yourself? Is she providing the freedom to have the government decide for you?

At every turn, the Biden-Harris Administration has pushed not only a centrally planned economy and federal-government hegemony, but the most aggressive imposition of left-wing philosophy and secular-progressive values in American history.

Its hallmark has been Democrats’ elites-know-best attitude in which ordinary Americans can’t be trusted to raise their children, make medical judgments, discern the truth, or pursue their own version of the American Dream.

Can’t you hear the freedom ringing?

Democrats promise ‘cradle-to-grave, big government dependency’

After the Biden Administration imposed mask mandates, discharged American servicemembers reluctant to comply with Biden vaccine mandates, persecuted parents as “domestic terrorists” who dared question the wisdom of multi-year school closures that set their children back, Harris’s celebration of “freedom” is as Orwellian as her self-portrayal as tough on crime in the face of her “defund the police” and bail-for-rioters antics.

Does Harris mean freedom from any chance of achieving the American Dream?

The Biden-Harris approach to the economy is summed up by its “Build Back Better” proposal to transform America, which it marketed using a cartoon depicting a mother and son—and the government programs on which they would depend under this plan, from the very beginning of their lives to the very end.

It was the definition of cradle-to-grave, big-government dependency, from federalized preschool and childcare where the state has the necessary control to indoctrinate your children to Green New Deal mandates that would replace good-paying private-sector jobs with the Civilian Climate Corps, a taxpayer-funded climate police, and an array of new big-government welfare programs.

Continue reading “”

So Kamalalamadingdong picked as radical a leftist as she is.

Rep. Lisa Demuth: Americans need to know Gov. Tim Walz’s real record

It seems like you can’t turn on a liberal TV show during the last several days without seeing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz auditioning to join Vice President Kamala Harris on the most liberal presidential ticket our country has ever seen.

Here in Minnesota, we personally would like to see Gov. Walz focused on his job here at home.

Gov. Walz likes to tout his legislative achievements from the past two years of one-party Democratic control, but voters need to know the real story. The last two years featured some of the most extreme and irresponsible policies we’ve ever seen in our state: $10 billion dollars in tax increases, an unsustainable and unaffordable 40 percent increase in state spending, new fees on your online orders, massive cost increases for your Uber and Lyft rides, expensive and extreme energy mandates that will drive up the electric bills for you and your family, and even a gas tax increase that goes up automatically every single year!

If you liked the inflation and sky-high costs under the Biden/Harris administration, Gov. Walz is right there with them.

Under Gov. Walz’s watch, fraud and waste in our state public programs has exploded. His administration allowed criminals to steal more than $500 million from a program intended to feed hungry children over the course of four years.

The fraud was allowed to continue unchecked, and the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Auditor determined that his agency’s inadequate oversight “created opportunities for fraud” to occur. Worst of all, not a single commissioner or state employee was disciplined or fired for their failure to adequately protect state tax dollars.

Gov. Walz enjoys talking about his time in the classroom and touting his record as a teacher. Minnesota parents know that his record is nothing to brag about — fewer than half of Minnesota students are meeting state standards in reading and math. During his time in office, test scores have declined in both by 17 percent, and school attendance rates have suffered as well with only 69 percent of students consistently in the classroom.

The “investments” he brags about on national TV were paired with crushing mandates that have resulted in budget cuts in schools across our state. Minnesota kids are simply not getting the education they deserve under Gov. Walz.

But really, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Gov. Walz is on a shortlist to serve on the ticket with Kamala Harris. In many ways, they share many of the same extreme policies.

Kamala Harris wants to decriminalize border crossings and give benefits to illegal immigrants. She served as Joe Biden’s border czar, overseeing a flood of millions of illegal immigrants into the country. Tim Walz signed a bill to give illegal immigrants free tuition, drivers licenses, and even health benefits, making Minnesota a magnet for illegal immigration.

Kamala Harris wants to get rid of gas-powered vehicles and impose expensive electric vehicle mandates. Tim Walz did the same in Minnesota, imposing California-style electric vehicle mandates that drive up the cost of vehicles.

Kamala Harris wants to abolish private health insurance, taking away health plans that millions of Americans rely on and want to keep. Gov. Walz signed a bill to eliminate health plans for 32,000 Minnesotans, further reducing plan options for Minnesota families.

Kamala Harris supported the Minnesota Freedom Fund — a controversial non-profit that bailed out rioters in 2020 and that freed violent criminals who went on to commit more crimes including murders and sexual assaults. Tim Walz let protests spin out of control into riots, resulting in injuries to officers and millions in damages to cities and businesses as Minneapolis burned for days before he was forced to respond.

Kamala Harris wants to coddle criminals by ending mandatory minimum sentences, shortening probation, and refusing to enforce penalties for parole violations. Tim Walz signed a bill to reduce sentences for violent criminals, and his administration supported efforts to reduce probation even for the most heinous criminal offenses.

Make no mistake — no matter who Kamala Harris chooses for Vice President, she is the most extreme major party candidate in my lifetime. If she chooses Gov. Walz, Americans need to know about his disastrous record, and make sure they vote accordingly this November.

Lisa Demuth is the House Minority Leader for Minnesota Republicans.

Comment O’ The Day….
“This is not the result of inept teaching. It’s the result of a deliberate strategy.”

Today’s Students Are Dangerously Ignorant of Our Nation’s History. And Our Failing Education System Is to Blame.

When Benjamin Franklin famously said, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it,” he was, as usual, prescient.

This summer, the democratic republic known as the United States of America is 248 years old, and civically minded organizations around the country are already busily working on plans to celebrate our nation’s 250^th birthday in 2026. Such a milestone is a cause for real celebration; by most reckonings, we are the longest-lasting democracy in history. Democracies are fragile: The Athenian democracy never made it to 200. Americans should use this anniversary as an opportunity for sober reflection on the current state, as well as the future, of our own democratic republic.

There is much for which to be thankful, as America’s free market economy and all-volunteer military force are still the envy of the world. There is also much to give us pause regarding the durability of our institutions, the moral fiber of our leaders, and the prospects for free government at home and abroad. It should be obvious: Challenges to election integrity—typically a sign of disease in a free body politic—an assault on our Capitol, and a looming election in which 25% of voters are dissatisfied with both major candidates are not cause for carefree celebration.

Oxford philosopher of history R.G. Collingwood wrote, “All history is an attempt to understand the present by reconstructing its determining conditions.” In these times, it should come as a dire warning that without a doubt, most young American college graduates are nowhere close to having the historical perspective to guide them through the rough political climate we face.

How much do today’s college students really know about their nation’s past? The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has conducted a fresh national survey of college students to answer just this question. The results are concerning.

Sixty percent of college students could not correctly identify the term lengths of members serving in U.S. Congress. Sixty-three percent were unable to identify the chief justice of the Supreme Court. These are multiple-choice questions. Students did not have to recall John Roberts’s name, they merely had to recognize it, and a large majority failed. The same is true for the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, whose name was only known to 35% of students. Sixty-eight percent did not know that impeachment trials occur before the Senate, despite living through two presidential impeachments as well as the impeachment trial of a cabinet official.

If these students are not reading the newspaper, it does not seem to be because they are busy studying their history lessons. A majority of students believe—falsely—that the Constitution was written in 1776, rather than 1787. This suggests two things: First, most students do not understand the origin of our Constitution—how the Articles of Confederation proved unworkable, how James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and others gathered in Philadelphia to make amendments but emerged instead with a new form of government, which the American people then debated before adopting. (This explains another survey result, which shows that a majority of students could not identify the purpose of the Federalist Papers.)

Students who believe the Constitution was written in 1776 do not understand the purpose and meaning of the Constitution. Second, and more importantly, these students clearly have not learned the true events of 1776, and thus their yearly Independence Day celebrations on July 4^th are sadly hollow and devoid of content. They enjoy the barbecues and the fireworks, but they often lack a basic understanding of what is being honored by the holiday.

America’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, once explained that the Constitution of 1787 was like a silver frame surrounding an apple of gold. The golden apple, he said, was the Declaration of Independence of 1776, the principles of which animate the republic, dedicate it to liberty and human equality, and cause it, so long as it adheres to such principles, to be a light unto the other nations, a beacon of freedom to all people. It was also President Lincoln who said in his Gettysburg Address that in America the government is “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Of course, only 23% of students were able to identify the source of that quote, and we may fear something yet more dangerous: that not many more understand what it means.

None of this is the fault of the students. Numbers like these do not arise from lazy pupils but from feckless pedagogues who are failing in their charge. Fewer than 20% of American colleges and universities require a course on United States government or history to graduate, according to data ACTA has compiled for our curricular study, WhatWillTheyLearn.com. This is unacceptable. Higher education that is worthy of its name would do better, and our universities must do better for our Constitution to endure another two decades, let alone two centuries. Every student should be required to take U.S. government and history to earn a college degree. Some states, such as South Carolina and Texas, already mandate this, and more should follow suit.

In a democratic republic such as ours, citizens must be informed for the commonwealth to function. As George Washington said in his Farewell Address, “In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” Far from being enlightened, our students today are seldom even taught the basics. This must change, for the sake of the students and for the future of our nation.

Cynical Publius-

It’s time for my periodic reminder that all Democrats are fascists.

I love the fact that whenever I point this out, some Democrat invariably claims “Derrrrr… you don’t even know what fascism is!” So let’s explore fascism a little, shall we?

Listed below are attributes and practices that all 20th Century fascists have in common with the Democrat Party of 2024:

1. Laws promoting the seizure of guns from law-abiding citizens and/or the denial of gun ownership rights for law-abiding citizens.
2. Censorship of free speech by pretending such censorship protects the citizenry from faulty information.
3. Government control of industry.
4. Government control of the mass media.
5. Control of the entertainment industry as a means of propaganda. (See: Leni Riefenstahl; Walt Disney Corporation.)
6. Children belong to the State and not their parents.
7. Political dissidents and opposing political leadership are to be persecuted for fabricated “crimes” under the color of law through the courts.
8. Political dissidents are locked up for months/years without a trial.
9. Leading political opponents who are a threat to the fascist order are to be assassinated.
10. Extreme nationalism (Democrats hate the United States of America, but are extreme nationalistic zealots for the Woke States of America).
11. Purposeful division of the population along racial and ethnic lines as a means to power.
12. Leadership of the ruling fascist party is chosen by party leaders without any input from rank-and-file party members, but an illusion of democracy is perpetuated.
13. Certain party criminals are turned into martyrs upon their demise. (See: Horst Wessel; Saint George Floyd.)
14. Destruction of statues, symbols and art of the pre-fascist order.
15. Accuse dissidents of the very crimes you yourself commit.
16. Justify all of it for the “common good.”

The Democrat Party of 2024 is a fascist party. Spread the word.

Remember when the media told you that the vaccine worked…?
It didn’t.
Remember when the media told you that masks worked…?
They didn’t.
Remember when the media told you the George Floyd riots were peaceful…?
They weren’t.
Remember when the media told you Joe Biden was healthy…?
He wasn’t.
Remember when the media said Jan 6th was an insurrection…?
It wasn’t.
Remember when they said Jussie Smollett was the victim of a hate crime…?
He wasn’t.

Don’t listen to what the mainstream media is saying about Kamala Harris…
She is DEI trash.
-Gunther Eagleman

The Secret Service’s Day Of Reckoning: What Kim Cheatle’s Evasion Means For America

United States Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle sat before the House Oversight Committee yesterday. The committee subpoenaed Cheatle to ensure her appearance. Her responses were predictable and tiresome. Whenever possible, she deflected questions, citing the FBI’s “ongoing investigation.” Her response to every substantive question was a simple variation on a theme — “I’m not going to get into the specifics.”

It’s a response that has rolled with ease off the lips of FBI Director Christopher Wray whenever confronted with the ire of congressional committee members. Anger — genuine or manufactured — displayed as the result of inexcusable incidents of politicization. But, these sorts of responses to congressional oversight committees have become so common they’re mundane.

However, Congress plays a significant role in the automatic and cavalier dismissals of pointed questioning by agency heads. Oversight has become a joke. Unless you’re a Trump appointee or official, contempt of Congress has absolutely no meaning. Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro are the only two examples in living memory of the efficacious use of Congress’ power of contempt. It seems only Democrats have the political will.

Cheatle easily dismissed the blustery, reddened faces congressional inquisitors assumed, like so many tomatoes set atop starched collars. Cursing and grandstanding only serves to elicit reshares on social media, and ensures a few early afternoon hits on broadcast news channels. All very important if you’re obsessed with the perpetual fundraising cycle, and convincing gullible constituents you really care one whit about their questions or concerns.

How do I know this is all a put-on? I’ve witnessed it firsthand. As a member of a dignitary protection detail, I’ve seen behind the veritable curtain, and witnessed the handshaking, back slapping, and laughing transform into Oscar winning tragedies of political theater when the cameras and lights come on. The outrage is a ploy — maybe not for everyone, but for most.

The American people can do the analysis for themselves. Congress doesn’t have the power to fire Cheatle directly, that option is solely within the purview of the lame duck president Joe Biden. But, Congress does control the purse strings, and the power to arrest and jail for contempt.

Cheatle followed the disaster of July 13th with a disastrous day before Congress. With nine days to anticipate obvious questions, she refused to provide a real answer to a single one. There’s no question she has access to accurate, preliminary findings — information the public has a right to know. A quick perusal of the operations plan would tell her who was responsible for covering the building from which the shooter fired.

Democrat members of the House Oversight Committee like Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC) used the publicity opportunity to vamp for gun confiscation. Norton asked Cheatle, “Would Secret Service protectees be safer or less safe if people could carry handguns in D.C?” What that has to do with the most significant Secret Service failure in almost fifty years is beyond the powers of mortal reason.

Incompetence is a feature of Democrat party policy, politics, and governance at every level.

Cheatle also failed to convincingly defend the men and women who responded within three seconds of the first shot fired on the July 13th assassination attempt, or to debunk the plethora of wild conspiracy theories infesting the dark environs of social media.

Keyboard jockeys immediately pounced on the female members of Trump’s protection detail, zeroing in on one in particular who seemed overcome by events. Though performance was certainly an issue during some of the tactical movements leading to securing Trump in his limousine, these criticisms are coming almost exclusively from people who have no dignitary protection background. The same critics have failed to realize the potentially pivotal role played by the Butler County Sheriff’s deputy who was boosted to the roof where the would-be assassin had positioned himself. It is highly likely that the actions of this deputy saved Trump’s life, having disturbed the shooter’s firing rhythm.

Ridiculous conspiracy theories abound. Rep. Jake LaTurner (R-KS) leveled a series of important questions, asking Cheatle to provide detail to dispel the growing body of wild and uninformed narratives surrounding the assassination attempt. She refused.

A particularly laughable theory posits that an FBI Assistant Director (AD) was placed behind Trump in the crowd during the rally. Any surveillance professional knows how ridiculous it is to suggest that an AD would be involved in surveillance at all, much less in one where she’d be placed directly behind Trump, in a position to be photographed countless times. But, this is the kind of nonsense that flourishes in the absence of information from professionals who are in the position to know.

Cheatle did get one thing right: she called the January 13th assassination attempt the worst lapse in decades. Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) called her incompetent, and demanded her instant resignation. Failing that, Turner called on Biden to fire her immediately. More notably, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) compared Cheatle to former USSS Director H. Stewart Knight after the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt, citing his resignation. Khanna said flatly, “I think you should resign.” Humorously, though stated in the most grave tones, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) called Cheatle, “a DEI horror story.”

It has been often said that the Secret Service’s duties are a “no fail mission.” That’s absolutely true. The responsibilities of dignitary protection are too weighty to allow for chance, mistake, or complacency. There are no take backs or do overs. That’s why former Director Stewart tendered his resignation. However, providing an acceptable level of transparency is also a no fail mission. Without it, as we have seen, everyone loses faith in our democratic institutions. That is an existential threat.

We must not just demand, but secure accountability from our representatives. We have an unparalleled opportunity to do just that this presidential election cycle. Trump can exercise executive authority to correct the leadership problems at the Secret Service, the FBI, and across the deep state apparatus.

Financial Surveillance: Why We Have To Prevent Liberal Organizations From Subverting The Second Amendment

There is no such thing as a free nation where the police and military are allowed to keep and bear arms and citizens are not. Our Founding Fathers understood this and enshrined the basic right to self-defense in the U.S. Constitution. The Second Amendment guarantees the absolute ability to live in peace without fear.

The U.S. Supreme Court has, time and again, reaffirmed that right. Yet elected Democrats and other stakeholders continue their all-out assault on this freedom with the ultimate goal of denying law-abiding Americans the opportunity to purchase and carry guns.

That’s why, in 2022, I became concerned when Visa and Mastercard announced they would separately categorize and track purchases for guns and ammunition. This move followed the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), an international standards organization based out of Europe, approving an application for a firearm-specific Merchant Category Code (MCC). This move would set a dangerous precedent targeting legal gun owners, the vast majority of whom are Republicans or independents who lean Right.

A specific MCC for gun purchases would subject Americans attempting to exercise their constitutional rights to unnecessary and unethical surveillance. If rolled out, a national gun registry would be closer than ever, even though it is prohibited by federal law. The Left, however, does not care about the rule of law and they certainly aren’t hiding their desire to take away your freedoms. An elected Democrat recently called a federal gun registry a “wonderful idea.”

A gun-specific MCC is a clear threat to the privacy and Second Amendment rights of all Americans. Not only does it present an easy opportunity for liberal institutions to de-bank firearms sellers, which is abruptly closing financial accounts for religious and political reasons, but it could also discourage Americans from exercising their Constitutionally-protected rights. Importantly, the MCC would do absolutely nothing to improve public safety.

The application for a gun- and ammo-specific MCC came from Amalgamated Bank in 2022, a blatantly Left-wing company that dubs itself America’s “socially responsible bank” and proudly says deposited money supports “sustainable organizations, progressive causes, and social justice.” Upon further examination, it’s clear the organization is closely connected to the Democrat Party. The New York Times in 2015 even called it “the left’s private banker.”

Clients of the union-owned bank include President Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Nancy Pelosi. Additional past and present clients include the Democratic Governors Association, the Biden Foundation, the Democratic National Committee, and Ready for Hillary 2016. Not exactly ardent defenders of the Second Amendment.

Amalgamated has also explicitly called for unconstitutional red-flag laws and says it discriminates against gun, nuclear weapon and ammunition manufacturers and distributors. Radical private organizations like this and the ISO should be nowhere near our Second Amendment.

At the time of the approval, Amalgamated Chief Executive Priscilla Sims Brown said the move “answers the call of millions of Americans who want safety from gun violence.” Does this call supersede the constitutional right to keep and bear arms? As a state representative serving the people of Northwest Tennessee, I can tell you my constituents would say that coastal elites and liberal corporations better stay far away from their guns and finances.

That’s why I set out to ensure this gun tracking scheme would never happen in the Volunteer State. This year, I sponsored the Second Amendment Financial Privacy Act, which was passed by the General Assembly and went into effect July 1. This new law will prohibit financial institutions from requiring retailers to use a specific MCC for firearms sellers in Tennessee.

Law-abiding Americans deserve to make these purchases without fear of liberal corporations and an overbearing federal government coordinating to spy on them. I was proud to provide that peace of mind to Tennesseans with the passage of this new law.

Just before the new law took effect, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti warned that Visa, Mastercard and American Express were potentially gearing up to ignore it.

“Specifically, I am concerned that your compliance efforts are not sufficient and will allow you and other financial institutions to continue to utilize impermissible codes in violation of Tennessee law,” he said in a June letter to the chief executives of each company.

No credit card company should be able to cancel the votes of millions of Tennesseans by disobeying our policies.

We’ve already seen the Orwellian-like behavior from the Biden Administration and the private companies all too willing to hand over sensitive information. Earlier this year, the House Judiciary Committee revealed federal investigators had asked financial institutions to search customer transactions for various MCCs, stores and phrases, including Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops, Dicks Sporting Goods, and MAGA.

The goal? Rooting out alleged “extremism” following the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

If the federal government and private companies are already using banking information to target conservatives, ask yourself why they might want a separate MCC for firearms and ammunition sellers. It’s clear that in attempting to force these codes on Americans, they are also attempting to reshape what the Second Amendment means in our country.

Americans are tired of these people and groups pushing an agenda contrary to our founding ideals. I’m proud Tennessee has taken a stand against the ever-increasing leftist corporate-government alliance meant to intimidate and silence Christians and conservatives. It’s time every state stands with us.

Russell ‘Rusty’ Grills represents District 77 in the Tennessee House of Representatives

Aren’t Gun Rights a Valid Presidential Debate Topic?

While Thursday night’s presidential debate was agonizing for many Americans to watch, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump did address some important issues ranging from our porous southern border to abortion to the downward spiraling economy.

What was glaringly absent, however, was any discussion of gun control and the Second Amendment-protected right to keep and bear arms.

Call me cynical, but I believe that was by design. CNN, which hosted the debate, is a media standard bearer for all things gun control. In fact, the network hasn’t seen a restrictive gun proposal that it hasn’t embraced. And both Biden and Trump have spoken out often on the matter, just like they have on other issues, leaving little doubt where they stand on the right to bear arms.

So why weren’t there any questions asked on this issue that is so important to many American citizens? I believe it was because CNN and others in the gun-ban community know they are on the wrong side of the issue. And with Biden’s diminished mental capacity, the network and whoever helped it choose questions for the debate simply were afraid of what ignorant things the president might say about firearms.

Perhaps they thought he might spout off one of the standard soundbites he has used multiple times in the past. Phrases like, “Deer don’t wear Kevlar vests,” (duh!) and, “Nobody could own a cannon during the Civil War period,” (an outright lie) don’t engender a lot of trust in a leader. And such answers would likely have drawn a quick—and probably humorous—response from Trump.

Perhaps CNN was worried he would say something about “military-grade assault weapons” when talking about common semi-automatic rifles, or even that the firearm industry is the “only industry in America that has immunity”—both well-debunked falsehoods. Or maybe they thought he’d revert to the old chestnuts that you don’t need: “20, 30, 40, 50 clips in a weapon”, “magazines that can hold multiple bullets in them” or a “magazine with 100 clips in it.”

Fact is, Biden is quite possibly the most anti-gun president in history, as well as arguably the worst. Of course, we’ve chronicled his anti-gun schemes many, many times here at TTAG.

He wants to ban common guns and magazines, let gun companies be sued into oblivion for criminal use of their legally made and marketed products and make a background check mandatory even for private gun sales between family and friends. His ATF has made things so difficult for gun dealers that many have left the business to avoid persecution, and he even created a so-called White House Office for Gun Violence Prevention to help enable anti-gun state legislators to push his gun-ban schemes at the state level.

While I can’t say Trump was the most pro-gun president in history, except for the ill-conceived bump stock ban, he was a pretty good friend to gun owners. And his federal judicial nominations at the circuit court level and to the U.S. Supreme Court have enabled many Second Amendment victories that we wouldn’t have won with a Democrat in the White House instead of Trump.

His recent speech at the NRA Annual Meetings and Exhibits in Dallas gives us some food for thought.

“Let there be no doubt, the survival of our Second Amendment is very much on the ballot,” Trump told the crowd gathered there. “We need the [Second Amendment] for safety. Because you know the bad guys are not giving up their guns…

“The NRA has stood with me from the very beginning. And with your vote I will stand strong for your rights and liberties.”

In the end, questions about gun control, like questions about nearly anything else, would have been losing questions for the sitting president. And while the debate was a pretty fair one, CNN chose to avoid asking Biden about his gun policies because it likely would have made him look even worse.

That omission is a true tragedy in a day and time when advocates of freedom constantly battle at all levels of government to retain our right to keep and bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment. Many people I know are one-issue voters. And that issue—a very important one to many people—wasn’t even discussed Thursday night.

The truth on permitless carry

I grew up in the inner city of St. Louis in a single parent household. We faced poverty, hunger, violence, and decay. It was a daily struggle that I assumed was the life of every black family in America. I didn’t know the world that existed outside of my neighborhood.

But by the grace of God, I saw a glimmer of light in the distance and chose a different path. I joined the St. Louis Police Department’s Prisoner Processing Division. There I learned about the true threats that plague our society, what public safety really means, and why we should hold our constitutional rights — especially the Second Amendment — close to our hearts.

After 16 years, I left the police force, but never lost focus of protecting people. So, I continued training individuals in self-defense and started an organization called Aiming for The Truth to focus on changing the underlying factors that drive violence in our communities.

A critical part of my job — as both a firearms coach and someone who is trying to generate wholesale change in impoverished communities — is showcasing truth while dispelling lies surrounding violence, firearms, and the Second Amendment.

Thanks to the anti-freedom people and organizations, most of us grow up seeing firearms as a tool for chaos, not a means to peace. But here’s the truth: Guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens create safer communities. But you don’t have to take my word for it — the data prove it.

In a recent paper from the Firearms Research Center at the University of Wyoming, senior fellow K. Alexander Adams assesses the research surrounding “Constitutional Carry,” a law under consideration in North Carolina that 29 other US states have adopted. In short, this legislation allows qualified citizens to carry a firearm without a weapons permit.

“The relationship between constitutional-carry laws and homicide is negative, which is the opposite of what gun-control activists have predicted,” wrote Adams. In fact, “Constitutional-carry laws were associated with about 6% lower homicide rates. The doomsday scenarios of constitutional-carry opponents are not supported by social science.”

Adam referenced a study published by the Center for Justice Research earlier this year that affirmed his national research.

“Beginning June 13, 2022, Ohio became the 23rd state to allow its citizens to carry a concealed weapon without a permit. In the year following, crime involving guns dropped across Ohio’s eight largest cities as a whole and in six of the eight individually.”

Adams also name checks the John Locke Foundation, quoting from a column published in Carolina Journal, “When analyzing violent crime rates of constitutional carry states (with enough data) in years since enactment, the states either reflected the national trend in violent crime or showed a relative decrease in their violent crime rates.”

As lawmakers in North Carolina contemplate passing gun rights legislation, it’s vital for them to seek and vocalize the truth. We know the gun control lobby is lying — and will continue to lie — about permitless carry and the Second Amendment more generally. We know they largely do it because they want power. If they can convince citizens that their rights can and should be compromised, freedom diminishes as the ruling class consolidates control.

So, considering the facts, figures, and future of this great nation, let’s endeavor to spread and amplify the truth — even when it doesn’t fit neatly into a political party or ideology.

Let’s talk about the Black Wall Street Massacre in Tulsa and why gun control is simply Jim Crowe 2.0.

Let’s share the stats about Gun Free Zones becoming the choice location for mass murder and expose the detrimental impact of “assault weapons bans,” as they threaten the safety and civility of our communities.

Permitless carry boils down to individual responsibility — the ability to exercise your rights without government intervention. While some try to paint these laws as a recipe for disaster, the data tells another story, a story that young men and women who grew up like me deserve to hear.

Anatomy of a Full Leftwing Meltdown
Victor Davis Hanson

The media is afire with warnings of the impending Trump “dictatorship”. Celebrities, the Squad, and Biden administration grandees vie to conjure up the most nightmarish things that Trump might do to them.

What drives their current mounting hysteria?

1) The Left feels it may be heading to an historic 1972 McGovern-like or 1980 Carteresque blowout. And it is terrified at this late date that it cannot do anything either about the escalating dementia of Joe Biden, or the terror instilled by the specter of either a President or continued Vice-President Kamala Harris.

2) It knows that a first-term novice Trump had a successful four years, and that he now is savvier four years later—and far more likely and able to overturn the entire four-year Biden catastrophe and thus enjoy an even more successful second term.

3) It fears that all it did to destroy democracy—the Russian collusion hoax, the Russian disinformation laptop farce, the two first-term impeachments the moment the Republicans lost the House, the Senate trial of ex-President Trump as a private citizen, the effort to remove Trump from state ballots, and the five criminal and civil show trials designed to bankrupt the leading presidential candidate and keep him off the campaign trail—might boomerang on the Left.

So, it is in full panic that its unconstitutional efforts to destroy Trump will obviously be used against itself—given it knows that if it returned to power it would go after its enemies in precisely the same, any-means-necessary ways that it had sought to destroy Trump. That is, they have destroyed norms and have established dangerous new precedents that they just assume, given their Jacobin nature, must rebound against themselves.

4) The Left is terrified that growing voter repugnance now extends even to traditional Democratic constituencies—Latinos, Blacks, Asians, Jews, the young, and even the college educated. And the Left privately grasps that these defections are fueled not just by the obnoxiousness and dementia of Joe Biden, but due to his far-left agendas that left us with abhorrent inflation, wild unsustainable federal deficits, a lethal open border, 10-million unaudited and often dangerous illegal aliens, foreign policy catastrophes, woke racial and tribal disunity, spiraling urban crime, and cultural extremism. Leftists accept that while in secret they blame the cognitively challenged Joe for their dilemmas, deep-down they know that “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves”—that is, in their own failed revolution that has utterly repulsed Americans and nearly destroyed the country.

5) In the next five months, the Left and Democrats know that they must pander to try to save themselves. But the more Biden panders, the more obvious, repugnant, and counterproductive the pandering becomes. The public is growing sick of Biden’s 11th-hour groveling to save himself from his self-created oblivion. And the more in his last days as President he drains even more the strategic petroleum reserve, the more he cancels student loan debt, the more he abandons Israel to win a few thousand votes in Michigan, the more he pressures the Fed to lower interest rates, the more he flips on tariffs, and the more he grants blanket amnesties to illegal aliens—all the more the country at large becomes disgusted at the low effort to temporarily appease particular voting blocs at the expense of the general interest of the country.

6) As we watch the Left go through the proverbial cycles of “denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance”, it will increasingly deny the accuracy of supposedly inaccurate swing state polls, then angrily damn the supposedly clueless, deplorable electorate, then turn to all sorts of dreams of remedies (changing or violating more voting laws being the most prominent), then get sullen about the entire American project, and only finally accept the inevitable of what likely lies ahead.

Even with his credentials, Bob has a long way to go to have people regain confidence in the NRA.

BARR: When It Comes To The Second Amendment, The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

I recently returned from the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) 153rd annual meeting in Dallas, Texas, an event at which hundreds of retailers and manufacturers of firearms, firearms accessories, archery equipment and camping gear set up shop and attracted more than 72,000 visitors, including many families with children of all ages. As was the case at every NRA annual meeting I have attended since becoming a Board member in 1998, the overarching theme was safe and responsible use and ownership of firearms.

On Monday, May 20th, immediately following the annual meeting and exhibit hall, I was elected by the 76-member Board of Directors to serve as NRA President for the 2024-25 year. I accepted this honor at a time of great challenge and opportunity for the NRA and its more than four million dues-paying members — also recognizing that every year is one of challenge and opportunity for the NRA.

The fact is, when it comes to defending the Second Amendment (and indeed, all the rights guaranteed to us by our Bill of Rights), our opponents never sleep, and a win one day is guaranteed to be followed by another challenge the next. Thus it has been since the founding of our great nation.

Thankfully for freedom-loving and law-abiding citizens, just as our adversaries never sleep, neither does the NRA in confronting challenges in the legislative, legal and regulatory arenas. And, since the turn of this century, those challenges have come also from the United Nations and other international organizations.

Here at home, the recent prosecution of former President Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg illustrates the manner by which our heretofore “blind” criminal justice system has been employed as a cudgel to attack political opponents. The NRA was similarly targeted by New York’s state Attorney General Letitia James, who promised as a candidate in 2018 to go after the NRA, which she considered a “terrorist organization.” Ever since then, she has used the power of her office to wage a multi-year war against the NRA.

With the support of millions of NRA members and a team of crack lawyers, the Association has proactively and successfully withstood such legal challenges, even as we have managed to advance gun rights, self-defense laws and hunting opportunities in states across the country.

The NRA has led the way for passage of constitutional carry – the gold standard in self-defense laws outside the home — in 29 states. Perhaps surprising to some observers, most of those states passed constitutional carry since 2018, when the organized campaign to put the NRA out of business began in earnest in the New York courts.

Whether through landmark Supreme Court cases or strategic litigation at the state level, the NRA has consistently demonstrated its commitment to upholding the Second Amendment as a fundamental civil liberty. The NRA shepherded two major Supreme Court cases just in the last three years: the consequential 2022 Bruen decision and the very recent, seminal NRA v. Vullo First Amendment decision that showed clearly New York’s attacks against the NRA were indeed politically motivated.

The Vullo decision, by a unanimous Court, assures that organizations of whatever political stripe or mission are shielded from government officials abusing their regulatory powers to silence those it regulates because it disagrees with their viewpoint.

As I assume the presidency of America’s oldest civil liberties champion, I am reminded that the right to keep and bear arms remains always under threat by those in power seeking more of it by depriving the citizenry of vital individual freedoms.

When I was first sworn into the 104th Congress in January 1995, our Second Amendment rights were under direct assault by then-President Bill Clinton’s gun-control agenda, which had been supported by the previous Congress under Democrat rule. Now, one generation later, another Democrat president is using the power of that office to weaken those same rights through executive actions wielded both directly and indirectly.

When it comes to the Second Amendment, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

So the Democrat/Media Complex is aghast that the “Far Right” won so dramatically in the European elections. That “Far Right” is, in reality, just ordinary people, and let me tell you what it is that their votes rejected. They rejected the following:

1. The deliberate depopulation of Europe.
2. The deliberate destruction of centuries-old European culture in favor of Islam via unchecked migration of “refugees.”
3. The deliberate lowering of standards of living and life expectancy through the mandated use of inefficient energy sources in response to the “climate change” hoax.
4. Centralized control of all facets of life by unelected, unaccountable EU bureaucrats.
5. Deliberate reductions in the farming, production and consumption of traditional food stuffs in favor of, among other things, bugs.
6. Failure of law enforcement to protect citizens from urban violence.

Americans, do these issues sound familiar to you? Remember how Brexit was a harbinger of Trump? I suspect that is about to play out again in 2024.

Both European and American citizens have come to understand that for the first time in history their political leadership is deliberately seeking to lower their quality of life as a specific policy objective.

Change is coming.

C. Publius

The Myth That Biden Had Nothing to Do With the Prosecutions of Trump

The five criminal and civil prosecutions of former President Donald Trump all prompt heated denials from Democrats that President Joe Biden and Democrat operatives had a role in any of them.

But Biden has long let it be known that he was frustrated with his own Department of Justice’s federal prosecutors for their tardiness in indicting Trump.

Biden was upset because any delay might mean that his rival Trump would not be in federal court during the 2024 election cycle. And that would mean he could not be tagged as a “convicted felon” by the November election while being kept off the campaign trail.

Politico has long prided itself on its supposed insider knowledge of the workings of the Biden administration. Note that it was reported earlier this February that a frustrated Joe Biden “has grumbled to aides and advisers that had (Attorney General Merrick) Garland moved sooner in his investigation into former President Donald Trump’s election interference, a trial may already be underway or even have concluded…”

If there was any doubt about the Biden administration’s effort to force Trump into court before November, Politico further dispelled it — even as it blamed Trump for Biden’s anger at Garland: “That trial still could take place before the election and much of the delay is owed not to Garland but to deliberate resistance put up by the former president and his team.”

Note in passing how a presidential candidate’s legal right to oppose a politicized indictment months before an election by his opponent’s federal attorneys is smeared by Politico as “deliberate resistance.”

Given Politico was publicly reporting six months ago about Biden’s anger at the pace of his DOJ’s prosecution of Trump, does anyone believe his special counsel, Jack Smith, was not aware of such presidential displeasure and pressure?

Note Smith had petitioned and was denied an unusual request to the court to speed up the course of his Trump indictment.

And why would Biden’s own Attorney General, Garland, select such an obvious partisan as Smith? Remember, in his last tenure as special counsel, Smith had previously gone after popular Republican and conservative Virginia governor Bob MacDonald.

Yet Smith’s politicized persecution of the innocent McDonnell was reversed by a unanimous verdict of the U.S. Supreme Court. That rare court unanimity normally should have raised a red flag to the Biden DOJ about both Smith’s partiality and his incompetence.

But then again, Smith’s wife had donated to the 2020 Biden campaign fund. And she was previously known for producing a hagiographic 2020 documentary (“Becoming”) about Michelle Obama.

Selecting a special counsel with a successful record of prior nonpartisan convictions was clearly not why the DOJ appointed Smith.

The White House’s involvement is not limited to the Smith federal indictments.

Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis’s paramour and erstwhile lead prosecutor in her indictment of Trump, Nathan Wade, met twice with the White House counsel’s office. On one occasion, Wade met inside the Biden White House.

Subpoenaed records reveal that the brazen Wade actually billed the federal government for his time spent with the White House counsel’s staff — although so far no one has disclosed under oath the nature of such meetings.

Of the tens of thousands of local prosecutions each year, in how many instances does a county prosecutor consult with the White House counsel’s office — and then bill it for his knowledge?

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s just-completed felony convictions of Trump were spearheaded by former prominent federal prosecutor Matthew Colangelo. He is not just a well-known Democratic partisan who served as a political consultant to the Democratic National Committee.

Colangelo had also just left his prior position in the Biden Justice Department — reputedly as Garland’s third-ranking prosecutor — to join the local Bragg team.

Again, among all the multitudes of annual municipal indictments nationwide, how many local prosecutors manage to enlist one of the nation’s three top federal attorneys to head their case?

So, apparently, it was not enough for the shameless Bragg to campaign flagrantly on promises to go after Trump. In addition, Bragg brashly drafted a top Democratic operative and political appointee from inside Joe Biden’s DOJ to head his prosecution.

Not surprisingly, it took only a few hours after the Colangelo-Bragg conviction of Trump for Biden on spec to start blasting his rival as a “convicted felon.” Biden is delighted that his own former prosecutor, a left-wing judge, and a Manhattan jury may well keep Trump off the campaign trail.

So, it is past time for the media and Democrats to drop this ridiculous ruse of Biden’s White House “neutrality.” Instead, they should admit that they are terrified of the will of the people in November and so are conniving to silence them.

Cynical Publius Profile picture

Cynical Publius

I am hoping there are still a few rational Democrats in existence, so I am writing this post in hopes reason will pull them back from the abyss they are about to throw the United States into.

The following statements are indisputable, verifiable facts:

1. The criminal prosecution of the leading Presidential candidate of the opposition party is a wholly unprecedented event that violates all American political norms.

2. In recorded world history, literally every time a nation’s ruling political party acts against prevailing political norms and imprisons or kills the leadership of its major political opponent, the history books record such action as tyrannical despotism.

Think about it, just as examples—Ancient Greece and Socrates; Ancient Rome and Julius Caesar; the French Reign of Terror; Russia, Lenin and the Romanovs; Stalin and his purges; every other Soviet premier and the Gulag; Nazi Germany (enough said); the British Raj and Gandhi; Mao’s Cultural Revolution; Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel and the Warsaw Pact versions of Poland and the Czech Republic; South Africa and Nelson Mandela; Vladimir Putin and everyone who ever opposes him; the list goes on and on and on. History records EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE of this phenomenon as the embodiment of abject evil and tyranny.

3. When tyrants imprison their opponents, they always justify the action as being necessary and lawful. Always. Without exception. Additionally, when that happens, there are MILLIONS of citizens who believe in good faith that their leaders’ actions are justified. Average Germans in 1933, average Russians in 1917 and average Chinese in 1970 all GENUINELY BELIEVED that they were the good guys and the actions of their leaders were entirely justified.

These are facts.
Indisputable.
Undeniable.

Here’s another set of facts: in the USA in 2024, the ruling party is seeking to imprison the leader of the opposition party, acting against historical political norms; the leadership doing this believes its actions are necessary and lawful; and average American Democrats believe fervently that the actions of their leaders are entirely justified. The parallels to historic tyranny are powerful, precise and alarming.

Democrats, please consider these facts. I implore you to reconsider your actions. You are not the good guys. Instead, you are the average German of 1933 or the average Chinese citizen of 1970. I warn you now:

History is about to mark you as yet another despicable entry in the pantheon of evil tyranny.

Step back from the abyss. There is still time.

Cynical Publius

I get the sense that a lot of people across the entire political spectrum do not fully understand one of the very most basic reasons why the US federal government is such a tyrannical soup sandwich, so I thought I would write a quick primer.

The US Constitution limits the power of the federal government vis-a-vis the states (or the People). To the extent the federal government has certain enumerated powers, it is up to Congress to make laws, and it is up to the President to enforce them. (Yes, I know that it is a very simplified explanation, but it’s basically true.)

Certain federal agencies housed in the Executive Branch have existed almost from the nation’s founding, but these related solely and directly to the President’s Constitutionally-enumerated powers, thus the War Department (for example) was necessary. However, starting with the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887, we began to see Congress abdicating some of its lawmaking powers to federal agencies.

Through the following decades, with the desire of the so-called “progressives” to establish rule by “experts,” that abdication of Congressional law-making responsibilities went on warp drive, through Woodrow Wilson, through FDR and even through Richard Nixon, as numerous new federal agencies came into being.

Over those decades, more and more law-making authority was delegated to those federal agencies, most of which were housed in the Executive Branch and responsive to the President, thus greatly expanding the President’s powers beyond the original Constitutional intent.

Over time, even the powers of the third branch—the Judicial Branch—were co-opted into the Executive Branch as these administrative agencies were given the power to create their own courts, thus ruling on disputes regarding and enforcement of the very laws they made.

Penultimately, we have reached the point today where the Executive Branch has subsumed many of the Constitutional authorities of the Legislative and Judicial Branches, creating the tyrannical federal government we see today—one run by life-tenured, unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who rule first and foremost for the growth and protection of their own agencies.

Now Donald Trump wants to undo much of this. He wants to unwind this cabal of extra-Constitutional power, and he wants to do so by taking that power OUT OF THE VERY BRANCH HE WILL RUN and return that power to the Constitutional authorities where it belongs. This effort to unwind the power in the Executive Branch is what worries Fascist Democrats when they talk about Trump “destroying democracy,” and it’s why they call him a “dictator.”

(Which is hilarious, since Trump would be the very first “dictator” in world history whose primary purpose is to reduce his own power, thereby enhancing democracy.)

So hopefully that makes things more clear. I left a lot out and simplified some very complex issues, but I think this covers things at the most basic level. If you want to know more, Google the following:

1. Administrative Procedure Act.
2. “Abolishing the Administrative Procedure Act.”
3. Chevron v. NRDC.
4. INS v. Chadha.
5. Wickard v. Filburn

Have a patriotic day please.

Taking guns away from lawful owners isn’t practical

RALEIGH — When officers from the U.S. Marshal Service, the N.C. Department of Adult Correction, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, and other agencies approached a home in eastern Charlotte on April 29, their purpose was to serve warrants on a fugitive named Terry Clark Hughes Jr.

The fugitive fought back, costing four men their lives: Adult Correction officers Alden Elliot and Samuel Paloche, Deputy U.S. Marshal Thomas Weeks, and CMPD’s Joshua Ayer.

Hughes was a habitual felon. In 2011, he was convicted in Person County of breaking and entering. In 2012, he was convicted in Alamance County of speeding to elude arrest — having fled a checkpoint at more than 100 miles an hour — and possessing a firearm, which as a felon he lacked the right to do.

So, when the task force arrived at the Galway Drive house on April 29, among the charges Hughes faced was the illegal possession of guns. Alas, he still had guns. He used them to murder four men before his outrageous conduct cost him his own life.

The officers were there, in other words, to enforce a gun-control law with nearly universal acceptance. And yet, in the aftermath of this horrific incident, progressive politicians couldn’t help themselves. Rather than tailor their reactions to the facts of the case, they engaged in a robotic plug-and-play.

In his April 29 statement, for example, Joe Biden called the officers “fallen heroes.” Yes, they are.

But the president also said this: “We must do more to protect our law enforcement officers. That means funding them — so they have the resources they need to do their jobs and keep us safe. And it means taking additional action to combat the scourge of gun violence. Now. Leaders in Congress need to step up so that we ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, require safe storage of guns, and pass universal background checks and a national red flag law. Enough is enough.”

Several days later, after President Biden met with family members of the fallen heroes as well as others wounded in the firefight, he insisted lawmakers needed to “keep the weapons of war” out of the wrong hands.

The hands of habitual felon Terry Clark Hughes certainly had no business holding firearms of any kind. But it was already illegal for him to do so. That was one of the main reasons the officers were there to arrest him in the first place.

As for the funding of state and federal law enforcement, I see no evidence it played any role here. Safe storage of guns? While the North Carolina General Assembly has already legislated on this matter, it also had no relevance to the case. Nor did the absence of red flag laws (since any report to authorities by family members that he possessed a gun would already have triggered yet another warrant for his arrest) or broader background checks (since he already knew he was precluded from owning a gun and wouldn’t have tried buying firearms from anyone required to use the National Instant Criminal Background Check System).

That leaves only Biden’s stated desire to ban all assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Assuming he means semiautomatic rifles such as the AR-15 — automatic weapons are already illegal for the vast majority of Americans to own — there are tens of millions of such rifles currently in private hands across our country. Most have magazines holding more than 10 rounds.

To put the matter bluntly, there is no practical way of confiscating these weapons from their lawful owners. Let’s focus on actual criminals like Terry Clark Hughes.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His latest books, Mountain Folk and Forest Folk, combine epic fantasy with early American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN GAVE US THE ANSWER FOR REJECTING GUN CONTROL

President Joe Biden said it again. Given another term, he’ll do gun control. This time, he’s grotesquely dismissive of the high price of freedom that has been paid with the lives of those who fought and died to preserve American independence. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Bill of Rights, famously wrote “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

President Biden told the “Smartless” podcast, according to Breitbart, that he will “make sure that we do something about gun violence in this country” should he be elected for a second term, adding, “this — the [tree of] liberty is watered with the blood of patriots, I mean, that’s a bunch of crap.”

President Biden specifically took aim at re-enacting the failed 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, that even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitted had no effect on crime reduction. He reiterated his disproven claims about “cannon control” and again placed himself as the pre-eminent Second Amendment authority, despite the U.S. Supreme Court clearly establishing the Second Amendment as a right of individual Americans.

It’s a mantra that would be easy to dismiss if it weren’t for all the gun control he’s already implemented by bypassing Congress and abusing his executive authority to attack the firearm industry.

Punishing Second Amendment Freedom

He targets “rogue” gun dealers, when even his own Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) officials published data showing they’re not the problem. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Volume Three of the National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment show just 0.1 percent of all federal firearms licensees were implicated in allegedly illegal firearm trafficking between 2017 and 2021.

President Biden’s Commerce Department published a punishing Interim Final Rule through the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) and slapped on new firearm export restrictions that have the intent of hobbling U.S. firearm manufacturers and exporters. The administration grasped at straws to justify it for national security reasons but it also belies ATF data. The ATF’s National Firearm Commerce and Trafficking Assessment shows less than one percent of legally exported firearms are ever traced in connection with a crime taking place in a foreign country.

Recently, Everytown for Gun Safety’s President John Feinblatt boasted of his gun control organization’s collusion with the White House’s office of Gun Violence Prevention, staffed by his former employee Rob Wilcox, and the City of Chicago to bring a frivolous and harassing lawsuit against Glock. The handgun maker is renowned for their product’s reliability and Feinblatt and others are upset because Glock refuses to change their handgun designs because criminals illegally alter them by affixing auto-sears – what ATF calls “machinegun conversion devices (MCD) -that are illegal to import, make, possess and install on a firearm. A dozen Democrat state attorneys general are threatening to sue, as is Hawaii.

The goal is to overturn the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), the law that prohibits frivolous lawsuits against the firearm industry for the harm caused by remote third parties. To more easily understand that, “remote third parties” is legal-speak for criminals. Feinblatt, President Biden and the Congressional gun control cabal want to return to the days of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s when unscrupulous trial lawyers in shiny suits in concert with gun control groups paraded a series of failing lawsuits to drain firearm manufacturers of funds with claims that were never successful.

That wasn’t the point, though. Disgraced former New York Gov. Anderw Cuomo served as the Housing and Urban Development Secretary under President Bill Clinton and infamously threatened the firearm industry with “death by a thousand cuts.” The objective was to bring the industry to its knees and force through court-ordered settlements gun control measures rejected by Congress or ratchet up the cost of litigation and shutter the industry through bankruptcy. Nothing changed.

Look to Another American President

It’s time to reject this mentality. There was a time in this nation when Americans shrugged off the collective blame that society shoulders responsibility for the ills that plague us and focused instead on holding criminals accountable. Instead of listening to the 46^th President of the United States, America should recall the words of the 40^th President.

“We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker,” President Ronald Reagan said. “It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

President Reagan delivered those remarks to the Republican National Convention in Miami in 1968. Those words are as fitting today as they were over a half century ago.

President Biden, with the help of gun control cronies, wants to shift the blame for criminals misusing firearms to snatch that Constitutionally-protected right from every American. Together, they’re doing it through executive fiat, judicial abuse and regulatory overreach. They’ve gone so far as to create an office within The White House that is structured to do that, staffed by former gun control lobbyists.

The notion that others are to blame for an individual’s failings and crimes is as juvenile as the toddler’s “the devil made me do it” excuse. Laws are enacted to protect society. They give society the tools by which to hold individuals accountable when they don’t respect the rights of others or the consequences of their actions. When President Biden and his gun control factions talk of repealing PLCAA, enacting unconstitutional restrictions through the rulemaking process instead of working through Congress – the representatives of “We, the People,” they are abrogating their responsibility to protect the very people they’ve been entrusted to govern. They break the social contract with Americans to shift the blame for crime from the criminal to those who had no part or responsibility for that crime.

This isn’t how Americans want to be governed. Weaponizing government – including the courts to cast the blame for criminal misbehavior on an industry or the rest of society – is anything but accountability. It gives the criminal a free pass. It punishes the innocent and negates rights that belong to law-abiding Americans.

This isn’t what the Founding Fathers envisioned. Americans must not tolerate a chief executive who crassly dismisses the hard-fought liberties that have been secured by patriots with their lives. Americans must not surrender their liberties to carry the collective blame when individuals break the law. Stripping Americans of their Second Amendment rights doesn’t make the country safer. It emboldens criminals and makes citizens wards of an Orwellian government.

Newsom’s gun control constitutional amendment gets nowhere, to the surprise of no one

Gov. Gavin Newsom made headlines last summer for proposing a 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution enshrining a handful of gun control measures into the supreme law of the land.

There was some ginned up fanfare, with state Sen. Aisha Wahab praising Newsom as “a man of action” in the press release announcing the amendment.

It was all a bit much for what everyone understood at the time to be Newsom’s latest attempt at positioning himself for the White House.

Alas, the California Legislature, dominated by the Democratic Party, approved a resolution calling for a constitutional convention on gun safety. Thirty-three states must make similar calls for such a convention to happen, but even then there’s an asterisk (more on that later).

Almost a year later, reports Bay Area News Group’s John Woolfolk, no other blue state has taken up Newsom on his proposal.

As Woolfolk notes, there are 18 other states with state legislatures controlled by the Democrats. But none have shown signs of following suit.

This is certainly not a surprise. Most states in the country have little interest in the sort of gun control measures pitched by Newsom.

Constitutional attorney Cody J. Wisniewski explained in these pages back in June: “Given only 10 states and Washington D.C. have any form of ban on so-called ‘assault weapons’ or any form of waiting period, while 27 states have enacted some iteration of free/constitutional/permitless carry, it is clear that there isn’t currently much appetite for Newsom’s particular brand of gun control across the country.”

Then there’s the problem with the fact that the California Legislature called for a constitutional convention limited to matters of gun safety.
“But constitutional scholars say it’s unclear that’s legally possible,” Woolfolk reports. If a constitutional convention did indeed get assembled, states could use the circumstance to propose whatever they want.

Oregon Sen. Floyd Prozanski told Woolfolk that’s among the reasons his state doesn’t seem likely to go down the path pitched by Newsom. “The last thing I’d want is to open up something where we can’t put the lid back on the can,” he said.

And so that’s where Newsom’s much-touted constitutional amendment and foray into national politics and national influence-peddling stands: nowhere.

Needless to say, this isn’t any surprise to this editorial board. On June 13, 2023, we said of the proposal: “This editorial board isn’t impressed by Newsom’s proposal and we’re confident most of the rest of the country won’t be, either.”