Editorial O’ The Day – Page 6

Cynical Publius
@CynicalPublius

To fully understand just how remarkable today’s exchange with Colombia was, you need to understand how Washington DC has traditionally worked through these sorts of issues, and the different way it works now under Trump.

I’ll illustrate.

Traditional Approach:

1. Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
2. On Monday, the State Department convenes an interagency task force with DoD, NSC, DEA, INS, ICE, Commerce, Treasury and Homeland Security.
3. The task force meets for four days and develops a position paper.
4. The position paper is rejected by the Secretary of State, who is unhappy that insufficient equity considerations are built into the process.
5. The task force reconvenes a week later to redevelop three new, equity-centric courses of action and create a new position paper.
6. The process is delayed a week because Washington DC gets three inches of snow.
7. SecState approves the new position paper for interagency circulation, and considerable input is received from the heads of other departments so the task force must reconvene.
8. The original three proposed responsive courses of action are scrapped in favor of a new, fourth course of action that achieves the worst aspects of the three prior courses of action but satisfies the interagency.
9. Someone in State who disagrees leaks to the Washington Post, who writes a story about how ineffective the Presidential administration is.
10. The White House Chief of Staff sets up a session three days later to brief the President, who approves the new fourth course of action.
11. Over a month after the issue is first raised, the State Department Public Affairs Officer holds a press conference announcing that Colombia has agreed to try to send fewer criminals into the US and everyone declares victory.

Trump Approach:

1. Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
2. After a par-5 third hole where he goes one under par, Trump uses his iPhone to post on social media as to how the USA will destroy Colombia’s economy if they do not do what the USA demands.
3. By the time Trump gets to the par-4 sixth hole, Colombia’s President has agreed to repatriate all the illegal Colombians in his own plane, which he will pay for.
4. Trump finishes three under par and goes to the clubhouse for a Diet Coke where he posts a gangsta AI image of himself and the new FAFO Doctrine.
5. Winning.

See the difference? It’s called LEADERSHIP.

A Hard Heart Kills: Why Liberal Values Breed School Shootings

Traditionally, the school shooting phenomenon was perpetrated by young, disaffected males. But, a disturbing new trend seems to be forming. The tragic shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School this week was committed by a young girl. A fifteen-year-old with a digital history indicative of the deep angst experienced by many young teenagers left adrift in existential darkness.

It is a very disturbing trend indeed when our young girls, typically characterized by feminine compassion, who should be anticipating the joys of family, motherhood, or career, instead are driven to find meaning in mass homicide. Surely, this is a sign of cultural apocalypse.

Reportedly, Natalie Rupnow had an online obsession with mass shootings and death. Can it really be surprising that our culture of death (the death of God, death of the unborn, the death of personhood) produces mass-murdering kids?

We treat the unborn like bio-waste and devalue life to the point of absurd irrelevance, discarding it at will. The message to anyone paying attention is that life is disposable and subject to whim or convenience. Making a statement with the lives of innocent people is a simple metaphysical extension of the secular culture of grievance and lack of eternal accountability.

Perhaps some old-fashioned hell-fire preaching might go a long way toward saving lives, both temporal and spiritual.

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Chris Martz
Why do most climate activists oppose nuclear power? I’ll tell you why.

It has nothing to do with the cost to deploy; it is actually pretty cheap without burdensome compliance regulations.
It has nothing to do with radioactive waste; that is easily compactible into steel and concrete casks, and much of it is in fact reusable.
Instead, their vitriol towards nuclear is an artifact of their Malthusian religion. They maintain that industrial processes are harming the planet and the only way to avert catastrophe is to decarbonize our economy rapidly and stop economic growth by abolishing capitalism.
Many in fact admit that is their intention. Solar and wind are their preferred energy technologies.

Why?

Because they are intermittent electricity generation sources. The activists know that neither solar nor wind can serve as the baseload to power modern civilization. It’s simply not feasible with current technologies [which is why they require fossil fuel backup when there is no sunlight reaching the panels or wind blowing to turn the turbine blades].

This means that supply must be rationed. Nuclear, on the contrary, can.
France runs 70% of their grid on it.
Fission is symbolic of an economically prosperous future.

Solar and wind are symbolic of what the degrowthers want.
It’s essentially a population control grift.

Some activist academics have gone so far as to say that the planet has too many people. But, they never take the liberty to decarbonize themselves and net zero their own existence. Oh, no.
There is just the right amount of them, but too little of us.

They don’t care about the planet; as George Carlin once said, they only care about having their own space to live. Their own little habitat. It’s narcissism guised as environmentalism.

You and I are the carbon that they want to reduce. It’s that simple.

BLUF
Only when we’ve plowed the soil of the Deep State with salt can we talk about a truce. But the damage personal damage we inflict over the next four years, in terms of jail time, bankruptcies, and legal judgments, must so terrify that second tier of Deep Staters that no matter what another batch of Democrat operatives cook up, they will refuse to get involved.

Op-Ed: Lawfare Will End When the Left Is Too Terrified to Contemplate Continuing It

Now that Donald Trump is headed to the White House, he has to make a decision vital to the Republic’s health. Over the last eight years, President Trump and his allies have been the subject of a non-stop stream of lawfare attacks designed to cripple him while he was president and later, after he peacefully turned over the reigns of power to the addled Joe Biden, to imprison him for what could have been the rest of his life.

The campaign to jail him was clearly a conspiracy involving Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and Fulton County, GA, District Attorney Fani Willis. The extent to which the civil cases against him were coordinated with the criminal cases has never, as far as I know, been explored, but it is hard to imagine that it did not exist.

This use of the judicial system to attempt to impoverish and imprison political opponents is foreign to the United States and to its founding principles. The decision that Trump has to make is to either ignore the attacks calculated to ruin his life or should he be faithful to the promise he made at CPAC in March 2023 and seek retribution.

In 2016, I declared I am your voice. Today I add I am your Warrior, I am your Justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your Retribution.

Andy McCarthy, writing in National Review, makes the case that Trump should end lawfare by ending lawfare.

You don’t have to be an admirer of Bannon or Navarro to see these prosecutions as toxic partisan lawfare. Or to understand how, in the end, this helped Trump with voters

— not because Americans have affection for these men, but because the Democrats’ unabashed exploitation of the government’s law enforcement apparatus for their own political advantage was despotic and frightening.

It’s not the sort of thing that shouldn’t be done to our side; it’s a betrayal of justice that shouldn’t be done, period, full stop.

Other than being wrong, McCarthy argues that the actions of all public officials have the same immunity that the Supreme Court declared applied to President Trump; see BREAKING: Supreme Court Rules on Presidential Immunity.

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The Trillionaires of Mars

The first entity to establish a Mars colony will be the universe’s first trillionaire.

Lately, we’ve had a lot of puddlefish whining about how “we” shouldn’t go to Mars. Some of them actually think they get a vote, based on economic illiteracy and the delusion that SpaceX is somehow part of the US federal government. [Closed caption for the hard-of-thinking: it isn’t.]

But others just think they are giving good investment advice… SpaceX investors can do what they want, but Mars is a frozen wasteland full of nothing but near-vacuum and rocks.

So why would anyone want to go there?

Elon Musk likes to answer this question by pointing out that it’s not a good idea to store all humanity’s eggs in one basket. He’s right, but this kind of argument isn’t comprehensible to everyone, nor is it the full picture.

So now it’s the SF writer’s turn.

And therefore I present to you…

An Economic Roadmap for the Future of Humanity.

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Cynical Publius

As many of you likely have noticed, most Democrats are still in complete denial as to the reasons behind their crushing landslide defeat on November 5th.

As a public service, I thought I would put a clothespin on my nose and descend into the stench of their post-election miasma of broken promises, SSRI-induced delusion, pumpkin spice micro-brew vomit and spoiled gender-swap hormones to bring back from this 90th Circle of George Clooney Hell the Top Ten reasons why Democrats believe they lost the election.

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James Woods

Physicists in 1900 basically accepted the Newtonian model of the universe. The only troubling anomaly was that Mercury, as it came into view in its journey around the sun, appeared to be in the “wrong” place. How was this possible? After much discussion brilliant scientists concluded that it “appeared” to be closer to the sun because the sun’s gravity was bending light rays reflecting off of Mercury on their way to earth.

This defied all the “settled science” embraced by classical physicists. It was to them heresy essentially, because by implication it would mean that energy and matter were interchangeable. Indeed a young physicist named Albert Einstein created the most famous equation in history, formulating that exact relationship: e=mc(squared).

The longwinded point I’m trying to make is that throughout history the most minor anomalies are often windows into a completely different understanding of the world.

Which brings me to my point.

This event where armed officers took a pet squirrel from an individual in New York opens a Pandora’s box of the horrors of leftist tyranny. The facts of the incident are disturbing enough: an anonymous instigator over 1000 miles away reported a humble man who had rescued a wounded squirrel and made a pet of him for years.

The informer’s motives in doing so can only be guessed, but the owner of the pet had made the horrific mistake in today’s America of supporting conservative thought. A cadre of armed officials got a search warrant, rummaged through the man’s property for five hours, illegally questioned his wife about her immigrant status, ultimately seizing the pet and killing it without giving the owner any recourse to save its life.

Now let’s take a look at the universe in which this macabre horrid little leftist “comedy” took place. In a nation overrun by tens of millions of illegal aliens, crushed by rampant crime and gang warfare, enduring a $35 trillion deficit, soul-crushing inflation, a culture of infanticide and child mutilation, sexual dysphoria, and insanity, and waging illegal lawfare against candidates of another party, New York State spent a full day killing a squirrel, that had been a harmless pet cherished by its owner for literally years.

The event in and of itself was just an act of petty cruelty. As a window into a larger universe, however, it is a fissure in the mantle of our world, signaling a cataclysmic eruption that may well end this nation. The tsunami of rage coming from ordinary and loving individuals was quite frankly astonishing.

Has America in the hands of the lunatic left become a powder keg about to explode? Will the power-hungry Democrats and their media minions spew enough hatred that even the most gentile among us will finally say ENOUGH? Does 87,000 newly minted and armed IRS agents offer you comfort or fill you with terror?

Are you sick of this yet?

Actor-Author-Believer Chuck Norris – ‘Calling All Gun Owners to Vote!’
Actor-Author-Believer Chuck Norris makes the case for gun owners, believers, and all others to be informed and vote wisely this election.

Millions may recall Chuck Norris for his starring roles in over 20 movies plus his role in the television series: “Walker, Texas Ranger.” From the WND News Center to MHProNews, and now, for the Patch readers is the following as Norris walks through Democratic presidential hopeful candidate Kamala Harris (D) history of remarks on gun confiscation and 2nd Amendment and other Constitutional rights related topics.

Calling all gun owners to vote!

‘The fact is: Kamala is an existential threat to the Second Amendment’

By Chuck Norris | October 21, 2024

Outside of our First Amendment rights of free speech and religious choice, nothing means more to me (and my wife, Gena) than our Second Amendment rights.

Its 27 words are clear and concise, needing no further commentary or regulation: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Could it get any clearer? Please read it again, even slower.

There are no two greater amendments to protect with our vote than the first and second amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The first is backed with bullets of the second.

The truth is: Our Second Amendment rights have never been in more jeopardy than they are right now, and especially through this Nov. 5 election.

Vice president and Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris has touted that she’s a Glock gun owner who boasted: “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot.”

She talks like a Texas Ranger but, in reality, has the gun policies and past record of a Cruella De Vil or the Grinch.

In 2008, Harris was the district attorney of San Francisco.

The same year, a brief that she signed 1) argued that a total handgun ban was constitutional, and 2) strongly suggested that the Second Amendment doesn’t secure an individual right.

The National Rifle Association added, “In this capacity, Harris endorsed an amicus curiae brief of district attorneys in support of the District of Columbia and its handgun ban in the Heller case.

“In February 2008, months prior to the Heller decision, Gallup asked, ‘Do you believe the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the rights of Americans to own guns, or do you believe it only guarantees members of state militias such as National Guard units the right to own guns?’

“Seventy-three percent of those surveyed responded that the Second Amendment protects the right of Americans to own guns, with a mere 20 percent endorsing the militia interpretation.”

It’s very simple: the Bill of Rights are there to protect American citizens not the state.

But Kamala’s record clearly shows that she does not believe the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms at all.

The Washington Times recently noted, “Ms. Harris has championed gun control for years. As San Francisco district attorney, she said, ‘Just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible.’

“It seems Ms. Harris believes that gun ownership voids privacy rights and eliminates the need for consent to searches,” a clear abandonment of Americans’ Fourth Amendment constitutional rights.

As a presidential candidate, she now says that she won’t confiscate people’s guns, but her past record tells otherwise.

Harris has repeatedly called for government confiscation of some of America’s modern sporting rifles.

We need to remember: Once one type of personal firearm is confiscated, it’s a very slippery slope to confiscate a host of others.

The NRA further explained, “On the September 16, 2019, edition of the ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,’ Harris reiterated her support for gun confiscation.

“During a question-and-answer session, an audience member asked Harris, ‘Do you believe in the mandatory buyback of quote-unquote assault weapons and whether or not you do, how does that idea not go against fundamentally the Second Amendment?’

“The candidate responded, ‘I do believe that we need to do buybacks.’

“Making clear that she believes Americans’ Second Amendment rights are for sale, Harris added, ‘A buyback program is a good idea. Now we need to do it the right way. And part of that has to be, you know, buy back and give people their value, the financial value.’

“Further demonstrating Harris’s commitment to gun confiscation, the candidate called for a ‘mandatory buyback program’ during an Oct. 3, 2019, MSNBC gun control forum and again during a November 2019 interview with NBC Nightly News.

“Harris appears to have carried this position into the vice president’s office.

“During an Oct. 26, 2023, state luncheon with Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Harris lauded Australia’s gun control measures. Referencing violence perpetrated with firearms, Harris remarked, ‘And let us be clear, it does not have to be this way, as our friends in Australia have demonstrated’ (emphasis added).”

Tragically, on top of gun control, Kamala repeatedly advocated for defunding the police before changing her position as a presidential candidate.

Moreover, in the last three years, together with Mr. Biden, she let into our country hundreds of thousands of criminals through their open-door immigration policy at the U.S. southern border.

She has also enacted further firearm regulation control as Biden’s gun czar over the newly established so-called Office of Gun Violence Protection.

The Harris-Biden administration is proof that more gun regulations and criminal liberality don’t reduce violent crimes (a 4.5% increase under Harris-Biden), but only cripple law-abiding citizens’ right and ability to defend themselves.

And to boot, their increased gun-free zones further enable criminals to know where innocent Americans abide for indefensible open-warfare. (Ninety percent of mass shootings occur in gun-free zones.)

Despite what Kamala pledges as a presidential candidate, her record is clear. She’s flip-flopped on a dozen critical issues in just a few short years, including on free speech and bearing arms.

The fact is: Kamala is an existential threat to the Second Amendment and Americans’ personal life, security and safety.

Harris might own a gun, but she doesn’t want you to. I guarantee you: she’ll NEVER advocate for it.

On the other hand, Trump doesn’t have a single empty-cartridge campaign promise when it comes to the Second Amendment. His record is very clear: he was a strong pro-Second Amendment president for the four years he was in office (2016-2020), and he will be as the next president. That is why the NRA and many other pro-Second Amendment groups endorsed him for president in 2024.

And just for the record, J.D. Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential running mate and a veteran Marine, has described shooting guns from an early age. The NRA and pro-gun group Gun Owners of America praised Vance for his “perfect voting record” on protecting the Second Amendment.

Again, the fact is: God and guns are what our country was founded upon. Any new student of American history and the Revolutionary period quickly learns that. They are what keep us strong, or what should keep us strong. Like our great military, and men and women in blue, they are there for our defense, too.

With crime, licentiousness and lawlessness running amok in our cities, and a desperate need for more law and order, now is the do-or-die time to stand strong for the Second Amendment by voting on Nov. 5, before progressives further suffocate our rights to bear arms by strangulating the barrels of our guns through further legislation and restrictions.

I urge you, fellow Americans, to pause what you are doing today and take three immediate actions:

Please share this article with everyone you know to inform and encourage them to “Save our Second Amendment.”
WRITE & FIGHT the White House and Washington elite today about their goals to reduce Americans’ right to bear arms.
Most of all, on Nov. 5, VOTE and encourage others to VOTE in this presidential election. If you’re not registered, register here. It’s free and only takes a few minutes. You can find where to vote in your state here.

I’m calling all gun owners and Second Amendment-loving Americans to vote!

You know where Gena and I stand by the picture and plaque on the front door of my ranch house: “We don’t dial 911.”

Friends and fellow Americans, let’s make America SAFE and SECURE again!

For more insight into the status of America and this upcoming presidential election, please read the recent excellent and insightful Special Edition of the Whistleblower, “Kamala’s America.” Order a copy, or download it today for free! ##

Chuck Norris

wretchardthecat

The key to renewal is repentance, the acknowledgement of error. Yet that acceptance is almost impossible to those who grew up on the belief they are better than everyone else, who have justified their power over others upon that undoubted superiority.

The normal person learns more from failure than success. But the already perfect man lacks the capacity to learn anything from defeat other than to conclude that someone failed him.

Usually it is we the public who have failed them. Taxes will increase and regulations redoubled until everyone is doing his fair share. Notice that the concept that they actually work for us has completely disappeared in the shuffle.

The trope that Communists make subordinates report while standing on a trap door over a shark tank is a joke, but only just.

“You know the penalty for failure. Comrade”

Hawkins: The Government Has No Rights, but the People Do
Although Democrat and other leftist politicians will, from time to time, speak of the government’s ‘rights,’ we must never forget the government has no rights. Only the people have rights and the government, on the other hand, has powers.

Moreover, the government’s powers are delegatory rather than original. In other words, the powers possessed by the government are those which the people delegated to it via the framework of the U.S. Constitution, and those powers are neither ambiguous nor infinite.

This is most easily understood if you think about the U.S. Constitution as establishing a compact between the people and the government, a compact best explained by Thomas Jefferson in the 1798 Kentucky Resolutions.

Jefferson wrote:

Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general Government for special purposes,—delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government…

Jefferson was strongly impacted by John Locke, who had written, “The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth.”

Jefferson and Locke are saying the same thing, just in a slightly different way. The lesson to be drawn is that the people enter into a “compact” (Jefferson) wherein they “consent” (Locke) to certain a degree of legislative power over their persons as they move about in society.

However, the people retain authority because they possess rights. Thus Madison, in Federalist 46, observed that “ultimate authority…resides in the people alone.”

It is under this authority the people loan or delegate certain powers to the government via the U.S. Constitution and, with that same authority, the people added the Bill of Rights to hedge in certain, inalienable rights as being outside the government’s purview. Among these inalienable rights is the right to keep and bear arms.

As I highlighted last week, the right to keep and bear arms is not something we as Americans possess because of government benevolence, but something with which our Creator endowed us. It is one of the rights specifically enumerated by our Founding Fathers and hedged in by the Second Amendment. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is the government given powers to regulate the ability of the American people to be armed.

Regulation of this natural right is not part of the compact; rather, the complete opposite is true: The government is told in plain English that the rights protected by the Second Amendment “shall not be infringed.”

In summation: The people have rights and the government merely possesses powers. The people’s rights are theirs at birth while the government’s powers belong to it only as long, and in such a fashion, as the people decide they should.

Trump Finally Correct about Jewish Vote.

Last week Donald Trump created a bit of a brouhaha—doesn’t he always?—when he spoke to the Israeli-American Council in Washington regarding the Jewish vote.

The former president made two statements I question to some degree but I heartily agree with his overall conclusion, as excessive as it may seem to some, that Jews that do no vote for him are crazy.

Perhaps it would be better put in the mother tongue and say they are meshugga.

My qualification, such as it is, for saying that is I am Jewish and eighty years old, so have been a Jewish voter now for nearly sixty years. For forty or so of those years I voted for the Democratic Party candidate no matter who he or she was. I have to admit I did this blindly. It was a habit, not all that distant from smoking, which I was able to avoid more easily.

In this century I have voted for Republicans, not because I have become a Republican. I find orthodox party politics noxious, frequently duplicitous and subject to change. Nevertheless, by the start of this century and even more with the candidacy of Barack Obama, it became clear to me that the Democratic Party was no longer what it was, but had become a rallying ground not just, obviously, for anti-Israel/antisemitic propaganda, but also for anti-American and even anti-Western Civilization thinking and policies.

I will get back to this in more detail but first the statements I question lightly. With Mr. Trump it’s usually a question of rhetoric. His policies are most always spot on. In this case he alleges that if he loses in 2024, it will be, at least in part, because of the Jewish vote of which, according to a poll he cited, he currently has 40%, up from 29% in 2020 and 25% in 2016.

He believes he deserves a much higher percentage because of all he has done for Israel—the Abraham Accords, moving the embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing the Golan Heights and, most of all, imposing sanctions on Iran while pulling out of the senseless nuclear deal. He also mentioned that he has Jewish children and grandchildren.

He makes a good case that he has been the most pro-Israel president ever, with the possible exception of Harry Truman who recognized the state.

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BLUF
Be ready. Buy guns and ammunition.

The Democrats’ Open Border Has Started a Countdown to a Bloodbath

It’s getting worse out there, and it’s getting scary, but America doesn’t have anybody in the driver’s seat. We have a crusty, desiccated zombie pretending to be president on a permanent vacation as he stares slack-jawed at “Matlock” reruns while his understudy vibes and brats around the country trying to re-up this incompetent administration for another four years of disaster. The terrifying reality is that we have millions upon millions of Third World illegal aliens on the loose within our country, and among them are not only your run-of-the-mill criminals – we have a hell of a lot of those – but terrorists who want to murder us right here in our own homes. And the Democrats are doubling down on supporting the enemy.

That’s literally true. The Democratic Party is the party of Hamas and of the murderers of 10/7 – the Dem base has made it very clear what side it is on. Hint: It ain’t ours. But don’t worry, those Palestinian schmucks aren’t the only psychotic jihadi terrorists they are enabling.

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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.”

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.

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.