That mere deflection means Yes on Gavin. Otherwise he would have gotten angry and yelled.
— Gimme3Steps (@TheSouthGAJohn) February 20, 2024
Category: Politics
Joe Biden is incapable of assuring voters he can handle another presidential term, his team has ‘no plan’ on how to deal with his senile behavior, and he should simply ‘not be running for re-election,’ according to New York Times authors.
Anxieties from the liberal Times’ Editorial Board and opinion writers show how worried they are that ailing Biden may not be able to beat ‘bad man’ Donald Trump this year.
The back-to-back opinion pieces knifing the elderly president, 81, over the weekend comes after a Justice Department report ripped into his handling of classified documents and portrayed him as a forgetful old man.
The 388-page report by Special Counsel Robert Hur confirmed he would not be charged – but it said that was because a jury would probably conclude he had ‘diminished faculties’ and was a ‘well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’
Biden’s lack of enthusiasm on the campaign trail, coupled with his doddering public appearances and ‘crotchety grandpa’ attitude, are huge concerns during this ‘dark time’ in his presidential tenure, according to the left-leaning broadsheet paper.
‘He needs to do more to show the public that he is fully capable of holding office until age 86,’ the Times board stated on Sunday.
The back-to-back opinion pieces knifing the elderly president, 81, comes after a Justice Department report into his handling of classified documents was released
Will the Clock Run Out on Grisham’s Anti-Gun Agenda?
We’re less than a week away from the 30-day legislative session coming to a close in New Mexico, and despite an onslaught of gun control bills backed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and supported by most Democrat lawmakers, so far no anti-gun measures have been sent to her desk.
That’s almost certain to change in the next couple of days, with a 7-day waiting period bill poised for final passage in the state Senate, but it’s beginning to look like time might run out before the bulk of her anti-gun agenda is approved by lawmakers in both chambers.
“We’re getting late in the session; we only have a week to go,” Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, said in an interview Thursday. Chandler has her name on two gun bills — one to make it easier to take guns away from people who might threaten themselves or others, one to go after gun sellers whose weapons end up in the wrong hands — that have stalled and may not get restarted, she said. Both are in a holding pattern just outside the landing field known as the House floor.
It could be difficult to get either bill through the House and then over to the Senate for vetting and support, she said, for one reason: “They are going to be racing against the clock.”
That clock is ticking away, and those bills are among more than 750 pieces of legislation introduced in this year’s session. They are fighting for attention against a raft of bills that have nothing to do with crime or guns, including approving a budget for the coming fiscal year.
In short, it’s priority time, and a lot of things are going to be left stuck behind in the mud.
What you will see now, said Sen. Pete Campos, D-Las Vegas, is a focus on the budget and capital outlay bills, meaning “some of the other issues will fall by the wayside, and they won’t have a chance to make it.”
Still, he said he expects long Senate floor sessions Friday and Saturday in an effort to move some bills forward, including gun-related legislation.
“Gun safety and gun issues will take up quite a bit of time,” he said in an interview.
Rep. Gail Armstrong, R-Magdalena, also expressed optimism some crime bills can make it.
“I think we’ll be on the floor a lot, I think we can still do it,” she said.
On the other hand she, like most Republicans and some conservative Democrats, is less enamored of supporting any new gun laws that, as they see it, violate the right to bear arms.
“I don’t want any of the gun bills [to get through],” she said in an interview.
The Democrat-controlled House and Senate haven’t rejected any of Grisham’s gun control bills, though they did water down the waiting period from 14 business days to 7. Even if the legislature only sends a couple of 2A-infringing bills to the governor she can always call a special session and bring lawmakers back to Santa Fe to finish the job. And even with many of her anti-gun priorities stuck in a holding pattern, there’s no guarantee they’ll continue to be bottled up until the session is gaveled to a close.
Albuquerque pollster and political analyst Brian Sanderoff said at this point in the legislative game, if it becomes clear a bill does not have the support of the majority of the Legislature or the strong support of a committee chair, it will likely “die just because time is running out.”…
Sanderoff said it is premature to assume any bill cannot be driven to the finish line in the last week of the session. He said if Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, and Democratic lawmakers in both parties want a bill to succeed, “there is still time to get it through the legislative process.”
It’s far too early for gun owners to celebrate. Honestly, even after sine die Second Amendment supporters need to be wary, because a special session may very well be on the table. Grisham threatened to bring legislators back to Santa Fe to work on multiple gun control bills last year, but eventually backed down when it became clear that her agenda didn’t have the support to pass. I’m not sure the same political calculus exists this year, given that many of her suggested gun control measures have cleared legislative committees along party lines and without any objections from her fellow Democrats.
We’ll be talking more about what might happen in the waning days of this year’s session on Monday’s Bearing Arms Cam & Co, but right now the most important takeaway is that gun owners need to keep up the pressure on lawmakers to say “no” to Grisham’s gun control package and any other infringements on our right to keep and bear arms… or to at least keep those bills sidelined until the session draws to a close. We can deal with a special session if and when the governor calls for one, but for now the goal should be to get to sine die with the Second Amendment still intact.
A Simple Moment of Weakness
Reconnecting with History—Special Installment
“The President’s job—and if someone sufficiently vain and stupid enough is picked he won’t realize this—is not to wield power, but to draw attention away from it.” —Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
My phone buzzed early in the evening. A message from one of my paid subscribers telling me about an impending press conference by one of my least favorite subspecies of humanity: a politician. She requested that I watch the conference and give my take on the potential historical significance of the event and/or share some history that might inform her understanding of the event.
This is not my idea of a “good time.” I would literally rather explain the evolution of torture techniques during the Spanish Inquisition—that, at least, would have a flavor of the lurid to leaven the horror on display.
Nevertheless, I allowed myself to be convinced. I need to keep my paid supporters happy (and yes, if you’re a paid supporter, I will pay attention to your requests for topics—I may not always fulfill them the next day, but they will go into the hopper. I’m an honest intellectual whore: I know how to sing for my supper). Besides, the event in question turned out to be a lot more important than I was hoping it would be. So here we go.
During his years as Vice President, Joe Biden appropriated a bunch of classified documents, some of which wound up in file boxes in his garage. On the face of it, this seems an even more egregious a violation of the official documents handling laws than did former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email server (a matter on which the DOJ declined prosecution) and former President Donald Trump’s stockpiling of maybe-declassified-then-reclassified-but-maybe-not documents in his part-time residence at Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida (for which he is currently being prosecuted).
The special prosecutor’s report on the Biden matter dropped today. You can read it here. You can read a Twitter thread digesting it here (warning: partisan account).
Tucked among the pages were an implied justification for declining to prosecute (the administration cooperated with the investigation, and without obstruction charges in the mix the rest becomes harder to prosecute) and a startling explicit justification: President Biden, the most powerful man on the planet, is incompetent to stand trial.
Biden held a press conference in response:
It did not go well.
You can watch it for yourself here:
Even as Biden declared himself competent and his memory sound, he forgot the name of the church from which his son’s memorial rosary was procured, he mixed up the President of Egypt with the President of Mexico, he inadvertently (if subtly) changed American foreign policy with regards to the current war between Israel and Hamas, he seemed unsure for a fleeting moment whether his dead son was, in fact, dead [3m11s], and he claimed responsibility for the crimes of which the special prosecutor had just declined prosecution (even while denying they took place and dissembling about their nature).
In my lifetime so far, I have seen seven Presidents. If I were to evaluate them by competence (Note: This is NOT a comment on the policies or politics of any of these men), I’d characterize them thusly:
Two of them were pretty-okay (Reagan and Bush 1), one was not politically astute (Carter), and then there was the parade of the most incompetent, self-involved, and corrupt dip shits ever to occupy the Oval Office, each one worse than the last (Clinton, Bush 2, Obama, and Trump—the first two of these were, at least, capable of holding productive conversations with other people in government, despite their inability to be consistently interested in the actual prosecution of their own avowed policy agendas).
Even if he hadn’t done so before, Biden revealed in this press conference that he is, hands down, the least-fit occupant of the Oval Office in the history of the Republic (which, in light of his four immediate predecessors, is a hell of an accomplishment).
In a “normal” world—which is to say, the artificial world my generation was taught about in our high school history classes, which is far from normal—Joe Biden would be removed from office tomorrow, on 25th Amendment grounds, by his own party. The party itself would not lose power, as they still control congress and would still control the White House, and they would head into the November Election from a position of moral strength: “We care so much about the country that we will remove this good man who isn’t up to the job anymore.”
Failing that, he would be impeached by his own party.
And, failing that, he would be locked out of a brokered Democratic Convention and not allowed to run for a second term.
But that “normal world” is long gone.
Sen. Chris Murphy: the people we care about most
A gaffe is commonly defined as when a politician inadvertently tells the truth and/or reveals his true intentions. During this election season, we’re seeing a bumper crop of gaffes, and not all by Joe Biden. Sen. Chris Murphy, among the most rabid Democrat/socialist/communist (D/s/c) congress critters, dropped a classic:
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Wednesday that the Democratic Party’s push for a path to citizenship in border legislation has failed the people they “care about most” in this country, “undocumented Americans.”
MSNBC host Chris Hayes asked Murphy about the border security bill and said, rather than pushing for a path to citizenship in border legislation negotiations like the party has in the past, Democrats were using Ukraine funding.
“Well, I mean, Chris, that’s been a failed play for 20 years. So you are right that that has been the Democratic strategy for 30 years, maybe, and it has failed to deliver for the people we care about most, the undocumented Americans that are in this country,” Murphy said.
Oooops. Murphy said the quiet part out loud.
“This is also not 2013 any longer, when we ran that play last. Back then, there were a couple hundred people showing up every day applying for asylum. Today, on some days, there are 8,000. And the reality is that the bulk of this country does not think that’s right or sustainable and wants us to change the reality at the border,” the Democratic senator added.
Ah! That’s why the failed border bill allowed in a minimum of two million a year: Murphy and the other D/s/cs are honoring the will of the electorate! That would be the electorate they’re trying to import, not actual Americans.
Murphy said there was a temptation among Democrats to run the “same play” they always run, but added they had a responsibility to adjust to what the country wants, because the play has not worked.
Which “play?” Ignore the law and illegally allow millions upon millions into the country, or pass a bill that ignores the law and illegally allows millions upon millions into the country, but pretends they’re not doing that and blames Republicans?
“Now this bill still had in it some very important things for migrant rights, including a right to representation and earlier work permits, and the biggest expansion of visas in 30 years. It’s not a pathway to citizenship, but it is something substantial for people that actually care about migrants,” he continued.
Of course. “The people we care about most, the undocumented Americans that are in this country,” have rights, which trump the rights of American citizens because they’re “migrant rights.” I think that’s the Ninety Third Amendment…or something.
Hayes asked Murphy if he was “proud” of the bill they put forward and wondered if he believed this would improve things at the southern border.
I think you are watching the issue of migration take down left and center-left governments all around the world right now. I think we’re at the point where if we didn’t bring some sense of order to the border, if we didn’t make a big down payment on reform to the asylum system, we were gonna have a really hard time holding on to a consensus in this country that we should keep legal immigration pathways alive,” Murphy responded during his media appearance.
Wait a minute. Didn’t Murphy just say: “the reality is that the bulk of this country does not think that’s right [illegal immigration] or sustainable and wants us to change the reality at the border?” And now we have to maintain “a consensus in this country that we should keep legal immigration pathways alive?!” I’m sure that’s Republican’s fault too.
“And so, I am of the belief that this is a moment where you had to show some big bipartisan momentum and progress on the border, or you would never, ever have the ability to try to rescue the undocumented Americans that desperately need to help,” he added.
“Undocumented Americans.” “Migrant rights.” Americans don’t want illegal immigration, but they’re worried about losing their consensus to keep illegal immigration alive. We must “rescue the undocumented Americans that desperately need to help.”
Well, at least Murphy is consistent about one thing: the people about which he, and the D/s/c Party, most cares are illegal immigrants, including terrorists, people with communicable Third World diseases, members of the Chinese military, few of which intend to assimilate, and many of which wish us deadly harm. And aren’t “undocumented Americans” everybody in the world not an actual American? I wonder if Murphy is purposely saying that?
What’s truly disconcerting is how many Black and Hispanic Americans are going to vote for whoever the D/s/c candidate is in November. Count among them millions of illegals, and the dead, who virtually exclusively vote D/s/c. Maybe that’s why Murphy cares so much for those folks.
Special Counsel Finds Biden Is Too Old to Be Charged in Classified Docs Scandal
“Your Honor, my client was clearly too drunk to have made it anywhere near I-25 from that maze of one-way streets in downtown Denver, and cannot be held accountable for how he or his car might have been found trying to enter the highway from the off-ramp.” —The World’s Best Defense Attorney back in my younger days
Some legal defense moves are so unscrupulous that it would take a high-caliber lawyer to think of them and a true scoundrel to implement them. I’m looking at you, Johnnie Cochran, in your $4,000 suits, with a combination of awe and horror.
But that’s just trial law. Where things get really very quite seriously unsettling is the even twistier world of special counsels, where Washington agrees to investigate Washington insiders using Washington insiders who pinky swear that everything will be on the up-and-up and that the truth will be brought to light and justice will be served — no matter which Washington insiders might be punished or suffer public shaming as a result.
Then the Washington insiders all pour one another stiff portions of 21-year-old single-malt scotch and have a good laugh at our (literal) expense.
The latest example of just that comes from the Department of Justice™ headed up by Biden administration crony Merrick Garland.
ASIDE: I swear this actually just happened. When I started to type “Department of Justice,” a moment ago, I quickly corrected myself after typing “Derpartment.” I wish I’d let it stand with a [sic] at the end.
As you’re probably aware, the Biden administration was doing one of those pinky-swear investigations of itself because of that time Biden accidentally left boxes and boxes of classified doc in his garage with his Corvette. At first, Biden was prompted to tell people that his garage is a secure location because, unlike the Trump compound on many well-guarded acres at Mar-a-Lago, Biden’s garage door has one of those twisty lock handles on it.
That garage is practically a SCIF, they claimed.
That excuse held about as much water as my wife when she was 40 months pregnant and had to pee from just looking at a faucet, so Garland appointed pinky-swear special counsel Robert K. Hur to look into whether he should find some special excuse for Biden’s mishandling of classified documents immediately or if it would be better to draw it out longer so they’d have a chance to truly savor that bottle of Glenfarclas.
That was in August. Today, we have the Mother of All Justifications — and it has me laughing harder than it has Biden’s reelection campaign team breaking out in hives. Here it is from Hur’s findings:
We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.
Never mind the weasel language about how Biden would present himself to a jury because an “elderly man with a poor memory” is how he presents himself to members of the press, gathered audiences, and various deceased foreign dignitaries from countries he gets mixed up sometimes.
Remember those reports from a month or three ago that Biden was getting all upset about the public perception that he’s too old and feeble for the job? Yeah, his own DOJ just used that as the reason Biden can’t be held accountable for storing classified documents next to the case of 40 Weight Motor Oil and expired boxes of Fix-O-Dent.
But don’t you worry. I don’t think anyone in Beijing or Russia or Tehran pays much attention to what goes on in the Biden White House. So you can rest assured, Jack, that when the fella from that place, you know the one, tries to threaten Corn Hole with the asufutimaehaehfutbw that old Joe Biden is gonna make sure they feel the trunalimunumaprzure like the what was I saying?
And you can take that to the bank and smoke it.
BLUF
In other words, look at how consistently inconsistent AI already is in its biases, without the intervention of powerful government actors. Imagine just how much more biased it can get — and how difficult it would be for us to recognize it — if we hand the keys over to the government.
A Tale of Two Congressional Hearings (and several AI poems)
We showed up to warn about threats to free speech from AI. Half the room couldn’t care less.
Earlier today, I served as a witness at the House Judiciary Committee’s Special Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which discussed (among other things) whether it’s a good idea for the government to regulate artificial intelligence and LLMs. For my part, I was determined to warn everyone not only about the threat AI poses to free speech, but also the threats regulatory capture and a government oligopoly on AI pose to the creation of knowledge itself.
I was joined on the panel by investigative journalist Lee Fang, reporter Katelynn Richardson, and former U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic Norman Eisen. Richardson testified about her reporting on government funding the development of tools to combat “misinformation” through a National Science Foundation grant program. As FIRE’s Director of Public Advocacy Aaron Terr noted, such technology could be misused in anti-speech ways.
“The government doesn’t violate the First Amendment simply by funding research, but it’s troubling when tax dollars are used to develop censorship technology,” said Terr. “If the government ultimately used this technology to regulate allegedly false online speech, or coerced digital platforms to use it for that purpose, that would violate the First Amendment. Given government officials’ persistent pressure on social media platforms to regulate misinformation, that’s not a far-fetched scenario.”
Lee Fang testified about his reporting on government involvement in social media moderation decisions, most recently how a New York Times reporter’s tweet was suppressed by Twitter (now X) following notification from a Homeland Security agency. Fang’s investigative journalism on the documents X released after Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform has highlighted the risk of “jawboning,” or the use of government platforms to effectuate censorship through informal pressure.
Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed that it seemed like we were having (at least) two different hearings at once. Although there were several tangents, the discussion on the Republican side was mostly about the topic at hand. On the Democratic side, unfortunately, it was overwhelmingly about how Trump has promised to use the government to target his enemies if he wins a second term. It’s not a trivial concern, but the hearing was an opportunity to discuss the serious threats posed by the use of AI censorship tools in the hands of a president of either party, so I wish there had been more interest in the question at hand on the Democratic side of the committee.
South Carolina Senate Advances Permitless Carry Bill, Expanding Gun Rights
The South Carolina Senate recently passed a significant piece of legislation that could greatly alter the landscape of gun rights within the state. The bill, nicknamed the South Carolina Permitless Carry bill, seeks to allow individuals to carry concealed handguns without the need for a permit. This move aligns South Carolina with a growing number of states that have adopted similar “permitless carry” laws.
The Senate’s decision came after six days of intense debate, highlighting the contentious nature of gun control discussions in America. The Permitless Carry Bill strengthens the Second Amendment rights by eliminating the permit requirement for law-abiding citizens wishing to carry concealed firearms. This measure not only enhances personal freedom and self-defense but also respects the constitutional rights of South Carolinians.
Critics, however, express concerns over public safety and the potential risks associated with more individuals carrying firearms without undergoing the training and background checks that a permit process typically entails. They fear that this could lead to increased incidents of gun violence and accidents, particularly in situations where disputes may escalate into shootings.
Despite these concerns, the bill received strong support within the Senate, passing with a notable majority. This legislative action signifies a clear shift towards expanding gun rights in South Carolina, reflecting a broader trend observed across several states in the United States.
It is important to note, however, that the bill’s passage in the Senate is just one step in the legislative process. It must still be approved by the South Carolina House of Representatives before it can become law. If enacted, the bill will allow individuals who are legally eligible to own a firearm to carry it concealed in public spaces without a permit, subject to certain restrictions.
As South Carolina moves closer to potentially adopting permitless carry, it joins the ranks of states reevaluating their stance on gun control and the requirements for carrying concealed weapons.
The South Carolina Permitless Carry represents a pivotal moment in the state’s legislative history. Whether viewed as a victory for gun rights advocates or a cause for concern among public safety proponents, its impact will be closely watched by both supporters and critics alike.
Did Obama Just Get Trump Off the Hook?
Just when you thought 2024 couldn’t possibly get any weirder — yes, I know it’s still only January — a secret Barack Obama memo could prove the undoing of special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump.
America First Legal — whose suit against the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “unearthed new docs showing that the deep state knew the risks of mass mail voting in 2020 but censored these criticisms as ‘disinformation’” — has another bombshell today.
“A secret Obama memo, the Presidential Information Technology Committee (PITC), regarding control of Presidential records could change everything in the DOJ’s politicized prosecution of Trump,” the organization announced Tuesday on Twitter/X.
By executive fiat, Obama created the PITC following a 2014 Russian hack of the president’s Executive Office computer network. The committee “includes representatives of the Departments of Defense and DHS, among others” and “established the President’s exclusive control over information resources and systems provided to the President,” according to America First Legal.
More:
Because the memo relied upon the Federal Records Act’s definition of “information system” as resources organized for the “use” and “disposition” of “information”, the memo gives the President exclusive control over information he receives.
This is relevant to what a President may reasonably believe about information given to him while in office.
Second, and related, if information stored on the PITC network formed the basis for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of former President Trump, that evidence should have been disclosed to the former President and may be relevant to his liability.
America First goes on to explain that “Obama’s PITC memo may have created a reasonable belief in President Trump that he, in fact, had such authority” to “possess or retain… classified documents.” That’s contrary to Smith’s 37-count indictment against Trump for “willful retention of national defense information; conspiracy to obstruct justice; withholding a document or record; corruptly concealing a document in a federal investigation,” among other charges.
It’s always been my understanding that as the chief executive, the president enjoys unlimited authority to declassify information — with a wave of the hand, wafting burning sage over the documents, or just by thinking about it really hard.
The issue of retaining documents is where the issue might get trickier, but as America First Legal noted, these new revelations are consistent with the organization’s “whitepaper contending that the President of the United States has absolute authority over presidential papers.”
Going further, “if the records Trump allegedly destroyed are still preserved within the EOP or the U.S. Department of Defense as part of PITC-created information systems, then other claims in the indictment may be baseless.”
If America First’s analysis is correct, Trump is on sound legal footing on possession of whatever documents he kept at Mar-A-Lago, and whatever he may have destroyed could have been just copies of what is still on the PITC systems authorized by none other than Barack Obama.
Somewhere in an 8,500-square-foot home in Washington’s tony Kalorama neighborhood, a former president must be seething.
How the second amendment is treated as a second class right by California Democrats.
You clearly want more innocent children to die if you don’t pass more gun-control. You can try and dress it up, but that is the basic marketing pitch for gun-control. You have to ignore the millions of violent crimes we stop and the lives we save each year for that emotional appeal to have a prayer of making sense.
What is passing strange is that the lawyers for the state of California are trying to sell a similar sales pitch to the 9th Circuit Court.
This story started last year when the US Supreme court confirmed that ordinary citizens have the right to bear arms in public. More to the point, governments violate our rights when they infringed on our right to bear arms. In reply to that federal ruling, anti-rights states like California discovered a new cause. Urged on by the campaign donations of anti-gun billionaires, the legislature made a surprising discovery. The places where trained, investigated, and licensed citizens had been carrying guns for decades were suddenly discovered to be “sensitive” places. Who knew?
California’s SB2 made almost every public place and commercial location into a new “gun-free” zone. In theory, we understand places like a jail, a prison, and a secure courtroom to be a sensitive place. We are legally prohibited from carrying a personal firearm in those rooms. The state is responsible for our physical safety in those areas because we have been disarmed as we passed through the security check point.
Now bear with me a moment as I show you a few of the places that California turned into disarmed-good-guy zones.
California said that hospitals, nursing homes, medical offices, and urgent care facilities are gun-free zones. So are their parking lots. That means honest citizens like you can’t go armed to the business that shares a parking lot with the doc-in-a-box-urgent-care office. I am positive that there isn’t a cop guarding every urgent care office. What you might not know is that people are often attacked in hospitals and their parking lots. Criminals like to rob weak people as they cross the parking lot while carrying plastic bags filled with drugs.
I know there isn’t a policeman or sheriff’s deputy at every bus, train, and ferry terminal. There isn’t a cop at every restaurant chain where you can buy a beer. There isn’t a security fence and a magnetometer screening portal at every concert or public gathering. There certainly isn’t much security at every school and playground. None of that matters and the California legislature said that honest citizens should be disarmed even though they were trained, vetted, and licensed to carry.
But its for the children! Don’t you care about them?
Unfortunately, those facts don’t matter to the California legislature. They want you disarmed anyway, and the legislators won’t be blamed for the rising rate of crime. To be fair to the Democrat legislators, those facts probably don’t matter to a majority of judges on the 9th circuit court either. I’m sorry, but these are the consequences we warned you about before the last election.
Right now, the California “gun-free” zone law is enjoined while the case is appealed. Here is the full list of prohibited places where honest citizens are disarmed.
South Carolina Senate to Vote on Making State the 28th for Constitutional Carry
The South Carolina Senate is expected to vote later this week whether the Palmetto State will become the 28th constitutional carry state.
The legislation is House Bill 3594. The NRA-ILA noted the legislation was passed by the South Carolina House last year and sent to the Senate to be taken up in early 2024.
On February 2, 2023, Breitbart News reported that South Carolina State Rep. Bobby Cox (R-Greenville) put forward H.3594 to secure constitutional carry in the state.
On February 23, 2023, NRA-ILA pointed out the South Carolina House passed Cox’s legislation.
HB 3594 is now before the state Senate and it was debated on the state Senate floor last week. It is expected that “debate will continue on Tuesday, with a vote expected to take place on or before Thursday, February 1st.”
There are currently 27 constitutional carry states in the Union. Those are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The gun control bills are flying in Santa Fe as anti-2A lawmakers are racing to enact a flurry of new restrictions on residents; a sweeping semi-auto ban, prohibiting gun sales to adults younger than 21, and enacting a new 14 business-day waiting period on all firearms transfers that would be the longest in the nation. Unlike last session, where similar bills were bottled up in committee or voted down altogether, Democrats this year seem willing to go along with virtually every restriction demanded by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, even as they tacitly admit that their bills are going to run into trouble in the courts if they’re enacted into law.
When State Sen. Joe Cervantes was questioned about that potential 14 business-day waiting period during a meeting of the Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee over the weekend, the anti-gun lawmaker studiously avoided answering a query from a colleague about whether that waiting period comports with the national tradition of gun ownership in the United States. Instead, he proclaimed that the Supreme Court is going to overrule its own decision in Bruen in just a few months, making any potential conflict with the “text, history, and tradition” test laid out in that case utterly moot.
“It’s an absurd ruling. And it’s an absurd ruling that will not stand, I believe, for the next six months because the Supreme Court will reverse itself and recognize the absurdity of Clarence Thomas’s opinion.
Now, that sounds pretty arrogant of me, a Las Cruces street lawyer, to say that the Supreme Court wrote an absurd opinion, but I’m going to stand by that. And I’ll give you an example: Clarence Thomas, with the majority, held that any restrictions on guns had to be based on historic traditions, yet we as a country do not allow guns in this capitol.
Some of you may disagree with that, but there’s no historical tradition about not allowing guns in government buildings.
Cervantes went on to say that there’s no historic tradition banning fully automatic firearms or rocket-propelled grenades or prohibiting the mentally ill or convicted felons from possessing firearms, arguing that the Court will have no choice but to reverse itself when it issues its decision in Rahimi, which deals with the federal prohibition on gun ownership for those subject to a domestic violence restraining order.
U.S. House Judiciary Committee approves South Dakota firearm legislation
RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) – On Thursday, two bills submitted by South Dakota Representative Dusty Johnson passed out of the House Judiciary Committee. The bills focus on the Second Amendment and the right to own a firearm.
To be able to purchase a firearm in the United States, you need to have an identification card such as a driver’s license, passport, or military ID. However, Tribal IDs are not currently accepted, and because of this, Representative Johnson re-introduced the Tribal Firearm Access Act, which would classify a Tribal ID as a valid form of identification for the purchase of firearms.
“They should be able to use that same government-issued photo ID to be able to go through purchasing a gun. They still have to go through the background check, they still have to go through the same process with a federal firearms dealer. But it makes it clear that having a tribal ID is just as good as having a state-issued driver’s license for the purchasing of firearms,” stated Rep. Johnson.
Also Thursday, the Travelers Gun Rights Act was passed out of the same committee. The bill, also introduced by Johnson, would allow firearm access for those who don’t have a permanent physical address.
“In many states to be considered a resident, you have to have lived in a permanent residence for quite a period of time, a year is not unusual, and you have to be considered that resident before you can purchase a firearm. That isn’t fair to military spouses. People who travel all over the country following that military member. It’s also going to make it that much easier for RV-ers, people who don’t have a permanent address that they’re at day in and day out, they’re out on the road, to also be able to exercise their second amendment rights,” Johnson continued.
Senator Mike Rounds also supported the Traveler’s Gun Rights Act. The next step for both bills is the full House.
Observation O’ The Day:
I remember when “serious” figures on the right mocked some of us for our alleged obsession with media bias. – Glenn Reynolds
Have you noticed that Republicans have been losing a lot lately?
This, in an environment where most Americans think that Democrats are screwing up the country. Why do you think that is?
Sure, hatred of Trump has something to do with it. Abortion politics has something to do with it. A lot, actually. Each of you can name an issue where Republicans are in bad odor with ordinary people, but add them all together and one thing becomes clear: propaganda works.
Why is Trump so unpopular? Was it because things got worse under his presidency? Uh, yeah, no. Things got immeasurably better, and even a lot of people who hate him will say that.
Is abortion such a drag on Republican prospects because people don’t agree that late term abortions are immoral, except in extreme circumstances? That’s not what the polls say.
Why do people think Republicans are all-in on banning books? Has anybody suggested making the publishing of any books illegal? Of course not. Democrats actively campaign to prevent the publication or sale of books they don’t like, but Republicans don’t.
So what is it?
It is the steady drumbeat of propaganda portraying Republicans as Nazi White Supremacists who want to force 11 year-olds to birth babies, schoolmarms who hate gays, and White Supremacists who hunt minorities in the dead of night. We wanted to kill grandma and deserved to be put in camps:
January 2022:
▪️30% of Democrats agreed that children should be taken away from unvaccinated parents
▪️Over 40% of Democrats agreed that the unvaccinated should be sent to quarantine camps
▪️Almost 50% of Democrats agreed that critics of the vaccine should be fined/imprisoned pic.twitter.com/4CsKpsn5X0— James Melville (@JamesMelville) July 12, 2023
You can’t escape the propaganda. It is everywhere. In the schools, in the classrooms, on every university campus, and in the MSM.
I think it more means the recruiting numbers suck and someone high enough at the Pentagon decided for better theatrics.
The Army’s New Recruitment Video Means Only One Thing
The U.S. Army on Monday released a recruitment ad that critics argue is a sure sign the military is gearing up for war.
There are no signs of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the 30-second spot, which features white males jumping out of a plane.
“Your greatest victories are never achieved alone,” text in the ad reads. “Be all you can be.”
It comes two years after the Army pushed an animated video series, “The Calling,” that checked all the woke boxes.
💪 Together, we can take on any challenge.
🪂 Jump into the unlimited #ArmyPossibilities to #BeAllYouCanBe at https://t.co/H2pnYPLqaQ #MondayMotivation pic.twitter.com/N5kUAuyJ3O
— U.S. Army (@USArmy) November 6, 2023
This was an Army ad 2 years ago, the story of a woman raised by lesbians:https://t.co/a7EcHV4TUA pic.twitter.com/knlHaaG4nJ
— The Air Loom 🇫🇷 (@Styx_Boatman) November 7, 2023
It’s great fun to watch the demoncraps fight each other.
A JEWISH POLITICAL REALIGNMENT?
Gaza’s genocidal war against Israel has torn the Democratic Party apart by revealing the anti-Semitic core of its dominant left wing. Axios headlines: “Biden’s 2024 team roiled by Israel-Hamas war.”
Part of President Biden’s political team is in turmoil over the Israel-Hamas war, as some aides see the White House as abetting an immoral attack on Palestinians — while others believe Biden is showing “moral clarity” in protecting Israel from terrorists.
… The strife within the Democratic National Committee (DNC) — which Biden is leaning on for his re-election campaign — reflects larger generational and political divisions among Democrats.
Those divisions are chiefly between older pro-Israel Democrats and younger progressives who are more sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians.
And are entirely indifferent to mass murder, gang rape and the beheading of infants, where the victims are Jews.
At the Daily Mail, Alan Dershowitz writes that the relationship between Jews and the Democratic Party has been profoundly altered:
The Hamas atrocities of October 7th have forever fractured any political alliance between centrist and liberal Jews and woke, anti-Israel progressives.
It’s either them or us. The coalition is at civil war.
Following the terrorist massacre of Israeli civilians and even before the military response, young woke progressives turned stridently against the Jewish State.
It was a knee-jerk reaction stimulated not by what Israel did – because it had done nothing to justify Hamas’ brutality – but what Israel is: the nation state of the Jewish people.
Anyone who rallies for Hamas is rallying for the extermination of Jews.
On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a new ‘National Strategy to Combat Islamophobia,’ which any sensible American would support.
But the streets of American cities and college campuses are not being filled with crowds celebrating the murder of Muslims.
These hordes are calling for the death of Jews – yet the President cannot muster a full-throated response that focuses on the current problem, namely rampant antisemitism.
And just last week, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pointedly declined to say if the President had any plans to speak to the explosion of antisemitism among university students.
What are Jews who have been loyal to the Democratic Party to do?
If something is not done immediately – if it is not too late already – the breach between Jewish voters who support Israel (and even those critical of some of its policies) and the Democratic Party will become unhealable.
Maybe – permanent.
***
[S]ince the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a vast majority of Jewish-American voters could be reliably counted upon to cast their ballots for Democrats and contribute disproportionately to their campaigns.This is unlikely to continue.
The silence of some Democrats, President Biden’s administration and America’s foremost liberal institutions in response to an eruption of left-wing anti-Zionism and Jew hatred is gut-wrenching.
It is nothing short of betrayal and Americans Jews must not move forward without a reckoning.
But then: where can disaffected Jews go?
Yes, centrist Jews have an alternative: they can become centrist Republicans. But that, too, will not be easy, since the Republican party is moving to the right on issues deeply concerning to many Jews – issues such as abortion rights, gay rights, climate control, gun control and the Supreme Court.
Blue collar and rural voters, many of whom were once Democrats, have turned to the conservative movement and the Republican Party. This is partly because they realized that conservative policies are more in their interest than liberal policies, but also, and perhaps equally, because it became evident that liberals despise them. Why should you vote for people who hate you?
That is a question that, in the years to come, many Jews will be called upon to answer.
STEVE adds: The last time a Democratic Administration was so openly hostile to Israel and its interests was the Carter Administration, and Reagan received a surprising 35 percent of the Jewish vote in 1980, helping to tip New York to his column. We’ll see if the current moment leads to another shift next year. (Obama was deeply hostile to Israel, too, but was more clever than Carter and disguised it better.)
Despite the failures that are being discovered that led to the Lewiston, Maine shooting, the Gun Control Industry is, as usual, pointing at the state’s allegedly lax regulation of guns. Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun agitprop outlet The Trace asked, Will Maine’s Permissive Gun Laws Change After the Lewiston Shooting?
It’s certainly possible. Democrats are in full control of state government, so the odds are in their favor in that regard. That doesn’t mean, however, that there would be any merit to changing Maine’s gun laws. Not given the laws they’re talking about.
It’s becoming clear that they see this as a “grab bag” opportunity to enact more gun control laws in the Pine Tree State. They aren’t just talking about laws that could plausibly have made a difference in this case, either. They want to crack down on gun rights in general.
Maine doesn’t have restrictions on AR-style rifles, like the one apparently used by the Lewiston gunman, nor does it regulate high-capacity magazines.
If the killer had used a Mini-14 with a ten-round magazine, would the death toll have been lower? That seems a tenuous claim, considering how fast reloads actually happen when someone knows what they are doing (as this veteran and firearm instructor did, sadly). And it was reported that the Parkland shooter used 10-round magazines on purpose because they fit better into his backpack. Yet he managed to kill and wound a similar number of people.
…a measure requiring the prompt reporting of lost or stolen firearms…
This is one of the rare gun laws I do support, so long as it provides a fair amount of time to comply, and conditioned on when you become aware of a lost or stolen gun. If you become aware you lost a gun or had one stolen, tell the police about it ASAP. But such a law, of course, wouldn’t have done anything to stop the Maine shooting if it had been on the books.
But [Bates College professor Michael] Rocque said the state’s “inconsistent” rules around guns — which require residents to take a safety course and exam to qualify for a hunting license but don’t require anything of concealed handgun carriers — are in dire need of an update.
This is where the push for more gun control after a tragedy really becomes something of a loot-fest, trying to take full advantage of the situation while it’s still in the news. Carry permit requirements are completely irrelevant to mass shooters. They obviously aren’t going to be concerned in the slightest about not having a carry permit when their intention is to commit mass murder.
It’s an utterly absurd argument that, again, would have had no impact at all on what Robert Card did.
Even outside of the mass shooting context, Professor Rocque’s implication is that the lack of a permit requirement is inherently unsafe. That’s an extraordinary claim, given that Maine has one of the lowest homicide rates in the nation. Maine’s homicide rate is so low that more people were killed in Lewiston in this one incident than are usually murdered in the state in an entire year.
The Trace article concludes that while other gun control pushes aren’t possible under the state’s rules until next year, they can still try to enact universal background checks in January.
Again, that would have had zero impact on the Lewiston shooter. The Lewiston killer bought his guns legally. When that happened or whether or not he lied about his history of mental illness at the time isn’t yet clear, but he did undergo a background check.
As is so frequently the case, the Gun Control Industry and politicians seem determined to punish the community of law-abiding gun owners for the inherent failures of the regulatory system they’ve built
As more details are learned about Robert Card, his mental history, and the failures of law enforcement in this situation, the more it becomes clear that Maine’s allegedly lax gun laws did nothing to make the Lewiston shooting possible. And the new laws The Trace and gun control advocates are calling for in response would do nothing to prevent another similar situation.
Longtime readers of this Briefing know that I find First Lady DOCTOR Mama Jill Biden to be an extraordinarily loathsome human being. If the woman had even an ounce of decency, she wouldn’t have let her husband near a camera after his tenure as vice president was up in 2017.
Jill Biden is a power-hungry lunatic though, so she doesn’t care if her husband continues to embarrass himself in front of the whole world. As long as she gets power, access, and a curious amount of money for a teacher, she doesn’t care if her husband’s sad and rapid decline is witnessed by everyone on Earth.
Victoria wrote a lengthy examination of Doctor Mrs. Sir Sniffsalot, and hit on an angle that I hadn’t yet thought of:
Americans are beginning to think that Joe’s smiling, 72-year-old presidential arm candy didn’t have the country’s needs at heart when she told her husband, “You gotta run.” It’s in that way she reminds Americans of Hillary Clinton.
Call her Jillary.
The reasonable criticism goes that any person who pushes their mentally incapable husband to become president is naturally a bad person committing an act of elder abuse, but Jill Biden’s happy warrior-like smiles may hide something even more sinister. Could Jillary be the force behind the so-called Biden Crime Family?
Whoa, if true.
There must be some brains behind the operation somewhere, and the missus does seem the most likely candidate when you think about it.
We talk a lot about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline these days because it’s important to acknowledge that the President of the United States has completely lost it. The thing about Joe Biden, however, is that he never really completely had it.
Let’s be honest — we don’t live in an era when being an intellectual heavyweight is a prerequisite for rising to the top of American politics. Despite the fact that he’s been around Washington since Precambrian times, not too many people have lauded Joe Biden for his brains.
In the interest of being accurate, I should probably say that no one has ever lauded Joe Biden for his brains. Heck, Joe Biden would probably admit that Joe Biden is a dullard, if he knew who Joe Biden was.
Then there’s the boy Hunter. I’ve generously referred to him as a mediocrity here on several occasions, proving that I can be nice when there’s nothing in it for me. I’m available to pick up my humanitarian award at any time.
If Hunter Biden weren’t the son of a politician who had an endless supply of favors to call in, he’d be picking bugs out of his hair in a crack house somewhere in central Florida. In fact, that’s probably what Hunter wants to be doing.
It’s safe to say that the men in the Biden family aren’t masterminding anything.
Jill Biden’s cold-heartedness has been on public display since the 2020 presidential campaign. She’s got the icy veins needed to run a criminal operation. I frequently refer to Joe Biden’s puppet masters. What if Jill is the only one? The cabal may be comprised of several political veterans, but it’s easy to believe that Her Doctorness is the one issuing the marching orders.
Jill Biden may very well be Hillary Clinton sans the drunken bitterness.
Which might make her more dangerous in the long run.
Another citizen who always voted for demoncraps asks the Question O’ The Day
“If silence is the answer, why should I ever vote for a Democrat again?”
Thanks, to a Politician Who Did His Job
When the IRS visited my home, Jim Jordan actually did something about it. Why couldn’t I call a Democrat?
A new report about IRS home visits has just been released by the House Weaponization of Government Committee, chaired by Ohio congressman Jim Jordan. It outlines disturbing issues, including confirmation that IRS agents making home visits may come without warning, using aliases, and without informing local enforcement agencies of their presence.
One of the cases outlined is my own. My home was visited by the IRS while I was testifying before Jordan’s Committee about the Twitter Files on March 9th. Sincere thanks are due to Chairman Jordan, whose staff not only demanded and got answers in my case, but achieved a concrete policy change, as IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel announced in July new procedures that would “end most” home visits.
Anticipating criticism for expressing public thanks to a Republican congressman, I’d like to ask Democratic Party partisans: to which elected Democrat should I have appealed for help in this matter? The one who called me a “so-called journalist” on the House floor? The one who told me to take off my “tinfoil hat” and put greater trust in intelligence services? The ones in leadership who threatened me with jail time? I gave votes to the party for thirty years. Which elected Democrat would have performed basic constituent services in my case? Feel free to raise a hand.
If silence is the answer, why should I ever vote for a Democrat again?
Democrats now want US split into ‘blue’ states and ‘red’ states
Liberals laughed when conservatives, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), called for dividing the United States into red and blue states because of national disunity and partisanship.
But they’re not laughing now. In fact, about a third of Democrats believe a political break from conservative-leaning states is needed.
In a survey of 2,008 voters conducted by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, 31% of “Biden supporters” want Democratic-controlled states to secede from the U.S. to form their own country.
Among voters who back former President Donald Trump, 41% support secession.
What’s more, large groups of both think it’s time to end democracy.
“Disturbingly, nearly one-third (31%) of Trump supporters and about a quarter (24%) of Biden supporters at least somewhat agree that democracy is no longer a viable system and that the country should explore alternative forms of government to ensure stability and progress,” the analysis from the center said.
Backing up reasons for secession, the analysis found that people generally are becoming more politically divided despite an inauguration promise made by President Joe Biden to unite the country.
Consider these results:
- A majority of both Biden (70%) and Trump (68%) voters believed electing officials from the opposite party would result in lasting harm to the U.S.
- Roughly half (52% Biden voters, 47% Trump voters) viewed those who supported the other party as threats to the American way of life.
- About 40% of both groups (41% Biden voters, 38% Trump voters) at least somewhat believed that the other side had become so extreme that it is acceptable to use violence to prevent them from achieving their goals.
The survey found that on most topics tested by the center founded by Larry Sabato, people are split, as they are on the choice of Biden or Trump in the 2024 campaign. The center said that in a head-to-head election, Biden leads Trump 52%-48%. A CNBC survey also out Wednesday found Trump leading Biden by 4 points, 46%-42%.