Category: Goobermint

BLUF
So there you are.  A return to the rule of law, being treated as just the opposite.  Par for the course in today’s political discourse, alas.

The Supreme Court, Chevron, and the Political Class’s Worst Nightmare: Accountability.

Goodbye, Chevron deference.  Larry Tribe is already mourning the Supreme Court’s overturning of NRDC v. Chevron, in the Loper Bright and Relentless cases, as a national catastrophe:

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Oh, the humanity!

Well, speaking as a professor of Administrative Law, I think I’ll bear up just fine.  I’ve spent the last several years telling my students that Chevron was likely to be reversed soon, and I’m capable of revising my syllabus without too much trauma.  It’s on a word processor, you know.  As for those academics who have built their careers around the intricacies of Chevron deference, well, now they’ll be able to write about what comes next. And if they’re not up to that task, then it was a bad idea to build a career around a single Supreme Court doctrine.

And that wasn’t the only important Supreme Court decision targeting the administrative state, a situation that has pundit Norm Ornstein, predictable voice of the ruling class’s least thoughtful and most reflexive cohort, making Larry Tribe sound calm.

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Sure, Norm, whatever you say.

But how about let’s look at what the Court actually did in Chevron, and in the Loper Bright and Relentlesscases that overturned it, and in SEC v Jarkesy, where the Court held that agencies can’t replace trial by jury with their own administrative procedures, and in Garland. v. Cargill, where the Court held that agencies can’t rewrite statutes via their own regulations.  I don’t think you’ll find the sort of Russian style power grab that Ornstein describes, but rather a return to constitutional government of the sort that he ought to favor.

At root, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council is about deference.  Deference is a partial abdication of decisionmaking in favor of someone else.  So, for example, when we go out to dinner, I often order what my son-in-law orders, even if something else on the menu sounds appealing.  I’ve learned that somehow he always seems to pick the best thing.

Deference doesn’t mean “I’ve heard your argument and I’m persuaded by it,” (though something like that is misleadingly called “Skidmore deference, “ but isn’t actually deference at all).  Deference means “even if I would have decided this question differently, I’m going to go with your judgment instead.”

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The Dangers of a Desperate Biden Campaign

After Thursday night’s disastrous debate performance, Democrats are officially gameplanning how to get Biden to step aside as the Democratic candidate for president, even though Biden’s surrogates claim he’s not going anywhere. If Biden does decide to stay atop the Democratic ticket, he’s going to be desperate to keep his base of support as intact as possible, and desperate people do dangerous things.

That’s especially true when we’re talking about politicians. So what steps could Biden take between now and November to ensure the gun control lobby spends tens of millions of dollars to promote his doomed candidacy?

We’re not going to see a gun ban or any other gun control bill approved in Congress between now and November. Biden’s options are really limited to executive branch actions, and thankfully the Supreme Court has taken a big step toward reining in executive branch overreach by overturning the Chevron Doctrine. That doesn’t mean, however, that Biden can’t propose new ATF rules, nor does today’s decision prevent the ATF from putting those rules in place. Loper Bright makes it much easier to invalidate agency overreach after the fact, but it won’t stop abuses from being implemented or enforced.

So what, if anything, could Biden do to thrill his anti-gun allies ahead of Election Day? As retired ATF deputy assistant director Pete Forcelli told Bearing Arms just a few days ago, his sources within the agency have informed him that Bidens’ White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention is putting pressure on ATF director Steve Dettelbach to go after Glock by reclassifying the company’s semi-automatic pistols as “machine guns” because of the rise in illegal switches that allow semi-automatic firearms to function as fully automatic arms.

I have heard from some good sources that the White House, and don’t forget that the Office of Gun Violence Prevention is run by Rob Wilcox, who’s formerly from Everytown.

He has a lot of influence at ATF now, and I know that from a number of sources because I didn’t retire from there all that long ago. One of the things they kicked around was trying to force ATF to reclassify Glocks as machine guns, because they’re so easily converted, in their minds, to a machine gun through the use of a switch.

And people within ATF pushed back and Dettelbach didn’t bite into that fishhook and get caught on that… yet. Who knows what happens if the Biden administration has nothing to lose.

I think we’re officially at the stage of Biden not having anything to lose… at least if he doesn’t drop out of his re-election campaign altogether. Dettelach too might be more inclined to go for broke if Biden remains the nominee, knowing that he’ll be removed from his post if Donald Trump wins election.

They also contemplated putting out a ruling to gun manufacturers stating that if you sell to government entities, then you would be prohibited from selling to the civilian markets. So, think about that for a second.

ATF agents use the Glock. If Glock wanted to sign on and sell guns to the ATF or to the military, they would be prohibited from selling to the civilian market. Again, that did not happen, but these are the things that the White House is trying to push the ATF to do. It may be gently now, but once there’s no worry about being re-elected maybe it’s not such a gentle nudge.

Conversely, if there’s a huge worry about being re-elected, then maybe Biden and Dettelbach decide to roll the dice and release this proposed rule as well. Again, desperate times call for desperate measures, and Biden’s reelection bid is in dire straights right now.

Heck, even if Biden does decide to fall on his walker and allow for a candidate who can complete a sentence to replace him as the nominee, he may very well decide to give the gun control lobby these parting gifts before he leaves office. The gun control groups have been very good to him, and I’m sure he’d like to repay the favor while he still has the chance.

Whether Biden remains the Democratic candidate for president or steps aside and allows for a chaotic race to replace him, gun control activists like Wilcox are almost certain to push Biden to go big on their issue between now and Election Day, and it’s crucially important for Second Amendment advocates to keep up with their machinations behind the scenes.

Justices rule for Jan. 6 defendant

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-5572_l6hn.pdf

The Supreme Court on Friday threw out the charges against a former Pennsylvania police officer who entered the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks. By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the law that Joseph Fischer was charged with violating, which bars obstruction of an official proceeding, applies only to evidence tampering, such as destruction of records or documents, in official proceedings.

Friday’s ruling could affect charges against more than 300 other Jan. 6 defendants. The same law is also at the center of two of the four charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith against former President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C.

The Supreme Court heard oral argument on April 25 on Trump’s claims of immunity and has not yet issued its decision in that case. But Smith has argued that even if the court were to rule for Fischer, the charges against Trump could still go forward because they rested, in part, on efforts to use false electoral certificates at the joint session of Congress.

The law at the center of Fischer’s case is 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), which makes it a crime to “otherwise obstruct[], influence[], or impede[] any official proceeding.” U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols concluded that because the previous subsection, Section 1512(c)(1), bars tampering with evidence “with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding,” Section 1512(c)(2) only applies to cases involving evidence tampering that obstructs an official proceeding, and he dismissed the obstruction charge against Fischer.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed Nichols’ ruling, concluding that the “meaning of the statute is unambiguous,” so that it “applies to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding, other than the conduct that is already covered by” the prior subsection.

On Friday, the Supreme Court vacated the D.C. Circuit’s decision, interpreting the law more narrowly to apply only to evidence tampering.

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Despite Strict Gun Laws, California Leads Nation in Mass Shootings

New figures from the FBI reveal that California, despite having some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, led the country in active shooter incidents in 2023. AWR Hawking’s over at Breitbart News called out the obvious fact after the FBI documented 48 active shooter incidents across 26 states last year, with California accounting for eight of these incidents. That number was the highest for any state.

The FBI defines an active shooter as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” The report highlights that open spaces, including roads, neighborhoods, parks, and outdoor venues, were the most common locations for these shootings, Fox News and ABC News reported.

California’s eight active shooter incidents in 2023 occurred in various settings, including open spaces, businesses, and educational centers. This marks a continuation of a troubling trend, as the state also led the nation in 2021 with six such incidents.

Federal investigators reported a total of 105 deaths and 139 injuries from these incidents nationwide. Texas and Washington state followed California, each with four incidents.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has frequently touted the success of his state’s gun control measures while criticizing the more lenient laws of other states. In a tweet on May 13, 2023, Newsom remarked, “It HAS to be the humidity. Why else would California’s gun violence rate be 57% lower than Florida’s?” However, FBI data shows that Florida had only two active shooter incidents in 2023, a quarter of California’s total.

Newsom’s comments highlight a paradox in California’s approach to gun control. While the state has implemented some of the nation’s toughest gun laws, it continues to experience a high number of mass shootings. Something clearly isn’t working. Will Newsom and his fellow anti-gun politicians ever figure it out?

FBI ‘Active Shooter’ Stats Shoot Holes In Biden’s ‘Mass Shooting’ Argument

President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, anti-gun legislators and gun-ban groups like to tout the number of mass shootings in America, often saying there have been more mass shootings in the country than there have been days in the year.

Of course, these anti-gun activists are using numbers from the Gun Violence Archives, a website known for using criteria that greatly inflates such numbers. And that’s very easy to see when compared to the just-released Federal Bureau of Investigation report on “active shooter” incidents.

GVA’s “mass shootings” criteria is all events where four or more people are injured in a shooting. These incidents are often drug gang attacks and the like—not at all what Americans think of as mass shootings. In fact, they would include a botched arrest where two cops and two suspects are shot, and even self-defense shootings! By their criteria, they reported 656 mass shootings in 2023.

The FBI, on the other hand, classifies an “active shooter” how most Americans likely envision it—“an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.” By the FBI’s count, there were 48 active shooter incidents in 2023, only about 7% of the total reported by GVA and constantly regurgitated by politicians and the press.

Of course, President Biden and other gun-ban advocates have full access to the FBI report, but you never hear them talking about it. They prefer the bloated numbers from GVA, even though they aren’t a true picture of what most think of when they hear the word “mass shooting.”

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Supreme Court backs Biden administration in social media case

Held: Neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established Article III standing to seek an injunction against any defendant. 
[In other words, we aren’t going to rule on this because…..reasons. So the federal goobermint can go right ahead and keep on doing this slimy crap]

Respondents are two States and five individual social-media users
who sued dozens of Executive Branch officials and agencies, alleging
that the Government pressured the platforms to censor their speech in
violation of the First Amendment.

Following extensive discovery, the District Court issued a preliminary injunction. The Fifth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. The court held that both the state plaintiffs and the individual plaintiffs had Article III standing to seek injunctive relief.

On the merits, the court held that the Government entities and officials, by “coerc[ing]” or “significantly encourag[ing]” the platforms’ moderation decisions, transformed those decisions into state action. The court then modified the District Court’s injunction to state that the defendants shall not coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to suppress protected speech on their platforms.

 

Army Admits Link Between COVID Vaccine and Soldier’s Heart Condition.

Investigative reporter Catherine Herridge is back. She’s on her own without any strings attached to biased MSM networks.

Herridge’s first report focuses on the military’s mandatory COVID vaccine, which led to at least one soldier’s heart condition.

Army Specialist Karoline Stancik suffered a heart attack right after she had the Moderna vaccine. She had pacemaker surgery earlier this month.

Stancik has had to take 27 medications a day since the first heart attack.

“I was left behind and trampled,” Stancik told Herridge.

Stancik never had a heart condition before the vaccine, noting that she could run 10 miles at one time and play basketball. Now she has trouble just standing up.

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The Message Is Plain

There are no property rights in the United States…at least, none that the State deigns to honor.

Do you remember Teresa Ghilarducci? I do. Any American who has a 401(k), an IRA, or some equivalent should know about her and her chief ambition:

     Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration.
     Triggered by the financial crisis the past two months, the hearings reportedly were meant to stem losses incurred by many workers and retirees whose 401(k) and IRA balances have been shrinking rapidly.
     The testimony of Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, in hearings Oct. 7 drew the most attention and criticism. Testifying for the House Committee on Education and Labor, Ghilarducci proposed that the government eliminate tax breaks for 401(k) and similar retirement accounts, such as IRAs, and confiscate workers’ retirement plan accounts and convert them to universal Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) managed by the Social Security Administration….
     The current retirement system, Ghilarducci said, “exacerbates income and wealth inequalities” because tax breaks for voluntary retirement accounts are “skewed to the wealthy because it is easier for them to save, and because they receive bigger tax breaks when they do.”…
     All workers would have 5 percent of their annual pay deducted from their paychecks and deposited to the GRA. They would still be paying Social Security and Medicare taxes, as would the employers. The GRA contribution would be shared equally by the worker and the employee. Employers no longer would be able to write off their contributions. Any capital gains would be taxable year-on-year.

Socialists are forever talking about “inequality” (or in their more recent argot, “inequity”) because it affords them a pretext for seizing our money and property in pursuit of their agenda. It’s well established historically that “inequality” increases under socialism, but they’d rather we didn’t notice that. At any rate, they constantly seek rationales under which to “redistribute” what we’ve earned and saved. We must all be equally poor – except for our loving rulers, of course. Anything else would be “unfair!”

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Comment O’ The Day
Are you surprised the gooberment lied in a report? – Jessica J

Citing Fake Mass-Shooting Data, US Surgeon General Declares ‘Gun Violence’ a Public Health Crisis

United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared that “gun violence” constitutes a public health crisis Tuesday but cited fake mass-shooting data from the long-debunked Gun Violence Archive to support his spurious claims.

Murthy presented his finding in a 40-page Surgeon General advisory, titled “Firearm Violence: A Public Health Crisis in America.”

“While mass shooting deaths represent only about 1% of all firearm‑related deaths in the U.S., the number of mass shooting incidents is increasing. According to data published by Gun Violence Archive, the U.S. experienced more than 600 mass shooting incidents each year between 2020 and 2023, compared to an average of less than 400 annual mass shooting incidents between 2015 and 2018,” the Surgeon General’s advisory states.

In his report, Murthy cites data from the Gun Violence Archive more than four times.

Founded in 2013, the GVA quickly became the administration’s source of choice for mass-shooting data because they hype the numbers. The small nonprofit came up with its own extremely broad definition of a mass shooting, which says anytime four or more people are killed or even slightly wounded with a firearm regardless of the circumstances, it’s a mass shooting. For example, according to the GVA there were 417 mass shootings in 2019. The FBI says there were 30, because it uses a much narrower and more realistic definition, which excludes gang-related and drug-related shootings, which the GVA includes in its data.

Murthy is not the only member of the Biden-Harris administration to use fake data from the GVA. Biden and his handlers have cited GVA’s mass-shooting data throughout his presidency in speeches, written statements and social media.

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ATF Whistleblower Applauds Bump Stock Ruling, Warns of Threats Ahead

Retired ATF Deputy Assistant Director Pete Forcelli, who helped blow the whistle on the Operation Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal, tells Bearing Arms the Supreme Court made the right decision in striking down the agency’s ban on bump stocks, but he’s still deeply concerned that the agency is going to continue to be used by the Biden administration as a way to enact new gun control laws without getting Congress involved… especially if Joe Biden gets another four years in office.

The left likes to attack things, and the problem that I have is when the ATF is tasked by the White House or the Justice Department to attack things rather than hold the people responsible [for their crimes]. It’s not an item that causes the damage. It’s the person misusing that item. How many bump stocks have been used in shootings in the United States aside from Las Vegas? I don’t know of any, to be honest.

Of course, the bump stock ban was implemented under Donald Trump’s watch, so the right can look for simplistic solutions as well, especially in the wake of a high-profile shooting like the Route 91 Harvest Festival murders that resulted in 60 deaths and hundreds of injuries. But the Biden administration has used the ATF to do an end-run around Congress on a regular basis; first by targeting unfinished frames and receivers, then pistol stabilizing braces, and most recently gun owners who offer to sell one or more of their firearms from their personal collection.

Those are just the rules the agency has implemented. According to Forcelli, the White House has been demanding even more.

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You literally can not make this up.

Here’s the demoncrap BUMP ACT ‘‘Banning Unlawful Machinegun Parts Act of 2023″ bill that was shot down today, and will keep getting shot down as it’s quite easy to see that it would ban a lot more than ‘bump stocks’.
In fact it would ban simply doing a trigger job that would lighten the trigger pull weight or travel as well as match triggers made by many different companies like Geissele, LaRue, J&T, etc.

bump_act_bill_text

 Biden Make His Mass Amnesty Move.

You knew it was coming eventually, and Joe Biden has lived up to expectations. Under the guise of “keeping families together,” he announced a new set of executive actions that will effectively grant amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in the United States.

“Since his first day in office, President Biden has called on Congress to secure our border and address our broken immigration system,” a statement from the White House released on Tuesday falsely claimed. It then blamed congressional Republicans for failing to secure the border — a talking point that has repeatedly failed to sway the public.

Still, there is more that we can do to bring peace of mind and stability to Americans living in mixed-status families as well as young people educated in this country, including Dreamers. That is why today, President Biden announced new actions for people who have been here many years to keep American families together and allow more young people to contribute to our economy.

According to the White House, the executive actions will allow illegal immigrant spouses and children of American citizens to stay in the country. The White House claims these actions will “promote family unity and strengthen our economy, providing a significant benefit to the country and helping U.S. citizens and their noncitizen family members stay together.”

Biden Importing Venezuelan Gangs Into U.S.

President Joe Biden’s border crisis has criminals pouring into the United States, infiltrating themselves into communities across the nation that were once deemed a safe and family-friendly place to live.

However, thanks to Biden’s blatant ignorance and complete failure to secure the southern border, the U.S. has become a free-for-all, with over 17 million illegal immigrants entering the country since he took office nearly four years ago.

According to a report, the number of Venezuelan gang members illegally crossing the border unvetted by the Biden Department of Homeland Security is rising to an unprecedented amount. U.S. law enforcement and immigration officials launched more than 100 investigations into crimes related to Venezuelan gang members living in the country. The cases involve the Tren de Aragua gang, one of the deadliest gangs.

According to Customs and Border Protection data, roughly, 30,000 Venezuelans crossed the U.S. border last year and 800,000 have tried to enter the country since 2021. The amount of illegal Venezuelans who have successfully crossed the southern border went from 50,500 in fiscal year 2021 to 334,900 in fiscal year 2023.

The report states that the gang members enter the U.S. illegally with no identification and give a fake name, hometown, and age to authorities. The authorities then release the illegal immigrants into the country with nothing but an order to appear in court to hear their “asylum” claim— which could be years down the road.

The cases involve one of the deadliest gangs, the Tren de Aragua gang. The gang is known for forcing illegal Venezuelan immigrants into sex slavery to repay smugglers who helped them cross over the border and into the U.S. illegally without detection.

Last month, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) busted a sex trafficking scheme in Louisiana involving members from Tren de Aragua who reportedly forced Venezuelan women into sex trafficking to repay coyotes who smuggled them into the U.S.

Venezuelans were the majority of new arrivals who fled to Democratic cities such as Chicago, New York, and Denver.

In May, Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens confirmed the arrest of 10 illegal immigrants associated with the gang in Texas.

The FBI has warned that it is possible the gang could team up with the MS-13— a deadly gang that originated in Los Angeles.

 

 

Yet they are doing exactly that to political opponents at this very moment. Steve Bannon for example.

DOJ Won’t Prosecute Merrick Garland For Contempt of Congress Over Biden Audio Tapes

The Justice Department won’t prosecute Merrick Garland for contempt of Congress over the Biden audio tapes.

The House of Representatives on Thursday voted to hold Merrick Garland in criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena.

Last month two GOP-led House committees passed resolutions recommending US Attorney General Merrick Garland be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over audio of Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur.

Merrick Garland has reportedly “classified at the highest level” the audio tapes of Joe Biden’s embarrassing interview with Special Counsel Hur. The tapes have been locked away in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), according to investigative journalist Paul Sperry.

6-3 with the 3 dissenters being exactly who you think they’d be.

Bump Stock Ban Tossed Out by Supreme Court in Gun-Rights Win

A divided US Supreme Court dealt a fresh blow to firearm-regulation efforts by throwing out the federal ban on bump stocks, the attachments that let a semiautomatic rifle fire at speeds rivaling a machine gun.

On a 6-3 vote along ideological lines, the justices voided a criminal prohibition put in place by the Trump administration after the 2017 Las Vegas concert massacre, when a man using bump stocks killed 60 people. The attack was the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

The case is one of two firearms disputes the court is considering in its 2023-24 term, along with a constitutional clash over the federal gun ban for people subject to domestic-violence restraining orders. The bump-stock fight concerned the reach of a federal statute rather than the Second Amendment, the constitutional provision the court has used to expand gun rights in recent years.

A 1986 law bars most people from owning fully automatic machine guns or parts designed to convert weapons into machine guns. The issue was whether bump stocks meet the law’s definition of machine guns as weapons that can “automatically” discharge more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”

“A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court majority.

Bump stocks replace the standard stock on a rifle — the part that rests against the shooter’s shoulder — with a plastic casing that lets the weapon slide forward and backward. The device harnesses the recoil energy when a shot is fired, causing the gun to slide backward and separate from the trigger finger. The separation lets the firing mechanism reset.

By applying constant forward pressure with the non-trigger hand, the shooter can then force the rifle forward so that it “bumps” the trigger finger, even without moving the finger.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

“The majority’s artificially narrow definition hamstrings the government’s efforts to keep machineguns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter,” Sotomayor wrote for the group. She took the unusual step of reading a summary of her dissent from the bench for emphasis.

The case is Garland v. Cargill, 22-976.