Category: Goobermint

US says no aid entered Gaza via Kerem Shalom; IDF releases footage showing trucks crossing

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller says that while Israel reopened the Kerem Shalom crossing this morning, no trucks carrying humanitarian aid actually went through the gate today due to logistical and security concerns.

Hours earlier, though, the IDF released drone footage showing the entry of trucks carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip today via the crossing.

Miller also says at the press briefing that despite assurances from Israel, the Rafah crossing into Gaza wasn’t opened to fuel shipments either, and urges Israel to immediately ensure the delivery of aid into Gaza.

Defense sources tell The Times of Israel that the Rafah crossing with Egypt will remain closed amid the ongoing IDF operations on the Gazan side of the crossing. The IDF hasn’t given any timeline regarding its operation in eastern Rafah or what will subsequently happen with the border crossing with Egypt.

Trump Classified Docs Trial Postponed Indefinitely.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed Trump’s classified documents trial.

“The Court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture—before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA issues remaining and forthcoming—would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury,” Judge Cannon wrote.

“The Court therefore vacates the current May 20, 2024, trial date (and associated calendar call), to be reset by separate order following resolution of the matters before the Court, consistent with Defendants’ right to due process and the public’s interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against former President Donald Trump has been on shaky ground lately. On Friday, Smith’s team admitted to misleading Cannon and tampering with the evidence that had been used as the basis for his case against Trump.

Last month, Cannon unsealed a trove of new documents in the case that also revealed that an FBI agent had testified that the General Services Administration (GSA) was in possession of Trump’s boxes in Virginia before ordering Trump’s team to come get them. The same boxes that the GSA had been holding and ordered Trump’s team to retrieve ended up being the boxes that contained classified markings, raising questions about whether the Biden administration had set up Trump.

“So an entire pallet full of boxes that had been held by GSA somewhere outside of DC is dumped at Mar-a-Lago,” independent journalist Julie Kelly noted. “Apparently these are the boxes that ended up containing papers with ‘classified markings.'”

The Supreme Court also heard oral arguments over Trump’s claims to presidential immunity, which may affect this cause.

Cannon’s decision is a major win for President Trump, who has repeatedly sought to delay the case until after the presidential election in November. In early April, Cannon rejected Trump’s previous attempt to dismiss the case, which he based on the argument that the documents found at his estate were personal records. Trump had filed multiple motions for dismissal back in February, employing various arguments, such as asserting presidential immunity and questioning the legitimacy of Smith’s appointment.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden had classified information that he was never entitled to have stored in boxes in his garage for years but was not charged. In February Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report concluded that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen” and that his actions “present[ed] serious risks to national security.” However, Hur wouldn’t bring charges against him because 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.”

Because of this, Hur concluded it would be “difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him […] of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.” Hur found that Biden’s memory was “significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017 and in his interview with our office in 2023” and that he couldn’t remember the years he was vice president or when his son Beau died.

John Kirby Says Israel Can’t Eliminate An Ideology With Force. History Disagrees.

In the 12th century, the Christian dualist movement Catharism began spreading across northern Italy and southern France. It was neither the first nor the last heretical challenge to orthodox Christianity in medieval Europe — as Catholics can surely attest.

In any event, the Cathars essentially believed, among many other heresies, in two gods: one of eternal heaven and another of worldly evil. The belief became so popular that Pope Innocent III, apparently not a fan of religious liberty, was compelled to launch the Albigensian Crusade to stamp out this theological perversion. Hundreds of thousands likely perished. In one French Cathar city, 20,000 people were reported slaughtered under papal legate.

I thought of the Cathars, as one does, when Kirby responded to a question about the United States’ support for Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas with his popular trope — “You’re not going to eliminate an ideology through military operations.” Unlike the Albigensian Crusaders, of course, Israel is taking unprecedented precautions to protect the civilian life of their enemies — even though Hamas, unlike medieval Christians, hides behind them.

The worst part of Kirby’s platitudinous nonsense, however, is that it creates the impression Israel is trying to eliminate an entire “ideology” rather than trying to eradicate an organized military and cultural force that uses theology for violent political aims. Of course Israel can’t bore into the souls of Gazans and transform them into right-thinking people. It can destroy Hamas’ hold on territory and render its ideology largely useless. It can bring the purveyors of Hamas ideology to justice and eradicate their military capabilities. For now, that’s good enough.

Moreover, if fighting wars to defend enlightened ideas against nefarious ones is really such a waste of time, why are we sending hundreds of billions to Ukraine to fight Putinst aggression? We are incessantly assured that the European war is a battle between “autocracy” and “democracy.” These are ideological camps. If Volodymyr Zelensky could strike a debilitating blow to Putin’s political power, would Kirby contend it was a waste of time?

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With ‘friends’ like this, we need no enemies.

Cornyn Engages in Damage Control on ATF New Rule

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act wouldn’t have passed without the help of one Sen. John Cornyn.

Cornyn championed the bill in the Senate, getting enough Republicans to sign on in order to get it out of that chamber and onto the House where there was never a chance at stopping it.

Which, honestly, might not have been too big of a deal were it not for this one bit that changed the definition of gun dealer, removing the requirement that someone attempt to make a livelihood out of selling firearms.

It seemed a small thing, but now it’s opening up things for the ATF where they can essentially push through universal background checks without going through Congress.

And Cornyn is now trying to do something about it.

The U.S. Justice Department rolled out a new policy last month requiring background checks for people who informally sell firearms at gun shows or on the internet. The rule, which is set to take effect on May 20, is based on a revised definition of gun dealers put forth in Cornyn’s so-called Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

Previously, gun dealers were defined under federal law as those who sell firearms with the “principal objective of livelihood and profit.” Under the revised definition, gun dealers are any people who “predominantly earn a profit” from selling firearms.

“Under this regulation, it will not matter if guns are sold on the internet, at a gun show, or at a brick-and-mortar store: if you sell guns predominantly to earn a profit, you must be licensed, and you must conduct background checks,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said last month. “This regulation is a historic step in the Justice Department’s fight against gun violence. It will save lives.”

Cornyn has vowed to file a congressional resolution of disapproval over the policy, and he said the Biden administration’s efforts to tie it to the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is “an outright lie.”

“This rule has long been on Democrats’ wish list, and for the Biden administration to say it’s a result of our school safety and mental health law is a shameless attempt to hide their real goal: to take away the firearms of every law-abiding American,” Cornyn said in a joint statement with North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis. “We will fight this unconstitutional rule tooth and nail, and look forward to overturning it in the Senate as soon as possible.”

I’m sorry, but Cornyn doesn’t get to play savior here.

He’s the reason we’re in this mess to begin with. Were it not for him crossing the lines for BSCA, the definitions wouldn’t have changed enough for the ATF to even begin to try this. He cajoled and pushed for the precise legislation that opened the door.

Now, he’s trying to engage in damage control, hoping he can keep his job by being aggressive in his rhetoric about the Biden administration’s efforts.

Did he not see this coming? Did he even read the bill?

To be fair, I don’t actually think Cornyn intended for this to happen. I think he just didn’t think through the ramifications of his actions.

Yet let’s also remember that we don’t give people a pass on the results of their actions. How many people are held culpable for the accidents they get into while driving drunk? They don’t intend to hit other cars or pedestrians, but they do, and we hold them accountable.

The Crumbleys didn’t intend for their child to carry out a mass shooting, but the lack of intention didn’t absolve them in the eyes of the court.

Hannah Guiterrez-Reed didn’t intend for a live round to end up in the gun that killed Halyna Hutchins, but she’s going to do time for it just the same.

We hold people accountable for the outcomes of their actions, and in this case, Cornyn’s actions directly led to the ATF’s proposed rule. While we can argue that even with the BSCA’s changes, it’s still overreach, it’s overreach that wouldn’t be remotely possible had Cornyn not bent the knee to Biden on it in the first place.

BLUF:
From what I can gather, the problem in cities is usually not that the police department itself is unwilling to assist, but that they are under orders from the mayor, afraid of upsetting far left constituents, to stand down.

Well, of course that’s what’s going on. Police usually do exactly what their city’s management tells them to do. Geez……

DAVID BERNSTEIN

Hans Bader on Selective Law Enforcement
Police in some major cities are refusing to enforce the law against protest “encampments”
I have been increasingly aware of, and disturbed by, instances of local police declining the requests of universities to help the universities–which generally do not have law enforcement officers capable of dealing with hundreds of people resisting arrest–arrest  protestors and remove their protest encampments. I was preparing to write a blog post about this, but Hans Bader beat me to it. So rather than reinvent the wheel, with permission, below is a shortened version of Hans’ post:

You have a right to free speech, but that doesn’t give you a First Amendment right to camp out on my lawn with protest signs. That’s trespassing. But government officials sometimes allow trespassing when they sympathize with the trespasser’s viewpoint. Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC have refused to remove progressive anti-Israel protesters camping out at private universities — Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and George Washington University.

Law professor David Bernstein notes that “Baltimore police will not assist in removing illegal encampment at Johns Hopkins University. Worse, they actually praise the illegal encampment as a valid exercise of First Amendment rights, which is complete nonsense. It’s especially nonsensical because most of the protesters are trespassers with no connection to the university.”

“The City of Baltimore strongly stands with every person’s First Amendment rights. Barring any credible threat of violence or similarly high threshold to protect public safety, BPD currently has no plans to engage solely to shut down this valid protest or remove protesters,” said the Baltimore police department in a statement apparently dictated by the mayor’s office.

Contrary to what this statement claims, there is no “First Amendment” right to camp out on public property, much less private property like the campus of Johns Hopkins University, which can tell trespassers to leave regardless of whether they are engaged in First Amendment activity. Camping out on someone else’s property is not a “valid protest,” even if the protesters have not yet made any “threat of violence.” The Supreme Court ruled that protesters do not have a right to camp out even on public property devoted to public use, like national parks, in Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence (1984).

Yet Neetu Arnold of the National Association of Scholars notes that Philadelphia is similarly refusing to clear out a protest camp at the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League university: “Philadelphia Police ignores Penn’s request to disband unauthorized encampment. The university has to provide proof that the encampment poses an imminent danger. Penn students have received multiple warnings to avoid the immediate area.” The Daily Pennsylvanian reports that the “Philadelphia Police Department declines to disband encampment after Penn requests immediate help.”

As a University of Pennsylvania alumnus notes, these illegal protests are only being allowed by progressive officials because of the viewpoint they are expressing. If the protesters were “white nationalists waving nazi flags and telling black people they should go back to Africa I’m sure [police] would be out there pretty quickly” to remove them.

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Week in Review: Gun Owners Targeted

The wannabe gun-grabbers on the Pima County, Ariz., Board of Supervisors have been looking to pick a fight over the state’s firearm statutes.

They picked the wrong one. Now, the Goldwater Institute is suing the county on behalf of Air Force veteran Chris King over an illegal mandate that slaps $1,000 fines on residents who fail to report a lost or stolen firearm to the government within two days.

Arizona law prohibits cities, counties, and other local government entities from passing almost any type of firearm-related regulation. But public records obtained by the Institute reveal the board has been gearing up for this fight for years, coordinating with left-wing activist groups, attorneys, and other elected officials to undermine Arizona’s broad protections for the rights to keep and bear arms.

They’ve bitten off more than they can chew—and now, they’ll have to defend their illegal ordinance in state court.

“We’re a nation of laws,” Chris says. “Why do Pima County officials think they’re above the law?”

The Goldwater Institute will always defend constitutional rights and keep rogue government entities in check when they thumb their nose at the law.

Read more here.

If the prosecution lied about this, what else did they lie about?

Trump Whodunnit: Prosecutors admit key evidence in document case has been tampered with
Legal experts call revelation a “serious violation” as Jack Smith’s team admits it also misled court.

In a stunning admission, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team is admitting that key evidence in former President Donald Trump’s classified documents criminal case was altered or manipulated since it was seized by the FBI, and that prosecutors misled the court about it for a period of time.

Legal experts told Just the News the revelation could prove to be a serious problem for prosecutors and a violation of court rules to preserve evidence in the state it was seized.

In a new filing Friday, Smith’s team said that the order of documents in some of the boxes of memos that were seized by the FBI from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was altered or jumbled, leaving two different chronologies: one that was digitally scanned and another the physical order in the boxes.

“Since the boxes were seized and stored, appropriate personnel have had access to the boxes for several reasons, including to comply with orders issued by this Court in the civil proceedings noted above, for investigative purposes, and to facilitate the defendants’ review of the boxes,” Smith’s team wrote in a new court filing to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.

“There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” the prosecutors wrote.

Smith’s team in a footnote also conceded it had misled the court about the problem by previously declaring that the evidence had remained in the exact state it had been seized.

“The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court,” the footnote said.

You can read the filing here:

gov.uscourts.flsd_.648653.522.0.pdf

The organization of the documents in storage boxes at Mar-a-Lago is likely to be an important part of Trump‘s defense. His team is expected to argue the documents were stored in the White House in chronological order on the days that Trump received them, and that staff simply boxed them up and sent them to his home without him accessing them or knowing they contained classified information.

Smith’s team tried to downplay the problem and argued it’s not a reason for a delay in Trump’s case.

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O’Keefe Media Group Exposes Alleged CIA Plot Against Trump.

According to a new undercover report by the O’Keefe Media Group, high-level intelligence community executives—including former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former CIA Director Gina Haspel—withheld information from former President Donald Trump throughout his administration.

A video posted on social media by James O’Keefe features Amjad Anton Fseisi, purported to be the project manager for cyber operations at the CIA. In the video, the undercover reporter for O’Keefe Media Group gets Fseisi to admit that several intelligence agencies deliberately withheld information from Trump out of some absurd fear that he might “disclose it.” Fseisi is seen in the recording admitting that intelligence agencies “all got together and said, ‘We’re not gonna tell Trump.’”

“The executive staff,” Fseisi said in response to a question about who specifically was involved in the decision.

“We’re talking about the director and his subordinates.” That would include Pompeo and Haspel.

According to Fseisi, the intelligence agencies “kept information from [Trump] because we knew he’d f***ing disclose it.”

“There are certain people that would… give him a high-level overview but never give him any details. You know why? Because he’ll leak those details.”

And can you guess why Fseisi says Trump would leak sensitive information? Because Trump is… wait for it… a Russian asset!

“He’s a Russian asset,” Fseisi claimed. “He’s owned by the f***ing Russians.”

But there’s more.

“Amjad reveals to OMG’s Undercover American Swiper that intel agencies not only kept intelligence information from a sitting United States President and Commander-In-Chief, they also used FISA to spy on [Donald Trump],” O’Keefe says on X/Twitter. “And his team and [sic] are still monitoring President Trump according to Amjad who says, ‘We monitor everything.’ Amjad adds ‘we also have people that monitor his ex-wife. He likes to use burner phones’ – information only an insider with access to highly sensitive information would state.”

“We steal it [information]” and “We hack other countries just like that,” Amjad, who states he currently works on the CIA’s China Mission Center, explains how intel agencies obtain information. He also describes a broken intelligence system where “We don’t share information across agencies” because the CIA is “very reluctant” to share information with the “careless” NSA.

O’Keefe Media Group’s bombshell undercover footage supports earlier reports by investigative journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag that revealed how the American intelligence community illegally ran a spy operation against then-candidate Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 and illegally acquired intelligence that was later used to justify the Federal Bureau of Investigation (@FBI) official probe, “Crossfire Hurricane,” which in turn led to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that ultimately did not find evidence of Russia collusion by the 2016 Trump campaign. @shellenberger @mtaibbi @galexybrane

Contractors like Fseisi hold the duty to withhold sharing confidential or national security information. In denying his statements, Fseisi may have realized he could be held liable for violating internal agency provisions and federal laws like the Executive Agency ethics provisions, which restrict what he may share with others outside of his contracted-to agency.

Additionally, any government worker or agency head who withheld information from a superior (i.e. President Trump) may violate: (a) obstruction of justice by deception (18 USC 1512); (b) conspiracy to obstruct (18 USC 371); and false statements (18 USC 1001). Agency regulations may also provide offenses related to insubordination, reflecting poorly on the agency in public, or misrepresentation or dishonesty.

When O’Keefe confronted Fseisi on the streets of Washington, D.C., he denied making the statements in the above video.

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Biden Admin Finally Acknowledges What’s Happening With Gaza Aid

President Joe Biden has made aid to Gaza a priority as the Israel-Hamas conflict rages on, despite the increasingly high financial cost, the threat to American troops, and how such aid has been hijacked by Hamas terrorists before. As The Times of Israel covered, which our sister site of Twitchy also picked up on, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller admitted on Thursday that Hamas was able to seize aid that was coming from Jordan to Gaza.

As the report mentioned:

According to Miller, the aid shipment was unloaded by the Jordanian military inside the Strip before being “picked up by a humanitarian implementer for distribution inside Gaza, and that aid was intercepted and diverted by Hamas on the ground in Gaza.”

“The UN is either in the process or has by now recovered that aid, but it was an unacceptable act by Hamas to divert this aid to begin with,” he said during a press briefing.

Miller added that UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, would likely issue a statement soon condemning the incident, indicating it was the organization from which Hamas stole the aid.

“If there’s one thing that Hamas could do to jeopardize the shipment of aid, it would be diverting it for their own use, rather than allowing it to go to the innocent civilians that need it,” he said, claiming this was the “first widespread case of diversion that we have seen” in Gaza.

Hamas held the aid trucks for “some time” before releasing them, according to Miller….

Israel recently stepped up efforts to deliver aid by land and opened up new ground routes, including opening Erez to aid trucks on Wednesday. Washington has said aid delivery has increased significantly in recent weeks, but that more is needed.

A temporary pier is also being constructed by the US military to increase humanitarian aid deliveries, and is more than halfway complete, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

The subheadline for The Times of Israel’s article notes, with added emphasis, that this was “the ‘first widespread case of diversion’ acknowledged by US.”

There’s been video evidence for months now of Hamas taking over aid meant for civilians and sold on the black market. The article also mentions the tricky way that the United States has tried to go about that narrative:

[Miller’s] comments follow Israel’s long-standing contention that Hamas stockpiled supplies and kept them from increasingly desperate civilians. Footage from Gaza has shown gunmen, who were reportedly linked to the terror group, stealing trucks delivering humanitarian aid from Egypt.

In February, the US diplomat who was then involved in humanitarian assistance for Gaza denied allegations that Hamas stole aid and commercial shipments into the enclave, saying that no Israeli official had presented him or the Biden administration with “specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance.”

At the same time, he acknowledged that Hamas had used other aid delivery channels to “shape where and to whom assistance goes.”

That acknowledgment of how much control Hamas really has in the region is a pretty significant one.

When it comes to Miller expecting a statement from the UNRWA, that may be asking too much. There’s evidence that the pro-Hamas agency of the anti-Israel United Nations has actually been involved with the terrorist group, and that this includes even holding one of the captives taken as a hostage on October 7.

As of early Friday afternoon, the most recent official statement posted to the UNRWA website is from Tuesday, April 30 and highlights the introductory remarks from UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini. There’s plenty of sympathizing with Gazans and criticism about Israel’s role in the conflict, but no update on hijacked aid.

Further, the UNRWA’s X account also contains no mention of the aid that was intercepted by Gaza. Instead, the posts lament the situation in Gaza as a result of the Israel-Hamas conflict brought on from the brutal attack that Hamas perpetrated against Israel on October 7, demand more assistance for their region and agency, and call for a ceasefire.

Maine Gov. Mills Allows 3-Day Wait, Vetoes Bump Stock Ban

Maine Gov. Janet Mills will allow a bill mandating a three-day waiting period on gun purchases to become law without her signature, while she vetoed legislaton that would have banned “bump stocks” in what may have been an effort to give up something to those opposed to the gun control package.

According to News Center Maine, the waiting period bill “drew fierce opposition from Republicans” and in a state with a long tradition, and high rate of lawful gun ownership, penalizing honest gun owners for crimes they did not commit is not going over well.

It does not appear bump stocks have been a problem in Maine. The story only referenced the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas—2,500 miles away—in which the killer used rifles fitted with bump stocks.

The Associated Press is reporting that Mills, a Democrat, was allowing the waiting period bill to become law “with caveats and concerns.” She plans to “monitor” any challenges relating to waiting period laws in other states.

Mills had earlier inked legislation to strengthen Maine’s “yellow flag” law and expand background checks to be required for private gun sales. The Democrat-controlled Legislature did not vote on a “red flag” proposal, which have been criticized by Second Amendment advocates because of due process concerns.

This rush to restrict gun ownership in the Pine Tree State is the Democrats’ response to last October’s mass shooting at two different locations in Lewiston. The killer was an Army reservist who had been evaluated last summer at a hospital in New York state, where he was training. After murdering 18 people, he hid in a trailer and took his own life.

There is no indication that a waiting period would have prevented the tragedy, and also no report that a bump stock was involved with the crime.

Maine is one of the safest states in the country. According to the FBI Crime Data Explorer, in 2022—the most recent year for which data is available—the state logged only 29 homicide “incidents” and 30 “offenses.” Handguns were used in nine incidents, knives/cutting instruments accounted for seven more, unidentified firearms were used in three killings and a shotgun was involved in one slaying. Maine’s crime rate is well below the national average.

AG Merrick Garland Admits That It’s *Gang* Violence, Not ‘Gun Violence’

We’ve written about it repeatedly.  It’s gang violence that’s rampant across America, not so-called “gun violence.” The problem has become so bad that even full-time partisan political hack and part-time Attorney General Merrick Garland admitted as much at an ATF “summit” just days ago. Of course, the mainstream media ignored it. What’s more, his comment even escaped most of the alternative news outlets as well.

Garland abandoned his “Christian Nationalist” and “White Supremacist” bogeymen to admit that gangs members and repeat offenders are driving the gun violence problem in America. And for the slow-witted trolls in comments, this isn’t the MAGA gang either.

Here is an excerpt from the transcript provided by the US Department of Justice:

We are using our prosecutorial and technological tools to identify the repeat offenders and gangs who are principally responsible for community violence.

And here’s the video which begins at 28:00 when Garland admits what we’ve known for a long, long time: that repeat offenders and gang members (sorry for repeating ourselves in so many instances) are driving violent crime:

Yes, the mainstream media and left-leaning pols love to redirect low-information voters from violent criminals to the tools they misuse.

I love it when soft-on-crime politicians get very defensive and very animated when you talk about gang violence in their presence or correct them when they throw out the “gun violence” talking point.

“We don’t talk about gangs,” one Illinois State Representative from Chicago said to me as I sat in his office in my role as executive director of Guns Save Life. His body language screamed his discomfort at where the conversation was headed.

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ATF’s Poorly Trained ‘Operators’ are a Threat to Public Safety

ATF Agents qualify with handguns during the two-week course to become member of ATF’s Special Response Team. (Screenshot courtesy ATF.gov)

Selection, training and leadership are vital to any special operations team, regardless of their size or mission parameters. The more rigorous the selection process, the more comprehensive the training, the more professional the leadership, the better the unit will perform.

Delta Force’s Operators Training Course, for example, is six months long, and teaches advanced CQB, precision marksmanship, counterterrorism and a host of esoteric skills needed by Delta operators to meet their worldwide mission requirements. OTC is only open to candidates who survive Delta’s arduous Selection and Assessment phase.

DEVGRU’s Green Team selection and training course is also six months long, and only Navy SEALs who have completed BUDS and spent at last five years on an SDV or SEAL team can apply.

MARSOC Raider candidates must complete a nine-month course, known as the Marine Special Operations Individual Course, or ITC. MARSOC Officers must also attend a four-week Team Commanders Course after they graduate ITC.

Army Special Forces candidates can spend six months to two years training before they earn an SF tab and a Green Beret, and the pipeline for Air Force special operators can take 15 months to two years.

Special Agents who want to join the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team must pass the New Operator Training School, which is 10 months long and extremely easy to fail.

United States Secret Service Counter Assault Team (CAT) members undergo a two-week selection course and then a seven-week basic training program. Secret Service snipers must pass a one-week selection process and then a 10-week sniper training course.

Candidates for Border Patrol’s Tactical Unit (BORTAC) undergo a three-week selection course and then a six-week training course before being assigned to a sector team. After a year, they can apply to join BORTAC’s elite national team.

By comparison, training for ATF’s Special Response Teams takes only two weeks, and ATF agents call themselves “operators” after they’ve completed the course.

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Just remember; The Process Is The Punishment™

Arizona rancher George Alan Kelly will not be retried after deadlocked jury, prosecutors announce

George Alan Kelly, the Arizona rancher charged with murder in the shooting of a Mexican national on his border property, will not be retried, prosecutors with the Santa Cruz County Attorney’s office said.

The state charged Kelly with second degree murder after he allegedly shot and killed a migrant, Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, on his land in January 2023.

The decision not to retry Kelly comes a week after a mistrial was declared following a deadlocked jury.

Kelly’s defense confirmed to Fox News Digital that there was “one, lone holdout” juror who wanted to convict, while the remaining jurors sought an acquittal.

The jury began deliberating April 18. After days of being unable to reach a verdict, the judge overseeing the trial declared a mistrial on Monday.

Biden Defense Official Says ‘Take All the Guns’, Use National Guard

Confiscate guns

In a recent undercover video released by James O’Keefe, a Department of Defense (DoD) employee, Jason Beck, was recorded discussing the potential use of the National Guard for gun confiscation.

Beck’s assertion that the National Guard would follow orders to confiscate guns prompts questions about the military’s obligation to uphold the Constitution. The tension between obeying lawful orders and respecting individual rights underscores the complexities of military service in a democratic society.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indiana Prosecutor Laments That Self-Defense Laws Exist, Protect Defensive Gun Users.

Apparently, some Indianapolis public officials have forgotten how their own self-defense laws work and why they exist in the first place.

In an interview that’s equal parts amusing and alarming, Indiana’s Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears recently lamented an increase in self-defense shootings in Indianapolis.

Mears complained to reporters that shootings involving self-defense claims are challenging to prosecute. This “mean[s] that someone lost their life” and “that case might ultimately be cleared” without the shooter being charged, he said.

Mears also implied that defensive gun users who can’t be prosecuted are just as bad as the criminals they shot, simply by virtue of the fact that both parties were armed.

With all due respect to Mears, the county prosecutor seems to miss the point.

As in virtually every other state, Indiana law justifies the use of deadly force only when a person has a reasonable belief that such force is necessary to prevent serious bodily injury, commission of a forcible felony, or unlawful entry into a home or vehicle.

Moreover, a person generally can’t rely on the protection of self-defense laws if he or she was committing a crime or fleeing after committing one, provoked the threat, or engaged in “mutual combat.”

In other words, to the extent that self-defense shootings are difficult to prosecute, it’s because there’s pretty good evidence that the shooter was morally and legally justified in doing what he did.

You would think that someone like Mears would comprehend this, given his position as a prosecutor.

The importance of armed self-defense can’t be overstated. Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to a 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.

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Police Website Reveals CDC Suppressing Defensive Gun Use Data

According to a report from Law Enforcement Today, recent revelations have exposed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for allegedly suppressing data on defensive gun use (DGU). This action has ignited debates over the transparency and potential politicization of the agency’s research on gun policy and public health.

The CDC, which studies various factors contributing to injury and mortality including firearm incidents, has been criticized for omitting defensive gun use statistics from its public communications. Despite commissioning a study from The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, which recognized DGUs as a “common occurrence,” the CDC chose to exclude these statistics following pressure from gun-control advocates.

Documents obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests revealed that individuals such as Mark Bryant of the Gun Violence Archive, Devin Hughes of GVPedia, and Po Murray engaged with top CDC officials. They were introduced by the White House and Senator Dick Durbin’s office and pressed the CDC to downplay DGU frequencies, which range from estimates of 60,000 to 2.5 million annually in the U.S.

Mark Bryant was particularly outspoken, vehemently opposing the highest estimates of DGU. He was quoted in correspondence saying, “that statistic needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again. It is highly misleading, used out of context, and holds zero value even as an outlier in honest discussions surrounding DGUs.”

Despite initial reluctance, the CDC ultimately removed references to DGUs from its publications, a move that has been perceived as aligning the agency more with gun-control advocacy groups than with unbiased scientific inquiry. This has raised concerns about the CDC’s commitment to providing comprehensive and unbiased data.

Gary Kleck, professor emeritus at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice and a long-time researcher of DGUs, criticized the CDC’s actions, suggesting they indicate the agency is a tool of gun-control advocates rather than a neutral body. Kleck, whose research supports at least 760,000 DGUs annually, emphasized the importance of rigorous methodology and empirical evidence in academic research.

This situation highlights the ongoing tension between scientific research and political influence, particularly in the contentious arena of gun policy. Critics argue that the CDC’s actions compromise its credibility as an evidence-based institution and call for greater transparency and accountability in its research practices.

“CDC is just aligning itself with the gun-control advocacy groups. It’s just saying: ‘we are their tool, and we will do their bidding.’ And that’s not what a government agency should do,” Kleck told Eddie Killian, the author of the Law Enforcement Today article.

Combine a small apocalyptic sect with one of its major prophecies being fulfilled, as they saw it, by a law enforcement agency who it is said were looking for headlines to bolster its reputation for an increased budget, and what you wind up with is this.

The Waco Siege: What Happened When the Feds Laid Siege to the Branch Davidian Compound

“The record of the Waco incident documents mistakes. What the record from Waco does not evidence, however, is any improper motive or intent on the part of law enforcement.”

The siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, is an important event in American history because it directly led to one of the biggest terrorist attacks on American soil – the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. It’s not necessary to defend this act of terrorism to understand why the entire freedom movement of the time was so incensed by it. Indeed, it stood as a symbol of federal overreach and the corruption of the Clinton Administration.

It’s important to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the siege of Waco, just as it is important to do so with the siege of Ruby Ridge or the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi. With every event, it is important to stick to the facts and what can be extrapolated from them to make the strongest argument about what went wrong and why, and what could be done differently in the future.

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In a nutshell, the military is going to have real problems trying to pull this off.

Might Turn Out That POTATUS’ Gonzo Gaza Pier Plan Was a Blessing in Disguise.

No, no, no – I haven’t lost my cotton-pickin’ mind. Hear me out on this one.

Let’s recap what the plan was for those in the backseats.

POTATUS used the time he spent shrieking during what was billed as a “State of the Union” to drop the little bombshell that he was directing United States assets – read that as our military – to build a “floating pier” off of Gaza for humanitarian relief. That declaration was immediately followed by a blatant lie about “no US boots” would be “on the ground” as part of this evolution. Anyone with half a brain hearing this – which, in fairness, automatically excludes POTATUS – knew it was an impossibility to build such a thing WITHOUT “boots on the ground.”

US forces will build a temporary dock on the Gaza shoreline to allow delivery of humanitarian aid on a large scale, Joe Biden announced in his State of the Union speech, amid warnings of a widespread famine among the territory’s 2.3 million Palestinians.

…“Tonight, I’m directing the US military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters,” the president said.

He promised “no US boots will be on the ground”, and said: “This temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.”

Those same rational types also realized that it would put any American personnel on or offshore directly in harm’s way, like rubber ducks in a carnival tub for the taking.

That was my main problem with potentially yet another administration-orchestrated snafu where only our military paid the price for their supreme incompetence and indifference to risk. I will admit to voicing boisterous and vociferous objections at every opportunity.

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BOOM: White House Blows Up as Israel Hits Iran

There’s an old joke about how the New York Times would announce the end of the world. “World to End Tomorrow; Women and Minorities Affected Most.” I’m here to tell you today that the real victims of Israel’s Thursday night airstrikes on Iran are in the Biden White House — and just two miles away in Washington’s exclusive Kalorama neighborhood.
I’ll get to that last part in a moment.

PJ Media’s own Paula Bolyard stayed up late last night to give you the up-to-the-minute coverage but, now that the dust has had a little while to settle, I’ve taken the zero-dark-thirty shift (Mountain Time) to serve up a little perspective with your morning coffee.

Please notice that Iran launched an unprecedentedly large drone and missile strike on Israel Saturday but everything they had either malfunctioned or was shot down. Israel seems to have hit Iran with impunity and, according to my friend and colleague Jennifer van Laar’s source, Israeli Air Force (IAF) warplanes simply did not show up on Iranian or Russian radar. Ponder for just a moment what that might have meant in the Russo-Ukraine War, had the West gotten serious from the start about arming Ukraine.

But I digress.

This one is a real stumper for the Biden administration. While there are no indications yet that the IAF hit any sites related to Iran’s mostly peaceful nuclear weapons program, it’s safe to say that the Obama-Biden Iran nuclear deal got “blowed up real good” last night.

Jen’s source also claims that the strike was “expected to be hypertargeted to eliminate IRN nuclear program and kill key personnel, eliminate known and suspected launch facilities” but nobody has admitted that’s what actually happened. “Iranian state press has reported that Tehran’s atomic facilities were left unharmed,” for whatever that’s worth.

Taking their cue from Barack Obama’s disastrous Middle East foreign policy, the White House has spent the last three years giving Tehran almost anything they wanted — relaxed sanctions, pallets of cash, treating Hamas with kid gloves, etc. — in exchange for pretending to do a somewhat better job of hiding their nuclear weapons program.

Whether or not Israel struck Iran’s nuclear sites, the IAF has proven that they can hit anything in Iran and there isn’t a damn thing Tehran can do to stop them. I’m not saying that Iran can’t strike back, because they surely will. Although I suspect that, after last night, Tehran might go back to using their proxies in Syria, Gaza, Yemen, etc instead of attacking Israel directly again. Whatever the case, the point remains that Iran’s air defenses cannot stop, hinder, or even see Israeli warplanes.

Biden’s Middle East foreign policy is in tatters, blown up along with whatever else Israel hit last night. Barack Obama, the architect of Biden’s Iran deals (and so much else), has failed this country — and the world — yet again, seven years after leaving office. The Arab-Israeli peace that Donald Trump’s team of SecState Mike Pompeo and Jared Kushner had worked so hard to create was tossed aside by Biden-Obama in 2021 in favor of making Iran the dominant regional power.

Now there’s no peace anywhere to be found. This is the inevitable result of making one of the world’s worst actors the cornerstone of your regional peace efforts.

Or maybe war was what they wanted all along.