Category: Goobermint

The Honeymoon Is Over: Trump’s Pick for Labor Secretary Is a Teachers’ Union Fave

Well, that didn’t last as long as I would have liked. President-elect Donald Trump had been on a roll with his choices for roles in his next administration. On Thursday, he ruined the good vibes with one horrible, horrible Cabinet pick.

In Tuesday’s Morning Briefing, I celebrated Trump’s nomination of Linda McMahon to be Secretary of Education. Her strong views on school choice rattle the people in charge of the teachers’ unions, who are the biggest obstacle to education reform because they’re powerful leftist political lobbies. I noted that substantive progress with school choice would be “a direct shot at the heart of the Democrats’ main source of funding.”

On Thursday, Trump did something to make the teachers’ unions happy.

The Wall Street Journal:

Hard to believe, but Donald Trump on Friday night nominated a favorite of teachers union chief Randi Weingarten as his Labor Secretary. Why would Mr. Trump want to empower labor bosses who oppose his economic agenda and spent masses to defeat him?

Mr. Trump’s regrettable choice is Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Ms. Weingarten on Thursday tweeted her support for the freshman Republican. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who spoke at the Republican National Convention, has also been pulling for her. In a Truth Social post, Mr. Trump said she’ll work toward “historic cooperation between Business and Labor.” But Ms. Chavez-DeRemer has backed union giveaways like the Pro Act, which are not “cooperation.”

I’ll get to the Pro Act in a moment. For the moment, let us focus on the fact that Randi Weingarten is a vile human being. She was the face of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, and championed keeping them closed far longer than even the other tyrants thought was necessary. Weingarten wrecked a generation of public school children, forcing them into a brutal game of “catch up” that many will never win.

Then she lied about her role in all of that.

She’s Team Trump with the Chavez-DeRemer choice though:

When one of the most clinically insane leftists in America thinks that a Republican politician did a good thing, it means that the Republican just did a clinically insane leftist thing.

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Federal Appeals Court Upholds Most of Restrictive New York Concealed Carry Gun Law; Next Stop SCOTUS
Federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals upholds “good moral character” requirement of New York’s concealed carry gun law, setting up expected showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court

We have been following the twists and turns of litigation battles associated with New York’s most recent concealed carry gun law. This is important, not only because it affects the constitutional rights of millions of law-abiding New York State citizens, but also because this case could be a bellwether for the country, should the U.S. Supreme Court decide to review the case and provide further guidance on the gun rights of citizens nationwide.

You may recall that it all started, as we reported, when SCOTUS struck down New York’s previous concealed carry gun law, which required citizens to make a showing of “special need” when applying for a carry permit, as violative of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, in the seminal New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen case:

We…now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.

The parties nevertheless dispute whether New York’s licensing regime respects the constitutional right to carry handguns publicly for self-defense. In 43 States, the government issues licenses to carry based on objective criteria.

But in six States, including New York, the government further conditions issuance of a license to carry on a citizen’s showing of some additional special need. Because the State of New York issues public-carry licenses only when an applicant demonstrates a special need for self-defense, we conclude that the State’s licensing regime violates the Constitution.

So after Bruen, as the case is typically called, New York could not require citizens to show a special need to get a concealed carry permit. And boy was Kathy Hochul, the far-left governor of New York, pissed: NY Gov. Hochul Loses Her Mind Over SCOTUS Ruling Striking Down Conceal Carry Law.

So pissed, in fact, that she rapidly called a special session of the New York legislature, and immediately passed a new concealed carry gun law even more restrictive than the previous one: New York Democrats Undermine Supreme Court 2nd Amendment Ruling In New Legislation.

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DOD ‘Intentionally Delayed’ National Guard Deployment To The Capitol On Jan. 6

Federal bureaucrats within the Department of Defense (DoD) delayed the deployment of the National Guard on Jan. 6, 2021 and covered it up, according to a House Republican investigation of government conduct related to the Capitol riot.

On Thursday, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who is leading a review of the work completed by the partisan Jan. 6 probe run by then-Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, sent a letter to the inspector general for the Department of Defense demanding a correction to an agency report published in November 2021.

“This report was the final product of the DoD IG’s review into the events of January 6, and reviewed how the DoD responded to requests for support as the events unfolded,” Loudermilk, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight for the House Administration Committee, wrote. “Throughout the Subcommittee’s extensive investigation into the failures of January 6, 2021, we have discovered numerous flaws and inaccuracies in the report that your office has yet to appropriately address.”

Such flaws and inaccuracies, however, may have been part of a partisan cover-up after GOP lawmakers discovered the Pentagon was responsible for delays in guard deployment.

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Kansas City-Area Lawmakers Buck Veto, Pick Fight With Missouri Legislature

When Jackson County, Missouri Executive Frank White vetoed a package of local gun control ordinances last week, he rightfully pointed out that the measures are “fundamentally flawed, unlawful, and counterproductive.” The state of Missouri has a firearms preemption law in place that prohibits localities from adopting their own gun laws, and there’s no doubt that the ordinances approved by the Jackson County legislature violate the state’s preemption statute.

The ordinances establish age limits for firearm and ammunition purchases and an almost near-total ban on the possession of “assault rifles” for adults under the age of 21. White said that if the ordinances were allowed to take effect, it would open up Jackson County to “costly legal battles,” but Jackson County lawmakers are apparently willing to let taxpayers foot the bill for their quixotic attempt to subvert state law because they’ve overridden his veto and put the county on a collision course with the state of Missouri.

County Legislator Manny Abarca, who was caught in Union Station with his then-five-year-old daughter during the Super Bowl parade shootings, said the bill is needed to fight the rash of violence this summer by armed teens. He also pointed to the murder of Irish chef Shaun Brady in August.

“The least we can do is implement common-sense protections to prevent such devastating incidents from happening again,” Abarca said in a press release. “This ordinance is a necessary step to enhance public safety and protect our youth.”

White vetoed the bill last week, saying state law clearly bans passage of any local gun laws and he feared a lawsuit.

He issued a statement late Monday saying passage of the bill was “a disappointing moment for our residents.”

“While I respect the legislative process, this ordinance does not meet legal standards set by state and federal law, and we fully expect that it will be challenged in court,” White said. “Regrettably, this will mean that taxpayer dollars are spent defending an ordinance that has little chance of being upheld.”

Abarca’s grandstanding won’t cost him a dime personally, but he and the other six Jackson County legislators who overrode White’s veto are going to be wasting a lot of the county’s money defending the indefensible. Missouri statute is crystal clear about the powers of local governments to impose their own gun control laws:

No county, city, town, village, municipality, or other political subdivision of this state shall adopt any order, ordinance or regulation concerning in any way the sale, purchase, purchase delay, transfer, ownership, use, keeping, possession, bearing, transportation, licensing, permit, registration, taxation other than sales and compensating use taxes or other controls on firearms, components, ammunition, and supplies…

The two exceptions granted to local governments are the ability to regulate the open carrying and discharging of firearms, though even then political subdivisions can’t craft an ordinance that prohibits guns from being used in defense of person or property. Abarca’s ordinances directly conflict with state law by imposing new regulations on the sale of firearms and ammunition, as well as the possession of so-called “assault rifles” ((a term, by the way, left undefined by the ordinance).

There’s no question that the ordinances conflict with state law. The biggest unknowns at the moment are who will sue to strike down the new ordinances, and whether Jackson County Sheriff Darryl Forte will try to enforce the measures adopted by county lawmakers.

There is no shortage of potential plaintiffs, including Second Amendment organizations, gun stores, and young adults in Jackson County who could bring a legal challenge to the new ordinances, but standing could be an issue if Forte decides its better not to enforce them. Regardless of enforcement, I expect the Missouri Attorney General’s office will also have plenty to say about the Jackson County legislature’s illegal ordinances, and might even bring a separate legal challenge to strike the measures from the books.

No matter how concerned Abarca and other lawmakers are about “youth” crime in Jackson County, violating state law to infringe on the Second Amendment rights of young adults is, as White said, a fundamentally flawed and counterproductive approach. Money that could be spent on hiring more deputies, prosecutors, or even community violence intervention efforts will now be directed toward defending Abarca’s public relations stunt instead of making Jackson County a safer place.

Don’t Think Guns Are Treated Differently? Think Again

There are some people who think guns get some kind of special dispensation within the law. This is popular with the “I wish women had the same rights as guns” crowd that can’t seem to shut up. It’s nonsense, of course, but some people really like to pretend otherwise. They like to pretend guns are treated differently than everything else.

But let’s be real. Guns are treated differently than other products. It’s just not the way they want you to think.

See, few other industries are facing threats of government regulation and intervention because of things that third parties do that are already prohibited by law, but  that’s what’s happening in the firearm industry.

After the video montage of criminal violence, Chairman Durbin continued his opening remarks.

“Glock switches, which are banned under federal law are cheap, often costing less than $20, and they’ve been increasingly common across our country,” the chairman said. “We must act. Gun manufacturers can and should do more to ensure their products cannot be converted into illegal machine guns.
If manufacturers fail to act, Congress should take up legislation to hold these companies liable for the foreseeable consequences of their actions.”

Of course, the White House coordinated with Everytown and The City of Chicago to sue Glock under this baseless legal theory; and is the subject of an ongoing congressional investigation.

Chairman Durbin gives away his authority here as he knows well lawful firearm manufacturers cannot and should not be held liable for the criminal actions of unaffiliated remote third parties. This is the cornerstone of American jurisprudence and codified in the bipartisan Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) that countless gun control activists wish to eliminate.

The chairman said it himself – these illegal firearm conversion devices like Glock switches are already illegal. Prosecutors need to get tough and hold criminals accountable for committing these horrible crimes.

Some argue that the PLCAA is more proof that guns are treated differently, but let’s understand what the PLCAA does and why it exists.

It was created to deal with a particularly insidious series of lawsuits aimed at trying to punish the firearm industry for what third parties did with firearms. There was no wrongdoing by the gun manufacturers, who complied with all federal regulations. It was just a way to try and bankrupt gun companies or force them to stop selling to the general public.

The PLCAA ended that.

Some argue this creates special protections for the industry, and it may, but only because they are needed. For example, the auto industry doesn’t get sued because of drunk drivers. If they did, we’d likely see similar protections put in place.

However, now the target is companies like Glock who find their firearms ending up in criminal hands and who are using devices that are illegal, that have been illegal since they were invented, and that cannot be lawfully purchased. Since most of them were made after 1986, the machine gun ban implemented that year means that no one can buy one even after jumping through all the NFA hoops.

The threat here is that Glock will face regulation if they don’t change their entire design to accommodate for someone doing something illegal.

No other industry would face such threats.

For example, no one has ever threatened the auto industry because the window glass is too easy for thieves to break or the cars are too easy to hotwire. No one sued door lock companies for failing to stop someone busting through the door.

But Glock is being threatened here.

The upside is that it’s an empty threat. The PLCAA does mean that lawsuits can’t really happen, but Congress can end those protections, so that’s not what makes it empty. What does is the fact that Durbin isn’t going to be calling any shots for the next two years at least. The incoming Congress doesn’t exactly look like one inclined to punish a popular firearm maker that provides most of the guns used by law enforcement over what criminals do with devices they add that aren’t even made by Glock in the first place

FEMA outrage reveals weaponized government — and points Trump toward reform.

One of President-elect Donald Trump’s first orders of business must be to de-weaponize the federal government. One episode from Florida illustrates why.

Not long ago you might have charged me with paranoid conspiracy theorizing if I had told you that federal disaster relief workers were deliberately keeping Trump supporters from receiving government assistance.

But they were, and a FEMA supervisor has been fired for it.

FEMA skipping Republicans’ homes:

Marn’i Washington allegedly told FEMA workers in Florida to skip houses with Trump signs out front after Hurricane Helene.

“Avoid homes advertising Trump,” she wrote in a “best practices” memo to employees, a copy of which was obtained by Daily Wire, reportedly reinforcing this with a verbal order.

Er, except that it was true. And The New York Times, as of this writing, had not corrected its false reporting, which itself constitutes disinformation.

So does that mean the conspiracy theorists are right?  Well, yes and no.

If the “conspiracy” would involve a handful of big-shots in a smoke-filled room sending out orders to their minions, not really.

That happens in government sometimes — as with the federal campaign to quash dissent on social media over COVID policy and the disputed 2020 election — but usually it doesn’t work that way.

Because it doesn’t have to.

When you have a federal workforce that overwhelmingly favors the Democratic Party, coupled with nonstop media (and social media) accounts of how awful Republicans are and how it’s fair to do pretty much anything to stop them because they’re basically Hitler, you don’t need to issue orders.

People act on their own.

I very much doubt that any FEMA higher-up told Marn’i Washington to skip over houses with Trump signs.

She just knew that she hated President Trump and wanted to punish his supporters. Then she took action.

Democrats like to see themselves as vital soldiers, defending democracy — and, coincidentally, their party’s power — from opponents who are not merely different, but outright evil.

This sense of self-importance is coupled with a self-esteem-boosting snobbery: They tell themselves they deserve to be in charge because they’re so much smarter and better and more moral than the hoi polloi.

And the allegedly high stakes justify even the most immoral actions because they’re in service of a higher cause — stopping Hitler! (An excuse that’s always available: Democrats characterize just about all of their GOP opponents as the next Hitler, going all the way back to Tom Dewey in 1948.)

Trump has said he will fire bureaucrats who get in the way of his reforms, and plans to vastly thin the civil service in general. This will help.

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Never forget what they did to us.
Never forget what they meant to do to us.
Never.
Don’t give them the benefit of the doubt next time.
And did they forget we have guns?

CDC Planned Quarantine Camps, Nationwide

No matter how bad you think Covid policies were, they were intended to be worse.

Consider the vaccine passports alone. Six cities were locked down to include only the vaccinated in public indoor places. They were New York City, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. The plan was to enforce this with a vaccine passport. It broke. Once the news leaked that the shot didn’t stop infection or transmission, the planners lost public support and the scheme collapsed.

It was undoubtedly planned to be permanent and nationwide if not worldwide. Instead, the scheme had to be dialed back.

Features of the CDC’s edicts did incredible damage. It imposed the rent moratorium. It decreed the ridiculous “six feet of distance” and mask mandates. It forced Plexiglas as the interface for commercial transactions. It implied that mail-in balloting must be the norm, which probably flipped the election. It delayed the reopening as long as possible. It was sadistic.

Even with all that, worse was planned. On July 26, 2020, with the George Floyd riots having finally settled down, the CDC issued a plan for establishing nationwide quarantine camps. People were to be isolated, given only food and some cleaning supplies. They would be banned from participating in any religious services. The plan included contingencies for preventing suicide. There were no provisions made for any legal appeals or even the right to legal counsel.

The plan’s authors were unnamed but included 26 footnotes. It was completely official. The document was only removed on about March 26, 2023. During the entire intervening time, the plan survived on the CDC’s public site with little to no public notice or controversy.

It was called “Interim Operational Considerations for Implementing the Shielding Approach to Prevent COVID-19 Infections in Humanitarian Settings.”

“This document presents considerations from the perspective of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) for implementing the shielding approach in humanitarian settings as outlined in guidance documents focused on camps, displaced populations and low-resource settings.

This approach has never been documented and has raised questions and concerns among humanitarian partners who support response activities in these settings. The purpose of this document is to highlight potential implementation challenges of the shielding approach from CDC’s perspective and guide thinking around implementation in the absence of empirical data.

Considerations are based on current evidence known about the transmission and severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and may need to be revised as more information becomes available.”

By absence of empirical data, the meaning is: nothing like this has ever been tried. The point of the document was to map out how it could be possible and alert authorities to possible pitfalls to be avoided.

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EXCLUSIVE: FEMA Official Ordered Relief Workers To Skip Houses With Trump Signs
Whistleblower: ‘It’s almost unbelievable to think that somebody in the federal government would think that’s okay’

A federal disaster relief official ordered workers to bypass the homes of Donald Trump’s supporters as they surveyed damage caused by Hurricane Milton in Florida, according to internal correspondence obtained by The Daily Wire and confirmed by multiple federal employees.

A FEMA supervisor told workers in a message to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid, internal messages viewed by The Daily Wire reveal. The supervisor, Marn’i Washington, relayed this message both verbally and in a group chat used by the relief team, multiple government employees told The Daily Wire.

The government employees told The Daily Wire that at least 20 homes with Trump signs or flags were skipped from the end of October and into November due to the guidance, meaning they were not given the opportunity to qualify for FEMA assistance. Images shared with The Daily Wire show that houses were skipped over by the workers, who wrote in the government system messages such as: “Trump sign no entry per leadership.”

It is unclear whether the same guidance was issued elsewhere in the country. The employees were part of a Department of Homeland Security surge capacity force team, meaning they volunteered from other DHS agencies to help an understaffed FEMA as it dealt with a second major hurricane in a span of just a few weeks.

Microsoft Teams chat used by FEMA workers.

“I know they’re short-staffed, I thought we could go help and make a difference,” one of the employees said. “When we got there we were told to discriminate against people. It’s almost unbelievable to think that somebody in the federal government would think that’s okay.” 

The employee said it felt wrong to discriminate against Trump supporters when they were at their “most vulnerable.”

“I volunteered to help disaster victims, not discriminate against them,” the employee said. “It didn’t matter if people were black, white, Hispanic, for Trump, for Harris. Everyone deserves the same amount of help.”

The guidance came as the Biden administration was criticized over its sluggish response to Hurricane Helene in rural areas across the country. In Roan Mountain, Tennessee, for example, locals told The Daily Wire it took nearly two weeks for FEMA to show up. The town is located in Carter County, which voted 81% for Trump on Tuesday.

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They were only brought to keep him out of office, and they failed.

DOJ to Drop Trump Cases.

Word is trickling out that the DOJ will fire Special Counsel Jack Smith and drop both of the federal cases against Trump soon.

MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian said “What’s interesting here is that the DOJ is moving to end them even before he takes office, citing the longstanding DOJ policy that sitting presidents can’t be prosecuted. And there were some thought that maybe special counsel Jack Smith was going to sprint through the finish line, was going to work up until the last day, force Trump to fire him, wait till a new Attorney General was appointed. But that does not appear to be the thinking inside the department. The thinking is that these cases can’t go forward.”

CNN’s Paula Reid said that Smith is in talks with the Biden Justice Dept’s Office of Legal Counsel to figure out how to “wind down” the cases.

FoxNews also reported that Jack Smith is on the way out, and the cases will be dropped soon, and ABC announced the same.

So far, this news only applies to the two federal cases, the classified documents case in Florida and the J6 case in DC. However, former AG Bill Barr has urged all of the state prosecutors to also “respect the people’s decision and dismiss the cases against President Trump now.”

Ending the Jack Smith prosecutions the day after the election is an absolute admission that these were political show trials- and now the show's over cry more, libs

The “Freedom From Fear” Ticket for Tyranny

The Democratic Party is championing presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a born-again champion of freedom. Earlier this year, Democrats shifted their focus from democracy to freedom, convinced that the latter word would enthrall voters on Election Day. Providing “freedom from fear” has become one of their most frequent political promises this past century.

Politicians routinely portray freedom from fear as the apex of freedom, higher than the initial freedoms buttressed by the Bill of Rights. While presidents have defined “freedom from fear” differently, the common thread is that it requires unleashing government agents. Reviewing almost a century of bipartisan scams on freedom from fear provides good cause to doubt the latest geyser of promises.

“Freedom from fear” first entered the American political lexicon thanks to a January 1941 speech by President Franklin Roosevelt. In that State of the Union address, he promised citizens freedom of speech and freedom of worship—two cornerstones of the First Amendment—and added socialist-style “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear.” FDR’s revised freedoms did not include freedom to dissent, since he said the government would need to take care of the “few slackers or trouble makers in our midst.” Nor did FDR’s improved freedoms include the freedom not be rounded up for concentration camps, as FDR ordered for Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. Three years later, FDR amended his definition of freedom by championing a Universal Conscription Act to entitle government to the forced labor of any citizen.

Richard Nixon, in his acceptance speech at the 1968 Republican National Convention, promised, “We shall re-establish freedom from fear in America so that America can take the lead in re-establishing freedom from fear in the world.” Nixon asserted, “The first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence, and that right must be guaranteed in this country.” But with the Nixon scorecard, government violence didn’t count. He perpetuated the war in Vietnam, resulting in another 20,000 American soldiers pointlessly dying. On the homefront, he created the Drug Enforcement Administration and appointed the nation’s first drug czar. The FBI perpetuated its COINTELPRO program, carrying out “a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order,” as a 1976 Senate report noted.

President George H.W. Bush told the National Baptist Convention on September 8, 1989, “Today freedom from fear…means freedom from drugs.” To boost public fear, a DEA informant arranged for a knucklehead to sell crack cocaine to an undercover narc in Lafayette Park across from the White House. Bush invoked the sell a few days later to justify a national crackdown. He informed the American Legion, “Today I want to focus on one of those freedoms: freedom from fear—the fear of war abroad, the fear of drugs and crime at home. To win that freedom, to build a better and safer life, will require the bravery and sacrifice that Americans have shown before and must again.”

Foremost among the sacrifices that Bush demanded was that of traditional liberties. His administration vastly expanded federal power to arbitrarily seize Americans’ property and increased the role of the U.S. military for domestic law enforcement. In a 1992 speech dedicating a new DEA office building, Bush declared, “I am delighted to be here to salute the greatest freedom fighters any nation could have, people who provide freedom from violence and freedom from drugs and freedom from fear.” The DEA’s own crime sprees, corruption, and violence were not permitted to impede Bush’s rhetorical victory lap.

On May 12, 1994, President Bill Clinton declared, “Freedom from violence and freedom from fear are essential to maintaining not only personal freedom but a sense of community in this country.” Clinton banned so-called assault weapons and sought to ban thirty-five million semi-automatic firearms. Gun bans in response to high crime rates mean closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. Citizens would presumedly have nothing to fear after they were forced to abjectly depend on government officials for their own survival. During Clinton’s first term, public housing authorities began mass warrantless searches of apartments to confiscate guns and other banned items. Clinton slammed a federal court ruling blocking the unconstitutional raids. When he visited the Chicago housing projects, Clinton declared, “The most important freedom we have in this country is the freedom from fear. And if people aren’t free from fear, they are not free.” In Clinton’s view, public housing residents had no right to fear the federally-funded housing police storming into their apartments.

In February 1996, Clinton, seeking conservative support for his reelection campaign, endorsed forcing children to wear uniforms at public schools. Clinton justified the fashion dictate: “Every one of us has an obligation to work together, to give our children freedom from fear and the freedom to learn.” But, if mandatory uniforms were the key to ending violence, Postal Service employees would have a lower homicide rate.

Senator Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee, repeatedly promised voters “freedom from fear” via crackdowns on crime. How did Dole intend to provide “freedom from fear”? By proclaiming that “we must…untie the hands of the police.” Dole did not specify exactly how many no-knock raids would be necessary to restore domestic tranquility.

George W. Bush, like his father, alternated promises of “freedom from fear” with shameless fearmongering. Prior to election day 2004, the Bush administration continually issued terror attack warnings based on flimsy or no evidence. The New York Times derided the Bush administration in late October for having “turned the business of keeping Americans informed about the threat of terrorism into a politically scripted series of color-coded scare sessions.” Yet each time a terror alert was issued, the president’s approval rating rose temporarily by roughly three percent, according to a Cornell University study. The Cornell study found a “halo effect”: the more terrorists who wanted to attack America, the better job Bush was supposedly doing. People who saw terrorism as the biggest issue in the 2004 election voted for Bush by a 6-to-1 margin.

The most memorable Bush campaign ad, released a few weeks before the election, opened in a thick forest, with shadows and hazy shots complementing the foreboding music. After vilifying Democratic candidate John Kerry, the ad showed a pack of wolves reclining in a clearing. The voiceover concluded, “And weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm” as the wolves began jumping up and running toward the camera. At the end of the ad, the president appeared and announced, “I’m George W. Bush and I approve this message.” One liberal cynic suggested that the ad’s message was that voters would be eaten by wolves if Kerry won. The Bush ad spurred protests by the equivalent of the Lobo Anti-Defamation League. Pat Wendland, the manager of Wolves Offered Life and Friendship, a Colorado wolf refuge, Colorado, complained, “The comparison to terrorists was insulting. We have worked for years, teaching people that Little Red Riding Hood lied.”

Bush’s campaign to terrify voters into granting him four more years to rule America and much of the world did not deter him from announcing a few months later in his State of the Union address, “We will pass along to our children all the freedoms we enjoy, and chief among them is freedom from fear.” This was back when the mainstream media was continuing to hail Bush as a visionary idealist, prior to the collapse of his credibility on the Iraq war, torture, and other debacles.

President Joe Biden milked “freedom from fear” in a Pennsylvania speech earlier this year on what he labeled “the third anniversary of the Insurrection at the United States Capitol.” Biden revealed plans to turn the November election into a referendum on Adolf Hitler, accusing Donald Trump of “echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.” CNN reported that Biden campaign aides planned to go “full Hitler” on Trump. Biden spent half an hour fearmongering and then closed by promising “freedom from fear.” This was the famous Biden two-step—demagoguing to his heart’s content and then closing with a few schmaltzy uplift lines, entitling the media to re-christen him as an idealist.

Biden did not survive the Democrats’ version of the Night of the Long Knives and Vice President Kamala Harris has been designated the party’s presidential flagbearer. Harris painted with an even broader brush than most politicians. At a Juneteenth Concert this summer, she condemned Republicans for “a full-on attack” on “the freedom from fear of bigotry and hate.” Harris implied that politicians could wave a psychological magic wand to banish any bias in perpetuity. How can anyone have “freedom from fear of bigotry” unless politicians become entitled to perpetually control everyone’s thoughts?

In August, the Democratic National Convention whooped up freedom in ways that would qualify as “authentic frontier gibberish,” as the 1974 movie Blazing Saddles would say. A campaign video promised “freedom from control, freedom from extremism and fear.” So Americans won’t have true freedom until politicians forcibly suppress any idea they label as immoderate? The Democratic Party platform warned, “Reproductive freedom, freedom from hate, freedom from fear, the freedom to control our own destinies and more are all on the line in this election.” But the whole point of politics nowadays is to preempt individuals from controlling their own destinies. Regardless, a Time magazine headline hailed “How Kamala Harris Took ‘Freedom’ Back from the GOP.”

“Freedom from fear” is the ultimate political blank check. The more people government frightens, the more legitimate dictatorial policies become. Pledging “freedom from fear” entitles politicians to seize power over anything that frightens anyone. Giving politicians more power based on people’s fears is like giving firemen pay raises based on how many false alarms they report.

Politicians’ promises of “freedom from fear” imply that freedom properly understood is a risk-free, worry-free condition. It is the type of promise that a mother would make to a young child. Freedom is now supposedly something that exists only in the womb of government paternalism. “Freedom from fear” is to be achieved by trusting everything that politicians say and surrendering everything that politicians demand. New Mexico Governor Michelle Grisham epitomized that mindset when she proclaimed at the Democratic National Convention, “We need a president who can be Consoler-in-Chief. We need a president capable of holding us in a great big hug.” And continuing to hold us until we formally become psychological wards of the state?

“Freedom from fear” offers freedom from everything except the government. Anyone who sounds the alarm about excessive government power will automatically be guilty of subverting freedom from fear. Presumably, the fewer inviolable rights the citizen has, the better government will treat him. But as John Locke warned more than 300 years ago, “I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else.”

Why not simply offer voters “freedom from the Constitution”? “Freedom from fear” means security via mass delusions about the nature of political power. Painting the motto “freedom from fear” on shackles won’t make them easier to bear. Perhaps our ruling class should be honest and replace the Bill of Rights with a new motto: “Political buncombe will make you free.”

Massachusetts grapples with fallout from landmark Supreme Court gun ruling

A landmark 2022 Supreme Court ruling involving a New York gun law has begun to undermine Massachusetts’ gun laws, with a Boston Municipal Court judge recently ordering the Police Department to provide a concealed carry license to a man it had deemed a public safety risk.

At issue is the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in what is known as the Bruen case, which cited the Second Amendment to overturn a New York law that required applicants for licenses to carry concealed handguns to show proper cause for why they needed one.

The ruling prohibited states from requiring gun owners to have a “good reason” to carry, unraveling gun regulations in Massachusetts, New York, and four other states with so called may-issue laws that gave local authorities sweeping discretion over who receives licenses.

Boston Municipal Court Judge Richard Sinnott cited the ruling in August in ordering Police Commissioner Michael Cox to grant a concealed carry license for East Boston resident Jordan Lebedevitch, who wrote in his application that he hoped to work in the firearms industry and needed to carry a gun for his job at a security company. Earlier this month, Cox sued in Suffolk Superior Court to overturn Sinnott’s decision. That lawsuit is still pending.

Police had found Lebedevitch unsuitable, a legal determination fordenying the license, citing a 2023 police report from his then-wife claiming he threatened to kill himself during an argument. State law gives gun licensing authority to local police leaders.

Lebedevitch disputed the threat of suicide in a letter to the department, writing that the situation had been a “misunderstanding.” He filed a legal petition in Municipal Court, which landed before Sinnott. The judge initially ruled in favor of the Police Department but reversed his decision the next day, ordering the department to issue the license, according to court filings.

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Has J. Edgar Hoover’s Spy Program Been Resurrected?
The Bureau Apparently Now Targets MAGA Activists

Although the legacy media has buried the story, it turns out that over the last several years the Federal Bureau of Investigation has resurrected a hated and unconstitutional spying program once directed by the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. His program, called the COINTELPRO program, targeted Americans who committed no crime, but simply sought to express their political views.

Former President Richard Nixon directed Hoover to aggressively infiltrate and disrupt many political movements in the late ‘60’s and ‘70’s. This included the Vietnam War activists, the Rev. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders. They even spied on environmentalists, women’s rights groups and animal rights activists.

According to an exclusive Newsweek expose that was published three weeks ago, it now appears the ghosts of Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover were resurrected by the Biden administration with a new expanded government spying and infiltration program based on political views. The FBI apparently redefined extremism to include those whom the administration determined hold unacceptable political views.

We now learn that during the Biden administration, the Bureau changed its domestic violence definitions from the “furtherance of ideological agendas” to “furtherance of political and/or social agendas.” They report that it was a “gigantic departure for the Bureau.”

As Newsweek explained, “For the first time extremist groups worthy of surveillance and even infiltration could be so labeled because of their politics.” The FBI’s main target: Trump MAGA activists.

A review by its investigative reporters of previously unpublished FBI documents shows, “nearly two-thirds of the FBI’s current investigations are focused on Trump supporters and others suspected of violating what the FBI calls “anti-riot” laws.”

Although I’m not a MAGA activist, I personally abhor any government spying program against its citizens. In fact, I was a plaintiff in a 1970’s leftwing legal lawsuit against the COINTELPRO program. The United States Supreme Court ruled in the case, called Hobson vs. Wilson, that the federal government’s political surveillance program was unconstitutional.

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More Support For Challenges To New Massachusetts Gun Law.

We’ve reported recently how Massachusetts’ sweeping new anti-gun law, launched early by an emergency preamble attached to it by Gov. Maura Healey, is facing a lot of pushback from pro-freedom groups.

Not only have two lawsuits already been filed to challenge the law in court, but an initiative petition to get a question on the 2026 state ballot to repeal the law already has more than the 90,000 signatures needed to put the matter to the vote.

Just two weeks after the measure was signed into law the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) ponied up $100,000 to help fund the court challenge by the Gun Owners’ Action League (GOAL). Now, according to a report at masslive.com, others within the firearms industry are joining the efforts to repeal the law or have it declared unconstitutional in court.

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NYC’s Gun-Detecting Subway Scanners Produced Dozens of False Positives, But Found Zero Guns

When embattled New York Mayor Eric Adams announced the trial rollout of gun-detecting machines at about 20 subway stations across the five boroughs earlier this year, he said he was impressed by the results of previous tests and predicted the use of the machines would soon become “the norm” across the subway system.As it turns out, the machines have been a bust. As ABC News reports, the machines failed to detect a single gun, but they did produce dozens of false positives.

Through nearly 3,000 searches, the scanners turned up more than 118 false positives as well as 12 knives, police said, though they declined to say whether the positive hits referred to illegal blades or tools, such as pocket knives, that are allowed in the transit system.

Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat and tech enthusiast, announced plans to pilot the portable scanners, manufactured by Evolv, at a handful of subway stations this past summer in an effort to deter violence within the subway system.

The announcement drew skepticism from some riders and civil liberties groups, who argued it was neither feasible nor constitutional to scan millions of riders who enter the subway system through hundreds of entrances each day. Violent crime is rare in the system, though the announcement came on the back of two high-profile shooting incidents.

After Adams promised for months to make the results of the test public, the New York Police Department released a four-sentence statement Wednesday night noting it had performed 2,749 scans at 20 stations during the 30-day period. In total, there were 118 false positives — a rate of 4.29%.

It’s entirely possible that none of the nearly 3,000 riders who were subject to a scan were carrying a gun. In fact, given that the subway system is supposed to be a “gun-free zone”, and lawful concealed carry holders are still few and far between in the Big Apple more than two years after the Bruen decision, I’d say that’s actually a likely scenario.

But even if Evolv can detect guns that are being carried (an open question, to be sure), it also produces a significant number of false positives. Adams said earlier this year that he wants the Evolv machines to be used at every subway station, and for every rider. According to the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees the subway system, there are about 3.6 million riders on weekdays. A 4.29% false positive rate would equate to more than 150,000 false positives every day. That’s utterly insane, and completely unworkable.

The bigger issue, of course, is that New York City’s public transportation shouldn’t be “gun-free zones” to begin with. It’s the primary way millions of New Yorkers navigate the city during the course of their daily routine, and preventing lawful concealed carry on buses and trains means countless residents are unable to lawfully exercise their right to bear arms, even if they have a valid carry permit.

Now that NYC’s subway scanners have proved to a bust, it’s the perfect time for the city to revisit its designation of public transit as a “sensitive place”. I know that won’t happen, but if criminals are still bringing weapons onto trains and buses, the growing number of legally armed citizens should at least be able to do the same without fear of a felony charge and several years in prison.

Here’s Why GOP Lawmakers Aren’t Surprised by That Treasonous Leak to Iran

Republican lawmakers who have been warning about an Iranian influence campaign, specifically targeted at Democrats on Capitol Hill and Democratic presidential administrations, aren’t surprised about the latest top secret intelligence leak out of the Pentagon. The leak, which was exposed over the weekend, shows someone with a top secret security clearance gave Iran U.S. intelligence about Israel’s attack plans inside the country.

More on the influence campaign from Semafor:

In the spring of 2014, senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials initiated a quiet effort to bolster Tehran’s image and positions on global security issues — particularly its nuclear program — by building ties with a network of influential overseas academics and researchers. They called it the Iran Experts Initiative.

The scope and scale of the IEI project has emerged in a large cache of Iranian government correspondence and emails reported for the first time by Semafor and Iran International. The officials, working under the moderate President Hassan Rouhani, congratulated themselves on the impact of the initiative.

At least two of the people on the Foreign Ministry’s list were, or became, top aides to Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy on Iran, who was placed on leave this June following the suspension of his security clearance. A third was hired by the think tank Malley ran just as he left for the State Department.

An investigation into who leaked the information is being conducted by the FBI, but the pace is unsatisfactory.

“There’s an absolute lack of urgency. This is very, very serious. It doesn’t get more serious than this, particularly, as I said, when Israel is fighting for its very existence and conducting important operations every single day. The fact that this classified information was leaked not only does it really hurt our credibility with our allies around the world in terms of intelligence sharing, but it also, I’m concerned about the lack of urgency from this Administration,” Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik said during an interview with Fox News Monday. “This should never happen again. There needs to be taken immediate criminal action, referrals to the Department of Justice, and this person who broke the law by leaking classified information, they should be in prison.”

There is a suspect, however.