Category: Deceit O’ The Day

The old line from a James Bond movie is;
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action
Paul will affirm that I don’t believe in ‘coincidence’, and I allow for ‘happenstance’ only in very limited instances.
From that, take what you will about what is termed ‘mistakes’ here.

Florida case shows inherent flaw with red flag laws

Red flag laws are a particularly onerous piece of gun control legislation. While a number of states have such laws on the books, all of them have serious problems. Part of that is because they start from a presumption of guilt and then you have to essentially prove your innocence.

But there tend to be layers to problems, and red flag laws aren’t uniquely devoid of those, apparently.

Take this case from Florida recently highlighted by USA Carry:

A case in point. The Lakeland, FL police department petitioned for a Red Flag Risk Protection Order through the Florida Statute 790.401(3)(a) and (b), in May 2020. Under the Order, a man I will call “E.P.” (identity protected because it is an active case) was taken into custody and his firearms and ammunition were seized.

His Hearing on the Order was scheduled for June 12, 2020 “in the court facility located at 255 N. Broadway Ave., Bartow, FL.” This date and time were confirmed on June 3, 2020, by the police department’s attorney, and again in a court notice issued before June 12. So, E.P. arrived at the appointed date and place at 1:30 pm and waited until 3:00 pm. He testified that “he was not let into the courtroom, nor was he aware that the Hearing would take place virtually or how to attend.” The Hearing was held at a remote video conferencing event, without notice of this change to E.P.

At that hearing, the court determined, incorrectly, that E.P. had “elected not to attend” and entered a Red Flag Protection Order against him. He was prohibited from having custody or control of, or purchasing, possessing, receiving, or attempting to purchase or receive, a firearm or ammunition for up to a year, and was required to surrender any and all guns or ammo not already in the custody of the police to law enforcement. E.P. appealed the Order on the basis that it was made without giving him the chance to appear or a notice that the proceedings would take place by means other than those designated in court documents. This non-legal layman understands that a Notice of Hearing must be issued by the court, received, and followed by involved parties about the specifics given.

From May of 2020, the Order was in effect, and not until August 13, 2021, was the Order invalidated. The Appellate Court ruled that E.P.’s Due Process rights were violated by the failure to notify him that the Final Hearing would take place virtually instead of in the court facility listed in the Order. His right to be heard was deprived and the Order was reversed in his favor. I also recognize that his Second Amendment rights were violated.

Note that E.P. spent much time and money to correct the mistakes made by the government court system and to restore his inalienable rights to his guns, ammo, and property… his Second Amendment and Due Process Rights.

Now, as the above-linked piece points out, for poorer people, this simply isn’t an option. E.P. was in a position to seek legal assistance, but a lot of people really just can’t do so. That means they’re stripped of their Second Amendment rights, sometimes because of a bureaucratic screw-up and not because they represent an actual danger to anyone.

E.P. did what he was supposed to, but the state didn’t. Yet because of their mistakes, he was ordered to surrender any and all firearms he might still possess, was denied the ability to even shoot a gun lawfully, and had to spend time and treasure fixing the issue.

Nothing about that is right and there are no repercussions for those who make such mistakes.

If this were the only issue with red flag laws, that would be enough, but it’s not. Red flag laws can be used by those with a grudge against the person, and we’ve seen attempts to do just that. How many have we not heard about?

This is especially troubling since red flag laws aren’t even needed. Those who represent a risk to themselves or others can be held for psychological evaluation for up to 72 hours as it is. Those planning a mass shooting can be arrested under existing laws as well.

There’s really no reason for red flag laws, and yet, here we are.

‘enemies, foreign and domestic‘

And this is called a ‘Freudian slip’ by one of them

BLUF:
What they want for America is rigged phony Chavista-style elections.  Jeffries just let the cat out of the bag.

Hakeem Jeffries lets the cat out of the bag about Dems’ plan for America

Sometimes, the truth gets out.

That seems to be the case with Joe Biden’s “Freedom to Vote” bill, which his fellow Democrats are shilling. Problem: One of them said too much.

Jeffries is the fifth most powerful Democrat in the House and considered the heir apparent to jurassic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  He’s a power.

His self-revision in that video, that he was talking about “César” Chávez, is total nonsense.  César Chávez was a famous labor organizer who had little to do with voting rights.  He had a job in his youth registering voters, but that’s a nothingburger compared to his claim to fame with organizing a large union and advocating for rural workers’ rights.  Hugo Chávez, by contrast, is the late, unlamented Venezuelan dictator who pioneered rigged elections under gaslighting claims, repeated on the American left, of expanding democracy for all.  Hugo was able to seize absolute power by corrupting Venezuela’s election process, starting in 2004, when he knew he was an unpopular political goner and subject to a recall referendum under his own revised constitution.

Continue reading “”

*sniff*
Smells like some goobermint stooge dropped some propaganda around here

*ahhHRRMMM*

‘Lady Al Qaeda’ the woman Texas synagogue hostage-taker wanted freed: She planned chemical attacks on Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge and demanded juror at her trial be DNA tested to see if they were Jewish

Who is Aafia Siddiqui? Details on the woman mentioned during negotiations by the man who took a North Texas synagogue hostage

……By all accounts in the trial record, Siddiqui was a combative defendant, refusing to come to court.

“She also complained that a Zionist conspiracy existed and would prevent her from getting a fair trial,” the judge said at her sentencing. “Indeed, during the course of the proceedings, she said ‘All I did say was that Israel was behind 9/11.’”…..

Nope.  Nothing ‘related to the Jews’ here. Nope, nope, nope

FBI Makes Claims Motive of Man Taking Hostages at Synagogue Was ‘Not Specifically Related to Jewish Community’

As was covered last night, a man who is now dead took multiple people hostage for nearly 12 hours on Saturday at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. Not only did the man take a rabbi and others hostage during shabbat services, but he demanded the release of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, who is suspected of having ties to al-Qaeda and was convicted of trying to kill U.S. military officers while in custody in Afghanistan. Yet once all the hostages had been released and were safe, the FBI said during a press conference that the man’s motive was not tied to targeting the Jewish community………..

With this as further confirmation, if you haven’t figured out by now that demoncraps are in any sense American, I can’t help you anymore.

NASA leasing bill transformed into “voting rights” legislation.

WASHINGTON — NASA’s ability to lease property at its facilities to companies or other organizations remains in limbo after a bill meant to reauthorize it was transformed in the House into voting rights legislation.

H.R. 5746 was introduced in October by Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), chair of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee. The bill extended NASA’s authorization to enter into what are known as enhanced use leases, or EULs, of agency property to companies, government agencies, or educational institutions, for 10 years. The House passed the bill by a voice vote Dec. 8.

The Senate amended the bill, extending the EUL authorization by only three months instead of 10 years, and passed it by unanimous consent, sending it back to the House.

The Democratic leadership of the House, in an unusual move, then took the Senate-amended bill and stripped out the NASA provisions, replacing it with the text of two voting rights bills and now called the “Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.” They did so because H.R. 5746 had already passed the House and Senate, so the amended version could go directly to the Senate floor without the threat of a filibuster from Senate Republicans, who oppose the voting rights legislation.

The move effectively sacrificed the NASA portions of the bill, something that Beyer said he accepted. “Though I did not expect this outcome when I first introduced the NASA Enhanced Use Leasing Extension Act, if my legislation will help overcome the filibuster, the Senate can finally have the long-overdue debate on voting rights this country deserves,” he said in a Jan. 13 statement. “I would be honored to make this unexpected contribution to the cause of protecting our democracy.”

The House passed the bill Jan. 13 220 to 203 on strict party lines, with Democrats voting in favor of the bill and Republicans against it.

Republican members, including some who co-sponsored the original H.R. 5746, strongly criticized the decision to turn the NASA bill into a vehicle for voting rights legislation. “The majority has taken a practical, bipartisan bill and gutted it, inserting 735 pages of unrelated legislation and forcing the House to vote on it barely 12 hours after the text was released,” Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), ranking member of the House Science Committee, said in a statement. “What’s more, by stripping this NASA bill and replacing it with an attempt to impose federal control of elections, they have killed our only vehicle to extend NASA’s authority to lease out underutilized property and save taxpayer money.”

NASA’s EUL authority lapsed Dec. 31, meaning that the agency cannot enter into new leases until that authority is renewed. NASA had signed leases for 65 properties as of 2019, which provided the agency with nearly $11 million in revenue that went to support other facility improvements.

It’s unclear what the next step is for restoring NASA’s EUL authority. A Senate bill introduced in December proposed a two-year extension, but that bill remains in the Senate Commerce Committee.

“We hope and expect to pass an EUL extension in future legislation,” Aaron Fritschner, spokesman for Rep. Beyer, told SpaceNews Jan. 13 after the House vote, but details on how to do so were still being worked out.

 

No, next question…….

BLUF:
Everyone has bias.  We all have opinions.  That said, I think it is very clear that Kellerman allowed his opposition to gun ownership to overcome his knowledge of what good research is and is not.  He could have answered some of the preceding questions and come up with a solid number for what the risk of gun ownership (if any) really is.  Instead, he produced a so called study that is “junk science” at best and pure propaganda at worst.

Does Owning A Gun Really Triple Your Chances Of Being Murdered?

Where Did This Idea Come From?  What Is The Evidence?

It is accepted as fact by most gun control advocates that simply having a gun in your home nearly triples your chances of being murdered.  The reality is that this number (from Dr. Kellerman’s work of 3-4 decades ago) is nothing more than deceptive propaganda.  Here’s the evidence that supports this claim:

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The Real Climate And Health Crisis

Anti-fossil-fuel climate policies increase energy prices, blackouts and death tolls

Paul Driessen;

Climate policies promoted and imposed by Team Biden and Democrats are based on junk science, headline-grabbing scare stories, and computer models that create far-fetched “scenarios” asserting that fossil fuel use and emissions will cause Earth to warm by 4 degrees C (7 F)over the next 80 years, and cause Arctic warming that will bring colder winters.

Those dire predictions are used to justify more taxpayer-funded “research,” like a recent Columbia University “mortality cost of carbon” study that claims 83 million people (the population of Germany) “could be killed” this century by those rising planetary temperatures. Therefore we must take “immediate action” to “transform” our energy and economic systems, and replace oil, gas and coal with (millions of) wind turbines and (billions of) solar panels and backup batteries.

These policies are lethal for people and planet They would require mining on scales unprecedented in human history, much of it by slave and child laborers, and nearly all using fossil fuels – bringing massive habitat and wildlife losses, air and water pollution, and horrific human health and safety problems.

But since most of the mining, ore processing and manufacturing will occur in other countries, far from the USA, politicians and climateers can say this “alternative energy” is “clean and green.”

Worse, climate policies cause widespread “energy poverty” – energy prices rising above families’ ability to stay adequately warm (or cool) at reasonable cost, given their incomes. That means people die.

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Deceit. While it is a standard moslem thing,  subterfuge has always been considered a valid tactic of war. Lessons, lessons.

Afghanistan: Taliban had sleeper agents in every major city, dressed like Westerners

Westerners continue to be duped across the board by jihadists and Islamic supremacists who fully recognize the West’s gullibility and play it to the fullest.

The Western dress of the sleeper agents is reminiscent of Islamic State bride Shamima Begum, who has dramatically changed her style, doffing her hijab and putting on jeans and a cap, as she desperately tries to fool everyone into thinking that she has reformed so that she can get back to Britain. Jihadists run rings around gullible Westerners as they employ the tactic of taqiyya, using deceit to advance their war against infidels.

“Taliban Covert Operatives Seized Kabul, Other Afghan Cities From Within,” Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2021:

KABUL—Undercover Taliban agents—often clean-shaven, dressed in jeans and sporting sunglasses—spent years infiltrating Afghan government ministries, universities, businesses and aid organizations.

Then, as U.S. forces were completing their withdrawal in August, these operatives stepped out of the shadows in Kabul and other big cities across Afghanistan, surprising their neighbors and colleagues. Pulling their weapons from hiding, they helped the Taliban rapidly seize control from the inside…….

“WSJ: Taliban Had Sleeper Agents in Every Major City, Who Aided Swift Downfall of US-Backed Gov’t,” Sputnik International, November 29, 2021:

The agents went as far as to ditch traditional Afghan clothing in favour of more westernised apparel and shaved their beards in violation of the Taliban’s* ultra-conservative norms. All this was done to avoid any suspicion of secretly being loyal to the Taliban.

The Taliban had sleeper agents across Afghanistan, including Kabul, who helped the insurgents to rapidly seize control of the country once the US started to withdraw its troops, The Wall Street Journal has reported, citing accounts by several Afghan commanders and former undercover agents.

These agents had different roles – some were designated to become fighters when the time came, some worked as fundraisers, while others worked on recruiting more followers to the Taliban’s cause. In order to avoid detection or even suspicion from the country’s law enforcement, many of these agents wore jeans and other western outfits, as well as shaved their beards – a tell-tale sign of a possible Taliban sympathiser.

Mawlawi Mohammad Salim Saad, a senior Taliban leader, boasted in the interview with the WSJ that the insurgent organisation had its men in many cities, government bodies, and companies across Afghanistan. Saad himself is a member of the Taliban’s elite Badri force, which was responsible for taking control of Kabul after President Ashraf Ghani’s reportedly unexpected and swift escape from the capital on 15 August…..

 

How to Lie About Guns, New York Times Style

One of the easiest ways to lie and not get sued for libel is to simply do so through exclusion. The New York Times is famous for this and if you don’t know enough about guns they can make things sound pretty bad, just by leaving out a little bit of information. In the wake of the Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict we ought to brush up on the tactics of far-left media. To do so, we simply just need to look to the past. Back in March of 2021, I found an article so egregious that I decided to go ahead and fill in the blanks. I believe the resulting work should be saved and used to inform anybody who is arguing for more gun control without all of the facts. For reference the original article can be found here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/24/us/ruger-ar-556-boulder-shooting.html

You’ll see that the author is attempting to paint Ruger’s AR-15 pistol and the 5.56 round in a darker light than it deserves.

The article opens with the basic facts and uses that tired old phrases like “military-style semiautomatic rifle and pistol.” Of course, the author leaves out that they are “military-style” in appearance only. Camouflaging a Kia doesn’t make it an M1 Abrams tank. As the piece starts to “develop,” the author also goes on to write, “Statements from the police and the charging documents did not make it clear which of the weapons was used in the attack, but it appeared at least one is a semiautomatic derivative of the assault rifles that have long been used by the American military.”

For starters, holy long sentence Batman. I had to read it a few times to keep up with it all, leaving just the catchphrases like “assault rifles” and “American military” to stand out. However, if you read it a few times you pick up what is being said. The guns being referenced are derivatives as opposed to copies because they are semi-automatic, like a common pistol. This is unlike the military’s fully automatic M4 carbines. Only folks who know guns are going to know that and only a few are going to be that dedicated to pull all of that from this poorly structured sentence.

Later on, I found what is arguably the poorest display of journalism in the entire article. The author goes on to state, “According to a police affidavit, the suspect charged with 10 counts of murder, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, bought a Ruger AR-556 semiautomatic weapon, essentially a shortened version of an AR-15 style rifle marketed as a pistol, six days before the killings took place. It is also unclear if that weapon was used in the shooting on Monday.”

Wait…if  it’s “unclear” that this gun was used at all, why does this article include this statement? Actually, why is there even an article entitled “What we know about the gun used in the Boulder shooting” in existence? The Times didn’t need 284 words to put this piece together, thanks to this statement I can do it with just one, “Nothing.”

About halfway through is where I found the most manipulative piece of information and this is where the author states “Both the AR-15 style rifle and the Ruger version fire the same small-caliber, high-velocity ammunition, which was first developed for battlefield use.” Sure, the 5.56 was built for the military… To replace the current, larger cartridge that was regarded as uncontrollable and too powerful for common battlefield use! I’ve had enough with media like this trying to make the 5.56 round out to be some sort of baby-killing monster. It’s one of the least-potent centerfire rifle rounds on the market, considered by most to be too small even for deer hunting. Is it more powerful than a pistol round? Sure, but almost any given rifle has more power than any given handgun.

As things begin to wrap up the author proceeds to attempt to make large-format pistols look like the “ideal” tool for mass shootings where she says “Based on their size, ‘AR pistols’ are much easier to conceal than a typical AR-15 carbine or rifle. According to the manufacturer’s website, the Ruger AR-556 pistol comes with either a 9.5-inch or 10.5 inch-long barrel, while a typical AR-15 has at least a 16-inch barrel.” Pretty convenient that she left out the fact that common pistols have barrels from 2 to 6 inches and are capable of the same rate of fire and in most cases, capacity. So although an AR Pistol is easier to conceal than a rifle or shotgun, it’s far less concealable than many other semi-automatic firearms.

As a New Yorker, I have been conditioned to read between the lines and sadly that’s where you are going to find the facts in dribble like this. It’s a shame that our publication doesn’t reach the same people who read the Times, because it would be nice to give the Times’s readership a complete and balanced idea of what that this firearm is—and more importantly what it isn’t. This, my friends, is why we must remain vigilant and never shy away from the conversation. We can only change an informed mind and that duty lies squarely at our feet.

SloJoe appears to have either grown tired of performing in the puppet show, or he’s mentally incapable of keeping up. Either way, he’s not running the show, and he’s still aware enough to know it.

As Biden Goes Off-Script, White House Tech Team Cuts the Mic and Blasts Music

President Joe Biden signed multiple pieces of legislation from the fake White House set in the Eisenhower Office Building Tuesday morning. During the event, he repeatedly took off his mask to turn toward attendees to speak.

The bills on the desk were the Protecting Moms Who Served Act of 2021, Hire Veteran Health Heroes Act of 2021, Colonel John M. McHugh Tuition Fairness for Survivors Act of 2021 and a bill Requiring GAO to Report on the Disparities of Race and Ethnicity in Administration of VA Benefits.

Before signing, Biden started to read the title of the legislation and then gave up. Previously, he gave a brief summary of each bill.

The bills on the desk were the Protecting Moms Who Served Act of 2021, Hire Veteran Health Heroes Act of 2021, Colonel John M. McHugh Tuition Fairness for Survivors Act of 2021 and a bill Requiring GAO to Report on the Disparities of Race and Ethnicity in Administration of VA Benefits.

Before signing, Biden started to read the title of the legislation and then gave up. Previously, he gave a brief summary of each bill.

Connecting Two Disparate Dots

Yesterday afternoon I had a long phone conversation with a childhood friend I grew up with in Vancouver and his wife. We spent much of the time talking about Covid and the insanity around it. He then asked me why I was skeptical about being vaccinated. I responded that I was not at all against vaccinations. In fact, I willingly got a tetanus shot a few weeks ago. What am I adamantly against are vaccine mandates and penalties for anyone who refuses the jabs. The logic behind this insistence hasn’t stood up against even the simplest questions.

Then a very different topic ran across my mind and I said, “I’m now going to explain the #1 reason I’m skeptical of the Covid jabs but will come at it from a completely different angle. See if you can connect the dots before I explain.” Shortly afterwards, this video appeared on my YouTube feed and Carl Benjamin parallels what I said very closely:

In point of fact, with my friends, I mostly focused on how the Waukesha tragedy had been memory-holed (hidden) within 48 hours after it happened. Why? Because it didn’t fit the media’s narrative.

Does it surprise anyone that the same despicable people who have so easily spit on the graves of those murdered on November 21st, would have any moral qualms about spinning a wide web of lies, half-truths, and obfuscations about a pandemic that occurred nearly two years ago?!? I will forever listen to everything they say with great skepticism. And, as I’ve done all of my life, will politely ask questions about anything that doesn’t make sense to me. Questions like these, for example.

  1. Can fully vaccinated people contract Covid?
  2. Can fully vaccinated people give others Covid?
  3. Statistically, are children more at harm if they contract Covid or if they get the Covid mRNA jab?
  4. Why has Japan turned away from vaccinations in favor of giving its citizens Ivermectin?
  5. Since Japan made this decision, what has been the result?
  6. Tell me what you know about the yellow star program in the 1930’s.
  7. Would you have been in favor of treating homosexuals differently during the AIDS crisis in the 1980’s?
  8. Are you in favor of “othering” those who have chosen not to get the Covid mRNA jab?
  9. If you are fully vaccinated, then could you explain to me why you are worried about being around unvaccinated people?
  10. If the Covid booster program continues for some time to come, are you prepared to continue to get a jab every 3 to 6 months?

Your Default Assumption Should Be That Everything Corporate Media Says Is A Lie
The media’s deluge of lies about the Rittenhouse case is a disturbing reminder that the corporate press lies about everything all the time.

As far as corporate media are concerned, the massacre in Waukesha, Wis., on Sunday was a “Christmas parade crash.”

That’s how the attack that killed six people and injured more than 60 others is being described by ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Newsweek and others. Not an intentional attack, not a massacre allegedly committed by a violent career criminal already facing multiple felony charges, but merely a crash. The New York Times is calling it a “tragedy.”

Not to be outdone by major news outlets, The Daily Beast rushed to remind its readers that “there are no indications of any additional motive for the Waukesha killings, or any reasons to label it domestic terrorism. That didn’t stop these right-wing trolls.”Oh no we wouldn’t want to assign ideological motives to a case too soon. But these damn right-wing trolls sure will! No mention from the Beast, of course, of the worst possible example of that in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, which every major news organization gladly went along with.

Here’s the thing. The next time you read an article in the New York Times or the Atlantic, watch a bit of breaking news on MSNBC or a panel on CNN, or hear a report on NPR, your default assumption should be that what you are reading, watching, or hearing is not true. Either it is an outright falsehood, a distortion of the facts, or not the whole story. That should be your posture toward literally every piece of news you consume from corporate media from now on.

There is ample justification for such a posture. It’s justified by every single major news story in recent years — the Russia collusion hoax, the origins of the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter riots, Hunter Biden’s laptop, the debate over Covid vaccines, the January 6 riot, and especially the Rittenhouse trial, to name just a few. Every one of these stories, and many more besides, were dishonestly reported by a corrupt media establishment that you should never trust again.

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Former Obama Doctor: “White House is Doing Everything They Can to Hide Biden’s Obvious Cognitive Decline”

Congressman Ronny Jackson, who was the former White House physician under Presidents Obama and Trump declared Wednesday that the reason Joe Biden has avoided cognitive exams is because he would have “failed miserably,” and his team “didn’t do it because they know, if they do it, you don’t ask questions that you don’t want the answers to.”

Appearing on Newsmax, Jackson described Biden’s latest health report as “six pages of superficial fluff.”

“Honestly, there were six pages of stuff that most people just don’t care about,” Jackson said, adding “I mean, you know, Dr. O’Connor spent six pages addressing like an occasional cough and some stiffness and things like that when the elephant in the room was the president’s cognitive ability.”

Jackson continued, “Over 50% of this country does not believe he’s cognitively fit to be our Commander in Chief and our head of state, yet that wasn’t addressed anywhere in there.”

“We set the precedent when we did President Trump’s physical. I did,” Jackson explained, further noting “The far-Left and the mainstream media were relentless in their pursuit of me to do something to address not only his physical capabilities, but his mental capabilities, which we did — we did a cognitive test. As far as I’m concerned, we set the precedent. And he should have had one done as well.”

Jackson added that “if anyone needs a cognitive test, it’s this president that we have right now. And I was really surprised to see there wasn’t any mention of anything like that in there.”

The Texas Congressman emphasised that Biden’s team “know that if they gave him a cognitive test, that he would have failed miserably, and then they would have had to explain that away somehow.”

Urging that Biden’s handlers “were doing it just to check a box,” Jackson added “Dr. O’Connor should have done what I had to do whenever I briefed President Trump’s physical, is stand up in front of the press in the press briefing room, and brief the physical. I was up there for an hour and 15 minutes answering every single question that the press had picking his physical apart. And instead what did we get? We just got a six page report and that’s the end of it. We’re supposed to just move on and play like everything’s fine now.”

The Second Amendment Ain’t That Complicated

When looking at the Bill of Rights, it becomes clear that the Second Amendment is pretty important. After all, it’s second in the list of amendments. Additionally, the First Amendment preserves a number of specific rights, whereas the Second is focused on a single right. That suggests some importance for that particular right.

For many of us, we’ve referred to as the insurance policy on the Bill of Rights. After all, your right to protest or worship as you see fit can be snatched away by any government willing to ignore words on a piece of paper. Having the right to keep and bear arms means a potentially tyrannical government will have to account for a populace that is both armed and outnumbers them.

But some have managed to take this relatively simple concept and make it complicated.

That’s at play in a recent editorial that appeared in several newspapers, but appears to have originated from the L.A. Times:

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a mess, a muddle, a grammatically challenged pair of clauses that allows two or more readers to insist that it says two starkly different things, both of which are of life-or-death importance and each of which can be only partially defended.

To some, it is foremost the militia amendment, plainly referring to “the people” as a collective entity and embodying a young, rebellious nation’s mistrust of professional standing armies in favor of armed citizens banding together at times of crisis.

Yet to others, it is primarily the gun-rights clause, safeguarding an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, notwithstanding the clear references to “the security of a free state” and the lack of any mention of individual rights.

The drafters of the Bill of Rights were learned men who knew how to write, so there must have been some reason for them to submit these oddly assembled 27 words that give us such trouble today. They most likely disagreed over the place of firearms in American society. Was their primary and most contentious purpose to defend the nation (against foreign invaders, but perhaps also against the abuses of their own government)? Or was it for shooting squirrels for the dinner table (and defending against slave revolts and Indian uprisings)?

I’m going to give the writer credit. For once, they at least acknowledge that we have an argument at least as equally valid as the gun control crowd’s.

Usually, they simply pretend we’re making stuff up.

However, I have to point out that the Second Amendment really isn’t that difficult to understand.

Let’s start by addressing the militia clause for a moment. “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state,” is an introductory clause, but it doesn’t actually carry much weight grammatically. You can purge it from the sentence and it still makes sense. Trust me, I use way too many introductory clauses in my own writing. I’m well versed in what they are.

But even if it’s not, the claim that “the people” refers to a collective group should be problematic for each and every person in this country, even if you don’t like guns.

After all, “the people” are referred to multiple times in the Bill of Rights. At no other point does it seem to refer to a collective right except with regard to the right to keep and bear arms. Now, why would the Founding Fathers write it that way?

Oh, and it’s highly unlikely that our Founding Fathers disagreed over the place of firearms in American society. These aren’t the vanguard of an ancient civilization lost to time. Their writings still exist, preserved by a society that recognized the importance of their words. We have many comments about preserving the right to gun ownership. We also have stories of these same men carrying firearms with them as they passed through the city.

What we don’t have, though, are any references to them believing that the right to gun ownership should be limited.

I mean, the Constitution gives Congress the power to issue letters of marque, empowering privateers to hunt the shipping of our nation’s enemies. That at least suggests that the private ownership of artillery was on the table. If they were unwilling to restrict cannons, then why should we believe they were accepting of any other restriction.

The fact is that there’s no evidence to suggest our Founding Fathers struggled with the role of guns in our society. Quite the contrary, actually, they not only accepted them but felt that they were a necessity for maintaining a free society.

The editorial goes on later to argue:

In some parts of the country, people still do use guns to put food on the table, for sport or simply as an attribute of their lifestyle. Gun-toting behavior that would be natural and acceptable in, say, rural Pennsylvania, would be menacing and is wisely prohibited in downtown Los Angeles. For now.

In issuing a ruling in the case currently before it, the Supreme Court may well strike down not merely New York’s permit requirements but also California’s, and those of the six other states that reserve the right to grant or deny permits based on the applicant’s reason for wanting one.

States have long made their own decisions about how to balance residents’ safety with their gun rights, based on the values expressed by voters at the polls and their representatives in the legislature.

This, of course, is in reference to the case before the Supreme Court, as is most of the editorial. The editorial board responsible for this one argues that these restrictions are good and necessary.

However, as I’ve already illustrated and as the courts have found, the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. That means restricting people from exercising that right based on a subjective interpretation of need is an infringement of that right. You can’t argue otherwise without simply pretending the right doesn’t exist.

The truth is, the Second Amendment isn’t that complicated.

Quote O’ The Day:
“One of the great advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”
–Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Journos and Other Libs Can’t Defend Darrell Brooks, So They Attack Andy Ngo.

For the past 15 months, our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the press have screamed that Kyle Rittenhouse is a “white supremacist” for shooting three white men who were attacking him. Now those same journos are trying to suppress information about a black supremacist who ran over dozens of people at a Christmas parade in Wisconsin. The journos and other libs can’t use this mass murder for their own political purposes, so they’re blaming Andy Ngo for revealing facts about the killer’s past that they’d rather you didn’t know.

Ngo and a few others confirmed the identity of Darrell Brooks, the Waukesha mass-murderer, almost a full day before the mainstream media got around to it:

Twitter avatar for @MrAndyNgoAndy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 @MrAndyNgo

That would be this individual from a prior arrest. (He has a very long criminal record.) #Waukesha

Image

Karol Markowicz @karol

Darrell E. Brooks, black male, late 30s is the suspect in custody in Waukesha.

November 22nd 2021

6,501 Retweets

Then Ngo immediately got to work, collecting evidence from Brooks’ social media accounts:

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The USA Today editorial board are liars

The USA Today editorial board is incoherent and/or has a reading comprehension problem and/or is lying. And they tell the lie that they believe an inanimate object can be guilty:

Kyle Rittenhouse may be innocent, but not the assault-style rifles are (once again) guilty in deadly shooting

He said the weapon was a key reason he shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum during the mayhem. “If I would have let Mr. Rosenbaum take my firearm from me, he would have used it and killed me with it,” Rittenhouse testified during the trial.

Demonstrators saw the shooting and chased after Rittenhouse in an apparent effort to disarm him. One of them was Anthony Huber armed only with a skateboard. Huber grabbed the barrel of the AR-15, and Rittenhouse shot him to death.

“The irony of the case is that Mr. Rittenhouse has become a cause célèbre among gun-rights advocates, even though, according to his own defense, it was his carrying of the rifle that put him in danger in the first place,” the Economist noted.

Rittenhouse said no such thing. And they quoted the testimony which refutes their claim! The key reason for all legal use of lethal force is the reasonable fear of imminent severe injury or death. Rittenhouse articulated this well, repeatedly, and the video supports his claims. Without the rifle Rosenbaum would still have been outraged at his dumpster fire, being pushed into a gas station, being put out with the fire extinguisher. And that outrage led to Rittenhouse being chased by Rosenbaum and others. And when they cornered him without the rifle they almost certainly would have caused him severe injury or death. Hence, the rifle cannot be the “key reason” justifying the use of deadly force.

They are also liars:

Such weapons were expressly designed for the battlefield, and that may be a good part of their appeal.

Wrong. Such weapons are expressly designed to be easy to shoot, maintain, carry, economical, and accurate. They are the most common rifle sold in the United States and no AR-15 style rifle has ever been issued to a military for battlefield use (the AR-15 is semi-auto, militaries all use select fire rifles).

The primacy of assault-style rifles in American society is not a Second Amendment issue. When the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia authored a Supreme Court ruling in 2008 underscoring the Second Amendment’s right to possess firearms, he said the freedom is “not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever.”

This must be a deliberate lie. Here is the complete quote from the 2008 Heller decision (emphasis added):

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. See, e.g., Sheldon, in 5 Blume 346; Rawle 123; Pomeroy 152–153; Abbott333. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. See, e.g., State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann., at 489–490; Nunn v. State, 1 Ga., at 251; see generally 2 Kent *340, n. 2; The American Students’ Blackstone 84, n. 11 (G. Chase ed. 1884). Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment , nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.26

We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.”

I cannot imagine having read to middle of page 54 to pluck the “not unlimited” quote they did not read to the top of page 55 and see the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.”

Being the most popular rifle style sold in the United States the AR-15 qualifies as “in common use”. Hence, the AR-15 is protected by the Second Amendment.

Main stream media being deceitful… again?
Where’s that Gomer Pyle meme when you need it?

‘But CNN said …’ Yet *another* media narrative goes up in smoke as Waukesha Police set the record straight on suspect Darrell E. Brooks

In the wake of the deadly incident at a Waukesha Christmas parade yesterday, media have been circling the wagons around suspect Darrell E. Brooks, touting a narrative that Brooks may have driven his SUV into all those people because he was fleeing from the scene of another crime. Because if that were the case, it would mean that he didn’t mean to injure and kill anyone.

A lot of outlets were going with that.

 

 

 

Well, according to law enforcement — like, law enforcement willing to go on video, on record — Brooks was, in fact, not being pursued by police when he mowed down parade attendees:

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The author is a Harvard Professor, so you can see the low level that a university education has sunk to, when you have teachers who so openly lie. And what’s amazing is that they still lie in the age of the internet where just a little searching can find the facts of a matter.

While I have had my problems in the past in conversation with Attorney Branca on a gun control related subject (in reference to the definition of a ‘bullet core’ in relation to M855 ‘green tip’ ammo and federal law definitions of ‘armor piercing’ handgun ammo), his video reply to this article is on point.

Rittenhouse Verdict Flies in the Face of Legal Standards for Self-Defense

In a two-week trial that reignited debate over self-defense laws across the nation, a Wisconsin jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse for shooting three people, two fatally, during a racial justice protest in Kenosha.

The Wisconsin jury believed Rittenhouse’s claims that he feared for his life and acted in self-defense after he drove about 20 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois – picking up an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle in Kenosha – in what he claimed was an effort to protect property during violent protests. The lakeside city of 100,000 was the scene of chaotic demonstrations after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, an unarmed, 29-year-old black man, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

In delivering its verdict, a Wisconsin jury decided that Rittenhouse’s conduct was justified, even though the prosecution argued that he provoked the violent encounter and, therefore, should not be able to find refuge in the self-defense doctrine.

As prosecutor Thomas Binger said in his closing argument: “When the defendant provokes this incident, he loses the right to self-defense. You cannot claim self-defense against a danger you create.”

The Wisconsin jury disagreed, and its decision may portend a similar outcome in another high-profile case in Georgia, where three white men are on trial for the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery after they claimed the Black man was a suspect in a rash of robberies. Like Rittenhouse, the three men claimed they were acting in self-defense.

Self-defense arguments are often raised during trials involving loss of life. Juries are then asked to determine whether a defendant’s conduct is justified by principles of self-defense or whether the offender is criminally liable for homicide.

Complicating matters is that each state has its own distinct homicide and self-defense laws. Some states observe the controversial “stand your ground” doctrine, as in Georgia – or not, as in Wisconsin – further clouding the public’s understanding on what constitutes an appropriate use of deadly force.

Five elements of self-defense

As a professor of criminal law, I teach my students that the law of self-defense in America proceeds from an important concept: Human life is sacred, and the law will justify the taking of human life only in narrowly defined circumstances.

The law of self-defense holds that a person who is not the aggressor is justified in using deadly force against an adversary when he reasonably believes that he is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury. This is the standard that every state uses to define self-defense.

To determine whether this standard is met, the law looks at five central concepts.

First, the use of force must be proportionate to the force employed by the aggressor. If the aggressor lightly punches the victim in the arm, for example, the victim cannot use deadly force in response. It’s not proportional.

Second, the use of self-defense is limited to imminent harm. The threat by the aggressor must be immediate. For instance, a person who is assaulted cannot leave the scene, plan revenge later and conduct vigilante justice by killing the initial aggressor.

Third, the person’s assessment of whether he is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury must be reasonable, meaning that a supposed “reasonable person” would consider the threat to be sufficiently dangerous to put him in fear of death or serious bodily injury. A person’s own subjective view of this fear is not enough to satisfy the standard for self-defense.

Fourth, the law does not permit a first aggressor to benefit from a self-defense justification. Only those with “clean hands” can benefit from this justification and avoid criminal liability.

Finally, a person has a duty to retreat before using deadly force, as long as it can be done safely. This reaffirms the law’s belief in the sanctity of human life and ensures that deadly force is an option of last resort.

‘Stand your ground’

The proliferation of states that have adopted “stand your ground” laws in recent years has complicated the analysis of self-defense involving the duty to retreat.

Dating back to early Anglo-American law, the duty to retreat has been subject to an important exception historically called the “castle doctrine”: A person has no duty to retreat in his home. This principle emerged from the 17th-century maxim that a “man’s home is his castle.”

The “castle doctrine” permits the use of lethal force in self-defense without imposing a duty to retreat in the home. Over time, states began to expand the non-retreat rule to spaces outside of the home.
“Stand your ground” laws came under national scrutiny during the trial of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

In that case, Martin, 17, was walking home after buying Skittles from a nearby convenience store. At the time, Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch volunteer who called police after spotting Martin. Despite being told by the 911 operator to remain in his car until officers arrived, Zimmerman instead confronted Martin.

It remains unclear whether a fight ensued, who was the aggressor and whether Zimmerman had injuries consistent with his claims of being beaten up by Martin. Zimmerman was the sole survivor; Martin, who was unarmed, died from a gunshot wound.

In the Zimmerman case, for example, under traditional self-defense law, the combination of first-aggressor limitation and duty to retreat would not have allowed Zimmerman to follow Martin around and kill him without being liable for murder.

But, in a stand-your-ground state such as Florida, Zimmerman had a lawful right to patrol the neighborhood near Martin’s home. As a result, during his trial, all Zimmerman had to prove was that he was in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury.

In Wisconsin, Rittenhouse was also able to put in evidence that he was in reasonable fear of death. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Rittenhouse testified. “I defended myself.”

The prosecution was unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rittenhouse was not reasonably in fear for his safety. This represents a high bar for the prosecution. They were unable to surmount it.

Ronald Sullivan is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

If you haven’t figured this out yet for yourself, you’re behind.

THEY ARE AFTER OUR CHILDREN

The precepts of Critical Race Theory are only taught to law school students, right? Sure. And also to pre-schoolers. Check out this new program from the University of Texas called GoKAR!. KAR stands for Kids Against Racism. UT is looking for parents “caregivers” who have preschool children ages four to five. They must “identify as white.” This is so the four and five year olds can be subjected to an “anti-racism” curriculum. In particular, “GoKAR! creates opportunities for caregivers to engage in dialogue about anti-Black racism with their preschool-aged children at home.” How about if we read them Winnie the Pooh instead? Please?

Click to enlarge, via Minding the Campus:

One stated objective of the GoKAR! program is to “increase awareness of racism.” I have no doubt that this goal will be achieved. These four and five year olds probably have little or no awareness of racism, but when the University of Texas is done with them, race will be front and center in their lives. Liberals think that is a good thing. God knows why.

That’s race. Now on to gender. In California, public school teachers’ union members are stalking middle-school kids on the internet, identifying potential 12- to 14-year-old kids whom they can groom into the LGBTQ life through school organizations. Seriously. Abigail Shrier has the story, obtained through audio recordings from a conference of California’s largest teachers’ union. Here, as is generally the case, the teachers’ union is a source of great evil.

Last month, the California Teachers Association (CTA) held a conference advising teachers on best practices for subverting parents, conservative communities and school principals on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation. Speakers went so far as to tout their surveillance of students’ Google searches, internet activity, and hallway conversations in order to target sixth graders for personal invitations to LGBTQ clubs, while actively concealing these clubs’ membership rolls from participants’ parents.

You really should read Ms. Shrier’s post in its entirety. It includes lengthy quotes from union members that support that summary. For example:

Middle school kids, apparently, did not have endless interest in sitting around with their teachers during lunch discussing their sexual orientations and gender identities. “So we started to brainstorm at the end of the 2020 school year, what are we going to do? We got to see some kids in-person at the end of last year, not many but a few. So we started to try and identify kids. When we were doing our virtual learning – we totally stalked what they were doing on Google, when they weren’t doing school work. One of them was googling ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ And we’re like, ‘Check.’ We’re going to invite that kid when we get back on campus. Whenever they follow the Google Doodle links or whatever, right, we make note of those kids and the things that they bring up with each other in chats or email or whatever,” Baraki can be heard to say. Beyond electronic surveillance of kids’ internet use, “we use our observations of kids in the classroom—conversations that we hear—to personally invite students. Because that’s really the way we kinda get the bodies in the door. Right? They need sort of a little bit of an invitation,” Baraki says in the clip.

It turns out that very few middle school kids are actually interested in being gay, trans or whatever. So radical teachers “stalk what they [are] doing on Google”–their words, not mine–and “use [their] observations of kids in the classroom” to identify children who might be vulnerable to the gay message, and entice them into the queer–their word–“movement.” All of this is at taxpayers’ expense, and, as one of the teachers caught on audio tape exults, they can’t be fired for stalking and grooming children.

However concerned you may be about the Left coming after your children, you can’t be paranoid enough.

The Media’s Verdict on Kyle Rittenhouse

Here is what I thought was true about Kyle Rittenhouse during the last days of August 2020 based on mainstream media accounts: The 17-year-old was a racist vigilante. I thought he drove across state lines, to Kenosha, Wisc., with an illegally acquired semi-automatic rifle to a town to which he had no connection. I thought he went there because he knew there were Black Lives Matter protests and he wanted to start a fight. And I thought that by the end of the evening of August 25, 2020, he had done just that, killing two peaceful protestors and injuring a third.

It turns out that account was mostly wrong.

Unless you’re a regular reader of independent reporting — Jacob Siegel of Tablet Magazine and Jesse Singal stand out for being ahead of the pack (and pilloried, like clockwork, for not going along with the herd) — you would have been served a pack of lies about what happened during those terrible days in Kenosha. And you would have been shocked over the past two weeks as the trial unfolded in Wisconsin as every core claim was undermined by the evidence of what actually happened that night.

This wasn’t a disinformation campaign waged by Reddit trolls or anonymous Twitter accounts. It was one pushed by the mainstream media and sitting members of Congress for the sake of an expedient political narrative—a narrative that asked people to believe, among other unrealities, that blocks of burning buildings somehow constituted peaceful protests.

Take this, for instance, from CNN:

 

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