The scariest poll you’ll see this summer.
In an identically worded poll five years ago, Democrats and Republicans favored free speech online by roughly 3 to 2 margins. Today, Republicans still favor the First Amendment by about that much. But Democrats have turned against it by even more.
Christians Arrested For Outdoor Church Service During COVID-19 Win $300,000 Lawsuit.
A primarily liberal college town in Idaho has agreed to pay $300,000 to three Christian churchgoers who sued the city after being imprisoned for failing to wear face masks or maintain social distance measures at an outdoor service during the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The city of Moscow, Idaho, announced this week that it would settle the lawsuit with Gabriel Rench and Sean and Rachel Bohnet, who filed a case against city officials in March 2021.
They asserted that their rights under the First and Fourth Amendments were violated when they were arrested at an outdoor “psalm sing” led by church leaders in September 2020.
Moscow, Idaho, is a community of around 25,000 inhabitants located approximately 80 miles south of Spokane, Washington. The church named in the lawsuit, Christ Church, is a small congregation of about 1,000 members that is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.
At the time of the incident, Officers took Rench’s hymn book before hauling him away in handcuffs to the county jail, where he and others were kept for several hours, according to video of the arrests, which went viral and was blasted at the time on the Twitter platform.
The calm worship service lasted only 20 minutes in front of Moscow City Hall, where local authorities had put little yellow dots six feet apart to guide participants in COVID-19 6-feet-apart social distancing.
Rench and the other two were accused of breaching the city’s periodically amended health law. However, a magistrate court later dropped the city’s case against them.
U.S. District Court Judge Morrison C. England, Jr., noted that the “plaintiffs should never have been arrested in the first place,
“Somehow, every single city official involved overlooked the exclusionary language [of constitutionally protected behavior] in the Ordinance,” the judge wrote.
Rench said that the situation in Moscow could be described as a sort of “microcosm” of concerns occurring throughout the country and overseas.
“I think it’s no secret that portions of our government and political groups are now starting to target Christians in a way that has never really happened in America or [even] Canada,” he said, referencing the pastors who have been jailed in neighboring Canada recently for holding church services.
“I’m in a conservative state, but I live in a liberal town, and the liberals had no problem arresting me for practicing my religious rights and my Constitutional rights,” Rench said. “But my [Republican] governor also didn’t defend me either. If you look at what’s going on in Canada, I think America’s 10 years, at most 20 years, behind Canada if we don’t make significant changes.”
One thing that Rench said he learned from the whole incident is that “hardened” political leaders cannot be expected to modify their mental processes or political ideals.
“What needs to happen is the people need to change how they vote and disincentivize the targeting of Christians and those who are genuinely trying to defend the Constitution,” he maintained.
“Under the terms of the settlement agreement, ICRMP will pay a total settlement amount of $300,000 and all claims against the City and the named City employees will be dismissed with prejudice along with a release of all liability,” the release said, including that the settlement will “provide(s) closure of a matter related to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic and the City’s efforts to protect the public during an exceptionally trying time.”
When the toxic media push enough hysteria, vulnerable individuals will be affected.
BLUF
Refutations of this narrative are easily found, if you know where to look. Not, however, in the pages of the New Yorker. Read Drs. Richard Lindzen and Judith Curry. Read Alex Epstein or Bjorn Lomborg. Read other serious energy experts at (mostly conservative) think tanks and organizations.
That will expose the real rationale for all of this: the desire by some to control resources for all. Those invested in the “green economy” of wind turbines and solar panels and electric vehicles want to justify banning their competitors for long-term profits. Rational answers also expose their cynicism. And they have the added advantage of being true.
Welcome to the ‘Climate’ Nut House.
Like everyone, we at The Pipeline have our moods. So when we stumbled across the recent “Therapy Issue” of New Yorker Magazine we were intrigued enough to see what they had to say about things. After all, given the unhappy realities of America’s elite, liberal culture, and the depression, anxiety, and isolation that has been so widely reported since the Covid lockdowns, maybe they knew something we don’t.
And, indeed, in one particular article we learned that there is a whole new category of mental illness stalking young people in particular, leading to despair, loneliness, and a sense of impending mortality. Its title: “What To Do With Climate Emotions?: “If the goal is to insure [sic] that the planet remains habitable, what is the right degree of panic, and how do you bear it?” It turns out, according to author Jia Tolentino, that the highly ideological “climate change” narrative has taken a serious toll on them, plunging them into a deep depression over the putative impending death of our planet.
What’s the difference between a conspiracy theorist & the truth? Time. Listen to this speaker at a WEF event talk about limiting your ability to buy ammunition, among other items. https://t.co/EIybBKGJoq
— GunsNewYork (@guns_ny) July 6, 2023
Pritzker compares AR-15s to “missile launchers” while calling for a federal ban
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker seems to be channeling his inner Joe Biden in his defense of the state’s ban on so-called assault weapons and “large capacity” magazines. Biden has famously (and erroneously) proclaimed that while the Second Amendment may protect muskets, it never allowed citizens to own cannons; a statement that’s been thoroughly debunked on multiple occasions yet still emerges from Biden’s mouth on a regular basis.
The thrust of Biden’s argument, factually deficient though it may be, is that the Second Amendment doesn’t protect the right to keep and bear any and all arms, and Pritzker is now piggybacking on the president’s pontifications with a ludicrous comparison of his own.
“We’ve banned assault weapons. We’ve banned high capacity magazines. We’ve banned switches that turn regular guns into automatic weapons and here in Illinois those are things that will keep people safe and alive, but we need a national ban,” Pritzker said.
The White House Wednesday highlighted Illinois’ law as what the Biden administration would like to see nationwide.…
To the consolidated lawsuit challenging the state’s gun and magazine ban, Pritzker said he’s “heartened” after last week’s hearing in the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The governor cited some of the judges’ questions focused on whether the issue is a “popularity contest which guns we’re going to allow.”
“Because the people who were advocating for semi-automatic weapons were saying ‘well gee, everybodies got one now, so you can’t ban them.’ Well that’s ridiculous,” Pritzker said. “If everyone had a missile launcher, we shouldn’t ban missile launchers?”
I confess that I’m not up to speed on the legality of owning missile launchers, but it’s perfectly legal to own a grenade launcher… as long as you’re willing to register it under the NFA and pay a $200 tax stamp. But as long as missile launchers cost millions of dollars, I don’t think Pritzker has to worry about a Patriot missile system being erected by a private citizen in Chicago or Joliet. We’re not talking about exotic weapon systems that will never be in common use for self-defense, we’re talking about commonly-owned rifles lawfully possessed by tens of millions of Americans for hunting, recreation, self-defense, and other lawful activities.
Todd Vandermyde, who’s consulting plaintiffs in the challenge to Illinois’ ban, said more gun control won’t make the streets safer. He said the governor’s other policies are “an abject failure.”
“They don’t go after the criminals. ‘Oh no, we’re going to give them electric home monitoring. Oh no, we’re going to let them go out for 48 hours. Oh no, we’re not going to require cash bail,’” Vandermyde told The Center Square, referring to the state’s latest changes to the criminal justice system.…
Vandermyde said the case isn’t about missile launchers.
“They just keep jumping to the absurd that if you allow rifles, shotguns and pistols then you have to allow all this other stuff. And nobody is arguing [that], that’s not even before the court in any way,” Vandermyde said.
Vandermyde’s correct in noting that this argument is more useful to politicians than to the attorneys defending the state’s ban, but Attorney General Kwame Raoul is deploying a similar argument that’s equally absurd. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported back in March:
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul on Thursday filed a brief defending Illinois’ assault weapon ban, arguing the weapons restricted by the newly enacted law aren’t commonly used for self-defense and that large capacity magazines are accessories — not “arms.”
It also argues the country’s founding fathers owned guns that could only fire a single shot before reloading — proving assault weapons and large capacity magazines weren’t in “common use” when the Constitution was ratified.
“The assault weapons restricted by the Act are not commonly used for self-defense; by design and in practice, they exist for offensive infliction of mass casualties,” the brief states.
It also argues the term “arms” refers to weapons and not “accessories,” and that large capacity magazines are therefore not protected under the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.
The Supreme Court has already stated that arms that are in common use today are protected by the Second Amendment, not just those arms that were around at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified. In Caetano v. Massachusetts , a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that stun guns and other electronic weapons fall under the scope of the Second Amendment, pointing out that in Heller the justices determined that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”
Note that the Supreme Court specifically referred to “bearable arms”, which negates Pritzker’s hamhanded comparison of missile launchers to AR-15s. But if the courts were to accept Raoul’s argument, then what’s stopping them from concluding that all semi-automatic firearms, including handguns, fall outside the Second Amendment’s protections? We may soon find out, because based on the makeup of the Seventh Circuit panel that recently heard oral arguments in the Illinois gun ban cases I’m not all that optimistic that the appeals court will follow Supreme Court precedent and the Bruen test to their logical conclusions; modern sporting rifles are indeed in common use for a variety of lawful purposes, and are therefore covered by the Second Amendment’s guarantee of our right to keep and bear arms.
Gavin Newsom Says Something So Mind-numbingly Stupid, Only a Leftist Could Believe It
With our country more divided than most everyone alive has ever seen it, we’re keenly aware that Leftists seem to live in an entirely separate reality from our own. In their world, it’s perpetually the hottest year evuh, Klansmen rove the streets in gas-guzzling trucks, murdering unarmed black youth, women are both superior and oppressed, and men have babies. So we shouldn’t be too surprised when one of them says something that manifestly isn’t so. Nonetheless, occasionally one of the luminaries of the Left will utter something so extraordinarily stupid that I am compelled to call it out. Today’s honoree is California Governor and 2024 Democrat presidential understudy Gavin Newsom.
Newsom recently posted a video on social media that was filmed while he was in Idaho over the weekend, allegedly stumping for Biden but coincidentally building up his own base. Anyway, the video shows Newsom browsing in a bookstore, while a white text overlay reads, “Visiting a bookstore with banned books in Boise.”
Let’s pause a minute and think this through.
When something is banned, it is removed — like a Republican president can be banned from social media platforms. It becomes illegal and cannot be found or obtained. Yet, here is Governor Nuisance, clowning around in a store full of so-called banned books, prominently displayed for sale. In a dark red state, no less. How is he able to do this?
Because, as with so many other words, “banned” does not mean what the Left says it means. To the Left, a book becomes “banned” if a responsible adult points out that it’s pornographic and not appropriate for minors.
“Book bans are at a record high — there have been over 1,200 challenges in the last year…” tweeted Gov. Tiresome, giving away the game by conflating “banned” with “challenged.”
The rest of the video is similarly idiotic. The text changes to “2022 set a new record…” while the image behind it shows the books The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and a book by Judy Blume. Of course, Toni Morrison has received more awards and honors than I have space to list in this article. Walker and Blume have sold millions of books, been widely read by multiple generations, and have even reached the writers’ pinnacle of having major motion pictures made from their books. But, you know — they’re “banned” or something.
Newsom’s video could not be any more nonsensical or patronizing, but progressives will eat it up and preen:
Book bans are at a record high — there have been over 1,200 challenges in the last year, nearly double the (then-record) total from 2021.
Couldn’t leave Boise without dropping by this incredible bookstore. The owners of Rediscovered Books are doing everything they can to push… pic.twitter.com/LYWItT1EjQ
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) July 2, 2023
…and this is the guy they’re probably gonna slip into the race when Biden finally implodes like an experimental submersible that wasn’t designed by boring 50-year-old white guys.
New Jersey Attorney General Platkin whines like a baby about gun owners
Platty-kins, Platty-kins, unconstitutional man.
Execute me a law as fast as you can.
Lie about it, double down on it, and mark it with a “D.”
Keep it on the books for Danielsen and me!
Well there you have it; the Attorney General of New Jersey’s official nursery rhyme. Just when the patriots thought that Matt “Stuart” Platkin couldn’t get any more swampy or whiney, he sends out this whiny little tweet over all his social media channels!
I'm tired of hearing people tell me about what's good for public safety – people who want guns in our schools, guns in our parks, and guns in the hands of domestic violence offenders.
Rest assured, most of our law is back in effect to keep guns out of places they don't belong. pic.twitter.com/hswyvM0E43
— Attorney General Matt Platkin (@NewJerseyOAG) June 27, 2023
Okay Plattykins, we’re rest assured. Rest assured you and the rest of the swamp creatures are in over their heads. The awful law, allegedly written by Assemblyman Joe Danielsen (I highly doubt Danielsen has the mental capacity to write something like the “carry-killer” bill by himself) has hit a minor speed bump on its journey to be overruled. The AG should be well aware that this is just a procedural thing, and that the stay on the injunction of New Jersey’s law is likely going to be reversed. This really only has to do with the fact the state asked for an emergency stay.
The state’s case is meritless. Attorney Daniel Schmutter mapped out everything that needs to be known about sensitive locations during the preliminary injunction hearing for the consolidated cases challenging this garbage law:
As Your Honor is aware, we so far have only seen one thing that gets you a sensitive place. That’s “governance.” And it’s actually narrower than government functions, because as Your Honor knows, the State claims that libraries and museums and all that stuff is government functions. It’s the function of governance. Legislatures, courthouses, polling places, those are the three Bruen sensitive places.
The policies that Platkin, Murphy, et.al. pushed for have no historical analogues. The insurance mandate, the ban on carry in the car, the fee hikes – all of it baseless and only enacted to make it more difficult on the law-abiding. Platkin is tired of defending himself because his position is indefensible. Why is he whining so much about this all of a sudden? Because he probably realizes he’s losing and has over caffeinated crazed Karens crawling up his two-hole. The guy screaming “I’m not crazy,” as he’s being whisked out of the room, usually is…well you know.
New laws in Vermont that start July 1: Gun purchases,….
Vermonters will soon see new laws that affect their wallets or their legal choices — and even possibly cut down on the theft of car parts.
Every year, July 1 is the date that many new laws take effect. Some of these laws were recently passed by the Legislature; others were approved a while ago and are just now rolling out.
Here are 11 of the changes you should know about this summer.
Waiting period for gun purchases
Young people in Vermont are less likely than their peers in other states to report feelings of sadness, hopelessness or suicidal thoughts — and yet their rate of suicide deaths is higher than the national average.
Lawmakers have decided that easy access to guns is a significant factor in those deaths. And legislation that goes into effect July 1 will institute a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases. Lawmakers hope that preventing someone in crisis from gaining immediate access to a gun will allow time for suicidal impulses to pass. The vast majority of people who survive a suicide attempt never make an attempt again.
A new law in Vermont creates a criminal penalty for unsafe storage of firearms if those guns are used in a crime.
The law will allow family members to petition courts for an extreme risk protection order, and creates a new criminal penalty for negligent storage of firearms, if that negligence results in commission of a crime.
The 72-hour waiting period provision is almost certain to invite a legal challenge. In a landmark ruling last year, the U.S. Supreme Court established a new precedent for the manner in which courts should assess the constitutionality of restrictions on gun ownership.
Though Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law, he said he doesn’t think the 72-hour waiting period will survive a constitutional challenge.
[It makes one wonder why the goobernor let it become law then, but scratch a lib, find a tyrant applies]
Doctoral student opines lying gun owners aren’t being reached with ‘responsible’ messaging
There’s no lack of progressive think tanks out there that claim they’re not coming for our guns, they just want to promote “safety.” The New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center is one of those groups that claims to be all about safety, however they never put out any studies, materials, or articles, on the responsible and law-abiding gun owner, nor any material about the corporeal topics of gun use or ownership. A recent study done by a doctoral student at the GVRC has her claiming foul over potential untruthful survey results.
In a study published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, researchers found that based on their answers to a variety of other questions, a group of individuals appeared as though they might be falsely denying firearm ownership when directly asked by researchers.
While some of these individuals resemble what previous research indicated to be a typical American firearm owner (e.g., white, male), others looked quite different (racial or ethnic minority, female, living in urban environments), highlighting that the landscape of firearm ownership in the United States may be shifting.
“Some individuals are falsely denying firearm ownership, resulting in research not accurately capturing the experiences of all firearm owners in the U.S.,” said Allison Bond, lead author of the study and a doctoral student with the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center. “More concerningly, these individuals are not being reached with secure firearm storage messaging and firearm safety resources, which may result in them storing their firearms in an unsecure manner, which in turn increases the risk for firearm injury and death.”
This hiccup that Bond has highlighted is a valuable feature in our evolution in my opinion. Unequivocally, I will personally stand by these statements – until the medical field shows they’re unbiased – I don’t suggest exposing whether or not you’re a gun owner to anyone associated with it, without relevant cause. I salute the people that elected to “falsely deny” their firearm ownership – even though a false denial would be a double negative, but I’m not the PHD student here.
What’s really hubris, troubling, and disgustingly elitist is that Bond has this concern that because “these individuals,” which I’m going to read as meaning “those/these people” – the ones that are “racial or ethnic minority, female, living in urban environments” – who smartly elected to lie to the center, they’re too obtuse to get proper “messaging.” Whatever Bond considers safety resources, it’s rather opinionated to assume those people won’t get them because they don’t trust those conducting the study. Bond is beyond out of touch here.
The Rutgers GVRC has done nothing but put forward an abstinence-only approach to firearms ownership. There’s never any research done on, or paper they put out, that highlights the positive elements of owning guns. Every rabbit hole they go down has a result that has to do with more regulations. Fortunately many of the regulations they’d want to see implemented would be considered unconstitutional if looked at properly with an unbiased approach.
After following the GVRC acutely since anti-gun Governor Phil Murphy instituted them, pumping taxpayer’s dollars into this gibberish, their main objective seems to have an ends in requiring firearms to be stored in a 100% unusable state. That condition goes directly against the Heller decision I might add. This has been my suspicion for a while and this study/reporting on it helps fortify that hunch.
Bond leaves out that every single brand new firearm sold in the United States includes a user manual. Nearly all handguns come with a lock and hard lockable case. In those manuals, there’s general instructions on so-called proper storage. Anyone walking into a gun store to purchase a firearm is approached with plenty of resources in the form of capitalism and altruism. At a shop, there’s generally someone wanting to help new gun owners to be safe, in addition to the fact businesses can only profit by selling more firearm safety devices.
The problem with Bond’s assertion that those people don’t get appropriately schooled on what she considers proper storage and safety rules is that Bond – and her ilk – try to squeeze everything into a one-size-fits-all solution. If we asked Bond or anyone else over at the GVRC about proper storage, they’re going to tell you firearms need to be stored unloaded, in a locked container, and ammunition stored in a separate locked container. I suspect Bond is not going to say that it makes sense to have a loaded firearm in the home for self-defense. The thought of storing a firearm in a night stand loaded, if appropriate for the given household, would be looked at with horror.
To people like Bond and groups like the GVRC, self-defense via firearm use is abhorrent. So keeping a firearm stored in any condition for ease of use would go against their biases. It’s unfortunate these alleged people of science don’t come standard where bias is completely removed. Follow the science – pish posh to that for these purposes.
The rest of the “safety resources” includes what? I’ve never heard the GVRC advocate that gun owners should take an NRA or USCCA training course to learn how to use a firearm. No, safety resources are going to come in the form of their own abstinence-only branded “education.” If groups like the GVRC advocated for people to take such branded training – by name – they’d have some credibility.
There’s an undertone that Bond was making about those people not being exposed to resources because of these “false denials.” Beyond their silly survey, what’s Bond and the GVRC doing to “educate” respondents? Do they offer self-described gun owners these important resources when respondents say they own guns? And in what form are these resources?
The study indicates a percentage of firearm owners may not feel comfortable disclosing their ownership status. Among those identified as potentially falsely denying firearm ownership, many were women living alone in urban environments.
The study indicates a good portion of people that have the right idea. While I’m all in favor of accurate data collection, I cannot support supplying any information about whether or not one is a gun owner to the GVRC or groups like it. Physicians and doctors out there may take exception to my advice here, but too bad. When the authors and groups behind these so-called studies make a good faith effort to not inject their anti-gun conclusion before the study has even concluded, then we can have a chat about being honest. They all claim they’re not about “making policy,” but that’s total and complete malarkey. I’ve chatted with the “I just want to save lives, I’m not about policy making” doctors, and I conclude they’re lying after reading their rhetoric and papers.
One of the other things that’s hinted at when talking about messaging is not said in the piece covering the study. Read into comments made by the GVRC executive director:
“There are several reasons some firearm owners might feel uncomfortable disclosing that they own firearms,” said Michael Anestis, executive director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center and senior author of the study. “These results serve as an important reminder that we should not assume we know everything about who owns firearms and that we should ensure that our efforts to reach firearm owners can resonate with broad audiences we might not realize would benefit from the message.”
Anestis left out one of the newer en vogue buzzwords that all readers need to be aware of. With the narrow exception of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, and a few other very limited number of groups, if the phrase “credible messenger” is in the literature, run. While I have read some reporting in NSSF – who makes a good faith effort to protect firearm owners and the industry – literature where credible messenger was used, generally speaking, only grossly anti-gun think tanks use it.
The mechanism for these groups is for them to find the right person, to talk to the right people, using them as a puppet to get their own message out. That’s it. It’s agenda driven and has everything to do with policy and culturally appropriating as many people as possible – to their way of thinking.
To all “those people” out there…the “racial or ethnic minority, female, living in urban environments,” welcome to the fray. There are resources out there, which I”m sure you’re well aware of, should you need any. With Second Amendment supporters, there’s an entire community of people that are more than willing and happy to help each other, including you.
Continue to go with your gut and learn there are trustworthy organizations out there. Let’s call the other groups those who utilize their alleged academic “achievements” to bend pseudoscience into a conclusion that results in our disarmament. Judging by Bond’s complaints, many of you have already figured this out. Kudos for that.
Basically they’re saying they know better and are the only people who can save the poor minorities from themselves.
Nothing to see here, folks! https://t.co/bO1SzMCHPl
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 9, 2023
“They were forced to undergo hysterectomies. Their tubes were tied and they were given vasectomies, sometimes without anesthesia.”
The scientific and political communities in America were solidly behind the project. Those performing the sterilizations were considered humanitarian heroes, and academics who questioned the idea were subject to vilification, loss of employment, and loss of academic funding. The press and political activists formed a solid phalanx to protect the pro-eugenics side. Glenn Reynolds of
PUBLIC HEALTH HAS ALWAYS INVOLVED A LOT OF GROUPTHINK: When Sterilization Was Dogma: Why the Eugenics Movement is Relevant Today. “Eugenicists sought to ‘improve’ the human species in the same way that one would improve cattle or soybeans—and using basically the same techniques.”
Later in the day, Glenn added an update—an excruciatingly poignant email that he had received from a reader:
“After giving birth to me in 1971, just months after turning 18, the rural community hospital staff convinced my mother to have a tubal ligation before she left.
Only decades later did I realize how improper this seemed for a healthy, married, drug-free young woman of 18. But she was in Appalachia, and poor. Was the hospital staff trying to avoid more of “her kind” being born?
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/title-x-family-planning-program-1970-1977
Then I heard of the Family Planning Services Act and began to wonder if there was in 1971 a federally-funded bias toward sterilizing poor young women in Appalachia. Is this why I never had siblings and face being the sole caretaker and provider for my aging mother?
But I can only wonder because I can’t find any research or data or even articles inquiring about changes in birth and sterilization rates among women in Appalachia before/after the Family Planning Services Act took hold.
Maybe the Act didn’t make a difference at all. Or maybe it was a quiet Bluegrass Genocide.
No one seems to want to ask.”
This writer’s expression, “bluegrass genocide,” is a marvel of imagery, simplicity, and power. Nowhere to be found on the internet (till now), the term lashes an arcadian adjective to a dystopian noun. Just two words and five syllables describe a sweeping saga, imparting both sense of place and sense of horror. It starkly captures the inhumanity that, for the better part of the last century, exerted a vice grip over science, medicine, culture, politics, journalism, and public policy—the notion that experts are entitled to play God with lives in pursuit of their favored social goals. The writer’s addition of “quiet”—”a quiet Bluegrass Genocide”—makes the events described all the more vile.
It's easy to forget just how anti-free speech democrats and their corporate media messaging arm really are. https://t.co/btjCXoTKbc
— Anthony Abides (@AnthonyAbides) June 3, 2023
Prof: ‘Nothing wrong with’ murder of Trump supporter from a ‘moral perspective.’
University of Rhode Island Professor Erik Loomis appeared to defend the murder of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, the member of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer, during recent social unrest in Portland, Oregon.
In 2012, Loomis came under scrutiny after he called for NRA executive Wayne LaPierre’s “head on a stick” following the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. Just weeks later, in January 2013, Loomis said, “I know the central mission of the Republican Party is to have a membership made up entirely of old rural white people.”
Now, Loomis is once again under fire after publishing a blog post titled “Why was Michael Reinoehl killed?” Reinoehl is the man suspected of fatally shooting Danielson. Reinoehl was killed as federal authorities tried to arrest him.
“Michael Reinoehl is the guy who killed the fascist in Portland last week. He admitted it and said he was scared the cops would kill him. Well, now the cops have killed him,” Loomis wrote in the September 4 blog post.
“I am extremely anti-conspiracy theory. But it’s not a conspiracy theory at this point in time to wonder if the cops simply murdered him. The police is [sic] shot through with fascists from stem to stern. They were openly working with the fascists in Portland, as they were in Kenosha which led to dead protestors,” Loomis continued.
In the comment section of the blog post, one reader challenged Loomis by writing, “Erik, he shot and killed a guy,” referring to Reinoehl.
Loomis responded by saying, “He killed a fascist. I see nothing wrong with it, at least from a moral perspective.” He further added that “tactically, that’s a different story. But you could say the same thing about John Brown.”
Loomis furthered compared Reinoehl to Brown who in the 1800s used violence as a means of fighting slavery.
One reader then asked, “What’s so great about assassinating a rando fascist? And in the absence of a sound affirmative justification, it should be easy to envision the drawbacks.”
Loomis was quick to reply with, “What’s so great about assassinating random slaveholders, said liberals to John Brown.”
In a separate comment, Loomis wrote, “the problem with violence is that it usually, though not always, is a bad idea. That I agree with.”
Loomis said in another comment, “Yes, sometimes violence is necessary, say to avoid greater physical harm, i.e. self-defense, or to defeat a literal army of fascists who are trying to kill people. But, ideologically, I think the idea that violence is good if it’s against our political enemies is a core part of fascism, and so the ideological opposition to that idea should be its opposite – that violence as a general rule is bad, unless the specific context of that situation requires a violent response.”
Loomis made headlines Tuesday for another comment he made on Twitter. In response to MSNBC host Chris Hayes tweeting, “Trump is objectively pro-Covid,” Loomis tweeted “yeah, I mean, once Republicans figured out COVID was going to affect people of color and the poor disproportionately, they stopped caring about doing anything about it.”
The Ominous Reason Why Biden Keeps Repeating His False Claim About a White Supremacist Threat
As Ben Bartee noted Saturday, Old Joe Biden’s commencement speech at Howard University “included a hearty condemnation of the alleged scourge of White Supremacy™ in America.” In fact, the alleged president called white supremacy “the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland.” Then on Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary and failed Disinformation Governance Board overlord Alejandro Mayorkas agreed with Old Joe, emphasizing that “domestic violent extremism is our greatest threat right now.” Many other Biden regime officials have said the same thing in the nearly two and a half years now that they have been inflicting themselves upon us. The reason why they keep making this false claim is clear and ominous.
At Howard, Biden first repeated his oft-stated lie that Donald Trump had called Nazis “fine people.” Then he said: “But on the best days, enough of us have the guts and the hearts to st — to stand up for the best in us. To choose love over hate, unity over disunion, progress over retreat. To stand up against the poison of white supremacy, as I did in my Inaugural Address — to single it out as the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy. And I’m not saying this because I’m at a black HBCU. I say it wherever I go.”
A “black HBCU”? As opposed to all the white historically black colleges and universities, Joe? But anyway, Old Joe’s lie about white supremacists being the nation’s biggest terror threat has also been repeated by Gestapo chief Merrick Garland and the FBI. In November 2021, FBI and Homeland Security Department officials increased investigations of “domestic extremists,” reiterating the claim that they are today’s foremost terror threat.
Yet no matter how often Biden and his henchmen repeat this, actual white supremacist terrorists in any significant numbers have been conspicuously lacking. Yet on MSNBC (of course) Sunday, “journalist” Jonathan Capehart perpetuated the myth, asking Mayorkas: “The president, yesterday at his commencement address for Howard University graduates, called white supremacy the major domestic terrorist threat in this country. Is that correct?”
Mayorkas, of course, answered in the affirmative: “It tragically is. And the terrorism context, domestic violent extremism is our greatest threat right now. Individuals are driven to violence because of ideologies of hate, anti-government sentiment, false narratives, personal grievances. Regrettably, we have seen a rise in white supremacy. The principle underlying our work is that when one community is targeted, Jonathan, when one community is targeted, we as a country are targeted.”
Note how Mayorkas related “anti-government sentiment” to “white supremacy.” Old Joe revealed the game that is being played here last September when he said in his ominous red and black speech that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
This regime aims to criminalize political dissent, and that will require demonizing and stigmatizing fully half of the electorate. It is increasingly clear that when Biden claims that white supremacists are the biggest terror threat the nation faces, he means ordinary Americans who have never broken any law but who oppose his agenda. If everyone who opposes him is a white supremacist terrorist, then the nation has over a hundred million of them. Arrests and prosecutions on false pretenses will follow. That’s the threat that was contained in his words at Howard.
And ever so conveniently for Old Joe, no sooner had he uttered this false claim again at Howard on Saturday than a couple of hundred actual white supremacist terrorists miraculously materialized in Washington. All were young, physically fit men; not a single fat Nazi in the bunch. All wore the same blue shirt and khaki pants uniform, all with their faces covered, and once again, the feds showed no curiosity about who they are and made no attempt to determine where they came from or where they went.
This clumsy false-flag operation was widely exposed and ridiculed on Twitter, but conservative writer Chris Brunet pointed out: “What’s sad about this clip is that everyone here on my side of Twitter instantly knows this is a glowie/fed operation… pure theatre. But it is actually a really effective psyop, they keep doing it, because it works. Ask any normal person on the street, ask your mom, ask your sister, and they will be terrified of this clip and fall for it hook-line-and-sinker.”
Indeed they will. They still have no idea what game is being played. But as Old Joe’s henchmen continue to move to make it possible for only their point of view to be enunciated in the public square, their objectives will become obvious to everyone.
One can imagine their looming disappointment. They have failed to appoint Supreme Court justices who would effectively redefine the 2nd Amendment out of existence, and they are about to bear the consequences of that failure. But from their perspective, there is comfort to be had in the prospect of eventually stripping the 2nd Amendment from the Constitution altogether, no matter how long it may take.
Such is the hope that animates aspiring intergenerational social reformer Allan Goldstein, who, in his “Let’s get serious and repeal the Second Amendment” has stepped forward to boldly launch a 50-plus year plan to eradicate all privately owned firearms in the United States.
Perhaps the piece might have been better entitled “Let’s Get Hysterical.” How galling it must be to be deprived of so obvious a good — a gun-free society — on account of something as frivolous as an obsolete, suicidally-construed constitutional amendment. On Goldstein’s account “[t]he Supreme Court has decided that ‘a well-regulated militia’ includes gang bangers and wild-eyed loners with a grudge.” What a shame Goldstein did not bother to provide a citation to the Supreme Court decision in which this is asserted.
Today I joined @MomsDemand trying to get answers to some questions even I, a firearm expert, don’t know the answers to such as:
– What is an “Assault Weapon”?
– What is a “Ghost Gun”?
– What is one gun law that goes to far?Rather than answers I was threatened with physical… pic.twitter.com/gJnK2MNqmH
— avsterbone (@avsterbone) May 14, 2023
BLUF
The only silver lining in this minatory storm cloud is the fact that such movements, though unconscionably cruel, arbitrary, and destructive, are also astonishingly fragile.
“Because he can.”
That’s the answer one has to give to those who ask how Alvin Bragg, a local district attorney in office by the slimmest of margins—and then only because of a huge subsidy from the anti-American billionaire George Soros—can get away with antics like indicting Donald Trump, a former (and, possibly, future) president of the United States, and, now, with charging former Marine Daniel Penny with manslaughter because he (along with at least two others) intervened to stop Jordan Neely from attacking fellow passengers on a New York subway.
Because he can. As a friend remarked when digesting the spectacle of Penny being led away in handcuffs, totalitarian movements often start slowly, almost timidly, but as they gain power, they become more brazen. After a certain point, they do outrageous things just to intimidate the public and demonstrate their power.
We now know that the FBI, the CIA, and other elements of America’s security apparatus intervened directly in the decision making of Twitter and other social media companies to influence the course of the 2020 election. One part of that intervention had to do with organizing 51 senior former intelligence figures to sign a letter declaring that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.” That was a lie. They knew it was a lie. It didn’t matter. They did it because they knew they could get away with it.
The United States is on the verge of being inundated with thousands upon thousands of illegal aliens. Many are from South or Central America. Hundreds are from China, even though they are crossing that notional line we used to be able to call, without irony, our southern border. Why did the Biden Administration decide to enact a real-life Camp of the Saints invasion of the United States? Because it could. There was no immediate price to pay.
In her classic study, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt makes several observations that bear on our current situation. “There is no doubt,” she observes,
Biden casting Bolshevik spells:
Lenin/Stalin’s “greatest danger principle” accused the ethno-racial majority culture of being a threat to justify to discrimination.
It dialectically progressed to minorities being the greatest danger once socialism succeeded.
(Martin, 2001) https://t.co/Pq3mWEBaD4 pic.twitter.com/AcQN94lW8C
— Steven Welliever (@StevenWelliever) May 13, 2023
