Category: You Can’t Make This Up

Firearms Policy Coalition @gunpolicy

The First Circuit heard oral arguments today in a lawsuit challenging Rhode Island’s magazine ban. You can listen to it here: ca1.uscourts.gov/sites/ca1/file…
“‘I struggle with the notion’ that magazines aren’t arms, said U.S. Circuit Judge Bruce Selya, a Reagan appointee. ‘The firearm isn’t operable otherwise. So I don’t understand why a magazine isn’t an essential component of a firearm and thus a firearm.'” courthousenews.com/can-states-ban…
The first federal appeals court to tackle this issue after the Supreme Court’s landmark gun-control ruling last year seemed uncertain how to proceed.
“[Judge] Kayatta was skeptical. ‘How did there get to be millions and millions of these in people’s hands if there’s a long tradition of outlawing them?’ he asked.”
wut?
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Staff Pulls Plug on Presser as Biden Goes Over Edge in Vietnam With Confusion, Dog-Faced Pony Soldiers

Joe Biden was in Hanoi on Sunday, meeting with Vietnam’s Communist Party leader, General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng.

After the meeting, he made some remarks and took a few questions from the press. We probably don’t even have to say anymore that it didn’t go well, you can just assume that there are going to be big embarrassing issues.

Biden started in confusion about whether it was evening there (it was).

I think he was trying to make a joke about “Good Morning, Vietnam,” which was a famous Robin Williams movie, not a “famous song.” And maybe that’s not the best movie to bring up when you’re in Vietnam. As my colleague Andrew Malcolm observed in his post about Joe Biden’s visit, Biden said his Afghanistan withdrawal would not be as bad as the Saigon panic, but then it was.

But that was the good part. It was all downhill from there once the presser started. Although to be fair, it’s not much of a presser when he limits it to five preselected reporters that “they gave me here.”

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‘no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the U.S. Constitution’……
Sounds like the newest set of damage control talking points got emailed out for the parrots

 

MEET THE NEW PRINCIPAL OF JOHN GLENN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Shantel Mandlay Facebook drag queen principal

Fox News reports that the Western Heights School District in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, has installed a drag queen as principal of the John Glenn Elementary School. Fox has confirmed that the new hire, Shane Murnan, is “a drag queen who goes by the name of Shantel Mandalay.” Although Mandalay’s Facebook account has since been deleted, the article provides screenshots of him in his full drag glory.

According to Fox, Murnan was employed as a drag queen at a venue called “The Boom.”

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¡Grupos de Autodefensas para tu y mi!

‘Who You Gonna Call’ in Austin, Texas, if You Are Robbed? Cops Say Don’t Call 911

As Americans in just about every large city endure a crime wave, some of those cities have all but given up fighting crime and given the bad guys free rein over the city. Businesses are getting out of those big cities in record numbers because of rampant theft and Soros-backed prosecutors who will not charge criminals. In one city, crime has gotten so out of hand that if you get robbed, well, don’t call 911. File a report, and they’ll get back to you.

Austin, Texas, is a blue island in a fairly red state. As a result of liberal Democrat leadership that embraced the “defund the police” movement, Austin police are severely short-staffed and are asking anyone who gets robbed near an ATM to call the non-emergency 311 number instead of 911. Robbery victims also have the option of making an online police report of the incident. Austin Police took to X to inform residents what they should do if they are robbed, saying:

“Even if you are cautious & follow all the safety advice, you may still become the unfortunate victim of a robbery. Do you know what your next steps should be? Make a police report & provide as much information as possible so we can recover your property quickly and safely.” 

Police also reminded those making a report to tell them the date and time of their ATM withdrawal. So, while being robbed, possibly at gunpoint, might seem like kind of an emergency to you, Austin Police have informed citizens that they don’t have enough manpower for it to be an emergency to them.

Thomas Villarreal is the President of the Austin Police Association. He places the blame for the crime wave in the Texas state capital squarely at the feet of a seemingly uncaring city council, stating, “We just continue to have a city council that doesn’t show its police officers that [it] cares about them.”

During a recent appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Villarreal had this to say about his city’s law enforcement predicament,

We’re a growing city, a city that should be up around 2,000 officers and growing right now. I’ve got about 1,475 officers in our police department and, you know, we’re moving in the wrong direction. There’s less and less and less resources to go out and do the job. I’ve got detectives who are pulled away from their caseload to just help answer 911 calls because we just don’t have the resources to adequately police the city.

Here at RedState, we have been covering the rampant crime wave affecting Austin and other Democrat-run cities. Not only are their policing policies, post-George Floyd, affecting individual residents, but they are also affecting businesses. Business owners say they do not feel safe, and the lack of police presence or response also drives away customers. One business owner said it took ten days to get a police report, and at the same time, business owners are being asked not to have weapons for their protection in their business. Since the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in 2020, and as Austin’s homicide rate has climbed, 911 callers are often put on hold for up to half an hour.

In addition to what Thomas Villarreal sees as an uncaring city council, Austin Mayor Kirk Watson also does not appear to have any sense of urgency when it comes to crime in his city. Up until recently, Austin police had a partnership with the Texas Department of Safety, which Watson praised and stated that crime had gone down as a result. But just two days later, Watson announced the end of the Austin police/Texas Department of Safety alliance, stating that it did not reflect “Austin’s values.” No word from the mayor on whether being robbed and having no police available to handle the situation constitutes an “Austin value.”  Just last month, Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon resigned after ongoing conflicts with the city council over staffing and increasingly smaller police budgets.

So, for the foreseeable future, if you get robbed in Austin at an ATM, you’d better just call it into 311 and wait your turn. Makes you wonder what the next thing to be called a “non-emergency” will be.

Dumb suggestion of the day: Serialize bullets

In our modern world, there are a lot of people who offer up their opinions on a variety of topics they know nothing at all about.

To some degree, I think we all do it, though many of us at least try to get informed before we speak on something we previously had no knowledge of.

Take guns, for example. Many have come to the idea that what we really need is “bullet control.” After all, if bad guys can’t get ammunition, they can’t shoot up their neighborhoods or anywhere else. A few places have tried it. California for example, has been giving it a try and so far, no one’s really seen any difference. New York is about to give it a go.

But one intrepid letter writer to the Baltimore Sun thinks he knows what we need to do. We should serialize bullets.

With ghost guns and the number of Baltimore youths getting access to guns growing in general, what’s the one thing they all require? Ammunition. So while the guns themselves can’t be easily tracked, it would seem the common item they all require is ammunition. So why can’t Maryland, and really all states, require ammunition manufacturers to code all bullets to be micro-encoded to identify the ammunition and dealers who sell the ammunition to identify every person to whom it is sold (”Man fatally shot in Canton carjacking was loving uncle, husband,” Aug. 25)?

Now, let’s understand we serialize guns and have for decades, yet that doesn’t seem to do much to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, but if we put a serial number on a bullet, that’ll change everything.

Wow. Just…wow.

The letter writer does acknowledge that it would take a while to work through current ammunition inventories before this serializing would actually do much good, so I’ll give him credit for that, at least, but other than that, it’s clear this is someone who doesn’t understand firearms all that much. It should be noted that the author doesn’t claim the idea originated with him. He probably came across it elsewhere, but this is still an idea concocted by someone who has no clue what they’re talking about.

First, the process of just trying to put a unique serial number on each and every bullet produced is going to be problematic in and of itself. I mean, look at some of the rounds out there and look at how tiny they are. Putting any kind of serial number would be tricky by itself. Making it so serial numbers can be put on a variety of rounds would also be an interesting engineering feat, I’d imagine.

Now, let’s say we do this. Now we have serial numbers on the bullets themselves, but where on the bullet? Too high on the round and it’s easily removed. Too low on the round and just seating the slug may damage the serial number, to say nothing of the round being fired causing even more damage.

And let’s not forget what happens when a round hits a target, for a second. Depending on what kind of bullet and what kind of medium is struck, the round is likely to experience varying degrees of damage. Will that obscure the serial number?

Even if everything works perfectly, it ignores some other harsh realities such as people loading their own including making their own bullets, stolen ammo, and so on.

See, the letter writer, like a lot of anti-gunners, thinks they understand the issue and have a proposed solution when all they’re doing is betraying their own ignorance. For this guy, all ammo comes from a store and this is an easy solution that could be implemented at the drop of a hat. He doesn’t understand anything else, nor does he likely care to. Yet he’s also indicative of a deeper issue with the gun control side.

For them, they read a few news articles–often only from heavily biased sources such as The Trace or even the mainstream media–and are convinced they understand the topic at hand, all because those articles quote supposed experts. Those same experts would be hard-pressed to actually articulate the pro-gun arguments in any detail, of course, but for the anti-gunner on the street, that’s irrelevant.

Then they’re convinced they know the topic and they think of crap like serializing bullets, blissfully unaware of how stupid they sound.

To be frank, our doctors did and were too.

In Wuhan, Doctors Knew The Truth. They Were Told To Keep Quiet.

In the first weeks of 2020, a radiologist at Xinhua Hospital in Wuhan, China, saw looming signs of trouble. He was a native of Wuhan and had 29 years of radiology experience. His job was to take computed tomography (CT) scans, looking at patients’ lungs for signs of infection.

And infections were everywhere. “I have never seen a virus that spreads so quickly,” he told a reporter for the investigative magazine Caixin. “This growth rate is too fast, and it is too scary.”

“The CT machines in the hospital were overloaded every day,” he added. “The machines are exhausted and often crash.”

But this tableau of chaos was hidden from the Chinese people — and the world — in early 2020. Chinese authorities had acknowledged on Dec. 31, 2019, that there were 27 cases of “pneumonia of unknown origin,” and 44 confirmed cases on Jan. 3, 2020. The Wuhan health commission reported 59 cases on Jan. 5, then abruptly reduced the number to 41 on Jan. 11, and claimed there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission or any signs of doctors getting sick.

That claim was a lie. The coronavirus was running rampant. Doctors at the radiologist’s hospital, and other hospitals, were getting sick. But China’s Communist Party leaders prize social stability above all else. They fear any sign of public panic or admission that the ruling party-state is not in control. The authorities in both Wuhan and Beijing kept the situation secret, especially because annual party political meetings were being held in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, from Jan. 6 to Jan. 17.

Secrecy has long been a major tool of the governing Communist Party. It suppresses independent journalism, censors digital news and communications, and withholds vital information from its people. Doctors in Wuhan who knew the truth were afraid to speak out. China did not reveal human transmission of the virus until Jan. 22, and by then, the pandemic had been ignited. In 3½ years, covid-19 has taken nearly 7 million lives by official counts. The true death toll is probably twice or three times that number.

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You might call the time when a boys under 15 year old high school soccer team beat the women’s national team  an indication this is true, but facts don’t matter when the narrative must go on.

Coach fired for saying biological men can outperform women in sports

A high school snowboarding coach has filed a lawsuit against his former employers alleging that he was fired for basically telling students in a conversation that men can outperform women in sports.

Coach David Bloch filed the lawsuit against the leaders of Woodstock Union High School in July demanding he be reinstated. An attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative firm that represents Bloch, said a hearing on the lawsuit is expected to take place in early September.

The federal lawsuit, filed in Vermont, states that Bloch was wrongly accused of violating the school district’s harassment and bullying policy for referencing a student “in a manner that questioned the legitimacy and appropriateness of [a] student competing on the girls’ team.”

Windsor Central Supervisory Union officials did not respond to The College Fix’s requests for comment over the past two weeks.

Bloch founded Woodstock High School’s snowboarding team over a decade ago and has served as its head coach ever since, according to the lawsuit, focused on the intersection of biological differences between genders and the right to speak on controversial topics.

According to an Alliance Defending Freedom news release, the controversial, three-minute conversation occurred in February when Bloch’s team competed against another team that had a biological male who identifies as a female that competes in the female division.

“Before the competition, Coach Bloch overheard two of his student-athletes having a discussion about that male competing against females, and he stepped into the conversation,” stated the news release from the alliance.

“Coach Bloch said that people can express themselves differently and that there can be masculine women and feminine men. But he also acknowledged the biological reality that males and females have different DNA, and he shared his belief that the physical differences between men and women give men an athletic advantage,” it stated.

Bloch’s attorneys allege the coach never referred to the transgender athlete by name and the competition took place without incident. However, the next day, Bloch was informed of his “immediate termination,” his attorneys stated.

The lawsuit alleges the superintendent who fired Bloch “has a child who identifies as transgender.”

According to Matthew Hoffman, legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, Bloch’s dismissal raises concerns about his rights to due process and free speech.

“He received no notice of the allegations against him and was not given an opportunity to defend himself before being fired,” Hoffman said in a telephone interview with The College Fix, adding this raises serious questions about the thoroughness of the investigation conducted by the school district.

The lawsuit also argues the school district’s harassment and bullying policies are unconstitutionally vague “because they grant government officials unbridled discretion in deciding what constitutes ‘gender identity,’ ‘harassment,’ and ‘harassment on the basis of gender identity,’” as well as “because they utilize terms that are inherently subjective and elude any precise or objective definition that would be consistent from one administrator, teacher, or student to another.”

In addition to reinstatement, the lawsuit demands the school district acknowledge his termination violated his First Amendment rights to free speech.

Hoffman added that he hopes this incident will lead to changes in policies to prevent similar occurrences, emphasizing that speaking out on controversial topics should not result in the loss of one’s job. He also called for greater protection of employees’ rights to express their opinions.

Bloch is a Roman Catholic “who believes that God creates human beings as male and female. Consistent with his faith—and with scientific evidence—he believes that chromosomes determine a person’s sex,” the ADF news release stated.

Hoffman said that despite the difficult circumstance Bloch is in, many students and community members have privately shared their support with him.

Louisiana Man Arrested for Making a Joke About COVID-19 and Zombies Wins Appeal
5th Circuit overrules grant of qualified immunity for officers who made warrantless arrest

NEW ORLEANS—During the COVID-19 pandemic Waylon Bailey made a joke about the virus, zombies, and his local sheriff’s department on Facebook. Today, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that Waylon’s joke was protected by the First Amendment and that deputies violated his free-speech rights and his Fourth Amendment rights when they arrested him. Waylon teamed up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to appeal a lower court decision that granted qualified immunity to the detective and sheriff responsible for his arrest.

“I’m relieved that the court recognized that the deputies were wrong to arrest me for making a joke on Facebook,” said Waylon. “I’m glad that I will be able to hold the detective and sheriff accountable, and hopefully my case will stand as a strong statement to officers about what the First Amendment protects.”

Judge Dana M. Douglas, writing for the unanimous panel, said that: “The First Amendment’s protections apply to jokes, parodies, satire, and the like, whether clever or in poor taste.”

“The court’s opinion makes clear that the First Amendment applies with full force to online speech,” said IJ Attorney Ben Field. “Government officials can’t get away with stretching criminal laws to go after people who make jokes at their expense. This is a victory for free speech and common sense and against the pernicious doctrine of qualified immunity.”

Waylon Bailey’s March 2020 Facebook post used over-the-top language, emoji, and a hashtag referencing the Brad Pitt movie World War Z in facetiously warning that the local sheriff’s office had been ordered to shoot the “infected.” Despite the obvious indications that it was a joke, sheriff’s deputies decided to arrest Waylon, without a warrant, under an anti-terrorism law and sent a SWAT team with guns drawn to his garage.

Waylon was taken to jail and booked, though the absurd charge was dropped when a prosecutor reviewed the case. But when Waylon brought a civil-rights lawsuit, the deputy responsible for the arrest was granted qualified immunity by the district court. To add insult to injury, the court also said that Waylon didn’t have any free speech rights to make a joke in the first place. The 5th Circuit reversed and remanded to the district court, which will now fully consider Waylon’s civil-rights lawsuit.

“Any reasonable officer would have known that Waylon’s zombie joke was clearly protected by the First Amendment, and certainly wasn’t ‘terrorizing,’” said IJ Attorney Caroline Grace Brothers. “By denying qualified immunity to the detective who arrested Waylon, this decision confirms that government officials should not escape accountability when it should have been obvious that their actions were unconstitutional.”

Growing Concern Vaccine Heart Damage in Adolescents May be Permanent.
Hong Kong study finds 58 percent of COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis confirmed by MRI not resolved at one year

Almost every day the news brings another story of a young person dying of cardiac arrest. It is a sickening realization that COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis could leave a zone of scar in the heart, risking the chance of ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, and cardiac arrest at any time. Recently Hulscher, et al. have conclusively shown by autopsy that COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis can be fatal.

Now a Hong Kong study by Yu and colleagues have found that of young persons who had heart damage confirmed by MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] and who underwent a second scan one year later, 58 percent had residual abnormalities suggesting a scar could be forming in the heart muscle.

Forty adolescents, mean age of 15, mostly boys, were evaluated. It was notable that 73 percent had no cardiac symptoms, so without an evaluation, the parents would have had no idea their child was suffering heart damage from the COVID-19 vaccine. Approximately 18 percent of cases initially had reduced left ventricular ejection fraction indicating they were at risk for the development of heart failure.

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Biden Administration Argues Texas and Florida Anti-Censorship Laws Are a First Amendment Violation

Presented as an effort to safeguard speech rights, the Biden administration has called on the Supreme Court to dismantle controversial segments of the anti-censorship social media laws ratified in Florida and Texas.

We obtained a copy of the filing for you here.

(President Biden is also using the argument that banning his administration from asking platforms to remove speech is a First Amendment violation.)

The laws in question restrict the autonomy of leading social media platforms by preventing them from censoring citizens speech and discriminating on the basis of political viewpoint.

Both Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott staunchly support these laws as a means of protecting voices from being suppressed. Governor DeSantis, at the law signing in May 2021, criticized Big Tech’s bias for Silicon Valley ideology and emphasized the need for accountability.

The Texas law, featuring a provision prohibiting discrimination based on viewpoints, incorporates several exceptions, permitting platforms to ban content promoting violence, criminal behavior, child exploitation, and harassment of sexual-abuse survivors and more. The law presses social media platforms to adopt user complaint procedures, disclose content and data management practices, and publish a comprehensive biannual transparency report.

The legislation only applies to platforms attracting over 50 million monthly users.

The Florida law has a similar scope and, in addition, mandates a detailed justification for each content moderation. The legislation also forbids the banning of political contenders or “journalistic enterprises.”

US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar perceives this as an encroachment on First Amendment rights. She contended in a recent court filing that such laws infringe the liberty of tech giants in selecting, editing, and arranging user-generated content. Essentially, she claimed these actions are all protected under the First Amendment.

Endorsing two industry trade groups that have formally contested the laws, she implored the Supreme Court to scrutinize both measures.

Federal appeals courts, however, are divided over the issue. The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has primarily blocked Florida’s legislation, deeming it potentially unconstitutional. Conversely, the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit backed the Texas law but held it back to permit an appeal to reach the Supreme Court.

Certainly, both states, as well as the trade groups, are petitioning the Supreme Court to adjudicate on a range of issues concerning the two cases. An announcement of the court’s decision is expected as early as September.

While Prelogar largely aligns with the social media companies, she refrained from endorsing their protest against the “general-disclosure provisions” that require the publishing of content-management policies and production of transparency reports. These issues, she argued, are not the main subject of the lawsuits and high court review would be premature.

Biden Promises Maui Fire Survivors $700 Per Household — Less Than What is Spent on Ukraine

President Joe Biden announced Monday that survivors of the Maui fires would receive “a one-time $700 payment per household,” after he faced criticism for telling a reporter he had “no comment” on the rising death toll.

His account posted: “We’re laser-focused on getting aid to survivors, including Critical Needs Assistance: a one-time $700 payment per household offering relief during an unimaginably difficult time.”

The one-time payment of $700 per household is less than the estimated cost to each American household for the Ukraine War, according to a budget expert at the Heritage Foundation.

Richard Stern, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, calculated that the congressionally-approved aid to Ukraine of $113 billion amounts to roughly $900 per American household.

“The formal aid packages alone amount to a staggering $113 billion — roughly $900 per American household and almost 12 times the spending cuts promised by House leadership in the annual spending bills,” Stern said in an email to The Daily Signal, Heritage’s news outlet.

Furthermore, he said the $113 billion would cost more than $300 in interest costs per household over the decade.

On Thursday, as the Maui fires continued burning, Biden asked Congress for an additional $20 billion more in aid for Ukraine.

“As the war in Ukraine becomes a prolonged conflict, Americans are rightly growing skeptical of sending more taxpayer dollars and equipment from our depleted armory,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts told The Daily Signal.

“Washington has failed to address their concerns, explain our nation’s strategy in the war, or enact basic oversight for our aid,” Roberts said. “If Congress can’t fix those fundamental issues, they have no business sending more money into the fog of war.”

Chicago Group Asks Gang Members Not to Shoot People Between 9:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m.

Native Sons, a group from Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, is asking that gang members pledge to cease fire from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. daily so no one lives in fear of being shot while going about their day-to-day activities.

The push for the cease-fire is being called “The People’s Ordinance,” CWBChicago reported.

Native Sons’ co-founder, Tatiana Atkins, said:

Under this ordinance, we ask that people stop associating with and glorifying ‘shooters,’ stop glorifying ‘switches,’ and stop wearing those ski masks everywhere which perpetuates you as some ‘opp.’ When those who live a certain lifestyle try to hang with ‘regular’ class citizens, they put everyone at risk.…

At the end of the day, five-year-olds are being killed by gun violence, 14-year-olds are being killed by gun violence, 78-year-olds are being killed by gun violence, pregnant women are being killed by gun violence, young boys with bright futures are being killed by gun violence, fathers are being killed by gun violence, and this shouldn’t be happening.

Atkins hopes that gang members will adopt the cease-fire and that parents will react by making sure they have their children home and inside as 9:00 p.m. approaches.

Breitbart News reported at least 23 people were shot over the weekend in Chicago, three of them fatally.

Over 370 people have been killed in Chicago thus far in 2023.

Former senator told Biden he’d ‘kick the sh-t out of’ the then-VP for getting handsy with his wife.

Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown threatened President Joe Biden with bodily harm when the then-veep allegedly got fresh with Brown’s wife more than a decade ago, he recalled this week.

“I told him I’d kick the sh-t out of – beat the – I told him to stop,” Brown told host Tom Shattuck on the “Burn Barrel” podcast Wednesday.

“He didn’t act the way I thought he should,” Brown added. “And, you know, we called him on it, and that’s it.”

The incident occurred in 2010, when Biden, in his role as president of the Senate, posed for photos with Brown and his wife, Gail Huff Brown, at the Republican’s swearing-in ceremony in the US Capitol.

Photographers captured Huff Brown’s frozen grin as Biden’s right hand remained awkwardly behind her back – apparently near her posterior – as the portrait session ended.

Brown who won his senate seat in a 2010 special election after the death of Sen. Teddy Kennedy and served just three years in office, refused to elaborate on the episode.

“No, no. It’s old news, it’s old news,” he insisted when Shattuck pressed him for further details.

Instead, Brown blamed Biden’s inappropriate handsiness on incipient dementia — which, he suggested, has worsened during his presidency.

“I spent quite a bit of time with him. I enjoyed his company,” Brown recalled. “But we all know people who have dementia and have the beginning of Alzheimer’s, and he’s got it,” he said. “I mean, it’s the walk. It’s the way he’s mumbling, his anger outbursts. And it’s a shame that we can’t do better in this great country.”

For years, Biden has been notorious for his touchy-feely behavior with women and young girls — with a particular fondness for groping female family members of new senators and cabinet members taking the oath of office.

In June, actress Eva Longoria had to physically guide the 80-year-old president’s hands away from her breasts as he embraced her at a White House film screening.