Category: You Can’t Make This Up

Ninth Circuit Upholds California Mag Ban, But Not Without Epic Dissent From Trump-Appointed Judge

Thursday’s decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding California’s ban on “large capacity” magazines wasn’t exactly unexpected, but the video dissent from Judge Lawrence Van Dyke was a curveball that I doubt anyone saw coming.

An en banc panel had previously ruled the state’s magazine ban in line with the Second Amendment, but SCOTUS vacated that decision and remanded the case back to the appellate court after Bruen in 2022. In turn, the Ninth Circuit sent the case back down to U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, who’d previously declared the ban unconstitutional. Benitez reached the same conclusion the second time around, and just like before an en banc panel has now overruled the West Coast “saint” of the Second Amendment.

“First, the Founders protected the right to keep and bear ‘Arms,’ not a right to keep and bear ‘Arms and Accoutrements,’ a common expression at the time of the Founding,” the opinion said. “Large-capacity magazines are optional accessories to firearms, and firearms operate as intended without a large-capacity magazine. A large-capacity magazine is thus an accessory or accoutrement, not an ‘Arm’ in itself. Possession of a large-capacity magazine therefore falls outside the text of the Second Amendment.”

The judges wrote that even if large-capacity magazines were covered by the Second Amendment, “California’s law falls neatly within the Nation’s traditions of protecting innocent persons by prohibiting especially dangerous uses of weapons and by regulating components necessary to the firing of a firearm.”

Under the Ninth Circuit’s argument, virtually all detachable magazines, regardless of their capacity, would fall beyond the Second Amendment’s protections because they’re “accoutrements” and not arms. The Court tried to get around that absurdity with its argument about a national tradition of prohibiting “especially dangerous uses of weapons”; establishing a whole new test that flies in the face of existing Supreme Court precedent. Going back to Heller the Court has held that arms that are in common use for lawful purposes are, prima facie, protected by the right to keep and bear arms. Magazines that can hold more than ten rounds aren’t just common, they’re ubiquitous, and they are possessed and used by far more lawful gun owners than violent criminals or mass shooters.

Three judges appointed during President Donald Trump’s first term authored dissenting opinions. Judge Ryan Nelson wrote that his colleagues flouted the standard set by the Bruen ruling and in so doing “(butchered) the Second Amendment and (gave) a judicial middle finger to the Supreme Court.”

Judge Lawrence VanDyke included in his dissent a video of himself operating firearms in his chambers. Seven of the eight judges who were part of the majority opinion joined in an opinion calling the video “wildly improper,” both because the video introduced facts that were not part of the record and because VanDyke appeared to be attempting to offer expert testimony.

It may be wildly improper in the eyes of VanDyke’s gun-controlling colleagues, but frankly I’d like to see more of this. Most folks aren’t going to read through more than 100 pages of legal arguments, but they’d be much more inclined to watch an 18-minute video on YouTube.

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Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva dead at 77. “Grijalva, D-Ariz., died of lung cancer-related issues on Thursday

UN Judge, Onetime Columbia University Human Rights Fellow, Found Guilty of Slavery.

A United Nations judge was convicted on Thursday of trafficking a young woman to the United Kingdom and forcing her to work as a slave.

Ugandan judge Lydia Mugambe, 49, “exploited and abused” the victim, prosecutors said, forcing her to work as an unpaid maid and caregiver while barring her from seeking other employment. A jury found Mugambe guilty of multiple offenses, including facilitating illegal immigration, forced labor, and witness intimidation, the Independent reported.

Mugambe was a fellow housed within Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, whose fellows work to “address some aspect of a history of gross human rights violations in their society, country, and/or region,” in 2017.

Columbia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mugambe became a judge on the U.N. International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in May 2023, even though police had been called to her home in Oxfordshire three months earlier, according to the Independent. Mugambe was studying for a law Ph.D. at Oxford at the time.

A jury agreed with the prosecution’s case that Mugambe, who also serves as a judge on Uganda’s High Court, conspired with Ugandan diplomat John Leonard Mugerwa in a “very dishonest” quid pro quo. Mugerwa, the prosecutors said, arranged for the Ugandan embassy to sponsor the victim’s entry into the United Kingdom under false pretenses, while Mugambe attempted to influence a judge overseeing a case in which Mugerwa was involved.

Mugambe denied the charges, insisting she always treated the young woman with “love, care, and patience,” the BBC reported.

SCOTUS is going to have to do something about this and slap these silly lower courts down, or things aren’t going to be pretty

Seventh Circuit Panel: SBRs Aren’t ‘Arms’ Protected by the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms. That should mean any weapon used for offensive or defensive acts. The reason was very clear. It was intended for us to be able to maintain a militia that could defend this nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

But the Seventh Circuit has decided that short-barreled rifles, or SBRs, aren’t arms covered by the amendment.

(I had to use a screenshot that I linked since X is having issues with the embed codes)

Now, this is a problem for a lot of reasons.

First, let’s talk a bit about the Miller decision. Yes, it’s a Supreme Court decision that lower courts have had to contend with for ages now. However, Miller dealt with a sawed-off shotgun. The Court in that decision said that such a weapon had no militia use, thus it wasn’t covered by the Second Amendment. That was wrong, of course, because that ruling was issued in 1934, so after shotguns had been used so effectively in World War I that the Germans tried to get using them considered a war crime.

Further, Miller himself was dead, so there wasn’t really another side arguing one way or the other in that case.

Still, when you look at Bruen, it doesn’t say anything about how you can just decide something isn’t an arm simply because you don’t think it’s useful for warfare.

Of course, then there’s the fact that if SBRs aren’t useful for warfare as a tool of the militia, then why is the standard issue weapon for the United States Army technically an SBR? The M4 has a barrel length of 14.5 inches, which is an inch and a half shorter than what is necessary for a rifle to not be considered an SBR. If SBRs aren’t useful for militia use, then why is it issued to every one of our combat troops and was used in pretty much every firefight out troops saw in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Now, let’s talk about the “step two in our Bruen” thing that’s cut off.

We turn to step two in our Bruen analysis in the interest of completeness. As discussed below, even if short-barreled rifles were “arms” within the meaning of the Second Amendment, historical tradition likely supports regulating them.

The court goes on to argue that Rahimi permits similar but more modern laws can be considered.

Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692. When the historical laws “address[ed] particular problems” there is a good chance “contemporary laws imposing similar restrictions for similar reasons” are also permissible. Id. The laws do not need to “precisely match”—the contemporary one must only “comport with the principles underlying the Second Amendment….” Id.

Now, I’m not an attorney, but this sure looks like the Rahimi decision seems to suggest that contemporary laws can be applied when the historical laws addressed either that problem or similar ones. In other words, if the Founding Fathers were trying to address drunk people carrying guns, as they did, a more contemporary law seeking to address a similar problem would apply.

Instead, the Seventh Circuit judges just decided to accept contemporary laws as good enough simply because they don’t like the idea of SBRs.

That’s not even getting into the possibility that these judges’ nominations might not even be valid since everything Biden signed looks to have been the result of an autopen and we can’t be sure Biden even knew what was happening in the first place.

Zelenskyy Pulls a George Costanza, Claims He Was Just Kidding When He Quit the Peace Talks.

The headline is a reference to this Seinfeld episode.

What? That? I’m a joker, you know that. I kid!

Zelensky reaches out to Trump after “regrettable” meeting
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has extended an olive branch to President Donald Trump following what he called a “regrettable” meeting in Washington. Zelensky thanked Trump for past U.S. support and reiterated Ukraine’s willingness to sign a mineral agreement “any time and in any convenient format.” His remarks come as the U.S. has paused military aid to Ukraine, and Trump has signaled a preference for peace negotiations.

Key Details:

Zelensky acknowledged that the Friday meeting at the White House did not go as planned and expressed a desire for “constructive” future cooperation.

He highlighted Trump’s past support for Ukraine, particularly his decision to provide Javelin missiles, as a pivotal moment.

The U.S. paused all military aid to Ukraine on Monday, with Trump telling Zelensky to return “when he was ready for peace.”

Here’s the statement this stupid actor posted on X:

Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUaI would like to reiterate Ukraine’s commitment to peace.

None of us wants an endless war. Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.

LOL. Please.

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BLUF
Cardinal Dolan may one day discover that he was unwittingly encouraging elements that no one, churchman or otherwise, should have encouraged. By then, however, it could be too late.

Cardinal Dolan Hails ‘Our Islamic Brothers and Sisters,’ Calls Ash Wednesday ‘Our Ramadan’

On Friday, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, posted on X: “Ramadan starts tomorrow! Ramadan is the season of penance for our Islamic brothers and sisters. Do they ever take it seriously! I tell you that because Ash Wednesday is coming up – that’s kind of like our Ramadan.”

These generous statements were entirely in keeping with the spirit of ecumenism that Pope Francis has advocated so assiduously, and so the cardinal’s words came as no surprise, but their graciousness was no guarantor of their accuracy. Unfortunately, virtually every part of Dolan’s statement was wrong, and some of it was dangerously misleading.

Ramadan is not, first off, exactly a “season of penance.” It does involve self-denial and cultivation of a sense of self-control, although the gorging all night somewhat mitigates the ascetic effect of the fasting all day, the focus is not primarily upon penance. Nobody “gives something up for Ramadan.” Ramadan superficially resembles Lent in that it is a season for Muslims to redouble their efforts to please Allah, but in Islam, this takes on a radically different form from efforts to please God in Christianity. (Note for those who need it: yes, “Allah” is the Arabic word for God — actually “the God,” and yes, Arabic-speaking Christians do use the word, although some, notably Copts, shy away from doing so because of its association with the God of the Qur’an. I am using it here to refer to that God.)

The highest form of service to Allah, according to Islam’s prophet Muhammad, is jihad, which principally involves warfare against unbelievers. A hadith has a Muslim asking Muhammad: “Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward).” Muhammad replied, “I do not find such a deed.” (Bukhari 4.52.44)

So what better way to increase one’s devotion to Allah than by waging jihad? Every Ramadan, therefore, we see an increase in jihad attacks. This is hardly something that Cardinal Dolan should be celebrating, but of course, he is certain that Islam is a religion of peace, and that anybody who tells him otherwise is just an “Islamophobe.”

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And With That Receipt, We Learn That USAID Paid for a Terrorist’s College Tuition

You cannot make this stuff up? USAID, which blessedly is no more, paid for a radical Islamic terrorist’s college tuition. Past receipts show that the former agency footed the bill for Anwar Awlaki’s higher education. Awlaki lied about the country of his birth to obtain funds for college through the State Department. Awlaki later became the point of the lance for al-Qaeda’s digital jihad arm. Investigative Catherine Herridge has more:

Looks like USAID supported college tuition for Anwar Aulaqi (Awlaki) who later became a high level al Qaeda terrorist. Aulaqi falsely claimed he was born in Yemen to secure the financial help via the State Dept. when he was actually a US citizen, born in Las Cruces New Mexico.

Aulaqi would later develop close ties with several 9/11 hijackers and attain leadership status in AQ’s Yemen affiliate. Aulaqi was the godfather of the digital jihad that leveraged his writings and the web to radicalize Americans to AQ’s cause. Aulaqi became the first American targeted for death by the CIA.

In 2011, he was killed in a US drone strike.

 

And yet, some media figures claim they cannot find any waste or abuse at USAID.

Yeah, again, the legacy media is a joke.