Category: Question O’ The Day

1
Question O’ The Day
Why is this person speaking in Moscow?
Answer?
She’s just another commie who is pushing a line of propaganda.

2
It is nice of them to self identify like this.

Speaker: Militias not protected by Second Amendment
Law professor Mary McCord tells a Moscow audience why they frequently go unchallenged

MOSCOW — Contrary to widespread beliefs about the right to keep and bear arms, unauthorized paramilitary organizations, also known as militias, are unlawful in every state.

These groups, often dressed in military uniforms and armed with semi-automatic rifles, are not protected by the Second Amendment or its interpretation by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to Mary McCord, a visiting law professor at Georgetown University and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

So why do these groups typically go unchallenged?

During the latest League of Women Voters of Moscow speaker series Wednesday, McCord said the answer lies in the widespread belief that private militias are constitutionally protected.

“There is a misunderstanding, including among law enforcement and even prosecutors, about the scope of the Second Amendment and the scope of the First Amendment,” McCord said. “Sometimes it’s just a misunderstanding, but sometimes it’s because even law enforcement is supportive of militias and has a different view about what the Second Amendment protects. Sometimes I think it’s a misunderstanding about the First Amendment and that some of it protects the expression militias are conveying.”

Despite the misconceptions, militia groups have proliferated across the country.

One year ago, during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, armed militia members traveled from as far as the state of Washington in an attempt to “stop the steal,” in response to Joe Biden’s triumph over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Other times, militia groups have sought to oppose government policies or protect property at riots.

In Louisville, Ky., heavily armed rival militias faced off at demonstrations following the police shooting of Breonna Taylor.

While these groups have a right to make their views known, they don’t have a right to deploy in public as private armies. According to McCord, the Supreme Court has been very clear — through upholding anti-militia bills and laws — that even conduct with an expressive aspect can be regulated in the interest of public safety.

“The Second Amendment does not protect this activity, but there has been such a mythology that has grown over the last several decades,” she said. “When you’re deploying to protect property or engage in security — that is usurping law enforcement functions.”

These groups decide when and under what circumstances to deploy lethal force against other people, and they’re not accountable to any higher governmental authority.

All of this results in an infringement on other people’s constitutional rights, McCord says.

“This notion that militias are there to be a bulwark against tyranny is very popular in areas that are quite anti-government,” she said. “People even say to me, ‘That goes back way before the founding of the country. That’s exactly why it was put in the Constitution.’ Well, that’s not right.”

While there are comments in the Federalist Papers about state militias being a necessary defense against a tyrannical central government, there are no such comments in the Constitution about private militias doing so.

After the American colonies won their freedom from England, they decided to become states.

The new states decided to work together by forming a weak federal government, leaving most of the power with state governments. At the time, there were fears of a tyrannical central government.

“But nothing there ever said, ‘Private individuals, you don’t like what you’re seeing? Form your own private army and take up arms against your government,’ ” McCord said.

“That was not part of our constitutional history.”

McCord is a former acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice and a former principal deputy assistant attorney general for national security.

Question O’ The Day
So… what’s the point of this article? They’re arguing that self-defense cases involving guns demands a higher level of scrutiny than self-defense cases that don’t involve guns, then seem to imply that there is a systemic issue of allowing judges to determine foregone conclusions (like they can in many contexts) when deciding the facts of a case. Then they proceed to use two high-profile cases as an example, then admit that neither case involved a foregone conclusion.

Seriously, what point are they trying to make, exactly?

Both the display of a firearm and the pointing of a firearm at another person are threatening acts that ordinarily would create a reasonable apprehension of death or serious bodily injury in another person, and thus should be viewed as prima facie evidence of aggression.

This is their point:
They want the mere existence of a visible gun on your person to remove your right to defend yourself.

When it comes to guns and claims of self-defense, juries need guidance
As a general matter, a criminal defendant loses the right to claim he acted justifiably in self-defense if he was the initial aggressor or provocateur

Jurors in two recent high-profile homicide cases involving guns and claims of self-defense have spoken. In one case, the jury found the defendant, Kyle Rittenhouse, not guilty on all homicide charges. In the other case, the jury found Greg and Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan guilty of murder in the death of Ahmaud Arbery.

Important factual differences contributed to the different verdicts in these cases. The skill sets of the attorneys and dispositions of the judges involved played a role as well.

One thing both cases had in common, however, was that each judge gave the jury an initial-aggressor or provocation instruction. The fact that the juries in the two cases were given such an instruction yet reached opposite conclusions indicates that the mere giving of such an instruction in self-defense cases will not predetermine the outcome.

Until these two cases, few people were aware of the initial-aggressor limitation on the defense of self-defense. Now, that limitation has become part of the national conversation.

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Question O’ The Day

Which is more offensive, Harris pretending she was born a poor, black child, or pretending that she’s Jewish, or believing that people are actually stupid enough to believe her BS?

Question O’ The Day
If CRT isn’t real then why are they so against banning it from schools?

Glenn Youngkin Defeated Terry McAuliffe Because Democrats Betrayed Parents.
From COVID-19 closures to critical race theory, Republicans can fix schools by giving families more choice.

While former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s loss to Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin was cemented very late on election night, in practice the day that he forfeited the gubernatorial race was September 28. That was when, during a debate with Youngkin, McAuliffe, a Democrat, made the statement that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

That was his response to questions about school curriculum and the fury that had taken hold at many local school board meetings, where irate parents assailed education leaders for allegedly supporting what has been termed “critical race theory” by right-wing activists who oppose it. CRT is a divisive concept, in part because progressives and conservative disagree sharply about what it even is. Many members of the liberal media don’t even believe it exists, and have accused the GOP of fabricating the issue. As Youngkin’s victory became apparent, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace lamented that critical race theory, “which isn’t even real,” had swung the suburbs 15 points in Republicans’ favor.

Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist and the architect of the current CRT framing, has claimed a well-deserved victory: There’s no question that his efforts to supply a memorable name—critical race theory—for the series of semi-related, clumsy diversity initiatives and questionable curriculum choices in some public schools helped raise the salience of the issue.

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Question O’ The Day

Question O’ The Day.
So was Milley lying to Trump, or was he actually that clueless?

General Milley told Trump the George Floyd protests were no big deal.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley dismissed the George Floyd riots as “penny packet protests” — insisting they weren’t an insurrection because the mobs only “used spray paint,” according to a new book.

The under-fire general — accused of going behind President Donald Trump’s back to contact his Chinese counterpart — wildly downplayed the riots when Trump raised fears they were “burning America down,” according to Fox News excerpts from the new book, “Peril.”

“Mr. President, they are not burning it down,” he told the alarmed commander-in-chief, according to authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

“They used spray paint, Mr. President, that’s not an insurrection,” he told Trump.

It was not immediately clear when the conversation happened, but violent, fiery protests broke out in cities across the US soon after Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police in May 2020.

New York City saw mass looting and fires in the street, including torched police vehicles, while other cities saw deadly shootings within days, and thousands of National Guard members were ultimately deployed in at least 15 states, Fox News also noted.

Milley, however, gestured to a portrait of President Abraham Lincoln as he tried to dismiss Trump’s clear fears over the violence.

“We’re a country of 330 million people. You’ve got these penny packet protests,” he said, using a term for something insignificant, according to the book being published Sept. 21.

Milley insisted it was not an issue for the US military — and instead said the protests were understandable given systemic racism, according to the Fox excerpts.

“That’s pent up in communities that have been experiencing what they perceive to be police brutality,” Milley reportedly told Trump.

But when the Jan. 6 Capitol riot happened, Milley believed it “was indeed a coup attempt and nothing less than ‘treason,’” the book said.

He feared that Trump might be looking for a “Reichstag moment” and believed the attack “so unimagined and savage, [it] could be a dress rehearsal for something larger,” the authors wrote.

Milley’s spokesperson told Fox News that his office was not commenting on the book.

Question O’ The Day

Why Isn’t the Attack on Larry Elder the Biggest Story in America?

⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓

Applying Sun Tzu’s axioms, knowing what your enemy is up to is half the battle.

We thank this author, and the authors of the articles for self identifying and providing such excellent evidentiary material.

Does Expanding Gun Access Threaten US Stability?

Commentators have pointed to the recent uptick in gun violence to push for looser gun laws and greater access to weapons for self-defense.

But the authors of an essay collection published by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law argue that expanding access to guns will undermine safety, stability and democracy in the U.S.

Titled “Protests, Insurrection and the Second Amendment,” the 13 essays “probe the complicated relationship between guns and race, policing, domestic violence, and republican government,” writes Brennan Center fellow Eric Ruben.

The Crime Report spoke with the authors of three essays: Stanford University Law Professor John J. Donohue, Duke University Law Professor Darrell A. H. Miller and Cornell University Law Professor Sherry F. Colb.

The full collection — which includes contributions from 14 scholars — is available here.

Question O’ The Day

Was it “innocent” gain-of-function research, or was it intentional bioweapon work? And was the leak accidental, or deliberate?

Bear in mind that secret military programs often have nested cover stories, where when one is penetrated, it leads to a new one.
[and how well I know that technique]

Natural germ in “wet market” –> lab leak –> deliberate release?
Who knows?
That last may be impossible to determine, unless a Chinese defector spills the beans or something. One way to address this in the future is to ban gain-of-function research, so that if it happens you know it’s illicit. Too late for that in this case, of course, since U.S. taxpayers, through the NIH, were actually funding this research.