Category: Enemies Foreign and Domestic

Democracy in Decline: The Subversion of Rule of Law

A friend recently wrote me to offer a sharp formulation of a distinction I have often written about myself. Regular readers know that I am fond of distinguishing between “democracy”—a political arrangement in which the demos, the people, rule—and “Our Democracy™,” a counterfeit or masquerade of democracy in which not the people but an elite nomenklatura rule. To an increasing extent, I believe, the United States is gradually subsisting into the latter, with all the political, social, and moral deformations that such anxious oligarchical arrangements entail.

True enough, the United States was never really a democracy—a form of government, as James Madison observed in Federalist 10, that tended to be “as short in its life as it is violent in its death.” Rather, the United States was, from the beginning, a democratic republic. Ultimately, the people were sovereign—that was the point of the phrase “We the People.” But their sovereignty was mediated through the agency of representation. The point of my distinction, however, still holds. The Founders bequeathed us a democratic republic and a Constitution whose chief purpose was to define and limit the power of government. Their modern successors have inhabited that political dispensation, slyly perverting and emptying it out of its original signification while maintaining the names and rituals of the original.

If you believe that the words “perverting” and “emptying it out of its original signification” are extreme, I invite you to contemplate the tenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” To what extent is the letter or spirit of that instruction followed today?

The answer is: not at all. What was originally a document designed to limit government and protect people from its coercive intervention has mutated into a reliquary containing the desiccated remains of a once-potent, now mostly quaint and antique admonition.

Which brings me back to my friend’s crisply formulated distinction. There are, he noted, two forms of law: rule of law and rule by law. The first, he wrote, the rule of law, “is based upon neutral rules that are in place and applicable to all without regard to political belief or status, economic class, religion, etc. That is or was the aim of classical liberal politics—to erect a limited system of laws applied to all as a foundation for liberty.” That’s precisely what the Framers intended to bequeath us.

The alternative, rule by law, describes the antithesis. Indeed, it is

a system of rules applied at the discretion of ruling elites, who exempt themselves and allies from those rules, and apply them to others on an arbitrary basis. The rule by law comes into play when the state has evolved into a large-scale enterprise and has formulated laws in scale and number that are capture citizens in a web of rules. In that circumstance, it is not difficulty to enforce rule by law, where the laws or rules can be applied politically or arbitrarily.

Continue reading “”

Democrat Cori Bush Funnels Another $17,500 in Campaign Cash to Husband, Docs Show

Radical Democrat Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) has funneled another big chunk of campaign cash to her husband, bringing the total to $120,000 so far, new filings have revealed.

Bush paid her husband an additional $17,500 from her committee in recent months.

The payments are for private security for the congresswoman, who leads the “defund the police” movement and campaigns for fewer police officers to protect the public.

The Democrat “Squad” member’s new filings, submitted to the Federal Election Commission late Wednesday night, show that her campaign made seven additional payments for $2,500 each to her husband, Cortney Merritts.

The payments were made between October 1 and December 31.

The new payments maintained the steady flow of checks to her husband over the past two years.

After it emerged that Bush and Merritts secretly married in February 2023, her office admitted they had been together since before she entered office in 2021.

Merritts initially gathered money for security services starting in January 2022.

However, Bush’s committee switched their description to “wage expenses” in April 2023 as they continued to bring headaches to the campaign.

The latest payments have emerged as the Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into Bush earlier this week over the use of campaign funds, as Slay News reported.

Merritts has now collected $120,000 from Bush’s campaign coffers.

Politicians can pay family members from their committees as long as they provide “bona fide” services at fair market value.

He pocketed the money as Bush’s campaign simultaneously spent significantly more with St. Louis-based companies such as PEACE Security for private detail.

She’s spent over $770,000 on private security services, despite demanding fewer police officers to protect the American people.

Meanwhile, Merritts, whose online accounts and posts have indicated he worked at a railroad company for years before starting a moving company, did not have a private security license as of late February 2023.

He also did not appear in a Washington, D.C., database of licensed security specialists.

The ordeal triggered at least two complaints from watchdog groups in the following weeks.

The first complaint, filed to the FEC in March 2023 by the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, is still pending.

The ethics committee has since cleared Bush in a second complaint from the Committee to Defeat the President.

In October, Merrits was confronted by a Fox News reporter as the couple left a D.C. fundraiser for California Democrat candidate Derek Marshall.

During the exchange, Merritts appeared to backtrack about his role on the campaign.

“I have a question for you,” the reporter said.

“What’s your role on the campaign right now?”

“I don’t have a role in the campaign, man,” Merritts responded.

“You don’t have a role at all?” the reporter countered.

“They were reporting you had wages on the campaign for security, and then it was a general wage.

“I was just wondering what you’ve been doing on the campaign?”

“Yeah, I mean you can Google what it is,” Merritts replied.

“You can also Google what happened with the FEC report came back 5-0, that it was all completely above board.”

“So you’re not doing any more work with her campaign?” the reporter asked.

“Am I doing work with the campaign?” Merrits said.

“Obviously, I am. I’m still [inaudible], right?”

“You’re still a part of it?” the report pressed.

“Am I still employed with it? Yes, so obviously, I’m going to work with it,” Merritts said.

“What’s this whole ‘gotcha’ s—? I’m not a politician, man, so ask me a question, man-to-man, and I’ll answer.

“So what’s your question?”

“That was it, about the campaign,” the reporter responded.

“I’m still in the campaign; I still do security with the campaign,” Merritts said before getting into the car with Bush.

“Have a good night, man. Be safe.”

Earlier this week, Bush confirmed the Justice Department is investigating her campaign spending on security services and said her office is “fully cooperating.”

“Since before I was sworn into office, I have endured relentless threats to my physical safety and life,” Bush said in a Tuesday statement.

“As a rank-and-file member of Congress, I am not entitled to personal protection by the House, and instead have used campaign funds as permissible to retain security services.”

“These frivolous complaints have resulted in a number of investigations, some of which are still ongoing,” Bush said.

“The Federal Election Commission and the House Committee on Ethics are currently reviewing the matter, as is the Department of Justice.

“We are fully cooperating in all of these pending investigations.”

Sounds a lot like ‘Giving Aid and Comfort’………

Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin Nails Biden and Austin on Telegraphing to the Iranians About Strike Locations

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such an incompetent group in my lifetime as the Biden administration.

We were given fair warning about Joe Biden from Obama’s Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. In his 2014 memoir, Gates said the then-vice president had “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”  Now make that five decades, and add he’s been wrong about virtually every major foreign policy issue so far that he’s faced during his presidency. Gates doubled down on those claims during a 2021 interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” saying, “I think he’s gotten a lot wrong,” specifically mentioning the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Now we’re faced with yet another situation due to Biden’s bad foreign policy, this time with Iran and the militants they use to fight us. There have been more than 160 attacks on U.S. forces or assets, with three people killed now and dozens injured over those assaults, some with possible traumatic brain injuries. Yet, the Biden response has been largely impotent and has not cowed Iran or the militants.

Not only hasn’t Biden responded yet to the attack on the troops in Jordan by Kataib Hezbollah in which 3 American troops were killed and more than 30 were injured, but Biden’s team has listed possible targets in such detail as to raise questions about telegraphing to the enemy.

Report: Biden May Take Action As Early As Tonight Re: Iran – Officials Even List Possible Options

Joe Biden’s Stupid Plan to Avenge Fallen US Troops: Tell Iran We’re Coming, Then Provide the Target List

Since we wrote those stories, they’ve given out even more information, saying they were going to launch a series of attacks for days against targets — including Iranian personnel and facilities — inside Iraq and Syria.

As Fox News’ chief national security correspondent at the Pentagon Jennifer Griffin noted, now the IRGC commanders in those areas have left and gone into hiding.

 “The Pentagon usually does not telegraph so much if it wants the element of surprise,” she said. Yes, if. So why are they telegraphing so much now? Do they want the IRGC to flee so it looks like they’re hitting something consequential even though the IRGC leaders will be gone?

Continue reading “”

Whistleblowers Allege ATF Is Drafting Rule That Could Effectively Ban Private Firearm Sales

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is working on a rule that could effectively ban the sale of firearms between private individuals, agency whistleblowers told a watchdog group.

Empower Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog representing one of the Hunter Biden Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers, says that ATF whistleblowers informed it of a 1,300-page document being drafted by the agency that would require background checks for all firearm sales, including those between two private individuals. The new rule would “effectively ban private sales of firearms from one citizen to another,” according to a press release from Empower Oversight.

Empower Oversight submitted a records request to the Department of Justice seeking more information about the rule.

The rule would “violate the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution,” according to Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt. Leavitt also said the rule would “circumvent the separation of powers in the Constitution.”

Empower Oversight points out that the ATF’s rule could redefine individuals who occasionally sell guns as being “engaged in the business of dealing in firearms,” thus requiring them to acquire a Federal Firearms Licensee and run background checks on whoever they’re selling to.

In the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986, Congress established that the term “engaged in the business” of selling guns “shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby.”

Leavitt pointed out that the courts would likely strike down the rule and argued that it is likely a ploy to fire up the Democratic base during an election year.

Private background checks are popular with voters, according to polling data.

A poll conducted by Morning Consult and Politico in 2022 found that 81% of registered voters supported background checks at gun shows and for private transfers.

Support for background checks is lower among Republicans than among Democrats. A 2021 Morning Consult and Politico poll found that 77% of Democrats supported background checks for all gun purchases, compared to just 53% of Republicans.

While Americans are open to background checks, banning certain kinds of firearms is unpopular among Americans.

Only 27% of Americans supported banning handgun ownership as of October 2023, according to Gallup. An April 2023 poll conducted by Monmouth University found that more Americans opposed an “assault weapons” ban than supported it.

The Biden administration has consistently pushed for stricter gun laws.

President Joe Biden pushed a rule that forced people who owned pistols with arm braces to register them as short-barreled rifles, Politico reported. Pistol braces remain legal as states and gun rights groups sue the ATF over the rule.

Registering a short-barreled rifle with the ATF carries a cost of $200. The National Firearms Act, the law requiring the registration of short-barreled rifles, was last updated in 1986.

Short-barreled rifles are illegal in some states.

Biden also banned the sale of firearm parts lacking serial numbers, which can be used to construct “ghost guns,” and has continuously pushed for a so-called assault weapons ban, according to Fox News Digital.

Some gun rights groups are ready to fight the ATF’s rule should it come to fruition.

“The records of these sales will eventually end up in the ATF’s firearm registry database,” director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America (GOA) Aidan Johnston told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The ATF maintains a registry of firearms sales, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Johnston said GOA is “actively preparing to take legal action if and when Joe Biden’s administration releases their rule change.”

Empower Oversight and the ATF did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

New Mexico Senator Can’t Defend Waiting Period Bill, Predicts SCOTUS Will Reverse Itself on Bruen Instead

Continue reading “”

NSA finally admits to spying on Americans by purchasing sensitive data. Violating Americans’ privacy “not just unethical but illegal,” senator says.

The National Security Agency (NSA) has admitted to buying records from data brokers detailing which websites and apps Americans use, US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) revealed Thursday.

This news follows Wyden’s push last year that forced the FBI to admit that it was also buying Americans’ sensitive data. Now, the senator is calling on all intelligence agencies to “stop buying personal data from Americans that has been obtained illegally by data brokers.”

“The US government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans’ privacy are not just unethical but illegal,” Wyden said in a letter to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines. “To that end, I request that you adopt a policy that, going forward,” intelligence agencies “may only purchase data about Americans that meets the standard for legal data sales established by the FTC.”

Wyden suggested that the intelligence community might be helping data brokers violate an FTC order requiring that Americans are provided “clear and conspicuous” disclosures and give informed consent before their data can be sold to third parties. In the seven years that Wyden has been investigating data brokers, he said that he has not been made “aware of any company that provides such a warning to users before collecting their data.”

The FTC’s order came after reaching a settlement with a data broker called X-Mode, which admitted to selling sensitive location data without user consent and even to selling data after users revoked consent.

In his letter, Wyden referred to this order as the FTC outlining “new rules,” but that’s not exactly what happened. Instead of issuing rules, FTC settlements often serve as “common law,” signaling to marketplaces which practices violate laws like the FTC Act.

According to the FTC’s analysis of the order on its site, X-Mode violated the FTC Act by “unfairly selling sensitive data, unfairly failing to honor consumers’ privacy choices, unfairly collecting and using consumer location data, unfairly collecting and using consumer location data without consent verification, unfairly categorizing consumers based on sensitive characteristics for marketing purposes, deceptively failing to disclose use of location data, and providing the means and instrumentalities to engage in deceptive acts or practices.”

The FTC declined to comment on whether the order also applies to data purchases by intelligence agencies. In defining “location data,” the FTC order seems to carve out exceptions for any data collected outside the US and used for either “security purposes” or “national security purposes conducted by federal agencies or other federal entities.”

Continue reading “”

New Mexico House Committee Moves 3 Gun Bills Forward


Nice PID

Gun control legislation continued to make headway in the Legislature Thursday, with three key bills getting through a House committee as Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham proclaimed she remains confident the controversial measures will eventually land on her desk.

One bill would limit magazine sizes and ban some types of semiautomatic rifles; one would raise the age to legally buy or possess an automatic or semiautomatic firearm from 18 to 21; and one would impose a 14-day waiting period on gun purchases. All three advanced out of the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee on 4-2 party-line votes and now head to House Judiciary.

Thursday’s lengthy hearing — almost six hours in all — got emotional at times, with some teen students expressing fear about being the victims of gun violence and some gun rights advocates striking a defiant tone. Supporters of the bills said the measures will save lives in a culture enveloped in gun violence, while opponents said they violate the constitutional right to keep and bear arms and will not stop criminals who illegally access guns from committing gun violence.

Continue reading “”

Analysis of New Mexico Gun Ban Bill Predicts Widespread Defiance

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s proposed ban on gas-operated semi-automatic firearms gets its first committee hearing today with the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee set to consider HB 137, and the bill is already drawing some red flags from the New Mexico Attorney General’s office as well as the Law Offices of the Public Defender.

A fiscal impact report prepared by the Legislative Finance Committee released on Wednesday details some of the concerns over the bill, including the prediction from both the AG’s office and the Administrative Office of the Courts that the bill would be subject to a costly legal challenge if it’s signed into law. According to the Legislative Finance Committee, taxpayers can be expected to fork over almost half a million dollars for Attorney General Raul Torrez to defend the law in court, though it’s unclear if the LFC is  accounting for the cost of lawsuits filed in both federal and state court. In addition to the legal bills, the fiscal analysis estimates it will take at least $200,000 each year for the Attorney General to enforce the measure if it takes effect.

NMAG advises, to perform the tasks HB137 assigns to it, it will need highly specialized technical staff to ensure its listing of applicable weapons is up to date, given constant updates to firearms and accessories. It will require a ballistics and firearms expert on staff to handle its responsibilities under the act and to coordinate with DPS and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives, at approximately $115 thousand per year, plus benefits, plus an investigator at approximately $85 thousand per year, plus benefits.

The Law Offices of the Public Defender (LOPD) expresses concern over potential widespread noncompliance should HB137 be enacted, leading to an unquantifiable increase in workload and expenses. LFC staff estimates this potential cost as indeterminate but minimal, which likely can be absorbed within its current budget.

While the public defender’s office may be able to absorb the cost of defending individuals charged with violating Grisham’s gun ban, the LFC predicts that the measure will also lead to a little more spending on incarceration if it’s enacted.

Continue reading “”

OPINION: The true intent of the Democrats’ anti-militia bill is to infringe on firearm training
This bill paints a target on the back of every law-abiding gun owner.

As a law-abiding citizen of this great country, I can form my own militia if I so choose, appoint myself colonel, enlist my friends as privates or PFCs, and we can run around the woods until we all keel over from heatstroke or heart attacks — whatever comes first. It’s all perfectly legal, at least for now.

We have the right to criticize our government. We can sit around the campfire at our secret militia base nursing our sore muscles and fire ant bites and talk about how Joe walks like a penguin, or how it would take Kamala a good 20 minutes just to tell you you’re on fire. It’s all perfectly legal and protected speech, at least for now.

We have the right to train with our firearms. We can draw from a holster, shoot while moving, practice CQB and send as much lead downrange as our bank accounts will allow. It’s all perfectly legal conduct, at least for now.

However, a new bill making its way through Congress known as the “Preventing Private Paramilitary Activity Act of 2024,” would make all of this illegal or at least suspicious enough to draw scrutiny from the feds. More importantly, it would paint a target on the back of every single American gun owner, which is the actual intent of this ill-conceived and extremely unconstitutional legislation.

To be clear, if Joe Biden ever signs this bill, the second he puts down his crayon the feds will flock to local gun ranges in numbers that will make it nearly impossible for actual members to find a place just to park. This bill would give them license to investigate anyone who trains with a gun in order to determine whether they’re a militia member — and don’t think for a second that they won’t.

The FBI recently investigated law-abiding Americans whose sole transgression was shopping at a Cabela’s or a DICK’s Sporting Goods. Evidently, the FBI, the country’s so-called premier law enforcement agency, wasn’t aware DICK’s stopped selling guns and ammunition eons ago. Nowadays, the most dangerous thing on their shelves is a pickleball paddle.

When the Framers wrote the Second Amendment, militia membership was not only encouraged, it was required. All able-bodied men were instructed to own a firearm, powder and shot and to keep them clean and serviceable in the event they were ever needed. Now, under the guise that it might be militia-related, a handful of lawmakers are trying to criminalize firearm training — especially anything tactical. In my humble opinion, it is just another step toward their ultimate goal of total civilian disarmament.

Continue reading “”

Leave The Pews

College campuses across the country were erupting in Jew-hating outbursts, and parents were rightly worried about their Jewish college-aged kids caught up in the frenzy of hate. On Facebook, a group called Mothers Against College Antisemitism (M.A.C.A.) was founded and grew quickly to over 50,000 members. They shared information, emailed, called, and signed petitions. They stood united against the oldest hatred rearing its head again.

But just as fast, fissures formed. The cudgel of DEI – that is, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies that had been used against Jewish students – was the subject of feverish debate. Sure, the policies were bad for Jews, but weren’t we all good liberals after all? Shouldn’t that take precedence here? People earnestly wondered whether other minority groups would be mad at them if they fought to end DEI instead of simply fighting to get Jews included in the special identity groups recognized by the absurd system.

It wasn’t just DEI, either. When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a plan to fast-track Jewish students who were feeling unsafe in their own universities who wanted to transfer to Florida colleges where he pledged they would be protected, commenters in the group warned not to accept his kindness as he was on the wrong political side.

What became clear within that Facebook group and in so many other quarters since Oct. 7 is that much of secular Judaism, in both the Reform and Conservative branches, had become overtly political and not really religiously based at all. For many Jews, their religious identity had become so intertwined with leftist politics that they couldn’t force a separation even when they themselves were being targeted with their own bad ideas.

They pledged allyship to other groups in their tent, not to Judaism or Israel. This was evident in 2019 when daily attacks began on Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. Activist synagogues in places like Park Slope, which would have been at the forefront of marches had any other group come under attack, spent years staying silent about it. The attackers, often caught on video, were frequently other minorities, not MAGA hat-wearing white people as they would have hoped, so it was awkward to raise a fuss. Progressive politics was the code they followed, and Judaism was an identity umbrella like all the others in their movement. “As a Jew …” they would begin their lectures. As a Jew, they were rarely interested in Judaism.

The Oct. 7 attacks in Israel woke many in the diaspora from their comfortable slumber. Jews in America and elsewhere, traumatized already from images of Jewish children stolen from their homes and Jewish teenagers mowed down while dancing at a music festival, also had to contend with a huge outpouring of hate in their own countries.

For many liberal Jews, it was hard to ignore that it wasn’t the boogeyman white supremacists that they had been warned about their entire lives. No, it was their professors, their co-workers at the nonprofit, friends of their college-aged kids calling for an end to Israel and celebrating the murder of Jews. And these hateful marches were not happening in rural Alabama, in the places they were taught to fear, but mainly in the bluest of blue cities.

The political bedfellows they had slept beside were sharply opposed to Israel doing anything but simply accepting the attacks of Oct. 7.

By Oct. 8, their “allies” had already taken to the streets, some in grotesque glee over the slaughter of Jews in their homes, others tearing down posters of kidnapped children, to say Israel should just sit down and take it.

Continue reading “”

Business Insider: Very Dangerous to ‘Indoctrinate’ Young Americans That They Can Lawfully Possess a Firearm.

Get woke, go broke and learn to code. Such is the hard lesson over at Sports Illustrated after the announcement that all of their writers will soon become unemployed and the publication’s future remains “uncertain.”  Enter Business Insider.  nstead of writing about issues germane to commerce and ways to operate businesses more effectively and profitably, BI’s crack team of future coders have gone another direction.

Their latest pearl-clutching screed laments the dangers of teaching America’s young people that they have the God-given right to own a gun for lawful purposes, including self-defense.  Why, it’s almost as if BI interns took a press release from the “Brady” gun control org and decided to post it as headline news on their website.

Shudder.

From Business Insider:

The NRA wants your kid to love guns: programs promote 2nd Amendment absolutism to Kindergarteners on up

For the National Rifle Association, no American is too young to join in their absolutist defense of the Second Amendment — and that includes Kindergarteners.

Continue reading “”

BLUF
As stated, the policy recommendations presented by the authors are merely longstanding goals of the gun-ban industry, which would help propel them toward their ultimate goal of total civilian disarmament. The only difference is that now their policy recommendations are presented as necessary to “address the dangers of armed insurrectionism.”

Johns Hopkins: More Gun Control Needed to Prevent Second Civil War

By Lee Williams

A recent report by the Center for Gun Violence Solutions, which is part of Johns Hopkins (Michael) Bloomberg School of Public Health, conflates private gun ownership with armed insurrection in order to advocate for expanded gun control.

The 32-page study, which is titled “Defending Democracy: Addressing the Danger of Armed Insurrection,” not only revisits and revises the Jan. 6th protest — even though no protesters were armed and the only casualty was 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by Capitol Police — it resurrects actual armed insurrections from American history, such as Shays’ Rebellion of 1786, the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 and the American Civil War.

The three authors, who are all attorneys with a history of paid anti-gun activism, clumsily raise the insurrection boogeyman to push for additional regulations for carrying firearms, tactical training prohibitions, additional gun-free zones, expanded Red Flag laws and the repeal of state preemption statutes, which has long been a major goal of the gun ban industry. Preemption laws prevent local jurisdictions from enacting their own gun-control regulations, which would result in a patchwork of gun-free zones.

Their authors’ warped message is to be expected, especially when you consider the biased nature of their backgrounds, their sponsors, their sources and Michael Bloomberg’s school itself. (If you type “gun violence” into the school’s internal search engine it will yield more than 1,000 results.)

Continue reading “”

Davos: From Proto-Fascism to Post-Fascism

The political adage “If you cannot beat them, join them” has been well-known for centuries. So, the Left made one extra step and arrived at the “if you cannot beat them, lead them.” The Left has been trying (unsuccessfully) various methods to eliminate capitalists and private property.

Eventually, Leftists learned their lesson and decided to preside over private property instead of confiscating and spreading it around. Lenin used it (the so-called “New Economic Policy” in the Soviet Union 1921-1928), Mussolini used it, Hitler used it, and the Chinese used it. It blatantly violates a well-demarcated borderline between the government and the governed. However, by now, it is the cornerstone of globalism.

Note that the systematic and deliberate infiltration of the state into private economic affairs did not begin with Mussolini. In 17th-century France, for example, Chief Minister Cardinal Richelieu established state-sponsored and state-directed cartels. That resulted in public-private entities that were granted monopoly status in their respective fields. Richelieu aimed not to build a proto-fascist state per se; his cravings were more down-to-earth: France had a war to win. (The following definitions are used: “Socialism is a state of society where most wealth, either de jure or de facto, belongs to a government. Fascism is a form of Socialism where most wealth de facto but not de jure belongs to a government.)

Nevertheless, Cardinal Richelieu deployed state power to consolidate state power even more. His offer to the French merchants was one they could not refuse: guaranteed profits under the protection of the state or guaranteed imprisonment at the Bastille.

Continue reading “”

There’s Proof Biden’s Border Crisis Was Intentional… And It’s Being Covered Up.

As soon as it became clear that Joe Biden was going to be inaugurated as president, illegal immigrants started flooding our nation’s southern border.

During Donald Trump’s time in office, the number of illegal border crossings dropped dramatically—an undeniable result of Trump’s zero-tolerance policy for illegal immigrants. The border wall also worked well in stopping people from crossing illegally. But when Biden became president, things changed. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order halting border wall construction. As anyone could have predicted, illegal immigration skyrocketed after Biden took office. Within months of Biden taking office, the number of illegal border crossings shot up to six times more than what the Obama administration deemed to be crisis level, and it’s only gotten worse.

The White House has repeatedly sought to blame Republicans for the crisis that they don’t official recognize as a crisis, but confidential documents obtained by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) have pulled the curtain back on the border crisis, revealing that the historic influx of illegal immigrants is entirely by design.

According to a lawsuit by IRLI against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency ceased the 287(g) program under Joe Biden. The 287(g) program enables the removal of illegal migrants involved in serious criminal activities such as child rape, attempted murder, assault, carjacking, and other criminal offenses. The program gives local law enforcement the ability to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to capture illegal immigrants who have committed crimes and bring them to federal custody for arrest and deportation.

Sure sounds like a sound program, doesn’t it? To most people, yes. But to the Biden administration, not so much. The program was canceled in January 2021, soon after Joe Biden took office. The agency never provided any explanation for the decision.

“It is ironic that the Biden administration insists it is ‘the most transparent in history’ when, in reality, it has repeatedly attempted to change immigration laws without congressional authorization and then tried to hide the evidence of its misdeeds from the American public,” IRLI Director of Investigations Matt O’Brien explained.

Our sister site Townhall has more:

Flash forward to September 2023, the IRLI filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to ICE, requesting to obtain internal documents regarding the agency’s suspension of the 287(g) program. However, the government did not comply with a rule that they must reply within 20 days. ICE authorities have yet to respond.[…]

Twenty-three agreements between local law enforcement and ICE were set to go into effect before Biden suspended the program. However, they were canceled after the president took office. Currently, ICE has 287(g) relationships with nearly 140 law enforcement organizations nationwide.

“Increased cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement is critical and makes our communities safer, so of course, this administration wants to limit that effort,” IRLI Executive Director Dale Wilcox said in a statement. “There is no benefit to this country or its legal residents by keeping criminal aliens in the country, yet it appears to be a priority of this White House. The American people own those emails, yet we are not allowed to see them because it might embarrass this administration and expose their extremist agenda.”

NM governor unveils bills that ban assault weapons, raise age to possess a gun

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced support for several bills that she said were aimed at gun violence — banning assault weapons, raising the age to possess a gun and extending the waiting period to take it home.

“We have a gun problem, ladies and gentleman, and we have a public safety problem,” she said Friday , surrounded by public safety officials, law enforcement and the bills’ sponsors. “We have a responsibility to our children, to families, communities to solve it, and I believe this package goes a long way to do just that.”

One bill would ban assault weapons statewide, another would raise the minimum age to buy a gun, from 18 to 21 years old, and extend the waiting period to take one home from three to 14 days.

The bills were just a few of dozens related to public safety that will come up in the legislative session, which begins Tuesday.

At least three of the gun initiatives Lujan Grisham highlighted Friday reflected failed legislation from the Legislature’s last session. House Bill 101, which would have prohibited people from possessing assault weapons; House Bill 100, which would have established a 14-day waiting period for guns; and Senate Bill 116, which would have made it illegal for anyone younger than 21 to purchase an automatic or semi-automatic firearm, all died in committee.

Continue reading “”