“People who object to weapons aren’t abolishing violence, they’re begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically ‘right.’
Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work.
Wear a gun to someone else’s house, you’re saying,
‘I’ll defend this home as if it were my own.’
When your guests see you carry a weapon, you’re telling them,
‘I’ll defend you as if you were my own family.’
And anyone who objects levels the deadliest insult possible:
‘I don’t trust you unless you’re rendered harmless’!”
–L. Neil Smith

DA declines charges in Hawthorne Street shooting, rules death justified self-defense

MEDFORD, Ore. — The Jackson County District Attorney’s Office has declined to file criminal charges in the November 2025 shooting death of a man on Hawthorne Street, ruling the killing was an act of justified self-defense during a violent home invasion.

District Attorney Patrick Green said his office will not prosecute David Rogers, 36, in the death of Martin Uriel Jimenez Jr., 32, who was shot in the early morning hours of Nov. 2, 2025.

Medford police were called to an apartment complex around 3:30 a.m. after reports of gunshots. While officers were en route, resident Thomas Owens, 72, reported that a man had broken into his apartment and tried to kill him.

Officers found Jimenez dead in the doorway of Owens’ apartment. Police said the door had been forced open and Owens had visible injuries, including facial bleeding and bruising. He was treated at the scene by Mercy Flights.

Rogers, a neighbor, told police he intervened after seeing Jimenez break into Owens’ apartment and hearing Owens call for help.

Investigators said Rogers saw Jimenez attacking Owens and fired three shots after Jimenez advanced toward him and reached for his gun.

The district attorney said evidence shows Rogers was not the initial aggressor and reasonably believed Jimenez was about to use deadly force, making the shooting legally justified under Oregon law.

Investigators determined Jimenez was intoxicated at the time and had been drinking heavily at a nearby residence before leaving on foot.

Police said it remains unclear why he entered Owens’ apartment.

Holy Moleeds. Yeah, an inside job.

So, That’s How Delta Force Was Able to Capture Maduro So Easily

Sure, it’s Delta Force, and they don’t screw around, but you cannot fly blind into a situation, right? That’s obvious. So, even though our special forces were facing the equivalent of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Caracas, Venezuela, they needed on-the-ground intelligence, and they got it. CIA was able to obtain an asset who gave minute details about Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s movements.

They knew exactly where he was when the airstrikes began on January 3. Langley also had a team on the ground since August. Delta Force built a replica of the safehouse and practiced before the mission. They carried out Maduro like a dog (via Reuters):

Elite U.S. troops, including the Army’s Delta Force, created an exact replica of Maduro’s safe house and practiced how they would enter the strongly fortified residence.

The CIA had a small team on the ground starting in August who were able to provide insight into Maduro’s pattern of life that made grabbing him seamless, according to one source familiar with the matter.

Two other sources told Reuters the intelligence agency also had an asset close to Maduro who would monitor his movements and was poised to pinpoint his exact location as the operation unfolded.

With the pieces in place, Trump approved the operation four days ago, but military and intelligence planners suggested he wait for better weather and less cloud cover. At 10:46 p.m. EST on Friday, Trump gave the final go ahead for what would be known as Operation Absolute Resolve, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine told reporters.

Trump, surrounded by his advisers at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, watched a live stream of the events.

How the hours-long operation unfolded is based on interviews with four sources familiar with the matter and details Trump himself has revealed.

“I’ve done some pretty good ones, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” Trump said on Fox News just hours after the mission was completed.

Well, there are reports of air attacks in several locations in and around Caracas, Venezuela as well as reports of actual ‘boots on the ground’ what with transport helicopters being seen in the air.

Something, something; Old Chinese curses

Seriously? Kathy Hochul Orders One World Trade Center Lit in Honor of Muslim American Heritage Month

Just hours after New York City’s first Muslim-American Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, was sworn in, Empire State Gov. Kathy Hochul declared January to be “Muslim American Heritage Month” and ordered One World Trade Center and 15 other state landmarks to be bathed in green light to celebrate “the heritage and culture of Muslim Americans.”

Many on social media were quick to point out that we can’t illuminate the Twin Towers because they are no longer on the skyline after the horrific 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks, which took down the buildings and killed almost 3,000 innocents. September 11, as all Americans know, was carried out by 19 hijackers affiliated with the Islamist extremist group led by the late Osama bin Laden.

But 9/11 was evidently not on Hochul’s mind Friday evening:

The governor also released a statement vowing to protect Muslims from Islamophobia. She did not mention a report released Monday from the NYPD, which showed that Jews were targeted more than all other minority groups combined in the Big Apple in 2024, and combined for more than 54 percent of all hate crimes in the city.

Hochul:

“Home to the largest Muslim American population in the nation, New York is proud to join in this month-long celebration, recognizing the values, faith and traditions of our Muslim American communities,” Hochul said in a statement.

“New York remains committed to being a beacon of hope, tolerance, and inclusivity that celebrates the diversity of its Muslim American population and protects them from Islamophobia, hate, bias, and harm.”

Meanwhile, Mamdani, in one of his first acts in office, rescinded several executive orders from his predecessor, Eric Adams, that targeted antisemitism. The state of Israel and many Jewish organizations were outraged.

Although local Muslim politicians and groups were pleased with the Appreciation Month and the green lights, there was plenty of negative reaction on social media as well. One conservative author wrote, “The betrayal of the nation’s veterans continues.” Another blistered:

Lighting One World Trade Center green for Muslim American Heritage Month—on the site where al-Qaeda terrorists murdered 3,000 in the name of radical Islam—is a profound insult to 9/11 victims, survivors, and first responders. Tone-deaf doesn’t begin to cover it.

Interesting — I wonder why Hochul waited till 6:49 p.m. to post the move, which is almost certain to provoke reactions from many? If you’re going to be bold, why not be bold in the sunlight of the day?

President Donald Trump has not weighed in as of this hour, but I’m betting he will at some point.

BLUF
If Donald Trump and the mostly useless GOP Congress really want to actually make America great again, starting in 2026 they will turn their metaphorical guns and scalpels on the government itself and begin to bring back the primary idea that made America great in the first place:  Limited government. Without that, everything else is little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and the outcome will be the same.

The Very Revolutionary United States Constitution
The American revolution was a revolution, but it wasn’t revolutionary; what was revolutionary was the United States Constitution.

During college one of my professors in Political Philosophy said that the only real revolutions in modern Western civilization were the French and the Russian.  He was right, but I didn’t quite get it at the time.  I do now.

While the American revolution was ostensibly a revolution, in reality it was more of a divorce where the kids kept the same parents, they just lived with their Mom.  Their Dad was still their Dad, but they didn’t have much to do with him. In contrast, the French and Russian revolutions were basically the children taking their parents out back and shooting them
.

The American revolution was a revolution, but it wasn’t revolutionary. But what was revolutionary was the United States Constitution.

For the first time in history, a government was formed by a written constitution that described rights that were inherent from God (as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the constitution of most of the original 13 states) upon which the government could not impede.  What’s more, the entire thing was created for the specific purpose of limiting the power of government. This was made clear by the Bill of Rights, which—beginning with Massachusetts—became the quid pro quo for getting the Constitution ratified. And in case anyone missed the point, the last of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights states “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.”

That was every bit as revolutionary as the French sending King Louis XVI to the guillotine or the Bolsheviks shooting Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family in a basement.  But what’s more, unlike those other two revolutions, the American Constitution didn’t result in rivers of blood and a collapse of society.  On the contrary, it set the American experiment on its slow but methodical march to revolutionize the world and unleash the potential of man.

The American experiment worked
 for almost 200 years.  Of course it didn’t work perfectly for everyone all the time, nor for some people any of the time, but for the overwhelming majority of people who have lived in the United States over the course of its existence, life has been better here than almost any other place on Earth.

But that experiment is in the process of collapsing. Why?  Simple.  Because the nation that was birthed with a constitution specifically geared toward limiting government power has metastasized into a nation where the government controls virtually everything.

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In keeping Americans ill-educated, ill-informed and constitutionally ignorant, the education establishment has been the politician’s major and most faithful partner. It is in this sense that American education can be deemed a success.
– Walter E. Williams

California ban on open-carry firearms is unconstitutional, appeals panel rules

A federal appellate court ruled Friday that California’s ban on openly carrying a firearm throughout most of the state is unconstitutional.

The decision from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals leaned heavily on the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a New York state law regulating concealed weapons. That ruling worried lawmakers in California at the time – including the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who said the 6-to-3 Supreme Court decision meant “more people will carry guns in bars, in shopping malls, in churches, hospitals, movie theaters, even schools.”

“We are committed to defending California’s commonsense gun laws,” according to a written statement from the office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta in response to Friday’s appellate court ruling. “We are reviewing the opinion and considering all options.”

The 9th Circuit appellate decision stemmed from a civil rights lawsuit filed by Mark Baird of Siskiyou County. Baird argued in Sacramento federal court that he wished to openly carry a firearm for self-defense throughout California, but the state’s ban made it illegal in counties with populations exceeding 200,000 residents.

U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, who wrote the appellate panel’s opinion, said the most recent Census shows that California counties with more than 200,000 residents are home to roughly 95% of the state’s population. There are 28 of California’s 58 counties have a population above the threshold, accounting for 37.3 million residents. Only 5% of California’s population for whom open carry is not outright banned, VanDyke said, are purportedly able to apply for a license that would allow them to open carry in just their counties.

VanDyke said openly carrying a gun has been the default manner of lawful carry for firearms for most of American history. When applying the standard set in the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, VanDyke said the historical record makes unmistakably plain that open carry is part of this Nation’s history and tradition.”

VanDyke, appointed in 2019 by President Donald Trump, said open carry remains the norm across the country with more than 30 states that generally allow open carry to this day, including states with significant urban populations.

“Similarly, for the first 162 years of its history open carry was a largely unremarkable part of daily life in California,” VanDyke wrote. “From 1850, when California first became a state, until the Mulford Act of 1967, public carry of firearms in California (open or concealed) was entirely unregulated. And when California first deviated (or considered deviating) from this practice, its reasons for doing so were less than morally exemplary.”

U.S. Circuit Judge N. Randy Smith provided a partial dissenting opinion, arguing that California’s ban complied with the 2022 Supreme Court decision. Smith, who was appointed in 2007 by former President George W. Bush, said his colleagues “got this case half right” but misread the Supreme Court’s ruling on the New York state gun law.

VanDyke was joined in his opinion by another Trump appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Kenneth K. Lee, also appointed by Trump in 2019. VanDyke said California law recognizes two methods to carry a firearm in public: concealed, such as hidden under a shirt and not visible to others, and open carry, such as visible in a holster and exposed to public view.

“Regardless of how a firearm is carried in California – concealed or openly – as a general matter it is unlawful under California law to publicly carry a firearm without a license to do so,” VanDyke wrote. “The reality is that no one in California can open carry – with or without a permit – in the counties where 95% of Californians live. Nor can the 95% of Californians who live in those urban counties get any open-carry permit at all, even to carry openly in one of California’s rural counties.”

For now, the ban remains in place and the case was remanded to Sacramento federal court with instructions to rule in favor of Baird on the open-carry ban. Bonta and his office have the option to request an en banc review from the full 9th Circuit.

Man Fought off a Mountain Lion Weeks Before a Suspected Fatal Colorado Attack
A suspected deadly mountain lion attack on New Year’s Day that killed a woman hiking alone was preceded by another harrowing encounter in the same area

A solo hiker who authorities believe was killed by a mountain lion on a remote Colorado trail on New Year’s Day was not the first person to encounter one of the predators in the area in recent weeks.

Gary Messina said he was running along the same trail on a dark November morning when his headlamp caught the gleam of two eyes in the nearby brush. Messina used his phone to snap a quick photo before a mountain lion rushed him.

Messina said he threw the phone at the animal, kicked dirt and yelled as the lion kept trying to circle behind him. After a couple of harrowing minutes he broke a bat-sized stick off a downed log, hit the lion in the head with it and it ran off, he said.

The woman whose body was found Thursday on the same Crosier Mountain trail had “wounds consistent with a mountain lion attack,” said Kara Van Hoose with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. An autopsy is scheduled for next week, said Rafael Moreno with the Larimer County Coroner’s Office.

Prior warnings and the hunt for a culprit

Wildlife officials late Thursday tracked down and killed two mountain lions in the area — one at the scene and another nearby. A necropsy will help determine if either or both of those animals attacked the woman and whether they had neurological diseases such as rabies or avian flu.

A search for a third mountain lion reported in the area was ongoing Friday, Van Hoose said. Nearby trails remained closed while the hunt continued. Van Hoose said circumstances would dictate whether that lion is also killed.

Based on the aggressiveness of the animal that attacked him on Nov. 11, Messina suspects it could be the same one that killed the woman on New Year’s Day.

“I had to fight it off because it was basically trying to maul me,” Messina told The Associated Press. “I was scared for my life and I wasn’t able to escape. I tried backing up and it would try to lunge at me.”

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“The individual is nothing; the collective is everything.”
– Stalin

“The interests of the individual must be subordinated to the interests of the collective.”
– Mao

“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
– Mussolini

“We’ll replace rugged individualism with collectivism.”
– Mamdani

Don’t be afraid to call out objective evil when you hear it.
– Tommy Robinson

For Such a Time As This in Iran

The words of Esther 4:14 have never been more relevant. “And who knows if you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

The words were first spoken in Persia, by Mordechai to Queen Esther, imploring her to intervene with her husband, the King, to reverse the death decree against the Jewish people, not just in Persia but throughout more than 100 provinces under its empire.

In recent years, the verse has become widely used to motivate others to take action, to follow the path of Esther who risked her life to do so, and specifically among Christians to stand with Israel and the Jewish people. For such a time as this. But today the words have never been more important, not just for these important reasons but because they speak to modern Iran and Iranians, Persia, from a Jewish leader in ancient Persia.

“For such a time as this” is a call to action being echoed in different words across Iran today. Massive, even unprecedented protests have ignited tens of thousands of Iranians against the evil Islamic regime that hijacked Iran in 1979. Iranians know this may be the best opportunity since then to unshackle themselves,

Listen to their modern words echoing Mordechai’s charge to Esther in what the protesters are chanting.

My friend Marziyeh Amirizadeh has updated me and the world on developments as they occur. She was born in Iran, where she experienced the evil misogyny of the Islamic regime firsthand. She was arrested and sentenced to death in 2009 because she converted to Christianity and refused to renounce her faith. She’s shared videos of Iranians chanting slogans calling for the restoration of the Pahlavi dynasty and the return of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.

“This is the final battle, Pahlavi will return.” “Reza Shah: May God bless your soul.” “O the king of Iran, please return to Iran.”

Parallel to chants of “Long live the Shah” Iranians have been chanting, “Death to (the) dictator” and “As long as the mullahs (Ayatollahs) are not buried, Iran is not (our) homeland.”

She has also shared that university students in Iran have joined the protests. This is significant because the Islamic revolution that brought the ayatollahs into power was largely led by students. This can be a corrective remedy, bringing down the Islamic regime that young people were fooled by two generations ago. Their chants are not just against the regime, but exposing three pillars of evil that prop up the regime. “Death to three corrupted groups, Mullahs (Ayatollahs), leftists (Reformists), Mojahed (MEK).”

In addition to calling for Pahlavi to return, protesters have addressed the corruptive global influence of the Islamic regime funding a wide-reaching terror network. “No Gaza, No Lebanon, my life for Iran.”

The latter is not just a charge to Iranians but also to the world. Of course, Israel has suffered the most from Iranian funding Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, but the regime’s tentacles spread much wider. It’s time for the world to stand up, once and for all, to bring down the Islamic regime, eviscerate one of the main sources of Islamic extremism, and bring us closer to the realization of President Trump’s resolution for 2026, “World peace.”

There is nothing more significant that can be done toward world peace than eliminating the global threats to peace posed by the Iranian regime. The future of the West and the entire world is at stake.

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