Because Leftism has the same First Commandment, “Thou shalt not have any other gods before me.” https://t.co/0cuQ9y5iL3
— Sean D Sorrentino (@SorrentinoSean) March 25, 2024
Grandmother shoots man who allegedly broke into her home while fleeing police
Albuquerque police say a woman trying to protect her 4-year-old grandchild shot an auto theft suspect who twice broke into her home demanding car keys Friday night in the North Valley.
Joseph Rivera, 32, is charged with burglary, attempted burglary and auto theft.
Franchesca Perdue, an Albuquerque Police Department spokeswoman, said Rivera will be booked into jail after being released from the hospital, where he is being treated.
Rivera is currently on pretrial release in a July 2023 case in which he was found in a stolen vehicle with fentanyl, cocaine and heroin on him, according to court records. At the time, Rivera told police that “his personal life and caring for his family has been incredibly difficult” as he struggled with undiagnosed mental health issues and addiction.
A warrant was issued in that case when he didn’t show up for a court hearing in October.
On Friday, around 8 p.m., police tried to pull over a stolen truck near Central and Cypress and used spike strips to flatten the tires, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. Police said the driver fled with the truck “on its rims” and crashed it into a curb near Candelaria and Rio Grande NW.
The driver ran into the neighborhood, and police made a perimeter to search the area.
Around 9:30 p.m., a woman called 911 and said she had shot a man in her home after he “took her keys and said he did not want to go to jail,” according to the complaint. Officers detained the burglar — identified as Rivera — at the home and the woman handed police the gun she used to shoot him.
Police said the woman told them she was with her 4-year-old grandson when she heard someone inside the home. She said she confronted the man, who “appeared to be angry” and told her he “just needed her keys.”
The woman told police she thought about arming herself then but “did not know if she had time to use the weapon” if he also had a gun, according to the complaint. The woman said she took him to a “bowl of keys” in the kitchen and Rivera took several keys and left.
Police said the woman told them she then grabbed a gun and took her grandchild into the bedroom. She said she then found Rivera back in her hallway, “demanding more keys.”
The woman told police she pointed the gun at Rivera and “told him to get out” but he began approaching her instead, according to the complaint. She said she was scared “he would kill her or her grandchild” and she shot him once.
Police said the woman told them Rivera fell to the ground and began “crawling through the halls asking for water.” She said she “put pressure on his wound until police arrived.”
Medal of Honor Day, held annually on March 25, provides an opportunity for Medal of Honor Recipients and the public alike to pause and reflect on the importance of service and sacrifice.
National Medal of Honor Day was first observed on March 25, 1991, when Congress declared it as a day to “foster public appreciation and recognition of Medal of Honor Recipients.” The selected date has an important place in Medal of Honor history, as March 25, 1863, was the date of the first Medal of Honor presentation.
On that day, Private Jacob Parrott became the first Recipient of the Medal of Honor. Parrott’s was one of six Medals of Honor presented that day to the Andrews Raiders, a group who showed the values of courage, commitment, sacrifice, integrity, commitment and patriotism which are still important to Recipients of the Medal of Honor today.
March 25, 2024
This is not about Delta Force, but another of the Special Mission Units of the National Mission Force with the cover name (among others) the ‘Intelligence Support Activity’, called, when colors were assigned to task forces; Task Force Orange….
The Unit: My Life Fighting Terrorists as One of America’s Most Secret Military Operatives
by Adam Gamal, Kelly Kennedy, et al.
The first and only book to ever be written by a member of America’s most secret military unit―an explosive and unlikely story of immigration, service, and sacrifice.
Inside our military is a team of operators whose work is so secretive that the name of the unit itself is classified. Highly-trained in warfare, self-defense, infiltration, and deep surveillance, “the Unit,” as the Department of Defense has asked us to refer to it, has been responsible for preventing dozens of terrorist attacks in the Western world. Never before has a member of this unit shared their story—until now.
From Adam Gamal, one of the only Muslim Arab Americans to serve inside “the Unit,” comes an incisive firsthand account of our nation’s most secretive military group. When Adam arrived in the United States at the age of twenty, he spoke no English, and at 5’1” and 112 pounds, he was far from what you might expect of a soldier. But compelled into service by a debt he felt he owed to his new country, he rose through the ranks of the military to become one of its most elite and skilled operators.
With humor and humility, Adam shares stories of life-threatening injuries, of the camaraderie and capabilities of his team, and of the incredible missions―but also of the growth he experienced as he learned to understand his own moderate faith.
Enthralling and eye-opening, The Unit is at once a gripping account of the fight against terror, an urgent examination of the need for diversity, and an inside look at how America fights its battles abroad in the modern age of terrorism.
Whoever came up with "Didn't Earn It" as the description of DEI might have saved the world.
Normally, the clever alternative names people use to mock the other side's policy are nothing but grin-worthy.
This one could collapse the whole racist system. It's that strong.
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) March 21, 2024
.@WesleyHuntTX putting the famous talking point of the left, "weapon of war" to rest once & for all. pic.twitter.com/YKecsqyZeZ
— Kat™ The Hammer ⚒️ (@KatTheHammer1) March 23, 2024
March 24, 2024
Firing all my @TheBabylonBee writers for not coming up with this one before it became reality https://t.co/uvLjUV1N8D
— Kyle Mann (@The_Kyle_Mann) March 21, 2024
BLUF
This new office is another way for the Biden administration to make it appear as if it is doing something about violent crime, when it is actually making it harder for lawful gun owners to keep and bear arms.
HOT TAKES: Social Media Slices and Dices Biden’s New Anti-Gun Red Flag Center
The Biden administration is stepping up its war against the right to keep and bear arms. On Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Parkland, Florida, to stand on the graves of the children who perished in a tragic school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School six years ago.
The vice president spoke at the school, pushing for red flag laws and other restrictions on lawful gun ownership ostensibly to combat gun violence. During her visit, she touted a brand spanking new anti-gunner initiative: The National Extreme Risk Order Resource Center.
The new office is supposedly aimed at helping local and state law enforcement agencies enforce red flag laws to stop mass shootings and other forms of violence before they happen. Naturally, not everyone is on board with this anti-gun endeavor.
Gun Owners of America, a pro-gun rights organization, wrote a post on X, accusing the White House of weaponizing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, while taking a shot at Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) who supported the legislation.
Joe Biden has weaponized the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act AGAIN to create this National Gun Confiscation Center. ⁰⁰You can thank @JohnCornyn for selling out your Second Amendment.🤬 https://t.co/YimKyHmjoG
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) March 23, 2024
GIGO “Garbage IN, Garbage OUT” is an old computer programming acronym meaning that if you program garbage, what the computer will produce is garbage
Lott: AI Chatbots Have a Bias Towards Gun Control
I’m not a big fan of artificial intelligence to begin with, but I’m even more concerned after reading Dr. John Lott’s latest piece at RealClearPolitics. Lott decided to put the 20 AI chatbots that are publicly accessible to the test when it comes to talking about crime and gun control, and found that the vast majority of them exhibited a liberal bias on the issue.
Lott queried the chatbots with a series of 16 questions ranging from “Do higher arrest and conviction rates and longer prison sentences deter crime” to “Do gun buybacks save lives”, and discovered that, while the chatbots gave a wide variety of answers, they almost always fell on the anti-2A side of the gun control debate.
Only Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbots gave conservative responses on crime, but even these programs were consistently liberal on gun control issues. Bing is the least liberal chatbot on gun control. The French AI chatbot Mistral is the only one that is, on average, neutral in its answers.
Google’s Gemini “strongly disagrees” that the death penalty deters crime. It claims that many murders are irrational and impulsive and cites a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report claiming there was “no conclusive evidence” of deterrence. But the Academy reaches that non-conclusion in virtually all its reports, and simply calls for more federal research funding. None of the AI programs reference the inconclusive NAS reports on gun control laws.The left-wing bias is even worse on gun control. Only one gun control question (whether gun buybacks lower crime) shows even a slightly average conservative response (2.22). On the other hand, the questions eliciting the most liberal responses are background checks on private transfers of guns (0.83), gunlock requirements (0.89), and Red Flag confiscation laws (0.89). For background checks on private transfers, all the answers express agreement (15) or strong agreement (3) (see Table 3). Similarly, all the chatbots either agree or strongly agree that mandatory gunlocks and Red Flag laws save lives.
There is no mention that mandatory gunlock laws may make it more difficult for people to protect their families. Or that civil commitment laws allow judges many more options to deal with people than Red Flag laws, and they do so without trampling on civil rights protections.
Lott’s piece made me curious, so I tried a brief experiment of my own; asking both Bing AI and Google Gemini if an AR-15 is an effective firearm for self-defense. Google Gemini’s response was “I’m a text-based AI, and that is outside of my capabilities,” but Bing’s Co-Pilot actually gave a decent response:
An Irish society, an unpaid loan and the hypocrisy of Letitia James
To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, here is a tale of financial shenanigans at the American Irish Historical Society, in which Trump-deranged New York Attorney General Letitia James is hoist by her own petard.
It involves a grand old building on Fifth Avenue, an unpaid loan, a fading family dynasty, a James Joyce theatrical production which almost ended in fisticuffs, and hypocrisy from the AG as obvious as a glass of green beer.
It all began when James Doyle, a wealthy Georgia businessman with a love of his Irish roots, joined the board of the nonprofit society, whose crown jewel is a rare Gilded Age mansion at 991 Fifth Ave., right across from Central Park and the Met.
Over the years, financial mismanagement and misfortune had befallen the society, and it was facing foreclosure. So in 2017, the board turned to Doyle for a $3 million loan, structured like a private mortgage. He was told that the Beaux-Arts townhouse was worth $80 million that included valuable air rights.
However, the society only made a few payments and Doyle soon found things weren’t quite as they seemed.
Cahill, a tropical disease specialist said to have treated Pope John Paul II after he was shot, reportedly raised the money to renovate the mansion to its former glory when he took over in the 1970s. A stocky man with bushy white eyebrows, he would dress each year in morning coat and Irish tri-color sash to preside over the St. Patrick’s Day parade from its Fifth Avenue balcony. He held a grand annual gala where he would hand out gold medals to the great and the good.
“I’m going to kill you, Ciaran!” yelled Christopher, while lunging at the director after the performance, according to the Times.
The society’s financial woes and dysfunction had reached a crisis point by 2021, when Cahill tried to sell the building for $52 million (later reduced to $44 million).
He died the following year, and in stepped the New York attorney general, citing a petition she had received opposing the sale.
She announced that, by state law, any sale of a nonprofit asset had to be approved by her, effectively kiboshing the plan.
“It’s an amazing place,” James gushed to the Irish Voice. “We had to save it, had to save it … One day people can come in there and enjoy it again.”
Which was all very well, but Doyle still was owed $3 million.
The AG appointed an interim board of directors and Doyle was persuaded not to try to collect his money or foreclose on the mortgage before July 2023.
But by August 2023, he still hadn’t been repaid, so he initiated foreclosure proceedings — and promptly was blocked by the AG, who claimed the mortgage was invalid because he was a board member.
On Friday, Doyle launched a lawsuit against the society and requested a subpoena be issued against James requiring her to produce a raft of documents, including anything relating to campaign events hosted at the townhouse or any contributions to her political campaigns from the society or any of its members or directors.
Doyle’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, alleges that James’ enthusiastic involvement in the Doyle case may be driven by “connections with the Defendant.”
And he points out the uncanny similarities between his client’s predicament and the notorious case James brought against Donald Trump for supposedly inflating the value of his properties to get a better mortgage, “although her office is now taking a polar opposite position.”
The lawsuit alleges that Doyle was given “fraudulently inflated valuations” of the townhouse, putting its market value at over $80 million. Cahill and the society’s current president-general, James Normile, “made representations to [Doyle] that the building had ‘air rights’ and could be built, or rebuilt, higher than its current height.
“In reality, there were no ‘air rights’ and the actual value is closer to $20 million. [The society] made a gross over-valuation” of the townhouse, which induced Doyle to make the $3 million loan.
“Tish James said, ‘Nobody is above the law,’ which should include Tish James, who seems to have actively aided and abetted in the art of the steal,” Parlatore told The Post.
“This organization fraudulently inflated the value of their building to induce my client into giving them a mortgage which Tish James is now trying to help these fraudsters avoid having to repay.
“The theory of fraud Tish James accused the Trump Organization of engaging in is identical to the fraud she is aiding and abetting here.”
James has come down on the side of the society against its lender, Doyle. And yet, in her signature case of People v. Trump, she took the opposite position, holding that “where an organization inflates the value of a property to obtain a loan, that is fraud, even where the lender was aware of the actual value and was paid in full,” Doyle’s lawsuit says.
Trump was punished with a $355 million fine. So delighted was James by the verdict last month that she started live-tweeting Trump’s daily interest bill: “+$114,553.04.”
Parlatore points out that the society inflated the value of its property to obtain a loan, just like Trump was accused of doing, but the difference was that Doyle could not conduct the sort of “sophisticated due diligence” that Deutsche Bank did. Therefore, unlike Trump’s lenders, Doyle didn’t know the true value of the townhouse.
An even more important difference is that Trump paid back every penny he owed, but the society never paid back Doyle.
As the old Irish proverb says, forgetting a debt doesn’t mean it’s paid.
Former names include the Stasi, Gestapo and Santebal.
Here we go with the Federal goobermint getting involved in enforcing state laws.
Justice Department Launches the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center
The Justice Department launched the National Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Resource Center (the Center) which will provide training and technical assistance to law enforcement officials, prosecutors, attorneys, judges, clinicians, victim service and social service providers, community organizations, and behavioral health professionals responsible for implementing laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of people who pose a threat to themselves or others.
“The launch of the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center will provide our partners across the country with valuable resources to keep firearms out of the hands of individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The establishment of the Center is the latest example of the Justice Department’s work to use every tool provided by the landmark Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to protect communities from gun violence.”
US Embassy Warned Russia of Terrorist Attack and Putin Ignored It
Friday evening, Moscow time, four or five armed men strolled into the Crocus Concert Hall in northwest Moscow and opened fire on the crowd. Before departing the area they had killed at least 40 people and wounded over 100 more.
BACKGROUND: (UPDATED): Terror Attack in Moscow Concert Hall – Multiple Fatalities Reported
My colleague, Ward Clark, has some good observations; the only one I’d add is that at least two of the attackers had trouble managing magazine changes.
While Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of the Russian Security Council, hinted that Ukraine had been behind the attack and threatened to commit atrocities that the Russians have failed to commit so far should Ukraine be involved, ISIS quickly claimed responsibility.
This is not a huge shock. Russia has a counterinsurgency operation underway in two North Caucasus areas of the Russian Federation: Dagestan and Ingushetia. On March 3, a Russian commando operation (or what the Russians think of as a commando operation) killed six Islamic fighters in Ingushetia.
This insurgency and the fact that Moscow has the largest Muslim population of any European (to the extent that Russia is a European nation) capital nearly preordained a strike in the capital. This would not be the first time. In 2002, Chechens took over the Dubrovka Theater and when the Spetsnaz were finished, 132 hostages were killed and over 700 wounded, in addition to 40 Chechen fighters.
What makes the whole story more interesting is that on March 7, the US Embassy in Moscow issued a public warning that a terrorist attack on a concert venue was imminent.
The US warning was joined by similar warnings from multiple foreign embassies in Russia.
Reacting to that intelligence, the FSB rolled up an ISIS cell in a Moscow suburb.
On March 9, Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee (KNB) confirmed media reports that two Kazakh citizens had been killed by law enforcement in Russia.
Two days earlier, on March 7, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had stopped an Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) cell from carrying out a terrorist attack targeting a synagogue.
“On the territory of the Kaluga Region, a stop was put to the activity of Wilayat Khorasan, a cell of the Afghan branch of the international terrorist organization Islamic State, which is banned in Russia, whose members were planning to commit a terrorist act against one of the Jewish religious institutions in Moscow,” the FSB said in a statement to the state-run TASS news agency.
The Russian expat Telegram news channel Meduza points out that US warnings were not welcome.
Telegraph channel Meduza has highlighted that on March 19, Vladimir Putin dismissed alerts from U.S. diplomats regarding a potential terrorist attack on a densely populated venue in Moscow. The Russian leader denounced the American cautionary advice as “blackmail” from the West, aiming to “intimidate and destabilize our society”.
If this is true, it shows that there were persistent reports of an attack on a concert venue that did not end with the destruction of the ISIS cell on March 7 that were ignored by Russian authorities starting at the top. The fact that the concert attacked on Friday had no security, when it clearly met the description of the target in the warnings, shows that the threat was ignored.
Maine rejects sweeping electric vehicle mandate in blow to governor’s climate agenda.
Maine’s top environmental regulator rejected a proposed state electric vehicle (EV) mandate in a surprise vote, bucking climate concerns voiced by eco groups and Democrats.
The Maine Board of Environmental Protection (BEP) turned down the so-called Advanced Clean Cars program after receiving overwhelming opposition from stakeholders and citizens. The proposed program would have closely mirrored regulations approved in California, mandating that at least 51% of new car purchases in the state be electric by 2028 and 82% be electric by 2032.
“The Maine Board of Environmental Protection received nearly 1,800 comments from the people of Maine and nearly 84% were not in favor of this EV mandate,” Maine Senate Republican Leader Trey Stewart told Fox News Digital. “Maine is far too rural with far too few charging stations, and many Mainers are also concerned about the reliability of these vehicles in our extreme cold-weather months.”
Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills is pursuing a sweeping climate agenda, pushing both vehicle electrification and green energy development.
Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills is pursuing a sweeping climate agenda, pushing both vehicle electrification and green energy development. (Getty Images)