The maintenance of the right to bear arms is a most essential one to every free people and should not be whittled down by technical constructions.
– State vs. Kerner, 181 N.C. 574, 107 S.E. 222, at 224 (1921)

Study Finds Coffee Linked to Lower Risk of Dementia, But There’s a Catch.

“But there’s a twist to the tale – the association only applies to unsweetened, caffeinated coffee.”

Older people who regularly drink coffee have a lower risk of developing dementia, according to a new study. But there’s a twist to the tale – the association only applies to unsweetened, caffeinated coffee.

The link was found from a study of the health records of 204,847 people in the UK, aged between 40 and 69 at the start of the study period, by researchers from institutions across China. The records included both coffee consumption habits and the diagnosis of dementia cases, over an average of nine years.

“Higher intake of caffeinated coffee, particularly the unsweetened variety, was associated with reduced risks of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, and Parkinson’s disease,” write the researchers in their published paper. “No such associations were observed for sugar-sweetened or artificially sweetened coffee.”

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Guns Don’t Kill People. Canada Kills People.

Recently, I was reading something interesting from National Review. It looked at some numbers out of Canada that were downright fascinating.

You see, the Great White North has two things many here have long favored – single-payer healthcare and assisted suicide. More people want the former than the latter, thankfully, but enough want both for me to have concerns.

These same people tend to think we should be like Canada on other things, too, such as gun policy. They believe guns kill people.

However, a piece by National Review points out something interesting:

What a debacle. More than 15,000 people died in Canada in one year because they couldn’t access care in the country’s collapsing socialized health-care system. From the Toronto Sun story:

Close to 15,500 people died waiting for health care in Canada between April 1, 2023 until March 31, 2024, according to data compiled by SecondStreet.org via Freedom to Information Act requests across the country.

However, SecondStreet.org says the exact number of 15,474 is incomplete as Quebec, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador don’t track the problem and Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia only provided data on patients who died while waiting for surgeries – not diagnostic scans.

SecondStreet.org says if it extrapolates the unknown data, then an estimated 28,077 patients died last year on health care waiting lists covering everything from cancer treatment and heart operations to cataract surgery and MRI scans.

Holy cow!

But it gets worse. About the same number of people were euthanized in Canada in 2023. Some asked to be lethally jabbed because they couldn’t access health care in a timely fashion.

So around 30,000 people die waiting for healthcare that never comes or are euthanized by the Canadian government.

In fairness, some of those who die waiting likely would have died no matter what, just as some of those euthanized were likely going to pass away regardless.

However, I’m willing to bet it wasn’t all that many, though we’ll never know.

Meanwhile, how many Americans were killed with a gun in 2023, which mostly lines up with this time period? 13,529.

The United States has more than eight times the population of Canada, and even massive death and destruction brought about by our gun policy pales in comparison to the number of people the Canadian government managed to kill during that period.

Even if you just counted the euthanizations, the death toll is higher not just on a per capita basis but in raw total numbers as well.

Yet, that number is doubled when you count the deaths that were the result of inaction on the part of the Canadian healthcare system.

“But you didn’t count suicides!” someone will argue, but I’m going to reject that right out of the gate. If you’re supportive of Canada’s MAID system, you don’t get to lash out about people taking their own lives here in the US, regardless of what method they use. That’s why I’m only counting homicides.

This is truly disturbing, to say the least.

What we do know for certain, though, is that guns don’t kill people. Canada kills people.

Trump Suspends Security Clearance of 51 Officials Who Protected Hunter’s Laptop.

President Donald Trump signed so many executive orders that I forgot to write about this one.

Trump revoked the security clearances of the 51 intel officials who claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

These people did everything they could to ensure former President Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020.

Once Biden won, though, no one could contain the truth: The laptop belonged to Hunter, and everything on it belonged to him.

Well, all 51 of the officials refused to apologize for their letter. The officials helped themselves by crafting the letter to make it easy to shed any responsibility.

They said they had suspicions about it coming from Russia, but they never provided confirmation.

They no longer have security clearances. The list includes James Clapper, Leon Panetta, Jeremy Bash (ex-husband of CNN’s Dana Bash), John Bolton, and John Brennan.

The executive order stated:

Section 1. Purpose. In the closing weeks of the 2020 Presidential campaign, at least 51 former intelligence officials coordinated with the Biden campaign to issue a letter discrediting the reporting that President Joseph R. Biden’s son had abandoned his laptop at a computer repair business. Signatories of the letter falsely suggested that the news story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Before being issued, the letter was sent to the CIA Prepublication Classification Review Board, the body typically assigned to formally evaluate the sensitive nature of documents prior to publication. Senior CIA officials were made aware of the contents of the letter, and multiple signatories held clearances at the time and maintained ongoing contractual relationships with the CIA.

Federal policymakers must be able to rely on analysis conducted by the Intelligence Community and be confident that it is accurate, crafted with professionalism, and free from politically motivated engineering to affect political outcomes in the United States. The signatories willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions.

This fabrication of the imprimatur of the Intelligence Community to suppress information essential to the American people during a Presidential election is an egregious breach of trust reminiscent of a third world country. And now the faith of Americans in all other patriotic intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect the Nation has been imperiled.

National security is also damaged by the publication of classified information. Former National Security Advisor John R. Bolton published a memoir for monetary gain after he was terminated from his White House position in 2019. The book was rife with sensitive information drawn from his time in government. The memoir’s reckless treatment of sensitive information undermined the ability of future presidents to request and obtain candid advice on matters of national security from their staff. Publication also created a grave risk that classified material was publicly exposed.

To remedy these abuses of the public trust, this Order directs the revocation of any active or current security clearances held by: (i) the former intelligence officials who engaged in misleading and inappropriate political coordination with the 2020 Biden presidential campaign; and (ii) John R. Bolton.

A Rifle Behind Every Blade Of Grass: Why The Taiwanese People Must Arm Themselves Like Americans

Communism is the most murderous ideology in recent history. Communists around the world killed close to 100 million people; that’s more than 5 times the number killed by the Nazis. Of those 100 million, the Chinese Communist Party is culpable for 65 million dead.

Luckily for the world, communism was dealt a decisive defeat last century. Within a few years of the Berlin Wall coming down, communism imploded across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. There were other unforeseen benefits: with its Soviet benefactor gone (and with other economic triggers), India had to roll back democratic socialism. Billions of people suddenly experienced freedom like never before.

There was hope that the Chinese regime would also suffer the same fate as other communist governments. But they managed to hang on to power, crushing dissent with tyrannical, barbarous force.

Despite the persistence of the Chinese Communist regime, the end of the Cold War marked a victory for liberal democracy. The 1990s were a time of optimism, as the world enjoyed a peace dividend.

All of this resulted in a belief that communist China could be wooed and charmed into what seemed like the future: a peaceful, liberal global order, with free enterprise, free trade, and open engagement among the peoples of the world.

The United States, Europe, and Japan opened up trade and travel with communist China. Entire industries were offshored with the belief that as the Chinese people engaged with liberal democracies, the communist regime would loosen its grip on them, like how Augusto Pinochet eventually ceded power and Chile became a democracy.

Unfortunately, the opposite occurred. The Chinese Communist Party remains entrenched, having transformed China into a surveillance state. The 26-year old Great Firewall of China looks quaint as compared to their modern Black Mirror-like dystopian social credit system. They’ve leveraged technology to create an authoritarian regime unprecedented in history. Rather than adopting liberalism, China is exporting illiberalism. (As an example, see how western governments imitated the harsh Chinese COVID lockdown model, instead of going the way of Sweden.)

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GOP Senators Introduce Bill Prohibiting Gov’t. Contracts with Anti-2A Groups

A group of 22 Republican U.S. Senators have signed onto legislation which weeks to prohibit the federal government from using taxpayer money to enter into contracts with known anti-Second Amendment corporations.

Led by Montana Sen. Steve Daines, the group is sponsoring the Firearm Industry Non-Discrimination (FIND) Act.

According to an announcement from Daines’ office, he is joined by Senators Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Katie Britt (R-Ala.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

In a statement released to the press, Daines explained, “Democrats and woke corporations have proven over and over again that they want to carry out an unconstitutional, overreaching gun-grabbing agenda, and under no circumstances should our federal government use taxpayer dollars for these efforts. Doing business with anti-Second Amendment corporations erodes Americans’ trust and infringes on law-abiding citizens’ Constitutional rights. It must stop.”

One of the most infuriating and alarming moves by the Biden-Harris administration was the creation of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, staffed by people from the gun control movement. This office should immediately disappear when Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th President Jan. 20.

Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, announced support for the measure.

“This legislation is critical to ensuring ‘woke’ corporations don’t use their financial might, funded by taxpayers, to deny essential services to the firearm industry,” Keane said. “Corporations, in particular financial institutions, have been dictating public policies from boardrooms that throttle firearm businesses, which are Constitutionally protected. This bill will no longer allow those corporations to benefit from taxpayer dollars while at the same time using those funds to deny Americans their Second Amendment rights. We thank Senator Daines for his leadership to ensure fairness in business, reasserting Congress’s role in ensuring the federal government isn’t picking winners and losers in the marketplace based on politics, and protecting the ability of a lawful industry to compete for services without artificial and agenda-driven barriers.”

Daines introduced the seven-page bill twice before, explaining that the FIND Act “ensures that corporations cannot benefit from taxpayer-funded contracts and subcontracts while discriminating against firearm trade associations or businesses that deal in firearms, ammunition, or related products.”