Oh yeah? Lest we forget:
Month: March 2020
Cleveland County man fatally shoots suspect who attacked him outside of his home
CLEVELAND COUNTY, N.C. – A Cleveland County man shot and killed a suspect who attacked him outside of his home in the early morning hours Wednesday.
The Sheriff’s Office says they received a 911 call at 1:19 a.m. on March 5 about someone beating on the side of a home in Shelby. The owner of the home, Donald Bautista, grabbed his pistol went outside to see what was causing the noise.
Bautista said he saw someone run into the wood-line behind his home moments before he was attacked by a suspect holding a wooden deck railing. Bautista sustained several defensive wounds before he fired one shot, killing the suspect later identified as Robert Burns.
Following an investigation, deputies found that Burns has been staying with friends in the same mobile home park as Bautista. Burns had an altercation with one of the friends and left the home shortly before the shooting. Witnesses say it appeared Burns was extremely impaired.
Bautista did not know Burns prior to this incident.
Did Chuck Schumer Just Threaten Gorsuch and Kavanaugh? Sure Looks That Way.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer appeared to threaten Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch over their potential votes in the first abortion case before the Supreme Court with the new conservative majority, during a #MyRightMyDecision rally outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
“I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,” Schumer said to a chorus of cheers. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Did Senate Democrat leader Schumer just threaten two conservative justices? Where is the media?
“I want to tell you Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch: You have unleashed a whirlwind, and you will pay the price”pic.twitter.com/MellytNNp5
— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) March 4, 2020
That sounds like a threat to me, which means that Chuck Schumer violated the law. According to 18 U.S. Code § 115, whoever threatens a federal official, “with intent to impede, intimidate, or interfere with such official, judge, or law enforcement officer while engaged in the performance of official duties, or with intent to retaliate against such official, judge, or law enforcement officer on account of the performance of official duties, shall be punished” by a fine or imprisonment of as much as ten years.
Chief Justice John Roberts calls Sen. Chuck Schumer comments ‘dangerous’ threats
……..Several hours later, after Schumer’s comments ricochetted across social media, Roberts issued a statement through a court spokeswoman.
“Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous,” Roberts said in the statement. “All Members of the Court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.”………….
“To me this sounds like he’s talking about a physical price, violence,” said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., in an emotional statement from the Senate floor. “These are members of the Supreme Court — he the minority leader of the United States. … I believe these statements are outrageous. They’re uncalled for. They’re out of bounds. And on their face, they appear to invite violence against members of the Supreme Court.”
Italy shutters all schools, universities as COVID-19 death toll reaches 107.
March 4 (UPI) — Italian education officials closed all schools and universities Wednesday in reaction to a coronavirus outbreak that has killed 107 people in the country.
Education Minister Lucia Azzolina made the announcement with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte during a news conference at Palazzo Chigi, Conte’s residence in Rome…………
Italy’s Civil Protection Agency said that in addition to the deaths, there were 2,706 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 disease in the country as of Wednesday. Most were centered in the Lombardy region, with smaller clusters in Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Piedmont, the Marche, Campania, Liguria, Tuscany, Lazio, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Sicily, Puglia, Abruzzo, Trento, Molise, Umbria, Bolzano, Calabria, Sardinia and Basilicata.
Some 276 people have recovered from the disease.
Iran’s coronavirus response: Pride, paranoia, secrecy, chaos
Nearly three dozen Iranian government officials and members of parliament are infected, and a senior adviser to the supreme leader has died.
The Health Ministry has proposed sending 300,000 militia members door to door on a desperate mission to sanitize homes. The top prosecutor has warned that anyone hoarding face masks and other public health equipment risks the death penalty.
Iran’s leaders confidently predicted just two weeks ago that the coronavirus contagion ravaging China would not be a problem in their country. They even bragged of exporting face masks to their Chinese trading partners.
Now Iran is battered by coronavirus infections that have killed 77 people, among the most outside of China, officials said Tuesday. But instead of receiving government help, overwhelmed doctors and nurses say they have been warned by security forces to keep quiet. And some officials say Tehran’s hierarchy is understating the true extent of the outbreak — probably, experts contend, because it will be viewed as a failure that enemies will exploit.
As the world wrestles with the spread of the coronavirus, the epidemic in Iran is a lesson in what happens when a secretive state with limited resources tries to play down an outbreak and then finds it very difficult to contain.
Intruder shot by homeowner in Juneau County break in
KINGSTON TOWNSHIP, Wis. (WKBT) – A man attempting to break into a home in Kinston Township was shot by the homeowner early Wednesday morning in Juneau County.
The Juneau County Communications Center received a call at 3:50 a.m. on Wednesday, March 4 regarding the incident.
According to the Juneau County Sheriff’s Office, the incident remains under investigation with no other information being released at this time. Authorities say there is no danger to the public.
The sheriff’s office was assisted by Wisconsin State Patrol, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, and Cutler Fire Department.
Boom: FBI gun checks surge 30% amid Biden, Bloomberg gun grab threats
FBI gun background checks required in most weapon sales have jumped 30% as consumers have rushed in to gun stores and shows to load up amid threats from Democratic presidential candidates to end sales and safety concerns as the coronavirus spreads.
Background checks in January and February recorded the highest number ever for the period, said the FBI. In just two months, there have been 5,505,169 checks. Last year, there were 4,218,980 background checks in January and February.
If the trend continues the way arms industry officials expect, 2020 will record the most-ever checks through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, at over 30 million.
UPDATE:
aaaaaaand He’s out.
Bloomberg suspends presidential campaign, endorses Biden
Out $600 million and still a loser to a commie and a senile idiot.
Michael Bloomberg, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to self-fund his 2020 presidential run, announced Wednesday that he is suspending his campaign after a poor performance on Super Tuesday and will endorse Joe Biden.
What he’s saying: “I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it. After yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden,” Bloomberg said in a statement.
Bloomberg 'Corrects' Reporter On The Pronunciation Of Texas: 'Tejas — That's Spanish For Texas'
Michael Bloomberg panders hard on Super Tuesday, "correcting" a reporter to pronounce Texas as "Tejas" because "you're in a Cuban neighborhood."
Posted by MRCTV on Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Bloomtard again opens his mouth and confirms his elite, clueless snobbery. In south Florida “Tejas” means the the clay roofing tile used since the Spanish colonized the area. I can almost guarantee that before Bloomie set foot to campaign in Florida he had never heard the word ‘tejas’ and one of his underlings added this to the list of things for him memorize to roll out if he was presented the opportunity so he could appear ‘woke’…and all he managed to do was sound exactly like the supercilious ignoramus he is.
BIDEN’S HATRED OF GUN OWNERS CLEAR BY NAMING BETO AS POINT MAN: CCRKBA
BELLEVUE, WA – Democrat Joe Biden made it clear in Texas that he despises American gun owners by declaring former rival Beto O’Rourke, the gun-grabbing former Texas congressman, as his point man on what he called “the gun problem,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.
“For Biden to embrace Beto should erase any doubt where the former vice president truly stands on gun rights,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Months ago, we vowed to let nobody forget O’Rourke’s brazen threat to take away people’s firearms, and we meant it.”
O’Rourke’s presidential campaign crumbled after he declared during a debate in Houston, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR15, your AK47.” When nobody else on stage at the time made any effort at all to counter the statement, Gottlieb said Democrats had officially become the “Party of Gun Confiscation.”
Biden told O’Rourke in front of his Dallas audience, “You’re gonna take care of the gun problem with me, you’re gonna be the one who leads this effort. I’m counting on you, I’m counting on you, we need you badly.”
“I’ll tell you what Biden needs even worse than O’Rourke,” Gottlieb responded. “He needs to kiss any credibility he ever had with gun owners a permanent goodbye. Beto O’Rourke represents everything that is wrong with today’s gun ban extremism, and he is one of the worst enemies of the Second Amendment. While he was campaigning, he said gun owners would be given the option of turning in their guns in exchange for cash, or risk being prosecuted. Then he outright threatened to confiscate the firearms of law-abiding Americans.
“We’re not sure how to explain this to Biden,” he added, “but accepting O’Rourke’s endorsement and then vowing to put him in charge of national gun policy, should he win in November, amounts to quid-pro-quo.
“Biden’s mask is completely off,” Gottlieb concluded. “He’s not just a doddering Democrat pushing to become president, he’s an extremist anti-gunner who just promised to put a gun prohibition fanatic in charge of his administration’s gun policy. That’s not just a difference in philosophy, it’s a declaration of war.”
Supreme Court Narrowly Decides That Identity Theft by Illegal Aliens Is Actually a Crime
“This victory is a key one, but it also shows just how close we are to having our immigration laws being made illegal to enforce.”
Small wonder that we are a magnet for illegal immigration. Our courts, with the best of intentions, have created a Rube Goldberg device whereby the black letter of immigration law is thwarted by loopholes and roadblocks to enforcement.
In 1986, Congress enacted the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). IRCA made it illegal to employ illegal aliens, established an employment eligibility verification system, and created various civil and criminal penalties against employers who violate the law. As part of this law came the Form I-9, known to anyone who has applied for a job in the past 30 years. This is a largely toothless provision that does nothing to deter anyone from employing an illegal nor does it pose any noticeable bar to the ability of illegals to work, but it has created a booming black market in I-9 friendly documents.
What could have been a fairly formidable tool to deter longterm illegals has been effectively gutted by the courts.
In Flores-Figuroa vs. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that illegals using counterfeit social security cards could not be prosecuted for identity theft unless they knew that the bogus social security number belonged to a real person. The decision was 9-0, but three justices made it clear that their concurrence was based on the fact that the law provided for a greater penalty for users of social security numbers belonging to real people than it did for those belonging to no one or to a deceased person.
When the US Supreme Court in thetravesty known as Arizona vs. United States ruled that states have no authority to enforce US immigration law…thank you, John Roberts, for again selling the nation down the river in order to try to bond with the liberals on the court….it opened a can of worms for any judge or court which is sufficiently woke and ambitious enough to use it. One of those instances happened in Kansas.
The case in question is called Kansas vs. Garcia. This is the background.
On August 26, 2012, Officer Mike Gibson pulled Garcia over for speeding. Gibson asked Garcia where he was going in such a hurry. Garcia replied that he was on his way to work at Bonefish Grill. Based on the results of a routine records check on Garcia, Gibson contacted Detective Justin Russell, who worked in the financial crimes department of the Overland Park Police Department. Russell was in the neighborhood and came to the scene to speak with Garcia.
The day after speaking with Garcia, Russell contacted Bonefish Grill and obtained Garcia’s “[e]mployment application documents, possibly the W-2, the I-9 documents.” Russell then spoke with Special Agent Joseph Espinosa of the Social Security Office of the Inspector General. Espinosa told Russell that the Social Security number Garcia had used on the forms belonged to Felisha Munguia of Edinburg, Texas.
As a result of the investigation, Garcia was charged with one count of identity theft.
Garcia was convicted and the conviction was upheld on appeal. But the Kansas Supreme Court reversed. That court reasoned that because state officials were barred from using information on the I-9 for reasons other than verifying eligibility for employment that Kansas could not use the fact the fake social security number was used on state and federal tax returns and on an apartment lease as evidence of a crime.
The federal Immigration Reform and Control Act bars employers from knowingly employing undocumented immigrants. The act also requires employees to verify that they are eligible to work in the United States by submitting a Form I-9, and it strictly limits the use of information on or attached to a Form I-9. Because the Social Security numbers that the defendants were using appeared on their I-9s, the state court reasoned, the prosecution was trumped by the IRCA, even if the Social Security numbers also appeared on the defendants’ tax-withholding forms.
In short, what the Kansas Supreme Court did was legalize identity theft so long as you were an illegal. (READ: Will the Supreme Court Choose to Preserve Immigration Law or Will It Make Identity Theft Legally Protected?) The US Supreme Court heard the case back in March and the decision was handed down today.
The court, in a 5-4 opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, reinstated convictions obtained by Kansas prosecutors against three restaurant workers for using other people’s social security numbers on forms given to their employers.
The central question in the case, Kansas v. Garcia, was whether such state prosecutions were barred by a provision of federal immigration law that says any information submitted with federal work-authorization forms can’t be used for state law-enforcement purposes.
Justice Alito, writing for a conservative majority, said the answer was no. The mere fact that Kansas law on identity theft overlapped with federal law “does not even begin to make a case” that the state’s prosecutorial efforts should be pre-empted, he wrote.
“In the present cases, there is certainly no suggestion that the Kansas prosecutions frustrated any federal interests,” Justice Alito said. Joining him in the majority were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the court’s liberal wing, said U.S. immigration law gave federal authorities the sole responsibility to police fraud committed to obtain eligibility to work.
The law “reserves to the federal government—and thus takes from the states—the power to prosecute people for misrepresenting material information in an effort to convince their employer that they are authorized to work in this country,” Justice Breyer wrote.
If this representation of Breyer’s views are correct, and I’ve not read the opinion, it is sheer lunacy. He is literally declaring that using a fake ID on an employment I-9 immunizes you from being prosecuted.
This victory is a key one, but it also shows just how close we are to having our immigration laws being made illegal to enforce.
Virus hammers business travel as wary companies nix trips
Amazon and other big companies are trying to keep their employees healthy by banning business trips, but they’ve dealt a gut punch to a travel industry already reeling from the virus outbreak.
The Seattle-based online retail giant has told its nearly 800,000 workers to postpone any non-essential travel within the United States or around the globe. Swiss food giant Nestle told its 291,000 employees worldwide to limit domestic business travel and halt international travel until March 15. French cosmetics maker L’Oréal, which employs 86,000 people, issued a similar ban until March 31
Other companies, like Twitter, are telling their employees worldwide to work from home. Google gave that directive to its staff of 8,000 at its European headquarters in Dublin on Tuesday.
Major business gatherings, like the Geneva International Motor Show and the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, have also been canceled.
On Tuesday, Facebook confirmed it will no longer attend the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, which is scheduled to begin March 13. And the 189-nation International Monetary Fund and its sister lending organization, the World Bank, announced they will replace their regular spring meetings in Washington — scheduled for mid-April — with a “virtual format.”
Michael Dunne, the CEO of ZoZo Go, an automotive consulting company that specializes in the Chinese market, normally travels from California to Asia every six weeks. But right now he’s not planning to cross the Pacific until June.
“With everything at a standstill, I do not feel a sense of missing the action,” Dunne said. “But there is no better catalyst for business than meeting people in person.”
Robin Ottaway, president of Brooklyn Brewery, canceled a trip to Seoul and Tokyo last week. He has indefinitely suspended all travel to Asia and also just canceled a trip to Copenhagen that was scheduled for March.
“I wasn’t worried about getting sick. I’m a healthy 46-year-old man with no preexisting conditions,” Ottaway said. “My only worry was getting stuck in Asia or quarantined after returning to the U.S. And I’d hate to be a spreader of the virus.”
The cancellations and travel restrictions are a major blow to business travel, which makes up around 26% of the total travel spending, or around $1.5 trillion per year, according to the Global Business Travel Association.
Homeowner Shoots, Kills Intruder
MILTON, GA — A homeowner shot and killed an intruder Saturday in Milton, police said.
At 8:40 p.m. on Saturday, Milton Police received a 911 call regarding burglary at a home in the 12000 block of New Providence Road.
Prior to police arrival, the suspect reportedly forcibly broke into the home through a locked front door and confronted the homeowner. The homeowner shot the intruder with a handgun, striking him multiple times in the torso.
The suspect was treated at the scene by Milton Fire-Rescue personnel for gunshot wounds, and transported to WellStar North Fulton Hospital. The suspect was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
The deceased suspect was identified as Corey Patton II, 23, from Charlotte, North Carolina. Milton Police said they do not believe there are any other suspects in this case.
Man shot by law enforcement after reportedly trying to carjack off-duty Pueblo County deputy
Definite mistake in the victim selection process. And the copy writer for KKTV need some more schooling because I did a ‘whut?’ the first time I read that headline.
PUEBLO, Colo (KKTV) – A man is dead after first leading police on a chase and then trying to carjack an off-duty Pueblo County sheriff’s deputy late Sunday night.
Pueblo police said officers were investigating a carjacking that happened around 10 p.m. at a 7-Eleven off Elizabeth Street and Highway 50. During that carjacking, officers said the suspect hit the victim in the head with a handgun and stole a 2004 Dodge truck.
The suspect was identified on Tuesday by the Pueblo County Coroner as Joshua Russell of Pueblo.
While police were at the gas station investigating the carjacking, officers said they were talking to a man and woman in an Escalade. During the conversation, the 35-year-old man abruptly took off. At some point during his attempt to flee, police said his car became immobile.
“The speculation is that he hit the curb over here, full head-on, and that’s what damaged the vehicle,” said Sgt. Frank Ortega with the Pueblo Police Department.
Officers sped after the suspect, who didn’t even make it a quarter-mile on Highway 50.
“That individual exited the vehicle with an AR-style rifle and attempted to carjack two vehicles. The first vehicle continued westbound; the second vehicle was an off-duty sheriff’s deputy,” Ortega said.
The deputy fired at the suspect.
“At the same time, or roughly the same time, an on-duty Pueblo police officer engaged the suspect. Several rounds were fired, and the suspect is deceased on scene,” Ortega said.
The shooting happened just before midnight. Ortega said there is no indication that the suspect fired his weapon, but the Colorado Bureau of Investigation is processing the scene for any evidence otherwise. Both the deputy and the officer are on paid administrative leave.
Police said the woman who was with the suspect in the car was interviewed and is cooperating.
Detectives are also investigating whether the suspect is the same person involved in the 7-Eleven carjacking.
“The male that is deceased here on the highway, he doesn’t match the suspect description from the original carjacking exactly,” Ortega said. “But they’re reviewing video from that original incident to see if he’s involved or not.”
Shortly after the shooting, Ortega said police found the Dodge truck that was originally stolen from the 7-Eleven not too far from the scene.
Bloomberg wins American Samoa caucus
And in other meaningless news………
Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii have won their first delegates thanks to American Samoa.
The island has six Democratic delegates and their caucus awarded five to Bloomberg and one to Gabbard, who hails from Hawaii.
This bug gets loose in another nursing home and we’ll see the same thing.
Two more residents of King County, Washington, have died from the coronavirus, bringing the state’s total to nine, as a top health official tells US senators he is deploying more personnel to a Kirkland hospital where most of the patients died.
The two additional victims actually died before the previously reported deaths, on February 26. They were identified as a woman in her 80s who died at her family home and man in his 50s who died at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, county health officials said in a statement.
Both were residents of Life Care Center, a chain of long-term nursing facilities that is linked to many of the fatal cases, officials said.
The state has had at least 21 cases. Eight of those who died were from King County, and one was from Snohomish County, county officials said. At least six of the patients died at EvergreenHealth in Kirkland, where the federal health experts are being sent.
Dr. Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary of preparedness and response for the US Department of Health and Human Services, described to a US Senate committee the type of experts he was hoping to send across the country.
“We’re looking to employ and deploy some of our national disaster medical system personnel as well as other federal health care personnel to assist at the Evergreen long-term treatment facility,” he said.
At the Life Care Center that county officials say was home to at least nine of the patients who came down with coronavirus, more than 50 residents and staff members were experiencing symptoms and were tested for the virus, King County health officer Jeffrey Duchin said Monday.
“Current residents and associates continue to be monitored closely, specifically for an elevated temperature, cough and/or shortness of breath,” officials said in a statement on the Life Care website. “Any resident displaying these symptoms is placed in isolation. Associates are screened prior to beginning work and upon leaving.”
A US Department of Homeland Security facility in King County was shut down Tuesday after officials learned an employee had visited a relative at Life Care, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said during a House hearing.
Justice Gorsuch’s Statement on the Denial of Cert in the Guedes v. ATF Bump Stock Ban Appeal
The problem with this is that, since the preliminary injunction ( to keep the people who filed the suit from having to either destroy or surrender their bumpstocks) has been denied , is that those stocks are now contraband and possession makes the owner liable to felony prosecution. Nice choice. The plaintiffs might actually win on the merits of the case, but that’s small consolation to having to lose the stock and the $$ paid or face possibly being charged. So those folks are out either way even if they win.
Stupid judges.
[ED: read the full opinion with cited case references here. As TTAG’s resident consulting attorney LKB points out, the key here is the last paragraph. The appeal in Guedes is from a denial of a preliminary injunction. There is no ruling here on the merits of the case. In other words, the bump stock ban itself could still be overturned.]
Does owning a bump stock expose a citizen to a decade in federal prison? For years, the government didn’t think so. But recently the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives changed its mind.
Whether bump stocks can be fairly reclassified and effectively outlawed as machineguns under existing statutory definitions, I do not know and could not say without briefing and argument. Nor do I question that Congress might seek to enact new legislation directly regulating the use and possession of bump stocks.
But at least one thing should be clear: Contrary to the court of appeals’s decision in this case, Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. 467 U. S. 837 (1984), has nothing to say about the proper interpretation of the law before us. In the first place, the government expressly waived reliance on Chevron.
The government told the court of appeals that, if the validity of its rule (re)interpreting the machinegun statute “turns on the applicability of Chevron, it would prefer that the [r]ule be set aside rather than upheld.”
Yet, despite this concession, the court proceeded to uphold the agency’s new rule only on the strength of Chevron deference. Think about it this way. The executive branch and affected citizens asked the court to do what courts usually do in statutory interpretation disputes: supply its best independent judgment about what the law means. But, instead of deciding the case the old-fashioned way, the court placed an uninvited thumb on the scale in favor of the government. That was mistaken.
This Court has often declined to apply Chevron deference when the government fails to invoke it. Even when Chevron deference is sought, this Court has found it inappropriate where “the Executive seems of two minds” about the result it prefers.
Nor is it a surprise that the government can lose the benefit of Chevron in situations like these and ours. If the justification for Chevron is that “‘policy choices’ should be left to executive branch officials ‘directly accountable to the people,’” then courts must equally respect the Executive’s decision not to make policy choices in the interpretation of Congress’s handiwork.
To make matters worse, the law before us carries the possibility of criminal sanctions. And, as the government itself may have recognized in offering its disclaimer, whatever else one thinks about Chevron, it has no role to play when liberty is at stake.
Under our Constitution, “[o]nly the people’s elected representatives in the legislature are authorized to ‘make an act a crime.’” Before courts may send people to prison, we owe them an independent determination that the law actually forbids their conduct. A “reasonable” prosecutor’s say-so is cold comfort in comparison.
That’s why this Court has “never held that the Government’s reading of a criminal statute is entitled to any deference.” Instead, we have emphasized, courts bear an “obligation” to determine independently what the law allows and forbids.
That obligation went unfulfilled here. Chevron’s application in this case may be doubtful for other reasons too. The agency used to tell everyone that bump stocks don’t qualify as “machineguns.” Now it says the opposite. The law hasn’t changed, only an agency’s interpretation of it.
And these days it sometimes seems agencies change their statutory interpretations almost as often as elections change administrations. How, in all this, can ordinary citizens be expected to keep up—required not only to conform their conduct to the fairest reading of the law they might expect from a neutral judge, but forced to guess whether the statute will be declared ambiguous; to guess again whether the agency’s initial interpretation of the law will be declared “reasonable”; and to guess again whether a later and opposing agency interpretation will also be held “reasonable”?
And why should courts, charged with the independent and neutral interpretation of the laws Congress has enacted, defer to such bureaucratic pirouetting?
Despite these concerns, I agree with my colleagues that the interlocutory petition before us does not merit review. The errors apparent in this preliminary ruling might yet be corrected before final judgment. Further, other courts of appeals are actively considering challenges to the same regulation. Before deciding whether to weigh in, we would benefit from hearing their considered judgments—provided, of course, that they are not afflicted with the same problems. But waiting should not be mistaken for lack of concern.
WATCH as this gun owner completely dismantles Bloomberg’s anti-gun policies during his Fox News town hall: pic.twitter.com/E6dKZ5G2HC
— Students For Trump (@TrumpStudents) March 3, 2020
Second Amendment ‘sanctuary’ movement gets some traction in rural Minnesota
CROW WING COUNTY, Minn. — As the debate over tighter gun control regulations heats up in Minnesota, a movement among gun rights advocates to designate Second Amendment sanctuary counties is gaining momentum across the state.
Five northwestern Minnesota county boards — Clearwater, Marshall, Red Lake, Roseau and Wadena — have voted to declare their county as a Second Amendment “sanctuary,” or otherwise dedicated to defending gun rights.
Similar efforts have surfaced in at least two dozen other counties, with some expected to vote in coming weeks. The resolutions are similar, with language saying local resources will not be used to enforce laws believed to infringe on the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Legal experts say the resolutions are symbolic because counties can’t choose not to enforce certain state laws. But in an election year, they are mobilizing rural voters who view gun rights as a critical voting issue.
“I think this is clearly what’s driving this concern, among especially people in greater Minnesota, that they need to take some kind of action for protecting what they perceive to be threats to their gun rights,” said David Schultz, a professor of political science and law at the University of Minnesota and Hamline University.
UPS worker who threatened mass shooting had 20,000 rounds of ammunition, small arsenal, say police
Thomas Andrews was found with 20,000 rounds of ammunition and several guns.
20,ooo? Thems rookie numbers.
A California UPS worker who threatened to carry out a mass shooting at his employer’s premises had multiple tactical rifles and 20,000 rounds of ammunition at his home when it was raided by police.
Thomas Andrews, 32, of Sunnyvale, California, was reported to police on March 1 for sending threatening text messages to his employer, saying that he was planning a mass shooting at the UPS facility in the city, according to a statement from the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety.
“He alluded to a mass shooting in his text messages,” Sunnyvale police Capt. Dan Pistor told the Associated Press. “I definitely think we avoided a tragedy.”
Officers began searching for Andrews that day, who they had discovered was the registered owner of four handguns and a rifle. Shortly after 11 p.m. that evening, officers spotted Andrews driving and attempted to pull him over, but he fled, leading officers into a pursuit on Highway 101.
‘He shot him four or five times’: Shopper shoots, kills armed robbery suspect in Greensboro
The suspect was shot by a customer in the store who had his own gun
GREENSBORO, N.C. — The terrifying armed robbery lasted less than a minute — ending when a customer pulled out their own gun and shot the suspect four to five times.
According to the Greensboro Police Department, 18-year-old Malik Harris tried to rob at gunpoint the convenience store NC Tobacco on the morning of Feb. 29.
This man is so delusional he can;t even keep his lies straight.
ABORT ABORT pic.twitter.com/BsLsn00ual
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) March 2, 2020
GA governor confirms 2 cases of COVID-19 in Fulton County.
Well, Delta airlines does have that hub in Atlanta. What should we expect?
ATLANTA, Ga. (WATE) — Georgia governor Brian Kemp and state public health officials confirmed Monday night the state’s first two COVID-19 coronavirus cases.
According to a news release from the Georgia Department of Public Health, the two cases involve residents of the same household in Fulton County. Both people have mild symptoms and they were being isolated at home with other relatives to keep the illness from spreading.
One of the patients had recently returned from Italy, the release stated.
Earlier Monday evening, Gov. Kemp spoke with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence about the two confirmed coronavirus cases, the news release stated, and the Governor’s Coronavirus Task Force was briefed via conference call at roughly 9:30 p.m. Monday.
We knew that Georgia would likely have confirmed cases of COVID-19, and we planned for it. The immediate risk of COVID-19 to the general public, however, remains low at this time,” said Kathleen E. Toomey, M.D., M.P.H, DPH commissioner. “I cannot emphasize enough the need for all Georgians to follow the simple precautions that DPH always urges to prevent the spread of respiratory viruses.”