Business owner shoots, detains suspected burglar in Houston

Shop owners in northwest Houston took action after catching someone breaking into their mechanic shop, shooting the suspect during the confrontation.

According to Houston police, the owners of the business, a man and a woman, spotted a suspect on their security cameras around 1:40 a.m. breaking into their property in the 1600 block of W 18th Street. Investigators said the same shop had been burglarized a few days prior, and the owners had been on high alert.

The owners rushed to the location and confronted the man as he was exiting the business. Police say the suspect became aggressive, leading one of the owners to shoot him once in the abdomen.

A nearby Jack in the Box employee helped subdue the suspect until officers arrived. The wounded man, believed to be in his 40s, was taken to a hospital and is expected to survive.

The business owners are cooperating with investigators, and no charges have been filed at this time.

A great Second Amendment victory in the 9th CCA, for now.
21-16756 Todd Yukutake, et al v. Anne E. Lopez, et al

On Friday, March 14, 2025, a divided three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that two Hawaii laws violate the Second Amendment. Invalidating the two laws, in and of themselves, although a victory, was not a great victory.

The most important thing is how the laws were invalidated.

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Unless the three-judge panel decision is vacated and the decision subsequently overruled by an en banc panel of the 9th CCA (or the US Supreme Court), the three-judge panel decision will be binding on all subsequent three-judge panels deciding Second Amendment cases.

The two laws invalidated were 1) a permit to purchase a handgun that expired 30 days after it was issued and 2) a requirement that newly purchased firearms be brought to a police station to verify that the paperwork to purchase the firearm matched the firearm.

Two of the three judges on the panel facially invalidated the two laws.

Why is this of great importance? Because in 2022, the United States Supreme Court held in US v. Rahimi that a Second Amendment facial challenge fails if there are any constitutional applications of the law (seemingly, a single application is all it takes for a facial challenge to fail).

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SAF FILES RESPONSE BRIEF WITH SCOTUS IN MINNESOTA CARRY CASE

BELLEVUE, Wash. — March 10, 2025 — Attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in a case challenging the State of Minnesota’s prohibition on licensed concealed carry by young adults ages 18-20 have filed a response brief with the U.S. Supreme Court encouraging the justices to “grant plenary review and set the case for argument.”

The case is known as Jacobson v. Worth, originally filed in June 2021 as Worth v. Harrington. SAF is joined by the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, Firearms Policy Coalition, and three private citizens, Kristin Worth, for whom the case is named, Austin Dye, and Axel Anderson. While all three have turned 21, the Eighth Circuit Court granted a motion to supplement the record and allow another individual, Joe Knudsen, to carry the complaint. They are represented by attorneys David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson, John D. Ohlendorf and William V. Bergstrom at Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C.

SAF won this case at trial and at the appeals court level. Minnesota is appealing the ruling.

“Today’s filing is unique in that we are agreeing with Minnesota’s request in asking the Supreme Court to hear our case to resolve a dispute between the circuits,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “The lower courts are not unanimous in their approach to the Second Amendment rights of 18-20-year-olds. It is important that the Court weigh in to confirm that 18-20-year-olds are part of ‘the People’ and the Second Amendment applies in full to those individuals. The ban Minnesota seeks to uphold eviscerates the right of those adults to be able to carry a firearm for self-defense. This is patently unconstitutional and while we prevailed at the court of appeals, the Supreme Court needs to ensure all the lower courts reach the proper result. By taking this case, they can do just that.”

“A clear majority of federal courts have already protected the Second Amendment rights of young adults,” added SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “As we note in our brief, we are not aware of any evidence of colonial or Founding-era laws restricting 18-to-20-year-olds from their right to keep and bear arms. Indeed, history is full of evidence that people in this age group were not prevented from keeping or carrying their own arms.”

What did I say about the OODA Loop?
I’m not the only one who understand that this is getting inside the demoncrap’s abilities to handle scandal after scandal

Here’s the Brilliance Behind Trump’s Move Declaring Biden’s Pardons ‘Void’.

President Donald Trump dropped a bombshell Sunday evening. As my PJ Media colleague Catherine Salgado reported, Trump declared Joe Biden’s pardons void due to the suspicious use of an autopen and serious questions about whether Sleepy Joe even knew what he was rubber-stamping.

“The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

But here’s what’s really fascinating — and telling. Biden’s social media team remains suspiciously silent. Not a peep from his X account disputing the autopen accusations. These are serious allegations that merit a response, yet we got nothing. Really makes you think, doesn’t it?

Trump’s second Truth Social post cuts right to the heart of the matter: “The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime.” This isn’t just about pardons; it’s about who was really running our government.

How is this going to play out? Proving that Biden wasn’t aware of these pardons might be an uphill battle. But something tells me that’s not the point. While I suspect that it will be virtually impossible to prove that Biden didn’t authorize those pardons, I still think this may have been a brilliant move by Trump.

Here’s why. Every legal challenge, every court filing, every public statement will keep this scandal front and center. Even if the pardons ultimately stand, the damage to Biden’s legacy and the Democratic Party will be done.

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Kevin Bass PhD MS

I was a lifelong Democrat. I thought most conservatives were ignorant or evil or lying. I believed almost everything written in the New York Times, The New Republic, and the Atlantic. I was horrified when conservatives criticized the authorities. Every criticism I saw: I thought all of it was motivated by animus, resentment, self-interest, or ignorance.

Whatever truth there might have been in the criticism, I saw as a mere “half-truth”: an exploitation of this or that cherrypicked fact being weaponized. Why did I see it in terms of weaponization? Because I was biased: I saw liberal establishment institutions and figures as fundamentally good, so all criticism of them was automatically interpreted as being in bad faith.

Didn’t the critics know that these institutions or figures were fundamentally good? If they didn’t, they were ignorant. If they did, they were evil. It was that simple. This meant that any legitimate criticisms would just be dismissed, as if bouncing off of an impenetrable bulletproof shield.

This all changed once I started writing about the pandemic. Soon people started talking about me the way I once thought about conservatives. This led to a complete identity collapse as I came to understand that my old worldview was hateful and ignorant, that I hadn’t understood what I had been judging.

I cannot forget the hearing that led to my dismissal from medical school a year after I started writing. During the hearing, people talked about me as if I wasn’t human. My behavior was interpreted in the worst possible light. Complete fabrications were created. Nobody was concerned with the truth, only horrified at my apparent “unprofessional behavior”, which was really a mirror of their unprofessional behavior directed at me. They structured the hearing to make it virtually impossible for me to speak and explain that what was being said was a lie. And nobody seemed to have any problem with this. Why? Because I was bad. If I am bad, then every mistreatment and every violation of the school’s own policies became justified. A person who is bad does not deserve any rights. They only deserve punishment.

But the thing I remember most was the allusions to my social media activity. They said, “Kevin is driven by resentment from his childhood.” I wasn’t. I was on good terms with my parents. They alleged that I needed psychotherapy to deal with this trauma. It was a completely fake story that they had constructed about me, to demean me, to marginalize me, to try to explain the views I had expressed: that something terribly wrong had happened during the pandemic. They couldn’t imagine that I might have legitimate points. So they reduced me to the same kinds of psychological caricatures that I once reduced conservatives to in my own mind.

When I was dismissed, I was broken. But I had help from friends who helped me understand what happened. And I came to realize that a hysteria had overtaken the left. I spent a lot of time reading about show trials, about witch trials, and so on. I also connected with people who had experienced similar things and came to realize that something similar had happened to hundreds of physicians around the country. My story wasn’t unique. It was all the same story over and over again.

I cannot believe the person I once was. I cannot believe that I could exist like that. I still don’t understand how I could be like that, or how millions of people in this country could continue being like that. It disturbs me greatly.

One thing I know is that whatever this thing is that is driving people crazy needs to be destroyed. It is hostile to civilization and to our humanity. It causes us to dehumanize each other and try to destroy each other. It is the very same monstrous thing that I once attributed to conservatives. But it had been inside me, and I could now see it inside others. This is something I still grapple with.

That said…

I don’t want anyone to feel bad for me. I just wanted to share my thoughts about leftism, from someone who has been there, and been put through the fire.

But my life is good now. Or at least it’s promising. I couldn’t be happier.

Martí
So we are learning the lesson that hundreds of millions came to ‘understand’ by losing their lives in the 20th century. The left can never be allowed to come to power human life means nothing to them. Their empathy is all show. The only thing they care about is the ideological

Kevin Bass PhD MS
One hundred percent.

The Only “Constitutional Crisis” is That Democrats Lost, Now They’re Trying To Govern from the Courtroom

My Hot Take on Democat Lawfare: “There is no constitutional crisis other than the Democrats lost. They are trying to create a constitutional crisis by having the judiciary and the federal district courts assume control of the executive branch.”

Democrats have launched a pre-planned, well-organized lawfare campaign against the Trump administration.

The NY Times reported in late November 2024 on the massive effort which was two-years in the making and in the immediate post-election period focused heavily on finding plaintiffs and lining up legal groups to challenge expected Trump policies:

More than 800 lawyers at 280 organizations have begun developing cases and workshopping specific challenges to what the group has identified as 600 “priority legal threats” — potential regulations, laws and other administrative actions that could require a legal response, its leaders said. The project, called Democracy 2025, aims to be a hub of opposition to the new Trump administration….

Democracy Forward has spent the last two years working to identify the possible actions the new Trump administration could take on issues they see as key priorities to defend, the group’s leaders said, using as a blueprint Mr. Trump’s first-term actions, his campaign promises and plans released by his allies, including the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 agenda….

The flotilla of lawyers is preparing to challenge new regulations released by the Trump administration, even beginning the process of recruiting potential plaintiffs who would have legal standing in court.

We have seen the fruits of the lawfare planning in the opening three weeks of the Trump administration, with several dozen lawsuits filed, and many (not all) district court judges willing at least to grant temporary restraining orders, incuding one ex parte TRO issued by an emergency duty judge at 1 a.m. last Saturday morning that by its terms removed political appointee control of Treasury payment systems. (That TRO was scaled back by the judge permanently assigned to the case, and is under review by her in a ruling expected soon.) It may be that the short-term TROs are not extended to longer-term preliminary injunctions, and if that happens the “crisis” may solve itself, but I’m not hopeful.

Here is my ‘hot take’ on how the lawfare, not the Trump administration, is creating the real ‘constitutional crisis’. This is a short excerpt from my much longer (almost 20 minute) explanation as part of the podcast we just posted.

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Actually I think the other nations that want to use the Suez canal and Red Sea for commerce should be upping their patrolling too

Something, something, OODA Loop, something.

The fight over this will be interesting, and ugly, and I don’t see where Trump has anything to lose from it. – Glenn Reynolds

Get out of my country, Mahmoud Khalil

Though I have always done my best to comprehend the arguments of my political opponents, I simply can’t wrap my head around the contention that the United States has any responsibility to hand permanent residency or citizenship, the greatest gift we offer, to an America-hating terror fanboy like Mahmoud Khalil.

There are millions of deserving people around the world dying to come here who would respect our laws and culture and become productive, peaceful citizens. People are always going on about how our immigration policy should focus on newcomers with skills. Wouldn’t it be better if we attracted foreigners who would make good Americans? At least let’s offer citizenship to those running from illiberal, violent philosophies not those trying to import them, like Khalil. He offers this country nothing of value.

I grew up around immigrants who had defected from communist nations. These were the most patriotic people I have ever known. They worked their asses off to build a life from the ground up. This brat—who somehow was allowed to come here on a student visa—is leading an insurrection at an Ivy league school. All he’s done as a guest here is make this country a lesser place.

This is not a First Amendment issue. No one has written a law abridging his right to free expression or claimed that visitors can’t speak their mind. No one is banning pro-Hamas protests. The country is lousy with them. But nowhere in the Constitution are we compelled to give citizenship to foreigners who support Islamists or any kind of terrorism. Green cards offer the highest level of protection before citizenship, yes, but they are still part of the vetting process. If we would refuse a visa to someone championing a terrorist group that murders Americans, we should have the right to revoke immigration status for the very same reason at any point.

And, anyway, Khalil lied on his visa application and broke the deal he made with the United States.

From my piece in the Examiner:

The Hamas-affiliated Council on American-Islamic Relations noted that Khalil “is a lawful permanent resident of our nation who has not been charged with or convicted of a single crime.”

So what?

You don’t need to be convicted of a crime to lose your immigration status.
The immigration card system exists so that newcomers can be properly vetted.
To become a citizen, you must exhibit “good moral character,” a criterion that Khalil doesn’t come close to meeting by any objective standard.
Just obey the law, pay taxes, and stay out of trouble.
Orchestrating and participating in harassment, vandalism, bigotry, and civil unrest at a once-esteemed Ivy League university falls under the label of “trouble.”

Then again, according to 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(B), Khalil’s permanent residency can also be denied or revoked if he “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.” (My italics.)

Khalil, who came here initially on a student visa, does little else. The CUAD brags about fighting for the “total eradication of Western civilization” and explicitly advocates “global intifada” and “armed resistance” by Hamas, an organization designated a terrorist group by the U.S. Justice Department. As the New York Times reported last year, the group was “openly supporting militant groups fighting Israel and rescinding an apology it made after one of its members said the school was lucky he wasn’t out killing Zionists.” (Me again.)

 

Saint Patrick’s Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick is a religious and cultural holiday held on 17 March, the traditional date that Saint Patrick , the patron saint of Ireland died in 461 A.D.

Saint Patrick’s Day was made an official Christian feast day in the early 17th century and is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, especially the Church of Ireland, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Lutheran Church. The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland.

Saint Patrick was a Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. Much of what is known about him comes from St. Patrick’s Confession, which was allegedly written by Patrick himself. He was born in Roman Britain in the fourth century, into a wealthy family. His father was a Christian deacon and his grandfather a priest. According to the Confession, at the age of sixteen, he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Gaelic Ireland. It says that he spent six years there working as a shepherd and that during this time he found God. The Confession says that God told Patrick to flee to the coast, where a ship would be waiting to take him home. After making his way home, Patrick went on to become a priest.

According to tradition, Patrick returned to Ireland to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity and that died on 17 March and was buried at Downpatrick.