Category: Enemies Domestic

BLUF
Maybe a few honest liberals might come out against this. But don’t hold your breath waiting on a major reaction from the Democratic establishment; unfortunately, this is the exact kind of thing they think the federal government should be doing. And that’s the truly scary part of this whole saga.

Leaked emails expose Biden White House’s attacks on the First Amendment

The “Twitter Files” reporting from last year exposed a disturbing collusion between Twitter executives and officials from the federal government to censor the public’s speech. But new revelations from Congress show that the Biden White House and Facebook have engaged in similar collusion.

On Thursday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who leads the House Judiciary Committee, released internal Facebook emails that show the Big Tech platform was explicitly pressured by the Biden administration to take down specific posts that the president’s allies disliked.

Our society’s ‘top brains’ have gone mad — and dysfunctional politics is the result

“Suppose we got it all wrong and the real crazies are the TV people in nice suits and $300 haircuts?”
That’s an observation by Richard Fernandez on Twitter, and he has a good point.

There’s a lot of craziness in the air these days.
But for the most part it seems to be flowing from the top down, not bubbling up from the bottom.

It wasn’t farmers and factory workers who came up with the idiotic COVID responses — nor was it they who originated the more or less criminal idea of conducting “gain of function” research on making dangerous viruses more dangerous.

It wasn’t shopkeepers and bus drivers who thought the way to deal with burgeoning urban crime was to get rid of police and release criminals without bail.

It hasn’t been landscapers and auto mechanics championing the notion that a child in the single-digit age range can make a lifetime choice about his or her genitalia or maintaining that even criticizing that idea is itself a species of “violence.”

Ordinary Americans haven’t been claiming the way to promote free speech is to censor people or the way to end racism is to classify everyone by race and consequently treat them differently.

It’s not the working class that wants to “save the planet” by blocking traffic, starting forest fires or banning pickup trucks or gas stoves (though private jets remain surprisingly free from criticism).

All these crazy ideas and more are the product of our allegedly educated and intelligent overclass, the experts, policymakers and media types who in theory represent the thinking part, the brains, of our society. But there’s something wrong with these people — the “brains” of our society are basically crazy. Crazy is when you believe and do things that obviously don’t make sense or fit with the facts.

It’s important to have an intellectual class.
Exactly how important is open to question — in his recent book “How Innovation Works,” Matt Ridley argues that most 19th- and 20th-century innovations actually came from tradespeople and industry, not academics doing abstract research — but important enough.
The COVID lockdown scolds killed people — but they still have no shame

There are dangers to an intelligentsia, though.
Communism and Nazism started as intellectual movements; so did such fads as eugenics and lobotomies.
The Tuskegee Experiment wasn’t the product of racist Klansmen but of the curiosity of credentialed public-health experts.

In a 1999 essay, Neal Stephenson wrote that “during this century, intellectualism failed, and everyone knows it. In places like Russia and Germany, the common people agreed to loosen their grip on traditional folkways, mores, and religion, and let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. Those wordy intellectuals used to be merely tedious; now they seem kind of dangerous as well.”

It’s gotten worse.

Ideas can be dangerous; playing with them can be like gain-of-function research with viruses — if they escape into the general environment, disaster can ensue.

Guardrails like custom, religion and moral traditions made such disasters less likely, but we have spent basically my entire lifetime weakening those guardrails.
At the same time, our ruling class has become less diverse and more prone to groupthink.

A century ago, the people running our government, our economy, our academy and our media were varied.
Now they’re all members of the same class, educated usually at the same elite institutions, incestuously intermarried and driven by class solidarity.

As J.D. Tuccille recently wrote regarding the press’ supine attitude toward government censorship, today’s journalists “love Big Brother”: “Prominent reporters and powerful officials know each other, share attitudes, and trust each other.”

Agriculturalists know that in a monoculture, diseases spread rapidly because the entire crop is identical.
In a social and intellectual monoculture, groupthink ensures that bad ideas spread the same way.
This is especially so because our ruling class has substituted reputation for achievement.

One can be a successful CEO if the company does badly, so long as it pursues the right political goals.
Journalists, bureaucrats and political operatives routinely fail upward because they play to their peers.
The result is that any crazy idea can flourish if it’s stylish. And it’s gotten more dangerous, probably because social media allow so much self-herding behavior by elites.

Dissent is instantly ostracized before it even has a chance to be considered.

A decade ago, the crazy ideas I listed earlier would have been seen as beyond the pale of civilized political discussion. Now they’re all endorsed by leading American institutions.
That’s the hallmark of dysfunctional politics, and dysfunctional politics is what we have.

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
(Federalist No. 47)

These overeducated morons don’t seem to realize that this is a two way street, that can turn into a two way range.

Tyranny of the minority: Liberal law profs urge Biden to defy the courts and the public

“I shall resist any illegal federal court order.”

When “the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution is egregiously wrong,” the president should refuse to follow it.

Those two statements were made roughly 60 years apart. The first is from segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D). The second was made by two liberal professors this month.

In one of the most chilling developments in our history, the left has come to embrace the authoritarian language and logic of segregationists in calling for defiance and radical measures against the Supreme Court.

In a recent open letter, Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet and San Francisco State University political scientist Aaron Belkin called upon President Joe Biden to defy rulings of the Supreme Court that he considers “mistaken” in the name of “popular constitutionalism.” Thus, in light of the court’s bar on the use of race in college admissions, they argue that Biden should just continue to follow his own constitutional interpretation.

The use of the affirmative action case is ironic, since polls have consistently shown that the majority of the public does not support the use of race in college admissions. Indeed, even in the most liberal states, such as California, voters have repeatedly rejected affirmative action in college admissions. Polls further show that a majority support the Supreme Court’s recent decisions.

So despite referenda and polls showing majority support for barring race in admissions, academics are pushing to impose their own values, regardless of the views of the public or of the courts.

However, even if these measures were popular, it would not make them right. It is precisely what segregationists such as Sen. James Eastland (D-Miss.) argued, that “all the people of the South are in favor of segregation. And Supreme Court or no Supreme Court, we are going to maintain segregated schools.”

Tushnet and Belkin cite with approval Biden’s declaration that this is “not a normal Supreme Court.” Biden’s view of normalcy appears to be a court that agrees with his fluid view of constitutional law, by which he can forgive roughly a half of trillion dollars in loans or impose a national eviction moratorium without a vote of Congress.

Tushnet and Belkin know their audience. Biden has previously evinced little respect for the Constitution or the courts. Take the eviction case. In an earlier decision, a majority of justices had declared that Biden’s actions were unconstitutional, confirming what many of us had said for months.

Even after the majority declared it unconstitutional, Biden wanted to reissue the national moratorium. White House counsel and most scholars told him the move would be blatantly unconstitutional and defy the express ruling of the court. Instead, he consulted the only law professor willing to tell him what he wanted to hear and did it anyway. It was quickly again declared unconstitutional.

Other commentators and academics have gone from implied to open contempt for our constitutional norms.

Georgetown University Law School Professor Rosa Brooks was celebrated for her appearance on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” after declaring that Americans are “slaves” to the U.S. Constitution and that the Constitution itself is now the problem for the country.

MSNBC commentator Elie Mystal called the U.S. Constitution “trash” and argued that we should simply just dump it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has questioned the need for a Supreme Court.

In a New York Times column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the Constitution to be “radically altered” to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”

So the danger is now “constitutionalism,” as opposed to what Tushnet and Belkin call “popular constitutionalism.”

Many have called for the court to be packed with liberal appointees to bring it back to what Biden views as “normal.” Some of these calls before Biden’s Supreme Court commission echoed the same views as Tushnet and Belkin. Indeed, they cite Harvard professor Nikolas Bowie, who rejected the notion that “the constitutional interpretation held by a majority of Supreme Court justices should be ‘superior’ to the interpretations held by majorities of the other branches.”

The Framers saw the Supreme Court as playing a counter-majoritarian role when it is necessary to protect individual rights and constitutional norms. The alternative is what the Framers viewed as a tyranny of the majority, where popularity rather than principle prevails. For that reason, the Court has often stood with the least popular in our society and, since Marbury v. Madison, has had the final word on what the Constitution means.

Justice Robert Jackson once observed that he and his colleagues “are not final because we are infallible, we are infallible because we are final.”

That finality has been essential to the stability of our system for generations. While presidents such as Andrew Jackson taunted the court for its inability to enforce its rulings without an army, it has never needed one. Respect for the court is in our DNA. No matter our disagreements with a given decision, Americans will not tolerate defiance of the institution and the rule of law. That is why, despite the support for court packing by many law professors (including Tushnet, Belkin and Bowie), the public remains staunchly opposed to it.

What is most striking about these professors is how they continue to claim they are defenders of democracy, yet seek to use unilateral executive authority to defy the courts and, in cases like the tuition forgiveness and affirmative action, the majority of the public. They remain the privileged elite of academia, declaring their values as transcending both constitutional and democratic processes.

The problem is indeed “constitutionalism,” and their view of “popular constitutionalism” is a euphemism for “popular justice.”

Tushnet and Belkin show the release that comes with rejecting constitutionalism. They declare that it is not enough merely to pack the court: “The threat that MAGA justices pose is so extreme that reforms that do not require congressional approval are needed at this time, and advocates and experts should encourage President Biden to take immediate action to limit the damage.”

In other words, they are calling for Biden to declare himself the final arbiter of what the Constitution means and to exercise unilateral executive power without congressional approval. He is to become a government unto himself.

You are not incorrect if you noticed that their description of “popular constitutionalism” sounds exactly like dictatorship.

This is what Tushnet has advocated in “taking the Constitution away from the courts.” Once the courts are removed from constitutionalism, however, we will be left where we began centuries ago: with the fleeting satisfaction of popular justice.

U.S. Senate Quietly Adds Permanent Gun Control Law Into 2024 NDAA Authorization

Republicans and Democrats are reportedly working together to end the sunset provision on a law gun rights orgs call ‘a backdoor gun ban’

As Congress begins consideration of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Senate leaders are attempting to quietly slip in gun control legislation.

The discovery was made by the Second Amendment advocacy group Gun Owners of America, who combed through the text and found an amendment inserted into the bill that would indefinitely authorize the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988.

According to a version of the proposed NDAA bill dated July 13, the amendment introduced by Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) would end the sunset provision on the 1988 law, which criminalizes firearms unable to be detected by metal detectors and x-ray machines commonly used at airports.

Though the provision was introduced by a Democrat, gun rights organizations say that Republicans are also involved in the effort to permanently codify the gun control law.

Continue reading “”

The Only Legitimate Framework

Quote of the Day

This court is not interested in the outcomes of single cases alone. The conservative majority has greater ambitions: to impose its conception of the Constitution as the only legitimate framework within which to interpret the law.

Caitlin B. Tully
June 25, 2023
Rethinking the Liberal Giant Who Doomed Roe

She says this as if it were a bad thing. And, in my mind, how could it be legitimate any other way?

I am reminded of Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty:

When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.

And that is why the political left is so upset at the current SCOTUS. The political left is intent upon being the master of all and if the U.S. Constitution were to be interpreted as written they would have, comparatively, no power.

Sen. Chris Murphy Targets Military Gun Owners In Defense Bills

It takes a certain amount of brazenness to put the responsibility of defending the nation on a young American and then, in the next breath, demand they forfeit those freedoms they are literally willing to die to protect.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is never one to disappoint, though. His latest legislative move is to put a target on the back of every service member as someone who cannot be entrusted to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Military members already sacrifice many of their freedoms to protect the United States. Sen. Murphy, who has never served a day in uniform, doesn’t think that’s enough.

Sen. Murphy thinks Second Amendment freedoms for those in uniform is, well, too much freedom.

Gun control isn’t anything new to Sen. Murphy. He’s made a career of attacking the Second Amendment and the firearm industry. That’s made him the darling of gun control groups but now he’s putting the Second Amendment rights of military gun owners in his crosshairs.

Sen. Murphy introduced an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which empowers our government to fund and support our nation’s military. As a “must-pass” bill, it naturally attracts thousands of amendments for pet projects every year. Most of those are ruled out of order, or not defense related, so they can’t be attached to the bill.

Continue reading “”

With Mfume, you don’t know whether he’s arrogantly stupid, or stupidly arrogant. In either case, he and his ilk are the reason some of the framers of the Constitution demanded a Bill of Rights that specifically included a protection of RKBA.

Democrat Kweisi Mfume Claims the Role of the FBI and IRS Are to ‘Keep Democracy in Check’

Wednesday, Maryland Representative Kweisi Mfume used his time at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability featuring IRS whistleblowers (WATCH LIVE: IRS Whistleblowers Testify Before House Oversight Committee Regarding Biden Criminal Investigation) testifying about the efforts of the Justice Department to stymie the criminal investigation of the Biden Crime family to provide a revealing insight into how the Democrats view our republican system of government; see IRS Whistleblower Joseph Ziegler Details DOJ Protection of the Bidens in CBS News Interview.

In a seamless segue from the subject of the hearing to complaining about Donald Trump, who, unlike Hunter, James, and Joe Biden, is in legal jeopardy for his real and imagined shenanigans, Mfume, who resigned his position as president of the NAACP due to sexual harassment, let loose with this broadside.

Here’s what galls me. I don’t like these attacks on the Department of Justice, the FBI, the IRS, as if they are somehow anti-US agencies. Those agencies keep this democracy in check and keep moving forward [he lapses into gibberish for a moment, so my transcript might be wrong about “forward’}. They provide the checks and they provide the balances.

 

Once you get past the point of being shocked and appalled that a member of the House of Representatives, the part of the federal government closest to the people, could claim that the DOJ, FBI, and IRS are part of our system of checks and balances and their role is to “keep this democracy in check;” you can actually be thankful to the guy.

On Tuesday, I posted on the confusion and disarray at the New York Times because of Trump’s public plan to bring the federal bureaucracy to heel; see Trump’s Plan to Destroy the Deep State Causes Panic at the New York Times. As my friend and RedState OG “Thomas Crown” noted on Twitter, “Our administrative state, at the federal level, is premised on two weirdly unconstitutional but broadly-accepted (and therefore sort of constitutional?) premises: That the Legislature can cede its power to the President’s branch, which he cannot and must not fully control.”

Granting any federal agency, much less those agencies who can take your possessions and kill you if you rile them up (just ask Vicki Weaver…oh, that’s right, you can’t ask her), status as our checks and balances looks, smells, and tastes very much like the Soviet Union referring to the KGB as the “sword and shield of the Communist Party.” Placing any federal agency, particularly those with the power to deprive you of life, liberty, and property, above criticism is something we sort of suspected the Democrats believed but never expected to hear them say out loud.

You Will Own Nothing: Your War with a New Financial World Order and How to Fight Back

When Carol Roth first heard that one of the World Economic Forum’s predictions for 2030 was “You will own nothing, and be happy,” she thought it was an outlandish fantasy. Then, she researched it. What she found was that a number of businesses, governments, and global elites share a vision of a future that sounds utopian: Everyone will have everything they need, and no one will own anything.

From declines in home and vehicle ownership to global inflation and government spending, many of the trends of modern life reveal that a new world that is emerging—one in which Western citizens, by choice or by circumstance, increasingly do not own possessions or accumulate wealth. It’s the perfect economic environment for the rich and powerful to solidify their positions and prevent anyone else from getting ahead.

In You Will Own Nothing¸ Roth reveals how the agendas of Wall Street, world governments, international organizations, socialist activists, and multinational corporations like Blackrock all work together to reduce the power of the dollar and prevent millions of Americans from taking control of their wealth. She shows why owning fewer assets makes you poorer and less free. This book is essential guide to protecting your hard-earned wealth for the coming generations.

Whistleblower X reveals identity as IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler

The anonymous IRS whistleblower alleging political misconduct throughout the Hunter Biden investigation has revealed his identity as Joseph Ziegler — a gay Democrat with more than a dozen years serving within the agency’s criminal investigative division.

Ziegler appeared for the first time publicly before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, alongside his IRS supervisor Gary Shapley, who also has blown the whistle on political influence surrounding prosecutorial decisions throughout the years-long federal probe into the president’s son.

He said he is a 13-year special agent within the IRS’ Criminal Investigation Division and described himself as a “gay Democrat married to a man.”

Ziegler is expected to testify that Hunter Biden “should have been charged with a tax felony, and not only the tax misdemeanor charge,” and that communications and text messages reviewed by investigators “may be a contradiction to what President Biden was saying about not being involved in Hunter’s oversea business dealings.”

He is expected to explain the “corrosion of ethical standards and the abuse of power that threaten our nation” that he has witnessed.

Ziegler is also expected to testify on several instances in which prosecutors “did not follow the ordinary process, slow-walked the investigation, and put in place unnecessary approvals and roadblocks from effectively and efficiently investigating the case,” including prosecutors blocking questioning and interviewing of Hunter Biden’s adult children.

Ziegler is also expected to ask Congress and the Biden administration to “consider a special counsel” for the Hunter Biden investigation and “all the related cases and spin-off investigations that have come forward from this investigation.”

He is expected to testify that Congress should consider “establishing an official channel for Federal investigators to pull the emergency cord and raise the issue of the appointment of a special counsel for consideration by your senior officials.”

Shapley, who has participated in multiple media interviews since the House Ways & Means Committee released his transcribed interview last month, is expected to testify that prosecutors “had decided to conceal some evidence from the investigators” that they found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Shapley is also expected to say that the Delaware’s U.S. Attorney’s Office “slow-walked steps like conducting interviews, serving document requests, and pursuing physical search warrants in California, Virginia and Delaware” until after the 2020 presidential election.

“The warrants were ready as early as April 2020, but the Delaware USAO pushed them off until after the November 2020 election and then never pursued them,” Shapley will say.

“After an electronic search warrant on Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud account led us to WhatsApp messages with several CEFC China Energy executives where he claimed to be sitting and discussing business with his father Joe Biden, we sought permission to follow up on the information in the messages,” Shapley will say. “Prosecutors would not allow it.”

Shapley will again testify that a search warrant for the guest house at the Bidens’ Delaware residence was being planned, but, despite agreeing there was “probable cause,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf “cited the ‘optics’ of executing a search warrant at President Biden’s residence as the deciding factor for not allowing it to be completed.”

“This was the decision even though she admitted there would be evidence at that location that would further the investigation,” Shapley will say. “AUSA Wolf also told investigators they should not ask about President Biden during witness interviews even when the business communications of his son clearly referenced him.”

The Left’s Culture of Death V: What Can We Do?

This series I have been writing on, “The Left’s Culture of Death” could go on, well, almost endlessly.  I have quoted a very, very small part of one book (Frank Dikötter’s The Tragedy of Liberation); he has three in his series, and they are about only one brutal Leftist, mass-murdering, totalitarian thug, Mao Zedong.  There are books on Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Che, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Robespierre, etc.  This is my fifth article.  I doubt Townhall will let me write an entire encyclopedia—which is what it would take to list all the horrors of the application of Leftist philosophy in the last 200+ years, the dominant philosophy of today’s elite, including the Democratic Party of America.

But then, what I have recorded in these articles is sufficient, or at least should be, to spur the interest of decent, intelligent people who truly care about their families and others.  If you are still skeptical, read Dikötter yourself, and follow it up with other studies on Stalin et al.  The cure for ignorance is knowledge; sadly, there is no cure for stupidity and a closed, bigoted mind.  Hate can be overcome by love, but one must be willing, and too many Leftists have demonstrated they aren’t.  Barbarity is cured by civilization, and Leftists don’t want that, either.  Civilization isn’t the road to totalitarian power.  Many naïve believers always exist, and they are forever swept up in the torrent of true Leftism.  They don’t open their eyes until it is too late.  “I’m a proud liberal!” One Leftist recently emailed me.  He’s going to be a dead one if his side wins.

But the history I have recorded in these articles is accurate and fairly portrays what the Left did in the 20th century in China, is still doing there and in many places in the world, and will continue to do wherever they have power and opportunity.  It is simply intrinsic to the Leftist worldview.  We know that because it is always the result of their philosophy wherever it gains ascendancy.  A tree is known for its fruit.  And they are doing it—so far, in moderation in America—but they will follow the Stalinist and Maoist mass murdering model if they ever feel they need to and can get away with it.  Keep buying guns and ammo, Americans; it is your best line of defense and might be the only salvation for the country.

But the problem is…what can we do?  Leftism has infiltrated deeply into America and is making every effort to spread its tentacles as far and wide as possible.  Decent, God-fearing people are at a disadvantage.  We have morals; they don’t.  We believe in the sanctity of human life; they don’t.  We want to practice “love thy neighbor” and “mind your own business;” they don’t.  Leftists practice hate and want to tell you how you MUST live, or you will be shot.  Conservatives try to teach people the best choices in life, too, but we don’t kill people when they don’t do what we suggest.  We CAN’T kill people.  It isn’t in the true philosophy of God-fearing people to do things like that.  Unlike Leftists, we aren’t the kind of people who will line our enemies up against a wall and shoot them.  Leftists do that.  We can’t, at least not to innocent people, six-year-olds, women, and poor farmers.  The Left has no qualms about it.  You and I do.

So, again, what can we do?  We can fight, of course; we have every right to defend ourselves to the death if necessary.  But we can’t commit mass murder like communists do.  We can’t throw people into gulags and labor camps and work them to death.  We can’t steal people’s land and businesses and terrorize them if we don’t like how they look (“white supremacists”).  That’s what Leftists do.  That’s what they have done, and that is what they will continue to do—even in America.  And we aren’t Leftists.

I’m not saying we always must “fight fair” (all is fair in love and war?).  But mass murder is totally, well, it’s simply beyond the capability of people like you and me.  We would never think of doing something like that or of stealing somebody’s property and goods; honor simply forbids it, and most conservatives are honorable people.  So, again, that puts us at a disadvantage because we cannot use many of the weapons—terror, mass murder, rape, theft, gulags—that Leftists use.  A decided disadvantage, indeed.

We can only win by the word, by persuasion, by faith in God; the gun is our last resort, and even then, only in self-defense.  But, as history is our witness, our hope is not great.  Decency, persuasion, and self-restraint can’t stop bullets.  Our nation rose in decency and civility.  It will end in decadence and barbarity—in other words, the path the Democratic Party is leading the country down right now.  The American people, from our Founding, have been some of the best people the world has ever produced.  Not perfect by any means, but by comparison, far superior to almost any other people’s history has ever witnessed.  And I have absolutely no hesitation in saying that.  And that sort of person, by the millions, still exists in the United States today.  I suspect the people reading this article are among them.  The problem is…are we outnumbered now?  That is a question I don’t know the answer to.  Decadence and barbarity are rampant in America, including in the highest echelons of power.  Indeed, Joe Biden is the number one trash cheerleader.  Are good words and persuasive arguments enough to gain victory?  They never have been before.

America produced great people, but there is nothing special about us as human beings.  That is what the Democratic Party is demonstrating to us today.  So, it may already be too late.

This is legal stonewalling by a judge who purposefully flips what SCOTUS ruled in Heller, Caetano and Bruen in what she hopes will take years of legal wrangling in the off chance that either or both Justices Alito and Thomas pass on and a demoncrap administration can appoint anti-gun Justices and get all these case law restorals of the 2nd amendment protections on RKBA undone…because the unwashed masses really shouldn’t have the means to tell goobermint where to go, and make it stick.

Federal Court Ruling Upholding Oregon Gun Law Will be Appealed

U.S.A. — A federal district judge’s ruling upholding the constitutionality of Oregon’s restrictive gun control Measure 114 will definitely be appealed, the head of the Second Amendment Foundation assured via email with a terse one-word statement.

SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, responding to an email inquiry asking, “Certainly, there will be an appeal, right?” responded bluntly: “Right.”

The ruling was immediately blasted by the Oregon Firearms Federation (OFF), one of several plaintiffs challenging the law in a consolidation of four federal lawsuits, two of which involve SAF and several partners. In a scathing reaction, OFF declared Judge Immergut’s ruling “absurd” and further said her decision was “against gun owners, the Second Amendment and a basic understanding of the English language.”

Immergut’s ruling does appear oblivious to facts involving firearms and self-defense when, on Page 120, she states, “The Supreme Court has held that Second Amendment protects an individual right to self-defense inside and outside of the home. LCMs are not commonly used for self-defense, and are therefore not protected by the Second Amendment.”

This seems to ignore the prevalence of modern semi-automatic pistols, which are commonly used for personal protection, and which come from the factory with magazines holding more than 10 cartridges.

According to The Hill, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum praised the ruling while acknowledging the law still cannot be enforced because it is still being challenged in state court. A judge in Harney County has scheduled a trial in September. By that time, Judge Immergut’s decision will likely have been appealed to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Rosenblum, a Democrat, was quoted by The Hill, stating, “Our team looks forward to ultimately prevailing in the state courts as well.”

Continue reading “”

God’s Children Are Not for Sale: Why the Left Hates Sound of Freedom

I recently went to see the movie Sound of Freedom. It was the first time I had gone to a movie theater since before Covid and it was well worth the wait for such a superb and important film. I was curious about a number of things including whether, in the midst of a heatwave (and rumors that AMC Theaters were sabotaging the air-conditioning in theaters showing the film), the theater would be air-conditioned and why the left has been so distraught over a movie about child sex trafficking – a seemingly nonpartisan issue about which all people of good conscience should be concerned.

I am happy to report that the theater, in West Nyack, NY, was air-conditioned and comfortable. I’m also happy to report that other than the first two rows, every seat was occupied. In fact, when I went to purchase the ticket, the 6:30pm and 7:30pm showings were completely sold out other than the first two rows, so I attended a 9:15pm showing.

And leftists won’t be pleased to hear that the composition of the audience was “representative” of the country’s demographics, i.e., it was quite diverse. In fact, the vast majority of the audience was Hispanic (my guess with the amount of Spanish I heard is first generation), Black, and much of the audience was likely 30 and under, although there were definitely people a bit older as well (I spotted only one white man who appeared to be older than 50). These are people the left thinks they own.

Continue reading “”

KAMALA, ON A ROLL
First, Kamala Harris committed an epic “Kinsley Gaffe” (that is, where someone in Washington accidentally tells the truth) with this amazing remark a couple days ago:

Pretty sure she just blurted out what lefty environmentalists really want to do (reduce population). Even the White House saw that this could not be ignored, and tried their best to clean it up:

Continue reading “”