Home intruder shot dead in Northeast Austin

A Northeast Austin homeowner shot and killed a suspected intruder during an attempted break-in early Tuesday morning.

According to the Austin Police Department, at around 5:31 a.m., officers responded to a call in the 7600 block of Bethune Avenue, where a female resident reported a man attempting to break into her home through the door and a window. The caller then stated that the male suspect had entered the home, followed by the sound of gunshots.

Upon arrival at the scene, the APD officers and EMS medics found the male suspect dead. APD says the preliminary investigation indicates that the suspect was shot by one of the residents in self-defense.

There is no indication that the residents knew the male suspect. He was later identified as 61-year-old Samuel Wolf. While further details about other occupants of the home have not been released, the police confirmed the residence is a duplex with side A and side B.

The investigation is ongoing, and the APD is urging anyone with information to call the homicide tip line at 512-472-TIPS. No charges are expected to be filed against the resident who shot the suspect at this time.

Does Colorado Show the State ‘Assault Weapon’ Ban Resurgence Starting to Fizzle Out?

Despite enjoying a recent resurgence in deep-blue states, “assault weapon” ban proponents are starting to confront the political and legal constraints to the policy’s continued expansion.

On Wednesday, the Colorado House of Representatives voted to kill a long-awaited proposal to ban the sale of dozens of semi-automatic rifles, pistols, and shotguns with certain targetted features, such as a pistol grip or telescoping stock, in its first committee hearing. Three Democrats joined the four Republicans on the committee in voting to reject the bill, as well as a proposed amendment to limit the ban to just bump stocks.

That an assault weapon ban failed to even make it out of committee in a legislative chamber where Democrats have a supermajority speaks to the tricky politics gun-control advocates still face for gun bans, even in states with trifecta Democratic control. The fact that bills to raise the minimum age to purchase firearms, impose a three-day waiting period, expand who can file a red flag petition, and impose civil liability on the gun industry all easily cleared the Colorado General Assembly this session highlights how much more difficult going after popular guns, such as the AR-15, really is.

A hardware ban is simply a different animal, politically speaking. That fact alone could do a lot to limit the ban’s potential to reach more than a handful of the most progressive-leaning states.

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April 22

1500 – While following Vasco da Gama’s newly opened route around Africa to India, Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral sails too far to the west in the Atlantic Ocean, and lands in what is now Brazil, discovering the South American continent.

1529 – The Treaty of Zaragoza between the king of Spain and Emperor Charles V, and JoĂŁo III of Portugal, regarding the areas of influence of both countries in Asia, divides the eastern hemisphere between Spain and Portugal along a line 297.5 leagues -892.5 nautical miles – east of the Molucca islands.

1836 – A day after the Texican victory at the Battle of San Jacinto, forces under General Sam Houston identify and take captive Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna who was hiding among the prisoners of war of the battle.

1864 – Congress passes the Coinage Act of 1864 that permits the inscription In God We Trust be placed on all coins minted as U.S. currency.

1876 – The first major league baseball game is played at the Jefferson Street Grounds in Philadelphia between the Philadelphia Athletics and the Boston baseball club

1889 – At noon, the first Land Rush into the Unassigned Lands of central Oklahoma Territory starts.

1898 – Off the Florida Keys, gunboat PG-7, the USS Nashville, the first U.S. Navy ship built by Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, fires the first shot of the Spanish-American War and captures the Spanish merchantman SS Buena Ventura.

1944 –US Army Air Force Lieutenant Carter Harman, of the 1st Air Commando Group, flying a Sikorsky R-4 helicopter, conducts the first combat rescue sortie, rescuing a downed liaison aircraft pilot and his 3 British soldier passengers in the China-Burma-India Theater.

1954 – The ABC and DuMont television networks provide the first live  coverage of Senate committee hearings by covering the Army–McCarthy hearings.

1970 – The first Earth Day is celebrated. Despite all prognostications of imminent doom, 52 years later the Earth and humanity are still here.

1977 – Optical fiber is first used to carry live telephone traffic.

1994 – Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States dies, age 81, at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, of a stroke suffered 3 days previously.

2005 – Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologizes for Japan’s World War 2 war record.

Prof. Yamane misunderstands one part of self defense law in Missouri when he states: “From where I stand, shooting someone through the locked glass of your front door.…does not rise to the reasonableness standard required by self-defense law.”   Well, under Missouri revised statutes 563.031
2. A person shall not use deadly force upon another person under the circumstances specified in subsection 1 of this section unless:
(2) Such force is used against a person who unlawfully enters, remains after unlawfully entering, or attempts to unlawfully enter a dwelling, residence, or vehicle lawfully occupied by such person;
In effect you can do exactly that to stop someone who’s trying to get in to where you are. That’s what a lot of people fail to take in account; each state’s laws on use of force may be very similar, but they are not all the same.

Stand Your Ground laws do not allow you to ‘shoot first and ask questions later’

Three recent shootings have, understandably, raised concerns about the legality of using lethal force in self-defense. Sixteen-year-old Ralph Yarl was injured after approaching the wrong house in Kansas City while trying to pick up his siblings. Twenty-year-old Kaylin Gillis was killed after a car she was riding in pulled into the wrong driveway in upstate New York. And two teenage cheerleaders were shot in Austin, Texas, after one of them got into the wrong car in a grocery store parking lot.

Gun violence prevention advocacy groups like Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action have used these events to renew criticisms of Stand Your Ground laws for emboldening people “to shoot to kill & claim self-defense.” Everytown even goes so far as to say these laws “give people a license to kill.”

These groups and even scholars studying gun violence refer to Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws as “shoot first” laws, short for “shoot first and ask questions later.” As a gun scholar, gun owner and opponent of gun violence, I fear that equating SYG with the legal right to “shoot first” could unintentionally mislead people into thinking that self-defense laws truly give them a blanket license to kill with impunity.

They do not.

Self-defense laws actually place significant limits on the ability of individuals to use lethal force in self-defense lawfully. Whether people fully understand those limitations is an empirical question, but critics should drop the language of “shoot first” in referring to these laws. Instead, in the interest of public safety, why not educate people on the limited range of behaviors they in fact allow?

First, the shootings of Ralph Yarl and Kaylin Gillis took place at the shooters’ homes, not in public spaces. Therefore, SYG law does not apply to these cases. (Not to mention that New York does not even have a SYG law.) If anything, they would fall under the common-law principle of “castle doctrine,” which allows people to use reasonable force — up to and including lethal force — to protect themselves and their loved ones at home. It allows people to stand their ground in their own “castle.”

SYG laws can be understood as extending castle doctrine into public space. They apply, in the language of Florida’s landmark law, to any individual “who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be.” These are significant limitations in themselves. Someone mistakenly getting into your car and then immediately exiting cannot reasonably be considered an attack, so no lawful acts of self-defense are justified. The shooting in the Austin grocery store parking lot looks much more like an act of criminal assault.

Second, even under SYG, all the other legal requirements for using lethal force in self-defense still apply. In addition to innocence, there is the issue of proportionality: A person only has a right to “meet force with force, including deadly force.” This also highlights that the individual claiming self-defense must establish their reasonableness. The person must convince a prosecutor or a jury that other reasonable people in the same circumstances would similarly believe they were in danger of death or great bodily harm.

From where I stand, shooting someone through the locked glass of your front door or at a car in your driveway does not rise to the reasonableness standard required by self-defense law. These cases are reminiscent of the killings of Renisha McBride in Detroit and Jordan Davis in Jacksonville. Both shooters claimed self-defense but are now incarcerated for murder.

Reasonableness, of course, is determined in the criminal justice system, which is marred by racial inequality. But the flawed application of law and a flawed law are not the same. People of goodwill can disagree about whether Stand Your Ground laws are, on balance, good or bad. But both gun owners and non-owners must understand what self-defense laws actually allow and prohibit — politically charged rhetoric like “shoot first” is harmful.

Stand Your Ground does not allow anyone to “shoot first and ask questions later.” Not within the law, at least. Please stop saying it does.

End the FBI Blackmail:

AP reported, “Former Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum is on trial in federal court on charges of corruption and lying to the FBI, facing a potentially long prison sentence if convicted of multiple wire fraud counts and conspiracy.”

Paragraph 4 said, “Prosecutors also say Gillum lied about his interactions with undercover FBI agents posing as developers who paid for a 2016 trip he and his brother took to New York, which included a ticket to the hit Broadway show Hamilton. Gillum is accused of falsely telling the FBI later that he never received anything from these undercover ‘developers’ and that his brother provided the Broadway ticket.

2016?

The FBI created a sting on a politician and held off prosecution for 7 years. Not only that but the FBI lied to him and then charged him with lying to the FBI. What a piece of blackmail the FBI would have held over a governor — if Gillum had been elected.

In this case, the FBI had evidence of what it now calls a crime in 2018 when Gillum almost became governor. No bust was made. The FBI — which has the ability to leak like a colander — said nothing to the press.

Imagine what power the bureau would have had in Florida if it could hold this over the head of a governor. Maybe it does. Who knows what dirt the FBI has in its files? The FBI tried to get Martin Luther King to kill himself once the bureau learned of his illicit affairs.

FDR created the FBI in 1935 from a previous Bureau of Investigation created when his cousin Teddy was president in 1908. From the beginning, its director J. Edgar Hoover manipulated the press like the Silly Putty the Fourth Estate devolved into.

Various radio and TV shows over the years billed as being from the files of the FBI have promoted the agency as a collection of men (and now women) dedicated to enforcing the law and protecting honest citizens. I call it Efrem Zimbalism.

The reality is far from that. Long after Prohibition ended, the mafia thrived under Hoover, who denied the existence of the Cosa Nostra. But the FBI kept files on Elvis, Mickey Dolenz and the Kingsmen, a garage band.

Classic Rock reported last August, “In the winter of 1963, a team of FBI agents spent their days hunched over portable record players, struggling to decode a message that threatened the morality of America’s youth.

“It wasn’t from the Russians or Castro, but a band of Portland teenagers called the Kingsmen. And the song was Louie Louie.

“‘J. Edgar Hoover felt we were corrupting the moral fiber of America’s youth,’ Mike Mitchell, guitarist and founding member of The Kingsmen, told me in 2016. ‘The FBI guys came to our shows, and they’d stand next to the speakers to see if we were singing anything off-color. It was a different time.’

“‘Louie Louie was kept out of the Number One spot on the charts by the Singing Nun,’ Kingsmen keyboardist Don Gallucci told me with a laugh. ‘That ought to tell you the mentality of the country back then. I thought, ‘Gee, I know the lyrics. What’s the deal?’ It never occurred to me how repressed teenagers were sexually. They were hearing all this stuff in the song. The genie was getting out of the bottle.’

“The world’s most infamous party song jumped out of the bottle in 1956. Penned by L.A. songwriter Richard Berry, the sailor’s lament had the singer pouring out his lovelorn heart to a bartender, Louie, over the girl he left across the ocean. The lyric’s sweet Calypso air includes couplets like ‘On the ship I dream she there / I smell the rose in her hair.’”

Louie Louie and the Singing Nun were chart-toppers in 1963. No wonder we had Beatlemania the next year.

As silly as the FBI was in the 1960s, it turned seditious in the 1970s. Nixon was re-elected in the first 49-state landslide in the nation’s history in 1972. But he made the mistake of passing Mark Felt over as Hoover’s successor.

Felt used the power of the FBI to push Watergate, which put forth the narrative that a president should not spy on his political opponents. In less than two years, the FBI and Congress forced Nixon to resign, negating the results of that election.

And 44 years later, Barack Hussein Obama used the FBI to spy on President Donald John Trump.

But it is setting crimes up — entrapment — that threatens our republic most. The FBI apparently decides who is a criminal, sets them up and then busts them.

Consider the Whitmer Kidnapping Plot.

C.J. Ciaramella reported in October, “The sort of informant-led investigation that resulted in the arrests of the Wolverine Watchmen is largely due to the rollback of Watergate-era restrictions on the FBI following 9/11. The Whitmer case wasn’t just a poorly conceived investigation; it was the direct result of a strategic internal policy change that allowed the FBI to begin targeting people who had done nothing illegal in order to prosecute the war on terror.

“In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft amended the attorney general guidelines to expand the investigative techniques the FBI could use during preliminary inquiries.

“In 2008, Attorney General Michael Mukasey again broadened the FBI’s power to investigate people absent any evidence that they were involved in a crime, something that would have been illegal prior to 9/11. The new guidelines also specifically allowed the FBI to consider religious affiliation and ethnicity when selecting targets, although those couldn’t be the sole criteria to justify threat assessments. The FBI argued that its manual forbade racial profiling, but if you were looking for young men with ties to the Somali extremist group al-Shabab, for example, Somali immigrant communities would be the natural place to start.

“This made way for a substantial shift in agency strategy and tactics, argues Michael German, the former undercover agent. ‘You actually had to have articulable facts that provided a reasonable indication of criminal activity,’ German says of the pre-9/11 FBI.

“The new rules reflected the national security apparatus’ biggest fear: not organized terrorist cells embedded in the U.S. but individuals radicalized and recruited through the internet or other propaganda, the so-called lone wolves.”

Crime prevention is not an appropriate use of government and police powers because it provides the state police the opportunity to frame people for crimes.

And to blackmail politicians.

Biden signs order prioritizing ‘environmental justice’

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order that would create the White House Office of Environmental Justice.

The White House said it wants to ensure that poverty, race and ethnic status do not lead to worse exposure to pollution and environmental harm. Biden tried to draw a contrast between his agenda and that of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. GOP lawmakers have called for less regulation of oil production to lower energy prices, while the Biden administration says the GOP policies would give benefits to highly profitable oil companies and surrender the renewable energy sector to the Chinese.

“Environmental justice will be the mission of the entire government woven directly into how we work with state, local, tribal and territorial governments,” Biden said in remarks at the White House.

The order tells executive branch agencies to use data and scientific research to understand how pollution hurts people’s health, so that work can be done to limit any damage. Under the order, executive agencies would be required to inform nearby communities if toxic substances were released from a federal facility.

As part of the announcement, Vice President Kamala Harris is separately traveling to Miami, Florida, to announce $562 million to help protect communities against the impacts of climate change.

The EPA last year formed its own Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, merging three existing EPA programs to oversee a portion of Democrats’ $60 billion investment in environmental justice initiatives created by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

The order puts more pressure on federal agencies — and the White House itself — to deliver on promises the Biden administration has made to clean up the environment in communities of color and poor communities and prepare them for the effects of climate change.

The administration has had mixed results in fulfilling this promise. There has been unprecedented spending on environmental and climate justice issues. But there have also been disagreements over how to gauge which communities are most in need of the funding and the administration’s greenlighting of controversial drilling projects as Republicans have criticized Biden for high gasoline prices.

Fauci’s legacy

Judicial Watch Obtains Docs Showing U.S. Funded Wuhan Lab Research From 2013-2020.

Nothing like rewarding scientists from a hostile foreign nation for creating catastrophe! According to documentation obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the U.S. government (NIH) didn’t just fund bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan lab leading up to the leak of COVID-19. The government gave another grant for work with the Wuhan lab in July 2020, long after COVID-19 likely leaked from the lab where it was probably created.

There is a lot of significant and interesting information in the Judicial Watch press release about the documentation. This includes EcoHealth Alliance’s initial “Application for Federal Assistance” submitted on June 5, 2013, which said it aimed to create mutant bat viruses and see how coronaviruses infect humans.

To understand the risk of zoonotic CoV [coronavirus] emergence, we propose to examine 1) the transmission dynamics of bat-CoVs across the human-wildlife interface; and 2) how this process is affected by CoV evolutionary potential, and how it might force CoV evolution. We will assess the nature and frequency of contact among animals and people in two critical human-animal interfaces: live animal markets in China and people who are highly exposed to bats in rural China.

The mention of live animal markets is very interesting since global elites tried to claim (and still do) that COVID-19 actually originated in a live animal market in Wuhan. Perhaps it did, but naturally or through this U.S.-funded Chinese lab program? Judicial Watch says:

EcoHealth Alliance’s $3.3 million grant to fund a project titled “Understanding the Risk of Coronavirus Emergence” was initially to run from October 1, 2013, to September 30, 2018. The first “Project/Performance Site Location” is the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Three other Chinese sites follow: East China Normal University in Shanghai, Yunnan Institute of Endemic Disease Control and Prevention in Dali, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Guangdong in Guangzhou.

A 2013 EcoHealth grant application lists a scientist from the Chinese CDC, which is a Chinese government agency. In China, all labs are answerable to the CDC; but, in this case, the link between NIH funding and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government seems disturbingly direct.

The various parts of the projects examined by Judicial Watch include DNA sequencing, “testing predictions of CoV inter-species transmission,” testing viruses of “varying pathogenicity” on “humanized mice,” and “the infectious clone of WIV1 was successfully constructed using reverse genetic methods.” Some scientists previously argued that COVID-19 was created in a lab and then reverse engineered to make the virus seem naturally evolved from bats.

A document dated July 13, 2020, detailed NIH funding (or rather funding from NIH’s NIAID, then headed by Anthony Fauci) and other information for a project titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” It was for Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth. NIH increased funding to EcoHealth Alliance, including providing “funds for activity with Wuhan Institute of Virology in the amount of $76,301.” How can NIH possibly excuse this July 2020 grant? The U.S. government should not be funding research in China at all, since all labs are answerable to the anti-U.S. CCP government, but funding research at the Wuhan laboratory after the allegations that COVID-19 was created there and leaked from there is completely unacceptable.

This week, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) released the “bombshell” COVID-19 origins report. It provided evidence to support the lab leak theory of COVID’s origins, with the help of U.S. government funding. Marshall estimated two leaks from the Wuhan lab, with the first one happening by September or October 2019, and possibly as early as July 2019 (a whole year before the Wuhan lab got another NIH grant). The documents obtained by Judicial Watch strengthen the evidence Marshall has.

So the U.S. government funded the research that likely created COVID-19 in a Chinese lab, and continued to fund research at that lab after COVID-19 had been wreaking havoc on the world. If only we could trust our government, and conspiracy theories didn’t keep turning out to be true.

Kansas: Gov. Kelly Signs AG Kobach’s Permit Fee Reduction Bill

Yesterday, Governor Laura Kelly signed Senate Bill 116 into law. This NRA-backed bill eliminates the Attorney General’s $100 fee for concealed carry permits, reducing the total fee to just the $32.50 paid to county sheriffs. Reducing the fee ensures that the permit, and the benefits that it confers in exercising Second Amendment rights, are more accessible to law-abiding citizens of less financial means.

Marksmanship lessons!

Suspect Shot Seven Times In Botched Home Invasion In Bethlehem

BETHLEHEM, PA – Four suspects were charged with robbery and home invasion in Bethlehem Township early Thursday morning, according to District Attorney Terry Houck.

The suspects were identified as Millito Delgado, 45; Michael Matas, 29; Francis Ferrando, 23; and Anthony Santiago, 29. Delgado, Matas, and Ferrando. They are currently in police custody, while Santiago remains at large.

During the home invasion, which occurred at approximately 4 a.m. in the 2000 block of Willow Park Road, four men broke into the residence where three occupants were present.

In an act of self-defense, one of the occupants shot defendants Matas and Ferrando.

Matas suffered seven gunshot wounds to the back and is currently in critical but stable condition, with an expected recovery. Ferrando suffered a single gunshot wound to the leg.

All four defendants are facing charges of 3 counts of Robbery – Attempt Serious Bodily Injury, 2 counts of Possession of Instrument of a Crime, Burglary, Simple Assault, and related charges.

Authorities have stated that there is no danger to the public at this time, and the investigation is ongoing. The affidavit has been sealed to protect the integrity of the investigation.

District Attorney Houck commended the Bethlehem Township Police Department for their swift response to the situation.

“This was first-rate work by the Bethlehem Township Police Department. I want to thank Chief Gregory Gottschall and his officers for their immediate response and attention to detail in this case. Although there is still much to do, I am confident no stone will be unturned in our effort to apprehend the fourth male,” he said.

 

Colorado House panel kills ‘assault weapons’ ban
Four Democrats joined the Colorado House Judiciary Committee’s Republicans to indefinitely postpone the bill.

DENVER — Legislation that sought to ban so-called “assault weapons” died early Thursday morning after three Democrats joined the Colorado House Judiciary Committee’s Republicans to kill the bill on a 7-6 vote.

Shortly before 1 a.m. Thursday, Democratic Reps. Bob Marshall of Highlands Ranch, Said Sharbini of Westminster and Marc Snyder of Colorado Springs voted down the legislation along with their Republican colleagues after a pair of amendments to ban bump stocks and rapid-fire trigger activators were lost.

A subsequent vote to postpone the bill indefinitely drew one additional Democratic vote from Rep. Lindsay Daugherty of Arvada.

The nearly 15-hour hearing, which kicked off Wednesday morning, drew a 2023 record 522 witnesses seeking to testify.

The bill — sponsored by Rep. Elisabeth Epps, D-Denver — has divided the Democrats’ Gun Violence Prevention Caucus, with leading members, such as Sen. Tom Sullivan, D-Centennial, believing other measures, such as his proposal to improve the red flag law, are better solutions to gun violence.

Man shot another on Barnett Street in self-defense

The Kern County Sheriff’s Office released more information Wednesday about a shooting death on Barnett Street last week.

Deputies were called to investigate vandalism in the 2100 block of Barnett Street and found a man suffering from a gunshot wound, KCSO reported Wednesday.

An investigation showed a man forced his way into a house on Barnett Street and another man shot him to defend the homeowner, KCSO said. A gun was recovered, and no one has been arrested.

The victim hasn’t been identified.

Pentagon Moves Troops To Prepare For Possible Sudan Embassy Evacuation.

The Pentagon is repositioning troops near the country of Sudan to prepare for a possible embassy evacuation as the nation devolves into civil war.

The Defense Department moved additional troops and equipment to a naval base in Djibouti, a small African country on the Gulf of Aden, to prepare for the potential evacuation, The Associated Press reported. The Pentagon said publicly it was deploying “additional capabilities” to the region but did not provide specifics.

Planning for an evacuation reportedly intensified after an American diplomatic convoy came under fire in Sudan on Monday. Fighting broke out in the country earlier this week between two rival factions, loyal to two warring military leaders who had been co-governing until negotiations toward a democratic process recently collapsed.

The State Department said Thursday that all embassy staff in Khartoum are currently safe and accounted for, but that the conditions on the ground are not currently stable enough for an evacuation of the staff or of other American citizens in the country. The department estimates that about 16,000 American citizens are in the country, but cautioned the figure is likely somewhat inaccurate. Americans in Sudan are being advised to shelter in place and avoid traveling on the streets.

Khartoum’s airport has been shut down and control over the area is disputed. The last time the United States conducted a ground evacuation of embassy personnel was in Libya in 2014, although it is unclear what methods could be used to do so in Sudan. At least 330 people have been killed in the several days of fighting so far, according to the most recent estimates, and an agreed ceasefire earlier this week failed almost immediately.