TO THE LEFTISTS WHO DOMINATE “INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS DISCOURSE” THIS IS A FEATURE NOT A BUG:
Human rights law has been intentionally perverted by people who want the West to be unable to defend itself against terrorist groups and other non-state actors. Israel is their first target, but they will use any precedents set against Israel against the US and NATO. Israel is serving as the canary in the coal mine, and the US must do everything in its power to undermine the power of far leftists (and their Islamist allies) to set the terms of military engagement, especially given that Israel’s rules of engagement are stricter than NATO’s.

Trump picks Pam Bondi for US Attorney General after Gaetz withdraws

Nov 21 (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday nominated former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to be U.S. Attorney General, moving swiftly to replace his former nominee Matt Gaetz after the embattled former congressman withdrew from consideration.
Gaetz, who faced opposition from Senate Republicans, was the subject of a House Ethics Committee probe into allegations of having sex with an underage 17-year-old girl and illicit drug use. He has denied wrongdoing.

Bondi served as the top law enforcement officer of the country’s third most populous state from 2011 to 2019 and on Trump’s Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission during his first administration.

Most recently, Bondi helped lead the legal arm of the America First Policy Institute, a right-leaning think tank whose personnel has worked closely with Trump’s campaign to help shape policy for his incoming administration.

Her resume contrasts with that of Gaetz, who has little of the traditional experience expected of an attorney general. Bondi would likely face less opposition from senators involved in the confirmation process compared with Gaetz.

Trump announced his pick of Bondi on social media, praising her for her prosecutorial experience and saying she was tough on crime as Florida’s first female attorney general.

Trump, who was elected on Nov. 5 despite being the subject of multiple criminal investigations from U.S. and state prosecutors, including a felony conviction in the state of New York, said Bondi would end the politicization of federal prosecutions.

“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans – Not anymore,” Trump said.
“Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fight Crime, and Making America Safe Again.”

Kansas City-Area Lawmakers Buck Veto, Pick Fight With Missouri Legislature

When Jackson County, Missouri Executive Frank White vetoed a package of local gun control ordinances last week, he rightfully pointed out that the measures are “fundamentally flawed, unlawful, and counterproductive.” The state of Missouri has a firearms preemption law in place that prohibits localities from adopting their own gun laws, and there’s no doubt that the ordinances approved by the Jackson County legislature violate the state’s preemption statute.

The ordinances establish age limits for firearm and ammunition purchases and an almost near-total ban on the possession of “assault rifles” for adults under the age of 21. White said that if the ordinances were allowed to take effect, it would open up Jackson County to “costly legal battles,” but Jackson County lawmakers are apparently willing to let taxpayers foot the bill for their quixotic attempt to subvert state law because they’ve overridden his veto and put the county on a collision course with the state of Missouri.

County Legislator Manny Abarca, who was caught in Union Station with his then-five-year-old daughter during the Super Bowl parade shootings, said the bill is needed to fight the rash of violence this summer by armed teens. He also pointed to the murder of Irish chef Shaun Brady in August.

“The least we can do is implement common-sense protections to prevent such devastating incidents from happening again,” Abarca said in a press release. “This ordinance is a necessary step to enhance public safety and protect our youth.”

White vetoed the bill last week, saying state law clearly bans passage of any local gun laws and he feared a lawsuit.

He issued a statement late Monday saying passage of the bill was “a disappointing moment for our residents.”

“While I respect the legislative process, this ordinance does not meet legal standards set by state and federal law, and we fully expect that it will be challenged in court,” White said. “Regrettably, this will mean that taxpayer dollars are spent defending an ordinance that has little chance of being upheld.”

Abarca’s grandstanding won’t cost him a dime personally, but he and the other six Jackson County legislators who overrode White’s veto are going to be wasting a lot of the county’s money defending the indefensible. Missouri statute is crystal clear about the powers of local governments to impose their own gun control laws:

No county, city, town, village, municipality, or other political subdivision of this state shall adopt any order, ordinance or regulation concerning in any way the sale, purchase, purchase delay, transfer, ownership, use, keeping, possession, bearing, transportation, licensing, permit, registration, taxation other than sales and compensating use taxes or other controls on firearms, components, ammunition, and supplies…

The two exceptions granted to local governments are the ability to regulate the open carrying and discharging of firearms, though even then political subdivisions can’t craft an ordinance that prohibits guns from being used in defense of person or property. Abarca’s ordinances directly conflict with state law by imposing new regulations on the sale of firearms and ammunition, as well as the possession of so-called “assault rifles” ((a term, by the way, left undefined by the ordinance).

There’s no question that the ordinances conflict with state law. The biggest unknowns at the moment are who will sue to strike down the new ordinances, and whether Jackson County Sheriff Darryl Forte will try to enforce the measures adopted by county lawmakers.

There is no shortage of potential plaintiffs, including Second Amendment organizations, gun stores, and young adults in Jackson County who could bring a legal challenge to the new ordinances, but standing could be an issue if Forte decides its better not to enforce them. Regardless of enforcement, I expect the Missouri Attorney General’s office will also have plenty to say about the Jackson County legislature’s illegal ordinances, and might even bring a separate legal challenge to strike the measures from the books.

No matter how concerned Abarca and other lawmakers are about “youth” crime in Jackson County, violating state law to infringe on the Second Amendment rights of young adults is, as White said, a fundamentally flawed and counterproductive approach. Money that could be spent on hiring more deputies, prosecutors, or even community violence intervention efforts will now be directed toward defending Abarca’s public relations stunt instead of making Jackson County a safer place.

Why Again Do We Still Have a Special Relationship With the Tyrannical UK?

America and the United Kingdom have long had a special relationship, working closely as allies to protect the West from oppressive dictatorships that suppress their own people, arbitrarily jailing them and persecuting them for exercising their God-given right of free speech. Here’s the problem. The UK has become one of those oppressive dictatorships that suppress their own people, arbitrarily jailing them and persecuting them for exercising their God-given right of free speech. And I’m not particularly interested in having a special relationship with a country like that. Nor are many other Americans.

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Kissinger’s final warning: Prepare now for ‘superhuman’ people to control Earth

Humanity must begin preparations to no longer be in charge of Earth because of artificial intelligence, according to a new book from the late statesman Henry Kissinger and a pair of the country’s leading technologists.

The rise of AI creating “superhuman” people is a major topic of concern in “Genesis,” published Tuesday by Little, Brown and Company. It’s the “last book” from Kissinger, according to the publisher’s parent company Hachette. Kissinger was a longtime U.S. diplomat and strategist who died last year at age 100.

Kissinger’s co-authors, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and longtime Microsoft senior executive Craig Mundie, finished the combined work after Kissinger’s death, and The Washington Times has obtained an advance copy. Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Mundie wrote they were among the last people to speak with Kissinger and sought to honor his dying request to finish the manuscript.

The authors offer a bracing message, warning that AI tools have already started outpacing human capabilities so people might need to consider biologically engineering themselves to ensure they are not rendered inferior or wiped out by advanced machines.

In a section titled “Coevolution: Artificial Humans,” the three authors encourage people to think now about “trying to navigate our role when we will no longer be the only or even the principal actors on our planet.”

“Biological engineering efforts designed for tighter human fusion with machines are already underway,” they add.

Current efforts to integrate humans with machine include brain-computer interfaces, a technology that the U.S. military identified last year as of the utmost importance. Such interfaces allow for a direct link between the brain’s electrical signals and a device that processes them to accomplish a given task, such as controlling a battleship.

The authors also raise the prospect of a society that chooses to create a hereditary genetic line of people specifically designed to work better with forthcoming AI tools. The authors describe such redesigning as undesirable, with the potential to cause “the human race to split into multiple lines, some infinitely more powerful than others.”

“Altering the genetic code of some humans to become superhuman carries with it other moral and evolutionary risks,” the authors write. “If AI is responsible for the augmentation of human mental capacity, it could create in humanity a simultaneous biological and psychological reliance on ‘foreign’ intelligence.”

Such a physical and intellectual dependence may create new challenges to separate man from the machines, the authors warn. As a result, designers and engineers should try to make the machines more human, rather than make humans more like machines.

But that raises a new problem: choosing which humans to make the machines follow in a diverse and divided world.

“No single culture should expect to dictate to another the morality of the intellects on which it would be relying,” the authors wrote. “So, for each country, machines would have to learn different rules, formal and informal, moral, legal, and religious, as well as, ideally, different rules for each user and, within baseline constraints, for every conceivable inquiry, task, situation, and context.”

The authors say society can expect technical difficulties, but those difficulties will pale in comparison with designing machines to follow a moral code, as the authors said they do not believe good and evil are self-evident concepts.

Kissinger, Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Mundie urged greater attention to aligning machines with human values. The trio said they would prefer that no artificial general intelligence surpassing humanity’s intellect is allowed to emerge unless it is properly aligned with the human species.

The authors said they are rooting for humanity’s survival and hope people will figure it out, but that the task will not be easy.

We wish success to our species’ gigantic project, but just as we cannot count on tactical human control in the longer-term project of coevolution, we also cannot rely solely on the supposition that machines will tame themselves,” the authors wrote. “Training an AI to understand us and then sitting back and hoping that it respects us is not a strategy that seems either safe or likely to succeed.”

Best Self-Defense Tools? Um…I Don’t Know…How ‘Bout a Gun

Ok, so to start, I get that the article in question appeared in the New York Post, published in, of course New York City, where all things “guns” are strictly verboten, so a New Yorker is naturally going to get creative. But therein lies the problem: When trying to determine or write an article about the best self-defense tools available, there is clearly, one option that trumps all others. The others are nice, maybe even kinda cool. But none of them are a gun. A firearm in virtually any of its many designs and configurations is the best self-defense tool ever created by man and, some bumper sticker enthusiasts might argue, perfected by Samual Colt. In the game of rock, paper, scissors, if you added nuke, which would beat all the others combined, the gun plays that same role in a discussion of self-defense tools.

But, for shits and giggles, let’s play along for a minute.

So the Post article, “How to stay safe with some of the best self-defense tools on the market,” was a nice New York-safe (sort of, more on that in a minute) article by Emma Sutton-Williams. A quick look at Ms. Sutton-Williams’ bio reveals she is an ardent electric scooter rider, a proud dog mom to a designer breed of Mini Sheepadoodle (not sure what that really is though speculating it’s a super ineffective version of a tiny sheep dog mixed with some version of poodle and is likely infinitely cute and hypoallergenic) and is a Julliard-trained violinist (impressive). She is no doubt quite talented, rather smart, exceptionally cultured, fashionably attractive, a solid writer and likely has zero familiarity or knowledge of firearms.

So, she got creative and looked at the typical non-gun items that can be used to knock an attacker senseless or simply attack his (or her) senses. Here was the author’s premise:

“In a world where chaos has taken root, propelled by social media and broadcasted entertainment, we constantly feel its toll on our society. The atmosphere is charged with a fearful undertone, robbing us of tranquility, even joy, if we let it. The world has stopped listening to one another, causing a wake of public shaming, name-calling, and acts of violence.

“In an effort to make our readers feel as safe as possible, we researched the best self-defense tools and techniques to feel protected and empowered. Knowing how to shield yourself is crucial whether you’re walking alone at night or navigating crowded public spaces.”

The Post is doing a little what The Truth About Guns is doing. We want our readers to feel safer, too. We just take a more direct, reliable approach to promoting that safety.

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ANTI-GUNNERS MORE INTERESTED IN PUBLIC DISARMAMENT THAN SAFETY—CCRKBA

BELLEVUE, WA – A recent report by ABC News that gun control groups are vowing to “double down” against incoming President Donald Trump if he pursues national concealed carry reciprocity only proves anti-gunners are more interested in citizen disarmament than in public safety, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said in response.

“National concealed carry reciprocity simply would mean American citizens would no longer leave their right of self-defense at a state border,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “The gun prohibition lobby needs to come clean and admit they don’t care if law-abiding citizens can’t defend themselves while traveling. They’re not interested in public safety, only public disarmament.”

A national reciprocity bill passed the U.S. House in 2017, but was never brought up in the Senate, and Democrats have opposed the idea. Now, however, with Capitol Hill under Republican control, and Trump on record as vowing to sign legislation if it hits his desk, anti-gunners—including Everytown for Gun Safety and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence—are promising a fight to keep people traveling from one state to another vulnerable to criminal attack.

“The gun ban crowd can couch their arguments any way they want,” Gottlieb observed, “but when you boil it down, what they really want is for good people to be vulnerable to violent crime. Anti-gunners argue that reciprocity will make it easier for criminals to cross state lines, but that doesn’t pass the smell test because criminals are already doing that.

“Any notion that legally-armed Americans are somehow a threat to public safety when they journey to another state is manufactured paranoia,” he said.

“And,” Gottlieb added, “when armed citizens go to other states, they must obey that state’s gun laws. The argument that states will see their own gun laws eroded by reciprocity is yet another myth invented by anti-gunners to dissuade people from supporting reciprocity. Each state’s laws would remain intact, and they know it.”

Devon Eriksen

Cenk has seen the writing on the wall, and knows the dems have no future.

Problem is, the fact that he is able to pivot so smoothly and quickly means that he wasn’t drinking the koolaid.

Which means he knew Trump wasn’t Orange Hitler. That he knew most of the things said about him were lies. Because if half the stuff they said about him was true, no sane person would work with him.

So, if he knew before that it was all a lie, but he’s only pivoting now, that means this is self-interest, not enlightenment.

Which means he is not trustworthy.

This is something to keep in mind as more and more lefties try to pivot to the Trump Coalition, which they will.

Keep an eye on when they turned, and what they said before they turned. Not just about Trump. About covid. About immigration. About white people. About middle America. About heterosexuals. About the working class. About men.

Check the receipts.

Doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t work with them, but it means we must be judicious about how much trust we extend.

Works the other way, too. Ron Paul was laying tracks for the Trump Train before even Trump was on it. Hell, before there was a train. At great personal cost and risk.

The compass needle is swinging away from “experts” with academic credentials from certifying institutions, and towards those with a track record of accomplishment, skin in the game, and, most of all, proven loyalty to the American tribe over the political class.

America is a blood-and-soil nation, like all the others, and, while we have a permissive culture about allowing others to join the club, they must prove their loyalty to be allowed to do so.

Let’s remember to keep that in mind as the rats start to abandon the ship.

Don’t Think Guns Are Treated Differently? Think Again

There are some people who think guns get some kind of special dispensation within the law. This is popular with the “I wish women had the same rights as guns” crowd that can’t seem to shut up. It’s nonsense, of course, but some people really like to pretend otherwise. They like to pretend guns are treated differently than everything else.

But let’s be real. Guns are treated differently than other products. It’s just not the way they want you to think.

See, few other industries are facing threats of government regulation and intervention because of things that third parties do that are already prohibited by law, but  that’s what’s happening in the firearm industry.

After the video montage of criminal violence, Chairman Durbin continued his opening remarks.

“Glock switches, which are banned under federal law are cheap, often costing less than $20, and they’ve been increasingly common across our country,” the chairman said. “We must act. Gun manufacturers can and should do more to ensure their products cannot be converted into illegal machine guns.
If manufacturers fail to act, Congress should take up legislation to hold these companies liable for the foreseeable consequences of their actions.”

Of course, the White House coordinated with Everytown and The City of Chicago to sue Glock under this baseless legal theory; and is the subject of an ongoing congressional investigation.

Chairman Durbin gives away his authority here as he knows well lawful firearm manufacturers cannot and should not be held liable for the criminal actions of unaffiliated remote third parties. This is the cornerstone of American jurisprudence and codified in the bipartisan Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) that countless gun control activists wish to eliminate.

The chairman said it himself – these illegal firearm conversion devices like Glock switches are already illegal. Prosecutors need to get tough and hold criminals accountable for committing these horrible crimes.

Some argue that the PLCAA is more proof that guns are treated differently, but let’s understand what the PLCAA does and why it exists.

It was created to deal with a particularly insidious series of lawsuits aimed at trying to punish the firearm industry for what third parties did with firearms. There was no wrongdoing by the gun manufacturers, who complied with all federal regulations. It was just a way to try and bankrupt gun companies or force them to stop selling to the general public.

The PLCAA ended that.

Some argue this creates special protections for the industry, and it may, but only because they are needed. For example, the auto industry doesn’t get sued because of drunk drivers. If they did, we’d likely see similar protections put in place.

However, now the target is companies like Glock who find their firearms ending up in criminal hands and who are using devices that are illegal, that have been illegal since they were invented, and that cannot be lawfully purchased. Since most of them were made after 1986, the machine gun ban implemented that year means that no one can buy one even after jumping through all the NFA hoops.

The threat here is that Glock will face regulation if they don’t change their entire design to accommodate for someone doing something illegal.

No other industry would face such threats.

For example, no one has ever threatened the auto industry because the window glass is too easy for thieves to break or the cars are too easy to hotwire. No one sued door lock companies for failing to stop someone busting through the door.

But Glock is being threatened here.

The upside is that it’s an empty threat. The PLCAA does mean that lawsuits can’t really happen, but Congress can end those protections, so that’s not what makes it empty. What does is the fact that Durbin isn’t going to be calling any shots for the next two years at least. The incoming Congress doesn’t exactly look like one inclined to punish a popular firearm maker that provides most of the guns used by law enforcement over what criminals do with devices they add that aren’t even made by Glock in the first place

In the Seventh Circuit, Procedural Red Herrings Threaten the Second Amendment

The Seventh Circuit heard oral argument on November 12 in Viramontes v. County of Cook, Illinois, a challenge to Cook County’s ban on semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15, inaccurately labeled as assault weapons. These bans are flatly unconstitutional under Heller, which establishes that the law-abiding citizens of this Nation have a right to possess firearms that are in common use. Semiautomatic rifles undoubtedly are in common use – indeed, the AR-15 has been the best-selling rifle in the Nation for years. Unfortunately, the Seventh Circuit departed from Heller in a case called Bevis to hold that arms that are predominantly useful for military purposes can be banned. But even under that reasoning, semiautomatic rifles cannot be banned. They are common civilian firearms, not military firearms, because they lack the capacity for automatic and burst fire.

 The questioning at the Seventh Circuit, however, did not focus much on the merits of the case. Rather, the panel (consisting of Judges Sykes, Brennan, and St. Eve) took a surprise detour through a series of procedural objections put forward in Cook County’s briefs. (Take a listen here). Judges Sykes and St. Eve appeared to think that Viramontes’ challenge should fail because he didn’t put forward critical evidence about semiautomatic rifles in the district court. Viramontes’ lawyer challenged that notion, including by citing to specific pages in the record containing key pieces of evidence. I decided to dig deeper into the history of the case to see who has the better of the argument. The short answer is that Viramontes does. Indeed, he has built one of the most robust records I have seen by a plaintiff in a case challenging a semiautomatic rifle ban.

Before turning to the record, it is helpful to take a step back to see how we got to this point. When Viramontes filed his case, the constitutionality of a ban on semiautomatic rifles was controlled by two Seventh Circuit precedents, Wilson and Friedman. Viramontes did not initially seek to build a record in the district court because his sole path to victory was to have the Seventh Circuit or U.S. Supreme Court declare that Wilson and Friedman were wrongly decided.

Cook County, however, requested the opportunity to build a record, and the district court obliged. Then, while the case was proceeding in the district court, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Bruen, arguably wiping out Wilson and Friedman as precedent. It was in this context that the parties put forward their evidence and engaged in summary judgment briefing. It was not until summary judgment was fully briefed that the Seventh Circuit decided Bevis, and the parties addressed that decision in short filings.

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