Biden appears to be done pretending to be President

Where Is the President? Who Is Running the Country?

President Joe Biden left a week long California vacation Monday and headed back to the East Coast. His destination wasn’t Washington D.C. or the White House. Instead, he’s back in Delaware for an additional two weeks at the beach. His schedule remains blank after receiving the “president’s daily brief.”

The call time for reporters in Rehoboth, where Biden is staying in his beach house, was pushed to 11 am Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre is also missing in action and has no planned briefings on the schedule. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby held an on-the-record gaggle with reporters Monday, where he was press on Biden’s whereabouts.

Q The President’s public comportment and the paucity of events on his public schedule, as on this very day, have fostered a public perception that Mr. Biden is increasingly disengaged from the presidency.  Time and again, the question I am hearing from members of the general public, and which I put to you here, Admiral, is: Who is running the country?

MR. KIRBY:  President Joe Biden.

Q    Is he a ceremonial figure in some sense at this point?

MR. KIRBY:  James, now you know better than that.  I mean, my goodness, he talked to Prime Minister Modi today.  He had calls with leaders in the region and in Europe, President Zelenskyy, last week.  He monitored in real time what was going on over the weekend.  I mean, come on.  The President is on vacation, but you can never unplug from a job like that, nor does he try to.  He’s very much in command of making sure we can continue to protect our national security interests here at home and certainly overseas.

 

Biden’s Surgeon General Warns That Parenting Is Hazardous to Your Health.

Joe Biden’s attorney general has made “mental health” a priority for the government. This has both good and bad aspects to it.

There is an epidemic of “mental illness” in America, including depression, obsessive-compulsive behavior, addiction, and other impulse control problems like gambling. More serious forms of mental illness, including eating disorders, paranoia, schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses, are dangerous to others as well as those afflicted.

Is parenting one of these “disorders”?

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy believes that parenting should have its very own warning label: parenting can be harmful to your mental health. It causes depression, dangerous levels of stress, and high rates of loneliness.

According to a survey by the American Psychological Association, “half of parents report overwhelming stress most days, compared with 26% of other adults,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

The temptation is to classify all sorts of situations and behaviors as “mental illnesses.” Everyday life for parents is stressful, period. Full Stop. End of story. Anyone who has sat up all night with a sick infant or a screaming two-year-old can define “stress” much better than childless couples.

But who isn’t feeling that way? Elderly people are lonely and stressed. Single men are lonely and stressed. College students are lonely and stressed. Gen X moms are lonely and stressed. There’s an epidemic of loneliness and stress in this country and it’s bad for our mental and physical health, which Murthy pointed out in a previous advisory.

His stark warning doesn’t necessarily help with the real problem. Fewer people are having children, some because they can’t—or can’t see a way to attain professional ambitions along with family ones. Politicians like JD Vance are outspoken on the primacy of parenthood, and lots of people feel the job is so sacred that it’s wrong to even talk about this.

Murthy believes that parents’ loneliness comes from their being totally and completely responsible for another human being. Frankly, I think that’s a bogus construct. Being responsible for another human being — a precious life that fills us at times, with unbearable joy and brings tears of happiness to our eyes — is not really a question of being alone. Yes, there are moments of sheer terror. But there are also moments of sharing that transcend any other human experience.

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Kamala campaign flip-flops on EV mandates.

The former senator cosponsored legislation banning gas-powered cars by 2040

A campaign official for Kamala Harris said Tuesday that it is a “lie” that the vice president Kamala Harris supports implementing an electric vehicle mandate, even though she cosponsored legislation doing exactly that in 2019.

Harris’s director of rapid response, Ammar Moussa, wrote in a campaign email ahead of Trump running mate J.D. Vance’s remarks on the economy in Michigan that the Ohio senator would “undoubtedly lie, gaslight, and try to run away from the truth.” One such lie, he cautioned, is that “Vice President Harris wants to force every American to own an electric vehicle.”

“Vice President Harris does not support an electric vehicle mandate,” Moussa claimed, before citing several news stories that argued the Biden administration only incentivized, rather than mandated, electric vehicle production by car manufacturers. The administration spent billions to build just a handful of electric vehicle chargers and introduced tax credits for electric vehicle purchases. In addition, however, the Biden administration pushed through a new tailpipe emissions rule through the Environmental Protection Agency that would force car manufacturers to significantly scale back production of gas-powered cars. “The regulation would essentially require automakers to sell more electric vehicles and hybrids by gradually tightening limits on tailpipe pollution,” the New York Times reported in March.

Even more damningly, Harris also supported an electric vehicle mandate when she serves as the junior senator from California. In April 2019, months after announcing her bid to become the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Harris cosponsored the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act of 2019. The bill, which was introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Mike Levin, presented “bold plan for transitioning the United States to 100% zero-emission vehicles.”

The original version of the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act of 2019 would require 50 percent of new passenger vehicle sales to be automobiles that use zero emissions — electric or hydrogen-powered cars and trucks. The bill would require all new car sales be zero emission vehicles by 2040, according to text of the bill and a press release from Senator Merkley’s office.

The legislation gave authority to the EPA administrator to issue an “injunction on the manufacture of any passenger vehicles other than zero-emission vehicles by a vehicle manufacturer” by 2040.

Harris supported an even more aggressive version of the legislation that would ban non-zero-emission vehicles by 2035, according to an archived page of her 2020 campaign website obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Harris’s campaign has also claimed that she no longer supports a fracking ban and other key policies of her 2020 Democratic primary campaign. Harris herself has not walked back any of these positions or explained why and how she changed her mind so radically in just one election cycle.

TN Sec. of State Withholds Approval of Memphis Gun Ballot Issue

The Memphis Commercial Appeal is reporting that Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett has declined to approve a gun control measure to be placed on the Memphis ballot for November.

The action came after the Fox News affiliate in Memphis, Tennessee reported that top Republicans in the state are “taking action” against Memphis and Shelby County if officials there “circumvent state law by politicized ballot measures or ordinances.”

The Memphis City Council reportedly voted last month “to allow voters to decide” on local gun control. According to WHBQ-TV, the local Fox News affiliate, Tennessee Lt. Gov. Randy McNally issued the following statement: “The Tennessee Constitution clearly outlines the roles and responsibilities of the state and local governments. Shelby County needs to understand that despite their hopes and wishes to the contrary, they are constrained by these explicit constitutional guardrails.”

McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton—both are Republicans—have promised the Legislature, controlled by Republicans, “will not tolerate attempts to go rogue…”

The Memphis Commercial Appeal is reporting that three ballot measures the council wants on the ballot are ostensibly aimed at allowing local voters to “signify support for safer gun handling policies.”

WANT News is reporting on the ballot measure, which asks, “Shall the Charter of the City of Memphis be amended to read:

  • No person shall be allowed to carry a handgun in the City of Memphis without possessing a valid handgun carry permit.
  • No person shall be allowed to carry, store, or travel with a handgun in a vehicle in the City of Memphis without possessing a valid handgun permit.
  • It shall be unlawful for a person to store a firearm, whether loaded or unloaded, or firearm ammunition, in a motor vehicle or boat while the person is not in the motor vehicle or boat unless the firearm or firearm ammunition is kept from ordinary observation and locked within the trunk, utility or glove box, or a locked container securely affixed to the motor vehicle or boat.”

That’s more than promoting “safe gun handling” critics contend.

Tennessee is a “constitutional carry” state, also known as permitless carry. Tennessee also has a state preemption statute which says, in part:

“Except as otherwise provided by state law or as specifically provided in subsection (b), the general assembly preempts the whole field of the regulation of firearms, ammunition, or components of firearms or ammunition, or combinations thereof including, but not limited to, the use, purchase, transfer, taxation, manufacture, ownership, possession, carrying, sale, acquisition, gift, devise, licensing, registration, storage, and transportation thereof, to the exclusion of all county, city, town, municipality, or metropolitan government law, ordinances, resolutions, enactments or regulation. No county, city, town, municipality, or metropolitan government nor any local agency, department, or official shall occupy any part of the field regulation of firearms, ammunition or components of firearms or ammunition, or combinations thereof.”

Massachusetts Supreme Court: Switchblade Carry Ban Violates Second Amendment

The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled Tuesday the state’s ban on carrying switchblade knives violates the Second Amendment.

The case is Commonwealth v. David E. Canjura.

Canjura was arrested on July 3, 2020, and a search of his person uncovered a knife “with a spring-assisted blade.” He was charged with “carrying a dangerous weapon,” among other charges, but challenged the constitutionality of the switchblade carry ban “in a pretrial motion to dismiss.”

He “argued that because a switchblade is an ‘arm,’ [the] prohibition on carrying a switchblade violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms for self-defense.”

The Massachusetts Supreme Court weighed Canjura’s motion via the U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller (2008) and Bruen (2022) decisions, noting, “The central component’ of the Second Amendment is the ‘inherent right of self-defense,’ which “guarantee[s] to ‘all Americans’ the right to bear commonly used arms in public subject to certain reasonable, well-defined restrictions.”

They observed, “While both Heller and Bruen involved handguns, Second Amendment protections subsume more than just firearms.”

The Massachusetts Supreme Court then focused specifically on Bruen’s “two part test” and found “the Commonwealth does not identify any laws regulating bladed weapons akin to folding pocketknives generally, or switchblades particularly, in place at the time of the founding or ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

They subsequently observed that the Commonwealth “has not met its burden of demonstrating a historical tradition justifying the regulation of switchblade knives…”

The Massachusetts Supreme Court wrote: “In this case, we are asked to decide whether…[the] prohibition against carrying a switchblade knife violates the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, considering…Bruen. We conclude it does.”

Analysis: The First Crack Forms in Federal Machinegun Ban

For the first time, a federal judge has ruled the Second Amendment protects civilian machinegun possession.

On Wednesday, US District Judge John W. Broomes dismissed charges against a Kansas man for possessing a fully automatic .300 blackout AR-15 and Glock 33 handgun. He ruled that the federal ban on possessing or transferring machineguns (with limited exceptions) was unconstitutional as applied to the defendant.

“To summarize, in this case, the government has not met its burden under Bruen and Rahimi to demonstrate through historical analogs that regulation of the weapons at issue in this case are consistent with the nation’s history of firearms regulation,” Judge Broomes wrote in US v. Morgan.

In many ways, the decision is the epitome of what some gun-rights advocates hoped the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision and the new test it laid down would bring to bear on America’s gun laws. The 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA), which marked the first time the federal government regulated machineguns by requiring registration and a $200 tax stamp, has rankled a vocal section of activists. The same is true of the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act, a provision of which known as the Hughes Amendment—18 USC § 922(o)—functionally banned civilian ownership of automatic weapons manufactured after its enactment.

Those activists view the federal regulations, enacted for the first time more than 140 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment, as incompatible with the Bruen standard because it prioritizes Founding-era approaches to weapons regulation when evaluating modern regulations. They see the ultimate liberalization of machinegun, suppressor, and short-barreled rifle regulations as the natural apotheosis of courts faithfully applying the Bruen test to America’s modern gun-control regime.

But court after court to address the question in recent years has rejected the idea the Second Amendment protects machineguns, largely based on the Supreme Court’s own words. Most often, they cite a section of the majority opinion in DC v. Heller that discusses the idea that fully automatic M-16s, which are functionally identical to the rifle at issue in Morgan, “may be banned.”

“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority in Heller. “Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’”

Broomes interrogated this reliance on Heller’s brief discussion of M-16 rifles and reached a different conclusion on how much it binds courts confronting an explicit challenge to the federal ban on new machineguns.

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NRA CEO Doug Hamlin sent a letter to staff today announcing the group has retained former Solicitor General Noel Francisco of Jones Day to handle its ongoing First Amendment fight with former New York financial regulator Maria Vullo. So it looks like Brewer Law finally got fired.

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David Codrea’s take on the overeducated moron.

Gun Prohibitionist’s Ultimatum Warrants Appropriate Gun Owner Response

“I would personally suggest the gun control groups develop a BATNA to help induce more good-faith negotiating,” Tom H. Hastings, Director of the Peace and Nonviolence Studies, Conflict Resolution graduate program at Portland State University and Secretary for the Oregon Peace Studies Consortium writes in the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal.

“BATNA?” Hastings asks rhetorically (“Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement”).  “It simply means that, if you are trying to negotiate with anyone, it’s important to not only think about ‘what if these negotiations fail,’ but to let the others know what you will be forced to do in that case.”

What does Hastings believe he’s “negotiating,” with whom, and what will he feel compelled to do if his demands aren’t met?

“My choice of BATNA would be, ‘Look gun rights people, we want to negotiate common sense regulations with you,” Hastings explains. “However, literally every time we pass such measures at the local or state level, you work to overcome the will of the people by challenging those commonsense measures in court, with your lawsuits, and it’s all based on the Second Amendment.”

“So we have a best alternative to a negotiated agreement,” Hastings imagines. “Our BATNA is that we are going to stop all other gun control work and focus all our resources on a campaign to repeal the Second Amendment.”

No carrot, just the stick? Give us everything we demand or we’re going to take even more? Hastings’ use of the term “negotiating” invokes nothing so much as Inigo Montoya’s famous “You keep using that word” line from The Princess Bride.

Here’s a counter-BATNA, Mr. Hastings: No. Your move.

I can’t speak for all gun owners the way you presume to speak for all gun-grabbers, but for, say three percent of them (which would still be millions of us), the only response you’ll get is “We will not disarm.”

We’re not interested in negotiating our rights that you and your fellow travelers have no claim to. Come and take them.

We’re not going to surrender the most egalitarian power-sharing arrangement ever devised by men a lot smarter than you so that useful idiots can ensure the state has an unchallengeable monopoly of violence. Besides, we know from experience that no concession will ever be enough (that’s why they call them “totalitarians”), and we know from nature that if you throw a scrap of flesh to a circling pack of jackals, rather than go away sated they will be emboldened to move in closer.

It’s not like your idea is anything new or original. Google “Repeal Second Amendment,” and you’ll see no shortage of egghead dolts who, like you, believe they’re smart but haven’t thought things through about what demanding the same unconditional surrender from an armed populace will result in. The latest rumblings that come to mind are from California Governor Gavin Newsom going full Orwell with his offensive and absurd 28th Amendment.

I see you were proposing the same subversive, reality-denying nonsense back in 2022, when you even showed you were aware of the potential of “Civil War 2.0. With approximately 400 million guns floating around U.S. society and an armed MAGA-driven polarization met by an increasingly armed leftist radical wing, along with evermore virulent rhetoric and escalating numbers walking around open-carrying war weaponry in public…”

To give yourself some semblance of gravitas, you begin your piece by citing Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who like you, called for repeal of the Second Amendment. But here’s the thing: Never meant to be an easy task, even if you could get the numbers needed to pass an amendment to the Constitution, repealing 2A would still not remove the right to arms. As the Heller majority noted when citing an earlier decision:

“The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ‘shall not be infringed.’ As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, ‘[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed…’”

And it shall not be—some of us will see to that.

So now it’s back to you, Mr. Hastings. Your silly and offensive BATNA is rejected, we’re not interested. Now do your worst. But do one other thing first: If they ever do pass your sick little fantasy, flesh out how you think those enforcing it (certainly not you or your fellow gun-grabbers by proxy!) are going to make it all happen. And since there hasn’t been much original thought offered from your side so far, don’t forget to threaten using F-15s and nukes!

With “progressives,” every day is Opposite Day. So it figures an aging, grinning academic wearing a stupid peace symbol earring is proposing unleashing the bloody horrors of civil war on the people of the Republic, and doing it in the name of non-violence and democracy.

In Missouri, the ‘simple’ act of even attempting to break into an occupied residence justifies the legal occupant using deadly force to defend themselves.

Homeowner fatally shoots intruder in Scott City

SCOTT CITY, Mo. (KBSI) – If someone breaks into your home, is it your right to defend yourself?

Under Missouri State Law in many circumstances, it is. This was a situation a Scott City resident faced over the weekend after his home was broken into.

A man is dead after a home invasion incident went wrong in Scott City over the weekend.

“It’s terrible,” said Scott City Police Chief Chris Griggs. “It’s a tragedy for everyone involved. Someone lost their life, and someone’s home was broken into.”

According to Chief Griggs, on Saturday, August 24 around 2:45 p.m., the Scott City Communications Center received a call that an intruder had kicked in the back door of a home on the north side of Scott City.

The intruder was identified as Jason Vermillion.

“He was confronted by the homeowner which demanded that he left,” said Chief Griggs. “He said that he was not leaving, and the altercation occurred and resulted in him being fatally wounded.”

According to Chief Griggs, once officers arrived on scene they used life saving measures, but Vermillion of Scott City later died from his injuries at Saint Francis Medical Center.

Chief Griggs says the shooter is not facing any charges at this time.

“Someone’s home was broken into and had to use lethal force, but was justified in doing so,” said Chief Griggs.

The state of Missouri recognizes castle doctrine and stand-your-ground laws which state if someone is under attack and fear of his/her life, the person has the right to protect him/herself and allows the use of force against intruders. Scott City Police Chief Griggs says the right to defend yourself is also constitutionally protected.

“Your home is your domain, it’s your property, you do whatever force you feel is necessary to stop the threat,” said Chief Griggs.

He says it is unknown why Vermillion broke into the home.

It’s important to note that these laws allow you to act only in self-defense and every situation is handled differently depending on the circumstances.

Hostage Taken on October 7 Freed by Israel in ‘Complex’ Military Operation.

Some Israelis are saying that the rescue of Kaid Farhan al-Qadi, a hostage held in Gaza since his abduction during Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, is reminiscent of the “Miracle of Entebbe” where 102 hostages were rescued by 100 Israeli commandos on July 3-4, 1976.

The IDF described the rescue operation as “complex.” As is customary, no details were released to the public about the operation.

What is known is that Mr. al-Qadi is back in the bosom of his family.

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