Just in case you never considered that congresscritterzℱ could be domestic enemies of the people and the Constitution:

Trump Classified Docs Trial Postponed Indefinitely.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed Trump’s classified documents trial.

“The Court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture—before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA issues remaining and forthcoming—would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury,” Judge Cannon wrote.

“The Court therefore vacates the current May 20, 2024, trial date (and associated calendar call), to be reset by separate order following resolution of the matters before the Court, consistent with Defendants’ right to due process and the public’s interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against former President Donald Trump has been on shaky ground lately. On Friday, Smith’s team admitted to misleading Cannon and tampering with the evidence that had been used as the basis for his case against Trump.

Last month, Cannon unsealed a trove of new documents in the case that also revealed that an FBI agent had testified that the General Services Administration (GSA) was in possession of Trump’s boxes in Virginia before ordering Trump’s team to come get them. The same boxes that the GSA had been holding and ordered Trump’s team to retrieve ended up being the boxes that contained classified markings, raising questions about whether the Biden administration had set up Trump.

“So an entire pallet full of boxes that had been held by GSA somewhere outside of DC is dumped at Mar-a-Lago,” independent journalist Julie Kelly noted. “Apparently these are the boxes that ended up containing papers with ‘classified markings.'”

The Supreme Court also heard oral arguments over Trump’s claims to presidential immunity, which may affect this cause.

Cannon’s decision is a major win for President Trump, who has repeatedly sought to delay the case until after the presidential election in November. In early April, Cannon rejected Trump’s previous attempt to dismiss the case, which he based on the argument that the documents found at his estate were personal records. Trump had filed multiple motions for dismissal back in February, employing various arguments, such as asserting presidential immunity and questioning the legitimacy of Smith’s appointment.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden had classified information that he was never entitled to have stored in boxes in his garage for years but was not charged. In February Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report concluded that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen” and that his actions “present[ed] serious risks to national security.” However, Hur wouldn’t bring charges against him because Biden “would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Because of this, Hur concluded it would be “difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him […] of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.” Hur found that Biden’s memory was “significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017 and in his interview with our office in 2023” and that he couldn’t remember the years he was vice president or when his son Beau died.

John Kirby Says Israel Can’t Eliminate An Ideology With Force. History Disagrees.

In the 12th century, the Christian dualist movement Catharism began spreading across northern Italy and southern France. It was neither the first nor the last heretical challenge to orthodox Christianity in medieval Europe — as Catholics can surely attest.

In any event, the Cathars essentially believed, among many other heresies, in two gods: one of eternal heaven and another of worldly evil. The belief became so popular that Pope Innocent III, apparently not a fan of religious liberty, was compelled to launch the Albigensian Crusade to stamp out this theological perversion. Hundreds of thousands likely perished. In one French Cathar city, 20,000 people were reported slaughtered under papal legate.

I thought of the Cathars, as one does, when Kirby responded to a question about the United States’ support for Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas with his popular trope — “You’re not going to eliminate an ideology through military operations.” Unlike the Albigensian Crusaders, of course, Israel is taking unprecedented precautions to protect the civilian life of their enemies — even though Hamas, unlike medieval Christians, hides behind them.

The worst part of Kirby’s platitudinous nonsense, however, is that it creates the impression Israel is trying to eliminate an entire “ideology” rather than trying to eradicate an organized military and cultural force that uses theology for violent political aims. Of course Israel can’t bore into the souls of Gazans and transform them into right-thinking people. It can destroy Hamas’ hold on territory and render its ideology largely useless. It can bring the purveyors of Hamas ideology to justice and eradicate their military capabilities. For now, that’s good enough.

Moreover, if fighting wars to defend enlightened ideas against nefarious ones is really such a waste of time, why are we sending hundreds of billions to Ukraine to fight Putinst aggression? We are incessantly assured that the European war is a battle between “autocracy” and “democracy.” These are ideological camps. If Volodymyr Zelensky could strike a debilitating blow to Putin’s political power, would Kirby contend it was a waste of time?

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Boy Scouts of America changes name after 114 years to ‘boost inclusion’

“Scouting America”

Comment O’ The Day:

BSA was worried about losing donations and membership because they weren’t “inclusive” enough.

As a non-secular organization God was at their core belief. The BSA was totally inclusive provided you believed in God. Didn’t matter which one, as long as you believed. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., all at a place within BSA. That was why Boy Scouts is a world wide organization.

But then atheists decided to tell what was essentially a religious group that they had to put aside their religious beliefs. That’s like atheists telling the Roman Catholic Church they had to accept non-believers and accommodate them, altering sermons, Bible studies, etc.

Then came allowing homosexual scout leaders. What a recipe for disaster, especially after the BSA already had a lot of baggage with male scout leaders molesting male scouts. Which no matter how much spin you put on it is homosexual pedophilia.

Then they had to allow girls and LBGTQEIEIO.

Somewhere along this slow motion train wreck the LDS, who were a huge subset of BSA, decided to have the its church form their own scouts. They up and left and took about 1/6th of all BSA revenue with them. Which ironically is what those trying to morph scouting to fit them should have done – form their own groups.

Now the perplexed leaders of BSA are renaming it to ‘Scouting America’, in order to further alienate their membership and donors.

This is nearing the end. Only a matter of time before they auger in. Another classic moral institution destroyed by the Church of Woke, Altar of Inclusiveness and Temple of Moloch.

This is what happens when you compromise your core principles. Pretty soon, you have no principles left.

With ‘friends’ like this, we need no enemies.

Cornyn Engages in Damage Control on ATF New Rule

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act wouldn’t have passed without the help of one Sen. John Cornyn.

Cornyn championed the bill in the Senate, getting enough Republicans to sign on in order to get it out of that chamber and onto the House where there was never a chance at stopping it.

Which, honestly, might not have been too big of a deal were it not for this one bit that changed the definition of gun dealer, removing the requirement that someone attempt to make a livelihood out of selling firearms.

It seemed a small thing, but now it’s opening up things for the ATF where they can essentially push through universal background checks without going through Congress.

And Cornyn is now trying to do something about it.

The U.S. Justice Department rolled out a new policy last month requiring background checks for people who informally sell firearms at gun shows or on the internet. The rule, which is set to take effect on May 20, is based on a revised definition of gun dealers put forth in Cornyn’s so-called Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

Previously, gun dealers were defined under federal law as those who sell firearms with the “principal objective of livelihood and profit.” Under the revised definition, gun dealers are any people who “predominantly earn a profit” from selling firearms.

“Under this regulation, it will not matter if guns are sold on the internet, at a gun show, or at a brick-and-mortar store: if you sell guns predominantly to earn a profit, you must be licensed, and you must conduct background checks,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said last month. “This regulation is a historic step in the Justice Department’s fight against gun violence. It will save lives.”

Cornyn has vowed to file a congressional resolution of disapproval over the policy, and he said the Biden administration’s efforts to tie it to the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is “an outright lie.”

“This rule has long been on Democrats’ wish list, and for the Biden administration to say it’s a result of our school safety and mental health law is a shameless attempt to hide their real goal: to take away the firearms of every law-abiding American,” Cornyn said in a joint statement with North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis. “We will fight this unconstitutional rule tooth and nail, and look forward to overturning it in the Senate as soon as possible.”

I’m sorry, but Cornyn doesn’t get to play savior here.

He’s the reason we’re in this mess to begin with. Were it not for him crossing the lines for BSCA, the definitions wouldn’t have changed enough for the ATF to even begin to try this. He cajoled and pushed for the precise legislation that opened the door.

Now, he’s trying to engage in damage control, hoping he can keep his job by being aggressive in his rhetoric about the Biden administration’s efforts.

Did he not see this coming? Did he even read the bill?

To be fair, I don’t actually think Cornyn intended for this to happen. I think he just didn’t think through the ramifications of his actions.

Yet let’s also remember that we don’t give people a pass on the results of their actions. How many people are held culpable for the accidents they get into while driving drunk? They don’t intend to hit other cars or pedestrians, but they do, and we hold them accountable.

The Crumbleys didn’t intend for their child to carry out a mass shooting, but the lack of intention didn’t absolve them in the eyes of the court.

Hannah Guiterrez-Reed didn’t intend for a live round to end up in the gun that killed Halyna Hutchins, but she’s going to do time for it just the same.

We hold people accountable for the outcomes of their actions, and in this case, Cornyn’s actions directly led to the ATF’s proposed rule. While we can argue that even with the BSCA’s changes, it’s still overreach, it’s overreach that wouldn’t be remotely possible had Cornyn not bent the knee to Biden on it in the first place.

Lone Wolf Attacks: The Most Likely Form of Terror

The open Southern Border is of utmost concern to anyone who is wise enough to realize that such a situation is unsustainable for the survival of a nation.  Not only does the influx of unmitigated and unregulated ILLEGAL migration strain national resources, but it has also introduced a host of security threats. Hidden among the constant stream of border crossers is human trafficking and narcotics importation.  Perhaps most worrisome of all is the fact that, for the past several years, bad actors in league with foreign entities who intend to commit terror attacks against the United States can literally just walk in.  This situation has resulted in even federal agencies admitting that the threat of terror cells is very real.

Still, whether or not terror cells activate at some point, which is a real possibility, a consistent threat that has always been with us certainly remains so, and that is the lone wolf terrorist. Lone wolf essentially means that an individual acts of their own accord to commit a mass-casualty or terror event.  The individual may well swear allegiance to a terrorist group or cause, but they are not directly supported by the group.  In terms of Jihadi-type terrorism, some lone wolves have been “radicalized” by fringe religious leaders or groups, but more often than not, the individual simply goes looking for a degenerate cause to latch onto in order to self-justify the terrible violence they wish to commit.  The truth is, all such mass attacks, whether workplace or school shootings, in supposed retaliation for bullying or oppression or attacks, steeped in extremist ideology, are committed by people of a similar mentality, no matter the particulars.  

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Hi. I’m Toshi.

I’m a retired ParaPyroPig, yellowjacket assassin, naturalized Appalachistani, greenhorn farmer, and aspiring author.
I’m voting for the Impotent Party in November, whom I dislike.
Why? I dislike the Impotent Party, but I utterly despise the Utterly Subversive Party.

While as corrupt, the Impotent Party doesn’t want to take my guns, put me into a reeducation camp, turn the USA into the USSR, and destroy western civilization.
Fans of the Impotent Party will call me a commie for not standing for their egomaniacal, megalomaniac, sociopath candidate, and congratulating them for their collective milquetoast mediocrity.

Fans of the Utterly Subversive Party will call me an ammosexual racist nazi islamophobe, and will assault, threaten, doxx, SWAT, and otherwise terrorize my family, for not supporting their babbling, senile dementia candidate.

I loathe politics, and the overwhelming majority of politicians.

Amazon delivery driver shoots, kills person with gun in attempted carjacking

CLEVELAND (Gray News/WOIO) – Authorities in Ohio say an Amazon driver shot and killed an armed carjacker Saturday evening.

WOIO reports the shooting happened near West 48th Street and Franklin Boulevard.

Cleveland police said the Amazon driver was working in the area just after 4 p.m. when he was approached by a person with a gun. The Amazon worker told police that the person held them at gunpoint while trying to steal the vehicle.

According to police, the situation turned into a carjacking with the armed subject crashing the vehicle. Authorities said the Amazon driver ended up shooting the carjacker during the ordeal. That person was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police did not release any further immediate information or identify the parties involved. The situation remains under investigation, Cleveland police said.

Analysis: Judges Show Limited Appetite for Upending Background Check Regimes

Following the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, Second Amendment jurisprudence is more unsettled than it has perhaps ever been. However, judges thus far appear skeptical of disrupting at least one realm of gun law: background check requirements.

Even in novel formats, background check requirements have largely escaped falling victim to the text, history, and tradition-based legal test so many other gun laws have been felled by in the courts. Most recently, the “enhanced” background check requirements for 18-20-year-old gun buyers in the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act were upheld as constitutional by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The [Second Amendment’s] plain text covers plaintiffs’ right ‘to keep and bear arms,’” Judge Jerry E. Smith, a Ronald Reagan appointee, wrote on behalf of a unanimous panel in McRorey v. Garland. “And on its face ‘keep and bear’ does not include purchase—let alone without background check. That is so in either the contemporary or the Founding-era context.”

As a result, there is now precedent in the country’s most conservative circuit blessing a background check scheme that effectively creates a ten day waiting period. And it’s difficult to see gun-rights challengers having better luck elsewhere.

In part, gun-rights litigants have a dicta problem. The language deployed by the Supreme Court to hedge its majority opinions in Heller and Bruen is repeatedly being used to uphold modern gun laws, even those that would seem to lack a historical analogue at first glance.

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‘birdshot’. Worst choice possible, except if it’s the only thing you have.
Of course, Mr. Oliver didn’t need to interject himself into the argument, precipitating all the resulting drama.

Neighbor confronts undocumented couple, leads to shooting at Northwest Side apartments

The shooting happened around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday at an apartment complex off Vance Jackson Road near Fredericksburg Road.

Police said an undocumented couple were arguing inside an apartment when a neighbor, identified as William Oliver, 49, told them to calm down. The 21-year-old man allegedly put a gun to Oliver’s head and, while speaking Spanish, threatened to kill him. Oliver then walked backed to his apartment

Oliver told police that he thought the other man was trying to kick in his front door. That’s when he grabbed a shotgun, loaded it with bird shot, and shot the suspect in the hand and foot. A female bystander was also hit in the leg.

Both the victim and bystander were taken to the hospital in stable condition.

So far, Oliver is facing no charges.

BLUF:
From what I can gather, the problem in cities is usually not that the police department itself is unwilling to assist, but that they are under orders from the mayor, afraid of upsetting far left constituents, to stand down.

Well, of course that’s what’s going on. Police usually do exactly what their city’s management tells them to do. Geez……

DAVID BERNSTEIN

Hans Bader on Selective Law Enforcement
Police in some major cities are refusing to enforce the law against protest “encampments”
I have been increasingly aware of, and disturbed by, instances of local police declining the requests of universities to help the universities–which generally do not have law enforcement officers capable of dealing with hundreds of people resisting arrest–arrest  protestors and remove their protest encampments. I was preparing to write a blog post about this, but Hans Bader beat me to it. So rather than reinvent the wheel, with permission, below is a shortened version of Hans’ post:

You have a right to free speech, but that doesn’t give you a First Amendment right to camp out on my lawn with protest signs. That’s trespassing. But government officials sometimes allow trespassing when they sympathize with the trespasser’s viewpoint. Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC have refused to remove progressive anti-Israel protesters camping out at private universities — Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and George Washington University.

Law professor David Bernstein notes that “Baltimore police will not assist in removing illegal encampment at Johns Hopkins University. Worse, they actually praise the illegal encampment as a valid exercise of First Amendment rights, which is complete nonsense. It’s especially nonsensical because most of the protesters are trespassers with no connection to the university.”

“The City of Baltimore strongly stands with every person’s First Amendment rights. Barring any credible threat of violence or similarly high threshold to protect public safety, BPD currently has no plans to engage solely to shut down this valid protest or remove protesters,” said the Baltimore police department in a statement apparently dictated by the mayor’s office.

Contrary to what this statement claims, there is no “First Amendment” right to camp out on public property, much less private property like the campus of Johns Hopkins University, which can tell trespassers to leave regardless of whether they are engaged in First Amendment activity. Camping out on someone else’s property is not a “valid protest,” even if the protesters have not yet made any “threat of violence.” The Supreme Court ruled that protesters do not have a right to camp out even on public property devoted to public use, like national parks, in Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence (1984).

Yet Neetu Arnold of the National Association of Scholars notes that Philadelphia is similarly refusing to clear out a protest camp at the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League university: “Philadelphia Police ignores Penn’s request to disband unauthorized encampment. The university has to provide proof that the encampment poses an imminent danger. Penn students have received multiple warnings to avoid the immediate area.” The Daily Pennsylvanian reports that the “Philadelphia Police Department declines to disband encampment after Penn requests immediate help.”

As a University of Pennsylvania alumnus notes, these illegal protests are only being allowed by progressive officials because of the viewpoint they are expressing. If the protesters were “white nationalists waving nazi flags and telling black people they should go back to Africa I’m sure [police] would be out there pretty quickly” to remove them.

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