November 3

1493 – On his second voyage to the new world, Christopher Columbus first sights the island of Dominica in the Caribbean.

1534 – English Parliament passes the first Act of Supremacy, making King Henry VIII head of the Anglican Church.

1783 – The American Continental Army is disbanded.

1868 – John Willis Menard (R-LA) is the first African American elected to Congress. Because of an electoral challenge, he is never seated.

1903 – Panama declares independence and separates from Colombia.

1908 – William H. Taft is elected the 27th President of the United States.

1911 – Louis Chevrolet and William C. Durant, a former manager of General Motors, found the Chevrolet Motor Company in Detroit with investors William Little of Little Automobile, and former Buick owner James H. Whiting

1926 – Phoebe ‘Annie Oakley’ Butler dies at Greenville, Ohio, age 66.

1936 – Franklin D. Roosevelt is re-elected President of the United States.

1946 – Written under supervision of General MacArthur, by occupation officers, the new Constitution of Japan is adopted, ending ‘Imperial Japan’ and reducing the Emperor to a symbolic position

1957 – The Soviet Union launches Sputnik with the first animal to enter orbit, a dog named Laika.

1964 – Lyndon B. Johnson is elected to a full term as President of the United States.

1973 – NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury. On March 29, 1974, it becomes the first space probe to reach that planet.

1978 – Dominica gains its independence from the United Kingdom.

1986 – The Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa reports that the United States government has been secretly selling weapons to Iran in order to secure the release of seven American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon and secretly finance the Nicaraguan Contra rebels.

1992 – Arkansas Governor William J. Clinton is elected the 42nd President of the United States.

2014 – One World Trade Center officially opens as the replacement for the World Trade Center Twin Towers

2020 – The United States presidential election takes place, but not until 5 days later is Joe Biden declared to be the winner.

One Dead After Pre-Teens Allegedly Attempted To Carjack Off-Duty Cop Waiting For Shift In DC

A 12-year-old child was arrested and charged in connection with an attempted carjacking that led to the death of a 13-year-old boy.

The incident took place around 10 p.m. last Saturday in the 600 block of D Street, NW, according to the news release by Metropolitan Police in Washington, D.C. The young perpetrators, aged 12 and 13, came face to face with an off-duty federal security officer, per Fox News. As the unsuspecting security officer awaited the start of his shift from his vehicle, the pair approached him with alleged ill intentions.

 

The duo demanded that he exit his car. The situation escalated immediately, as one of the assailants placed his hand within his front waistband pocket, simulating the presence of a firearm. Fearing for his safety, the security officer decided to step out of his vehicle.

The officer then drew his weapon to defend himself. The shots that followed wounded the 13-year-old Vernard Toney, Jr. was critically injured. The teen was rushed to a nearby hospital, but despite all efforts, he died, the outlet further added.

The other suspect fled from the scene. However, law enforcement officers caught him with the help of security cameras. Surveillance footage was released by the police department, which played a pivotal part in tracking down the 12-year-old suspect. The alleged pre-teen carjacker was arrested and taken into custody on Tuesday.

If I was Benjamin Netanyahu, I have my spokesman to ‘diplomatically’ tell SloJoe what to do with a cactus.

Biden Shot His Mouth Off About the Israeli Invasion of Gaza…And It’s Not Good

Joe Biden once again mouthed off about the Israeli invasion of Gaza last night. He wants a humanitarian pause, also known as a ceasefire, which is music to Hamas’ ears. Granted, this isn’t new, but it showcased again the administration’s temperamental attitude toward this issue. We vetoed a UN resolution calling for something similar when Israeli air and artillery strikes were becoming more intense. The timing isn’t lost on anyone, either.

Guy wrote about the Israel problem Biden is facing from the Left. And Biden’s “pause” remarks occurred during an event in Minnesota, a state he needs to win next year, which is chock-full of pro-terrorist or terrorist-sympathizing voters (via Fox News):

“President Biden said there should be a “pause” in the Israel-Hamas War to provide humanitarian aid to Gazans and get those trapped in the Gaza Strip released. 

The comment came during a campaign event in Minnesota on Wednesday evening, when a member of the audience shouted: “As a rabbi, I need you to call for a ceasefire right now.” 

The president — who has not supported a ceasefire since the war began on October 7 — said that he would support a “pause.” 

“I think we need a pause,” Biden began. “A pause means give time to get the prisoners out.” 

In his comments, Biden was exerting pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give Palestinians a brief reprieve from Israel’s retaliatory military operation. He also said he convinced both Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to allow aid into Gaza. 

Biden later said that he understood the “emotion” over the war and said it is “incredibly complicated for Israelis.” 

“It’s incredibly complicated for the Muslim world as well… I supported a two state solution, I have from the very beginning,” he continued. “The fact is the matter is that Hamas is a terrorist organization. A flat-out terrorist organization.” 

Supreme Court Roundup: Not all History is Created Equal

In a previous post, I wrote about the attempt by Merrick Garland’s Justice Department in United States v. Rahimi, set to be argued before the Supreme Court on November 7, to sidestep the controlling “text and history” interpretative methodology described in District of Columbia v. Heller and in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen. Rahimi is the case challenging the facial constitutionality of 18 U.S.C § 922(g)(8), a federal statute that disarms any individual subject to a state domestic violence restraining order (DVRO). In that post, I explained how the Government is contending, contrary to Bruen, that the established rule is that “Congress may disarm persons who are not ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens.'” That statement is not just incorrect, but a serious distortion of what Heller actually said.

As it turns out, the Government’s recently filed reply brief contains several other important errors about the fundamental principles to be applied when assessing historical analogue laws, which are central to Bruen‘s methodology.  Let’s start with an easy one.  The Government takes Rahimi to task for allegedly asserting that Bruen limits courts to historical evidence from “near the time of ratification.” Here’s what Rahimi’s brief actually said, after discussing attempts by some courts to boost some dicta in Heller to the level of substantive constitutional law:

[T]he original meaning of the Second Amendment must be determined exclusively using the text and the historical tradition of firearm regulations adopted near the time of ratification—not with assumptions or dicta. 

That statement by Rahimi was contrasting the use of actual historical traditions to determine the meaning of the Second Amendment, as opposed to twenty-first century dicta, or assumptions by lower courts regarding what those dicta meant. It was not an attempt to fine tune the period of time with precision.

Yet Rahimi is correct that the time around the adoption of the Bill of Rights must be the principal period to determine the original public meaning of its provisions.  Bruen quoted Heller to the effect that “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them,” before noting that “The Second Amendment was adopted in 1791….”

The Bruen opinion also quoted approvingly a dissent by then-Judge Kavanaugh: “post-ratification adoption or acceptance of laws that are inconsistent with the original meaning of the constitutional text obviously cannot overcome or alter that text.” The six-person Bruen majority also relied on a dissenting statement by Chief Justice Roberts, in Sprint Communications v. APCC Services (2008), that “The belated innovations of the mid- to late-19th-century courts come too late to provide insight into the meaning of [the Constitution in 1787].” The same is true of the Bill of Rights, adopted in 1791.

The Government claims in its brief that “the Court has consulted post-ratification evidence—extending ‘through the end of the 19th century’—’to determine the public understanding of’ the Amendment.” But as Bruen notes, another case made clear that this evidence was reviewed “only after surveying what [the Court] regarded as a wealth of authority for its reading—including the text of the Second Amendment and state constitutions.” Bruen continues, “In other words, this 19th-century evidence was ‘treated as mere confirmation of what the Court thought had already been established.'” See also Justice Barrett’s concurrence in Bruen, quoting Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue (2020) (a practice that “arose in the second half of the 19th century … cannot by itself establish an early American tradition” informing our understanding of the First Amendment); Mark W. Smith, Attention Originalists: The Second Amendment Was Adopted in 1791, not 1868, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy Per Curiam (Fall 2022).

So Rahimi is right.  A court must look principally to the Founding era to determine the meaning of the Second Amendment.  It can look at later evidence only for confirmation, not to change the original understanding.

Continue reading “”

The New York Times Asks Why ‘Fiery’ Iran Hasn’t Killed All the Jews Yet

Congratulations, New York Times! Bravo! It has taken 90 years, but you may have finally outdone your support for Joseph Stalin and his Ukrainian genocide. Maybe this coverage will get you another Pulitzer Prize you’ll never give back. The Columbia Journalism Review may have to create a new award for “Best Support of 21st Century Genocide.” The Politi”fact” frauds in Florida will be forced to find a whole new way to offer “context” for this one. And anti-Semites, from those still hiding in caves to Qatar’s terrorist financiers to the nation’s Ivy League faculty lounge nests of Jew haters, will applaud your efforts. 

On Wednesday, the New York Times editors asked a question posed by so many Islamo-supremicists over the millennia: Why haven’t they killed all those Jews? 

What an excellent question. Indeed, the newspaper posed it as a long-time “dilemma” for the biggest state sponsor of terrorism. 

The story was written by Times reporter and UN bureau chief Farnaz Fassihi, an Iranian-American writer who has reported not just for the Times but also for the Wall Street Journal. Fassihi posed the “dilemma” facing the Shiite terror regime in the piece, entitled “After Years of Vowing to Destroy Israel, Iran Faces a Dilemma.” It was subtitled, “With Israel bent on crushing Iran’s ally Hamas, Tehran must decide whether it and the proxy militias it arms and trains will live up to its fiery rhetoric.”

Sheesh, and we thought the biggest dilemma from recent events was trying to determine the identities of all those people who were burned, raped, beheaded, and shot before their remains were cast to the demon birds on October 7. 

Continue reading “”

November 2

1675 – Plymouth Colony governor Josiah Winslow leads a colonial Militia against the Narragansett tribe during King Philip’s War.

1734 – Daniel Boone is born in a log cabin in Oley Valley, Pennsylvania.

1889 – North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.

1912 – Engaging in the bloodiest battle of the 1st Balkan War, with both sides suffering over 20% casualties, the heavier armed Bulgarian Army defeats Ottoman Empire Army at modern day Lüleburgaz, Turkey, east of the Bosphorus, opening the way to Constantinople.

1914 –The Russian Empire declares war on the Ottoman Empire, closing the Dardanelles passage from the Mediterranean Ocean to the Black Sea.

1917 – The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” with the clear understanding “that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities”.

1920 – Station KDKA in Pittsburgh starts broadcasting as the first commercial U.S. radio station.

1930 – Le’ul Ras Täfäri Mäkonnän is crowned Haile Selassie I  – Negusa Nagast – Emperor of Ethiopia

1947 – Howard Hughes performs the maiden, and only, flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules “Spruce Goose” seaplane off Cabrillo Beach, Los Angeles.

1963 – South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother Ngô Đình Nhu are assassinated following a military coup.

1965 – Norman Morrison, a 31 year old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war.

1967 –  A group of retired former presidential advisors termed,”The Wise Men” who had been formed and advised Democrat administrations since the days of President Roosevelt in World War II, advise President Johnson that the American people should be given more ‘optimistic’ reports on the progress of the war.

1983 – President Reagan signs the bill into law creating Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

1984 – Serial murderer Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States, in this case, North Carolina, since 1962.

1999 – A disgruntled employee of the Xerox corporation in Honolulu, Hawaii, shoots and kills 7 co-workers and wounds another before fleeing and later surrendering to police.

2000 – Expedition 1 arrives at the International Space Station for the first long duration stay onboard. From this day to present, a continuous human presence in space on the station remains uninterrupted.

2016 – The Chicago Cubs defeat the Cleveland Indians to win their first World Series in 108 years.

Coffee County homeowner shoots lone intruder, suspect in custody

MANCHESTER, Tenn. (WSMV) – The Coffee County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a home invasion in the Beechgrove area Monday morning.

The sheriff’s office said the lone intruder was shot by the homeowner during the home invasion, and the suspect is in custody. Initially, the CCSO said it was possible there were other suspects but have since clarified the one suspect is responsible for the home invasion.

The intruder remains at a local hospital. At last check, he was about to go into surgery.

The CCSO warned residents to be cautious Monday morning. The investigation remains ongoing.

We Will Not Comply: Only .1% of Illinois Gun Owners Have Registered Their Newly Banned Guns So Far

According to Illinois State Police data, 2,415,481 gun owners call the Land o’ Lincoln home. Earlier this year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the so-called Protect Illinois Communities Act into law which banned the most many of the most popular guns used for self-defense. Under the law, existing owners of these now verboten firearms must register their guns by January 1, 2024 or face felony charges.

Four weeks into the gun registration window, exactly 2430 of those FOID holders have registered their guns, accessories, or .50 caliber firearms. That works out to .1006%, or about one in a thousand.

What’s even more remarkable is the number of FOID holders choosing to comply has fallen with each passing week.

In other words, Illinois gun owners have declined to participate in the state’s gun ban.

Continue reading “”

This elitist snob starts with an opinion that he states as fact and then moves on from there building a large sand castle

Textualist or not, does Johnson, or anyone, really, believe that if we could question Madison today, he would say that it was his intent to allow this country to be awash in guns, including automatic weapons that serve no good purpose other than as instruments of war or mass killings?

The obvious answer is YES! Madison and his fellow patriots had just fought off what they considered a tyrannical government, and they believed the people had that right and that responsibility to ensure a free state. “Weapons of War”™ (*gasp* Horrors!) were exactly the kind of “arms” the second was intended to protect, just in case the government was stupid enough to not realize that in the future. That does not even address the issue that there exists tens of millions of these rifles in the nation that are used for lawful purposes daily.

He claims he is ‘incredulous’. I find myself also being incredulous that someone who has held and holds such positions can also hold such a flawed opinion, especially after the Supreme Court had ruled on the matter so many times, starting in the 1800s with Cruikshank and on to just last year in Bruen. Actually I wish he would hold his breath.

Speaker Johnson’s hypocritical First and Second Amendment contradictions

From Court to Campus: Former Federal Judge John E. Jones III Takes Helm ...
Former (thank God) Federal Judge John E. Jones III, President of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania

I am a college president. And I am afraid.

The mass killing last week in the college town of Lewiston, Maine, is the 36th this year in the United States, according to an AP/USA Today/Northeastern University mass killings database. The 18 who were murdered bring us to a total of nearly 200 victims of these ghastly events.

Sadly, it is easy to predict that there will be more of them before the year is out. Which community — college town or not — will bear the weight of the next tragedy?

I am also a former federal judge. And I am incredulous.

The House of Representatives has a new Speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.). During a 2016 sermon at the Christian Center in Shreveport, La., Johnson blamed mass school shootings on a “series of cultural shifts” in the United States that included teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution and erasing creationism from society. Last week, Johnson opined that it was inappropriate to discuss gun control “in the middle of a crisis” and that “it’s not the weapon, it’s the underlying problem.”

The suspected Maine shooter reportedly used a “Ruger SFAR” rifle “chambered for high-powered .308 ammunition.” The weapon is “larger and more powerful than the regular ammunition carried in the rifles of soldiers and SWAT teams.”

Johnson is a staunch defender of what he believes the Second Amendment to the Constitution represents. Its wording, which includes “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” has for generations been the subject of various interpretations and countless lawsuits.

Interestingly, the same Bill of Rights that contains the Second Amendment also features the First Amendment. Within it is the establishment clause, which prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”

In 2005, I presided over the landmark case of Kitzmiller v. Dover in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. At its conclusion, I ruled that a school district’s policy introducing a concept known as intelligent design into the ninth-grade biology curriculum was, in fact, tantamount to teaching creationism, and thus violated the establishment clause. In rendering this opinion, I carefully followed the First Amendment’s dictates as well as Supreme Court precedent. The decision was not appealed and still stands.

It is my educated guess that Speaker Johnson, a trained lawyer, sees himself as a textualist. That is, he believes in the ordinary meaning of a legal text. I have always thought that to be an interesting interpretive theory so far as it goes, but far too unrealistic in practice. The Second Amendment was drafted largely by James Madison, who of course later served as president of the United States.

Textualist or not, does Johnson, or anyone, really, believe that if we could question Madison today, he would say that it was his intent to allow this country to be awash in guns, including automatic weapons that serve no good purpose other than as instruments of war or mass killings? It is absurd to think that Madison, a brilliant scholar and statesman, would endorse that view. In fact, I think he’d be as incredulous as I am that anyone could so torture the amendment he carefully drafted in this fashion.

I find myself endeavoring mightily to explain to my students how we arrived at this point, and why we lack the political will to pass reasonable gun legislation that would make us all safer. I have no good answers to their inquiries. They are afraid, and I share their apprehensions.

And so, I ask new Speaker Johnson and his colleagues these questions: Where is your courage, and when is the right time to pass legislation designed to end these slaughters? I will not hold my breath waiting for answers.