War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. — John Stuart Mills

Here’s some updated material

Today’s Senate ‘Bipartisan Gun Safety’ Proposal Is Just as Bad as You Feared It Would Be

Sunday, a bipartisan group of Senators agreed to an expanded package of ‘common sense’ gun control measures. The Vichy Republican contingent consisted of Pat Toomey (PA), Susan Collins (ME), Lindsey Graham (SC), Thom Tillis (NC) and Bill Cassidy (LA) under the leadership, if I may be so bold as to use such a word, of John Cornyn (TX). My colleague Bonchie covered the deal in Republicans Prepare to Play the Sucker After ‘Gun Safety’ Bill Is Revealed. This is how he sums it up:

Here’s the thing. There is going to be another mass shooting. No matter how many laws we pass, evil people will get their hands on the tools necessary to commit evil acts. When that mass shooting occurs, Democrats are going to scream about how the last “gun safety” bill wasn’t enough and how we must “do something.” That “do something” will include confiscation and outright bans on common weaponry. By compromising now without laying a marker down they are willing to stand by, they are simply handing Democrats the leverage to take the whole pie the next time around.

The left-wing push to ban semiautomatic weapons is not going to end here. Republicans that don’t recognize that are being suckers.

Now Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy has released more detail on what is included in the deal, and “suckers” hardly does the Republican participants credit for their duplicity.

NEWS: We have a deal. Today a bipartisan group of 20 Senators (10 D and 10 R) is announcing a breakthrough agreement on gun violence – the first in 30 years – that will save lives.

 

2/ Major funding to help states pass and implement crisis intervention orders (red flag laws) that will allow law enforcement to temporarily take dangerous weapons away from people who pose a danger to others or themselves.

3/ Billions in new funding for mental health and school safety, including money for the national build out of community mental health clinics.

4/ Close the “boyfriend loophole”, so that no domestic abuser – a spouse OR a serious dating partner – can buy a gun if they are convicted of abuse against their partner.

5/ First ever federal law against gun trafficking and straw purchasing. This will be a difference making tool to stop the flow of illegal guns into cities.

6/ Enhanced background check for under 21 gun buyers and a short pause to conduct the check. Young buyers can get the gun only after the enhanced check is completed.

7/ Clarification of the laws regarding who needs to register as a licensed gun dealer, to make sure all truly commercial sellers are doing background checks.

8/ Will this bill do everything we need to end our nation’s gun violence epidemic? No. But it’s real, meaningful progress. And it breaks a 30 year log jam, demonstrating that Democrats and Republicans can work together in a way that truly saves lives.

9/ So grateful to @JohnCornyn @kyrstensinema @SenThomTillis @SenToomey @Sen_JoeManchin @SenBlumenthal @SenatorCollins @LindseyGrahamSC @ChrisCoons @TeamHeinrich @BillCassidy and others for their amazing work to get us this far.

10/ Drafting this law and passing it through both chambers will not be easy. We have a long way before this gets to the President’s desk. But with your help and activism, we can get this done. This time, failure cannot be an option.

I’ve already expressed my opinion about the cravenness of Republican officeholders who crawl over broken glass to appease Democrats; see Don’t Bother Me With Your ‘Common Sense’ Gun-Grabbing Ideas, I’m Not Playing the Game, and Matthew McConaughey Sold the White House’s Gun-Grabbing Agenda Today Just Like He Has for Years. In my opinion, the problem is less a case of needing more laws and more one of chickensh** prosecutors with a political agenda refusing to enforce the laws already on the books. If we passed a law making prosecutors criminally liable for future gun crimes of anyone not prosecuted for a gun offense, I’d go along with that plan.

Let’s look at the items on the list.

2/ Red Flag laws are a civil rights non-starter as far as I’m concerned. Giving a disgruntled neighbor, a deranged leftist relative, or a vindictive current or former “partner” the ability to have your weapons confiscated while you bear the burden of proving you are not dangerous is antithetical to our system of justice. Above and beyond the Kafkaesque process, the procedure is a sham. A judge will not deny a “Red Flag” order and risk that person killing someone with a firearm. They are never giving your firearms back for the same reason. This is simply a backdoor for anti-gun activists to harass and intimidate gun owners. Any Republican who votes for this is not worthy of our support.

3/ I’m not convinced “community mental health clinics” do very much other than provide a sinecure purple-haired transgenders with an MSW degree. Be that as it may, linking these clinics to a bill ostensibly designed to prevent school shootings means that schools will be pressured to refer students to the clinics for evaluation and treatment. If they don’t, their reason for existence will be revealed as a fraud (SPOILER ALERT: it is). Those mental health referrals will be made by the same people who teach Critical Race Theory, make your elementary school student experiment with “pronouns,” and groom them towards transgenderism and the remainder of the alphabet soup of perversions. If we want more “community mental health clinics,” then authorize them independent of any gun control law. By the way, mental health people are pretty adamant that mental health is not a factor in the overwhelming majority of shootings. The problem is Evil, not crazy.

4/ If you want to understand what “closing the boyfriend loophole” opens the door to, check out what goes on in Title IX sexual harassment/assault hearings in colleges. Without a cohabitation requirement, you are fair game for any woman you went out with one time who wants revenge. If you feel in danger, get a restraining order and stay the hell away from the person. If you can’t qualify for a restraining order, then maybe vindictiveness, not personal safety, is your goal.

5/ Straw purchases are already illegal. Gun trafficking, unless you have a Federal Firearms License, is illegal. Without seeing an actual proposal, my best guess is that this will end the private sale of weapons, the so-called “gun show loophole” that the anti-gunners have been after for years.

6/ Other than the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), I don’t know of any other systems available for background checks that do not involve field investigators. I suspect there is no such system, and this law will try to create any additional level of surveillance of American citizens. The problem with NICS continues to be incomplete and inaccurate information entered into the system. I am at a loss of what an “enhanced” background check would include that isn’t a restraining order, a felony conviction, or a civil commitment order. Just joking, those “community mental health centers” will feature prominently here. I also don’t know how you make a juvenile record available for “young” buyers without making it available to nearly everyone and why only “young” buyers would be subject to such an “enhanced” background check

7/ What constitutes a “licensed gun dealer” is damned clear. This is aimed at shutting down the private sale or gifting of firearms.

10/ Dude, you are in Congress. Failure is always an option.

This is all eyewash. Besides funds for hardening schools, the whole plan is an exercise in “doing something.” Literally, nothing in this proposed bill would have done any good in any major shooting. It wouldn’t even have an impact on Saturday night in Chicago or LA, which is where the focus should be for anyone serious about ending firearms deaths. I’d done playing this game. As Bonchie and I have pointed out, this is not an end state but a waypoint. This is just the anti-gun left getting Republicans to buy into the concept of silly measures that can’t work so that at some point in the future, the left can say we’ve tried everything, and they know there will be quisling Republicans to help them ban firearms.

Looks like standard operational unspecific jabberjawing to me

Here’s What Senators Came Up With for a Deal on New Gun Laws

After days of negotiations that worried Second Amendment advocates and law-abiding firearm owners due to talk of sweeping new restrictions, it seems like — for now at least — the Republican members of the bipartisan working group held the line on the strictest proposals, though they didn’t stop Democrats on all fronts in the talks that made many conservatives scratch their heads.

The bipartisan group of Senators — led by Chris Murphy (D-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) — announced their proposal for legislation they seem to think has a chance of making it through their evenly-divided chamber.

In a joint statement, the senators said their plan will “protect America’s children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country” while citing a duty they feel to “come together and get something done.” Never mind, apparently, that all the restrictive gun laws in Chicago and elsewhere haven’t protected residents.

The statement continued saying the agreement “increases needed mental health resources, improves school safety and support for students, and helps ensure dangerous criminals and those who are adjudicated as mentally ill can’t purchase weapons,” again, as if previous laws to keep guns out of criminals’ hands had worked. “We look forward to earning broad, bipartisan support and passing our commonsense proposal into law,” the statement concludes. We’ll see.

The proposal includes providing “resources” — likely grant incentives — to states if they implement so-called “red flag laws.” It also includes investing taxpayer dollars in mental health services for families and in schools along with school safety resources to “to help institute safety measures in and around primary and secondary schools, support school violence prevention efforts and provide training to school personnel and students.” The proposal announcement also says legislators will seek to include an “enhanced review period” for firearm purchasers under 21 years old.

Perhaps notably — and showing Democrats did not get all the things they’ve called for in the wake of the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas — is a lack of their buzzword assault weapons ban, high capacity magazine restrictions, a federal red flag system, or an increase in the minimum age to purchase certain rifles.

To be clear, the lack of those items in the framework proposal does not mean Democrats won’t try to sneak in some version of them as an eventual piece of legislation is developed.

As WaPo previewed before the official announcement of the proposal, the inclusion of billions of federal dollars for school security programs and mental health care is probably the only thing the proposal has going for it with most Republicans.

Townhall reported last week that an armed school resource officer and secured doors kept an aggressive man from entering an elementary school filled with children. The SRO took the individual down with assistance from local law enforcement while most children inside the building were unaware that anything had happened outside. The training and protocol that worked there should be used for a framework, not gun-grabbing Democrats’ CNN talking points.

Throughout the negotiations, Republicans involved had tried to assuage concerns from firearm owners and gun safety advocates. Sen. Cornyn said that the forthcoming deal was “not about creating new restrictions on law-abiding citizens” but “about ensuring that the system we already have in place works as intended.” Yet several of the pieces of the framework seem to include new restrictions, albeit lesser than a blanket ban on “assault weapons” or magazines.

And while the group may have reached a tentative agreement, they’re only a small group of the U.S. Senate — and several Republicans in the crew such as Susan Collins (ME) and Mitt Romney (UT) are not exactly known as standard bearers for the GOP. At least 60 senators in all would be needed to support any resulting legislation in order to overcome a potential legislative filibuster.

As we’ve learned before, a statement of agreement between a small group of senators is anything but a done deal. We’ve also learned that what might seem to be a workable legislative framework can turn into a Frankenstein’s monster of horrible policies as Democrats scheme to use the bipartisan cover of squishy Republicans to ultimately get their way.

The best thing for any Senate Republican to do at this point is walk away from the table and declare opposition over anything even remotely concerning in the tentative agreement — the incentive for red flag laws or the enhanced review for under-21 purchasers, for example — or legislation as it ends up being written.

There’s less than five months until the midterms, Democrats need at least ten Republicans to even move a bill to a vote, and there’s no reason for Republicans to cave on an issue as critical as Americans’ Second Amendment freedoms just to look like they’re playing nice. Democrats would never do the same if they were in the minority, and there are better, more effective, less freedom-depriving options available to respond to tragedies like the one in Uvalde. Harden schools, fund resource officers, train willing staff, and work to remedy the myriad failures of government that are discovered in the wake of such tragedies.

I’ll say it again. When the leadership becomes the ‘story’ instead of what the organization’s purpose is, that leadership needs to go. If WLP had resigned 3 or 4 years ago and the Board of Directors taken things in hand, I think the NRA wouldn’t be in the situation where some goobermint agents just may be appointed to stick their noses into the business.

NRA loses bid to end New York AG suit seeking LaPierre’s removal

New York Attorney General Letitia James definitely had it in for the National Rifle Association before she ever assumed office. As a candidate, she called the group a “terrorist organization” and vowed to launch an investigation into the New York-charted group if elected. That was one promise she was happy to fulfill, and her investigation and case against the NRA has gone on for three years now.

James vowed to dissolve the organization as well, but she was prevented from doing so by the judge overseeing the case against the NRA, who declared earlier this year that while the Attorney General has laid out plenty of details of “greed, self-dealing, and lax financial oversight”, she failed to prove that of that actually benefitted the group itself and not individual leaders and higher-ups in the group. It was inappropriate to shut down the group itself, ruled Justice Joel Cohen, but James could continue her case with an eye towards removing the NRA’s leadership.

The NRA objected to Cohen’s decision, arguing that James had launched her investigation solely because of her bias against the group and asking that the judge throw out the James’ modified complaint, but on Friday, Cohen issued a ruling that allows James to move forward in trying to ban CEO and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre and three others from ever holding a position within the NRA, as well as installing an independent monitor to oversee the group’s books.

The NRA has failed to prove that James pursued the NRA only because of her political views, the judge ruled.

Instead, James’ allegations of “fraud, waste, and looting” are enough to justify her lawsuit, regardless of her political beliefs, the judge wrote.

“There are no factual allegations suggesting that the stated concerns driving the investigation — reports of fraud, waste, and looting within the NRA — were imaginary or not believed by the Attorney General,” the judge wrote.

None of the AG’s claims are frivolous, Cohen added.

“In fact, the NRA itself recognized many of the same issues about corporate governance underlying the Attorney General’s investigation,” the judge wrote.

LaPierre’s control of the NRA has been challenged internally as well, but the 76-member Board of Directors has solidly stood behind him over the last few years. Allen West’s attempt to become Executive Vice President during the recent Annual Meetings resulted in him getting just one vote, with another seven board members abstaining, and more than 50 votes cast in favor of retaining LaPierre in his current position.

While Cohen was careful to note in his opinion that James has yet to prove all of her claims, he did call them “objectively well-founded”, and, as noted above, pointed out that even the NRA itself “recognized many of the same issues about corporate governance underlying the Attorney General’s investigation.”

Within the NRA, whistleblowers “push[ed] for additional documentation and transparency,” an effort which was “met with resistance from a handful of its executives and vendors”. One executive “was fired by the NRA for many of the same issues alleged in the Complaint,” while the group “became embroiled in litigation” against others who “abused its trust”. And in this action, current NRA members have sought leave to intervene to address “concerns . . . about the NRA’s management by the Individual Defendants and current Board”.

Further, when the NRA sought to evade the Attorney General’s actions in New York by filing for bankruptcy in Texas, the federal bankruptcy court there underscored concerns about the NRA’s corporate governance. For example, the bankruptcy court noted “the surreptitious manner in which [Wayne] LaPierre obtained and exercised authority to file bankruptcy for the NRA,” finding the decision to “[e]xclude[] so many people from the process of deciding to file for bankruptcy, including the vast majority of the board of directors, the chief financial officer, and the general counsel, . . . nothing less than shocking”. The court also alluded to “cringeworthy facts” about the NRA’s past misconduct. It found “[s]ome of the conduct that gives the Court concern is still ongoing,” including “very recent[ ] violat[ions]” of the NRA’s internal procedures and “lingering issues of secrecy and a lack of transparency”.

Cohen went on to say that “[i]n the end, an objectively reasonable investigation – here, one uncovering credible evidence of wrongdoing – is not rendered unconstitutional solely by the investigator’s subjective state of mind,” declaring that even if James had a personal animus against the NRA, the organization hasn’t demonstrated “a sufficient causal link between the animus and the adverse action”; in this case, the original lawsuit filed by James to dissolve the NRA and the revised complaint seeking his (and others) removal from the organization.

There’s still plenty of legal wrangling to be done (and millions of dollars in legal expenses for the organization to be billed) before this case goes to trial, likely some time next year, but I doubt that Cohen’s ruling is going to be overturned on appeal.

I do believe that James’ original motivation was more of a fishing expedition than anything else, but unfortunately for the NRA and its leadership, what she found can’t be as easily dismissed by Justice Cohen as her attempt to dissolve the organization was.

BLUF:
..for FY 2017 there were a grand total of 12 prosecutions out of 112,000 denials. When, all else being equal, there is a 1 in 10,000 chance of being prosecuted for a crime in which the perpetrator necessarily offers himself up to the government, the goal isn’t public safety, it’s to control the law-abiding.

Gun Control is About Stripping Rights NOT Stopping Crime

Economics has a concept called “revealed preference.” The gist is that a person’s observed actions reveal more about their preferences than what a person might profess to prefer. As applied to anti-gun politicians, despite all the noise they might make about stopping the criminal misuse of guns, their actions reveal that their policies are designed to attack the rights of law-abiding Americans.

Consider, anti-gun politicians ceaselessly propose new gun control laws they claim will stop criminal actors from misusing firearms. However, many of these same policymakers are indifferent to the woeful federal prosecution rates of those who misuse or try to obtain a firearm illegally under current law. In certain jurisdictions, these politicians have actively worked to undermine law enforcement officers and prosecutors’ ability to bring those who commit violence with firearms to justice and sufficiently incapacitate dangerous individuals. Therefore, the rational observer comes to understand that, as those who break the law don’t stand to be punished, the real aim of gun control is to restrict the law-abiding.

The most prominent item on the gun control wish list in recent years is the criminalization of private firearm transfers, sometimes inaccurately referred to as “universal background checks.” The policy would force law-abiding gun owners to obtain government background checks before transferring firearms to their neighbors, friends, or even extended family. While seeking to foist this burden on the law-abiding, anti-gun politicians have shown little interest in punishing criminals who fail such background checks.

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A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious.
But it cannot survive treason from within.
An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.
But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.
For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.
He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.
A murderer is less to fear.
– (the real) Marcus Tullius Cicero (42BC)

We Were Right Again – “FDA Approved” Comirnaty Was a Hoax (Will Corporate Media Correct the Record?)

In August of 2021, COVID vaccine uptake was off, and they needed something to convince people to get The Jab™. The Kool-Aid only works if everyone drinks it, so Pfizer and the FDA crafted on paper a legally distinct COVID “vaccine,” named it Comirnaty, and declared it approved.

And it worked. Every Karen and their water carrier proclaimed from atop the rising mountain of bodies and harms that “The COVID vaccine” was approved. It was safe and effective. No excuses. Go get yours today!

But the shot you got, the only injection anyone could or would get, was still under Emergency Use Authorization. That never changed. Comirnaty was a bait and switch, and we were suspicious right out of the gate.

08/21 – Pfizer’s FDA Approved “Vaccine” is Not the One You Got, or Will Likely Get Anytime Soon
10/21 –Pfizer Admits You Still Still Can’t Get Their “FDA Approved Vaccine” in the United States
01/22 –Start the New Year Right – Stop Lying to People about Their COVID19 Vaccine Being Approved.

The corporate media, politicians, and the so-called medical experts all aped the lie. Mandates rolled out. People lost their jobs, careers, and friendships, it was quite the public “health” relations coup. All while the VAERS numbers rose and the vaccinated continued to get sick – to which they responded, well, that’s the fault of the unvaccinated (it was not), and you need a booster!

This cabal even went on a terror campaign against “deniers” and used the “approved” lie to justify jabbing younger and younger children who were never at risk.

A lot of people died. Young people died. They knew it was never safe or effective. And this week, the CDC quietly issued a Pfizer update that Comirnaty will never be produced. The approved version of the “vaccine” only existed on paper, and it was time to dot the ‘i’ cross the ‘t.’

“Pfizer received initial FDA BLA license on 8/23/2021 for its COVID-19 vaccine for use in individuals 16 and older (COMIRNATY). At that time, the FDA published a BLA package insert that included the approved new COVID-19 vaccine tradename COMIRNATY and listed 2 new NDCs (0069-1000-03, 0069-1000-02) and images of labels with the new tradename. These NDCs will not be manufactured. Only NDCs for the subsequently BLA approved tris-sucrose formulation will be produced.”

For the record, BLA approval refers to the Biologics License Application necessary “to market and commercialize a pharmaceutical or biological product in a country or jurisdiction.”  It was a false flag that gave Pfizer and everyone else permission to lie to you about what they were “selling” and what you were getting.

So, the 12 billion dose question now is this. The corporate media had zero curiosity about the lack of availability of the “approved” version. They gleefully sold the lie that they were the same – inferring that the EUA version that gave Pfizer immunity was the same.

You’ll not likely see anything bordering on journalism about any of that, just the approved narratives and CDC or FDA-approved talking points.

Now that Pfizer and the FDA/CDC have quietly covered their asses over this stunt, will the ”Media” have the stones to explode this across the front page? Any page?

A search at NH ABC affiliate WMUR for the word Comirnaty produced zero results. Yuu can’t even find old reporting on the so-called approval. It’s been scrubbed.

The liars at the NH Union Leader, however, haven’t scrubbed theirs yet.

UL Comirnaty Pfizer FDA approval lie

So, I doubt you’ll find any admission of the lie in the watchdog media, but if you do, send it my way. I’d love to see the spin or – maybe I’ll be surprised, and someone will commit an act of journalism.

No, I’m not holding my breath.

One more point: Let’s not forget that New Hampshire spent over 100 million dollars on marketing to encourage vaccination based on the “FDA Approved” lie.

Researchers find that aspirin alters colorectal cancer evolution.

In a new study published in the journal eLife, researchers at the University of California, Irvine reveal for the first time that  changes the way colorectal  cell populations evolve over time, making them less able to survive and proliferate.

“We asked what aspirin does to the Darwinian evolution of cells,” said co-author Dominik Wodarz, professor of population health and disease prevention at the UCI Program in Public Health. “Cancer arises because cells evolve from a healthy state toward a pathogenic state where the cells divide without stopping. This happens when cells acquire a number of mutations, and these mutations are selected for. We found that aspirin affects these  and slows them down.”

The team found that aspirin alters the birth and death rates of  cells. Specifically, aspirin reduces the rate of tumor cell division and increases the rate of cell death.

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Somebody needs to ask herself, “Are we the baddies?”

Pa. Democrat Congresswoman Goes Full Nazi, Says GOP Must Be ‘Cleansed

Despite being an advocate of “civility,” “decency,” and “unity” in the past, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) has apparently been so radicalized by her caucus that she now says the Republican Party is “diseased” and must be “cleansed.”

“This is, in my opinion, a diseased Republican Party. And it needs to be cured and cleansed,” Houlahan said on the Daily Beast‘s The New Abnormal podcast last month. “So the stakes of having a Republican, as an example, in my seat are more than just policy differences. They are democracy, in my opinion.”

The GOP is “diseased” and must be “cleansed?” Where have you heard such rhetoric before? It bears a shocking resemblance to the rhetoric of the Nazi Party.

Activists often make comparisons of their political enemies to Nazis, but in this case, this is not hyperbole.

Here’s what the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says about the Nazi’s racial science:

From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany carried out a campaign to “cleanse” German society of individuals viewed as biological threats to the nation’s “health.”

Houlahan’s language is dehumanizing and immoral, and yet I have no doubt she has drunk enough of the left-wing Kool-Aid since she took office in 2019 that she actually believes what she’s saying. This is the kind of rhetoric that inspires left-wing activists to want to assassinate conservative Supreme Court justices or members of Congress. They’ve been conditioned to believe that people who disagree with them on policy are less than human.

Maher: The Times buried the Kavanaugh assassination story because he’s a conservative

“They just wear their bias on their sleeves,” he says here of the paper, “and if it’s not part of something that feeds our narrative, f— it, we bury it.”

I’m sticking with my bet that Joe Rogan ends up fully red-pilled before Maher does. But I admit, clips like this make me wonder.

Apologies for the odd French-language embedded tweet but it’s the only one I could find with the full exchange between him and his guests.

His point is true beyond a shadow of a doubt and has been for a long time. It’s a neat follow-up to yesterday’s post about media gatekeeping, in fact. Partisan media aggressively filters the news it covers to shield its audience from information that might shake their faith in “the team.” But big media filters too, even when it feels obliged to pay some attention to major developments that disfavor their own side. A gunman showing up outside Sonia Sotomayor’s home would be big news, illustrating a right-wing “climate of hate.” Whereas a gunman showing up outside Brett Kavanaugh’s home is a page-20 curio about a random lunatic.

Katrina Trinko remembers how the Gabby Giffords shooting, perpetrated by a genuine random lunatic, was immediately and egregiously coopted by the media as an indictment of tea-party agitation against Democrats. But the supreme example of the double standard will forever be the attempt by an ardent Bernie-loving progressive to mass-murder Republican congressmen on a baseball field in 2017, news that would have been treated as a national trauma on the order of a major terrorist attack had the partisan roles been reversed. As it is, the story fizzled after a few days and probably would have fizzled sooner if not for the subplot of Steve Scalise fighting for his life in the hospital. Trinko:

[W]hen it comes to political violence in the United States today, here’s a maxim you can always rely on: If the victim or likely victim is on the right, the perpetrator is simply a lone wolf. But if the victim or likely victim is on the left, the perpetrator was fueled by dangerous rhetoric…

Sure, the justices have been given some additional security. But where is the outrage from top liberal lawmakers and activists? Where are the calls for people to remember that at the end of the day, no matter how vehemently we disagree on certain policies, we are all Americans who should be working together to resolve our differences?…

Here’s the reality: Corporate media and liberal lawmakers probably aren’t going to rush to highlight the horrific assassination attempt on Kavanaugh. They know that moderates will be horrified to discover how commonplace it has become for Supreme Court justices to face protests at home. (Notice how little coverage the corporate media has given to these protests, despite the fact that they are publicly announced ahead of time.) And they don’t want to risk alienating the extremists on their own side by focusing on this.

Left-wing agitators understand that they operate free of scrutiny from major media. It’s why the same group that doxxed the Court’s conservative members last month felt no compunction about advertising a new protest at Amy Coney Barrett’s home even after the news broke about a threat to Kavanaugh.

 

Because they’re of the left, by definition they can’t be part of a “climate of hate” that places anyone at risk. If anyone takes a shot at Barrett, the takeaway will be nothing more profound that that there are some crazy people in America. It’s the progressive version of the strategy some righties engage in after mass shootings, complaining about poor treatment for mental health in order to steer the debate away from gun policies favored by Republicans. When your side is on the political hot seat, you can’t go wrong changing the subject to the unfathomable nuances of a murderer’s mental illness.

In lieu of an exit question, read Jonah Goldberg today on a glaring example of politically motivated gatekeeping by major conservative media. Or read this, about Trump’s “free speech” platform allegedly refusing to allow certain topics to be broached. Taken together with the Times’s inexcusable downplaying of the Kavanaugh story, they help explain why the GOP is in the state that it is. Conservatives justifiably distrust major media due to its biases, they place their trust in partisan media instead, and then partisan media grossly abuses that trust by distorting or outright suppressing information that conservatives should have.

People intervene in attempted carjacking, suspect shot in Maryvale

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) — Police say an attempted carjacking was stopped by people nearby and the suspect got shot in Maryvale on Wednesday morning. It happened around 8 a.m. at a parking lot near 83th Avenue and Encanto Boulevard, which is north of McDowell Road.

Phoenix Police Sgt. Phillip Krynsky said a man was trying to steal a car when a group intervened and the man was shot. He was taken to the hospital with a life-threatening injury. No additional information has been released. Krynsky said the details are preliminary and subject to change as officers investigate the incident. No identities were released.

Iowa homeowner shoots would-be intruder

ADAIR, Iowa — A homeowner near Casey, Iowa shot a would-be home invader multiple times early Thursday, according to the Adair County Sheriff’s office.

Investigators say their received a 911 call from the homeowner around 4:30 a.m. saying he had just shot someone who tried tried to break into his home. The homeowner awoke to unusual noises and then heard glass breaking before he found the person trying to enter the home through a broken window.

An Adair County deputy and officers from the Stuart, Iowa police department were already in the area, investigating the crash of a vehicle on Interstate 80 near the Adair rest area. The deputy found the vehicle abandoned around 3:18 a.m. in the median.

Investigators say the vehicle had been reported as stolen to the Omaha Police Department.

Officers responded to the rural home after the 911 call and administered first aid to the wounded person. That person was taken to a Des Moines hospital for treatment of multiple gun shot wounds.

Thursday afternoon. the Adair County Sheriff’s Office had not released the identity of the suspected intruder.

And when they come back into session, they’ll probably conveniently let it die with some bland boilerplate statements.

Senate leaves town without a deal on gun legislation

Senators have wrapped up their work and left Washington, D.C., without reaching a deal on gun violence legislation, disappointing Democrats who had hoped to issue a joint statement with Republicans on a framework.

Democrats say they are “very close” to an agreement with Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the lead Republican negotiator, but Democratic and Republican staff still need to hammer out differences over language, according to Senate negotiators.

Senate sources say that Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the lead Democratic negotiator, was “itching” to put out a joint statement with Cornyn before lawmakers left town but that Cornyn declined to sign on to any public statement until there’s an agreement on the language of the core proposals.

“There’s not an agreement until we agree on everything,” Cornyn told reporters Thursday afternoon. “We’ve narrowed the issues considerably.”

Cornyn said the group had hoped to release a joint statement by week’s end but isn’t there yet.

“We were hopeful there might be something we could do today, but we have this remaining issue we need to resolve,” he said.

Sources familiar with the negotiations said Cornyn, a former Texas Supreme Court justice, doesn’t want to sign off on any framework until the language of the core provisions are finalized.

“How outrageous is that?” Cornyn quipped about his insistence on knowing the details of the agreement before endorsing a framework for the legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he wanted a deal by the end of this week and has come under pressure from progressives to force a Senate vote on gun control legislation if Republicans don’t agree to a compromise bill soon.

Schumer received a briefing from Murphy on Thursday afternoon, telling reporters afterward that the bipartisan group is making good progress and that he hopes to get something from the group soon.

The four core negotiators — Cornyn, Murphy, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) — are scheduled to hold a virtual meeting to continue the talks Friday afternoon.

They are looking for a deal that can bring along 10 Republican votes to overcome a filibuster in the 50-50 Senate. Every Democrat is expected to vote for the legislation.

The Republicans in the negotiating group also include Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.).

If those four plus Cornyn and Tillis agree to vote “yes,” Democrats would still need to round up four more Republicans to overcome the 60-vote threshold for ending a filibuster.

Senior Democrats briefed on the negotiations say the two sides are “very close” to a deal and expect to see an agreement by sometime next week.

“I think we are very close,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “We have good vibrations. I think Schumer did the right thing by focusing on a date to complete the negotiations.”

Schumer said soon after a gunman killed 21 people in Uvalde, Texas, that he would give Republicans only a short amount of time to work out compromise legislation before he would begin to force them on gun control proposals.

Republicans want to create tax incentives for the sale of safe storage equipment, while Democrats want to also add mandates for safe storage.

Another tricky issue is how to handle people who make a business of selling firearms online but are not required to conduct background checks because they don’t hold federal firearm licenses. Gun control advocates view this as a loophole in the law requiring firearm dealers to conduct background checks.

Cornyn on Thursday said significant progress has been made since then on classifying people who make a business of selling firearms, noting that he and Murphy have worked on the issue for more than a year.

Another potential landmine in the negotiations is a proposal to encourage states to set up red flag laws to remove firearms from people deemed a danger to the community.

Marshall on Thursday said he doesn’t “see how any red flag [law] passes” and called it a “poison pill.”

“I don’t think the red flags address the real issue,” he said. “I think it could sure be abused. I think it’s an infringement on the Second Amendment.”

Daines said he would oppose using taxpayer money to give states incentives to establish red flag laws.

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia already have such laws on the books.

“What hasn’t been talked about a lot is the school resource officer at Uvalde was not at his post. Why are we not talking more about that? Imagine for a moment if you had a couple of Capitol police officers who weren’t at their post and someone came in the Capitol. There would be a lot of discussion about what do we do to keep the security hardened around the Capitol,” he said.

Blumenthal, who has negotiated a red flag law with Graham, however, said members of the bipartisan group should be able to reach agreement on that issue.

“We’re going to keep working on language. I’m enormously encouraged having worked on this for quite a few years,” he said of red flag legislation.

Murphy, the lead Democratic negotiator, declined to say whether he could support a package that doesn’t include incentives for states to set up red flag laws.

“I’m not drawing any lines in the sand at this point,” he said, though he added a red flag law “could have made a difference in Uvalde.”

New gun laws won’t fix the problem

Another senseless act of violence against children and anti-gun groups are blaming gun advocates for this violence, but the answer could be closer to home.

Gun control has been with us since 1968 and since then a myriad of gun laws has emerged. Clearly, they haven’t worked. Totally ignored are the shooters who have been from broken homes, isolated, prone to other types of violence, had interactions with police and been active on social media. Their behavior was excused or ignored.

The politicians say it’s easy to get a gun, but if the system was effective and criminals prosecuted, it could be more of a deterrent to block sales to potential shooters. While enhanced background checks may sound good, if the local authority doesn’t inform the investigating agency, and in most cases they don’t, then a shooter will be able to get guns. Reporting agencies aren’t obligated to inform them.

If all factors are considered, then it is not a gun problem, and a new gun law will not fix it. The legal gun owner is not the problem, and within the context of self-defense they prevent potential victims in defense of self or others, often without shots fired. The gun-owning public has grown and includes women, minorities and prior gun control advocates due to violent criminals having gun charges disappear in plea bargaining, as well as being released before the ink is dry on the booking form.

The danger of being a victim has increased because of an agenda that puts criminals ahead of the public’s safety. Unfortunately, many mass shootings are ignored by the media such as in Chicago or New York, but gang violence has become commonplace and non-newsworthy except to those affected in the inner cities. Poor minorities tend to bear the brunt of ineffective political policies.

President Joe Biden has suggested that the Second Amendment is “not absolute” and if so, then freedom of speech, religion, assembly and the press are also “not absolute.”

William Aherin, Southampton