September 22th
1554 – Spanish Conquistador and explorer of Mexico and the North American plains, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, dies in Mexico City.
1692 – The last woman convicted in the Salem witch trials is hanged.
1711 – The Tuscarora War between the Tuscarora tribe and their allies on one side and European American settlers, and Yamassee tribes, and other allies on the other begins in North Carolina.
1776 – Nathan Hale is hanged by the British for spying.
1789 – The office of United States Postmaster General is established.
1823 – Joseph Smith states that after being directed by God through the Angel Moroni to the place where they were buried, that he has found golden plates which he translates into English and publishes as the Book of Mormon.
1862 –President Lincoln issues proclamation and executive order number 95 stating that on January 1, 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State in rebellion will be considered emancipated and free by the Union.
1896 – Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather King George III as the longest reigning monarch in British history at that time.
1919 – A labor strike led by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, begins in Pennsylvania before spreading across many of the steel manufacturers of the nation.
1941 – On the Jewish New Year Day of Rosh Hashanah, German SS troops murder 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsia, Ukraine that survived a massacre a few days earlier.
1948 – USAF Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen officially starts parachuting candy to children as part of the Berlin Airlift.
1975 – Sara Jane Moore tries to assassinate President Gerald Ford.
1980 – Iraq invades Iran, beginning the nearly eight year long Iran–Iraq War.
1991 – The Dead Sea Scrolls are made available to the public for the first time.
1993 – A barge being pushed by the towboat Mauvilla runs into a bridge crossing the Big Bayou Canot, near Mobile, Alabama, causing the derailment minutes later of the Amtrak Sunset Limited train, killing 5 crew, 42 passengers and injuring another 103 people aboard.
1995 – U.S. Air Force E-3B AWACS, callsign Yukla 27, crashes outside Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska after multiple bird strikes disable 2 engines soon after takeoff, killing all 24 crew on board.
2000 – World War II Imperial Japanese Navy pilot and author, Saburō Sakai dies after attending a formal dinner given in his honor by the U.S. Navy at Atsugi Naval Air Station in Japan.
2015 – Yogi Berra, American baseball player, coach, and manager dies, age 90 of natural causes at his home in West Caldwell, New Jersey, U.S.
Never, ever place any trust in “The Internet of Things” “IOT”
BLUF
If we ponder that relationship for a moment, we might conclude that many of the things that we believe we control are really on loan as a means of controlling us.
On Thursday, May 25, Brandon Jackson, a software engineer in Baltimore County, Maryland, discovered that he was locked out of his Amazon account. Jackson couldn’t get packages delivered to his home by the retail giant. He couldn’t access any files and data he had stored with Amazon Web Services, the company’s powerful cloud computing wing. It also meant that Jackson, a self-described home automation enthusiast, could no longer use Alexa for his smart home devices. He could turn on his lights manually, but only in the knowledge that Amazon could still operate them remotely.
Jackson soon discovered that Amazon suspended his account because a Black delivery driver who’d come to his house the previous day had reported hearing racist remarks from his video doorbell. In a brief email sent to Jackson at 3 a.m., the company explained how it unilaterally placed all of his linked devices and services on hold as it commenced an internal investigation.
The accusations baffled Jackson. He and his family are Black. When he reviewed the doorbell’s footage, he saw that nobody was home at the time of the delivery. At a loss for what could have prompted the accusation of racism, he suspected the driver had misinterpreted the doorbell’s automated response: “Excuse me, can I help you?”
Submitting the surveillance video “appeared to have little impact on [Amazon’s] decision to disable my account,” Jackson explained on his blog on June 4. “In the end, my account was unlocked on Wednesday [May 31, six days later], with no follow-up to inform me of the resolution.” By now, many months later, Amazon’s investigation into the matter appears to have concluded though the issue remains far from resolved. Contacted for a response, the company wrote: “In this case, we learned through our investigation that the customer did not act inappropriately, and we’re working directly with the customer to resolve their concerns while also looking at ways to prevent a similar situation from happening again.”
It was only Jackson’s technical skills and particular automated home setup that saved him from what could have been a larger lockout. “My home was fine as I just used Siri or [a] locally hosted dashboard if I wanted to change a light’s color or something of that nature,” he explained. His week of digital exile amounted to a frustrating inconvenience only because, as a tech-savvy user and professional software engineer, he had the ability to set up his own locally hosted network that acted as a failsafe. But Jackson’s experience is a warning to the vast majority of Alexa users and smart home dwellers who, lacking his particular skills and foresight, are increasingly at the mercy of the tech they have embedded into their lives and bedrooms.
“I came forward,” Jackson told Tablet, “because I don’t think it’s right that Amazon could say, ‘I know you bought all these devices, but we think you are racist. So we’re going to take [you] offline.’” On one side, critics lambasted Jackson as a dupe for having smart devices in the first place; others said his criticisms of Amazon implied that he didn’t support a company protecting its employees. “People missed the main point,” he said. “I don’t really care who you are, what you do, or what you believe in. If you bought something, you should own it.”
Jackson’s story of being temporarily canceled by the tech behemoth spread across the internet after it was discussed in a YouTube video by Louis Rossman, a right-to-repair activist, independent technician, and popular YouTube personality. Right to repair, or fair repair, is a consumer-focused movement advocating for the public to be able to repair the equipment they own instead of being forced to use the manufacturer’s repair services or upgrade products that have been arbitrarily made obsolete. In the early 20th century, fair-repair advocacy began with automobiles and heavy machinery, but its tenets have spread as computer chips have come to undergird contemporary life.
Following Rossman’s initial video about Jackons’s case, Amazon alleged that Rossman had abused its affilate marketing program and placed restrictions on the YouTuber’s business account, leading him to speculate in a follow-up video that the corporate giant was retaliating against him for covering Jackson’s travails. Rossman alleges that this was the first time Amazon made any allegation against him of abusing its affiliate marketing program since he enrolled in the marketing program 7.5 years ago.
Jackson’s experience is a warning to Alexa users and smart home dwellers who are increasingly at the mercy of the tech they have embedded into their lives and bedrooms.
The number of households adopting smart home devices in the United States is expected to reach 93 million by 2027 and most consumers rely on cloud services for their daily online use. But the cloud is not just a metaphor to explain a connected network; it describes the complete reorganization of digital life under the power of remote centralized databases. Light switches, lightbulbs, locks, thermostats, coffee makers, air conditioners, speakers, exercise equipment, and virtually every other piece of equipment you can find in the average home can now all be operated as interconnected pieces of a single digital network, run by an outside host, such as Amazon, which operates the massive server banks that make up “the cloud.” For consumers, this arrangement offers convenience and optimization. You can turn on the heat in your house from another state, or reorder a household good with a simple voice command. But the cost of that convenience is that consumers no longer independently control how their tech—or their homes, since the two are increasingly integrated—is operated. As Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit and another right-to-repair activist put it, “Who really owns our things? It used to be us.”
Brandon Jackson
Alexa’s terms of use includes a clause stating that Amazon is permitted to terminate “access” to Alexa at the company’s discretion without notice. Jackson was told by a customer relations executive over the phone that he needed to assure the company that he would not ridicule or put future delivery drivers in harm’s way. Nearly a month later, Amazon admitted no wrongdoing, only apologizing for “inconveniences.” Given absolute power over its users, there is no pressure on Amazon to explain its decision. Indeed, the company used the same statement Tabletreceived for an earlier June Newsweek article regarding Jackson’s lockout.
Amazon’s claims of being concerned about the safety of blue-collar workers strain credibility. According to a 2021 article published in Vice, when minority delivery drivers faced violent threats and racial harassment, the company’s penchant for efficiency took priority over worker safety. Unsustainable demands from delivery drivers have translated to drivers peeing in bottles and defecating in garbage bags, a problem Amazon internally acknowledged even as it publicly denies the allegations. Inside its “fulfillment centers”—the term the company uses for its warehouses—workers suffer 5.9 serious injuries for every 100 workers, an 80% greater injury rate than competitors. Indeed employee turnover is so high in these facilities that a leaked company memo from 2022 warned that the company was on track to deplete its number of available workers by 2024.
Amazon’s intrusion into Jackson’s life, then, should not be understood within the context of protecting workers—which might begin by giving them adequate time to use the restroom—but rather as part of an emergent regime of technological control. The culmination of years of debate about political and civic norm moderation on social media and in public discourse has created a new normative standard in which “innocent until proven guilty” is now viewed as an oppressive and antiquated relic. As the new unelected masters of public discourse, tech giants like Amazon, Google, Twitter, and Facebook, have been encouraged to execute summary punishments of users for mere accusations of racism or “disinformation.”
Amazon’s enormous power in the global economy and ubiquitous presence in the U.S. supply chain and cloud computing sectors allows the company to take the power of surveillance and cancellation even further. Unlike purely social media companies like X (formerly known as Twitter), Amazon’s suite of smart home gadgets and services gives it a direct physical presence inside of people’s homes. That means that when Amazon wades into cultural issues, or decides to punish people based on offensive speech, its political values are mapped onto objects and processes used in the real world.
In Jackson’s case, in order to regain access to things he had already paid for, he was forced to submit the surveillance video from his home to Amazon to prove his innocence. Somehow, in the new cloud-based networked world these corporations are building for us, the solution to every problem always involves individuals handing over more of their private data.
Debates over censorship, free speech and its limits typically revolve around social media use. But Hayley Tsukayama, a senior legislative activist for Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, suggested to Tablet that Jackson’s case shared a similar architecture to conversations around content moderation. Companies can choose not to allow certain forms of speech, but in doing so they can no longer be treated as neutral platforms. Tsukayama argues that social media users are offered a recourse, even if the process is stacked against them. “If [Amazon] is going to look at customer behavior as being part of the terms of service,” she said, “they [should] make that clear and set up a process that’s perhaps not unlike what we see at Facebook, YouTube or others who deal with content takedown.”
But, of course, we now know that millions of social media users had their accounts censored or banned without explanation or recourse for posts, including many that were classified as “disinformation” at the time of the alleged offense but contained statements that authorities later acknowledged as true. In that light, placing more trust in a content moderation model seems like a dangerous gamble. It could also lead to even more surveillance online as companies like Amazon claim a need to monitor their customers’ every move so they can judge them “fairly.”
Like many digital technologies, the smart home offers connectivity at a steep price—it makes individuals passive subjects of the products that surround them, including the things they own. Few of us have any real understanding of the “terms of service” on the devices and services that we rely on. Consider how streaming services replaced physical media and how the arrival of smartphones, with all their wonders, also meant that the owners of such phones became incapable of replacing their own batteries, SIM cards, and physical storage. If we ponder that relationship for a moment, we might conclude that many of the things that we believe we control are really on loan as a means of controlling us.
Federal Judge Rejects Hunter Biden Request To Appear In Court Via Video Conference
A federal judge rejected a request from Hunter Biden’s legal team this week to allow the president’s son to make his arraignment on federal gun charges through a video conference instead of having to show up in person.
U.S. Magistrate Judge from the District of Delaware Christopher Burke rejected the request in an order on Wednesday afternoon.
Burke gave multiple reasons for denying, including that the Court believes the appearance in important because its one of the few times that the defendant will physically be in the courtroom and the setting “helps to emphasize the ‘integrity and solemnity of a federal criminal proceeding.’”
Special Counsel David Weiss indicted Hunter Biden earlier this month on three charges related to the purchase of a firearm, including allegedly making multiple false statements, and being unlawfully in possession of a firearm.
“Moreover, in this matter, most of the criminal charges that Defendant now faces are new and were not addressed at his prior hearing in July 2023-such that this will be the first time they are discussed in court,” Burke wrote. “The Court will also address Defendant’s pre-trial release conditions; while the Court expects it is likely that the currently-imposed conditions will remain in place, were either side to suggest alterations, the Court would want to be able to address that issue in person with the parties.”
“Other than during the exigent circumstances of the COVID crisis (when the Court was proceeding under the auspices of the now-expired CARES Act standing order), in 12 years as a judge on this Court, the undersigned cannot recall ever having conducted an initial appearance other than in person,” he continued. “That has been the case as to defendants of all types, regardless of their location or personal circumstance.”
Burke used the words from Hunter Biden’s legal team against him, saying that he agrees that Hunter Biden “should not receive special treatment in this matter-absent some unusual circumstance, he should be treated just as would any other defendant in our Court.”
“Any other defendant would be required to attend his or her initial appearance in person,” he said. “So too here.”
One dead, one arrested following attempted home invasion in Spring Valley
LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A man is dead, and another is in custody following an attempted home invasion in Spring Valley on Wednesday morning.
According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, reports of a shooting at a single-family residence in the 3300 block of Iberia Street around 9:02 a.m.
The caller claimed that two individuals dressed in dark clothing and masks attempted to enter their residence, and their son shot them.
Officers arriving on the scene made contact with the caller, who was identified as a 70-year-old man, and his son, who was identified as a 50-year-old man and the shooter. According to LVMPD Homicide Lieutenant Jason Johansson, both subjects with not be facing charges, as the shooting was determined to be in self-defense.
The father told officers that one of the suspects appeared to be dead in the backyard, where officers would discover the body of a 20-year-old man. Medical personnel arriving on the scene would declare him deceased.
The second suspect involved in the attempted invasion was seen leaping over the wall in the backyard and fleeing the scene in a gray sedan.
About 10 minutes after the initial 911 call, LVMPD also received reports of a reckless driver who drove through a parking lot on Tropicana and Jones at a “high rate of speed.” The vehicle was then seen leaving the lot headed eastbound on Tropicana.
Lt. Johansson says the vehicle was later involved in a collision on Tropicana and Decatur, where the sedan struck two other vehicles. After crashing, the suspect exited the vehicle, and police observed a “non-life-threatening gunshot wound to his lower leg.”
The suspect was transported to a nearby hospital and is currently in custody.
LVMPD will be looking into recent burglaries in the area to see if there are any possible connections. Lt. Johansson says that police have identified at least one incident of interest.
It’s currently unclear if the suspects were armed at the time of the incident.
Officers will be in the area for the next few hours to conduct an investigation into the incident. Drivers are advised to use caution when traveling in the neighborhood and surrounding areas.
“Right now, it’s just gonna come down to interviewing, getting the rest of the surveillance footage, and serving a search warrant on the house and the vehicle,” Lt. Johansson said.
Plaintiffs rest in state trial challenging Oregon’s new gun laws
Lawyers for two Harney County residents who are suing the state to block Oregon’s new gun laws wrapped up their arguments Wednesday. They presented two and a half days of expert testimony from firearms experts, law enforcement officers and other people who regularly use firearms in the course of their day-to-day lives.
Measure 114 requires a permit to purchase a firearm and a completed background check and bans magazines holding over 10 rounds of ammunition. It also bans magazines “that can be readily restored, changed, or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition.” The provisions were blocked in December by Harney County Circuit Court Judge Robert Raschio pending this week’s trial.
On the opening day of the trial, the plaintiffs called Derek LeBlanc, a firearms instructor, and Ashley Hlebinsky, a former curator at the Cody Firearms Museum in Wyoming.
LeBlanc testified that, for self-defense, he recommends people get a firearm capable of holding as many rounds as possible. Questioned by Oregon Department of Justice attorneys defending Measure 114, LeBlanc conceded that he doesn’t carry the largest magazines possible, such as 60 or 100 round magazines.
Hlebinsky testified that there have been points in history when people carried more advanced firearms than the military. The Oregon Court of Appeals has in the past said firearms that evolved from military ordnance are not protected under the state constitution.
Hlebinsky also testified that there were many early firearms capable of firing multiple rounds without needing to be reloaded, and several makes and models that held over 10 rounds or used magazine-style feeding devices. During cross-examination, Hlebinsky said many of the earlier rifles she mentioned in her testimony were only available in Europe or, if they were in the United States, they were only in very limited numbers.
Hlebinsky’s husband works in the firearms industry and owns over $1 million in stock in an ammunition company. Her ties to the firearms industry and lack of formal training as a historian led a federal judge to question her credibility in a federal trial testing Measure 114′s legality under the U.S. Constitution.
“Ms. Hlebinsky lacks background and training as a historian,” U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut wrote in her July ruling, which found Measure 114 federally constitutional. “More troubling to this Court, Ms. Hlebinsky has both professional and personal ties to pro-gun groups and the firearms industry, which this Court finds limit her ability to serve as a neutral expert in this case.”
Scott Springer, who manufactures firearms parts and accessories, went over several different handgun, rifle, and shotgun magazines, and showed how the most common 10-round magazines can be altered to accept more than 10 rounds. The modifications require a drill, belt sander or additional parts.
Oregon State Police Superintendent Casey Codding, Union County Sheriff Cody Bowen and Harney County Sheriff Dan Jenkins all testified that their troopers and deputies carry firearms with 17-round magazines plus one round in the chamber. They also carry an additional two extra magazines for a total of 52 rounds. Codding said many of his troopers in rural areas take their firearms home with them because they start and end their days at home.
Bowen and Jenkins said their jurisdictions cover large geographic areas where response times can be lengthy. Bowen said citizens have asked him what they are supposed to do while waiting for a potentially 30-minute response “while somebody is beating on the door saying they’re going to kill me.”
“My answer to them, you know, defend yourself,” Bowen testified. “As far as human life, you have every right to defend yourself. You do whatever it takes to stay alive and wait for us to get there.”
Both sheriffs said their deputies have often relied on armed civilians to provide cover for them during incidents. They also testified that residents and deputies use their firearms to protect themselves, their families and their livestock from predators including bears, wolves and coyotes.
Bowen said he recently had a run-in with a bear, although he said the bear “didn’t get his filthy paws on me, but it was way too close for my comfort.”
Lawyers defending Measure 114 objected to much of Codding’s, Bowen’s and Jenkins’ testimony because the law has carve-outs for law enforcement to own and carry high-capacity magazines. Special Assistant Attorney General Harry Wilson said that, unlike citizens, law enforcement has the authority and duty to protect the public.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that police do not have a constitutional duty to protect the public from harm.
Lawyers challenging the new law said law enforcement’s assessment of what is necessary for self-defense is relevant. Raschio agreed and allowed the testimony.
Cattle rancher Shane Otley testified that he carries a Glock 380 and an AR-15. In the Glock, he said he carries a five-round magazine, and in the AR-15, he said he uses between 10 and 30-round magazines. He said he carries the Glock for personal defense and the AR-15 for protecting his livestock.
Harney County gun store owner Ben Callaway testified about the various kinds of magazines and firearms he frequently orders and sells. He testified that several attempts to order 10-round magazines had been rejected by out-of-state companies citing Measure 114′s prohibition against magazines that can be modified to hold more than 10 rounds.
Republicans push ahead with attempt to impeach governor over Albuquerque gun ban
A pair of Republican lawmakers are pushing ahead with an effort to impeach Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham over a gun ban that has been called unconstitutional and thrust New Mexico into the national debate on gun violence.
The effort, however, faces an uphill battle in the state Legislature, where Democrats control both chambers.
Reps. John Block of Alamogordo and Stefani Lord of Sandia Park this week launched a certificate form for lawmakers to sign calling for an extraordinary session to impeach Lujan Grisham over an executive order prohibiting carrying open or concealed firearms in public in Albuquerque and across Bernalillo County.
“The U.S. Constitution is absolute and designed to protect the rights of the people against tyrannical decisions like Governor Lujan [Grisham] attempted to do,” Lord, a staunch gun rights advocate, said in a statement.
Now that the state has to really deal with illegals, instead of merely signaling their virtue……
New York governor Kathy Hochul welcomed asylum seekers with ‘open arms’ and pledged to house them just three years before telling migrants to ‘go elsewhere’ because the city is at its limit.
The Democrat addressed the migrant crisis on Wednesday, warning that asylum seekers who arrive in New York City will not be housed in hotel rooms as they have been in the past.
‘We have to get the word out, that when you come to New York, you’re not going to have more hotel rooms, we don’t have capacity,’ Hochul said on CNN. ‘So we have to also message properly that we’re at a limit – if you’re going to leave your country, go somewhere else.’
It’s a stunning reversal from her statements in December 2021, when she promised to house and protect asylum seekers – before thousands of migrants began arriving every month from Sothern border states. More than 113,000 migrants have arrived in the city since last Spring.
‘As you know, the Statue of Liberty is inscribed. It says, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be free,’ Hochul previously said. ‘You’re welcome with open arms and we’ll work to keep you safe… We’ll not only house you, but we’ll protect you.’
2021: Hochul tells migrants ‘you are welcome here’
New York governor Kathy Hochul has warned that asylum seekers who arrive in New York City will not be housed in hotel rooms as they have been in the past
New York governor Hochul tells migrants to ‘go somewhere else’
First of all, lower your voice…………..
September 21
454 – Roman Imperial General Flavius Aetius, victor over the forces of Attila the Hun at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, is murdered by Emperor Valentinian in Ravenna, Italy.
1776 – Part of New York City is burned shortly after being occupied by British forces.
1780 – Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point.
1938 – A category 3 power hurricane hits Long Island in New York, causing some 500-700 deaths and over $300 million in damage.
1942 – In Seattle, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress makes its first flight.
1953 – North Korean pilot Lieutenant No Kum Sok, the late Kenneth H. Rowe, defects to South Korea with his MiG-15 jet fighter and is awarded a $100,000 bounty.
1964 – In Palmdale California, the North American XB-70 Valkyrie makes its first flight
1974 – Actor Walter Brennan dies at his ranch in Ventura County, California.
1976 – Former Chilean Marxist government official Orlando Letelier is assassinated by a car bomb in Washington D.C
1981 – Sandra Day O’Connor is unanimously approved by the Senate as the first female Supreme Court Justice.
1993 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin suspends the Russian parliament and scraps the existing soviet era constitution causing widespread violence lasting over a week.
1996 – The Defense of Marriage Act is passed by the United States Congress.
2001 – America: A Tribute to Heroes, is broadcast by over 35 network and cable channels, raising over $200 million for the victims of the September 11 attacks.
2003 – NASA’s Galileo orbiter is purposefully crashed into Jupiter’s atmosphere.
2013 – Al-Shabaab Islamic militants attack the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya, killing at least 67 people.
A Christian woman who volunteers to feed the homeless says that the number of people who live on the streets of Atlanta has grown exponentially, with entire families, gang members, and prostitutes all seeking assistance.
The woman, named Teresa Hamilton, who goes by the nickname Lady T, has volunteered to feed the homeless in Georgia for over 27 years, but in 2023 she says the situation is worse than ever. Previously, people seeking free meals were mostly limited to those with substance abuse problems, but the volunteer said the demographic has widely grown.
“The numbers are growing. It is a different flavor of homeless people now. Back in the day, it was just some alcoholics or somebody on drugs; now we have whole families living in parks,” she told Fox 5 Atlanta.
Lady T and her crew feed approximately 900 people per week, with different groups serving different types of homeless communities. The volunteer sends teams to provide meals to everyone from prostitutes to homeless gang members.
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“This is one set of people, and we have three or four other sets of people. We got tent city. We got prostitute lane. We got crack city. And we got gangland,” she said. “People don’t understand, even though they are in gangs, they are still homeless.”
“I have a heart for other people who are less fortunate. We need lots and lots of help. We need lots and lots of volunteers. We need financial support always,” she said.
Lady T began working as a volunteer in the mid-1990s after she shut down her successful catering business. The Chicago native said that God spoke to her and she immediately knew she had to shift her focus.
“It was a booming catering business. God woke me up at 2 in the morning and I said, ‘Yes Lord?’ And he said, ‘Feed my people,’ and I shut the catering business down the next day,” Hamilton explained.
“She treats me like a human being,” said Joel Kirkland, who has been homeless for three months.
Another woman named Tanisha Holcomb told Fox 5 Atlanta that she was robbed of all of her belongings in Cleveland, Ohio, before becoming homeless.
“As far as Miss T, she saved my life,” the woman revealed.
An Atlanta resident:
I’ve lived here since 2001 and until a few years ago I had never seen a tent under a highway overpass. Now they seem to be everywhere.
Not defending it, but being homeless is easier than ever because of technology.
With only a smartphone, one can have and manage a bank account, receive income (like public benefits), make online payments, communicate with friends and family, hire transportation to/from your location, schedule medical appointments, have food delivered to your location, purchase items on Amazon delivered to a nearby drop-off point, arrange drug deals, find customers for sexual services, etc.
A homeless person in America with a smartphone can shop, select, and have their preferred tent delivered to them from China to a nearby Amazon locker within a few days, as well as any other “camping” supplies they desire.
In balmy Georgia for 9/12ths of the year, that is a “home-free” lifestyle that is completely feasible from a tent under I-75.
Opponents of Measure 114 gun laws say case is about “individual rights” in trial opening
In opening statements Monday, lawyers for two people suing over Oregon’s new gun laws said Ballot Measure 114′s provisions are the “most significant threat to [the right to bear arms] Oregonians have faced in nearly 165 years.”
“This case is not about public health, public safety or public concern,” plaintiffs’ attorney Tony Aiello told Judge Robert Rascio. “This is about individual rights. This is about the individual right to self defense and the right to bear arms to secure that right.”
Aiello said plaintiffs in the state trial plan to show that Measure 114, approved by voters last year, effectively limits Oregonians to owning only antique firearms. He said Measure 114 regulates firearms that were plentiful prior to 1859, the year Article I, Section 27 of the Oregon constitution — the section protecting the right to bear arms — was ratified.
The new laws would ban high capacity magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition, require a completed background check to buy or transfer a firearm and require a person to take training and receive a permit to purchase a firearm. Raschio, an Oregon Circuit Court judge based in Harney County, blocked the new laws from taking effect in December pending this week’s trial.
In their opening statement, lawyers defending the new rules for the Oregon Department of Justice said the court must determine if large capacity magazines are considered “arms” under the state constitution, and thus protected, a question they said had already been resolved by the Oregon State Court of Appeals.
More evidence that the law only applies to law-abiding
Over and over again, we’re told we need more gun laws because of the actions of people who are anything but law-abiding.
We shouldn’t have so-called assault weapons because some people have misused them. Never mind that these same people would have used whatever they could get their hands on to kill just as many people. No, those who actually obey the law should be punished for the actions of evil people.
But the truth is that people who don’t care about obeying the rules will simply break whatever rules they want.
Take this example out of Rochester, NY.
Rochester Police say they found six loaded guns inside a building on North Clinton Avenue early Saturday morning. Officers say there was gunfire inside that building while it was operating an unlicensed bar.
RPD first responded to the property on North Clinton Avenue near Rauber Street around 11:30 p.m. on Friday after getting complaints about an after-hours party. Officers say they heard loud music and saw multiple illegally parked cars.…
Three hours later, RPD returned to the building after getting reports of shot fired. Officers saw people running and found multiple guns, along with a large quantity of narcotics, inside the building. No one was hit by the gunfire.
Among the firearms was an AR-style pistol and several other handguns.
Now, let’s look at this case for a moment. We’ve got everything from parking violations and loud music to an unlicensed bar to illegal guns and drugs.
I mean, if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear these weren’t law-abiding citizens here.
See, one of the problems with gun control is that it only impacts the law-abiding. It only controls those who are willing to accept that control.
Criminals, however, don’t.
For one thing, they don’t think they’ll get caught. The police showed up at this illegal bar earlier in the evening and were told that this was just a birthday party. When they left, the guy figured he was golden and probably felt pretty cocky.
He’d been breaking the law under the cops’ noses and got away with it.
I won’t say that people who break one or two laws will break any law. No, most people have a line somewhere that they won’t cross. It would be silly to say that someone who speeds will commit murder, after all.
But those who are willing to take a life aren’t necessarily going to quibble about speeding.
When it comes to gun control, those who are law-abiding are the only ones who will follow gun control laws, just like it’s the law-abiding who don’t run illegal bars out of their homes or tend to partake in illegal drugs as a general rule.
The biggest problem, though, is getting some other parties to understand it. They continue to push the idea that somehow you can control criminal behavior with just a few more laws despite ample evidence to the contrary.
The truth is that many simply choose to believe the laws will work because it makes them feel better about the laws they’re pushing for.
September 20
1066 –The defeat of the armies of Earls Morcar and Edwin at Fulford England by Harald Hardrada’s invading Norse army, compels King Harald Godwinson to force march his army the 190 miles from London to York in less than 6 days.
1187 – The Saracen army of Salah ad-Din begins the Siege of Jerusalem, ending with the surrender of the city by Balian of Ibelin less than two weeks later on October 2nd.
1519 – Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet sets sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda on his expedition to the east indies from the west, that will eventually circumnavigate the globe
1737 – By terms of a 1686 treaty, the Lenape-Delaware tribe sign a new treaty ceding 1.2 million acres of land to the Pennsylvania Colony
1835 – In the Brazilian province of Rio Grande do Sul, Generals Bento Gonçalves da Silva and Antônio de Sousa Neto begin a rebellion called the Revolução Farroupilha or The Ragamuffin War.
1881 – Chester A. Arthur is officially sworn in as President after the death of President Garfield the day before.
1893 – Charles Duryea and his brother road test the first American made, gasoline powered automobile.
1973 – At Natchitoches, Louisiana’s regional airport, Jim Croce’s chartered light plane, a Beech E18Sm, crashes on takeoff, killing all 6 aboard.
1984 – A suicide bomber in a car attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 22 people.
1989 – USAir Flight 5050, a Boeing 737, crashes into Bowery Bay during a rejected takeoff from LaGuardia Airport, killing 2 passengers of the 63 pass people.
2001 – In an address to a joint session of Congress and the American people, President George W. Bush declares a “War on Terror”.
2005 – Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal dies in Vienna, Austria.
2011 – The United States military ends its “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy
2017 – Hurricane Maria hits Puerto Rico as a Category 4 hurricane, resulting in 2,975 deaths and $90 billion in damage
The quiet part slips out again
— Chris Gray (@Goatchaps) September 19, 2023