The Biden 10-Step Plan for Global Chaos.

Why is French President Emmanuel Macron cozying up to China while trashing his oldest ally, the United States?

Why is there suddenly talk of discarding the dollar as the global currency?

Why are Japan and India shrugging that they cannot follow the United States’ lead in boycotting Russian oil?

Why is the president of Brazil traveling to China to pursue what he calls a “beautiful relationship”?

What happened to Turkey? Why is it threatening fellow NATO member Greece? Is it still a NATO ally, a mere neutral, or a de facto enemy?

Why are there suddenly nonstop Chinese threats toward Taiwan?

Why did Saudi Arabia conclude a new pact with Iran, its former archenemy?

Why is Egypt sending rockets to Russia to be used in Ukraine?

Since when did the Russians talk nonstop about the potential use of a tactical nuclear weapon?

Why is Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador bragging that millions of Mexicans have entered the United States, most of them illegally? And why is he interfering in U.S. elections by urging his expatriates to vote for Democrats?

Why and how, in just two years, have a confused and often incoherent Joe Biden and his team created such global chaos?

Let us answer by listing 10 ways by which America lost all deterrence.

Continue reading “”

Gun groups sue Michigan Legislature over firearm bills, alleging open meetings violations

A pair of Michigan-based pro-firearm organizations, Great Lakes Gun Rights and Michigan Open Carry, Inc., have sued the state Legislature over its passage of gun safety bills recently signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, arguing lawmakers violated the Open Meetings Act by not properly allowing public comment on the legislation.

Last week, Whitmer signed legislation expanding background checks on firearm purchases and creating criminal penalties for gun owners who fail to keep firearms out of the hands of minors, commonly referred to as “safe storage” laws. A third proposal to temporarily confiscate guns from those deemed a risk to themselves or others by a court is also making its way through the Legislature.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in the Michigan Court of Claims aims to get a temporary restraining order against the gun safety bills and laws.

Plaintiffs allege both the House and Senate judiciary committees violated Michigan’s open meeting laws by not allowing opposition testimony during some of the hearings before the bills were voted on.

Committees in each chamber held hearings on the bills in March and April. In each, members heard mostly from supporters of the legislation. Groups, including speakers from Great Lakes Gun Rights and Michigan Open Carry, submitted cards in opposition but were unable to speak during an April 12 hearing on the so-called “red flag” bills. Lawmakers cited time constraints.

“Defendants have, and continue, to blatantly favor testimony from parties in support of Defendants’ own viewpoints while openly suppressing and outright denying testimony from Plaintiffs and others critical of Defendants’ viewpoint,” wrote Thomas Lambert, an attorney representing the gun groups in the lawsuit. “This is in direct contravention of the Open Meetings Act’s unambiguous mandate that ‘a person must be permitted to address a meeting of a public body,’ which unquestionably includes Defendants.”

The groups are seeking an ex parte motion, meaning they seek an order from the court before defendants can provide a brief of their own.

The lawsuit argues the hearings were unbalanced in terms of the number of speakers, although under both current Democratic and previous Republican leadership, committee hearings on politically contentious proposals have generally featured more speakers in favor of the position of the majority party.

The Open Meetings Act is Michigan’s law requiring public bodies to make their meetings and actions accessible to members of the public. Under the OMA, boards are required to make time for members of the public who attend meetings to speak, although they do have flexibility when it comes to making time limitations for speakers.

“The Michigan House complies with the Open Meetings Act. The groups that filed the lawsuit did participate in the committee process,” said Amber McCann, a spokesperson for House Democrats, over email. In a statement, Sen. Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, also said committees complied with the law.

Smith: The NRA Has Won and America Is Stuck in a ‘Doom Loop’ of Gun Buying

[O]ne would think supporting policies that let Americans carry any type of gun, anywhere, at anytime would be a losing proposition for any politician, much less one who wants to be president.

And yet as I listened to Trump — and the parade of equally craven Oval Office hopefuls who preceded him onstage — I began to realize that he just might be right in his political calculation. Because, far from losing, the NRA seems to be winning. In fact, it might already have won, polls be damned.

Why would I believe such a thing?

It’s not because of the nonsense I heard longtime NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre spout last week, including that the Founding Fathers created the 2nd Amendment so that, from “the day you’re born,” Americans have the “God-given right” to carry a gun for self-defense that cannot be infringed upon.

Nor is it because, as former Vice President Mike Pence told the NRA faithful, “freedom is under attack,” and Americans are determined to not let the government take their guns. I’ll spare you the stories of people I know who think this so fervently that they’ve buried boxes of semiautomatic rifles and ammunition in their backyards.

I believe it because of what I’ve seen and heard in liberal California over the past few years — and how similar it is to what I saw and heard at the NRA convention in the conservative state of Indiana last week.

Consider that the past three years have been the most profitable in modern history for gun manufacturers, even as the country has been plagued by mass shooting after mass shooting. …

Of course, this was the NRA’s grand plan all along, this having America armed to the teeth. It’s a lobbying organization for gun manufacturers, after all. Under the veneer of patriotism is just naked greed.

Aside from the true believers, like the woman in the red, white and blue pants, I have to think most Americans know this by now. We were under no obligation to follow the NRA’s grand plan. LaPierre didn’t force us to buy more guns. Republicans didn’t make people start carrying sidearms to the mall like we’re sidling up to a bar in an old western.

Sure, the NRA has made it easier to do all of this. But I don’t think we can blame the gun lobby for the number of people in coastal California who, as CalMatters reported, are rushing to capitalize on last year’s Supreme Court ruling that made it easier to get a concealed carry license before state lawmakers can close the loophole.

We made these choices. And now it appears we’re stuck in a San Francisco-style “doom loop,” when the sheer number of guns owned by Americans, and the violence and death they cause, is prompting still more Americans to buy more guns, leading to more violence and death, and so on.

So as much as I applaud Gov. Gavin Newsom for taking on the NRA and its political lackeys in his so-called Campaign for Democracy, we’re going to have to fix a lot of this ourselves. Somehow we’re going to have to break our addiction to guns. 

— Erika D. Smith in Trump and the NRA Might Be Right About Guns — And We Mostly Have Ourselves to Blame

Hobbs vetoes guns bills, saying they won’t prevent violence

Parents won’t be able to bring their loaded weapons onto school campuses, at least not while Katie Hobbs is governor.

Nor will students get training on gun safety.

In a single veto letter Monday, the governor vetoed both measures saying they do nothing to prevent gun violence. And she said if safety of school children is really a concern of lawmakers there are better ways to do that — ways the Republican-controlled Legislature has refused to consider.

Hobbs also vetoed two other measures.

One would have directed judges, when confronted with two conflicting interpretations of a state election law, to err on the side of which promotes more transparency.

“This bill adds unnecessary language into statute and does not solve any of the real challenges facing election administration,” the governor wrote of HB 2319. “I look forward to working with the Legislature on bills to do that.”

And even Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, who crafted the bill, acknowledged much of this wouldn’t be necessary if lawmakers crafted clearer statutes.

Hobbs also rejected HB 2297, which would have said that prosecutors pursuing cases of fraudulent schemes and artifices are not required to establish that all the unlawful acts occurred within the state.

“This bill will lead to confusion where none currently exists,” Hobbs said in her veto message.

“Existing state law adequately outlines the jurisdictional issues addressed in this bill.”

But the governor saved most of her comments for the two gun-related measures.

SB 1131, proposed by Sen. Janae Shamp, R-Surprise, sought to create an exception to existing laws that preclude loaded guns on school property. It would have allowed parents who have a state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon to keep it with them if they also have a child at that school.

Shamp said that, if nothing else, it would keep parents rushing to the school from being charged with a felony simply because they forgot to first unload the weapon.

Anyway, she told colleagues, it is far safer to keep the gun loaded than risk accidents when unloading and reloading it.

HB 2332 was pushed by Rep. Selina Bliss, R-Scottsdale. It would have required public and charter schools to provide “age-appropriate” training in firearms safety to students in grades 6 through 12.

None of that would involve the actual instruction on how to operate weapons. Instead, it was promoted as teaching “simple, easy-to-remember steps so individuals who receive the training know what to do if they ever come across a firearm.”

Hobbs found neither plan acceptable.

“Mandatory firearm safety training in schools is not the solution to gun violence prevention,” the governor wrote. She said the requirement could have “immediate and long-term impacts” on the health and well-being of students, teachers and parents, though Hobbs did not spell out what those were.

Nor did she like Shamp’s proposal.

“Allowing more guns on campus will not make a campus safer,” she said. Then there’s the fact that police officers, arriving at a school with an active-shooter situation, won’t necessarily know who are the criminals who are armed and who are the parents.

“I’m focused on finding concrete solutions to gun violence prevention that protect Arizona families, including but not limited to, policy focused on trauma-informed emergency planning and safe, secure gun storage,” the governor wrote.

And Hobbs said lawmakers did have a chance to consider such a measure.

She pointed to HB 2192, which would have made it illegal to keep a firearm or ammunition in any home unless they were in a “securely locked box” or the gun was equipped with a device that makes it inoperable without a key or combination. The only exception would be if the owner was carrying the gun or it was within “close proximity.”

It is dubbed “Christian’s Law,” named after Christian Petillo, who, while at a friend’s house in Queen Creek for a sleepover, was fatally shot. The death was ruled an accident.

House Speaker Ben Toma, R-Peoria, never even assigned the measure by Rep. Jennifer Longdon, D-Phoenix, for a committee for a hearing.

In fact, GOP leadership used a procedural motion to block a bid by Longdon, who is paralyzed from the waist down since a random drive-by shooting in 2004, to bring what is known as “Christian’s Law” to the full House and put all lawmakers on record. House Majority Leader Leo Biasiucci, R-Lake Havasu City, defended the maneuver.

“At the end of the day, it’s the person behind the gun,” he said in engineering the move to block a vote. “And we should never forget that it (the Second Amendment) says ‘shall not be infringed.’ ”

Monday’s actions bring Hobbs’ total vetoes this session to 52. The record of 58 was set by Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano in 2005.

April 18

1506 – The cornerstone of the current St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome is laid.

1521 – The trial of Martin Luther continues into its second day during the assembly of the Diet of Worms.

1775 – Paul Revere and others ride to warn the leadership of the rebellion, and militia, that British troops are moving out from Boston towards Concord.

1783 – The first instance of slaves in the U.S. being counted as 3/5th of persons (at this time, for the purpose of taxation), is introduced as a resolution of the Congress of the Confederation to be part of the Articles of Confederation.

1831 – The University of Alabama is founded in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

1847 – U.S. troops under General Winfield Scott outflank General Santa Anna’s forces in battle at Sierra Gordo, near Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz,  during the Mexican-American War, opening the way for the further invasion of Mexico.

1906 – A magnitude 7.9 earthquake and fire destroy much of San Francisco, California, killing over 3000 people.

1912 – The Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brings 705 of the survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City.

1923 – Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York opens for the Yankees’ first home game, hosting the Boston Red Sox.

1942 –  U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, leading 51 Officers and 28 Airmen, flying 16 specially modified B-25B Mitchell bombers, are launched from the U.S. Navy carrier, CV-8 USS Hornet on a mission to attack targets on the main islands of  Japan.

1943 – Over Bougainville Island in the Solomons, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto IJN is killed when his aircraft is shot down by U.S. P-38 Lightning fighters, after radio messages informing Japanese bases of the schedule of his inspection tour had been intercepted and decoded.

1983 – A suicide bomber in Lebanon destroys the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people.

1988 – In retaliation for the USS Samuel B. Roberts striking an Iranian mine in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. launches Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval forces in the largest naval battle since World War II.

1997 – Due to heavy snow and ice melts up stream, several dikes are breached along the Red River of the North, causing flooding in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Southern Manitoba, resulting in over $3.5 billion in property damage.

2019 – A redacted version of the Mueller Report is released to the United States Congress and the public.

Man shoots, kills intruder in Ohio home

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A man who reportedly was trespassing in a home Saturday was shot and killed by the homeowner.

WBNS Channel 10 reports the shooting occurred at about 6 p.m. in the Southern Orchards neighborhood of Columbus. Officers were called to the home for reports of a trespasser.

By the time officers arrived, the homeowner had shot and killed the intruder, police tell WCMH Channel 4. The accused trespasser, whose identity has not been released, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The homeowner has not been charged but the incident will be reviewed by the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office, WBNS reports.

He says that like it is a bad thing.

I believe you meant to say training our children so they can defend themselves from criminals and political attackers.

Hell, after a quick search, I no longer wonder why you worry. Google is not your friend. You look like central casting’s version of the recently released sexual offender.

WA Gun Sales Spike Following Gun Ban Bill Passage

Gun sales in Washington State have spiked in the aftermath of last weekend’s passage of legislation to ban the future sale, manufacture and importation of so-called “assault weapons,” according to a report from KOMO News.

The story quoted longtime Bellevue gun dealer Wade Gaughran, owner of Wade’s Eastside Guns, who said sales have jumped 400 percent this month. The House adopted the gun ban legislation, House Bill 1240,  in March. He said the legislation violates the Second Amendment, and he predicted it will likely be overturned by the courts.

According to KOIN News in Portland, Oregon, the bill bans more than 50 specific firearms. It is noiw back in the House for concurrence on two amendment adopted by the Senate.If approved, the bill then goes to Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee, who will likely sign it within days.

Gaughran has estimated the gun ban will affect about 30 percent of his business. He does not believe it will accomplish what the proponents say it will, which is a reduction in violent crime in the Evergreen State. Historical crime data supports his position.

Gun control has been hampering Washington gun owners since the passage of Initiative 594 in 2014. That measure was bankrolled by the billionaire-backed Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a Seattle-based gun prohibition lobbying group.

Crime data from the FBI Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and Seattle Police Department have shown the steady increase in homicides since 2015, the first full year I-594—mandating so-called “universal background checks”—was in effect.

In 2015, Washington reported 209 homicides, including 141 involving firearms, according to the FBI/UCR. By 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, Washington suffered 325 murders, including 209 involving firearms.

In 2015, Seattle passed a special “gun violence tax” on the sale of firearms and ammunition. It was supposed to generate between $300,000 and $500,000 revenue annually and finance programs to reduce so-called “gun violence.” It has failed on all accounts.

In 2016, the first year the gun tax was in effect, Seattle police reported 19 homicides. Last year, Seattle racked up 52 murders. The revenue has never come close to projected levels.

Gaughran told KOMO he’s been selling modern semiautomatic rifles for some 35 years. In all that time, he said, “we’ve never had one traced back that was used in a serious crime and I’ve sold thousands and thousands of them.”

Second Amendment Scholar Challenges Gun Control Narrative, Says It Increases Racial Bias In Criminal Justice

By Leo Wolfson, State Politics Reporter

An African American Second Amendment scholar is bringing a perspective challenging many of the mainstream narratives that firearms increase crime in America. Instead, he believes gun control laws exacerbate racial bias in the criminal justice system.

“We need to take a harder look at those programs, rather than pursuing what we call the modern orthodoxy,” said Nicholas Johnson at the University of Wyoming’s Firearm Research Center on Thursday night. “The community would be better if we took a case-by-case policy look. We need a hard-look approach that is pursued with rigor.”

He questions gun control laws from a perspective he acknowledges many will find uncomfortable, showing a connection to racial and criminal justice questions. He said those who believe bias pervades the criminal justice system should also be opposed to the modern gun control movements, where he says the same biases translate into gun law enforcement.

In his “A Race-Sensitive Hard Look at Firearms and the Black Community” presentation, Johnson explains that studies show many of the same laws leading to disproportionate incarceration of African Americans and other minorities are interconnected with gun control laws that Democrats and many of the same people impacted by the policies support.

“The conservative tough on crime policies cross paths with the liberal paths to solve gun control at all costs,” he said. “Conservatives and liberal progressives have tried to outdo each other to be progressively punitive.”

The Fordham University School of Law professor wants lawmakers to consider firearms regulation from a new lens.

Continue reading “”

NRA was the first National Gun Control Organization

There are many in the gun community that are angry with Trump for the bump stock ban. I have never blamed Trump for the travesty that was the bump stock ban, because I don’t think that he is the one who sold out gun owners. Let’s be honest here- the NRA greenlighted the bump stock ban. This is nothing new, the NRA was pro gun control for most of its history.

In the 1920s, the National Revolver Association, the arm of the NRA responsible for handgun training, proposed regulations later adopted by nine states, requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon, five years additional prison time if the gun was used in a crime, a ban on gun sales to non-citizens, a one day waiting period between the purchase and receipt of a gun, and that records of gun sales be made available to police. Florida becoming the 26th state to get rid of concealed weapons carry as a crime meant getting rid of that NRA proposal after 100 years.

During the 1930’s, the NRA helped shape the National Firearms Act of 1934. President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to make gun control a feature of the New Deal. The NRA assisted Roosevelt in drafting National Firearms Act and the 1938 Gun Control Act, the first federal gun control laws. These laws placed heavy taxes and regulation requirements on firearms that were associated with crime, such as machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and silencers. Gun sellers and owners were required to register with the federal government and felons were banned from owning weapons. Not only was the legislation unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court in 1939, but Karl T. Frederick, the president of the NRA, testified before Congress stating, “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”

After the assasination of President John F. Kennedy on  Nov. 22, 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald with an Italian military surplus rifle purchased from a NRA mail-order advertisement, NRA Executive Vice-President Franklin Orth agreed at a congressional hearing that mail-order sales should be banned stating, “We do think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States.”

The NRA also supported California’s Mulford Act of 1967, which had banned carrying loaded weapons in public in response to the Black Panther Party’s impromptu march on the State Capitol to protest gun control legislation on May 2, 1967.

Then came 1968. The assassinations of JFK, jr and Martin Luther King prompted Congress to enact the Gun Control Act of 1968. The act brought back some proposed laws from 1934, to include minimum age and serial number requirements, and extended the gun ban to include the mentally ill and drug addicts. In addition, it restricted the shipping of guns across state lines to collectors and federally licensed dealers. The only part of the proposed law that was opposed by the NRA was a national gun registry. In an interview in American Rifleman, Franklin Orth stated that despite portions of the law appearing “unduly restrictive, the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.”

It wasn’t until a mini-revolt was staged at the 1977 NRA convention that there was a change in direction. A group of gun owners pushed back and deposed the old leaders in a move called the “Cincinnati Revolt.” Led by former NRA President Harlon Carter and Neal Knox, the revolt ended the tenure of Maxwell Rich as NRA executive vice president and introduced new bylaws. The Revolt at Cincinnati marked a huge change in direction for the NRA. The organization thereafter changed from “hunting, conservation, and marksmanship” and towards the defense of the right to keep and bear arms. The catalyst for this movement was that the NRA wanted to move its headquarters from Washington, DC to Colorado. The new headquarters in Colorado was to be an “Outdoors center” that was more about hunting and recreational shooting than it was the RKBA.

I became a member of the NRA about a decade later and remained an annual member, until I became a life member about 15 years later. I believed for years that the NRA was fighting the good fight for gun owners. It wasn’t.

The NRA was always influenced by a group of Fudds who supported hunting, but hated guns that weren’t for hunting. The bureaucrats who were a part of the NRA’s organization always tried to steer towards hunting, eventually caused the organization to morph into an organization that used the threat of Democrat gun bans for fundraising.

LaPierre was able to use the large flow of money to fund his luxurious life on the company dime, including over $13 million each year for travel and a postemployment golden parachute worth $17 million. LaPierre testified in the NRA’s bankruptcy hearings about his annual weeklong trips to the Bahamas on the company dime.

All they were good at was bargaining away gun rights to the Democrat gun banners in exchange for money and power. That’s why my political donations for the past 15 years went to other gun rights organizations, and yours should, too.

EDITED TO ADD:

Thanks to an anonymous poster, we get this quote, directly from the pages of the March 1968 edition of The American Rifleman, the NRA’s official monthly publication:

the NRA has consistently supported gun legislation which it feels would penalize misuse of guns without harassing law-abiding hunters, target shooters, and collectors”

NRA president Karl T. Frederick

Note that they make no mention of RKBA as anything other than support for the hobby of hunting. The article goes on to declare the NRA’s support for firearm registration, waiting periods, as well as prohibitions on sales of ammunition and firearms across state lines. The also express support for the prohibition of firearms to what they termed as :undesirables.”

The NRA is not, and apparently never has been, a true supporter of the Second Amendment and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. They should rename it the National Hunting Association. It can collapse and die for all I care. We don’t need them.

Ryan Busse Can’t Seem to Decide Which Side of the California ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban Case He’s Arguing For

The State acknowledges that Mr. [Ryan] Busse offers no historical testimony, but argues that he addresses several issues still relevant under Bruen. The State says Mr. Busse’s testimony is relevant to whether the firearms at issue are covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment. State’s Opp. at 9. But as established above, that is an open-and-shut question. And while Mr. Busse includes some discussion of the features of so-called “assault weapons” he does not opine on whether those features represent a “dramatic technological change” that would allow the State to engage in the “more nuanced approach.” 

The State also exposes its shocking ignorance about the very firearms it regulates when it attempts to equate only caliber with power, while suggesting both of those are apparently unrelated to velocity. Every child in this country at some point learns Newton’s second law, which is that force equals mass times acceleration. The caliber of a bullet pertains to its mass (though is not totally determinative of it, as .223 and .22LR have similar calibers but very different projectile weights), and the speed at which a particular mass moves determines how forcefully it impacts the intended target.

It is not Plaintiffs’ “view” that .223 Remington is one of the weaker centerfire cartridges. It is an indisputable fact that it is. That is why, as Plaintiffs showed in their motion, a handful of states actually banned .223 for deer hunting out of fear it was not powerful enough to reliably kill a deer, unlike far more powerful common centerfire rifle rounds like .308. (Virginia argued that their caliber regulation is necessary because the use of rifles of a caliber less than .23 to dispatch deer would result in an unacceptable number of crippled wounded and/or lost deer.). 

Mr. Busse knows all of this. On his Twitter account on July 5, 2022, he explained that “the typical hunting gun fires a much larger bullet (might be 200 grains or more) some at similarly [to .223] fast speeds. Those rifles are technically MUCH more powerful than an AR15.” Just this week, on April 12, 2023, Mr. Busse similarly tweeted that “The AR15 does not fire particularly high-power rifle rounds when compared to single rounds of most hunting rifles. Single .223/5.56 cartridges of the AR15 are only fractionally ‘as powerful’ as a cartridge like the .30-06.” Perhaps Plaintiffs should have retained Mr. Busse to rebut Mr. Busse.

Given his knowledge, his effort to deceive this Court by comparing the centerfire .223 round to the far weaker rimfire .22LR, a much slower and smaller round typically used for hunting small game or low-recoil target shooting, demonstrates Busse’s unreliability as an expert witness. 

— Plaintiffs’ reply to defendants’ opposition to motions to exclude expert testimony in Rupp v. Bonta, challenging California’s “assault weapons” ban

 

April 17

1492 – Queen Isabella, King Ferdinand and Christopher Columbus sign the negotiated Capitulations of Santa Fe for his voyage to Asia to acquire spices, granting him the titles of Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy, Governor General, the honorific Don, and also the tenth part of all riches to be obtained from his intended voyage.

1521 – The trial of Martin Luther over his religious teachings begins during the assembly of the Diet of Worms.

1524 – In the service of King Francis I of France, Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano is the first European to reach New York harbor during his voyage of exploration of the Atlantic coast of North America between what is now Florida and New Brunswick.

1861 – The state of Virginia’s secession convention votes to secede from the United States, later becoming the eighth state to join the Confederate States of America.

1905 – In the case of Lochner v. New York, the Supreme Court decides that the “right to free contract” is implicit in the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

1907 – The Ellis Island immigration center sets a record processing 11,747 people in one day.

1961 – A group of Cuban exiles financed and trained by the CIA lands at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro.

1969 – Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy and sentenced to death with the sentenced later commuted to life imprisonment.

1970 – The Apollo 13 astronauts return to Earth safely when their Command Module Odyssey splashed down in the Pacific ocean, southeast of American Samoa.

1978 – The leader of the Parcham faction of People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, Mir Akbar Khyber, is assassinated in Kabul.

2013 – While emergency services personnel were responding to a fire set by an arsonist at the West Fertilizer Company storage and distribution facility in West, Texas, ammonium nitrate in the structure explodes, killing 15 people and injuring 160 others.

2014 – NASA’s Kepler space telescope confirms the discovery of the first Earth-size planet, Kepler-186F orbiting in the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Kepler-186 in the constellation of Cygnus.

Robbery suspect who was shot by witness at Chase ATM was wanted for murder

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — A stranger stepped in to help a man he witnessed being pistol-whipped by a suspected robber in southwest Houston Saturday night, according to police.

On Sunday, ABC13 learned that the suspect was wanted for murder out of Louisiana.

Investigators said the stranger saw the robbery as it was happening at a Chase Bank in the 10400 block of Westheimer Road.

A man pulled into the bank to withdraw money from the ATM when the armed suspect came around the corner and ordered him to hand over money, according to police.

Detectives said the victim reportedly began to comply until the suspect began to pistol-whip him.

That’s when police say someone driving by saw the crime happening and pulled out a gun to defend the victim.

The man shot the suspect in the leg and foot after several shots were fired. The suspect was taken to the hospital in stable condition, according to Houston police.

Investigators interviewed the victim and passersby, who were not harmed.

According to ABC13’s Safety Tracker, in the zip code where the incident happened, 77042, there have been at least 103 robberies in the area in the last year.

There Is Zero Reason For Republicans To Cooperate With Dianne Feinstein’s Request.

There’s zero reason Republicans should cooperate with Schumer and the president on their judicial agenda, either tactically, politically, or even morally.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein is no longer able to perform her duties as a U.S. senator. That is, at least, the reality according to her staff, who asked the Senate majority leader to temporarily replace her on the Judiciary Committee as she approaches two months of absence over health issues.

This isn’t surprising, of course: Dianne Feinstein is 89 years old. While Americans used to joke about the fossils who ran the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Feinstein was already a full decade older than the oldest Soviet premier to ever die in office when she ran for re-election — a full five years ago.

Her mental decline has been known on Capitol Hill for years, with staff guiding her around the halls, and yet still just this year Sen. Chuck Schumer decided to let her remain on the Senate committee responsible for accomplishing the president’s judicial agenda.

She served on that committee until early March. Then finally, after six weeks away recovering from shingles, her California colleague, Rep. Ro Khanna, publicly called for her resignation. Democrats like Khanna had grown weary — between Feinstein and Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, the party’s judicial agenda had been stalled since the top of March.

Hours after Khanna’s tweet, she asked to be temporarily replaced in her duties on the essential committee. Democrats are eager to comply.

But are Republicans so eager? They shouldn’t be. There’s zero reason — zero — that Republicans should cooperate with Schumer and the president on their judicial agenda, either tactically, politically, or even morally.

Republicans have the power, too: Committee assignments are decided at the beginning of the session, either by unanimous consent or, if contested, by the vote of at least 60 senators. Democrats certainly hope they can just brush this through under the former, but what reason does Sen. Josh Hawley, or maybe Sen. Mike Lee, or Sen. J.D. Vance have to let that one pass them by?

Then if one senator says no, the whole thing’s got to come to a vote, and while people like Sen. Mitt Romney might be happy to fill benches with left-wing judges in the name of “decency” or some other principle long ago extinguished by left-wing activists, getting nine other Republicans to join him might prove more difficult.

The task of persuading 10 Republicans to cooperate with the president’s judicial agenda will prove even more difficult if Sen. Mitch McConnell — himself just out of the hospital (and seven years older than Josef Stalin was when he died) — holds the line. While populist conservatives may have little love for the minority leader, they must give him credit for hard-nosed judiciary tactics.

No one’s talking about government funding here, or defense, or some other thing sacred to the old guard of the GOP. At issue is an essentially lawless administration seeding the court with the types of judges who will uphold their lawlessness. Why cooperate in that?

Weak-kneed Republicans might suggest not cooperating with the Democrats on this issue would be poor form or set a bad precedent. Those Republicans might need reminding that mild-mannered Brett Kavanaugh was falsely accused of being a serial rapist in front of the entire country. Poor form? Bad precedents? In the context of today’s political battles, those ideas hold little sway.

And let no man mention “normalcy.”

There are no more “live pairs,” wherein past senators have refrained from voting themselves to give opposing colleagues the courtesy of a necessary absence. That tradition has passed on.

Yes, senators have died in office or resigned mid-Congress before and their replacements have often been accomplished by simple consent, but first, no senator has ever asked to be temporarily replaced, and second, those were normal times. We’re beyond those now; and not only because of Kavanaugh or the sexual accusations against Clarence Thomas or even the religious interrogation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, but because this Democratic Senate has declined to even deliberate on judicial nominees. There’s been no debate, no regular order, on the White House’s list of new judges — just a simple vote to move them through.

With what evidence can any Republican claim they would be given the same quarter if one of them threw themselves upon their colleagues’ mercy? The party that voted to impeach President Donald Trump twice was disciplined and committed in its opposition to his judicial nominees.

Even today, if left-wing activists and their allies in the press had their way, the courteous tradition of the “blue slip” (which allows senators to hold up nominees from their own states) would be abolished.

Congressional observers might point to the previous Senate, which was tied and so voted to allow for nominees to be discharged from committee even if the vote was locked in a tie, but that rule was agreed to only for that Congress and is no longer in effect. Because of this, Democrats need a majority to work the committee.

Without any procedural normalcy, returned comitatus, or shared judicial philosophies, there are no reasons to continue to cooperate with the president’s judicial agenda. And without Republican collaboration, that agenda will stall.

Politico’s liberal D.C. newsletter, Playbook, predicted Republican intransigence could lead to two different outcomes: pressure for Feinstein’s resignation, or Democrats rallying “to her defense.”

To that, a casual observer of the past seven years of vicious Democratic politics might respond: “let them rally.” The reality is Republicans have nothing to lose from resisting Democrats’ push to replace Feinstein, and everything to gain. This battle is far too deep in the weeds for independent voters to care, Democratic voters are already motivated against Republicans enough, and Republican voters are inclined to reward a little courage in the fight.

The GOP didn’t make this situation: The Democrats put an 89-year-old woman and an emotionally and mentally traumatized man into the U.S. Senate in the name of pure power politics. That play is not working out for them. Republicans can let them rally away, but they’d be fools to let them confirm.