Category: Goobermint

Biden Dumbs Down American Citizenship Test

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced changes to the U.S. naturalization test on Wednesday, reducing the difficulty of the English-speaking section and editing the civics section to make the test easier for citizenship applicants, according to an unpublished notice obtained by the DCNF scheduled for publication Thursday.

The changes will lead to the English-speaking section being curated to more daily conversational subjects, as opposed to more formal subjects formerly discussed, with standardized criteria for assessment that reduce the examiner’s discretion to judge the quality of responses. “Applicants will respond to three color photographs randomly selected from a bank of approximately 70 images that directly correspond to an ordinary usage scenario,”

Additionally, the section on civics will be recrafted to become a multiple-choice format with each question having four options, as opposed to the previous “fill-in-the-blank” test where candidates have to answer a question from memory. The multiple-choice format, used on standardized tests for college admissions like the SAT and ACT, increases the probability of a candidate selecting the right answer by 25%, while allowing the candidates to recall the right answer more easily.

“Primarily, this is about responding to suggestions from the wider community that we’ve received over the past couple of years and making it more fair,” a USCIS official told CNN in advance of the notice’s publication. The proposed test will enter a five-month trial period in 2023 before being adopted later in the year, though current citizenship applicants will use the existing test.

The measure is one of several initiated by the Biden administration to streamline the immigration and naturalization process, as well as reverse Trump-era measures that progressives have claimed were barriers to immigrants’ integration. Twelve days after taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing government agencies to “identify [and remove] barriers that impede access to immigration benefits” as well as conduct a “comprehensive review…of the civics and English language tests.”

In November 2020, the Trump administration promulgated a new syllabus for the naturalization test, raising the pass threshold to answering 12 out of 20 questions correctly (instead of 10, previously), with a larger question bank of 128 questions. Officials claimed that the test would “provide the applicant with more opportunities to learn about the United States as part of the test preparation process,” per the USCIS website.

The Trump administration’s version of the test contained additional questions about Founding Fathers such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, as well as questions about the Civil War, the spread of communism, the 14th Amendment and the War on Terror, among others. The Biden administration promptly rescinded the new test months later when it took office, reverting back to a 2008 version utilized during the George W. Bush administration.

However, the Biden administration is not changing the English reading and writing sections of the naturalization test. “We welcome input from – and the participation of – stakeholders who are familiar with this important process, as we continue to improve and update our naturalization test,” said USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou.

The White House, UnidosUS and the Heritage Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.

A government of officious martinets

This is a unique point in our history. Our rulers lack either powerful intellects or great accomplishments. They have no leadership aura, having advanced through coercion and corruption. Both parties’ leaders are mostly empty suits with little to no substance. If one leaves, a new one fills the space without disruption.

Should people of accomplishment or independent thinking sneak into one of these positions, those abilities are deemed irrelevant or attacked. If they were elected, the election was illegitimate. If they were appointed, the appointment was invalid. The powers-that-be must correct the error that people chose someone for a powerful position based on his qualifications.

The feckless leaders have a facade of leadership without substance. The government’s administrative offices can decide what will be done, and they direct the selected leaders as the public face of the administrative decision.

These cardboard standup leaders must be able to look like leaders. They must have a veneer of leadership that is the face the public sees. The real source of political power, the administrative bureaucracy, will assure the people that the new leaders are legitimate.

Eventually, a weak administration will find itself unable to lead effectively due to incompetency or corruption. The bureaucracy will be called in to protect the administrative state from being exposed as the real power source. A process resembling justice will be started. The administrative police force will lead in the removal, and the administrative state will select an acceptable leader to become the new face of leadership.

The transfer of power to an unconstitutional, unelected fourth branch of government will be complete. The Republicans and Democrats will join to serve this administrative state as a unified party. They will run in elections where the administrative state and its corporate sponsors select the winners and direct the results. The people, they hope, will retain the delusion that they have really elected them.

The people and the states will be told what to do. The nation’s wealth will be siphoned off to feed the dictating administrative state and buy the states’ obedience. There will be no single leader that can be removed to end the tyranny. Leaders will come and go, and the administrative state will rule.

The administrative state will be manned by like-minded comrades selected from college graduating classes. These schools will successfully indoctrinate their students into the need for a powerful government outside the people’s will. They have been taught what to think and do. They will be useful cogs in the administrative machinery.

K-12 government education will prepare them for these colleges. Teachers (themselves college-trained) will tell students only what they need to know. They will eliminate teaching students to be free and independent thinkers. The curriculum for mathematics, reading, and social studies must be carefully crafted to give an appearance of education. The goal will be to teach the ability to react without logic and reason and to respond to the facts as given.

Many more people exist outside of this administrative system than there are rulers within the system. The ones on the outside will be fed a sterilized stream of information about the great administrative system while being blocked from information that opposes the system. Media will participate, as will social media, sports, and entertainment.

The people will be constantly reminded how the administrative leaders care deeply for the people, and the people will be given opportunities to apply these lessons. For example, an international health emergency may be declared, after which the administrative state issues guidelines that must be followed to prove the citizens’ understanding and fealty to those in charge. They will get extra credit for becoming personal enforcers of the state demands.

The administrative state will need to control the flow of wealth. The possibilities for control include supply chains, energy production, food production and distributions, banking, housing, and anything else that may be considered essential to living. When problems occur and people suffer, the government must be the first source of relief—the same government that caused the suffering. Suffering people are less likely to complain.

Finally, we no longer need to be a moral people as seen by our Founders. Traditional morality must be replaced by a new morality based on individual desires and wants. Religious teaching will be unnecessary as the administrative government will define and enforce morality. Traditional religion will be discouraged. Threatening to take tax favors and showing that they can be shut down on a government whim should keep churches under control.

We can then welcome with open arms our new government. We will have long lost the republic and have abandoned the “precious” democracy. We will have become the world’s first great government of officious martinets, The Administrative State of America. We will own nothing and be happy.

Oregon judge signals more trouble ahead for Measure 114

Oregon’s ban on “large capacity” magazines and the state’s “permit-to-purchase” scheme remain on hold for now after a hearing in rural Harney County on Tuesday, with the judge who originally granted a restraining order against the anti-gun ballot measure telling both sides in a court challenge to the new restrictions that he’ll issue a formal ruling on a request for an injunction by this Friday.

Harney County Circuit Judge Robert S. Raschio did say during the hearing, however, that the permit-to-purchase portion of Measure 114 will not take effect, at least until the state can prove that the system is fully operational and won’t result in residents being unable to exercise their right to acquire a firearm for self-defense.

“Any complete bar on the ability to secure a firearm would be unconstitutional even under strict scrutiny,” said Harney County Judge Robert Raschio on Tuesday morning.

The order was also the precursor to several hours of oral arguments and witness testimonies about whether the judge should place a preliminary injunction against ballot Measure 114’s ban on high-capacity magazines. While Judge Raschio made no formal decision on that proposed injunction Tuesday, he said he would issue an opinion no later than Friday, Dec. 16 at noon.

Altogether, Tuesday’s court hearing marked an eventful day for gun advocates in Oregon, many of whom tuned-in to the district court’s live feed to witness the marathon hearing about why the judge should or should not issue a preliminary injunction against Oregon’s ballot Measure 114.…

It was a different story for the issue of magazine capacity, however, discussion of which occupied another six hours in court Tuesday.

Plaintiffs largely argued that by capping magazines to 10 rounds and including restrictions on the use of extenders and removable baseplates, the state has essentially made it impossible to purchase legal firearms in Oregon from gun manufacturers. To prove a point, attorney Tony Aiello called upon firearm dealer Ben Callaway as an expert witness, who said online vendors like MidwayUSA or Zanders Sporting Goods no longer ship firearms to Oregon if they can be modified to hold more than 10 rounds.

Yet, the real challenge for the groups was to prove that guns with a 10-round capacity or more were commonly used for self-defense in 1859, a requirement made by Oregon Supreme Court’s protection of the right to bear arms. But while expert witnesses from both sides of the injunction agreed that multi-shot firearms existed around that time, there was disagreement as to whether these weapons were of common use.

The availability of multi-shot firearms in 1859 shouldn’t be the determining factor in whether or not they’re protected by the Second Amendment. As the Supreme Court noted in the Caetano case, arms that are in common use today but weren’t around at the time of the Founding are still protected by the text of the Second Amendment.

The Court has held that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 582 (2008) , and that this “ Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States,” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 750 (2010) . In this case, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a Massachusetts law prohibiting the possession of stun guns after examining “whether a stun gun is the type of weapon contemplated by Congress in 1789 as being protected by the Second Amendment.” 470 Mass. 774, 777, 26 N. E. 3d 688, 691 (2015).

The court offered three explanations to support its holding that the Second Amendment does not extend to stun guns. First, the court explained that stun guns are not protected because they “were not in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment.” Id., at 781, 26 N. E. 3d, at 693. This is inconsistent with Heller’s clear statement that the Second Amendment “extends . . . to . . . arms . . . that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” 554 U. S., at 582.

The court next asked whether stun guns are “dangerous per se at common law and unusual,” 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N. E. 3d, at 694, in an attempt to apply one “important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms,” Heller, 554 U. S., at 627; see ibid. (referring to “the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’ ”). In so doing, the court concluded that stun guns are “unusual” because they are “a thoroughly modern invention.” 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N. E. 3d, at 693–694. By equating “unusual” with “in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment,” the court’s second explanation is the same as the first; it is inconsistent with Heller for the same reason.

Finally, the court used “a contemporary lens” and found “nothing in the record to suggest that [stun guns] are readily adaptable to use in the military.” 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N. E. 3d, at 694. But Heller rejected the proposition “that only those weapons useful in warfare are protected.” 554 U. S., at 624–625.

For these three reasons, the explanation the Massachusetts court offered for upholding the law contradicts this Court’s precedent.

What the court should actually be looking for are statutes in place at the time of Oregon’s founding that are historical analogues to the ammunition capacity restriction the state wants to put in place today, and I don’t think anything like that exists. I’m not aware of any state law or even a local ordinance in the state that barred the carrying or possession of revolvers or other multi-shot firearms at the time the state constitution was approved, and given that these types of bans are modern inventions of the anti-gun lobby, I suspect that finding a 19th century analogue is going to be difficult… at least without stretching the bounds of credulity as U.S. District Judge Karen Immergut did when she upheld the magazine ban in a federal lawsuit filed by the Oregon Firearms Federation and several county sheriffs.

With Rashcio pledging to deliver his ruling on the request for an injunction against Measure 114 by noon Pacific time on Friday, we won’t have too long to wait before we learn whether the magazine ban can take effect, though if Raschio does impose an injunction the state will appeal once again to the state Supreme Court. That body has already declined to overturn Raschio’s initial restraining order against Measure 114, however, and if Raschio keeps the status quo in place while the constitutionality of Measure 114 is being litigated there’s a very good chance the state’s highest court will do the same.

Observation O’ The Day
The law — and the DOJ — only protects people the Administration likes.
That’s been made quite clear.

DOJ Official Admits Targeting Pro-Lifers Is Response to Overturn of Roe.

The Justice Department has been targeting pro-life activists through the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act as a response to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, according to Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta.

Gupta delivered remarks at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s 65th Anniversary earlier this month. The associate attorney general described the overturn of Roe v. Wade as a “devastating blow to women throughout the country” that took away “the constitutional right to abortion” and increased “the urgency” of the DOJ’s work—including the “enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.”

She did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Signal.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division enforces the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services.”

It protects both pro-life pregnancy centers and abortion clinics, as a DOJ official noted to Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, last week.

At least 98 Catholic churches and 77 pregnancy resource centers and other pro-life organizations have been attacked since May, but the DOJ has apparently not charged a single person in connection with these attacks. Meanwhile, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has charged 26 pro-life individuals with FACE Act violations this year.

The DOJ has not responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment on this point.

Pregnancy resource centers are typically run by pro-life women who seek to offer expectant mothers alternatives to abortion. Such centers provide diapers, baby clothes, and resources for both mothers and fathers, empowering them to care for their child, overcome addictions, build community, and find jobs.

Is There Anything We can do to Stop Mass Murderers in the United States?

That question comes to mind since President Biden recently claimed we need to massively disarm honest US citizens in order to stop mass-murderers. Instead of accepting the President’s words at face value, I looked at what the experts say. There are many questions we might ask and lots of facts we can consider. We do many things today to stop violence in the US. There is more we could do, and this is what I found;

  • We stop several thousand violent events every day.
  • The United States is about average in its rate of mass murder.
  • We stop more than half of the attempted mass murderers who attack where honest citizens are allowed to go armed.
  • Most mass murderers go through a predictable process, and we ignored warning signs time after time.
  • We should stop making the murderers into overnight celebrities, but that is hard to do.

A Walmart employee murdered several of his co-workers in Virginia. That happened a few weeks ago. President Biden then commented that,

“[T]he idea we still allow semi automatic weapons to be purchased is sick.  It’s just sick.  It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”

The president’s comment sounds bizarre given what we know. We know that more than 5,000 ordinary US citizens use a firearm to protect themselves from a serious threat every day. Stopping that much assault, robbery, rape and murder every day sounds like an immense socially redeeming value to me. The president obviously disagrees.

That level of armed defense shouldn’t come as news. We’ve seen similar reports for the last few decades. The data is broadly consistent, including a report from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention that was commissioned by the Obama Administration.

All of us are biased, but we have good reason to be. We think that what we see in the news gives us a representative picture of what is happening in the world overall. It feels that way to us, but in truth there is a lot of news that goes unreported by our local news stations. Our news media covers a mass murder in the US for days but they only cover a mass murder that happened in another country for a few minutes. That distorts our thinking about where violence happens.

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Biden Administration Continues Push to Target Firearms with Attached Stabilizing Braces

It seems like we have been warning about the Biden Administration’s intent to reclassifyhandguns equipped with braces intended to help disabled veteran shooters for quite some time.

There were once signs that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) intended to get out of the practice of making confusing regulations—including those involving stabilizing braces—that appeared to circumvent the authority of Congress to actually define and pass laws regarding firearms. But with Biden’s election in 2020, a reinvigorated faction within ATF began a push to re-examine stabilizing braces. NRA immediately took notice, and put out a call to action.

Way back in June of 2021, Biden’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) published a new notice of proposed rulemaking on its website entitled Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached “Stabilizing Braces”. The proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on June 10, 2021, giving interested parties until September 8, 2021 to file comments.

The rule seemed aimed at making nearly all configurations of firearms equipped with stabilizing braces subject to the taxation and registration requirements of the National Firearms Act.

Since 2012, when Biden was serving as then-President Barack Obama’s vice president, ATF has recognized that stabilizing braces serve a legitimate function, and the inclusion of a stabilizing brace on a pistol or other firearm does not automatically subject that firearm to the provisions of the NFA. That’s because stabilizing braces were first designed and intended to help disabled veterans fire large format pistols.

While ATF estimates that there are approximately three million pistol stabilizing braces, even other portions of the United States government recognize that this is a vast undercounting of the number of pistol braces currently in circulation. A report by the Congressional Research Service puts the estimate much higher; suggesting anywhere from 10 to 40 million pistol stabilizing braces. With so many in circulation, effectively banning firearms with these devices attached would be the largest confiscatory firearm regulation in the history of the United States.

NRA, of course, submitted comments to this terrible proposed rule, which you can find here.

More than one year since the comment period ended, and a year-and-a-half since the original proposed rulemaking, it is still unclear when, or how, the new rule will be implemented.

In January of this year, we reported, in a story on different rules Biden’s ATF had put in place, that the regulations page for the proposed stabilizing brace rule indicated it would be finalized in August.

That didn’t happen.

Now the regulations page says “Final Action” will take place on “12/00/2022.” What date that actually signifies is unclear, but it would appear the final rule remains in a holding pattern.

There may be other complications facing Biden’s ATF when it comes to this pending rule, other than the general complexity and poor optics of potentially criminalizing millions of Americans (especially disabled veterans) for owning items that same ATF previously said they could legally acquire and own.

The rule has now been transferred to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review. That means that the final rule could be posted in the federal register in the coming days.

With the House of Representatives coming under pro-gun leadership, scrutiny of this federal agency is likely to get much more intense. When the House was under the control of radical, anti-gun extremists like soon-to-be-former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), virtually any anti-gun action taken by ATF was encouraged—even if it seemed to circumvent the authority granted by Congress.

A recent article noted Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) “is targeting newly-confirmed U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Steve Dettelbach over new gun rules that Jordan calls ‘a deliberate attempt to usurp the authority of Congress and infringe on American citizens’ fundamental Second Amendment rights.’”

Jordan will be serving as House Judiciary Chairman when the new Congress convenes in January, so it would behoove Dettelbach to take his stated concerns seriously.

The article mentions a letter Jordan sent Dettelbach outlining a number of concerns the Chairman-to-be has regarding ATF. Included among those concerns is the pending rule on stabilizing braces. Jordan notes that no federal law has been passed that “criminalized the use of a pistol arm-stabilizing brace.”

In an earlier letter to ATF on the subject of these braces, Jordan wrote, “Through its proposed rule, ATF seeks to subject stabilizing braces to GCA criminal penalties and NFA regulation without Congressional prohibition of the underlying activity.”

Other than the prospect of facing a House majority that does not work in lockstep with anti-gun activists, the ATF may be facing additional problems with what many consider to be overreach of its use of rulemaking. Recent actions by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) may indicate the nation’s top court may try to reign in federal rulemakers, which could include those at ATF.

Whatever develops on this front, you can count on NRA to remain involved, and to keep you updated.

I really like how the goobermint can come up with an “8.7%” inflation rate for COLAs when my grocery bill has gone up by 30+% and gas by 100%

BLUF
The economy seems to be slipping into a Carterian perfect economic storm: prices and interest rates jumping in unison, with lingering structural supply issues leaving shelves half-stocked.

The Bernank Can No Longer Hibernate

The animated ursine explainers were right. And a billionaire-backed business-first broadsheet confirms it.

Christmas has come early for Ron Paulers in the most libertarian way: their past contrarian construals are vindicated by everyone suffering. Surely Justin Amash has a path to the presidency in 2024 now!

This Thanksgiving, more budgets were busted than the front button on stretch-fit Dockers. If you didn’t notice because mommy and daddy footed the 20% higher turkey tab this year, your attention may be arrested by the $70 sum on new PS5 games. That is, inflation has not abated despite the summer passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which, in a twist of marketing nominative nondeterminism, had zilch to do with quelling swelling prices.

The consumer price index punched in at 6.3% in October, when compared to last year. While that percentage bump is less than the nearly 10% YTD rate in June, the cost jumps are still historically high. And if you’ll excuse me… *unrolls a sheet of tinfoil, folds it firmly into the shape of a conical hat, turns the cooktop burner on to singe the tip so it generates extra-hot takes, places tightly on head.* Everyone knows (if you disagree, you’re not everyone, and therefore an outcast—the perfect phrasal conspiratorial cordon!) that the CPI is deliberately calculated to underplay the actual inflation rate. Volatile commodities are excluded to provide a more stable picture. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose abacus-brained technocrats fashion the CPI, use something called the “hedonic quality adjustment” to anticipate vittle variation—which really just sounds like a john settling for a veteran flesh house servicer than a fresher offering based upon his thin wallet.

The point is, the CPI is calculated in a closed room, under the inscrutable cover of green eyeshades. So that when the price of the 2022 Lego Guardians of the Galaxy Advent calendar you want to get for yourself your kids jumps up by $15 compared to similar block-sets, the headline rate may seem lower than what your lying eyes see. And we aren’t even touching on what’s known colloquially as “hidden inflation.” (If you need evidence of that concept, just look at the Reese’s Peanut Butter cup sizes over last Halloween versus the discs of gooey peanut butter we were treated as kids.)

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Makes sense when “democracy”  means demoncraps are in charge

The Twitter files: leftism requires censorship.

One of the funny (although not ‘funny ha-ha’) things about all of this is that these same people bleat on about ‘democracy’ and its great value and worth. And yet they think of the public as unable to sort out the wheat from the chaff, as children in need of control from – yes – Big Brother Twitter. And they’re not the least bit ashamed about it. They had to do it to save democracy.

America’s Ruling Regime Doesn’t Fear Disinformation. It Fears Truth.

In Joe Biden’s America, attempting to cancel Joe Rogan is just counter-terror policy.

This is because our ruling class—in the name of “defending democracy”—classifies those who question the regime on any matter of consequence as a threat to the homeland, and pledges to pursue them accordingly.

Our ruling elites have engaged in an overt war on wrongthink masquerading as a domestic counter-terror mission since at least January 6, 2021.

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BLUF
By every measure – economic, national security, militarily, culturally and electoral integrity – the Biden administration has been a disaster of incalculable proportions.   All of this has occurred in just two years.  Ben Franklin was right when he noted that the Founders created “a republic, if you can keep it,” and Reagan’s warning that  “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”  

One of the most important things Trump accomplished was that the left, so deranged by hatred of the man, revealed who they really are: Ideological totalitarians who actually embrace communism of the Chinese variety.

They have to be stopped.

The terrible, horrible, no-good consequences of stolen elections and government corruption

Elon Musk was true to his word, as far as we know, with regard to his promise to release Twitter documents, first by Matt Taibbi and then by Bari Weiss.

Thus far, he has exposed that social media site’s calculated censorship of any and all information that might silence conservative voices, including President Trump’s, as well as information that reflects badly on the Biden family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, lockdowns, and vaccines.

He has done exactly that, probably not to the fullest extent, but he’s released enough to prove how much Twitter, the mainstream media, and all the other social media sites interfered with the 2020 election.

Their interference amounts to both fraud and treason.  The Democrats engineered the Biden victory and subsequently bragged about it.

Twitter’s big part of the game has finally been revealed for all to see.  Twitter, on their own or often due to orders from the Biden White House and/or the FBI, de-platformed anyone who posted anything remotely critical of the Biden regime and/or its horrific policies, especially those related to COVID lockdowns and vaccines.

The left cheats; they can’t win if they don’t cheat, so they regularly cheat.  Nothing makes that clearer than the 2022 midterm elections in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Polls show that about sixty percent of the American people believe the 2020 election was stolen; those people are not all Republicans.

Chances are that in their heart of hearts, ninety percent of Americans know it was stolen.

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Just to clarify.
This requirement isn’t for concealed carry. It’s to simply BUY a firearm.
I think this monstrosity isn’t going to make it through the court system, but it does illuminate just how mindless a lot of people are, which isn’t a new thing, as the Framers recognized the malady even back then when they demanded a Bill of Rights.

Measure 114’s live fire training component leaves trainers in limbo

While Oregon’s new voter-approved gun control measure is getting worked out in the courts, there remains uncertainty among local gun shops and firearms instructors in Central Oregon.

Sharon Preston, owner of Ladies of Lead in Redmond — and an instructor who specializes in self-defense training for women — says there are a lot of questions that still have not been answered about the implementation of Measure 114.

Preston says business has been through the roof. But she says she’s had to stop firearm sales, not knowing what is next with the measure. But she says selling guns is only part of what she does.

“Selling guns is a very small portion of my business. I do it as an added value to my clients, so it’s educational based gun sales. But my main focus is always going to be in training,” said Preston.
She’s been forced to find alternatives as 114 is in limbo.

“I’ve heard too many stories in this store from women, locally. The brutality and violence they have been through, survived through. They want a tool that will allow them to live their lives large again, and they’re not going to be able to get on. That’s why I’m switching to crossbows, pepper ball guns, tasers, knives,” Preston said.

Preston’s biggest concern with the measure lies in the required live fire training — meant to prove shooting proficiency. As of now, she says no guidelines have been spelled out as to how the state will facilitate the training courses. And no one knows who will be authorized by the state to lead those courses.

And there are other unanswered questions.

“They don’t know how many rounds we have to shoot, at what distance we have to shoot, at what target we have to shoot. They don’t know what firearm we can use. So there’s so many questions out there,” said Preston.

The next hearing on Measure 114 will be held Tuesday at Circuit Court in Harney County. Those who support the measure will be able to argue against the temporary hold set in place by Judge Robert Raschio.

 

original:

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Reworked to fit the narrative:

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A black market arms dealer, for a basketball player, (instead of a former Marine) that, if it wasn’t for this, would be just another unknown.
Just name five (5) professional women’s basketball players…. Can’t, can ya?
(neither can)

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BLUF
The larger objective of U.S. involvement in social media has always been monitoring and surveillance of the public conversation, and then ultimately controlling and influencing public opinion.

It’s All Making Sense – Elon Musk Has No Idea What He Purchased with Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop…

… And if he does, the outlook is worse.

According to both the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI), via Chairman Mark Warner, and the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) via Mike Turner, the Chinese social media platform TikTok represents a “national security risk” to the United States.  South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, soon to be the vice-presidential candidate for the DeSantis-Noem 2024 ticket, has also called TikTok a national security threat and banned it in the state. Now, think about that carefully.

What is it about a social media app that allows short video sharing that would constitute a national security risk?  The answer is not about dog and cat videos, or dancing diatribes or funny, weird or goofy content; nor is the national security risk attached to any data of the app users or content providers.  The national security risk is found in the ability to influence public opinion that is not under the control of the United States government, or more specifically the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS).

The need for control is a reaction to fear.  TikTok, as a social media platform, is not considered a national security threat because the Chinese government can control it.  TikTok is considered a national security threat because the United States government does not control it.

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Buried in the ‘Bipartisan’ Immigration Bill Is an INSANE Provision That Republicans Have No Business Supporting

A few years ago, one of my closest friends went on a mission trip to Honduras with one of the missions our church supports there. He fell in love with a young woman who was helping the mission with their work, and he wound up making several trips back to spend time with her. (Talk about a long-distance relationship!)

Eventually, they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. She began the process of getting her visa to come to the U.S. They married in November 2019, and she continued the legal process to acquire her green card.

That process got ever more complicated during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it took her months longer than it normally would have because of lockdowns and the complications that the virus brought us.

I know she’s not alone, but at the same time, illegal immigrants are pouring across our southern border to the tune of tens of thousands a month. The month my friends got married, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency processed 51,857 encounters with illegal immigrants.

It’s no secret that our border is in crisis. Just read any of the reports from my Townhall colleague Julio Rosas if you don’t believe it. Federal inaction at every level has only exacerbated the problem. So when we hear of a good faith effort, especially a bipartisan one, it gets our attention.

Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) are putting forth a bill in the lame-duck session of this Congress that’s simply bad. Over at Townhall, my colleague Matt Vespa explains just two of the major components of this bill:

“There is no funding to complete the border wall—that would make sense,” Matt writes. That’s bad enough, but another proposal in the bill creates a potential ripple effect that could become disastrous.

Matt writes that this bill “will permit some two million recipients of Obama’s unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to get on the citizenship track. The buried portion of this provision is that once these two million are through the process, they can sponsor extended family members so that two million-figure could be closer to seven million, and I’m being conservative in that estimate.”

Blanket forgiveness for two million people who arrived in this country illegally when they were children with a ripple effect that could more than triple that number? How can anyone from either party think that’s a good idea?

In a conversation, my PJ Media colleague Athena Thorne made a perceptive analogy.

She said this type of amnesty bill is akin to “If some squatters bring a kid into the house they’re squatting in and the kid gets comfortable, the kid gets to keep the house!” With that ripple effect, the whole family could get to make their home in a house they don’t have any rights to.

There’s a little bit of a trade-off, as the Washington Post reports: “It gives Republicans faster removal from the country of migrants who fail to qualify for asylum, a continued restriction on applications for the next year, and more border security.”

That’s all well and good, but that doesn’t make up for the millions of illegal immigrants who will suddenly become legal. This will allow millions of people who broke the law to jump the line ahead of those who have waited out the legal immigration process. These people already cut in line once when they made their way across the border — and they’ll get to bypass the process again? That’s not right.

One of the characteristics of this nation that people like to brag about is that we’re a “nation of immigrants.” That’s a nice thing to be proud of, but we’re also a nation of laws. We need to honor those laws, too. If an immigrant wants to become part of this “nation of immigrants,” he or she should abide by our laws, and that starts with coming to this country legally.

An immigration policy starts with enforcing the immigration laws that are already on the books before we try to enact more. A bill like the one Tillis and Sinema are proposing is worse than no immigration reform at all. We can only hope that it won’t get enough traction to pass.

Biden admin disbands ‘fake’ parents council after pushback from parental rights groups

WASHINGTON (CITC) — The Biden administration is disbanding its newly formed national parents council after several advocacy groups accused it of violating federal law.

The National Parents and Families Engagement Council was formed in June as a way to “facilitate strong and effective relationships between schools and parents, families and caregivers.” Representatives were handpicked by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to help the agency engage with communities at the local level.

Less than a month later, the Biden administration was hit with a lawsuit by parental rights groups claiming the council was ideologically divisive. Plaintiffs Parents Defending Education (PDE), America First Legal (AFL) and Fight for Schools and Families (FFS) noted that members of the council included those who stood by a National Schools Boards Association (NSBA) letter that likened concerned parents at school board meetings to “domestic terrorists.”

The lawsuit also argued the council failed to meet other various federal requirements, including open and transparent public meetings and public oversight.

The DOE appeared to concede Monday, as it announced that while it “disagrees” with the notion that it violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), it will no longer move forward with the council.

“Parental rights and voices matter,” the announcement reads. “That’s a clear and consistent message we hear from education stakeholders throughout our nation, whether they’re parents themselves, students or educators, or partners in government or the private sector.”

The DOE added that it strives to hear from “as many parents as possible” and that it recognizes the concern shared by all for the future of American students, regardless of political, social and cultural backgrounds.

The three groups behind the lawsuit have quickly taken to social media to celebrate the victory.

“Parents should NEVER be used as political props to advance radical policies that harm students,” PDE founder and president Nicole Neily, who calls the outcome a “huge win,” reacted on Twitter.

We Now Have the Full Transcript of Fauci’s Deposition in Social-Media Collusion Case

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry deposed Anthony Fauci last month in the states’ case accusing the Biden administration of “colluding with social media companies to censor speech” related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Today, they released the full transcript of that interview (you can read the entire document below).“Today, Louisiana and Missouri are releasing the full transcript for the deposition of Dr. Anthony Fauci, which was taken on November 23rd, 2022. The deposition was taken as part of Louisiana and Missouri’s landmark lawsuit against the federal government and the Biden Administration for colluding with social media companies to censor speech,” said Landry in a press release. “Fauci’s recent deposition only confirmed what we already knew: federal bureaucrats in collusion with social media companies want to control not only what you think, but especially what you say. During no time in human history was this more obvious than during the COVID-19 crisis where social engineering tactics were used against the American public, not to limit your exposure to a virus, but to limit your exposure to information that did not fit within a government sanctioned narrative.”“Missouri and Louisiana are leading the way in exposing how the federal government and the Biden Administration worked with social media to censor speech. In our deposition with Dr. Fauci, it became clear that when Dr. Fauci speaks, social media censors,” added Schmitt in his own press release. “I invite everyone to read the deposition transcript and see exactly how Dr. Fauci operates, and exactly how the COVID tyranny that ruined lives and destroyed businesses was born.”

In a Twitter thread, Schmitt noted that know-nothing Fauci blurted out, “I don’t recall,” 174 times during the deposition, “including when asked about emails that he sent, interviews that he gave, and other important information.”

Fauci did, however, “vaguely recall” telling former HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell in early 2020 not to wear a mask when traveling. “Just a couple months later, he was advocating for universal mask mandates,” Schmitt noted.

Also from Schmitt: “One of Fauci’s deputies joined a WHO delegation to China in February of 2020, and in talking to Fauci afterwards, was impressed with how the Chinese ‘were handling the isolation, the contact tracing, the building of facilities to take care of people.’”

Indeed, Fauci admitted that this American official told him the U.S. “may have to go to as extreme a degree of social distancing to help bring our outbreak under control.” But then Fauci clammed up and said he “didn’t recall” the individual discussing this with him when he returned home.”

This is a breaking story. We’ll have more details to report in an upcoming article. 

Full Redacted Fauci Transcript by PJ Media on Scribd