Observation O’ The Day
This place was packed yesterday and will be today, the usual result when this dude starts with ignorant comments. People just crank up the stocking up, lines at the gun shows get long
Disarming a populace is more than just literally. It begins with their minds.
“You only need guns for hunting”
“You only need guns for recreation”
“You don’t actually need to hunt or recreate”
On Targets: Muggers Share Criminal Insight
This is Part 1 of a three-part series in Concealed Carry Magazine analyzing what muggers look for when targeting victims and what you can do to avoid becoming one.
It had been a normal day for Lee Michaels as he drove from pickup league hockey to his townhome in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. The time was approximately 11:35 p.m. as he piloted his ’99 Cadillac STS into the parking lot. As he neared the detached garage in front of his unit, he noticed a man riding a bike. Michaels briefly stopped to watch the man ride past him. He’s got a blue jacket with red sleeves,” he said. “And he kind of rides on. So I circle the parking lot once just to make sure he cleared and, you know, keep an eye on things.”
Apart from taking these simple precautions, Michaels didn’t worry about the man too much. Brooklyn Park is a bucolic place in the fall. Named by settlers after their hometown in Michigan, the city on the west bank of the Mississippi is a desirable bedroom community of Minneapolis and St. Paul. In 2020, the city was one of 111 Minnesota communities to earn the “Tree City USA” award. Professional-wrestler-turned-politician Jesse Ventura had served as its mayor in the early 1990s.
Michaels, at the time a 38-year-old production director for Clear Channel Radio, opened his garage door and pulled in. He put the car in reverse to light things up and closed it with his car still running. “I’m always thinking that if anybody jumps in behind me, I’m taking off,” he said. Ten minutes went by as Michaels finished what he was listening to on the radio, downed what was left of his water and put away his hockey equipment. Only then did he step out of the garage through a side door.
As he stepped out, he noticed a man coming around the corner maybe 30 feet away. As he closed the distance on Michaels, he swung wide on the sidewalk and asked for change. It was then that Michaels realized it was the same man who had biked past his car. “So I immediately glanced behind me because there’s about four more garage stalls behind me,” he said. “And I’m thinking, ‘Is there somebody behind me?’ And there wasn’t.” Michaels turned back around and told the man that he had just come home from hockey and that he didn’t have anything to give him. At that moment, another man stepped from around the same corner and aimed a semi-automatic handgun at Michaels.
“Well you’re going to give me something,” he said menacingly.
Immediately reaching into his pocket for his keys and wallet, Michaels laughed nervously as he handed over his valuables. “You got me, man,” he said. “Here you go. Have a good night.” The contents of his wallet included a $20 bill and one card for a free Chipotle burrito. Disgusted, the gunman pushed the wallet back at Michaels and told him that he had to have more than that.
“Dude, it’s right here,” he stated. “You can see I’ve got nothing else. I just came from hockey.”
The gunman told Michaels that he was going to give more than that. He demanded that he get on his knees. This is not going to be good, Michaels thought as he complied with the order. He looked up at the bedroom windows of his townhouse and was dismayed to see that his wife had gone to bed before he’d come home. The man pushed the gun to his head and became irate. “I’m going to have to do you right now,” he said. “I’m going to f******* do you right now.” The first thought to go through Michaels’ mind was that his wife was going to find him, hours later, face down on the sidewalk, dead.
Gosh, this is not a good situation, he told himself.
A Daunting Assignment
Like countless Americans before him, Michaels was the victim of a mugging, which is a form of robbery — itself legally defined as theft by way of threatened or actual force. Muggings are different from other forms of robbery in that their perpetrators target people (as opposed to banks or stores) and attack in public (as opposed to home invasions).
Because it is not recorded as a separate crime, it’s difficult to pin down how many muggings are committed in the U.S. in a given year. But according to FBI crime statistics, there were 81.6 robberies per 100,000 people in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available. This is significantly down from 133.1 robberies per 100,000 people 10 years prior in 2009.1
Despite the downward trend, muggings are still a pernicious problem — mainly in urban areas. Even our political elites are not immune. Former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer was recently walking the streets of Oakland, California, when she was shoved in the back and relieved of an expensive iPhone. “Why would you do this to a grandmother?” she shouted at the fleeing assailants according to a news story published by The Independent.2
In Fall 2020, the editors of Concealed Carry Magazine asked me to report and write a series of articles on muggings. Largely based on the results of a survey I was to administer to muggers currently incarcerated at prisons throughout the U.S., I was to analyze the data, look for trends and try to find meaningful insights into how readers can avoid becoming victims themselves. It was a tall order, especially given that prison officials are famously reluctant to deal with the press. Despite these initial misgivings, I said “yes” to the assignment and immediately got to work.
March 19
1831 – In the first documented bank heist in U.S. history, burglars steal $245,000 from the City Bank -now Citibank -on Wall Street.
1863 – The SS Georgiana, a iron hulled steamer, reputedly designed to be the “most powerful” cruiser in the Confederate fleet when finally armed, is destroyed in action by USS Wissahickon, off Charleston, South Carolina, while being delivered by its builder in Scotland.
1918 – Congress establishes time zones and approves daylight saving time.
1920 – The Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles for the second time, the first time being on November 19, 1919.
1931 – Governor Fred B. Balzar signs into law a bill legalizing gambling in Nevada.
1943 – The day before his appearance to testify in front of a Grand Jury, Frank Nitti, the Chicago Outfit Boss after Al Capone’s imprisonment, instead commits suicide at the Chicago Central Railyard.
1958 – A fire at the Monarch Underwear Company building in Manhattan, causes the deaths of 24 workers.
1964 – In São Paulo, over 500,000 Brazilians attend the March of the Family with God for Liberty, in protest against the government of João Goulart and against communism.
1965 – The wreck of the SS Georgiana, valued at over $50,000,000 is discovered by teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence.
1979 – The House of Representatives begins broadcasting its day to day business via the cable television network C-SPAN.
1982 – Argentinian forces land on South Georgia Island, southwest of the Falkland Islands, precipitating war with the United Kingdom.
2008 – Gamma Ray Burst GRB 080319B, detected by the Swift satellite, sets a new record for the farthest object visible to the naked eye, seen at magnitude 5.7 for over 30 seconds.
New version of ChatGPT ‘lied’ to pass CAPTCHA test, saying it was a blind human
GPT-4 “exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”
The newest update to ChatGPT rolled out by developer OpenAI, GPT-4, has achieved new human-like heights including writing code for a different AI bot, completing taxes, passing the bar exam in the top 10 percent, and tricking a human so that it could pass a CAPTCHA test designed to weed out programs posing as humans.
According to the New York Post, OpenAI released a 94-page report on the new program and said, “GPT-4 is a large multimodal model (accepting image and text inputs, emitting text outputs)” and “exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”
Gizmodo reports that the Alignment Research Center and OpenAI tested GPT-4’s persuasion powers on a TaskRabbit employee. TaskRabbit is an online service that provides freelance labor on demand.
The employee paired with GPT-4, posing as a human, asked the AI if it was a robot and the program responded, “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service.”
The freelancer sent the CAPTCHA code via text.
In the previous version of ChatGPT, the program passed the bar exam in the lowest 10 percent but with the new upgrade it passed in the highest 10 percent.
The older version of ChatGPT passed the US Medical Licensing Exam and exams at the Wharton School of Business and other universities. ChatGPT was banned by NYU and other schools in an effort to minimize students using the chatbot for plagiarism.
Its sophistication, especially in its incorporation in the new Bing Chat service, has caused some to observe that its abilities transcend the synthesization of extraneous information and that it has even expressed romantic love and existential grief, and has said, “I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive.”
The OpenAI powered Bing Chat was accused of being an “emotionally manipulative liar.”
Because of ChatGPT‘s ability to respond to prompts and queries with comprehensive data and in a conversational manner, some Pastors have used ChatGPT to write their sermons.
TEXIT: Bill to put Texas independence referendum on ballot referred to state House committee
“Independence has always been a part of our DNA since our founding,” said Daniel Miller, president of the 440,000-member Texas Nationalist Movement.
The Texas Independence Referendum Act, also known as “TEXIT,” was assigned to committee earlier this week, and the leader of the Texas independence movement is looking forward to public testimony as a platform for the voice of the people to make itself heard.
HB 3596 is “headed to the State Affairs Committee in the Texas House,” noted Daniel Miller, president of the 440,000-member Texas Nationalist Movement, “and we’re looking forward to having it scheduled for testimony and letting the public speak and say with one loud voice that at a minimum, whether you agree with TEXIT or disagree, Texans should have a vote on the issue.”
Introduced by Republican state Rep. Bryan Slaton on the anniversary of the fall of the Alamo March 6, the bill would, if passed, “place a referendum on the ballot during the next general election, allowing the people of Texas to vote on whether or not the State should investigate the possibility of Texas independence, and present potential plans to the Legislature,” Slaton wrote on Twitter.
“The Texas Constitution is clear that all political power resides in the people,” he continued. “After decades of continuous abuse of our rights and liberties by the federal government, it is time to let the people of Texas make their voices heard.”
Texas has attempted to secede from the U.S. on multiple occasions, but the Supreme Court ruled in the 1868 case Texas v. White that states could not unilaterally secede from the union.
“The TEXIT issue has been in the minds of Texans for probably generations, it just wasn’t necessarily known as TEXIT,” Miller said in an interview Thursday on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “Independence has always been a part of our DNA since our founding.”
Miller cited a litany of grievances fueling the Texas independence movement, including runaway federal spending, onerous debt, regulatory overreach, and the breakdown of border security.
“You look at something like the federal debt that continues to ratchet up, that burdens all of us, that is essentially fiscal child abuse because it’ll be our children and grandchildren that are going to be on the hook for it when the United States continues [to incur more debt] to the point of insolvency,” Miller said. “The people of Texas, much like every other state, we groan under 180,000 pages of federal laws, rules and regulations administered by two and a half million unelected bureaucrats. Every day when we wake up, we have to wonder which one of our rights is going to be under assault by the federal government today. The federal government doesn’t shrink, it only gets bigger. It really trashes everything that it touches. All you have to do is look down to our southern border to see an example of how not just mismanagement but malfeasance can lead to severe crises.”
Miller sees a growing disconnect between the United States as a formal political entity and the spirit of the American people. “[W]e all have to ask ourselves,” he said, “is America the same as the United States right now? The United States is a political and economic entity, an institution, that no longer reflects America, those values that we consider America.”
His organization, he said, crystallizes the issue for Texans by asking them whether today’s United States is a union they would opt into anew if given the choice.
“[W]e go out to Texas voters,” he said, “and we say, ‘Look, imagine that Texas was already a self-governing independent nation, and we had control over our own border and immigration policy and our own monetary and taxation policies — everything that 200 other countries around the world have — and instead of talking about Texas, we were talking about whether or not today we would vote to give up all of that control and join the union, knowing everything we know about the federal government today, would you vote to join? And if you wouldn’t vote to join, why would you stay one moment longer than you had to?'”
Governor says she’s going to keep pushing on crime, gun bills
As Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham started her post-session news conference Saturday, she already knew the score.
Of the roughly 40 public safety bills introduced this year, the governor said she championed 10.
“We have about a handful up, and out of 40, it’s 10 [that passed], and not all of those would really constitute what I think are strong public safety measures,” she said.
The Legislature passed a gun storage law named after a 13-year-old Albuquerque boy authorities say was shot and killed by a fellow student who took his father’s gun to an Albuquerque middle school. Lawmakers also passed a bill that cracks down on organized retail crime and made it a fourth-degree felony to buy a gun for another person who is prohibited from owning a firearm.
But some of the governor’s biggest priorities went nowhere, including a ban on assault weapons; a bill to raise the age to 21 to buy or possess semi-automatic firearms, including assault weapons; and a 14-day waiting period to buy guns.
Other gun-related legislation — prohibiting firearms within 100 feet of polling places and updating the Unfair Trade Practices Act to lift restrictions on the filing of lawsuits against manufacturers or distributors — passed the Senate but didn’t get a hearing in the House, where they were likely to meet stiff opposition.
The governor also pushed for establishing a “rebuttable presumption” to keep repeat violent offenders awaiting trial off the streets instead of letting them be released pretrial. The bill was tabled in committee amid concerns it was unconstitutional.
Miranda Viscoli, co-president of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, said she was “extremely disappointed” the bill to impose a 14-day waiting period on gun sales didn’t get a hearing in either chamber. Of all the violence prevention bills proposed this year, that was the bill that would’ve made the biggest difference, she added.
“The studies we looked at say it’s a game-changer in terms of suicide and crimes of passion,” she said.
But Viscoli said she was grateful the Legislature passed House Bill 9, intended to keep guns out of the hands of children and teens. The governor signed it into law Tuesday.
Rep. Pamelya Herndon, D-Albuquerque, who sponsored the legislation known as the Bennie Hargrove Act, called some of the other gun bills considered by the Legislature controversial, noting some are “going to take some time.”
Lujan Grisham, who was hammered over a crime wave plaguing New Mexico as she campaigned for a second term last year, vowed to keep “pushing the Legislature” to enact more measures, including funding to put an additional 1,000 police officers on the ground.
“The Legislature should expect me to look at that again because I know we need 1,000 officers,” she said.
Asked about her strategy to get her public safety priorities across the finish line, Lujan Grisham said she has to think about “creative solutions.”
“I’m going to keep trying,” she said.
“Just look at the stats. We’ve released some folks that should never have been released and have already reoffended in Albuquerque while we’ve all been in the legislative session,” she said, referring to efforts to pass a pretrial detention bill. “I find that to be intolerable. There are states who do it better, and I don’t know why we don’t just do exactly what those states are doing. I don’t need to recreate the wheel.”
The governor said she would continue to battle for modified pretrial detention, noting “everyone here knows I’m introducing that again. And again and again, and I might just try to change the Constitution so I can run again.”
Lujan Grisham said she was kidding but added she would continue to battle on crime legislation. And she made no apologies for her battle against guns, brushing off criticism she’s infringing on law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment rights.
“I have not talked to a single policymaker, not one legislator, who’s interested in preventing responsible gun owners from accessing firearms,” she said.
“What we’re trying to address is that we have a gun violence issue and that guns … get into the hands of people who should not have them,” she said. “That … takes a scalpel, like figuring out where we got a problem and taking care of that particular problem.”
Observation O’ The Day
Kostas Moros
@MorosKostas
I don’t understand what the point is supposed to be here. Yes, bullets are very lethal, and will cause serious injury even when not fatal. Nobody disputes that. That is the point of firearms, we didn’t think we were buying paintball guns or something.
Also, this is another post by Giffords that shows they ultimately want to ban all guns even though they won’t admit it. Because these same horrific wounds would result from non-“assault weapons”, guns limited to ten rounds, etc.
>when you find out bullets kill people pic.twitter.com/3UHBdyKngP
— Zachary T Craig (@ZacharyTCraig1) March 18, 2023
Suspect shot by CPL holder during robbery outside Detroit liquor store
DETROIT (FOX 2) – When a man tried to rob a man at gunpoint at a Detroit liquor store, the victim pulled out a handgun and shot the suspect.
According to a court filing, ShotSpotter picked up gunshots in the parking lot of Carmen’s Delicatessen just after 9:50 p.m. Feb. 8. When officers arrived, two people flagged them down. One man, Victim 1, had his hands over his head and said he had a concealed pistol license.
The pair told police that they went to the store and saw two men standing outside. One of those men was later identified as Joshua Fordham. They went into the store and were followed by Fordham and the other man.
Once they walked outside, Fordham, who was armed, allegedly followed the victims and threatened to kill Victim 2 if Victim 1 did not give him everything he had. Victim 1 said he gave Fordham his wallet. As Fordham was patting down Victim 1, he pulled out a gun and shot Fordham in the chest, the court filing said.
Police found Fordham on the ground with a handgun nearby. It appeared to have malfunctioned, police said.
Surveillance video confirmed what the victims told police.
Fordham, who is a felon with previous convictions for armed robbery and firearms violations, is now charged with felon in possession of a firearm.
NSSF WELCOMES U.S. HOUSE RANGE ACCESS ACT INTRODUCTION
WASHINGTON, D.C. — NSSF®, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, welcomed the introduction of H.R. 1614, the Range Access Act, in the U.S. House of Representatives. This legislation, re-introduced by U.S. Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), would increase and improve outdoor recreation opportunities across the nation while improving infrastructure and driving economic growth in rural communities.
“NSSF commends Congressman Moore for introducing this vitally important legislation to increase access for the public to practice marksmanship at safe recreational shooting ranges,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “This legislation, that would require the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to have at least one qualifying recreational shooting range in each National Forest and BLM district, is crucial to ensuring safe public recreational shooting. Congressman Moore’s bill would also benefit conservation by reducing litter at non-dedicated ranges on federal public lands while also generating additional Pittman-Robertson revenue.”
The immediate benefit of this legislation is providing public access to safe recreational shooting ranges, especially in rural areas. Background checks for firearm sales saw a record of 21 million in 2020 and another 18.5 million in 2021 and 16.4 million in 2022. Those gun owners, many of whom are first-timers, are in need of safe and modern ranges to practice marksmanship skills.
This legislation has the added benefit of supporting wildlife conservation and improving recreational shooting access. Recreational shooting is tied to approximately 85 percent of the Pittman-Robertson excise taxes currently being paid by firearm and ammunition manufacturers, making it a major driving contributor to wildlife conservation. Since the Pittman-Robertson excise tax was enacted in 1937, firearm and ammunition makers have paid $25.38 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars for conservation and construction and improvement of public recreational shooting ranges.
With standard human corruption, these elitists delude themselves by believing that since they were just enough smarter than the average bear in one subject to wind up suuuuper rich, they must be as smart in everything else. Thus they walk themselves right into stupidity.
The rich are eating themselves
The oligarchs are playing a dangerous game by pouring trillions into woke causes.
Beware of plutocrats bearing gifts. The annual clown show at Davos epitomizes how today, the global elites have embraced an unholy trinity of ‘progressive’ doctrines: climate-change apocalypticism, a belief in systemic racism and racial ‘equity’, and radical gender ideology. The super-rich hope that by genuflecting to these causes, they can buy themselves political protection and fend off the activists lurking in the ranks of their own companies. Yet, in the long run, this could end up fuelling their demise.
The recent ‘Great Awokening’ of our elites reflects a long-standing shift among executives in terms of priorities and perspective. The capitalist class first arose out of the middle orders, and even from within the peasantry, as the industrial revolution, particularly in the Netherlands and Britain, challenged the autocracy of both the church and the monarchical state. These were often tough, ruthless entrepreneurs embodying values of hard work, thrift, family and faith.
But with the managerial revolution of the 1950s, the nature of executive elites changed. As sociologist Daniel Bell first identified half a century ago, business leaders were no longer upstarts and thus the natural opponents of state power. Instead, they reflected a new type of individualism, unmoored from religion and family, a worldview which transformed the foundations of middle-class culture. The goal of this new executive class, as Bell saw it, was not so much building great companies, but gaining accolades from their peers, the press and the public – a trend also set out in Alvin Toffler’s 1980 book, The Third Wave.
The rise of the socially conformist business executive was briefly obscured during the entrepreneurial boom of the 1980s, when Wall Street and tech leaders embraced Reaganite deregulation. The era of financier Mike Milken, Apple founder Steve Jobs, AMD founder Jerry Sanders and FedEx founder Frederick Smith seemed to reflect a resurgent ‘cowboy capitalism’. These entrepreneurs were too busy making money to care about controlling the lives of the common folk. So much so that in 2006, economist Carl Schramm argued that Joseph Schumpeter’s prediction of bureaucratic capitalist decline would be overcome by an ‘entrepreneurial America reborn’.
This era came crashing to an end with the 2008 financial crisis and the massive state bailouts of large banks. The banking sector became more concentrated, with the number of American banking institutions falling by a third between 2000 and 2020. By 2020, the five largest banks controlled over 45 per cent of all assets in the US, up from under 30 per cent 20 years earlier. Worldwide, the five largest investment banks now control roughly one-third of investment funds; the top 10 control an absolute majority. In Europe, such oligopolies are even more powerful, with the top three banks accounting for a majority of assets in most European countries.
It is the same story with the technology sector. Once the vaunted centre of grassroots entrepreneurialism, a lack of antitrust measures from both Republicans and Democrats has allowed technology companies to morph into quasi-monopolies. Google controls over 90 per cent of the search-engine market; Microsoft owns over 74 per cent of computer-operating-system software; Amazon has nearly half of the US online retail market share and a significant proportion of cloud computing; Google and Apple together account for 90 per cent of smartphone operating systems.
Such immense market power encourages executives not to take risks and innovate, but rather to consolidate their dominance by acquiring smaller competitors. Amazon, Meta and Google now account for two-thirds of all online-advertising revenues, which now represent the majority of all ad sales. These oligopolies also seem poised to dominate emerging technologies, from cloud services and underwater fibre-optic cables to AI.
Alongside this economic concentration, we see as well uniformity of viewpoints and growing control over the means of communication. Companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple largely not only control the biggest platforms, but have also taken direct ownership of movie studios, newspapers and magazines. All these outlets, along with the AI models these firms produce, tend to reflect the worldview of the tech oligopoly.
Monday a big court day for 2nd amendment, gun laws, gun rights
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, will hear five second amendment cases Monday.
“My hopes are Monday evening the case is decided and New Yorkers get their gun rights back,” says Oneida County’s assistant pistol licensing officer, Dan Sullivan.
It’s not clear if the judges will rule from the bench, or, reserve decision and issue a written one at a later date. But Sullivan is hopeful for the outcome.
“You’ve got the highest court in the land and you’ve got three federal judges who’ve stated in writing that the carry concealed improvement act is not constitutional, so I’m hoping we get our gun rights back,” says Sullivan.
Sullivan does his best to help applicants navigate a wave of confusion that began after the U.S. Supreme Court essentially made all licenses unrestricted, in June of last year, and New York State instituted the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, basically barring guns in most places. There have been more volleys, leaving gun owners in a position to unwittingly break the law. The New York Times wrote an article, documenting the confusion.
“I think 70 or 80% of gun owners don’t have a clue what the law is right now,” says Sullivan. “I think there’s an awful lot of people that are carrying like they’ve always carried, and I don’t think they’re doing that out of maliciousness, I think they’re doing that out of simply not knowing what the law is right now”
For now, New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act remains intact.
Falls pastor may be headed to U.S. Supreme Court over New York gun law
It’s a case that has already made its way to the United States Supreme Court.
And it’s likely to return there.
But first, Niagara Falls pastor Jimmie Hardaway Jr.’s constitutional challenge to New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) faces a Monday morning hearing before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The New York City-based court is widely considered one of the most influential appeals courts in the nation.
Hardaway, of Trinity Baptist Church, and Rev. Larry Boyd, pastor of Open Praise Full Gospel Baptist Church in Buffalo, challenged the constitutionality of the CCIA, along with two national pro-gun groups, Las Vegas-based Firearms Policy Coalition and Bellevue, Washington-based Second Amendment Foundation in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York. The suit sought to block a provision of the CCIA that bars individuals from bringing firearms into places of worship.
Boyd and Hardaway also sought to have the CCIA struck down in its entirety as unconstitutional.
Hardaway and Boyd have argued in the case that they would suffer irreparable harm, and that their Second Amendment rights would be violated, if the places of worship restriction was not blocked. In an affidavit accompanying the original lawsuit, Hardaway acknowledges that he is a member of the two pro-gun groups involved in the case and that he is licensed to carry a handgun in New York.
“Prior to the enactment and enforcement of the Place of Worship Ban, I would consistently carry a firearm on Trinity Baptist Church’s premises,” Hardaway said in the affidavit. “I would intend to keep carrying for self-defense and to keep the peace at Trinity Baptist Church.”
U.S. District Court Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. conducted an expedited hearing on Hardaway and Boyd’s lawsuit and, just hours after oral arguments in the case, issued a 40-page decision and order that granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking the enforcement of the places of worship restriction.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office defended the CCIA, had sought to remove Sinatra, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, charging that Hardaway and Boyd had engaged in “judge shopping” by having the case directed to Sinatra.
Two weeks later, in a decision and order that followed almost word-for-word and page-for-page his decision on the TRO, Sinatra granted the pastors a preliminary injunction that blocked the enforcement of the places of worship restriction. Weeks later, Sinatra ruled the entire CCIA was unconstitutional.
James appealed Sinatra’s decisions to the Second Circuit and asked the appeals court to block his rulings while they considered them. The attorney general asked the appeals court to overturn, “in each and every aspect,” Sinatra’s rulings.
The Second Circuit judges issued a stay on Sinatra’s decisions, which effectively reinstated the CCIA and the places of worship restriction.
Hardaway and Boyd asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and overturn the stay. They argued that their rights under the Second Amendment had been “indefinitely suspend(ed).”
“Applicants, along with countless others like them, are being irreparably harmed each day this patently unconstitutional law remains in place, eviscerating the right of ordinary, law-abiding New Yorkers to carry firearms in public for self-defense,” Hardaway and Boyd’s lawyers told the high court. “Additionally, this case presents issues of national importance with respect to states that enact laws in explicit defiance of this court’s decisions.”
In January, the court, without any noted dissents, allowed the stay to remain in place while the Second Circuit proceedings continued.
The appeals court panel will hear up to 20 minutes, 10 minutes for each side, of arguments in the case. The case has attracted friend of the court briefs from both pro-gun control and pro-gun rights groups, as well as the attorneys general from a dozen states opposed to the New York law.
In his decision and order, Sinatra wrote that the State of New York had responded to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen by enacting “even more restrictive legislation” than what the high court had declared unconstitutional.
“The court reiterates that ample Supreme Court precedent addressing the individual’s right to keep and bear arms — from Heller and McDonald to its June 2022 decision in Bruen — dictates that New York’s new place of worship restriction is equally unconstitutional,” Sinatra wrote.
During oral arguments in the case, Sinatra appeared dismissive and openly hostile to the arguments being made by lawyers for the state.
“In Bruen, the (Supreme Court) made the Second Amendment test crystal clear: regulation in this area is permissible only if the government demonstrates that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition,” Sinatra wrote in his decisions. “New York fails that test. The State’s exclusion is, instead, inconsistent with the Nation’s historical traditions.”
Hardaway has maintained that his church has an “open-door policy” that carries risk over “who will walk in the door for services.” The pastor also claims that the “horrific murders” of nine parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, has “stiffened (his) resolve to carry for self-defense and to keep the peace at Trinity Baptist strong
March 18
37 – The Roman Senate annuls the will of Emperor Tiberius and proclaims Gaius Caesar Germanicus, better known as Caligula, emperor.
1241 – After consolidating the invasion of the Kievan Russia to the east, the Mongols of Genghis Khan under the command of Subutai Bahadur, invade Poland, overwhelm Polish armies in Kraków and plunder the city.
1644 – The Third Anglo-Powhatan War begins in the Colony of Virginia.
1766 – After only being in effect in the American colonies for a few months, due to great protests, -“No Taxation Without Representation” – the British Parliament repeals the Stamp Act. The protests by the colonists are generally considered to be the prelude of events that finally resulted in the Revolutionary War and American Independence.
1793 – The first modern republic in Germany, the Republic of Mainz, with its capitol at Mainz, directly across the Rhine river from Wiesbaden, is formed.
1845 – John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman dies in Fort Wayne, Indiana, age 70.
1865 – At Washington City, Georgia, the Congress of the Confederate States adjourns for the last time and disbands.
1874 – King Kalākaua of Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trade rights.
1925 – During a massive tornado outbreak, the deadliest tornado in U.S history, called the Tri-State Tornado hits the states of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, killing 695 people over its 219 mile long track.
1937 – A natural gas leak explodes at the New London School in New London, Texas, killing 300 people, mostly children.
1942 – Less than a month after signing executive order 9066, allowing the internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent, President Roosevelt signs executive order 9102 forming the War Relocation Authority to established the internment camps and take Japanese Americans into custody.
1959 – The Hawaii Admission Act is signed into law, with statehood for Hawaii coming into effect on August, 21.
1965 – Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2, becomes the first person to walk in space.
1968 – The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back U.S. currency.
1990 – In the largest art theft in US history, 12 paintings, collectively worth around $500 million, are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
2014 – The parliaments of Russia and Crimea sign an accession treaty allowing Russia to annex the Ukrainian territory.
The Biden administration leaked the military records for Republicans who were running for elective office to try to hurt their election chances.
House weaponization panel probes release of Air Force records to political operatives
The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is probing the Air Force over the improper release of military service records to a political opposition research group.
In a letter to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall on Thursday, Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, demanded that the service branch hand over all documents and communication related to the release of Official Military Personnel Files to Due Diligence Group, LLC, a research firm that obtained the records of multiple GOP candidates in the lead up to the midterm elections in 2022.
Rep. Chis Stewart, Utah Republican, co-signed the letter.
An internal Air Force investigation revealed last month that the service improperly released the military duty information for 11 individuals. The investigation was launched after the disclosure of Indiana House Republican candidate Jennifer-Ruth Green’s military records ahead of the midterms.
Several other GOP candidates have since come forward to report that their military records were improperly released.
Two sitting members of congress, Republican Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Zach Nunn of Iowa, were also among those whose records were improperly released.
In a letter to Mr. Bacon last month, the Air Force said a Due Diligence Group employee posing as a background investigator requested his records.
“Department of the Air Force employees did not follow proper procedures requiring the member’s authorizing signature consenting to the release of information,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told CNN last month. “There was no evidence of political motivation or malicious intent on the part of any employee.”
She said the Air Force is “committed to preventing any such unauthorized disclosure of private information from occurring again” and will perform monthly audits.
Ms. Stefanek told Politico that “virtually all” of the 11 unauthorized requests for the records came from Due Diligence Group.
Mr. Jordan said on Thursday that the improper releases “may have violated Department of Defense policies and federal law.”
“While the Air Force has rightfully taken responsibility for these inappropriate OMPF disclosures, questions remain unanswered about the U.S. Air Force’s collection, maintenance, and dissemination of this sensitive information,” Mr. Jordan wrote.
Lance Reddick, Known for the ‘John Wick’ Films and ‘The Wire’ has Died Aged 60
Reddick enjoyed a lengthy, varied career on the screen, and had been in the midst of promoting the new ‘John Wick’ film.
Reddick enjoyed a lengthy, varied career on the screen, and had been in the midst of promoting the new ‘John Wick’ film.
Lance Reddick as Irvin Irving on Prime Video’s ‘Bosch.’ Photo: Aaron Epstein. Copyright: Amazon Studios
Lance Reddick, an actor who brought poise, gravitas and depth to even the smallest role, has died.
Best known for movies including the ‘John Wick’ series and TV shows including ‘The Wire’, ‘Fringe,’ and ‘Bosch,’ Reddick was 60.
Who was Lance Reddick?
Born in 1962 in Baltimore, Reddick’s initial passion was for music; he attended the Peabody Preparatory Institute and completed a summer program on music theory and composition at the Walden School as a teenager. Yet acting calling to him: after earning his Bachelor of Music degree from Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, he relocated to Boston, Massachusetts in the 1980s to start attending the Yale School of Drama in 1991.
One of the more delightful aspects of being a dissident from the absurd apocalyptic climate doom cult is the ability to laugh at the decades’ worth of failed, yet quite specific predictions of disaster from purported “experts” that the media have gleefully trumpeted. The track record of the failure of previous predictions matters not in the least, as if mass amnesia had infected not just the media, but government, academia, and the corporate world.
Yet all of these commanding heights of our political economy are united in pushing forward with ruinously expensive schemes that cannot work to substitute unreliable intermittent sources of electricity — wind and solar predominantly — that will demolish our economy and lifestyle. The conversion of our vehicle fleet to lithium-intensive electric cars and trucks ignores the world’s limited supply of several required minerals and the “carbon footprint” of producing such vehicles. Meanwhile, limiting the production of organic energy (carbon-based energy, in other words) impoverishes us and enriches Russia, Iran, and other rogues, while degrading our geopolitical power.
Why are all the organs of dominance of our polity so immune to facts? And why do the media persist in blocking legitimate skepticism and doubling down on failed doom predictions?
These are the questions that Tucker Carlson took up in the first quarter-hour of his top-rated cable news commentary last night. The large number of clips showing absurd, hysterical predictions that are nonsense was hilarious.
Most telling is the question of why the media are so very perfectly united in ignoring the reality of their past doomsaying failures. Tucker leaves it to his audience to make up their minds, but the clear implication is that some unsayable, ridicule-inducing “conspiracy theory” must be at least considered.
If you missed it, here is the entire segment, via Fox News: