Category: Politics

Team Trump just called a halt to the Obama-era war on American suburbs.

President Trump gets credit — and takes heat — for many things, but many folks don’t even know about one of his best accomplishments: blocking the federal government’s power grab for control of America’s suburbs.

During the Obama administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to install Washington bureaucrats as the decision makers for how communities across all 50 states should grow. Using an obscure rule called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, HUD sought to remake America’s cities, towns and villages by forcing any community that was getting federal funds to meet racial quotas.

To do this, HUD applied the notion of “disparate impact,” which unilaterally deems housing patterns to be discriminatory if minority representation is not evenly spread across the jurisdiction. Communities with high concentrations of minorities are automatically labeled segregated.

Westchester served as the petri dish for HUD’s “grand experiment.” On Jan. 1, 2010, the day I was inaugurated as county executive, a federal consent decree signed by my predecessor went into effect requiring Westchester to spend at least $56 million to build 750 units of affordable housing over the next seven years in 31 white communities — or face crippling financial penalties.

Westchester not only met the goal of 750 units on my watch, it exceeded it by 40. A happy ending for everyone . . . except HUD. The administration was intent on taking its AFFH-linked, disparate-impact visions national, and that required villains. The last thing HUD wanted was a suburban community working cooperatively and using its existing zoning framework to build affordable housing without the federal government’s racial micromanagement.

So a year into the settlement, HUD demanded that the county go “beyond the four corners” of the decree and declare its basic zoning rules on things like height, density and safe drinking water as racially “exclusionary.” Single-family homes on quarter-acre lots were deemed potentially “racist” — supposedly because minority members might not be able to afford them….

Now:

Gone is the federal mandate dictating the modeling of communities based on statistical formulas. Restored to local officials is the power that gives them the flexibility to weigh real-world factors in making housing decisions. Restored, too, is the prosecution of bad actors by the courts — not bureaucrats — under the Fair Housing Act.

And builders are now more likely to build affordable housing, since the attached strings have been removed.

The Democratic candidates for president didn’t get the memo. They continue to support radical, divisive and failed housing policies aimed at abolishing single-family residential zoning. And they’d use billions of our tax dollars to local communities — and the threat of lawsuits — to get their way.

The United States needs affordable housing. By replacing social engineering with common sense, guarded by strong nondiscrimination laws, the country is now better positioned to meet that need — and that’s a victory for everyone.

The Joe Biden Theory and the Ukrainian macguffin’

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my earlier Joe Biden theory is confirmed more and more every day. Let’s start from the beginning.

1. At first Biden is reluctant to run. But in the spring of 2019 he gets wind of Trump investigating his corruption in Ukraine – and he immediately enters the race on 4/25/19. On the trail he looks old, tired, and his heart just isn’t in it. Why do it then? Because it’s about a lot more things than simply running for president.

2. If Trump isn’t stopped, the entire Biden family’s dirt will come out. At this point, the only way to avoid or at least to delay it is Biden being in the race: the news of his corruption can then be discredited as usual electioneering and Trump’s dirty tricks.

3. Biden may not be the only one who took dirty money from Ukrainian oligarchs, plus Democrats used Ukrainian politicians to dig up dirt on Trump’s team in 2016. Now their lives and careers depend on their ability to stop Trump’s investigation and to muddle the issue. They also know they can’t beat Trump in 2020, all they can do is try to impeach him in order to shut him up. They have loyal spies in the White House and wait for an opportune moment to pounce.

4. Trump’s phone call with Ukraine becomes such a moment. The Dems quickly compose a play about a concerned whistleblower and stage it in the House. They charge Trump with exactly what they themselves have done – getting help from a foreign government in order to dig up dirt on a political rival, followed by a cover-up.

5. These charges only make sense if Biden is running against Trump in a general election, which he isn’t. As a minimum, he must be a frontrunner in the primaries, and so the DNC throws him into the mix of candidates and artificially inflates his status. The entire impeachment scheme is predicated on Biden running and winning the primaries. Without him posing as Trump’s rival, the Democrats won’t be able to claim that Trump wanted to steal an election. So old Joe must make a good face and keep running even if he eventually collapses and pays with his life to save the swamp.

6. The Senate acquits Trump and the Dems switch to harassing him about Roger Stone. It no longer matters if Biden is a frontrunner, he has outlived his usefulness. The DNC pulls the plug and the sad old Joe is done, unless the Dems can use him later to cheat Bernie out of a win. His numbers are in the gutter.

7. What are the Dems covering up in Ukraine? It must be big if they staged an impeachment and risked their entire political capital over it. Otherwise they wouldn’t have spied on Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine trying to tarnish his investigation and to besmirch him personally. They even identified Giuliani’s two Ukrainian associates and had them arrested for exceeding a political campaign donation. If Michael Cohen’s story is any indication, the men were likely threatened with imprisonment and then offered a deal in exchange for dirt on Giuliani and Trump.

8. Wouldn’t you want to know what that Ukrainian macguffin really is? I have a theory about that, too, but that’s a story for another time.

Arizona Senate Panel OKs City Liability for Gun-Free Zones
An Arizona Senate panel has approved a measure that would make government entities that don’t allow guns on their property liable if someone is shot on their premises.

PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona Senate panel on Thursday advanced a measure that would make government entities that don’t allow guns on their property liable if people are shot on their premises.

The proposal from Republican Sen. David Gowan would allow anyone to sue if they or loved ones are injured or killed after being barred from carrying weapons for self-defense on government property.

The measure is the latest in a years-long series of pro-gun measures that are routinely approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Arizona is among the most gun-friendly states in the nation, allowing open or concealed carry of guns without a permit in most places. But efforts to allow weapons on property owned by schools, universities and government buildings have failed.

“It’s just a simple bill that says if a government creates gun-free zones which prohibit a law-abiding citizen from defending themselves, then if harm comes to them because of that policy that entity will be held liable for the damages,” Gowan told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The point is, if you have a policy like this you protect them or allow them to protect themselves or there will be consequences.”

Missouri Senate bills seek to strengthen gun rights
A bill that would allow concealed carry permit holders to bring guns onto college campuses and other places drew opposition from public safety officials from Lincoln University and the University of Central Missouri in a hearing Thursday.

A bill that would allow concealed carry permit holders to bring guns onto college campuses and other places drew opposition from public safety officials from Lincoln University and the University of Central Missouri in a hearing Thursday.

The Senate Transportation and Public Safety Committee heard two bills Thursday morning that are intended to strengthen gun rights, both sponsored by Sen. Eric Burlison, R-Battlefield.

One was “anti-commandeering legislation” that bars any law enforcement officer in Missouri from enforcing federal gun laws that infringe on Second Amendment rights.

The other allows people with concealed carry permits to bring guns and other deadly weapons onto college campuses and other places they’re currently restricted. Allowing concealed carry on campus was the most controversial part of that bill, with leaders of campus police of two universities testifying against it.

Judiciary Committee Dems hit with ethics complaints over ‘suspicious’ conduct

‘Everytown’ is the Bloomberg bankrolled, astroturf anti-gun organization. So this just might blowback onto him as well.

Three Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee were hit with ethics complaints Wednesday, connected to a slew of alleged violations related to campaign fundraising.

Nonprofit watchdog group Americans for Public Trust filed complaints with the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) against Reps. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Lucy McBath, D-Ga., calling for investigations of possible violations of House rules and federal law. The organization, founded by former National Republican Congressional Committee research director Caitlin Sutherland, also filed complaints against Dean and McBath with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

“All three of these members have engaged in disturbing activities that appear to us to be violations of federal law and House rules. This is especially alarming given all three sit on the prestigious House Judiciary Committee, which has direct oversight responsibilities over the U.S. Department of Justice and, by extension, the nation’s law enforcement,” said Adam Laxalt, former Nevada attorney general and outside counsel to Americans for Public Trust. “We’re calling on the Federal Election Commission and the Office of Congressional Ethics to immediately investigate these suspicious activities.”…………….

The complaints also allege that McBath received money from Everytown for her campaign during that time, even though Everytown reported in an FEC filing that they first began contributing to McBath’s campaign on April 25, 2018.

“However, Everytown began spending in the election for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District while Representative McBath was still serving as the group’s national spokesperson,” the OCE complaint says. “It is not publicly known what level of involvement Representative McBath had in Everytown’s expenditures against her eventual general election opponent while she was still employed by Everytown.”

Majority of Americans would vote against socialist candidate for president

Americans are not happy with the prospect of a socialist candidate like Bernie Sanders for president, a new poll finds.

A majority of US residents — 53 percent — said they would vote against a socialist candidate for president, the Gallup poll released Tuesday reveals. Meanwhile, only 45 percent of respondents in the poll said they would vote for a socialist.

In fact, socialism was the only category in the poll rejected by a majority of Americans.

For example, 60 percent of Americans said they would vote for an atheist while 38 percent said they wouldn’t. And more than nine in 10 Americans said they would vote for a presidential candidate nominated by their party who is black, Catholic, Hispanic, Jewish or a woman.

The findings come as Sanders (I-Vt.) — a self-described Democratic socialist — is a top-tier candidate vying to win the Democratic nomination for president. He was leading in polls to win Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary and has surged ahead of Joe Biden in national polls.

There is a political divide over the socialist candidate question, however.

For example, 82 percent of Republicans said they wouldn’t vote for a socialist while just 17 percent said they would. By comparison, 76 percent of Democrats said they would vote for a socialist, while 21 percent wouldn’t.

Significantly, only 45 percent of key swing-state voters — self-described independents — would vote for a socialist while 51 percent said they would not.

 

New York Politicians Lied and Their Gun-Control Laws Failed Again

New York politicians said we would be safe. Democrats told us to register our guns so the criminals would be disarmed. New York Democrats said we needed to have fewer cartridges in our guns so the bad guys couldn’t hurt us. Last week, a convicted felon shot police officers in New York City. We were told this couldn’t happen because of New York’s strict gun laws. Clearly, the Democrats lied to us. If it could happen to the police, then it could happen to any of us. It isn’t the tool that does harm, it is the evil person who kills with any tool he wants to use. We were fools to believe the old lies, and we’d be bigger fools to believe the New York politicians now.

New York Democrats passed the SAFE act in 2013. This gun control legislation was passed in the middle of the night because it was “emergency legislation” that we needed desperately to insure public safety. The legislation outlawed many handguns and long guns. The law limited the number of cartridges honest gun owners could carry in their guns. It required a background check before law abiding individuals could transfer a gun or buy ammunition. Provisions in the SAFE act meant honest gun owners could be disarmed if someone questioned their mental health. Democrats said that would keep us safe.

It didn’t work at all. Disarming the good guys doesn’t stop the bad guys. Last week, a convicted felon got a gun. The felon attacked police officers several times. The criminal had a previous conviction in 2002 after he shot and tried to kill a man, carjacked a woman, and then shot at police. He was arrested again in 2018 for driving while intoxicated. The criminal was out on parole when he shot a police officer in the head, another officer in the arm, and then attacked a police station. Criminals don’t obey our laws and the police can’t keep us safe.

In New York City, criminals get guns in a few minutes on the street while honest gun owners need months or years to receive government permission to own a gun. It turns out that criminals don’t care about New York gun laws any more than they are stopped by laws against assault and murder. Criminals use any weapon they want and carry it anywhere they want.

Criminals don’t care who we are. If thugs would attack the cops, then we are not safe. That means we should protect ourselves, but New York’s gun-control laws makes that difficult if not impossible for law abiding citizens. Disarming the good guys puts all of us in greater danger rather than making us safer. That is the opposite of what we were promised.

Is that failure of gun-control an accident, or were these laws designed to fail? Was this failure part of a larger plan?

Democrats in New York condemned honest police officers and released repeat criminals. Democrat politicians made it harder for honest citizens to defend themselves in public. Now, the thugs shoot cops, and crime soars. In the face of this new violence, will Democrat politicians then demand complete gun confiscation from honest citizens to stop the ‘unprecedented levels of public violence’ they created? That is another prescription for failure.. for deadly failure.

That idea sounds crazy to me, but we let New York politicians lie to us before. New York Democrats might get away with their lies again.. if we let them. Our future, like our family’s safety, lie in our hands.

Tell your politicians to repeal these failed laws.

Virginia House passes ‘assault weapon’ ban

Not unexpected, but VA Secretary Moran is a moron.

Virginia’s House of Delegates has passed one of the most controversial bills of the 2020 legislative session.

On Tuesday – known as ‘Crossover Day’ in the General Assembly, the final day for a bill to be passed out of its originating chamber – the House voted 51-48 to pass HB 961, a bill which would would redefine ‘assault firearms’ in Virginia and ban future sales and possession of the weapons in Virginia.

House Bill 961 makes it a Class 6 felony to import, sell, transfer, manufacture, purchase, possess, or transport assault weapons or large-capacity firearm magazines, all defined in the bill.”

It specifically bans the possession of magazines that hold more than 12 rounds.

Under the proposed law, any person who already owns a weapon classified as an assault firearm under the new legal definition would be able to retain possession of the weapon, but future sales would be prohibited.

Three Democrat delegates joined their Republican colleagues in voting against the bill.

A similar bill died in committee before ever advancing to the full floor of the Senate, so it’s unclear whether HB 961 will have the votes to pass the Senate, which is more narrowly controlled by Democrats than the House of Delegates.

Moderate Democrats in the Senate have already indicated they are unlikely to support the measure……..

Virginia Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Brian Moran said a ban on selling assault weapons and high-capacity magazines is needed to help prevent mass shootings, or at least limit the damage mass shooters can inflict. He cited the fact that the shooter in the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 had a handgun with a high-capacity magazine.

“Assault weapons are not protected by the Second Amendment because they are weapons of war,” Moran said.

Biden Abruptly Cancels New Hampshire Primary Party Appearance, Heads to South Carolina

No surprise since SloJoe came in 5th place. I wonder if that had anything to do with him calling that woman a ‘lying dog faced pony soldier’?

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Joe Biden is heading south.

The former vice president abruptly announced on Tuesday morning that he won’t spend primary night in New Hampshire as planned and instead is flying to South Carolina to headline a newly scheduled kick-off rally in the state he’s long considered his campaign firewall.

“We’re going to head to South Carolina tonight,” Biden told reporters as he visited a polling station with voting underway in the state that holds the first primary in the race for the White House. “And I’m going to Nevada… we’ve got to look at them all.”

Maryland ‘Assault Weapon’ Registration Bill Would Charge Gun Owners Up to $1000 Per Firearm

When you think of heavily gun controlled states, names like New York, California and New Jersey immediately come to mind. But don’t sleep on Maryland. The Eat Crab or Die State has long been at the forefront of Second Amendment rights abrogation and a new bill entered in the state’s House would move the Old Line State way up on the #gunsense hit parade.

HB 1261, authored by House Speaker Adrienne Jones along with Reps. Vanessa Atterbeary and Eric Luedke, was introduced Friday and would ban a range of firearms after October 1. It would also require those already owning assaulty-looking guns to register them.

Registering with the Department of State Police before January 1, 2021 costs Marylanders nothing. But then complying with the law would require emptying your wallet.

Here’s the bill’s escalating penalty fee schedule:

1. ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2021, AND BEFORE MAY 1, 2021, A REGISTRATION FEE NOT EXCEEDING $290 PER FIREARM;

2. ON OR AFTER MAY 1, 2021, AND BEFORE NOVEMBER 1, 2022, A REGISTRATION FEE NOT EXCEEDING $580 PER FIREARM; AND

3. ON OR AFTER NOVEMBER 1, 2022, AND BEFORE MAY 1, 2023, A REGISTRATION FEE NOT EXCEEDING $1,000 PER FIREARM.

What happens if you fail to register your gun at all before May 1, 2023? Prosecution, of course!

A PERSON WHO LAWFULLY POSSESSED AN ASSAULT LONG GUN OR A COPYCAT WEAPON BEFORE OCTOBER 1, 2020, AND WHO REGISTERS THE ASSAULT LONG GUN OR COPYCAT WEAPON ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2021, AND BEFORE MAY 1, 2023, ONLY AFTER BEING DISCOVERED IN POSSESSION OF THE ASSAULT LONG GUN OR COPYCAT WEAPON BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, IS NOT SUBJECT TO THE PENALTIES IN § 4–306 OF THIS SUBTITLE.

A PERSON DESCRIBED IN SUBPARAGRAPH 1 OF THIS SUBPARAGRAPH IS GUILTY OF A MISDEMEANOR AND ON CONVICTION IS SUBJECT TO IMPRISONMENT NOT EXCEEDING 1 YEAR FOR EACH INCIDENT IN WHICH THE PERSON IS DISCOVERED WITH UNREGISTERED FIREARMS.

“Assault long guns” has already been defined in Maryland law here. HB 1261 lists a range of “assault pistols” that would be banned, guns like the TEC-9, the Czech Skorpion, Uzis and the like.

Oh, and “copycat weapons” under the bill means any gun that has one of those really disturbing features like thumbhole stocks, forward grips, barrel shrouds, yadda, yadda, and:

THE ABILITY TO DISCHARGE THROUGH FIRING ACTION ANY OF THE FOLLOWING ROUNDS:

A. .450 BUSHMASTER;

B. 5.56 MILLIMETER (INCLUDING THE 5.56X45 11 MILLIMETER NATO AND .223 REMINGTON);

C. 7.62 MILLIMETER (INCLUDING THE 7.62X39 13 MILLIMETER, .308 WINCHESTER, 7.62 NATO, 7.62X51 MILLIMETER NATO, .30 14 CARBINE, 7.62X33 MILLIMETER, OR 300 AAC BLACKOUT);

D. .50 BMG;

E. 5.7X28 MILLIMETER OR

F. ANY OTHER ROUND DETERMINED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE POLICE TO BE CAPABLE OF PENETRATING THE STANDARD BODY ARMOR WORN BY LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS WHEN FIRED BY THE PISTOL;

No ambiguity there, huh?

There’s much more that’s equally egregious, but you get the idea. Again, you can read the bill here.

Will Maryland’s Governor Larry Hogan sign such a bill if it gets to his desk? Don’t bet against it.

 

Washington: Committee Deadline And Anti-Gun Bills

February 7th marked the deadline for all policy bills to pass out of committee in their chamber of origin. Numerous gun control bills have passed out of committee and remain active, including two of the most egregious bills that are awaiting a floor vote in both chambers. Please contact your lawmakers and ask them to OPPOSE 2240/6077 and 1315/6294.

House Bill 2240 and Senate Bill 6077 ban the manufacture, possession, sale, transfer, etc. of magazines that hold more than fifteen and ten rounds of ammunition respectively. These limitations are strongly supported by the Governor and the Attorney General. These so called “high capacity” magazines are in fact standard equipment for commonly-owned firearms that many Americans legally and effectively use for an entire range of legitimate purposes, such as self-defense or competition. Those who own non-compliant magazines prior to the ban are only allowed to possess them on their own property and in other limited instances such as at licensed shooting ranges or while hunting. Restricted magazines have to be transported unloaded and locked separately from firearms and stored at home locked, making them unavailable for self-defense. HB 2240 has been pulled from the Rules Committee and is now eligible to receive a floor vote at any time!

House Bill 1315 and Senate Bill 6294 requires onerous government red tape and further training to obtain a Concealed Pistol License. Mandatory training requirements are yet another cost prohibitive measure intended to ensure that lower income Americans are barred from defending themselves.

Being Fired by Trump Does Not Make You a Holocaust Victim

Get a grip: The president’s critics are not being rounded up and sent to death camps. They’re landing book deals and TV gigs.

Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes, one of the media’s favorite Donald Trump antagonists, took to Twitter this weekend to pen a transcendently nonsensical thread comparing the firing of a handful of bureaucrats to the rounding up of political undesirables in the lead-up to the Holocaust.

It’s wouldn’t be a huge deal, except that this kind of hysterical reaction has now been normalized in American discourse, illustrating that once-rational people have either lost all sense of history or are willing to belittle the past for short-term political gain. My bet is on the latter.

Here’s how Wittes begins his updated version of Martin Niemöller’s famous poem:

When fellow Hungarians came for my grandfather — he was one of the first to be deported from the country — they sent him to sweep mines on the Eastern Front before handing him over to the Germans at Mauthausen and then Gunskirchen.

At some point he perished, no doubt, in a vile and undignified manner, perhaps succumbing to starvation or typhoid or dysentery, or maybe he was shot in the head and left in a shallow unmarked grave. We don’t know. His wife and son, the latter of whom he would never meet, would never find out how he died, despite decades of trying. His loss, like the deaths of millions of other powerless and now anonymous victims of that age, would have repercussions that reverberate today.

When “they” came for James Comey, on the other hand, he landed a massive book deal, made millions on the speaking circuit, wagged his finger at his former boss through social media to his million followers, and spent some quality time with family. He never once had to worry about state-sanctioned violence. Comey, a man powerful enough to oversee a cooked-up investigation into a presidential candidate, merely lost a job.

Government bureaucrats aren’t endowed with a God-given right to work in the executive branch of the United States government. Most of these “victims” will find lucrative work elsewhere. None, I confidently say, are going to be thrown into camps. If you don’t like who Trump fires, or how he fires them, you can always vote for another candidate.

It might come as a surprise to those who, through hyperbole, demean the real victims of history, but Nazi Germany didn’t hold impeachment hearings for their leaders in 1938, there was no institutional anti-Hitler media in 1939, and most people in 1940 did not publicly accuse Hitler of being a seditious criminal and madman. Those who did, such as Martin Niemöller, ended up in Sachsenhausen and Dachau, not the green room at CNN.

Though there are a number of iterations, here is the most popular version of Niemöller’s poem:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak for me.

You’ll notice the kicker. Even as Wittes is diminishing the horrors of the Holocaust for political gain with his bumbling analogies, a bunch of high-profile Americans were speaking out about Trump actions. We’ve basically spent four years listening to people speaking out. Some of the people on Wittes’s list, in fact, have been speaking out for themselves in major magazines and on television and in newspapers.

Trump’s most self-aggrandizing critics might not realize this, but they’re not actually part of any real “resistance,” they’re just partisans. The only people who “came” for Andy McCabe were producers and editors with checkbooks open. And even if the firing of Alexander Vindman reminds you of Night of the Long Knives, you have wholly lost touch with reality. As the kids say: Read a book.

 

FRACKING AND THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Liberals openly hate the electoral college (and the Senate, but one thing at a time) because it is counter-majoritarian. To which the answer is: Yes, precisely. That’s one of its strongest points. It means a winning presidential candidate has to take in a broader range of local interests if he is to win a constitutional majority, which is superior to a mere numerical majority that may be lopsided in just a few regions (like the two coasts today).

This comes to mind given the promise of leading Democrats to ban fracking for oil and gas if they are elected president. I assume this plays very well in San Francisco and Manhattan, but it does mean giving the middle finger to the middle of Pennsylvania, among other locations.

What do the locals think about fracking? We’re told endless by environmental propagandists that it is poisoning the local water and air, though a thorough EPA study done during the Obama Administration found little evidence to support this.

A new study of voting results on an anti-fracking ballot initiative in Colorado in 2018 (which was defeated) in Energy Research & Social Science gives us a more fine-grained look at the matter. The key author of the study, Daniel Raimi of Resources for the Future, offers a plain English summary of the study on Twitter. His first finding is the most useful:

Key findings: (1) Strong opposition to #fracking is mostly found in places where there is little to no drilling activity. Strong support for drilling is mostly found in the places that have the largest density of wells. . . most people who live in the “patch” do want #fracking in their back yard.

The study also finds a sharp partisan divide, with Republicans favoring fracking and Democrats opposing it. To which we say: Duh. (For this we need social science?) Anyway, for more about the study, see here.

But you can see that if we left the matter up to the larger number of voters in San Francisco (or just the Denver metro area), fracking would be killed in opposition to the local opinion of people who live with it. Ironic, since those rural rubes provide the fuel for all those fancy Wolf and Viking gas ranges in those fancy professional-grade, two-sink kitchens in the Bay Area.

And this, boys and girls, is why we have the electoral college. (Also property rights, but that’s also a topic for another day.)

Will Somebody Please Hate My Enemies For Me?

Mr French is being sarcastic as he’s one of the big Never-Trumpers

“So my problem with David French’s claim that Christians shouldn’t vote for Trump is that if you take it seriously, Christians shouldn’t vote for anyone because no president in my lifetime was Christ-like enough to meet French’s standard. (No, not even Jimmy Carter, whose public piety is merely cover for a poisonous personality). Now if you want to argue for monastic exclusion from politics, that’s fine (though to my mind stupid). But if you want to argue for it only when Trump is president, then I question your sincerity, and French’s rather pharasaical tone doesn’t help.

But despite his argument, I think even a serious pro-life Christian might conclude that, given a choice between an un-Christ-like politician who is loudly and vigorously in favor of abortion (i.e. any Democrat these days), and an un-Christ-like politician who is without doubt the most pro-life president we’ve ever had, it’s okay to support the latter. French attempts to engage this argument but to my mind he is not successful. I doubt many will find the piece all that persuasive but I think that French’s main intended audience was David French, whose faith in neverTrumpism may need bolstering at this point. And I’m not sure it’s impossible to love your enemies while still trying to kick their ass.

On a broader note, so long as we’re talking about sin, I’ll note that pride and envy seem to play a major role in the NeverTrump movement in general: Pride in (self-proclaimed) moral superiority, and envy of Trump’s accomplishments, which make him by any reasonable measure the most conservative president of my lifetime. I’d suggest some self-reflection on this point'”–Dr Glenn Reynolds

Hate has no place in pro-life America. None. And embracing or defending hate—even hatred of the movement’s most vigorous opponents—for the sake of life contradicts the spirit of the movement and stands to do more harm than good to the political cause that so many Christians value the most.

American Evangelicals represent one of the most powerful religious movements in the world. They exercise veto power over the political success of any presidential candidate from one of America’s two great parties. Yet they don’t wield that power to veto the selection of a man who completely rejects—and even scorns—many of their core moral values.

I fully recognize what I’m saying. I fully recognize that refusing to hire a hater and refusing to hire a liar carries costs. If we see politics through worldly eyes, it makes no sense at all. Why would you adopt moral standards that put you at a disadvantage in an existential political struggle? If we don’t stand by Trump we will lose, and losing is unacceptable.

More Arizona counties approve ‘sanctuary’ resolutions on gun rights

“I’m Bad….I’m Nationwide.”

PRESCOTT, Ariz. – Two more rural Arizona counties have declared themselves to be “Second Amendment sanctuary counties,” taking stances in favor of gun rights even as some supporters of the measures acknowledge they’ll have no or little real legal effect.

The unanimous votes by the boards of supervisors of La Paz County on Monday and Yavapai County on Wednesday follow a similar declaration by Mohave County supervisors on Nov. 4.

The Yavapai County board approved its resolution after previously hearing hours of testimony in December and January. About 120 people packed the meeting room and dozens more filled the lobby Wednesday as 25 people spoke in favor and three against, The Daily Courier reported.

Under the measures, the supervisors vowed to defend state and federal constitutional rights, including the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

The measure also said the supervisors won’t spend public money or use other government resources to enforce laws that unconstitutionally infringe on gun rights.

Many of those who addressed the Yavapai County board urged the supervisors to take a stand, arguing that laws in other states infringed on gun owners’ rights.

“We see this type of total disregard for our Second Amendment rights under attack. This is about our rights, protecting our freedoms and liberty,” Prescott resident Sherrie Hanna said.

 

“WE’RE LOSING OUR **** MINDS”

What he seems to be saying is that the demoncraps should stop with removing their masks and showing that they’re actually commies.
Their problem with Bernie Sanders is that he’s so open with it.

Cast your mind back to 2009, when Democrats, coming off Barack Obama’s convincing victory in the 2008 election, had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a more than ample majority in the House. Happy days are here again! Here comes pro-union card check, higher income taxes, amnesty and open borders, sweeping climate change legislation, and universal health care! It was around this time that James Carville, the impresario behind Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign, confidently declared that Democrats were now set to rule for the next 40 years! He even published a book—40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation

Carville had drunk the Kool Aid of the liberal-Hegelian conceit that demographics and “the side of history” had delivered Democrats into the Promised Land, from whose commanding heights it was Progress as far as the mind’s-eye could imagine. Well, that glorious 40 years quickly became a fast one-way trip to the wilderness, as it didn’t even last 40 months. All liberals got out of that heavily Democratic Congress was . . . Obamacare? And oh what a success that was. No card check for labor unions, no amnesty for illegal immigrants, only a slight increase in income taxes for the very rich, while climate change legislation went down in fossil-fueled flames, as U.S. oil and natural gas production soared. Obama resorted to trying to get some of these things through executive action, but much of that was stymied in the courts or reversed by President Trump, who came to office and said, “Hey look—I found Obama’s pen!” In the 2010 election, the Democrats got creamed, with Republicans achieving their strongest position on all levels in 70 years.

All this came back to mind watching the Democrats’ debate in New Hampshire last night, which occurred conveniently during cocktail hour out here on the Left Coast, so in fact I literally ate popcorn along with adult beverages while I watched the Democratic field show once again that it is running to be president of Twitter more than President of the United States.

And this brings me to the angst of James Carville, who gave an extraordinary interview to MSNBC that has been transcribed by Vox: “We’re Losing Our Damn Minds.” Read the whole thing if your schadenfreude medication is at full strength. Here are a few excerpts:

Sean Illing: Why are you “scared to death” about the 2020 election?

James Carville: Look, the turnout in the Iowa caucus was below what we expected, what we wanted. Trump’s approval rating is probably as high as it’s been. This is very bad. And now it appears the party can’t even count votes. What the hell am I supposed to think? . . . And now it’s like we’re losing our damn minds. Someone’s got to step their game up here.

Sean Illing: Give me an example of what you mean by distractions.

James Carville: We have candidates on the debate stage talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration. They’re talking about doing away with nuclear energy and fracking. You’ve got Bernie Sanders talking about letting criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells. It doesn’t matter what you think about any of that, or if there are good arguments — talking about that is not how you win a national election. It’s not how you become a majoritarian party. . .

Sean Illing: So your complaint is basically that the party has tacked too far to the left?

James Carville: They’ve tacked off the damn radar screen. And look, I don’t consider myself a moderate or a centrist. I’m a liberal. But not everything has to be on the left-right continuum. . .

Here’s another stupid thing: Democrats talking about free college tuition or debt forgiveness. I’m not here to debate the idea. What I can tell you is that people all over this country worked their way through school, sent their kids to school, paid off student loans. They don’t want to hear this shit. And you saw Warren confronted by an angry voter over this. It’s just not a winning message.

The real argument here is that some people think there’s a real yearning for a left-wing revolution in this country, and if we just appeal to the people who feel that, we’ll grow and excite them and we’ll win. But there’s a word a lot of people hate that I love: politics. It means building coalitions to win elections. It means sometimes having to sit back and listen to what people think and framing your message accordingly. . .

James Carville: I want to give you an example of the problem here. A few weeks ago, Binyamin Appelbaum, an economics writer for the New York Times, posted a snarky tweet about how LSU canceled classes for the National Championship game. And then he said, do the “Warren/Sanders free public college proposals include LSU, or would it only apply to actual schools?”

You know how ****** patronizing that is to people in the South or in the middle of the country? First, LSU has an unusually high graduation rate, but that’s not the point. It’s the goddamn smugness. This is from a guy who lives in New York and serves on the Times editorial board and there’s not a single person he knows that doesn’t pat him on the back for that kind of tweet. He’s so fucking smart.

Appelbaum doesn’t speak for the Democratic Party, but he does represent the urbanist mindset. We can’t win the Senate by looking down at people. The Democratic Party has to drive a narrative that doesn’t give off vapors that we’re smarter than everyone or culturally arrogant.

But looking down on people is now a core value for the left, but I’ll need to write a separate post about the serious basis of this. (For academic readers, go back and find John Wettergreen’s dense but profound 1977 essay in the Western Political Quarterly, “Is Snobbery a Formal Value?” Short answer: Yes, yes it is.)

But finally, this:

Sean Illing: Buttigieg seems to model the sort of candidate you think can win.

James Carville: Mayor Pete has to demonstrate over the course of a campaign that he can excite and motivate arguably the most important constituents in the Democratic Party: African Americans. These voters are a hell of a lot more important than a bunch of 25-year-olds shouting everyone down on Twitter.

So he’s not happy. Democrats won’t like Carville when he’s not happy. I wonder if Carville was watching last night, and if so whether there are any un-smashed TV screens left in his house this morning.

Virginia’s Unconstitutional Attack on Gun Owners
Simply because a small number of psychopaths happen to like the aesthetics of a popular gun doesn’t magically transform that firearm something distinctively menacing to American society.

And not just the U.S., but also the Virginia Constitution

Today Virginia Democrats continue their multi-front offensive against the Second Amendment, taking up Governor Ralph Northam’s “assault weapons” ban, magazine limits, and suppressor-confiscation bills in the state house’s Public Safety Committee. That makes it as good time as any to remind people again that “assault weapons” bans are unconstitutional. The quicker an “assault weapon” ban case can be put in front of the Supreme Court — which, granted, has been reluctant to take on new gun cases — the better.

District of Columbia v. Heller found that the Second Amendment protected weapons “in common use by law-abiding citizens.” AR-15-style weapons, the most popular rifle in America, with over a million sold every year, clearly meet this criterion. Everything about the gun, from its mechanisms to its purpose, is common. Notwithstanding the rhetoric you hear from Virginia lawmakers, some appellate-court judges, and gun-control lobby mouthpieces, the AR-15 is not, nor has it ever been, a “weapon of war.” To say so is historically and functionally incorrect. Eugene Stoner, chief engineer of ArmaLite and its parent company, Colt, designed and marketed the AR specifically for civilians in the early 1960s, years before any military version was adopted. The AR-15 is less a “weapon of war” than a 1911 handgun, which the U.S. military adopted from that year to 1986.

Not that we should have any problems with weapons of war being in civilian hands per se. Muskets and flintlock rifles, the predominant guns of the revolutionary era, were also weapons of war. The Founders wanted civilians to own lethal weapons. Sorry, John Kerry, but the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting or recreation, or even predominately about personal home protection. So, yes, ARs are indeed dangerous. That’s the point. But the concerted effort to depict ARs as especially “dangerous and unusual” is only meant to place them outside the protections of Heller.

Indeed, there is no evidence that AR-15s pose a unique threat. Simply because a small number of psychopaths happen to like the aesthetics of a popular gun doesn’t magically transform that firearm something distinctively menacing to American society. Even if one conceded for the sake of argument that the presence of criminality was a sound rationale for restricting constitutional rights — an increasingly popular argument for ignoring the First Amendment, as well — the argument to ban AR-15s would become weaker.

Gun crimes fell precipitously, hitting historic lows, after the federal assault-weapon ban instituted in 1994 expired. In 2018, the last year of FBI data, there were 6,603 Americans murdered by handguns, 297 by rifles (most of them not AR-15s), and 236 by shotguns. (Gun types used in crimes aren’t reported by all police departments, but the trend is almost surely the same.) To put it in perspective, there were 1,604 knife homicides during that same span, and 656 people killed by fists and kicking. ARs are rarely used in crimes.

More important, if the state can ban one type of semi-automatic weapon simply because it looks a certain way or because one type of criminal favors it, what principle would constrain it from banning every semi-automatic weapon? The worst mass shooter in Virginia history did not use an AR but .22-caliber and 9mm handguns. If Northam can ban ARs, what stops him from banning a 9mm? Surely the cheering crowd at a CNN “townhall,” or the average Democratic presidential candidate, would answer, nothing.

Virginia lawmakers are also debating legislation that would make it a felony to possess a magazine that holds more than twelve rounds after January 1st, 2021, which, as Cam Edwards points out, would turn most Virginia gun owners into felons. Another bill would make it illegal to own a silencer. Right now, Americans own over a million silencers for all kinds of reasons — to avoid damaging their hearing or bothering their neighbors — but almost none of them own a silencer for criminal reasons. The ATF reports that there are around 44 silencer-related crimes per year over the past decade — or as Stephen Gutowski noted, something like .003 percent of silencers are used in crimes each year.

For now, most of the bills seem likely to fail. A more draconian state-senate bill that would have authorized the confiscation of assault-style weapons was already discarded. “This is a compromise that takes into account folks’ concerns and is still a good bill that will help reduce mass murders in the commonwealth,” Delegate Mark Levine, the Democrat sponsoring the legislation, told the Associated Press. There’s no evidence that any of these initiatives would make Virginians any safer, nor, as a matter of principle, is preemptively banning Americans from owning a firearm objectively different from confiscating the one they already own. Both are means to stop citizens from owning the gun. Both should be discarded as unconstitutional.