Reality Caught Up to ‘Climate Change.’

For decades, the monolithic and sacrosanct international climate change hierarchy went unquestioned.

Western nations in particular spent trillions of dollars over the past half-century to subsidize expensive but erratic wind and solar energy while demonizing carbon fuels as toxic threats to the planet.

Like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion dogma, climate change orthodoxy was embedded into every aspect of Western culture, from the corporate boardroom to the university campus.

Question whether man-made global warming was truly responsible for increased temperatures rather than natural, often centuries-long cycles of heating and cooling of the planet, and one was labeled a climate crank.

Everything from declining fertility to forest fires was ridiculously attributed to climate change.

But the causes of both demographic crises and charred landscapes were more likely the result of new affluent lifestyles that saw child-rearing as too expensive and time-consuming, and misguided forest policies or underfunded firefighting.

Yet reality has caught up with the near-religious climate change cult.

One, the left-wing tech billionaires—exemplified by former climate change zealot Bill Gates—have become apostates of the green movement. Now they do not warn of a planet threatened by too much man-made heat but rather by too little man-made kilowattage.

They believe artificial intelligence will prove as transformative as the Industrial Revolution. But to win the AI revolution will require vast increases in electricity production, of up to a staggering 100 gigawatts a year of additional capacity.

Such enormous demand—to build the equivalent of a hundred huge power plants per year—is far beyond the ability of “renewables” alone.

Instead, the only solution is an “all of the above” strategy of building more nuclear, natural gas, clean-coal, wind, and solar generation plants.

Two, ascendant China’s massive arms buildup and its bullying Belt and Road imperialism have finally put international “climate accords” into question.

Even the environmentalist King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden has recently let it slip that he is troubled by why Europe sandbagged its own economy by shutting down its formerly efficient nuclear and fossil fuel plants. He reminded the world that the European Union nations contribute only six percent of the planet’s carbon emissions.

The West finally realizes that a cynical China has been playing it for years by funding green propaganda abroad.

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This Gun Case Harks Back to Constitutional Concerns About the Limits of Federal Power That Now Seem Quaint
Congress justified that National Firearms Act of 1934 as a revenue measure—a rationale undermined by the repeal of taxes on suppressors and short-barreled rifles.

Testifying in favor of the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934, Attorney General Homer S. Cummings noted that the federal government “of course” had “no inherent police powers to go into certain localities and deal with local crime.” Rather, “it is only when we can reach those things under the interstate commerce provision, or under the use of the mails, or by the power of taxation, that we can act.”

Cummings explained how “the power of taxation” worked in this context: “If we made a statute absolutely forbidding any human being to have a machine gun, you might say there is some constitutional question involved. But when you say, ‘We will tax the machine gun,’ and when you say that the absence of a license showing payment of the tax has been made indicates that a crime has been perpetrated, you are easily within the law.”

Last July, Congress eliminated that legal pretext for several NFA provisions by repealing the federal taxes on sound suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns. That change, several gun rights groups argue in a memorandum they filed last Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, fatally undermines the constitutional rationale for the NFA’s requirement that dealers and owners register those products, which was supposed to facilitate the collection of the taxes.

The case, which Reason‘s Brian Doherty covered after the original complaint in Brown v. ATF was filed on August 1, might seem of little moment unless you own the covered products or would like to acquire them. But the lawsuit goes to the heart of congressional authority to intervene in matters that were long understood to be outside the federal government’s purview.

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Every Republican president is Hitler, until the next Hitler comes along, and the former Hitler is transformed into a wizened elder statesman to attack the current Hitler. – Glenn Reynolds

Gun Safety Part of Curriculum in Arkansas, Tennessee, Utah

Arkansas, Tennessee and Utah have something in common this year which recently caught the attention of network news.

All three are now teaching firearms safety in their public schools at all three levels: elementary, middle and high school, according to NBC News. The project includes what the story refers to as “5 basics of guns safety” including proper storage and what to do if a youngster finds a firearm. It’s a simple message which became widely known when it appeared as part of the National Rifle Association’s popular “Eddie Eagle” program: “Stop, Don’t Touch, Leave Quickly, Tell an Adult.” The original language was “Stop, Don’t Touch, Leave the Area, Tell an Adult.” However, the reports attributed the phrase to “hunter education courses.”

As reported by The Independent, “The new laws require teaching students about gun safety and proper storage, though only Utah’s legislation includes an opt-out provision for parents.” Interestingly, The Independent noted in its report that the gun safety project is supported by Republicans and “some non-partisan groups,” but “faces criticism from gun control advocates who argue it shifts responsibility from adults to children.”

ABC News reported that a similar law in Arizona was vetoed “by the Democratic governor.” In 2023, Gov, Katie Hobbs vetoed House Bill 2332, which was opposed by gun control proponents and criticized by the American Academy of Pediatrics, according to the Arizona Mirror.

At the time, Hobbs asserted in her veto message, “Mandatory firearm training in schools is not the solution to gun violence prevention. This requirement could lead to immediate and long-term impacts on the health and wellbeing of students, teachers, and parents.”

The network also reported, “lawmakers in at least five other states have introduced such proposals, putting schools at the forefront of yet another debate about gun violence.”

How important is such a class? Both networks referred to what happened in a fifth grade class at Berclair Elementary in Memphis. When the 16 students were asked how many had seen a real firearm, “nearly all raised their hands.”

The key thing about these gun safety courses in schools is that students do not touch any firearms.

By some estimates, there are as many as 300- to 400 million privately-owned firearms in the U.S.

Democrats’ Favorite Talking Point About Children And Gun Deaths Is A Lie.

Gun control advocates often claim that guns are the leading cause of death among children — but that is false.

Earlier this year, Virginia’s new governor-elect, Democrat Abigail Spanberger, demanded new gun control laws, calling guns “the number one killer of kids in our country.” Other Democrats such as North Carolina’s Democrat Gov. Josh Stein also mentioned it. In June, the Ad Council launched a $10 million campaign touting the “alarming statistic — gun injuries at the number one killer of children and teens in this country.” And, of course, there were parting shots from Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, literally days before they left office earlier this year, pushing the claim.

Over the last couple of years, the media has continually pushed the assertion regarding children being at risk. The Washington Post’s headline warned: “Why guns are America’s number one killer of children.” An NPR headline wrote: “Firearms overtook auto accidents as the leading cause of death in children” and the BBC noted: “Gun deaths were the leading killer of US children in 2020.” Fact-checkers from Newsweek to Snopes also push these claims.

What defines a child? For those under 18, vehicle deaths consistently outnumber firearm deaths. But in 2023 they were essentially tied. The combined total of unintentional deaths, homicides, and suicides reached 2,580 for vehicles and 2,581 for firearms. Yet those firearm numbers make the two causes seem closer than they are, because they include “justifiable homicides” — cases in which civilians or police shot young offenders who posed deadly threats.

When we exclude those justified killings and use the FBI’s count of murders instead, the firearm total drops by more than four hundred, from 2,581 to 2,166 deaths.

About 72 percent of firearm homicides involving minors occur among 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds alone make up about 57 percent of those cases. These killings overwhelmingly stem from gang activity, and even a total gun ban would do little to stop gangs from obtaining weapons to protect their highly valuable drug supplies.

So even if we classify 17-year-old gang members as “children,” the gun control claim doesn’t hold up. In 2019 and 2020, more minors died from suffocation than from firearms, and the two causes were nearly equal in 2022 and 2023.

If we define children as those under 15, motor vehicle deaths far exceed firearm deaths. From 2019 through 2023, motor vehicle deaths were 64 percent to 153 percent higher than firearm deaths (excluding justified homicides), while suffocation deaths were more frequent in 2019 and 2020, and similar in later years.

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Gun Control Orgs Ready to Floor It in Virginia As Soon As Spanberger Takes Office.

On November 4, Virginia elected its first woman governor, Democrat Abigail Spanberger.

It also got something else: another chance to pass comprehensive gun reform, something the majority-Democrat General Assembly had tried to do for the past two years, but was stymied by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin.

Youngkin has vetoed 42 gun reform bills since he took office in 2022, including an assault weapons ban, a prohibition on abusive dating partners owning guns, and a minimum age for rifle purchases, according to a Trace analysis. He vetoed 24 of those bills in 2024 alone. The following year, Democrats reintroduced 15 of the same bills — plus three new ones — knowing they had little chance of passage. Now, with Spanberger set to be sworn in on January 17, Democrats are mobilizing for another try.

“We’re not going to take our foot off the gas,” State Senator Adam Ebbin, who chairs the Legislature’s gun violence prevention caucus, told The Trace. Ebbin plans to reintroduce the bills he sponsored that were vetoed by Youngkin last year. “I know that we’ll have others as well who are strategizing on it currently,” he said of his fellow Democratic lawmakers. “So there’ll be a substantial gun safety package reintroduced. And I expect the bills to be signed.”

“We have consistently voted for gun safety reform, and our voters prioritize it,” Ebbin added. “Governor-elect Spanberger is on the right side of those issues.”

Spanberger, who represented the Fredericksburg area in Congress until this year, has been a gun reform advocate since before she embarked on a career in politics. A former CIA operations officer, Spanberger joined a local chapter of the gun reform group Moms Demand Action shortly after she left the agency in 2014, according to a Washington Post profile.

— Jennifer Mascia in Virginia’s Election of a Democratic Governor Primes the State for Gun Reform

The 12 gun bills passed by the Colorado legislature this year and signed into law.

Democrats in the Colorado legislature this year passed a dozen bills imposing new gun regulations, all of which were signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis.

They included measures limiting who can purchase most semiautomatic rifles on the market today, raising the minimum age to buy ammunition and aiming to improve Colorado’s response to mass shootings.

While some don’t go into effect until next year, and a few are sure to draw legal challenges from gun rights groups, they represent some of the most wide-reaching changes to Colorado’s firearms laws ever adopted.

Here’s a breakdown of what gun measures the legislature passed this year and what they will do.

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Did anyone actually believe HAMAS was going to keep its promises?

You almost — almost — have to respect Hamas for the sheer audacity of today’s announcement.

Welp, So Much for Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan

Surprising almost nobody, Hamas today rejected essential points in Phase 2 of President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan with defiant conditions that the fractured terrorist group is in zero condition to enforce.

In a statement before today’s UN vote on Trump’s proposal, Hamas (translation courtesy of open-source intel guy “Raylan Givens“) said it opposes “the disarmament of Gaza” and insisted that “any discussion about weapons will be within a Palestinian framework related to ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state.”

Calling Trump’s plan “dangerous,” Hamas described it as “an attempt to impose international guardianship over the Strip” and claimed that “humanitarian aid could become a tool of blackmail that pushes out UNRWA and Palestinian institutions.”

“Any international force must be directly subordinate to the UN and work in coordination with the official Palestinian institutions, without the participation of the occupation,” Hamas said in reference to Israel in that last bit. Hamas wants the UN to run things because the UN is friendly to Hamas and hostile to Israel. UNRWA — the UN organization responsible for “relief” in Gaza — is essentially run by Hamas.

But guess what? Losing is supposed to suck — and it’s exactly what ought to happen when you start a war with the murder of 1,100 or so civilians and kidnap 250 others.

None of this is to imply that Trump’s plan was a total failure. Implementation of Phase 1 got all 20 living hostages back to Israel and the bodies of around 20 others murdered while held under Hamas’ tender mercies. Only three bodies are believed left in Gaza.

You almost — almost — have to respect Hamas for the sheer audacity of today’s announcement. The terrorist organization doesn’t merely assert a legal sovereignty it never had, it also acts as though it hadn’t been thoroughly beaten on the field of battle, or that the only reason there are still any of them left in Gaza is the same ceasefire they just rejected.

That’s enough to make me wonder, if only for a moment, whether President Trump should have stayed hands-off until Israeli forces had completely occupied the Strip and eliminated Hamas. But then I think of those hostages, finally home after two hellish years. Trump’s ceasefire also gave Israel much-needed diplomatic breathing space, particularly from our so-called allies in London, Paris, and Ottawa, hell-bent on legitimizing Hamas. Now, when the ceasefire fails, the onus is on Hamas for choosing war over peace.

So, yeah, even with Phase 2 effectively Tango-Uniform, Trump’s diplomacy was worth it. Phase 1 didn’t do anything to help Hamas, but it did get nearly all of the hostages home, dead or alive.

What happens next? Well, if Hamas doesn’t want a ceasefire, there’s no reason for Israel to keep the IDF on its side of the ceasefire line for one second longer than it takes to lock and load, if that’s what the government decides is right.

As Richard DeCamp wryly noted on X this morning, “So what I’m taking away from that is Hamas wants Israel to finish the job.”

What other choice has Hamas left them?

WSJ Launches Another Attack on ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws

In late October, the Wall Street. Journal ran a big piece claiming that “it’s easier than ever to kill someone in America and get away with it,” because of Stand Your Ground laws. The paper claimed that justifiable homicides by civilians increased by 59% from 2019 through 2024 in a “large sample of cities and counties” in 30 states with Stand Your Ground statutes, compared with a  smaller 16% in in total homicides in the same jurisdictions.

As we noted at the time, the WSJ’s piece had several flaws, including ignoring the fact that, besides the 30 states with Stand Your Ground statutes, there are another eight states where Stand Your Ground is found in common law. And importantly, the paper’s investigation didn’t really spend any time at all considering whether the law is allowing more people to legitimately act in self-defense.

Well, now the WSJ is out with a followup of sorts, this one allegedly focusing on “the self-defense cases that made Jacksonville No. 1 in legal homicides.” And yet again, the paper’s reporting alleges that Stand Your Ground laws are letting an untold number of people get away with murder.

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BLUF
They gaslit America for years, censored the truth, and rewrote intelligence reports to keep Trump from being proven right. Now the cover-up is unraveling, but half the country still believes the lie. PJ Media has been sounding the alarm on Deep State corruption from Day One, and we’re not backing down.

Kash Patel Drops Covid Origin Bombshell

FBI Director Kash Patel dropped a bombshell during a recent interview with Glenn Beck, and anyone who has watched the federal bureaucracy sabotage President Trump at every turn will recognize the pattern instantly. Patel walked through how the Trump administration evaluated intelligence about the virus in the early days and how that assessment collided with a coordinated effort inside the bureaucracy and the media to protect China, shield Anthony Fauci, and deny Trump credit for getting it right.

Patel reminded Beck that the team briefed Trump based on the intelligence they had. Trump listened, weighed the facts, and acted. Then the usual suspects stepped in: “Then enter Fauci and the media. ‘No, no, no. The Chinese would never do this. It’s not about… No, no, it didn’t come from that.’ Then the wet bat thing came out and some other goofy whatever.”

We all remember what went down. Fauci played the patronizing scientist. The legacy media enforced the talking points. Big Tech censored any dissent. The establishment insisted the virus emerged from some Wuhan wet market and treated anyone who questioned that tale like a threat to democracy.

Patel then pointed out the bombshell that dropped just weeks ago. According to him, former CIA Director Gina Haspel “authorized six case officers and intelligence analysts to be paid off so that they would change their assessment on COVID originations.”

“That’s a CIA institutional decision to spend taxpayer dollars to lie to the world where COVID came from because it fit the narrative that Fauci and the media wanted out there, along with Gina Haspel, because she didn’t want Donald Trump to get the credit for reading the intel right and making the hard right decision,” he said.


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