Category: Enemies Domestic

Bills of 2023 | Newsom signs ‘sin tax’ on guns and ammo

Assembly Bill 28 by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, a Woodland Hills Democrat, imposes an 11% excise tax on retailers and manufacturers for sales of guns or ammunition.  

Modeled on a similar federal levy for wildlife conservation, the tax could bring in an estimated $160 million annually for violence intervention programs, school safety improvements and law enforcement efforts to confiscate guns from people who are prohibited from owning them.

Who Supports It

Facing a higher two-thirds threshold for approval, the measure received widespread backing from Democratic lawmakers who argue that it would provide an essential, steady stream of funding to further California’s gun safety efforts. Gun control advocates, physicians and nurses groups, local elected officials and even some police departments also endorsed it.

Who Opposes It 

Gun rights groups contend the tax will unfairly burden lawful owners of firearms, particularly sports shooters and hunters who frequently buy ammunition, because businesses will simply pass the cost on to customers. They have suggested they will sue to stop it. Their complaint was echoed by Republicans and some Democrats who spoke against the measure in the Legislature.

Why It Matters

Lawmakers unsuccessfully pursued sales or excise taxes on guns and ammunition half a dozen times over the past decade, some of which never even got a hearing. Gabriel credited a changing political climate for finally pushing the policy through this session — including parents’ anxiety over regular active shooter drills at schools and widespread anger over last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that tossed long-standing restrictions on carrying concealed weapons.

“The public is demanding this of us,” Gabriel told CalMatters. “They are demanding that we have more solutions, that we protect their kids, to protect their communities.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a vocal proponent of gun safety measures who has repeatedly discouraged legislators from pursuing new taxes in recent years, faced a choice between two key governing principles.

The Governor’s Call

Newsom signed the bill Sept. 26 in an event with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Gabriel and gun safety advocates. The governor, who has been skeptical of tax increases, said this bill is different and will fund school safety, mental health and other violence prevention programs. “This is not a general income tax,” Newsom said. “From my perspective, it’s more of a sin tax.”   

The Biden Administration Hasn’t Just Abandoned You, It’s Actively Trying to Subject You to Invasion

BLUF
It’s too bad none of the scores of journalism contests out there yet offers a fake news category. If one did, the 14 stories chosen by the Trace would be award winners.

The ‘most memorable gun violence journalism of 2023,’ according to the Trace
If there was a Pulitzer category for gaslighting, the stories chosen by the Trace would all be serious contenders.

The Trace, the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s antigun empire, recently published their picks for “The Most Memorable Gun Violence Journalism of 2023.”

If there was a Pulitzer Prize category for gaslighting or agitprop, the 14 stories highlighted by the Trace would all be serious contenders.

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Analysis: A New Twist on the ‘Dangerous and Unusual’ Standard for Gun Bans

A Massachusetts federal judge upheld the commonwealth’s ban on AR-15s and similar rifles this week. His rationale for doing so relied on an idiosyncratic understanding of the rifle’s purported lethality and defensive utility.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV denied a motion for preliminary injunction against Massachusetts’ ban on “assault weapons” and ammunition magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds. He did so by putting a new twist on an old argument. He determined that modern laws banning AR-15s fit within the country’s historical tradition of regulating “dangerous and unusual” weapons.

“The banned weapons are ‘dangerous,’ because they are unreasonably dangerous for ordinary purposes of self-defense due to their extreme lethality and high potential for collateral harm,” Saylor, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in Capen v. Campbell, “and they are ‘unusual,’ because it would be unusual for an ordinary citizen to carry such a weapon on his person on the street for self-defense, or to use it in the home to confront invaders or to protect against personal violence.”

While Saylor is certainly not the first to uphold a hardware ban since the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, his analytical framework for doing so stands out among the rest for its emphasis on the “dangerous and unusual” standard and his understanding of how AR-15s fit in.

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2024—the Year of our Reckoning
Will we meet the challenges or ensure the ongoing decline?

We should remember the now modern proverb of Nixon-era economic advisor Herb Stein to the effect that what cannot go on (without destroying the nation), simply will not go on.

In some sense, the country for recent years has been cruising on the fumes from prior and likely better wiser generations and institutions. In 2024, the tab for our current apathy, toxic politics, and incompetence will come due.

So next year we will likely see the climax to a number of current dangerous ideas, events, and forces, which finally will either overwhelm us or be addressed and remedied. We live in a Neronian age but can recover if we first understand how we got here and the nature of the suicide we are committing.

In 2023, it became clear, to even the most loyal supporters of the Biden administration, that the U.S. has simply lost or indeed forfeited American deterrence abroad. Our enemies do not fear us; our friends do not trust us; and neutrals do not care either way.

After the 2021 Kabul debacle, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 2023 brazen Chinese spy balloon’s uncontested trajectory over the United States, the recent Hamas invasion of Israel, the serial Iranian-fueled terrorist attacks on U.S. installations in the Middle East, and the terrorist Houthis’ veritable absorption of the Red Sea, many of America’s opportunistic enemies drew conclusions and adopted strategies that would have been previously unthinkable.

Either adversaries will be so emboldened to start regional wars—an impotent Iran now brags it will block the entire Mediterranean—or a United States will be shocked into action and have to deter Iran, the Houthis, and Islamic terrorism, while dealing with an opportunistic China eager to annex Taiwan, and Russia determined to finish off Ukraine.

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GIBBON, GUNS AND GOVERNMENT

In the course of writing Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon encountered Mohammed, who pursued the Jews with “implacable hatred” to the end of his life. The historian also called out Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogoth king who invaded Italy in 488 AD and “condescended to disarm the unwarlike natives of Italy, interdicting all weapons of offence, and excepting only a small knife for domestic use.” Call it an early display of the totalitarian mindset.

Wherever they hold sway, modern totalitarians disarm the people of firearms and ammunition. For details, see Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming Jews and “Enemies of the State,” by Stephen Halbrook. Hitler’s National Socialists used the registration records of the Weimar Republic to identify and disarm gun owners.

As Halbrook shows in Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance, the Nazis confiscated all firearms, even antique hunting rifles. That left the people vulnerable to wholesale slaughter. On June 10, 1944, four days after D-Day, troops of the 4th SS Panzer Regiment surrounded the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in central France. The attackers killed 245 women and 207 children, including six below the age of six months.

The 196 men killed included seven Jewish refugees from other parts of France. Of the 648 people murdered in the village, only 50 could be identified. The Nazis locked the women and children in the village church, shot indiscriminately, and set the victims on fire. The rest of the village was then looted and set ablaze.

As the late P.J. O’Rourke explained, this is what happens when those with all the power have all the guns. And to paraphrase inspector Claude Lebel (Michael Lonsdale) in The Day of the Jackal, be in no doubt that this is what the Biden Junta wants.

At every mass shooting, the default government response is to blame guns and make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms. This does not apply, however, to Muslim jihadists like “Soldier of Allah” Maj. Nidal Hasan. At Ford Hood in 2009 Hasan gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers, including Pvt. Francheska Velez, who was pregnant. Hasan wounded more than 30 others, including Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, who took seven bullets from the jihadist.

According to the composite character president David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, this was “workplace violence,” not terrorism or even “gun violence,” and the mass murderer Hasan got better medical treatment than his victims. In 2014, Lunsford sought to explain his plight to the president, who declined to meet with him. The composite character did not proclaim Islamic terrorist attacks in 2015 at San Bernardino (14 dead) and Orlando in 2016, (49 dead) as cases of “gun violence.”

Of all the various forms of government in the world, wrote Gibbon, “an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule.” The buffoonish Biden channels Obama, but the Delaware Democrat shapes up worse. On September 1, 2022, backdropped in red light with Marines at the ready, Biden targeted those who want the nation to be great as the primary threat to America. Biden’s FBI openly follows suit and in August the FBI killed Craig Robertson, a 75-year-old woodworker, for threats he had allegedly posted online.

Recall the Ruby Ridge siege of 1992, when the FBI deployed massive military force against a single family, and FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot dead Vicki Weaver as she held her infant daughter. That case prompted Senate hearings, but so far nothing on Robertson. Biden’s FBI shoots first and avoids questions later, so an escalation of deadly violence is not out of the question. Christmas 2023 may well be joyous, but 2024 shapes up as the year of living dangerously.

The Great Legal War Over Your Freedom

Since the U.S. Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen in 2022, the lower courts have been either trying to apply, or to resist, its directive to decide the validity of restrictions on the basis of the text of the Second Amendment and historical analogues from the time of the Founding. According to the ruling, an activity is presumed to be protected if it involves keeping and bearing arms by the people. The burden is then on the government to find historical precedents to show that a restriction is part of the nation’s history and tradition.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals applied Bruen to the federal ban on gun possession by a person subject to a domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) and found it to violate the Second Amendment. State DVROs are often issued with little pretense of an adversary hearing or are mutually agreed upon in divorces without knowledge that it evokes a federal gun ban.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, U.S. v. Rahimi, and a barrage of amicus briefs have been filed on both sides. Mr. Rahimi faces several state charges involving actual violence, dwarfing the federal possession charge. The amicus brief of the National Rifle Association put it this way: “Rahimi should not only lose his Second Amendment liberties, but he should also lose all of his liberties—if the allegations against him are ultimately proven true with sufficient due process. But constitutional safeguards cannot be set aside to obtain those ends.”

Consider the supposed historical analogues cited by Biden’s Justice Department and its amici—discriminatory laws disarming Catholics, slaves and “tramps”; confiscation of arms by oppressive British monarchs and by our own patriots in the American Revolution (there was a war going on, after all); and wholly irrelevant laws against gun sales to children and intoxicated persons. The Court heard oral arguments in the case on Nov. 7, 2023.

The Third Circuit, in Range v. Merrick Garland, held the federal ban on gun possession by felons to be unconstitutional as applied to a person convicted of a minor, non-violent offense.  Again, no laws in the Founding era disarmed persons who were not dangerous. The government is asking the Supreme Court to hear that case after it decides Rahimi.

When it decided Bruen, the Supreme Court directed the Fourth Circuit to reconsider its upholding of Maryland’s “assault weapon” ban in Bianchi v. Frosh. That court had held that ordinary AR-15 semi-automatic rifles are not really different from machineguns and are “weapons of war most useful in military service,” even though no military force in the world issues them as service rifles.

The Fourth Circuit got right on it, holding its oral argument on Dec. 6, 2022. A year later, crickets. Still no decision. Is it really so hard to apply Bruen’s simple tests, or would the court not like the result?

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Massachusetts Assault Weapon Ban Ruled Constitutional by Judge

Massachusetts’ law prohibiting the possession and sale of some semiautomatic weapons commonly used in mass shootings is acceptable under a recent change to Second Amendment precedent from the US Supreme Court, a federal judge said Thursday.

The National Association for Gun Rights asked the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts to prevent the state from being able to enforce its law, claiming the weapons are protected under the Second Amendment because they were in common use at the time the Second Amendment was adopted.

The banned weapons “are unreasonably dangerous for ordinary purposes of self-defense due to their extreme lethality and high potential for collateral harm,” Chief Judge Dennis Saylor wrote in an order denying the gun rights group’s request to halt enforcement of the law.

This IS NOT the Bruen Standard.

The US Supreme Court held last year in New York State Rifles & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen that state governments must prove a regulation would have been consistent with the nation’s historical regulation of firearms.

Saylor’s decision helps build the jurisprudence for the types of state regulations that remain acceptable under the Second Amendment post-Bruen as many states grapple with challenges to their weapon laws. States like Illinois, California, and Connecticut have also been allowed to move forward enforcing their assault weapon bans.

“The relevant history affirms the principle that in 1791, as now, there was a tradition of regulating ‘dangerous and unusual’ weapons—specifically, those that are not reasonably necessary for self-defense,” the order said, and the current restrictions “pose a minimal burden on the right to self-defense and are comparably justified to historical regulation.”

THIS, is not the Bruen Standard either!

Saylor was not convinced that assault weapons are commonly used for self-defense, finding them “generally unsuitable” for that purpose because of their weight, size, and firepower.

“The features of modern assault weapons—particularly the AR-15’s radical increases in muzzle velocity, range, accuracy, and functionality—along with the types of injuries they can inflict are so different from colonial firearms that the two are not reasonably comparable,” the order said.

The case is Capen v. Campbell, D. Mass., No. 1:22-cv-11431, order 12/21/23.

Civilizational Jenga
Bit by bit, our ruling class is eliminating our societal safety margins

Politics makes me sad sometimes.

Oh, not just because politicians are doing dumb things.  Not even because politicians are corrupt.  Politicians have always been dumb and corrupt, as any study of history will demonstrate.

And it doesn’t matter if they hold office by election, inheritance, or swords distributed by strange women lying in ponds.  Stupidity and corruption are human characteristics, and politicians are very, very human.  (Though recent history is such that strange women lying in ponds distributing swords look better as the basis for a system of government . . . .)

Sometimes their stupidity and corruption make me angry, and sometimes they make me laugh.  But, given my low expectations, it takes a special kind of stupidity and corruption to actually make me sad.

What makes me sad now is the ongoing game of Civilizational Jenga that our ruling class is playing.  One by one, they’re withdrawing the supports of civil society, in a process that will inevitably lead to a collapse.  They’re taking what was a very robust society, and consuming all the safety margins, bit by bit.

What really makes me sad is that while some of the people involved – let’s call them “the morons” for convenience’s sake – are doing this out of shortsightedness, cupidity, or sheer partisan bloodthirstiness, I’m increasingly convinced that there’s a contingent at the top that knows exactly what it’s doing, and is fine with it.

Roger Kimball gets at it in a recent piece:

“This is the same old trick,” Trump said when he got the news that the Colorado Supreme Court voted 4-3 to keep him off the primary ballot for the 2024 presidential election.

Oops. Sorry. I got my papers mixed up. That was actually Abraham Lincoln in 1860 when he got the news that some Southern states had voted to keep him off the ballot. Eventually 10 states did so.

So here we are again. It’s a bit like that Army Major in the Vietnam war who explained that they had to destroy a village in order to save it. Just so, the virtuous people of Colorado have decided that in order to save democracy they need to destroy it.

In fact, what they have just voted to preserve is not democracy but “Our Democracy™.” Here’s the difference. In a democracy, people get to vote for the candidate they prefer. In “Our Democracy™,” only approved candidates get to compete.

Donald Trump is the opposite of an approved candidate. The untrammeled hermeneutical ingenuity of the American legal profession had be let loose against Trump. As I write, he faces huge legal battle in four states. . . .

Trump is guilty not because of anything he has done but because of who he is. He is an enemy, not of the state, exactly, but of the state of mind that constitutes “Our Democracy™.” When he unexpectedly won the presidency in 2016, the beautiful people, beginning with his opponent Hillary Clinton, couldn’t believe it. They denounced the election as fraudulent. “Our Democracy™,” you see,  means “rule by Democrats.”

Now they are warning that, should Trump be reelected, he would be a “dictator,” a new Hitler, etc. He would weaponise the Department of Justice against his enemies, they claim, and use the FBI to harass his opponents. Stay tuned for the seminar on what the Freudians call “projection”: it meets this afternoon in a democratic redoubt near you.

In a more civilized version of America – one that existed just a few decades ago – the notion of waging this sort of unrestricted lawfare against a leading presidential candidate, much less a former president – would have been considered ridiculous, and had it been taken seriously, would have been seen as enormously risky.

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Biden Administration Urges Supreme Court To Overturn Injunction on Federal Agencies Influencing Tech Censorship
Biden wants the Supreme Court to support its censorship efforts.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently affirmed an injunction against federal agencies to stop the current White House from colluding with Big Tech’s social media.

And now, the Biden Administration is going to the US Supreme Court in a last-ditch attempt to reverse this decision.

The big picture effect – or at least, the intended meaning – of the Fifth Circuit ruling was to stop the government from working with Big Tech in censoring online content.

There’s little surprise that this doesn’t sit well with that government, which now hopes that the federal appellate court’s decision can be overturned.

The White House says the ruling is banning its “good” work done alongside social media to combat “misinformation”; instead of admitting its actions to amount to collusion with Big Tech – which has been amply documented now, not least by the Twitter Files – the government insists its actions are serving the public, and its “ability” to discuss relevant issues.

We obtained a copy of the petition for you here.

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is back again here – to say that what those now in power in the US (a message amplified by legacy media) did ahead of the 2020 presidential election, as well as subsequently regarding the pandemic “misinformation” – which is now fairly widely accepted to be censorship (“moderation”) – is what Murthy still calls, justified.

By what, though? Because the appellate court’s ruling looked into the government’s “persuasive actions” (and no, you’re not reading a line from a gangster movie script, where “coercion” is spelled as, “urging”, etc.).

In any case, the appellate court found these actions were in fact coercive and unconstitutional.

Well, Murthy believes the court got it all wrong. The Fifth Circuit is accused of “improperly applying new and unprecedented” remedies. (No – he was not talking about the Covid vaccine(s). The reference was to the court’s allegedly flawed “legal theories”).

Murthy and other administration representatives are telling the Supreme Court that what the Fifth Circuit found to be unconstitutional, was actually “lawful persuasive governmental actions.”

The “grand” argument here is that, historically, US governments have been using free speech as a vehicle to promote their policies. And so – why would this case of “urging” Big Tech be any different?

“The Biden administration’s urging of social media platforms to enforce their content moderation policies to combat misinformation and disinformation is no different,” the government said.

Putting the enemies of civilization in charge of educating our kids may have been a mistake. You think I exaggerate?

“I’ll take ‘Totally Lacking Due Process” for $500, Alex

On Trump and Colorado

By now most readers will have heard that Donald Trump was disqualified from the ballot in the state of Colorado, by the Colorado State Supreme Court, for what amounts to a criminal offense neither proven nor charged. Fifth Amendment, Schmifth Amendment, apparently.

This is a major escalation of the lawfare phenomenon that’s zoomed from simmer to boil in the seven short years since Trump was first elected in 2016. The glee of #Resistance dolts like Robert Reich and Dean Obeidallah at this decision shows that this was a move dreamed up at the very center of the bubble-within-a-bubble-within-a-bubble that is the blob of the modern Democratic Party. Racket readers, I had a piece planned for later on a quasi-related subject, but I’ll try to get it out in the day or so now.

 

Every institution has been corrupted, but they get upset if you call them corrupt.

‘Liberty and Justice For All’ – A Tattered Cliche?

One set of laws for Donald Trump and his supporters, and another set for the harassers.

Throughout history, the tyrannical abuse of governmental power has been a fearsome thing to behold. Wise men instituted laws in an effort to tame that abuse. The Constitution of the United States, for example, was framed in large part as a prophylactic against the coercive power of the state. The Framers witnessed the “long train of abuses and usurpations” perpetrated by the British crown and resolved to respond. The Constitution dealt with many other things, to be sure, but concern about tyrannical abuse of power by the government and its minions is patent from the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence straight through the Constitution and its Amendments. The idea was that we Americans would live in a polity governed by “laws, not men.” That is to say, laws would be legitimately formulated, clearly defined, and administered impartially, so far as was humanly possible. How are we doing on that score?

Not so well.

The terms “administrative state” and “deep state” entered parlance only about seven years ago. The realities those phrases name long predate their currency, but Donald Trump was the lens through which worry about those legitimacy-devouring, essentially tyrannical phenomena crystallized. During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s chief strategist Steven Bannon raised eyebrows when he said that “deconstructing the administrative state” was a high priority. In the event, Trump’s success on that task was only a patchwork affair, but he did make an effort.

What prompts these thoughts is the spectacle, partly risible, partly terrifying, of the federal government’s ongoing vendetta against a single individual it cannot countenance. That individual, of course, is Donald Trump. And while the focus of its vendetta is against Trump the man—or, more precisely, Trump the presidential candidate—its animus has spilled over to embrace anyone tainted by association with the Trump phenomenon. Into this category fall the hundreds of people who had the misfortune to visit the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Opinions differ about the state of popular sentiment when it comes to the current disposition of the United States government. I have by degrees joined the camp that has grave doubts about its legitimacy. I do not, for example, believe that the hallowed ideal of “liberty and justice for all” is these days much more than a tattered cliché, a pious nostrum without substance.

One of the great poster children for this erosion of public support—and, consequently, of political legitimacy—is the FBI. At a time when its operations are so patently partisan, it is hard to maintain confidence in its beneficence. Consider the news about Charles McGonigal, former head of Counterintelligence for the FBI, boss of  FBI love bird Peter “Mr. Insurance Policy” Strzok, and vigorous investigator of the Trump Russia Collusion hoax. Wouldn’t you know it: the chap who went after George Papadopoulos and others in Trump’s circle was just fined and sentenced to four years in prison for—wait for it—colluding with Russia.

You might argue that McGonigal’s comeuppance shows that “the system works,” that the FBI can effectively police itself, etc. I would counter that it is yet another reminder that the deep-state, anti-Trump forces operate primarily by what the Freudians call projection, by being guilty of what they accuse others of. There is a hilarious video collage making the rounds of various pundits and politicians warning that the world, or at least our democratic republic, will come to a sudden and ignominious end if, heaven forfend, Donald Trump should be elected again in 2024. Trump will assassinate generals, you see, shoot visitors to the White House, suspend the Constitution, and kill democracy. It is an inadvertently amusing compilation but also a deeply depressing one since it underscores the sad and debilitating effects of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Trump represents a threat to democracy, ergo he must be prevented from running “by any means necessary,” otherwise so many people might vote for that he would win. That’s the logic. Odd isn’t it? Person X wins in a free and open election. But you don’t like the person. So you declare the election “undemocratic.”

It is here that we must distinguish between “democracy,” which is what would be upheld if Trump were allowed to run, and “Our Democracy™,” that strange, oligarchical confect that can be maintained only by suppressing common, or garden variety democracy.

It is in this context, I believe that we must understand the unhinged legal campaigns unleashed against Trump in four separate jurisdictions.

I say “legal campaigns,” but really they are partisan political assaults masquerading under cover of legal procedures.

That is, they look like legal procedures from the outside; they employ all the paraphernalia of legal procedures. There are courts, lawyers, subpoena, judges.  But  the German Judge Roland Freisler (1893-1945) employed all that machinery, too. He presided over trials.  But he always got the results he wanted.

And this brings me to the activities of Special Counsel Jack Smith, the anti-Trump fanatic and DOJ pit bull who has been charged with taking Trump down in Washington, D.C., where Trump is accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election by “obstructing an official proceeding,” etc., and in Florida, where he is accused of illegally possessing classified documents.

Smith understands that by far his best chance of getting Trump is in Washington—not, I hasten to add, because he has much of a case there but because he has an Obama-appointed anti-Trump judge Tanya Chutkan and a Democratic jury pool that can be counted on to convict Trump on anything he accused of. Andy McCarthy has published a thoroughgoing anatomy of the the legal niceties of the case. He is no friend to Trump, deprecates what he calls his “loathsome behavior,” but does say that he thinks Trump is “being denied due process.” He further acknowledges that the effort to use Section 1512(c) of the federal penal law against Trump will be a “tough case” that is likely to signal “trouble for Smith.”

It’s the opposite in Florida, where the judge is a Trump-appointed jurist and the jury pool is likely to be sympathetic to Trump. In my view, Trump’s possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is no different from Biden’s possession of classified documents in his garage behind his Corvette. Rather, Trump’s case was less egregious than Biden’s. For one thing, Biden was never president.  He had many more documents, in many more, less secure places. And remember: all modern presidents seem to have possession of classified documents after they leave office, but not all former presidents are Donald Trump.

Trump’s lawyers have appealed the Washington case and, in response, Smith has asked the Supreme Court to bypass the usual appeal process and take the case on an expedited schedule. Why? Because the Washington trial was set to begin on March 4, a day before “Super Tuesday,” at which Trump is likely to seal the GOP nomination. Smith hoped that an early trial would harm Trump with voters. So far, legal attacks agains Trump have had the opposite effect, increasing his standing in the polls. That is because voters understand that the legal challenges are legal in name only. At bottom, they are instances of bare-knuckle political warfare.

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial whose slug got to the nub of the issue. “The special counsel,” it read, “tries to drag the Justices into his political timetable for the Jan. 6 trial of Donald Trump.” That’s it exactly. Smith wants the Court to decide now, today, so he can pursue his vendetta against Trump on the time table the election calendar has set. Most observers believe that the Court will be more circumspect. The writers of that editorial caution that “The wiser decision would have been to lay out the facts of what the special counsel found and let the voters decide. They chose to prosecute, and the damage has begun to unfold.”

I was talking to a friend about about Smith’s case. He responded “It sounds like the judiciary/prosecution is corruptly trying to interfere with an official proceeding, i.e., the election.” That’s pretty much what I think, too, though I don’t expect Jack Smith to be charged for the tort. Remember, there is one law for Donald Trump and his supporters. They can be harassed, prosecuted, and jailed. There is another law for the nomenklatura that does the harassing, prosecuting, and jailing.

Christian Nationalism

We’re being told that we should be afraid of this:

And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set down, his disciples came unto him. And opening his mouth, he taught them, saying:
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.

Blesses are the peacemakers: for they shall be called children of God.
Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you.

     [Matthew 5:1-12]

And this:

And behold one came and said to him: Good master, what good shall I do that I may have life everlasting?

Who said to him: Why asketh thou me concerning good? One is good, God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
He said to him: Which? And Jesus said: Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness. Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

     [Matthew 19:16-19]

And this:

But the Pharisees hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, came together: And one of them, a doctor of the law, asking him, tempting him: Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.

     [Matthew 22:34-40]

But we’re not supposed to be afraid of this:

“Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for Holy Warriors! These are hundreds of other psalms and Hadiths urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.” — Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

“The minarets are our bayonets; the domes are our helmets. Mosques are our barracks, the believers are soldiers. This holy army guards my religion. Almighty Our journey is our destiny, the end is martyrdom.” — Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister of Turkey

Those who believe fight in the way of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the way of the Shaitan. Fight therefore against the friends of the Shaitan; surely the strategy of the Shaitan is weak. [Koran, Sura 4:76]

“I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them.” [Koran, Sura 8:12]

“But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem…” [Koran, Sura 9:5]

“Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, of the people of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.” [Koran, Sura 9:29]

“O Prophet! Struggle against the unbelievers and hypocrites and be harsh with them.” [Koran, Sura 9:73]

Puzzling, eh?

***

It’s becoming rare that my boiler gets lit over anything, these days. I’ve said too much…written too much. But among my remaining hot buttons, this one may be the hottest: people who promote contempt toward Christianity and malice toward Christians. From the way they whine and rave, you’d think we had our hands in their pockets, if not down their pants.

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Hamas Calls for Violence Against Americans, and So Does This Michigan Imam

Could the war in Israel spread to the United States? Sure. Some people want it to.

Hamas has never made a secret of the fact that its goal of destroying Israel is just part of a larger jihad to conquer the entire world for Islam. And so it was inevitable, both in light of that aspiration and the Biden regime’s shaky but still subsisting support for Israel’s defensive effort, that Hamas jihadis would call for violence against Americans. What is more surprising, at least for those who have bought into the comforting establishment fictions that have been circulating since 9/11, is that one such call came from right here at home.

Hamas operative Sami Abu Zuhri recently proclaimed that Biden regime Secretary of State Antony Blinken, despite pressuring Israel to go easy on the warriors of jihad, was just as bad as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “When Blinken is justifying the killing of women and children, the sons of our nation should say to him: You are the enemy, just like Netanyahu, and you must pay the price, just like Netanyahu. We should keep this in mind.” Yes, we should indeed.

If you’re wondering when exactly Blinken justified the killing of women and children, the answer, of course, is never. Blinken has actually parroted Hamas propaganda in warning Israel that it must do more to reduce civilian deaths, when in reality the number of civilians killed in Gaza compares favorably to the death toll of civilians in other recent conflicts, notably the battle of Mosul against ISIS in Iraq.

Nevertheless, Abu Zuhri wants to see American blood: “Now it is our nation’s turn to pressure the Americans to stop this war. We need violent acts against American and British interests everywhere, as well as the interests of all the countries that support the occupation.”

It’s hard to see how those who call for violence against people who have nothing to do with the conflict have the moral high ground, and those who are doing all they can to limit civilian casualties deserve the opprobrium of the entire world; we’d need an American university student to explain that.

Meanwhile, an echo of this call for jihad terror attacks against Americans came from a Muslim cleric, Ahmad Musa Jibril. Jibril, “whose hate-filled sermons,” according to a Friday report in the New York Post, “were said to have inspired the London Bridge terrorist attack,” is not in Britain, or in Baghdad or Balochistan. Jibril was born in Dearborn, Michigan, and while his current whereabouts are murky, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) identifies him as a “Michigan Islamic scholar,” and the Twitter/X account that posted his call for jihad in America states that it is operating out of Chicago and is “managed by students.” Jibril, who did hard time in the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex for fraud, money laundering, unlawful possession of firearms and more, clearly has considerable influence among Muslims in the United States.

Contradicting the false narrative Americans have been fed for two decades now, Jibril declared: “Yes, there is holy war in Islam, it is jihad. This may be a surprise to many who grew up in the West, especially those who were born or grew up post 9/11, because of the growing number of hypocrites, who are spreading the American-Zionist Islam, and it has nothing to do with Islam, that version of Islam is and Islam that suits the enemies.” He added that “the one who has been spreading that there is no holy war in Islam, has been defecating heresy out of his mouth for the past 20 years, downplaying the legislation of Allah and the Islamic punishments.”

That would include virtually all of the prominent Islamic spokesmen in the U.S. As far as Jibril is concerned, the only people who had it right about jihad and Islam were the ones who were (and still are) vilified, marginalized, and silenced as “Islamophobes.” And now he wants Muslims in the U.S. to start taking this holy war seriously: “The Muslims in the West, especially the youth in the West, especially the youth in America, need to wake up. The current events are a wake-up call for Muslims to start normalizing mentioning jihad’s proper meaning, and putting it back into their vocabulary. Jihad must be a common, normal term on your tongues, on your social media, and in the mosques and elsewhere.

This should, he said, be a matter of lifelong indoctrination: “It’s time the mothers nurse their infants with the love of jihad and the ambition to become a mujahid and a martyr.” A martyr in the Islamic sense is one who acts upon Allah’s promise of paradise in the Qur’an to those who “kill and are killed.” America said Jibril, is “a vicious enemy of Muslims.” And so the import of his words was clear: Muslims need to wage jihad against America. While the Biden regime’s FBI hunts for “white supremacist terrorists” and Jan. 6 “insurrectionists,” some young men in America right now are heeding the words of Ahmed Musa Jibril.

The Self-Described “Subversive” Dance Group the Bidens Invited to the White House.

Yesterday I posted a short note about the dance company that the Bidens invited to the White House to perform as part of their Christmas celebration. I simply linked to Jill Biden’s video of the performance with a short note that observed that this was how the Bidens, who profess to be Catholics, celebrate the birth of Christ. I had intended to let the video speak for itself and to let the viewers draw their own conclusions. I still want that. But I was prompted by a comment from one of my subscribers to do a little research into Dorrance Dance, the dance company featured in the White House performance. What I found was a surprise, although perhaps it should not have been.

I learned that the Dorrance Dance is not just another entertainment group that happens to specialize in tap dancing. Rather, it is an ultra-radical political organization that designs and intends its performances to be “subversive.” The company’s statements and recommendations on its website provide the context that explains what it means when it says that its dancing is meant to be “subversive.” I summarize this below.

Mrs. Biden’s post says that the video is a “playful interpretation of The Nutcracker Suite.” Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite was first performed as a ballet in 1892. It was centered around a young girl’s Christmas eve and her adventures with her nutcracker doll, who came alive as a charming prince. With its performances including Christmas trees, toys, candy, snowflakes and, the joy in seeing a young child’s wonderment at the ideal of a symbol of love come to life, it naturally has become famous as a celebration of Christmas.

The abbreviated jazzed-up tap dance version of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece performed by the Dorrance Dance company, and on display at the Biden White House, is not intended as a celebration of Christmas. Rather, it is intended to subvert traditional values, such as Christmas.

Don’t take my word for it – Dorrance Dance says on its own website that “At its core, tap dance is a subversive form.” “Subversion” has been defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “trying to destroy or damage an established system or government.”

The White House almost certainly knew that Dorrance Dance was a subversive company and intentionally so. Public performers at the White House are vetted for security reasons. One of those reasons, presumably, is to identify potentially subversive actors who should be scrutinized closely. Certainly, at a minimum, the White House staff and Secret Service would scrutinize the web site of a company such as Dorrance Dance. They would want to know the identity and backgrounds of the performers who would be coming to the White House.

When the Secret Service and the White House staff checked out Dorrance Dance, this is what they would have found (among other things) that provides the context for its pledge to be “subversive”:

· “It is our job to tell the history of tap dance as a celebration of Black culture and also the never-ending struggle against systemic racism and white supremacy in this country – the origin story of appropriation in American culture.” [All bolded emphasis is added.]

· “The answer to police violence is not ‘reform.’ It’s defunding.”

·     White people should “Join fights to defund the police.”

And statements by the founder of the company, Michelle Dorrance:

·     “I am a white tap dancer with Black cultural ancestors in a society that privileges white people and whiteness.”

·     “It is from this place of white privilege that I invite you to join me in lifelong antiracism work. Understanding how deeply embedded white supremacy, racism, and colonialism is in our culture is paramount to understanding our role (as white people) in perpetuating it and embracing our job to dismantle it.”

In short, even a casual look at Dorrance Dance’s website would have revealed its constant references to “whiteness,” “white privilege,” “white supremacy,” “systematic racism,” and the like. Any reviewer also would see that Dorrance Dance has sounded the call to do away with prisons and policing, and that it has endorsed the likes of Ibram A. Kendi “(who has argued that “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”), as well as racist ideas such as the 1619 Project (which has been discredited for, among other things, its false argument that one of the principal reasons for the American Revolutionary War was to preserve slavery). All this makes clear that its agenda is one of radical and political activism and the “subversion” of traditional – and necessary – values and institutions (such as the police!).

We must presume that the Secret Service brought these red flags to the attention of the President, the First Lady, and/or their senior staffs. There is no other possible conclusion other than, perhaps, sheer incompetence. Yet, they went forward with the Dorrance Dance performance anyway. Why? Because it is what they wanted.

The Bidens and their staffs plainly agreed to a White House Christmas celebration that was intended to be “subversive” of traditional American values.  That should not be a surprise because it was a decision aligned with numerous other well-documented Biden policies and initiatives that are trying to subvert — “to destroy or damage”— the traditional American “system,” — a system that has brought unprecedented wealth and security to millions of people of all races and origins.

No. These domestic enemies need prosecution

THEY SKIPPED CIVICS
SENATOR CORY BOOKER NEEDS A REFRESHER COURSE ON RIGHTS

It’s as if the gun control crowd doesn’t want me to retire, because the Capitol Hill clown show seems to be taking every federal court rejection of extremist gun control as a challenge rather than a lesson in civics and the Constitution.

Last month, U.S. Senator Cory “I am Spartacus” Booker of New Jersey and a handful of his Beltway buddies — the “usual suspects,” of course — introduced a stinker known as the “Federal Firearms Licensing Act.” Otherwise dubbed S. 3212, it reads like the handiwork of someone who either slept through American Government in high school or skipped it altogether. The bill was read twice and referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Here are the highlights:

“Except as provided in subsection (d), it shall be unlawful for any individual to purchase or receive a firearm unless the individual has a valid Federal firearm license.

“The Attorney General shall establish a Federal system for issuing a Federal firearm license to eligible individuals for firearms transferred to such individual.

“(2) REQUIREMENTS.—The system established under paragraph (1) shall require that—
“(A) an individual shall be eligible to receive such a license if the individual—
“(i) has completed training in firearms safety, including—
“(I) a written test, to demonstrate knowledge of applicable firearms laws; and
“(II) hands-on testing, including firing testing, to demonstrate safe use and sufficient accuracy of a firearm; and
“(ii) as part of the process for applying for such a license—
“(I) has submitted to a background investigation and criminal history check of the individual;
“(II) has submitted proof of identity;
“(III) has submitted the fingerprints of the individual; and

“(IV) has submitted identifying information on the firearm that the person intends to obtain, including the make, model, and serial number, and the identity of the firearm seller or transferor.”

If you liked the above, you’ll love what follows:

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Netanyahu, Israeli FM to Biden: We’re Destroying Hamas Whether You Like It or Not

Before we get to this direct rejection of the Biden/Blinken ‘credit’ argument, let’s go over the background that led to it. Under pressure from progressive anti-Semites in his party, Joe Biden growled yesterday about Israel’s supposedly “indiscriminate” bombing campaign in Gaza. His comments at a campaign event yesterday sent shock waves through the US media:

“Israel’s security can rest on the United States,” Biden stated during a campaign event Tuesday, as he touted his government’s strong support of Israel. …

“But they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place” in Gaza, Biden said, in a statement that implied Israel was needlessly targeting civilians.

The context of the event mattered in this case. Biden was in campaign mode, and as such, Biden apparently felt compelled to pander to his progressive wing on Israel. While agreeing that Hamas are “animals” and need to be held “accountable,” Biden then compared Israel’s campaign in Gaza to World War II, and claimed “Bibi” made the comparison:

It was pointed out to me — I’m being very blunt with you all — it was pointed out to me that — by Bibi — that “Well, you carpet-bombed Germany. You dropped the atom bomb. A lot of civilians died.”

I said, “Yeah, that’s why all these institutions were set up after World War Two to see to it that it didn’t happen again — it didn’t happen again. Don’t make the same mistakes we made at 9/11. There was no reason why we had to be in a war in Afghanistan at 9/11. There was no reason why we had to do some of the things we did.”

I’m not sure what point Biden thinks he was making. Is he criticizing the Allied war actions of World War II, which destroyed the Nazis and liberated half a continent? Would he have recommended cutting a deal with Hitler instead and leaving the Nazis in place? Is he criticizing Truman for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (As I explained in August, there were good reasons to make that choice, some of which apply in this conflict.) Does Biden think we “carpet-bombed” Afghanistan? If the answer to any of these is “yes,” then Biden is far more ignorant than even we assumed.

At any rate, it seems unlikely that Netanyahu actually made an argument based on “carpet-bombing,” because that is clearly not what the IDF is doing in Gaza. (That part smells like Biden’s typical self-serving fabulism.) The IDF has chosen to use ground troops and narrow targeting of Hamas-infiltrated infrastructure rather than use bunker-busters that would eliminate some of the risk to its own soldiers. Even the New York Times tacitly acknowledged the falsity of Biden’s claim in a rather useful deep-dive analysis of “proportionality” today. Steven Erlanger debunks the idea that “proportionality” has anything to do with equating body counts, as well as that “symmetry” is a legal requirement in wars, especially when one side starts it as part of an annihilation effort.

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