No Holds Barred: Barr & Durham Must Investigate Obama & Biden Too.

Roger L. Simon

Roughly a week ago Attorney General William Barr made two noteworthy comments in an interview with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo.

The first was that we would likely learn some significant information from John Durham’s investigation into the provenance and conduct of the Russia probe by end of summer.

The implication was that some people were going to be in legal jeopardy. Barr didn’t name them but we can imagine Messrs. Brennan, Comey, Clapper, Strzok, McCabe and so on could be among them.

It’s also noteworthy how these same individuals have suddenly been less in the public eye, not appearing ad nauseam on MSNBC and CNN and sparing us their tweets (mostly), perhaps on advice of counsel.

All to the good. May justice finally be served.

But Barr’s second major point raised some eyebrows in conservative and libertarian circles. He averred that former president Barack Obama and former vice president Joe Biden were not under investigation.

One can imagine his reasons. The attorney general has long said he wants to take the politics out of justice and he could fear, with some justification, that indicting (or doing something similar to) Obama and/or Biden would divide a country already riven as never since the Civil War.

Of course that didn’t stop the other side that investigated, and continues to investigate, President Trump until the proverbial cows come home, but, as Gandhi famously told us, an eye for an eye has got to stop somewhere.

Nevertheless, something is wrong here, increasingly wrong as we were reminded just the other day by the release of yet another heretofore “lost” (or was it missing?) page of notes—riddled with redactions, needless to say—from the Department of Justice, this one the scribblings of disgraced FBI Lothario Peter Strzok himself.

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Hmmm, Nitro Zeus, or its successor may still be in operation.


Report: Massive Explosion in Tehran, Blackout in Shiraz.

Tehran (AFP) – A gas tank explosion rocked Tehran overnight near a military complex that had come under scrutiny five years ago from the UN nuclear watchdog, Iran’s defence ministry said Friday.

The tanks blew up at around midnight, with Fars news agency saying “a number of social media users reported seeing an orange light” in the east of the Iranian capital.

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This is not the French Revolution; it is the acting out of spoiled, ignorant and ungrateful thugs

As Americans watch some of our major cities ravaged by rioting, looting, and the vandalism or destruction of monuments to our nation’s past with impunity, it is, for those of us of a certain age, a moment to reflect on the depredations of the French Revolution. But let us not be confused by the differences.

The French Revolution took its cues from our own Revolutionary War for independence from England, but theirs went all wrong. The devastatingly poor of Paris were well and truly abused by the Parisian aristocracy. They were treated as less than human.

Of course, the British aristocracy thought the same of the American colonists, but they were by an ocean removed, and the colonists were made of sterner stuff than the Brits sent to defeat them for England.

The Jacobins of France in 1789 had good reason to set about murdering their abusers and got rabidly carried away, killing by guillotine every member of the aristocracy they could capture as well as anyone even remotely related to them, no matter how innocent. Sound familiar?

Our rioters and looters of late have been gleefully knocking down statues of great or not so great men of our past with relish and abandon. The difference is that our monument-destroyers have no clue who the bronzed and marbleized men they are tearing down were or why they were memorialized. Sure, the Confederate generals are easy, but they are ruining countless statues of abolitionists, generals who fought slavery, men like Gandhi and Churchill. A woman in the U.K. who had defaced a statue of Churchill, when asked who he was, had no idea, none at all.

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You want to defund the police? You have to let the people have guns.


House Resolution 1013: Resolving that jurisdictions seeking to dismantle or reduce funding for the jurisdiction’s police force should not unduly burden residents who seek to defend themselves.

Russ Fulcher R-Idaho:

Resolving that jurisdictions seeking to dismantle or reduce funding for the jurisdiction’s police force should not unduly burden residents who seek to defend themselves.

Whereas the killing of George Floyd was a horrific and despicable act;

Whereas racism in any form is wrong and should not be tolerated;

Whereas adequate and accountable police departments are vital to helping people to defend themselves and their property; and

Whereas the right to defend oneself is a God-given natural right enshrined in the Constitution and upheld in English common law and recent Supreme Court cases: Now, therefore, be it that –

(1) any jurisdiction in the United States, which seeks to dismantle or reduce funding for a police force, should undertake a review of its local rules to ensure such rules do not place an undue burden on its residents who seek to defend themselves, including the legal purchase of a firearm and any training services such individuals choose;

(2) such a review should be based on the standards set forth by the Supreme Court in the cases District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, which confirmed the Second Amendment to the Constitution to be an individual right and that no law can prohibit an individual from possessing and using a firearm in the home for self-defense; and

(3) any jurisdiction which seeks to dismantle or reduce funding for police agencies must ensure they remove rules that hinder individual gun ownership or access to firearms.

 

 

Black and White Americans are embracing the Second Amendment

The gun control crowd isn’t having a good year.

Americans have been buying firearms at a phenomenal pace. From January through May, the FBI conducted 15.2 million background checks on people purchasing guns through licensed dealers — an increase of 3.7 million over the number of background checks during the same period last year. First-time buyers have accounted for an estimated 40 percent of gun purchases in 2020, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation — and of those new gun owners, 40 percent have been women.

For months, news accounts have reported on the nationwide surge in gun sales. The soaring demand for guns has led in turn to soaring prices for gun stocks. Shares of firearms manufacturers like Smith & Wesson and Ruger have sharply outpaced the broader stock market.

All this was happening before Americans learned about Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police offier who killed George Floyd on May 25, or saw the video of Gregory and Travis McMichael, the two Georgia men — one an ex-cop — who gunned down Ahmaud Arbery after seeing him jog past their home. Black Americans in particular have been getting a pointed lesson in the value of their Second Amendment right to bear arms, and translating that lesson into action.

Hence the “explosion in the number of Black gun owners nationwide,” as David Dent reports in The Daily Beast. The National African American Gun Association, which began in 2015 with a single chapter in Atlanta, now comprises more than 100 chapters with 40,000 members — 10,000 of whom joined within the past five months.

They include not only recreational shooters, but new owners like Iesha Williams, a young mother who, Dent writes, was persuaded by recent events to acquire a gun “as a form of protection against racial violence.” Black gun ownership is as essential today as it was in 1892, when Ida B. Wells wrote that “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every Black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”

The gun-control lobby, which includes a vast swath of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party’s leadership, has for years sought to make it harder for ordinary Americans to acquire guns and insisted that firearms in private hands pose an intolerable risk. “Hell, yes!” declared an impassioned Beto O’Rourke last September during a Democratic presidential primary debate. “We’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.” The partisan audience roared its approval, but O’Rourke’s candidacy expired six weeks later.

Millions of Americans instinctively grasp that private ownership of guns makes them safer. But advocates of more gun control never see it that way. When Michael Bloomberg was asked in January about a Texas church where a massacre was aborted when a 71-year-old parishioner shot and killed the gunman, his response was that guns are for police. “It’s the job of law enforcement to have guns and to decide when to shoot,” said Bloomberg. “You just do not want the average citizen carrying a gun in a crowded place.”

Only cops should have guns and decide when to shoot? Try telling that to the families of Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Botham Jean, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, Michael Dean, and Walter Scott, all of whom were killed when cops — whether from recklessness, incompetence, or racism — decided to shoot.

Of course the great majority of cops are neither racists nor thugs. But even the most dedicated police officers cannot always be there to provide protection when it is needed. The Second Amendment exists in part for just that purpose, as persecuted minorities have had good reason to know.

The denial of the right to own weapons reinforced the racial repression of America’s first centuries. In its infamous Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that if African Americans were considered US citizens, the Second Amendment “would give to persons of the negro race … the right … to keep and carry arms wherever they went.” Gun control’s racist roots run deep. Before the Civil War, a multiplicity of laws barred slaves from owning weapons and permitted free Blacks to do so only with a court’s approval. In the Jim Crow era, states found other ways to disarm Black Americans. They heavily taxed handgun sales, for example, or permitted pistols to be sold only to sheriffs and their deputies — a category that often included KKK terrorists.

“The Second Amendment is always revitalized when we feel threatened,” writes David Harsanyi in the current National Review. Between the Coronavirus pandemic, the killing of George Floyd, and the recent wave of riots and looting, this is an alarming moment in American life. Black and White Americans, millions of them, have chosen to meet the moment by arming themselves. The hoplophobes may disapprove, but this is what the Second Amendment is for.

North Carolina law modified to allow carrying a handgun while wearing a mask

Under normal circumstances, it is against the law to carry a gun while wearing a mask. However, that law is being suspended until February 2021.

The Nash County sheriff’s office has been getting many calls lately from people wondering what the rules are.

According to the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office, if you have a valid concealed carry handgun permit, it is legal to carry a concealed handgun while wearing a mask, so long as you’re wearing the mask to protect yourself or others from COVID-19.

The Nash County Sheriff’s Office announced on social media that it will not be enforcing face coverings.

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President Donald Trump Says Black Lives Matter Leader Has Committed Treason, Sedition, And Insurrection

President Donald Trump has accused a Black Lives Matter leader of committing treason, sedition, and insurrection in a tweet on Thursday.

President Trump’s tweet was aimed at Hawk Newsome, the leader of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York…………

Newsome was interviewed on Fox News on Wednesday about his calls to “burn down” the US system. He would not clarify if he meant this literally or figuratively.

“I said if this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down the system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking figuratively, I could be speaking literally,” Newsome said. “It’s a matter of interpretation.”

Barr: DOJ Has 500 Investigations Into Rioters and Destruction of Statues

Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department had “scores of indictments” filed against people who committed violence during a wave of protests across the country.

During Thursday’s episode of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast, Verdict, which is co-hosted by conservative commentator Michael Knowles, Barr said his agency was using 35 joint terrorist task forces across the country to investigate criminal activity, which has taken place since the Memorial Day death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man.

“When the real violence started around May 25, 26, and so forth, we started using our joint terrorist task forces around the country. And there are 35 of them around the country,” Barr said.

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Cleveland resident fatally shoots alleged burglar

CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Division of Police is investigating the shooting death of a 40-year-old man.

Officials responded to a home in the 3300 block of East 137th Street around 9: 20 a.m. for a call indicating a burglary and shooting. At the scene, the victim found shot inside the home and later died at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. He has since been identified as Lavar Overton.

Witnesses tell police Overton had broken into the home and was fatally shot by the resident, also a 40-year-old man. Police say Overton was a former tenant at the home, but had no connections to the current occupant.

The resident left the location after the shooting, but later turned himself in to police. He was questioned and released.

Study: Zinc, HCQ, Z-Pak Cocktail Effective Early Vs. COVID-19

An outpatient study is reporting a combination of zinc, hydroxychloroquine, and azithromycin significantly reduces hospitalization and death for COVID-19 positive patients, cutting mortality rate to a mere 0.3%.

The current COVID-19 positive case mortality rate is 5.26%, according to the study. Azithromycin is more commonly known as Z-Pak.

The key note of this study, according to CrowdProtocol doctors, is the early treatment of COVID-19 in outpatients before they require hospitalization for a severe COVID-19 case, the latter of which was used to suggest no benefit to HCQ use in hospitalized patients.

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US Marshals told to ‘immediately prepare’ to defend national monuments

U.S. Marshals have been told they should gear up to defend national monuments across the country, after several of the structures were toppled or vandalized during recent protests, a report said on Wednesday.

The service “has been asked to immediately prepare to provide federal law enforcement support to protect national monuments,” Marshals Assistant Director Andrew C. Smith wrote in an email obtained by The Washington Post.

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Some western candidates weigh in on the elections


It’s about freedom

Lauren Bobert:

Last fall, I told presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, “Hell no, you won’t take away our guns!” which quickly became a national rallying call to protect our Second Amendment rights.

When Gov. Polis and Denver’s liberal legislature passed the National Popular Vote Compact, I volunteered months of my time and effort to make sure we could stop the Democrats from stealing our votes for president and giving them to California.

This November, for the first time since 1932, Colorado voters will have the opportunity to repeal a law because of a citizen-led effort that generated 229,000 signatures across the state. I am proud of the effort and proud to have become the second-largest signature gatherer in the state.

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Defending the 2nd Amendment

For years we have sat silently as those in power have worked tirelessly to erode our Second Amendment rights. Often acting under the guise of safety and security, those in power have escalated their attacks on the Second Amendment in response to mass shootings, claiming they want a greater level of safety and security for Americans. This, despite historical evidence that makes clear connections between a disarmed people and an oppressed people. Ben Franklin once wrote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Let me make one thing clear. The Second Amendment was not written to give you the right to keep and bear arms. It was written to create a legal framework by which the government could not legally strip you of, or infringe on, your God-given right to self defense.

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“I’ve often suggested stocking up on three metals: gold, silver, and lead.”
So have I.


MSM OUTLETS ARE “ANGRY” THE LOST CONTROL OF THE GUN CONTROL NARRATIVE

At least one major mainstream media outlet, the LA Times, has been reportedly “angry” that gun sales have shot up because of the tyrannical takeover of government in response to the COVID-19 panic they induced. Apparently, fear can have effects on the public that the MSM and government do no want – more self-reliance.

According to a report by Big League Politics, the LA Times is “throwing a fit” that other humans are buying weapons to defend themselves against the obvious tyranny. Remember, this follows their theme. The more dependent you are on them and the system they set up against you, the easier you will be to control. Taking your self-defense into your own hands was never a part of their plans. In fact, the LA Times editorial board described the increase in gun sales as follows:

Since the start of the pandemic, Americans are buying more guns. The FBI says it conducted a record 3.7 million background checks for would-be gun buyers, a loose proxy for firearm sales, in March as lockdown orders spread across the nation. In April the checks dropped to 2.9 million but rebounded to 3.1 million in May. The monthly average for 2019 — itself a record year for background checks — was 2.4 million. So even as we get fresh studies connecting possession of firearms with increased risk of gun violence, accidental shootings (usually by children) and suicides, we are adding more firearms to the nation’s already numbingly large privately owned arsenal of some 300 million guns (no reliable count is available) owned by about a third of the population. -LA Times

The board goes on to say that this amount of gun sales can be considered “madness.”

Breitbart News reported Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting’s chief economist Jurgen Brauer noted “the ratio of handguns to long-gun sold…[set] a new record of 1.94” in April. That ratio “[broke] the previous high of 1.84 set just one month ago.” The uptick in handgun purchases are indicative of a populace feeling like an extra layer of self-defense in warranted.

I’ve often suggested stocking up on three metals: gold, silver, and lead.

LA County Sheriff to Increase Concealed Permit Issuance by 400 Percent

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva revealed Wednesday his plans to increase the issuance of concealed carry permits by 400 percent.

Getting a concealed carry permit in L.A. County has been difficult in past years, regardless of the sheriff in charge.

On February 14, 2013, Breitbart News reported that the carry permits may have been disproportionately given to friends and donors of Sheriff Lee Baca.

LA Weekly noted that people securing the hard-to-come-by permits included:

  • Emerson Glazer: the son of the man who developed the Del Amo Fashion Center mall in Torrance, gave Baca “basketball tickets and gift baskets.”
  • Stan Shuster: the owner of a cigar room, gave Baca “shirts and golf balls.”
  • Michael Yamaki: “is among Baca’s best friends.”
  • George Chilingar: gave Baca $750 worth of Persian rugs.
  • Hollywood producer Arnold Kopelson: “gave Baca ballet tickets in 2004″
  • Singer James Darren: “gave Baca some CDs and a photograph.”
  • Jeweler Nagapet Boyadgian: “gave Baca a $500 contribution in 2010.”
  • Arthur Kassel: “hosted a birthday party for Baca.”

On December 26, 2017, Breitbart News reported that an audit by the California State Auditor showed there were only 197 concealed carry permit holders in Los Angeles county. At that time the county had a population of 10.2 million, and only 197 of those residents were permitted to carry a handgun for self-defense.

But in the current climate, where residents feel endangered in their neighborhoods and where rioters set fire to police vehicles in the street, Sheriff Villanueva is making clear he plans on increasing the issuance of concealed carry permits.

Fox LA’s Bill Melugin tweeted: “L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said he expects to begin increasing the amount of concealed carry permits he issues by as much as 400%. CCWs are notoriously difficult to obtain in LA.”

 

Wisconsin governor activates National Guard after violence

MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin’s governor activated the National Guard on Wednesday to protect state properties after a night of violence that included the toppling of two statues outside the state Capitol, one of which commemorated an abolitionist Civil War hero.

Protesters also attacked a state senator, threw a Molotov cocktail into a government building and attempted to break into the Capitol Tuesday night, only to be repelled by pepper spray from police stationed inside. The violence broke out as a group of 200 to 300 people protested the arrest of a Black man who shouted at restaurant customers through a megaphone while carrying a baseball bat.

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UZI does it.

Special Forces Students Range Day

A student assigned to the U. S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School who is in the Special Forces Weapons Sergeant Course fires an Uzi submachine gun during weapons training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina May 12, 2020. The Soldiers were trainined to employ, maintain and engage targets with select U.S. and foreign pistols, rifles, shotguns, submachine and machine guns, grenade launchers and mortars and in the utilization of observed fire procedures. (U.S. Army photo by K. Kassens)

I simply look on it as pre-stocked supply depots


Leftists want war, but they’re the Stone Age fighters

Leftists want a make-or-break revolution in America, forgetting that, when it comes to weapons, they’re the Stone Age tribes and conservatives are Europe.

I had an epiphany, albeit one that ends with blood. John Kerry has threatened all of America by announcing that if Trump is elected president, there will be a revolution. He’s not making a scholarly prediction; he summoning the troops.

When I read that, my first thought was, “Well, conservatives (i.e., Trump supporters) are the ones with the guns.” Leftists in America may be violent, but except for Antifa, some of whose members are armed, the lefts’ anti-Second Amendment stance means they’re armed with bricks and sticks.

And that’s when I had my epiphany. The leftists are the Stone Aged tribes of America. They paint themselves funny colors, make lots of noises, and do ritualized “violence dances.” They look scary but, just like any Stone Aged people, when the more advanced civilization’s guns come out, the Stone Aged people are done for. It’s not complicated: The side with the better weapons win, and conservatives are on that side.

The famous gun versus sword scene in the first Indiana Jones movie is a cute, graphic representation of this problem. Cute — but surprisingly accurate. Europe successfully colonized Latin America, Africa, North America, and the Caribbean because the Europeans had guns and the indigenous people — all of whom were Stone Aged in the technology, didn’t. In North America, Native Americans fought valiantly against European colonization but they were never going to win against the better armed Europeans.

Leftists would know this if they studied actual history, as opposed to made-up history.

The only thing that could change this dynamic goes back to the Obama administration’s weapon buying binge in 2013. In a recent American Thinker post, John Watson remembers how Obama went crazy arming his administrative agencies. (Watson speaks of the last two years of the administration, but I happen to know it began in 2013, so the purchases may be even more significant than Watson documents):

During the last two years of the Obama administration, some unusual purchases were made.  Large quantities of ammunition were purchased, as were firearms, mostly for somewhat obscure agencies or agencies with no real need for such weaponry.  Estimates are that over 1 billion rounds of ammunition were ordered, which resulted in making ammunition scarce for the normal civilian market.

Also significant was Obama’s troublesome statement made during his campaign, as follows

We cannot continue to rely only on our military … we’ve got to have a civilian security force just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.  We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set.

Moreover, Watson reminds us that it wasn’t just ordinary guns and ammo these agencies got. It was serious stuff for agencies that had no possible use for that kind of thing (emphasis mine):

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service spent $4.77 million purchasing shotguns, 7.62mm caliber rifles, night-vision goggles, propane cannons, liquid explosives, pyro supplies, buckshot, LP gas cannons, drones, remote-control helicopters, thermal cameras, military waterproof thermal infrared scopes and more.

[snip]

$426,268 on hollow-point bullets, including orders from the Forest Service, National Park Service, Office of Inspector GeneralBureau of Fiscal Service, as well as Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  The latter three, sure, but the Forest Service, National Park Service, and Inspector General’s Office?

These agencies are filled with Democrat denizens of the Deep State. It’s not impossible to imagine them using those taxpayer-funded weapons as an arsenal for the leftist side should John Kerry’s threatened “revolution” take place.

Of course, you can give Stone Aged fighters modern weaponry, but possessing them is not the same as knowing how to use them. Nevertheless, if the Deep State is the armory, we’re in trouble. If not, it will be a bloody war, but a short one, and history tells us that the Stone Age fighters will lose.

Indiana: Law Eliminating Fees for a License to Carry a Handgun Goes into Effect July 1st

Next Wednesday, sections of House Bill 1284 (2019) will go into effect.  A five-year License to Carry a Handgun will now be free to obtain.  In addition, applicants will have the option to register to vote while applying.  ​Removing barriers for lawful carry in Indiana, including taxes and fees, is significant for many Hoosier gun owners that desire to carry for the defense of themselves and others.  A full outline of the law is below:

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Science Magazine Publishes Bogus Science From RAND On Gun Control

In a paper titled, “Changes in firearm mortality following the implementation of state laws regulating firearm access and use,” RAND Corporation staffers have published a paper examining child access prevention (CAP), right-to-carry (RTC), and stand your ground (SYG) laws. The paper shows that the people at RAND are continuing doing very biased and poorly done research on gun control.

We have never previously seen a paper that uses 80% confidence intervals. As soon as you look at their table 1, it is clear that they did that because they wouldn’t have gotten any statistically significant results if they used 95% or even 90% confidence intervals. Indeed, only one of their findings might be statistically significant at the 85% level (the child access laws for total firearm deaths would be at about 1.00 and one would need more information to know whether it was just above or below 1.00 to see if that was statistically significant at the 85% level).

The bottom line is that NONE of their results are statistically significant.

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