On one hand, I hate to support gun buy-back programs because they’re a waste of money on feel-good foolishness that will have absolutely no effect on crime. This one is especially idiotic because the sponsor – Pillsbury – plans to turn the guns into “art” which means there’s also a subsidy to some “artist” to produce junk nobody would ever pay to see.
On the other hand, I have an old .22 pistol that I bought for $100 and rarely use; they’ll give me $200 for it at the buy-back. There might be other impulse buys and relics in the gun safe. I could free up shelf space at higher-than-market prices and use the money to buy a gun I really want.
The Pillsbury Doughboy wants to give me a free assault rifle. How can I turn that down?
Now, I’ll cop to is – I read this on the end of a two week big of liberal panic; of a social media feed clogged with liberal acquaintances overwrought with “fear” about the GOP candidate.
It’s classic Berg’s Seventh Law; on the one hand, the left says conservatives, the right, and even Trump supporters (who are far from necessarily conservative) are motivated by “fear”; on the other, the most powerful voices on the left are trying to provoke and motivate people to feel…
…what, now? I don’t wanna see all the same hands, here.
If there’s a part of this country in as dire a need of judicial reform as Wisconsin (with its Soviet-style “John Doe” laws), it’s Texas, where District Attorneys can go “DA shopping” to pin a defamatory criminal charge on people who say inconvenient truths.
David Daleiden and his associate Sandra Merritt were indicted for their roles in the release of the videos in January. Misdemeanor charges against Daleiden were dismissed last month.
But Texas District Judge Brock Thomas dismissed the last charge — tampering with government records, a felony — Fox News reported. Prosecutors alleged Daleiden and Merritt used fake driver’s licenses while dealing with Planned Parenthood, the network said, adding that if they had been convicted of the felony charge, each could have been sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
The controversial videos released last summer depicted Planned Parenthood employees appearing to negotiate the price of aborted fetal body parts “per specimen.” Profiting from the sale of human body parts — including those of the unborn — is a felony in the United States. Spokespersons for Planned Parenthood have denied illegal conduct.
The propensity of Democrats to abuse the judicial and government systems to stifle free speech should make any real American’s blood boil .
The resignation becomes effective at the end of the convention, which wraps up Thursday.
Wasserman-Schultz cited her desire to focus on boosting Hillary Clinton in Florida, where she is running for re-election, in a statement announcing her decision to step down just one day before the Democratic convention begins in Philadelphia.
“Going forward, the best way for me to accomplish those goals is to step down as party chair at the end of this convention,” she said. “As party chair, this week I will open and close the Convention and I will address our delegates about the stakes involved in this election not only for Democrats, but for all Americans.”
A hilarious and validating byproduct of the Wikileaks DNC scandal? It’s a classic Berg’s Seventh Law issue; as much as the left claims that the RNC and Fox News are in bed with each other, it naturally follows that the DNC and MSNBC have, essentially, a client-vendor relationship.
Suppose a guy walks down the interstate highway during rush hour, blocking traffic and stalling thousands of motorists for hours, and when arrested says: “I did it as an act of non-verbal communication to protest police violence because Black Lives Matter.”
We know the First Amendment protects citizens’ right to speak freely, including the right to protest government policy. We know the courts have defined “speech” to include non-verbal communication such as nude dancing and therefore, presumably, walking.
Should the walker’s First Amendment defense require that he be found Not Guilty of Obstructing Traffic? Liberals would say “Yes” and many Moderates might agree.
Change the facts a bit: instead of walking down the freeway, he rapes a co-ed. Or burns a store. Or shoots a cop. If the same defense is raised, should the same result obtain? For many Liberals, probably so. But for Moderates, here’s a crucial question: if the First Amendment should not excuse rape, arson or murder but it should excuse obstructing traffic, why?
An attack by a Muslim acting on behalf of ISIS, who was a registered Democrats, got this reaction at the New York “Pride” Parade over the weekend:
The Democrat Party – and let’s be frank, it’s the Democrats who are behind banners like this – is all about ending the namecalling and anger…by Republicans.
Many of you reading this blog are amateur journalists; we met back when everyone was a exercising their First Amendment rights with blogs and the like.
Now, writing online – blogs, tumblr, Facebook, whatever – is fine. And audio podcasts are OK.
But nobody really needs video. It’s just too much.
I’ve worked as a real reporter; I’ve had actual training with real video. And if you don’t believe me, believe many, many professional journalists, who’ll tell you – regular people just don’t need video.
To: Everyone in Northern Minnesota
From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re: Your Congressional Representative
All,
Here’s Rick Nolan, your representative from CD8.
Banana Republicans (from L): Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, and Rick Nolan.
It was taken this past Wednesday, as he participated in a “sit-in” on the floor of the House, in favor of a bill that would have gutted due process by allowing the government to bar firearms from anyone on a “terrorism watch list” that government can put people on with no due process, no accountability, and no recourse.
All government has to do is put your entire group – pro-lifers, hunting rights groups, even union activists – on the “watch list”, and boom; no guns for you. And there’s nothing you can do about it.
Just like in the Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia, or any banana republic.
This is what Rick Nolan is spending his taxpayer-funded time and money on in DC; pretending that you, the people of CD8, want this country to turn into a banana republic.
Glenn Reynolds, in a piece about Big Left’s lies about “gun culture”:
Remember, none of this is about saving lives. It’s about the cultural domination of the people in flyover country, by their coastal “betters” who get a near-erotic thrill out of such domination, and who are reduced to blind rage whenever their efforts at domination fail.
I’ve been saying for years – usually as a jibe at my DFL friends – that while the Big Left has been jabbering about “the upcoming class war” for decades, most lately with its “Occupy…” “movement” with its rhetoric of the “1%” vs the “99%”, most of them don’t reallize they finally got their class war. It is the gun issue. And they’re the Patricians, the 1%, the lotus-eaters.
And Michael Bloomberg isn’t ponying up millions for gun control because he’s concerned about all those poor black and brown people in Chicago and El Paso being murdered.
On Sunday, June 12, ISIS won a dramatic victory. Without risking any of its terror assets and without having to spend one dime of its financial assets, an ISIS volunteer vindicated its strategy of inspiring terrorist acts and launched the deadliest attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. The act not only shattered the lives of the victims and their families. It no doubt inspired still more jihadists to plot their own attacks both at home and abroad. Facing battlefield reverses in Iraq and Syria, ISIS struck back at its chief enemy. But the wins didn’t stop there. Incredibly, ISIS won not just in Orlando. It’s winning the aftermath. The American response to the attack has been beyond ineffective, veering decisively toward the counterproductive. We’re doing nothing more to deter or prevent terror attacks and everything to deceive our own people about the true nature of the threat. Rather than unite to fight a common enemy, we’re dissolving into partisan, polarizing stupidity.
Going after the NRA over Orlando – which many politically and socially prominent gays and media figures are doing – is a little like attacking the Eastern Orthodox Church over Hitler’s invasion of Russia; they weren’t there, and they had nothing to do with it.
French notes the deepening vacuity of our political class in dealing with this:
The western and moderate Muslim world’s campaign against ISIS remains dilatory and indecisive.
It’s not only validated ISIS’s latest tactic of farming out its terrorism in the West to “do it yourselfers” who get their information from ISIS’s very polished print and web presence, it gave them a poster boy with a big victory.
The entire US response so far? Jabbering about gun control (which doesn’t affect terrorists in the least – even if you went door to door and grabbed every gun in the United States tomorrow, they could switch to gasoline, dynamite or knives), scabrous pronouncements against Christians and gun owners.
Everything but the two things that would work: getting serious about ISIS, which is not only not the “JV team”, but is running rings around Barack Obama, and decreasing the number of places where citizens are rendered statutorily helpless targets.
Planned Parenthood black community outreach group is claiming that what happened in Orlando was due to “toxic masculinity.” “#Islam doesn’t foment the violence alleged gunman Omar Mateen enacted, toxic masculinity & a global culture of imperialist homophobia does,” the group, PP Black Community, tweeted on Sunday. Now, I’d agree it wasn’t motivated by “Islam” generally, because I understand the difference between “Islam” and “radical Islam.” However, I am also not so completely brain-dead and delusional as to think that this attack was motivated by absolutely anything but the latter. How do I know? Because I’m a psychic? A genius? No, because the shooter, Omar Mateen, &*%$-ing said it was.
No teenager with car keys and a bottle of Brass Monkey is as stupid as a “progressive” non-profiteer with a Twitter feed.
Every gun control argument you ever heard, explained in one sentence (emphasis added):
“We don’t elect futurists. We elect mostly lawyers, which means people who think the world is not only made of words . . . but that if you change the words the world will change.”
I read Sarah Hoyt, not because she’s such a great writer or even a great thinker, but because she occasionally hits the ball over the stands, out of the park and into the river. This is one of those moments.
Joe Doakes
This is up there with Lileks’ observation – that politics is full of smart people who believe that process actually accomplishes things.
Hillary Clinton clarifies that children have no Constitutionally protected rights until the moment of birth.
This is a critical point. Roe v. Wade turns on a woman’s right to privacy, to be free from government snooping in her personal life. The unborn child’s right to liberty and pursuit of happiness never appear in that case because the law assumes that unborn child doesn’t even have the first right – a right to life – without which, none of the other rights matter.
It’s exactly the same legal analysis that applied to Negros in the Old South, or to Jews in Nazi Germany: they were technically homo sapiens but they were not “persons” in the eyes of the law. They had no rights. They could be murdered with impunity. Nowadays, Democrats have taken us one step further – we fund the murder with taxpayer dollars to supplement the profits from sale of infant body parts.
Abortion-for-convenience is the most sacred plank in the DFL party platform and it’s unconscionably evil. Never stop reminding them of it.
Joe Doakes
It almost make slaveholders look rational in comparison.
The Obama Department of “Justice” – part of an administration utterly beholden to Big Left, including Big Infanticide – is trashing the Constitution…
…again. As usual:
Agents seized all video footage from his apartment, along with his personal information, David Daleiden said in a Facebook post. Daleiden, the founder of a group called the Center for Medical Progress, said agents left behind documents that he contends implicate Planned Parenthood in illegal behavior related to the handling of fetal tissue.
Center for Medical Progress spokesman Peter Robbio confirmed the social media posting is authentic, but he declined further comment. He said Daleiden lives in Orange County.
Harris said in July that she planned to review the undercover videos to see if center violated any state charity registration or reporting requirements. She said that could include whether Daleiden and a colleague impersonated representatives of a fake biomedical company or filmed the videos without Planned Parenthood’s consent.
Since when does “journalism” require the subject’s consent? (Yes, I know – some states require consent for recordings. Generally, “Journalists” get a pass on that, when reporting stories in the public interest).
This is Big Infanticide (and Big Media) calling in its markers with the Administration.
Western Civilization. It was a fun run. Adios, Representative Constitutional Republic. Welcome to the dawn of Authoritarian Bureaucracy.
Ron Fournier, political reporter for National Journal, claims Hillary should not be prosecuted because there’s a higher standard to prosecute someone who’s running for public office.
Well, no, there isn’t. But maybe there should be?
Let’s have a show of hands – who remembers a Democrat prosecutor announcing an indictment against a Republican candidate just in time to influence the election, only to quietly drop the charges after the election, or have them thrown out in disgust by a higher court? Any of these names ring a bell: Senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska; Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas; Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wisconsin?
There’s a law that politicians can’t be arrested while they’re doing their jobs, under the theory of Parlimentary Privilege. But what about candidates? What about their supporters and contributors? Google the phrase “Democrat Lawfare” for an eyeful of interesting examples showing how one party abuses the power of the judiciary for partisan political advantage. Maybe we should rein in that power?
Joe Doakes
But that’d involve giving up power.
And Democrats fight for power the same way Republicans fight for unborn babies and the right to defend oneself.
Alondra Cano – “third world feminist” (whatever that means) and Minneapolis City Councilwoman – took time off from not bothering with her actual constituents’ real problems to sound off, like every other demigogue, on the Freeman press conference yesterday.
Her Facebook page seems to be set up to disallow copying, so I screenshot the whole dismal lashup:
Let’s be clear, here; I don’t find the inquisition into possible police wrongdoing comical.
“Political pressure?” The City of Minneapolis has bent over backwards to accomodate Black Lives Matter. If a Tea Party or Pro-Life group ever blocked a freeway, the Minneapolis or Saint Paul police departments would rain down attack dogs and billy clubs like the Great Deluge.
Like all wannabe liberal demigogues, she’s making up her reality as she goes along, knowing the stupid and gullible won’t care.
The Star/Tribune’s editorial board is a group of people, apparently in their sixties and seventies, who seem to spend their days pining away for a time when the media could say anything they want without fear of being caught out in public by people who know better.
And like everyone on the institutional left, they participate – with all the grace of a German jazz band – in the left’s only real tactic on the issue of gun control; Lie First, Lie Always.
Why, it’s almost as if Heather Martens, in addition to being a State Representative, is a Strib editor…
Teachers unions hate charter schools, and are trying (via their wholly-owned Democrat legislative caucuses) to strangle them in the crib, using absurd, pointillistic regulation to try to do what the market won’t – for example, denying funding to schools that don’t hit racial, income, and special ed goals. It’s called “anti-creaming” – as in “charter schools skim the cream off the top of the studen pool” – and it ignores two things:
That said, charters do skim the cream off the top – where “cream” equals “parents that give a crap”, a demographic that crosses ethnic, income and pretty much every other line.
Beyond that, though? The fact that so many teachers, beholden to their unions, oppose charters is a tragic lost opportunity, for students and (good) teachers:
The hostility between many teacher unions and the charter school and voucher movement is a tragedy of modern American life. What we really need is a proliferation of teacher-owned, teacher-managed cooperative educational ventures—operating either in public school buildings or in churches or in other community spaces. These coops should receive favorable regulatory and tax treatment, and give teachers the latitude to teach in an environment they control. Different coops would cater to different kinds of students, or different age groups, or offer different educational philosophies. Parents would be able to chose among many alternative programs, and teacher assessment could be something that the community would do in a much richer and holistic way—good coops would get good word of mouth
As they already do in places like the Twin Cities, with charter markets that are thriving despite the unions and DFL’s (ptr) best efforts.
