Tina Smith is retiring from the Senate, citing health.

So – who’s turn is it in DC?

Tim Walz has made noises about running – and clearly lusts after DC real estate.  More on that maybe next week.

Peggy Flanagan came right out of the gate, though, and announced yesterday. 

No huge surprise there. 

Of course, some of her support rates a grim chuckle:

Her “lived experience” is entirely as part of the non-profit/DFL/industrial complex; she has never not been a first or second-tier government employee.

As to “proven leadership?” The only issue I can recall about her actually leading, as opposed to posturing…

…was when as chair of the Capitol Architecture Committee she let a group of her cronies tear down the statue of Christopher Columbus on the Capitol mall, and then made sure their leader and token arrestee was “sentenced” to teach kids about the evils of Christopher Columbus.

Now that’s leadership.

Besides Walz (ahem), we’ve Ilhan Omar, Jacob Frey, and we’ve got late-breaking rumors that Leigh Finke is mulling throwintg Leigh Finke’s hat into the ring:

MInnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon apparently shares a platitude writer with Tim Walz:

Same person? Different? hard to say – but they share a certain – uh…

…factual incoherence?

The DFL’s strategy in the tied MN House appears to be “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks”.

Case in point:

They’re certainly not dialing back the crazy.

Keith Ellison is going to spend millions of taxpayer dollars defending the state against a Federal Title IX rule!

“In Minnesota, participation and eligibility of transgender student-athletes is determined by state law, through the Minnesota Human Rights Act and the Minnesota Constitution. The Minnesota State High School League, similar to other youth sports organizations, is subject to state anti-discrimination laws, which prohibit discrimination based on gender identity. Therefore, students in Minnesota are allowed to participate consistent with their gender identity. League Member Schools have done excellent work in respecting students and their individual situations as they determine their participation and eligibility within interscholastic sports.

Look – the DFL just discovered the 10th Amendment!

While the fracas in the MN House is getting all the attention, the DFL is having to battle for their electoral lives in the Senate, where their one-vote rests on Senator Nicole Mitchell.

The reasoning is getting clearer and clearer:

Becker County Attorney Brian McDonald added a second burglary charge Monday against state Sen. Nicole Mitchell focusing on items she had with her when police encountered her stepmother’s home in April 2024 in Detroit Lakes….Mitchell’s case was supposed to go to trial in late January, but her defense team invoked a Minnesota law saying lawmakers cannot be required to attend court proceedings during a legislative session. That delayed Mitchell’s case until June and possibly later, depending on when the 2025 session wraps.

The new complaint includes more details about her alleged interaction with police. It says Mitchell told an officer “I’m just hoping this mistake won’t completely f*** up my life” and that she voiced alarm about affecting her military retirement.

She’s gonna leave the Senate, one way or another, and while two tied chambers isn’t any bigger of a hassle for the Governor and DFL and their agenda than one tied chamber, Woodbury isn’t so utterly safe that they can take anything for granted. 

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Mistakes were made.  Nobody could have known.  Can’t we just move on?

Written for Canada but the same lesson applies to Minnesota.  

Joe Doakes

Open the tweet to read the whole thing. 

And pass it around. Forgiveness without atonement is a litlte hollow.

A US District Judge in Mississippi rules that the ban on fully-automatic weapons violates the Bruen decision.

He wasn’t happy about it – but he made the ruling:

In his ruling, Judge Carlton Reeves, an Obama appointee, made no bones at all about the fact that he hated what he was doing, but under Bruen — of which he is also not a fan — the law is very clear.

The Supreme Court has, of course, ruled that gun control laws like the machinegun ban can be justified in the case of firearms that are “dangerous and unusual.” Judge Reeves, however, ruled that while machineguns are dangerous, they are not, in fact, unusual. And we can thank the work product of the great legal minds of the US Department of Justice for their failure to argue that machineguns are rare. As the judge noted . . .

Bruen nevertheless tells us that there is an American “historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’” 597 U.S. at 21 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 626). That is the law to be followed. The ultimate problem for the government, then, is this: although machineguns are “dangerous,” it does not explain how machineguns are unusual.  …

The Morgan case raised by Mr. Brown says there were more than 740,000 machineguns lawfully possessed in the United States in 2021. 2024 WL 3936767, at *4 (citing ATF data). The government has not pointed to any other number. The Court accepts it as true.

Seven hundred and forty thousand is no small number.7  The government presents no argument or explanation for why such a large figure is somehow not common. Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines common as, among other things, “widespread.”8 Three-quarters of a million of any kind of firearm is plainly widespread. 

The government also failed to show any historical evidence that banning machineguns would be consistent with gun laws at the founding.

It appears the legal and legislative sharks are circling the National Firearms Act.

Don’t get irrationally exuberant just yet:

Let’s be clear here. This ruling came in a criminal case and applies only to Justin Brown. Don’t head over to your local gun store expecting to buy full auto M4 any time soon.

The question now is, what happens next…whether or not the DOJ chooses to appeal the case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Yes, the Fifth is probably the most gun-friendly circuit in the nation. But they’ve also ruled in the past that machineguns are both dangerous and unusual. That, however, was before Bruen. And you can bet that if the Brown decision is appealed, the DOJ will come up with arguments supporting its contention that guns with giggle-switches are, in fact, rare.

 

So it’s too early to start shopping.

But not window-shopping.

I am intermittently concerned that Big Left might eventually learn the lessons of this past election. 

And then I see things like this:

…and I’m at least a little less concerned about the mid-terms.

…is law-abiding citizens buying guns at gun shows. 

Not guys like this:

For those who don’t scroll down in these attached Tweets:

Thompson was sentenced to a “mandatory” 5 years for felon in possession of a firearm in Sept. 2023.

[counts on fingers and toes…] that means he should still be in prison, right??

Nope, not in Minnesota. He was released early by the UNELECTED MNDOC Commissioner Paul Schnell (appointed by Timmy) after just one year, in Oct. 2024, despite the fact that he’s a repeat violent offender, who already had THREE prior convictions on gun cases, including machine gun possession.

Wonder if he took a “universal” background check?

Joe Doakes formerly of Como Park emails:

The President issues Executive Orders which apply to the whole nation.  Opponents shop around for a sympathetic judge to block the orders.A federal judge for the District of Massachusetts blocked the federal employee buy-out offer at the request of employee unions.

A federal judge for the Western District of Washington blocked the Executive Order against birthright citizenship.

One federal judge for the District of Columbia has blocked the DOGE team from scrutinizing Treasury Department payments, and a different one in that district has blocked release of the names of FBI agents assigned to the J6 investigation. 

And that’s just in the last two weeks.  The Trump administration faced 22 nation-wide injunctions in his first term.

How can we have a nation of fair and impartial equal justice under the law, if judges in random jurisdictions can overturn the law of the whole land at whim? 

Justice Thomas criticized the practice of nation-wide injunctions in Trump v. Hawaii, saying, “. . . if their popularity continues, this Court must address their legality.”  Seems to me that time has come.

Joe Doakes

That time has definitely come.

Just in time for Christmas – and President’s Day [1] – the Governor Walz action figure!

Pull the string on his back to hear ten realistic-sounding phrases! –

• “One Minnesota!”
• “While billionaires feed their greed, we’re feeding kids!”

…and, like 6-8 more! [2]

Also – realistic “deer in the headlights” look when you ask him a question!

Corn dog, smart phone and DFL Comms Brodude sold separately.

[1] Too soon?

[2] Updates may be required.

I wasn’t surprised to see Ken Martin get elected as chair of the DNC.

And since David “Boss” Hogg threw his lot in with the Piglet last summer, I figured if Martin won, Hogg was on his way to, er, “bigger better” things at the DNC.

I was…er, right, sort of.

So the Democrats have decided to cling to the worst of their coalition, and to forefront it. Friedrich Hayek once pointed out that the problem with all large, powerful, nondemocratic institutions — particularly those with left-wing underpinnings — is that empirically, the worst inevitably tend to get on top. It is the nature of the machine, a product of its operation and existing incentive structures. Which is why I re-emphasize how unsurprising David Hogg’s political ascent to internally elected power has been: Given the party’s sclerotically hidebound decision-making apparatus, of course the DNC would find itself turning to someone like Hogg in a desperate attempt to connect with the “youth vote.” David Hogg is an old person’s idea of a young person.

He wrote it so I don’t have to.

Melissa Hortman folded her hand yesterday, and said the House DFL would come back to work.   Lisa Demuth is the Speaker, and the GOP controls the committees, at least until after the 40B Special on March 11. 

There are a few Republicans – largely from the crowd that thinks “Minnesota Gun Rights” is an actual gun rights group in Minnesota – who think it was a defeat for the GOP. 

Let’s let a DFLer address that:

For someone who’s gotten a little fatalistic about Minnesota Republicans screwing every pooch that can be screwed, it was a very good day.   This is not your fathers House GOP Caucus. 

More please.

This is an update of a post I ran in 2014

Today would be Ronald Reagan’s 114th birthday.

I’ve been writing about Reagan – who, along with PJ O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn, Dostoevskii, my college English advisor and Paul Johnson is the reason I’m a conservative today – as long as this blog has been in existence.  His eight years were not perfect, and I don’t beatify my presidents, even if they’ve been out of office for almost forty years.  His last term wasn’t as stellar as his first, and his last two years were very difficult.

Still and all, he was the greatest president of the second half of the 20th Century.

But in these difficult times, after (in effect) three terms of a President who promoted  fear and malaise in the guise of “change” and “doing something”, it’s worth remembering Reagan’s example; when times seemed at their most dire, Reagan walked onto the scene with a smile and a vision, and a backbone of steel, and cleaned up the mess lefty by his failed predecessors – something Donald Trump needs even more, today.

And the most important part? He did it by unleashing something that many thought was dead – the inner, optimistic, take-charge greatness of the American spirit.

Ten years ago, I wrote “the best we can hope for from President Trump is that he approaches the job with the same tenacity to match his vision that Reagan had.” The first term was a mixed bag. This past two and a half weeks – well, so far so good. 206 weeks go go.

Oh, there are those who say “today’s GOP wouldn’t nominate Reagan!” – to which I respond with a contemptuous sigh, before telling the critic to listen to “A Time for Choosing”, and tell me who Reagan more resembles; Arne Carlson, or Scott Walker?

There are also conservatives who pick out their favorite issue – debt, abortion – and ask “what did Reagan ever do for us?”  

Remember – Reagan never controlled Congress.  Republicans controlled the Senate for his first six years, but they were by no means a rubber stamp.   The Democrats controlled the House all eight years, and seized the Senate in 1987.   Trump controlled both houses in 2017, and he does again today; it’s narrow, but it’s more than Reagan had to work with.  Reagan knew he had only so much political capital, and focused it all on his two major issues – defeating the USSR, and reviving the economy.

He succeeded wildly at both.

I’m imagining what Reagan might have done if he’d had Trump’s circumstances – control of Congress and the SCOTUS and that combination of first-term energy and second-term “I don’t have to worry about getting re-elected, so I’m gonna mix stuff up”.

Reagan’s gone. But that spirit, the one he understood, almost alone among American politicans of his era, lives on in the American people. Most of it, anyway.

So Happy Reagan’s Birthday, everyone!

Not sure what reminded me, but today is this blog’s 23rd birthday. 

It’s kind of amazing how life evolves – too slowly to perceive, yet startling, even overwhelming over time. 

On February 5, 2002, I was a fairly newly-single parent, working at a company that was visibly circling the drain faster and faster every day.  My kids were 10 and 9 years old.  I wasn’t adrift,  per se – “overwhelmed” is probably a better word. 

I was reading Time magazine at my desk over lunch hour, and I tripped into an article about the new generation of conservative intellectuals, focusing on Andrew Sullivan, who was probably the first big-name “conservative” “celebrity” blogger.  A sidebar explained what a “blog” was, and gave a URL to “Blogger.com”. 

Which I followed, that night, after the kids went to bed.  I started writing that night, and 23 years later, I haven’t stopped. 

The first two years of Shot in the Dark are long lost.  The next two are a little tenuous. But I’ve been writing on this platform, WordPress, since 2006.   I need a big of a technical facelift – I’m praying for a two day blizzard that’d justify me spending that kind of non-work time at my desk. 

My kids are now a tad older than I was when they were born.   My career – which seemed fragile and tenuous 23 years ago – has worked out pretty well.  Better than that company did, anyway.  The blog morphed into the Northern Alliance of Blogs, where I met King, Ed, Chad, Brian, Atomizer, JB, John HInderaker and Scott Johnson and, eventually, the first real-life social circle I’d had in a long, long time. 

Life moves slow – usually. Starting this blog 23 years ago today kicked off one of the bigger, better evolutions in mine.  And for that – and all of you – I’m thankful. 

So why is the DFL fighting everything so hard this year?

As we’ve noted in the past, the DFL has been in the minority before.  And they never reacted like they are today. 

So while acknowledging all the usual caveats – anonymous sources, citing even more anonymous connections, etc – read this entire thread anyway:

Presuming it’s true – it smacks of plausibility – then USAID is just a huge money-transfer machine, slapping altruistic facades onto over-the-top grifts to launder taxpayer money to the non-profit/industrial complex.

Looking at the freneticism and bile of the attacks on DOGE, Musk and the effort to tame USAID, it looks like it’s struck a nerve.

So – imagine what’ll happen if a Republican gets into the executive branch in Minnesota ever again?   Or gets enough power in the legislature to do some serious digging and publicizing?

If a Minnesota version of DOGE – perhaps the “Office of Minnesota Internal Graft, Abuse and Waste Detection” – were to get free reign to find where Governors Dayton and Walz and their non-profit/industrial complex handlers hid the bodies?

I suspect this list would get a lot bigger -and that that is why the DFL is squawking so hard this time

It must be a tough time to be Erin Maye Quade – Senator from Apple Valley, and Big Left’s attack poodle in the Senate.

In the past couple of years, she’s voted for a thoughtcrime data base, and openly fantasized about using government power to keep parents from teaching their kids about abstinence…

…and about “Eminent Domaining” and bulldozing the crisis pregnancy centers try to keep people out of the Planned Parenthood clinics that spend so much on her campaigns and will presumably be her post-politics career.

Because suddenly, she’d discovered that big powerful government can be scary, when you’re not at the controls.

Even if you have to conjure those threats out of thin air:

Further evidence of Berg’s Seventh Law; QAnon was a fantasy, but BlueAnon is very, very real. 

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

End foreign aid handouts.  Begin foreign aid employment.  New slogan:  “Do the crime, do the time . . . in Hell.”  

Still not tired of all the winning.

Joe Doakes

 

The ACLU might have an Eighth Amendment suit, and they might be right.

But it’s a fun thought. 

Yesterday, I was trying to remember – how long has it been since the inauguration?   Was it three weeks, or four?

Nope.  Two weeks. 

Seemed so much longer than that. 

MN Rep. Leigh Finké (DFL-66A) apparently thinks that if hospitals can’t chemically neuter and surgically maim children, they shouldn’t offer care at all:

Nationwide, the Democrats failure to not look crazy harmed them immeasurably last November. 

I’m mildly gratified to see they’re not backing off one iota. 

After almost five years, the City of Minneapolis “plans” to “do” “something” with the former Speedway in “George Floyd Square”.

I’m adding emphaiss to the quote below for a reason:

The City of Minneapolis has received four applications to redevelop The People’s Way, which was formerly a Speedway gas station at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.

The gas station turned into a gathering place in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. For the past four years, the community has used the site for twice-daily meetings, annual events honoring George Floyd, gardening and other activities, according to the city’s Request for Qualifications presentation.

So who are these four groups?

City Councilmember Andrea Jenkins represents the area and she told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS not much is known about what the private groups would do with the property, but said it is a positive step toward progress and growth at George Floyd Square.

I’m gonna guess we know one thing about them: They’re dues-paying members of Minneapolis’s DFL/DSA non-profit/industrial complex.

And if you look at Rise & Remember, Minnesota Agape Movement, P3 Foundation and Urban League Twin Cities, you’ll realize not only that nobody ever went broke betting against the City of Minnepolis transferring money to its political class, but that whatever “happens” at George Floyd Square is going to be both exquisitely expensive and a magnet for blight.

Rise and Remember – run, among other people, by George Floyd’s aunt.

Minnesota Agape Movement – headquartered in George Floyd Square. Their “team” page is blank.

P3 Foundation – if I’ve got the right one, they appear to be national nonprofit that is into all sorts of things.

The Urban League needs no introduction.

Anyway – it’s going to wind up being a “community space” that turns into a graffity-coated monument to blight.  But the non-profits will get their payoff.  So tomayto/tomahto, I guess.

And congratulations to Ken Martin on his election as head of the Democrat National Committee. 

Democrats – you’ve made a great choice. 

Provided, of course, that the national media is as compliant, even sycophantic, as the MInnesota media (although I fully expect to start seeing “Another Look at Tim Walz” pieces in the WaPo any day now). 

And provided, of course, you have an efficient-enough machine for laundering billionaire and public employee money into your campaigns (although Martin excels at that).

Good news for Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi, though – he’s the kind of leader they need, if you catch my drift:

Martin has endorsed RIchard Carlbom to replace him. Carlbom was one of the architects of the Same Sex Marriage amendment – successful mainly by turning the debate from a moral and ethical one to an emotional one. But he’s not always been successful.

Among the vice chairs is David Hogg. Who is going to get right on the business of tackling the cultural and moral malaise that has brought so many young people to Trump:

And I’m gonna guess…

….that all that “Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute!” yapping is gonna stop.

It’s not like they’ve never been in the. minority before.   As recently as (checks notes( 2021-2022 (somehow it seems longer), they had a one-vote minority in the Senate, and the DFL’s world didn’t end. 

And yet being (when all the special elections and likely special election results are in) one vote up in the Senate and tied in the House has them out larping Norma Rae. 

Why, oh why?

For those who don’t want to open “X” and scroll down:

Democrats would show up to work, the Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee could hold official House committee hearings and dig in deeper. We are waiting.

And now it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?