Bearing Arms Asks the Wrong Question.

While the statics come out in favor of concealed carry, yet again, I think it is also true that Tom Knighton here is asking the wrong question.  His article at Bearing Arms asks In the Wake of Synagogue Shooting, How Effective are Armed Citizens Anyway? But the truth is, the armed citizen is not an unpaid security guard, nor is he a member of the police, who do have a mandate to protect the public at large. No, the armed citizen only job is to protect his own life, and those of his loved ones. He has no duty to act just because he carries a gun. But most of us would consider him a coward not to act if the opportunity arose.

The use and abuse of statistics is the way of the "Utilitarian Argument."  The utilitarian argument says that the only things allowed in society are those things that serve society.  Unfortunately, the utilitarian argument is a slippery slope that inevitably leads to a dystopian future.  There is no end to the horrors that can be visited on people in the name of society.  Thus for instance, since older people can no longer work, their abilities being eroded by time, they can be euthanized.  Similarly, we can abort disable children in the womb because they would be a net cost to society. Indeed, the entire eugenics movement was based on utilitarian arguments.

Some things must be based upon principles, immune to utilitarian arguments and statics.  The right to free speech, to freedom of religion and so on are such principles.  The right to defend one's life is another.  Along with that right is the right to possess and carry tools necessary to that end.  These should not be up for grabs, but recognized by everyone.  Laws should only apply to those who abuse these rights.

Still, it is interesting that when an armed citizen is available, and has an opportunity to stop a bad guy, that they are 75% effective.  Good to know, so thanks for the tip, Tom.

Go read the article and see if you agree.

It is not the guns that killed in Pittsburgh...

The shooting of people at a synagogue yesterday in Pittsburgh, with the shooter saying things like "all Jews must die!" has the Left already calling for more gun control.  It is not clear yet that any proposal could have stopped this, but the left does not seem to "get it."  But as Kevin McCullough points out in an article over at Townhall.com It Was No More the Guns Than It Was the Bombs. We already have extensive "bomb control" in this country. Bombs, by the nature of such things are designed to kill indiscriminately. But they must be designed, built and set in place by human hands. Similarly, guns do not shoot themselves. They must be loaded, aimed and fired by human hands. The common denominator in any killing is that one or more human beings decide to kill one or more other human beings.

Eventually all of this will be leveled at the feet of inanimate objects—the guns themselves.

Taking them away—preferably from the entire citizenry—is the only thing that will quench the thirst for control from the activist political class, celebrities with outsized perspective of their own opinions, dishonest faculty in the classrooms of the universities, and smarmy news anchors who look down their noses at close to everyone.

But it wasn’t the guns that left us the tragedy in Pittsburgh.

For it took human fingers to pull the triggers.

Just like it took human hands to create the dozen bombs sent to politicians, without human hands pulling the trigger on three firearms those eleven fatalities would be alive today.

No it wasn’t the guns, the gun laws, the politicians, or the NRA that did any of this.

Truly the source of this pain is traceable.

It can be defined, identified, and in an attempt to be helpful even be targeted.

But our society doesn’t wish to.

Because to admit the real culprit is to admit something that all the elites try desperately to avoid.

Basically... looking in the mirror.

Mankind is sinful. Left to our own devices murder is normal.

If we want to get to the truth of the matter, we must confront the fact that guns, and to a lesser extent, bombs, make killing more efficient, but they are not required. Swords, knives, spears, javalins, daggers, scimitars, stones and rocks have been used to kill, along with various tools that were designed for other purposes such as nail guns, screw drivers, ice picks, chain saws, jet engines, and the list goes on...and on...and on...

At the same time, we don't want the most efficient means of committing violence concentrated in the hands of the government such that they alone have a monopoly of violence. For the government is not composed of angels, but instead is composed of we the people.  And of course the police are not there to protect any one individual, but are there to protect the public at large.  But again, they are not made up of angels, but instead are drawn from the people.  Nothing in their training gives the special powers of good over evil.  They merely have numbers and fire power.

The truth is there is no solution.  No set of laws, or magical incantations can prevent murders.  The most you can do is make murder itself illegal and punishable in the old fashioned way...a life for a life. 

Katie Pavlich Smacks Down David Hogg

Katie Pavlich had an excellent answer to David Hogg right here. A special thanks to Tom Knighton at Bearing Arms

The 501st Anniversary of the Reformation

Tomorrow, we will be celebrating the day that Martin Luther nailed the 95  Theses to the door of the Wittenburg church on October 31, 1517.  I say "celebrating" because in point of fact, Martin Luther would have looked unkindly upon any celebration that took the focus of the members of his congregation off of Christ crucified, and his saving work for all of mankind.  Luther, who was a humble man despite being a Doctor of the Church, viewed himself as a good catholic, and called his own brand of Catholicism "Evangelical Catholicism."  He would never have approved of calling ourselves "Lutheran."

Now, I must take a slight excursion here to explain that the word "evangelical" does not mean "fundamental" or hand waving, praise bands, large TV monitors, or any of the other clap trap that has typically gone by the name "evangelical."  If you believe that "evangelical" is a descriptor of weird so called "christianity" then you have been badly misinformed.  Evangelical means that you follow the Word of God, as recorded in the Bible.  Bible translations that use original sources, or as close in time to original sources as we can get are considered the best.  Every part of our service is documented as being from the Bible.  So, while Roman Catholics make up theories of "transubstantiation" about the Eucharist, and other protestants label the Bread and Wine as "symbols," Lutherans believe what Christ said at the Last Supper:

26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, [a]blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”

27 Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 For this is My blood of the [b]new covenant, which is shed for many for the [c]remission of sins.

How it works is above our pay grade. That it works is a matter of faith. No more needs to be said.

And so tomorrow, we will likely gather and will confess our sins, which we do daily, by commission and omission, such that we deserve God's temporal and eternal punishment. But God, in his boundless graciousness, has done for us what we could not do for ourselves. He sent his son to die a painful, tortured death for us. So we will look to the Cross, and be grateful.

Do the Press Lie? Are they indeed the enemy of the American People?

I am constantly torn between remaining calm and principled in the face of lies that, should they be believed, will change an election, and doing as Trump is doing and "hitting" back rhetorically.  Jonah Goldberg makes some good points in his article today at Townhall.com entitled The Logic of the Vendetta Now Guides Our Politics. He is right, and he is wrong. At some point, we need to defend ourselves, and our actions. President Bush (both 41 and 43) showed us the pitfalls of being stoical in the face of constant attacks from the media. The Left just kept coming after them. Then there is the story of the Proud Boys over at the American Thinker. Go read it, and tell me, Mr. Goldberg, what are people to take away from that. Doesn't it sound like the press has taken sides, again, and rather than fairly reporting events wants to color events to the Proud Boys disadvantage?

After meeting with the police to give a statement on what I saw, I was confident that justice would be served. I could have never imagined what was next to come. A complete inversion of reality was widely reported by the press, who seized upon the incident to fabricate an "October Surprise" to damage the GOP's chances for November's midterm elections. Top Democratic officials, including the New York governor, New York City public advocate, and the attorney general all badmouthed the Proud Boys publicly and called for their prosecution for defending their rights and engaging in self-defense during other incidents that night. Antifa assailants are referred to simply as “protestors” while a multiracial and multiethnic group of Proud Boys are defamed as “White Nationalists” in the press, being simultaneously “doxxed” by the online wing of the Antifa mob. Now, the feeding frenzy has started. Our stand for freedom against leftist terror has been completely spun. Out-of-context quotes from Gavin McInnes are being used to paint him as a right-wing militant leader when he in all actuality he just runs a patriotic fraternal group who like America and beer. Antifa’s acts of terror and manifesto promising more violence were glossed over completely in nearly all reports.

The Proud Boys, it should be noted, are a group of men who are, as they say, "Western Chauvinists" who accept all men who share their philosophy. Ladies can join the Proud Boys' Girls.  They are not alt-right, which are really yet more collectivist ninnies. Instead they do not buy into political correctness, nor the reparations nonsense. In fact, if their website is any indication, they sound pretty normal.  So, its no surprise The Southern Poverty Lie ...er... Law Center has them down as a hate group, which means they don't really hate anyone.

I  have a story of my own.  We were stationed in Panama in the late 1980s, during the time George H. W. Bush was trying to extract Noriega from Panama for trafficking in drugs to the United States.  Noriega was playing the administration for a fool in the press.  To that end, he would stage "protestors" for the cameras to make a bunch of noise, burn tires, and look threatening.  The action would take place on the street on a particular block. The protestors themselves viewed this as a job, and typically went home for lunch.  They were a rent-a-mob who protested whatever someone would pay them to protest.  Meanwhile, through editing, close up shots, and other photo illusions, the reporting on CNN was that the entire city was ablaze, and Anti-Americanism was rampant.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.

We got CNN on the Armed Forces Radio and Television station, so I knew what CNN was reporting first hand.  When we would call home, my mother was frightened  for us, so I figured NBC, CBS and ABC were showing similar footage of "Panama burning."  We often explained that we had just been downtown, and everything was fine.  But to her, it looked to be true, and she probably thought we just didn't want her to worry.

I remembered going to Universal Studios, where one of the stops along the tour was "Tarzan's Jungle."  The jungle was a stand of trees about 600 square feet in extent, and the entire Tarzan series of films starring Johnny Weissmuller was filmed in that tiny area.  Yet on screen, Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan seems bigger than life, his territory seems to extend to the ends of the earth.  That is the power of photo illusions.

Meanwhile, at the same time that CNN was inflaming the American public, they were bashing President Bush, in hopes of getting rid of him at the next election and electing instead another Democrat.  They succeeded by the way.  CNN and the rest of the MSM should use the power of photography to inform, but they don't.  Instead they use it to shape a story to fit an agenda.  In doing so, they lie.

So tell me, are the media the enemy of the American people as President Trump says?  it is difficult to see where he is wrong.  So sad.

Guns are in America's DNA

Over at Bearing Arms, Tom Knighton has a post entitled The Gun and How It Made America Great, that in turn refers to a Daily Signal interview with the David Harsanyi, author of a new book First Freedom: A Ride Through America's Enduring History With the Gun. David Harsanyi also blogs at Townhall.com.

I suggest you read both links, then come back here for a short commentary.

Have you read them both?  Good. Now, I have not read the book yet, but will be purchasing it soon.  The book sounds like one that should be on the book shelves of every shooter.

Harsanyi makes two points that I want to emphasize.  The first is that the right of self defense, and the right to bear arms precedes other rights such as free speech and freedom of religion.  Indeed, it can be traced back at least to the Roman law, and the Bible itself makes clear that you have the duty of self defense.  Second is that the Second Amendment directly supports and defends the rest of the Bill of Rights.  We have seen how the Left has attempted to undermine the other rights listed in the Bill of Rights.  Due process has been undermined, as well as Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights in their pursuit of the President and their maniacal focus on guns as opposed to the people who wield them.  We can not let the left near the levers of power. 

The 50th Anniversary of the GCA 68

David Codrea of the War on Guns reminds us that today is the 50th anniversary of the Gun Control Act of 1968, aka GCA68. I was in high school at the time, but even then, as a very young conservative, who would spend many years reading, thinking, and formulating the principles that under gird my conservatism, I realized that GCA68 represented a great loss of freedom for the people of the United States, and that the gun grabbers would not stop with GCA68.

Be sure to go read Codrea's Rights Watch column at Guns Magazine for some interesting historical data.  For those who remember a time before GCA68, this is the anniversary of a sad loss.

Not one more inch.   

Leftists Go Berserk After Trump Promises To Go After Voter Fraud

Voter fraud is a problem in our election process because in a number of key districts, it often doesn't require that many illegal votes to make a significant difference nationally. I am reminded of the Al Franken election where after counting the votes, and finding that he was short, a Franken operative suddenly "found" some uncounted Franken votes in the trunk of his car. What luck, right?  But, it gave the Senate to the Democrats, and sealed the Obamacare bill's passage in the Senate.  A few votes in a key district gave us yet another socialist law that we likely will never be able to get rid of.

Scott Morefield has an article discussing voter fraud at Townhall.com entitled President Trump Takes Aim at Voter Fraud, Liberals Go Berserk. Morefield writes:

From decrying illegal immigration to espousing an America First trade policy, from denouncing “angry mobs” to taking jabs at “Crazy Maxine” and “Pocahontas,” few would disagree that when it comes to triggering lefties, President Trump is the ultimate Zen master. And given the president’s almost superhuman ability to drive the Left insane with the push of a few buttons to his Twitter account, one might be forgiven for being surprised that one seemingly ubiquitous Saturday tweet topped all or most of the rest, not by calling someone “Horseface” (although yeah, that was hilarious) or taking another well-deserved jab at Robert Mueller’s “witch hunt,” but by bringing a key issue to light that the Left desperately wants to hide.

Namely - voter fraud.

“All levels of government and Law Enforcement are watching carefully for VOTER FRAUD, including during EARLY VOTING,” Trump tweeted. “Cheat at your own peril. Violators will be subject to maximum penalties, both civil and criminal!”

And of course, the Left has gone berserk. They have accused the President of "voter suppression." What voter suppression? If you are only voting once, under your own name, and you are registered to vote, why should you feel fearful of voting? As for presenting your identification, what's the big deal.  You do it all the time for lesser things like writing a check at a grocery store.  They have also claimed that voter fraud doesn't exist, so the President is wasting law enforcement's time going after it.  But, having law enforcement track down voter fraud seems like small beer compared to the billions wasted elsewhere in the budget.   But Morefield has an explanation:

Now if you’re a normal person reading this, you might think - ‘What’s the big deal? Isn’t Trump basically saying law enforcement will be looking out for, uh, those who, you know … BREAK THE LAW?’ And you’d be entirely correct, but remember when it comes to liberals we aren’t talking about “normal” people, not on any intellectual or moral level. We’re talking about people whose entire lives revolve around obtaining power, retaining power, and using that power to pound the rest of us into submission. By any means necessary. So when Trump or anyone else to the right of center talks about an issue like voter fraud, liberals don’t hear ‘law and order’ or ‘fair elections,’ but instead they see it as mean-old-Trump trying to take away one of their primary tools for stealing elections.

So, power is what motor voter laws are about. It is what same day registration is about. It's what early voting is ultimately about. Go read the entire article. Voter fraud is only getting worse, and will continue getting worse until it is taken seriously. It really does make a difference, sometimes a big difference. Go read the whole article by Scott Morefield.  Also check out Project Veritas, who has this this recording up from 2015. but things haven't changed.

Operation Choke Point: Yet another Obama era attack on normal Americans

Recently, several banks including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and J.P. Morgan  have taken actions to deny firearms related business banking services from their institutions.  According to Tony Oliva at Bullets First these banks are also the most complained about. Indeed, the list of things pulled on their customers makes one think they should be charged under the RICO statute.

Yet, not only do these four banks rate as the most complained about financial institutions in the country but they also all have policies in place to punish, deny and/or harrass American’s who DARE to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights. I don’t mean that these banks simply hide under the naive cloak of gun free zones in their establishments. No, these banks have systematically and aggressively attempted to undermine the business of firearms in this country.

Bank of America has twice attacked gun manufacturers with monetary terrorism in recent years. McMillan Firearms Manufacturing were forced to close their accounts last year and transfer their business infrastructure elsewhere simply because they manufactured firearms...

...snip...

During the Christmas season of 2012, when guns are often purchased as Christmas and other Holiday Gifts, the sales from American Spirit Arms went up. In response to this Bank of America FROZE Spirit Arms accounts for THREE WEEKS starting on December 18th. For nearly a month American Spirit Arms could not access that money and the financial impact nearly sent them under at a time when they should have been the most profitable.

When Joseph Sirochman, owner of American Spirit Arms, contacted BoA he was told by a manager at the bank that the accounts and deposits would be held under “further review” and that, as a policy “we believe you should not be selling gun and parts on the internet.”

I don’t know about you but I don’t think that Bank of America should be allowed to use the word America in their name as their actions are about as un-American as they come.

As always, please go read Mr. Oliva's post.

Now, these banks did not start this directly because of the Obama Administration "Operation Choke Point," but they were certainly emboldened by it.  And now, we have Proof of authoritarianism in the form of:

A lawsuit against federal banking regulators filed last Friday in Washington D.C. may appear at first blush to be a simple case of due process violation but, according to at least one legislator and a former ambassador, documents released in the case actually prove an Obama-era program, long thought to prevent some businesses disfavored by that administration from operating, was doing exactly that.

You can read the article, written by Sarah Lee at Townhall.com under the title Proof of authoritarianism: Operation Choke Point Revisited. In the modern world, the extending of credit to businesses is a requirement. A business will hire people to produce a product, and others to sell that product. There is typically a lag between when the product is produced, and when the business receives funds for the sale of its products. The middle man here is the bank, which extends credit to keep the employees paid, the lights on, and the businesses creditors paid until the business receives the funds from the sale of its product and pays the bank back the money it has borrowed, with of course, interest. They may also seek funds as capitol for expanding the business, building new facilities, or buying new tooling. Such is true of all businesses. Thus, banking services may be seen as a utility. Utilities may not deny services to any legal business, which are businesses producing legal products.

 In the case of American Spirit Arms, B of A essentially withheld the funds American Spirit had earned, and with which it would have paid off its loans, thus forcing American Spirit out of business based solely on a philosophy.  Of course, our A rated by the NRA Congress should have done something to stop this, but I am glad at least one victim of these arrogant banks are taking them to court.  Perhaps with a more Constitutionally minded Supreme Court we will finally get some relief.

To B of A and the rest, please note: the money deposited in your banks by us is not your money.  It is ours.  We have a fiduciary relationship with you, but you may not tell us how to spend our funds, no matter that you disagree. 

Fed Up? #MeToo!

I don't write much about feminists, screaming harpies, or whatever bad behavior passes into the public realm.  Like a lot of men, I don't like it, but the fact is that the only reason it is allowed at all is because we men tolerate it.  We wouldn't have to, you know.  If we were to adopt Islam-like practices, we could keep women, as they like to say, barefoot and pregnant.  And yet, the fact that women are allowed to say these things, to scream at their husbands, cause them public shame, to make outlandish claims, and otherwise make asses of themselves belies the claims themselves.  For have you ever heard that Muslim men are pigs, and treat their wives badly from the wives themselves?  No?  It is because in the Muslim world, they do not tolerate it.   In the West, we do.

We have recently witnessed the #metoo movement suck up a bunch of piggish men who used power in a particular field to obtain sex.  I say to obtain sex because the word "seduce" implies more naivete on the part of the women than is believable.  The women in each case wanted something the man had, and the man wanted something the women had.  It seems to me that in the Harvey Weinstein case, and others like it, that what we are actually talking about is prostitution.  The women wanted stardom, and were willing to give up sex to get it. Not exactly the story the #metoo movement wants to tell.

Now, women are sometimes mistreated.  Women who are genuinely raped, or beaten by domestic partners, do indeed need the protection of the law.  Protection orders are all fine and good, but they are only worth whatever the government can afford, which isn't much.  So, a woman in this position should obtain a gun, and learn how to use it.  The "men" who do these things need to be punished, and the women need to be treated with respect, but we should in no way relax the legal standards of evidence, or of giving the defendant the right to confront his accuser.  But of course this is not what the #metoo movement is about.  In saying to believe all women, it wants to destroy the legal underpinnings of our society. They want one half the population to be able to simply say what they want and have it obeyed, on pain of a false claim.

Sorry, "ladies."  We men will tolerate much, and much more than we perhaps should, but but you and your pajama boy toys don't get to do that to us.  Now run along a play, and allow us men, and the REAL women out there, to get back to work.

Cowering Before the Party of Evil

Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire tells us that Political Correctness and its enforcers are not really all that popular.

Huh!

Shapiro writes that:

On Wednesday, Yascha Mounk, lecturer on government at Harvard University, wrote a fascinating piece for The Atlantic regarding a new study from Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam Juan-Torres and Tim Dixon, titled Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape. There’s a lot of fascinating material in the report, but Mounk picks out the biggest gem: Americans hate political correctness. Or at least nearly all Americans do, the only exceptions being far-Left progressives.

And who are these far-Left progressives? They’re disproportionately white and upper class.

Yep, their the young people who, rather than feeling grateful as they should, feel guilty that they have so much. But instead of doing what they should if they feel this way (hint: give it away to the poor and make your own way in the world) think the rest of us should give up what our fathers and mothers have bequeathed us. My mother and father worked hard to get out of poverty and give us a better life than they had. Sorry if you rich kids feel guilty about it, but I ain't givin' it up. Go peddle your crap somewhere else.

And please, gentle readers, go to the link and read the whole article. Then go out an enjoy breaking some so called "rules" of PC. It's fun to piss off a liberal snowflake on occasion.

And while your at it, go look at a scene from one of my favorite anti PC movies here.

Meanwhile, Michael Reagan, son of the great President Ronald Reagan writes a piece at Townhall.com entitled The Party of Evil. Now, you may be wondering what ties these two pieces together. And here it is: the enforcers of PC often feel guilty for having more than others, but the Democrat politicians do not. Instead, they manipulate these poor misguided people for their own ends. It is like someone taking advantage of a mentally disabled individual to take his lunch money.  Go read also the Party of Evil. 

God does not give us the power to destroy the earth!

So, it is that time of year again when the climate alarmist brigade begins to ramp up its claims of impending doom, before going into a big, well funded meeting with all the usual suspects.  These meetings of the UN Framework Conventions on Climate Change are big events that have a carbon footprint that dwarfs those of small countries.  They eat the finest cheeses, drink the best wines, and generally live very high on the hog.  No doubt celebrities will fly in on their private jets to rub shoulders with the leftist delegates to the Convention while staying in five star luxury at the hotels.  All very chic.

This year, however, the IPCC report is being credibly challenged by a group of scientists who will be releasing their report, "Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels" in Katowice, Poland the week of December 4, 2018. But you should read all about it from John Dale Dunn and Joseph Bast at the American Thinker entitled The IPCC is still wrong on climate change. Scientists prove it. Go read the whole thing.

 Like Mr. Dunn, I am not a scientist myself. I am a civil engineer, who like Mr. Dunn took chemistry, physics, geology and a bit of biology in the course of getting my degree. In the course of my work since, I have developed an excellent internal "B.S." meter.  My BS meter pegged out the first time I heard about what was then called "Global Warming" and the fact that man was causing it.  I knew from my geology days that the earth had been though hot spells as well as deeply cold periods.  The deeply cold periods were known as "ice ages."  For civilizational survival, an impending ice age scares me more that the idea that it might get a little bit warmer.

Frankly, I grow weary of debunking the theory that there is anything man can do to either make it warmer or colder.  Believing this nonsense is akin to the  superstition that by dancing around a "powerful shaman" can make it rain.  But as we read in Matthew 5:45, the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.  It may seem unfair until one realizes that we have all fallen short of God's expectation, so why should he favor on over another?

I realize that many no longer believe in God, and that many have been taught to believe that the earth is a fragile thing that man can easily upset.  Indeed, I saw a movie recently in which the premise was that we had run out of the resources to grow food and therefore had to leave the earth.  Yet the truth is that all the resources that ever existed here are still here.  They may be in landfills but they are still here and can still be used. God does not give us the power to destroy the earth.  Believe it or not, that is a scientific fact.

Judge Kavanaugh Confirmed

According to Townhall.com Judge Kavanaugh has been confirmed to be the next Justice of the Supreme Court.

While I am conservative, strangely enough I did not want Brett Kavanaugh on the court because he is "conservative," but because I expect he will decide cases based on an originalist interpretation of the Constitution.  Had leftists not created the idea of a "living Constitution" that changed meanings every time a leftist fad popped up, we would not have needed to have this fight.

Interestingly, the Constitution has been amended 27 times.  It is not impossible, merely difficult.  The amendment process was designed to be difficult to ensure that it was not amended lightly, or because a mob has temporarily overwhelmed the majority before it has had time to make up its mind.  An originalist believes that if we want to change the Constitution, it should be amended rather than have some Justice peer between the lines at the emanations of the penumbras, perhaps had consulted the entrails of goats, and come up with a amendment by interpretation.

It will be interesting to see how Kavanagh changes the Court. 

Speaking of needing consequences...

This from David Codrea over at the War on Guns blog:


US Guns to Mexico Report Feels Like 'Deja vu All Over Again' 

When will the "authorities" take action on this?

Consequences

I have on occasion noted that if there are no consequences for breaking laws, there really is no reason for having them.  In the case of gun laws, for example, it is illegal for a felon to have in his possession, a gun.  But relatively few people are prosecuted for it (though Sessions notes that Federal prosecutions are up.) Attorney General Sessions "gets it" that crimes must be punished, if the law is to have its intended effect of regulating behavior.

Interestingly, according to an article by Wayne LaPierre in the September 2018 issue of the American Rifleman, the New York Times apparently had an article lamenting Sessions' efforts because these might be too successful, thus eliminating the argument for more gun laws (!).  The NYT publishes behind a pay wall, and in any case, I don't intend to send anyone their way.  You are on your own with this one.

Today at Townhall.com we learn that Allies of Christine Blasey Ford put the screws to long time friend to change her statement. This is witness tampering, a crime. It should be punished. Similarly, Senator Dianne Feinstein should be investigated and if found to have leaked Ford's letter, should be punished as well by whatever means the Senate has to punish members. No one is above the law, or should be.

For further reading, go to the American Thinker for an article entitled How To Prevent Another Kavanaugh Circus by Ted Noel.  Ted lays out a number of steps Republicans can take to rein in the Democrats.  Since most of the activity of Dems is illegal, it only requires a prosecutor with a spine to carry it out.  Oh, and perhaps the prosecutor may need body guards.  After all, prosecuting these people will not be unlike prosecuting the mafia.

The Daily Caller Exposes the Problems With the Left

The Daily Caller featured a post about a Facebook vice president supported Judge Kavanaugh during his hearings with the Senate Judiciary Committee.  The post can be found here. According to the post:

Facebook employees are reportedly in the middle of a week-long meltdown after vice president for global policy Joel Kaplan sat behind Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during Kavanaugh’s Sept. 27 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Hundreds of Facebook employees expressed their displeasure with Kaplan since Kavanaugh’s testimony, according to reports in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter.

“His seat choice was intentional, knowing full well that journalists would identify every public figure appearing behind Kavanaugh. He knew that this would cause outrage internally, but he knew that he couldn’t get fired for it,” one Facebook program manager wrote about Kavanaugh, according to TheNYT.

There is the problem with Leftist ideology, right there. The late Mike Vanderboegh called the various ideologies on the Left "Collectivist." This fits with Jonah Goldberg's definition of Fascism, an ideology on the Left:

“We tend to forget that unity is, at best, morally neutral and often a source of irrationality and groupthink. Rampaging mobs are unified. The Mafia is unified. Marauding barbarians bent on rape and pillage are unified. Meanwhile, civilized people have disagreements, and small-d democrats have arguments. Classical liberalism is based on this fundamental insight, which is why fascism was always antiliberal. Liberalism rejected the idea that unity is more valuable than individuality. For fascists and other leftists, meaning and authenticity are found in collective enterprises—of class, nation, or race—and the state is there to enforce that meaning on everyone without the hindrance of debate.”

Here we see the notion, which is expressed everywhere among the young these days, that one can not have a different opinion and still be allowed into decent society. This is collectivist thinking, and it is fundamentally anti-liberal, and intolerant.  We used to value independent thought and action.  Now, not so much.

More Cultural Marxism, This Time on Guns

In all the fuss over the Kavanaugh appointment, I have overlooked a number of very bad laws that states like California, Maryland, and even Florida have enacted called "Red Flag Laws."  Red Flag Laws allow the government, in the form of the police and the courts, to take your weapons from you on the flimsiest of excuses, or even no excuse at all.  You do not have to be credibly charged or convicted of anything. Due process is out the window here. 

As a thought experiment, suppose the local paper printed up the names and addresses of all the concealed carriers in their coverage area.  Someone in the same neighborhood as you, that you don't know and with whom you have had no interaction notices your name and address.  That person happens to be a hoplophobe who is immediately offended that someone in his neighborhood carries a gun.  So your "neighbor" gins up a case where you have acted suspiciously and files a complaint against you.  Next thing you know, the police are knocking on your door and asking for your weapon.

This is the type of scenario that David Harsanyi is writing about at Townall.com today in an article entitled  Democrat's New Laws Are Also An Attack on Due Process

The notion that certain Americans are pre-emptively guilty of wrongdoing, whether there's any corroborating evidence to back up an accusation or not, isn't reserved for conservatives who happen to be in contention for a Supreme Court seat. In the hierarchy of progressive values, due process is a bottom dweller.

...snip...

Another area of American life where we continue to see egregious attacks on the presumption of innocence is gun ownership. You might remember that a couple of years ago, Democrats engaged in a much-covered congressional "sit-in" to support legislation that would have stripped Americans on secret government watchlists -- hundreds of thousands of people who had never been accused, much less convicted, of any crime -- of their constitutional right to bear arms.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in fact, proposed legislation that would have restricted not only American citizens on faulty watchlists but anyone who had been on any watchlist at any time during the previous five years and anyone who had traveled to select Middle Eastern countries. Apparently, Democrats believe limiting the number of refugees from Syria is unconstitutional but explicitly restricting the constitutional rights of Syrian immigrants here legally is just fine.

Most of these laws were passed in the wake of the shootings at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School. None are based on anything that would actually work to stop such crimes. Indeed, the government had all the laws it needed before the shooting to stop it, if the people who run the government at all levels would have done their jobs. Instead, they passed on doing their jobs in favor of doing...who knows? Interestingly, the laws that obtained before did not require a suspension of the Constitution. They just required that people do the right thing.

Huh!

All it takes in many states is for a family member, neighbor or co-worker to accuse you of a pre-crime. One of Maryland's many new laws (signed by Republican Gov. Larry Hogan) allows the police to confiscate weapons for up to a year -- or until the next person accuses you of a crime you are only yet to commit.

There is risible evidence that these new regulations will stop mass shootings or lower gun crime. But as William Rosen, deputy legal director for Everytown for Gun Safety, explains, "red flag laws" are needed to "step into that gap." What gap? You know, the pesky space between protecting the ideal of presuming innocence and completely ignoring it when you feel like it.

Go read the whole thing. Vote accordingly.

My Righteous Anger

Yesterday, as I was driving and explaining what has been happening to Judge Kavanaugh to someone who is what Rush has described as an "uninformed voter," I found myself having to constantly put down anger to sound sane.  Today, Derek Hunter captures exactly how I felt over character assassination that has taken place by people whose past and present behavior leaves them little room to criticize.  Hunter's piece can be found at Townhall.com under the title The Righteous Rage of the Right.

Hunter writes:

Now, after witnessing how disgusting the political left have become in their attempted character assassination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, I would crawl over flaming broken glass into a salt and lemon juice pit to vote against every Democrat I can. And I’m not alone.

I don’t know if Democrats realize what they’ve done, what they’ve awoken in their crusade against Kavanaugh, but I can assure you that conservatives are awake now, ready and enthusiastic to register their disgust at the ballot box. Even never-Trump Republicans have come home, outraged over what our politics have devolved into in the name of “progress.”

Only Democrat voters can change this situation. They can vote the bastards out of office, and do as we have done to find worthy candidates of the old style like Zel Miller and Sam Nunn. In the meantime, I will not vote for another Democrat, and I hold anyone who claims to be a registered Democrat suspect until proven otherwise. The late Robert Bork, Justice Clarence Thomas, and now Judge Kavanaugh, not to mention the other people whose lives have been ruined despite being able representatives of the people have disgusted me since Dan Quayle was run out of office for misspelling the word "potato." Who knew that one of the qualifications for the job of representative, senator, and Vice President was to have first been a spelling bee champion. Does this mean that Joe "Gaffe Machine" Biden was unqualified to be Vice President, and surely to run for President? How about Maxine "Worlds Smartest Woman" Waters? Has she been a spelling be champion?

I suspect the Left will not like the new rules, but they are the only ones who can change them back.