The FBI Should Become the Democrat Bureau of Investigation

 So, now we find, thanks to a FOIA request by John Crump, and reported at Ammoland that the FBI is adding non prohibited buyers to the NICS thus preventing purchases of guns by those who otherwise could. Needless to say, this is incredibly sneaky and under handed. But it shows that the FBI, that once had a reputation as incorruptable, and even handed, has become another Democrat Party hack. Sad.

Go read the whole article, but get a cool drink first because your blood will definitely boil.

Should Democrats Change the Name of Their Party to the Oligarchs?

 Over at the American Thinker today, Andrew W. Coy has an article analyzing the reasons why the Supreme Court refused to see or hear any evidence in the Presidential Election of 2020. Coy's notion is that the Supreme Court are either Cowards, Crooks, or Compromised. Unfortunately, he doesn't come to any conclusions as to which it is. But he at least lays out what the range of the possibilities is. But I think any member of this court should feel utterly ashamed at the notion that they had the chance to set things right, and did not take it. On the other hand, shame is not something today's politicians feel.

They appear to be cowards or crooks or compromised. Cowards, crooks, or compromised seems to be the only way to explain the decision-making of the United States Supreme Court. The Court's unwillingness to make any decisions regarding the presidential election of 2020 is a historic failure. These last twelve months have seen the Court refuse to do its duty. The Court refused to be a co-equal branch of the federal government.

With the Bush v. Gore of 2000, there is legal precedent. Just twenty short years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court took Bush v. Gore, a presidential election case, so the precedent was there. Over this last year, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to address election law questions before the election last summer, right before the election, right after the election, and even prior to the inauguration in January. On all these occasions, the majority of the Supreme Court judges refused to hear any case dealing with the presidential election. They stuck their heads in the sand and acted as if they had no role.

One could argue, successfully, that January 6 on the Washington Mall happened because of the lack of integrity and guts in the Supreme Court. Because of their blatant disassociation with being a coequal branch with the presidency and Congress, the Court has lost enormous respect from half of America. This is dangerous to a democratic republic. One must ask, why would they be willing to do this? Are they cowards, crooks, compromised, or something else? Can these be the only answers to this seemingly impotent Supreme Court?

Coy goes on to analyze each in turn, either cowardice, or crookedness, or simply compromised. In general he thinks crookedness is the least likely, but doesn't discount it. And while Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito clearly wanted to hear the cases, Roberts receives condemnation as a possible coward of the yellowest stripe. Or is Roberts a man of the Left who hid his leanings behind a mask until safely ensconced at the Supreme Court? He wouldn't be the first.  And what about Kavanaugh and Barrett? Wouldn't you think they might owe Trump some measure of loyalty to at lease take a peek at the evidence?  I don't condone compromising their principles in their rulings, but at least hear the case.

A number of states are working to tighten voting laws, reinstating voter ID requirements in many cases, putting in place stricter requirements for mail in ballots, and other voter integrity issues.  Georgia is the first to actually pass such a bill.  It will no doubt face court challenge as the one here in North Carolina did.  We should have had voter ID in 2020, but for a Democrat Attorney General agreeing with Democratic challengers that our law was racist.  Thus the will of the majority of the people can so easily be dispensed with.  Perhaps the Democrats should change the name of the party to to the Oligarchs?

But where will the Supremes be when these eventually come before them?  Will they still be hiding in the basement?

Politicians Pushing Gun Control are Like Wolves Advising the Sheep to Have Their Teeth Removed

 

Today at Townhall.com, Jacob Sullum has a very good article explaining the legal problems with the bump stock ban that President Trump put in place. The ban was a distinct stain on an otherwise pretty good presidency. You can find the article at The Bump Stock Ban Highlights the Danger of Letting Bureaucrats Invent Crimes. The Founders intended that the Congress would make laws, that the Executive would faithfully execute those laws. and that the Courts would interpret those laws. Congress has no authority to delegate to the Executive the power to make up the law, or impose crimes not mentioned in the law itself. But they have been doing it anyway, so President Trump might have been excused for thinking he had that power.

Two years ago, peaceful, law-abiding gun owners across the country became felons overnight, thanks to the Trump administration's ban on bump stocks. But as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit recognized last week, Congress alone has the authority to define new federal crimes, while the president and his underlings are charged with enforcing those laws.

Combining both powers in a single branch is a license for tyranny -- a danger the framers tried to avoid by carefully separating the legislative and executive functions. Regardless of their views on gun control, Americans who care about the rule of law should be troubled by the implications of letting unelected bureaucrats unilaterally and arbitrarily criminalize previously legal conduct.

It has been getting worse and worse with each president we elect, until at what point do we no longer recognize the country anymore. The Founders must be rolling over in their graves. But good for the 6th Circuit for getting it right.

According To A Leftist: The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is...Fear Itself Maybe He's Right

One of the things that marks the present age is the deterioration of the arts. Of course, we are all aware of socialist graphic art that contains heavy handed messages. It is just awful. Then there is literature. Shakespeare was sublime, and of course was written at a time when the British culture was on the rise.  Literature now is derivative and insipid.  Movies, they have made an original movie in I can't remember when,  And of course, classical music is timeless. But now, Oxford University wants to cancel musical notation. How stupid is this? If nobody is trained in musical notation, then of course eventually, no one will be able to play the great composers of the past, let alone any garbage you may be composing now.

And, of course, the musical professors at Oxford University know that. Reading music comes, through years of training I might add, as second nature as reading this page comes to speakers of English. What is at work at Oxford is fear:

Second, I think the Oxford music teachers know this is bunkum. They’re raising it only because they feel that, unless they chime in on the Black Lives Matter issue and show themselves to be on board with it, they will be the next target. Under the tyranny that is BLM, if you’re not with them, you’re against them, and if you’re against them, you will be destroyed in the next purge (and there’s always a next purge).

As I watch the endless waves of BLM stupidity in corporations and academic institutions in the English-speaking world, I’m reminded of nothing so much as the mourners at Kim Jong-il’s funeral. They knew that the secret police were watching and that anyone showing insufficient grief was at risk of being carted off to a concentration camp. That’s why you see videos such as the one below showing thousands of people engaged in hysterical weeping. Yes, they were told that their communist godhead had died, but what you’re seeing... isn’t grief, it’s fear.

That same stench of totalitarian fear is, quite disgracefully, oozing out of Oxford. An institution with over a thousand years of solid academics behind it shouldn’t be groveling before the Marxist BLM thugs.

Gentle readers who are paying attention may have noticed that I mention fear a lot lately. The Communists/Socialists/Fascists among us want power. They want absolute power to control your life from birth to death, and even whether you will be born. They know that under normal circumstances nobody but a fool would grant them that power. You would be an idiot to do so. But if they can intimidate you, frighten and scare you enough with their acts of canceling people, then you might just knuckle under. But understand that if you do, the intimidation will never stop. It can't, because if it did, you might revert to questioning their illegitimate authority.  Can't have that.

The only way to avoid this fate is for people to face the fear, and overcome it.  FDR said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.  Maybe he was right,

The Similarities Between the Rise of the Nazi Party and the Present Day United States

 In yesterday's post, I highlighted an article that noted similarities between the rise of the Nazi party and the events happening in the presented day United States.  Today, I wanted to point to an article at the American Thinker by Steve McCann that points out that The Commonalities Between the Rise of the Nazis and the Tactics of the American Left Cannot Be Ignored At least not if we want to maintain our liberty and freedom

McCann notes six specific items where the Left, either consciously or not, is apparently following the Nazi playbook. The first item is as noted, the creation of "enemies of the people." Leftists always need to have enemies. Just as the Nazis blamed all the problems of Germany on the Jews, so today they blame all the problems of America on so called "systemic racism" and the new enemy is the straight white male. Second, the Nazi party heavily engaged in censorship of any competing ideas. The staged book burnings as a means to scare anyone who might publish opposition news and books. Today they don't exactly burn books, but they do refuse to sell you books that don't fit the current narrative. And of course, then there is the sudden rise of "cancel culture" where the Left seeks to scare people into agreeing with them by making public examples of those who lose there jobs and means of livelihood. Of course, companies are buffaloed into complying with the "woke" mob through social media coordinated threats of boycotts.

Speaking of companies who are going "woke" apparently contradicting the interests of their investors.  They apparently believe that they will be eaten last if they go along with the nonsense:

Fourth, the Nazis, true to socialist ideology, preyed on class envy to stoke tensions and resentment as they blamed the “Junker Class” (the equivalent of today’s “one percent”) for the nation’s economic woes. The American left and the Democrat party hierarchy, true to socialist ideology, has long blamed the evil one percent or greedy billionaires for income and economic inequality in order to foment class envy and resentment.

But the similarity does not end there. In an extraordinary juxtaposition the Nazis were able to vilify the wealthy and the industrialists while the subjects of their vitriol voluntarily financed the Nazi Party and its political campaigns. Hitler assured the German corporate titans that, despite their rhetoric, the Nazis would leave them alone and award them lucrative contracts if they supported the Party through massive financial support and favorable newspaper coverage. Greed overcame good sense, and they did so. These gullible cowards were ultimately responsible for unleashing the Nazis on an unsuspecting planet.

The American left has established a similar rapport with the corporate establishment, in particular the tech titans, by tacitly letting them know that the Democrat party will leave them alone if they financially support the party. Additionally, their disciples have infiltrated the management ranks of many companies further exacerbating the pressure to support the agenda. In the inane belief that they will be left alone by the left and the Democrat party, the American corporate elites have financed the ascendancy of the radical left as the left learned their lesson well from the Nazis and the wealthy elites did not. As virtually all the financial support for the Democrats to manipulate the 2020 election came from these naïve and credulous buffoons. Thus, unleashing radical leftism, societal chaos and a senescent president on the United States.

I urge you, gentle readers, to go read the McCann's entire article. It lays out what is happening today in chilling detail. What he doesn't say, though, is that no one is coming to save us. There is no cavalry over the horizon. Rather it is up to us, with God's help, to save ourselves.

Please also read Dinesh D'Souza's opinion at the Epoch Times entitled My Experience With "Woke" Corporations. D'Souza tells how the Left gets its hooks into people and spreads its evil. It sounds not unlike the Mafia.

By Any Means Necessary

 Have I stated before in this format that the Biblical book of Exodus is actually everyone's story?  I think I have, but could not point to it, so I will say it today.  Everyone is a slave to sin, and only God can save you.  In the Exodus, God brought His people out of bondage in Egypt.  This salvation is celebrated every year in the feast of the Passover.  Now, sometimes our Creator is subtle or obscure, but this time he wanted to make the point very clear, so he arranged the execution of His only son on the Friday after Passover, only to raise Him from the dead the following Sunday.  Thus he tied the two events together.  The first Passover was to free Israel from bondage to Egypt, the second Passover was to free all of us from sin.

For those who are not religious, today is Palm Sunday, the anniversary of the day our Lord, Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem to celebrate Passover.  As Jesus entered, riding on an ass, the foal of an ass, the crowds laid down palm fronds before the Lord.  The following Thursday He celebrated Passover with His disciples, before being captured and taken before the Sanhedrin.  On Friday He was executed on the cross, and the following Sunday He rose from the dead. 

Today, at the American Thinker, Carrie Lynn Caoili has an article entitled Learning the Lessons of Jewish History in which she points out similarities between Nazi Germany and today in the United States.

And now we face Passover 2021 in America. This year, we have more information about COVID. We know that it is far less deadly than we once feared and that there are proven treatments for those uncomfortable with the vaccine. There is even evidence (although it’s contested) that annual deaths have remained relatively consistent since 2016, even with the pandemic. Most recently the CDC statistics show that mask mandates only decreased the spread by a maximum of 1.8 percent.

Yet, for some reason, we are still in the same place that we were almost exactly one year ago. Businesses are still closed, and many have gone under. More than half our children are not in school full-time and many remain locked down. We are wearing masks and social distancing, and we still receive government warnings to avoid our family and friends on holidays for “fear of the spread.”

After a year, shouldn’t our fears have shifted? Shouldn’t we be asking ourselves if this is still about a scary virus that’s new and misunderstood? We now know that, for the overall population, while COVID deaths exceeded those from flu in the elderly, they were offset by the relative absence of any flu deaths. Cases and deaths are rapidly decreasing (see charts below with data from Bing on March 26), with hospitals struggling to keep staff. Few have become overrun.

Caoili goes on to describe the many similarities between Nazi Germany and the United States of 2021. Every tyranny needs enemies. For the Nazis it was the Jews. But what if they had run out of Jews to hate? Of course they would have had to find another enemy, another public enemy No. 1. But this virus is really the perfect enemy. First, a virus is constantly renewing itself through variants, so they never run out of enemies. Second, a virus is invisible, and only experts can detect this specific virus. Third, nearly any health issue a person might have can be a symptom of Covid, so there will always be people convince that they have the disease. In short, through the news media producing fear porn, they can keep enough of the people in such fear that they will give up their God given liberties to be saved from the enemy.

And the Democrats are preparing to take full advantage of the fear.

Vaccine passports and mask mandates are beginning to feel like “Star of David” armbands and camp tattoos, with a special interest in white men and conservatives. Will people who refuse to wear a mask, get the vaccine, have the wrong color skin, or fall on the wrong side of the political spectrum be forced to the fringes of society? Moved into internment camps? Where will the marginalization end?

We are being groomed as a society to see an “out” group that the MSM paints as dangerous, national enemies. These new “enemies” including people whom the government wants to put on a no-fly list merely because of their political leanings, or who’ve been assaulted, arrested, and refused service because they didn’t wear a mask.

...snip...

What’s predicted for the “unvaccinated,” sounds a lot like what happened to the Jews at the beginning of the Holocaust. That started with propaganda that created fear towards a chosen target. Then escalated to a Star of David armband, papers, and a curfew to identify and control those “dangerous” members of society. The “out group” was then moved into ghettos so they “couldn’t harm fellow members of society.”

Dick Morris said You Will Be Made To Care, and those who will make you will use, as always, "any means necessary."

Yes, Sen. Grassley, What About Those Prosecutions?

Sen. Chuck Grassley asked yesterday Why Hasn't Anyone Who Lied Under Oath About Kavanaugh Been Prosecuted?. Katie Pavlich had the story over at Townhall.com yesterday. Actually, I'd like to know the same thing.  The lack of action on prosecuting these people lends credence to the idea that if you are a Democrat, you can get away with pretty much anything.  Not so for Republicans, and not that it should be.  Both Democrats and Republicans should have to obey the law.  And if you are a law maker, you should be even more scrupulous.

 Oh, and while were asking about prosecutions that never take place for people who deserve it, what about anyone who committed illegal acts in perpetrating Fast and Furious? You may remember that was the operation where certain gun stores, at the request...er...on the orders of the ATF allowed guns to "walk" across the border and into drug cartel hands, some of which were used to gun down Border Agent Brian Terry. This was done under Obama's first Attorney General Eric Holder.  The operation broke numerous laws, not only ours, but Mexico's as well.  The press at the time described it as a "botched sting operation."  I don't think you can put lipstick on this pig and sell it as a beauty queen, but even if it was intended as a sting, and even if they did not anticipate what could go wrong, there are still the broken laws that need to be prosecuted.  Oh, and under the murder felony rule, these crimes have no statute of limitation.  Just sayin'....

Bump Stock Ban Ruled Unconstitutional

In a little reported Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, the court found that Trump's Bump Stock Ban is Unconstitutional. I suspect this is not the last we will hear of this, but it is a good sign.

The Ninth Circus Strikes Again

 Ok, so here is the Ninth Circus we all know and...well...know.  According to Bearing Arms, the Ninth Circus...er...Circuit Rules 2A Doesn't Protect Right to Bear Arms. Wait...what? Doesn't the Second Amendment say " A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."? If I understand the English language, then it seems that one of the things protect by the Second Amendment is the "bearing" part. They've already ruled that concealed carry can be infringed, and now they have ruled that open carry can be infringed as well. What, then, do they think "shall not be infringed" means?

The opinion in Young v. Hawaii, taken in conjunction with the Ninth Circuit’s decision a few years ago in a case called Peruta vs. San Diego, means that the largest appellate court in the country has declared that the average citizen has no right to bear arms at all; instead, the state has the privilege and power to grant certain people the ability to carry a firearm in self-defense.

You can read the ruling by going to the article by Cam Edwards and clicking on the 'opinion.' On the other hand, there appears to be at least one judge that can read English as well. Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain dissented from the ruling

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” U.S. Const. amend. II (emphasis added). Today, a majority of our court has decided that the Second Amendment does not mean what it says. Instead, the majority holds that while the Second Amendment may guarantee the right to keep a firearm for self-defense within one’s home, it provides no right whatsoever to bear—i.e., to carry—that same firearm for  self defense in any other place.

This holding is as unprecedented as it is extreme. While our sister circuits have grappled with—and disagreed over—the question of whether public firearms carry falls within the inner “core” of the Second Amendment, we now become the first and only court of appeals to hold that public carry falls entirely outside the scope of the Amendment’s protections.

Well, there is some sanity at the Ninth Circuit.

Too Many of "We the People" Live in Fear

 J. B. Shurk exposes who the Left is really working for, whether they know it or not.  And no, it's not to bring themselves to power, but to bring a bunch of oligarchs to power.  It is interesting that the Left and the Muslims use each other, hoping to be the last ones eaten.  But then each of these groups of crazies is being used by the super rich.  Who knew?  You can find the article at the American Thinker entitled The Great Reset Is Just A MacGuffan for Total State Control. So, who is using whom?

The United States has always presented a roadblock to the ambitions of globalist oligarchs through its one-two punch of a Constitution that clearly constrains the powers of government while empowering the people and an American culture that prides itself on representing the last, best hope for freedom on the planet. So how do you "reset" America so that it becomes just another socialist country controlled by an elite few? You undermine America's freedoms by undermining her foundations. You go to war with the American people.

And the Democrats (with a few Republicans, lest we forget) has done just that.

"White supremacy" is the socialists' "yellowcake uranium." It's really that simple. You can't start a war against society without an excuse, and you can't engage in perpetual war unless the excuse chosen is so vague and illusory that it can't possibly be vanquished. This has always been a particular talent of power-hungry socialists. They know how to engage their troops in endless battles by choosing inexhaustible targets: bourgeois materialism, carbon dioxide, hate, whiteness. It's bloody (evil) genius! "We're going to wage war against the middle class, natural air, bad thoughts, and skin color — that should keep everyone busy!"

Shurk goes on to describe the idea that "the issue is never the issue." I must be slow, but I have always had a problem with the idea that the issue isn't the issue. But the "MacGuffin" concept makes it clear to me, so thank you Mr. Shurk. It also explains why presenting well developed logical arguments opposing these ideas is met with name calling. Even the Left doesn't believe them. For example, do you really think John Kerry cares about the climate? It's as if the Left is saying "Oh, for heaven's sake, don't be so literal,"  to which the only answer seems to be "Not No, but Hell No!" But I'll let Shurk tell the story:

Weather, white supremacy, who cares? They're not important; what's important is how to train the many to obey the few — that's socialism in a nutshell! Italian dictator Benito Mussolini succinctly defined fascism as "all within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." Famed director Alfred Hitchcock used the term "MacGuffin" to describe an object or device in a movie that serves merely as a trigger for the plot. If you put both ideas together, you've got a pretty good handle on what socialism really is. Socialism is a way for a small group of people (the oligarchical, blue-check, blue-blood, limousine-liberal, champagne-swilling, Davos-demagoguing, pampered elite) to rule over everyone else by keeping populations so riled up about absolute nonsense that they beg to be ruled over more completely.

Shurk goes on to describe a number of MacGuffins used to scare and distract us from what they are really doing. Whether it is climate doom, or the Wuhan Virus doom, these are just things to get us riled up and frightened until we beg then to provide us with security. We will even give up some of our liberties. Think how we used to travel by air, and look at us now lined up like cattle awaiting slaughter. We pay to have stewardesses lord it over us, as if we were visiting a sadomasocist parlor.

 In Shurk's telling, at the right moment, when we are finally desperate enough, a strong man will take over. We, the people, of course, will not have anyone defending our rights. It used to be we the people who defended our rights. But too many of "we the people" have bought into the fear.

Here we go again

 The second time's a charm, right?  In any case, Sen. Diane Feinstein  has introduced another so-called "Assault Weapons" Ban.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on gun control. There will be blustering about the need for background checks for gun sales, closing so-called “loopholes” and getting “weapons of war” off the streets. Before the inflated labels get thrown around, it’s important to know the facts.

Larry Keane, the author, then goes on to slaughter the various arguments. He points out that every gun sold by a dealer requires a NICS background check. Oh, and these "weapons of war" aren't. Their the same semiauto rifles that have been around since the turn of the last century. Indeed, if Feinstein believes these are weapons of war, then why wouldn't she propose issuing them to our troops?  Scratch that, she might just do it.  But you can read the article for yourself. What I want to talk about is that Sen. Feinstein claims this gun grab will prevent crime. But in fact, it does nothing to reduce guns in the hands of criminals. They can just go buy a stolen gun out of the back of someone's car. Every gun grab depends on people obeying the law, and they ain't the criminals.

“This has taken me, a law-abiding citizen with nary an unpaid parking ticket to my name, over a month,” Kane told the Washington Free Beacon. “Meanwhile Joe Bad Guy has probably purchased several fully automatic AK-47s out of the back of an El Camino in a shady part of town with zero background checks.”

Just a thought here, but doesn't substantially burdening the law abiding citizen with countless prior restraints on a right constitute "infringement?"

First They Came For...

 I have said that I am a Christian who belongs to a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church congregation.  We have certain religious practices that are "must haves."  For instance, most Sundays we have a Divine Service that features the eating of Christ's Body and drinking His Blood, through the bread and wine of Communion.  Christ commanded that we do this.  To not do it is to spit on his Commandment.  We also sing hymns, engage in corporate prayers, and so forth.  So why am I highlighting a story from The Federalist that talks about what the "Equality Act" will do to Jewish worshippers? Well, because of a Lutheran who lived during the Nazi regime in Germany, Martin Neimoller. Neimoller wrote a confessional poem called "First they came for...

First they came for the socialists,

and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The essence of defending free speech, or indeed any right against State encroachment is to speak when it first rears its head. But failing that, we need to speak out whenever and wherever we see it. So, I am highlighting a piece today by Yaakov Menken entitled How The Equality Act Would Legalize Religious Bigotry. I would note that here in the United States there is a widespread belief that that which is legal (or at least not illegal) is moral. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the Equality Act is such a piece of work. Like the "For The People Act," the "Equality Act" was written in Hell by the Devil himself.

Menken starts off by telling us about a ceremony for at least 100.000 Jews who had completed a 7 year long study of the Oral Torah, the first 5 books in the Holy Bible.

On Jan. 1, 2020, almost three months before COVID-19 limits on gatherings, more than 100,000 observant American Jews filled MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, and other locations across the country for a unique gala honoring religious education. Called simply “The Siyum,” meaning “the completion,” it honored the tens of thousands of religiously motivated men — and significant number of women — who completed a seven-and-a-half-year cycle studying the Oral Torah.

The Siyum celebrates not only education, but Jewish resilience in the face of persecution. The 2,711-day cycle was first set in motion in Poland in 1923, where the first Siyum ensued in 1931. In 1945, the main venues of the third Siyum were in Israel, but, incredibly, one was also held by Holocaust survivors in a displaced persons camp in Germany. Since 1990, the largest celebrations have taken place in the United States, each exponentially larger than the one before it.

Makes sense. After all, our own theologians study for many years to become pastors. Contrary to the impressions of atheists, Christianity requires a great deal of people to be able to maintain trust and faith in their God in the face of extreme difficulties and death. And Christians must many times face down such fears in the face of not knowing: it's why it's called "faith."

But back to the issue at hand, the reason there may never be another Siyum in these United States is because Congress intends to make it illegal to segregate the men from the women. But this segregation is part and parcel of Jewish religious custom:

The reason is simple: not only prayer services, but family lifecycle events of all kinds — from circumcisions to bar mitzvahs to weddings to funerals — are commonly divided by biological sex in traditional Orthodox Judaism. This is true whether or not ceremonies are held in synagogues.

Whether in restaurants, catering halls, funeral homes, or elsewhere, all of these gatherings are often observed in what the law describes as “public accommodations.” Every major Siyum event over the past century has observed this same strict separation of the sexes.

The Equality Act would ban them all. This piece of legislation mandates the “desegregation of public facilities [by] sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity).” This directly forbids traditional Jewish practice in any such location.

The Equality Act is one more piece of garbage legislation. The act does not supply actual equality, but is intended to give pretend equality to pretend girls for made up reasons. It caters to the sick among us. It defies reality, and should be opposed.

Don't Let Fear Rule You

 I can not remember who pointed out that at least half of local news since the Wuhan Flu panic started is fear porn.  But I started watching closely and my friend is right.  And as I read more and more, I also realized that the statistics reported were often cherry picked to make them seem worse. So, the article at The Federalist by Jordan Davidson entitled Study: Majority of Americans Grossly Overestimate Covid-19 Hospitalization Rates caught my attention.

The current hospitalization rate for COVID-related illness in the United States hovers between 1 and 5 percent, but 41 percent of Democrats, 28 percent of Republicans, and 35 percent of independents or members of other political parties said there is a 50-plus percent chance that someone with the Wuhan virus will need to be treated at a hospital.

This incorrect yet general consensus, the New York Times noted, was often reinforced with widespread policy decisions by partisan actors, such as Democratic politicians in blue states and cities keeping schools closed despite scientific evidence pointing to reopening while red states started to transition back to in-person models as early as August.

So if this study is correct, it means my friend is not a conspiracy theorist. But it also implies that the fear generated in the public, particularly Democrats, is intentional. The next question sends one to a very dark place: why would that be?

Part of the answer to that question comes today at the American Thinker Chet Richards has an article entitled Science in an Age of Fear. The author of this piece is an actual scientist, one who practices science. Now, I am not an actual scientist. I am an engineer. Engineers have been described as using the discoveries of science to solve practical problems. Point is, I can attest to the following:

Far too many people believe that science is some mysterious entity which speaks in oracles and delivers miraculous new toys for people to marvel at and play with. This form of Science is a Cargo Cult. This Science is a kind of benevolent deity to be worshiped without understanding and without questioning.

Others have correctly pointed out that science is not a thing. Science actually is a methodology. It employs a dialog among competing ideas about the nature of reality. Intellectual independence and controversy is an essential part of the process.

This dialog can only be resolved through experiment. Only with intellectual freedom can experiments be defined which will show which ideas are correct and which are not. As Richard Feynman famously said: “It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.”

Without freedom of thought and speech, without opposition and testing, science is a mere catalog of previous discovery. Without full intellectual freedom Science is dead. It has become Science. It has become ritual.

And another word for Science is dogma. But some particularly politicians, conflate the scientific method with Science and use the result to instill fear. The more fear they can induce in the public, the greater will be the cry to save them. And external enemy like Jihadis, or the border crisis do work, but even better is a never ending ever renewing itself through variants virus. And the tyrants have certainly not let a good crisis go to waste.

The fear of this epidemic has been used by governments to imprison us. After all, “lockdown” means we must remain in our locked cells. The lockdown has wreaked havoc with our economy, obliterated multitudes of businesses, and demolished the savings of millions of citizens.

There is no science behind this imposed tyranny. It should be obvious that the directives coming from those charged with managing the epidemic are based not on scientific understanding but on intentionally magnifying fear for political advantage.

...snip...

Large parts of the nation remain in lockdown even though it is now apparent that lockdown, mask wearing, and social distancing are not effective in preventing the spread of disease. Lockdown is not scientifically valid. The tyranny of fear is being used to impose real political tyranny.

We must resist the fear. We must not be afraid to say what we really think. In so doing we are very likely to discover we have unexpected allies. Never forget that intellectual freedom is the shield protecting all our freedoms.

Please go read the whole article. It is quite profound, and there is only a small window while we can still speak out. We must muster the courage to do so. Also, go read Naomi Wolf "The End of America," which lays out the steps every Facsist dictator takes on the road to power.

The Supreme Court Exposed

 What Ho! A Federal District Court is attacking the Supreme Court?  Well, it is about time someone showed a little spine.  Andrea Widburg, in a post at the American Thinker has the story entitled  A Federal Appellate Judge Challenged Supreme Court Infallibility.

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, nobody but the parties involved cared about the issues in the case. It became noteworthy, though, because Judge Laurence Silberman used the dissent, not just to disagree with the majority’s ruling, but also to warn against the danger of a national media that is completely allied with the party controlling all of Washington D.C. However, I find the case even more exciting because it attacks the notion of Supreme Court infallibility.

I am always a little appalled that whenever an appointee to the Supreme Court is undergoing Senate hearings, the Democrats in particular are concerned that the appointee has a proper respect for stare decisis, the Latin term for allowing judicial precedent to guide future rulings. The idea grows out of English Common Law, where there is no statute to rely upon, then judges would look to similar cases to see what had been done before this case. A proper use of stare decisis would require that the Justices weigh past rulings, while going back to the Constitution itself to find the best theory to use in each case. To do such is to acknowledge, as does Silberman, that all rulings are made by mere men.

Although Silberman acknowledges the difficulty inherently in overruling “landmark” cases, he has come to see the 57-year-old New York Times opinion as “a threat to American Democracy. It must go.” And then Silberman goes into overdrive defending the Constitution.

He makes plain his disdain for Justice Kennedy’s contention that “criticism of the Court is tantamount to an attack on the Constitution.” Instead, “I readily admit that I have little regard for holdings of the Court that dress up policymaking in constitutional garb.” It’s that kind of dissimulation that is “the real attack on the Constitution.” Indeed, “[t]he notion that the Court should somehow act in a policy role as a Council of Revision is illegitimate.”

What Silberman has written is incredibly important. The Supreme Court, unlike the Pope, is not God’s representative on earth (at least for Catholics). It’s a collection of lawyers, with those from the left being highly politicized. These same leftist lawyers pretend that they are, in fact, infallible, making their decisions indistinguishable from the Constitution itself – and as unassailable.

The emphasis is mine, but I think Widburg has touched on an important flaw in our understanding of the Constitution. Ever since Marberry v. Madison (1803) the Court has grabbed power not granted to it by the Constitution itself. It has thus seen itself as the "Council of Last Resort" but has in the last hundred years taken even more power, as a "Council of Last Revision." Silberman is right to call this latter out as illegitimate.

The Left has gotten a lot of what it wanted by going to court.  They have done so because their program is quite unpopular.  Courts, having been trained by the Left,  have agreed with the Left most of the time.  But contrary to the notion of "settled law" these court rulings have invariably left conflict in their wake.  Too much that should have been settled by State politics has been instead settled by the national Supreme Court.  We need to return to the notion of these United States rather than the United States.  The one is a confederation of sovereign States, the other is a homogenized nation calling itself the United States.  But that is not how it was founded.

I suspect we have fallen into this trap in trying to extricate ourselves from the last effects of Jim Crow.  But we seem to have thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

Tip Of The Iceberg

 On the election integrity front, the Epoch Times has a report saying that 24 people have been charged with voter fraud in North Carolina.

Reading between the lines, I suspect that these 24 cases represent the proverbial tip of the iceberg.  While North Carolina has a republican majority in the legislature, the governor and his appointees are Democrat.  Certainly the Attorney General is Democrat.  I suspect the U.S. Attorney who brought these charges overwhelmed the state with requests for records.  Remember this case the next time someone says that...well, yeah, sure there's election fraud, but it's not enough to tilt an election.  We don't really know how much fraud takes place.  The Democrats keep sweeping it under the rug.

Close Your Eyes and Tap Your Heels Three Times...

 There was a time when General Motors was the world's largest automotive manufacturer.  That was then, this is now, and now Toyota is the world's largest, including here in the United States.  And as the world's largest, I suspect they know a thing or two about the automotive market.  In the article at PJ Media by Bryan Preston, Toyota Warns (Again) About electrifying All Autos. Is Anyone Listening?. Toyota, a company that introduced the Prius hybrid vehicle , warns that there is simply not enough infrastructure to electrify the entire fleet of the United States.

Toyota warns that the grid and infrastructure simply aren’t there to support the electrification of the private car fleet. A 2017 U.S. government study found that we would need about 8,500 strategically-placed charge stations to support a fleet of just 7 million electric cars. That’s about six times the current number of electric cars but no one is talking about supporting just 7 million cars. We should be talking about powering about 300 million within the next 20 years, if all manufacturers follow GM and stop making ICE cars.

...snip...

We will need much more generation capacity to power about 300 million cars if we’re all going to be forced to drive electric cars. Whether we’re charging them at home or charging them on the road, we will be charging them frequently. Every gas station you see on the roadside today will have to be wired to charge electric cars, and charge speeds will have to be greatly increased. Current technology enables charges in “as little as 30 minutes,” according to Kelly Blue Book. That best-case-scenario fast charging cannot be done on home power. It uses direct current and specialized systems. Charging at home on alternative current can take a few hours to overnight to fill the battery, and will increase the home power bill. That power, like all electricity in the United States, comes from generators using natural gas, petroleum, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, or hydroelectric power according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. I left out biomass because, despite Austin, Texas’ experiment with purchasing a biomass plant to help power the city, biomass is proving to be irrelevant in the grand energy scheme thus far. Austin didn’t even turn on its biomass plant during the recent freeze.

Half an hour is an unacceptably long time to spend at an electron pump. It’s about 5 to 10 times longer than a current trip to the gas pump tends to take when pumps can push 4 to 5 gallons into your tank per minute. That’s for consumer cars, not big rigs that have much larger tanks. Imagine the lines that would form at the pump, every day, all the time, if a single charge time isn’t reduced by 70 to 80 percent. We can expect improvements, but those won’t come without cost. Nothing does. There is no free lunch. Electrifying the auto fleet will require a massive overhaul of the power grid and an enormous increase in power generation. Elon Musk recently said we might need double the amount of power we’re currently generating if we go electric. He’s not saying this from a position of opposing electric cars. His Tesla dominates that market and he presumably wants to sell even more of them.

But we seem to be getting a train of carts lined up before the horse. If the idea of electrifying the car fleet is to reduce our carbon footprint, doesn't this just move our carbon footprint from the tail pipe to the power plant?  And then there is the assumption, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that we can do all this with wind and solar power.  Look, even aspirational goals need to be based in reality.  But like everything else the Left does, the idea of powering automobiles solely with electricity partakes of magical wishing.  This is just more of the childish behavior of so much of the Left. 

Do You Believe In Magic?

 John Conlin has a piece at the American Thinker entitled Can Liberalism Survive Science. Conlin makes the same point that I have been making that the Left engages in unreality. Indeed, all its thinking seems to be magical. Whether it is dividing people into groups, when there is just one human race, or pretending that a man can decide he is a she, or the notion that man can hold back the changing climate, the Left claims god like power to make things different.

So, you believe in science, eh? Excellent, so do I. At the core of this science-thinking is the acceptance of the fact that there is reality. Thus, there are a finite number of things which are true and an infinite number of things which aren’t -- and our beliefs, opinions, and desires have no impact on this.

...snip...

Let start with their insistence on classifying and grouping individuals -- the only real unit of humanity -- based on a handful of traits or behaviors and acting as though these groups -- their own creation -- are actually real in some physical sense.

Black, white, people of color, rich, poor, Hispanic, Latino, Latinx, conservative, liberal, Republican, Democrat, gay, straight, Trump-supporters, Trump-haters, left-handed, right-handed -- these groupings of individuals are almost endless.

They then “give” these imaginary groups motives, emotions, beliefs, action, and life. If the creators “like” the group, these all will be framed in a positive light. If the groups are “bad,” they will be framed in a negative light.

In effect they act as little gods who have the ability to shape reality. Where they obtained this power is never revealed.

I have found myself agreeing with the Pink Pistols, a group of gays that keep and bear arms. And of course, I can understand why they might need a gun for self defense. And while I probably don't agree with much that Naomi Wolf believes, we both agree on the need for freedom and the rights embodied in the Constitution.  That is enough for me.  Truly, there is only one race composed of individuals who each are a minority of one.  Each should be taken on the merits of his or her character. 

Then there is the bizarre notion that boys can become girls and vice versa by simply declaring it so.  This reminds me of Wiccans who think they can cast spells by declaring the right combination of words.  Say, if people can change reality by just uttering the right spell, why can't they cast a spell to stop global warming...er...cooling...change?  What are you saying liberals don't really care?

Their latest assault on human reality is their strange fascination -- bordering on obsession -- with the mental disorder of gender dysphoria, or as it is more commonly called, transgenderism. Yet the science on this is clear: there is no such thing as a transgendered person. They don’t and can’t exist. This is a mental issue, not a physical one. This progressive assault on reality -- all while shouting “I believe in science” -- is a wonder to behold.

Do you believe in science, or magic?

Critical Race Theory Invades Wake County Schools

 Critical Race Theory (CRT) has taken hold with seemingly lightning speed.  Today I want to highlight an egregious example of the infection of CRT into our local schools in Wake County.  For those of you not in North Carolina, Raleigh is the county seat of Wake County as well as the Capitol of North Carolina.  Andrea Widburg, at the American Thinker has the story for us entitled North Carolina School District Says White Parents Are the Problem. Interestingly, several years ago conservatives had people on the Board of Education to counter this sort of thing. But the Democrat party Left fought back and won. This is the result.

The plague of Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) has reached North Carolina’s largest school district. Christopher Rufo obtained documents from a teachers’ training program held last year that was a festival of race hatred. CRT blatantly violates the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and offends the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. What’s especially disturbing about the training in Wake County is that the teachers were told to ignore parents’ concerns and force the training on their children.

Just to orient those who may be new to CRT, it holds that every aspect of American life is infused with racism, all of it emanating from Whites towards other races. (Jews are classed as White and come in for both race hatred and anti-Semitism from the CRT crowd.) Whites who object to being labeled as evil, racist oppressors are told that their objections only prove their racism. Additionally, anything associated with Western culture – scientific accuracy, grammar, punctuality, ambition, organization, whatever – is inherently racist.

As I noted above, CRT is pure racism and is, therefore, unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral. Nevertheless, thanks to the religious fervor of BLM that swept through Democrats last year, CRT is gaining traction in schools across America...

Back on March 2, I wrote a post entitled Stating The Truth Is A Revolutionary Act, in which I pointed out that to teach students CRT, in this case in relation to mathematics, is to abandon reality. There are correct answers, and incorrect answers in mathematics. The scientific method, properly understood is designed to find ever more and more correct answers. These things have nothing to do with race, or what is termed "white supremacy." And while these things are a part of Western culture, they come from all over the world, because one of the defining features of Western Civilization is discovering and the using whatever works best. The notion that Western Civilization was invented by Europeans is, of course, false. Rather, the things that make up Western Civilization were synthesized into a whole in Europe, and then transferred back to the World as a whole.

Western peoples, for example, adopted phonetics, which tied the written letter to spoken sounds.  What a great gift brought to us by the Phoenicians.  Our numbering system was developed in India, coming to us through the Arabs.  Geometry of course came from the Greeks, while Algebra came from the Arabs.  But there were geniuses in the West too, such as Isaac Newton, who discovered more advanced mathematical systems.  We also have great universal plays including the Greek theatre, and of course Shakespeare.  Today we stand on the shoulders of giants, and proudly proclaim so.

So, I said that stating the truth is a revolutionary act.  Well, here's part of the truth:  anyone, from anywhere can adopt the best of Western culture.  It is not tied to any place of any people.  Oh, for sure there is much that is tawdry, superficial, and icky about popular culture that no one should adopt.  But mathematics, science, literature, and art can and should be adopted by all.  These things have given us the greatest freedom in history.  

One more thing before I close this post is an excellent piece by Christopher Rufo entitled Critical Race Fragility. I suspect the reason this is moving so fast, and so sub-rosa, is precisely because critical race theorists can not stand debate. Indeed, they simply declare, in a circular fashion, that if you believe CRT is wrong, that proves that CRT is correct. What??

I advise you to look into what your children are being taught, and get involved before it's too late.

Update:  Over at The Federalist is a great piece by Ian Prior entitled How Writing An Article Put Me On the Chardonay Antifa List. The main thrust of the piece is how cancel culture is used to shut people up.  The particular reason why they wanted to shut down Mr. Prior is because he wrote an article against Critical Race Theory. His point? Don't back down. CRT is wrong on all counts, and we need to be heard loud and clear.  Martin Luther King had it right, the CRT jerks have it wrong.  Period.

Return Trip to Fascism

 I probably would not agree with Naomi Wolf on policy issues.  She describes herself as a Leftist, and was a political consultant to the Clinton administration.  However, she seems to be a real patriot.  I can live with that.  Here at the the American Partisan is a recorded zoom call between Wolf and a group of Germans entitled The Return Trip to Fascism. Go watch it when you have a hour.

The Woke Military As Silly As the Woke Left

 Kurt Schlichter, at Townhall.com today, laments that Our Military Suffers Yet Another Defeat...This Time to Tucker Carlson. Like a lot of Schlichter's writings, it is written with tongue-in-cheek, and yet he is deadly serious.

So, basically, Tucker Carlson – who they lambaste for being like the other ~92 percent of Americans who were never in uniform – would have done less damage running our formerly indomitable military than the perfumed princes who run it now. Yet these generals and senior NCOs who got and internalized the SJW memo are utterly clueless. They are more engaged and interested in fighting TV hosts who embarrass them by exposing their failures, and snipe hunting for mystery extremist boogeymen in the ranks, than in preparing to defeat China in high-intensity conventional combat.

Let’s get beyond their utter breach of tradition, and their unpunished breaking of the regulations banning political activity in uniform in general and information operation targeting of U.S. citizens in particular. Let’s instead focus on how crummy a job these generals and senior sergeants and their eager minions did doing it. They completely misunderstood the battlespace. They thought that all those Gallup polls listing “The Military” as America’s most respected institution would allow them to use their titles and uniforms and stuff leverage the support of the American people against this uppity pundit. But they totally failed, as usual. Citizens were outraged. Vets were livid – especially since we vets would have been handed our walking papers for this kind of garbage in our day.

You must understand that the traditional military has been immune to following the silliness of the wider society because if you are fighting an enemy up close and personal. When bullets are flying by your head, one must acknowledge reality or die, and soldiers tend to look at the world as it really is. But of course anyone who doesn't acknowledge the fantasy of the Left stands as a rebuke to these nut cases.

The Left is like the Emperor in the fable who believes those around him who falsely claim his "new clothes" look oh so stylish, to keep their heads, no doubt. It takes a child to point out that he is as naked as a jaybird, buck naked, naked as the day he was born.  Reality is a rebuke to this silliness.

So, the first thing we need to do is acknowledge reality.  Boys can not become girls by having various parts cut off.  Their DNA was set at conception, and will never change.  Oh, and women, on average, can not compete with men where physical strength and endurance is required.  That doesn't mean women should not be in the military, but let's use them in non combat roles.  Oh, and saying that the average young man is not physically fit enough is not an answer.  The military may need additional training time, but serious people know the requirements of serious warfare.

The Chinese are a serious military, devoted to one thing: winning the coming war against the United States. Our military leadership is not serious. It has lost its edge and devoted itself to social experimentation while cheerleading itself into thinking everything is A-okay. It’s not.

This comes from the top, but unfortunately the commander-in-chief is busy with a Matlock marathon while the people pulling his puppet strings are interested only in ensuring that the military is fully absorbed into the ranks of the woke institutions. How can you expect a civilian leadership in China’s pocket to prep to fight it?

Meanwhile, J. B. Shurk has an article at the American Thinker entitled Is D.C. Using Its 'Premeptive War' Strategy Against The States?

All the while, Congress primarily dedicates itself to figuring out how best to gut punch ordinary Americans while paying off its partners in crime, largely succeeding by passing a two trillion dollar blue state bailout and moving forward with legislation that punishes the religious faithful (H.R.5), gun owners (H.R.8), and dissident conservatives who refuse to shut up (H.R.1).

That’s a mouthful. And only the tip of the iceberg. For every monstrosity the Democrats drag forth before the public, they are pursuing another hundred out of the spotlight within the labyrinthine administrative state that makes law while no-one is looking. This administration is relentless in pursuing bad policies that hurt Americans and erode further the few constitutional bonds that keep the nation intact.

Which leads to a painful possibility:

I find myself asking the same questions millions of Americans now ask themselves: given this campaign of outright hostility toward the American people and general dereliction of duty to protect and defend the states, is the American government intentionally trying to provoke civil conflict? Are all these horrendous policies leading to armed confrontation against red state holdouts? Has D.C. transformed the Iraq War’s “Preemptive War” Doctrine into a plan of action against its own citizens?

As Schlichter makes clear, our military is not at this time capable of fighting a real war against a serious enemy like Communist China. They may not even be able to win a war against the Netherlands. But as has been shown time and time again, a joke of a military can still manage to fight against unarmed and disorganized civilians.

But you be the judge.  Go read both articles and decide.  The military is no longer to be trusted, just as the DOinJ or the FBI can no longer be trusted to fairly and evenly enforce the laws.  Lady Justice is no longer blind.  And now we can add the military to the ranks of the woke Left.

Criminalize Capitol Protests Will Stiffen Trump Supporters Spines

 Once again, now that it doesn't matter, more proof that the presidential election was stolen. This time a court in Michigan found that the Michigan Secretary of State had indeed overstepped her legal authority by changing the rules on absentee ballots in the state.

Why this matters is because the usurpers are attempting to Criminalize the Protests At The Capitol, with the goal of destroying any Trump supporters, no natter how innocuous they may be.  It is an exercise in raw power, in which the laws are not being equally enforced.  It has become a system where Trump supporters get the book, any book, thrown at them while the real terrorists and conspirators dance away scot free**.  Both our military and our law enforcement have been turned against us.  I can tell these usurpers, however, that it is not working.  Just as Martin Luther King led a movement to remove discrimination of blacks, so conservatives may be forming a movement to eliminate discrimination against them.  And make no mistake, Republicans remember their history, and MLK is one of our heroes, along side Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas.

I personally am defiant.  I took down my United States Flag, which had flown over my home since I moved here, after Obama won.  I watched as he attempted to transform America, and frankly, he succeeded to a remarkable degree.  I felt we no longer lived in the constitutional republic that we had live in.  We now lived in the Former United States of America (FUSA).

Yesterday, I put up that flag, in defiance of the usurpers and the RINOs.  Every piece of ground around me may be FUSA territory, but my little piece remains the old USA.

Please read both articles.  And keep in mind that the Left has already admitted to stealing the election by bragging about it in Time Magazine.

* For attribution, the first hyperlinked article is written by Matt Vespa at Townhall.com entitled "Trump Lobbed This Election Claim...And It Just Got Vindicated In Michigan." The second hyperlink is at the American Thinker by Andrew Paquette entitled "Criminalizing Protests At The Capitol".

**The term "scot free" originates from 'Skat' is a Scandinavian word for tax or payment and the word migrated to Britain and mutated into 'scot' as the name of a redistributive taxation, levied as early the 10th century as a form of municipal poor relief.

 'Scot' as a term for tax has been used since then in various forms - Church scot, Rome scot, Soul scot and so on. Whatever the tax, the phrase 'getting off scot free' simply refers to not paying one's taxes.

Gun Control Doesn't Control Crime. Big Surprise

 Over at Bearing Arms Cam Edwards has a report that...shocker...New Zealand Gun Confiscation Had No Effect on Crime. Of course, this comes as no surprise to those of us who keep and bear arms. It may come as a surprise to some of the foot soldiers in the gun grabber community, though I suspect that the Left will be yawning. The Left wants to grab guns because otherwise, they fear what the American people will do.

Apparently, the New Zealand government has noticed these facts too. But, like all gun prohibitionists, who would rather blame the tools a criminal uses rather than blame the criminal, they intend to double down on a failed policy:

The group Gun Control New Zealand is calling for a host of new restrictions on legal gun owners, including fast-tracking a national gun registry and to restrict the sale of ammunition to guns that have been registered with the government. If you haven’t registered a 9mm, for instance, you wouldn’t be able to purchase any 9mm ammo.

Why would criminals pay any more attention to these restrictions, given the fact that they’ve ignored the gun ban? Ardern and other gun control supporters can’t say. Instead, they’re just stuck on the idea that with enough gun control laws in place, eventually it will have some effect on violent criminals. It’s not working out that way in New Zealand, and it hasn’t worked out that way in the United States either. If you want to crack down on violence, you have to go after those responsible. Any attempt by government to ban their way to safety is doomed to failure, but New Zealand’s government appears ready and willing to double down on their failed strategy.

Now there's an idea: go after the criminals rather than the tools they use. Because, let's face it, if criminals don't obey the existing laws, what makes them think that they will obey new laws.  Too bad the New Zealand government hasn't figured this out.

Is It Too Little, Too Late?

 I have written before about Jay Valentine.  He's the guy who runs a team of people that advises law enforcement, insurance companies and others about fraud.  He and his team are consulted by some very sophisticated people about how fraud is committed and what to do about it.  He has another article today at the American Thinker entitled The Sovereign Crime of Industrial Scale Vote Fraud. He starts out with this:

Recently our team was invited to meet with 2020 election fraud investigators in downtown Austin. Our team, with some of the top criminal profiling talent in the country, was happy to attend. At the last minute, our new pals cancelled their meeting. Since we changed our schedules and lost those days, we decided to hold our own confab.

The point? The government was in on the fraud by averting its eyes to obvious in your face fraud. That is what is meant by "Sovereign Crime." It occurs elsewhere, but this is the first time Americans have seen it here.

Sovereign crime is not something we see a lot of in America as our governmental institutions are generally not organized to commit, support or hide a crime.

Most Americans have never seen an organized crime take place, in plain view, supported by or covered up by governmental institutions. But it happens all the time around the world, even in some countries that are quite Westernized.

Sovereign crime means your government was a participant, active or passive, enabling vote fraud.

Valentine goes on to document the many ways that the government, at the State and Federal levels, were either involved by participating in the fraud, or were complicit in ignoring it. And when it was brought to the attention of the courts, they dismissed it rather than try the cases brought to them on the merits. The 80 million Trump voters have a right to feel betrayed by the government and the courts.

But wait...there's more! The experts say that fraudsters do not stop on their own.

The team, educated in some of the most sophisticated organized fraud tactics, posited that this was not a dry run. Their thesis is that if one were to seriously evaluate the balloting in many states for 2014, 2016 and 2018, one will find traces of what happened in 2020. That project is under discussion.

Their second thesis is that this is not over by any means. This kind of election fraud was hugely successful. If one even questions the 2020 election, one can be banned from social media and labeled e a “conspiracy theorist” by sovereign governmental agencies.

The team believes the best is yet to come.

Fraud perps are greedy and when left to commit fraud, for which there was likely millions of dollars in remuneration either presently or in the future, they are not going to stop. As fraudsters recognize that national law enforcement refuses to investigate and the courts will not look at evidence, they are emboldened. Who wouldn’t be?

Repulicans are beginning to wake up. Indeed, even a few Democrats are beginning to understand that if this industrial scale election fraud continues that their government will be out of their control too. The question is, is it too little, too late?

Pope Francis Declares Blessing of Gay Unions "Illicit"

 I mentioned several years ago that my then congregation was chartered under the auspices of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).  The ELCA has a squishy attitude toward abortion, and had recently approved the ordination of gay individuals if they are in so called "committed" relationships.  Part of the reason this came up was because the presiding Bishop at the time had a daughter who was gay.  This had nothing to do with following the Bible, and everything to do with the ego of the persons interpreting faith for us.  So, it was with sadness that I left that congregation and joined a Missouri Synod church.  While the Missouri Synod has its own problems, they do still attempt to follow the Bible on matters of faith. 

Fortunately, the Catholic Church has not given in to the Leftists, and still calls abortion what it is: murder. Now, Pope Francis has Declared Blessings For Same Sex Unions "Illicit" according to the Epoch Times. No doubt the Left will be displeased, but the Pope did the right thing.

The Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a formal response of “negative” to a question of whether the Catholic churches have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex on March 15.

Pope Francis approved this response.

“It is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex,” the statement said. What is blessed should be “objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace” according to the designs of God, the statement explained.

The blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit because “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.”

What this means, I am taking it, is that there won't be any Catholic gay weddings. Just as there are others who are willing to bake a cake for a gay wedding, so there are others who are willing to conduct ceremonies for gay weddings. There really is no need for a Catholic Priest to degrade his office and his Church to satisfy Leftists.  Indeed, there is no reason for anyone of conscience to participate in any way in gay weddings.

The reason the Left insists on forcing Christians to participate in gay weddings is to demoralize believers.  It is no different in kind than feeding them to the lions in ancient Rome.  It is positively evil.

Good Advice From A Competent Lawyer

 Kurt Schlichter today has another good article at Townhall.com entitled How Many Times Must We Tell You Never To Apologize To These Scumbags? You can almost hear him telling clients "How many times to I have to tell you, never talk to the police. They are not your friends!" But this time, he is not writing about the police, but about the so-called social justice warrior mob (SJW) on so called social media. This mob goes after anyone they think they can intimidate. They do it for fun, because most of them have no life. This is how they get their jollies. Oh, and they can not be appeased. Show them any weakness, and they immediately smell fear. They are like sharks that can smell blood from miles away.

Really, people, this is getting exhausting. How many times do we have to say it? How many people have to plead for forgiveness and end up humiliated, broken, and – not incidentally – unforgiven before people understand that the only effective response to these monsters’ fake outrage is to flip them the middle 20 percent of the fingers of a Bulwark staffer’s primary erotic partner?

Never never never give them an inch. It always ends badly.

Whether anyone wants to admit it, we are in a war for control of our country. The war has even drawn blood, mostly on our side. And while it has not yet devolved into actual shooting at each other, it is still war. It was Winston Churchill who famously said "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." We must be like that now, for if we follow Churchill's advice, we can not lose.

For those of you who have not been paying attention, it’s not about “racism” or “sexism” or whatever -ism or -phobia these tools are pretending to be upset about this week. The left actively supports racism and sexism – leftists are affirmatively in favor of those things, so it’s not like their performative pouting is a good faith critique of their victim’s words.

It’s about power, the power to force others to comply by guaranteeing a tsunami of hate toward anyone deviating from the ordained narrative.

You have to understand that you can’t obtain their forgiveness, though you shouldn’t want it in the first place. They already know you did nothing wrong. Right and wrong is irrelevant. Your life is a human sacrifice to Lib Moloch, the demon demigod of the left, and they wish to feast upon your soul. Saying “sorry” won’t save you. Keep your dignity and don’t try.

You also have to understand that you can’t reason your way out of it. It’s not about reason. Facts and evidence are bourgeois conceits. They laugh when you try to reason with them, because it shows you are not woke to the reality that internet raging is what people who can’t do push-ups do to bully others. So, don’t reason with them.

All excellent advice, given by a competent lawyer. I would read the article, and take the advice. You will be much happier.

We Are Not In Control

 Here is an interesting article from the Epoch Times that compares the virus toll in States that did and did not have major restrictions. The interesting thing is that it didn't make a difference. Which, at least to me, shows that we are not really in control. As Scott Morefield says, virus going to virus. Doesn't matter what we do. Oh, people can affect it to some degree on the margins, but over all, it doesn't matter. Some would say it is really all in God's hands.

That points to another issue where we are trying to claim that what we do will make a difference. The issue, of course, is climate cooling...er...warming...er...change. Humans like to believe that they are so powerful that they can control the weather. Such hubris has plagued mankind since the ancient Pharohs, who believed that if they did not perform certain ceremonies each day, the sun would not rise. But the sun has been rising and setting since before the Pharohs ruled Egypt, and has been doing the same since they died out.

The climate has also been changing for billions of years before man was on the planet. Within the time span that man has been on the planet, the earth has been much warmer, and much cooler that it is today. So, if man pumping CO2 into the air makes a vanishingly small contribution to climate warming, what makes the planet go from boiling hot to a ball of ice? Well, believe it or not, go outside tomorrow at 7:00 am, look to the East, and you will see a giant ball of fire rising. Yes, the Sun.

The Sun provides all the energy on Earth. Plants convert sunlight to carbohydrates like wood and sugar. Animals eat the plants to derive the energy stored in the plants. And of course, animals eat each other. But all that is energy derived from the Sun. The geologists claim that oil is derived from plants as well. If true, then our cars also run on sunlight. But the thing is, the sun doesn't provide a steady source of energy. Instead, it varies quite a bit, and the variations happen to coincide with the heating and cooling of the climate.

Perhaps the lesson in all this is what God told us in Psalm 46: "Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in all the earth." Maybe we should trust in God more, and dial back on the hubris. For we are not in control, our Heavenly Father is.

Welcome To The Party Pal

 J. B. Shurk has an article today at the American Thinker entitled Sen. Mike Lee Hops Aboard the "Too Little, Too Late' Election Fraud Bandwagon. Lee compared H.R. 1 to something created by the devil himself in the depths of hell. He is right, of course, but, it's a little too late. The time, as Shurk says, to have made a stink has come and gone. H.R. 1 was the inevitable result. But let Shurk tell it. Go read the whole article. I'll just leave you with this:

When the Great Emancipator warned of America's collapse, he wasn't worried about external attacks from Russia and China. He was worried about a corrupt criminal justice system that targets Americans for political persecution. He was worried about a Congress dishonorable enough to conspire with intelligence agencies to take down a sitting president with frame-up jobs, smear campaigns, and public innuendo. He was worried about political operatives capable of permanently undermining Americans' faith in elections. He was worried about a Supreme Court too cowed into submission by unscrupulous actors or too compromised itself to protect the Constitution and uphold the rule of law. He was worried about people of good conscience looking the other way as great evils occur. He was worried about politicians looking out for their partners in crime while the people they represent suffer. He was worried about what would happen next after a tainted election like the one we saw in 2020.

If Senator Lee didn't realize how dire the situation was until seeing H.R.1 in all its glory, then he has a lot of catching up to do. For the rest of us, the war against radical socialism has been an all-hands-on-deck affair raging for years. Better late than never, I guess.

So, Senator, welcome to the party!

Are Georgia Voters Experiencing Buyers Remorse Yet?

 From the Epoch Times comes a report that the House has passed gun control bill expanding background checks on firearm sales.

As I have explained before, dealers are required to perform a background check on everyone who buys a gun from them either at their place of business, or a gun shows. Further, if you buy the weapon online or out of state, you must have it shipped to a local dealer, who will then perform a background check before turning the gun over to you. It seems to be pretty covered, doesn't it? The only way to obtain a weapon without a background check is if you buy it on the black market, which is what criminals do.

But, there is one way, and that[s to buy from a private seller. Private sales, it goes without saying, but I will say it anyway, usually go to family members and friends. You know these people well, so background checks are not needed. But the gun grabbers will not let gun go without getting their permission.

According to a summary of the legislation, it will “utilize the current background checks process in the United States to ensure individuals prohibited from gun possession are not able to obtain firearms.” Currently, any firearm purchased at a retail store or online has to go through a background check and has to involve a licensed firearms dealer with a federal firearms license, known as an FFL. Specifically, H.R. 8 would also require background checks for private sales.

So, if the Senate also passes this bill, you won't even sell your own property without government permission. There are just enough anti-gun Senators that they will likely pass it. And don't count on the Supremes sticking up for you. I wonder if Georgia voters are experiencing buyers remorse yet?

To Borrow...Steal...A Phrase, Thoughts On The Passing Scene

The great Thomas Sowell used to run the occasional article entitled "Thoughts on the Passing Scene." I suspect that these resulted when there was just too much insanity to concentrate on any one issue. Today seems like a typical "Thoughts on the Passing Scene" type of day, so here goes.

Ann Coulter has a piece today at Townhall.com that speaks to what you can expect everywhere if we do not stop the current descent into wokeness. She writes that in the "blue" states, people are experiencing Rule By Leftwing Lunatics. On the Proud Boys, she writes that:

In a nation of laws, a crime is a crime, and it shouldn’t matter whether it’s committed by Mother Teresa or Charles Manson, but, as long as they brought it up, OF COURSE THE PROUD BOYS AREN’T “WHITE SUPREMACISTS”!

The organization is a tongue-in-cheek men’s group, promoting masculinity and Western civilization in humorous ways. Most of what they tell members is healthy: Get out of your apartment, work out, get a girlfriend and don’t masturbate. Further aside that it annoys me to have to make: There are African Americans, American Indians, immigrants and loads of Mexicans in the Proud Boys. Pretty crappy membership drive for a “hate group.”

Of course you will want to read the whole article.  Coulter is at here best here, and I have always liked her style.

I often disagree with Piers Morgan, naturally. He was at one time a host on CNN after all, and I don't think I have agreed with CNN in twenty years. Indeed, David Codrea at the War on Guns has a regular feature titled Trouble in Piers Morgan Paradise in which he recounts the failures of gun control in the formerly Great Britain. But, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Thus, I applauded Morgan's unvarnished belief that Megan Markle's performance on Oprah was at the very least, undignified: One of the most famous and popular TV personalities in Britain walked off the set of his TV show and resigned after getting flak over his charges that Meghan[i] was just drama queening to Oprah when she claimed to have considered suicide. So great is Piers Morgan’s media clout that the show business bible Variety wrote, “Morgan’s shock departure from “Good Morning Britain” is sure to be a blow for ITV,” rather than a risky gambit for the broadcaster. And then, Morgan doubled down the next day saying that free speech is a hill I am happy to die on. Hear Hear!

Speaking of liberals that none the less I agree with on at least one issue, Tulsi Gabbard has been making the rounds of conservative media telling people that the Democrats are setting up a police state. David Codrea has the story at the Firearm News. But while Tulsi Gabbard is correct on this issue, she is still a citizen disarmament proponent. I suspect she is trying broaden her appeal ahead of another presidential run. Thus, while she seems to be saying a lot of the right things, we can not let her anywhere near the levers of power.

Finally, Sean Davis at The Federalist takes down Taylor Lorenze for being a powerful journalist at the New York Times, who stalks children and shames them. But when Tucker Carlson called out Ms. Lorenze, she feigned being the victim.

“She would say she writes about internet culture and tech, when in reality she’s actually the journalism equivalent of the creeper cruising by the schoolyard asking the kids if they want any free attention in The New York Times. She stalks teenagers on the internet,” Davis said. “And this isn’t my opinion. She says as much, and she even talks about how if she were a dude doing what you were doing, people would think it’s kind of creepy.”

If you haven't watched Tucker Carlson, watch the segment at the end of the article. It is delicious.

Refuse to wear a mask

 J. B. Shurk, at the American Thinker that again makes the point that masks make no difference in terms of stopping the virus, indeed any virus. Instead, are, however, Masks are just part of the socialist uniform.

The Centers for Disease Control released another study showing no statistically significant decrease in "daily case" or "death growth" rates from COVID-19 in areas with mask mandates. This comes after a similar CDC study in October indicated that mask mandates do not appear to have slowed or stopped the spread of the coronavirus at all. Still, the CDC continues to recommend that all Americans wear masks, except in certain private settings when individuals are fully vaccinated, unless the goalpost-shifting Dr. Fauci gets his way.

This whole "masks don't seem to be having much effect, but wear them anyway" bureaucratic calculus may seem like a frivolous controversy to Americans preoccupied with the pandemic, but for Americans who are equally worried about the State's steady encroachment into the lives of families, mask mandates are the worst kind of noxious administrative abuse — another iteration of government coercion that constricts a person's freedom while accomplishing next to nothing. It's government rule-making for the sake of rule-making whose chief purpose is to demonstrate that it is the government's job to command and each citizen's duty to readily obey.

Exactly so. I often shake my head when I see people wearing masks in the most ridiculous situations. I see them wearing masks while walking alone outside. I see young people wearing masks while participating in sports. This is just virtue signaling gone wild. It has no other purpose than to show your acquiescence in the governments demands.  And let's not forget, they have no right or authority to demand your acquiescence.  They do have a right to ask for your voluntary action, but then the request must make actual sense, but masking makes no sense.

For Americans who believe that the government spends most of its time doing the exact opposite of what America overwhelmingly prefers, a mask mandate that accomplishes so little in the way of public health seems like the perfect metaphor for the government's desire to shut up its own citizenry. What Big Tech censorship fails to catch in its net, Big Government catches in its own.

Like I said, the only way to retain your freedom is to resist. If you want to remain free, you need to resist by not wearing a mask. Just refuse.

   

Update:  At The Federalist Kaylee Zempel has a post entitled Vaccines Should Signal A Return to Normal. But Blue States and Bureaucrats Are Ensuring That Doesn't Happen.

The Johnson and Johnson shot is 66 percent effective, they say? Well, that’s not 100 percent, the COVID kings will say when they decide it serves their interests. We’ve done this dance before. The same people who said you should double-mask because two are better than one will not be satisfied when you get a shot that is only 66 percent effective. So on the one-year anniversary of 15 days to slow the spread, do get your vaccine but also please remain six feet apart and make sure your mask is tight around your nose and chin.

Monday’s much-anticipated CDC guidelines for people who are vaccinated say as much. According to the guidelines, vaccinated people should still wear masks and socially distance in public and do the same when they’re with at-risk people or with unvaccinated people from more than one household. The guidelines also say vaccinated people should avoid undefined medium and large gatherings and keep heeding CDC and health department travel requirements — meaning even after you’re vaccinated, don’t travel if you can avoid it.

Live and Let Live

At The Federalist today, Auguste Meyrat tells us that Forcing People To Wear a Mask Isn't Kind, It's Selfish. As study after study shows that masks do nothing to stop the spread of the virus, the mask Nazis have resorted to the notion that wearing a mask shows that they care. And if you don't wear a mask, by contrast, it shows that you are a selfish bastard who doesn't care. In other words, the mask is noting more that a symbol.

The immediate reaction to Abbot’s announcement reveals something deeper about the mask phenomenon, however: over the months of wearing them, they have become powerful symbols. While some might argue about their effectiveness — an argument that has long since become political — most prefer to talk about what they mean more than what they do.

And what do they mean, exactly? For many pro-maskers, masks are a symbol of charity, health, and solidarity with those who have suffered from the virus. They remind healthy people that others at risk, they are responsible for them, and conformity is essential right now.

So, if you like to do things for which you can pat yourself on the back, then go for it. However, when you force others to follow suit, you run the risk of being the exact opposite of what you are trying to be. Because, as I noted above, there is no scientific evidence that masks make a difference, so you may be forcing someone to do something against their own concscience.

To start, the most glaring problem behind masks is the hypocrisy of accusing those who dislike them as “selfish.” It doesn’t seem to occur to some of the mask supporters that forcing others to do something against their will is also selfish — like a bully telling his victim to stop hitting himself as he whacks him with the defendant’s own hand.

The usual defense against this charge is that requesting a person to wear a mask to save lives is no different from requesting a driver not to run over pedestrians or officer workers not to throw people out of buildings. But this is a false analogy. Going to a public place and breathing without a mask is clearly not the same as running over a person crossing the road.

How about if we all just live and let live. If you want to wear a mask to show virtue, have at it. I won't try to stop you. But don't force this unnatural act on others. They may not see it the same way.