LinkSwarm for March 30, 2018

March 30th, 2018

Happy Good Friday! Spring has sprung and I’m knee-deep in my taxes.

  • The sitcom Roseanne‘s return features the titular character as a Trump supporter and enjoys smash ratings.
  • French President Emmanuel Macron talks about sending forces to Syria to block Turkey, then almost immediately walks it back, offering to “mediate” between Turkey and the coalition-backed, Kurd-led Syrian Democratic Forces. That’s…interesting.
  • What will Middle East Studies academics do now that Saudi sugar daddy Alwaleed bin Talal is out of favor? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • More ObamaCare rate hikes coming, as Democrats in blue states scramble to avoid the inevitable results of their own policy choices. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Headline: “POPE SAYS HELL DOESN’T EXIST!” (tiny print) “According to a 93 year old atheist who has been wrong before, didn’t tape him, and is quoting from memory. And the Pope himself denies it.” Guess I’ll have to cancel that hooker and blow party I was going to throw Easter Sunday, just in case…
  • Gun ownership rates say absolutely nothing about homicide statistics.

    When a media source such as Mother Jones or Everytown for Gun Safety implies that “we have a gun problem,” they are making exactly the same reasoning error as if they said, “we have a black people problem.”

    And black population was six times more predictive than gun ownership was.

  • Harris County hit with lawsuit for refusing to turn over voter roles so non-citizens can be purged.
  • Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban is running for reelection on a platform of opposing Muslim immigration and George Soros.
  • Texas booze lobby defeated in court, paving the way for Sam’s Club, Costco, and other national chains to start selling hard liquor. (Hat tip: Cahnman’s Musings.)
  • Mozilla launches a “condom” extension to thwart Facebook spying on other sites.
  • Of all the things to be adopted by the InfoWars right as a bulwark against the radical left, an Austin vegetarian cat café would seem to be among the most unlikely.
  • What happens when an airliner crashes in your front yard.
  • Oracle vs. Google heads back to trial.
  • Karl Rehn attended the 2018 Rangemaster Tactical Conference and brought back lots of insights on things like engaging active shooters. That’s just the first of four after action reports, and all are worth your time to click through.
  • Latest Hollywood bigshot to sexually exploit underage women: Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi.

    In an extensive report from BuzzFeed, cartoonist John Kricfalusi—the creator of iconic Nickelodeon series Ren & Stimpy—has been accused of sexually exploiting teenage girls, promising them careers in animation at his studio Spumco while allegedly grooming them for sexual relationships. One of the women, Robyn Byrd, says it all began in 1994 when she was only 13, after she sent Kricfalusi a video of herself talking about how she wanted a career in animation and how important Ren & Stimpy was to her. Kricfalusi, who was 39 at the time, responded by sending her packages of toys and art supplies, and eventually he helped her set up an AOL account so they could communicate more regularly.

    Kricfalusi visited Byrd at her home and told her that she could “become a great artist,” and later he invited her out to Los Angeles, where she says he “touched her genitals through her pajamas” while they were at his house. She was 16. In 1997, Kricfalusi gave Byrd an internship at Spumco; she lived with him during this period, prompting him to allegedly call her “his 16-year-old girlfriend.” Convinced that he was helping her launch the career of her dreams, Byrd moved in with Kricfalusi once she graduated from high school.

    Apparently, this was all an open secret in the animation world at the time, partly due to an interview Kricfalusi gave with Howard Stern in which he creepily noted that a “hot chick with big cans and nice legs” he had drawn for a comic book was “underage, too.” People working at Spumco allegedly shrugged off the relationship between Byrd and Kricfalusi, with another former intern noting that Kricfalusi once “left out a drawing he made of Byrd, naked, with a dog ejaculating on her.”

  • Via Dwight comes a followup to yesterday’s Waco biker trial roundup: “Yesterday a judge ordered the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office to stop distributing what his attorney calls “private, intimate sexual images” of former defendant Cody Ledbetter and his wife.”
  • All good things must come to an end. And all bad ones.
  • Polish man kayaks across the Atlantic. Three times.
  • Waco Biker Trials Update

    March 29th, 2018

    The wheels of (in)justice seem to be grinding ever on in the endless string of (non)trials resulting from the 2015 Twin Peaks Waco biker shootout.

    First, another of the bikers arrested in the shootout is now headed to trial on April 2:

    Cody Ledbetter has been trying to get his day in court for almost three years as the specter of witnessing his stepfather’s death in the 2015 Twin Peaks shootout and his pending indictment hang over his life.

    Ledbetter and his attorney, Paul Looney, of Houston, got their wish Monday when 54th State District Judge Matt Johnson gave them the April 2 trial date initially reserved for the retrial of Jacob Carrizal, president of the Dallas Bandidos chapter, whose November trial ended in a mistrial.

    Ledbetter’s stepfather, Daniel Boyett, was shot and killed at Twin Peaks during the Sunday afternoon brawl between members of the Bandidos and Cossacks motorcycle groups and their support clubs, and Ledbetter’s life has been turned upside down while the first-degree felony charge hangs over his head.

    Carrizal’s trial ended in mistrial in November after jurors could not reach unanimous verdicts on any of the counts against him. The McLennan County District Attorney’s Office hand-picked Carrizal to be tried first among 154 bikers indicted at the time in the Twin Peaks case.

    On Monday, Carrizal’s new attorney, Christopher Lewis, of Dallas, filed a motion for continuance in the case, telling Johnson he is set for trial in federal court in Dallas on the same day. He also said he received 1.9 terabytes of discovery from the DA’s office on Feb. 12 and needs more time to adequately review the materials and prepare for trial.

    With a trial date available, Looney and Ledbetter, a 28-year-old diesel mechanic with no criminal record, jumped in.

    “It is just time to go in and lay the cards on the table and let the jury exonerate this man,” Looney said. “He has been innocent and on bond for three years. That is a torture that no innocent person should have to go through. It is time for it to stop, and we are finally in front of a group of people who can finally make it stop.”

    Looney filed a motion to disqualify McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna in October after it was discovered that the DA’s office released videos from Ledbetter’s cellphone that showed Ledbetter and his wife having sex. The videos were sent to more than 125 attorneys as part of the massive Twin Peaks discovery process.

    In news you may have missed, the charges against thirteen of the bikers were dismissed in February:

    An attorney for one of the bikers indicted in the deadly 2015 Twin Peaks shootout said it appears the “Twin Peaks dam” is starting to break with the dismissal of charges against 13 bikers Thursday.

    Meanwhile, the same attorney, Brian Bouffard, said McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna only dropped the cases in a show of “moral cowardice by an elected official” to avoid adverse testimony at a scheduled Thursday hearing to disqualify his office.

    Two district judges signed orders submitted to them by the DA’s office Thursday morning dismissing charges against 13 bikers arrested in the May 17, 2015, Twin Peaks shootout and two recusing the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office in two other biker cases.

    Besides the 13 dismissals, prosecutor Michael Jarrett told the judges that Reyna also intends to formally refuse eight more cases against bikers who were arrested, but have not been indicted in the shootout that left nine dead and dozens injured.

    The dismissals came hours before a hearing scheduled for Thursday afternoon at which two bikers were asking to disqualify Reyna from handling their cases on a variety of grounds.

    That hearing was canceled in light of Reyna’s actions.

    Reyna did not return phone calls seeking comment Thursday and declined to provide the Tribune-Herald with a written statement he prepared about the dismissals.

    Judge Ralph Strother, of Waco’s 19th State District Court, said Thursday he plans to ask the Texas Attorney General’s Office prosecutorial assistance division to take over prosecution of the case against biker Billy McRee. Reyna agreed to recuse his office in that case, while he dismissed the case against Jorge Salinas.

    Salinas, a two-tour Marine combat veteran; and McRee, a mechanic, are both former members of the Cossacks motorcycle group.

    Salinas, who said he was sitting in a deer blind when he was notified his case had been dismissed, said he became emotional at the news. He said he is grateful, but that the decision came too late and at too high a cost to him and his family.

    Salinas, his family and Bouffard, of Fort Worth, spoke at a press conference Thursday that also included McRee and his family; and his attorney, David Conrad Beyer, also of Fort Worth; and Dallas attorney Clint Broden.

    Broden, who represents two bikers indicted in the incident, said they chose the first-floor courthouse rotunda as the location of the press conference because it was there that Reyna held a press conference almost three years ago to announce that he had, as Broden characterized it, “bamboozled” a grand jury into indicting 154 bikers on identical charges after the shootout.

    “My client is a decorated Marine combat veteran,” Bouffard said. “He and I took the same oath years ago. Part of that oath is that we will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And I ask you and I ask the public to ask yourselves, what better definition of a domestic enemy of our Constitution than Abel Reyna?”

    The attorneys charged that Reyna only decided to drop the charges and to recuse his office in McRee’s case to escape being placed under oath at the disqualification hearing and to prevent the adverse testimonies of former and current members of his staff, some of whom have reported alleged abuses of his office to Texas Rangers and the FBI.

    “The Twin Peaks dam has now broken, and with each new dismissal that may come, the public will see clearly what Twin Peaks defense counsel have known for almost three years — that Abel Reyna arrested, charged, and indicted a very large number of these men for purely political reasons, apparently without any intent to take them to trial,” Bouffard said in a statement Thursday morning.

    “Though it took far too long, we pushed Mr. Reyna’s back to the wall and he finally had nowhere else to run.”

    And what about Mr. Reyna himself, the prosecutor who has yet to bring a single charge of murder in an incident where nine people died, but was more than willing to file conspiracy charges against bikers for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? He lost in the Republican primary:

    Barry Johnson, who beat Reyna in the Republican primary, made the bungled prosecution of more than a hundred bikers a central issue of his campaign. The years since the shootout, he argued, have been marked by misconduct, suppressed evidence, and overreach.

    According to the official story, two rival motorcycle gangs got into a turf war outside a local Twin Peaks restaurant, and then turned their guns on police officers who tried to intervene. Nine of the bikers were killed in the shootout and 20 more were wounded. But investigative reporters have cast doubt on this narrative, suggesting instead that police overreacted to a small skirmish and escalated the fight. Police were responsible for at least four of the nine deaths, according to evidence obtained by the Associated Press.

    Snip.

    Reyna’s office ultimately pursued charges against more than 150 bikers under the argument that even individuals who weren’t involved in the fight were guilty by their attendance alone. More than 100 bikers have since sued Waco for wrongful arrest. Their cases could cost the city more than a billion dollars.

    Prosecutors were caught repeatedly withholding evidence during the first and, thus far, only biker trial. A Texas Ranger relayed that Reyna had specifically instructed him to keep evidence away from the defense team.

    “At one point in the trial, [the defense attorney’s] discoveries of withheld evidence had become so regular that [the judge] ordered Reyna to instruct his prosecutors and all law enforcement agencies involved in the Twin Peaks investigation to go back and search their files to make sure all materials had been disclosed to the defense as required by law,” the Waco Tribune reported.

    That trial ended with a deadlocked jury in November. Since then, Reyna has dismissed more than 50 biker cases and recused his office from another to avoid a disqualification hearing. The bikers’ defense attorneys subpoenaed several of Reyna’s employees and a retired police detective to testify about the DA’s misconduct and corruption.

    Assuming he wins in November, Johnson has his job cut out for him cleaning up Abel Reyna’s mess…

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

    The Mask Slips

    March 28th, 2018

    Finally!

    Finally, a high ranking Democrat finally has the guts to say what lies near and dear to the cockles of the vast majority of their party’s heart: “Repeal the Second Amendment.”

    Thanks you, John Paul Stevens, for not just, at long last, admitting what Democrats have long-believed, but doing so out-loud and in mixed company!

    There, was that so hard? All you had to do was tell the truth.

    Democrats want to repeal part of the Bill of Rights so they can forcibly disarm law-abiding Americans.

    Both left and right have known this for a long time, but Democrats felt compelled to lie about it for trivial reasons like “losing elections.”

    To thine own self be true!

    Additional reactions:

    Ann Althouse:

    Usually, advocates of gun control tend to give assurances that they’re not out to repeal the Second Amendment. A forthright demand for a repeal of the Second Amendment would wreck those assurances and elevate the pro-gun side, which could credibly intensify its rhetoric with reality-based anxiety that they are coming to take away your constitutional rights. If they can take away your Second Amendment rights — if the Bill of Rights is on the chopping block — they may come for your freedom of religion next, they can take away your freedom of speech, you right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures — whatever they like, whatever they think stands in their way.

    Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

    The op-ed comes across as whining over his Heller defeat and the implication that the Constitution should be treated as a historical relic (Stevens’ term). That certainly explains some of his votes on the Supreme Court, perhaps most notably in Kelo, although courts had unfortunately paved that road long before. At least in this case, Stevens suggests using a valid constitutional process to erode individual rights rather than a Supreme Court decision that effectively rewrites the Constitution to expand federal power at the expense of liberty. That may have more to do with Stevens’ lack of a seat on the court at this time, though.

    So how likely will a repeal effort be? Maybe if Democrats really start pushing it — as they clearly would love to see it happen — it might get, oh, 40% of the House to vote for it, far short of what’s necessary to send it to the states. The only states likely to ratify such an amendment proposal are those whose gun-control regulations have utterly failed to stop violence in their jurisdictions, as was the case in Washington DC when Heller was decided in 2008.

    However, such an effort would certainly clarify the choices for voters outside of those jurisdictions in national elections, and Democrats would be lucky to comprise 40% of Congress if they tried to follow Stevens’ advice. Don’t expect too many of them to climb on Stevens’ bandwagon, especially as rickety as it is in this essay.

    And some tweets:

    NBC To Broadcast Jesus Christ Superstar Live Easter Sunday

    March 27th, 2018

    My mind is clearer now
    At last
    All too well
    I can see
    Where we all
    Soon will be…

    Not paying much attention to TV networks, this news caught me off-guard: NBC will be broadcasting a live performance of the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Jesus Christ Superstar this Easter Sunday starting at 7 PM CDT.

    I am so going to watch the Hell out of that.

    I would confess my love of Jesus Christ Superstar as a guilty pleasure but I’m honestly not the least bit guilty about it. It’s musically the strongest of all the “rock operas” that made it to Broadway in the late 60s and early 70s. Thanks to the power of the source material, it’s a much more compelling musical than any of Webber’s later work. Though Christians may object to portions of it (Judas is portrayed more as a victim of God’s machinations than The Great Betrayer), most of it the story is recognizably faithful.

    And broadcasting a live musical on network television? That’s the sort of risk-taking that deserves to be rewarded.

    I am curious as to whether it will include “Could We Start Again, Please?“, the song from the Broadway production that was not in the original (and far more famous) London pre-cast recording.

    Real Reform in Saudi Arabia?

    March 26th, 2018

    Displaying another tiny crack in the wall of Saudi Arabian intransigence, Riyadh has allowed overflight of its country to Israel-bound air traffic for the first time.

    Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel with the inauguration of an Air India route between New Delhi and Tel Aviv.

    Flight 139 landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport after a seven-and-a-half hour journey, marking a diplomatic shift for Riyadh that Israel says was fuelled by shared concern over Iranian influence in the region.

    To be sure, it’s not Israeli air traffic, but baby steps. Combine this with Friday’s story about Saudi Arabia purging Muslim Brotherhood members from the country, and signs that he wishes to loosen the restrictive dress code on omen (hat tip: Instapundit), and it appears that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is ushering in real reform in the kingdom. To be sure, the results will not remotely resemble modern western liberal democracy, but they will mark a vast improvement over the status quo that prevailed before his ascension.

    Speaking of Saudi Arabia, they also shot down seven ballistic missiles launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the shrapnel from one killing an Egyptian citizen. Pretty much everyone believes the missiles are manufactured and supplied by Iran. Do you think Egypt is going to take that lying down? I rather doubt it. Egypt supports the Saudis in Yemen, but have avoided intervention due to their own unpleasant history there.

    Reform in Saudi Arabia is potentially one of the biggest stories this year, and the mainstream media is barely covering it at all.

    Greg Gutfeld on the Trump/Biden Rumble

    March 25th, 2018

    It’s your lazy Sunday video, featuring Greg Gutfeld and company weigh in on Joe Biden threatening to beat up President Donald Trump

    Plus Jordan Petersen on the panel afterwords.

    Travis AFB Attacker Identified

    March 24th, 2018

    Just in case you missed the news with all the porn star and sullen teenage instastars news, there was an attack on Travis Air Force Base in California last week, and authorities have now identified the attacker:

    The man who drove into Travis Air Force Base in California on Wednesday night has been identified as Hafiz Kazi, 51, according to the FBI special agent in charge, Sean Ragan.

    Kazi was from India, a legal permanent resident since 1993 with no connection to the base, Ragan said.

    Ragan described him as having generally lived in the San Francisco area for much of that time.

    I’m going to go out on a limb and guess Hafiz Kazi wasn’t a Baptist.

    His vehicle slowly approached the checkpoint at the main gate of Travis on Wednesday evening, two U.S. officials said. At the point where a guard would have checked Kazi’s identification, the vehicle kept moving, and a flash was observed inside the vehicle.

    As the vehicle moved slowly through the checkpoint, it fully ignited into flames before coming to a stop on a median, the officials said.

    Ragan said five propane tanks were found inside the vehicle, along with three phones, three plastic one-gallon gas cans, several lighters, and a gym bag with personal items.

    No word as to how many propane accessories were in the van.

    Authorities are stumped as to motivations. “We don’t have any evidence of any religious affiliation or anything at this point.”

    I guess that means there’s only a 99% chance he was an Islamic extremist, then…

    LinkSwarm for March 23, 2018

    March 23rd, 2018

    After making noises about vetoing the liberal-provision-packed omnibus spending bill, President Donald Trump signed the bill anyway. This is certainly a bad and base-depressing move, but shouts that this has “doomed” Republicans in this year’s midterms are premature.

    Some links:

  • But the omnibus spending bill does provide $500 million to build a border wall. In Jordan.
  • “Saudi Arabia is seeking to purge its school curriculum of any influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and dismiss employees who sympathise with the banned group, the education minister said.” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is starting to look like an actual, real-life Muslim reformer.
  • Seems like a good idea:

  • Former Senator and Governor Zell Miller has died. Miller was a conservative Democrat who insisted his party had left him and endorsed George W. Bush in 2004.
  • Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos reigns in unions at Department of Education, including making them opt-in rather than semi-automatic. As far as I’m concerned, her tenure is already a success… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Ohio high school student suspended for not walking out of school. One most never challenge the latest and most sacred dogma of the overclass… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “How Facebook Went From ‘Ideal Way’ to Reach Voters to Being ‘Weaponized’ (Hint: a Republican won).”

  • Orlando Weekly attacks woman as a “white supremacist” for posting anti-Jihad messages to Twitter. Tiny problem: she’s black.
  • Margaret Atwood, “bad feminist.” “Canadian literature (‘CanLit,’ as it’s known within the treehouse) has become ‘a raging dumpster fire” of embittered identity politics and ideological tribalism.'” (Hat tip: Gregory Benford’s Facebook feed.)
  • The enduring appeal of Casablanca.
  • EU decide to make things difficult for antiquarian booksellers:

    Starting next year they may become subject to new import regulations that will significantly complicate the process of buying old books, prints and manuscripts from sources outside the EU. The purpose of the changes is to combat the looting and smuggling of antiquities and prevent the financing of terrorism through the illicit trade in cultural goods. While the need for the new regulations is presented almost entirely in relation to the war on terror, the sweeping new rules themselves will be applied comprehensively and include no provisions for exempting goods from areas which are free from armed conflict or terrorist activities.

    The new regulations apply to a broad range of cultural goods, but none will be impacted more adversely than books. The new procedures are as follows:

    If a book, engraving, print, document or publication of “special interest” that is more than 250 years old is presented for import in any EU member state the owner or “holder of the goods” will be required to submit a signed importer statement to customs authorities in the country of entry. The statement must include a declaration that the books have been originally exported legally from their source country. However, in cases where the export country (distinct from the source country) is a “Contracting Party to the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Property” then the holder of the books must provide a declaration that they have been exported from that export country in accordance with its laws and regulations. Needless to say, while the proposal specifies books and documents of “special interest” it does not give any more explicit criteria for defining what this means and the notion of “special interest,” on its own, is sufficiently vague and subjective to include, in practice, virtually any book that someone might want to import.

  • “The Bike-Share Oversupply in China: Huge Piles of Abandoned and Broken Bicycles.” With pictures. And when they say huge, they really mean huge.

  • Since the Social Justice Warriors at Google are purging firearms instruction videos, Full30.com.
  • The Onion: “American People Admit Having Facebook Data Stolen Kind Of Worth It To Watch That Little Fucker Squirm.”
  • To end on an up note: Happy National Puppy Day!

    Ted Cruz On Why He Voted Against the Omnibus Spending Bill

    March 23rd, 2018

    While your were sleeping, our gutless wonders in congress voted for a budget-busting, liberal wish list omnibus spending bill. Here’s Ted Cruz on why it sucks:

    A few tweets describing how the bill could have sucked even more if Cruz and other conservatives hadn’t successfully stripped out even worse provision (like an Internet sales tax) omitted.

    President Donald Trump should veto this monstrosity and demand Republican congressional leadership restore the priorities America voted for in 2016.

    Congress Caves on Sanctuary Cities

    March 22nd, 2018

    This is discouraging:

    The draft 2018 omnibus bill denies President Donald Trump explicit authority to withhold federal grants from the Democratic-dominated “sanctuary cities” which are trying to secede from the nation’s immigration laws, say Hill sources.

    There is “nothing in the omnibus bill to stop funding for the sanctuary cities,” said a source. “It will just be a continuation of the status quo” because Democrats threatened to torpedo the funding bill if it included new rules allowing administration officials to block federal funding to the cities which shield illegals from deportation, the source said.

    Federal funding cuts would be “a huge financial hit for Democratic strongholds … [and] I just think that [GOP leaders] don’t want to have the fight,” said Rosemary Jenks, policy director at NumbersUSA.

    The pending rejection comes even though Trump took time on Tuesday to denounce sanctuary cities, presaging a likely midterm election theme. “We’re going to win it, it should be easy, but it’s not,” Trump said to his deputies in a media event. “It’s so basic, it’s called law and order and safety and we’re going to have it in our country.”

    More:

    House and Senate leadership has rolled over and played dead on border security. When it comes to a border wall, they say it is not our problem. When it comes to funding sanctuary cities, they say it is not our problem. What they are essentially saying is we are going to pass bills with more Democrats than Republicans,” the aide told TheDCNF. “This is a sign to administration that leadership doesn’t care what the White House wants. Even though GOP members ran on these issues. Conservatives mean it. The administration means it.”

    It’s almost as if Republican congressional leadership want to encourage illegal aliens and their Democratic Party enablers and vote-harvesters.