Happy New Year! Today the open carry law went into effect, meaning that if you have a Concealed Handgun License, you may now openly carry a handgun in most (but not all) locations where it was legal to conceal carry before. (It was already legal to openly carry rifles and shotguns without a CHL, and the open carry law didn’t change that.)
The Houston Chronicle has some pointers on open carry, though annoyingly, they are in slideshow form. Some highlights:
Open carry of handguns is only allowed for those who already hold a valid CHL.
You need a belt or shoulder holster to open carry, even in your car. Your gun must be holstered while driving or otherwise hidden.
Primary and secondary schools, hospitals, sporting events, and nursing homes are still “gun-free zones.”
Handguns cannot be taken into amusement parks, churches, hospitals and bars and public meetings if they post notice it’s a gun-free zone.
CHL holders can open carry unless it’s been prohibited by the private property owner. (I am given to understand that HEB is allowing concealed carry, but not open carry.)
“If you do not leave you could be charged with criminal trespass and/or unlawful carry. You will also most likely lose your rights to carry a handgun too.”
A 30.06 sign means no concealed carry on premises but open carry is allowed.
A 30.07 sign ONLY means no open carry on premises but conceal carry is allowed.
And you still can’t carry (open or concealed) in an establishment that derrives 51% or more of its income from the sale of alcohol:
You can’t open or conceal carry beyond the security checkpoint in an airport (duh).
Reciprocity still applies, so if you’re licensed to conceal carry by another state, you’re licensed to open carry in Texas.
The separate campus carry law which allows CHL holders to conceal carry in most buildings at most public universities does not go into effect January 1, but rather August 1, but you still won’t be able to open carry on campus then. Private colleges and universities may opt out, and junior colleges do not need to comply until August 2017.
I think the touches all the highlights. If you think I missed something important, let me know in the comments.
Using surveillance video from other area businesses to identify the arsonist, Gary Nathaniel Moore, 37, was arrested and charged with starting the Christmas Day fire that devastated a Houston, Texas mosque. Moore is a devout Muslim who attended this same mosque for years, praying up to five times a day every day of the week.
Funny how the majority of high profile “hate crimes” against Muslims or black activists seem to be committed by the supposed “victims”…
So the NSA spied on congress in the course of spying on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
NSA snooping allegedly found Netanyahu and his aides leaked details of the negotiations gained through Israeli spying, coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal and asked those lawmakers who were undecided on the deal how it could get their vote, according to the report.
The administration decided that monitoring Netanyahu served a “compelling national security purpose,” according to the Journal, which cited unnamed current and former U.S. officials.
Of course, the “compelling national security purpose” was that Netanyahu was making Obama look bad by opposing his asinine Iran nuke deal.
When you’re as lawless as the Obama Administration, and spy on as many people as the NSA spies on, Stuff Happens. Including, evidently, Separation of Powers violations.
Is there any abuse of power by the Obama Administration that would surprise us at this point?
I hope everyone had a merrier Christmas than I did. (My father recently went on hospice care after a two year fight with cancer, so I was back home helping my mother care for him.) Here’s a LinkSwarm to start your week with.
What would Democrats do to defeat the Islamic State? Not a damn thing.
Iraqi government forces retake Ramadi, the Anbar province city the Islamic State took in May.
“Two weather occurrences – the Arctic Oscillation and El Niño – are combining to shake up temperatures from coast to coast in the U.S., bringing springlike conditions to the Northeast for much of this month and leaving parts of the West colder and wetter than usual.”
Adjusting for inflation, the gross domestic product of the 19 countries now sharing Europe’s common currency, the euro, was less in 2014 than it was in 2007. Widespread joblessness and diminishing opportunities confront an entire generation of young Europeans, especially in Spain, Italy, France and Greece. The economic malaise tinges everything: Young people resist marriage for lack of economic opportunity. Poorer European countries are experiencing brain drains as many of their best young professionals and college graduates move abroad. Numerous Greek doctors, for instance, now work in more prosperous Germany while Greece’s health system is in crisis.
Pennsylvania’s insane, disgraced Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Kane accused of suborning perjury.
Democrats in congress have proposed a sweeping gun control bill. Because that’s always such a big electoral winner. It just kills liberals that free citizens are allowed to remain armed…
Merry Christmas! Instead of a Friday LinkSwarm, enjoy something more in keeping with the festive nature of the holiday: Dave Barry’s 2015 year-end roundup:
“Wait a minute! Surely there were some positive developments in 2015! How about the fact that, after so many years of sneering judgmentalism and divisive, overheated rhetoric, we were able to have rational, open-minded conversations about such issues as gun ownership, gay marriage, race relations and abortion, so that, as a nation, we finally began to come together and … Whoa! Sorry! Evidently I am high on narcotics.”
“In Paris, two million people march in a solidarity rally following the horrific terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Eyebrows are raised when not a single top U.S. official attends, but several days later, Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in France with James Taylor, who — this really happened — performs the song You’ve Got a Friend. This bold action strikes fear into the hearts of terrorists, who realize that Secretary Kerry is fully capable, if necessary, of unleashing Barry Manilow.”
“NBC suspends Nightly News anchor Brian Williams after an investigation reveals inaccuracies in his account of being in a military helicopter under fire in Iraq. ‘Mr. Williams did not actually come under fire,’ states the network. ‘Also technically he wasn’t in a helicopter in Iraq; it was a Volvo station wagon on the New Jersey Turnpike. But there was a lot of traffic.’ A contrite Williams blames the lapse on post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from killing Osama bin Laden.”
“In business news, troubled retailer RadioShack files for bankruptcy, citing the fact that in the past six years, the chain’s 4,000 stores had made a nationwide total of one sale, that being a home email server purchased by Hillary Clinton.”
“There is troubling news from Baltimore, where the death of an African-American man in police custody touches off a conversation on race that lasts several days, resulting in 250 arrests and extensive property damage. The Rev. Al Sharpton rushes to the scene but is unable to prevent things from eventually calming down.”
“Hackers announce that they have broken into the Ashley Madison website and obtained personal data on millions of clients allegedly seeking to have affairs. A statistical analysis will later reveal that, of the 37 million accounts hacked, only 23 belonged to actual women, 21 of whom were Ashley Madison employees posing as clients. The remaining two belonged to Miley Cyrus.”
“On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton continues to have no choice but to roll her eyes over all these pesky scandals that her enemies keep dreaming up to prevent her from serving the American people, especially women. The current scandal involves the email server she used as secretary of state, which, in a deviation from government-security standards, was located in her home and had Mrs. Clinton’s personal secret password (‘PASSWORD’) written on a sticky note stuck to the front. A Clinton spokesperson, speaking through another Clinton spokesperson who was briefed by a third Clinton spokesperson on condition of anonymity, denies that the server ever held classified emails and promises that it will be turned over to the FBI ‘as soon as it has been melted down to a softball-sized blob.'”
“After much agonizing, Vice President Joe Biden announces that he will not run for president, stressing that the decision had nothing to do with the severed horse head wearing a HILLARY! button he found in his bed, which Biden says he believes ‘was meant in a supportive way.'”
It’s been an odd week, for a number of reasons, so I’m a bit late on the “Washington Post cartoonist draws Ted Cruz’s 5 and 7 year old daughters as monkeys” story. Because nothing says “reasonable” and “rational” like attacking children because you dislike the politics of their father. On the off-chance you missed it, it featured Cruz as an organ-grinder and his daughters as monkeys on leashes. The ostensible rationale for the doodle was Cruz featuring his daughters in that parody Christmas ad that ran during Saturday Night Live, making them “fair game.”
Right.
Though the Washington Post editor took the doodle down (calling it a cartoon would suggest there was an actual attempt at humor), we all know that if someone attempted the same drawing featuring Obama and his daughters, it would have been denounced as racist and the cartoonist fired so fast they wouldn’t have been allowed to pack their desk. Of course, the MSM have always been hypocrites when it comes to different standards for Democrats and Republicans. Anything that hurts Republicans is fair game, while anything that hurts Democrats is a source of high moral outrage.
The question is: Will cartoonist Ann Telnaes pay any price for such a gross transgression of basic decency?
This time next month, @AnnTelnaes will be drawing blackboard doodles for the daily specials before her shift at Starbucks. @BoundaryStones
The irony is that the episode provided a palpable boost to the Cruz campaign, which had an outraged fundraising mailer (“They attacked my children!”) out within hours. I bet they raised at least $1 million off of it.
Liberal gun control advocates are not “most people.”
This Sean Davis piece shows two of their more persistent errors on display: Their inability to learn what an “assault weapon” was legally defined as, and their inability to figure out that their actions make owning a gun more popular, not less.
More than one pundit has observed that pushing for gun control legislation accomplishes two things: 1.) Sends gun sales through the roof, and 2.) Gets Democrats defeated come election time.
Notably absent from that list: Decreasing firearms deaths.
Of course, for liberals gun control has never been about keeping criminals from using guns. The purpose behind gun control has always been to disarm the law abiding civilian population, all the better to implement their big government/culture war schemes.
There was a time when Blue Dog Democrats would keep the gun-grabbing instincts of their liberal brethren in check, but the last two decades have seen those Blue Dogs ruthlessly purged from the party. No the Democrats are All In on gun control, even if it kills them.
Let’s hope that Democrats have the same sort of election in 2016 they had in 1994…
Here’s something on the surface that seems like a small local story, but it’s one that could potentially have huge national implications.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF)’s Center for the American Future representing Williamson County resident John Yearwood and Williamson County, Texas today filed suit to intervene into the pending lawsuit seeking delisting of the Bone-Cave Harvestman from the Endangered Species Act. Mr. Yearwood and Williamson County, Texas challenge the authority of the federal government to use the Interstate Commerce Clause to regulate non-commercial interactions with the Bone Cave Harvestman arachnid, which only exists in two central Texas counties, is not bought nor traded in interstate commerce, and does not otherwise affect interstate commerce.
“This lawsuit centers around respect for the rule of law and recognition that the Constitution establishes our federal government as having limited, enumerated powers,” said Robert Henneke, director of the Center for the American Future at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “Congress has the power to regulate commerce among the states, i.e. Interstate commerce. Congress’ Commerce power through the Endangered Species Act should not, therefore, extend to regulate the Bone-Cave Harvestman species – an intrastate cave-arachnid existing only in caves in Central Texas without any commercial value. For there to be rule of law, there must be limits to government power.”
The Interstate Commerce Clause is the camel’s nose by which the federal government has stuck its vast regulatory powers into just about every crevice of the body politic. Because the Williamson cave spider case clearly has no impact on interstate commerce, there’s the potential for the case to unravel a whole host of intrusive New Deal-era commerce clause rulings, of which Wickard vs. Filburn is probably the most egregious.
There’s no guarantee the case will get to the Supreme Court, but if it does…
