Back when I’d visit my parents a decade or so ago, one of my father’s guilty pleasures was watching Storage Wars.
If you’re unfamiliar with this cable staple, it features competing teams of people bidding on abandoned storage units, then going through the ones they won trying to figure out what things were worth. Storage Wars was infamous for every episode having one or more “surprise items” that the buyer just happened to know an expert who could identify the item and its value. It was a little cheesy, and like all realty TV, was fake and scripted, but was a higher, more nourishing brand of cable junk food, than, say Ice Road Truckers or Deadliest Catch (which is evidently still on).
Anyway, people still bid on abandoned storage units, and a guy who has a YouTube channel bid a princely $5,786 for a unit because he saw some gun cases in there.
Did it pay off?
Boy did it!
There were a few cheap handguns, but also a lot of expensive hunting rifles, including:
A Marlin 1895CB chambered in 45/70 Government.
Two Remington Model 700s chambered in .270.
A Winchester Model 1894 chambered in 450 Marlin.
Etc.
But also thousands of rounds of ammo, a whole lot in loaded magazines.
This video is almost 100% pure gun pr0n:
Let this be a reminder: If you have a large firearms collection, you want to make sure you have an itemized and notarized will, so your designated heirs end up getting fair value for your collection.
Greetings, and welcome to a special Monday LinkSwarm! Still getting over a bad cold, but both the wet cough and fatigue have improved thanks to lets of bed rest.
Also on the mend: Salman Rushdie, who is reportedly off the ventilator and able to talk and joke.
Stories of unparalleled depravity: “Metro Atlanta couple charged with using adopted kids to make child porn.” I see they left out the word “gay” before couple.
Walton County couple has been arrested and are facing child sex crime charges for acts deputies say they committed against their adopted children.
Last month, the Walton County Sheriff’s Office raided a home in unincorporated Loganville where they believed a man was downloading child pornography. When interviewing him, the suspect admitted to collecting child porn and identified a second suspect in Oxford.
The suspect told deputies that the other suspect was making the child porn with at least one child who lived in his home. The first suspect’s identity has not been released.
Deputies were able to get arrest warrants for both adult men living in the home, William Dale Zulock, 32, and Zachary Jacoby Zulock, 35.
Walton County’s Division of Family and Child Services joined deputies in responding to the home to help protect the two children in the home.
After making sure the children were safe, investigators found evidence that the couple, who were the adoptive fathers of the pair of brothers living there, were recording themselves committing sexually abusive acts against the children.
"Waiting for pizza"
Zachary J. Zulock, accused of sexually abusing his adopted boys for child porn, has a long social media history of support for liberal causes. He was a big fan of #BLM, radical trans pride & the Democrat Party. One of his most used hashtags was "love is love" pic.twitter.com/Mz6cS36LOp
Speaking of the Democratic Media Complex doing it’s best to try to avoid the existence of pedophiles among its ranks, they really don’t like you using the word groomer. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
At the end of July, the Tavistock gender clinic in the United Kingdom was closed down by the National Health Service after a review of the clinic’s practices found that its “clinical approach and overall service design has not been subject to some of the normal quality controls that are typically applied when new or innovative treatments are introduced.”
In a letter addressed to the NHS, Dr. Hillary Cass, who conducted the review, wrote that other providers had “not developed the skills and competencies” necessary to provide the right amount of support to children “with lesser degrees of gender incongruence who may not wish to pursue specialist medical intervention.” Cass acknowledged that there are unanswered questions about the use of puberty blockers as a treatment for children questioning their own gender identity and suggested that much more evidence will need to be collected before she draws a conclusion on their value in these contexts.
Puberty blockers were initially developed as a treatment for precocious puberty in young children, but have since been repurposed and advertised by transgender activists as a way to hit the “pause” button and buy time for kids who think they may have been born in the “wrong body.” A sizable-but-marginalized group of doctors has long warned that the consequences of puberty-blocker use as a part of the transition process are unclear, and amount to an affirmative and significant step toward transitioning, rather than a “pause.”
The closure of Tavistock in July came as welcome news to those of us worried about the skyrocketing number of children suffering from gender dysphoria and being treated as though it were a physical malady. Then, yesterday, it was reported that a group of families in the U.K. is suing the NHS arm affiliated with Tavistock for the effects that its dogmatic approach to the treatment of youth — described by Cass as “an unquestioning affirmative approach” — had on their own lives.
A lawyer for the plaintiffs told Sky News that he believes that misdiagnoses have affected “potentially hundreds of young adults who have been affected by failings in care over the past decade at the Tavistock Centre.” It is, first and foremost, a tragedy that this has happened, but it is undoubtedly encouraging to see the mistreated join together not just to collect damages, but to tell their stories.
Moreover, the politicians in the country’s Conservative Party are showing signs that they may be willing to push back on the madness. Attorney General Suella Braverman said earlier this week that transgender theory should not be taught in schools. Penny Mordaunt, a near-finalist in the Tory leadership contest, was sunk in part because of her lack of spine on the issue.
Across the U.K., then, politicians, doctors, and activists are all beginning to recognize that the unquestioningly affirmative model of care for gender-dysphoric children is scientifically unsound, morally dangerous, and the result of, more than anything else, social and political dogma.
And the U.K. is not the first European country to begin to recognize its past mistakes. In Sweden, the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones have been almost entirely ruled out for minors as of this year. Finland, meanwhile, has determined that “the initiation of hormonal interventions that alter sex characteristics may be considered before the person is 18 years of age only if it can be ascertained that their identity as the other sex is of a permanent nature and causes severe dysphoria” and “the young person is able to understand the significance of irreversible treatments and the benefits and disadvantages associated with lifelong hormone therapy, and that no contraindications are present.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s son has apparently joined the list of political offspring who magically keep landing jobs as “consultants” overseas. The Daily Mail reports:
Nancy Pelosi’s son is the second largest investor in a $22 million Chinese company whose senior executive was arrested in a fraud investigation, DailyMail.com can reveal, raising questions about his secretive visit to Taiwan with his mother.
As well as investing, Paul Pelosi Jr, 53, also worked for the telecoms company, Borqs Technologies, in a board or consultancy role, Securities and Exchange Commission documents show.
Wow, this feels like déjà vu all over again. Just substitute the name “Hunter Biden” for “Paul Pelosi Jr.” and the story would still sound credible.
For his “consultancy,” Pelosi was given 700,000 shares of stock in the company. At one time he was the second-largest shareholder in the Beijing-based firm, although it’s unclear if that’s still the case today. Either way, it must be nice. Borqs is a telecoms company specializing in the “Internet of Things” products and is “listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange with a current market capitalization of $22 million,” according to the Mail.
Hunter Biden seems to have a better nose for profitable graft corridors than Pelosi’s get, since a $22 market cap is essentially nothing in the IoT space…
The poll from the Democratic-aligned Winning Jobs Narrative Project, which surveyed 60,000 voters across 17 states, found that “making villains of corporations” and embracing “culture war topics like abortion” are ineffective strategies for Democrats. Liberals would attract more voters, in fact, if they sounded like conservatives—talking about “respect for work” and placing “government in a supporting rather than primary role.”
Voters prefer Republicans’ handling of the economy, which remains “the top issue of the coming election,” the poll found. Americans don’t believe President Joe Biden’s claims that “this has been the fastest recovery in 40 years,” instead “looking at the worst inflation in the same period and record gas prices.”
Another day, another Democratic politician refusing to pay his tax bill. “Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman Matthew Cartwright is once again in trouble for being delinquent on his property taxes. Cartwright and his wife share a condo in Washington and tax records indicate that they owed penalties and interest from 2021 due to being late in paying their taxes.”(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
The Biden Recession continues to wreck the pocketbooks of Americans, EU economies are sucking even worse than ours, more Bidens Behaving Badly, and unlimited abortion is not nearly as popular among the American public as it is among New York Times staffers.
Support for unlimited abortion is deeply unpopular:
New Harvard/Harris poll: Huge super-majority of Americans favor 15-week abortion bans in states. Women more likely than men to favor such restrictions; men more likely to support no limitations. Just 10% of respondents agree with federal Dems' 9-month-abortion radicalism: pic.twitter.com/wyOzUPg9uE
Democrats are just tired of Joe Biden and of having to explain away his poor performance. Since Biden was elected, the only thing that has gone right is that the Covid-19 pandemic effectively ended and the unemployment rate has remained low. Inflation is out of control, gas prices are at record highs, grocery bills are skyrocketing, the stock market is getting battered and people’s 401(k)s are shrinking, crime remains high, mass shootings keep bedeviling America’s public spaces, Russia’s invading Ukraine, there’s a global food and commodity crisis, and the Taliban is running Afghanistan and oppressing women again. Democrats are apoplectic that the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, a New York State gun law, and the EPA’s right to regulate carbon emissions without explicit approval from Congress. Parents are up in arms, the teachers’ unions look like callous fools who kept schools closed and harmed a generation of schoolchildren, and “abolish the police” looks like a suicidal public policy. Republicans notice that waves of illegal immigrants headed north shortly after Biden’s inauguration and haven’t stopped coming since.
You didn’t even mention the Social Justice insanity and all the transexual madness.
That New York Times poll found that 64 percent of Democrats want a different presidential nominee in 2024. Nobody’s willing to cover for this guy anymore; no one is inclined to avert their eyes when Biden or his wife blurts out something tone-deaf now.
There are some of us who would argue that Joe Biden has always been an insecure, abrasive, presumptuous, disingenuous, demagogic, insufferable blowhard who was largely protected by a cozy, all-too-friendly relationship with a press inclined to airbrush his glaring character faults, presenting him as a wacky neighbor or a kindly, ice-cream loving grandpa.
What we see now is what happens when much of the national media, the Democratic Party establishment, and liberal interest groups stop playing along with the narrative that Biden is a wiser, sharper, kinder, more energetic and sensitive man than he is. And the truth isn’t pretty.
Speaking of unwanted Bidens: “Hunter Biden could face prostitution charges for transporting hookers across state lines and disguising checks to them as payments for ‘medical services.'” I’ll believe Hunter Biden prosecution when I see it. Also, I’ve been treating the 4Chan “Hunter Biden iPhone leak” with a certain amount of skepticism. Certainly the Hunter laptop revelations were real, and Hunter is a big enough scumbag to do the the things alleged iPhone leak materials depict. But I try to be cautious about anything that fits too neatly into my preconceptions. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
“Left-Wing Nonprofit Scores $171.7 Million-$1 Billion Government Contract To Help Illegal Immigrants Avoid Authorities.”
A liberal non-profit group has been given a taxpayer-funded government contract worth at least $171.7 million — which could potentially reach just under $1 billion — for assisting illegal immigrant minors in avoiding capture or incarceration by U.S. Border Patrol and state officials.
The Department of the Interior was the awarding agency and “The Vera Institute of Justice,” based out of New York — which supports the “defund the police” movement and has lax views on immigration enforcement — was the beneficiary.
Thanks in part to a lack of zoning, Houston builds housing at nearly three times the per capita rate of cities like New York City and San Jose. It isn’t all just sprawl either: In 2019, Houston built roughly the same number of apartments as Los Angeles, despite the latter being nearly twice as large. This ongoing supernova of housing construction has helped to keep Houston one of the most affordable big cities in the U.S., offering new arrivals modest rents and accessible home prices even amid seemingly endless demand.
Houston is by no means a model for planning. Like every other Sun Belt city, it struggles with segregation and sprawl. Yet its continued success as one of America’s most affordable and prosperous cities reveals the workability—indeed, the desirability—of non-zoning. Houston is a profoundly weird place, resistant to seductive oversimplifications. But it provides insight into what comes after the arbitrary lines that have misshapen our cities—and how we might get there.
So why didn’t Houston adopt zoning like every other U.S. city? The answer comes down partly to process. Unique among major cities, Houston subjected zoning to a citywide vote. While most city councils had, historically, quietly adopted zoning after a few perfunctory public hearings, the Bayou City invited voters to decide on zoning in 1946, 1962, and 1993. Voters rejected it each time—a reality that calls into question the often-postulated popularity of zoning.
Zoning critics rightly dispensed with the comforting myths surrounding zoning—that its purpose was to merely rationalize land use—and zeroed in on its tendency to restrict new housing construction, limit access to opportunity, institutionalize segregation, and force growth outward. Far from being duped, Houston’s working-class residents exhibited a subtler understanding of the purposes of zoning than many contemporary planners and rejected it accordingly.
But the answer to why Houston remains unzoned also comes down to politics. Zoning proponents didn’t merely lose the referendums—they were also tactfully bought off by being allowed to have something resembling zoning in their immediate vicinity. Indeed, the dark little secret of non-zoning in Houston is that it depends on a system of land-use regulations known as deed restrictions, which empower certain communities—principally middle- and upper-class homeowners—to effectively “opt out” of non-zoning, writing their own land-use rules for their own neighborhoods. In exchange, Houston is able to protect the vast majority of the city from the types of arbitrary-use distinctions, density limits, and raucous public hearings that cause so much harm in every other U.S. city. That is to say, in exchange for respecting pockets of private land-use regulation, Houston is able to grow, adapt, and evolve like no other city.
Deed restrictions are private, voluntary agreements among property owners—typically the homeowners of a particular subdivision or neighborhood—regulating how they can and cannot use their land. These rules are literally tied to the deed, meaning that a property owner must agree to them as a condition of the sale. Since the failed 1962 zoning referendum, the city has enforced these agreements on behalf of the relevant parties, refusing to issue permits that run afoul of their provisions and bringing legal action against violators.
Is this system of publicly enforced deed restrictions “basically zoning,” as some might argue? On the one hand, deed restrictions—like zoning—demarcate specified areas subject to a distinct set of stricter land-use rules. Both zoning and deed restrictions in Houston are enforced by the government, principally with the aim of propping up home values and maintaining a certain quality of life. Many deed restrictions even have rules banning apartments and enforcing a strict two-and-a-half-story height limit.
Yet, the similarities end there, and Houston’s system of deed restrictions is a significant improvement over zoning. For starters, deed restrictions only cover an estimated quarter of the city, largely in areas with low-rise, detached, single-family housing. Industrial areas, commercial corridors, mixed-use and multifamily neighborhoods, urban vacant lots, and yet-to-be-developed greenfields are virtually never subject to their provisions. This means that roughly three-quarters of Houston—including its more dynamic sections—are largely free to grow without anything even resembling zoning holding them back.
Another key difference is that deed restrictions must be voluntarily opted in to. This serves to discipline deed restrictions in a way that is rarely true of zoning: If the rules are stricter than what prospective homebuyers might prefer, or not strict enough, or simply focus on the wrong concerns, this may translate into lower home values. This in turn nudges homeowners to think through the optimal form of land-use regulation to a degree that rarely happens with zoning.
After deciding to let drug-abusing transients use their restrooms, Starbucks is now closing 16 stores because of rising violence, and the fact that transients are shooting up in their restrooms. Golly, who could have possibly seen that coming?
Another Texas school superintendent has stepped down amid criticism from parents concerned about liberal indoctrination in their children’s classrooms.
At a special meeting Monday afternoon, Clear Creek Independent School District’s board of trustees accepted the retirement of Superintendent Eric Williams, effective in January 2023.
Conservative parents in the Houston-area district had complained that Williams, who started in early 2021, was subjecting their students to liberal ideologies he brought from his former job as superintendent of
Between contractors working on my house and finishing up a book catalog, yesterday was super busy, resulting in short shrift analyzing one of the most important Second Amendment decisions in the history of the Republic. Fortunately, a lot of other good analysts have been doing the heavy lifting.
First up, here’s the actual text of the decision. For this post, I’m going to snip much of Justice Thomas’ reasoning to get to the meat of the conclusions.
In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570 (2008), and McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742 (2010), we recognized that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right of an ordinary, law-abiding citizen to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense. In this case, petitioners and respondents agree that ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a similar right to carry handguns publicly for their self-defense. We too agree, and now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.
The parties nevertheless dispute whether New York’s licensing regime respects the constitutional right to carry handguns publicly for self-defense. In 43 States, the government issues licenses to carry based on objective criteria. But in six States, including New York, the government further conditions issuance of a license to carry on a citizen’s showing of some additional special need. Because the State of New York issues public-carry licenses only when an applicant demonstrates a special need for self-defense, we conclude that the State’s licensing regime violates the Constitution.
Snip.
In Heller and McDonald, we held that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. In doing so, we held unconstitutional two laws that prohibited the possession and use of handguns in the home. In the years since, the Courts of Appeals have coalesced around a “two-step” framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny.
Today, we decline to adopt that two-part approach. In keeping with Heller, we hold that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest. Rather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.” Konigsberg v. State Bar of Cal., 366 U. S. 36, 50, n. 10 (1961).
Snip.
Despite the popularity of this two-step approach, it is one step too many. Step one of the predominant framework is broadly consistent with Heller, which demands a test rooted in the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by history. But Heller and McDonald do not support applying means-end scrutiny in the Second Amendment context. Instead, the government must affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.
Snip.
This Second Amendment standard accords with how we protect other constitutional rights. Take, for instance, the freedom of speech in the First Amendment, to which Heller repeatedly compared the right to keep and bear arms. 554 U. S., at 582, 595, 606, 618, 634–635. In that context, “[w]hen the Government restricts speech, the Government bears the burden of proving the constitutionality of its actions.” United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc., 529 U. S. 803, 816 (2000); see also Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. Hepps, 475 U. S. 767, 777 (1986). In some cases, that burden includes showing whether the expressive conduct falls outside of the category of protected speech. See Illinois ex rel. Madigan v. Telemarketing Associates, Inc., 538 U. S. 600, 620, n. 9 (2003). And to carry that burden, the government must generally point to historical evidence about the reach of the First Amendment’s protections. See, e.g., United States v. Stevens, 559 U. S. 460, 468–471 (2010) (placing the burden on the government to show that a type of speech belongs to a “historic and traditional categor[y]” of constitutionally unprotected speech “long familiar to the bar.”
Snip.
If the last decade of Second Amendment litigation has taught this Court anything, it is that federal courts tasked with making such difficult empirical judgments regarding firearm regulations under the banner of “intermediate scrutiny” often defer to the determinations of legislatures. But while that judicial deference to legislative interest balancing is understandable—and, elsewhere, appropriate—it is not deference that the Constitution demands here. The Second Amendment “is the very product of an interest balancing by the people” and it “surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms” for self-defense. Heller, 554 U. S., at 635. It is this balance—struck by the traditions of the American people—that demands our unqualified deference.
The test that we set forth in Heller and apply today requires courts to assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding. In some cases, that inquiry will be fairly straightforward. For instance, when a challenged regulation addresses a general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th century, the lack of a distinctly similar historical regulation addressing that problem is relevant evidence that the challenged regulation is inconsistent with the Second Amendment. Likewise, if earlier generations addressed the societal problem, but did so through materially different means, that also could be evidence that a modern regulation is unconstitutional. And if some jurisdictions actually attempted to enact analogous regulations during this timeframe, but those proposals were rejected on constitutional grounds, that rejection surely would provide some probative evidence of unconstitutionality.
Snip. Here’s Thomas disposing of the “musket” red herring:
While the historical analogies here and in Heller are relatively simple to draw, other cases implicating unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technological changes may require a more nuanced approach. The regulatory challenges posed by firearms today are not always the same as those that preoccupied the Founders in 1791 or the Reconstruction generation in 1868. Fortunately, the Founders created a Constitution—and a Second Amendment—“intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.” McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 415 (1819) (emphasis deleted). Although its meaning is fixed according to the understandings of those who ratified it, the Constitution can, and must, apply to circumstances beyond those the Founders specifically anticipated. See, e.g., United States v. Jones, 565 U. S. 400, 404–405 (2012) (holding that installation of a tracking device was “a physical intrusion [that] would have been considered a ‘search’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted”).
We have already recognized in Heller at least one way in which the Second Amendment’s historically fixed meaning applies to new circumstances: Its reference to “arms” does not apply “only [to] those arms in existence in the 18th century.” 554 U. S., at 582. “Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” Ibid. (citations omitted). Thus, even though the Second Amendment’s definition of “arms” is fixed according to its historical understanding, that general definition covers modern instruments that facilitate armed self-defense. Cf. Caetano v. Massachusetts, 577 U. S. 411, 411–412 (2016) (per curiam) (stun guns).
A long, interesting discussion of the history of firearms regulation (including the right of blacks to own guns for self-defense in the south) snipped. His conclusion:
The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” McDonald, 561 U. S., at 780 (plurality opinion). We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government offic ers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense.
New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment in that it prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
SCOTUS just tossed the use of scrutiny in examining the Second Amendment. No more “shall not be infringed except for…” quibbling. As the opinion says, HELLER did that, and Thomas sounds angry that he’s is now having to tell lower courts to cease and desist the use of means testing. He’s stating it about as clearly as can be done in the English language.
This is even better than the use of strict scrutiny, which was previously the best I thought I could hope for. A quick review of intermediate and strict scrutiny is in order.
Strict scrutiny requires that there must be a compelling government interest for a restriction of rights, it must narrowed tailored, and it must be the least restrictive way to do it.
Intermediate scrutiny requires little more than We need this to fix that.
SCOTUS just said, rather forcefully at that, that “compelling government interest” doesn’t apply when analyzing restrictions on fundamental Constitutional rights. Instead, you must demonstrate that there is a longstanding and general historical tradition for the rule… or you can’t do it at all.
The Ninth Circuit, infamous for invoking limited intermediate scrutiny — despite HELLER — must be excreting masonry construction units right about now. California Dims likewise, because the Ninth has abused scrutiny to uphold all of the state’s 2A infringements.
The Supreme Court just told them, Stop it, damnit! No more games; follow our instructions.
Thomas rebuffed New York’s effort to justify its proper-cause requirement as an effort to regulate guns in “sensitive places” – specifically, crowded urban areas, like Manhattan, where people are likely to gather. Thomas agreed that, as a historical matter, there have long been laws restricting guns in places like courthouses and polling places. Moreover, he continued, restrictions that apply to the modern versions of “sensitive places” may also pass constitutional muster. Although Thomas left open exactly what might qualify as a “sensitive place,” he made clear that urban areas do not meet that definition. The state’s “argument would in effect exempt cities from the Second Amendment and would eviscerate the general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense,” Thomas concluded.
Two landmark Supreme Court cases drop, another woke social justice child-rapist exposed, Keith Olbermann channels John C. Calhoun, and the secret plans to nuke Yorkshire. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Just like the old gypsy woman said leakers indicated, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe vs. Wade.
The Supreme Court on Friday overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion, allowing a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks to take effect.
“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the 6-3 majority.
Justice Alito was joined by Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority. Justice Roberts wrote in a concurring opinion with the majority that he would have taken a “more measured course” stopping short of overturning Roe altogether, but agreed that the Mississippi abortion ban should stand.
The Court’s liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor dissented….
The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization means each state will now be able to determine its own regulations on abortion, including whether and when to prohibit abortion.
In New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Court affirmed that gun rights are due the same protection as all other constitutional rights.
To which I can only reply “Duh. What took them so long?”
Today’s Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen is not only the most important Second Amendment ruling since D.C. v. Heller, it is potentially the most important Second Amendment ruling in American history.
Not sure about that, as Heller firmly established the gun ownership was an individual right unconnected to militia service. That laid the conceptual groundwork for today’s ruling.
For all the brouhaha, the question at hand in Bruen was rather straightforward: Can the state of New York require that applicants for gun-carry permits “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community,” or is New York obliged by the Constitution to offer a “shall issue” regime of the sort that 43 of the other 49 states have adopted? By a 6–3 vote, the justices decided that the latter approach is required. In the United States, Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion concluded, “authorities must issue concealed-carry licenses whenever applicants satisfy certain threshold requirements, without granting licensing officials discretion to deny licenses based on a perceived lack of need or suitability.” Moreover, while there is nothing illegal about America’s existing state-level permitting systems, those systems may not be mere smokescreens for outright prohibition, unequal protection, or unacceptable delay. “We do not rule out,” Thomas added in a footnote, any “constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.”
As Justice Alito was keen to note, this “holding decides nothing about who may lawfully possess a firearm or the requirements that must be met to buy a gun. Nor does it decide anything about the kinds of weapons that people may possess.” It concludes solely that:
The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need. The Second Amendment right to carry arms in public for self-defense is no different. New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.
Bottom line: New York is allowed to exclude carry-permit applications on a categorical basis (e.g., the applicant has a felony conviction), but not on a subjective one (e.g., the applicant doesn’t “need” a gun in the view of the determining officer).
To get there, the majority first determined that “nothing in the Second Amendment’s text draws a home/public distinction with respect to the right to keep and bear arms.” Indeed, “to confine the right to ‘bear’ arms to the home,” the majority observed, “would nullify half of the Second Amendment’s operative protections.” This, Thomas explained, would not do, because “the constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.’”
Liberals are taking the gun and abortion rulings well. Ha, just kidding! Keith Olbermann came out for nullification. Because nothing says “progressive liberalism” like adopting the policies of South Carolina from 1832.
Ukraine has banned the main opposition party. Not a great look. Though you know FDR would have tried that with Republicans if he thought they posed more of a threat to his agenda and the Supreme Court would let him get away with it…
Israel is headed for yet another election. “After almost one year of taking power, Israel’s ruling coalition has agreed to dissolve the parliament and hold new elections. ‘Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office announced Monday that his weakened coalition will be disbanded and the country will head to new elections.'” (“How many elections is that now, five?” “Shut up! Don’t tell Mere!”)
International Swimming Federation bans men from competing. It’s astonishing that headline even needs to be written…
Powers that be in Tennessee are threatening YouTuber Whistlin Diesel with a year in prison for…splashing with a jet ski. Sounds like a clear abuse of power to me…
A review of one of the last production Trebants, the crappy, under-powered, plastic communist car East Germans had to wait years to buy. Let this be another reminder that commies aren’t cool and the consumer goods produced by commie companies that don’t have to deal with market competition are crap.
“In my day, we had to work twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week, and they set off a nuclear explosion underneath us! You tell that to kids these days and they don’t believe you!”
“After ‘Lightyear’ Bombs, Disney Quietly Cancels Their Upcoming Movie ‘Brokeback Woody.
Given that, it’s no surprise that Cornyn was booed at last week’s Texas GOP convention.
Before he could get a word out, the boos descended upon Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) during his speech at the Texas GOP convention.
After getting up to the podium, about a minute and a half went by before Cornyn could even begin his speech. The crowd’s objections were a direct response to the role Cornyn is playing in the U.S. Senate in bartering a gun reform bill pushed in the wake of the Uvalde shooting.
Cornyn knew full well he was walking into the lion’s den, stating, “I will not approve any restrictions for law-abiding gun owners, and that’s my red line. And despite what some of you may have heard, that’s what our plan does.”
Citing conservative lodestar William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review, Cornyn added, “Someone needs to stand athwart history, yelling stop.”
Each time he repeated this formula, the crowd returned fire, yelling “Stop!” at Cornyn.
The senior Texas senator did receive some applause when touting Trump-appointed judges and pro-life legislation, and when criticizing critical race theory and rising crime rates.
Right after Cornyn left the stage, Attorney General Ken Paxton took the stage and delivered a tacit shot at the senator — with whom he has sparred before.
“We have some Republicans who are trying to run from the fight (to preserve gun rights), and we need to remember their names next time they’re on the ballot,” Paxton warned. Earlier this month, Paxton said Texas “will be the first to sue” if the federal government passes a gun bill that “infringes on our Second Amendment Rights.”
Here’s some video to judge for yourself:
If it’s just a matter of “enforcing existing laws” as Cornyn states, why isn’t he holding hearings on why the Biden Administration refuses to enforce those laws? Why cooperate with the party that seeks complete civilian disarmament rather than actually stopping criminals?
Says Michael Quinn Sullivan: “The senator seemed stunned by the response, clearly not expecting grassroots activists to understand what he had been pushing in Washington with the Democrats.”
The longer Cornyn has been in office the squishier he’s gotten (a sadly familiar pattern), not only on gun control but also illegal alien amnesty. He’s gone from “pretty reliable conservative” to someone whose feet you have to hold to the fire to keep from drifting left on the latest burst of media hot air, and the latest chorus of boos shows that Republican activists know it.
The imperfect status quo in gun laws is vastly preferable to any “reform” the current congress is likely to cook up.
Democrat tries to murder Brett Kavanaugh and Pelosi shrugs, human traffickers busted in Texas, another Democrat convicted of voting fraud (in Philadelphia, naturally), WaPo finally draws a line it won’t let SJWs cross, and an 8K computer that can be yours if you have somewhere north of a quarter million dollars. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Another month, another four decade high inflation rate. “The Consumer Price Index (CPI) went up by 8.6 percent in May, the highest year-over-year increase since December 1981.”
Nicholas John Roske was charged with attempting or threatening to murder or kidnap a Supreme Court justice Wednesday after traveling to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home armed with a Glock handgun, intent on killing the justice over his expected rulings in ongoing cases related to abortion and the Second Amendment.
Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, Calif., was identified as the suspect in an affidavit unsealed Wednesday afternoon. Roske told law enforcement that he called 911 to turn himself in because he was having suicidal thoughts, also telling the operator that he intended to kill a “specific” Supreme Court justice, according to the affidavit.
Roske was subsequently arrested, and officers found a Glock 17 pistol with two magazines, as well as a tactical knife, pepper spray, and other items.
Naturally, Democrats stalled a bill to provide additional security for Supreme Court Justices.
A former Democratic congressmen convicted and expelled for taking bribes has now been convicted of committing that voting fraud that Democrats swear up and down doesn’t exist.
A former Democrat congressman, who was expelled from the House of Representatives in 1980 after getting caught taking bribes in what turned out to be an FBI sting, pleaded guilty to multiple election fraud charges this week after the U.S. Department of Justice charged him with bribery, falsifying voting records, stuffing ballot boxes, and more election crimes in Pennsylvania.
According to U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams, 79-year-old Michael “Ozzie” Myers admitted to bribing Philadelphia election judge Domenick J. Demuro, who already pleaded guilty in 2020, during the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 state elections for $300 to $5,000 per election and then telling him to lie about falsely inflating votes.
Demuro, who “was responsible for overseeing the entire election process and all voter activities of his Division in accord with federal and state election laws,” then manipulated the voting machines in his respective ward and division in a way that satisfied Myers’ desire to “illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections,” especially those clients who paid him “consulting fees.”
“Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices that Myers favored for a variety of reasons,” the DOJ noted in a press release.
Myers pulled the same stunt with another South Philadelphia election judge Marie Beren, who also pleaded guilty in 2021 to her role in the fraud.
“Myers acknowledged in court that on almost every Election Day, Myers transported Beren to the polling station to open the polls. During the drive to the polling station, Myers would advise Beren which candidates he was supporting so that Beren knew which candidates should be receiving fraudulent votes. Inside the polling place and while the polls were open, Beren would advise actual in-person voters to support Myers’ candidates and also cast fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates on behalf of voters she knew would not or did not physically appear at the polls,” the DOJ stated.
The pair also used cell phone communication to notate in real-time how many votes they faked versus how many were real.
“If actual voter turnout was high, Beren would add fewer fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates. From time to time, Myers would instruct Beren to shift her efforts from one of his preferred candidates to another. Specifically, Myers would instruct Beren ‘to throw support’ behind another candidate during Election Day if he concluded that his first choice was comfortably ahead,” the press release continued.
Much like Demuro, Beren then falsified poll books “by recording the names, party affiliation, and order of appearances for voters who had not physically appeared at the polling station to cast his or her ballot in the election” and balanced the list with the ballots recorded by voting machines before certifying the tainted results.
In a story that launched a thousand “Bye, Felicia” jokes, Washington Post Social Justice Warrior “reporter” Felicia Sonmez was fired for insubordination and constantly attacking her co-workers for victimhood points.
The workplace drama began on June 2 when Sonmez publicly took colleague Dave Weigel to task after he retweeted a joke from YouTuber Cam Harless that said “every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”
Sonmez posted a screenshot of the retweet, captioning it “fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”
Weigel deleted the retweet, and explained that he “did not mean to cause any harm.” Nevertheless, the Post handed down a one-month unpaid suspension to punish Weigel for his retweet.
Post reporter Jose A. Del Real then waded into the controversy to criticize Somnez for continuing to tweet about Weigel and the paper even after it took action against Weigel. He accused her of public bullying and “clout chasing,” leading Sonmez to accuse Del Real of violating the paper’s social-media policy.
With the drama hitting a boiling point, Post executive editor Sally Buzbee sent an internal memo to staff saying, “we do not tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues either face to face or online.”
The memo seemed to spark a flood of pro-Post tweets from its reporters, who used similar language to laud the paper’s “collegial” work environment.
Sonmez evidently took offense to her colleague’s tweets saying they were proud to work at the paper.
“The reporters who issued synchronized tweets this week downplaying the Post’s workplace issues have a few things in common with each other,” Sonmez wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning. “They are all white . . . They are among the highest-paid employees in the newsroom, making double and even triple what some other National desk reporters are making, particularly journalists of color . . . They are among the ‘stars’ who ‘get away with murder’ on social media.”
Will this be a cause for soul-searching among MSM outlets over the wisdom of staffing their newsrooms with social justice warriors? Of course not. Sonmez dared to make the mistake of going after higher ranking members of the Clerisy.
Taylor Lorenz and the Washington Post are attempting a third adpocalypse. They’re attempting to take out rivals to the leftwing legacy media — specifically, YouTubers who sided more with Johnny Depp during the Amber Heard defamation trial. The leftwing media, of course, had uncritically championed Amber Heard, as they’d championed all #MeToo allegations, #BelievingAllWomen without asking for any evidence.
In fact, the defamatory opinion piece Depp sued Heard for appeared in the Washington Post. They just added a stingy “Note” to their defamation.
So Lorenz is now attempting to paint it as dangerous for people to openly question #MeToo allegations on YouTube, and to suggest there’s something wrong with non-legacy-media outlets making money off of a major media story. There’s nothing wrong with the Washington Post making money off it, of course — because they take the proper leftwing view of things.
But people like Rekieta or YellowFlash or That Umbrella Guy, the people who thought that Amber Heard was lying? Which, of course, a jury found to be the case?
They’re dangerous and they shouldn’t be allowed to make money off it. And damnit, YouTube has got to control who is allowed to make money from these news events!
By the way: The entire Depp/Heard story was already heavily censored by YouTube. Videos would be demonetized — denied advertising — if they discussed it all. Because of this, YouTubers were forced to resort to the childish tactic of referring to Depp as “The Pirate Guy” and Heard as “the Aqua Lady” to avoid censorship and demonetization. They had to avoid saying the names of the people they were talking about.
No, I’m serious.
But that’s not enough for Taylor Lorenz and The Washington Post.
Either they have to declare “The Aqua Lady is telling the truth and The Pirate Guy is an abuser,” or they must be deplatformed!
And Lorenz, in making the case that only she, a nobody, barely-educated semiliterate wannabe influencer who pretends to be a tweenager online and gets away with it because she is effectively developmentally delayed, should be allowed to weigh in on the Depp-Heard trial, and that actual trial lawyers like Rikieta and LegalBytes should not be so allowed, is on a scorched earth campaign to make them toxic to advertisers.
And of course she’s also up to her old tricks of claiming she reached out to her subjects — I mean, targets and victims — for comment.
Spoiler alert: She did not reach out to her targets and victims for comment.
Gordon decided to take a strategic approach to make the Virginia GOP a party that could attract serious, intelligent, capable candidates, run them, and win. He founded The Virginia Project (TVP) with the mission to create a 21st-century party infrastructure capable of competing effectively and rolling back Democrat Party influence.
Once Gordon realized that Republicans failed to field candidates in 25% of races with a Democrat incumbent in 2019, he made running a candidate in every race a mission point. Other objectives of TVP included taking a complete accounting of GOP performance in every election district and providing a baseline level of support for every GOP candidate in the state. The group also wanted to share tools and best practices to optimize branding, marketing, messaging, voter outreach, and mobilization throughout the state. The goal was to disrupt the Democrats’ narratives and force them to play defense.
After the 2020 election, Gordon realized that to put Democrats on their heels, TVP would have to go on offense. There was no way to verify the vote in Virginia after nearly 60% of Virginians voted early or by mail. The window for challenging congressional elections closed in 25 days. There was no point in fielding candidates across the state without shoring up election integrity. So with the help of Ned Jones, Gordon and TVP set about securing Virginia’s elections.
The group forced the implementation of voter roll management laws already on the books. TVP ensured the process was logged, transparent, and consistent in every Virginia county and removed a half million bad entries from the voter rolls statewide. Then TVP made sure a system was in place for 2021 that had what Gordon refers to as “Eyes on Every Ballot.”
Challenging elections after the fact proved fruitless at the state and national levels in 2020. The key would be to challenge violations on the spot rather than post facto. TVP prepared and delivered training for election observers. The Virginia GOP went from 33% to 95% observer coverage. Gordon said, “The worse Biden gets, the more people volunteer. A good look in some of the disputed states in 2020 also motivated people to get involved.”
The success in recruitment and training allowed the GOP to challenge every suspected violation on election night 2021. As a Twitter thread from TVP noted, “[DNC lawyer Marc] Elias’ now-legendary losing streak started with us stopping him. We fought for and won every legal stipulation needed to enforce our rights.”
President Biden unveiled new sanctions Thursday targeting influential Russians and President Vladimir Putin’s yachts on the 99th day of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine — but two oligarchs linked to his son Hunter Biden again were spared.
The slow rollout of sanctions comes despite the president threatening “swift and severe” penalties ahead of the invasion, which began Feb. 24.
New US-targeted individuals include the steel and gold-mining oligarch Alexey Mordashov, Putin-linked money manager Sergei Roldugin, billionaire property developer God Nisanov, electronics executive Evgeny Novitsky, banker Sergey Gorkov and Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. The Treasury Department also sanctioned two yachts that Putin allegedly co-owns and the Monaco-based yacht brokerage Imperial Yachts and its Russian CEO, Evgeniy Kochman.
It remains unclear why Hunter Biden’s alleged Russian business associates — the billionaire oligarchs Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenko — eluded the latest round of US sanctions against members of Russia’s business elite.
It’s a great mystery.
Baturina, whose wealth derives largely from construction, in 2014 paid a firm associated with Hunter Biden $3.5 million, according to a 2020 report written by Republican-led Senate committees. She is the widow of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, and documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop indicate she may have attended a 2015 dinner in DC with then-Vice President Joe Biden.
Yevtushenkov, who owns a nearly 50% stake in Russian conglomerate Sistema — which has telecom, retail, banking, food and health interests — faces UK sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but hasn’t yet been targeted by the Biden administration. He met with Hunter Biden in 2012 at Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, but recently claimed they had no subsequent contact.
Before the war, [Sgt. 1st Class Chris] Freymann, a cavalry scout in the Washington state National Guard, had been the lead instructor in the U.S. military’s program that trained soldiers in Ukraine how to use the shoulder-fired tank-killing missiles. He trained about 200 Ukrainian troops during his months with the program.
Russia launched its invasion in February, after U.S. trainers left. But the relationships Freymann made remained. His former students — now troops fighting on the front lines — again reached out for help on operating the Javelins as they encountered technical issues or forgot details.
“When the war started, I had a lot of guys hitting me up on WhatsApp,” Freymann told Military.com. “One of our linguists, her husband was one of the few soldiers who were left. A lot of the students trained by the other [Guard units] died.”
Freymann would relay information on operating the Javelin to the linguist. Her husband, who was in the fight, would then send Freymann photos and videos of destroyed Russian tanks. Freymann says at least four tanks were destroyed after some of his over-the-phone coaching.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Americans are abandoning high tax states (New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey) and moving to low tax states (Florida, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, Tennessee). (Hat tip:Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Catastrophic failure at an aluminum extrusion line. Looks like an overpressure event and the oil itself (over a drop ceiling no less) open a portal to a demon dimension… pic.twitter.com/VQeM0f85Mw
Not news: Real estate owners in New York City jacking up rates. News: Jacking up New York real estate. Namely jacking a landmark Broadway theater up 30 feet to put retail space underneath it.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds on (but Ukraine launches a successful counterattack), Joe Biden said Democrats are responsible for inflation and ignoring the needs of the middle class, Rand Paul gets pissed, ESG is officially a great big fraud, more shenanigans from Soros-backed DAs, and debunking a Victorian vibrator myth.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is 100 days old. While Russia continues to grin forward on some fronts in Donetsk, Ukrainian forces seem to have taken back part of Severodonetsk while also making some gains in the south. Caveat for that link in that this Ukrainian guy’s shtick is tracking day-to-day map movements without a lot of tactical depth. So: Grains of salt may be in order. (Update: More successful Ukrainian counterattacks near Severodonetsk at Metolkine. Same guy, same caveats…)
In a speech on the Senate floor Friday, Rand Paul blasted efforts by Democrats to paint up all law enforcement officers and those in the military as dangerous radical racists.
Paul was addressing The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022, blocked by Republicans in the Senate, that demands the FBI and Department of Homeland Security change the way they investigate and monitor domestic terrorism suspects.
The official summary of the bill notes that an “interagency task force” would be established in order to probe into “white supremacist and neo-Nazi infiltration of the uniformed services and federal law enforcement agencies.”
“This bill should be called by a more accurate name: the Democrat plan to brand our police and soldiers as white supremacists and neo-Nazis,” Paul proclaimed.
He continued, “How insulting,” adding “We knew that Democrats despise and want to defund the police, but now, they believe that the police, federal law enforcement, and the U.S. military are full of white supremacists and neo-Nazis?”
Referring to the now mothballed ‘Disinformation Governance Board’, Paul also noted “Those of us who still care about the Bill of Rights just got done taking down the DHS ‘Ministry of Truth,’ and a day later, Democrats want to create the DHS Thought Police. You couldn’t make it up if you tried. But they don’t stop there.”
“The bill creates two other Thought Police offices at the Department of Justice and at the FBI, which seems like a self-defeating choice, since elsewhere in the bill, we are told that federal law enforcement is shot through with white supremacists and neo-Nazis,” Paul urged.
The Senator also noted that “None of the bill makes sense. It doesn’t make sense because it was a bill that was never intended to become law. It’s a dumb, Washington talking points memo masquerading as legislation.”
“But congressional Democrats have gotten so radical, so extreme, and so out-of-touch with the American people that when they read it, they see something worthwhile,” he added.
Paul concluded that “This bill will fail today because the Democrats’ message — hate the police, defund the police, slander the military and police as racists and white supremacists — has been roundly rejected by the American people.”
The bill failed to pass, but 47 Democrats voted for it…
A bunch of kids are being murdered by some semi-human, so what do you do? Draw your weapon and put him down or die trying? Or do you sit there, doing nothing?
The same government we’re supposed to give up our guns to because they have it all under control chose Option B. It chose failure.
Tell me more about how the real problem is that we have the capacity to defend ourselves.
But the real problem, to our enemies, is not that murderers murder. The real problem, to our enemies, is the very fact that we can defend ourselves. The objective of our trash elite is not to have a country that runs well, where people are secure, and where rights are respected. The objective is to rule. And if a bunch of kids die for that, they’re fine with it. They can live with failure, but not accountability.
The clusterfark in Uvalde is just a symptom of a much bigger pathology. It is a symbol of the failure of every institution in our society. And the solution is never to revamp the institutions and eject the parasites heading them. It’s always – always – to take power from us and give it to the people who screwed up in the first place.
“The Democrats lost an election they never expected to lose. They basically lost to a reality TV show host when Hillary Clinton had all the backing of the establishment in the world. And instead of asking, what is it about our ideology that ruled the country for eight years, that drove people away from us into Donald Trump’s arms, they instead decided they were going to blame everybody else,” he said.
“The Democrats simply replaced Trump with the same ideology they governed with for 8 years under Obama that caused people to run away from them as fast as they could,” he said. “And now that people are doing that again, instead of asking ‘why is that happening’ they’re getting poised to blame the electorate for being stupid — for thinking the economy’s bad when it’s actually good.”
Haven’t had time to talk about the farce that was the Sussmann acquittal, but here’s a tweet:
TURLEY: “I mean, he is facing a jury that has three Clinton donors, an AOC donor, and a woman whose daughter is on the same sports team with Sussmann’s daughter. With the exception of randomly selecting people out of the DNC headquarters, you could not come up with a worse jury” pic.twitter.com/RHqen6AMAc
Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano (D.) and Arlington County commonwealth’s attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti (D.) since 2020 dismissed or declined to prosecute a 25-year-old Maryland resident for nearly a dozen charges related to larceny. The looting incidents amounted to thousands of dollars in stolen merchandise and include felony offenses, including two grand larcenies and one assault on a police officer, making the offender eligible for years behind bars. The prosecutors found the looter guilty of just a few misdemeanors. No verdict levied more than a few hundred dollars in fines, and he served no time in prison.
“If Stuart Kirk’s devastating accusations are correct, in my opinion his words could be interpreted as suggesting the inputs to financial models which predict a demand for the climate investment products currently being sold are being heavily manipulated to produce a preconceived outcome. Stuart appeared to claim he is being “pressured” to add unrealistic assumptions to climate financial models, to ‘move the needle’ on predicted economic harm from climate change.” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Iranian military bases attacked by drones launched from inside Iran. Hmmmmm…
“Miracle Cures and Murder For Hire: How A Spoon-Bending Turkish Magician Built A $600 Million Nasdaq-Listed Scam Based On A Lifetime Of Lies.” You really need to read the whole thing to see how Enochian Biosciences’ co-founder Serhat Gumrukcu fled from one alleged scam to another. Here’s just one line-item: “Gumrukcu claims to have spent 12+ years earning an M.D. and multiple PhDs in Russia and Turkey. Our research indicates he made it all up. He has no medical degree and no PhDs.” Plus that pesky murder thing… (Hat tip: ZeroHedge.)
The jury in Johnny Depp’s defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard ruled Wednesday that the actress did in fact defame Depp by identifying herself as a victim of domestic abuse and awarded Depp $15 million in compensatory and punitive damages, capping a blockbuster trial that has seen immense media coverage over the last several weeks.
The jury of five men and two women reached their unanimous verdict after 13 hours of deliberations, which began on Tuesday afternoon. It also awarded Heard $2 million in damages for a countersuit against Depp for statements made by his lawyer.
Depp may be a self-indulgent hedonist with poor judgment and substance abuse issues, but he came out smelling like a rose in comparison to his extra-crazy ex.
Slogans are no substitute for facts. “Hear all women” is a pledge we should all make. “Believe all women,” however, is asking people to shut their brains off at the approach of a slogan and forget the fact that women are people, too. Sometimes they shade the truth or lie, sometimes they are the more abusive party, and sometimes they are cynical, show-business shams. The evidence at trial changed a lot of minds, all the more so the more people watched it.
A favorite theory about Victorian vibrators turns out to be made up out of whole cloth.
With the anniversary of D-Day coming up, here’s a look at Operation PLUTO, which laid gasoline pipelines underneath the English channel to help fuel the invasion.
Evidently Twitter has decided that mentioning use of lethal force to defend your life and home (legal in all 50 states, but especially in Texas, a castle doctrine state) is forbidden. Or, more likely, the left-wing “duh, you don’t need to worry, because there’s only a 7% chance home invaders will commit violence!” troll reported it as a “threat” and Twitter just automatically suspends accounts over mere reports.
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! The Biden Administration has done everything it can to worsen inflation, The Ministry of Truth’s Scary Poppins dissolves into a puddle, a whole lot of school groomer news from all across the country, and the world’s longest D&D game.
The Biden administration’s first response to any problem is to pretend that it isn’t a problem. That’s how inflation went from a minor problem to a major one. Unwilling to take the necessary steps to rein in inflation early — pushing the Fed to raise interest rates and slowing down the torrent of money going out the Treasury’s doors — Biden and congressional Democrats at first insisted that inflation wasn’t a real problem: “Transitory,” they called it.
And then when inflation turned out not to be transitory, they thought they could just pin it on the Russians. Jen Psaki sniffed smugly at the “Putin price hike,” as though Americans were too stupid to understand that inflation at home had started long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That gambit fizzled, too.
When you don’t have any fresh ideas or real principles — and when your long-term goals are limited by the fact that the president, who was born during the Roosevelt administration, isn’t exactly buying any green bananas — then the easiest thing to do is to throw money at every problem.
Throwing money at things is how you make inflation worse.
Washington had already thrown a lot of money at the economy during the COVID-19 emergency, and, predictably, the emergency spending outlasted the emergency. By the time Biden was elected in 2020, Washington had thrown $2.6 trillion in budgetary resources at COVID and had authorized as much as $4 trillion in subsidized federal lending. That was new money amounting to about a third of GDP sloshing around the economy. Biden’s first priority was pushing out another $1 trillion in a phony infrastructure bill (that has little to do with actual infrastructure) and a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, even though the Consumer Price Index was already rising steeply, according to the Federal Reserve.
Stimulating an already overstimulated economy is how you make inflation worse.
Our inflation problem is only partly an issue of dovish monetary policy and reckless spending. There are problems in the real-world physical economy, too, those “supply-chain issues” we hear about. The Biden administration has done extraordinarily dumb things to make these worse, too, keeping in place the worst of the Trump administration’s anti-trade policies. That “Made in the USA” talk sounds good on the stump, but the truth is we need a lot that we don’t make at home and aren’t going to — including much of the steel and other vital inputs for the high-value manufacturing we actually do here.
The incredible fact is the Biden administration still had punitive tariffs on Ukrainian steel while it was seeking financial aid for the Ukrainians — it wasn’t until the Chamber of Commerce and conservative critics started making a stink that the administration changed its stance.
More Biden magic: “Dow Suffers Longest Losing Streak In 99 Years.”
“Hunter Biden Took In $11 Million Over 5 Years.” I would treat NBC’s number as a floor rather than a ceiling…
Scary Poppins resigns from the Ministry of Truth because all those vicious right-wing bullies were mean to her about her gross bias and constant lying.
I know you’ll be shocked, shocked to find Taylor Lorenz attempt to ride to her rescue:
Investigating and criticizing a Homeland Security official is now "harassment" and bullying, according to the WashPost and @TaylorLorenz.
Only ordinary citizens can be investigated — not high-level US Security State operatives. Them's the rules:https://t.co/rtHpupbeMw
In sum, a free press exists to unmask and punish private citizens with the wrong politics ("shoe-lace reporting"), not to investigate and scrutinize the beliefs, conduct and claims of powerful government officials ("harassment" and bullying).
Also seems odd that WPost allowed @TaylorLorenz (who, credit where due, broke the story of the DHS "pause") to write an entire article arguing Nina Jankowicz should be off-limits from criticism, without mentioning Jankowicz argued the same about Lorenz:https://t.co/Sh6mzcKRe0
Indeed, Jankowicz has a very long history of defending Lorenz and expressing solidarity for the trauma Lorenz suffers when her work is criticized. That's almost certainly where Lorenz got her version of events and seems like it should be disclosed when Lorenz defends Jankowicz. pic.twitter.com/R49NHCQ3RZ
I live in a manufacturing city with a very strong union voice speaking into the politics of our community. Yet a fascinating and unmistakable phenomenon has been occurring over the course of the last decade or two. Though the percentage of citizens in our area who post their “Proud Union Home” yard signs has likely increased, the percentage of them identifying as, or supporting, the Democratic Party has dropped precipitously during that same time frame.
For the first time in my city’s history, Republicans swept all municipal offices in the last election. So what is happening, and is it a microcosm of some larger trend?
I can’t offer any scientific study or analysis; I can only tell you what I have been told. Though former President Trump attempted overtures towards the “made in America” union mentality, that isn’t the most often cited rationale among Democrat dropouts. Instead, their disillusionment seems to stem from the prevailing belief that the party has been hijacked by single-issue ideologues that are willing to destroy party cohesion and solidarity if it means advancing their singular cause. More and more of these ex-party members now consider the Democrats the “Abortion First” party.
Again, that may be just the frustrated sentiments of disgruntled Dems in rural Indiana who feel as though the once big tent that embraced them has become far more rigid and dogmatic in who they welcome under the awning. Gone seem to be the days of the party’s Rust Belt/Union Grit identity, replaced today with a coalition that obsesses over white guilt, pronoun pandering, and legal feticide.
“Tucson high school counselor accused of sexual misconduct with a 15-year-old student…police officials in the Southern Arizona city said Zobella Brazil Vinik turned herself in to detectives on May 11.”
Bellingham School District board director is advertising a “queer youth open mic” for ages 0-18 taking place in her sex shop which she owns. @BhamSDpic.twitter.com/jIIdAV0YOu
Speaking of sexual predators after your children, this is pretty horrifying: “Texas Teen Goes to Bathroom at NBA Game, Is Found 10 Days Later Sold for Sex in Oklahoma Hotel.”
In another action-packed school board meeting in McKinney, the board president was served with a lawsuit for suppressing the free speech rights of citizens who disagree with her policies.
Civil rights attorney Paul Davis served Amy Dankel, president of McKinney Independent School District’s board of trustees, during the public comments portion of Tuesday night’s meeting.
“Your outrageous display of tyranny in how you trampled on the rights of the public at the last meeting was shocking,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
In recent months, McKinney ISD’s school board meetings have featured a heavy police presence.
On several occasions, police officers have ejected citizens, at Dankel’s direction, for failing to observe her rules of decorum during public comments.
Davis said Tuesday that Dankel’s rules “placed an unconstitutional restraint on First Amendment rights by disallowing signs, clapping, and comments.”
He also says Dankel enforced her rules unequally.
She directed police to physically remove people who were wearing green—supporters of conservative trustee Chad Green, who Dankel is trying to oust from the board.
“Those same rules were not applied to people wearing blue,” Davis said, referring to Dankel supporters. “For that, we have filed a civil rights lawsuit against you.”
Kevin Whitt is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
During last month’s school board meeting, the pro-family activist spoke against the district’s failure to proactively identify and remove sexually explicit books found in students’ libraries—a contentious topic in McKinney and other districts across the state since last year.
Later in that meeting, Whitt was dragged out by City of McKinney police officers for uttering a single word—“disgusting”—after a local mom finished comments that included excerpts from one of the explicit books.
Speaking of Texas school boards getting sued parents, Round Rock ISD is being sued over violating parent’s rights.
The contentious saga in Round Rock ISD continues after two parents filed a federal lawsuit last week against five school board trustees, the district superintendent, and several district police officers.
Last year, the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office arrested Jeremy Story and Dustin Clark on charges of “hindering proceedings by disorderly conduct” following a September school board meeting. Both men were released the next day.
The lawsuit claims the defendants violated Story’s and Clark’s rights under the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment. Additionally, the suit accuses the defendants of violating 42 U.S. Code 1983, or misusing their power to deny their constitutional rights.
The two men attended last September’s school board meeting to protest Superintendent Dr. Hafedh Azaiez’s continued employment and a proposed tax increase.
Texas Scorecard chronicled multiple scandals involving Round Rock ISD in a special report and a podcast series, Exposed, which included investigations into the school district and Azaiez. Five of the district’s seven trustees, dubbed the “Bad Faith Five,” were also brought under scrutiny for allegedly covering up domestic violence allegations against Azaiez.
At the August 16 board meeting, Round Rock ISD officers removed Story after he referenced the investigation into Azaiez. Amy Weir, president of the school board, instructed district officers to escort Story from the building, claiming his concerns about Azaiez did not follow the meeting’s agenda.
At the same meeting, trustees Mary Bone and Danielle Weston walked out after accusing the district of intentionally limiting seating under the guise of following COVID-19 safety guidelines. Clark then demanded the board let more citizens in to witness the meeting, and Weir subsequently instructed district officers to escort him out.
Three days later, Williamson County officers arrested Story and Clark. Although Story’s charges pertained to the August 16 meeting, Clark’s charges dated back to a September meeting of the school board. Their lawsuit, filed May 11, accuses all defendants of suppressing Story’s and Clark’s constitutional rights and claims they were arrested illegally.
If successful, the lawsuit would void Azaiez’s contract and prevent Round Rock ISD from restricting attendance at school board meetings due to COVID-19.
Groomer teachers are even popping up in Ohio:
Elementary-high school students at @OlentangySD were allegedly given an invasive electronic survey on their pronouns, sexual orientation, and mental health. Parents were not notified and were not asked to consent. pic.twitter.com/opEPFNm6dC
Speaking of Michigan lawsuits over gross abuse of state power, a couple is suing Highland Park after the police seized their building and legal marijuana business, charged them with no crime, and then offered to give it back if they bought the police department two cars.
Speaking of crooked Democratic politicians, you would think that all that graft Bill De Blasio’s wife raked off would allow him to retire in style, but evidently that festering bucket of crooked failure just can’t stay out of the spotlight, and is now running for congress.
People magazine may cease its print version. Bonus: “Sources told The Post that under Wakeford, People had been selling more than 200,000 copies at the newsstand a week. Since then, newsstand sales have been uneven, with a May 2 Prince Harry cover dipping to about 160,000 copies sold, and a March 14 Lizzo cover cratering to between 125,000- 150,000 copies sold, which is said to be one of the worst selling issues in People’s half-century history.” Funny how no one gives a rat’s ass about woke royals and the morbidly obese…
Larry Correia gives a deserved royal fisking to an article by a leftwing feminist who wonders why her boyfriend reads that primitive “science fiction” stuff rather than modern literary fiction that checks all the required Victimhood Identity boxes.
