Posts Tagged ‘Samuel Alito’

LinkSwarm For June 14, 2024

Friday, June 14th, 2024

Greetings, and welcome to a LinkSwarm so large I had to start working on it Wednesday! Unemployment rises too much to rig it away, home sales crash to Carter levels, Europe’s voters rise up to throw out the left, Hunter is guilty guilty guilty, another blow to the Biden Administration’s tranny Title IX rewrite, Israel rescues some hostages and smokes a Hezbolli terror master, and California continues to do California things.

  • The Biden Administration has been lying about how high unemployment is. Says who? The Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

    Every so-called “strong” jobs report has been a disaster if one puts in even a little work to dig below the pristine, if fake, surface. And while we expected this charade to continue indefinitely, and certainly at least until the November election, at which point suddenly all the truth about the ugly labor market would be revealed to usher in the new president amid an economic crisis, we were shocked when none other than the Fed chair admitted today that the Biden admin was rigging jobs data.

    In response to a question from a Bloomberg journalist during the post-FOMC presser, asking the Fed chair to comment on the state of the labor market, the Fed Chair said that two years ago the labor market was “overheated” and has since gotten back to “normal”, largely thanks to “supply from to immigration” – translation: illegal aliens have been the main reasons for the increase in employment and the drop in wages and thus, overall inflation, which as we discussed recently, is the narrative that is being pushed out to mitigate demands by most Americans to halt illegal immigration.

    Where things got very interesting, however, is when Powell was discussing the demand-side of the labor market: here, he addressed the dropping quits level, the decline in job openings and wages, but more importantly, the rising unemployment rate – from 3.4% to 4.0% which clearly goes against the narrative of red hot payrolls – all of which the Fed chair summarized as strong job creation, yet caveated by saying that “there is an argument that [payrolls] may be a bit overstated.”

    Note: he didn’t say “understated” because the “-stating” always goes in just one direction: the one that makes the resident of the White House look good.

    In other words, the jobs – like so many things about this Potemkin economy – are a lie, and while Powell immediately realized what he had said, and tried to couch it by adding that payrolls are “still strong”, suddenly the entire narrative of a strong labor market imploded in front of our eyes, because if the Biden admin will lie about a “bit” of the jobs report, it will lie about any part of it.

    And, as we have shown above and every month this year, lie is precisely what the Biden administration has been doing, month after month, year after year.

    And the biggest stunner, as Edward Snowden put it so eloquently, is that he’s “not sure I’ve ever seen the chairman of the Federal Reserve publicly accuse the White House of cooking the books on employment numbers, but here we are.”

  • Speaking of which: “Initial Claims Surge To 10-Month Highs As California Joblessness Soars.” “Did we suddenly get a peek at economic reality? The number of Americans applying for jobless benefits for the first time surged last week to 242k (up from 229k and well above the 225k exp). That is the highest since August 2023.” And California, which just happened to implement a minimum wage hike, led far and away with the most claims…
  • Home sales have dropped so far during the Biden Recession that they’re now back to 1978 levels.

    The recession in the U.S. existing home sales market has been so deep that we’re back to late ‘70s levels—despite us now living in a much bigger country:

    April 1978: 4.09 million U.S. existing home sales print

    April 2024: 4.14 million U.S. existing home sales print*

    1978: 223 million U.S. population

    2024: 341 million U.S. population

    The reason, of course, is that housing affordability has deteriorated so much that many buyers and sellers alike have pulled back from the market. Many homeowners who would otherwise like to sell and buy something else are staying put rather than trading in their 3% mortgage rate for a 7% mortgage rate.

    The bad news?

    According to a forecast published this week by Goldman Sachs, the recovery for existing home sales could be a slog.

    1978: Jimmy Carter was still President, the Bee Gees dominated the music charts thanks to Saturday Night Fever, and a brand new comic strip about a lasagna-loving cat named Garfield debuted. And the average price of a home was somewhere around $56,000. (Yet, somehow, home sales were still stronger during the 1981-82 interest rate hikes than under Carter in 1978…)

  • Hunter Biden found guilty on all counts in his gun trial.

    A jury of Hunter Biden’s peers found him guilty on all three felony charges on Tuesday after a six-day trial that demonstrated that the first son lied on a federal gun-purchase background-check form when he claimed not to be a drug addict.

    The verdict was reached after the jury deliberated for three hours, beginning Monday afternoon with the conclusion of closing arguments. Hunter was surrounded by family members, including wife Melissa Cohen Biden and his uncle James Biden, as the verdict was read. First lady Jill Biden missed the verdict announcement and rushed to greet Hunter afterward.

    Hunter was found guilty on two charges for lying about his crack-cocaine addiction on federal gun paperwork when he bought a Colt Cobra revolver at a sporting-goods store in Wilmington in October 2018. He was also found guilty on a third charge for possessing the firearm while he was using crack cocaine.

    The first son faces up to 25 years in prison, though he’ll likely receive a lighter sentence as a first-time, nonviolent offender. Judge Noreika, who presided over the trial, said that a sentencing hearing will be held in September.

    Though Hunter Biden still has a pending tax trial, don’t hold your breath about him going to trial for his role as the Biden crime family’s bagman…

  • “Court Confirms: Weiss’s ‘Special Counsel’ Appointment Is a Sham.”

    I’ve pointed out time and again (including yesterday) that Biden Justice Department AG Merrick Garland’s “special counsel” appointment of Biden Justice Department Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss in the Hunter Biden case is a fraud on the public.

    In a pretrial ruling denying the younger Biden’s motion to dismiss the case, Judge Maryellen Noreika has confirmed that Garland’s appointment of Weiss did not comply with federal regulations for appointing special counsels. That, however, was not a basis to dismiss the case — particularly with Garland and Weiss quietly citing the last special-counsel regulation, §600.10 (of Title 28, Code of Federal Regulations), which provides that no one may hold the Justice Department accountable for flouting its own regulations.

    To be clear, I have never contended that Garland lacked the authority to assign Weiss, or whoever he wanted to assign, to investigate the Biden case. As Judge Noreika correctly explained, federal statutory law — in particular, §§509, 510, 515, and 533 — vest attorneys general with sweeping power to run the Justice Department as they see fit, including power to designate any DOJ lawyers they choose to run investigations anywhere in the country.

    Weiss, for example, is now prosecuting Hunter Biden in Los Angeles, on the tax case scheduled to begin trial on September 5, in addition to the gun case in Weiss’s own Delaware district. That’s because Garland doubled-down in assigning the investigation of the president’s son to the same prosecutor — Weiss — who had just schemed with defense lawyers on a failed sweetheart plea deal that was designed to make all conceivable cases against said son disappear (and only after Weiss had consciously dithered as the statute of limitations steadily eviscerated serious criminal offenses).

    Garland is the attorney general, and he has that power. It is power he wields with no fear that Congress will slash the DOJ’s budget, censure him, impeach him, or do anything else but caterwaul over how he abuses it. My point is that Garland has been engaged in a nearly four-year fraud — trying to con the country into believing the Justice Department is neither protecting its boss nor trying, to the extent politically feasible, to protect the president’s son.

    The AG refused to appoint a special counsel for the Biden investigation, despite the president’s (and other Biden family members’) being implicated in Hunter’s malfeasance, particularly crimes arising out of his peddling of his father’s political influence for huge pay days from agents of corrupt and anti-American regimes.

  • Europe’s ruling center left just got smashed in European elections.

    Early projections of the EU-election results show that the continent’s right-wing parties have made significant advances as voters signal their dissatisfaction with illegal immigration and inflation. Formerly powerful left-wing parties seem to have been routed, while centrists stayed the course.

    This antiestablishment sentiment was expressed most strongly in Germany and France, two of the European bloc’s most powerful countries.

    The French results prompted President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the French parliament in preparation for snap elections on June 30 and July 7, as his party lost badly to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which is part of the Identity and Democracy coalition in the European Parliament.

    Before crowds in Paris, Le Pen responded to Macron’s announcement: “This historic vote shows that when people vote, people win. . . . We are ready to exercise power, to end mass migration, to prioritize purchasing power, ready to make France live again.”

    In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Social Democrats were trounced by a combination of support for the right-wing CDU/CSU and Alternative for Germany (AfD). The left-wing Social Democratic Party (14.6 percent) and the Greens (12 percent) underperformed. Katarina Barley, speaking for the Social Democrats, called it “a bitter evening.” “I am very disappointed.” The AfD, having won 14 percent as of this reporting, is intent on carrying its EU wins to the national elections in October 2025.

    Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni was the only leader of a European power to see success, with the right-wing politician’s allied faction, European Conservatives and Reformists, placing first in Italy.

    In Spain, the conservative People’s Party took 34.2 percent of the vote, a rejection of socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez and his Socialist Workers’ Party, which received 30.2 percent. Two other right-wing parties, Vox and Se Acabó La Fiesta (The Party’s Over), received another 14.2 percent between them.

    The Greens ceded more ground than any other party in the EU, losing more than a quarter of their seats.

    For decades, the ruling Euroelite have insisted that there is no alternative to their high tax, high spending, high debt, high regulation, high immigration, environmental leftist EU superstate. Voters seem to have finally grown tired enough of it that they’re willing to embrace Marine Le Pen if that’s what it takes to make their voices heard.

  • “Biden Asks Why Europe Didn’t Just Arrest Conservative Candidates Before Election.”
  • Good news! The Supreme Court has struck down the bump stock ban.

    In his opinion, Thomas wrote that, though a bump stock does increase a rifle’s rate of fire, it does not turn it into an automatic weapon.

    “A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does,” Thomas wrote. “Even with a bump stock, a semiautomatic rifle will only fire one shot for every ‘function of the trigger.’”

    Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his concurrence that, while the ATF’s interpretation of the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act was an incorrect reading of the statute, there are legislative remedies for the issue of bump stocks.

    “The horrible shooting spree in Las Vegas in 2017 did not change the statutory text or its meaning,” Alito wrote. “That event demonstrated that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock can have the same lethal effect as a machinegun, and it thus strengthened the case for amending §5845(b). But an event that highlights the need to amend a law does not itself change the law’s meaning.”

  • The Lies and Fall of Ibram X. Kendi.” “This man gave America the simplest, most easily applicable binary solution to all of our racial problems. It didn’t matter that it was stupid, at least not from the perspective of his personal enrichment. For a while, it sold…What we lived through in 2020, during the Floyd meltdown and its aftermath, was a onetime necrotic bloom during which the first carrion-feeders on the scene were able to fatten themselves up to spectacular proportions on the collapsed body of American progressive racial and political angst.”
  • Alas, I fear the idea that the woke poison of social justice is really on the wane may be too optimistic, as Michigan State still has 140+ employees working to implement DEI. Let a thousand pink slips bloom.
  • Five of seven convicted in Feeding Our Future Covid funds fraud trial in Minnesota. The convicted included Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Mohamed Jama Ismail, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff, and Hayat Mohamed Nur. If only we could figure out what they have in common…
  • Ukraine takes out Russia’s latest and greatest Su-57 “stealth” fighter.
  • The US has expanded economic sanctions on Russia.

    The US has broadened its sanctions on Russia, including a fresh crackdown on banks dealing with sanctioned entities.

    It expands a December programme to target foreign banks deemed to be aiding Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.

    The US also placed sanctions on the Moscow stock exchange, leading to it halting trading in dollars and euros.

    It also moved to try to restrict Russia’s use of technology, including chips and software.

    US President Joe Biden signed an executive order in December that imposed sanctions on banks dealing with about 1,200 individuals and companies deemed to be helping Russia’s war machine.

    Those measures, which expose banks to the risk of being cut off from the US financial system, have now been expanded to about 4,500 entities.

    The US will also target gold-laundering.

    Peter Harrell, a former White House senior director for international economics, told the Reuters news agency that the US “is shifting towards something that begins to look like an effort to set up a global financial embargo on Russia”.

    As part of this effort, the US Treasury announced that it would impose sanctions on parts of Russia’s financial system, including the Moscow Exchange, which is one of Russia’s main stock exchanges.

    The stock exchange, which is Russia’s largest foreign exchange market, said the sanctions had forced it to stop trading in dollars and euros.

    The US also focused on technology. Chips and other technology made in the US have been found in downed Russian equipment on Ukraine battlefields, including drones, radios, missiles and armoured vehicles.

    The sanctions aim to make it more difficult for companies to supply that tech.

    The US will target shell firms in Hong Kong selling chips to Russia.

    There are YouTubers saying “Russian economy is crippled” etc., but I remain skeptical. The chips going into Russian drones aren’t anything special, they’re COTS stuff and EPROMs you can get almost anywhere.

  • “Israeli Military Rescues Four Hostages from Gaza.” Naturally this is good news for decent human beings everywhere and a tragedy for the radical left.
  • “Lebanon: Israeli Airstrike Kills One Of Hezbollah’s Most Senior Terror Commanders. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday night eliminated one of Hezbollah’s senior-most terror commanders operating in Lebanon. Sami Taleb Abdullah, who headed Hezbollah’s Nasr terrorist force, and three other Hezbollah commanders were killed in an Israeli airstrikes on a terrorist base located in southern Lebanon.” Good. Remember how commentators have repeatedly opined on the possibility of Hezbollah opening up a “second front” while Israel settles Hamas’ hash? They seem to have done very little but the usual pinprick terror attacks. With all the terror money Iran is sloshing around to Hamas and the Houthi’s, one wonders if they’re stretched to thin to send much Hezbollah’s way…
  • Bill Maher Calls Out Campus Protesters for Ignoring the Oppression of Women in Muslim Countries.” “Today, right now, hundreds of millions of women are treated worse than second-class citizens. When you mandate that one category of human beings don’t even have the right to show their face, that’s apartheid.”
  • An end to the petrodollar? Peter Zeihan asserts that there’s still no real alternative to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Let’s hope he’s right. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The American College of Pediatricians releases statement calling for an immediate halt to puberty blockers and gender surgery for minors.
  • Another day, another federal judge slapping down the Biden Administrations unilateral tranny rewrite of Title IX.

    Western District of Louisiana Chief Judge Terry Doughty in an order Thursday declared that Title IX, a federal education law that bars sex-based discrimination, “was written and intended to protect biological women from discrimination.”

    “Such purpose makes it difficult to sincerely argue that, at the time of enactment, ‘discrimination on the basis of sex’ included gender identity, sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, or sex characteristics,” Doughty, a Trump appointee, wrote. “Enacting the changes in the Final Rule would subvert the original purpose of Title IX.”

    (Previously.)

  • Still, the Biden Administration continues its tranny push, going so far as to indict the whistleblowing surgeon who exposed lawbreaking transgender procedures at Texas Children’s Hospital.
  • Brandon Herrera reflects on his narrow election loss.
  • “Congressman Henry Cuellar’s Bribery, Money Laundering Trial Date Moved to 2025.” Hopefully Jay Furman, the Republican candidate for the Texas 28th Congressional District can retire him in November so he can concentrate on his trial…
  • Be a cop working a gun buyback program for the San Antonio Police. 2. Take choicest guns for yourself. 3. Profit! (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Old and Busted: LA thieves stealing anything not bolted down. The New Hotness: Actually, they’re stealing fire hydrants now.
  • Another week, another California chain leaving California. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Seattle’s $26 minimum wage hike = people just stopped ordering food delivery.
  • Of course the U.S. Women’s basketball has left Caitlyn Clark off the team. Because we all know queer identity trumps winning a medal for your country…
  • On the upside, also not competing: “Lia” Thomas. Turns out the Olympics don’t want men competing in women’s swimming. Who could have possibly seen that coming?
  • Tesla is now officially a Texas company. And Elon Musk’s big payday was approved by Tesla shareholders.
  • AI music gets good enough. “It’s going to replace people.”
  • For a brief period after World War II, homes were made of enameled steel. I bet Lustron would offer a pretty high degree of bullet resistance…
  • “Why the US Drops 14.7 Million Worms On Panama Every Week.” Raccoona Sheldon should write a story…
  • The ecology of stray dogs in east Austin.
  • Star Wars, RIP.
  • Old and Busted: Top Gear presenters offering their own brand of gin. The New Hotness: Tiger tanks offering their own brand of gin.
  • How 12 Japanese Kanji “ghost characters got into unicode.
  • “Pfizer Assures Public They Are Preparing For Next Pandemic By Developing An All-New Ineffective Vaccine With Fatal Side Effects.”
  • “In Hindsight Fans Realize They Were Too Quick To Call The Holiday Special The Worst Star Wars Project Ever…After watching the latest Disney Star Wars offering The Acolyte, however, many fans admit they might have been too harsh to call the holiday show the worst thing to come out of the franchise.”
  • LinkSwarm for June 24, 2022

    Friday, June 24th, 2022

    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.

  • The Supreme Court also handed down a landmark pro-Second Amendment case.

    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.’”

  • In light of the ruling, Borepatch offers up a rare word of praise for Mitch McConnell for black holing the Merick Garland nomination in 2015.
  • 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.
    

  • Woke “socialist high school teacher” is “fighting for a better society” by filming himself having sex with a 13-year old student during lunch breaks.
  • Long, interesting twitter thread on how crime has soared under various George Soros-backed DAs.
  • 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…
  • Biden Administration to oil companies: “Hey, we need you to refine more oil! Also, we want to put you all out of business in five to ten years.”
  • “Court Rules Virtue-Signaling Minneapolis Mayor Failed to Protect Citizens With Enough Cops…The Minnesota Supreme Court has ordered kneeling Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and his band of defundanistas to hire more cops as required under the city’s charter or show why they can’t.”
  • Remember Andrew “failed Florida Democratic Gubernatorial candidate/gay meth orgy participant” Gillum? Well, he was just indicted on 21 counts of “conspiracy, wire fraud and making false statements” for raking off campaign contributions into his own pocket.
  • This week’s example of a reporter making up sources comes to you from Gabriela Miranda of USA Today.
  • Reason to worry: China has a new aircraft carrier the size of our own Nimitz-class carriers. But not too much: It probably won’t be ready for active service until 2025, and it’s oil-boiler powered rather than nuclear.
  • 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…
  • Twitter board recommends that they accept Elon Musk’s offer. Maybe he can get them to unlock my account.
  • The Denver Airport is expanding, and they’ve actually leaning into the conspiracy theories.
  • 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.
  • I’ve posted a lot of Peter Zeihan video this year, so you might be interested to know that his book The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization is now out.
  • “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.
  • Supreme Court Strikes Down Warrantless Gun Seizure 9-0

    Tuesday, May 18th, 2021

    Here’s some welcome news in the form of a rare 9-0 Supreme Court decision upholding Fourth Amendment rights against warrantless gun seizure:

    In a unanimous opinion Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against police who seized a man’s guns without a warrant while he was in the hospital for a suicide evaluation.

    Police cannot justify the warrantless search and seizure based on the “community caretaking” exception to the Fourth Amendment, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his opinion for the high court.

    The Supreme Court had recognized the exception in a 1973 case, Cady v. Dombrowski, in which police searched the trunk of a car that had been towed after a crash.

    The Supreme Court ruled Monday in a challenge by Edward Caniglia, who retrieved an unloaded gun during an argument with his wife, put it on the table and said, “Why don’t you just shoot me and get me out of my misery.”

    Caniglia’s wife ended up spending the night at a motel. When she called her husband the next day, the wife was unable to reach him. She called police in Cranston, Rhode Island, for a wellness check.

    Caniglia agreed to go to the hospital but only after police allegedly promised that they wouldn’t confiscate his firearms. Police entered Caniglia’s home and took two guns.

    The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Boston had ruled against Caniglia, ruling that the community caretaking exception applies to homes and cars. The Supreme Court disagreed.

    The 1st Circuit’s community caretaking rule “goes beyond anything this court has recognized,” Thomas wrote. “What is reasonable for vehicles is different from what is reasonable for homes. Cady acknowledged as much.”

    The full text of the decision can be found here.

    The First Circuit’s “community caretaking” rule, how-ever, goes beyond anything this Court has recognized. The decision below assumed that respondents lacked a warrantor consent, and it expressly disclaimed the possibility that they were reacting to a crime. The court also declined to consider whether any recognized exigent circumstances were present because respondents had forfeited the point.

    Nor did it find that respondents’ actions were akin to what a private citizen might have had authority to do if petitioner’s wife had approached a neighbor for assistance in-stead of the police. Neither the holding nor logic of Cady justified that approach. True, Cady also involved a warrantless search for a firearm. But the location of that search was an impounded vehicle—not a home—“‘a constitutional difference’” that the opinion repeatedly stressed. 413 U. S., at 439; see also id., at 440–442. In fact, Cady expressly contrasted its treatment of a vehicle already under police control with a search of a car “parked adjacent to the dwelling place of the owner.” Id., at 446–448 (citing Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443 (1971)). Cady’s unmistakable distinction between vehicles and homes also places into proper context its reference to “community caretaking.” This quote comes from a portion of the opinion explaining that the “frequency with which . . . vehicle[s] can become disabled or involved in . . . accident[s] on public highways” often requires police to perform noncriminal “community caretaking functions,” such as providing aid to motorists. 413 U. S., at 441. But, this recognition that police officers perform many civic tasks in modern society was just that—a recognition that these tasks exist,and not an open-ended license to perform them anywhere.

    * * *

    What is reasonable for vehicles is different from what is reasonable for homes. Cady acknowledged as much, and this Court has repeatedly “declined to expand the scope of . . . exceptions to the warrant requirement to permit warrantless entry into the home.” Collins, 584 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8). We thus vacate the judgment below and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

    In some ways this was a very narrowly tailored opinion, in that the Second Amendment was not invoked at all, only the Fourth. And indeed, Justice Samuel Alito’s concurring opinion specifically states that “Our decision today does not address those issues” in relation to the constitutionality of red flag laws. However, the decision was a blow for individual rights against warrentless police seizures in the home. Also, by explicitly including guns as property that is equally protected from such warrentless seizures, the Supreme Court has properly supported Second Amendment rights against the state’s overreach.

    Now if they could do something about civil asset forfeitures…

    Election Fraud Update for December 7, 2020

    Monday, December 7th, 2020

    We are rapidly approaching the endgame on election fraud remedies. States must ratify their final electors by December 8 (the “safe harbor” date), and electors meet and vote on December 14. Either the Supreme Court will have stopped the steal by that date, or Joe Biden will officially receive enough electoral votes to be elected President.

  • President Donald Trump lays out the case for significant voter fraud having altered the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election:

  • Here is a complete transcript of the speech.
  • Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has agreed to hear arguments that Pennsylvania’s loose mail voting requirements violated both state and federal law. Moreover, hearing it within the “safe harbor period by Tuesday “may signal that the Supreme Court takes Kelly’s case, which was rejected by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court with prejudice last weekend.”
  • The mysterious case of four suitcases of ballots pulled out from under a table after counting had supposedly stopped:

    President Donald Trump’s legal team on Dec. 3 presented surveillance footage at a Georgia state legislature hearing that appears to show ballot-counting workers telling poll observers late at night on Election Day to leave before continuing to count and pulling out what appears to be boxes filled with ballots.

    In the hearing on Dec. 3, Jacki Pick, a lawyer who is volunteering with the campaign’s legal case, said the team received video footage from State Farm Arena’s vote-tabulation center in Fulton County, Georgia. The team said that GOP poll watchers weren’t allowed to watch the counting process in the poll center.

    According to Pick, an unusual occurrence took place later in the evening at around 10 p.m. local time: A woman—described as a blonde woman with braids—told workers to stop counting and notified everyone to go home.

    Describing the video footage, Pick said, “Everyone clears out, including the Republican observers and the press, but four people stay behind and continue counting and tabulating well into the night.” The four counted unobserved until about 1 a.m., according to the video.

    Pick said that video footage shows Fulton County election workers waiting at their scanning areas until GOP poll observers and reporters left the room before they started “scanning ballots,” ostensibly without any observation.

  • National Review‘s Rich Lowry says that there’s nothing nefarious going on. I’m not so sure.
  • Ruby Freeman and daughter/supervisor Wandrea “Shaye” Moss (involved in the suitcases full of ballots) are also involved in this video-captured thumb drive handoff:

    If that’s not suspicious activity, they’re certainly doing an amazing imitation of looking suspicious while doing something.

  • Freeman seems to have lawyered up.
  • “GA Rep Says Forensic Tests Run On Sequestered Dominion Equipment Found Votes Switched From Trump to Biden.”
  • “Whistleblowers Dispute Over 1 Million Ballots, Cite Dominion Tampering, Shipping Filled Ballots Across State Lines.”

    The Amistad Project has gathered whistleblowers and sworn declarations revealing over one million potentially fraudulent swing-state ballots, including completed ballots getting shipped across state lines, postal service workers being told to prioritize Biden mail, and officials tampering with Dominion systems to prevent an audit.

    In total, over 300,000 ballots are at issue in Arizona, 548,000 in Michigan, 204,000 in Georgia, and over 121,000 in Pennsylvania.

    The declarations state that unlawful actions by state and local election officials in swing states, and possibly U.S. Postal Service officials,” the Amistad Project noted.

    The evidence details “the failure of election officials in blue jurisdictions to maintain ballot chain of custody,” and include “photographs of individuals improperly accessing voting machines and a detailed eyewitness account of the breaking of sealed boxes of ballot jump drives and commingling of those jump drives with others.”

    In addition to voting machine tampering, the Amistad Project’s findings reveal efforts by Postal Service officials in at least three of six swing states. “Details include potentially hundreds of thousands of completed absentee ballots being transported across three state lines, and a trailer filled with ballots disappearing in Pennsylvania,” the group notes.

    The Amistad Project feels that one whistleblower, a USPS truck driver Jess Morgan, had “fraudulent ballots were mistakenly placed” in his Pennsylvania-bound truck.

    (Hat Tip: Cut Jib news at Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • “Up to 280,000 Ballots ‘Disappeared’ Overnight Along with Trailer, USPS Whistleblower Alleges.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Judge Orders Forensic Audit of Dominion Voting Machines in Michigan.” “‘Our team is going to be able to go in this morning at about 8:30 and will be there for about eight hours to conduct that forensic examination and we’ll have the results in about 48 hours, and that’ll tell us a lot about these machines,’ Trump election attorney Jenna Ellis told Fox News.” Maybe this will finally provide the Dominion smoking gun. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Did Dominion give Biden a 5% boost in Georgia?
  • “Biden Received ‘Mathematically Impossible’ Spike in Votes When Suspicious Ballots Counted in Georgia.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Trump campaign witness Melissa Carone’s testimony about Michigan fraud was evidently deemed worthy of Saturday Night Live parody.
  • “Arizona GOP finds 2% of duplicate ballots took votes away from Trump after judge allows sample to be examined.”
  • Wisconsin supreme court refuses to hear election fraud cases.
  • A breakdown in Georgia court orders relating to election fraud cases through November 30.
  • The Red Headed Libertarian summarizes the evidence:

  • A call for an audit in Maricopa County, Arizona:

  • More evidence of Georgia fraud:

  • Scott Adams makes the case for witnesses being denied their rights to observe elections by force:

    (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)

  • Twitter has evidently taken down this video:

  • Sydney Powell discusses election fraud with Mike Huckabee.
  • “Pair Charged With Voter Fraud Allegedly Submitted THOUSANDS of Fraudulent Applications on Behalf of Homeless People.”
  • George Soros Appoints Chair of Smartmatic Parent Company to Lead Open Society Foundations.” That would be Mark Malloch-Brown. (Hat tip: Cut Jib news at Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Mysterious Tower Of Missing Trump Votes Appears In Utah Desert.”
  • Let me know if I missed any important election fraud news in the comments.

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    SCOTUS Strikes Down Public Employee Union Fees For Non-Members

    Wednesday, June 27th, 2018

    In a 5-4 decision in Janus v. AFSCME, the Supreme Court has struck down the compulsory collecting of public employee union dues from non-members for collective bargaining, ruling that it violates non-members’ First Amendment rights. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Kennedy and Gorsuch.

    States and public-sector unions may no longer extract agency fees from nonconsenting employees. The First Amendment is violated when money is taken from nonconsenting employees for a public-sector union; employees must choose to support the union before anything is taken from them. Accordingly, neither an agency fee nor any other form of payment to a public-sector union may be deducted from an employee, nor may any other attempt be made to collect such a payment, unless the employee affirmatively consents to pay.

    Text of the decision here.

    This is a huge blow to the Democratic Party’s union dues collecting machine. And the small remaining rump of #NeverTrump’s mocking cries of “But Gorsuch” ring particularly hollow today.