“Common Sense”

The Progressive-Democratic Party is attempting to use its Newspeak Dictionary to redefine “Nonsense” as “Common sense.” The latest example of this is President Joe Biden’s (D) latest call for “common sense” gun reforms. He made his latest demand in response to a series of murders with guns in Mississippi. In that series, the murderer used a shotgun and two handguns to murder six people across three locations in his single rampage. Biden’s demand:

That includes requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, fully closing the boyfriend loophole to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, requiring safe storage of guns, and eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our streets.

Because any of that, like banning mythical devices—assault weapons and weapons of war on our streets—would have kept shotguns or handguns away from this murderer, or any other. And surely “high capacity magazines,” of whatever definition that becomes convenient from time to time to an overreaching government, would have kept shotguns and handguns away from criminals.

Holding gun manufacturers liable for the abuses of their products by criminals will only limit the availability of firearms to us honest ­average Americans. Oh, wait: that’s the goal of Party. Party members know full well that laws are ignored by criminals; that’s at the core of what makes them criminals.

Nonsense is common sense to Party. And Party expects us meekly to accept that. Or else.

The FBI Needs to Go

The agency’s management, from Director Christopher Wray on down far too deeply into the organization, is showing its naked bias by relying so heavily—and so exclusively—on Left-wing “sources” for rationalizations for initiating investigations, investigations that pry into mostly average Americans because we stand up for our rights. The FBI also is showing its blatant incompetence even at being dishonest by failing so heavily in those pseudo-investigations:

A dossier alleging Russian collusion funded by a Democrat presidential candidate. A suggestion that school parents were domestic terrorists from a left-leaning school board group. A list suggesting old-fashioned Catholics were extremists from a liberal watchdog on hate speech.

Jason Foster, an ex-US Senate investigator and current Empower Oversight operative who represents FBI whistleblowers, is being generous:

They [the FBI] need to have an understanding that there are folks out there that are looking to manipulate them for political purposes, and every time they fall for it, they’re damaging the reputation of the FBI in a way that is fundamentally harmful to not only the FBI, but to the country[.]

No, there’s no misunderstanding here. The FBI selects very carefully, and FBI personnel are some of the smartest people in our nation. FBI personnel understand very clearly what they’re doing, and far from being manipulated by Left-wing personages, these personnel are active in their ally-ship of the Left-wing.

There is no capability to recover the FBI; it cannot be restored to what it never had in the first place. The agency was untrustworthy under J Edgar Hoover, it never fully recovered, and its performance today would embarrass Hoover.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the Federal Bureau of Investigation needs to be disbanded and the law creating it completely rescinded.

Relocate the agency’s databases, forensics labs, and associated personnel to a newly created independent and small agency whose sole purpose is to maintain law enforcement databases and to conduct the forensics investigations and analyses requested by State and local law enforcement departments. The new agency should be located, in its entirety, in the middle of the US—central Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, for instance.

Transfer the line FBI agents to the Secret Service or the US Marshals Service, or to the private sector—out of Federal government employ—if they choose not to accept reassignment. Transfer every other member of the FBI and civilian employee of the FBI to the private sector—out of Federal government employ—with no option for other transfer.

Consensus

US District Judge William Shubb blocked California’s Progressive-Democratic Party-dominated State house and Governor’s mansion law that sought to punish doctors accused of promulgating Covid “misinformation.” By “misinformation, those worthies meant anything that didn’t comport with California’s “medical consensus.” The block is, on the whole, good, but Shubb unfotunately centered his ruling on the difficulty in correctly defining “consensus” in this or that endeavor, or in correctly identifying the sources qualified to define the relevant consensus.

That’s merely a subset of the larger problem with consensus, though.

That larger problem is the idea that any consensus should govern. Consensus isn’t science, which changes over time and among…scientists…it’s only the majority vote of what that majority thinks—rightly or wrongly—is correct today. Adhering to even a correctly identified consensus inhibits, if it doesn’t prevent altogether, innovation and science evolution.

Proud Censorship, and Keeping and Bearing

Illinois’ law banning even the possession of semiautomatic weapons took effect last Tuesday, when the Progressive-Democrat governor, JB Pritzker, signed the bill after the Illinois House passed what the State’s Senate had handed over.

Aside from the plain unconstitutionality of the law, though, what especially drew my attention is this statement from Pritzker:

We will keep fighting—bill by bill, vote by vote, and protest by protest—to ensure that future generations only hear about massacres like Highland Park, Sandy Hook, and Uvalde in their textbooks[.]

No one is to be allowed access to, Illinois’ children are to be denied, information regarding firearms other than what the Progressive-Democratic Party that rules Illinois approves.

Pritzker openly brags about that denial of speech.

Related is this position by Edwards County, IL, Sheriff Darby Boewe:

Part of my duties that I accepted upon being sworn into office was to protect the rights provided to all of us, in the Constitution. One of those rights enumerated is the right of the people to KEEP and BEAR ARMS provided under the 2nd Amendment. The right to keep and bear arms for defense of life, liberty and property is regarded as an inalienable right by the people.

Boewe is absolutely correct on the matter except for the narrowness of his interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. What that Amendment says, in full, is this:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

In order to be able to mount an effective Militia, each of us American citizens must be able to be individually armed and facile with our individually owned weapons. Government is not permitted to limit the weapons any of us can possess and keep with us wherever we might go (especially if we’re needed for a Militia and its suite of weapons), nor is Government permitted to dictate to any of us our purpose in the possessing and carrying—that Militia is only one such purpose. Defense of life, liberty and property is only one such purpose. Shall not be infringed is much broader.

He’s Right

Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov says it’s…silly (my term)…to negotiate with the Russian barbarians while they’re still inside Ukraine.

“There’s no way to have conversations with them; you can’t talk with terrorists,”…citing Russia’s attacks on civilian infrastructure during a brutal winter. The war will not end, he continued, until the Ukrainian forces “turn everything back—all the territories.”

And

“Everything will be linked once again, including Crimea,” Danilov said. “Not one meter will be left for the taking of the enemy.”

Indeed. How is it even possible to negotiate with an entity whose first and only goal is the utter dissolution of your nation?

Readers of this blog know the peace terms I’ve been advocating for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to require.