Monthly Archives: January 2026

Were they Tipped?

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The lede raises the question in my mind.

On New Year’s Day, an oil tanker partially filled with sanctioned crude slipped out of Venezuela’s main export terminal and sailed toward Iran. The next day, another tanker escaped with Venezuelan oil, scrambling its signals to hide its course. Satellite imagery later confirmed it was headed to China.

Just two days later, US forces and law enforcement personnel entered Venezuela and seized the nation’s dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, bringing them back to the US for trial.

That timing raises my question: did someone tip off the Venezuelans that we were coming, and that’s why at least one of them left while only partially loaded? Or was that all the oil Venezuela had available for shipping at the time?

Public Keeping and Bearing

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Our Constitution’s 2nd Amendment is brief and crystal clear:

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.

The Supreme Court has already ruled, several times, that a well regulated militia is an outcome facilitated by individuals keeping and bearing arms, it’s not the purpose of that. The Court has further clarified that to mean shall not be infringed is nearly all-encompassing, with only a few carefully enumerated locations that can bar individuals from bringing their firearms. That short list includes locations like polling places, post offices, public-accessible private facilities like places of business that post clear signs prohibiting them on the premises. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc, et al. v Bruen is one example of this.

Hawaii wants to outlaw carrying firearms altogether, having devised and enacted a State law that bars carrying anywhere—private enterprises, even other folks’ homes—unless those places are explicitly posted permitting the carrying. As the Wall Street Journal‘s editors correctly note,

A shop could theoretically post a sign on the door—or the parking lot entrance?—saying it doesn’t object to concealed carry. But it’s easy to see why a proprietor might hesitate, since a “Pistols Welcome” banner might alienate other customers. Businesses have an incentive to accept whatever is the default.

Hence the effective ban on carrying firearms that the State is attempting. The State argues that

[a] default of no guns…fits Hawaii’s custom and “unique history,” dating to King Kamehameha III, who banned weapons in 1833.

Bruen, though, says otherwise.

[W]hen the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct, and to justify a firearm regulation the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

The Nation’s historical tradition, not any particular State’s personal choice. Bruen is as crystalline as is our basic right under the 2nd Amendment. Hawaii’s statute needs to be struck down completely.

This is Foolish

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President Donald Trump (R) has decided to impose an additional 10% tariff on several European countries, starting next month, in an effort to get them to push Denmark into selling Greenland to us.

Greenland is important to us from both a national security and an economic perspective, but this is the wrong way to go about satisfying those two imperatives.

We don’t want to own Greenland. Begin with the fact that we don’t want to incur the bill for the $1 billion annually in subsidies that Denmark currently pays Greenland because the Greenland economy is so deficient.

Set aside that unnecessary expense. It’s cheaper and win-win all around for us to cut deals with Denmark (and Greenland, to the extent the island’s autonomous territory status within Denmark gives it a seat at the negotiations) to greatly expand our basing rights in Greenland and to expand our access to and development/exploitation of Greenland’s oil, natural gas, coal, and rare earth resources, of each of which Greenland has a wealth. Maybe even get exclusive rights to access and develop/exploit the rare earths.

The win: we get what we need strategically and economically without bringing in a population unenthusiastic about joining us and without our having to absorb those $1 billion annually.

The other win: Denmark gets an infusion of money from the royalties involved in those resource developments, and Greenland gets a large expansion of its economy from its cut of those royalties; the large jobs expansion from construction, drilling, mining, and all the supporting and ancillary businesses that will appear; and it will see a broad diversification of its economy away from the fishing industry that is virtually is sole current economic activity.

He’s Right

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Robert Woodson, Woodson Center Founder and President, wrote in the lede of his Thursday Wall Street Journal op-ed this:

Black America must declare a one-year moratorium on whining about racism. Not because racism has disappeared, and not to soothe the sensitivities of white America—but because grievance has become a shield protecting predators within our own communities. Accusations of racism are routinely weaponized to silence accountability, excuse corruption, and reward moral cowardice.

That’s absolutely correct. One of the Critical Items in American culture, currently under direct assault by open borders and the detritus remaining from that, is that our republic can survive only with acceptance and action on personal responsibility. Government is a last resort in that, not the default solution.

Then Woodson expanded on that in a way that too few folks who should know better have the courage (or integrity, I add) to do.

Civil-rights leaders and politicians remain conspicuously silent, waiting instead for the next police shooting or racial controversy they can exploit for media attention and moral posturing. Call out this silence, and you will be accused of racism—bullied into retreat by those who profit from outrage while ignoring the suffering in their own backyard. This silence isn’t compassion. It is cowardice.

He’s especially right about that last. It’s also an especially cowardly form of cowardice. Bullies have only the power over their victims that their victims consciously, deliberately, choose to grant those bullies. These grown, adult, allegedly rational civil-rights “leaders” and politicians assuredly know that. Yet they still bow down and if not actively kiss the boots of their bullies, passively cower under their desks, hoping to go unnoticed.

These folks are unworthy of their civil-rights or political desks, and they should be disregarded by the rest of us.

Open Borders and Racism Still are Progressive-Democratic Party Planks

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If there were any question about whether the Progressive-Democratic Party was walking away from its open borders position, there shouldn’t be anymore.

It was probably no surprise that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar [D, MN]…announced the Congressional Progressive Caucus has “adopted an official position” to defund Immigration & Customs Enforcement.

Mainstream Progressive-Democrats are too far Left to voice any opposition to this lawlessness. In fact, one of the more mainstream Progressive-Democrats, Seth Moulton (MA), has introduced a bill that would, at bottom, sharply reduce funding for ICE, thereby greatly reducing its and our nation’s ability to maintain our national borders short of moving DoD military personnel to the border—over which, of course, Party members would raise a loud hue and cry, too. As cited from the Associated Press,

[Moulton] introduced a bill on Wednesday that would—without adult supervision in Congress—gut the $75 billion funding increase ICE received in President Donald Trump’s [R] Big Beautiful Bill and dump the money into propping up…Obamacare….

Congressman Dave Min (D, CA) wants more. He’s

back[ing] impeaching Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and has called the work of enforcing immigration laws “illegal” and “unconstitutional.” He’s got the backing of Omar and her Squad pals at the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC.
Min [also]…has called a House committee investigation into Minnesota’s massive fraud scandal “partisan and racist.”

This is Party, not only wanting to abolish our borders and calling enforcing our laws somehow unconstitutional, but also projecting its own intrinsic racist bigotry into the argument. There is, after all, very little more insidiously racist than injecting that bigotry into a discussion where there is no racism.