Category Archives: culture

Arms Rights

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What’s the value of a law authorizing acknowledging our right to keep and bear when the Liberals in government routinely violate it?

Roosevelt Twyne, a 25-year-old African-American security guard, was arrested by Roselle Park Police in February after a traffic stop stemming from tinted windows on his car. Evan Nappen, Twyne’s attorney, told the Washington Free Beacon that his client was then erroneously charged for illegally carrying a firearm and being in possession of so-called hollow point ammunition.
“He was arrested for the hollow point ammunition,” Nappen told the Free Beacon. “Then they claimed he was transporting his handgun illegally. He had a permit to carry a handgun.”

And he wasn’t carrying hollow point ammunition, either. He was carrying Hornady “Critical Duty” ammunition, issued to him by his employer and explicitly identified as legal by the New Jersey State Police.

This is all clear-cut and should be open and shut—Twyne has his weapon and ammunition promptly returned to him with apologies for the mistake.

No.

The Union County [Roselle Park’s county] Prosecutor’s Office did not respond to questions about the charges against Twyne but did say his case will be heard next month in New Jersey Superior Court.

Next month.  In a few weeks.  The prosecutor will get around to Twyne’s case when the prosecutor damn well feels like it. Quit bothering him. In the meantime, Twyne remains with his lawfully possessed and carried weapon and his lawfully possessed ammunition in Government’s custody. And unable to work.

This is an example of why gun control laws must be doomed to fail. They’re just a step on the road to confiscation.

Question for the Future

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My wife put it to me re the Progressive-Democratic Party: Stipulate arguendo that Trump is reelected (regardless of the [Progressive-Democrats’] nominee). Who’s their bench for 4 years from now? Amy? Pete? ?????

It’s true enough, there is no next generation in Party; they’re going to have to skip one to get to anyone even remotely viable.  Who do they have?

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D, MN) is all they have in their next generation, but she’s a one-hoss shay that’s starting to fall apart.

Pete Buttigieg would seem to be the front-runner in that skipped-to generation, but he’s just not capable. Too many demographics don’t trust him: black voters because he’s been worthless, even counterproductive, in his own small city; veterans because he’s bragged too much about his soft tour in Afghanistan (as such tours go), spending his free time on roof tops smoking and getting into his laptop instead of looking for ways to further his unit’s mission; moderates of any stripe because his economic and social safety net ideas are destructive of the things that actually would support the least among us.

Robert Francis O’Rourke is in the mix—and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden has promised to make him the head of a Gun Confiscation program in a Biden administration. And he is born to it.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) will be old enough for 2024 and beyond elections, but she won’t be mature enough. Her social welfare, climate, and economic ideas are just plain crazy.

Ro Khanna (D, CA) will happily parrot the Party line, including the new Party-centric position of free stuff for everyone, and that’s certainly sufficient to qualify him for Party standard bearer. He virtue signals with the best of them, too, but none of that is enough for anything serious. And he doesn’t have the fire in the belly required to go past the safety of his California district.

I tend to favor an Ocasio-Cortez-O’Rourke ticket, though: their ideas need to be dragged out into the open and clearly, sharply debated as the only way to put those foolishnesses to rest.

(Double) Standards of Protection for Government Officials

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) threatened two Supreme Court Justices if they didn’t rule his way on a Louisiana law requiring doctors to have hospital admission privileges as a prerequisite to doing abortions. (The case actually has little to do with abortions; it concerns whether third parties—doctors here—can sue on behalf of others, especially when those others have suffered no harm from the matter.)

Schumer stood on the steps the Supreme Court building in front of a noisy protest crowd and, pointing back at the Supreme Court building, said [the quote below starts at about 0:45],

I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.

The lack of “Justice” honorific might seem merely rude on Schumer’s part, but he omitted it to emphasize the directness and seriousness of his threat. The smirk on his face as he took in the crowd’s noisy approval illustrates the matter, too.

Schumer, of course, denied through his spokesman (apparently he didn’t have the courage to speak directly), that he was threatening the Justices, insisting that he was talking political retribution for Republican politicians. The video at the link demonstrates the lie of that. Schumer, in one paragraph of his speech was clearly addressing—facing, pointing at, calling by name—two Justices. It wasn’t until the next paragraph that he addressed—facing his crowd, no pointing, no Republican addressed by name (not even his chiefest opponent, the Senate Majority Leader so instrumental in getting those Justices confirmed)—Republican politicians.

On the floor of the Senate Thursday, Schumer doubled down on his threat. First, he lied about making a threat; his words weren’t intended that way, he claimed. He’s from Brooklyn and Brooklynites speak in strong language, he said—as if being his habit makes it all right. Then he tried to downplay his words by insisting that Republicans are creating the situation with their politics and with their “manufactured outrage” over Schumer’s remarks.

Then Schumer, still on the floor of the Senate at the end of his doubling down, refused even to apologize to the Justices. He just yielded back his time.

The Wall Street Journal, in its op-ed on the matter, mentioned President Donald Trump’s call for Justice recusal in emphasis of the seriousness of Schumer’s escalation of the Left’s political rhetoric:

Mr Trump recently tweeted that liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor should recuse themselves on cases involving his Administration.

It’s much more than this, though.  Trump didn’t threaten Ginsburg and Sotomayor, individually or together, if they didn’t comply. Not tacitly, especially not as nakedly as Schumer threatened Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

The Secret Service gets after folks who threaten Presidents. Don’t Justices—on the same government hierarchical level as Presidents—deserve the same protection? Apparently not, when it’s a Progressive-Democrat who makes the threat.

Two Political Contestants

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Progressive-Democrat Ilhan Omar is up for reelection to our House of Representatives in Minnesota’s 5th District.  Dalia al-Aqidi is a Republican candidate for that seat and that office.  Some remarks by each are dispositive of their attitudes toward America and us fellow Americans.

Omar:

I am, Hijabi, Muslim, Black, Foreign born, Refugee, Somali[.]
Easily triggering conservatives, Right wing bloggers, anti Muslim bigots, tinfoil conspiracy theorists, birthers, pay me a [dollar] to bash Muslims fraudsters, pro-occupation groups and every single xenophobe since 2016.

Al-Aqidi:

I am an American[.]
I came to the US more than 25 years ago. So, basically, I’m not a refugee anymore. I’m not an Iraqi anymore. I’m an American. Period[.]

The distinction couldn’t be starker, or the choice clearer.

Progressive-Democrats’ Tuesday Debate

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Some are calling it rowdy; others say raucous.  There’s this more concrete description, too, from Tony Katz:

Everyone else is talking to each other, yelling at each other, yelling at the moderators, yelling at the guy in the rafters….

And talking over each other, interrupting each other, trying to drown out each other. Recall the 2015-2016 Republican primary debates—they were rowdy, often rude, as participants occasionally interrupted or tried to talk over each other.  Tuesday’s Progressive-Democrat debate was nothing but a constant rolling drumbeat of that.

I have a different take on that debate from “some,” “others,” and Katz.

This debate was a clear and present demonstration of Progressive-Democrats’ view of free speech.  Their interruptions and talkings-over were not occasional, nor were they done in the heat of the moment, for all the zeal of their arguments.

No, their interruptions and talkings-over were demonstrative of their attitude toward the speech of anyone who disagrees with them.  What any particular Progressive-Democrat decides he has to say is the only thing worth hearing.  What others have to say—are already saying—is just too trivial, too unimportant to waste time on; the new speaker will just start talking, and those others should just shut up.

It’s of a piece with one of them insisting that the others should drop out of the primaries altogether and get out of his way.

Tuesday’s verbal melee also was demonstrative of their views of us in the audience and in TV viewer-land.  Progressive-Democrats will tell us what we should hear; they will tell us what we will be permitted to hear. We’re wholly unfit to decide that for ourselves.

And that’s what they’ll inflict on our free speech rights if they gain the White House and the Senate and hold the House. Freedom’s just another word for “Shut up; I’m talking.”