Tag Archives: politics

Gun Control

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In the matter of Bianchi v Frosh, a Maryland gun control case in which the State has

designated specified firearms as assault weapons and prohibited them from being transported into the state or from being possessed, sold, transferred, or purchased in the state[]

Mountain States Legal Foundation has filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to take up the case. The article itself is worth the read, but what drew my eye is this position of the Fourth Circuit in its appellate ruling in Kolbe v Hogan, Jr. referenced in passing by JtN.

Are the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines “like” “M-16 rifles,” i.e., “weapons that are most useful in military service,” and thus outside the ambit of the Second Amendment?  The answer to that dispositive and relatively easy inquiry is plainly in the affirmative.

This test manufactured by the Fourth Circuit deliberately ignores our history and the actual text of our Second Amendment.

A significant fraction of the artillery—cannons—our Continental Army used in our Revolutionary War were privately owned, as were the powder and shot privately manufactured and provided. A significant fraction of our combat ships—privateering ships—in our nation’s Revolutionary War were privately owned, as were the powder and shot privately manufactured and provided.

The Fourth Circuit’s test also deliberately ignores another bit of our history: our Second Amendment was written as defense against an overreaching, abusive government like the one we fought that war to be free of. And our Declaration of Independence outlines the duty of all Americans: [W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations…it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…. which requires suitable weaponry.

The Fourth Circuit’s test also deliberately ignores the text of our Second Amendment: the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. There’s not a jot or a tittle in there of “except if a government official, including a judge, thinks otherwise.” Nor is there a single minim about government being authorized to specify the purpose for which an American citizen might choose to arm himself and to bear those arms.

The Fourth Circuit’s opinion can be read here.

Works for Me

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Russian-supporting (emplaced?) rebel leaders (they’re not separatists) in the Russian occupied Donbas region of Ukraine are encouraging “civilians” to evacuate the area in the face of Russian-supported shelling of civilian villages. And to go east, to Russia.

That’s not necessarily a bad idea. The bulk of those Donbas civilians are Russians who are either immigrants, legal aliens, illegal aliens, or nominal citizens of Ukraine. A significant fraction of those folks still favors Russia over their host nation. Such an evacuation, were it actually to occur, would take some of the teeth out of one of Putin’s rationalizations for invading Ukraine—Anschluss­.

What Happens When

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This is an example of what happens when President Joe Biden (D) presses his assault on our nation’s energy production industry, presses his enthusiastic destruction of our energy independence, and does his kowtowing to Russia (and to OPEC) regarding that nation’s and that cartel’s oil and natural gas production and sale.

He’s reduced the United States of America to begging other nations for energy, and those nations along with Russia are now showing their contempt for Biden’s obsequiousness.

The headline summarizes the matter.

As Oil Nears $100, Saudis Snub US, Stick to Russian Pact Amid Ukraine Crisis

And this:

Rising oil prices and fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine have created a dilemma for Saudi Arabia: help the West by pumping more crude to tame the market, or stand by a five-year-old oil alliance that is helping Moscow at the expense of Washington.
For now, the world’s largest crude exporter is sticking with Russia.

And this:

President Biden has repeatedly called on Persian Gulf producers to pump more oil to reduce gasoline prices that, for Americans, are about twice as high as they were earlier in the pandemic. Those calls have grown more urgent as oil prices have risen toward $100 a barrel….
Instead, the Saudis have said they won’t pump more than they agreed to last year as part of a deal between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia[.]

It doesn’t matter a whit to Biden that this problem wouldn’t exist if he got his Biden-Harris administration out of the way of our domestic oil and natural gas production so we could go back to being independent of our enemies and acquaintances for our energy, our economic life.

It doesn’t matter a whit to Biden that European nations’ dependence on Russia for their energy wouldn’t exist if he got his Biden-Harris administration out of the way of our domestic oil and natural gas production so we could go back to supplying Europe with oil and natural gas.

Slander

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Former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin lost her slander suit against The New York Times (after the presiding judge telegraphed to the jury, while it was deliberating, that he’d set aside the jury verdict, but that’s for a story about judicial malfeasance). The Wall Street Journal‘s article centered its reporting on the premise that Palin had failed to pass the high bar reserved for celebrities and other public figures: she had to show actual malice in order to have a case, and she didn’t succeed in the judge’s opinion.

But case brings up a larger matter regarding the malice standard itself.

There’s no reason at all why some Americans should be prevented by that high bar from defending themselves against slander, while other Americans are not so prevented. The 14th Amendment to our Constitution is quite clear on this: No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The courts’ and the Court’s differential treatment of groups of Americans based solely on their social or political standing plainly violates that equal treatment clause.

Wuhan Virus Boosters

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The CDC now says

studies showed effectiveness against COVID emergency-department and urgent-care incidents was “87% and 91%, respectively, during the two months after a third dose” of the [mRNA vaccine] booster,” but that it decreased to 66% and 78% by the fourth month after a third dose.

That’s for both the Delta and Omicron variants of the Wuhan Virus.

Leave aside, for the moment, the lack of credibility of anything coming from the Biden-Harris’ CDC; instead, accept, arguendo the narrow claims of the CDC paper Just the News cites.

Unmentioned in the CDC’s paper is the extremely low baseline rate of “emergency-department and urgent-care incidents.” The seemingly sharp reduction via the boosters is real in a purely narrow, statistical sense, but starting out so close to zero, it remains an open question of whether the booster really provides much value—even were its effects to last much longer.