Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

Category Archives: Constitution

Far-left Philadelphia Mayor Bans Guns From Public Places, Despite State Preemption Law

Wednesday, 28 September 2022 16:18
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, September 28, 2022:  

Knowing full well that his executive order released Tuesday and declared to be effective immediately would be challenged in court, Jim Kenney, the thug mayor of Philadelphia, in concert with his Soros-backed district attorney, Larry Krasner, challenged the state anyway, declaring: “Bring it on!”

He and his far-left progressive DA have been working successfully to emasculate the city’s law-enforcement culture, resulting in record-setting gun violence by criminals released thanks to lenient/nonexistent prosecution of their crimes. Tuesday’s executive order prohibiting firearms at city parks and recreational centers is just an extension of Kenney’s agenda to limit and ultimately eliminate the private ownership and possession of firearms.

This is, of course, is a necessary step in turning a free republic into a communist dictatorship.

Said Kenney: “There’s no place for guns anywhere, but especially in pools, playgrounds, or rec centers.” This is consistent with his oft-stated belief that only police should have guns: “I would get every gun off the street and every gun shop should be closed.”

That would result in only criminals, the elite, and the state having firearms, thus eliminating any chance for law-abiding citizens to challenge the politicians instituting their tyranny.

Said Krasner, twice elected DA thanks to millions supplied to his campaigns directly by George Soros and indirectly by his many political action committees: “Even if you have a permit to carry, and you go on these premises, you’ve got a problem with me.”

Krasner already has a problem with the Republican-dominated state Legislature, which is considering whether he should be impeached for dereliction of duty. The committee looking into the matter has — not surprisingly — been stymied by Krasner’s unwillingness to comply with their subpoenas.

Lars Dalseide, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association (NRA), sarcastically noted:

Every law-abiding Philadelphian hopes and prays that the violent criminals Mayor Kenney and his woke district attorney carelessly [deliberately] release onto the streets abide by his directive.

 

A more prudent and effective approach would be to arrest, prosecute, and punish these savage criminals for their violent crimes.

He then noted that the Kenney/Krasner directive will go nowhere thanks to Pennsylvania’s preemption law holding that local municipalities may not enact laws stricter than those allowed at the state level:

The simple fact is that Pennsylvania state law prevents local jurisdictions from passing laws that are inconsistent with or more restrictive than state law.

 

This ban is more restrictive and therefore illegitimate.

Under the Kenney/Krasner administration, gun violence in Philadelphia has soared. According to Kathryn Ott Lovell, the city’s commissioner of Parks & Recreation, there have been nearly 300 incidents of gun violence in the city’s recreation facilities alone since 2019.

The Washington Times reports that:

Violent crime has surged during Mr. Krasner’s term, with Black residents overwhelmingly the victims.

 

The homicide rate in 2020 was the highest in three decades. The number of homicides was 499, up 40% from 2019, according to police department figures.

In response to the Kenney/Krasner regime’s attack on law enforcement, citizens have been arming themselves at record rates. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, concealed carry permit applications are “up 600% from recent years.”

Krasner’s “progressive” policies, aided and abetted by a supportive far-left mayor, include ending criminal charges against those caught possessing marijuana, ending cash bail for criminals charged with “minor” crimes, and demanding lenient sentences for certain crimes. In addition, the progressive reordering of justice in Philadelphia includes reviewing past cases and sentences in order to seek re-sentencing to lesser punishment, or even release from prison.

In his first month as district attorney, Krasner fired 31 pro-law-enforcement assistant attorneys and replaced them with his own brand of progressives.

While the Kenney/Krasner cabal has issued an order that on its face is illegal and contravenes state law, it is indicative of what the world would look like if thugs and criminal politicians like these two were allowed to operate freely: crime would soar, justifying still more government restrictions on the freedom of private citizens to defend themselves, leading ultimately to total government control. That’s the agenda of thugs like Kenney and Krasner and their funders.

Pushback Growing Against Credit-card Companies “Red-flagging” Gun Purchases

Friday, 23 September 2022 16:29
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, September 23, 2022:  

Florida’s chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, issued a warning on Wednesday to credit-card companies threatening to track gun purchases with a special code:

It is clear that the actions by these credit card companies are part of a larger effort to curtail God-given constitutional rights of Americans….

 

The second amendment is foundational to our American way of life. The idea that law-abiding Americans would be put on some kind of corporate watchlist is disturbing. Our rights come from our Creator, not the government, and especially not big corporations.

Unless Visa, MasterCard, and American Express persuade Patronis that they aren’t implementing the code recommended by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), he will sue them, and work with the Florida legislature to prevent them for operating in his state:

If we come to the legislative session and companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express are generating these reports to create a chilling effect against the purchase of firearms, then I’ll work with the Legislature to pass a law penalizing businesses who are targeting the right to bear arms….

 

We can also take it a step further by barring these companies from doing any business with the State of Florida. We will send a message out to these large corporations that if you are interested in doing business with Florida, you need to make sure that you’re protecting Floridians right to arm and defend themselves.

Patronis is confident that he is standing on solid Constitutional footing. Referring to the recent federal court ruling in NetChoice v. Paxton, he added, “We’ve seen a groundbreaking ruling come out of the Fifth Circuit limiting corporations’ ability to curtail American’s constitutional rights, so we are on solid legal footing to pursue a bill protecting Floridians 2nd Amendment Rights.”

Patronis is the just latest high-profile figure to push back against the threat posed by credit-card companies tracking gun purchases using a special code.

Those companies announced two weeks ago that they were “ready” to implement the special tracking code allegedly to detect suspicious sales and to prevent potential mass shootings. The perfidy was official, as a MasterCard spokesman said that “it will be implemented by merchants and their banks as we continue to support lawful purchases on our network while protecting the privacy and decisions of individual cardholders.

A spokesman for the National Rifle Association (NRA) disagreed, saying:

The decision to create a firearm-specific code is nothing more than a capitulation to anti-gun politicians and activists bent on eroding the rights of law-abiding Americans, one transaction at a time.

The driving force behind the move by ISO to urge credit card companies to start tracking gun sales was the union-owned Amalgamated Bank, with a majority interest held by Workers United, an SEIU affiliate. Its CEO, Priscilla Sims Brown, said having that data available “could” help reduce violent gun crime:

We could identify and detect where there may be gun sales that are intended for black markets, where we see patterns of gun purchases being made in multiple gun shops.

 

We could see the patterns of behavior that would indicate to us that there is something not right here.

Shannon Watts, founder of anti-gun Moms Demand Action, affirmed the move to track gun purchases: “These new merchant codes will help banks and financial institutions track suspicious and potentially illegal gun purchases.” She failed to clarify exactly what she meant by “suspicious” or “potentially illegal” gun purchases, or who would make those decisions.

The blatant move to allow credit-card companies to identify and track individuals exercising their constitutional rights didn’t sit well with New York Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who led 100 of her fellow pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment colleagues to sign a letter of protest against those credit-card companies. She said:

I am adamantly opposed to this attempt to track the information of law-abiding gun owners and am calling out this attempt to infringe on our Constitutional, Second Amendment rights.

 

As Far Left gun grabbing politicians seek to further erode our Constitution, I’m working to ensure credit card companies are not aiding in their anti-Second Amendment agenda.

 

I am demanding immediate answers to protect American citizens’ ability to exercise their Constitutional right to bear arms without fear that the Far Left is tracking their information or that this information will be used against them.

In her letter to Alfred Kelly, CEO of Visa, she said:

We write you today with grave concern regarding your implementation of a new firearm specific Merchant Category Code (MCC).

 

This implementation follows an equally concerning decision by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to create this MCC, which is an assault on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens.

She called out the Amalgamated Bank for its role in pushing for the new surveillance tool, calling them “red flags”:

Amalgamated Bank stated its intent to utilize software to flag allegedly suspicious purchases made by Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights and file these red flags with law enforcement.

She also stated that there was no definition of who would be “suspicious” and who would not be, leading to the tracking and registering of every purchaser of a firearm:

There is no accepted, consistent, scientific, or legitimate way to determine from this data what is and what is not a “suspicious” purchase.

 

A gun control advocate could view any desire to own or obtain a firearm as per se suspicious.

 

Instead, this is a transparent attempt to chill the exercise of constitutionally protected rights and to circumvent existing legal restrictions on the creation of firearm registries by the government.

On Tuesday, two dozen state attorneys general sent a letter to the CEOs of each of the major credit card companies (American Express, MasterCard, and Visa), raising the issue of the legality of such a move:

We, the undersigned Attorneys General, write to express our concerns about the legality of recent actions you have taken or are considering taking at the behest of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

 

As our respective States’ chief legal officers, we are tasked with protecting the constitutional rights of our citizens, defending our consumers from privacy intrusions and other abuses, and enforcing antitrust laws.

 

Accordingly, we share our concerns and ask that you take immediate action to comport [do what is right concerning] our consumer protection laws and respect the constitutional rights of all Americans.

If those credit-card companies fail to “comport” and back off, they will face legal action:

Press releases from public officials make clear that the new merchant code was created and adopted in concert with various state actors, which may additionally create the potential for both civil and criminal liability for conspiracy to deprive Americans of their civil rights….

 

Be advised that we will marshal the full scope of our lawful authority to protect our citizens and consumers from unlawful attempts to undermine their constitutional rights.

 

Please keep that in mind as you consider whether to proceed with adopting and implementing this Merchant Category Code.

Attorneys General from the following states signed on to the letter: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Hampshire, and Virginia.

Federal Appeals Court Upholds Texas Bill Prohibiting Social Media From Censoring Content

Monday, 19 September 2022 16:23
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 19, 2022:  

The Appeals Court for the Fifth Circuit reversed a lower court’s ruling in NetChoice v. Paxton on Friday, setting the stage for another appeal to the Supreme Court.

At issue is the First Amendment’s guarantee of the right to free speech — “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” — and whether Texas House Bill 20 violates or upholds it.

When Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the bill into law last September, he stated:

Social media websites have become our modern-day public square. They are a place for healthy public debate where information should be able to flow freely — but there is a dangerous movement by social media companies to silence conservative viewpoints and ideas.

 

That is wrong, and we will not allow it in Texas.

NetChoice disagreed:

The Act tramples the First Amendment by allowing [Texas] to force private businesses [i.e., Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube] to host speech they don’t want to … [and additionally allows Texas to] police and control speech online, overriding the First Amendment rights of [those businesses].

Fifth Circuit Judge Andrew Oldham, a Trump nominee with a law degree from Harvard, minced few words in his decision:

A Texas statute named House Bill 20 generally prohibits large social media platforms from censoring speech based on the viewpoint of its speaker.

 

The platforms urge us to hold that the statute is facially unconstitutional and hence cannot be applied to anyone at any time and under any circumstances.

 

In urging such sweeping relief, the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment. That Amendment, of course, protects every person’s right to “the freedom of speech.”

 

But the platforms argue that buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech. [Emphasis in original]

He and fellow appeals court judges Edith Jones and Leslie Southwick rejected outright that “rather odd inversion”:

Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say.

 

Because the district court held otherwise, we reverse its injunction and remand [return it to the lower court] for further proceedings.

Because Friday’s decision is counter to a ruling by an appeals court in Florida on the same issue, it is certain to be appealed to the high court once again for final resolution.

Oldham lays the groundwork for that appeal:

The First Amendment protects speech: It generally prevents the government from interfering with people’s speech or forcing them to speak.

 

The Platforms [NetChoice, et al.] argue that because they host and transmit speech, the First Amendment also gives them an unqualified license to invalidate laws [like Texas House Bill 20] that hinder them from censoring speech they don’t like.

 

And they say that license entitles them to pre-enforcement facial relief against HB 20.

 

We reject the Platforms’ attempt to extract a freewheeling censorship right from the Constitution’s free speech guarantee.

 

The Platforms are not newspapers. Their censorship is not speech. They’re not entitled to pre-enforcement facial relief. And HB 20 is constitutional because it neither compels nor obstructs the Platforms’ own speech in any way.

 

The district court erred in concluding otherwise and abused its discretion by issuing a preliminary injunction. The preliminary injunction is VACATED, and this case is REMANDED for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Big Social Media sued in December, getting a judge to block the bill’s enforcement.

Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit, which lifted the sanction, but NetChoice et al. immediately appealed to the Supreme Court. The high court suspended the law pending a full review by the Fifth Circuit. Friday’s decision by the Fifth Circuit overruled the lower court’s sanction, setting in motion another appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Texas law bars social media platforms from acting to “block, ban, remove, de-platform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression.”

New Software Negates Latest “Ghost Gun” Rules

Wednesday, 14 September 2022 21:22
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, September 14, 2022:  

A new software program (protected under the First Amendment) is protecting the Second Amendment. The software allows a 3D printer to create a “jig,” a simple but necessary piece of plastic that is used in assembling a firearm at home.

After the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) issued its latest infringement on the Second Amendment, software developers quickly created open source (free to the world) software to allow owners of 3D printers to print out their own jig. In essence this is an end-run around the latest ATF transgression of precious rights.

The continuing flow of misinformation from the ATF sets up the straw man to justify its latest violation of the Second Amendment:

To help keep guns from being sold to convicted felons and other prohibited purchasers, the rule makes clear that retailers must run background checks before selling kits that contain the parts necessary for someone to readily make a gun.

 

To help law enforcement trace guns used in a crime, the rule modernizes the definition of frame or receiver, clarifying what must be marked with a serial number – including in easy-to-build firearm kits.

 

To help reduce the number of unmarked and hard-to-trace “ghost guns,” the rule establishes requirements for federally licensed firearms dealers and gunsmiths to have a serial number added to 3D printed guns or other un-serialized firearms they take into inventory.

It admitted that its latest transgression generated a lot of pushback from gun owners:

On May 7, 2021, the Department of Justice issued a notice of proposed rulemaking, and during the 90-day open comment period, the ATF received more than 290,000 comments, the highest number of comments submitted to a proposed rule in ATF’s history.

Here’s the loophole in the new regulation that software developers are exploiting: if the jig isn’t part of the “kit,” then there’s no firearm under the latest definition and hence no required background check. Specifically, the rule states that when an unfinished frame or receiver is “distributed or possessed with a compatible jig or template,” it is now automatically considered to be a firearm. Leave out the jig, however, and the” kit” is incomplete and doesn’t fall under the rule.

On its website, Tactical Machining in Orlando, Florida, offers this update to its customers:

As many of you know or heard, ATF’s lawless and corrupt ruling went into effect on August 24, 2022. At the advice of our counsel, Tactical Machining was advised to maintain a holding pattern. Since then, we have some developing updates.

 

Per ATF, 80% AR-15 lowers are still legal!

 

In recent testimony during lawsuits against the ATF, they have admitted in open court that the “Final rule” does not restrict the sale of 80% lowers IF they are not sold with a jig/instructions or Templates.

 

Our local ATF agent tasked with enforcing the new rule changes also confirmed, in writing, that all of Tactical Machining’s 80% products are legal to buy and sell since we stopped offering our jigs.

Jim Jusick, Tactical’s design engineer and manager, quoted this from that letter from the ATF:

As we’ve been instructed, and our understanding here in Orlando, the unfinished receiver, with a jig, instructions, or template is NOT A FIREARM.

 

The combination of such an item (unfinished receiver) with other parts (excluding the jig) does not reach the standard for Readily Convertible.

 

In other words, your manufacture and selling of unfinished receivers with a lower parts kit [without the jig] does not meet the [newly defined] firearm threshold.

Just as was the case with radar detectors, developers were always one step ahead of the enforcers. In their zeal to criminalize all gun owners and eventually disarm them, the enforcers continue to play catch-up ball with the developers.

Oberlin College Finally Gives Up, Pays Up in False Racism Charges Against Local Bakery

Tuesday, 13 September 2022 21:13
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, September 13, 2022:  

The board of trustees of Oberlin College — a proud incubator of radical student progressivism almost since its founding — gave up the fight last Thursday, declaring it “would not pursue the matter further.” It has begun paying out to Gibson’s, a local bakery in Oberlin since 1885, the $36,590,000 awarded by the court.

The “matter,” put succinctly, is the attack on the bakery by Oberlin College officials, professors, and several hundred students that occurred six years ago.

Three black students entered the store (which also sells wine) on November 9, 2016, and the police recorded what happened next:

On Wednesday, November 9, 2016, at approximately 4:58pm, officers responded to the area of Gibson’s Bakery in reference to a report of a fight in progress.

 

As officers were responding to the area, dispatch advised that this was involving an alleged theft complaint.

 

Dispatch advised that Allyn Gibson, who is an employee of Gibson’s Bakery, was attempting to apprehend a subject who Allyn had witnessed attempt to steal several items.

 

As officers approached the area, Sgt. Ortiz, and Officer Feuerstein both stated they observed Allyn Gibson lying on his back with several individuals kneeling over him punching and kicking him….

 

Officers attempted to gain control of the situation and were met several times with resistance from several different individuals.

 

After a few minutes officers were finally able to take one female into custody and calm the incident and attempt to figure out what had taken place.

Please note the day: This was the day after Donald Trump was surprisingly (and legally) elected president of the United States, and the students and faculty of this communist training center in the small town of Oberlin, Ohio (population 8,000), were suffering mightily. There were tears, mourning, whining, weeping — and anger.

When Jonathan Aladin (aka Elijah Aladin), who was accompanied by two female associates, tried to purchase some wine using a fake ID, the owner of the store, Allyn Gibson (son and grandson of the owners), turned him down. Gibson noted that Aladin had two bottles of wine inside his coat, and when Gibson pulled out his iPhone to take a photo, Aladin slapped it away, striking Gibson’s face.

The three then ran out of the store, with Gibson in hot pursuit. Gibson attempted to detain Aladin, but Aladin knocked him to the ground and the two female associates joined in the melee. They were punching and kicking Gibson when the police arrived.

Those are the facts.

But to the upside-down, truth-is-falsehood, criminals-are-the victims world in which Oberlin College lives, this was an act of racism, pure and simple: a white man attacking a black man. End of discussion.

School officials supported a student-led riot involving some 200-300 radicals outside the bakery the following day. Some of the school’s staff, including the dean of students — one Meredith Raimondo — distributed flyers that said: “This is a RACIST establishment with a LONG ACCOUNT of RACIAL PROFILING and DISCRIMINATION. PLEASE STAND WITH US.”

The flyer, created by Raimondo and copied by the thousands on college copy machines, gave this view of the incident:

A member of our community [Aladin] was assaulted by the owner [Gibson] of this establishment [Gibson’s] yesterday.

 

A nineteen y/o young man [Aladin] was apprehended and choked by Allyn Gibson of Gibson’s Food Mart & Bakery.

 

The young man, who was accompanied by 2 friends [Cecelia Whettstone and Endia Lawrence] was choked until the 2 forced Allyn to let go.

 

After [t]he young man was free, Allyn chased him across College St. and into Tappan Square.

 

There, Allyn tackled him and restrained him again until Oberlin police arrived.

 

The 3 were racially profiled on the scene.

 

They were arrested without being questioned, asked their names, or read their rights.

 

2 were released shortly after and charged with assault.

 

The young man is being held in Lorain County Jail, charged with robbery….

 

If you have been victimized by this establishment in any capacity, we ask you to stand with us in support of our community member.

Oberlin’s student senate participated in the canard, publishing this:

A Black student was chased and assaulted at Gibson’s after being accused of stealing.

 

Several other students, attempting to prevent the assaulted student from receiving further injury, were arrested and held by the Oberlin Police Department.

 

In the midst of all this, Gibson’s employees were never detained and were given preferential treatment by police officers.

 

Gibson’s has a history of racial profiling and discriminatory treatment of students and residents alike.

This statement appeared in the college public square, where it remained posted for a year after the incident.

This is the “reality” in which Oberlin students are immersed, ready to spread their poison to the culture upon graduation. They have both the dean of students, Meredith Raimondo, and the college’s vice president of communications, Ben Jones, as role models.

When retired Oberlin professor Roger Copeland (from another time and, to the students, another planet) wrote a year after the incident, “The time has come for the Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo, on behalf of the College, to apologize to the Gibson family,” she texted: “F**k him….”

Jones remained unrepentant for his and his school’s support of the boycott of Gibson’s. In an email, he posted this screed:

All these idiots complaining about the college hurting a “small local business” are conveniently leaving out their massive (relative to the town) conglomerate and price gouging on rents and parking and the predatory behavior toward most other local business. F**k ’em.

The school had been fighting the lawsuit brought by Gibson’s since 2016, finally giving up when the state’s Supreme Court refused to hear its appeal. The award — the largest in state history — would have been vastly larger except that the state has capped such damage claims at just $25 million. The balance due is legal fees incurred by Gibson’s.

The school said it has begun the process of transferring the funds demanded by the court to Gibson’s, announcing that “this does not diminish our respect for the law and the integrity of our legal system.”

Nor its mission to turn students into radicals.

Court Beats Back New York State From Forcing Christian Adoption Agency to Allow Same-sex Parents to Adopt Their Kids

Monday, 12 September 2022 13:00
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 12, 2022:  

The same court that originally upheld New York state in its determination to force New Hope Family Services — a privately-funded Christian adoption agency that has placed more than 1,000 children with traditional parents since its founding in 1965 — to comply with a new state law demanding placement of children with unmarried or same-sex parents was forced to reverse that decision last week.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Mae A. D’Agostino found cogent reasons to reverse her previous ruling, thanks to demands from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that she do so.

Initially she upheld the complaint of New York State’s Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) against New Hope that the Christian agency — by refusing to place children with unmarried and/or same-sex couples, according to their Christian beliefs — violated the state’s new law. She found that New Hope’s policy was “discriminatory and impermissible” under that law.

For years New York prohibited adoption by any couple other than a heterosexual, married couple. In 2010, however, the state — reflecting the continued erosion of Christian, traditional values and their consequent replacement with secular, non-Christian values — reversed. It rewrote the law, allowing — not demanding — adoption agencies to place children with unmarried or same-sex parents.

Later, that law was turned into a demand. When the agency turned its attention and its new anti-Christian-religion animus toward New Hope, demanding that the agency change its policy, the agency sued.

They lost. But on appeal, they won. With the assistance of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a nonprofit law firm focused on providing legal assistance in cases like this one, the appeals court demanded that Judge D’Agostino reverse her previous decision.

Which she did, in spades:

“‘At the heart of the First Amendment’ is the principle ‘that each person should decide for himself or herself the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence.’”…

 

“Consistent with this principle, freedom of speech means that the ‘government may not prohibit the expression of an idea,’ even one that society finds ‘offensive or disagreeable.’”…

 

“For much the same reason, [the] government also cannot tell people that there are things ‘they must say.’”…

 

“Thus, when [the] government ‘direct[ly] regulat[es] … speech’ by mandating that persons explicitly agree with government policy on a particular matter, it ‘plainly violate[s] the First Amendment.’”…

She concluded:

New Hope has demonstrated that it is entitled to a permanent injunction prohibiting the State of New York from requiring New Hope to provide adoption services to unmarried or same-sex couples.

 

First, New Hope has succeeded on the merits of its First Amendment claim against OCFS, as detailed above.

 

Second, “[t]he loss of First Amendment freedoms, even for minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.” [From Elrod v. Burns, 1976.]

As Douglass Dowty noted on Syracuse.com:

D’Agostino this week ruled in favor of New Hope after the higher court’s decision. She found that New Hope had a First Amendment right [after all] to deny adoptions to same-sex or unmarried couples.

The appeals court sending the case back to D’Agostino uncovered a “suspicion of religious animosity” by the state’s commission given the way it used the law as a bludgeon to force New Hope to violate its First Amendment rights. The court wrote:

It is plainly a serious step to order an authorized adoption agency such as New Hope — operating without complaint for 50 years, taking no government funding, successfully placing approximately 1,000 children, and with adoptions pending or being supervised — to close all its adoption operations.

ADF senior counsel Roger Brooks celebrated the legal victory:

The court’s decision is great news for children waiting to be adopted and for the parents partnering with New Hope Family Services to provide loving, stable homes.

 

New Hope is a private religious ministry that doesn’t take a dime from the government. Shutting down an adoption provider for its religious beliefs—needlessly and unconstitutionally reducing the number of agencies willing to help—benefits no one—certainly not children.

 

New Hope’s faith-guided services don’t coerce anyone and do nothing to interfere with other adoption providers who have different beliefs about family and the best interests of children.

 

The decision from the court simply allows New Hope to continue serving the community so that more kids find permanent homes, more adoptive parents welcome a new child, and more birth parents enjoy the exceptional support that New Hope has offered for decades.

 

The state’s attempt to shutter New Hope did nothing other than violate core rights protected by the First Amendment—the freedom to speak what you believe and the freedom to practice the teachings of your faith.

The victory is just one in the long, sustained, and accelerating battle between atheists and Christ and His followers. The office violating New Hope’s First Amendment rights said it was “deeply disappointed with the decision and maintains that discrimination on any basis should not be tolerated. We’re reviewing our options for next steps.”

Judge: Fauci, WH Press Secretary Must Turn Over All Emails Pertaining to Government-media Collusion

Wednesday, 07 September 2022 17:14
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, September 7, 2022:  

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty demanded on Tuesday that additional documentation be provided to the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana in their lawsuit.

That lawsuit, filed back in May, contended that after

having threatened and cajoled social-media platforms [i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Google] for years to censor viewpoints and speakers disfavored by the left, senior government officials in the Executive Branch have moved into a phase of open collusion [with those platforms] under the Orwellian guise of halting so-called “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “malinformation.”

Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana accused the Biden administration of suppressing the First Amendment-protected right to free speech on topics ranging from Covid lockdowns, vaccines, and masking to Hunter Biden’s “laptop from Hell.”

The court ruled that the plaintiffs Schmitt and Landry did have a case but limited discovery — the process that takes place after a lawsuit has been filed and before trial that provides information to lawyers to prepare for that trial — to just a few administration officials.

According to Doughty,

Plaintiffs allege they have, through expedited discovery, obtained information that federal officials and agencies not named in Plaintiffs’ Complaint and Amended Complaint, have also engaged in communications with social-media platforms about misinformation, disinformation, and censorship of disfavored speech.

 

These allegedly include the State Department, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), the Census Bureau, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the U.S. Treasury Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations [sic] (“FBI”).

He allowed those additional federal officials and agencies to be added to the original lawsuit, holding that

the requested information is obviously very relevant to Plaintiffs’ claims.

 

Dr. Fauci’s communications would be relevant to Plaintiffs’ allegations in reference to alleged suppression of speech relating to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin, and to alleged suppression of speech about the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is included as well in the broadened discovery process:

This Court believes Plaintiffs are entitled to external communications by Jean-Pierre and Dr. Fauci in their capacities as White House Press Secretary and Chief Medical Advisor to the President to third-party social media platforms.

A lot of damning evidence has already surfaced, thanks to the discovery process and prior investigations into the government-media collusion. For example, in a May 5, 2021, press conference, Biden’s previous press secretary, Jen Psaki, flatly stated: “The President’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation.”

During a July 15, 2021, press conference, Psaki admitted that “we are in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff.” She added, “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread misinformation.”

Facebook admitted that, based on communication with Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the media platform has taken “aggressive action against misinformation about COVID-19.”

That “aggressive action” included pulling down disfavored posts and banning those behind the posts from using the platform.

Schmitt has learned from the information already obtained that the government-media information collusion is vastly larger and deeper:

The limited discovery produced so far provides a tantalizing snapshot into a massive, sprawling federal “Censorship Enterprise,” which includes dozens of federal officials across at least eleven federal agencies and components identified so far.

 

[These officials] communicate with social-media platforms about misinformation, disinformation, and the suppression of private speech on social media — all with the intent and effect of pressuring social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech that federal officials disfavor.

The initial tranche of information resulting from the lawsuit so far revealed that more than 50 government officials across a dozen government agencies were involved in the collusion. But some of them, specifically Dr. Fauci, refused to answer, or gave incomplete answers. Doughty corrected that by ordering Fauci and Jean-Pierre to comply. And they have 21 days to do so.

The plaintiffs’ New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) lawyer Jenin Younes stated:

We know from the previous round of discovery that efforts to censor the speech of those who disagree with the government on covid policy have come from the top.

 

Americans deserve to know Anthony Fauci’s participation in this enterprise, especially since he has publicly demanded that specific individuals, including two of our clients, Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, be censored on social media.

In response to yesterday’s ruling, a spokesman for the Biden administration doubled down on the government’s perceived role as Big Censor:

We believe in and we support freedom of speech, and we also believe it is important for all media platforms, including social media, to represent factual scientific information and combat misinformation and disinformation that can cost lives.

Court Gives Trump a Partial Victory in Mar-a-Lago Documents case

Tuesday, 06 September 2022 15:03
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, September 6, 2022:  

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled on Monday on Donald Trump’s motion to appoint a “special master” (typically a retired judge or lawyer) to review all of the documents seized by the FBI from his home in Palm Beach, Florida on August 8.

In her statement, she declared that:

Pursuant to the Court’s equitable jurisdiction and inherent supervisory authority, and mindful of the need to ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity under the extraordinary circumstances presented, Plaintiff’s Motion … is GRANTED IN PART.

What does “to ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity” mean? Is this a disclaimer that the entire incident is fraught with intrigue, illegality, and falsehoods? Is it a warning to the FBI and the Department of Justice that she will brook no further outrageous behavior going forward?

She approved Trump’s demand for a special master:

The Court hereby authorizes the appointment of a special master to review the seized property for personal items and documents and potentially privileged material subject to claims of attorney-client and/or executive privilege.

That covers the more than 33 boxes the FBI seized which, it was later learned, contained more than 11,000 documents.

It also prevents the DOJ and its FBI from “reviewing” the seized documents, despite the fact that the government had informed her that they had already completed their “review”:

Furthermore, in natural conjunction with that appointment, and consistent with the value and sequence of special master procedures, the Court also temporarily enjoins the Government from reviewing and using the seized materials for investigative purposes pending completion of the special master’s review or further Court order.

So, while the government agencies have completed their “review” of all of those 11,000-plus documents, she ordered them not to use them for “investigative purposes,” whatever that means.

But the separate investigation being performed by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) will be allowed to continue unimpeded:

This Order shall not impede the classification review and/or intelligence assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The present DNI, Avril Haines, is likely no fan of Donald Trump, having served as assistant to the president during the Obama administration.

According to the enhanced listing of documents reluctantly and belatedly provided by the FBI, its two dozen agents, over a nine-hour period on August 8, seized 11,385 documents, but only 103 of them were marked “classified.”

Small matter: The search warrant issued by the notoriously anti-Trump magistrate was written so broadly that the agents raided the entire facility, including Melania’s closet and underwear drawer along with, it is now revealed, Trump’s son Barron’s bedroom. Trump should be happy they didn’t take the furniture and his grand piano.

Trump asked the court to return everything that wasn’t classified. The judge said no — not until the soon-to-be-named special master has completed his/her “review” of all those documents. The judge also failed to suppress any “evidence” that the FBI might have already uncovered as part of its investigation.

As Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich declared, “This unprecedented and unnecessary raid of President Trump’s home was not some surgical, confined search and retrieval that the Biden administration claims. It was a SMASH AND GRAB!”

In light of all that has been revealed so far, many believe the raid was conducted nefarious purposes: 1) to keep Trump so preoccupied with the legal wrangling that is likely to go on for years (a la the Mueller investigation) that he’ll be unable to focus all of his time and attention on supporting candidates and holding rallies; and 2) to continue to sully his name in the public eye and make it so toxic that candidates being supported by him or claiming to support him and his policies will lose support from voters come November.

The special master will be named on Friday. So far, the first list that appeared with potential candidates contains at least one with a history of virulent hatred of Trump.

Biden Attacks Trump and His Supporters in “Non-political” Speech

Friday, 02 September 2022 15:15
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, September 2, 2022:  

In a speech billed as “non-political” by the White House, Joe Biden seized the opportunity in Philadelphia last night to reveal his true colors. His 24-minute speech was filled with what many see as outrageous misstatements, falsehoods, innuendoes, and hatred of traditional Americans and traditional American.

Below we quote extensively from the White House transcript of the screed:

Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic….

 

But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country….

 

MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.

 

They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.

 

MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.

 

They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.

 

They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.

 

And they see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections.

 

They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people. This time, they’re determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people.

 

That’s why respected conservatives, like Federal Circuit Court Judge Michael Luttig, has called Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans, quote, a “clear and present danger” to our democracy….

 

And now America must choose to move forward or to move backwards. To build the future or obsess about the past. To be a nation of hope and unity and optimism, or a nation of fear, division, and of darkness.

 

MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies….

 

Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to — to destroying American democracy….

 

Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated. And that’s where MAGA Republicans are today….

 

MAGA Republicans look at America and see carnage and darkness and despair. They spread fear and lies — lies told for profit and power….

 

The MAGA Republicans believe that for them to succeed, everyone else has to fail.

The speech was interrupted frequently by avid Biden supporters when he reiterated a statement with which they agreed.

Very few people actually watched the speech. That was likely because of a local college football game going on simultaneously, and because only CNN among the major networks covered it from start to finish. Other networks, including ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox News didn’t cover it live.

There was a very clear ominous militaristic theme to the speech, with Marines standing behind Biden, backlighted in 1930’s Hitler-style red. Erick Erickson called the presentation reminiscent of Hitler’s Third Reich, with Biden “flanked by Marines and backlit by mid-1930s German red mood lighting.”

In addition, Biden revealed either his ignorance or his deliberate misunderstanding of the word “democracy,” which he used dozens of times to describe what the Founders actually created: a constitutional republic. Those Founders knew the dangers of democracy as being just one short step toward mobocracy and then tyranny.

This follows Lenin’s instruction, “First confuse the vocabulary.” As Founding Father James Madison wrote in The Federalist, No. 10:

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.

Biden implied the use of force to correct the errors of his enemies:

I have come to this place … to speak as plainly as I can … about the power we have in our own hands to meet these threats….

 

Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic….

 

There is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country….

 

It is within our power, it’s in our hands — yours and mine — to stop the assault on American democracy.

He said nothing about the FBI raid on Trump’s private residence. He didn’t have to. There, in full public view, is precisely how Biden will use agencies such as the FBI to “stop the assault on American democracy.”

He said nothing about the failures of his administration: inflation, invasion, military disaster, and loss of respect abroad. Instead, he claimed that his policies are working to improve the economy, while the economy itself is poised on the brink of recession.

Biden is guilty, after all is said and done, of projecting onto his enemies the very charges that are rightly applied to him and his administration. By offending the 70-plus million people who voted for Donald Trump in 2020, Biden has sown the seeds of his own demise.

Pressure Mounts on FBI as Agents Claim Director Wray Has “Lost Control” of the Agency

Thursday, 01 September 2022 12:06
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, September 1, 2022:  

A former FBI agent who now represents several current FBI “whistleblowers” has just added another log onto the fire that is burning the FBI. Kurt Siuzdak, a lawyer and former FBI agent, told The Washington Times on Wednesday that “they’re saying, ‘How does this guy [Christopher Wray] survive? … He’s got to leave.’”

Siuzdak, a 25-year veteran of the agency, left in March due to what he perceived to be a strong partisan political bias at the very top of the FBI.

At the “very top” sits a Trump appointee, Christopher Wray, who replaced Jim Comey as head of the agency after Trump fired him in May 2017. As Wray is a Yale law graduate and a member of the prestigious Federalist Society, with a long history in both public service and private practice, Trump thought he was appointing someone who would clean house.

Instead, the man he chose turns out to be part of the problem instead of the solution.

Thanks to numerous FBI whistleblowers — agents inside the agency seeing firsthand how political bias is playing out against Trump and for Biden — Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley has brought the situation to light. Serving as the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he has been privy to numerous agents’ complaints about that bias and has written repeatedly to Wray asking for explanations.

In his letters, dating back to May of this year, Grassley wrote of his concerns:

In light of these allegations [by FBI whistleblowers], I remain very concerned that political bias by a select group of Justice department and FBI officials has infected the Justice Department and FBI’s usual process and procedure to open and pursue high-profile and politically charged investigations.

There is a blatant double standard at play in the agency:

The double standard in the application of Justice Department and FBI policies has resulted in investigations opened in a manner appearing to benefit the political aims and objectives of a select few Justice Department and FBI officials.

 

Further, it is my understanding from whistleblowers that when FBI agents sought a uniform and consistent application of these standards, their concerns were marginalized or otherwise not acted upon.

Grassley noted specifically the actions of FBI Assistant Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault, noting that he exhibited a “pattern of active public partisanship” and requesting an investigation into that “pattern.” Thibault exhibited his bias against Donald Trump in a series of social media posts which, when Grassley’s letter became public, were deleted.

Thibault also had a hand in dismissing demands that Hunter Biden’s laptop information be investigated, calling any such evidence “disinformation.” Grassley wrote that the whistleblower information available to him “involves concerns about the FBI’s receipt and use of derogatory information related to Hunter Biden, and the FBI’s false portrayal of [that] evidence as disinformation.”

Grassley noted:

In fact, the information I have received reveals that Thibault’s political partisanship went much deeper than the inappropriate social media posts. Instead, it impacted his official decision-making on sensitive public corruption investigations.

 

Equally concerning is that, based on Justice Department and FBI policies, Thibault’s partisanship likely affected investigations briefed to, and approved by, senior Justice Department and FBI officials.

Thibault was put on temporary leave following Grassley’s claims, and that temporary leave became permanent this weekend when Thibault announced his retirement from the agency. His lawyer, not surprisingly, said that his client’s retirement from the agency had nothing whatsoever to do with Hunter Biden “misinformation” or his political bias exposed in those deleted social media posts.

Sending Thibault off into retirement isn’t going to end the corruption at the very top of the FBI, though. Hopefully he will serve not as the scapegoat, but as the first of many at the top to be exposed. Wrote Grassley:

Starting on May 31, 2022, I’ve written three letters to you [Director Wray] regarding political bias that has infected the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

 

Two of those letters provided specific and credible allegations based on numerous whistleblowers that have approached my office with information that one can only conclude is indicative of a deeply rooted political infection that has spread to investigative activity into former President Trump and Hunter Biden.

So far, the only response to Grassley’s demands has been the canning of a minor player in the agency’s grand scheme to sully Trump and protect Biden. If Republicans regain control of the Senate in November, then one may reasonably expect Grassley’s demands will be taken much more seriously.

Articles of Impeachment of Biden Filed by Republicans on Tuesday

Wednesday, 31 August 2022 20:01
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, August 31, 2022:  

Several members of the House of Representatives filed articles of impeachment on Tuesday declaring that Joe Biden’s conduct “warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.”

Those House members feel that there are plenty of reasons why the current occupant of the Oval Office should be impeached, including:

  • The lack of border enforcement that has let millions of illegals, including many criminals, into the U.S.;
  • The handling of the coronavirus pandemic;
  • The dreadfully mismanaged and damaging withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan;
  • The unilateral and illegal cancellation of student loan debts;
  • The eviction moratorium prohibiting property owners from evicting renters who violate their leases by not paying rent; and
  • The “Hunter Biden issue” that the mainstream media continue to ignore.

Said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.):

I have consistently said President Biden should be impeached for intentionally opening our border and making Americans less safe.

 

Congress has a duty to hold the President accountable for this and any other failures of his Constitutional responsibilities, so a new Republican majority must be prepared to aggressively conduct oversight on day one.

Previous articles of impeachment, including one filed by conservative firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) the day after Biden was sworn into office, addressed most of these.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) thinks Biden isn’t the only legitimate target for impeachment:

Mayorkas and Garland have purposefully made our country less safe, politicized their departments, and violated the rule of law. In some instances, they have instructed their subordinates to disobey our laws. That is unacceptable.

 

Next January I expect the House to pursue my impeachment articles against Mayorkas as well as Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s impeachment articles that I co-sponsored against Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former advisor, expressed his confidence in January 2022 that Republicans would impeach Biden once they took control of the House starting next January:

You have stood down ICE and you’ve stood down Border Patrol, and guess what? That’s the impeachment hearing I want to hear!

 

You’re going to sit there for day after day and week after week and we’re going to bring the witnesses. We’re going to bring the witnesses of what you did to this country and what you did on the southern border….

 

This November is about one thing: it’s about impeaching Joe Biden to stop this madness and to stop this illegitimate regime from destroying our nation.

Under the Constitution, only the House can consider impeachment charges, and the Senate has the power to try any impeachments passed by the House. Article I, Section 3, Clauses 6-7 make it clear that

No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the [Senate] Members present … and shall not extend further than to removal from office.

The pending “red wave” expected in November won’t be sufficient to give Republicans anywhere close to that two-thirds vote required to remove Biden. But if the House does make impeaching the present occupant a priority, it will further enlighten an already-awakening body politic as to the gross violations the present administration has committed and permitted, and set the stage for the presidential election in 2024.

Former FBI Official Declares Government Has “No Case” Against Trump in Mar-a-Lago Raid

Monday, 29 August 2022 12:50
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 29, 2022:  

In its attempt to justify the illegal, unconstitutional, and outrageous raid by FBI agents on Donald Trump’s home in Florida three weeks ago, CNBC claimed that “the FBI had probable cause to believe that records containing classified national defense information would be found” at his home.

CNBC quoted from an unredacted portion of the affidavit, written by an FBI agent (whose name was blacked out):

Based upon this investigation, I do not believe that any spaces within the PREMISES have been authorized for the storage of classified information at least since the end of FPOTUS’s [former president of the United States] Presidential Administration on January 20, 2021.

That’s all that the biased left-wing media outlet could find to justify the raid: a single, unnamed FBI agent, charged with creating the document used to justify the issuance of the warrant that led to the raid, concluded that Trump’s home hadn’t “been authorized” for the storage of the documents the FBI seized in the raid.

That the mere statement made by the unnamed agent justified the raid is laughable on its face. So says Kevin R. Brock, a former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI. After reviewing the 11 pages of that 32-page document that weren’t blacked out, Brock stated:

I don’t believe the affidavit articulates how a federal law was or is being broken. For those [on the left] who hold out hope that the affidavit’s redacted sections fill that gap, there is almost no chance that they do.

Brock points out that the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures was breached by the agent who authored the affidavit:

A criminal violation of [federal] statutes only exists if it can be established that the person being investigated was not authorized [to store the documents].

But the agent/author failed:

The unredacted parts of the affidavit make no attempt to articulate cause that Trump was not authorized to have these documents in his home.

 

The reason is that, as president, he had broad, legally intimidating authority, established by law and court determinations, to declassify any and all documents and to determine what is and is not a presidential record.

In the 1988 Supreme Court case Department of the Navy v. Egan, the majority opinion included this:

The President, after all, is the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” U.S. Const., Art. II, 2.

 

His authority to classify and control access to information … flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant.

This was reiterated by Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law: “There’s no question that the president has broad authority to declassify almost anything at any time without any process….”

Any attempt to find Trump guilty under U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2017, is also without merit. On the surface, that section appears to apply to Trump, and, according to anti-Trump lawyer Marc Elias, a conviction would keep him from ever holding office again:

Whoever, having the custody of any such record [filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States], proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. [Emphasis added.]

But Hillary Clinton escaped prosecution under this identical law when she destroyed those thousands of emails.

So, one is left with only one conclusion: the raid was a political hit, without substance in law, precedent, or history. Concluded Brock:

The situation does not look good for the government.

 

The Ivy League-educated attorneys of the DOJ had to know this adventure had little chance of an eventual successful prosecution.

 

The use, therefore, of a highly intrusive search of a home simply as a forcing function to retrieve documents for the National Archives — and then not follow through with actual charges — spikes the potential abuse needle dramatically and will not help quiet the growing suspicion that this was more of a political [hit job] to take Trump off the chessboard than it was the pursuit of blind justice.

Smith & Wesson CEO Fires Back Against Anti-gun Democrats

Friday, 26 August 2022 11:38
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, August 26, 2022:  

Mark Smith, the CEO of Smith & Wesson, the 170-year-old iconic firearms manufacturer, finally had enough. After being bullied, harassed, and excoriated by the anti-gun Democrat-laden House Committee on Oversight and Reform over his unwillingness to be subjected to the committee’s intended effort to sully the gun maker’s reputation, his company published a letter in response.

Smith did not hold back:

A number of politicians and their lobbying partners in the media have recently sought to disparage Smith & Wesson.

 

Some have had the audacity to suggest that after they have vilified, undermined and defunded law enforcement for years, supported prosecutors who refuse to hold criminals accountable for their actions, overseen the decay of our country’s mental health infrastructure, and generally promoted a culture of lawlessness, Smith & Wesson and other firearm manufacturers are somehow responsible for the crime wave that has predictably resulted from these destructive policies.

 

But they are the ones to blame for the surge in violence and lawlessness, and they seek to avoid any responsibility for the crisis of violence they have created by attempting to shift the blame to Smith & Wesson, other firearm manufacturers and law-abiding gun owners.

 

It is no surprise that the cities suffering most from violent crime are the very same cities that have promoted irresponsible, soft-on-crime policies that often treat criminals as victims and victims as criminals.

 

Many of these same cities also maintain the strictest gun laws in the nation. But rather than confront the failure of their policies, certain politicians have sought more laws restricting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, while simultaneously continuing to undermine our institutions of law and order.

 

And to suppress the truth, some now seek to prohibit firearm manufacturers and supporters of the Second Amendment from advertising products in a manner designed to remind law-abiding citizens that they have a Constitutional right to bear arms in defense of themselves and their families.

A firearm, adds, Smith, never committed a crime:

To be clear, a Smith & Wesson firearm has never broken into a home, a Smith & Wesson firearm has never assaulted a woman out for a late-night run in the city, a Smith & Wesson firearm has never carjacked an unsuspecting driver stopped at a traffic light.

Without saying as much, it’s clear he isn’t going to appear before the committee to be attacked, intimidated, and sullied. On that heavily weighted Democrat committee are such notorious anti-gunners as Carolyn Maloney, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Rashida Tlaib, and Cori Bush.

That committee successfully attacked the CEOs of two other gun makers who agreed to submit to its harassment. Smith originally agreed to join them, but when it was clear that their motives were strictly political, he told them he wouldn’t “be available” to be subjected to their inquisition.

In response, Maloney, who for the moment (she just lost her primary) chairs the committee, notified Smith that her committee has issued a subpoena to obtain various documents that the committee would use to build a case for more infringements on rightful gun owners.

In her committee’s initial demand for his attendance, she made clear exactly how the inquisition would operate:

As the chief executive officer of a major firearms manufacturer that sells millions of assault weapons, your testimony is crucial to understand why your company continues to sell and market these weapons to civilians, what steps your company plans to take to protect the public, and what additional reforms are needed to prevent further deaths from your products.

In other words, Maloney and her anti-gun majority had already declared Smith & Wesson guilty, and Smith would be given the privilege of attempting to defend himself and his company.

He saw the ruse, and politely bowed out.

The committee tried to reschedule, and again Smith refused.

Maloney ran out of patience, and on August 1 announced that her committee is issuing a subpoena:

I am writing to notify you that I have issued a subpoena to Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. (“Smith & Wesson”) for documents related to your company’s manufacture and sale of AR-15- style firearms.

 

Your company collects hundreds of millions of dollars selling assault weapons that are used in mass shootings, including the horrific murder of seven Americans and the wounding of dozens more during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois.

 

This subpoena was necessitated by your unwillingness to voluntarily comply with the Committee’s investigation, including your refusal to testify about your company’s troubling business practices at the Committee’s July 27, 2022, hearing, and your refusal to voluntarily produce key information about your company’s sale of assault weapons to civilians.

Time is working against Maloney and her anti-gun committee, and both she and Smith know it. Come January she will no longer chair the committee or even be in the 118th Congress.

The momentum for the private ownership of firearms continues to build. On April 1, the National Rifle Association celebrated the 25th state — Georgia — to pass constitutional-carry laws. As the NRA noted:

The NRA paved the way for constitutional carry by first leading the charge for right-to-carry nearly 40 years ago.

 

Today, every state, and the District of Columbia, provides for the carrying of a firearm for self-defense outside the home in some form, and half the nation recognizes [that] the Second Amendment protects law-abiding citizens’ right to self-defense as an inherent and inalienable right.

So, Smith ended his letter making clear that he would be happy to participate in future discussions with honest and honorable members of Congress seeking information, and not harassment and humiliation:

We will continue to work alongside law enforcement, community leaders and lawmakers who are genuinely interested in creating safe neighborhoods. We will engage those who genuinely seek productive discussions, not a means of scoring political points.

As for his company’s customers, Smith added:

We will continue informing law-abiding citizens that they have a Constitutionally-protected right to defend themselves and their families. We will never back down in our defense of the 2nd Amendment.

Trump Files Blistering Lawsuit Against DOJ; Demands Unaffiliated Party Examine His Records

Tuesday, 23 August 2022 13:46
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, August 23, 2022:  

The three lawyers representing former President Donald Trump minced no words in the lawsuit they filed on his behalf against the Department of Justice on Monday afternoon:

On August 8, 2022, in a shockingly aggressive move — and with no understanding of the distress that it would cause most Americans — roughly two dozen Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), directed by attorneys of the U.S. Department of Justice (the “Government”), raided the home of President Donald J. Trump.

 

According to the government, the agents seized documents, privileged and/or potentially privileged materials, and other items — including photos, handwritten notes, and even President Trump’s passports — that were outside the lawful reach of an already overbroad warrant.

The lawsuit implied that that broad overreach reflected the weaponization of law enforcement:

Law enforcement is a shield that protects Americans. It cannot be used as a weapon for political purposes.

The suit raises several questions by the former president:

  1. Why raid my home with a platoon of federal agents when I [Trump] have voluntarily cooperated with your every request?
  2. What are you trying to hide from the public — given that you requested that I turn off all home security cameras, and even refused to allow my attorneys to observe what your agents were doing?
  3. Why have you refused to tell me what you took from my home?

The government has, so far, claims the suit, been either unable or unwilling to answer these questions:

The Government has declined to provide even the most basic information about what was taken, or why….

 

Significantly, the Government has refused to provide President Trump with any reason for the unprecedented, general search of his home.

 

To date, the Government has failed to legitimize its historic decision to raid the home of a President who had been fully cooperative.

Building its case that the search was “unreasonable” and therefore in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of such searches, the suit claimed that “the actual chronology of events clearly establishes that there was no “exigency [pressing or urgent need] for a forceful raid.”

The lawsuit claimed that the warrant issued by the magistrate judge was so broadly written that it, for all intents and purposes, served as a “general warrant” that allowed agents to “rummage” through Trump’s private papers and personal effects. It quoted from previous rulings that the Fourth Amendment was designed to prohibit the “specific evil” of such “rummaging in a person’s belongings.”

The lawsuit reviewed some history behind the Fourth Amendment:

That type of rummaging was permitted [demanded] during the colonial era by a “general warrant,” which the Fourth Amendment is specifically intended to preclude….

 

It is familiar history that indiscriminate searches and seizures conducted under the authority of “general warrants” were the immediate evils that motivated the framing and adoption of the Fourth Amendment.

The warrant failed the “particularity” test (i.e., “No warrants shall issue but upon probable cause … and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized”):

In fact, the Search Warrant’s broad scope was in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement and thus the warrant permitted a “general search,” prohibited as unconstitutional since red-coated [British] soldiers created the need for the requirement in the first place.

Because Trump and his lawyers don’t trust the DOJ or the FBI, the suit asks the court to halt the investigation into the papers they seized, and to provide a third party — an outside unaffiliated party called a Special Master — to conduct the investigation. Such a third party is needed, claims the lawsuit, “to preserve the sanctity of executive communications and other privileged materials.”

The suit made it clear that Trump and his lawyers don’t trust the “Government”:

With the conclusion that the materials seized from [the Trump residence] are all presumptively privileged, it is unreasonable to allow the prosecutorial team to review them without meaningful safeguards.… Only a neutral review by a Special Master can protect the “great public interest.”

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, where it will be heard by a Trump appointee, Judge Aileen Cannon.

Trump to Sue DOJ Over FBI Raid on Mar-a-Lago

Monday, 22 August 2022 14:52
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 22, 2022:  

Former President Donald Trump teased his followers on Truth Social on Friday that he would very shortly be filing suit against the Department of Justice over the FBI’s raid on his Palm Beach, Florida, home two weeks ago.

Wrote Trump:

A major motion pertaining to the Fourth Amendment will soon be filed concerning the illegal Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago, right before the ever-important Mid-Term Elections.

 

My rights, together with the rights of all Americans, have been violated at a level rarely seen before in our Country.

 

Remember, they even spied on my campaign. The greatest Witch Hunt in USA history has been going on for six years, with no consequences to the scammers. It should not be allowed to continue!

To review: The raid — characterized by the FBI as merely the serving of a legitimate search warrant on a private citizen — took place on Monday, August 8; involved more than 20 FBI agents dressed in riot gear; and took more than 10 hours to complete.

The search included prying into Melania’s closet and underwear drawer, and resulted in the FBI carrying away at least eleven boxes (variously marked as secret or top secret, with some marked as protected by client-attorney privilege, along with Trump’s passports).

The affidavit supporting the warrant is due to be released, although heavily redacted (blacked out), later this week.

James Trusty, a former federal prosecutor and now one of Trump’s lawyers advising the former president, was interviewed on Mark Levin’s radio show on Friday. He elaborated on the pending lawsuit, outlining the tack it will take in challenging the entire operation:

We are not going to leave it to the DOJ [Department of Justice] to tell us that they are doing their filter search, and they are the guardians of what’s privileged or not.

 

We are going to have [the] court [get] involved, judicial intervention, at the district court level … that can help us vindicate the Fourth Amendment rights of the [former] president.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Trusty says the warrant, issued by a magistrate judge with a far-left history, contains what is needed to invalidate it. “The Fourth Amendment requires particularity. It requires narrowness to the intrusion on the person’s home.”

However, he added:

This warrant had language in it. And keep in mind, all we’ve seen is a warrant and an inventory. But the warrant has language in it about if you find a classified document, you can take the whole box … and you can take any boxes near it.

 

And that’s really the functional equivalent of a general search. There’s just no limit to that kind of scope in the warrant.

Attachment B of the warrant states that “any government and/or Presidential Records created between Jan. 20, 2017, and Jan. 20, 2021” shall be subjected to seizure if the agent deems it relevant as “evidence, contraband, or fruits of crime.”erty are to be included, gathered up, and seized — without limit.

One of many anomalies is that the FBI already knew what Trump was storing at Mar-a-Lago, having been allowed previously to inspect the security measures being used while Trump was negotiating with the National Archives about how to ship the items to that agency securely.

This made the raid political, according to Jeffrey Clark, a former U.S. assistant attorney general in the Trump administration:

Since [federal] officers had been to Mar-a-Lago to inspect the documents there, they already knew there were [presidential] documents there, and have for [months].

 

The political nature of [the] raid [is] clear because they waited to search for what they knew was ALREADY THERE until just before the Midterms.

Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer for Trump, agreed that the pending lawsuit is necessary “to assert his constitutionally protected rights” and demand that the DOJ “show cause for their unreasonable, irregular, and politically motivated raid.”

The lawsuit is likely also to emphasize another protection provided by the Fourth Amendment: that against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” It will ask the court whether the entire raid — involving armed FBI agents invading a former president’s private residence when they could have obtained through a subpoena (as they did earlier in June) the items needed — was excessive, unnecessary, and unreasonable.

By taking everything in sight it’s easy to conclude the political nature of the raid. Trump has had possession of the documents for over 15 months, and so why all of a sudden does the FBI show up early on a Friday, refuse to let Trump’s attorney see the warrant until after the raid, and then not allow her to make a copy of it, all just before the midterm elections?

Once the lawsuit is filed, The New American will keep its readers informed — especially since, if this sort of raid is allowed to be perpetrated on a former president, they too would then be unprotected by the Fourth Amendment.

For, as Trump wrote on his Twitter account just after being impeached, “In reality they’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.”

Florida School District Places an AR-15 in Every School

Thursday, 18 August 2022 12:23
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, August 18, 2022: 

A spokesman for the Indian River County School District in Florida told a local news outlet last week they had installed enhanced safety measures at the start of the school year:

In addition to the safety measures our local law enforcement agencies have placed on our campuses to ensure the safety and security of each student, teacher, and staff member on campus, we are blessed to have highly trained law enforcement officers assigned to each campus.

 

One Student Resource Officer/Deputy is at each of our 13 elementary schools and 4 middle schools, and 3 SRO/SRD’s are at each of our traditional public high schools.

The enhanced “safety measures” include providing each school with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle available instantly in the event of a threat. And the local sheriff warned potential shooters they are prepared to meet any threat. Said Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers:

If they’re coming at us with an AR-15 we’re gonna return with the same or greater firepower….

 

If something were to happen … [the resource officers] would have ready access to that AR-15 and their shield to be able to respond immediately….

 

Our folks are there to protect the kids. Our folks are bringing guns, they’re the good guys. When bad guys show up with guns, they’re gonna find our guns.

 

They’re gonna find out that we’re well prepared and that we’re prepared for that threat. Us bringing guns to campuses only keeps the schools safer.

 

We’ve seen what’s happened in Parkland. We’ve seen what happened in Uvalde. Our folks are not gonna stand by and wait for something bad to happen to kids in Indian River County….

 

Our folks are not gonna be running backwards to get a shield, running backwards to get a rifle. They’re gonna go directly at the threat and the teams that come in behind them can bring in that additional gear as they’re responding.

The National Rifle Association noted, “Our banks, airports, baseball games, office buildings, movie stars, politicians – they’re all more protected than children at school,” and applauded the school district’s move, saying:

Hats off to Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers for doing what’s right and protecting students!

 

Parents want to drop off their kids at school and be assured they are safe.

The move by the Indian River County School District, with more than 15,000 enrolled students, has national political implications. First, it burnishes the reputation of the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who has consistently supported the Second Amendment. And it’s a direct challenge to the current anti-gun agenda at the federal level with its recent move to infringe further on Second Amendment rights.

This is to say nothing about dampening any enthusiasm a criminal might have for seeking a school with armed student resource officers and deputies protecting the little ones. Seeking unarmed potential victims, those miscreants will be forced to look elsewhere lest they find armed resistance determined to neutralize their threat.

Hats off to the Indian River County School District for doing the right thing.

Wyoming Voters to “Fire” Liz Cheney Today

Tuesday, 16 August 2022 15:12
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, August 16, 1022:  

When former President Donald Trump came to Casper, Wyoming, to campaign for Liz Cheney’s opponent in today’s Republican primary, he called out: “Liz, you’re fired!”

The crowd responded with raucous cheers. They will be part of those who vote today to end Cheney’s attempt to keep her seat in the House of Representatives.

Harry Enten, CNN’s political analyst, predicts she will go down in flames by more than 20 points. The latest poll is predicting closer to 30 points.

In a state that went for Trump by more than a 40-percent margin in 2020, Cheney has only herself to blame for her political banishment today. She was the state’s fair-haired girl, riding on strong name recognition (her father, Dick Cheney, was a Wyomingite who served as George W. Bush’s vice president) and a perceived conservative voting record. She first won election to the state’s only seat in the House in 2016 by 60 percent. She easily won reelection in 2018 and in 2020.

But then she voted to impeach President Trump. And then she accepted Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to co-chair the committee “investigating” the riot that took place during mostly peaceful protest on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol.

The tide turned against her to the point where she was removed from the third-highest position in the House and voted out of the Wyoming Republican party.

The final nail in the coffin was her latest ad, featuring her father, that excoriated Trump, calling him a “coward” and not “a real man,” angering Wyoming Republicans.

Still, she continued to receive millions of dollars from out-of-state supporters who see today’s catastrophe at the polls as merely the first battle in the long war against Trump. A Cheney ally who was given anonymity by Yahoo News called today’s loss “the first battle in a much larger and longer war.”

How would that work, exactly? Jon Ward, writing for Yahoo, explained: In 2024 she would first run in the Republican presidential primary, attracting anti-Trump votes. She would then run as a “conservative” independent hoping to carry with her those disaffected voters in sufficient numbers to keep Trump from winning.

It would be a “spoiler” campaign, said Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant, “designed to prevent Trump from becoming President. It [would be] designed to take from the GOP base and make it mathematically impossible for Trump to win.”

Cheney has a big hill to climb, but the presidential election is more than two years away. A Morning Consult poll released last week showed that 56 percent of Republican registered voters would choose Donald Trump in 2024, with Florida Governor Don DeSantis coming in a distant second, with 18 percent. Cheney came in tied for last place, at two percent.

Of the $15 million she has received, most of it from out of state, she has barely spent half in the losing campaign, possibly hoarding the balance for a run in 2024. In the meantime, she will work hard to burnish her image as a “staunch conservative,” probably with the help of the mainstream media.

Newsweek opened the first salvo in that coming battle, noting that “questions have begun to arise concerning whether she will run as the Republican’s Primary 2024 Presidential election candidate.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper said last week that there is no question: Cheney is going to run for the presidency in 2024. Following an interview with her last week, he concluded,

When you hear a politician talking about the country “standing on the edge of an abyss” and the need to elect “serious candidates,” well, it doesn’t take an astrophysicist to figure out what’s going on there.

Cheney will have some work to do to sell herself as that “staunch conservative.” The Epoch Times points out that “among the 211 Republicans in the House of Representatives, only 13 have a lower score this term … Cheney is easily among the 10 percent most liberal Republicans … [and] is easily among the five percent most liberal Republicans. You don’t get much more RINO than that.”

The Freedom Index, published by The New American and based upon how closely members of Congress follow the Constitution (to which they swear an oath to support and defend), shows Cheney at 60 percent. Put another way, when given the opportunity to vote in line with the Constitution, Cheney’s history shows she fails 40 percent of the time.

She voted for the $250 billion corporate welfare package for Big Tech known as the CHIPS Act, she voted for the gun-control bill, and she voted for Biden’s $1.5 trillion spending monstrosity in March.

Starting tomorrow, anyone thinking that Wyoming has offloaded Cheney into the dumpster of electoral history will be sorely disappointed. The RINO from Wyoming is just getting started.

Idaho Supreme Court Rejects Abortion Providers’ Attempts to Block State’s Abortion Bans

Monday, 15 August 2022 10:48
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 15, 2022:  

In a split decision, the Idaho state Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the state’s near-total ban on abortions may take effect, along with the state’s “heartbeat” law. The abortion ban (with narrow exceptions for rape or incest) will become effective in 10 days, while the heartbeat bill became effective immediately.

The state’s highest court ruled that the civilian enforcement part of the heartbeat law is also effective immediately. That provision allows relatives of the fetus or embryo that was murdered in the mother’s womb to sue the abortionist and his or her staff. If convicted, those parties could be fined up to $20,000 and/or serve up to five years in prison.

Abortion provider Planned Parenthood, along with a local abortionist, brought the suit against the state of Idaho, the speaker of the house, and the president pro tempore of the Senate, along with the entire Idaho state Legislature. It was filed three days after the Supreme Court of the United States made its landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on June 24.

That ruling reversed the high court’s previous decisions in Roe v. Wade (decided in 1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (decided in 1992). The court ruled in Roe that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provided a “fundamental right to privacy” that protected a pregnant woman’s freedom to abort her unborn child. The decision in Casey upheld that alleged right.

Following the reversal, the Idaho Supreme Court noted that what the “petitioners [Planned Parenthood and the abortionist bringing the suit] are asking this court to ultimately do is to declare a right to abortion under the Idaho constitution when — on its face — there is none.”

This is the same flaw that ultimately tripped up Roe and Casey: nowhere in the federal Constitution is abortion even mentioned. And the 10th Amendment specifically reserves to the states the power to make decisions on issues not mentioned — nor powers granted to the federal government — in the Constitution.

To make that point crystal clear, Justice Robyn Brody wrote in the majority opinion:

[E]ven if Petitioners have carried their burden of demonstrating that irreparable harm will flow from immediate enforcement of the [state’s] Total Abortion Ban, this alone cannot permit the extraordinary remedy Petitioners seek….

 

As noted in our June 30, 2022 order, the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs has “altered the landscape” of long-standing federal constitutional law.

 

In Dobbs, the Supreme Court held that the United States Constitution does not explicitly or implicitly contain a right to abortion and returned the “profound moral question” of abortion to the “people and their elected representatives.”

To emphasize the point further, Justice Brody quoted from that monumental Dobbs decision:

We hold that [Roe v. Wade (1973)] and [Planned Parenthood v. Casey, (1992)] must be overruled.

 

The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

 

That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”

The issue of abortion is one of life and death, a “profound moral question” that the Constitution doesn’t address. Said the U.S. Supreme Court:

Abortion presents a profound moral question.

 

The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion.

 

Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.

The issue isn’t settled yet, though, as the Biden administration is suing Idaho over its pro-life laws. And other states with similar laws that became effective following the Dobbs decision, including Wyoming and Louisiana, are being sued by Planned Parenthood. So, the issue remains unsettled and will likely remain so until the moral side of the issue is resolved, and the culture of death is excised from the body politic.

But for Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center, Friday was a day for celebration:

This is the day that the pro-life movement has worked towards for decades!

 

Precious children with beating hearts now finally have legal protection in the state of Idaho — and to God be the glory!

FBI and Texas State Wrong on How Many Armed Citizens Stop Mass Shootings

Saturday, 13 August 2022 20:55
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Saturday, August 13, 2022:  

Ed White, a journalist for the Associated Press covering the story of an armed citizen stopping a shooting in an Indiana mall in July, said such an incident is very rare:

A bystander’s decision to shoot a man who opened fire at an Indiana mall was a rare occurrence of someone stepping in to try to prevent multiple casualties before police could arrive….

 

It isn’t common for mass shootings to be stopped in such fashion. From 2000 to 2021, fewer than 3% of 433 active attacks in the U.S. ended with a civilian firing back, according to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University.

In covering the same incident, The Washington Post echoed the refrain, calling it “a rare instance of [an] armed civilian ending a mass shooting,” adding:

The Greenwood incident is unique, however, because it became one of the rare instances of an armed civilian successfully intervening to end a mass shooting, adding more fuel to a national debate about the role of bystanders during an active shooter attack.

The Post’s journalists referred to data captured by the FBI as the basis for their reporting:

In practice, this is an uncommon occurrence during mass shootings. In recent studies of more than 430 “active shooter incidents” dating back to 2000, the FBI found that civilians killed gunmen in just 10 cases.

John Lott, head of the Crime Prevention Research Center, exposed the error on Wednesday in his report “How the FBI Undercounts Armed Citizen Responders to Mass Killers — and Media Play Along.” He reported that the FBI showed that only 11 out of 252 active shooter incidents in its database were stopped by an armed citizen.

But the FBI undercounted the number of incidents they collected between 2014 and 2021. According to Lott’s research, there were a total of 281 active shooter incidents, and 41 of them were stopped by armed citizens.

Lott called the discrepancy “overlooked cases” that the FBI failed to count. And of course, the mainstream media never bothered to look past the FBI’s conclusion and reported the error as fact.

Lott asked the FBI about those “overlooked” discrepancies: “The FBI declined to address them.” He asked the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University to address the discrepancy that also showed up in their results, and received this from them:

We do appreciate you sending potential active shooter cases for the FBI team to review for inclusion in their active shooter dataset. As promised, I sent the email chain to the FBI team yesterday.

 

As I’m sure you know, the FBI Active Shooter reports are released on an annual basis.

 

My assumption is that any amendment retroactively adding cases would likely be included in a release with the [next] annual report.

Lott also contacted Ed White, the AP writer, within hours of his article being published, pointing out that the data he was using was not accurate. But White never corrected his reporting of the incident.

Which means that the false underreporting of armed citizens foiling attempts at mass shootings will continue to be picked up by the compliant anti-gun media and reported as fact.

Meanwhile, Lott and his organization continue to collect reports of those armed citizens stopping mass shootings in their database, which at present lists in detail more than 60 such instances in the time period 2014 through 2021.

Lott treated what appears to be a coordinated effort to mislead the media, and the public, kindly:

Although collecting such data is fraught with challenges, some see a pattern of distortion in the FBI numbers because the errors almost exclusively go one way, minimizing the life-saving actions of armed citizens.

Armed citizens don’t foil just mass shootings. Gun owners defend themselves against aggression between 500,000 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and 1,884,348 (Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz) times every year. As this writer noted previously:

Also left unreported by any media is the number of times an individual with criminal intent is deterred not just by the presence of an armed citizen, but by the mere suggestion that the citizen might be armed.

 

As horrific as the recent mass shootings are, one needs to balance the mainstream media’s 24/7 blood-red coverage of those events with the fact that, without armed citizens present, there would be many more such ghastly atrocities being committed.

Anti-Trump Lawyer Spills the Beans: Mar-a-Lago Raid Seeks to Keep Trump From Running in 2024

Tuesday, 09 August 2022 13:49
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, August 8, 2022:  

The raid by the FBI on Trump’s Florida residence has nothing to do with “national security” or the “National Archives.” It has everything to do with finding something — anything — in those 15 boxes to nail him under a law that, if he is convicted, would prevent him from ever running for president again.

The hubris of Marc Elias — who served as Hillary Clinton’s top lawyer in her failed 2016 presidential campaign and was invested heavily in almost all of the Deep State’s attacks on Trump since then — not only may be his undoing, but also may help propel Trump into the presidency in 2024.

On Monday — 48 years to the day after President Nixon resigned from the presidency — the raid on Mar-a-Lago was followed by rejoicing by Elias on Twitter:

The media is missing the really, really big reason why the raid today is a potential blockbuster in American politics.

This revelation was followed by a screen shot of U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2071, with the following text highlighted:

[Anyone] having the custody of any such record [filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States], proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. [Emphasis added.]

On the surface, it appears that the FBI could either find, or create, evidence that could be used to charge the former president under this law.

But a closer look reveals that Hillary Clinton escaped prosecution under this identical law when she destroyed those highly sensitive personal emails. In fact, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey sought clarification and found that “disqualification extends only to statutory or appointed offices, but not to any constitutionally-mandated or elected positions.”

Since Trump was elected and not appointed, he could run in 2024 even if he were in jail.

But that is highly unlikely, as Elias noted in a follow-up tweet:

Yes, I recognize the legal challenge that application of this law to a president would garner (since Qualifications are set in the Constitution).

 

But the idea that a candidate [Trump] would have to litigate this during a [presidential] campaign is in my view a “blockbuster in American politics.”

On the contrary, it could turn out that the raid on Mar-a-Lago was the greatest law-enforcement mistake ever made in American history. It could galvanize Trump’s base and cement into place his reelection in 2024 while destroying what might remain of the FBI’s credibility, possibly leading to its dismantlement and restructuring by Congress.

Trump is the Teflon President, having survived all efforts by the Clinton camp, the Democrat establishment, the administrative agencies (i.e., the Deep State), the NeverTrumpers, the sold-out media, and the RINOs to get rid of him. In announcing the raid on his Florida residence, Trump said:

After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.

 

It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.

His announcement that he will run for re-election in 2024 is expected shortly. Until then, this three-minute ad that he released following the raid will suffice.

Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2021 Bob Adelmann