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

Ten Senate RINOs Poised to Sell Out Fourth, Fifth Amendments to Get to the Second

Thursday, 23 June 2022 15:30
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, June 23, 2022:  

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) could hardly contain himself. On Wednesday he rejoiced:

I am pleased Congress is on the path to take meaningful action to address gun violence for the first time in nearly 30 years.

 

This bill is real progress. It will save lives.

He has the support of 10 Republicans (In Name Only):

Senators John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis and Richard Burr of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

They all will violate their oaths of office in order to pass what is laughingly called the Bipartisan Safe Communities Act. It should be, and more accurately would be, called “The Bipartisan Fourth and Fifth Amendment Sellout Act to Destroy the Second Amendment.”

For its primary purpose is to bribe states not already inflicting unconstitutional red flag laws on its innocent citizens with federal money — $750 million to start with — so that eventually all of them will accept the bribe — the money along with the strings attached — so that there will soon be in place a de facto federal red flag law.

Such laws, wrote Michelle Malkin at The New American,

empower disgruntled strangers, duplicitous family members, biased police, and ideologically driven judges to disarm [innocent] citizens by labeling them mental health threats to themselves and others.

The unconstitutional nature of red flag laws was made clear by Nikki Goeser, executive director of the Crime Prevention Research Center. In an article co-authored by a Republican congressman who hasn’t sold out his constituents, Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, Goeser said:

These laws allow judges to seize a person’s guns without a trial, based solely on a written complaint that the person might be a danger to themselves or others. All a judge needs is “reasonable suspicion.”

This contrasts with the provisions the Founders of our Republic put in place to prevent such violations of precious rights. The Fourth Amendment requires the much higher standard of “probable cause” instead of the much weaker “reasonable suspicion”:

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. [Emphasis added.]

The Fifth Amendment requires “due process” against such illegal seizures:

No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. [Emphasis added.]

Red flag laws, freed from those constitutional constraints, pose a direct and immediate threat to everyone who owns a firearm. As Malkin explained:

If you stray from the politically correct position on VA incompetence, guns, masks, vaccines, transgenders in sports, Drag Queen Story Hour, election fraud, demographic transformation, Black Lives Matter, or abortion, you and your children can be tagged, flagged and bagged for life.

She understates the threat. The “reasonable suspicion” standard is so low that ultimately anyone owning a firearm could be “tagged, flagged and bagged” for that reason alone.

The “bipartisan” act is an indirect but effective attack on the Second Amendment. It has nothing to do with stemming gun violence. It has everything to do with confiscating, under the color of law, every firearm from every gun owner in the country, thus paving the way for the imposition of a communist dictatorship on the once-free United States of America.

Supreme Court Rules Maine’s Discrimination Against Religious Schools Unconstitutional

Wednesday, 22 June 2022 15:49
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, June 22, 2022: 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Maine’s practice of forbidding parents from choosing religious schooling for their children when paid for with public funds is unconstitutional. Wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority:

Maine’s “nonsectarian” requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

 

Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.

Some 5,000 of Maine’s 180,000 school-age children live in areas where there is no public school. The state has for decades offered tuition assistance to them, allowing their parents to select a nearby school — school choice, in other words — for their kids.

For years, the state has prohibited those parents from selecting a school that teaches religious values. The parents of children discriminated against brought suit — Carson v. Makin — claiming discrimination under the First Amendment.

Having lost their case in lower courts, the parents appealed to the Supreme Court. It took the case, heard the oral arguments in January, and reversed lower courts in their ruling.

While this appears to be a minor skirmish in the war against religion, it is fraught with great significance in the overall battle. For years Thomas Jefferson’s infamous letter to the Danbury Baptists, in which he used the phrase “separation of church and state,” has been used as a hammer by atheists and socialists to discriminate against and ultimately abolish all religious influence in the culture.

In explaining the historic importance of a proper understanding of the Founding Fathers’ intentions, Wallbuilders’ David Barton noted, “The First Amendment was intended to keep government out of regulating religion, but it did not keep religion out of government or the public square.”

In the 6-3 decision Justice Sonia Sotomayor recognized immediately the threat of such high court decisions to remove that hammer from atheists and socialists, falsely claiming, “This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers sought to build.”

The Wall Street Journal decried the decision, recognizing that threat, referring to the decision as “the latest … by a conservative majority [who are] skeptical of precedents that draw a bright line between church and state.”

The Journal is referring to two recent high court decisions that reflect the Founders’ original intent, including Trinity Lutheran v. Comer and Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue.

In Trinity Lutheran, money granted by the state of Missouri for playground resurfacing excluded those owned or controlled by a church. Writing for the majority in that case, Chief Justice Roberts said:

The exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution … and cannot stand.

In Espinoza, Roberts wrote again for the majority:

A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.

Jeffrey Toobin, CNN’s legal analyst, saw the mounting threat to the Left’s continuous and deliberate misinterpretation of Jefferson’s phrase, claiming on Twitter that “’Separation of church and state’ is a vanishing concept at the Supreme Court.”

The ACLU also recognized the continuing threat to the false narrative by declaring that “The Supreme Court’s decision today undermines our Constitution’s promise of separation between government and religion.”

Of course, as Barton pointed out, “The phrase ‘separation of Church and State’ cannot be found in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it is not found in any of our nation’s founding documents.”

The most egregious attempt to reframe yesterday’s decision came from American Atheists’ attorney Geoffrey Blackwell:

With this decision, the Supreme Court has betrayed our nation’s founding principle that the government should not fund religion, including a religion like Christianity.

 

This court is destroying the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, which protects all Americans — especially atheists and members of minority religions.

Other officials with American Atheists expanded on what they perceived as a threat to the Founders’ intentions. Alison Gill, AA vice president, said:

The religious conservative majority on the Supreme Court is intent on placing the interests of Christians above all others, including individuals’ fundamental rights.

 

These justices will keep working at breakneck speed to undermine nondiscrimination protections, replace public education with a discriminatory religious “education,” and force Americans to fund conservative Christianity and other religions. This will harm countless Americans, especially children.

Of course, a proper reading of the Founders’ original intent reveals no such thing. But the rant from AA by its president, Nick Fish, continued the group’s fabrication:

Extremists are weakening our democracy. Calls to reform and expand the Court to limit the impact of its dangerous Christian nationalist wing will only grow louder, as the Supreme Court tries to establish what can only be described as a theocracy.

Fish did get one part correct:

Today’s decision is appalling, but it isn’t the first and it won’t be the last.

As the war against the nation’s culture includes an attack on its religious freedom, yesterday’s proper ruling in Carson v. Makin is comforting.

No More Abortion in South Dakota as of Monday

Friday, 17 June 2022 21:27
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, June 17, 2022:  

On Monday, the last abortion in South Dakota took the life of an unborn child as the last Planned Parenthood abortion center has stopped scheduling abortions. Governor Kristi Noem tweeted: “Abortions have stopped in South Dakota. We have prayed for this day, and now it is here.”

In an official statement issued in January, Noem noted:

The two bills I am signing today are crucial, because they are also protections for mothers. We must remember that abortion has two victims: both the unborn child who loses their life, and the mother who must go through the physical and emotional trauma of the procedure.

Those two bills followed eight others she signed into law the previous year. The first was a “heartbeat” bill similar to Texas’ law; the second was a bill banning so-called “telemedicine” abortions.

Telemedicine abortions were facilitated by two drugs previously available online: mifepristone, which deprives the fetus of nutrients, and misoprostol, which induces labor to expel the remains of the dead baby.

Now, the only time those two drugs may be administered is by a physician licensed in the state following an in-person consultation with the pregnant mother.

But if Roe v. Wade is overturned — the Supreme Court decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is expected momentarily — South Dakota’s “trigger law,” passed in 2015, will ban those abortions as well.

The ending of abortions at South Dakota’s only Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls makes South Dakota the second abortion-free state in the country, after Oklahoma. Texas allows abortions up until a fetal heartbeat can be detected.

Idaho had four abortion clinics, but the Planned Parenthood facility in Boise closed on June 1, and one of the other three is closed for the summer and is not likely to reopen after the Dobbs decision has been rendered.

Pro-abortion states such as Colorado and California are seeking to become abortion “sanctuaries” for mothers determined to end their pregnancies but prohibited from doing so by state laws.

In California, the Democrat-controlled state legislature is presently considering a package of 13 bills that would include paying for the travel costs and accommodations for out-of-state women seeking abortion.

The Biden administration is going further. The White House is considering announcing numerous possible executive decrees that would hinder states such as South Dakota from enforcing its laws. One is allowing the Department of Health and Human Services to suspend a pro-life state’s medical licensing regulations so that abortion doctors could perform abortions in that state regardless of the state’s prohibition.

Another move would be to sue states that prohibit dispensing abortifacient drugs that happen to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Still another is allowing abortions in federal facilities located in pro-life states, such as military bases. That would turn Ellsworth Air Force Base located in Rapid City into an abortuary, outside the reach of state prohibitions.

The war to protect life as stated in the Declaration of Independence — We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — continues, and will likely increase in intensity if the high court overturns Roe v. Wade.

More Black Americans Are Exercising the Right

Wednesday, 15 June 2022 20:41
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, June 15, 2022:  

The sale of firearms to black Americans rose an astonishing 58% in 2020, and that growth is continuing. A recent survey by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) revealed that nearly every gun-store owner in the country has seen growth, especially among black, brown, and Asian-American customers.

One of them, Michael Moody, a black federal employee working in Washington, D.C., drove to Maryland to purchase a firearm and was surprised at the number of black customers in the store. He told NBC News:

You look at Buffalo [the May mass shooting at a grocery store there] and the feeling of “This could have been me” is there.

 

We could be the next target. And when it’s you, what are you going to do? Are you going to run and hide? Or are you going to be able to protect yourself? Protect your family?

 

I didn’t want a gun. I’m not a gun person. But this world has made me get one.

Next, he said, is one for his wife.

The surge is reflected in the growth of the National African American Gun Association (NAAGA). Started in 2015 by Philip Smith, the group has been adding more than 1,000 new members every month since 2020 and now has a membership approaching 50,000. On Facebook it enjoys more than 100,000 followers.

Americans are buying more than 20 million firearms every year, and almost 40% of them are first-time buyers. The reasons include fear that the Biden administration will be successful in passing more gun (people) control laws, including banning the sale, purchase, and possession of the most popular rifle in the country, the semi-automatic AR-15.

There’s also the fear that inflation will drive up the price of firearms (along with everything else) and that government pressure on gun manufacturers will reduce the available supply.

There’s the rising crime, mostly in anti-gun, Democrat-controlled cities. There’s the increasing sense of self-reliance that comes from owning and becoming familiar with a firearm.

And there’s a sense of camaraderie that’s encouraged by local gun clubs. One such is the Freedom Firearms & Safety Gun Club in Phoenix, where divorcee Onnie Brown now serves as vice president. The club’s co-founder Scott Dias said:

It only made sense to me that we should have someone in the forefront that’s a female … [female guests] feel more comfortable and they’re more motivated when they see other women and when they connect with other women.

Along the way, new black gun owners not only learn how to handle a firearm, but likely also learn some true black history concerning firearms. As The Trace pointed out:

Black Americans carried guns before the Founding Fathers gathered in secret to draft the Constitution.

 

They carried them during the Civil War and again afterward as members of the Buffalo Soldiers, established in 1866 as the nation’s first all-Black military regiments.

 

They carried them for protection after their emancipation from slavery, although the Black Codes of the Reconstruction Era tried to put a stop to that.

 

They carried them out West on what was then America’s frontier, in search of greater freedoms.

 

They carried them throughout the South to guard against white lynch mobs.

 

Later, they carried them to protect scions of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr., who famously preached nonviolence; less well known is that King applied for, and was denied, a permit to carry a gun, and his Alabama home at one point held so many firearms it was described as “an arsenal.”

They’re also likely to learn that the Second Amendment is color-blind, and that the present resident of the White House is no friend of that amendment.

This is likely to have political implications. In the past the Democratic Party could bank on 90% of black voters supporting whomever they put up for president.

Now, however, that present resident is suffering from dismal approval ratings, dragging down that black support. According to a Marquette University Law School poll taken in April, Biden’s approval rating among blacks has dropped from 88% in July 2021 to 56%, a dizzying decline of 32 points.

The more all Americans — including blacks, browns, and Asian-Americans — exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, the more difficult it will be for tyrants, present administration included, to take them away.

Sports Illustrated: SCOTUS Ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District Will Unleash “White Christian Nationalism”

Tuesday, 14 June 2022 14:39
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This article was published by TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, June 14, 2022:  

Days before the Supreme Court is likely to issue its ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, Sports Illustrated offered its criticism of it in advance. After reviewing “more than 1,000 pages of documents related to the lawsuit and [having] met several times … with [football coach Joseph] Kennedy and his legal team,” author Greg Bishop was ready to make his own ruling in the case: If the high court rules in favor of Kennedy, that ruling will be “a sledgehammer aimed at a bedrock of democracy: the separation of church and state.”

Even worse, such a decision will unleash a wave of “white Christian nationalism” on the nation. Wrote Bishop, “They believe America was created by a preeminence of people like themselves [“white Christian slavers”] and should always have laws in place that reflect America’s origins.”

He quoted Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represents Bremerton: “That’s what this case is about.… [it’s] a movement that is so determined they are not willing to stop. They are willing to destroy our democracy to achieve their ends.”

She claims that those groups supporting Kennedy through amicus briefs represent a “who’s who of religious extremists in this country.”

It’s all part of a master plan, wrote Bishop, to “redefine church and state.” Previous court rulings prohibiting the teaching of creationism and prayer in schools are likely to be threatened as part of that master plan. Under recent rulings “God,” he complained, “can remain in the Pledge of Allegiance … the federal government can give money to faith-based schools, and … religious groups can discriminate based on their beliefs when hiring.”

“It’s really,” wrote Bishop, “whether church and state should be separated — and where that line of separation should be drawn. Or redrawn. Or removed.”

Kennedy himself is the unlikely “hero” in the drama. For seven years he coached Bremerton High School’s JV football team and helped with the varsity. For years he prayed by himself after each game on the 50-yard-line.

And for seven years, nobody minded. Nobody said anything. Nobody sued. Nobody even threatened to sue.

But when a school administrator paid a public compliment to how the coach was positively impacting the lives of his players, the school board told Kennedy to stop. When he didn’t, the board decided not to renew his contract.

In 2015, he sued to get his job back. That’s when First Liberty entered the fray. Since then, the lawsuit wended its way through the judicial system until it finally was taken on appeal by the Supreme Court in January.

Oral arguments were heard in April and the ruling is expected at any moment.

The ruling is likely to disappoint Bishop. The court has limited itself to answering just two questions:

(1) Whether a public-school employee who says a brief, quiet prayer by himself while at school and visible to students is engaged in government speech that lacks any First Amendment protection; and

(2) Whether, assuming that such religious expression is private and protected by the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses, the Establishment Clause nevertheless compels public schools to prohibit it.

The high court will not visit the issue of the alleged “separation of church and state.” David Barton, founder of Wallbuilders, clarifies that issue:

The early colonists who came to America … made sure that the government, or the State, could not control or limit religious beliefs or activities. This was their understanding of the separation of Church and State….

 

The phrase “separation of Church and State” cannot be found in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it is not found in any of our nation’s founding documents. Related to government, the phrase first appeared in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in 1801….

 

The Danbury Baptists wrote Thomas Jefferson expressing their concern that the government might try to regulate their religious expression. In response, Jefferson wrote his now famous letter, using the phrase “Separation of Church and State” to reassure the Danbury Baptists that the First Amendment prohibited the government from trying to control religious expression.

 

In short, the First Amendment was intended to keep government out of regulating religion, but it did not keep religion out of government or the public square.

That is what frightens Bishop and groups such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Supreme Court originalists may some day restore the original understanding of the relationship between church and state, demanding that tyrants and atheists cease using the government to regulate religion into oblivion via an intentional misreading of Jefferson’s phrase.

Ten RINOs Joining With Democrats in Pushing Red Flag Laws

Monday, 13 June 2022 14:08
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, June 13, 2022:  

Anti-Second Amendment Connecticut Democrat Senator Chris Murphy could hardly contain himself on Sunday. After lengthy discussions over the weekend with several Republican (In Name Only) senators, he tweeted: “We have a deal,” adding:

Today a bipartisan group of 20 Senators (10 D and 10 R) is announcing a breakthrough agreement on gun violence – the first in 30 years – that will save lives.

Murphy was no doubt referring to the dreadful infringement of Second Amendment rights that was passed in 1994, called the Clinton Gun Ban, which banned the manufacture, sale, or purchase of “semi-automatic” firearms. Ten years later, after discovering that the ban had absolutely no impact whatsoever on gun violence, the law was allowed to expire.

Murphy was also touting the “bipartisan” nature of the “breakthrough” agreement, suggesting that Democrats and Republicans had finally repaired their animosity over the issue of gun rights and had come together to infringe further on gun owners’ rights.

However, four of the five Republicans who joined with the Democrats have no fear of electoral retribution from their voters: they are retiring from the Senate this year. Further, none of the other six are up for reelection. So they can safely display their animosity towards the Second Amendment with impunity.

Another RINO, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined the 10 in celebrating the victory: “I appreciate their hard work on this important issue. The principles they announced today show the value of dialogue and cooperation.” He added:

I continue to hope their discussions yield a bipartisan product that makes significant headway on key issues like mental health and school safety, respects the Second Amendment, earns broad support in the Senate, and makes a difference in our country.

There is no written text reflecting the agreement. And the clock is ticking: Congress soon breaks for the Independence Day weekend, and any legislation must be written and passed before constituents back home have an opportunity to express their displeasure at their senators and representatives selling them out.

Gun rights groups like Gun Owners of America and the National Rifle Association are already ramping up pressure to keep that insidious legislation from passing.

Murphy admitted as much in his series of tweets touting the anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment (and anti-constitutional) provisions. Last week he told reporters that “we can’t come to agreement the last week we’re here. There are people in the Senate who are no doubt going to use every rule available to them to hold this up and slow it down.”

Those “people” are called “constitutionalists,” using procedural moves put in place precisely to limit a noisy, power-seeking minority from overriding the rights of the majority.

The 10 Republican sellouts are Senators John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis and Richard Burr of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Buried in the bill is the most pernicious attempt to disarm gun owners: pushing for red flag laws by giving federal tax money to states if they pass them. Nineteen states already have the onerous and unconstitutional laws in place, and the remaining 31 are the targets of the Senate’s financial generosity.

In the so-called agreement that Murphy celebrated on Sunday, the phrase “red flag laws” is never mentioned, for fear of raising a red flag over the proposal from those who understand and support the Constitution. Murphy’s “law” refers to “intervention orders” that would apply to “those who are adjudicated as mentally ill” so they cannot purchase or possess firearms.

The NRA urged its members to “take action,” reminding their representatives of their rights and warning them of retribution at the polls in November if they violate them. The bills already passed by the House and being pressed for passage in the Senate

create “red flag orders” that allow for the confiscation of firearms without due process of law. The legislation would directly empower federal judges to nullify Second Amendment rights on a case-by-case basis and issue orders to seize firearms from the named individuals.

 

It would also provide funding to encourage states and localities to pass and enforce laws allowing judges to issue orders to seize firearms.

 

[The House bill] would strip Second Amendment rights of individuals by confiscating firearms without constitutional due process by allowing courts to issue ex parte (meaning the accused is not present) firearm confiscation orders.

 

A person could be forcibly disarmed of otherwise lawfully-possessed firearms before he or she had so much as an opportunity to contest the accusations — this would represent a clear denial of constitutional due process protections.

The unconstitutional nature of red flag laws was made clear by Nikki Goeser, executive director of the Crime Prevention Research Center. In an article co-authored by a Republican senator who hasn’t sold out his constituents, Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, Goeser said:

These laws allow judges to seize a person’s guns without a trial, based solely on a written complaint that the person might be a danger to themselves or others. All a judge needs is “reasonable suspicion.”

This contrasts with the provisions the Founders of our Republic put in place to prevent that sort of behavior. The Fourth Amendment requires the much higher standard of “probable cause” instead of the much weaker “reasonable suspicion”:

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.

The Fifth Amendment requires “due process” against such illegal seizures:

No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

The vacuity of red flag laws is revealed by noting that there is little proof that they work. As left-leaning PolitiFact admitted: “It’s challenging for researchers to determine whether mass shootings are prevented by red flag laws.”

The real purpose of red flag laws is to do an “end run” around the Second Amendment. As Senator Murphy admitted in his series of tweets celebrating and expanding on his “victory”:

Will this bill do everything we need to end our nation’s gun violence epidemic? No. But it is real, meaningful progress. And it breaks a 30 year log jam….

 

Drafting this law and passing it through both chambers will not be easy. We have a long way before this gets to the President’s desk.

As the Senate is deadlocked 50-50, all 10 of those Republican Senators will have to join all 50 Democrats in order to pass the measure. If passed, it will next need to be ratified by the House, and then will be sent to the occupant of the White House for signing into law.

Biden’s Bizarre Statements on Gun Control Walked Back by Press Secretary

Wednesday, 01 June 2022 14:07
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This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, June 1, 2022:  

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was forced to walk back and cover for a bizarre rant her boss made on Monday. On his return to Washington following a trip to Uvalde, Texas, Biden said:

[While a senator] I sat with a trauma doctor, and I asked him — I said, “What’s the difference?” I said, “Why are they dying?” And they showed me x-rays. He said, “A .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out, may be able to get it, and save the life. A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.”

He followed this other-worldly comment with another:

So the idea of these high-caliber weapons is of — there’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of thinking about self-protection, hunting.

He tripled down with this:

And remember, the Constitution, the Second Amendment was never absolute. You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed. You couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weapons.

Ed Morrissey, senior editor at Hot Air, responded to the first canard: “Needless to say, a 9mm round does not ‘blow the lung out of the body.’ That’s an idiotic claim to make on both ballistics and anatomy.”

As for the second, in the last decade, American citizens, exercising their Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms, purchased more than 15 million 9mm handguns. Not for one moment did they consider their purchase irrational, especially in light of the rise in violent gun crime in Democrat-controlled cities.

Thirdly, anyone knowing anything about the human body can safely conclude that Biden’s so-called visit with a “trauma doctor” was conjured for political convenience.

White House Press Secretary Jean-Pierre was only partially successful in covering for her boss. When she was asked, “Would … Biden ever consider a … restriction on handguns here?,” she answered, “He does not support a ban on the sale of all handguns, to answer your question.”

As for the second canard uttered by the increasingly mentally deficient occupant of the Oval Office, she said nothing. But fact-checkers have called out Biden for repeating the third lie about the Second Amendment, earning him Four Pinocchios from the Washington Post and a False label from PolitiFact on three other occasions dating back to 2020. At the time the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution, there was no intention by the Founders to limit possession of any form of firearm.

Such infringements began in earnest with passage of the National Firearms Act of 1934, under the Democrat Roosevelt administration.

To repeat a lie when one knows it’s a lie is a form of mental illness. It’s called “pseudological fantastica” or “mythomania,” a lifelong behavior pattern of making up elaborate stories about oneself; an urge, wrote Dr. Dan Brennan at WebMD, “that [a person] can’t control.”

Oklahoma senatorial candidate Representative Markwayne Mullin said that Biden has “no idea of what he’s talking about,” adding that “the 9mm is the most popular self-defense round in America and the caliber of choice for his own Secret Service.”

Georgia Republican Representative Austin Scott said that Biden’s bizarre claims are “proof that Biden has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about,” while Representative Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) added, “It’s unfathomable that our commander-in-chief is this out of touch with the American people.”

National Media Ignore Mass Shooting Prevented by Armed Citizen

Saturday, 28 May 2022 12:47
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This article appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Saturday, May 28, 2022:  

With the mainstream media in thrall with covering recent mass shootings, they have ignored another one that never happened. The event was covered by MetroNews out of Charleston, West Virginia, on Thursday: “There was a shooting last night in Charleston after a man opened fire at a party at an apartment complex.”

The shooter, Dennis Butler, was stopped by local police for speeding through the apartment complex. He returned later with a semi-automatic rifle and began shooting indiscriminately at a crowd of people celebrating the graduation of a young person in the complex.

When two police officers arrived, they confronted Butler, who fired a shotgun at them, wounding them and taking them both out of action. A woman carrying concealed confronted Butler, who received fire from her and died at the scene.

Said Police Chief Tyke Hunt: “It looks like the person who fired upon Mr. Butler does not have any reason to prohibit [her] from carrying a firearm lawfully.” Chief of detectives Tony Hazelett added: “Instead of running from the threat, she engaged with the threat and saved several lives last night.”

The incident doesn’t fit the media narrative: That NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre is wrong when he declared in 2012 that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

But, according to numerous sources, incidents such as Charleston’s on Wednesday night happen millions of times every year.

According to the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, armed citizens use guns to defend themselves “at least 989,883 times” every year. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology published a study by scholars Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz that revealed that gun owners use their legally owned firearms to defend themselves an average of 1,884,348 times per year.

Another study, this one by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), estimated “annual defensive gun uses range from about 500,000 to more than 3 million.”

Almost never mentioned in any of the media or in those studies, however, is how often an armed citizen comes to the rescue of a law-enforcement officer who is neutralized in a confrontation with an armed suspect. For instance, in a residential area of Maple Falls, Washington, two sheriff’s deputies responded to a “shots fired” report on February 14. When they challenged the shooter, he shot both of them, knocking them to the ground. Two military veterans heard the commotion and the shots, put their children inside, and confronted the shooter. The shooter was arrested and charged with a felony, and his bail was set at $5 million.

Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo said: “We are extraordinarily blessed that [these] armed citizens came to the deputies’ assistance at the critical moments when they were most vulnerable.”

Last October, in Tonopah, Arizona, a suspect accused of critically wounding a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy was captured after a homeowner shot him.

Similar instances of armed citizens coming to the aid of law-enforcement officers are reported at length by John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center.

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.

Court Orders North Carolina Sheriff to Stop Delaying Gun Permits

Tuesday, 10 May 2022 14:06
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, May 10, 2022: 

Using the Covid pandemic and surging gun sales as an excuse, Mecklenburg, North Carolina, County Sheriff Garry McFadden delayed issuing gun purchase and concealed-carry permits for up to a year. On Monday, the judge for the Superior Court ordered him to stop delaying the issuance of those permits:

After considering the pleadings and other sworn testimony of the parties and after hearing the arguments of counsel, the Court finds as a fact the Sheriff and his office have not issued handgun permits in accordance with the time frames set forth in the applicable statutes.

 

As a result, the constitutional rights of the Plaintiffs to bear arms have been infringed and Plaintiffs are entitled to preliminary relief.

Those plaintiffs include Gun Owners of America (GOA) and Grass Roots North Carolina (GRNC), along with individuals whose rights were violated by the sheriff and his staff.

The judge added:

Furthermore, the Court concludes as a matter of law Plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the merits and are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief … it is therefore ordered that the Plaintiffs’ Motion is GRANTED.

The motion granted now requires the sheriff and his staff:

1.) to process pistol purchase permit applications within the 14 days required by North Carolina statute;

2.) to process concealed handgun permit applications within the 45 days required by statute;

3.) to request mental health records to process concealed handgun applications within 10 days as required by statute; and

4.) to process fingerprints for concealed handgun permits within 5 business days.

GRNC President Paul Valone celebrated the ruling:

In violation of North Carolina law, Sheriff Garry McFadden has been dragging his feet in processing North Carolina pistol purchase permits and concealed handgun permits, often taking up to a year to issue permits and preventing lawful North Carolinians from buying and carrying handguns for defense of themselves and their families.

 

We believe this order sends a clear message to sheriffs in Guilford, Mecklenburg and Wake counties, among others, that obstructing lawful citizens from exercising the right to keep and bear arms will no longer be tolerated.

 

To ensure compliance by a sheriff who has so far dragged his feet, Grass Roots North Carolina advises anyone whose fingerprints are not taken with five business days of completing a concealed handgun application to contact us immediately.

The ruling fails to address the issue of the infringement built into the statutory law that a citizen of North Carolina be required to get permission in the first place. A person ought to be free to decide whether to purchase, keep, bear, and carry a firearm depending on his own personal circumstances. Where does the Constitution allow or require fingerprinting, a mental-health check, or a “background” check, before a law-abiding citizen can exercise that right spelled out in the Second Amendment?

“This case,” wrote Cam Edwards at Bearing Arms, “is yet more proof that we the people shouldn’t have to obtain a state-issued permission slip before exercising a constitutionally-protected right in the first place.” He added:

Why should our rights be put on hold because our county sheriff is having staffing issues?

 

That’s one thing you never have to worry about with Constitutional Carry.

At present, more than two dozen states allow constitutional carry. Perhaps this ruling in North Carolina will galvanize the state legislature to pass such a measure, make Monday’s ruling obsolete, and take sheriffs of all North Carolina counties out of the picture altogether.

Poll: 54% Think Abortion Should Be Illegal

Thursday, 05 May 2022 13:38
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, May 5, 2022:  

The latest Fox News poll reflects a pro-life trend that has been growing for years. In a poll completed just before Politico announced the leak of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on Monday, Fox reported that a majority thinks abortion should be illegal “all (11%) or most of the time (43%).” Those who think abortion should be legal “is [at] a record low and it’s also the first time the portion saying ‘illegal’ has been above 50% on a Fox News poll.”

The trend favoring the pro-life position has been apparent for years. Back in 1998, Gallup asked, “Do you think abortions should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances?” At the time, 15 percent said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. Ten years later, that percentage was 18 percent, and since then it has moved higher, to nearly 20 percent.

According to the Pew Research Center’s latest polling results, 39 percent say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.

Last June, Gallup found that 52 percent of Americans take a pro-life position on abortion, wanting all (19 percent) or almost all (33 percent) abortions made illegal. That same poll found that only 32 percent of those polled think abortions should be legal up to the moment of birth.

A January 2021, a Marist poll found a majority of those polled were pro-life and oppose all or nearly all abortions. A poll conducted later that year by CBS News reported that 55 percent of Americans say abortion should either be more limited or should not be permitted at all.

A Morning Consult poll conducted last year found that a majority of those polled want abortions to be made illegal either in all cases or only legal in very rare cases such as rape or incest, or when the pregnancy directly affects the life of the mother. Those exceptions constitute less than two or three percent of all abortions, which means, as Steven Ertelt of Life News put it, “Most Americans support making virtually all abortions illegal.”

Another measure of growing opposition to abortion comes from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, which reported that since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, states have imposed more than 1,300 restrictions on the procedure, including more than 100 last year alone.

At least one of them — Texas SB 8, the “Heartbeat Law” — made headline news, especially as other states such as Oklahoma and Idaho passed nearly identical laws.

In commenting on the Texas law, former Texas congressman Dr. Ron Paul pointed out that

It is no coincidence that Roe v. Wade came at a time when respect for natural rights of life, liberty, and property, was on the decline.

 

Roe contributed to the decline….

The ultimate solution, Dr. Paul wrote, was to reverse the trend by recognizing that abortion is the taking of an innocent life:

The way to reverse these developments is to restore respect for the inalienable right to life, liberty, and property, of all human beings, both born and unborn.

 

The cause of life is inseparable from the cause of liberty.

It’s taken 50 years, but the trend, and the momentum, is unmistakable. The Supreme Court “leak” is now propelling forward the conversation that states and their citizens must have on the issue. And they’re increasingly moving back to the Declaration of Independence’s crystal-clear statement:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Oklahoma to be the First State to Ban All Abortions After Heartbeat

Friday, 29 April 2022 12:43
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, April 29, 2022:  

The moment Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signs two bills into law — expected today — Oklahoma will be the first state effectively to ban all abortions in the state from the moment a heartbeat is detected onward to birth. Sooner State legislators aren’t waiting for the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, expected in June, to act.

The state’s Senate passed the “Oklahoma Heartbeat Act” — Senate Bill 1503 — on Thursday, which prohibits abortions any time after a heartbeat can be detected, usually around six weeks into a pregnancy.

The Senate also passed House Bill 4327 (after reconciliation) on Thursday, allowing private citizens to file civil lawsuits against abortion providers or anyone assisting an abortion. That includes not only the individual performing or attempting to perform an abortion, but also anyone who knowingly “aids and abets” an abortion. That would include anyone paying for the abortion, providing information leading to an abortion, or providing transportation to or from an abortion facility — in other words, anyone who assists in abortion in any way could be sued. If convicted, that individual would pay a fine of at least $10,000 plus other penalties and legal fees.

This mirrors the “Texas Heartbeat Act” — SB8 — that has effectively all but shut down abortions in the Lone Star State.

When combined with previous legislation that Governor Stitt has already signed making performing an abortion a felony (with a $100,000 fine and 10 years in jail), Oklahoma can now boast the most protection for the unborn of any state in the union.

While the previous bill that the governor signed making performing an abortion a felony won’t become effective until later this summer, the two bills on his desk become effective immediately upon signing.

This will effectively shut down the traffic abortion clinics have enjoyed from Texans fleeing that state in order to kill their unborn legally. Before the Texas ban, about 40 women from that state traveled to Oklahoma for abortions. That number jumped to over 240 in October — a 600-percent increase.

Once the bills are signed into law, those deciding to kill their unborn child will have to travel to states that still don’t consider abortion as murder, such as Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, and Arkansas.

Abortion providers are suing to prevent implementation of the Oklahoma felony law and are threatening to sue over the two bills sitting on Stitt’s desk once he signs them. They can see what’s coming, as Nancy Northrup, president for the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, noted:

We are asking the state courts to uphold the State Constitution and apply Oklahoma precedent to block these insidious abortion bans before they take effect.

 

Oklahoma is a critical state for abortion access right now, with many Texans fleeing to Oklahoma for abortion care. These bans would further decimate abortion access across the South.

Abortion facilities in Oklahoma are already refusing to schedule abortions for next week in anticipation of Stitt’s signing those two bills into law shortly. Tony Lauinger, chairman of Oklahomans for Life, said that “we are hopeful that [these bills] will save the lives of more unborn children here in Oklahoma.”

Through these bills, Oklahomans are declaring that the sanctity of life must be protected. In a world where there are clearly efforts to destroy the foundations of the culture, it’s comforting to know that states such as Oklahoma — along withTexas, Idaho, and others — are defending those foundations.

New York’s Highest Court Rejects Democrats’ Redistricting Gerrymander

Thursday, 28 April 2022 15:22
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, April 28, 2022:  

The ruling on Wednesday by New York State’s highest court, its Court of Appeals, tossing the Democrats’ obvious and unconstitutional gerrymander of the state’s voting districts dashed the last chance Democrats had to overcome (or at least mitigate) the Republican Party’s momentum in the November elections. Democrats were counting on the blatant gerrymander of New York’s districts to offset Republican gains from redistricting in Republican states such as Kansas and Florida.

Democrats have a supermajority in both houses of the state’s legislature, and the Court of Appeals’ seven justices were all appointed by Democrats. What could go wrong?

New York has a tawdry history of political gerrymandering that is so offensive that the state’s constitution was amended in 2014 in an attempt to limit, if not eliminate, the ability to stack the deck in favor of the ruling party.

But the high court surprised and disappointed those counting on the gerrymander to give the Democratic Party at least a fighting chance to ward off the coming Republican tsunami in November. From the majority opinion:

During the first redistricting cycle to follow adoption of the 2014 amendments, the IRC [Independent Redistricting Commission] and the legislature failed to follow the procedure commanded by the State Constitution.

 

A stalemate within the IRC resulted in a breakdown in the mandatory process for submission of electoral maps to the legislature.

 

The legislature responded by creating and enacting maps in a nontransparent manner controlled exclusively by the dominant political party — doing exactly what they would have done had the 2014 constitutional reforms never been passed.

 

On these appeals, the primary questions before us are whether this failure to follow the prescribed constitutional procedure warrants invalidation of the legislature’s congressional and state senate maps and whether there is record support for the determination of both courts below that the district lines for congressional races were drawn with an unconstitutional partisan intent.

 

We answer both questions in the affirmative and therefore declare the congressional and senate maps void.

The left-leaning FiveThirtyEight political analysis website said the ruling “just cost Democrats their big redistricting advantage,” adding:

The decision was a huge blow to Democrats, who until recently looked like they had gained enough seats nationally in redistricting to almost eliminate the Republican bias in the House of Representatives….

 

That’s because much of Democrats’ national redistricting advantage rested on their gerrymander in New York.

Under the map created by the Democrat supermajorities and signed into law by New York’s Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul, Democrats were expected to win 22 of New York’s 26 House seats. It didn’t matter that this is way out of proportion with how New York State voters vote. It was designed to give Democrats three more seats in the House and cost the Republicans four seats – a swing of seven. Since the Democrat margin in the House is just five seats, Democrats were looking to New York’s gerrymander to keep the House under Democrat control.

In his revised analysis, Nathanial Rakich, writing for FiveThirtyEight, said:

Now, however, Republicans clearly have the advantage.… I estimate that redistricting currently positions Republicans for a net gain of around four or five House seats and Democrats for a net loss of about four.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has concluded that it’s all over for the Democrats in November:

The overturned New York Congressional map was widely viewed as an aggressive Democratic gerrymander that likely would cost Republicans 4 seats.

 

At the very least, a marginally fair map would likely return [the House] at least to GOP control. In the current political environment, a partisanly neutral map could give Republicans as many as ten of The Empire State’s 26 seats.

Dave Wasserman, who is affiliated with The Cook Political Report, thinks the ruling will have catastrophic consequences for Democrats in November. On Wednesday he Tweeted:

In a 4-3 ruling, NY’s top court has turned Dems’ 2022 House outlook from terrible to potentially horrific. A court-appointed special master will draw a remedial map, perhaps costing Dems three NY seats they otherwise would have gained & making R[epublican]s clear redistricting winners.

And all because, in New York State, there are Democrat judges who followed the Constitution. As New York Republican Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis said:

Today, New York State’s highest court confirmed the decision by two lower courts and the opinion of editorial boards, good government groups, academics, and voters across the state.

 

I am heartened to see that the judicial system worked and that the will of the people is being preserved.

Federal Judge Ends Challenge to Texas Heartbeat Law

Wednesday, 27 April 2022 13:57
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, April 27, 2022:  

In a terse statement, a federal appeals court has dismissed all lawsuits pending against Texas state officials and administrators who have challenged the state’s “heartbeat” law:

Having received the ruling of the Texas Supreme Court that named official defendants may not enforce the provisions of the Texas Heartbeat Act … this court REMANDS the case with instructions to dismiss all challenges to the private enforcement provisions of the statute and to consider whether plaintiffs have standing to challenge.

Put another way, the ruling dismisses all attempts by pro-abortion advocates and providers to overturn Texas’ “Heartbeat Act.” And it requires the lower court to consider whether those bringing those challenges even have legal standing to do so.

In short, this ends the matter: Texas’ “heartbeat” law stands, and will continue to save an estimated 100 babies from being murdered in their mothers’ wombs every day.

The Texas law prohibits Texas officials from enforcing the law but allows private citizens to do so. It empowers them to sue anyone suspected of aiding or abetting an abortion after a heartbeat is detected (usually after six weeks of pregnancy). That would include physicians and their assistants, those providing advice and counsel to a woman considering ending her pregnancy, and those providing transportation to and from the abortion clinic.

The penalties against those providers are tough and have, for all intents and purposes, ended the abortion holocaust in the Lone Star State.

More than 20 lawsuits have been filed since the law became effective last September, and 14 of them were filed against Texas Right to Life (TRL). Said TRL President Jonathan Saenz:

This final federal court decision for life leaves no doubt that the Texas Heartbeat Act is the law of the land in the Lone Star State. We are grateful to the federal courts for upholding this groundbreaking law and protecting pre-born babies.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott celebrated the ruling: “Another legal loss for those challenging SB8 — the pro-life law that is saving babies every day.” So did Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, tweeting:

Very proud of my team for bringing win after win for the unborn in Texas! The Texas Heartbeat Act is one of the greatest pro-life laws in the nation, and I’m glad to defend it. Tens of thousands of babies have been saved in Texas because of SB 8 and our victories in court!

One lawsuit — Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson — sought to exploit an opening the Supreme Court allowed back in December: that anti-life challengers could bring action against state licensing officials. That opening has now been firmly shut.

All eyes are now on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, heard by the Supreme Court in December with an expected ruling in June. Optimists are hoping the high court will overturn Roe v. Wade and return the issue of abortion to the states, where it rightfully belongs.

But they could be disappointed, as the Supreme Court is only considering “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”

For now, pro-life supporters are celebrating, as well as thousands of babies who have been saved from the holocaust since the Texas Heartbeat Act became effective last September.

In Blatant Political Move, Biden Administration Demotes Temporary Head of ATF

Friday, 22 April 2022 08:20
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, April 21, 2022:  

With Joe Biden’s poll numbers dropping out of sight and the obliteration of his first nominee to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), progressives were screaming for something good to happen.

The New York Times responded, sounding the death knell for the agency’s present temporary head of the agency, Marvin Richardson, back in January, and on Wednesday the White House confirmed his demotion from temporary director to deputy director.

The timing has everything to do with the November elections. Richardson, a 30-year veteran of the ATF, is due to retire next year. His relationship with the gun industry was professional and cordial. But in today’s toxic political environment, even being black couldn’t save Richardson.

From the Times:

In late January, Marvin G. Richardson, the acting director of the [ATF], told a gathering of weapons manufacturers that the rule banning online sales of [ghost gun parts] would not be completed until June….

 

This infuriated some Biden allies….

 

Progressives see Mr. Richardson’s low-key leadership … as part of the problem.

Richardson was just doing his job. The “ghost gun” initiative has generated the largest-ever response to any ATF anti-gun move: More than 250,000 comments were received in opposition to it during the “public comment” period required before the initiative could become active. Richardson was forced to dedicate 30 ATF employees to go through the comments before he could make the rule permanent.

Biden’s first nominee, David Chipman, went down in flames thanks to his odious anti-gun position. Biden’s second, Steve Dettelbach, is cut from the same cloth, and his Senate confirmation is increasingly unlikely.

So, in a signal to progressives, Biden and his handlers decided Richardson was expendable. In an exclusive, Stephen Gutowski, writing for the pro-Second Amendment blog The Reload, detailed what he learned from his contacts inside the agency:

The reshuffling was announced by Richardson on a conference call on Monday, which left many ATF officials surprised and dismayed….

 

“The news that he was being replaced came as a shock to most of us within the agency,” one ATF official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told The Reload.

Richardson was too friendly with the firearms industry, according to the Times. He had worked hard to maintain cordial relations with the industry for a very good reason: Many good tips on potential violators came from gun dealers. Said one of Gutowski’s sources:

A lot of the tips that we would get on illegal firearms activity from straw purchasers to traffickers came from dealers.

 

The reality is just a very, very small percentage of gun dealers are bad. So, those partnerships are important, and Marvin really did a good job at nurturing those relationships….

 

The fact that he has those relationships may not have sat well with the current administration. And I’m sure that that might’ve helped them push him out.

Indeed, the Biden administration is intending to weaponize the ATF against those very gun dealers, hoping to put many of them out of business for even the most minor infractions of the agency’s rules.

As far back as October 2020, Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the firearms trade association National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), saw what was coming in the event Biden somehow won the White House:

The Biden-Harris ticket will weaponize the ATF against retailers to close them down for even minor errors in inspections….

 

Kamala Harris … has vowed to turn the ATF from an agency which assists family-owned retail businesses to stay within the overwhelming labyrinth of federal and state laws and regulations to one that carries a heavy hammer and will shutter federally licensed retailers for minor administrative errors.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced that the U.S. attorney for the district of Arizona, Gary Restaino, will take Richardson’s place until such time as a permanent director is confirmed.

The move could be costly politically. As Ed Morrissey noted in Hot Air:

Put the optics of demoting one of the few black agency heads there are in the Biden administration, and it’s a recipe for embarrassment and chaos, if not disaster.

Kentucky Legislature Overrides Governor’s Veto of Pro-life Bill

Monday, 18 April 2022 15:03
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 18, 2022:  

Five days after Kentucky’s Democrat Governor Andy Beshear vetoed the most protective pro-life bill in the country, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature overturned it. The state’s house voted 76-21 on Wednesday and the state’s senate followed later the same day, voting 31-6, to quash his veto.

The override allowed the law to become effective immediately, with Reuters declaring that it “makes Kentucky the first U.S. state without legal abortion access since the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade established [a mother’s] right to end a pregnancy.”

The law models the Mississippi abortion law that is pending before the Supreme Court — Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The high court will rule on “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional” with its decision due in June.

Many are expecting the high court to restrict the right to abortion, and a number of states, including Kentucky, are enacting laws to reflect the high court’s anticipated ruling. Dobbs is an opportunity for the Supreme Court to reverse its 1973 decision and allow the states to make their own decisions, as the Constitution allows (see the Ninth and 10th Amendments).

Kentucky’s law is unique, however, in that it demands accountability among abortion providers in the state that simply cannot be met, and so, for all intents and purposes, abortion is dead in Kentucky.

In his veto message, Kentucky Governor Beshear complained that the bill contains no exceptions or exclusions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest and that it makes certain demands of the state to implement, among other things, an electronic database for all abortions, but without providing the funding for it. He also expressed his opinion that “House Bill 3 is likely unconstitutional.”

Both Planned Parenthood and the ACLU have filed suits against the law. ACLU Communications Director Samuel Crankshaw said the law “inserts politics into medicine, aggressively sidelines science in healthcare, and threatens the wellbeing of Kentuckians.” He didn’t mention the death sentences being rendered on the unborn by mothers with “unwanted pregnancies” and the abortion providers assisting them.

The new law requires that a pregnant woman must be examined in person by a doctor before being given abortion pills (it is estimated that half of all abortions in Kentucky are caused by those “kill pills”). It also requires physicians performing abortions to maintain hospital admitting privileges close to where the abortion is to be performed.

Without funding, the bill’s requirement that the state’s Board of Pharmacy certify providers writing prescriptions for those pills can’t be implemented. Furthermore, the law requires the state’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services to create three new full-time positions (along with the new database), and establish public reporting requirements. But there’s no funding in the law for these either.

Kentucky is the latest state to enact pro-life bills in anticipation of a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court. The Texas “heartbeat” law was followed by similar bans in Mississippi, Arizona, South Dakota, Idaho, Florida, and Oklahoma.

The veto power granted in the states’ constitutions, as part of the “separation of powers” doctrine unique to the American Republic, has just operated to save the lives of unborn babies in Kentucky. May other legislatures facing governors who are attempting to thwart the will of the people through the veto power have similar success.

Georgia 25th State to Pass Constitutional Carry

Wednesday, 13 April 2022 16:09
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, April 13, 2022:  

When Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed into law Senate Bill 319 — aka the Georgia Constitutional Carry Act — on Tuesday, he said:

SB 319 makes sure that law-abiding Georgians … can protect themselves without having [to obtain] the permission of the state government.

 

The Constitution of the United States gives us that right, not the government….

 

People don’t have to carry if they don’t want to. But this is a constitutional authority that people have, and they certainly shouldn’t have [to get] a piece of paper from the government to be able to legally carry a firearm.

Kemp also signed into law Senate Bill 218 ensuring that citizens from other states who already have their concealed-carry licenses will also enjoy the same right in Georgia.

The law is effective immediately, and will save gun owners the $75 license fee and the ignominy of having to undergo a mental-health check as well as a background check. This has another advantage: No background check means no entry into the recently revealed national gun registry that the ATF has been keeping under wraps for years.

Georgia’s anti-gun politicians tried to block the bill by using old, outdated, and weak arguments. Democrat State Representative Kimberly Alexander intoned, “This legislation will … allow individuals with a criminal history who purchase a gun through a private sale to legally carry a hidden, loaded weapon in our communities.”

Alexander is correct: once an individual has paid his or her debt to society, their Second Amendment-protected right is restored. She is incorrect by intimating that they will cause an increase in gun violence upon their release, for at least two reasons: They may have reformed their behavior while incarcerated, and the new law would no doubt dampen any enthusiasm they have to return to their old ways simply because their search for a “soft target” — an unarmed citizen — is now going to be much more difficult.

Another anti-gun Democrat, State Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, ranted:

The governor is signing away lives [with] this bill. It is a sad day in Georgia when we have to watch legislation enacted that we know will cause harm, as this will….

 

He wants more guns on the streets, and the shameful outcome of that is more gun violence.

Both complaints are without merit, and John Lott’s research has proved it. The founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, Lott noted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Several dozen peer-reviewed academic studies show there’s no evidence of any uptick in gun crimes linked to concealed carry laws, and most show violent crime declines.

 

Research also shows that murder rates fall even more when states move to Constitutional Carry laws.

When Lowndes County, Georgia, Sheriff Ashley Paulk was asked about the impact SB 319 might have in his county, he responded:

I don’t expect that [it] will have a big impact around here. The criminals don’t care — they’re going to get their weapons anyway — and a law-abiding citizen with a weapon won’t make trouble.

Lott agrees: Firearms violations among police officers are extremely low, as would be expected. But among those “law-abiding citizens” who now are free to carry without first being forced to get permission, firearms violations are one-seventh — 2.4 per 100,000 versus 16.5 per 100,000 — that of the police.

The real change will be in the behavior of criminals already on the streets seeking soft targets. They are now facing an existential question in their line of work: Is my target armed, or should I find another less-risky means of gain?

With half the states in the union allowing their citizens the freedom to exercise their rights under the Second Amendment, just how long will it take for the others to grant the same freedoms to their citizens?

At the moment, Florida and Nebraska are on the verge of passing similar laws, with South Carolina right behind. This is allowing the Second Amendment to occupy the place the Founders of the Republic intended: the anchor securing the others in the Bill of Rights.

Biden to Take Another Shot at Nominating an Anti-gunner to ATF

Thursday, 07 April 2022 13:40
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, April 7, 2022:  

The last time Joe Biden nominated a left-wing anti-gun ideologue to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the nominee’s virulent anti-gun position sank his nomination into oblivion.

According to Politico’s inside sources, Biden’s going to try again: same ideology, different name. Politico said that, according to “multiple people” inside the White House, including “one official within the Senate Democratic Caucus,” Biden will officially nominate Steve Dettelbach. He served as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio during the Obama administration from 2009 to 2016.

Dettelbach has the right (i.e., left) credentials: Graduating from Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, he was nominated by then-President Obama in 2009 to his U.S. attorney position. This no doubt was a payoff for his work in Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, for which he provided legal assistance and advice. Following Obama’s election, Dettelbach served as a legal advisor to his transition team.

He was a candidate for the office of Ohio’s attorney general in 2018 and lost, but in the process revealed where he stands on issues relating to private gun ownership: No one should own an “assault-style” rifle, and everyone buying a firearm anywhere from anybody at any time needs to undergo a background check first. That background check would then be added to the recently revealed secret registry that the ATF has been keeping, now totaling nearly one billion records.

If confirmed, Dettelbach would go along with the Biden administration’s stated determination to weaponize the ATF against private gun owners and dealers, especially gun dealers.

Given the labyrinthine minefield of current regulations under which gun dealers operate, there would be no forgiveness even for minor errors, mistakes, or infractions. Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the firearms trade association National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), warned in October 2020:

The Biden-Harris ticket will weaponize the ATF against retailers to close them down for even minor clerical errors in inspections.

 

This is a promise Senator Kamala Harris made from the campaign stage.

 

She has vowed to turn the ATF from an agency which assists family-owned firearm retail businesses to stay within the overwhelming labyrinth of federal and state laws and regulations to one that carries a heavy hammer and will shutter federally licensed retailers for minor administrative errors.

When Biden’s first nominee to head the ATF, David Chipman, went down to defeat, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) tweeted: “His defeat is a win for the Constitution — and a crushing flow for Joe Biden.”

Dudley Brown, founder and president of the National Association of Gun Rights (NAGR), was pleased to learn that the White House had dropped Chipman down its memory hole:

Chipman … could not garner enough support in the U.S. Senate to make it through the confirmation process.

 

David Chipman’s nomination to lead the ATF was a slap in the face to gun owners across the country. Now, thanks to pro-gun grassroots, we’ve put Chipman back where he belongs: at home.

But, warned Brown:

We know … Biden will prop up another anti-gun pawn in the near future.… We [must] stand ready to oppose their unconstitutional actions.

Brown and his nearly five million members, along with Gun Owners of America, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and other Second Amendment supporters, will once again need to push back against Biden’s second effort to weaponize the ATF with another anti-gun radical.

Biden is expected to make the official announcement during National Police Week, May 11-17.

Indiana the 24th Constitutional-carry State. Three More States Right Behind

Monday, 04 April 2022 12:30
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 4, 2022:  

Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb signed into law on March 21 his state’s permitless carry bill that had passed both the state’s House and Senate overwhelmingly.

That makes 24. And the third state so far this year.

On March 10, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a similar bill into law. This was followed by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who signed a constitutional-carry bill into law on March 14.

Georgia is next, as a similar bill passed both state houses last Friday and will arrive shortly on Governor Brian Kemp’s desk for signing.

Said Kemp earlier, “The Constitution should be our carry permit, and I look forward to signing a Constitutional Carry measure this year to enshrine hardworking Georgians’ ability to protect themselves and their families in Georgia law.”

National Rifle Association (NRA) Chairman Wayne LaPierre told Fox News:

The success of the carry movement in America cannot be denied at this point. When Gov. Brian Kemp signs this landmark legislation, half of America will protect the right to carry as an inherent and inalienable right.

Two more states — Florida and Nebraska — are on the brink of passing laws protecting their citizens’ right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment, without first having to get permission to do so.

South Carolina is right behind, with conservative, pro-constitutional Republican majorities in both state houses. Constitutional-carry bills failed to pass last year, but pressure is building on Governor Henry McMaster to urge the legislature to bring such a bill to his desk for signing.

Tennessee already has a “partial” constitutional carry law in place, but it only applies to handguns, and legislators in the Volunteer State are itching to amend it to include long guns. What’s in place, according to John Harris, executive director of the Tennessee Firearms Association, is “not real constitutional carry,” and his group is lobbying to expand the present law.

It should be noted that not a single state has repealed a constitutional-carry law, nor has there been a single move in any state to consider such a move.

It should also be noted that arguments against such laws consist primarily of worries that more firearms will mean more gun violence. But that has simply not been the case. According to the Crime Research Prevention Center (CRPC), firearms violations by police officers are very low — about 16.5 for every 100,000 police officers. For citizens who already have a permit, the rate is even lower: 2.4 per 100,000.

Further research by the CRPC reveals that gun violence drops as private gun ownership increases. As John Lott, founder of the CRPC, noted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Several dozen peer-reviewed academic studies show there’s no evidence of any uptick in gun crimes linked to concealed carry laws, and most show violent crime declines.

 

Research also shows that murder rates fall even more when states move to Constitutional Carry laws.

That makes sense, as the people who benefit the most from carrying a firearm are the most likely to be victims: They are “overwhelmingly,” wrote Lott, “poor Blacks who live in high-crime urban areas.”

As states increasingly remove infringements from the right to keep and bear arms, it becomes increasingly difficult for tyrants to turn the American Republic into a dictatorship. To succeed, they must first disarm every private owner of his firearms. At present, the momentum is heading in the other direction.

The Second Amendment was never about duck hunting. It was always about keeping the government in check.

A quote from Adolf Hitler bears repeating:

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.

 

History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.

War in Ukraine Reminds Americans of Need for Second Amendment

Thursday, 31 March 2022 14:50
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, March 31, 2022:  

The day before the Russian invasion, Ukrainian citizens suffered under some of the most severe gun-ownership restrictions in the world: One had to be 21 to buy a shotgun and 25 to own a rifle. Handgun ownership was banned altogether.

A background check was required, along with a mental exam, the payment of a fee, taking a gun-safety class, and owning a government-certified gun safe for storage.

The process was designed to impede approval, which often took months and usually resulted in permission being denied.

That same day — February 23, 2022 — the Ukrainian parliament passed a law allowing Ukrainians to buy all the firearms they wanted. President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted:

We will give weapons to anyone who wants to defend the country. Be ready to support Ukraine in the squares of our cities.

It has been reported that between 10,000 and 25,000 fully automatic rifles were snapped up by Ukrainians that same day.

As English writer Samuel Johnson once famously said, “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” 

 

From the NRA’s institute for Legislative Action:

Anti-gun commentators — Joe Biden among them — often mock the idea that an armed populace poses any obstacle to a modern military force. But some are now singing a different tune, now that ordinary Ukrainians are taking up arms in response to [the] Russian invasion.

From the Firearms Policy Coalition:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unequivocally reinforces the importance of the right to keep and bear arms beyond defense against single attackers and reminds Americans that the Second Amendment is as relevant today as ever.

From Bearing Arms:

Better late than never. This is a “break glass in case of emergency” moment, which is why the country’s parliament is … willing to reverse decades of restrictions and allow citizens the ability to carry firearms.

From Gun Owners of America:

Severe gun control policies infringed on the right of Ukrainian citizens to keep and bear arms until the very moment a nuclear world superpower launched its ground invasion.

 

Now it’s up to the government to pass out as many fully automatic weapons as it can … [so] that civilians might successfully repel a Russian invasion.

From Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

While we’ve seen reports that the Ukraine Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) has voted to ease restrictions allowing civilians to carry arms outside their homes, in our country this has been the constitutional law of the land since our nation was founded.

 

The right of the people to keep and bear arms has protected this country since the beginning, and what is happening right now in Ukraine should be a lesson to all of those who push for citizen disarmament and a ban on private gun ownership how perilous that would be….

 

Our Second Amendment was enshrined in the Bill of Rights by men who had just fought a war for independence. They returned to their homes from battlefields, not from some deer hunting camp.

The right to keep and bear arms has never been about shooting ducks, but about protecting our right as citizens of the greatest nation on earth to defend our homes and families immediately against the kind of international outrage now unfolding in eastern Europe.

 

From John Lott, founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center:

A lot of these countries have laws left over from the Communist era when gun ownership was basically banned. In the Ukraine, less than 2 percent legally owned a gun until the invasion. Then 18,000 fully automatic rifles were handed out in one day.

Even the far-left media outlet Occupy Democrats reversed itself. It tweeted:

Ukraine’s Interior Minister announces that 10,000 automatic rifles have been handed out to the civilians of Kyiv as they prepare to fight tooth and nail to defend their homes against Putin’s invasions. RT (retweet) if you stand with the brave Ukrainian People!

Putin failed to learn a valuable lesson from another tyrant bent on enslaving people: Adolf Hitler. On the same that day France surrendered to his Nazi blitzkrieg, June 25, 1940, he ordered his generals to draw up a plan to invade and subjugate Switzerland. The plan, called Operation Tannenbaum, which called for 11 German divisions and 15 more Italian divisions — between 300,000 and 500,000 troops — was drawn up but never implemented. As Michael Peck, writing for The National Interest, explained why:

The Axis would have faced formidable opposition. As with Sweden, Swiss neutrality was an armed neutrality.… All Swiss men were liable for conscription, and all were issued with rifles that they kept at home in case of mobilization.

 

For a nation of just four million people, the Swiss could have mustered an army as large as 850,000 strong. Largely mountainous Switzerland, where German tanks would have been useless, would have been a tough nut for blitzkrieg to crack.

States Preparing for a “Post-Roe,” “Pro-life” America

Friday, 25 March 2022 13:26
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, March 25, 2022:  

Numerous states are preparing for an America where the contentious issue of abortion is properly and constitutionally returned to the states to resolve. Even the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute (named after the former president of Planned Parenthood with which it was once affiliated) is lamenting the expected outcome of the case before the Supreme Court: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

A favorable ruling in Dobbs would not only uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion law, but would also likely overturn the court’s finding in Roe v. Wade that a mother somehow has a constitutional right to murder her child while in her womb.

Guttmacher laments:

In 2021, state legislatures set an alarming record of 108 abortion restrictions enacted in 19 states. With the fate of Roe v. Wade hanging in the balance at the U.S. Supreme Court, 2022 is shaping up to be even more devastating for abortion rights….

 

Already, a number of state bills have grabbed headlines for proposing outrageous and shocking abortion restrictions … [and] other restrictions and bans … are moving quickly through some state legislatures.

At least 12 states have already enacted so-called trigger bans that would instantly prohibit abortion if the high court does in fact overturn Roe and/or returns the issue to the states to resolve.

Lawmakers in Arizona, Florida, and West Virginia have adopted, or are about to adopt, laws similar to Mississippi’s. Idaho has adopted one similar to Texas’s “heartbeat” law. Four states — Tennessee, Alabama, and West Virginia — have gone further by amending the state constitutions, declaring that there is “no right to abortion.”

Two other states — Kentucky and Kansas — have constitutional amendments pending voter approval later this year. Iowa will vote on a “no right to an abortion” ballot measure in 2024.

Kansas is a rare situation. The state’s supreme court has ruled — as has the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade — that somehow, buried in the Kansas state constitution, there is a right of a mother to murder her unborn child. That has made the Sunflower State a “destination state” for the abortion industry frustrated over abortion restrictions imposed in other states.

So, even if the Supreme Court overturns Roe and returns the issue to the states, the Kansas state supreme court would still allow the murder of the unborn to continue.

The reasoning of the Kansas state supreme court follows that of the high court:

Section 1 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights provides: “All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

 

We are now asked: Is this declaration of rights more than an idealized aspiration? And, if so, do the substantive rights include a woman’s right to make decisions about her body, including the decision whether to continue her pregnancy?

 

We answer these questions, “Yes.”

Here’s how the Kansas high court came to that conclusion:

Included [in Section 1] is the right of personal autonomy, which includes the ability to control one’s own body, to assert bodily integrity, and to exercise self-determination.

 

This right allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life — decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy. Although not absolute, this right is fundamental.

 

Accordingly, the State is prohibited from restricting this right….

This is how a court creates law from the bench — by ignoring the right of the fetus to enjoy the same rights as a post-partum baby. The court ignores the fact that the fetus is a human. Instead, it’s a blob that somehow only gains those rights by being born. Pre-born, it may be discarded.

What’s encouraging in the Kansas case is the grassroots effort to pass an amendment overturning the state high court’s dictum. Said Kansans for Life director Danielle Underwood, “Kansas is in a unique position regardless of what happens at the federal level.” So she, along with the Kansas Catholic Conference and Kansas Family Voice, are mounting an effort to inform Kansans on the issue. And that includes more than 1,000 churches:

We’re mobilizing the largest grassroots effort in Kansas history. We are working through over 1,000 churches in the state and making sure we get the word out to Kansans about what is at stake….

 

Now it is up to the people of Kansas to make sure we do our part to ensure Kansas does not remain a destination state for abortions.

 

This is “all hands on deck.”

Of all institutions that should be supporting the right to life, churches should be leading the way. After all, the Sixth Commandment declares, “You shall not murder.” (Exodus 20:13).

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