[guest post by Dana]

[Ed. Pressed for time, so it’s a quick post.]

An armed man who said he wanted to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh was arrested near Kavanaugh’s home this morning:

Police arrested a man early Wednesday morning close to the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, with an unsealed arrest affidavit indicating that the man told officials he wanted to kill the justice.

The suspect, identified by officials as California resident Nicholas John Roske, was arrested at 1:50 a.m. on Wednesday morning, a Supreme Court spokesperson said in a statement. Montgomery County police said that the case has been transferred to the FBI.

…

The arrest affidavit said that the man, who was allegedly holding a briefcase and backpack and was wearing black clothing, had been dropped off by a taxicab in front of Kavanaugh’s home earlier that morning, later walking away from his residence after seeing two Deputy U.S. Marshalls.

…

Officials found a slew of items from Roske’s backpack and suitcase, including a Glock 17 pistol with two magazines and ammunition, zip ties, a crow bar and pepper spray, among others.

From the affadavit, Roske said “that he was upset about the leak of a recent Supreme Court draft decision regarding the right to abortion as well as the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Roske indicated he believed the Justice that he intended to kill would side with Second Amendment decisions that would loosen gun control laws”…

NEW: Here's the federal affidavit against the man accused of trying to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Nicholas Roske allegedly flew from CA to DC. He took a taxi to Kavanaugh's Chevy Chase, Md. home.

Roske was found with a pistol, pepper spray, hammer, screwdriver, crow bar, etc pic.twitter.com/XJd5ZMWwrn

— Kevin Lewis (@KevinLewis7News) June 8, 2022

President Biden condemned the actions of the suspect:

White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News Wednesday that “President Biden condemns the actions of this individual in the strongest terms, and is grateful to law enforcement for quickly taking him into custody.”

“As the President has consistently made clear, public officials—including judges—must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety or that of their families,” Bates said. “And any violence, threats of violence, or attempts to intimidate justices have no place in our society.”

Bates stressed that the president has “said that himself, and his spokespeople have been forceful about this from the podium.”

Mitch McConnell weighed in, and pointed the finger at House Democrats for blocking the unanimously voted-for Senate bill (May 9) which would provide funding security for Supreme Court justices and their families. (Note that the White House did not mention the SC security bill in this morning’s comments…):

This morning’s disturbing reports are exactly why the Senate unanimously passed a Supreme Court security bill weeks ago. But House Democrats have inexplicably blocked it. House Democrats need to stop their blockade and pass this uncontroversial bill today. pic.twitter.com/wd8UB5RDvm

— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) June 8, 2022

This:

On May 20, Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said he was very concerned the House hadn’t yet voted on the bill. House Democrats have claimed they have not moved the legislation because they want to add funding for Supreme Court clerks and staff, but the notion that it would take more than a month to make such a minor change to the bill is preposterous.

Note that:

The threat at Kavanaugh’s home comes one day after the Department of Homeland Security rebuffed a “heightened” terrorism advisory ahead of the Supreme Court’s expected reversal of the nation’s landmark abortion rights ruling.

I don’t see any reason for the delay in passing the current court funding bill. Nancy Pelosi should explain, in light of the volatile protests at Justices’ homes last month, why it continues to be delayed. Thus far, I can find no new comments from her regarding either the bill or today’s events at Kavanaugh’s home.

Also, I am seeing on Twitter that a great many people are demanding to know: If the SC Justices get a bill passed to specifically provide protection from deranged people with guns, why isn’t the safety of America’s schoolchildren an equal priority (with regard to bills being passed to protect them from deranged people with guns) as well?

UPDATE:

NOW – Protesters gather outside Justice Kavanaugh's home.pic.twitter.com/DR5vlbblKV

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) June 8, 2022

And I’m just going to leave this reminder here:

Meanwhile, people are protesting outside the homes of Justices Kavanaugh and Roberts in an effort to influence their votes, which is illegal under a statute that is likely constitutional.

–Dana

[guest post by JVW]

It turns out that this report dates back to February, but the always invaluable CalMatters blog neatly illustrates the reason that I am so antagonistic towards progressive government, especially here in the Golden State:

A new California program to financially reward college students for volunteering has drawn national attention — but less than half of its budgeted money is going to actual student aid.

The California Volunteers College Corps program, backed by $159 million in mostly state money, promises to award up to $10,000 to 6,668 low-income students who volunteer in K-12 education, on climate action or to reduce food insecurity.

That only works out to $66.7 million for students, though. So where is the other $92 million going?

Mostly it’s going to hiring and administrative costs despite no guarantee the program will continue past 2024. Some experts think that money split makes sense because students could benefit from training and there’s a chance the program would get additional funding in the future. Other experts think the money should go directly to students, so fewer of them will have to work on top of their other responsibilities.

Try to find me an instance where Democrats propose a new government-sponsored initiative designed to help the working poor, or minorities, or homeless, or the middle class, or children, or any other favored constituency which doesn’t include creating hundreds if not thousands of make-work jobs for government bureaucrats, the most favored Democrat constituency of them all. Rather than reallocating funding and reassigning paper-pushers from existing programs which haven’t proven to work as intended, California Democrats (and national Democrats for that matter) invariably jack up the overall funding alongside of the headcount as they chase new dragons to slay.

The CalMatters piece goes on to quote two progressive Democrats, one a professor at UC Berkeley who thinks that the high overhead for this program serves an important purpose and is thus appropriate and the other a former Obama Administration official who believes that it would have been better to give a much larger chunk of the fully appropriated sum directly to the students. The reporter then turns to the California Community College Chancellor who — surprise! surprise! — thinks the high administrative costs are totally justified and a USC professor who has some concerns but overall is supportive of the plan. This being California, the reporter couldn’t rouse himself to get the opinion of any Republicans or small-government types, even though CalMatters is generally pretty balanced in the presentation of this sort of material.

Anyway, more intellectual ammunition for my argument that governments exist to waste money by first and foremost feather-nesting their own domains. Living here is to know what it feels like to forever be the mark.

– JVW