Patterico's Pontifications

9/8/2023

Weekend Open Thread

Filed under: General — Dana @ 8:58 am



[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

Elon Musk confirmed the story:

Elon Musk on Thursday acknowledged turning off internet access from his Starlink satellites during a Ukrainian raid last year on a Russian naval fleet, saying he did so to prevent SpaceX from being “complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

Musk responded on his social media platform X to new details from an upcoming book that indicated he ordered his engineers to shut off communications network before the attack off the Crimean coast.

“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” Musk wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.

“The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” Musk wrote.

An excerpt about the raid from American author and journalist Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography on Musk, titled “Elon Musk,” was published by CNN.

What might have been:

What if the strike had ended the war, or what if the strikes had prevented missiles being launched at Ukrainian cites. There are children who might be alive.

A reminder why Ukraine continues to fight, among other things:

1. Often people are not allowed to leave their villages. Supplies (incl. food supplies) are often cut
2. Russia doesn’t bring Russian law, but brings lawlessness. People lose their rights – even those who sympathize with Russia. Your house can be taken by someone else; your car can be confiscated; you can be abducted, nobody would investigate.
3. Lots of people who are missing. We don’t know whether they are alive or not. Family members of these people are often forced to keep silent, violence will be applied to them as well.
4. If you live for months without food supplies (shops are closed, you cannot leave your village), you can only rely on your land, domestic animals and what you have in your personal food savings. Ukrainian peasants usually have a lot – at least they can survive
5. Some patterns – like not letting people leave their villages for months – remind of Holodomor, the Stalin’s artificial famine in 1932-1933. Clearly these practices “live” in the minds and practices of the Russian soldiers and commanders
6. Tortures are applied widely. Esp. tortures with electric current. The Russian torturers call it “a call to putin”. So they themselves acknowledge that the acts of cruelty should bear putin’s name

Second news item

Audition time! Gov. Kristi Noem will be sharing a stage with Trump and is expected to endorse him as well:

It’s billed as a fundraiser for the South Dakota GOP, but a Friday rally with former President Donald Trump and the deep red state’s conservative two-term Gov. Kristi Noem could signal much more.

Trump, the commanding front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is headlining the sold-out political gathering in Rapid City, South Dakota.

No comment from Marge or Kari on this latest development…

Third news item

Ouch!:

Two-thirds of Democrat-leaning voters say the party should not nominate President Biden for a second term, according to a new CNN poll released Thursday…Unfavorable opinions of Biden are rising among his own party, as its voters hesitate about the 80-year-old’s age and ability to handle another term in office.

Zoom in: When Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent voters were asked who the party should nominate as its 2024 presidential candidate, only 33% chose Biden, according to the poll conducted by SSRS.

67% said they wanted a different candidate as the party’s nominee. Yes, but: When those respondents were asked who the party’s 2024 nominee should be, no other person polled above 3%.

The overwhelming majority of Democrat-leaning voters who said they were against a 2nd term for Biden — 82% — said they want “just someone besides Joe Biden.”

The biggest concern is President Biden’s age and how it might impact his mental competency.

Fourth news item

What an awful price to pay for doing one’s civic duty:

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asked a judge…to take steps to protect jurors who indicted former President Trump and over a dozen of his allies for their alleged attempts to flip Georgia’s election results in 2020.

…Willis said at least 23 jurors in the case have had their personal information — including their names, ages, addresses and vehicle details —posted anonymously on “conspiracy theory websites” hosted by a Russian company as part of an effort to “harass and intimidate them.”

Willis asked the court to protect jurors by restricting their appearance throughout the case and access to their identities…the state fears that Trump and his allies’ right to a fair trial will be violated if their identities became widely known to the public, though she acknowledged that the case has received international attention and that the upcoming trial will likely be “highly-publicized.”

Fifth news item

Today’s NYC: We’re a sanctuary city…at least until migrants land on our doorstep:

As asylum seekers and their families continue to arrive at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, recent comments from New York City Mayor Eric Adams are drawing reactions.

During a community meeting on the Upper West Side this week, Mayor Adams said that the ongoing migrant crisis “will destroy NYC.”

“Never in my life have I had a problem that I didn’t see an ending to, I don’t see an ending to this,” Adams said. “This issue will destroy New York City.”

Sixth news item

Ah, well okay then:

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris dismissed questions about President Joe Biden’s age on Friday, telling a television interviewer she is prepared to be commander in chief, but that it won’t be necessary.

“Joe Biden is going to be just fine,” Harris said, when asked about concerns that Biden is too old to run again.

Seventh news item

Well, why weren’t they charged?:

A Georgia grand jury recommended criminal charges against three Republican U.S. senators and other allies of Donald Trump as part of its investigation into efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 presidential defeat, according to a report released on Friday.

None were ultimately charged when Georgia prosecutors filed a sweeping criminal case against Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators.

The special grand jury recommended charging Georgia’s two senators at the time, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, as well as Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the report showed.

Eighth news item

Landing in unfamiliar territory:

Flamingos have been spotted as far north in the US as Ohio and Pennsylvania in recent days, after they were blown off course by the powerful Hurricane Idalia that hit Florida late last month, experts say.

The distinctive birds have been reported in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, also in Texas and further north from their typical habitats, in Kentucky and even Ohio…They were also seen in Franklin county in southern Pennsylvania on Thursday, NPR reported.

Interesting tidbit:

American flamingos are typically found in the Caribbean or the northern coast of south America, according to the Smithsonian National Zoo. Native to Florida, they were nearly hunted out of existence in the late 19th century because their feathers were prized for women’s hats, NPR reported in 2018.

Have a great weekend.

–Dana

466 Responses to “Weekend Open Thread”

  1. Good morning!

    Dana (4020dd)

  2. The overwhelming majority of Democrat-leaning voters who said they were against a 2nd term for Biden — 82% — said they want “just someone besides Joe Biden.”

    That is quite a chunk out of his 81,283,501 fanbase.

    66,652,470.82 want someone else? Talk about buyers’ remorse. You would think the streets would be full of those disgruntled voters. Shouldn’t be to difficult to get 100 people in front of some administration building somewhere with a couple of signs and maybe a bullhorn.

    Where are they? Maybe twitter..

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  3. I think that this kind of mess will happen until NONE OF THE ABOVE is on the ballot.

    Heck, we might find out that some politicians aren’t even necessary.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  4. What would happen in the real world if Microsoft and Apple had been producing terrible OS’s for the last decade? The only thing that is keeping these two parties afloat is the fallacy of sunk costs.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  5. Well, why weren’t they charged?

    As a guess, it was because they did not have the evidence they needed for trial.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  6. The really amazing thing about all these “NYC stressed by unconscionable transportation of defenseless migrants from red states” stories is that those transported are a tiny fraction of the influx that those border red states were expected to deal with on their own.

    This is a classic case of “making my problem their problem” in order to get some response from the powers that be.

    I note that Governor Newsom is sending National Guard troops to the border.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  7. Heck, we might find out that some politicians aren’t even necessary.

    If we could only vote directly for bureaucrats, or at least on their budgets.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  8. As for NYC, the city was built by the influx of Italians, Irish and Jews that came over in the 19th and early 20th century — well before there were limits on numbers of immigrants. The factors that limited immigration were the difficulty of travel and the lack of assistance for those immigrating.

    Now we have (ineffectual) limits on immigration, much cheaper travel and ever-increasing “assistance” from municipal co-dependants.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  9. Biden’s solution seems to be a modification of the asylum release program, requiring those released to remain in their state of entry. This will be called “compassionate” by people in far-distant sanctuary cities.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  10. #5 Indicting Loeffler and Perdue would have been silly. They made some “stolen election” noises so that they could secure Trump’s endorsement, but did not get roped into the whole phony elector scheme. It would have been like indicting Gov. Kemp, who also was skeptical about the Georgia results early on.

    It’s fortunate that this document was kept under wraps — it would have made the grand jury look silly and made it more difficult to persue any charges against Trump and his comrades.

    Appalled (03f53c)

  11. Third news Item:

    Apparently it won’t be Gavin Newsom:

    ……….
    “We need to move past this notion that he’s not going to run,” Newsom told NBC “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd in an interview clip released Friday. “President Biden is going to run and I’m looking forward to him getting reelected.”

    Newsom’s comments further end speculation about a potential 2024 White House bid. The California governor has long said he won’t challenge Biden for the 2024 Democratic nomination but has been talked about as a potential future presidential candidate.
    ………..
    When asked if he would consider a run against Harris, Newsom said, “Of course not. By definition. Won’t happen.”
    ………..

    As I’ve said before (without any supporting evidence), the only way Newsom becomes the Democratic nominee is if for some reason (health, impeachment, death) Biden drops out after the primaries but before the convention. And if delegates become deeply divided over Kamala Harris’s ability, they will turn to Newsom and draft him as a compromise candidate.

    Rip Murdock (5f14f9)

  12. Rip Murdock (5f14f9) — 9/8/2023 @ 11:28 am

    f delegates become deeply divided over Kamala Harris’s ability,

    But they are unlikely to be divided, because they were mostly picked from the same pool; and to say that Kamala Harris is incompetent would require lots of proof, and come under suspicion of racism.

    they will turn to Newsom and draft him as a compromise candidate.

    Who would be the other candidate? Elizabeth Warren?

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  13. Elon Musk on Thursday acknowledged turning off internet access from his Starlink satellites during a Ukrainian raid last year on a Russian naval fleet, saying he did so to prevent SpaceX from being “complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

    Specifically, nuclear war. A Russian official told him that. (or hinted at that)

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/world/europe/elon-musk-starlink-ukraine.html

    …The excerpt [from Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography “Elon Musk,” published by The Washington Post] said that Mr. Musk had conversations with a Russian official that led him to worry that an attack on Crimea could spiral into a nuclear conflict.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  14. at Kamala Harris is incompetent would require lots of proof……..

    Look at her polling-it’s abysmal. That’s all the proof you need.

    Who would be the other candidate? Elizabeth Warren?

    LOL! She’s nearly as old as Trump (74 v. 76). If the Democrats wanted a real contrast with Trump (and Biden), they should nominate someone much younger and dynamic. Not gonna happen.

    Rip Murdock (5f14f9)

  15. We know what side Elon Musk is on, and it’s not Ukraine.

    Rip Murdock (5f14f9)

  16. The “other candidate” would be Harris.

    Rip Murdock (5f14f9)

  17. Mr. Musk had conversations with a Russian official that led him to worry that an attack on Crimea could spiral into a nuclear conflict.

    The Russians have been threatening nuclear war since the beginning of the conflict. It’s an empty threat.

    Rip Murdock (5f14f9)

  18. During a community meeting on the Upper West Side this week, Mayor Adams said that the ongoing migrant crisis “will destroy NYC.”

    What came close to destroying New York City was the fiscal crisis in the 1970s. They all focused on the budget and not the spending that needed to be done. Police and other things were cut. Crime rose, until the HIV virus came along to save the city by infecting heroin addicts in the late 1980s and addicts became sick and disabled and the forces of law and order were able to catch up, starting the opposite of a vicious cycle. (once they caught up, the virtuous cycle continued even without HIV deaths) That is the truth. It wasn’t abortion, like the people from Freakonomics said.

    https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion-and-crime-revisited

    The proof that it was AIDS and not abortion is that NYC had the highest AIDS rate in the country and also the largest drop in crime.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  19. Rip Murdock (5f14f9) — 9/8/2023 @ 12:04 pm

    For the Democrats (if Biden is “unavailable”), the choice would be between Harris becoming the nominee and losing (in a landslide) or dropping her and drafting a candidate who hasn’t gone through the primary process and possibly winning.

    Not hard to guess what they would do.

    Rip Murdock (5f14f9)

  20. During a community meeting on the Upper West Side this week, Mayor Adams said that the ongoing migrant crisis “will destroy NYC.”

    How could they tell?

    Rip Murdock (5f14f9)

  21. @17

    The Russians have been threatening nuclear war since the beginning of the conflict. It’s an empty threat.

    Rip Murdock (5f14f9) — 9/8/2023 @ 12:06 pm

    I sympathize with Musk here.

    Remember, this was very early in the war and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE thought at the time that Russia would simply LOLSTOMP Ukraine and the war would be over in days.

    Musk was thinking of his company and the likely post-war world at the time.

    But to say he’s on #TeamRussia is absurd. Especially, shortly afterward (and after legit criticism), Musk relented allowing Ukraine military to use SpaceX.

    whembly (5f7596)

  22. “Never in my life have I had a problem that I didn’t see an ending to, I don’t see an ending to this,” Adams said. “This issue will destroy New York City.”

    What’s going on is nothing except incompetence.

    An addition to the population, spread out over the course of a year, of less than 1% consisting of homeless people (some 40% have some place in NYC to go to – the people we’re talking about are people without previous connection to NYC) will destroy the city??

    He’s in over his head. He can’t see a patronage contract that got too big. The same company previously made money off of Covid.

    Meanwhile, everybody’s lying. The Republicans are linking this to the sanctuary city policy, which it has nothing to with, (the problem is mostly caused by the positive right to shelter, a result of a lawsuit settlement back in 1981) and they are opposing any other attempt to deal with this,

    And wanting to blame Biden for letting them in – and to say that Republicans are right on immigration – so that all Biden supposedly has to do is stop. They never suggest anything else except a wall.

    One partial solution is allowing people to work but Republicans oppose that on the grounds that then even more people will cross the border.
    (They were let in, but not allowed to work legally for a minimum of six months.)

    Biden wants to make asylum more resemble immigration law, with sponsors required, but that is absurd for any real cases of asylum.

    The Biden Administration gives advice to New York City, some of which may be good, but refuses to ask Congress for money except for a useless and in any case long term border wall or to put people up at a military base as happened with other refugee surges including Afghanistan in 2021 because then he would be welcoming them like the Republicans accuse him of.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  23. 16. The “other candidate” can’t be Harris, because in this scenario, Newsom is a compromise candidate.

    There must be two others, only one of which is Harris. Is the other one Biden?

    If there was only Harris, Newsom would be the “alternative candidate.”

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  24. @22 Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 9/8/2023 @ 12:31 pm
    I think the ONLY way to handle this, is for the states to enforce employers to ensure that their employers are citizens/legal resident.

    The jobs for illegals will dry up and they’re self deport.

    whembly (5f7596)

  25. One of the mysteries of the original Fulton County GJ report — addressed:

    https://www.ajc.com/politics/fulton-grand-jury-report-hints-at-why-it-suggested-charges-against-loeffler-perdue/5F7LXD7IUVFXXOASNQJHUEXBV4/

    Gotta say, the Fani Willis letter (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23941366-jim-jordan-letter) to Jim Jordan was more entertaining. I’d actually love an opinion from our prosecutor host on the propriety and risks of sending a letter like that out.

    Appalled (03f53c)

  26. I wonder if Newsom’s people aren’t whispering in his ear that this could potentially be a very difficult year for Democrats, and that his best bet is to sit out 2024, leave office on January 1, 2027, then spend an entire year gearing up to challenge a GOP incumbent (or if it is Trump, an open office) or to replace a feeble figurehead like Biden who has been nursemaided his entire second term. Of course a Biden reelection followed by his resignation and the ascendency of Kamala Harris would be his worst case scenario, but he’ll still only be 65 years old on Election Day 2032, which is only a few months older than George H. W. Bush was when he was elected, so as long as Newsom can find a way to remain in the public eye (and admittedly, that will be a challenge) then he could still be bothering us as a candidate ten years from now.

    JVW (1ad43e)

  27. Here is news about the contract:

    https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/nyc-comptroller-lander-declines-to-approve-432-million-docgo-contract-for-work-on-asylum-seeker-emergency

    NYC Comptroller Lander Declines to Approve $432 Million DocGo Contract for Work on Asylum Seeker Emergency

    September 6, 2023

    New York City Comptroller Brad Lander announced he declined to approve a $432 million contract with DocGo, Inc (formally known as Rapid Reliable Testing NY LLC), the first time during Comptroller Lander’s term that his office has done so regarding an emergency contract. Lander returned the contract to the Department of Housing & Preservation Development (HPD) citing numerous concerns associated with vendor selection, vendor responsibility, fiscal capacity and subcontractor selection.

    Since January 1, 2022, the Comptroller’s Bureau of Contract Administration (BCA) has registered over 30,000 contracts submitted by City agencies, registering 98.8% and returning just 0.22% (fewer than 75) to contracting agencies as a result of procurement concerns. In addition, during the same time period, BCA approved all of the other 303 emergency contracts submitted by the Administration, including 69 emergency contracts for asylum seeker related services.

    “My office did not make this decision lightly. After a careful review, we are declining to approve this contract due to numerous outstanding concerns,” said Comptroller Brad Lander. “The agency’s contract submission to our office fails to describe how the $432 million price tag was reached. There was little evidence to show that this company has the experience to provide the services it has been contracted for. Contradictory information was provided regarding their fiscal capacity and serious questions were raised about the integrity and responsibility of this vendor and their subcontractors. After thorough review, we are returning the contract to HPD and encouraging them to reconsider whether this vendor is appropriate for the services described.”

    Further link:

    https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/letter-on-return-of-rapid-reliable-testing-ny-llc-contract-20248801671

    Rapid Reliable Testing NY LLC is the name of the company, but it is, commonly known as DocGo Inc. They made money on Covid tests. Now they went in for asylum care on the grounds there’s something medical involved also.

    Mayor Adams can’t see waste fraud and abuse when it’s staring him in the face – and the Republicans would rather say “I told you so” even though they didn’t tell anyone so, on immigration than complain about wasteful spending.

    Brad Lander is a “progressive” by the way. The refusal to approve is a meaningless gesture, also, but it is interesting that he came out against waste.

    There are ideas that have been suggested that would probably require changes in law. For instance, NYCHA is having trouble getting enough public housing residents to pay rent. It has been suggested pay elderly people with extra space because their children moved out, $65 a month to take migrants in, and in return or in addition, they could do shopping and some caregiving, which would be uncompensated. Better than $256 a month in a hotel. Obviously, if real, people would need to be approved and mistakes reversed. But there could be similarity of background in some cases. Of course many public housing projects are dangerous. But that’s just one idea that’s going nowhere.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  28. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/01/nyregion/the-covid-test-company-that-got-into-the-migrant-business.html

    …We also know from records available online that on May 5 of this year, the no-bid $432 million contract took effect. It is under this contract that the company has been busing migrants upstate — as far away as Buffalo — and providing them with temporary housing, food and other services. The city has also said DocGo is being paid to provide services for migrants in New York City.

    We asked City Hall to let us see the contract, to no avail. We have now filed a request for the contract and other documents under the state’s Freedom of information Law. That request will take weeks, if not months, to work its way through the bureaucracy.

    Many of the migrants who were bused upstate told you they were lied to and worse. Why?

    This was a very common theme among the migrants that I interviewed in Albany.

    There has been a recruiting process in New York City during which migrants are informed about the option of relocating upstate. City Hall says the program is entirely voluntary, and no one is promised a job. That’s not the story I got in Albany, where hundreds of migrants have been temporarily resettled. Most of the migrants I interviewed said authorities in New York City told them that if they went to Albany, they would get help with their asylum paperwork, assistance in obtaining a state ID and — most importantly for them — a job.

    We even discovered that in one of the Albany hotels, DocGo representatives gave asylum seekers documents, on what looked like New York City letterhead, claiming they were “eligible for employment” as contractors. The letterhead appeared to be fake, but the DocGo people kept handing out the same documents even after migrant advocates complained that this was “misinformation.”

    Many migrants also said they were constantly harassed, some even threatened, by DocGo’s hired security guards. At one of the hotels housing migrants in Albany, a sign posted on the wall falsely claimed they would be barred from seeking asylum if they were caught smoking, drinking or fighting.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  29. The “other candidate” can’t be Harris, because in this scenario, Newsom is a compromise candidate.

    There must be two others, only one of which is Harris. Is the other one Biden?

    In my scenario Biden is not “available”, he is out of picture.

    Newsom would be the compromise candidate between the factions that back Harris, and those that want to win.

    I think JVW is correct as to why Newsom won’t challenge Biden directly , but I believe he would gladly be drafted to run against Trump or DeSantis.

    Rip Murdock (5f14f9)

  30. Several things about Musk. First, he obviously bought into this bullsh-t “escalation” narrative, particularly this part, noted here…

    If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation

    …where failed to understand the actual dynamics of this war of aggression by Putin. And regarding “act of war”, Jonah provided some clarity…

    “Act of war” means something that can *cause* a war or justify the initiation of war. Russia lawlessly invaded Ukraine. That was an act of war. Ukraine defending itself is lawful self-defense, not an “act of war.”

    But maybe that sort of thing happens when Musk is following pro-Putin hacks like catturd and Ian Miles Cheong. /1

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  31. whembly (5f7596) — 9/8/2023 @ 12:35 pm

    I think the ONLY way to handle this, is for the states to enforce employers to ensure that their employers are citizens/legal resident.

    Aside from all other considerations, the only way to do this is to punish some companies so severely that they go out of business. (This is also liable to be violated by companies that will go out of business if they don’t employ people without work authorization.)

    There’s been a problem with Uber Eats. Uber Eats has paid for people to deliver things, using their own vehicles.

    https://help.uber.com/driving-and-delivering/article/signing-up-to-deliver-on-uber-eats-with-a-bike-or-on-foot

    The state ID problem has been worked out somehow. Necessity is the mother of invention.

    But

    Problem: These new migrants cannot legally register their bicycles or what it is, motorscooters.

    So anyway they were all parking them in the same place and somebody complained. and the NYD set up an operation to confiscate the bikes and some migrants fought the police.

    https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/09/07/migrants-nypd-scooters-brooklyn-brawl

    Neighborhood complaints over the proliferation of unregistered gas-powered scooters in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, sparked a brawl between newly arrived migrants and cops who confiscated more than a dozen of the mini-bikes on Thursday morning, according to police and witnesses.

    As tensions over the city’s migrant crisis remained high, NYPD officers arrested six men for assaulting police, disorderly conduct, obstructing government administration, weapons possession, harassment, menacing and inciting a riot outside a migrant shelter on Flushing Ave. near Jefferson St. just before 8 a.m., cops said.
    Cops confiscated 16 motorbikes, according to authorities, after people in the neighborhood griped to the city about unregistered scooters taking up scarce parking and crowding the sidewalks.

    This was the second time this summer that authorities confiscated illegal motorscooters in front of the shelter.

    A shelter worker said that the bikes had become a problem again.

    “If you want to have these bikes, you have to take proper ownership. They have to be registered and insured,” he told the Daily News. “That’s why the cops came today.”

    Yerol Polanco, 26, of Venezuela, arrived in the city two months ago. He said he used his bike to earn money making deliveries for UberEats.

    Now, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do.

    “They took my way of working,” he told The News. “I have to get a new motorcycle. It’s very difficult. I don’t know what I’m going to do now.

    “I didn’t have the papers that I needed to get a [license] plate. I know the police were doing their job. I’m only trying to work and live. What can I do? I have no way of working.”

    A worker at the shelter, which sits in a neighborhood where hipster boutiques bump up next to Chinese wholesale warehouses, said that there were at least 50 mopeds and bikes parked in front of the shelter Thursday.

    He said that a large truck pulled up to block the bikes from getting out, and then police started confiscating them.

    “[Police] were cutting off the locks and that’s when the fracas started,” said the man, who was not authorized to speak. “They were actively assaulting the police officers. It’s a good thing [the police] were here, [the migrants] were going to maul the traffic [enforcement] guys.”

    The shelter employee said that once word trickled up to the upper floors of the building where the new arrivals were staying, the chaos started.

    “They were going crazy,” he said of the migrants. “They were coming down and jumping on the bikes as they were taking them away.”

    It is interesting to reflect on the kind of crimes these migrants were committing It wasn’t drug dealing. It was economic crimes, like in the old Soviet Union.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  32. 67% said they wanted a different candidate [than Biden] as the party’s nominee. Yes, but: When those respondents were asked who the party’s 2024 nominee should be, no other person polled above 3%.

    Well, there’s a rose in a fisted glove
    And the eagle flies with the dove
    And if you can’t be with the one you love, honey
    Love the one not Trump
    Love the one not Trump

    nk (bf12b8)

  33. The jobs for illegals will dry up and they’re self deport.

    If there’s another place to have equally good jobs, maybe.

    It’s happening in Florida.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/us/florida-immigration-hurricane-cleanup.html

    When Hurricane Idalia struck last week, Michael Burnett’s bayside home in Crystal River, Fla., was inundated with a noxious cocktail of storm water and sewage from burst pipes that rose to his chest.

    “We lost everything we owned,” Mr. Burnett, the manager of a gun shop, said. “All my kids’ clothes, all my guitars, all my guns, everything I have collected is gone.”

    He added, “The only saving grace was those guys who came to my house.”

    The “guys” are four undocumented men he hired to help sort through the muck, members of an immigrant work force that in recent years has helped communities in Florida and other states clean up and rebuild after climate disasters, with thousands of such workers rushing in.

    But as this year’s hurricane season intensifies, they may be in shorter supply in Florida.

    In May, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law to discourage unauthorized immigrants from living and working in the state. The law, which he has described as the country’s most aggressive crackdown, rejects out-of-state driver’s licenses issued to undocumented immigrants, makes it a felony to transport such immigrants into Florida and punishes companies that hire them.

    Michael Burnett was a homeowner.

    Many illegal immigrants are self deporting to places like Louisiana.

    What, you imagined Mexico?? Or their home countries if they could get there?

    After the Florida Legislature passed the measure, but even before it took effect on July 1, Maria and other immigrants said they had been harassed by police officers and sheriff’s deputies in the state. Now, they expressed fear that law enforcement would arrest them and turn them over to federal authorities for detention and deportation.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  34. “Constitutional Attorneys” and “Trump Campaign” Shouldn’t Be In Same Sentence:

    ………….
    …………. Meshawn Maddock, one of the 16 fake electors in Michigan charged by the state attorney general for the alleged scheme, detailed the Trump campaign-directed plan and said the crucial decision on which electors to use would ultimately rest with a constitutional attorney and Vice President Mike Pence and Congress.
    …………..
    While Maddock has previously claimed the fake GOP electors were not meant to replace the legitimate Democratic ones, even in the December 2020 interview, her newly uncovered comments about Pence show her understanding that the slate of fake electors could eventually usurp the legitimate elector votes on January 6, 2021.

    Despite Trump losing the state by more than 150,000 votes, Maddock and 15 others signed phony certificates claiming to be the legitimate electors from the state just days before the interview and attempted to enter their state capitol to deliver the votes.

    “I’m no constitutional attorney,” Maddock said on December 16, 2020, in an interview with local radio host Steve Gruber. “I’m an elector for Donald Trump from the Michigan Republican Party. I along with the other 15 electors were guided by legal minds – attorneys for our president, some very incredible constitutional attorneys – I’ve never in my whole life appreciated legal minds and attorneys before.”

    “I can tell you that in the last few weeks, just some incredible minds,” she added. “And from what I understand, you know, you have the federal constitutional law, and then you have state statutes, um, and they’re two different things. So, what we did, uh, along with seven other states, really send in dueling electors, and that will be there before, um, you know, a federal constitutional attorney, and it’ll be before, uh, Mike Pence and Congress to make that decision.”
    ………….
    “A lot of that is still vague to me. And I don’t have any email communications with any of these people,” Maddock said when asked which attorneys asked her to sign the fake election documents in another interview with Steve Gruber in July 2023.

    Maddock seemingly placed blame on the last state party chairperson.

    “Laura Cox was our state party chair at the time, somebody from her staff contacted all of us, asked us to be at the Michigan Republican Party office at 2 pm,” Maddock said.
    ………..

    Rip Murdock (5f14f9)

  35. The prohibition to hire was included in the 1986 immigration bill, Simpson Mazzoli. The rationale was the idea that immigration laws were passed for the purposes of preventing unemployment. One person actively pushing the legislation was none other than Chuck Schumer, then a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

    Another achievement of Schumer was the Schumer box on credit cards, which is OK. It tells you approximately (it varies depending n the exact date of payment) how much you would have to pay per monthly statement period to pay off a debt completely in 3 years, assuming that no other charges were made and interest rates didn’t change.

    But he also was responsible for legislation that prevented many college students under age 21 from getting credit cards, but did nothing at stopping them from getting bankruptcy proof student loans (which can come with a cash kickback)

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  36. Apparently it won’t be Gavin Newsom

    For now. The loyal supporter. But if Biden stumbles, or has trouble with RF Jr, he will enter the race, more in sorrow than opposition.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  37. Rip Murdock (5f14f9) — 9/8/2023 @ 1:09 pm

    Newsom would be the compromise candidate between the factions that back Harris, and those that want to win.

    That means there are some for is Harris, and there are some for an unknown Democrat, because they want to win, (Andrew Cuomo??) but whom the Harris backers won’t accept, and Newsom is the compromise candidate

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  38. The Russians have been threatening nuclear war since the beginning of the conflict. It’s an empty threat.

    Nuclear war ends with the utter, total destruction of Russia. Thermonuclear weapons are to Hiroshima as fuel-air bombs are to hand grenades. Almost three orders of magnitude. And we have several thousand.

    I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, but every cockroach in Russia would be dead.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  39. I think the ONLY way to handle this, is for everyone to…

    First among things that never happen.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  40. At the moment, Kenneth Cheesbro and Sidney Powell are scheduled to be tried together (not separately as Cheesbro and Sidney Powell want) and Donald Trump and the rest of the gang with them, except the judge said that’s not likely to happen, but he’ll leave it that way for now.

    Cheesbro’s motion came up first.

    https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4190152-judge-denies-kenneth-chesebros-request-to-sever-georgia-charges-from-sidney-powell

    They say they don’t know each other, the chares are in separate buckets and the commonality is only that they both tried to elect Donald Trump president (well, tried to do that, using legal manuvers, after the election should have been over)

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  41. The counter argument was that it’s RICO and even if two parties did not themselves act in concert, they both acted as part of the larger conspiracy.

    It seems like this first trial will be a dress rehearsal, with much of the same evidence and testimony that will be required for the band tried with Trump. While I agree that 19 defendants, all with their own lawyers, is too complex to manage, I don’t see that 17 is going to be much better.

    The DA obviously wants the group trial — no previews allowed to the defense, and easier all around for her.

    The other possibility is to have multiple simultaneous trials, but that can lead to divergent results depending on how many Trumpbots lie their way onto juries.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  42. Second, the drone attack that Musk sabotaged was big, targeting “the Russian Navy at anchor at its Sevastopol naval port.”
    A successful strike could have changed the course of the war in Ukraine’s favor, with fewer missile strikes from the Black Sea (thus fewer terrorist attacks and civilian casualties) and perhaps opening a shipping channel for grain exports.

    Third, Musk and Biden have something in common: Both were so intimidated by Putin’s threats that they throttled back, which is a tactic that has worked for Putin.

    In summary, Russia uses the threats of nukes to instill fear and suppress support of Ukraine. And it succeeds as this case shows. The result – the reduced ability of Ukraine to resist Russia, more casualties, and emboldened Russia, and less safer world.

    Four, Musk’s appeal for a “truce” is ridiculous, because it gives Putin the time to re-arm, re-supply and scrounge up more Russians for battle. Again, he doesn’t understand the dynamics (or worse, maybe he does understand them).

    Five, Musk’s views on Crimea as being “Russian” are ahistorical and wrong. The new defense minister, Umierov, is an example. His parents were were a couple out of 100,000± whoo were forcibly removed from the peninsula in the Soviet era, which is why Umierov ended up being born in Bumf-ck, Uzbekistan.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  43. Sidney Powell’s lawyer arguing for severance

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0n_Wkt021w

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  44. Cheseboro has plenty of reason to want severance from Powell, as she was in this mess to her neck and he doesn’t want to be hanged by accident.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  45. Meadows is stuck in Fulton County, as I expected.
    I doubt venue changes will work for the other defendants, Trump included.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  46. That means there are some for is Harris, and there are some for an unknown Democrat, because they want to win, (Andrew Cuomo??) but whom the Harris backers won’t accept, and Newsom is the compromise candidate

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 9/8/2023 @ 1:40 pm

    Correct, but unless the Democrats revive Mario Cuomo from the dead, it ain’t gonna be a Cuomo.

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  47. Paul Montagu (d52d7d) — 9/8/2023 @ 3:03 pm

    This was really a change of jurisdiction, not venue. In either case the trial will be held in Atlanta.

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  48. If the former White House chief of staff can’t get his case transferred to federal court, what chance do the fake electors and indicted lawyers have? The answer is none.

    From the decision, quoted here:

    <blockquote”Meadows’s participation on the January 2, 2021 call was political in nature and involved the President’s private litigation, neither of which are related to the scope of the Office of White House Chief of Staff,” Jones wrote. “The Court finds that these contributions to the phone call with Secretary Raffensperger went beyond those activities that are within the official role of White House Chief of Staff, such as scheduling the President’s phone calls, observing meetings, and attempting to wrap up meetings in order to keep the President on schedule.”
    ………..
    “What the Court must decide for purposes of federal officer removal is whether the actions Meadows took as a participant in the alleged enterprise (the charged conduct) were related to his federal role as White House Chief of Staff,” Jones wrote. “The actions at the heart of the State’s charges against Meadows were taken on behalf of the Trump campaign with an ultimate goal of affecting state election activities and procedures.”

    I’m sure it will be appealed.

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  49. Sorry for the failed blockquote.

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  50. More on the case against the fake Georgia electors:

    ……….
    Shawn Still, Cathleen Latham and David Shafer — the former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party — were among the Trump allies who signed the false documents in Georgia, and they’ve been charged as part of a sprawling racketeering conspiracy ………

    In recent court filings, all three have argued that they believed they were doing Trump’s bidding when they signed the false documents, pointing to the fact that Trump sent a campaign attorney to their Dec. 14 meeting who urged them to sign the documents to keep Trump’s election hopes alive. That attorney, Ray Smith, is also charged in the alleged conspiracy.

    ………. At the heart of their argument (to transfer their cases to federal court) is the claim that they acted at Trump’s behest — and, therefore, became appendages of the federal government.………
    ………..
    But (Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis), in response to Still’s filing, took an unsparing approach to his argument, contending that there is no plausible way he or his fellow false electors were acting as federal officials when they signed the elector certificates.

    Rather, she noted, he has acknowledged acting to further Trump’s political candidacy on the advice of Trump’s personal lawyer — not any federal official seeking to further a federal function.
    ………….
    “The fact that he and the other fraudulent electors pretended to be duly elected and qualified presidential electors confers no federal official standing whatsoever, and no federal action to be protected with immunity,” she continued.

    “The activities in which he conspired with then-President Trump were all ‘unofficial’ activities concerning campaign litigation and Trump’s efforts to remain in office for a second term, and there is no federally protected authority for a president or anyone acting on his behalf to take any actions concerning the administration of a presidential election under either the Constitution or federal law.”

    Willis also notably rejected efforts by Still to claim that he was acting on the advice of Trump’s attorneys. ………
    ##########

    Paragraph breaks added.

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  51. Elon Musk is a weak reed, a straw that the Ukrainians grasped at the beginning of the war, when they had no strong cane to lean on, and practiced at disguising duplicity as whimsy. Like his cars, he can only be relied on for things you can easily do without. Not for anything vital.

    nk (f9da9d)

  52. The main advantage to removing to federal court is a larger , multi-county, jury pool. The case would still have been tried under Georgia law.

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  53. Rip Murdock (1b91a0) — 9/8/2023 @ 4:22 pm

    More importantly, it wouldn’t be televised.

    Must see TV!

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  54. This was really a change of jurisdiction, not venue.

    Yes. Wrong word, right conclusion.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  55. The Ukraine Support Tracker has been updated and, finally, commitments from the EU and UK have caught up and exceeded US support.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  56. The main advantage to removing to federal court is a larger , multi-county, jury pool. The case would still have been tried under Georgia law.

    No. The case would have been dismissed under federal law pursuant to the Supremacy Clause and federal immunity statutes which protect federal employees acting within the scope of their duties from being tried under state law in state courts for crimes or torts.

    nk (f9da9d)

  57. No. The case would have been dismissed under federal law pursuant to the Supremacy Clause and federal immunity statutes which protect federal employees acting within the scope of their duties from being tried under state law in state courts for crimes or torts.

    Pretty much how the Ruby Ridge sniper avoided Idaho law.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  58. “He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot …He doesn’t represent my party…He’s unfit for office.”
    –Lindsey Graham, 2016

    “One thing I want people to know, I am standing with President Trump. I am proudly supporting him.”
    –Soulless Political Shell Also Named Lindsey Graham, today

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  59. https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2023/09/08/ca-assembly-passes-ab-957-the-affirm-your-childs-gender-choices-or-else-law-n576691

    The State of California says your kids belong to them. And if your kid decides he’s a unicorn and you tell him he’s a boy, the state will take him away from you.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  60. No more putting away those Progress Pride flags or, if you’re really hep to the jive, the Intersex Progress Pride flag come July 1, my fellow Californians. Nope, now we will have the month of August designated as Transgender History month, thanks to California House Resolution 57, co-sponsored by 65 Assembly members. This ended up being 62 Assembly Democrats along with three Republicans, Juan Alanis of Modesto, Marie Waldron of Valley Center (North San Diego County), and Greg Wallis of Burma Dunes (near Indio and La Quinta). Democrats Sabrina Cervantes of Riverside and Tim Grayson of Concord did not join in as co-sponsors.

    We can’t solve the water storage problem in this state, we can’t solve the homeless problem, we can’t solve the income inequality problems, we can’t solve the housing shortage, we can’t prevent wildfires, we can’t have consistent revenue from year to year, we can’t create quality public schools, we can’t keep crime from making our cities uninhabitable, we can’t keep middle-class families from leaving for more functional states. But we can sure virtue-signal on picayune matters like no other state can virtue-signal.

    JVW (1ad43e)

  61. So does this mean that the Ts are kicked out of LGBTQIAS+ Pride Month in June then? Why of course not. It’s just that after a quick respite in July, we have August to celebrate the accomplishments of transgender folks throughout California’s illustrious history. Did you know that when the Spanish soldiers under Juan Cabrillo first came to present-day San Diego that one solder wrote in his journal of male natives who dressed in fancy clothes and acted like women? Thus it is quite clear from this one piece of data that transgenderism was alive in pre-Conquistador California. If you don’t believe me, just ask that college history professor with the “Hate Has No Home Here” sticker and the poster featuring the full (at least for now) collection of Pride flags posted outside on his office door.

    JVW (1ad43e)

  62. If Newsom signs that bill, he can kiss off ever being president.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  63. New Mexico’s governor spits on the Constitution and decides she can declare a state of emergency to overrule it. Just as conservatives predicted would be done due to the illegally permitted restrictions from the virus of unknown origin.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  64. Good news. The Ukrainians are getting longer-range missiles after months of delay.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  65. HEre’s the details on Lujan Grisham’s suspension of gun rights in New Mexico.

    Breaking: New Mexico Governor Suspends the Second Amendment

    New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham declared a “public health emergency” as justification to ban all concealed and open carry for the next month or longer, effective now.

    See used several cases involving illegal carry by minors to justify her order.

    At no point do open or concealed carry factor in to any of these crimes nor is there any, at all, evidence showing that concealed carry permit holders are the people driving the crime rate. Grisham is simply punishing the innocent for the illegal actions of criminals. If prohibited persons are willfully violating the law to illegally carry then banning all carry isn’t going to have any effect, either — except on innocent people’s ability to defend themselves.

    Why has the crime rate skyrocketed?

    Albuquerque’s crime rate has steadily risen for the past several years with the cause attributed to the former Soros-backed DA, now AG of New Mexico, Raúl Torrez.

    The DA was busy dismissing cases right and left and the clueless governor doesn’t understand why crime is on the rise? The new DA isn’t any better: a Grisham hand-picked establishment Democrat who was accused of directing staffers to publish stolen emails that included receipts about underwear purchases from former Susana Martinez.

    In short, the governor is using NM’s gun laws as an excuse to cover her party’s gutting of the criminal justice system, even though the effects are remarkably similar to California’s rising crime rates despite CA’s draconian gum laws.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  66. In New Mexico, the law only requires licenses for concealed carry; there are no gun registration laws nor restrictions on open carry. This has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the (Democrat gerrymandered) legislature refusing the governor’s frequent entreaties to pass new restrictions.

    So, she issued this decree, using the same “health emergency” powers that she abused during the Covid period. I guess that envelope is stretched now.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  67. More:

    NM gov. plans to ban firearms in public spaces in Bernalillo County (ABQ Journal)

    Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said they would not be enforcing the order and there were concerns that doing so could violate the department’s police reform settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. And in a statement, Sheriff John Allen said he had “reservations regarding this order.”

    “While I understand and appreciate the urgency, the temporary ban challenges the foundation of our Constitution, which I swore an oath to uphold,” Allen said.

    Twenty-five of NM’s 33 counties have declared themselves “2nd Amendment Sanctuaries.” I guess you can now add Bernalillo County (the state’s largest) to that group.

    The governor is assigning state police to enforce her order, which carries only civil penalties since it’s not actually a law.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  68. Paul and Rip have already noted the Meadows decision. My IANL take is that the judge took a common sense view of the situation. Georgia election laws are ordinarily not the concern of the Federal Government (read your Constitution). Therefore, when Meadows took actions which reflected concerns with these laws, he was not acting within the scope of his duties as a Federal officer. I think this logic would not hold up if, for example, there were violations of national voting rights laws.

    Appalled (fb31a9)

  69. Kevin and Rob, did you actually read AB957?

    I read Rob’s piece and was annoyed that the article was just quoting a bunch of people reacting to the bill. So I looked it up and read it. It doesn’t say what you say it does.

    Nate (7759cd)

  70. What does it say, Nate?

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  71. DeSantis and Ramaswamy Have Chosen Sides

    …………
    Several sentences have been handed down in the past two weeks: 22 years for Enrique Tarrio, 15 and 17 years for Zachary Rehl and Joseph Biggs, and 10 and 18 years for Dominic Pezzola and Ethan Nordean. The Proud Boys were behind major breaches of the Capitol on Jan. 6, and the men who received the sentences played leading roles in planning the attack, executing it or both.

    (Ron DeSantis on Newsmax said)“They may have been violent, but to say it’s an act of terrorism when it was basically a protest that devolved into a riot, to do excessive sentences — you can look at, OK, maybe they were guilty, but 22 years if other people that did other things got six months?”

    Another candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, declared on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday in response to the sentences, “This is wrong & it’s sad that I’m the only candidate with the spine to say it.” In a statement on Wednesday, he vowed to pardon all “peaceful, nonviolent” Jan. 6 participants and said, “America now has a two-tiered justice system: Antifa and B.L.M. rioters roam free while peaceful Jan. 6 protesters are imprisoned without bail.”
    …………..
    ………….. An Associated Press investigation in 2021 found that, in the (Black Lives Matter) cases where they did turn violent, more than 120 defendants had either pleaded guilty or been convicted on federal charges such as rioting, arson and conspiracy.

    Those who had been sentenced at the time of the A.P. investigation had received prison terms of a little over two years on average. But of the more than 1,100 cases related to Jan. 6, according to an NPR database, the median sentence for those who received prison time has been 120 days.

    In the cases of Mr. Tarrio and other Proud Boys leaders, the more serious charges of seditious conspiracy — and the harsher sentences — stemmed from their attempts to overturn a democratic election or prevent the government from carrying out essential business. ……….
    …………
    “The Portland rioters’ conduct (when protesters attacked the Federal Courthouse building in Portland OR), while obviously serious, did not target a proceeding prescribed by the Constitution and established to ensure a peaceful transition of power,” Carl J. Nichols, a district court judge in Washington who was appointed by Mr. Trump, wrote in denying a motion from a Jan. 6 defendant who had claimed to be a victim of “selective prosecution.” “Nor did the Portland rioters, unlike those who assailed America’s Capitol in 2021, make it past the buildings’ outer defenses.”
    …………..

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  72. Rip Murdock (1b91a0) — 9/9/2023 @ 9:15 am

    See also here and here for additional information on BLM protest prosecutions.

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  73. BuDuh (4214e4) — 9/9/2023 @ 9:07 am

    CaliforniaState Assembly AB 957.

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  74. Kevin and Rob, did you actually read AB957?

    Yes. Here.

    The added portions of the two sections it amends are basically this:

    …the court shall, among any other factors it finds relevant and consistent with Section 3020, consider all of the following:
    (1) (A) The health, safety, and welfare of the child.
    (B) As used in this paragraph, the health, safety, and welfare of the child includes, among other comprehensive factors, a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity or gender expression. Affirmation includes a range of actions and will be unique for each child, but in every case must promote the child’s overall health and well-being.

    Section B is added. Thew same paragraph is also added in another section for the same purpose.

    If you read the Assembly Floor Analysis (PDF) the entire argument is about this paragraph.

    So, Nate, how is this different from NJRob’s characterization? The other sections (e.g. drug abuse) were already there.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  75. The opposition’s argument:

    The California Capitol Connection opposes this bill because it will undermine the current law that “allows parents to object to their child’s request for a change of gender and/or name on government documents.” They fear this bill will instead “force family courts to ignore the parents’ objections and rule in favor of the minor’s request. Parents are responsible for the well-being of their children. Parents should have the final say in every major decision a minor makes.” Finally, the California Capital Connection points to a higher law: “The Bible and nature also teach us that there are only two genders. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

    The California Parents’ Union (CPU) opposes this bill because it would violate judicial independence. CPU argues that no judge “can be dictated to – by the legislature – as to how to rule on a case. [Judges] are required to rule based on the law and the facts before them objectively and without bias. I would submit this is especially important when a ruling is based on a very dangerous issue that could result in a permanent life altering decision. The undisputed fact is that participating in changing “genders” of a minor child is extremely controversial and medically dangerous. Judges cannot be told to favor one side or the other ethically.”

    Argument in support:

    Arguments in Support

    Equality California (EC), one of the co-sponsors of this bill, writes that while “states across the country are passing discriminatory policies attacking LGBTQ+ people, especially transgender and non-binary youth, AB 957 will ensure that California TGI youth have access to a legal system that affirms and protects their health, safety, and livelihood.” EC notes that while TGI youth face higher rates of mental illness and suicidal thoughts, research shows that they do much better with supportive parents who affirm rather than disapprove of their gender identity. EC also observes that while the Family Code lists several factors that a court should consider when determining the best interests of the child, it “fails to take into account this very vulnerable population of [TGI] children who are at increased risk of harm.” This bill, EC concludes, “will center the health and well-being of TGI youth by clarifying that affirming their gender identity is in their best interest.”

    The California chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW-CA) believes this bill “is important for transgender youth, as it prioritizes the best interest of the child for legal name change and custody decision purposes.” NASW-CA notes that California has already taken strides to protect transgender youth, and that this bill will offer further protection to transgender youth “if they come to California from such states as Alabama, which criminalizes gender-affirming care.” Finally, NASW-CA notes that its Code of Ethics includes “advocating for social justice for those who are marginalized and vulnerable. This bill would do just that, ensuring that transgender youth dignity and worth is upheld and the court system ensures their gender identity is affirmed. With the nation increasingly creating anti-trans youth bills, this is a necessary counter-measure.”

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  76. Come Nate,

    answer the question you posed. Did you actually read the bill?

    NJRob (dd6810)

  77. More about Lujan Grisham’s suspension of constitutional rights (AP), during a new “health emergency”:

    [Bernalillo County Sheriff] John Allen said in a statement late Friday that he has reservations about the order but is ready to cooperate to tackle gun violence.

    “While I understand and appreciate the urgency, the temporary ban challenges the foundation of our constitution, which I swore an oath to uphold,” Allen said. “I am wary of placing my deputies in positions that could lead to civil liability conflicts, as well as the potential risks posed by prohibiting law-abiding citizens from their constitutional right to self-defense.”

    Sounds like he’s worried that officers might not have qualified immunity in this instance.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  78. I wonder if some GOP governor, perhaps in Kansas, could suspend abortions due to a “health emergency” involving SIDs deaths. Sure, it’s unrelated, but so is the NM governor suspension of carry licenses and lawful open carry due to teen gun violence.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  79. I wonder if some GOP governor, perhaps in Kansas, could suspend abortions due to a “health emergency” involving SIDs deaths. Sure, it’s unrelated, but so is the NM governor suspension of carry licenses and lawful open carry due to teen gun violence.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/9/2023 @ 10:55 am

    Since abortion is not a federal right, and firearm possession is, the two aren’t comparable.

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  80. I would also think that most Republican dominated states heavily restrict, if not ban, abortions, so what would be the point?

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  81. See also here.

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  82. Constitutional Ignorance:

    Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says that as president, he would deport American-born children of undocumented immigrants.

    “The family unit will be deported,” said Ramaswamy when asked by NBC News if the deportations would include American-born children, after a packed town hall here (in Orange City, Iowa) Friday.

    These children, however, are U.S. citizens……..

    When asked again if these children would be deported along with their families, Ramaswamy doubled down.

    “That is correct,” he said.
    ……….
    “Under the legal theory that the child of an illegal immigrant is not someone who enjoys birthright citizenship, then it would be perfectly legally permissible to remove the entire family unit,” he said.

    Even Ramaswamy acknowledges his plan stands on dubious grounds.

    “There are legally contested questions under the 14th Amendment of whether the child of an illegal immigrant is indeed a child who enjoys birthright citizenship,” he says. “They are contested.”

    Ramaswamy isn’t the only GOP presidential hopeful with his own take on the 14th Amendment. ……..
    ………….

    The current legal framework:

    …………
    The weight of current legal authority suggests that these executive and legislative proposals to restrict birthright citizenship would contravene the Citizenship Clause. At least since the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the prevailing view has been that all persons born in the United States are constitutionally guaranteed citizenship at birth unless their parents are foreign diplomats, members of occupying foreign forces, or members of Indian tribes. In Wong Kim Ark, the Court held that a man born in the United States in 1873 to parents who were Chinese nationals acquired citizenship at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment. ……..
    ………….
    ……….Wong Kim Ark clearly interprets the “subject to the jurisdiction” requirement to allow the federal government to carve out only the narrow exceptions discussed above to the general rule of birthright citizenship. Because none of these exceptions permits the denial of birthright citizenship based on the alienage of parents who are not diplomats, the case is most often interpreted as barring the federal government from accomplishing such denial through any means other than a constitutional amendment.

    Since Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court has not made any further holdings on the extent to which Congress or the Executive may deny citizenship to a person born in the United States based on the alienage of his or her parents. ………
    …………

    A Supreme Court decision that is 125 years old and that has stood the test of time is hardly contested. Ramaswamy, DeSantis, and Trump are grandstanding.

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  83. Jonah on Grisham…

    I think this is outrageous. She should lose her job. I should also note that however much a state governor should uphold the Constitution, federal officers have an even more obvious and direct duty. And yet a lot of the folks venting about this defiance of the Constitution are pretty frick’n blasé about Trump & Co’s disregard for it.

    The Constitution is one document. You can’t be righteous about one clause and not give a rat’s ass about the others.

    And you can’t be outraged when the other team has contempt for the Constitution but totally cool with your team’s contempt for it.

    I mean, yeah, technically you *can* be a totally inconsistent hack and hypocrite. But when you do these things, you’re telling the world that’s exactly what you are.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  84. The top 10 Republican presidential candidates for 2024, ranked
    ………….
    So where do things stand a little more than four months before the first votes in Iowa? ……….

    10. Asa Hutchinson

    ………… A post-debate poll from The Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos showed Hutchinson as the only candidate to see no increase in the percentage of debate watchers considering voting for him. Before and after the debate, just 9 percent said they would consider him, the lowest percentage for any candidate onstage. ……..(Previous ranking: 10)

    9. Doug Burgum
    ………..(9)

    8. Chris Christie

    The former New Jersey governor remains the candidate most disliked by GOP primary voters, with around 6 in 10 having an unfavorable opinion. ………. Christie’s path to victory remains a mirage………(7)

    7. Glenn Youngkin

    A new poll last week cast doubt on the Virginia governor’s status as the party’s Trump alternative in waiting. The Roanoke College poll showed him at 9 percent in Virginia’s primary if he were to jump in the race, compared with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s 13 percent and Trump’s 47 percent. ……….(5)

    6. Vivek Ramaswamy

    Nobody stood out in the debate like Ramaswamy — for the good and for the bad. ……… This still feels like a case of a guy bidding for something besides victory in 2024………(8)

    5. Mike Pence

    ………(H)e was a focal point, by virtue of the discussion of his Jan. 6 actions. He actually got the most speaking time. But he’s in much the position he was in before, without a solid base and with precious few Republicans considering him (23 percent of debate watchers)………(6)

    4. Tim Scott

    The senator from South Carolina, too, remains largely what he was before: the broadly acceptable candidate who appears to be waiting for a bump that just hasn’t come. …….. Perhaps the bump will come, but being behind Pence and Christie and at 3 percent nationally probably isn’t where he needs to be right now……..(3)

    3. Nikki Haley

    In retrospect, the former South Carolina governor was the most pronounced winner of the debate (to the extent there was one onstage). Fully 15 percent of debate watchers said she won it, a share that was the biggest relative to her current standing in the race.………..(4)

    2. Ron DeSantis

    The Florida governor continues to suffer the kinds of stories that often get written about a truly struggling campaign effort. The latest involves leaked audio of a seemingly desperate plea for $50 million from the chief strategist for his super PAC. “I’ve already lost once to Trump, and we can’t do it again,” said the strategist, Jeff Roe………… DeSantis remains in second place in the national polls at about 15 percent ……..it’s a far cry from when he was near neck-and-neck with Trump in February. ……….(2)

    1. Donald Trump

    The former president remains north of 50 percent in the national polling average, which is more or less where he has been since his indictments started landing in late March. ………. he might well have the race sewn up before we ever get to the meat of (his federal election interference trial). (1)
    ……….

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  85. Paul Montagu (d52d7d) — 9/9/2023 @ 12:44 pm

    If every governor or president “lost their job” over policies that were later ruled unconstitutional, there would be repeated turnover in those offices.

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  86. How to protect innocent assault gun owners and punish the guilty. This wont interfere with 2nd amendment. Every time there is a mass shooting simply arrest politicians who voted against gun safety measures. Charge them with accessory to murder and enabling killing. The problem will be quickly solved.

    asset (8b2d6c)

  87. Since abortion is not a federal right, and firearm possession is, the two aren’t comparable.

    It IS a right in Kansas.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  88. Ramaswamy isn’t the only GOP presidential hopeful with his own take on the 14th Amendment

    I can see citizenship tourism being curtailed, under the theory that neither the parents or child intends to be subject to US law or any of the duties of a citizen, similar to the carve-out for children of diplomats. This is indeed debated.

    But the 14th Amendment was particularly written to defeat arguments about children of non-citizens (e.g. the enslaved). Children born here to immigrant parents are citizens. Since there was no such thing as “illegal immigrants” in 1865, the people who wrote that had no such intention.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  89. What Lujan Grisham is doing, in order to fight drug-fueled gang crime, is disarming the potential victims.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  90. This wont interfere with 2nd amendment.

    asset (8b2d6c) — 9/9/2023 @ 1:49 pm

    Actually, it does. The governor’s order is even more arbitrary than licensing requirements. The Supreme Court has ruled that the public has a right to carry firearms outside the home. The Governor’s order seems to violate that right. See New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

    “The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,’” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion. “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.”

    In the ruling’s most far-reaching language, Thomas said concern for public safety isn’t enough to justify new gun controls.

    “The government must affirmatively prove that its firearm regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms,” he wrote.

    Source

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  91. @84:

    September 3rd.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  92. The NM governor has repeatedly tied to dial back gun rights since she became governor in 2018, but her own party has a substantial 2nd Amendment wing — they want to stay in office and being against guns is a loser outside the (few) big cities.

    So, she is issuing a decree using “her” emergency powers outside an emergency, since democratic methods don’t give the results she wants. Effing dictator.

    I expect it will be a race between state and federal courts to enjoin.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  93. It IS a right in Kansas.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/9/2023 @ 2:33 pm

    So what? I don’t have a problem with the governor of Kansas suspending abortions for any reason if he has that authority, it is an internal issue for Kansans. What your governor has done is attack the federal constitutional right of New Mexicans to defend themselves, which should concern everyone.

    I’m sure it will be challenged in court and she will lose.

    Rip Murdock (28ff55)

  94. So, asset, would banning speech attacking capitalism interfere with the 1st Amendment? After all, there are lots of other things you can talk about.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  95. If every governor or president “lost their job” over policies that were later ruled unconstitutional, there would be repeated turnover in those offices.

    It is said that the Obama Administration lost more unanimous Supreme Court decisions than any other Administration in history. He would theoretically be eligible for capital punishment under this sort of tradition.

    JVW (1ad43e)

  96. What your governor has done is attack the federal constitutional right of New Mexicans to defend themselves, which should concern everyone.

    She has also suspended other rights guaranteed by the state constitution and state law. Up until yesterday, I could have an unregistered gun in my car’s glove box, or walk down the street with a loaded (and also unregistered) shotgun. With a permit I could carry concealed. I’m not aware of any part of the state law that allows the governor to suspend such permits.

    I note she also closed all the gun stores as “non-essential” during the lockdown, but pot stores were left open.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  97. I can see citizenship tourism being curtailed, under the theory that neither the parents or child intends to be subject to US law or any of the duties of a citizen, similar to the carve-out for children of diplomats. This is indeed debated.

    Contested by whom? While not illegal per se, “birth tourists” can be denied visas by consular officials, and there have been prosecutions of those who organize such travel (see here and here for examples).

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  98. RIP Dennis Austin (76). Principal developer of PowerPoint:

    ……….
    Released in 1987 by Forethought, a small software firm, PowerPoint was the digital successor to overhead projectors, transforming the labor-intensive process of creating slides — a task typically assigned to design departments or outsourced — to one where any employee with a computer could point, click and rearrange information with a mouse.
    ………..
    Working alongside Robert Gaskins, the Forethought executive who conceived the software, it was Mr. Austin’s job as the software engineer to make PowerPoint (originally called Presenter) easy to operate. He accomplished this with a “direct-manipulation interface,” he wrote, meaning that “what you are editing looks exactly like the final product.”
    ………..
    A few months after PowerPoint debuted, Microsoft bought Forethought for $14 million in its first major acquisition. By 1993, PowerPoint was generating more than $100 million in sales. Microsoft eventually added PowerPoint to its emerging suite of Office programs, including Word.
    …………
    …………(T)he software has been derided by corporate executives, business school professors and military generals for dumbing down presentations into a mind-numbing morass of interminable bullet points.
    …………
    Mr. Austin and Gaskins acknowledged the complaints, but thought they were unfairly aimed at the software and not the people who were using it to make lazy, poor presentations.

    “It’s just like the printing press,” Mr. Austin told the Wall Street Journal in 2007. “It enabled all sorts of garbage to be printed.”
    …………

    Rip Murdock (1b91a0)

  99. Congratulations to Coco Gauff for winning the women’s singles title at the US Open 2-6, 6-3, 6-2; her first Grand Slam title. She is also the first American teenager (19) to win the Open since Serena Williams in 1999, and the first American to win since 2017.

    Rip Murdock (28ff55)

  100. Ms. Gauff realized a dream.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  101. Critical missing: Florida woman of indeterminate age, 5’11”, vague European accent. Last heard in public on May 9, 2023.

    Current whereabouts unknown.

    Rip Murdock (ee7171)

  102. Rip Murdock (1b91a0) — 9/9/2023 @ 3:07 pm

    Well, it could be curtailed by statute, with a visa application waiver requirement. “We agree that should a person admitted under this visa give birth while in the United States, that US citizenship will not be thereby conferred.”

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  103. AB 957:

    Out: Don’t be mean.
    In: Don’t be creepy.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  104. Well, it could be curtailed by statute, with a visa application waiver requirement. “We agree that should a person admitted under this visa give birth while in the United States, that US citizenship will not be thereby conferred.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/9/2023 @ 6:28 pm

    Not under the current interpretation of the law. Adding a new category of those born in the United States that would not receive citizenship at birth would require a constitutional amendment.

    Wong Kim Ark clearly interprets the “subject to the jurisdiction” requirement to allow the federal government to carve out only the narrow exceptions discussed above (parents who are foreign diplomats, members of occupying foreign forces, or members of Indian tribes) to the general rule of birthright citizenship. ……….(Wong Kim Ark) is most often interpreted as barring the federal government from accomplishing such denial through any means other than a constitutional amendment.

    Rip Murdock (ee7171)

  105. They don’t have to sign it, and they don’t have to get a visa.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  106. “I support gun safety but there is no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the U.S. Constitution.”

    — David Hogg, Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor, on X

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  107. They don’t have to sign it, and they don’t have to get a visa.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/9/2023 @ 6:59 pm

    LOL! Immigration fantasy camp.

    Rip Murdock (ee7171)

  108. The National Association for Gun Rights, a pro-firearms group that has challenged numerous gun restrictions in court, filed a federal lawsuit on Saturday saying the measure was not constitutional and “infringes the rights of the people.” The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/09/new-mexico-guns-suspended-albuquerque/

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  109. LOL! Immigration fantasy camp.

    Wait, wasn’t someone just saying the US was denying visas for this purpose?

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  110. Some Midwest governor ought to declare pornography “an epidemic” and ban sexual speech online, subject to fines, for 30 days.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  111. Kristi Noem November 17, 2022:

    South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem says Trump is not GOP’s ‘best chance’ for 2024

    Kirsti Noem September 8, 2023:

    Noem endorses Trump at South Dakota rally

    What difference 295 days make.

    Rip Murdock (ee7171)

  112. Wait, wasn’t someone just saying the US was denying visas for this purpose?

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/9/2023 @ 7:08 pm

    State Department officials are allowed to deny visas to enter the US, but if someone does enter the US and gives birth, their children become US citizens under current law. If the US wanted to deny citizenship to those children, it would require a constitutional amendment.

    Rip Murdock (f8b12e)

  113. If the US wanted to deny citizenship to those children, it would require a constitutional amendment.

    No, it would simply require a different court than we had in 1873, which was also busy gutting the first section of the 14th Amendment in the Slaughterhouse Cases.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  114. Dear Lujan Grisham:

    Title 18, U.S.C., Section 241 – Conspiracy Against Rights

    This statute makes it unlawful for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same).

    It further makes it unlawful for two or more persons to go in disguise on the highway or on the premises of another with the intent to prevent or hinder his/her free exercise or enjoyment of any rights so secured.

    Punishment varies from a fine or imprisonment of up to ten years, or both; and if death results, or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years, or for life, or may be sentenced to death.

    The statute of limitations is 7 years. That’s until 2030. Bet you the Democrats don’t hold the White House that long.

    (mistakenly posted on different thread)

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  115. Rip,

    you keep citing an incorrect interpretation of Wong and it’s getting tiresome. You push the leftist interpretation over and over again.

    https://www.heritage.org/immigration/commentary/birthright-citizenship-fundamental-misunderstanding-the-14th-amendment

    Sen. Lyman Trumbull, a key figure in the adoption of the 14th Amendment, said that “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. included not owing allegiance to any other country.

    As John Eastman, former dean of the Chapman School of Law, has said, many do not seem to understand “the distinction between partial, territorial jurisdiction, which subjects all who are present within the territory of a sovereign to the jurisdiction of that sovereign’s laws, and complete political jurisdiction, which requires allegiance to the sovereign as well.”

    In the famous Slaughter-House cases of 1872, the Supreme Court stated that this qualifying phrase was intended to exclude “children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.” This was confirmed in 1884 in another case, Elk vs. Wilkins, when citizenship was denied to an American Indian because he “owed immediate allegiance to” his tribe and not the United States.

    American Indians and their children did not become citizens until Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. There would have been no need to pass such legislation if the 14th Amendment extended citizenship to every person born in America, no matter what the circumstances of their birth, and no matter who their parents are.

    Even in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 case most often cited by “birthright” supporters due to its overbroad language, the court only held that a child born of lawful, permanent residents was a U.S. citizen. That is a far cry from saying that a child born of individuals who are here illegally must be considered a U.S. citizen.

    Of course, the judges in that case were strongly influenced by the fact that there were discriminatory laws in place at that time that restricted Chinese immigration, a situation that does not exist today.

    The court’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment as extending to the children of legal, noncitizens was incorrect, according to the text and legislative history of the amendment. But even under that holding, citizenship was not extended to the children of illegal aliens—only permanent, legal residents.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  116. No, it would simply require a different court than we had in 1873, which was also busy gutting the first section of the 14th Amendment in the Slaughterhouse Cases.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/9/2023 @ 7:44 pm

    It would be easier to pass an amendment.

    Rip Murdock (ee7171)

  117. NJRob (eb56c3) — 9/9/2023 @ 7:47 pm

    Given the fact that no Congress or administration has tried to enact a statute or regulation that strips citizenship from the children born in thee US of illegal immigrants, the federal government by omission has accepted that “erroneous” interpretation.

    The Heritage Foundation post is interesting, and they may be correct about the “misinterpretation” of the 14th Amendment, but it’s not the way current law is enforced by the federal government.

    Further:

    In the 1983 case Plyler v. Doe, the Court held that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from denying free public education to children on account of their unlawful presence in the United States.

    The Equal Protection Clause, which appears at the end of the sentence that follows the Citizenship Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment, provides that a state shall not “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Court reasoned that unlawfully present children are “within [the] jurisdiction” of a state for equal protection purposes so long as the children are “within the State’s territorial perimeter” and “subject to the laws” of the state.

    The case did not concern citizenship, but it cited Wong Kim Ark for the proposition that the term “jurisdiction” when used in the Fourteenth Amendment has a “predominantly geographic sense.”

    The Plyler Court also cited a 1912 treatise for the proposition that “no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.”

    Paragraph breaks added.

    Rip Murdock (ee7171)

  118. Source for quote in post 118.

    Of course it’s from that well known leftist organization, the Congressional Research Service.

    Rip Murdock (f8b12e)

  119. @90 My suggestion has nothing to do with what new mexico gov. is doing. She is not arresting politicians who vote against gun safety which isn’t against the 2nd amendment. Try again.

    asset (5cab4a)

  120. @94 of course it would. BUT! voting against gun safety is neither a 1st or 2nd amendment right. Speech is a right spelled out in the 1st amendment. Shooting school children or enabling is not a right.

    asset (5cab4a)

  121. As John Eastman, former dean of the Chapman School of Law, has said

    Not the best argument.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  122. My suggestion has nothing to do with what new mexico gov. is doing.

    She is depriving citizens of a basic constitutional right. Not only is that wrong, but it is criminal. Title 18, U.S.C., Section 241 and 242. As in:

    Deprivation Of Rights Under Color Of Law

    TITLE 18, U.S.C., SECTION 242

    Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  123. Kevin M,

    the best and most logical argument is that at the time of the Amendment no nation grated status based on location, it was all based on parentage. The Amendment was designed to grant citizenship to the formerly enslaved and their progeny and not the world as we see by the separate law passed in the 1900’s to grant the different tribes American citizenship.

    Even today, only fool nations like Canada and our misinterpretation of the law grant such citizenship.

    NJRob (bd761d)

  124. you keep citing an incorrect interpretation of Wong and it’s getting tiresome. You push the leftist interpretation over and over again.

    Eastman was intellectually raked over the coals for his spurious reasoning, by conservatives, such as Volokh and Yoo, and his standing has only cratered after his spurious reasoning about the 12th Amendment and Electoral Count Act.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  125. Quelle Surprise:

    …………
    The National Association for Gun Rights, alongside Albuquerque resident Foster Haines, filed suit just one day after Grisham announced the public health order temporarily suspending concealed and open carry laws in the city.
    …………
    The group argued that the order violates their Second Amendment rights, pointing to the Supreme Court’s decision last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
    ………….
    “The State must justify the Carry Prohibition by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” the complaint reads. “But it is impossible for the State to meet this burden, because there is no such historical tradition of firearms regulation in this Nation.”
    ………….

    Rip Murdock (eb5012)

  126. This message approved by Christie For President.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  127. Paul,

    you couldn’t actually cite anything to disagree so you attack the messenger.

    Got it.

    NJRob (bd761d)

  128. Lujan Grisham could justify this action in the case of civil disorder. An ongoing riot or insurrection might allow her to suspend the carrying of weapons by the citizenry. But ABQ is not in civil disorder, and she probably could not even call out the national guard to “fight” the recent downtick[!] in gun-related crime.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  129. you couldn’t actually cite anything to disagree so you attack the messenger.

    You appealed to Eastman’s authority. Pointing out that he has none of late is as fair as fair could be. But he ALSO pointed to rebuttal authorities, still with some repute, who trash Eastman’s analysis arguments.

    I don’t see what you have to complain about.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  130. Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/9/2023 @ 7:45 pm

    It would be an interesting test case, as Grisham is not banning the possession of firearms (a clear constitutional violation), but only the public possession of firearms, which wasn’t constitutionally protected until last year. It would be easier to sue the state under 42 USC 1983, which allows civil lawsuits for deprivation of rights, which the National Association for Gun Rights is doing.

    It is unlikely that Grisham would be charged with a crime under 18 U.S.C. § 242 by any administration (unless President Trump orders his DOJ to so).

    Rip Murdock (eb5012)

  131. you couldn’t actually cite anything to disagree so you attack the messenger.

    I made two cites, using real links, asshole.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  132. Volokh:

    [H]ere’s the relevant part of the New Mexico Constitution’s right to bear arms provision (enacted in 1971):

    No law shall abridge the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms for security and
    defense, for lawful hunting and recreational use and for other lawful purposes, but nothing herein shall be held to permit the carrying of concealed weapons.

    City of Las Vegas v. Moberg (1971) interpreted the 1912 constitutional right to bear arms provision (“The people have the right to bear arms for their security and defense, but nothing herein shall be held to permit the carrying of concealed weapons”) as indeed invalidating laws that ban both open and concealed carry of guns. The argument in this federal case doesn’t rely on the state constitutional provision (likely because federal courts generally can’t issue injunctions against state governments violating state law), but I thought it worth noting, since the New Mexico Governor is of course obligated to comply with the state constitution.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  133. The Best Anti-Trump Argument Can’t Be Used

    ……. (H)is opponents can’t make the most compelling argument against Trump — namely, that for myriad, deep-seated reasons he’s poorly suited to represent the GOP and become the country’s president again.

    ………….Trump’s opponents tend to say that he’s not electable, or he didn’t deliver on his promises, or we can’t argue about the past, or we can’t have our attention diverted by distractions or we need a new generation of leadership.

    This is different than saying that Trump’s poisonously stupid conduct in office and afterwards was completely unacceptable and alienated the middle of the electorate, that he creates his own private realities, that he will say anything without regard for the truth and that he is profoundly selfish, easily distracted and vengeful.

    Any other frontrunning candidate with Trump’s qualities and vulnerabilities would have this case made against him every day on the stump, in TV commercials and during debates. …………
    ………….
    …………. Yes, Trump has massive baggage and would be an electorally risky choice, but he ran a close race against Biden in 2020, and it’s not crazy to think a rematch would be close again.

    Two, the early general election polling isn’t cooperating. In the RealClearPolitics polling average, Trump trails Biden by just .9 percent. Perhaps that would change next year when Democrats turn their political guns on Trump in earnest or as Trump faces potential criminal trials and guilty verdicts. But the data point that everyone uses as the most ready reference on electability looks good for Trump.

    It’s especially awkward for Ron DeSantis to make the electability argument, by the way, when he is polling more poorly against Biden and trailing Trump badly.
    …………
    The root of the problem is that Republicans really like Trump and believe, even more than ever after the indictments, that he is being treated unfairly. The conundrum is that it’s impossible to bring Trump’s 75 percent favorable rating down without attacking him, but attacking him brings the possibility of inadvertently getting lumped in with the people treating him unfairly, and hurting yourself more than Trump.
    …………….

    Rip Murdock (eb5012)

  134. It would be an interesting test case, as Grisham is not banning the possession of firearms (a clear constitutional violation), but only the public possession of firearms, which wasn’t constitutionally protected until last year.

    See 133 for the NM state constitution, which DOES protect that and has a 50 year-old federal precedent clarifying that.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  135. The European Union has welcomed the dismissal of Ukraine’s scandal-ridden prosecutor general and called for a crackdown on corruption, even as the country’s political crisis deepened over efforts to form a new ruling coalition and appoint a new prime minister.

    Ukraine’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to fire Viktor Shokin, ridding the beleaguered prosecutor’s office of a figure who is accused of blocking major cases against allies and influential figures and stymying moves to root out graft.

    “This decision creates an opportunity to make a fresh start in the prosecutor general’s office. I hope that the new prosecutor general will ensure that [his] office . . . becomes independent from political influence and pressure and enjoys public trust,” said Jan Tombinski, the EU’s envoy to Ukraine.

    “There is still a lack of tangible results of investigations into serious cases . . . as well as investigations of high-level officials within the prosecutor general’s office,” he added.

    Irish Times, March 2016

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  136. It is unlikely that Grisham would be charged with a crime under 18 U.S.C. § 242 by any administration (unless President Trump orders his DOJ to so).

    1) Why not? Professional courtesy?

    2) Any GOP president would be pressured to do so, as 2A rights are as holy to the GOP as abortion is to Democrats.

    Governors and other government officials who issue ukases in blatant denial of enumerated rights OUGHT to go to jail. Trump is being prosecuted under 18 USC 241.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  137. Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/10/2023 @ 9:11 am

    You know NM politics better than anyone here, but given the breakdown of the legislature, I assume that she is safe from impeachment. I expect her order will be withdrawn by the end of the week.

    Rip Murdock (eb5012)

  138. New outrage:

    Biden’s answer to the NYC immigrant problem: mandating that released asylum-seekers remain in their state of entry. Texas is not pleased:

    Texas governor Greg Abbott has promised to send “even more buses” to Washington, D.C. if President Joe Biden’s proposal to restrict the ability of border states to relocate illegal immigrants to other spots around the county proceeds.

    “Biden considers forcing migrant families to remain in Texas. This scam was tried years ago & was shot down by a judge,” the Republican governor wrote on X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter. “We will send Biden the same swift justice.”

    “And, we will add even more buses of migrants to Washington D.C.,” Abbott warned on Thursday.

    https://www.nationalreview.com/news/greg-abbott-blasts-potential-wh-plan-to-make-illegal-migrants-remain-in-texas-threatens-even-more-buses-to-d-c/

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  139. 2) Any GOP president would be pressured to do so, as 2A rights are as holy to the GOP as abortion is to Democrats.

    That’s fine, let them order the FBI to investigate and their DOJ to prosecute.

    Rip Murdock (f45733)

  140. “This is different than saying that Trump’s poisonously stupid conduct in office and afterwards was completely unacceptable and alienated the middle of the electorate, that he creates his own private realities, that he will say anything without regard for the truth and that he is profoundly selfish, easily distracted and vengeful.”

    I want this as my bumper sticker

    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3)

  141. It’s possible that “natural-born citizen” has since been broadened to include children of U.S. citizens born overseas (a 1790 Act of Congress specified that, “The children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural-born citizens”). But it hasn’t been narrowed, and in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Court interpreted the 14th Amendment as reaffirming that people born in the U.S. are indeed natural-born citizens, regardless of their parents’ citizenship.

    Two lies in one paragraph from Soviet born Volokh.

    1) In 1795 the “natural born citizenship” language was repealed and only “citizenship” was used.

    2) If the Court was “reaffirming that people born in the U.S. are indeed natural-born citizens,” then their holding would have expressly used that language. No such luck:

    VII. Upon the facts agreed in this case, the American citizenship which Wong Kim Ark acquired by birth within the United States has not been lost or taken away by anything happening since his birth. No doubt he might himself, after coming of age, renounce this citizenship, and become a citizen of the country of his parents, or of any other country; for by our law, as solemnly declared by Congress, “the right of expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people,” and “any declaration, instruction, opinion, order or direction of any officer of the United States, which denies, restricts, impairs or questions the right of expatriation, is declared inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the Republic.” Rev. Stat. § 1999, reënacting act of July 27, 1868, c. 249, § 1; 15 Stat. 223, 224. Whether any act of himself, or of his parents, during his minority, could have the same effect, is at least doubtful. But it would be out of place to pursue that inquiry; inasmuch as it is expressly agreed that his residence has always been in the United States, and not elsewhere; that each of his temporary visits to China, the one for some months when he was about seventeen years old, and the other for something like a year about the time of his coming of age, was made with the intention of returning, and was followed by his actual return, to the United States; and “that said Wong Kim Ark has not, either by himself or his parents acting *705 for him, ever renounced his allegiance to the United States, and that he has never done or committed any act or thing to exclude him therefrom.”

    The evident intention, and the necessary effect, of the submission of this case to the decision of the court upon the facts agreed by the parties, were to present for determination the single question, stated at the beginning of this opinion, namely, whether a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States. For the reasons above stated, this court is of opinion that the question must be answered in the affirmative.

    Order affirmed.

    Within the massive dicta of Wong Kim Ark, there is plenty to show that “natural-born citizen” is no more synonymous with “citizen” than “naturalized citizen” would be synonymous with “citizen.” Each is it’s own specific term. Volokh’s fuzzy statutory construction would allow a naturalized citizen to be President.

    SCOTUS punted on ruling that “citizen at birth” is the same as “natural-born citizen” when it could have been a slam dunk to use specific language found in The Constitution. That should make everyone give this topic a little more thought.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  142. Governors and other government officials who issue ukases in blatant denial of enumerated rights OUGHT to go to jail. Trump is being prosecuted under 18 USC 241.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/10/2023 @ 9:17 am

    Prosecutions under 18 U.S.C. § 242 need specific victims whose rights have been deprived, so I suggest you violate her order and then file a complaint with the Justice Department.

    Rip Murdock (eb5012)

  143. mandating that released asylum-seekers remain in their state of entry.

    A “Remain in Texas(or other Border State) Policy!” Too funny!”

    The way asylum treaties were supposed to work is that the asylum seekers weren’t supposed to travel past the first asylum capable country they encounter. That was the basis for Remain in Mexico.

    But 81 million people had their say…

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  144. Catoggio on Musk.

    We could spend the rest of this newsletter spitballing theories for why Elon behaves the way he does. The Occam’s Razor explanation appeals to me instinctively: Like millions of other people his age, he’s been seduced by the populist belief that contrarianism is intrinsically virtuous. Internet tribalism has turned a healthy impulse to question authority into an unhealthy reflex to dispute the conventional wisdom in all things, even when the conventional wisdom is stuff like “Ukraine’s cause is just” or “Jews aren’t to blame for antisemitism.”

    Social media is a factory for manufacturing useful idiots. Elon doesn’t just own the factory, he lives there. He’s the most Very Online person in America.

    And so he’s the most useful idiot.

    He was also succinct in describing Musk’s wrong moral calculus.

    Musk reportedly described the Ukrainian plan to Isaacson as a “mini-Pearl Harbor,” which succinctly captures his moral confusion. Russia is the side that instigated hostilities in this conflict, of course; they’re the proper analogue to Japan, not Ukraine. The Ukrainian operation in Crimea wasn’t an attempt to prepare the wider battlespace for a war of conquest by decapitating the enemy’s navy. It was a defensive measure to try to end that sort of war.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  145. You know NM politics better than anyone here, but given the breakdown of the legislature, I assume that she is safe from impeachment. I expect her order will be withdrawn by the end of the week.

    NM is weird.

    There are 2.1 million people in NM. Half the (non-Native) population lives in cities (ABQ, Santa Fe, Las Cruces, Taos). The rest live in (very) small communities. More than half of the state’s land is US military land, national parks and a number of Native reservations (including the huge Navajo rez across Four Corners).

    The cities have turned a bit red of late, due to crime and several Soros-style DAs (one of whom is now the state AG) refusing to prosecute petty criminals. The ABQ city council is much less liberal than it once was.

    The other half (900,000) live in isolated communities of a few thousand at most. These folks are VERY supportive of gun rights as they are their own first responders. While many of them vote for Democrats in the legislature, those Democrats are not anti-gun. This is why Lujan Grisham is unable to get her lopsided, gerrymandered, legislature to pass more gun control. She has far more luck with programs that provide government benefits or benefit her party. The first act of the NM legislature under Lujan Grisham was to join the Electoral Vote Compact.

    That being said, the desert communities tend to elect strong conservatives, and the Congressional gerrymander assigned parts of greater ABQ to each of the 3 CDs to dilute the rural vote.

    Trump is particularly unpopular here, as the state is 50% Hispanic (and many of those trace their roots to before the Mexican Cession). They do not like Donald Trump. This has tilted many state elections to D, as Trump is a drag on the ballot.

    W was the last GOP presidential candidate to win the state in 2004, by less than 1%. The next 4 times the GOP lost by 15%, 8%, 10% and 11%. The Libertarian Party is strong here, having reached 9% in 2016.

    In governor’s races the state is competitive, with the last 4 races being R+7, R+15, D+14 and D+6. The last two elections had Trump as as a GOP handicap.

    The statehouse is 65%-35% Democrat in both houses and the congressional delegation is 3-0. Both due to a gerrymander after the legislature ignored the citizens commission and passed their own map. There are ongoing lawsuits.

    Note that “Lujan” is to NM as “Lee” is to Virginia. Both the governor and one of the Senators are part of a family dynasty.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  146. Social media is a factory for manufacturing useful idiots.

    That is a hell of a thing to post on social media.

    The Dispatch strikes again.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  147. Also, all but six of NM’s counties are part of a 2A sanctuary organization. Of the others, the Bernalillo Country (read: Albuquerque) sheriff and the ABQ police chief have said they will not police the governor’s new order, and that each of them has serious reservations about it.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  148. That is a hell of a thing to post on social media.

    This is not Facebook, thank God. Neither is The Dispatch.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  149. Two lies in one paragraph from Soviet born Volokh.

    Talk about attacking the messenger.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  150. Subscription sites where groups of people post their thoughts/opinions on topics are not social media sites?

    Sure.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  151. Talk about attacking the messenger.

    Your rules.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  152. Prosecutions under 18 U.S.C. § 242 need specific victims whose rights have been deprived, so I suggest you violate her order and then file a complaint with the Justice Department.

    I suspect someone is speeding up and down a state highway, trolling for state police as we speak, so that he can point to his unlocked rifle in the back seat — legal last Thursday — and get the needed citation.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  153. Your rules.

    Uh, no. Attacking an argument is different that this pure ad hominum.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  154. Ok

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  155. Subscription sites where groups of people post their thoughts/opinions on topics are not social media sites?

    Well, they’re websites. But they are the difference between a members-only club and a bullhorn on he sidewalk. Facebook is just email spam with a bit of organization.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  156. For Rip:

    New poll finds California voters resoundingly oppose cash reparations for slavery

    The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by The Times, found that 59% of voters oppose cash payments compared with 28% who support the idea. The lack of support for cash reparations was resounding, with more than 4 in 10 voters “strongly” opposed.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  157. Volokh’s fuzzy statutory construction would allow a naturalized citizen to be President.

    Arnold for President!

    Rip Murdock (eb5012)

  158. Scotusblog: Court asked to review prosecution of Jan. 6 participants, with implications for Trump

    This week, we highlight petitions that ask the court to consider, among other things, whether federal prosecutors can seek to punish participants in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol – and possibly, the former president – under a financial-crimes law that bars obstruction of government proceedings.

    Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 following a series of high-profile investment scandals, most notably the collapse of Enron. The law increased protections for investors and whistleblowers in the corporate-finance industry. One provision of that law, known as Section 1512(c), makes it a crime, carrying a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, to “corruptly” tamper with evidence for use in an official proceeding or “otherwise” obstruct that proceeding….

    [Defendant] Miller did not contest the charges for assaulting police and disorderly conduct. However, he sought to have the charge for obstructing an official proceeding dismissed. The government’s reading of Section 1512(c) was too broad, he insisted. In particular, Miller argued that the provision’s two clauses function in tandem, outlawing corrupt conduct that “otherwise obstructs” a government proceeding only if that conduct tampers with evidence.

    A federal district court in Washington agreed and dismissed the obstruction charges. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reinstated them against Miller and two other men, Edward Lang and Joseph Fischer, charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attacks. (Lang has filed a separate petition that is currently pending at the court; Fischer received an extension until next month to file his petition.) The appeals court held that the law’s two clauses function independently, barring not only evidence tampering but also conduct that, even if not directed at any government record, “otherwise obstructs” a government proceeding. That reading, the D.C. Circuit explained, is consistent with the ordinary meaning of terms like “otherwise” and “obstruct.”

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  159. Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/10/2023 @ 10:06 am

    Not willing to put your money (literally) where your mouth is?😜

    Rip Murdock (eb5012)

  160. Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/10/2023 @ 10:30 am

    Idiotic idea. The reparations report will be shelved and forgotten.

    Rip Murdock (eb5012)

  161. Arnold for President!

    Rip Murdock (eb5012) — 9/10/2023 @ 10:31 am

    Or Volokh.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  162. Idiotic idea. The reparations report will be shelved and forgotten.

    I particularly liked the bit about capping rents in previously redlined zip codes. I can think of no better way to mandate slums.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  163. The Dispatch is a subscription online website with a comments section, so if that is your view of what social media is, BuDuh, does that mean that this website is also social media? Oxford defines “social media” as…

    websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.

    Dispatch and Patterico users can post comments, but we don’t have the keys to post any front-page content.

    Regarding the 14th Amendment, the language in very first sentence is unambiguous…

    All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

    It doesn’t say natural born, just born. The only place in the Constitution where “natural born” appears is Article II, Section 1, pertaining to qualifications for president.

    Regarding “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”…

    The first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment conveys U.S. citizenship on all persons “born … in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Obviously we are talking here about persons “born … in the United States.” Thus the children of illegal aliens are not U.S. citizens only if they are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

    But there is no sense in which children of illegal aliens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. So long as they remain in the United States, they are subject to U.S. law. If they violate U.S. law, they can be arrested by U.S. law enforcement, brought before a U.S. court, and sentenced to U.S. prison.

    Your Naturalization Act argument makes no sense to me. The “born” part was specifically referring to situations like McCain or Ted Cruz.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  164. Federal Court Rules Against Texas in Case Where State Claimed Immigration and Drug Smuggling Qualify as “Invasion”
    …………
    ………….(In his ruling), Judge David Alan Ezra concludes that Texas violated the statute. He also rejects the state’s invasion theory, primarily on the ground that the issue of invasion is a “political question”:

    [T]he political question doctrine bars consideration of Texas’s “invasion” defense. Texas argues that it constructed the floating barrier pursuant to the Self-Defense Clause, U.S. Const. art. I, § 10, cl. 3,27 because it is being “invaded” by “[t]housands of aliens . . . including members of cartels,” and thus asks the Court to exempt Texas’s conduct from the RHA…. To credit Texas’s allegation of invasion would be to make a policy decision on a topic the Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit have identified as a nonjusticiable
    political question….

    Several constitutional provisions assign the federal government—not states—the authority to recognize and respond to invasions. See U.S. Const. art. I., § 8, cl. 15 (power to call forth militia); art. I, § 9, cl. 2 (power to suspend habeas corpus); art. IV, § 4 (power to protect against invasion). The Constitution’s commitment of the question of an “invasion” is especially strong when it involves “the immigration and the status of aliens,” which the Constitution assigns exclusively to Congress. Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387, 394-95 (2012)….

    Thus, courts of appeals have uniformly declined to consider whether and when an “invasion” occurs because of illegal immigration, as it “involves matters of foreign policy and defense,” which the Constitution specifically commits to the federal government. Padavan v. United States, 82 F.3d 23, 28 (2d Cir. 1996) (finding nonjusticiable plaintiffs’ claim that “the federal government violated the Invasion Clause because the influx of legal and illegal aliens into New York State represents an ‘invasion,'”); New Jersey, 91 F.3d at 470 (finding nonjusticiable New Jersey’s claim of invasion by illegal aliens)……….

    ………….

    Texas hopes to distinguish its case from the resounding rejection of similar “invasion” arguments in the cases cited above by centering the argument on the State’s right to “engage in War” when “actually invaded.” U.S. Const., art. I, § 10, cl. 3….

    [A]ll Texas’s new argument does is ask the Court to take the additional step—beyond the nonjusticiable question of whether the federal government has failed to protect Texas from invasion—of sanctioning Texas’s assertion of plenary power to declare and respond to “all types of invasions, including invasions from non-state or quasi-state actors.” (Dkt. # 26 at 24.) Under this logic, once Texas decides, in its sole discretion, that it has been invaded, it is subject to no oversight of its “chosen means of waging war.” (Dkt. # 33 at 7-8.) Such a claim is breathtaking.

    ………….

    The Fifth Circuit has temporarily stayed Judge Ezra’s ruling pending appeal.

    Rip Murdock (eb5012)

  165. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

    Thank you, Paul.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  166. Hand Wringing:

    ……………
    Interviews with more than a dozen Republican donors and their allies revealed hand-wringing, magical thinking, calls to arms and, for some, fatalism. Several of them did not want to be identified by name out of a fear of political repercussions or a desire to stay in the good graces of any eventual Republican nominee, including Mr. Trump.
    …………
    Some donors have backed Mr. Trump’s rivals despite believing that he is unbeatable in the primaries. These donors are banking, in part, on the chance that Mr. Trump will eventually drop out of the race because of his legal troubles, a health scare or some other personal or political calculation.

    Fred Zeidman, a Texas businessman who is an enthusiastic backer of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, said he had given her a blunt assessment of her prospects last month.

    “You’re at 2 percent, and he’s at 53 percent,” he recalled telling her, in only a slight exaggeration of Mr. Trump’s polling advantage. “He ain’t going to erode that much. Something needs to happen to him for you to overtake him.”
    ………..
    Large-dollar Republican donors, even those who enthusiastically or reluctantly backed Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020, have made no secret of their wish to move on in 2024.
    …………..
    ………….. The explosive growth of small-dollar contributions — a phenomenon that, on the Republican side, has overwhelmingly favored Mr. Trump — reflects a widening disconnect between voters’ sympathies and the interests of big donors.
    ………….
    The conservative commentator Bill Kristol, who has become a pariah in his party over his longstanding opposition to Mr. Trump, said he told donors and their advisers at the beginning of the year that if they were serious about defeating Mr. Trump, they had to spend money in a concerted effort to persuade Republican voters that he should not be the nominee.

    The hope was that, by Labor Day, Mr. Trump’s poll numbers would be in the 30s, Mr. Kristol explained. Instead, he said, “they’ve done nothing, and Trump is at 50 percent.”
    ………….
    (Metals magnate Andy Sabin, who is backing Senator Tim Scott) conceded that Mr. Trump had a “very solid base,” adding that he would “almost have to murder somebody” for people to turn on him. “People think he’s God.”
    …………

    Rip Murdock (eb5012)

  167. Dana/JVW:

    My post at 12:15 pm is “in moderation”. Please release Thanks.

    [Done. – JVW]

    Rip Murdock (f45733)

  168. Nate (7759cd) — 9/9/2023 @ 9:01 am

    Kevin and Rob, did you actually read AB957?

    I read Rob’s piece and was annoyed that the article was just quoting a bunch of people reacting to the bill. So I looked it up and read it. It doesn’t say what you say it does.

    You probably have to read between the lines.

    The bill would have the state of California endorse a cult with crazy beliefs – that many people are assumed at birth to be the wrong sex and that this can be corrected, and that children should lie about this to their parents – not at age 18 but at age 12.

    That the belief about being the wrong gender is wrong is proven by increase in the percentage of children who have this belief, because it means either all over the world and for all time till now people were being forced wrongly to agree on what their sex is, or that this is amounts to a new cultish belief, spread by some adults to children.

    Sammy Finkelman (246e0e)

  169. I don’t think Nate is coming back to this one even though Rip provided him a link.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  170. It doesn’t say natural born, just born. The only place in the Constitution where “natural born” appears is Article II, Section 1, pertaining to qualifications for president.

    Yet another phrase that is tortured by those that want it to mean something else.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  171. It doesn’t say what you say it does.

    Yes it does, as it only adds one paragraph within the state code, in two different places. The rest of the stuff (e.g. don’t give kids back to their crack addict mom) was already there.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  172. Thus the children of illegal aliens are not U.S. citizens only if they are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

    And indeed, they would note BE “illegal” if they were not subject to said jurisdiction. The only place where this makes sense is those with diplomatic immunity, and potentially those just passing through. Would a child born in a international transit holding area qualify?

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  173. *And indeed, they would not be

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  174. The “natural born v. born” and if “natural born” meant “born of two citizen parents” was a hallmark of the Obama citizenship conspiracy theory litigation.

    Rip Murdock (820914)

  175. And, as we know, it means “became a citizen at birth.” So, the child of two illegals, born in El Paso, can become president.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  176. And what was the consensus of the holdings in the majority of those litigations, Rip?

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  177. And, as we know, it means “became a citizen at birth.”

    I guess the framers of the 14th amendment were just too lazy to use the synonym that everyone knows.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  178. And what was the consensus of the holdings in the majority of those litigations, Rip?

    BuDuh (1a6e52) — 9/10/2023 @ 4:27 pm

    Lack of standing or frivolous litigation.

    Rip Murdock (bb3d20)

  179. Oh?

    So I guess the “hallmark” didn’t get resolved. Funny that.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  180. So I guess the “hallmark” didn’t get resolved. Funny that.

    BuDuh (1a6e52) — 9/10/2023 @ 4:35 pm

    Hallmark: a distinguishing characteristic, trait, or feature.

    Rip Murdock (bb3d20)

  181. The questions raised by the birtherism litigation had already been answered, in that President Obama was a natural born citizen of the United States.

    Rip Murdock (bb3d20)

  182. 👍

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  183. ESPN Baffled What Athlete Kneeling With Eyes Closed And Hands Folded Could Possibly Be Doing

    QUEENS, NY — As tennis champion Coco Gauff knelt on the court with her eyes closed and hands folded, puzzled ESPN commentators were left to wildly speculate as to what Ms. Gauff could possibly be doing.

    “What do you make of it, Jean?” asked commentator Pam Shriver. “Perhaps it’s a new yoga pose? Never seen anything like it!”

    As Ms. Gauff completed the mysterious ritual and rose to her feet, ESPN producers pored over prior videos. “It appears Ms. Gauff has performed this bizarre practice several times in the past,” said ESPN’s Bill Bonnell. “We’re still at a loss. The only similar thing we’ve ever seen was when people would kneel on one knee in honor of Tim Tebow, also known as ‘Tebowing’. Maybe Coco just doesn’t know how to ‘Tebow’ properly.”

    Eventually, a low-level producer explained to ESPN that Ms. Gauff was praying. That producer was subsequently sacked, and the person who hired him was also sacked for good measure.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  184. Taking Sides:

    Former President Donald J. Trump on (Sunday, September 2nd) called Blake Masters, the failed Arizona Senate candidate considering a second run next year, and told him he didn’t think Mr. Masters could win a primary race against Kari Lake…………
    ………….
    Mr. Trump’s call on Sunday came days after a report that Mr. Masters, a 37-year-old venture capitalist, was preparing to make a second run for the Senate in the swing state after his loss to Senator Mark Kelly, the Democratic incumbent, in 2022.
    …………..
    Last year, Mr. Trump endorsed both Mr. Masters, a political newcomer and an anti-immigration hard-liner who has close ties to the populist New Right, and Karie Lake, who embraced Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election with particular intensity.
    ……………
    The call between the former president and Mr. Masters was described by two people familiar with it who insisted on anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the private conversation. One of the people said Mr. Trump had not definitively ruled out supporting Mr. Masters’s candidacy and that in conversations with others, Mr. Trump had left open the possibility that Ms. Lake might not run.
    …………..
    Mr. Masters has told associates that he thinks another “bloody” primary would hurt the party’s chances of winning the seat — and that a battle against Ms. Lake would surely be bloody, according to the person close to him. Mr. Masters has also privately questioned whether Ms. Lake will run, that person said.
    ……………
    Mr. Trump’s skepticism about Mr. Masters long predates their weekend conversation. The former president has told associates he thinks Mr. Masters was a “bad candidate” in 2022, according to two people who have spoken to the former president.

    Among Mr. Trump’s complaints about Mr. Masters was that he had tempered some of his comments related to Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. When Mr. Masters said in a debate in October 2022 that he hadn’t seen evidence of widespread fraud in the state, Mr. Trump called him, in a moment captured by a Fox News camera.

    “If you want to get across the line, you’ve got to go stronger on that one thing,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Masters. “That was the one thing, a lot of complaints about it.” Then he mentioned Ms. Lake, then the Republican nominee for governor.

    “Look at Kari — Kari’s winning with very little money,” Mr. Trump said. “And if they say, ‘How is your family?’ She says, ‘The election was rigged and stolen.’ You’ll lose if you go soft. You’re going to lose that base.”
    ………….

    Rip Murdock (bb3d20)

  185. More From Arizona:

    A proposal by Republican election deniers in Arizona who want to opt out of the state’s government-run presidential primary election in 2024 and instead hold the party’s own one-day, in-person election, with paper ballots that would be counted by hand………
    …………
    Jeff DeWit, chair of the state party, concluded that the party does not have the money, the manpower or the infrastructure to run an election for an estimated 1.4 million eligible voters.
    …………
    “The actions taken by the (Maricopa County Republican Committee) are in solidarity with President Donald J. Trump, who has been persecuted, arrested and indicted for taking the very same positions,” Craig Berland, chair of the Maricopa County Republican Committee, said in a video posted this week on X, formerly known as Twitter.
    …………..
    The Maricopa County GOP proposal runs counter to efforts by the RNC and groups allied with Trump to embrace early voting after disappointing election losses. ……….

    The overwhelming majority of Arizonans return their ballots early either by mail, by drop box or by walking them into poll centers that open before Election Day. Echoing Trump, Maricopa County Republican activists have blamed those voting methods, along with the machines that count votes, for losses by Trump, Lake and others.

    Invoking a raft of election conspiracies, Berland and other county GOP leaders passed a resolution in late August that demanded the state party withdraw from conventional voting procedures, where voters can cast ballots by mail and elections are run by local officials across 15 counties and overseen by the secretary of state.

    Under state law, parties are allowed to opt out of publicly run elections. Under the county party’s model, the cash-strapped state party would pay for the election, draft election rules, locate and set up hundreds of polling sites, and recruit, hire and train election workers. The state party had about $200,000 cash on hand at the end of June, campaign finance records show.
    ……………

    Comedy gold!

    Rip Murdock (bb3d20)

  186. “Mr. Trump had a “very solid base,” adding that he would “almost have to murder somebody””

    I kinda doubt that murder would even disuade many. The victim would have had it coming…or the facts would somehow be in dispute. However Trump wanted them to see it. We’ll see what people do when we get to actual primary voting. It’s perplexing that the party of Reagan has become the party of Trump. I guess good luck with that…

    AJ_Liberty (677a2b)

  187. Trump could shoot Chris Christie on national TV and he’d still get a plurality of the vote.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  188. Don’t forget Trump’s comment “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” in 2016.

    The gnashing of teeth and rending of garments by the billionaire class that funded Trump in 2016 and 2020 is hilarious. He is their monster, and they are unable (or unwilling) to anything to stop him.

    Rip Murdock (bb3d20)

  189. If Christie and Trump had an old fashioned duel, neither would miss

    steveg (758282)

  190. Christie would be OK with that.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  191. Both would claim victory

    steveg (758282)

  192. Flesh wound?

    steveg (758282)

  193. I feel like Christie can probably shoot. Trump probably has people who shoot for him.

    Nic (896fdf)

  194. Why do minorities in blue states vote for progressive prosecutors and judges? Many come from states like texas where judges run on how many death warrants they sign and prosecutors on how many death sentences they get. When they get caught like tex. ag ken paxton they expect mercy and forgivness. L federal “drug” prosecuter tried to get out of hit and run and drunk driving arrest by flashing his government credentials and telling cops their masters wont want to make an enemy of a prosecuter. We had a gov. republican jan brewer get away with it here in AZ because dhe was a “friend” of DPS ron milstead.

    asset (eae5d7)

  195. I feel like Christie can probably shoot. Trump probably has people who shoot for him.

    Christie would empty the clip, too.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  196. Out: Covfefe
    In: Lying dog-faced pony soldiers.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  197. It’s how stutterers compensate. They stick to words they’ve found they can pronounce.

    I have no explanation for the WWII (dogface) and Plains Wars (pony soldiers) jumble.

    nk (c50eed)

  198. I feel like Christie can probably shoot. Trump probably has people who shoot for him.

    Trump would have trouble with his finger reaching the trigger; Christie with getting his through the trigger guard.

    nk (c50eed)

  199. And neither should start from a waist draw.

    nk (c50eed)

  200. Meantime, has anybody already mentioned this and I missed i?

    Appeals court slaps Biden administration for contact with social media companies

    The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld an injunction restricting how the government can communicate with social media companies, which the Biden administration warns will stymie efforts to counter false and misleading claims about elections, public health and other important topics.

    The panel of judges, all GOP nominees, say that the administration’s efforts to flag what it considered to be false and harmful content about COVID, the 2020 election and other topics that violated the social media companies’ policies likely amount to a violation of the First Amendment. The court found that Biden Administration officials coerced and threatened the social media companies to take down content.

    Reading past the media bias, the facts are damning. And I think I owe NJRob an apology. But not Matt Taibbi.

    nk (39ee67)

  201. I had forgotten about this.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emergency_(India)

    This kind of thing is much on my mind these days. We need to avoid it at all costs.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  202. @104 Rip Murdock (ee7171) — 9/9/2023 @ 6:49 pm
    Re: Wong Kim Ark.

    That was a judicial ruling, and if I’m not mistaken considered Dicta with respect to birthright citizenship.

    Congress CAN pass a statute to turn off birthright citizenship from a fixed date.

    What they cannot do, is make it retroactive once given. THAT would take a constitutional amendment.

    whembly (eafcf2)

  203. @202, It does make one nervous when politicians from both side start dipping into emergency powers to get their preferred results. Biden’s vaccine mandate for large private companies and his unilateral extension of rent deferral are troubling over-reaches. So too it appears the NM governor’s foray into unilaterally regulating guns because of an imagined emergency. These are the problems that manifest with both increased radicalism and the paralysis it brings to the political system. For instance, there are reasonable things we could be doing on illegal and legal immigration to make it more ordered, but we rather play politics to try to gain an advantage in terms of power. The temperature rises with the predictable result being violence and the authoritarianism required to control it. It’s equally concerning that Trump’s people were allegedly contemplating using the Insurrection Act to quell opposition to their quasi-insurrection. DeSantis bullying Disney and public teachers and performatively shipping illegals around the country are not encouraging signs either. It’s cliche, but we do need to find a way to get along better. We need common purpose. This is the problem with the culture war items…it just makes this problem worse. Some don’t seem to care.

    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3)

  204. AJ, I think that the kindergarten approach—You Cut, I Choose—seems best. I mean, I listened to:

    1. Someone claiming that Biden was smart as a whip this weekend.
    2. A pro-Trump person dissing DeSantis for being…rude and insensitive.

    Folks really can’t think this. It must be rah rah cheerleading…or a complete disconnect from prior events.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  205. Anyone see Biden beimg shooed off the stage by his handlers while he was answering a question.

    Is anyone even pretending anymore that he’s in charge?

    NJRob (9fa282)

  206. That was a judicial ruling, and if I’m not mistaken considered Dicta with respect to birthright citizenship.

    It was a Supreme Court ruling and it was on all fours (not dicta) with respect to birthright citizenship. The Court ruled that a person of Chinese parents born in the United States was by birth a citizen of the United States no matter how much a bunch of xenophobic bigots in Congress might yammer that his allegiance still lay with the Emperor of the Celestial Kingdom.

    nk (ad8fa8)

  207. AJ,

    telling school teachers not to use their authority to groom small children is not an abuse of power. The government does not own our kids.

    NJRob (9fa282)

  208. Simon,

    Here’s what we are up against: Trump or Death

    Many readers are under the impression that they have a choice in next year’s presidential election. Allow me to disabuse them of this false notion. Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith and Fani Willis took away the right of Republicans to choose a presidential candidate by indicting President Donald John Trump. Because the charges are bogus, we must re-elect him or government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall perish from the earth.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  209. Congress CAN pass a statute to turn off birthright citizenship from a fixed date

    Congress can make pi equal to 7 if they want. Doesn’t make it true. How do you expect textualists to get around the plain English of the 14th Amendment? Pretty sure that Clarence Thomas would rip that a new assh0le.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  210. So too it appears the NM governor’s foray into unilaterally regulating guns because of an imagined emergency.

    Especially when gun crimes in the affected county have been on a decrease, thanks to a change in the DA and public opinion regarding criminal justice.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  211. The Court ruled that a person of Chinese parents born in the United States was by birth a citizen of the United States

    While I agree with your interpretation, I don’t see how this is on point wrt illegal immigration, something that has mostly evolved since. Back then, someone could move from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso and no one would be the wiser. IDs, personal taxes, etc, didn’t exist.

    Everyone was undocumented.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  212. The fact of the matter is that for a 100 years or so, both Congress and the Supreme Court have moved towards recognition of citizenship when the question arises, to the point when it has become very difficult to even voluntarily renounce it.

    nk (ad8fa8)

  213. It does make one nervous when politicians from both side start dipping into emergency powers to get their preferred results. Biden’s vaccine mandate for large private companies and his unilateral extension of rent deferral are troubling over-reaches. So too it appears the NM governor’s foray into unilaterally regulating guns because of an imagined emergency.

    No argument.

    These are the problems that manifest with both increased radicalism and the paralysis it brings to the political system. For instance, there are reasonable things we could be doing on illegal and legal immigration to make it more ordered, but we rather play politics to try to gain an advantage in terms of power.

    Still no argument

    The temperature rises with the predictable result being violence and the authoritarianism required to control it. It’s equally concerning that Trump’s people were allegedly contemplating using the Insurrection Act to quell opposition to their quasi-insurrection.

    Um, no argument but I see a tilt developing.

    DeSantis bullying Disney and public teachers and performatively shipping illegals around the country are not encouraging signs either.

    Now the tilt is obvious. DeSantis (and Abbot) are acting to counter largely unopposed transgressions: Illegal immigration (sharing the pain with the posturers), trans activism (masquerading as education), and corporations that sanction states for democratically-passed laws.

    It’s cliche, but we do need to find a way to get along better. We need common purpose. This is the problem with the culture war items…it just makes this problem worse. Some don’t seem to care.

    All true, but the problem is at least shared. The Culture Wars did not start on the Right and more than the Ukraine War did not start in Ukraine.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  214. *and any

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  215. it has become very difficult to even voluntarily renounce it.

    The IRS has a hand in that. There are people who have never visited the USA, and never intend to, who have serious banking problems in their country of residence because the IRS claims they own US income taxes.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  216. CA culture wars:

    AB-5, called the Safe and Supportive Schools Act, passed the California State Assembly in May by a vote of 64-4 and on Thursday passed the California State Senate, 32-3. The bill would mandate an “online delivery platform and an online training curriculum to support LGBTQ cultural competency training for teachers and other certified employees.”

    ——

    AB-655 states that “mental health treatment” shall involve a minor’s parent or guardian “unless the professional person who is treating or counseling the minor, after consultation with the minor, determines that the involvement would be inappropriate.” In doing so, the legislation intentionally carves out an exception to hide “gender-affirming counseling” from parents on the suspicion that parents who want to save their kids from later experimental interventions actually pose a threat to their own children.

    ——

    AB-1078 bills itself as protecting “instructional materials and curriculum” that address “diversity.” On Thursday, it passed both the California Senate, 31-9, and the Assembly, 61-17.

    The bill aims to prohibit a public school board or a charter school governing body from “refusing to approve or prohibiting the use of any textbook, instructional material, or other curriculum or any book or other resource in a school library on the basis that it includes a study of the role and contributions of any individual or group” as laid out in requirements to “accurately portray the cultural and racial diversity of our society.”

    ——

    SB-407, which cleared the California Senate in May by a vote of 31-5, advanced Sept. 1 through an Assembly committee. Although the bill has yet to pass the state’s lower house, it represents an extension of the transgender measures that the Assembly has passed repeatedly in recent days.

    The bill would require a “resource family” in the foster care system to “demonstrate … an ability and willingness to meet the needs of a child regardless of the child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, and that, should difficulties around these issues arise, a willingness to obtain resources offered by the county or foster family agency or other available resources to meet those needs.”

    ——

    The capstone to this entire system of mandated belief is the most Orwellian provision of all: AB-957, the bill that makes it “child abuse” if a parent disagrees with his or her child’s stated gender identity. This bill passed the Assembly, 51-13, in March and the Senate on Friday, 57-16.

    https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/10/californias-coming-inquisition-targeting-anti-trans-parents/

    None of these bills should be within government’s power. They are a further demonstration of government enforcing religious belief in the schools and in society at large.

    But the real takeaway is that states that oppose this kind of overreach are pilloried, while stat3es that engage in Culture Wars on the other side are not.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  217. Sorry about the missing block quotes.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  218. The Democrat Party controls the state legislature 3-1 in both houses, even though statewide elections are much closer than that. CA invented the modern gerrymander.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  219. How do you expect textualists to get around the plain English of the 14th Amendment?

    Is “natural-born citizen” part of that plain English?

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  220. I’m fine with people pushing back on teachers and their unions. They have indulged in quite of mission creep beyond their original charter, to the point where they want more rights than the parents have, and don’t care much about pushing back on Disney’s kingdoms. They co-opted and corrupted Anaheim, they went one up in Orlando area by carving out their own Kingdom within a state, now is time for that to be over.

    I think Texas should be able to win a legal challenge on buying immigrants a ticket to LA or NYC. If the person is said by USA to be free to move about the country, it should be legal to gift them a ticket if they’d like to go to NYC, Chicago or LA. If the feds say that the immigrants must stay in the border state they first crossed into, I think TX should win there on it being an unfair burden on Tx citizens but it is all politics, power and not about what is best

    steveg (da3952)

  221. @207

    That was a judicial ruling, and if I’m not mistaken considered Dicta with respect to birthright citizenship.

    It was a Supreme Court ruling and it was on all fours (not dicta) with respect to birthright citizenship. The Court ruled that a person of Chinese parents born in the United States was by birth a citizen of the United States no matter how much a bunch of xenophobic bigots in Congress might yammer that his allegiance still lay with the Emperor of the Celestial Kingdom.

    nk (ad8fa8) — 9/11/2023 @ 8:54 am

    Ah, thanks for the correct.

    Again, my point still stands. Either another SC rule overturns that, or Congress passes a statute governing birthright citizenships.

    whembly (5f7596)

  222. @210

    Congress can make pi equal to 7 if they want. Doesn’t make it true. How do you expect textualists to get around the plain English of the 14th Amendment? Pretty sure that Clarence Thomas would rip that a new assh0le.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/11/2023 @ 9:04 am

    Textualism, yes you’d be right.

    But, the arguments to be had is Originalism…and there’s debate about that.

    whembly (5f7596)

  223. Well Biden being a puppet explains why he’s the first President to ignore 9/11.

    NJRob (9fa282)

  224. But, the arguments to be had is Originalism…and there’s debate about that.

    But there were NO arguments about “illegal immigrants” during the ratification, so originalism gets you nowhere. As I’ve said before, only what we now call “citizenship tourism” was addressed, and only by tenuous implication. There were no “illegal immigrants” in 1866, nor any good way to identify such.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  225. @213

    The fact of the matter is that for a 100 years or so, both Congress and the Supreme Court have moved towards recognition of citizenship when the question arises, to the point when it has become very difficult to even voluntarily renounce it.

    nk (ad8fa8) — 9/11/2023 @ 9:17 am

    Federal Abortion (from 1973) stood nearly 50 years and was overturned.

    So, I don’t think it’s as insurmountable as you’re implying.

    For sure, it would take an Amendment to retroactive remove Birthright citizenship already given, and I doubt we’d see any appetite.

    But, at some future point? I can certainly see either overturned in SC or Congress passes a statute prohibiting it.

    whembly (5f7596)

  226. @225

    But, the arguments to be had is Originalism…and there’s debate about that.

    But there were NO arguments about “illegal immigrants” during the ratification, so originalism gets you nowhere. As I’ve said before, only what we now call “citizenship tourism” was addressed, and only by tenuous implication. There were no “illegal immigrants” in 1866, nor any good way to identify such.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/11/2023 @ 10:27 am

    The originalism argument, as I understood it, as the 14th Amendment was silent on the idea of this “citizenship tourism”.

    Hence, the arguments that should congress explicitedly pass a law to govern this, it should be kosher.

    whembly (5f7596)

  227. Clarence Thomas views the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment as holy writ, as it allowed the freedmen to have (at least theoretical) full citizenship. He’s actually more on board with the first paragraph of that amendment than Supreme Court precedent, since everything after the first sentence was gutted in the 1870s.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  228. The originalism argument, as I understood it, as the 14th Amendment was silent on the idea of this “citizenship tourism”.

    Hence, the arguments that should congress explicitedly pass a law to govern this, it should be kosher.

    Not exactly. The bit connecting the birth to those who are subject to the laws of the United States is not “silence.” There was no discussion of people arriving by jet plane, of course, but there is an at least presentable argument there involving “owing allegiance.”

    This is different that those who enter the US with a view to living here, whatever their official status is. Even an illegal immigrant “owes allegiance” to the US and the state within which they reside.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  229. @229

    Even an illegal immigrant “owes allegiance” to the US and the state within which they reside.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/11/2023 @ 10:39 am

    While the US vs Ark case does seem to argue for birthright citizenship, there’s a distinction here…

    Wong Kim Ark was a legal resident of the US.

    You can’t say the same for those who illegally come to our country.

    Here’s a working analogy:
    Newborn children of illegal aliens born in US soil are more analogous to the children of a foreign invading force than to Wong Kim Ark. The former are children of parents who lack immigration status and whose presence actually defies our laws – – whereas the latter was the child of lawful-permanent-resident which is nearly indistinguishable from citizens.

    Congress, via the various nationalization/immigation laws is the controlling authority here if they so choose to change birthright citizenship, imo. (no chance something like that happens in near term)

    Unless I’m missing some other judicial ruling, there has never been an explicit holding by SCOTUS that the children of illegal aliens are automatically accorded birthright citizenship. Again, in the case of Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Court ruled that a child born in the U.S. of legal aliens was entitled to “birthright citizenship” under the 14th Amendment. This is an important distinction and the legalese are suckers for such specificity. This was a 5–4 opinion which provoked the dissent of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who argued that the 14th Amendment did not in fact adopt the common-law understanding of birthright citizenship.

    Keep in mind during this time, there was almost unanimous agreement among its framers that the amendment did not extend citizenship to Indians. Over the years there were some hodge-podge laws that moved the tribes under the US jurisdiction. Then, in 1923 Indian Citizenship Act, there was a universal offer to all tribes. Any Indian who consented could become a citizen.

    Thus Congress used its legislative authority under Section 5 of the 14th Am. to determine who was under the jurisdiction of the U.S.

    Congress could make a similar determination today, based on this legislative precedent, that children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens ARE or ARE NOT subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. A constitutional amendment is no more required today than it was in 1923.

    Furthermore, the intent was plain –

    Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (1866), 2890 (Sen. Howard, authoring the 14th amendment):
    Howard said,

    …except that the question of citizenship has been so fully discussed in this body as not to need any further elucidation, in my opinion. This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [or] who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country.

    Illegal aliens fits the “foreigners” and “aliens” moreso than anything else.

    That’s where my perspective is on this debate.

    Congress can pass a statutory law government whether or NOT illegal aliens born in the US are automatically citizens. Even the Supreme Court could reverse it’s Kim Ark ruling as well.

    With the debacle currently today at the border and border states “sending” illegal aliens to Blue cities, there may be some appetite to confront this.

    whembly (5f7596)

  230. I agree that Disney, Trans, and immigrant lifts/bussings are different kinds of animals than pushing for suspect regulations or dubious executive orders. There is also no link to an appeal to emergency powers. DeSantis and the legislature certainly have the power to revoke Disney’s special district. I’m not so sure they have the ability to revoke it because of political speech Disney engaged in. The Florida legislature can also draft rules that government employees must follow in schools. Problems result if the rules are ambiguous but that’s true of all legislature…but in this case it is purposeful rather than accidental. If it happened that it did result in a “don’t say gay” interpretation, then would that go to far in terms of chilling free speech (with admittedly teachers having obvious constraints on what topics they can engage in the classroom).

    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3)

  231. The wording of the fourteenth amendment on this topic is clear:

    > All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

    The argument that some people born in the US are not citizens depends on the clause “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”. If they are born here without being subject to our jurisdiction, they’re not citizens.

    But if they’re not subject to our jurisdiction, we cannot prosecute them for any crimes they commit (because they are not subject to our jurisdiction).

    People who want the children of illegal immigrants to both not be citizens *and* be prosecutable for crimes are trying to interpret the same exact five word clause differently in different circumstances without any textual justification for doing so.

    aphrael (71d87c)

  232. Congress can pass a statutory law government whether or NOT illegal aliens born in the US are automatically citizens. Even the Supreme Court could reverse it’s Kim Ark ruling as well.

    It is unlikely that Congress would be able enact such a law, as it would be filibustered in the Senate, and even more unlikely that the Supreme Court would reverse Wong Kim Ark. Enacting such a law (or regulation) would be necessary so that the a legal challenge to the current interpretation would reach the Supreme Court.

    Citizenship law fantasy camp.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  233. You would think that Joe Biden would at least acknowledge the 9/11 anniversary. But no. Go look.

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  234. > the arguments that should congress explicitedly pass a law to govern this, it should be kosher.

    if Congress explicitly passes a law which says that some people who are born in the united states are not citizens of the united states, it is no different than if Congress explicitly passes a law which says it is a federal crime to utter certain words. It directly contradicts the express text of the constitution.

    aphrael (71d87c)

  235. @232

    The wording of the fourteenth amendment on this topic is clear:

    > All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

    The argument that some people born in the US are not citizens depends on the clause “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”. If they are born here without being subject to our jurisdiction, they’re not citizens.

    But if they’re not subject to our jurisdiction, we cannot prosecute them for any crimes they commit (because they are not subject to our jurisdiction).

    People who want the children of illegal immigrants to both not be citizens *and* be prosecutable for crimes are trying to interpret the same exact five word clause differently in different circumstances without any textual justification for doing so.

    aphrael (71d87c) — 9/11/2023 @ 11:03 am

    This is an argument similar to how “militias” was/is interpreted with respect to the 2nd amendment.

    “subject to jurisdiction” isn’t meant back then as how you posited. It’s meant, “as it’s understood, what country/nation do you hold your allegiance”.

    Just because you illegally cross a boarder, doesn’t mean you renounce your former allegiance.

    Point being, it isn’t as clear cut as an argument you’re making and there’s a LEAST a case to argue that the status quo interpretation is wrong.

    whembly (5f7596)

  236. Another way to look at it.

    If you wanted the status quo, (ie, illegal alien giving birth to US citizens)…

    Then why bother the “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, ” descriptor? Just leave it out.

    But, it’s there and it’s meaningful.

    whembly (5f7596)

  237. whembly, the fact that birthright citizenship is valid if the immigrants are legally present does not say that it is not, if they are not. Additionally, the 14th Amendment’s language is broader, since it intended to make the freedmen citizens retroactively. So, “all persons … subject to jurisdiction” included them as the slaves were, if anything, subject to American jurisdiction.

    Even if the Court did not have to reach the “legality” issue, the arguments are the same.

    Illegal immigrants can be arrested, prosecuted and — after due process — imprisoned, expelled or both. This means they are also subject to US jurisdiction. I think that they could be drafted, if there was a draft, and charged with treason, should that apply. So they also “owe allegiance” to some degree.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  238. Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!!!!:

    ……..
    ……..(A)llies of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump signal they are preparing to fight over the state party’s new delegate rules — a battle with major implications for the important Super Tuesday contest.

    California is a significant prize in the presidential primaries, with more delegates than any other state. ……

    in late July, the (California Republican Party) wrote a new rule to change the way it operates, making the transition to a potential winner-take-all state. So as things stand for the 2024 race, whoever wins more than 50% of the statewide vote will get all the delegates. Should no one hit that threshold, delegates will be allocated proportionally.

    DeSantis allies blasted the change, which the Trump campaign supported. Delegates were previously awarded to the top two finishers in each congressional district, which would have allowed DeSantis, the second-highest-polling contender in the GOP primary, to obtain a large delegate haul. Those rules also would have encouraged DeSantis allies to spend more liberally in specific congressional districts where it felt the GOP electorates were more receptive to his candidacy.
    ……….
    ……….(I)t would be a big lift for DeSantis’ allies to get the rule changed. Jessica Millan Patterson, the chairwoman of the state Republican Party, said a change at this point would require an amendment to pass through the rules committee, in addition to winning the support of a majority of the state party’s delegation. Without support from the rules committee, two-thirds of the state party convention delegation would have to back any change — which is in excess of 1,400 members.
    ……….
    The convention is set to be well-attended by GOP primary candidates. In addition to Trump and DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy will speak, and Patterson hinted at more announcements in the coming days.
    ………..
    ………..(A) recent survey by the University of California-Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times showed how the new rules might be very beneficial to Trump. The poll found that Trump is on track to win all of the state’s massive delegate haul — the largest in the country — under the new rule, as 55% of likely GOP voters in the state planned to cast ballots for him. Just 16% backed DeSantis.
    ………..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  239. Congress CAN pass a statute to turn off birthright citizenship from a fixed date.

    No, they can’t. Well, they can try, but would be ruled unconstitutional.

    Wong Kim Ark was not a legal resident, he was a citizen. CA became a state in 1850, the 14th Amendment was passed in 1866, Ark was born in Frisco in 1873, and the USSC ruling bore directly on the issue. It wasn’t a segue into dicta. Call me a Scalia textualist, but the 1st sentence in Article I is concise…

    All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  240. Too bad for Volokh. Paul lucidly points out that “natural-born citizen” does not exist in the 14th Amendment. I don’t see how a textualist, Scalia style or otherwise, gets around this problem.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  241. whembly (5f7596) — 9/11/2023 @ 11:31 am

    If you wanted the status quo, (ie, illegal alien giving birth to US citizens)…

    Then why bother the “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, ” descriptor? Just leave it out.

    It’s mainly to exclude “Indians not taxed” who were excluded from the Census.

    There was a frontier at the time. There were ungoverned areas.

    It also applies to diplomats. Very important here is if a parent was employed by a foreign government at the time of the bi
    birth of the child.

    There was also no such thing as an illegal immigrant in 1868 nor even any “unincoporated territory.”

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  242. whembly (5f7596) — 9/11/2023 @ 10:50 am

    Congress can pass a statutory law government whether or NOT illegal aliens born in the US are automatically citizens.

    No it can’t.

    And if it would be possible to reinterpret the first clause of the 14th amendment, it would apply to the past, too, unless Congress made all people previously assumed to be citizens, citizens

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  243. 184. BuDuh (1a6e52) — 9/10/2023 @ 4:54 pm

    As tennis champion Coco Gauff knelt on the court with her eyes closed and hands folded, puzzled ESPN commentators were left to wildly speculate as to what Ms. Gauff could possibly be doing….

    …. Eventually, a low-level producer explained to ESPN that Ms. Gauff was praying. That producer was subsequently sacked, and the person who hired him was also sacked for good measure.

    The one who made the mistake, (was Bill Bonnell a producer?) or the one who corrected ESPN?

    Did he or she correct them on the air?

    The posture is derived from that of King Solomon at the dedication of the first temple.

    II Chronicles 6:12-13

    https://mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt25b06.htm

    12 And he stood before the altar of the LORD in the presence of all the congregation of Israel, and spread forth his hands–

    13 for Solomon had made a brazen scaffold, of five cubits long, and five cubits broad, and three cubits high, and had set it in the midst of the court; and upon it he stood, and kneeled down upon his knees before all the congregation of Israel, and spread forth his hands toward heaven–

    Also in I Kings 8:22 & 54, though not as clearly:

    https://mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt09a08.htm

    22 And Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD in the presence of all the congregation of Israel, and spread forth his hands toward heaven;

    and

    54 And it was so, that when Solomon had made an end of praying all this prayer and supplication unto the LORD, he arose from before the altar of the LORD, from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread forth toward heaven.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  244. Despite the many pages of Wong Kim Ark the court boils it down to the specific question and the direct answer.

    The evident intention, and the necessary effect, of the submission of this case to the decision of the court upon the facts agreed by the parties, were to present for determination the single question, stated at the beginning of this opinion, namely, whether a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States. For the reasons above stated, this court is of opinion that the question must be answered in the affirmative.

    Embracing the power of and:

    the single question, stated at the beginning of this opinion,

    namely, whether a child born in the United States,

    [and]of parents of Chinese descent,

    [and] who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China,

    [and] but have a permanent domicil

    and residence in the United States,

    and are there carrying on business,

    and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China,

    becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States.

    That is the total “single question” that the court “answered in the affirmative.”

    Does that mean that the status of an illegal alien parent, that may have residency in the United States but is technically domiciled in his country of origin, can prevent his US born child for acquiring US Citizenship at birth?

    Maybe. That set of specifics was not explored in the WKA question to the court so the court never ruled on it.

    IMO, which isn’t worth anything, this leaves open the possibility for Congress to pass a law regarding residency/domicile as a disqualification for birthright citizenship. Or has SCOTUS separately resolved this? I don’t know.

    WKA was as a very, very specific question. And the court took care in noting that.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  245. I don’t see how a textualist, Scalia style or otherwise, gets around this problem.

    What problem? How does the lack of the “natural” in the sentence somehow cancel what it precisely says?

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  246. I don’t disagree with the precise language, Paul. I agree that it is very precise.

    I am pointing out that Volokh, in your link, is treating it as if it has the specific term “natural-born citizen.”

    That is an error.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  247. 8, Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/8/2023 @ 10:35 am

    As for NYC, the city was built by the influx of Italians, Irish and Jews that came over in the 19th and early 20th century — well before there were limits on numbers of immigrants. The factors that limited immigration were the difficulty of travel and the lack of assistance for those immigrating.

    The New York Daly News had along, somewhat meandering and inconclusive editorial on Sunday, in which it said that actually in that time period the level of immigration was higher. The so-called crisis, it says, is the product of choices made and not made.

    https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/09/10/migrants-strengthen-new-york-but-the-city-still-needs-financial-help/

    Most New Yorkers know this abstractly, but to put it in comparative terms, during Ellis Island’s heyday a century ago, as many as 10,000 immigrants were arriving by ship daily, most of them passing through in a matter of hours. That was at a time when NYC’s population was about half what it is today, meaning the city was receiving roughly the contemporary equivalent of as many as 20,000 people per day, and some 10,000 on average. [A lot didn’t stay in New York] Today, we are getting 10,000 newcomers a month.

    They were largely quite poor and had levels of educational attainment far below contemporary migrant arrivals; many were outright illiterate. The stream of arrivals doubled the city’s population between 1900 and 1930, surging it by more than 3.5 million. Was the city destroyed? No. This immigration powered its development into the sort of city that stands as a global icon of opportunity, a self-perpetuating truism that has so many asylum seekers choosing here as the place to try to start over.

    Now, it’s obvious that the realities of immigration a century ago aren’t exactly parallel to today. Yesteryear’s immigrants were mostly left to fend for themselves, and there was certainly no equivalent to the city’s current shelter mandate, which compels it to provide at minimum a place to live for the tens of thousands of new arrivals.

    Pre-1921, arrivals generally didn’t even need visas, let alone work authorization. They were basically expected to arrive, settle in as best they could and work to sustain themselves immediately, in housing that, even adjusted for inflation, cost a small fraction of what it does today. [When it comes to housing, people commonly took in boarders, and also, since 1885, they were supposed to prove that they would not to become a public charge – now, if they go the asylum route, they are virtually required to become a public charge for six months to two years, if they don’t have someone take responsibility for them or work against the law]

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  248. No. The case would have been dismissed under federal law pursuant to the Supremacy Clause and federal immunity statutes which protect federal employees acting within the scope of their duties from being tried under state law in state courts for crimes or torts.

    nk (f9da9d) — 9/8/2023 @ 6:43 pm

    Maybe, maybe not. It’s interesting that Trump’s lawyers have not yet filed for removal to federal court.

    …….(T)he Supreme Court defined the doctrine of Supremacy Clause immunity in a series of cases between 1890 and 1920. Taken together, Supreme Court and 11th Circuit precedent provide that Trump would need to make three key showings to successfully raise a Supremacy Clause immunity defense to criminal prosecution in Georgia.

    First, Trump would need to demonstrate that he was acting pursuant to either an express grant of authority or an implied grant “growing out of the Constitution” and “the nature of the government under the Constitution.”

    Second, from an objective point of view, he would need to demonstrate that he did only what was necessary to pursue a valid federal objective.

    Finally, he would need to prove that he acted with proper subjective motivation—such as his belief that his actions were closely related to pursuing a legitimate federal objective—and not an improper one—such as his own personal political gain. An improper subjective motivation could be understood as either nullifying his authority in the presence of self-interest or criminal intent, or as defeating the reasonableness of his conduct.

    Trump’s Supremacy Clause immunity defense would be unpersuasive at any step of this analysis. First, no statute authorized him to interfere in Georgia’s ballot-counting process, and his attempt to force a state to take action to keep him in power was, if anything, directly contrary to the constitutional structure. Second, his actions bore no objectively reasonable relationship to the accomplishment of any valid federal objective or the enforcement of any federal statute.

    Finally, Trump’s subjective intentions fail to establish immunity in any formulation. There is no evidence demonstrating that he believed his own claims of fraud, and there is substantial evidence that he should not (and would not) have believed them. The context and the content of his statements to Georgia officials provide overpowering evidence that he acted in a self-interested manner, rather than in furtherance of a federal goal. For all these reasons, there would be no merit to an argument by Trump that he is shielded by Supremacy Clause immunity.

    Source (page 184). Paragraph breaks added and footnotes removed.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  249. this leaves open the possibility for Congress to pass a law regarding residency/domicile as a disqualification for birthright citizenship.

    What odds would you place on that happening? Somewhere between slim and none. Even as recently as the 115th Congress (2017-19) when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress (and Donald Trump was President for most of its existence), such legislation did wasn’t enacted.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  250. [and]of parents of Chinese descent,

    [and] who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China,

    These two factors were considered because at the time, and until 1943, the Chinese Exclusion Acts were in effect. Federal statutes specifically excluding Chinese (and later other Pacific Asia nations). Substitute “Birth Tourism Act” for a possible future case.

    nk (c8f033)

  251. The current situation — a product of a cascade of failures at all levels of government stretching back decades, from GOP legislators blocking every single attempt to shift immigration laws for years to President Biden’s hands-off approach on financial assistance and logistical coordination to Albany’s willingness to let Adams handle it alone — is undoubtedly unsustainable.

    Yet the juxtaposition to our past immigrant experience only highlights the fact that this so-called crisis is only so as a result of choices made or not made, choices like policy roadblocks against migrants’ ability to quickly start working; like the federal government’s almost insultingly paltry financial disbursements; like Gov. Hochul’s discomfort with signaling that other counties must be part of the solution.

    The problem with all the buck-passing and politicking of the past year is that it assumes inherently that the migrants are a burden, where the predominant question is who exactly should shoulder that burden and how. This framing is already a failure of imagination and an abdication of a leadership vision.

    When immigrants have historically been this country’s greatest asset, a rational approach would be for the federal government to take point in providing support like faster work authorizations and basic housing and employment assistance, as they already do for refugees.

    Congress decided, in years past, as a policy choice, not to allow people claiming political asylum to work for at least six months. Nobody has published details so far, but it’s a law that Biden and apparently other Democrats, wouldn’t even dream of proposing changing..

    Temporary Protected Status would allow people to work, but no one can legally arrive after the date it is proclaimed.

    There’s a special non quota work visa/ It’s little used and difficult to apply for, and may require a number of employees to be included at the same time, and so difficult for small farmers, but I would guess that people who say they don’t want to go back to their country f citizenship are not eligible or something.

    Congress has been tying immigration up in knots for decades, all with a goal of limiting numbers and the president’s discretionary authority. The vetting for Afghans who were clearly in the anti-Taliban side, has become impossible.

    Then states, localities and local nonprofits could divvy up guarantees of certain supports like getting driver’s licenses, health insurance and navigating employment law and work training.

    Not sure what this is about, but presumably the cost of these is low. They omit schools but the government is trying to raise the cost of education and the number of teachers anyway.

    Municipalities shouldn’t be fighting over who has to shoulder support for migrants, they should be fighting over who gets to take them in and have them help with the post-COVID economic revitalization and the current labor crunch. With cases still playing out for years, the majority of these folks are likely going to be around at least through Adams’ first term, and some large portion will win their cases and remain indefinitely.

    About 30% in New York, but if they lose they won’t be arrested immediately. They can also apply for hardship deferrals – applies to extreme hardship for U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouses but not hardship for U.S. citizen children, on the reasoning presumably that would be immigrants might have children just in order to stay in the country while marriages are a non quota category, but people ordered deported are ordinarily barred from using it for ten years. Of course this gets the federal government into the business of determining whether a marriage is real or not.

    The extreme hardship deferral of removal exists in the first place of course, in order to prevent pressure on Congress for private relief bills or to liberalize the law. Don’t think the restrictionists are not strategizing.

    Everybody lobbying strategizes and they seek either to prevent or create loopholes and nobody discusses things honestly. False issues are also raised by the restrictionists. Polio!?? I read that in a letter to the editor as an example of a disease for migrants are not tested. The other two were slightly more plausible possibilities. Fentanyl? It’s smuggled in hidden with fruit and vegetables, especially avocados, and in vehicles driven by U.S. citizens. Now, the most inexperienced drug dealers may try small scale smuggling and they would also be the most deadly. So yes, it would be useful to stop that if it’s going on. Guns? The smuggling is in the other direction U.S.A. -> Mexico.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  252. Finally, he would need to prove that he acted with proper subjective motivation—such as his belief that his actions were closely related to pursuing a legitimate federal objective—

    This is probably where Jeffrey Clark loses, because he is accused of conspiring to have the Department of Justice issue a false statement. This is where Mark Meadows had the better case but the judge ruled that what he did (or is accused of) when beyond the furthest bound of a legitimate action by a Chief of Staff. Meadoes ad argued he hoed tat if he helped Trump he would be ale to land the plsane (make a peaceful transition)

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  253. the Chinese Exclusion Acts were in effect. Federal statutes specifically excluding Chinese

    From immigrating, until World War II (1943) when a quota of 100 individuals was enacted for Chinese.

    They also if already here, could not naturalize.

    Now there was afraud that people did. A Chinese man woud travel for a year to China and report a birth. Maybe it was real. years later a “paper son” would apply to come to be admitted. They were closely questioned but at the time there was no DNA or even blood tests used.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_sons

    In 1906, the San Francisco earthquake caused a huge fire that destroyed public birth documents. Suddenly a new opportunity for citizenship arose: Chinese men who were already in the United States could claim that they were born in the United States. Other Chinese men would travel back to China as United States citizens and report that their wives had given birth to a son. Consequently, this made the child eligible to be a United States citizen, for which they would receive a document. These documents could then be used for their actual sons, or sold to friends, neighbors, and strangers.[8] This was termed as a “slot” and would then be available for purchase to men who had no blood relationships in the United States in order to be eligible to enter the United States. Merchant brokers often acted as middlemen to handle the sale of slots.[9]

    To truly enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act, an Immigration Station located in Angel Island in 1910, questioned and interrogated immigrants coming from 84 different countries with the majority of immigrants being Asian and Chinese, being the largest ethnic group at the time of establishment. Since official records were often non-existent, an interrogation process was created to determine if the immigrants were related as they had claimed. On average an interrogation process could take up to 2–3 weeks, but some immigrants were interrogated for months. Questions could include details of the immigrant’s home and village as well as specific knowledge of his or her ancestors.[10] These questions had been anticipated and thus, irrespective of the true nature of the relationship to their sponsor, the applicant had prepared months in advance by committing these details to memory. Their witnesses—usually other family members living in the United States—would be called forward to corroborate these answers. Any deviation from the testimony would prolong questioning or throw the entire case into doubt and put the applicant at risk of deportation, and possibly everyone else in the family connected to the applicant as well. A detention center was in operation for thirty years; however, there were many concerns about the sanitation and safety of the immigrants at Angel Island, which proved to be true in 1940 when the administration building burned down. As a result, all the immigrants were relocated to another facility. The Chinese Exclusion Act was eventually repealed in 1943.[11]

    When ships arrived in San Francisco, travelers were separated based on their nationality. Europeans and other first or second-class ticket holders were allowed to disembark, while Asian and other immigrants or those who had health concerns and were in need for quarantine were sent to Angel island for processing.[12]

    https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/paper-sons-daughters-complexity-choices-during-exclusion-era

    https://www.immigrant-voices.aiisf.org/stories-by-author/737-my-father-was-a-paper-son

    Only merchants, teachers, students, travelers, diplomats, and children of citizens and these exempt individuals were allowed into the U.S. During the 1920’s, 30’s, and 40’s many immigrants from China arrived in the United States with purchased citizenships. Those who utilized this method to enter the U.S. were known as “paper sons.”

    They were eventually legalized and allowed to reclaim their true identity.

    This fear was finally alleviated when Immigration Amnesty was granted in the sixties. My father took this opportunity to change his surname back to the original family surname, Quock. My brothers and I decided to also change our surnames. We spelled our last name, “Kwok”. There are several anglicized ways of spelling (the Chinese character for our surname). In Cantonese it is pronounced Gock. In Mandarin it is pronounced Guo. So our last name is just a phonetically spelled name for the Chinese character.

    On August 6, 1966, under the Amnesty Program, Jim gave up his false citizenship as a Fong, in exchange for a status as Permanent Resident and reverted to his true name, Jim Quock. He petitioned for Naturalization on February 10, 1969 and became a Naturalized citizen of the United States on January 20, 1970.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  254. From the Daily News editorial published Sunday

    …Before the mayor and other detractors launch into more diatribes about how the city’s full, they should keep in mind that the city’s population nosedived by an estimated 468,000 people between mid-2020 and mid-2022, or some eight times the number of migrants currently in the city’s care; some of them have returned, many haven’t.

    The retort that the city wasn’t responsible for taking care of those people in the same way only emphasizes the fact that this is far from the type of influx that would actually overwhelm the city’s capability to absorb if we just had a better approach.

    That’s not something that can fundamentally be laid at the mayor’s feet — as we’ve long maintained, the person most dropping the ball here is the president, who will never be sadistic enough to satisfy the hardcore border restrictionists but also seems politically allergic to be seen providing too much help, despite the fact that he’s going to be made to own this issue anyway — but the mayor needs to understand that he’s setting the tone here.

    Pronouncements that migrants are a destructive force can and do have repercussions, from chipping away at public support for humanitarian immigration to pouring gasoline on an already spreading fire of white nationalist hate and terrorism, whether or not the mayor intends them to. This July, a Texas man was sentenced to life in prison for having driven 700 miles specifically to murder Hispanic people he accused of invading the U.S., eventually killing 23 people in the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooting.

    It’s good for Adams to hedge his words later, as he did in a PBS interview on Friday, that the burden is financial (and yesterday he ordered city agencies to cut their budgets 5%) but he should simply avoid making those types of statements in the first place.

    Instead, be more precise in pointing out, for example, that this could be an extraordinary boon to New York if only the feds were more willing to work collaboratively with him, and more directly call out showmen like Curtis Sliwa, who have decided to seize on this issue politically in the least helpful manner possible. Political opponents are gleefully using the migrants as an attack vector but don’t often themselves have any better ideas beyond pointless cruelty….

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  255. Today we had the reading of the names, broadcast on most main television stations (not the subchannels) but not on radio, although some shows discussed what was going on or September 11th itself.

    A bell rings at four times: When the two planes hit and when the buildings fell down. I think also the time when the plane hot the Pentagon and the plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I didn’t watch this steadily.

    The names are read in alphabetical order, except for the two presenters who say things: And my aunt, uncle husband wife, etc. we miss you Thse names are read out of order. One person near the end played a recorded message.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  256. Maybe. That set of specifics was not explored in the WKA question to the court so the court never ruled on it.

    The ruling did not differentiate the legal status of the parents. It simply said they are residents, permanently domiciled in California and conducting business there. They were not diplomats or agents of a foreign power.

    That they did not sort legal from illegal actually argues against you. It would take a court to find that the difference matters before there is any notion that such a statute would be constitutional. Do you think that the current Supreme Court would accept that? I can see lots of reasons to think otherwise, particularly recent Native American cases.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  257. Chinese Exclusion Acts

    I am willing to bet large sums that no member of the Supreme Court will rely on the Chinese Exclusion Acts to buttress their case.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  258. who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China,

    Any immigrant who has not naturalized is the subject or citizen of a foreign state. Even if they are able to be naturalized, but don’t, WKA still applies.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  259. Not Gonna Happen:

    ……….
    In a filing Monday, (attorneys for former President Trump) argued that Judge Tanya Chutkan should recuse herself from the case for previous statements they say give the appearance of bias. They did not outright accuse Chutkan of being biased against Trump, but highlighted statements they claimed “create a perception of prejudgment incompatible with our justice system.”

    “Judge Chutkan has, in connection with other cases, suggested that President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned. Such statements, made before this case began and without due process, are inherently disqualifying,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in the filing.
    ……….
    “This was nothing less than an attempt to violently overthrow the government, the legally, lawfully, peacefully elected government, by individuals who were mad that their guy lost,” Chutkan said during one October 2022 hearing, later adding, “it’s blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”

    Trump’s attorneys called that statement “an apparent prejudgment of guilt.”

    “The public meaning of this statement is inescapable — President Trump is free, but should not be,” they wrote.

    The filing also highlights statements Chutkan made to rioter Robert Palmer, who was sentenced to more than five years in prison for using a wooden plank and a fire extinguisher to attack police.

    “The people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged,” Chutkan said during Palmer’s December 2021 sentencing hearing.

    Ultimately, it is up to Chutkan to decide if these past statements create a perception of bias. If she does, a new judge would be assigned to the case. If she disagrees with Trump’s attorneys, she will continue to preside over the matter. If the recusal is denied, Trump’s attorneys could petition an appeals court for a writ of mandamus, essentially an order requiring her to recuse. These efforts are not often successful.
    ……….
    The only case in which Trump has not sought a new judge or jurisdiction is one in which the special counsel charged him with 40 felony counts related to “willful retention” of national security information. The judge in that case, Aileen Cannon, was appointed by Trump.
    ……….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  260. The ruling did not differentiate the legal status of the parents.

    No kidding?

    It simply said they are residents, permanently domiciled in California and conducting business there. They were not diplomats or agents of a foreign power.

    It simply said that the child of parents who posses those attributes, if born on US Soil, is a citizen.

    Change the attributes and you have an unanswered question.

    BuDuh (1a6e52)

  261. Change the attributes and you have an unanswered question.

    Like if they were English subjects and not Chinese?

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  262. In response to Trump’s complaint about the trial date just before Super Tuesday, Judge Chutkan should move the date a month earlier.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  263. It simply said that the child of parents who posses those attributes, if born on US Soil, is a citizen.

    Change the attributes and you have an unanswered question.

    No. The Wong Kim Ark Court acknowledged that Congress had “acted” with the Chinese Exclusion Act. And then decided that Congress could not overturn the Fourteenth Amendment.

    nk (908739)

  264. I am pointing out that Volokh, in your link, is treating it as if it has the specific term “natural-born citizen.”

    I still don’t understand why you think there’s a distinction between “born in the US” and “natural-born”, and I saw no such distinction in the Wong Kim Ark case.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  265. So much for textualism.

    BuDuh (6e812b)

  266. It simply said that the child of parents who posses those attributes, if born on US Soil, is a citizen.

    Change the attributes and you have an unanswered question.


    According to arch-liberals James Ho and Eugene Volokh
    , that question was answered 40 years ago by Plyler v. Doe and INS v. Rios-Pineda, both of which held, quoting Ho, “that the 14th Amendment extends to anyone ‘who is subject to the laws of a state,’ including the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens.”

    The following, for example, is from INS v. Rios-Pineda: “Deportation proceedings were then instituted against [the illegal immigrant] respondents, who by that time had a child, who, being born in the United States, was a United States citizen.”

    lurker (cd7cd4)

  267. In Fulton County, Fear Not Removal

    ………..
    (Mark) Meadows—and Donald Trump, for that matter—can get a fair trial in Fulton County court. They can also get a fair trial in federal court. The fate of justice and accountability for Jan. 6 does not turn on the success of the removal litigation.
    ……….
    It is also important to separate the question of removal from the question of whether Supremacy Clause immunity may protect Meadows, Trump, and others. These two questions are related, but they are emphatically not the same. And some of the anxiety about removal has its roots in the concern that the same logic that leads to removal will ultimately lead to the case’s dismissal.

    This conflation is a mistake. …….
    ……….
    Color us skeptical that Meadows has a winning argument for federal Supremacy Clause immunity. The grand jury has accused him of taking a string of actions that the district attorney argues are wholly outside of his role as the president’s chief of staff:

    Count 1 of the Indictment alleges that the defendant, while associated with a criminal enterprise, unlawfully conspired and endeavored to conduct and participate in the enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity, both directly and indirectly. That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to unlawfully change the outcome of Georgia’s presidential election in Mr. Trump’s favor.

    Count 28 charges the defendant with soliciting Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to violate his oath of office by unlawfully “altering, adjusting, or otherwise influencing” the certified returns of the presidential election in Georgia. Neither of these alleged acts fall within the scope of a Chief of Staff’s official duties, and the defendant’s proffered federal defense of Supremacy Clause immunity cannot apply to them.

    We believe that when the record is full, this argument will ultimately prevail—both against Meadows and against Trump. …….
    ……….
    In our view, removal is appropriate because the decision that a federal immunity defense is not available to Meadows (and others) should itself come from a federal court.

    Imagine, for a moment, that a presidential election truly was stolen. Under such circumstances, wouldn’t we want the president to aggressively investigate that possibility and be minimally deterred by the possibility of later liability in protecting the integrity of the vote? …….. Do we really want the final word on that question to be a state court system answerable only to the people of a single state?
    ……….
    There are two more reasons why removal is desirable here. The first is that the law of presidential official acts and immunity is, even by the standards of Article II doctrine, unclear and unsettled. We know that this case is going to present the question of the scope of the president’s official duties, both through litigation by Meadows and others and likely through Trump himself. The law of presidential immunity should be decided in federal, not state, court.

    And indeed the question will be decided in federal court no matter what, because the federal questions will make their way up through the Georgia state system and ultimately be appealable to the Supreme Court on direct review and on any subsequent collateral attack. ……

    There are broader policy considerations, especially around the dangers of allowing state-level prosecutors to go after presidents, that point in the same direction. There’s a case for not letting any county-level prosecutor indict a former president without some minimal degree of federal oversight……..
    ……….
    There may even be certain advantages to trying the case in federal court. With little more than a year before the 2024 presidential election, time is of the essence—yet past examples of multi-defendant RICO trials in Fulton County courts have been anything but efficient. In 2014, jury selection in the 12-defendant RICO case related to the Atlanta Public Schools test cheating scandal lasted more than six weeks, with a verdict being handed down more than six months later. Presently, a sprawling RICO case against more than a dozen individuals involved in an alleged criminal gang, dubbed “Young Slime Life,” is on month eight of jury selection. In the Trump case, jury selection alone could take a year or more.
    ……….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  268. lurker,

    That same article has WKA qualifying the citizenship to “includ[e] all children here born of resident aliens.” While this makes no differentiation between legal and illegal, it does make a distinction between resident aliens and those just passing through.

    Which is why I claim that there is a decent basis for Congress to reject citizenship tourism.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  269. Ho begins by taking this WKA paragraph:

    The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: The Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes. The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke, in Calvin’s Case, 7 Rep. 6a, “strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject;” and his child, as said by Mr. Binney in his essay before quoted, “if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle.” It can hardly be denied that an alien is completely subject to the political jurisdiction of the country in which he resides — seeing that, as said by Mr. Webster, when Secretary of State, in his Report to the President on Thrasher’s Case in 1851, and since repeated by this court, “independently of a residence with intention to continue such residence; independently of any domiciliation; independently of the taking of any oath of allegiance or of renouncing any former allegiance, it is well known that, by the public law, an alien, or a stranger *694 born, for so long a time as he continues within the dominions of a foreign government, owes obedience to the laws of that government, and may be punished for treason, or other crimes, as a native-born subject might be, unless his case is varied by some treaty stipulations.” Ex. Doc. H.R. No. 10, 1st sess. 32d Congress, p. 4; 6 Webster’s Works, 526; United States v. Carlisle, 16 Wall. 147, 155; Calvin’s Case, 7 Rep. 6a; Ellesmere on Postnati, 63; 1 Hale P.C. 62; 4 Bl. Com. 74, 92.

    And butchering it down to this excerpt:

    In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, it held that the “14th Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory … including all children here born of resident aliens.”

    Wow.

    I will need some Dramamine to get through the rest of his slaughter.

    BuDuh (6e812b)

  270. Well, it needed some butchering. Judges don’t have editors, but they should. And it does reduce to that, particularly the “resident” part. IF you removed that word from the summary, it would be a distortion.

    But thank you for the full excerpt, since “or born on foreign public ships” would tend to remove [non-resident] citizenship tourists from the allowed groups.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  271. That same article has WKA qualifying the citizenship to “includ[e] all children here born of resident aliens.” While this makes no differentiation between legal and illegal, it does make a distinction between resident aliens and those just passing through.

    Which is why I claim that there is a decent basis for Congress to reject citizenship tourism.

    With the caveat that I don’t enough to have an informed opinion, your distinction seems plausible. But what does Congress have to do with it? Either the !4th Amendment makes the American-born offspring of transient illegal immigrants citizens or it doesn’t. The place to settle that is the courts. If the answer is “nah,” then no Congressional action is necessary. If it’s, “yeah, they’re citizens,” Congress can’t do a thing about it.

    I suppose Congress could pass a law which would immediately be challenged, and which challenge would force SCOTUS to weigh in. In that case all I’ll say is, assuming I remember my 1-L Property correctly, that your legal residence is pretty much just wherever you live or have lived, and intend to stay or to which you intend to return. And yes, you can have more than one country of residence. So good luck proving a pregnant illegal snuck in just to drop an anchor baby, and not to reside here. The ones who go back their country of origin right after giving birth, never to retur, sure, those cases can be made. But how many such women leave their babies behind? Because if they don’t, what’s to argue about?

    Seems like an interesting question, but with a vanishingly small number of people to whom it should matter.

    lurker (cd7cd4)

  272. Ugh. Typos. I think they’re all easily enough decipherable. Remember the good old days before Obama stole the preview function?

    lurker (cd7cd4)

  273. butchering

    Wow

    slaughter

    I have no idea what you’re caterwauling about.

    lurker (cd7cd4)

  274. lurker (cd7cd4) — 9/11/2023 @ 10:19 pm

    Remember the good old days before Obama stole the preview function?

    It was a software update but what did it have to do with Obama?

    It happens too many times with new versions of software.

    And now I read the iPhone is surpassing Android, which is better software.

    Sammy Finkelman (d28438)

  275. Remember the good old days before Obama stole the preview function?

    It was a software update but what did it have to do with Obama?

    It wasn’t Obama. It was Jack Smith.

    nk (28c6fd)

  276. I have no idea what you’re caterwauling about.

    Me neither, just like I have no idea why BuDuh is making a case about the relevance of “natural born” versus “born”, but I can’t get an explanation out of him.

    BTW, Gov. Youngkin is another superior alternative to Trump but is unfortunately not running, and he made the right call in pardoning Scott Thomas Smith.
    The young father rightfully and righteously expressed his outrage that his 14-year old daughter was raped in a public school by a cross-dressing hooligan.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  277. Catoggio on Gov. Grisham’s power grab…

    If I were a soulless anti-anti-Trumper forever grasping for new ways to justify supporting Republicans, this is where I’d announce that Grisham’s power grab has sadly left me no choice but to withdraw my support from Biden and vote for Donald Trump next year.

    Because I’m a Never Trumper, I’m able to retain some moral perspective. One Democratic governor’s civic failure doesn’t quite balance the scales with a coup attempt, two impeachments, four indictments, and a deepening enchantment with illiberalism across the American right.

    But Grisham did fail spectacularly here. And she’s been so comically villainous about it that I find myself wondering if there’s some ulterior motive that I can’t sniff out.

    On Friday, she announced a 30-day ban on carrying firearms in public areas and on state property in Albuquerque and its surrounding county. New Mexico has seen a number of horrendous shootings recently that left children dead—a 5-year-old while she was sleeping, an 11-year-old outside a baseball stadium, a 13-year-old shot by her 14-year-old friend.

    No more, the governor declared. From now on, anytime a county averages more than 1,000 violent crimes per 100,000 residents—plus a certain number of hospital visits for gunshot wounds—a 30-day moratorium on gun possession in public spaces will take effect. Which law grants her the power to institute such a rule, you might ask?

    The law of Because I Said So, That’s Why. Better known as “emergency powers.”

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  278. Breaking:

    McCarthy backs launching formal impeachment inquiry into Biden

    So two brothers decide to go into the watermelon business. They rent a truck, go to a wholesaler, and load it with watermelons at $1.00 per melon.

    Then they park it at a highly-trafficked area and sell the watermelons from the truck at $1.00 per melon.

    At the end of the day, they tally up the money and the expenses and what with the rental of the truck, they’re $160,00 in the red.

    They think about it and, finally, one brother turns to the other: “I think we need a bigger truck.”

    nk (3514ca)

  279. McCarthy proposes impeachment inquiry, Clown Caucus still not satisfied.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  280. @279

    Breaking:

    McCarthy backs launching formal impeachment inquiry into Biden

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 9/12/2023 @ 8:35 am

    A welcome effort that would give the committees subpoena powers.

    But, it definitely looks like GOP is slow walking this.

    whembly (840a86)

  281. Something changed…

    “If we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People’s House and not through a declaration by one person.”
    –Kevin McCarthy, 11 days ago

    “I am directing our house committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into president Joe Biden.”
    –Kevin McCarthy, this morning

    …I’m guessing it was McCarthy’s fear of a Scaramucci-length career as Speaker.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  282. Rip (#268):

    I still fear removal. I remember a phrase about “Justice delayed is justice denied”.

    Removal throws more delay into the process. I am also concerned the RICO gets split between Georgia and Federal courts (fake electors and state people would likely remain in Georgia).

    The one thing that some of the never-never-Trump people get right is that it has taken way too long to get this to the indictment phase. The 1-6 charges should have been brought in 2022 or even late in 2021.

    Appalled (ec364d)

  283. A welcome effort that would give the committees subpoena powers.

    But, it definitely looks like GOP is slow walking this.

    whembly (840a86) — 9/12/2023 @ 9:47 am

    I disagree the GOP is slow walking Biden’s impeachment (and that’s how the inquiry will end, no doubt about it). They want to impeach him at the height of the presidential campaign.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  284. Removal throws more delay into the process. I am also concerned the RICO gets split between Georgia and Federal courts (fake electors and state people would likely remain in Georgia).
    …….

    Appalled (ec364d) — 9/12/2023 @ 10:16 am

    Removal to the federal courts doesn’t change what laws will be used. Trump, et. al. will still be prosecuted under Georgia’s RICO statute.

    From the source linked in post 268:

    Removal does not change the nature or substance of the state charges in the indictment. The charges would remain Georgia state charges under Georgia law. And presidential pardons can be granted only for “offenses against the United States,” meaning federal crimes. So even if the case were removed to federal court, neither Trump nor any other president could issue pardons related to the Fulton County case.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  285. Appalled (ec364d) — 9/12/2023 @ 10:16 am

    More:

    And Willis’s office is hardly new to litigating in federal court in any event: Last year, after Fulton County prosecutors brought state law charges against two federal marshals who killed a man during a 2016 shootout, a judge in the Northern District of Georgia permitted removal to federal court. Since then, Fulton County prosecutors have continued to litigate the case in federal court. If the Meadows (or Trump) case were to be removed, Willis and her team will be able to draw on its experience with the Heinze case. And, if necessary, Willis can also hire outside counsel with experience in federal courts to assist with the prosecution.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  286. Morning Consult Republican Primary Tracking Poll 9/12/23

    ……….
    The bulk of the GOP’s electorate (57%) would back Trump if the primary or caucus were held in their state today, down from a record 61% high in August. Another 14% would support DeSantis.

    Vivek Ramaswamy is backed by 9% of the party’s potential voters, followed by former Vice President Mike Pence and Haley (each at 6%), former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (3%) and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott (2%).
    ………
    Hypothetical head-to-head matchups show Biden leading Trump by 2 points and DeSantis by 5 points among the general electorate. ……
    ……….
    Trump is popular with 76% of the party’s potential electorate, while 22% view him unfavorably, unchanged from the previous week.

    Haley has seen a slight popularity boost in recent weeks. Her net favorability rating has improved from 24 points to 31 points since late August, with 50% of potential primary voters holding favorable views and 19% holding unfavorable ones.

    Haley is maintaining positive buzz following the first debate. About 3 in 10 potential primary voters have recently heard something positive about her while 13% have recently heard something negative — though the bulk of the GOP’s primary electorate (55%) reported hearing nothing at all.
    ……….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  287. Rip,

    The RICO indictment does not just include the idiots around Trump who held federal office. It contains a multitude of state GOP fake electors and kraken-brained outsiders, like Sidney Powell, who held no federal office. IANL — but I would like to hear from one how the Futon County case doesn’t end up being split in 2, because some people get removed and some do not.

    Appalled (ec364d)

  288. Rip,

    The RICO indictment does not just include the idiots around Trump who held federal office. It contains a multitude of state GOP fake electors and kraken-brained outsiders, like Sidney Powell, who held no federal office. IANL — but I would like to hear from one how the Futon County case doesn’t end up being split in 2, because some people get removed and some do not.

    Appalled (ec364d) — 9/12/2023 @ 11:35 am

    That may be, but all will be prosecuted under Georgia law.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  289. It ends up being split into at least two parts, but not because of removal to federal court (just the court and maybe rules would be is different, not the law or prosecutor) but because Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell have requested a speedy trial, as is there absolute right under Georgia law, and Trump and many others are going to have motions in court that will prevent their trials starting on October 23. Sidney Powell has also requested severance from Chesebro.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  290. Paul Montagu (d52d7d) — 9/12/2023 @ 8:15 am

    No more, the governor declared. From now on, anytime a county averages more than 1,000 violent crimes per 100,000 residents—plus a certain number of hospital visits for gunshot wounds—a 30-day moratorium on gun possession in public spaces will take effect.

    I think aa president could more legitimately se OSHA to declare unsafe any place of employment within 600 yards, say, of recent shootings.

    What’s going on here is the characterization of violent crime as a public health concern. I assume on the grounds that shooting victims get treated at hospitals.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  291. Every time I hear or read Chesboro, I think of Cheetos.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  292. I think of Wisconsin and cheese.. He’s a cheese brother. You know, like Blues Brother.

    He actually went to the Capitol to document Alex Jones telling people not to attack the police and instead go to another location where they would be able to listen to Trump speak.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  293. 294

    The order will suspend gas and diesel taxes in the state. This would be the second time in two years Kemp has suspended fuel taxes.

    I don’t know if that’s all does.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  294. Breaking: New Mexico Attorney General (D) refuses to defend Governor’s order suspending 2nd Amendment.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  295. So far the following Bernalillo Country officials have refused to enforce the governor’s order targeting Bernalillo County:

    Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen
    ABQ Police Chief Harold Medina
    Bernalillo County DA Sam Bregman
    ABQ Mayor Tim Keller
    NM State Attorney General Raul Torrez

    All are Democrats.

    The State AG has written a letter (PDF image) to the Governor, announcing that his office will not defend her in the lawsuits filed challenging her emergency Health Order.

    “Though I recognize my statutory obligation as New Mexico’s chief legal officer to defend state officials when they are sued in their official capacity, my duty to uphold and defend the constitutional rights of every citizen takes precedence,” Torrez wrote. “Simply put, I do not believe that the Emergency Order will have any meaningful impact on public safety but, more importantly, I do not believe it passes constitutional muster.”

    https://gazette.com/news/wex/new-mexico-ag-raul-torrez-refuses-to-defend-gov-lujan-grisham-in-gun-carry-suspension/article_4eb0f38d-8b11-5c93-8f3b-21ebeeb575a5.html

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  296. He said no to a lady? He is no gentleman.

    nk (c97f19)

  297. Bummer:

    It took just three plays for Aaron Rodgers to become the newest chapter in the New York Jets’ legacy of despair.

    On his opening series quarterbacking the franchise he was supposed to save, Rodgers took a snap out of the shotgun and made a short dropback in search of his first completion for the team. Then he was quickly engulfed by Buffalo Bills pass rusher Leonard Floyd, who brought him down for a sack.

    Rodgers got up, but then sat down. Soon, he was getting helped off the field and carted to the locker room.
    ………
    ………(C)oach Robert Saleh confirmed Rodgers’s season was over because of a torn Achilles tendon. Such injuries typically take up to a year to recover from.
    ………..
    ………Fans saved their loudest roar for when Rodgers emerged from the tunnel carrying an American flag on the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

    After the Jets held the Bills to a punt on the game’s opening drive, Rodgers took the field for his first regular-season possession wearing a slightly new shade of green. He never made it to his first completion.

    The drive began with a long run. On the next play, Rodgers’s first passing play, he narrowly avoided a sack and had to throw the ball away. Following a penalty, Rodgers took his final snap of the day—and potentially the season.
    ……….

    Given Rodgers’ age it’s likely that he’s taken the final snap of his career. He’s guaranteed $75 million of his current contract through 2024 out of $112 million, unless he retires.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  298. I wish, but it’ll never happen.

    lurker (cd7cd4)

  299. Meanwhile, California “complies” with Bruen by restricting concealed carry to almost nowhere, while making the permitting process much harder in those counties that were previously “shall-issue.”

    https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-09-12/california-democrats-concealed-carry-senate-bill-2-anthony-portantino-gavin-newsom-bruen-supreme-court-guns

    Portantino’s measure includes more than two dozen “sensitive places” where concealed firearms would not be allowed, such as day-care centers and schools, bars, college campuses, government buildings, medical facilities, parks and playgrounds, and on public transit. The bill would also make commercial businesses automatically gun-free zones unless the owner explicitly indicates otherwise.

    The bill also maintains rigorous application requirements for licensing authorities, mainly county sheriffs, to determine whether someone is a “disqualified person” from obtaining a permit, a term that opponents of SB 2 see as another subjective term that wouldn’t pass constitutional muster.

    The protocol includes conducting in-person interviews, obtaining character references and reviewing social media and other publicly available statements to identify safety risks. The bill requires an applicant to be 21, the same age required to buy a handgun, and bolsters training and safe storage rules.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  300. 18 USC 241 (Conspiracy Against Rights) should get wider play than just going after Donald Trump.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  301. @303 There are no rights only privileges. The privilege for a minority to own an assault gun is out weighed by the majority’s privilege to not have their school children shot. As napoleon said god is on the side of the heaviest artillery. He who wants all gets nothing. Gun nuts should be supporting reasonable gun control laws instead of riding around in pick up trucks with I will give up my gun when they take it from my cold dead hand bumper stickers. The supreme court can be changed at any time as can the federal system that gives a white minority power over larger populated states. The next democrat wont be a corrupt senile doofus like biden ;but someone who who will make lujan look like a moderate. The corporate deep state protects conservatives from the democrat party as they know their turn would be next ;but their time is running out. If you really believed you had rights you wouldn’t need to own a gun. Make a deal with the gun grabbers while you still can!

    asset (7c4770)

  302. asset (7c4770) — 9/13/2023 @ 2:19 am

    Get rid of the communists and those who are race baiting and we’d have a much safer society. You first.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  303. @282 if they’re slow walking it, why?

    Time123 (15a94d)

  304. NJRob, it’s odd to see someone that claims to be a populist so afraid of communists. Your economic policy preferences and theirs aren’t so far off.

    In the 2016 primary Warrens economic plans looked very similar to trumps when it came to trade and economic investment.

    Time123 (15a94d)

  305. I wish, but it’ll never happen.

    I wish, too. Ignatius is right today, lurker, just like Will was right ten months ago.

    I don’t know if I said it here or somewhere else, but the issue is less about Biden’s age and more about his replacement, because chances are good that the replacement will be POTUS in his 2nd term if he wins.
    Ms. Harris will never be ready for primetime, and she’s not a leader. If she has the character to put the good of the country above her personal ambition, she’ll announce that she won’t be Biden’s running mate so that Biden can pick someone capable. If he picked Michelle Obama, he’d win in a landslide.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  306. I never claimed to be a populist Time. You again put words in my mouth.

    I’m a conservative. Social conservatives that you hate so much because you refuse to acknowledge your social leftism creates the fuel for leftist economic policies. Or maybe you do know that and are just getting your jollies.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  307. @306

    @282 if they’re slow walking it, why?

    Time123 (15a94d) — 9/13/2023 @ 5:54 am

    I can think of two…

    1) Whether it’s deliberate or not, they’re purposely moving slowly to show they’re taking this inquiry seriously. The end result, is that this issue isn’t going away and will hound the Biden administration.

    2) McCarthy wants to pass any budget and thinks this inquiry will give him cover to pass “bad” budgets, thinking that the hardliners would rather have an active impeachment process than the government shutting down.

    whembly (5f7596)

  308. those make sense. Could also be timing the hearings to have the most impact on the election. I assume that if they felt they had compelling evidence they’d move very quickly.

    Time123 (15a94d)

  309. @282 if they’re slow walking it, why?

    Time123 (15a94d) — 9/13/2023 @ 5:54 am

    Because they don’t have a case for impeaching Biden. They are doing it only because Trump has been pressuring them to. For spite and retaliation.

    nk (29f376)

  310. McCarthy might as well be a hangnail on Trump’s pinky. He has no volition of his own.

    nk (29f376)

  311. NJRob, I don’t hate social conservatives. I’m a church going married man with 4 school aged children in youth sports. I spend what free time I have on shooting sports, camping, and off road vehicles with my kids.

    My family includes veterans, LEO, ppl who donate time to GOP candidates and one person who worked for a GOP elected official for 8 years.

    Many of the ppl I interact with in real life are social conservatives. Many of my views are correctly categorized as socially conservative. (Views around gun rights, limited government, rule of law, education, & regulation for instance)

    You’re just so warped by partisanship you can’t see it and view anyone that doesn’t perfectly align with you as a communist enemy.

    Time123 (15a94d)

  312. What executive experience does Michelle Obama have that makes her “capable?”

    BuDuh (6e812b)

  313. What executive experience does Michelle Obama have that makes her “capable?”

    One, eight years in the White House. Seems like a few things would’ve rubbed off during that time.
    Two, leadership, a trait Harris don’t have.
    Three, a spousal advisor who has some pretty solid experience.

    BTW, this is an assessment, not an endorsement. I’m not voting for Joe, regardless of who’s on the ticket, unless maybe he picks a Republican for a running mate.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  314. The NM emergency gun ban got me to thinking about the second amendment and our societal preoccupation with guns generally.

    I wonder a bit about concealed carry and even more about open carry. Personally, I struggle to think of a situation (over decades) where I might say, man I wish I was packing. Especially looking back to my younger more foolish days, I see things playing out more in Rittenhouse fashion or with unneeded escalation. Now I completely understand that people who must travel through, work, or live in high-crime areas…where muggings, jackings, and assaults are common….I am totally in favor of a liberal (classical) allowance of concealed carry. A 110lb woman coming home late at night on the bus shouldn’t fear for her life…and though it’s no guarantee that a confrontation may go well, this is at the crux of self defense. I want that individual trained at handling the weapon, understand the laws involved when she pulls it out and uses it, and understands all of her options to resolve the conflict.

    But generally, why carry if the likelihood of encountering crime is so low? Now you might argue, there’s no harm and in the 1:1,000,000 chance something does happen, better ready than crouching and hoping law enforcement arrives expeditiously. I get that, but it is also possible that given an average person’s lack of regular training and inexperience with correctly navigating volatile situations, the odds of a good outcome are sketchy. Gun fights are rarely clean and even good guy’s bullets can go through unintended walls.

    I get fear. People who have been mugged don’t want to feel defenseless ever again. Even if it’s still likely that a mugger could get the drop on them, there’s a psychological benefit to having a chance. But as a society are we correctly calibrating the odds. Are we letting our imaginations drive our better judgment. More guns means more guns that law enforcement must navigate and discriminate between. Are we helping…or do we only think we’re helping?

    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3)

  315. Personally, I struggle to think of a situation (over decades) where I might say, man I wish I was packing.

    When the state I lived in went to “shall issue” a lot of my friends got permits and started carrying just because.

    It didn’t last long.

    Even small handguns are sort of heavy and bulky and annoying to tote around for no reason. Plus there’s the list of places you can’t take them and leaving them in the car isn’t ideal.

    Only people I know who still Cary do so because they get paid in cash sometimes and have a legitimate concern about crime. AFAIK none of them have had to draw their weapon. (Thankfully)

    But you’re right that there’s a valid need for self defense.

    There are policy solutions that would reduce gun violence, but it’s a culture war issue that’s demagogued by both sides so I see little hope for improvement.

    Time123 (15a94d)

  316. There are policy solutions that would reduce gun violence

    What “policy solution” would prevent this?

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  317. Thanks, Paul. I am relieved that you are not endorsing an Obama/Biden/Obama ticket. I do think you are mistaken on Michelle being a winning choice due to her capabilities, of which I think she has far less than you describe.

    She is a winning choice for the same reason 81 million people voted for Kamala Harris.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  318. @282 if they’re slow walking it, why?

    Time123 (15a94d) — 9/13/2023 @ 5:54 am

    I can think of two…

    1) Whether it’s deliberate or not, they’re purposely moving slowly to show they’re taking this inquiry seriously. The end result, is that this issue isn’t going away and will hound the Biden administration.

    2) McCarthy wants to pass any budget and thinks this inquiry will give him cover to pass “bad” budgets, thinking that the hardliners would rather have an active impeachment process than the government shutting down.

    whembly (5f7596) — 9/13/2023 @ 7:05 am

    3) So the impeachment vote will occur in the middle of the general election campaign.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  319. Time123 (15a94d) — 9/13/2023 @ 7:27 am

    Did you or did you not support shutting down churches by state mandate due to the same type of nonsense New Mexico’s dictator is doing now?

    Are you pro-abortion, directly contrary to Christ’s teachings?

    Do you believe the government must mandate homosexual indoctrination in schools, permit it if the teacher desires, or should they focus on reading, writing and arithmetic?

    Do you believe that boys are boys and girls are girls or are they “gender-fluid?”

    Do you believe drug use is harmful and mass drug use breaks down society?

    Do you believe there are illegal aliens or are they just “undocumented Americans?”

    Is Christ the Son of God, who sacrificed himself and died on the cross for our sins only to rise again and ascend to Heaven?

    NJRob (000ff9)

  320. If (Biden) picked Michelle Obama, he’d win in a landslide.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d) — 9/13/2023 @ 6:08 am

    Gavin Newsom said on MTP that if Feinstein left her Senate seat early, he would make an “interim” appointment to fill the seat, which pissed off Barbara Lee to no end.

    Since there is no residency requirement for US Senators, I could see Michelle Obama being picked.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  321. What executive experience does Michelle Obama have that makes her “capable?”

    BuDuh (6e812b) — 9/13/2023 @ 7:41 am

    FWIW:

    In 1991, she held public sector positions in the Chicago city government as an Assistant to the Mayor, and as Assistant Commissioner of Planning and Development. In 1993, she became executive director for the Chicago office of Public Allies, a non-profit organization encouraging young people to work on social issues in nonprofit groups and government agencies. She worked there nearly four years and set fundraising records for the organization that still stood twelve years after she had left. Obama later said she had never been happier in her life prior to working “to build Public Allies”.

    In 1996, Obama served as the Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago, where she developed the university’s Community Service Center. In 2002, she began working for the University of Chicago Hospitals, first as executive director for community affairs and, beginning May 2005, as vice president for Community and External Affairs.

    Footnotes omitted.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  322. Did you or did you not support shutting down churches by state mandate due to the same type of nonsense New Mexico’s dictator is doing now?

    I did not. I supported non-discriminatory bans on public gatherings that included Churches.

    Are you pro-abortion, directly contrary to Christ’s teachings?

    I am not pro-abortion. I do not believe that life begins at the moment of conception or that Barrier contraception is a sin.

    Do you believe the government must mandate homosexual indoctrination in schools, permit it if the teacher desires, or should they focus on reading, writing and arithmetic?

    I do no believe the government must mandate homosexual indoctrination.

    Do you believe that boys are boys and girls are girls or are they “gender-fluid?”

    I think the evidence is clear that some small percentage of the population is more comfortable living as a gender that doesn’t match their biology. Which doesn’t impact me in the least.

    Do you believe drug use is harmful and mass drug use breaks down society?

    Yes. Especially alcohol. But I still like a nice cocktail from time to time.

    Do you believe there are illegal aliens or are they just “undocumented Americans?”

    Illegal aliens. But I don’t hate them the way you seem to. Nor do I think your policy preferences will accomplish anything in this area.

    Is Christ the Son of God, who sacrificed himself and died on the cross for our sins only to rise again and ascend to Heaven?

    Yes.

    Time123 (60f113)

  323. https://nypost.com/2023/09/12/cia-tried-to-pay-off-analysts-to-bury-covid-lab-leak-findings-whistleblower/

    The Central Intelligence Agency offered to pay off analysts in order to bury their findings that COVID-19 most likely leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, new whistleblower testimony to Congress alleges.

    A senior-level CIA officer told House committee leaders that his agency tried to pay off six analysts who found SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they changed their position and said the virus jumped from animals to humans, according to a letter sent Tuesday to CIA Director William Burns.

    Goebbels level propaganda from our government.

    NJRob (000ff9)

  324. Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 9/13/2023 @ 8:56 am

    Well you have your reasons to vote for her, Rip.

    Always quick with the Dem defense. 👍

    Or…. was this just you being the helpful librarian that has no real opinion? That is always a clever ruse.

    Tell me, does the set of accomplishments you posted make you consider Michelle Obama capable of leading the free world?

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  325. https://www.aier.org/article/child-speech-issues-are-at-historic-highs-in-the-united-kingdom-a-new-report-found-and-we-all-know-why/

    In a recent interview with Sky News, London resident Viral Bhundia described what it was like to watch his young son Jay struggle with speaking.

    “If he wanted something he would scream, and it was up to us to kind of decode it and figure out what he wanted,” said Bhundia. “Does he want a cup? Does he want water?”

    Jay’s struggles are not an anomaly. They are part of a broader trend of children across the world lagging in basic language communication.

    The latest evidence comes from Speech and Language UK, which found one out of every five children in the United Kingdom are behind in basic speech. This is reportedly the “highest number of children with speech and language challenges ever recorded” in the UK, Sky News noted.

    It’s not difficult to glean why so many children are deficient in basic language skills. Around the world, governments responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with an arsenal of blunt tools— lockdowns, mandatory mask orders, endless social distancing, and travel restrictions—which had a devastating impact on learning development. (Of these, masking in particular is viewed by many as the primary cause of speech delays.)

    NJRob (000ff9)

  326. Well you have your reasons to vote for her, Rip.

    Always quick with the Dem defense. 👍

    Or…. was this just you being the helpful librarian that has no real opinion? That is always a clever ruse.

    Tell me, does the set of accomplishments you posted make you consider Michelle Obama capable of leading the free world?

    BuDuh (4214e4) — 9/13/2023 @ 9:17 am

    Just being the librarian. 😊

    I do have a real opinion about Michelle Obama, and that is that she won’t be a candidate for anything. She has explicitly said she is not interested in national politics, and Democrats who think she would be great candidate are wishcasting as much as Republicans seeking an alternative to Donald Trump.

    But then again there was nothing in Trump’s background prior to 2016 that suggested he was capable of leading the free world.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  327. There’s nothing in his background now to suggest that.

    Time123 (60f113)

  328. More on the NM gun case(s):

    New Mexico’s Attorney General Raúl Torrez will not defend the state government against any challenges to the public health order issued Sept. 8, but administration lawyers and outside counsel still can.

    In a letter on Tuesday to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Torrez said he cannot defend her and the state’s health secretary in court because he believes the emergency order restricting public possession of firearms in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County is a constitutional violation.

    Torrez wrote that he recognizes state law obliges him to defend state officials when they get sued for something they did while in office, however, “my duty to uphold and defend the constitutional rights of every citizen takes precedence.”

    However, Torrez has granted a limited commission for administration lawyers or outside counsel to defend Lujan Grisham and New Mexico’s secretary of health Patrick Allen, according to a spokesperson for Torrez.

    Lujan Grisham and Allen are named as defendants in four cases pending before a federal judge in Albuquerque.

    At 1 p.m. on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge David Urias will hear arguments on a request that the order be stayed by three gun rights groups.

    A review of online court records on Tuesday showed no attorneys have officially stepped in to defend the administration.

    https://sourcenm.com/2023/09/13/new-mexico-ag-grants-limited-authority-to-attorneys-defending-public-health-order/

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  329. Biden drops dead or has a stroke and the field will suddenly get wide open. Harris would be challenged and likely eclipsed.

    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3)

  330. I wish, but it’ll never happen.

    He could pick New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham. She’s Hispanic. Or maybe “Hispanic.” And maybe she could help with Hunter’s gun issues.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  331. BTW, the Ukrainian missile strike on a Sevastopol shipyard damaged or destroyed a KILO-class submarine (the kind that fires Kalibr missiles into Ukraine) and a landing ship. Good news for the Ukrainian freedom fighters.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  332. A word to Grassley, McConnell, Feinstein and the rest of the Congressional gerontocracy: Be like Mitt.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  333. Personally, I struggle to think of a situation (over decades) where I might say, man I wish I was packing.

    And RIGHT THERE, you fail. It’s not about you. It’s also not about people who live in well-policed, safe areas, who don’t work at night, who aren’t women, or who don’t have jobs that puts them in contact with random strangers while alone.

    Examples: Cab drivers, Uber drivers, tow truck drivers (especially repo). Mom & pop store owners going to or from the bank, late-shift employees, cocktail waitresses, people working in dodgy areas. Not to mention people living in dodgy areas. Or, in places like New Mexico, places where the nearest cop is an hour away and you are your own first (perhaps only) responder. See any episode of Dark Winds.

    The fatal conceit here is this: “If there were no guns, we’d all be safe.” There are so many guns in America that this is a fanciful argument to begin with, but even in places where there aren’t supposed to be guns (e.g. NYC for the last 100 years) there are guns, and no one rally tries to fix that.

    We have laws that we don’t enforce. Hunter Biden and everyone who lies like he did should do 5-10 in the slammer. But, we are told, that never happens. There is the failure, and taking guns away from people who don’t lie, rob or do drugs won’t fix it.

    CCW holders are about an order of magnitude less likely to shoot someone by mistake than a cop is, probably because the cops are given a lot more latitude that private citizens are, and are largely immune to civil suits.

    One of the sicker gun-free rules there are involve late-night businesses like 7-11 that require their employees to be unarmed. This is not to prevent the employees from getting killed in a gunfight, but to prevent the corporation from ever being sued over someone getting shot (the employees have already signed away their rights). Dead employees are not a huge cost to 7-11, Inc.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  334. @312

    Because they don’t have a case for impeaching Biden.
    nk (29f376) — 9/13/2023 @ 7:11 am

    Let’s go to the tape on the evidence the “Democrats” gathered to launch impeachments against Trump.

    Impeachment 1: A phone call – impeachment was for “abuse of power”, that is debatable. Not clear cut.

    Impeachment 2: A typical political speech – the actual article of impeachment used here was for political purpose to give Democrats a useful cudgel, rather than focusing on Trump’s behavior during J6. I’m on record that Trump didn’t do enough, when it was needed on J6… that is more than enough to impeach/convict on J7.

    Now, let’s go to the evidence for the GOP’s “impeachment inquiry” into Biden.

    Bank records, shell companies, FBI testimony from a “trustworthy” witness, two IRS whistleblowers’ testimony, witness testimony from business partners, mobile texts, laptop documents, White House visitor logs, Air Force 2 travel logs, copying Hunter on official emails, hundreds of Burisma emails, Joe Biden using at least three known pseudonyms on emails, documentation that Hunter Biden’s sole purpose for his $83,000/month board position was to take the heat off of Burisma, the evidence that Biden was responsible for pushing to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor, Joe openly bragging about it being his idea for the ‘quid pro quo’ threat to fire the prosecutor, Joe taking along a Burisma associate on his trip to Ukraine to ask for firing the prosecutor…

    But, sure nk, they don’t have a case.

    whembly (5f7596)

  335. This impeachment inquiry is over the wrong thing. Senility should be impeachable; relying on the 25th Amendment isn’t likely, as we saw with Donald Trump.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  336. @338 Senility should be impeachable but it’s due to no fault of Biden. So, until he gets to the point where his administration feels to invoke the 25th Amendment, I don’t think Congress wants to go there.

    At least with the impeachment inquiry, they ought to be policies and/or behaviors that meet that “he dun f’ed up” standards.

    I just wished the inquiry would also investigation:
    1) The Afghanistan withdrawal
    2) Biden’s plan to forgive student loans
    3) Biden’s rent mortatorium
    4) Southern border fiasco

    All of which are so far beyond merely “policy differences”.

    All of which, are purposeful acts to unfaithfully execute the laws.

    whembly (5f7596)

  337. “And RIGHT THERE, you fail.”

    Doesn’t seem like you made it through my comment.

    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3)

  338. RFK Jr has written aan op-ed in the WSJ about how the DNC has rigged the rules to renominate Joe Biden.

    , No debates, and South Carolina comes first and winner of NH could get no delegates, wat to make changes in Iowa and Georgia moving to disqualify from ballot any DEM who takes part in NH

    Sammy Finkelman (a99e03)

  339. NYP and Sean Hannity keep on repeating as fact that Joe Bidenfired the prosecutor

    Sammy Finkelman (a99e03)

  340. (leveraged $` biliion – except he maade the whole story up)

    Sammy Finkelman (a99e03)

  341. Whembly, you know that getting rid of shokin was US policy?

    In March 2016, testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former ambassador to Ukraine John E. Herbst stated, “By late fall of 2015, the EU and the United States joined the chorus of those seeking Mr. Shokin’s removal” and that Joe Biden “spoke publicly about this before and during his December visit to Kyiv”. During the same hearing, assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland stated, “we have pegged our next $1 billion loan guarantee, first and foremost, to having a rebooting of the reform coalition so that we know who we are working with, but secondarily, to ensuring that the prosecutor general’s office gets cleaned up.”

    Time123 (f96738)

  342. Doesn’t seem like you made it through my comment.

    Oh, I did. You started off with “all about me”, then went to the futility of self-defense and finished with treating people’s fears are irrational.

    The problem is, of course, that incidents of self-defense, especially the warning-off kind, don’t make the papers. Only when bad guys start shooting does it make the press.

    You never hear about the young woman approached late at night who shows her PX4 Carry to the would-be rapist and sees him back off. Which is why she carries it, not to shoot someone. And she might not do that more than once every 5 years, but still it’s important that she can.

    Of course, in California a cocktail waitress will no longer be able to have a gun in her purse for those trips late at night to the bus stop, even with her existing carry permit. Not on public transport, not in bars or restaurants, and probably not near them either. She’s SOL and the rapists know that now.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  343. @340
    Are we helping…or do we only think we’re helping?
    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3) — 9/13/2023 @ 12:34 pm

    I think that’s the wrong thread to pull.

    I think this country, this culture, is refusing to acknowledge very basic premise… such as:
    1) Police cannot and are not able to protect you.
    2) Evil people will always do evil things.
    3) The basis of city violences are almost always ignored.
    4) 2nd Amendment is a right, not a privilege. Far too often the gun control advocates are arguing from position of the latter rather than the former.

    So to answer your question “Are we helping?”.

    My response to that, honestly is this: Who’s “we”?

    And franky, as a 2nd Amendment advocate I’m tired of my opponents ignoring the above premise.

    Just tell us what you’re really advocating for…

    whembly (5f7596)

  344. But, sure nk, they don’t have a case.

    That’s right.
    Possession of bank records, for example, isn’t evidence of a crime by Joe, it’s what’s in those records, and no one has produced a transaction in those statements that indicates or shows that bribes occurred.

    Traditionally, every impeachment since Nixon has involved abuse of power, and I haven’t seen evidence of Joe doing that either. Yes, he crossed a Constitutional line on student loans, for example, but every president has overreached Constitutionally, Trump included.
    And since I’m a traditional conservative, an article of impeachment on policy differences doesn’t cut it for me, because that would set a new and poor precedent, only making it easier to impeach presidents down the road, for more blatantly political reasons.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  345. RFK Jr has written aan op-ed in the WSJ about how the DNC has rigged the rules to renominate Joe Biden.

    , No debates, and South Carolina comes first and winner of NH could get no delegates, wat to make changes in Iowa and Georgia moving to disqualify from ballot any DEM who takes part in NH

    Sammy Finkelman (a99e03) — 9/13/2023 @ 12:38 pm

    Shocking!

    BTW, when was the last time an incumbent President debated his primary opponents?

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  346. @344

    Whembly, you know that getting rid of shokin was US policy?

    In March 2016, testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former ambassador to Ukraine John E. Herbst stated, “By late fall of 2015, the EU and the United States joined the chorus of those seeking Mr. Shokin’s removal” and that Joe Biden “spoke publicly about this before and during his December visit to Kyiv”. During the same hearing, assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland stated, “we have pegged our next $1 billion loan guarantee, first and foremost, to having a rebooting of the reform coalition so that we know who we are working with, but secondarily, to ensuring that the prosecutor general’s office gets cleaned up.”

    Time123 (f96738) — 9/13/2023 @ 12:44 pm

    And?

    Are you implying that Joe Biden, via his VP role, could NOT have instructed the States Department from adopting such policy?

    And, you do know, that several veteran State’s departments were alarmed by the mere fact that Hunter Biden was on the board at Burisma?

    whembly (5f7596)

  347. On 1/2/2021, Mitt sent this prescient text to Mitch McConnell, which the Senate Majority Leader never answered.

    In case you have not heard this, I just got a call from Angus King, who said that he had spoken with a senior official at the Pentagon who reports that they are seeing very disturbing social media traffic regarding the protests planned on the 6th. There are calls to burn down your home, Mitch; to smuggle guns into DC, and to storm the Capitol. I hope that sufficient security plans are in place, but I am concerned that the instigator—the President—is the one who commands the reinforcements the DC and Capitol police might require.

    If Pelosi is to be blamed for not doing enough on J6, then McConnell shares that blame because their Sergeants-at-Arms are both on the Capitol Police Board as equal members.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  348. Are you implying that Joe Biden, via his VP role, could NOT have instructed the States Department from adopting such policy?

    Biden and US diplomats were acting on behalf of the president. Biden didn’t just make it up. It was US policy.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  349. @347

    But, sure nk, they don’t have a case.

    That’s right.
    Possession of bank records, for example, isn’t evidence of a crime by Joe, it’s what’s in those records, and no one has produced a transaction in those statements that indicates or shows that bribes occurred.

    Traditionally, every impeachment since Nixon has involved abuse of power, and I haven’t seen evidence of Joe doing that either. Yes, he crossed a Constitutional line on student loans, for example, but every president has overreached Constitutionally, Trump included.
    And since I’m a traditional conservative, an article of impeachment on policy differences doesn’t cut it for me, because that would set a new and poor precedent, only making it easier to impeach presidents down the road, for more blatantly political reasons.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d) — 9/13/2023 @ 1:07 pm

    There’s more than enough evidence to thoroughly investigate the Bidens. That’s what this impeachment inquiry.

    Does it meet some threshold to impeach Biden? Well… you have your opinion and I have mine.

    My argument of others, namely Afganistan withdrawal, border and Student Loans stuff are so beyond the pale of “policy differences” that it should be on the table.

    Meaning, it’s not the standard political squabbles over policy. These were overt act that Biden either KNEW was unconstitutional and/or KNEW would cost lives in the most embarrassing manner that was solely done for his own political rationale, that it SHOULD be a basis for impeachment to signal future President not to be this absurdly blatant.

    whembly (5f7596)

  350. whembly (5f7596) — 9/13/2023 @ 11:38 am

    I would add the prisoner exchanges with Russia and Iran.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  351. @350

    If Pelosi is to be blamed for not doing enough on J6, then McConnell shares that blame because their Sergeants-at-Arms are both on the Capitol Police Board as equal members.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d) — 9/13/2023 @ 1:12 pm

    I don’t think McConnell, via his Sergeant-at-Arms, could override the Speaker of the House though, as Congressional security was her responsibility.

    whembly (5f7596)

  352. Comer: “Ah’m tellin’ ya, we got bank records!”
    Reporter: “Sir, what’s in those records that shows a crime was committed?”
    Comer: “Ah’m tellin’ ya, we got bank records!”

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  353. @353

    whembly (5f7596) — 9/13/2023 @ 11:38 am

    I would add the prisoner exchanges with Russia and Iran.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 9/13/2023 @ 1:21 pm

    Absolutely.

    @thread, remember, impeachment need not be ONE thing. Yes, some administration can get things wrong and probably deserves some grace. But the totality of Biden’s behaviors could be used against him.

    whembly (5f7596)

  354. I don’t think McConnell, via his Sergeant-at-Arms, could override the Speaker of the House though, as Congressional security was her responsibility.

    No, it’s not. The three members of the Capitol Police Board are the respective Sergeants-at-Arms, and the Capitol Architect (who’s appointed by the president). The police chief is on the board as a non-voting member. Chairmanship alternates annually between the Sergeants-at-Arms. Pelosi had no more responsibility for the board than McConnell.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  355. State department officials should have been alarmed that the VPs son was in the board of a corrupt company.

    I’m not implying anything.

    The testimony gave not just the policy but the reasons for it. Here’s a decent summary that links to supporting articles from before this became a political issue to give background on why that was good policy. (Google the diamond prosecutors if you want even more fun)

    Bottom line is that there’s a lot of evidence that Shokin was fired as part of US anti-corruption policy and was also desired by our Allies.

    You’re free to assert that’s a cover for Biden to help his son get paid, but that needs to be supported by something that would outweigh sworn testimony to Congress.

    Seems like the State department under Pompeo (who was highly competent) would have been well incentivized to provide evidence that firing Shokin wasn’t good policy back when Trump was extorting Ukriane to announce an investigation of Joe Biden.

    Time123 (32f8e5)

  356. Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) praised a ban on carrying guns days after the New Mexico governor banned guns in public places around Albuquerque.

    https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/watch-elizabeth-warren-praises-new-mexicos-unconstitutional-gun-carry-ban/

    Just goes to show you what this witch would do, given the chance.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  357. Fact Check-Capitol Hill Security:

    The Speaker of the House is not in charge of Capitol security. That’s the responsibility of the Capitol Police Board, which oversees the US Capitol Police and approves requests for National Guard assistance.
    ………
    Pelosi also cannot unduly influence who is appointed to the Board, which consists of the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms, the Architect of the Capitol and the Chief of the Capitol Police. The Sergeants at Arms are elected and must be confirmed by their respective chambers and the Architect must be confirmed by both chambers of Congress.

    And according to testimony from the former Capitol Police chief, Pelosi was not involved in the decisions made ahead of January 6 regarding the National Guard. In his testimony before the Senate in February, former US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund said that he approached both Sergeants at Arms on the House and Senate side on January 4 to request the National Guard through an Emergency Declaration from the Capitol Police Board.

    His request, according to Sund, was not approved. Instead, the Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael C. Stenger “suggested I ask (the National Guard) how quickly we could get support if needed and to ‘lean forward’ in case we had to request assistance on January 6,” according to Sund’s testimony.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  358. Whembly, Biden and Trump shared the same bad policy on Afghanistan. Biden continued with the withdrawal that Trump started. I think Biden did a poor job of it, but I don’t think being bad at doing something hard is impeachable. Not sure how you think this one is impeachment worthy.

    Time123 (32f8e5)

  359. I’ll add that while I think the withdrawal wasn’t good policy I recognize that that is a policy disagreement and not a something more sinister.

    Time123 (32f8e5)

  360. @355

    Comer: “Ah’m tellin’ ya, we got bank records!”
    Reporter: “Sir, what’s in those records that shows a crime was committed?”
    Comer: “Ah’m tellin’ ya, we got bank records!”

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d) — 9/13/2023 @ 1:22 pm

    Paul: “there’s no evidence, stop looking you mooks!
    Rational mind: “you cannot ignore the evidence and stipulate that there’s nothing worth investigating”
    Paul: “how dare you sir! you knave!”
    Rational mind: “so I guess you have zero interest in a possible compromised and corrupt Presidency, so why are we talking?”

    whembly (5f7596)

  361. @360 Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 9/13/2023 @ 1:32 pm
    I’m not seeing where it was McConnell’s Sargent at Arms who denied it.

    Sunds is on record that even in the heat of the riot of J6, he was denied resources by someone above him.

    We still don’t know who made that decision.

    whembly (5f7596)

  362. @358

    You’re free to assert that’s a cover for Biden to help his son get paid, but that needs to be supported by something that would outweigh sworn testimony to Congress.

    Time123 (32f8e5) — 9/13/2023 @ 1:31 pm

    We have multiple evidence that this, indeed, has happened.

    Even contemporary emails with Hunter/Associate asserting that his company were either lying to his customers that he could influence Ukraine policies via his “Brand™”, or that he actually was able to influence US-Ukraine policies.

    The fact that Shokin was fired *is* a red flag, and you cannot simply state “this was US policy at the time” because VP Joe Biden was the US point person of the US-Ukraine policies. If VP Joe Biden was *the guy* that everyone has to listen to, then using “it was US policy at the time” really should be renamed as “it was VP Joe Biden’s policy at the time”.

    whembly (5f7596)

  363. More on Capitol Hill Security:

    ……….
    Maintaining, protecting, and securing the Capitol Complex, including those who work in and visit the Capitol Complex, is divided among four entities: (1) the United States Capitol Police; (2) the Senate Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper; (3) the House of Representatives Sergeant at Arms; and (4) the Architect of the Capitol. This section details the role and mission of each of these entities.
    ………
    The Capitol Police Board (“the Board”) is charged with overseeing USCP. It is comprised of the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms and the Architect of the Capitol.25 A Chairman presides over the Board, a position that alternates annually between the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms.26 The USCP Chief serves as an ex officio, non-voting member. The Board’s stated aim is to “direct, oversee and support the Capitol Police in its mission, as well as to advance coordination between Congress, the Capitol Police, the Sergeants at Arms of the House and the Senate and the Architect of the Capitol” by establishing “general goals and objectives covering its major functions and operations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations.” ……….In terms of security matters, the Board is responsible for the design, installation, and maintenance of security systems for the Capitol Complex, as well as the regulation and movement of all traffic and parking within the Capitol Complex. The following diagram details the roles and responsibilities of the Board and USCP:
    ………
    ………(N)one of the members of the Capitol Police Board appeared fully familiar with the process or requirements relating to emergency declarations or requesting external support. This lack of familiarity with the process delayed requests for National Guard assistance on and before January 6.

    Pursuant to 2 U.S.C. § 1970, “Executive departments and Executive agencies may assist the United States Capitol Police in the performance of its duties . . . when requested by the Capitol Police Board.” The Capitol Police Board must submit a written request for external assistance; however, during emergencies, the House and Senate SAAs may authorize the request for their respective chambers.

    ……..Although there is a statutory requirement that any Capitol Police Board request for external assistance be in writing, Capitol Police Board members informed the Committees that a Board vote on or request for support from external agencies may be done orally and subsequently documented. Thus, the USCP Chief may not directly request support from Executive agencies, including the National Guard.
    ………
    None of the Capitol Police Board members on January 6 could fully explain in detail the statutory requirements for requesting National Guard assistance. …….

    Members of the Capitol Police Board also indicated that there was no formal process for such requests. …….
    ………
    Prior to January 6, Mr. Sund failed to submit a formal request for National Guard support to all members of the Capitol Police Board and thus, never sought nor received authority from the Board to make any such request. ……
    ……..
    ……..Mr. Sund testified that he called General Walker, the Commander of DCNG, around 6:45 p.m. on January 4; explained that he did not have the authority to request assistance; and asked how quickly DCNG could respond to a request. ……

    Mr. Irving (House Sergeant at Arms) and Mr. Stenger (Senate Sergeant at Arms) disputed Mr. Sund’s testimony about his request for emergency authorization for DCNG assistance. Neither Mr. Irving nor Mr. Stenger perceived the conversations with Mr. Sund as a formal request to the Board.
    ………
    Regardless of when the request was made, Mr. Sund acknowledged that he made the request orally to Mr. Irving and Mr. Stenger.472 He did not submit a formal request to the Capitol Police Board……..

    Footnotes removed. Paragraph breaks added. Emphasis my own.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  364. We still don’t know who made that decision.

    whembly (5f7596) — 9/13/2023 @ 1:43 pm

    Actually we do. See my post above at 1:53.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  365. @361

    Whembly, Biden and Trump shared the same bad policy on Afghanistan. Biden continued with the withdrawal that Trump started. I think Biden did a poor job of it, but I don’t think being bad at doing something hard is impeachable. Not sure how you think this one is impeachment worthy.

    Time123 (32f8e5) — 9/13/2023 @ 1:35 pm

    But Trump!

    As if, that gives Biden a F’n mulligan on this one?

    Fact is, Trump didn’t do it. Biden did, and impeachment CAN be something over that, as he purposely put US military personnel and citizens in severe peril, where lives were lost for a purely political rationale. That’s prima facie case for impeachment, and a strong one.

    whembly (5f7596)

  366. @367

    Actually we do. See my post above at 1:53.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 9/13/2023 @ 1:55 pm

    That document is a lot of CYA.

    But I was talking about during the riot, when Sunds was calling everyone/anyone for additional resources and he was stonewalled.

    That’s what I was referring to when I said “we don’t really know who said no” during the initial hours of the riot.

    whembly (5f7596)

  367. But if you want to say McConnell shares some responsibility, I’m on board with too.

    whembly (5f7596)

  368. Federal judge temporarily blocks New Mexico governor’s gun order

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – A controversial public health order in New Mexico has been stirring up frustration among politicians and civilians. On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled on the order.

    On September 8, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham created a public health order to ban open and concealed carry in public in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County.

    Now, the judge has granted a temporary restraining order that blocks the enforcement of the order.

    The governor’s 30-day order has been in place since last Friday and was set to expire on October 8. The temporary restraining order was enacted Wednesday at 2:55 p.m. and will last until October 3.

    The judge said people have a constitutional right and a state right to carry a firearm outside their homes.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  369. More here on Romney, from his biographer. This part caught my eye.

    Some of the reluctance to hold Trump accountable was a function of the same old perverse political incentives—elected Republicans feared a political backlash from their base. But after January 6, a new, more existential brand of cowardice had emerged. One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. The congressman reasoned that Trump would be impeached by House Democrats with or without him—why put his wife and children at risk if it wouldn’t change the outcome? Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.

    As dismayed as Romney was by this line of thinking, he understood it. Most members of Congress don’t have security details. Their addresses are publicly available online. Romney himself had been shelling out $5,000 a day since the riot to cover private security for his family—an expense he knew most of his colleagues couldn’t afford.

    If that $5,000/day number is accurate, then he’s paid around $4.8 million out of pocket for his and his family’s personal security. That’s a real price tag for consistently and vocally opposing the unhinged malignant narcissist who is our GOP frontrunner.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  370. Paul: “there’s no evidence, stop looking you mooks!”

    I never said or implied “stop looking”, whembly. Not honest.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  371. But I was talking about during the riot, when Sunds was calling everyone/anyone for additional resources and he was stonewalled.

    Sund had no authority to call for additional resources. That was up to the Capitol Police Board.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  372. Whembly I don’t think anyone here loves Biden (Nic maybe???). Everyone is fine with him being removed from the presidency if he’s, say, shown to have sacrificed US interests to help his son or done so to enrich himself.

    So we’re open to hearing evidence that he has done so. For instance, when Devin Archer was trumpeted as being a witness to Biden’s involvement, I read the entirety of the deposition transcript. And my takeaway was “Oh there’s absolutely nothing there.” I think no one could read that honestly and have a different response. And when I read the House Republican’s summary of what he said and it’s incredibly misleading and gives impressions that are the opposite of what was said, I think “oh this is just for politics, they aren’t actually trying to find out anything about Joe Biden.”

    Similarly when you say Biden should be impeached for not reversing Trump’s plan to withdraw from Afghanistan (I never once saw you call for Trump to be impeached when he announced the plan) it feels like motivated reasoning.

    Nate (30f36d)

  373. Whembly, my point was not “but trump” my point was that the Afg withdrawal /was/ a policy decision and one that Biden shared with the previous administration. How do you view that as impeachable?

    Time123 (5a03e5)

  374. Whembly, I’ve provided sworn testimony that removing Shokin was us policy to fight corruption and links to news articles from that time that corroborated that Shokin was viewed as corrupt by our Allies which support the assertion that we removed him for policy reasons.

    If you have evidence that it was done for corrupt reasons you haven’t provided it.

    Archer’s testimony was that Shokin wasn’t someone Burisma was worried about at the time.

    Here’s another article about Shokin from 2019 by the right leaning examiner. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/cache-of-diamonds-trump-biden-impeachment-fight-originates-with-corrupt-chauffeur

    Time123 (5a03e5)

  375. @nate@375 I think he’s better than the current alternative but I don’t think he’s particularly impressive either. My preference would be that he doesn’t run again.

    Nic (896fdf)

  376. Ninth Circuit rules against California ban on gun ads aimed at minors
    ………
    A three-judge panel of the federal appellate court on Wednesday overruled a lower court judge who last year had declined to issue a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the statute in a lawsuit brought by Junior Sports Magazine and Second Amendment advocates.

    Since California allows youngsters to use firearms under adult supervision, such as for hunting and target practice, the case was about whether the state can ban a truthful advertisement about firearms used legally by adults and minors only because the ad “reasonably appears to be attractive to minors,” U.S. Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote.

    But the First Amendment only allows states to ban truthful and lawful advertising if it materially and directly advances a substantial government interest, such as reducing gun violence, and is no more extensive than necessary, according to Lee. The California law fails in this regard, the panel ruled, because the state hasn’t provided any evidence how a ban against, for example, ads for hunting riffles in the magazine Junior Shooter, would reduce gun violence.

    “Simply put, California cannot lean on gossamers of speculation to weave an evidence-free narrative that its law curbing the First Amendment ‘significantly’ decreases unlawful gun use among minors,” Lee wrote for the panel. “The First Amendment demands more than good intentions and wishful thinking to warrant the government’s muzzling of speech.”

    In addition, Lee said the California law was too broad because it would also ban firearm ads aimed at adults just because they might be appealing to children as well.
    ………..
    “When the text is peeled back, the legislative record indicates an intention that the law will stop the message that minors should lawfully use firearms, and a hope that the law will prevent minors from eventually becoming adults who have a favorable view of gun ownership and use,” (U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence Van Dyke, also a Trump appointee) said.

    The First Amendment almost universally “forbids” laws that restrict speech on the basis of viewpoint, he said.
    ………

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  377. Sorry for the lack of blockquotes.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  378. Gov. Grisham’s unconstitutional order on firearms slapped down as unconstitutional. Good call, done quickly.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  379. Nobody’s fooling nobody.

    Trump’s finger puppets in the House don’t work for America. They work for Trump.

    They have an affirmative duty to say and do things that make Trump happy. Otherwise they’re RINOs and “milktoasts” (it’s actually spelled milquetoast).

    Not making Trump happy every hour of the day, every day of the week, is not an option. No more than a court jester not being entertaining is an option.

    When they grow a spine to replace Trump’s fingers up their nether orifices, then I’ll grant them some credibility. Until then, they’re each a Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell to me.

    nk (820acb)

  380. If anybody is better than Trump then line up behind Nikki Haley.

    1) She’s anybody
    2) She’s better than Biden.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  381. If anybody is better than Trump then line up behind Nikki Haley.

    1) She’s anybody
    2) She’s better than Biden.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/13/2023 @ 5:20 pm

    3) And 49.5 points behind Donald Trump nationally, and 35.7 points behind in South Carolina (in third place).

    Comedy Gold!

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  382. Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 9/13/2023 @ 5:55 pm

    4) And 40.5 points (sixth place, behind Doug Burgum) behind Trump in New Hampshire.

    5) And 39 points (fourth place) in Iowa.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  383. This election is like the Monty Python “Spam” skit.

    nk (ddb327)

  384. Gov. Grisham’s unconstitutional order on firearms slapped down as unconstitutional. Good call, done quickly.

    That’s only until it goes to a full hearing on October 3, and it’s not entirely out of the question that the Biden-appointed judge might allow the governor to place some questionable restrictions on Second Amendment rights via emergency powers, provided that they fall short of an outright ban. It’s heartening that the judge in this case went ahead with the injunction, but it’s not time to pop those corks just yet.

    JVW (1ad43e)

  385. As I keep saying there is no 2nd amendment protection for voting against gun safety. Every time children get killed in school shooting arrest all the politicians who voted against gun safety for being terrorists and accessory to murder. Have the dead children’s parents the jurors as by that time the 6 rethugs on the supreme court will have been impeached.

    asset (eea168)

  386. Every time children get killed in school shooting arrest all the politicians who voted against gun safety for being terrorists and accessory to murder.

    Works the same way every time an illegal immigrant commits a murder too, right asset?

    JVW (1ad43e)

  387. @389 Democrat are trying to help children. Republicans are trying to help shoot children. Thats what guns are for shooting children. What else can a gun do other then shoot?

    asset (8e6123)

  388. JVW & asset, complex problems don’t have solutions they have trade offs. One of the reasons our political discourse is so bad is that we’ve all gotten good at taking the trade off and asserting that anyone who thinks it’s acceptable or the “lesser evil” of their policy preference is actually seeking that at their primary outcome and is a horrible person. It’s great for fundraising but not much else.

    JVW made the same point with his comment but I wanted to spell out why this approach is bad.

    Time123 (fddcce)

  389. https://nypost.com/2023/09/13/us-incomes-fall-for-third-consecutive-year/

    You aren’t just imagining it: Your paycheck didn’t go as far last year as it did the year before — or the year before that.

    Inflation surges outpaced the average pay raises of US workers in 2022 — the third consecutive year under President Joe Biden in which Americans have seen their standard of living take a tumble, according to fresh data from the US Census Bureau.

    Inflation-adjusted median household income fell to $74,580 in 2022 — a 2.3% decline from the 2021 average of $76,330, the federal agency reported on Tuesday.

    The result has caused many cash-strapped New Yorkers to go out less, buy cheaper groceries, borrow from their family to pay rent – and even consider a move to Canada to escape the crushing impact of the administration’s touted Bidenomics, The Post found.

    Bidenomics 101.

    Add to that extreme inflation and incomes and the middle class are being destroyed. But no mean tweets.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  390. It would take 700 additional hours of hearings and votes to work around Tuberville’s blockage, according to the Congressional Research Service. Maybe it’s time to, uh, adjust Senate rules to compensate for the unserious.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  391. judge might allow the governor to place some questionable restrictions on Second Amendment rights via emergency powers, provided that they fall short of an outright ban.

    Given the NM Constitution, which explicitly does NOT protect concealed carry (although it bans local legislation even there), I can see an argument that suspending concealed carry permits in an emergency is acceptable, while still allowing open carry. I wonder if there is any such provision in the state CCW law.

    Of course, this is probably not an “emergency” either, and the possibility that such a designation is trivially announced to justify any old crap is just as worrisome as the 2A suspension.

    Lastly, I suggest that suits also be brought in state court — federal law rests only on Bruen and judges have been gaming that.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  392. Maybe it’s time to, uh, adjust Senate rules to compensate for the unserious.

    McConnell did that in 2018 to compensate for the Democrat insistence on “full” (70 hours iirc) debate on Trump’s judicial candidates.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  393. What else can a gun do other then shoot?

    It can threaten to shoot, which is how guns are mostly used. Police, for example, do not shoot everyone the point a gun at. Neither do people who are warning off attackers. Most people, even bad people, get the message when they see a gun pointing at them: “back the F off.”

    Even when they are used to shoot someone, almost all of the time they are shooting someone who needs shooting, like a would-be rapist.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  394. As I keep saying there is no 2nd amendment protection for voting against gun safety

    Others would say there is no first amendment protection advocating government thievery.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  395. It would take 700 additional hours of hearings and votes to work around Tuberville’s blockage, according to the Congressional Research Service. Maybe it’s time to, uh, adjust Senate rules to compensate for the unserious.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d) — 9/14/2023 @ 7:39 am

    And you are opposed to this? The Senate is supposed to be a deliberative body. What right’s stealing policy would you ratyer them work on?

    NJRob (c7dad5)

  396. And you are opposed to this? The Senate is supposed to be a deliberative body.

    Yes, because they’re routine appointments. If Tuberville has an objection to any appointee he feels is too woke, then he should take part in deliberating instead of blocking the whole 700. He’s taking a Senatorial sledgehammer to swat a policy bug.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  397. The administration has ordered the military to take unlawful action, spending money against the expressed will of Congress. The question is not why does Tuberville do this, but why does the administration persist in illegal spending?

    The Hyde Amendment is to Biden as the Boland Amendment was to Reagan.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  398. according to the Congressional Research Service.

    I cannot find the CRS memo. CNN doesn’t provide a link and other publications only quote CNN’s reporting.

    CRS reports are based on what information they were given and those are the assumptions they use to create their conclusions. Too bad CNN didn’t want to make it easy to double check this bombshell.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  399. IF the administration does not like this, they have two options:

    1. Stop what they are doing, or
    2. Get Congress to pass a law authorizing the spending.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  400. https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2023/09/11/liberal-activist-storm-and-take-over-kevin-mccarthys-office-n2628258

    Are these terrorists going to get serious prison time for trying to overthrow our country and obstruct Congress? Are the organizers getting 20 years in prison?

    Equal justice and all that.

    NJRob (c7dad5)

  401. @377 Time123 (5a03e5) — 9/13/2023 @ 3:33 pm
    Time, I’m super busy so I won’t have time to break down in timely manner those articles you posted. I’ve read them and have… many, many questions.

    What I would suggest for you to do, is listen to the last two podcast of Andy McCarthy. (I listen when I’m on the road) He brings it together much more succinctly and points out why this has legs.

    whembly (5f7596)

  402. Time123 (5a03e5) — 9/13/2023 @ 3:33 pm

    Whembly, I’ve provided sworn testimony that removing Shokin was us policy to fight corruption and links to news articles from that time that corroborated that Shokin was viewed as corrupt by our Allies which support the assertion that we removed him for policy reasons.

    Ukraine came under considerable pressure in March, 2016 to remove Shokin – almost all of his supporters in the Ukrainian Parliament abandoned him
    what I don’t know is why a vote was needed – this was not disussed in the one thing I read.

    It certainly wasn’t caused by Vice President Biden secretly pushing for Shokin to be removed behind the scenes – to the point of withholding $1 billion in loan guarantees on his own authority, surprising various people (different people in the two accounts) who didn’t think that a vice president had so much power – but nobody wanted to call his bluff.

    The position of the New York Post (and presumably some of the Republican caucus in the House, is that the Obama Administration and the Europeans were quite happy with Shokin and only Biden wanted tto get rid of him and the New York Post cites documents (probably selectively) to prove that.

    Yes, they are arguing over historical facts that should be easy to establish, Should be.
    I

    f you have evidence that it was done for corrupt reasons you haven’t provided it.

    Archer’s testimony was that Shokin wasn’t someone Burisma was worried about at the time.

    Here’s another article about Shokin from 2019 by the right leaning examiner. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/cache-of-diamonds-trump-biden-impeachment-fight-originates-with-corrupt-chauffeur

    Sammy Finkelman (394a88)

  403. f you have evidence that it was done for corrupt reasons you haven’t provided it.

    The argument is that Biden’s defenders are lying when they claim that anybody else wanted to get rid of him.

    Biden is in a bind because he and the Democrats can’t explain why and how exactly Shokin really got fired because it would mean asserting that Biden lies to the Council on Foreign Relations on January 23, 2018.

    Archer’s testimony was that Shokin wasn’t someone Burisma was worried about at the time.

    Archer’s knowledge of Burisma;s attitude is being questioned.

    Sammy Finkelman (394a88)

  404. Sigh.

    Organizers said that seven demonstrators were arrested after about 10 to 15 minutes of being in the office, and that those arrested included King and Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell. Capitol Police said that the seven people were arrested on charges of unlawful entry after they refused to cease demonstrating.

    There are no signs that they broke down doors or threw police shields through windows to get in, or “stormed in”, whatever that means. It’s more likely that they walked in, non-violently, and then started braying obnoxiously in protest, a pointless gesture by the liberal activist wing, most probably done for PR and fundraising. Do I approve of this idiot tactic? No, of course not. Prosecute them to the full extent of the law, but there isn’t much of an extent, from what I can see.

    There are no indications that they assaulted Capitol Police or resisted arrest or disrupted a Constitutional proceeding, or disrupted much of anything given that McCarthy wasn’t even there. So yes, equal justice, proportionate to the offense committed.

    As they say, there’s no equivalency like a bogus equivalency. I mean, this “storming” of the Capitol was so “serious” that it didn’t turn up in this comment thread until three days after the fact.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  405. Paul Montagu (d52d7d) — 9/14/2023 @ 10:47 am

    Good distinctions, Paul. Unfortunately, people blinded by partisan rage aren’t into making distinctions. It ruins the fervor.

    norcal (cf999d)

  406. Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 9/14/2023 @ 10:41 am

    Can the CRS quotes from the CNN article be found in your February report, Rip?

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  407. But no mean tweets.

    NJRob (eb56c3) — 9/14/2023 @ 7:28 am

    Just when I thought you had soured on Trump

    norcal (cf999d)

  408. The administration has ordered the military to take unlawful action, spending money against the expressed will of Congress. The question is not why does Tuberville do this, but why does the administration persist in illegal spending?

    The Hyde Amendment is to Biden as the Boland Amendment was to Reagan.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/14/2023 @ 9:26 am

    The Hyde Amendment only applies to programs funded by the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies annual appropriations bills, not the Defense or other departments of the government.

    Under 10 U.S.C. § 1093, the DoD is prohibited from paying for abortions, or using DoD facilities to do so:

    (a)Restriction on Use of Funds.—
    Funds available to the Department of Defense may not be used to perform abortions except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term or in a case in which the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest.

    (b)Restriction on Use of Facilities.—
    No medical treatment facility or other facility of the Department of Defense may be used to perform an abortion except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term or in a case in which the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest.

    What Tuberville is objecting to is the DoD policy to pay for the travel of military personnel to other locations for abortions, which is not restricted by 10 U.S.C. § 1093 or the Hyde Amendment. Here is the Office of Legal Counsel’s justification as to why DoD can legally spend the funds.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  409. BuDuh (4214e4) — 9/14/2023 @ 10:56 am

    Search it yourself.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  410. I knew you had no idea what you were posting. Just 1st click BS.

    Silly.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  411. norcal (cf999d) — 9/14/2023 @ 10:54 am

    Thanks. It’s just that Rob has pulled this sh-t before, likening the J6 rioters to a gaggle of screamers and door pounders outside the Kavanaugh hearings.
    The latest rioter count is around 1,400 criminally indicted, 400 of them for assault against Capitol Police.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  412. Here’s another article about Shokin from 2019 by the right leaning examiner. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/cache-of-diamonds-trump-biden-impeachment-fight-originates-with-corrupt-chauffeur

    The thedis seems to be that while it wsn’t Biden it wasn’t minly outside pressure – and there may not have been too much – that resulted in Viktor Shokin’s dismissal – but a scandal that got attention.

    An article like this almost could only have been written in 2109;

    ;hokin is now siding with those who blame Biden although saying that he doesn’t know,

    Sammy Finkelman (394a88)

  413. BTW, Hunter indicted on three gun charges, which won’t satisfy the HDS-afflicted.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  414. I’m sorry he didn’t get away with zero indictments, Paul. You sound devastated.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  415. BuDuh (4214e4) — 9/14/2023 @ 11:05 am

    Sorry for the flip answer. CRS memos are written in response to specific requests by Representatives or Senators, this particular memo which apparently was released just yesterday hasn’t shown up anywhere online.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  416. BTW, Hunter indicted on three gun charges, which won’t satisfy the HDS-afflicted.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d) — 9/14/2023 @ 11:13 am

    Not until he is drawn and quartered.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  417. CNN says it was written in late August and released Tuesday this week. It was a response to Armed Services Chairman Jack Reed.

    I am certain that in some time it will somehow be easily available to the rest of us. My bone of contention is that CNN could have linked their source, printed the entire text, or at least explained why the public has to wait to see it.

    It is the main support for their story.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  418. The problem is not that Hunter was charged with crimes that are rarely prosecuted, but that they are rarely prosecuted. With any luck that will change now.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  419. There are still some foreign lobbying charges to be dealt with, and of course the tax evasion.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  420. Now, would a felony conviction mean that Hunter could not run for President someday? Asking for a friend.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  421. whembly (5f7596) — 9/13/2023 @ 2:01 pm

    rposely put US military personnel and citizens in severe peril, where lives were lost for a purely political rationale. That’s prima facie case for impeachment, and a strong one.

    Biden did not want to admit ir acknowledge even to himself that he was turning Afghanistan over to the Taliban, You can only argue that he put military personnel and citizens in severe peril if you disregard his presumption, backed up by many intelligence estimates, that the Afghan government would hold out for aa sufficient length of time to evacuate everyone he cared about, which did not include any Afghans.

    He could have made the withdrawal slower, or abandoned Kabul before Bagram, but that would have, in his eyes, risked an attack on the way out, and Biden did not want any casualties and did not know how long the Taliban would refrain from attacking. Neither did he want to openly abandon an ally. He wanted a decent interval, and thought it was guaranteed. He gambled and lost.
    ,

    Sammy Finkelman (394a88)

  422. @424

    Now, would a felony conviction mean that Hunter could not run for President someday? Asking for a friend.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/14/2023 @ 11:29 am

    You know Joe Biden will pardon his son, don’t you?

    whembly (5f7596)

  423. You know Joe Biden will pardon his son, don’t you?

    whembly (5f7596) — 9/14/2023 @ 11:35 am

    Yes, but not before the 2024 election.

    norcal (cf999d)

  424. https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/09/white-house-tells-media-outlets-to-ramp-up-their-scrutiny-of-house-gops-biden-impeachment-inquiry/

    “It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, wrote in the letter, which was first obtained by CNN.

    The letter, which said an impeachment inquiry with no supporting evidence should “set off alarm bells for news organizations,” was sent to executives helming the nation’s largest news organizations, including CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, the Associated Press, CBS News, and others, a White House official familiar with the matter said.

    It’ll be easy to tell who are the Biden stenographers.

    NJRob (c7dad5)

  425. Terrorists took over the Speaker of the House’s office and Paul is downplaying it.

    I’m shocked, Shocked!

    NJRob (c7dad5)

  426. https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/boilingfrogs/gone-fishing/

    Allahnick with some thoughts on the impeachment inquiry:

    Trump has reportedly been lobbying House Republicans to impeach Biden since before the midterms, expecting there’d be a sizable GOP majority this year to do his bidding. According to Rolling Stone, he was prone to asking cronies in Congress not whether they’d impeach Biden once they were in charge but “how many” times. He’s continued egging them on behind the scenes for months, per the New York Times, and was briefed recently on the new impeachment inquiry by the third-ranking House Republican, loyal toady Elise Stefanik.

    As such, one could view this impeachment as a bookend to Trump’s first impeachment over Ukraine. Both incidents evince the same Republican M.O., using government power to undertake a fishing expedition for dirt on Joe Biden ahead of a presidential election. (Kevin McCarthy knows a little something about that too.) The 2019 impeachment was a production of Trump 2020, the 2023 impeachment is a production of Trump 2024.

    By the way, for the next few days both Allahnick and Kevin Williamson can be read for free at The Dispatch.

    norcal (cf999d)

  427. Terrorists

    Just when you though a word could not be misused more…

    So, should HRT burst in and shoot them all?

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  428. You know Joe Biden will pardon his son, don’t you?

    whembly (5f7596) — 9/14/2023 @ 11:35 am

    He won’t pardon H. Biden before November 2024; and he will do so only if he:

    1) Ends his reelection campaign;

    2) Wins reelection;

    3) Loses in 2024: or

    4) At the end of his second term.

    At most I would expect H. Biden to receive no more than a year in Club Fed as a nonviolent offender. And given that he is “guilty as sin”, I don’t expect there will be trial.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  429. I’m sorry he didn’t get away with zero indictments, Paul. You sound devastated.

    Devastated? No, BuhDuh, the gun charge is what I predicted.

    “The guy is a loser who had the dumb luck to have a dad who is now president. I’ll be surprised if he’s indicted for anything more than tax fraud and lying about his guns.”

    As they say, Montagu nailed it.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  430. I think New York Mayor Eric Adams has no executive ability. He thinks everything runs on autopilot, or he can pick a few people he trusts to decide how to handle things,].

    This lets him go wrong when things change and business as usual is no good.

    Sammy Finkelman (394a88)

  431. @427

    You know Joe Biden will pardon his son, don’t you?

    whembly (5f7596) — 9/14/2023 @ 11:35 am

    Yes, but not before the 2024 election.

    norcal (cf999d) — 9/14/2023 @ 11:40 am

    I honestly think Joe Biden believes it won’t impact his re-election chances if he did.

    But, Hunter is going to fight this so his sentencing will be delayed until his appeals are exhausted.

    The irony here, is that Hunter’s lawyer may challenge the “he was on drugs” provision of the law as unconstitutional.

    whembly (5f7596)

  432. I am going to bet that Hunter doesn’t want to delay his tax and foreign agent trials until 2025.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  433. Terrorists took over the Speaker of the House’s office and Paul is downplaying it.

    “Downplaying”? No, Rob, just calling it straight, but your hyperpartisan hyperbole never disappoints.

    Terrorism: the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—
    (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
    (B) appear to be intended—
    (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
    (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
    (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
    (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States;

    As they say, words have meaning, and these chanting left-wingers didn’t commit “acts dangerous to human life”, no matter how off-key and loud they were. Your personal definitions don’t count.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  434. @436

    I am going to bet that Hunter doesn’t want to delay his tax and foreign agent trials until 2025.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/14/2023 @ 12:06 pm

    The cynic in me is that the goal here is to tie up Hunter such that he can’t be subpoenaed to testify in any impeachment effort, and can claim the 5th. It’s not a real effort to hold Hunter accountable.

    If it were so, then we’d see the IRS tax stuff, FARA and the likes in the indictment.

    whembly (5f7596)

  435. Ooh…Wiess is using the same case number as the felony Indictment for the Diversion.

    Need some legal eagles to explain this.

    Doesn’t this mean, now, that Hunter’s lawyers will now move to dismiss, relying on the Diversion Agreement saying these charges are barred by contract?

    Seems like it.

    So, no, for those wanting to hold Hunter accountable, this isn’t it.

    whembly (5f7596)

  436. As they say, words have meaning, and these chanting left-wingers didn’t commit “acts dangerous to human life”, no matter how off-key and loud they were. Your personal definitions don’t count.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d) — 9/14/2023 @ 12:14 pm

    Suddenly words have meaning. Who would’ve believed it. I guess I’ll just have to call them insurrectionists.

    NJRob (c7dad5)

  437. Suddenly words have meaning. Who would’ve believed it. I guess I’ll just have to call them insurrectionists.

    “Suddenly”? Um, no, you’re lying, because I’ve used the dictionary definitions of words like “insurrection” and “invasion” for awhile, and in a thread where we interacted, and I’ll do it again…

    Insurrection: “a violent uprising against an authority or government”
    –Oxford Dictionary

    Were those activists violent? No, therefore not an insurrection or insurrectionists, and not terrorists either per the US Code. We’re they obnoxious and did they break the law? Yes, for unlawful entry. This isn’t hard, but you do you.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  438. FTR, I’ve used “words have meaning” or “words mean things” for years, like when I called out a Nazi-adjacent antisemite back in 2018.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  439. Those in the Speaker’s office could be charged with

    demonstrating in the Capitol,
    disorderly conduct,
    being in a restricted building,
    and disruptive activity

    All misdemeanors.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  440. Breaking: L.A. County D.A. sued over prosecution allegedly sparked by election conspiracy theories

    Eugene Yu, the chief executive of a 21-employee business known as Konnech, accused Gascón and the district attorney’s office of multiple civil rights violations, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress, according to the 86-page complaint.

    Yu was arrested in Michigan in October and indicted on charges that he compromised the personal information of L.A. County poll workers by storing data on Chinese servers. In the months before Yu’s arrest, Konnech had become the subject of unfounded allegations that it was working with the Chinese government to influence U.S. elections.

    Many of those claims were pushed by True the Vote, a Texas-based group that traffics in conspiracy theories denying the legitimacy of the 2020 election. The organization funded and appeared in the film “2000 Mules” by right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza, which purported to prove that then-President Trump lost his bid for a second term because of coordinated ballot box stuffing by Democrats.

    A little over a month after Gascón announced the arrest, which drew praise from former President Trump and other right-wing election deniers, the case against Yu collapsed.

    After initially denying True the Vote had any involvement in the investigation, the district attorney’s office acknowledged that a tip from the group’s co-founder, Gregg Phillips, sparked the inquiry into Yu. Phillips has also said he testified before the grand jury. Even though the group’s election-related claims had been reviewed by several state attorney generals and the FBI with no charges filed, L.A. County prosecutors decided to pursue the case.

    Gascón’s office dismissed the initial indictment that was linked to True the Vote and filed new embezzlement and conspiracy charges against Yu, but those were also dropped in early November. The lead prosecutor, Eric Neff, was placed on administrative leave a week later.

    In the lawsuit, Yu claims Gascón’s botched prosecution led nearly half of Konnech’s clients to end their contracts with the company and cost him roughly $80 million. The Yu family has also been the subject of a litany of violent threats, according to the lawsuit, which claims someone also left dead animals outside the family’s home after news of his arrest broke.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  441. Who knew that Gascon was a 2020 Truther?

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  442. Patience whembly. The DOJ moves slowly. I expect to see additional charges as this goes on.

    Also, I think the gun law he’s charged with is a bad law. But bad laws should be applied evenly.

    Hoping to see a FARA charge as well.

    Time123 (419e37)

  443. Also, I think the gun law he’s charged with is a bad law. But bad laws should be applied evenly.

    Why should drug addicts be allowed to buy guns? Do you also think schizophrenics should be able to buy guns?

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  444. It seems like NYC` Mayor Adams is wrong about all the migrants being prohibited from working.

    https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/09/12/white-house-mayor-adams-nyc-migrants-eligible-work

    Senior officials in President Biden‘s administration pushed back Tuesday against Mayor Adams‘ claims the White House isn’t doing enough to help migrants in New York City, pointing out that an unspecified number of asylum seekers who’ve arrived are already eligible to apply for legal work authorization.

    The officials, who spoke with reporters on background Tuesday morning, conceded that they do not know precisely how many asylum seekers in New York City are now eligible to apply for work authorization, but suggested those answers might reside within the Adams administration, which is surveying its shelter population to determine the method by which migrants are seeking asylum.

    [I think he’s to incompetent, and led around by his staff, to come up with an estimate.]

    The two Biden administration officials who spoke Tuesday framed their presentation to reporters around what the White House is doing to help the city in its struggle to manage the situation.

    Among the topics they touched on were the three ways migrants coming into America are seeking asylum. One is geared toward immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who entered into the U.S. lawfully, which allows them to apply for work authorization immediately and be approved for it typically within six to eight weeks. [I think this is no longer available. When Biden gave people from those four countries Temporary Protected Status, it came with a cutoff date]

    A second method is through the federal government’s Customs and Border Patrol One app, which allows asylum seekers to register with the feds prior to entering the U.S. and then apply for work authorization immediately upon entry. The process to receive work authorization through the app, which was created earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, also takes about two months to complete.

    The third — and most onerous — method of seeking asylum is crossing the border into the U.S. without applying for entry beforehand. Obtaining a work authorization in those cases is bound to last at least six months, but can often take longer depending on when an asylum application is filed.

    It’s unclear exactly how many migrants in New York City fall under which category, but the officials in Biden’s administration noted that at least 160,000 adults have come into the U.S. using the CBP One app — but less than 20% of them have so far applied for work authorization.

    Spokesmen from Mayor Adams’ team did not immediately provide answers when asked to provide breakdowns of how many migrants fall into which asylum-seeking category.

    Adams’ spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak noted that about 20% of migrants in the city’s care have filed asylum applications, but said that figure likely doesn’t account for the total number of applications filed in the city because it doesn’t include those filed with legal assistance from non-profits.

    An Adams’ administration official also noted that using the CBP One app carries with it a $410 fee, which could be steep for many of the impoverished migrants who’ve come to the city. [That’s before the fact but the Biden Administration officials were speaking after the fact. there were many that did pay it, because the smugglers charge, I read, about $3,000 to people from South and Central America. Families somehow come up with the money so they could have another $400.The deterrent is more technical and maybe a judgement that they have better chances of getting admitted without it]

    The White House didn’t respond to questions about the number of asylum applications filed and accepted since April 2022.

    During his television appearance Tuesday, Adams pointed to the “thousands of jobs” now available in New York City as part of his rationale for the White House to do more.

    “That’s the irony of it. Like, we needed lifeguards over the summer. We could have filled those jobs,” he said. “So we’re hoping that the federal government looks at what we’re saying and makes it happen.”

    Adams contended that the current situation has created a “black market of employment” pervaded by low wages, women “being sexually exploited” and an increase in prostitution.

    “People have to provide for their families,” he said. “It’s really going to impact the quality of life in our city if we don’t get this issue right.”

    The Biden administration officials noted that for people coming over the border without first seeking approval from the federal government the timeframe around receiving work authorizations is a matter of federal law — and can’t be changed without Congress enacting a new law.

    [And Biden doesn’t want to ask Congress]

    “We can’t change that. Only Congress can,” said one official. “What we can do is mobilize our team, not just at the Department of Homeland Security, but across the federal government to work collaboratively with communities.”

    The second Biden administration official emphasized the need for outreach to migrants in order to determine when they’re eligible to work. As part of that effort, the federal government is sending 50 people to the city to help migrants navigate both the work authorization process and how to apply for asylum.

    The official said the feds don’t know how many migrants in New York City are now eligible to apply for work authorizations, but that the city government “is actively surveying its shelter population to better understand” that situation.

    Other measures the Biden administration is taking include alerting state education departments about federal money to help address the costs of additional migrant students now enrolled in public schools, identifying housing voucher funding for citizens that can help alleviate the burden felt in homeless shelters and sending a supplemental budget request to Congress for additional cash to address the crisis.

    The Biden administration officials also fielded a question about efforts in Albany to pass a law allowing the state to grant work authorization to migrants and pointed out that such authorizations clearly fall under federal jurisdiction.

    “It is not something that we would encourage states to pursue,” one official said. “Our position has been that it is a clear federal authority.”

    Well, maybe there’s a case for arguing Congress doesn’t have the right to interfere with intrastate commerce, or to regulate immigration at all, except as a byproduct of foreign commerce and national defense. The constitution only gives to Congress the right to regulate naturalization. People are hallucinating it says immigration but they are two different things..

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  445. It’s official. Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell will be tried early- but not the other defendants. It could be as early as October 23 – on television or streamed

    https://www.newser.com/story/340146/in-georgia-case-trump-wont-face-trial-in-october.html

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  446. Slaughterhouse, once again:

    Ursula Newell-Davis has been a social worker in New Orleans for more than 20 years with a particular passion for special needs children (including her own), so she knows special needs families are often desperate for affordable and reliable respite care. It allows parents time to work, run errands, or just attend to themselves, confident that their kids are safe with someone qualified to help. In 2019, Newell-Davis tried to open her own business providing that care, but the state of Louisiana said no.

    Since 2021 she has been locked in a civil rights lawsuit, arguing that the regulation keeping her from her calling is unconstitutional. She has lost in the lower courts and recently petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States for review, where we are representing her. For her to prevail, the court will have to reconsider a clause in the 14th Amendment it has largely ignored since 1873….

    Newell-Davis’ lawsuit charges that the state is restricting her rights in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause, which states, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Lower courts dismissed the claim on the grounds that the clause doesn’t protect the right to earn a living in a lawful occupation.

    That would have surprised Rep. John Bingham, the principal drafter of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. Bingham said in 1871 it was aimed at (among other things) securing “the liberty … to work in an honest calling and contribute by your toil … to the support of yourself [and] your fellowmen, and to be secure in the enjoyment of the fruits of your toil.”

    “Privileges or Immunities” is an admittedly opaque phrase, but contemporaneous records and scholarship today agree that it encompasses a vast array of fundamental rights secured by the common law, the Bill of Rights, and the 1866 Civil Rights Act. It was emphatically intended to knock down state legal barriers to earning a living, so vital to the millions of former slaves claiming their freedom to work for themselves. However, in the words of Harvard constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, the clause was “improperly gutted” in the first case to come before the Supreme Court to enforce it: the Slaughter-House Cases (1873). The lower courts in Ursula’s case ruled that they were bound to follow suit.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  447. @391 I did not accuse JVW of being a horrible person I do not make personal attacks on other posters here. We just disagree.

    asset (806e40)

  448. @412: A bit pedantic, as the point is the same. Why is it OK for them to spend money enabling abortions when it was not OK to ask others to fund the Contras?

    Did you hear the story about the guy who, after a lifetimes work, determined that Homer did not write the Iliad but that it was another Greek of the same period, with the same name?

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  449. Why is it OK for them to spend money enabling abortions when it was not OK to ask others to fund the Contras?

    The difference is that the DoD policy is not circumventing US law, as there is nothing in 10 U.S.C. § 1093 that forbids the DoD from providing travel benefits to military personnel to receive abortions using their own funds.

    The activities supporting the contras through third parties were designed to circumvent US law (such as the Boland Amendments) and were completely unaccountable to anyone except the White House and the National Security Council. This ultimately led to the selling weapons to Iran, in violation of our own arms embargo, in the hope that Hezbollah would free American hostages, and use the profits to purchase weapons for the contras.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  450. I cannot find the CRS memo.

    Here it is, BuDuh. Seems like their approach was informed and reasonable.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  451. Thank you for the link, Paul.

    From the assumptions:

    • That cloture is invoked, and the maximum two hours of post-cloture time is consumed for each nominee prior to voting on confirmation.

    546 of the “689 hours and 20 minutes” comes from a maximum assumption.

    Thanks again, Paul.

    BuDuh (aeb9d8)

  452. Anyone trying to slow the process will demand the full two hours. It was what the Dems were doing, with a much longer allowed time, to slow Trump’s judges. Until McConnell “nuked” their ass with a rules change.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  453. Anyone trying to slow the process will demand the full two hours

    No kidding?

    BuDuh (aeb9d8)

  454. Like I’ve said before, don’t go fooling around with Mrs. Tuberville. Tommy will come over to the motel and let the air out of the bellboy’s car tires.

    The soldiers that Putin’s pixie is holding up the promotions of aren’t the ones responsible for the abortion travel expenses policy. They just work there.

    All this does is show the shiftless mean-mindedness of the Trump gerbils.

    nk (a972c4)

  455. “Why should drug addicts be allowed to buy guns? Do you also think schizophrenics should be able to buy guns?”

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/people-convicted-nonviolent-crimes-can-guns-court-says-rcna88030

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-considers-recoil-landmark-gun-rights-ruling-rcna89261

    So if someone is addicted to pot, then they should lose their right to self defense? How much can someone binge drink before they lose their right to self defense?

    Personally, I’m even a littled bothered about a law that compels an addict to self report. Someone consumed by addiction might not be fully competent to self-assess that addiction or its degree. It might be too easy for those individuals to rationalize that a few clean days might mean they’re really not an addict. With the court decisions above, I question whether someone without felony drug charges and without a violent record will lose his right to self defense.

    AJ_Liberty (a4451e)

  456. Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 9/14/2023 @ 6:05 pm

    This ultimately led to the selling weapons to Iran, in violation of our own arms embargo, in the hope that Hezbollah would free American hostages, and use the profits to purchase weapons for the contras.

    Presu=ident Reagan signed a covert finding allowing the sale.zPoindrxter hsd expected him to sign it on January 6, 1986 (and Reagan had signed a paper in advance not knowing what it was – Poindexter tore it up) but Sect Defense Weinberger objected and it was changed and he signed it on January 17

    There were no profits Poindexter and North could apprpriate until then I think. The sale of arms to Iran came fist. ASupporting the contras came second and no money went to the contras because it was deposited in the wrong (Swiss?) numbered bank account,

    Sammy Finkelman (1adfb2)

  457. So if someone is addicted to pot, then they should lose their right to self defense? How much can someone binge drink before they lose their right to self defense?

    I don’t know, but demanding a line be drawn does not mean there should not be a line. How about 3 drunk driving convictions in 5 years? It’s 4, ever, here in NM and it’s a felony. I’d argue for 3, here in the land of the giant truck.

    Personally, I’m even a littled bothered about a law that compels an addict to self report. Someone consumed by addiction might not be fully competent to self-assess that addiction or its degree. It might be too easy for those individuals to rationalize that a few clean days might mean they’re really not an addict. With the court decisions above, I question whether someone without felony drug charges and without a violent record will lose his right to self defense.

    One of the reasons given for infrequent prosecution is this exact difficulty; not so much the addict’s self-delusion, but the difficulty to prove he was using drugs heavily, addicted or not (the law doesn’t actually care). In Hunter’s case he was stupid about it, like the burglar who films his escapades. It’s this blatant activity that makes the “infrequent” argument weak — here they have the goods.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  458. There is also a semantic issue with “addict” or “alcoholic.” I’ve been abstinent for 35 years, but I remain vulnerable to my next drink. I have seen it too often to think otherwise. Now, I would answer the form with “No” — as the question implies a different meaning than the recovery programs do. But some might think I’m being a hypocrite. Not that I care.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  459. It always pays to proof the cover of your book:

    https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0CH26KPJB

    Senator Blutarsky strikes back.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  460. It always pays to proof the cover of your book:
    …….
    Senator Blutarsky strikes back.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 9/15/2023 @ 8:30 am

    Comedy Gold!

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  461. Ms. Noem appears to be beefing up her resume for the VP slot.

    Paul Montagu (d52d7d)

  462. Damn the Germans!

    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3)


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