Friday, January 31, 2020

I Was Wrong – They Want War

by Marta Hernandez in Cultural Issues 36 Comments

I admit it – I was wrong.

Last week I advised that the best course of action as the left attacks our rights is to keep a civil course, wow them with facts, decency, and knowledge and defend our rights with knowledge, passion, and eloquence.

I felt that we could win based on logic and rational discourse, but having watched the events of this week unfold in front of my eyes, I realize just how wrong I was.

I thought that after engaging with our political opponents en masse, peacefully stating our concerns, and rationally discussing the issues of due process and Second Amendment rights in Richmond, the Democrats would step away from their insane assault on our freedoms.

I was wrong.

Despite concerns which the Democrats admitted to have had about the proposed “red flag law” during discussions with the press and with gun rights advocates, they advanced this appalling legislation the very next day after the massive rally in Richmond, disingenuously claiming that the measure is “thoughtful” and preserves due process. They jammed through other appalling bills, limiting the ability of peaceable Virginians to exercise their rights, without so much as a second thought, claiming that “elections have consequences.”

A Democratic-led House committee voted Friday for several pieces of gun legislation that a Republican majority has blocked for years. Those bills include limiting handgun purchases to once a month; universal background checks on gun purchases; allowing localities to ban guns in public buildings, parks and other areas; and a red flag bill that would allow authorities to temporarily take guns away from anyone deemed to be dangerous to themselves or others.

Based on previous interactions with some of these legislators, I thought they would give consideration to the people whom they represent, even if those people didn’t vote for them or disagree with them politically.

I was wrong.

Virginia Democrats are now in the process of jamming bills down our throats that threatens our First Amendment rights. It’s already illegal to threaten to kill, injure, bomb, etc. government buildings or officials in Virginia, but Senate Bill 1627 goes a step further.

The bar for harassment is already as low as “vulgar language” in Virginia’s code 18.2-152.7:1: If any person, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, or harass any person, shall use a computer or computer network to communicate obscene, vulgar, profane, lewd, lascivious, or indecent language, or make any suggestion or proposal of an obscene nature, or threaten any illegal or immoral act, he shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. Bourne’s bill proposes adding the following amendment: A violation of this section may be prosecuted in the jurisdiction in which the communication was made or received or in the City of Richmond if the person subjected to the act is one of the following officials or employees of the Commonwealth: the Governor, Governor-elect, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor-elect, Attorney General, or Attorney General-elect, a member or employee of the General Assembly, a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, or a judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia.

Bourne’s Bill also changes the language of “he shall be guilty” to “he is guilty” of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Not only do the twisted, power-hungry politicians in Richmond want to relieve you of your right to keep and bear arms, but they want to criminalize criticism of the very elected officials Virginians put into office!

Let’s remember, boys and girls. These pernicious fucks work for us, but they’re trying to keep themselves in power by silencing detractors and appealing to fetid ignorami.

And if you think this trend is limited to Virginia, you would be wrong too.

The proglodyte sociopaths have a chokehold on the Democrats, so much that they feel they have to pander to their insanity by promising abortions on demand for biological males and paying off billions of dollars in college loans at taxpayer expense, while screwing Americans who have been fiscally responsible with their earnings.

I thought there were sane Democrats left in this country.

I was wrong.

There may be some decent leftists here and there, but the shrieking, perpetually aggrieved progressive parasites have taken over, and they want you silenced and stripped of any dignity and freedoms.

The “Wax My Balls” and “Make My Cake, Bigot” woke fascists want war, and they might just get it.

Antifa is parading around in masks, threatening those who don’t toe the progressive line and even assaulting them.

A field organizer for one of the front runners for the Democratic nomination has recently professed his love for gulags to reeducate his political opponents and squawked that he was ready for the revolution.

I was wrong.

These people won’t listen to reason, and they are determined to destroy us – libertarians, moderate Republicans, hardcore conservatives, and RINOs. They don’t care. They want us gone, and they’re willing to lie, malign, and destroy using any means possible.

Elizabeth Warren is perfectly happy denigrating judges appointed by President Trump as “Homophobic, racist, sexist, and anti-voter.” And Occasional Cortex wants to change the meaning of the word “ethical” to mean giving up your property, autonomy, and freedom, as well as your earnings to those who have accomplished nothing, done nothing with their lives, learned nothing, and earned nothing, so that idiots can steal from you and control you at will.

I thought the Democrats could be reasoned with.

I was wrong.

They don’t want to just have power over you. They want you gone. They want you “re-educated” to toe their ideological line, and they are perfectly willing to use your tax dollars to ensure that your freedom of expression and your BadThink are eradicated – violently, if they have to.

This is a matter of survival – not just for conservatives, but for anyone who values freedom.

This is not just about gun rights, or free speech rights. These people are out in the open, and they want to destroy you – everything you are.

I thought the Democrats wanted the same things for our nation as we do, and we merely disagreed on the best way to accomplish this.

I was wrong.

They don’t care about human rights, as they claim. They care about giving themselves power over you, over your thoughts, over your achievements and earnings. They don’t consider you human.

They want to burn it all down, and they will do whatever is necessary to ensure that happens. OK, let’s see what happens.

They want you gone. Act accordingly.

Featured photo courtesy of Pixabay; cropped and resized; Pixabay License

https://victorygirlsblog.com/i-was-wrong-they-want-war/

Thursday, January 30, 2020

A BLOW FOR LIBERATION FROM LEFT-WING JUDGES

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN JURISPRUDENCE, SUPREME COURT

Since President Trump was inaugurated, leftists have brought a series of lawsuits on behalf of supposedly aggrieved parties–themselves, mostly–seeking to enjoin enforcement of administration policies. District Court judges in venues remote from the issue at hand, like a federal judge in Hawaii who purported to block implementation of the administration’s “travel ban,” have issued nationwide injunctions far exceeding the scope of any case or controversy actually before them (if any). This is a perversion of our legal system that encourages, to put it mildly, judge shopping. As a 41-year litigation veteran, I can tell you that judge shopping happens all the time. If a nationwide injunction is in prospect, the temptation to judge-shop is overwhelming.

This practice has come under nearly universal condemnation from judges and legal scholars, and many expect that before long, the U.S. Supreme Court will take decisive action to stop such overreaching by District Court judges. Earlier today, the Supreme Court took a step in that direction.

The Court ruled, on a party-line 5-4 vote, to grant a stay of a preliminary injunction barring implementation of the Trump administration’s “public charge” initiative, which simply enforces century-old federal immigration law. The administration’s rule shouldn’t even be controversial, but left-wing judges sought out by left-wing activists have put it in play. What is newsworthy is Justice Gorsuch’s blistering concurrence with the Court’s order, in which Justice Thomas joined:

On October 10, 2018, the Department of Homeland Security began a rulemaking process to define the term “public charge,” as it is used in the Nation’s immigration laws. Approximately 10 months and 266,000 comments later, the agency issued a final rule. Litigation swiftly followed, with a number of States, organizations, and individual plaintiffs variously alleging that the new definition violates the Constitution, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the immigration laws themselves. These plaintiffs have urged courts to enjoin the rule’s enforcement not only as it applies to them, or even to some definable group having something to do with their claimed injury, but as it applies to anyone.

These efforts have met with mixed results. The Northern District of California ordered the government not to enforce the new rule within a hodge-podge of jurisdictions—California, Oregon, Maine, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia. The Eastern District of Washington entered a similar order, but went much farther geographically, enjoining the government from enforcing its rule globally. But both of those orders were soon stayed by the Ninth Circuit which, in a 59-page opinion, determined the government was likely to succeed on the merits. Meanwhile, across the country, the District of Maryland entered its own universal injunction, only to have that one stayed by the Fourth Circuit. And while all these developments were unfolding on the coasts, the Northern District of Illinois was busy fashioning its own injunction, this one limited to enforcement within the State of Illinois.

If all of this is confusing, don’t worry, because none of it matters much at this point. Despite the fluid state of things—some interim wins for the government over here, some preliminary relief for plaintiffs over there—we now have an injunction to rule them all: the one before us, in which a single judge in New York enjoined the government from applying the new definition to anyone, without regard to geography or participation in this or any other lawsuit. The Second Circuit declined to stay this particular universal injunction, and so now, after so many trips up and down and around the judicial map, the government brings its well-rehearsed arguments here.

Today the Court (rightly) grants a stay, allowing the government to pursue (for now) its policy everywhere save Illinois. But, in light of all that’s come before, it would be delusional to think that one stay today suffices to remedy the problem. The real problem here is the increasingly common practice of trial courts ordering relief that transcends the cases before them. Whether framed as injunctions of “nationwide,” “universal,” or “cosmic” scope, these orders share the same basic flaw—they direct how the defendant must act toward persons who are not parties to the case.

More at the link. This issue is under the radar, but it is critical for Americans to be liberated from the tyranny of shopped political judges. Justice Gorsuch’s opinion today is a shot across the bow, but my guess is that before long, the Court as a whole will take decisive action to reform this abuse of the federal courts.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/01/a-blow-for-liberation-from-left-wing-judges.php

Fireworks: Our Own Katie Pavlich Takes Chris Wallace to the Woodshed Over Trump Impeachment

Fireworks: Our Own Katie Pavlich Takes

Chris Wallace to the Woodshed Over Trump

Impeachment

Matt Vespa

@mvespa1

Fireworks: Our Own Katie Pavlich Takes Chris Wallace to the Woodshed Over Trump Impeachment

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton has decided to air dirty laundry in a new book that just happened to be released prior to the Trump Team taking their first full day of counterarguments to the Democrats’ shoddy impeachment case against President Trump. The New York Times printed a story from Bolton where he alleges that Trump wanted to withhold Ukraine aid until a corruption investigation was opened into Hunter Biden’s shady employment arrangement with Burisma, an energy company. It was yet another salvo for those who want witnesses in this show trial. Leah had the details:

Over dozens of pages, Mr. Bolton described how the Ukraine affair unfolded over several months until he departed the White House in September. He described not only the president’s private disparagement of Ukraine but also new details about senior cabinet officials who have publicly tried to sidestep involvement.

For example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged privately that there was no basis to claims by the president’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani that the ambassador to Ukraine was corrupt and believed Mr. Giuliani may have been acting on behalf of other clients, Mr. Bolton wrote.

Mr. Bolton also said that after the president’s July phone call with the president of Ukraine, he raised with Attorney General William P. Barr his concerns about Mr. Giuliani, who was pursuing a shadow Ukraine policy encouraged by the president, and told Mr. Barr that the president had mentioned him on the call. A spokeswoman for Mr. Barr denied that he learned of the call from Mr. Bolton; the Justice Department has said he learned about it only in mid-August.

And the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was present for at least one phone call where the president and Mr. Giuliani discussed the ambassador, Mr. Bolton wrote. Mr. Mulvaney has told associates he would always step away when the president spoke with his lawyer to protect their attorney-client privilege.

During a previously reported May 23 meeting where top advisers and Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, briefed him about their trip to Kyiv for the inauguration of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr. Trump railed about Ukraine trying to damage him and mentioned a conspiracy theory about a hacked Democratic server, according to Mr. Bolton. (NYT)

And that allegation has collapsed. The timing is suspect. Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney had denied this tale, but it did its job. Mitt Romney and Susan Collins now say that they’re curious as to what Bolton might have to say. Bolton has long said he was willing to testify as a witness in this kangaroo court.

Our own Katie Pavlich got into it with colleague Chris Wallace over the whole process of this clown show. During the Clinton impeachment, all of the witnesses, including those from the grand jury investigation, were interviewed as part of the House impeachment process, done before the articles were voted on and formally transmitted to the Senate. Wallace took issue with that and sparks flew:

I don’t know why, even Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), a staunch anti-Trump Democrat, admitted that the House did a piss-poor job with the discovery process:

The Democrats thought this impeachment process was so critical to the nation that they decided to sit on it for a couple of weeks, then hold some bush-league hold out because they know the Republican Senate will kill this effort. They don’t have the evidence and the House doesn’t get to dictate the terms of the Senate trial. So, if they wanted witnesses, they should have thought about all of this prior. Instead, we got celebrations and sighs of relief from Democrats that they got the articles passed out of some whacko promise to their base to impeach Trump over the fact that he won the 2016 election. It’s nakedly political, partisan, and half-assed. And all it has done is push swing states further away from Democrats and bolster Trump’s approval numbers in the process.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/01/27/fireworks-our-own-katie-pavlich-curb-stomps-chris-wallace-over-trump-impeachment-n2560190