Welcome to spring! More evidence the Biden clan lied under oath, lots of illegal alien news, Ukraine hits more Russian oil refineries, and BlackRock and Planet Fitness enjoy the consequences of getting woke. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
In his opening statement before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski publicly accused the first son and his uncle, Jim Biden, of lying under oath about the nature of their business dealings with Chinese conglomerate CEFC.
Bobulinski is testifying on Wednesday about the Biden family’s foreign business dealings, the subject of the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. He testified behind closed doors last month and vividly recalled meeting Hunter, Joe, and James Biden in May 2017 to discuss a proposed joint venture with CEFC.
Bobulinski cited three examples of alleged perjury from Hunter Biden’s sworn testimony last month, accusing Hunter of lying about: the timeline of his business relationship with CEFC, his father’s interactions with his business associates, and the threatening text he sent a Chinese businessman in which he demanded payment and said he was sitting next to his father.
“Hunter Biden gave his transcribed interview to the House Oversight Committee on February 28 and lied throughout his testimony,” Bobulinski said in his written testimony.
Hunter Biden said his work for CEFC began with a retainer in 2017. However, Bobulinski insists, based on conversations he said he had with Hunter, that the Biden business relationship with CEFC goes back further, possibly to Joe Biden’s time as vice president.
Hunter Biden claimed his father never interacted with his son’s business partners and repeatedly denied his father’s involvement in those dealings. However, Hunter Biden confirmed Joe Biden met Bobulinski and multiple foreign business partners, and spoke to business associates on speakerphone.
James Biden denied in his closed-door testimony that he attended that May 2017 meeting, contradicting Hunter’s sworn testimony.
“The sole reason Hunter wanted me to meet his father was because I was the CEO of SinoHawk, the Bidens’ partnership with CEFC. I was a business associate. In his transcript, Hunter confirms that that meeting with Joe took place and incriminates his Uncle Jim for perjury by confirming it,” Bobulinski’s statement reads.
In his written testimony and the opening statement he delivered, Bobulinski also accuses Hunter of lying about the details of a text he sent to a Chinese business associate in July 2017 where he appeared to leverage his father’s influence. Hunter Biden testified that he was embarrassed by the text and claimed he sent it to the wrong Chinese business partner, a person not connected to CEFC.
“He leveraged his father’s presence next to him in that infamous text to strongarm CEFC into paying Hunter immediately,” Bobulinski said.
In March 2017, Hunter Biden’s then-business partner Rob Walker received a $3 million payment from State Energy HK, an account linked to CEFC.
Walker distributed roughly $1 million of the State Energy HK funds to bank accounts linked to Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family, bank records show. The $3 million wire to Walker took place after Hunter Biden and his business associates held meetings with CEFC and helped explore business deals, according to Walker’s testimony and Hunter Biden’s federal tax indictment. Joe Biden’s vice presidency concluded only weeks before the State Energy HK payment came in.
Bobulinski also accused James Biden of lying under oath about the details of his involvement with Bobulinski and CEFC.
Testifying behind closed doors last month, James Biden repeatedly denied meeting Bobulinski, contradicting the testimony given by Bobulinski and Hunter Biden, according to a transcript of his testimony. Despite being shown exhibits to the contrary, James Biden doubled down on his denial that the May 2017 meeting with Bobulinski and Joe and Hunter Biden took place. Likewise, James Biden denied signing any agreement to get into business with Bobulinski through Oneida Holdings, a holding company created for the CEFC proposal.
When presented with a signed copy of the Oneida agreement, James Biden said he could not recall being part of the Oneida arrangement. The CEFC proposal involving Bobulinski fell apart, and the Bidens entered a separate joint venture with CEFC called Hudson West III to help CEFC explore U.S. energy deals.
“There are many other examples of Hunter’s and Jim’s lies, which I am happy to discuss during my testimony here today, and I hope this Committee will hold them accountable for their perjury before you,” Bobulinski’s written statement adds. When questioned by Republican lawmakers, Bobulinski repeated his accusations Hunter and James Biden committed perjury during their closed-door testimonies last month.
Alongside Bobulinski, imprisoned former Biden associate Jason Galanis is testifying virtually about the business enterprise he worked on with Hunter Biden and other business partners. Galanis’ opening statement on Wednesday mirrors private testimony in which he claimed Joe Biden helped his son finalize deals with Chinese and Russian business partners.
“The entire value-add of Hunter Biden to our business was his family name and his access to his father, Vice President Joe Biden,” Galanis testified. He believes he is risking his safety to testify because of alleged retaliation by the Justice Department during his time in prison for participating in a fraudulent bond scheme.
Bobulinski’s testimony will be no surprise to regular BattleSwarm readers following the scandal.
I’ll confine myself to one typical example, although many could be cited. On page 55 of the transcript, Hur asks Biden in what workspaces he kept documents at the vice president’s residence (the Naval Observatory); Biden’s response runs seven pages — although it was not a sensible response to the very simple question asked.
The president began by recounting that “I was the guy who wrote the Violence Against Women Act”; that agriculture is “a $4 billion industry in Delaware and the Delmarva peninsula”; that in a law-school torts class he was applauded for speaking ten minutes about a case he had not read; that “to make a long story short” he got a job out of law school at a firm in Delaware; and that “to make a long story not quite so long” he participated in a case while he was waiting for his bar results involving “this poor kid [who was] down a hundred-foot vessel, chimney, scraping the hydrogen bubbles off of the inside” but “was wearing the wrong pants, wrong jeans, and he —a spark caught fire and got caught in the containment vessel and he lost part of his penis and one of his testicles and he was 23 years old.” The senior partner told Biden to write a memo supporting a motion to dismiss the case, “and son of a bitch, it prevailed,” whereupon Biden thought “son of a bitch I’m in the wrong business, I’m not made for this.”
Thereupon, the senior partner invited him to go to the Wilmington Club, where “no blacks, Catholics are allowed — have been allowed to be members. The DuPont family name.” (Biden elsewhere in the seven pages repeatedly refers to the DuPont family, whom he describes as “Rockefeller Republicans” highly influential in Delaware.) Biden recalled being so taken aback by the Wilmington Club invitation that, in “the only time I ever lied that I can remember looking somebody in the eye,” he made up a story that his father was coming to visit that day. Then he immediately walked through “the basement on a public building and walked in with a guy named Frank and I said I want a job as a public defender.” This began “what got me — I had been involved in the civil-rights movement. That got me deeply involved in trying to reform the Democratic Party, which was a southern Democratic Party. We were a slave state by law.”
“And the whole point of telling you all this,” he continued, “is that I had a lot of material that I kept notes on” about the Democratic Party. And at that point, when he was 26 or 27 years old, Biden elaborated, “I went to work part time for a criminal-defense firm mainly, a real estate — there were five people. And so I was no longer a public defender. . . .” Then “one thing led to another” and Biden joined a group seeking to reform the Democratic Party. Even though he was young, they wanted him to run for the state senate. But he wanted to start his own law firm instead. “So to make a long story short,” he ended up running for county council, but “wanted to be sure that I was going to lose,” so he ran in a district that no Democrat had ever won. “And I won it. And next thing you know, I’m in a tough position. My generic point was that there was a lot of material that I had amassed that I wanted to save. I probably still have it somewhere. And so that stuff would travel wherever the hell I was.”
At that point, mercifully, Hur interjected, “trying to steer us back to the end of your vice presidency.”
To repeat, what I’ve outlined above comes from a single, uninterrupted, utterly non-responsive answer to a question about where Biden kept documents while living in the Naval Observatory circa 2016.
I would say that Grandpa Simpson is running the country, except it’s his Obama-retread aides who are doing that, and Grandpa Simpson is markedly more focused and coherent than Slow Joe is now. (Hat tip: Powerline.)
A senior official with United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) revealed Wednesday that CBP agents in El Paso arrested a man for attempting to enter the country illegally, and a further search led to the discovery of gang connections and alarming images contained on the man’s phone.
CBP Chief Jason Owens announced the arrest on social media, saying the man was from Colombia and shared images of tattoos that connect him with the Clan Del Gulfo (CDG) cartel.
A federal law, Section 922 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, bars illegal immigrants from carrying guns or ammunition. Prosecutors charged Heriberto Carbajal-Flores, the illegal alien, in 2020 after he was found in Chicago carrying a semi-automatic pistol despite “knowing he was an alien illegally and unlawfully in the United States.”
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman rejected two motions to dismiss, but the third motion, based on a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, triggered the dismissal of the case on March 8.
“The noncitizen possession statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5), violates the Second Amendment as applied to Carbajal-Flores,” Judge Coleman, appointed under President Barack Obama, wrote in her 8-page ruling. “Thus, the court grants Carbajal-Flores’ motion to dismiss.”
“Tyson closed down a pork plant in Iowa to hire ‘asylum seekers’ in New York. Tyson Foods just axed 1,200 jobs in Perry, Iowa, a town of just a few thousand people, and have moved those jobs, as well as others, to places like New York where they know there are ‘asylum seekers’ ready to replace American workers.”
The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will impose the strictest vehicle-emissions regulations ever enacted as part of an effort to push the American car industry toward electric vehicles.
The emissions standards, which will cover light-duty vehicles — cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks — are set to apply to models produced from “2027 through 2032 and beyond,” the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement.
The new rules set targets for the number of electric models produced in the United States as a percentage of all light-duty vehicles created each year. For instance, in 2030, hitting the EPA’s new targets would require somewhere between 31 percent and 44 percent of new cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks to be fully electric, with the exact percentage depending on the amount of emissions from other vehicles.
Though the regulations announced Wednesday are the strictest in the country’s history, they are a step back from the EPA’s April 2023 proposal, at least in terms of the rollout speed. While the target in 2032 is still for carbon emissions to be cut in half from the total produced by cars that went on sale in 2026, the shift will be more gradual than the changes the administration proposed last year and the targets in the earlier years easier to meet.
Another difference is the inclusion of hybrid vehicles. The April 2023 proposal called for two-thirds of cars sold in 2032 to be electric, but the new regulations amend that number to 56 percent of cars sold being electric and another 13 percent hybrid.
The electric car market is already saturated and EV sales are falling. Americans don’t want them, so the Biden administration is going to punish (and possibly destroy) the American car industry in their relentless pursuit of green graft.
“Texas School Fund Divests $8.5 Billion From BlackRock Over Anti-energy Policies. State Board of Education Chairman Aaron Kinsey said BlackRock was not in compliance with new legislation that prohibits state funds from being given to organizations that boycott energy companies.” Good. BlackRock’s “Environmental Social Governance” is bad for investors and bad for America.
The U.S. Department of Justice investigated firearm violence from 1993 through 2011. The report found, “In 2007–2011, about 1 percent of nonfatal violent crime victims used a firearm in self-defense.” Anti-gun zealots attempt to use this statistic to discredit the use of a gun as a viable means of self-defense, and by extension, to discredit gun ownership in general.
But look deeper into the numbers. During that five-year period, the Department of Justice confirmed a total of 338,700 defensive gun uses in both violent attacks and property crimes where a victim was involved. That equals an average of 67,740 defensive gun uses every year. In other words, according to the Justice Department’s own statistics, 67,740 people a year don’t become victims because they own a gun. (I suspect that if more states allowed concealed carry to be widespread, the number of instances of defensive gun uses would be even higher.)
Is it significant that at least 67,740 individuals use a gun in self-defense each year? Well, in 2016, 37,461 people died in motor vehicle accidents in the United States; in 2015, the number was 35,092 people. Mark Rosekind, administrator of the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA), called those road fatalities “an immediate crisis.” If the NHTSA administrator considers it a crisis that approximately 37,000 people are dying annually from car accidents, then saving nearly twice that many people each year through the use of firearms is simply stunning.
In reality, the Department of Justice findings about defensive gun uses are very conservative. A 2013 study ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and conducted by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council found that:
Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence… Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008… On the other hand, some scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey…”
The most comprehensive study ever conducted about defensive gun use in the United States was a 1995 survey published by criminologist Gary Kleck in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. This study reported between 2.1 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses every year.
The City of Midland tells NewsWest 9 that a suspect burglarized a north Midland home Saturday morning and was killed by the homeowner who used self-defense.
According to the Midland Police Department, at about 4:09 a.m. on Saturday, officers responded to the 1400 block of Daventry Place due to a “disturbance with weapons.”
Upon arrival, officers found a man identified as 37-year-old George Samuel Butler located at the scene, deceased.
MPD determined that Butler entered the residence “by force with a rifle,” and then the homeowner placed Butler in a choke hold some time during the burglary.
Butler was killed by the homeowner in a case of self-defense, according to the city.
Bartlesville Police say a woman shot and killed a man who broke into her apartment.
Police say the man was 23 years old and that the woman told police she didn’t know him.
Neighbors say the thing that surprised them the most is they didn’t expect something like this to happen in broad daylight when families are getting ready for work and kids ready for school.
Bartlesville Police say a woman called 911 this morning and said someone was breaking into her apartment, then said she’d shot the intruder.
The piece is light on shooting details and heavy on neighbors “I never thought such a thing could happen here blah blah blah” reaction quotes, so I’m chopping it off there.
A Phoenix homeowner shot a strange man last week when the intruder forced his way into the residence last week.
According to the Arizona Family, it was just after 8 p.m. that night when the intruder attempted to force entry into the home.
Police reports say this was when the homeowner shot the man.
The intruder, later identified as 24-year-old Isaiah Roggenbuck, ran away from the home. Police found him in a nearby part of the neighborhood.
Reports from the Arizona Family claim that Roggenbuck was found near a marijuana dispensary.
This is my shocked face.
Roggenbuck was charged with criminal trespassing.
In Houston, somebody robbed a guy at a gas pump and was promptly shot and killed by another guy, who then took off.
Good on you, red car guy. I think the victim showed poor situational awareness, and should have doused the perp, which tends to make any halfway sane thug think twice.
In Indianapolis, a homeowner wrestled the gun away from an intruder and shot him.
A baller move, to be sure, but it’s far better to rely on your own gun…
Superman gets tired of Iran’s catspaws tugging on his cape, the Biden Recession has both inflation and budget deficits soaring, another polar vortex barrels down on Texas, and the crazy-eyed girlfriend of a corrupt Democrat shows up on the Epstein list. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen just had to keep fucking around, so now they’ve found out.
The U.S. and Britain launched air strikes in Yemen on Thursday in response to the Iran-backed Houthis’ recent attacks against vessels in the Red Sea.
The strikes came hours after White House national-security spokesman John Kirby called on the Houthis to “stop these attacks” and warned that the group would “bear the consequences for any failure to do so.”
The militants have launched 27 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea since November 19, the U.S. military said earlier on Thursday. The group says the attacks are in protest of the Israel–Hamas war.
The retaliatory strikes targeted a source of the group’s attacks, Bloomberg News reported, noting that heavy explosions were seen in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and the port city of Al Hudaydah. The attacks were carried out with support from Australia, the Netherlands, Bahrain, and Canada, while the U.K. contributed aircraft.
President Biden confirmed the strikes in a statement on Thursday evening, explaining that the action was “in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea — including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.”
“These attacks have endangered U.S. personnel, civilian mariners, and our partners, jeopardized trade, and threatened freedom of navigation,” he said, noting that more than 50 countries had been impacted by the attacks on commercial shipping, while crews from more than 20 countries have been threatened or taken hostage in acts of piracy.
“More than 2,000 ships have been forced to divert thousands of miles to avoid the Red Sea — which can cause weeks of delays in product shipping times. And on January 9, Houthis launched their largest attack to date — directly targeting American ships,” Biden said.
Suchomimus has taken a break from his Ukraine war work to do a video on the strike:
Plus another one on the locations hit:
Is there a Habitual Linecrosser video for this strike? Yes, yes there is:
The Biden Recession bites even deeper, with higher inflation and record food prices. And those are just the official numbers. Food inflation seems a hell of a lot higher than official numbers are letting on…
Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis appointed a former romantic partner to lead the prosecution against the former president and his associates, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant alleged in a court filing late Monday.
“The district attorney and the special prosecutor have been seen in private together in and about the Atlanta area and believed to have co-habited in some form or fashion at a location owned by neither of them,” the court document submitted by Michael Roman’s legal representatives argues. Roman served briefly as a special assistant and researcher to President Trump.
The submission does not offer any explicit proof of the DA’s connection to special prosecutor Nathan Wade, but instead claims “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney have confirmed they had an ongoing, personal relationship.” Wade was paid over half a million dollars throughout his involvement in the Trump election-interference case, which Willis has overseen and authorized.
How long until the radical left argues that it’s perfectly normal with elected black female Democrats like Fani Willis and Kamala Harris to commit adultery with other Democrats to further their career, and it’s just those right-wing troglodytes who are hung up over it?
It’s a problem in the western world that is rarely discussed in the media beyond puff-piece articles and glancing polls that avoid connecting the dots. The precipitous decline of dating, committed relationships and marriage along with a flatline in population in the past couple decades in the US is treated as a novelty issue rather than the threat to the stability of civilization that it actually is. History shows that without the traditional family structure, numerous ugly societal consequences follow.
One could argue, though, that the situation is far worse than that. We may be heading into a future where families become a novelty, and many argue that the root cause is feminism and the hyperinflated delusions of progressive women.
In order to understand the problem we have to look at the stats.
More than 50% of American women are still childless by age 30. By age 35 fertility goes into steep decline with women having a 15% chance of becoming pregnant, and a less than 5% chance of motherhood at age 40. Meaning, the best window of opportunity for women to find a compatible partner and build a family is in their 20s.
Feminists argue, though, that this is the time in a woman’s life when they should be building a career and having fun. Family life, they say, is an artificial prison “created by the patriarchy” in order to oppress the fairer sex. Corporate media and Hollywood entertainment often reinforce this narrative and encourage unrealistic life goals.
The propaganda has generated what many refer to as the “Female Happiness Paradox.” Surveys show that increased power, job access and responsibility for women in society since the 1970s has also led to a diametrically opposed decline in overall happiness for those same women. The correlation suggests the exact opposite of what feminism originally promised and that the ideology has been a net negative.
Though some will argue that a general decline in economic conditions is the real cause, surveys show that women have suffered a far more pronounced drop in happiness compared to men. Meaning, men were already acclimated to the struggles of the workaday world and their roles as providers and protectors. Women were happy until they joined men in the trenches.
For men, the reaction has been to back away from the dating scene and the double standards involved. Over 63% of men under the age of 30 are now single; that’s up from 51% in 2019. The majority of single men say this is by choice and that they are seeking to avoid relationships altogether. Why? The consensus appears to be that modern western women cost too much money and cause too much trouble.
Fear of failed marriage is one aspect that has the younger generation of men on edge, with family courts still largely in favor of women in divorce settlements and child custody. This is one reason why marriage rates have declined by 60% since the 1970s. However, the obstacles go well beyond divorce and into a new culture of female entitlement.
The word on the street is “Hoeflation”: The dramatic increase in cost for men today to maintain a relationship with a woman while the quality of women continues to go down. That is to say, it is an increase in female expectations vs what they bring to the table in a relationship.
In other words, women of the past used to have something to offer beyond sexual companionship, from greater femininity, greater potential for motherhood, less combativeness and narcissism, as well as a superior ability to raise children and maintain a home. Such traits are highly attractive to men even after 60 years of widespread feminism, but are seen as non-existent among women under 30 in 2023.
It should be noted that “Hoeflation” seems to be directly linked to progressive influences, and not all women fall into this category. Unfortunately, around 71% of young women identify with progressive beliefs, as opposed to young men who are only 53% progressive. It should also be noted that progressive today means something a lot different from what it meant in the 1990s (progressive now means woke, or extreme leftist cultism).
Terrified journalists being forced to kneel in a TV studio by gunmen pointing high-powered weapons at their heads as the cameras rolled, police officers pleading for their lives after being kidnapped on duty.
The scenes which have unfolded in Ecuador show the extent to which this once peaceful haven in Latin America has descended into violence.
Snip.
Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has ordered the armed forces to restore order in the country after days of unrest which saw two gang leaders escape from jail, prison guards held hostage, and explosive devices set off in a number of cities across the country.
In the most dramatic attack, a group of armed men forced their way into the studios of TC Television in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, and tried to force one of the presenters to read out a message live on air.
The gunmen were eventually overpowered by soldiers and have been arrested but the live footage of the stand-off between the hooded men and the armed forces while TC staff cowered on the floor has terrified Ecuadoreans.
Second Amendment victory: ” In Stunning About-Face, 9th Circuit Prohibits California from Banning Concealed Carry in Public Places.”
From the court’s Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction:
California will not allow concealed carry permitholders to effectively practice what the Second Amendment promises. [The new law’s] coverage is sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court. The law designates twenty-six categories of places, such as hospitals, public transportation, places that sell liquor for on-site consumption, playgrounds, parks, casinos, stadiums, libraries, amusement parks, zoos, places of worship, and banks, as “sensitive places” where concealed carry permitholders cannot carry their handguns. SB2 turns nearly every public place in California into a “sensitive place,” effectively abolishing the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding and exceptionally qualified citizens to be armed and to defend themselves in public.
Slowly but surely, Bruen is stopping the gun grabbers dead in their tracks.
“Director of ‘Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence,’ Caught With Illegal Guns, Sentenced To Prison…Michael Rodriguez, 49, the now-former director of “Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence” was sentenced to ten years in state prison following his arrest last summer on drug and gun charges.”
Nearly 59,000 registered Pennsylvania Democrats left the party in 2023; that makes more voters than fans needed to fill the capacity of the Franklin Field Football Stadium at the University of Pennsylvania.
Of those nearly 59,000 who left the Democratic Party, 36,950 switched to the Republican party, and 21,644 switched their party affiliation to “other,” the category the Pennsylvania Department of State uses in its data to cover parties such as Green and Libertarian.
“As the Democrat Party tilts further to the progressive left, more historically traditional, working-class families are moving to the Republican Party, both in terms of how they vote and how they’re registered,” conservative political strategist Charlie Gerow told the Epoch Times.
Scary traffic controller incompetence via Instapundit:
Holy smokes this is terrifying. Female Air traffic controller argues with a pilot who’s been flying for 15 years about a landing and says she “googled it” so she’s right and knows best.
DTO is the airport for Denton, Texas, a college town northwest of Fort Worth.
“Georgia Tech researchers claim they have created ‘the world’s first functional semiconductor made from graphene.’ Importantly, the research team’s epitaxial graphene is claimed to be compatible with conventional microelectronics processing methods and is thus a realistic silicon alternative. Moreover, this refined material achieves a desirable band gap for electronics applications and has latent potential for future quantum computing devices.” Higher band gap is necessary for switching a circuit from on to off; it’s what puts the “semi” in “semiconductors.”
Billions of insects are predicted to burst out of the ground in the United States during late spring, in an event which hasn’t happened for more than 200 years.
The red-eyed, winged insects called periodical cicadas, emerge in 13 to 17-year cycles and are completely harmless.
In 2024, two of these groups – called Brood XIII (meaning 13) and Brood XIX (19) – are predicted to burst from the ground together for the first time since 1803.
The US states of Wisconsin and Illinois will be mainly affected as billions of the bugs making a loud clicking noise will fill the air, cover branches, sign posts and pavements for about a month later this year.
Interesting how the BBC feels it has to explain what Roman numerals mean…
“Three Austin Police Department (APD) SWAT officers have been cleared by a Travis County grand jury following a deadly shooting last year.” As well they should be. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Another day, another machete wielding lunatic keeping Austin weird. Steve Adler may be out of office, but his legacy lives on…
The Texans host a playoff game tomorrow after winning three games each in the previous two seasons. But ESPN hates rookie quarterback phenom C. J. Stroud giving all the glory to God.
Nick Saban retires. That’s a lot of turnover among legendary winners in one week…
Echo: “When it comes to casting roles like this, you usually have to choose between fighters who can’t act, or actors who can’t fight. But unfortunately, Alaqua Cox can’t seem to do either…Because she can’t speak, she really needs to sell the performance with her body language and facial expressions. The problem is, she doesn’t seem to have any.”
You may remember New Mexico Democratic Governor Lujan Grisham from such previous hits as I can unilaterally suspend parts of the Constitution I don’t like by decree. She made the foolish decision to try to extend her illegal decree, and was smacked down yet again by the courts. Here’s William Kirk of Washington Gun Law on the case:
“The case we’re talking about today is Springer v Grisham. This is one of many many challenges to Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s gubernatorial order, where she sua sponte suspended the Second Amendment rights of everybody in the city of Albuquerque as well as the surrounding county.”
“There was certain parts of that order that were stripped down right away by the courts, but there are other parts that kept going.”
“A gubernatorial order on a public health emergency. Where have we ever seen that before?”
“In the the People’s Republic of Washington, we had a public health emergency a few years ago, where our governor promised us 15 days to flatten the curve and he shut down the whole state…after almost 900 days, 900 days, the governor finally released most of his emergency power.”
Grisham keeps extending the emergency gun order.
“The two issues that were challenged here in Springer were governor Grisham’s prohibition on firearms in parks and in playgrounds, and this ended up before the United States district court for the District of New Mexico and the judge here has enjoined the order on parks.”
“The restrictions on the playgrounds still remain in effect.” Per the decision: “The government has demonstrated that playgrounds are analogous to sensitive places where there is a longstanding history of firearm regulations.” Responsible gun owners may argue against this on a the basis of logic (lawfully armed citizens prevent unlawful behavior), but at least the court is now applying the Bruen decision.
Indeed, the decision itself states “defendants have not satisfied the test set forth in Bruen at this stage, as they have not demonstrated a historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of firearms in public parks. The Court therefore enters a preliminary injunction enjoining the public health order to the extent it prohibits carrying firearms in public parks in Bernalillo County and Albuquerque, New Mexico.” Just the fact that district courts are now citing Bruen in the first pages of their decisions is a huge win.
WK: “There is a litany of case law out there that says ‘Listen, if you’re violating a constitutional right in general, then we will presume that to be irreparable harm. So we’re talking about the violation of one’s Second Amendment rights, this activity is clearly covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment. So the Court’s willingness to enjoin this law is incredibly positive, because it also shows the court believe that the plaintiffs are likely to prevail.”
New Mexico relied heavily on the case Maryland Shall Issue Inc. vs. Montgomery County, but the decision pointed out that was decided pre-Bruen.
By actually applying the Bruen test, and using it to strike down half of the remaining decree, the courts have giving gun owners at east three-fourths of a loaf here.
On Friday, Judge Thomas S. Kleeh issued a decision striking down the federal prohibition against 18 to 20-year-olds purchasing handguns.
The plaintiffs in the case are Steven Robert Brown, Benjamin Weekley, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the West Virginia Citizens Defense League.
Judge Kleeh, a Donald Trump appointee, is Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia.
Kleeh put the case in context:
This case requires the Court to assess the protected right of the people under the Second Amendment to the Constitution to keep and bear arms. U.S. Const. amend. II. Plaintiffs Robert Brown (“Brown”) and Benjamin Weekley (“Weekley”), individuals, are “law abiding, responsible adult citizens who wish to purchase handguns.”…Brown and Weekley are citizens of West Virginia and the United States of America and are between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. Brown and Weekley, as law-abiding, responsible adult citizens, would purchase handguns and handgun ammunition from Federal Firearms Licensees (“FFLs”) but for the right proscribed by 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(b)(1) and (c)(1).
He went on to explain that Brown and Weekley had each tried to buy a handgun but were “refused the sales because they were under twenty-one years of age.”
Kleeh noted that the plaintiffs sought summary judgment against the statute while the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), Attorney General Merrick Garland, and ATF Director Steven Dettelbach sought to have the case dismissed.
He sided with the plaintiffs and quoted extensively from Bruen (2022) to show the manner at which he arrived at his decision.
Here is one of Kleeh’s quotes from the Bruen decision:
To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest…To demonstrate the regulation of that conduct is within the bounds of the Second Amendment, “the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historic tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.”
It’s taken a bit of time, but we’re finally seeing Bruen test standards used to strike down gun-grabbing laws. Hopefully a whole lot more will be struck down in the near future…
I don’t usually cover state level gun lawsuits (and Texas is pro-Second Amendment enough that they aren’t necessary here), but Washington State vs. Gator’s Guns is interesting, in that Washington State’s unconstitutional “high” (i.e. standard) capacity magazine ban has a good chance of being thrown out as unconstitutional.
Unlike two other cases challenging the law, Washington state’s Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson is the one suing Gator’s Guns. That means the case will be tried in rural Cowlitz County, as Ferguson can’t get the venue moved to liberal, urban Thurston County.
Pete Serrano of the Silent Majority Foundation: “We’ve had several hearings before judge [Gary] Basher, the presiding judge in this jurisdiction, who said ‘I want to know whether or not this ban is constitutional. Everything else can come in on the back end.'”
The AG’s playbook on cases in Kings and Pierce County was radically different. Serrano: “The Attorney General came in hard, fast, hit the person, and either tried to extract the settlement agreement or punish them immediately and had a favorable venue.”
Usually scheduling order hearings are uneventful things that can be done by Zoom. Not this one. Serrano: “Here the judge ordered us into the court in person on Monday and said ‘Listen, you guys can’t get the scheduling together because we’re pushing to have this thing done and heard by the end of 2023.'” The AG is trying to drag things out well into 2024.
The constitutional issues in the case have been covered before. Serrano: “We’ve briefed it in Brumback [vs. Ferguson], we’ve seen it briefed in other cases throughout the state and.”
“You have [U.S. District] Judge [Roger] Benitez’s opinion on the same thing in California.”
Washington Gun Law President William Kirk: “Let’s also remember that a lot of the case law that we’re talking about on the assault weapon bans, is also similar case law that would be cited in a magazine ban case as well.” I suspect this is a reference to Bruen. One thing I haven’t seen in this video or the snippets on this case online is how Bruen has changed the burden of proof on government regulation of citizen firearms.
Serrano: “There’s nothing really original here.”
Kirk: “Did the Attorney General bite off a little more than they could chew on this one?”
Serrano: “Oh absolutely…It was like here’s a gift from God. Or, you know definitely not God, but from Bob Ferguson. It’s [a gift] from Satan…He’s going to go into a rural small conservative county and sue someone who allegedly sold over a thousand of these magazines.”
In 12 years, Cowlitz County has gone from mild blue to deep red.
This is the sort of magazine ban I can see being struck down even before Bruen. In light of the the post-Bruen environment, it’s hard to believe it won’t get struck down.
Only stubborn Democratic dedication to complete civilian disarmament keeps the Bob Fergusons of the world trying to impose gun control methods that have already been found unconstitutional.
New Mexico Democratic Governor Lujan Grisham declaration that she could unilaterally suspend parts of the United State Constitution by decree have gone over like a depleted uranium balloon:
New Mexico’s Democratic attorney general notified the governor, a fellow Democrat, on Tuesday that he will not defend her in litigation challenging her public health order temporarily banning firearms in certain counties and imposing other gun restrictions.
The prohibition applies to Albuquerque and Bernalillo counties.
“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,” New Mexico attorney general Raúl Torrez wrote to fellow Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham in a letter. “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.”
Multiple plaintiffs — the National Association for Gun Rights, We the Patriots USA, residents of the affected counties, and Gun Owners of America — filed lawsuits against Grisham and her administration over the dictate.
Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen announced Monday that his office would not enforce the order, arguing that it is unconstitutional, according to the NM Political Report.
“There’s no way we can enforce that order. This ban does nothing to curb gun violence,” Allen said at a Monday press conference. “We must always remember not only are we protecting the Second Amendment, but at the same time, we have a lot of violence within our community. Let me be clear, I hold my standards high, and I do not or never will hedge on what is right.”
It’s well documented that Democrats love banning guns almost as much as graft and abortion. The fact that so many prominent New Mexico Democrats have said categorically that they won’t back Grisham’s insane power play is telling as to just how far out of the mainstream her illegal ban grab is.
This is from a few months ago, and acting as your own attorney is usually a bad idea 99 times out of 100. But this video of Florida Open Carry advocate Don Andre calming and patiently dismantling the police officer who violated his rights by arresting him without proper cause in the course of taking his deposition is a thing of beauty.
Again, it is generally best to leave such activities to the legal professionals. But if you are going to represent yourself, make sure that you’re as calm, and know the relevant law as thoroughly, as Mr. Andre
A lawsuit by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton seeking to exempt Texas-made suppressors from federal regulations will move forward, after federal Judge Mark Pittman on Monday ruled against a motion to dismiss the case.
The ruling constitutes a procedural win for Paxton and co-plaintiffs in the case, which was filed on behalf of several Texas residents.
Attorney Tony McDonald, legal counsel for several of the plaintiffs, wrote on social media that the “big (initial) win” will allow the case to move forward and that the judge rejected the argument that suppressors are firearms accessories and not protected by the Second Amendment.
“Obviously this doesn’t mean we’ll win, but importantly it signals Pittman rejects [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives]’s argument that suppressors are just accessories and are not protected by the 2A. That seemed to be a pretty clear legal question that, if accepted, meant we had no case,” McDonald wrote.
At issue is House Bill (HB) 957, a Texas law recently passed by Representative Tom Oliverson (R-Cypress) exempting firearms silencers or suppressors from federal regulations if they are manufactured, marked, and kept in the State of Texas.
The law empowers the Texas attorney general to file suit on behalf of private citizens who wish to manufacture a suppressor and to obtain a court order enjoining the federal government from enforcing federal firearms regulations before the citizen can move forward.
Under current federal laws, anyone purchasing a firearm suppressor must fill out an extensive background check application, pay a $200 tax, and wait for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to issue their approval — a wait that can sometimes take over a year.
Today’s ruling only allows the case to move forward and doesn’t guarantee either side a final victory.
The case has considerable importance not only on Second Amendment grounds, but on Tenth Amendment grounds as well. It is obvious that the Founders only intended to regulate commerce between states, not within a single state, and much government-expanding mischief has been wrought in the name of the commerce clause. Breathing new life into the Tenth Amendment would help remedy that.
Now we’ll see if the case can make it all the way to the Supreme Court…