Reader’s Links for April 15th, 2024

Posted on by

Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.

This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.

So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.

This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.

For those interested, please check out https://vladtepesblog.substack.com/ as an another avenue of expression.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

21 Replies to “Reader’s Links for April 15th, 2024”

  1. In 2020 my doctor bro-in-law in Florida said he wouldn’t begin to read anything about the mRNA injections unless it was peer reviewed. Fair enough, but if I ever speak with him again, which I doubt I will, I wonder what he will have to say now that medical publications are appearing with his required bona fides. I wonder what conversation takes place in a head that reminds itself it forced my sister and wonderful niece to be injected by poison many times. Or maybe the head has no such conversation, at all. Existance is so much more aerodynamic without the turbulence create by conscience.

    Heads. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em. At the end of the day we are pretty much just a head attached to a vehicle. Some people have Ferraris, others beat up old Chevys, but it really comes down to the ol’ coconut.

    Tucker and Wolf kind of lose me on religion and evil. Conscience exists before a person finds God, because the smallest key of conscience is still needed to open that door. Maybe the right religion just never knocked on my door. Not yet, anyway. (Sorry Jehovahs, but I have a pan of hot grease on the stove.) And I no longer bow my head at these Freedom congregations. That’s the recalcitrance that Vlad mentions. Why should I pretend? Good for you and your faith, says I, but I won’t fake it. It almost feels as if my conscience is being peer reviewed at those things when they all lower their heads.

    How many nasty characters throughout history hid behind peer-reviewed conscience that, in turn, hid behind religion? Lots. Confess your sins to the Father on Sunday and you’re good for another week of drinking, carousing and wife beating, aye? Hiding behind corrupted medical journals printing fraudulent peer-reviewed articles during the plandemic was no different and no less violent.

    Winding my way along my own road less travelled, there’s a little voice in my head, which happens to be attached to a 1963 E-Type Jaguar sporting a massive six-cylinder engine. (I don’t mean to brag, but sniff.) The little voice asks if all this questioning I do is actually the road to God, but I just don’t know it yet. Maybe, maybe not. Life is full of surprises. Review this.

  2. It seems each “new normal” budding western dictatorship comes with its own style. In Canada they arrest the one guy who opposes five thousand tards chanting from the river to the sea. At least we have this much clear. German society seems to have its own compound morality curves, which are compounded by its guilty legacy.

    https://cjhopkins.substack.com/p/the-palestine-congress

  6. (Richard: This report sounds like the Biden/Obama administration and the Jerusalem Post is reporting it so …)

    PURE EVIL: Biden Administration Reportedly Provided Guidance to Iran in Saturday’s Drone and Missile Strike on Israel
    by Jim Hoft Apr. 15, 2024 9:00 am391 Comments

    Boy, the Biden-Obama regime really, really hates Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel!

    According to reports coming from Israel and Turkey the Biden Administration provided guidance to Iran in its missile and drone strike against Israel.

    Tom Fitton
    @TomFitton
    ·
    Follow
    Biden reportedly provided guidance to Iran in its attack on Israel.

    https://twitter.com/TomFitton/status/1779550972068422059

    Post
    See new posts
    Conversation
    The Jerusalem Post
    @Jerusalem_Post
    Iran informed Turkey in advance of its planned operation against Israel, a Turkish diplomatic source told Reuters on Sunday, adding that the US conveyed to Iran via Ankara that its operation must be “within certain limits.”

    https://twitter.com/Jerusalem_Post/status/1779512742350635038

    Here is video of Iranian missiles and drones entering Israeli airspace where most were shot down.

    Post
    See new posts
    Conversation
    Mossad Commentary
    @MOSSADil
    Nablus

    https://twitter.com/MOSSADil/status/1779286324077347324
    The Jerusalem Post reported:

    Iran informed Turkey in advance of its planned operation against Israel, a Turkish diplomatic source told Reuters on Sunday, adding that Washington had conveyed to Tehran via Ankara that any action it took had to be “within certain limits.”

    Turkey, which has denounced Israel for its campaign on Gaza, said earlier on Sunday that it did not want a further escalation of tensions in the region.

    The Turkish source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan had spoken to both his US and Iranian counterparts in the past week to discuss the planned Iranian operation, adding Ankara had been made aware of possible developments.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/04/pure-evil-biden-administration-reportedly-provided-guidance-iran/

  7. The Pro-Hamas Crowds will Soon Have a Rendezvous with Reality
    The accounting they’re about to face.

    April 15, 2024 by Victor Davis Hanson 11 Comments
    Newsletter

    [Pre-order a copy of David Horowitz’s next book, America Betrayed, by clicking here. Orders will begin shipping on May 7th.]

    For over six months, the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests have accelerated, and now are predictably incendiary and violent.

    Recently, they have jumped the shark with unapologetic chants of “Death to America”. Or so a cheering crowd in Michigan chanted in homage to the late king of all Western-hostage-takers, the murderous Ayatollah Khomeini. And the huckster speaker revved them up by quoting Malcolm X that America is “one of the rottenest countries that has ever existed on this Earth.” (Does such a condemnation of fellow Americans presage mass reverse migration of unhappy Middle Easterners back to the West Bank, Gaza, and Iran?)

    The more these demonstrators shut down major bridges at commute hour, defaced iconic government monuments and cemeteries, disrupted Easter and Christmas services (try that with mosques at Ramadan), broke into the Capitol and congressional chambers (no January 6-like penalties to come?), and hunted down Jewish students, the bolder they became.

    Apparently, the demonstrators were convinced that they were either exempt under the woke aegis, or too precious in Joe Biden’s Michigan electoral calculus, or too useful to campuses as rich full-tuition-paying foreign students on gold-plated student visas.

    But everything and everyone have limits. They have now crossed them, and are about to face an accounting, and for a variety of reasons.

    1) News is leaking out that Hamas may have for some time been bluffing about a ceasefire for hostages. Given Hamas has suddenly announced that they cannot meet the conditions of the proposed ceasefire, since not all the forty women and sick and elderly men taken hostage are still alive.

    If true, then their months of bartering and “negotiating” were a likely sham, and their earlier claims that three hostages were collateral damage of Israeli strikes become more dubious.

    Why would they kill their escape route?

    To hide their torturing and raping of the kidnapped? In furor at their own-self-inflicted dilemmas? Sick hatred of Jews?

    Who knows? But, if true, this may remind the gullible West that it cannot trust anything the lying Hamas says: that the ultimate fate of the hostages did not depend on the Israeli entrance into Gaza, given that Hamas had either already killed many of the remaining kidnapped, or had planned to do so under any circumstances.

    2) For the first time since the ‘60s, universities are facing protests that they genuinely fear. College presidents are starting to realize that if they continue to allow the pro-Hamas violent demonstrators to make a mockery of campus rules and laws, they soon will have no campus at all. And the mob then will determine who can and cannot speak with impunity. Administrators’ tolerance of overt anti-Semitism and violence against Jews is turning American campuses into something like late-1930s German universities.

    3) Yet at Vanderbilt and Pomona we for the first time are witnessing a return to administrative sanity, marked by suspensions and exemptions. And the reactions of those held accountable confirm how pathetic these bullies are. They prove eager to resort to violence and crash into lecture halls, only suddenly to become fragile and terrified for their beautiful career plans endangered by a modicum of accountability. Expect more universities to be encouraged by just how well deterrence can work against woke thuggery.

    4) Joe Biden’s pandering in Michigan is reaching the point of obscenity and if continued will be counter-productive. For each Muslim-American voter he thinks he can keep by abandoning Israel and protecting the agendas of the October 7 killers and kidnappers, he is going to lose two voters appalled that fellow-Americans in Michigan are now calling for death to America. Biden is so confident of the Jewish-American vote and donor class that he is now siding with those calling for the absolute destruction of the Jewish state and everyone inside. Is he convinced that his Jewish base is permanently in tune with Chuck Schumer—or will it finally have had enough?

    5) The old myth that being anti-Israel had nothing to do with being anti-Semitic is now exposed for the lie it mostly always was. The pro-Hamas crowd makes no distinction, and certainly not on campus, where the more educated the protestor, the more likely he is to harass Jews first, and ask questions later if at all about whether his targets support Israel. The new myth that being pro-Gaza has nothing to do with being pro-Hamas is equally exposed as a lie by the chants of “from the River to the Sea” and calls for a return to the pre-1947 borders—in other words, the Hamas charter of destroying Israel.

    6) Do these protestors who scream “Genocide Joe” really see an alternative in November? Because the more they show America who they are and what their values and agenda intend, the more they make it clear why we need to reexamine every aspect of immigration, junk DEI and substitute required civic education, and undertake a complete reappraisal of higher education.

    The latter would revisit current tax-exempt endowment income, government subsidized student loans, massive unaudited federal grants, the huge number of foreign students, and their exemption from federal oversight.

    It is long past time to overhaul the student visa programs, replete with rapid cancellations of visas and deportations for those who come to study but end up breaking our laws.

    In sum, the more brazen the pro-Hamas crowd and the more they reveal the cravenness of the Biden administration, the more they may ensure their rendezvous with Donald Trump in 2025.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-pro-hamas-crowds-will-soon-have-a-rendezvous-with-reality/

    • ANOTHER ONE: Anti-Israel Protesters Shut Down Entire Golden Gate Bridge, Backing Up Traffic for Miles – Police Show Up in Riot Gear to Confront the Agitators (VIDEO)
      by Cullen Linebarger Apr. 15, 2024 12:15 pm401 Comments

      The Gateway Pundit previously reported that pro-Hamas agitators are blocked off a road entering Chicago O’Hare Airport while police are doing nothing, forcing some travelers to ditch their cars and walk to the airport. Now, they have completely shut down the Golden Gate Bridge as police arrive to confront them in riot gear.

      According to KGO-TV, the protest started Monday morning on Northbound I-880 in Oakland where agitators blocked every single lane. They brought barrels onto the roadway and reportedly chained themselves to the barrels.

      In the video below, the protesters can be seen holding signs reading “Stop the World for Gaza” and End the Siege on Gaza Now!”

      WATCH:

      Post
      See new posts
      Conversation
      Collin Rugg
      @CollinRugg
      NEW: Pro-Palestine protesters have blocked the Golden Gate Bridge just hours after another group shut down lanes at Chicago O’Hare airport.

      The protest reportedly started in Oakland where they blocked lanes and chained themselves to barrels.

      Now, all southbound direction lanes of the Golden Gate Bridge are blocked causing miles of traffic.

      Protesters say the protests are a part of a “worldwide economic blockade in solidarity with Palestine.”

      https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1779914595156808045

      https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/04/another-one-anti-israel-protesters-shut-down-entire/

      ==================================================

      RIDICULOUS: Pro-Hamas Losers Shut Down Entrance to Chicago O’Hare Airport While Cops Stand Around – Travelers Forced to Leave Cars and Walk to Airport (VIDEO)
      by Cullen Linebarger Apr. 15, 2024 12:00 pm271 Comments

      Pro-Hamas agitators are blocking off a road entering Chicago O’Hare Airport while police are doing nothing, forcing some travelers to ditch their cars and walk to the airport.

      As ABC 7 Chicago reported, every lane is blocked on I-190 West between Bessie Coleman Drive and the airport.

      The agitators are wearing signs reading “Free Palestine” and “Stop Genocide.” The group Chicago Dissenters, which helped organize the protest, claims they want the U.S. government to stop sending Israel weapons.

      On this Tax Day, when millions are paying taxes which fund the ongoing U.S and Israeli bombardment of Gaza, protestors seek to take dramatic action, alongside other @a15actions organizers worldwide.

      https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/04/ridiculous-pro-hamas-losers-shut-down-entrance-chicago/

  8. Read more: https://www.ammoland.com/2024/04/new-yorkcesspool-of-loyalists-to-the-crown-seeded-the-anti-2nd-amendment-zealots-of-today/#ixzz8XU8skftY
    Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
    Follow us: @Ammoland on Twitter | Ammoland on Facebook

    New York: A Cesspool Of Loyalists To The Crown Seeded the Anti-2nd Amendment Zealots of Today
    Ammoland Inc. Posted on April 15, 2024 by Roger Katz

    Opinion

    New York’s Deceit in Ratifying Rights: New York’s leaders reluctantly ratified the Bill of Rights to avoid being seen as British loyalists. Giving birth to the Deep State operatives of today.
    Hostility to Armed Self-Defense: New York’s government has a deep-rooted hostility towards the right to armed self-defense and is actively undermining this right.
    Manipulative Government Actions: The New York Government uses propaganda and subterfuge to erode Second Amendment rights, controlling the populace under the pretense of public safety.

    Surrender of Lord Cornwallis Cropped IMG Public Image
    “The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis” is an oil painting by John Trumbull. The painting was completed in 1820, and hangs in the rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington, D. C.
    Architect of the Capitol, IMG Public Image

    New York – New York never accepted the idea of a natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms.

    Sure, the State ratified the Nation’s Bill of Rights, which prominently included the natural law right codified in the Second Amendment. However, New York’s elder statesmen who agreed to that were likely never happy doing so.

    They probably only did so to avoid many Americans inferring justifiably that the State was a viper’s nest of “Tories” (Loyalists to the Crown). At the War’s conclusion, they may have continued to harbor bad feelings about the fledgling Nation. Drawing this conclusion is not unsound.

    New York alone furnished about 23,000 loyalist Red Coat troops, perhaps as many as all the other colonies combined.

    “The loyalist fighters aroused a vengeful hatred among the patriots . . . and when taken in battle they were treated as traitors” [See the article in Brittanica].

    ADVERTISEMENT
    SCROLL DOWN TO CONTINUE READING

    Consider that number, 23,000, in relation to the total number of people residing in New York during the American Revolution: 25,000.

    “The largest cities in the colonies were Philadelphia, Pa, (43,000), New York, N.Y. (25,000), Boston, MA (16,000), Charleston, S.C. (12,000), and Newport, R.I. (11,000)” [See the article in American Battlefield Trust].

    A Further Note:

    Over the course of the war, about 231,000 men served in the Continental Army, though never more than 48,000 at any one time, and never more than 13,000 at any one place. The sum of the Colonial militias numbered upwards of 145,000 men.

    At its peak, the British Army had upwards of 22,000 men at its disposal in North America to combat the rebellion. An additional 25,000 Loyalists, faithful to Great Britain, participated in the conflict as well. [See the article in American Battlefield Trust].

    A second article from the same source points out that of the “25,000 Americans [who] served the crown, some [fought] in British regiments, but most in ‘provincial’ regiments with other Loyalists.”

    If this number is accurate and New York did provide the Crown with 23,000 troops, as cited supra, then New York provided the bulk of “Tories” (“Loyalists” or “Royalists”) who fought for England—for King George III against America’s “Patriots”—over ninety percent of the total.

    Had not 376,000 “Armed Patriots” taken up arms against a Tyrant, America would have remained a colony of the British Monarch and, thereafter, a component of the British Commonwealth of Nations. The Commonwealth was formed in 1931.

    In the end, many Loyalists simply left America. About 80,000 of them fled to Canada or Britain during or just after the war. Because Loyalists were often wealthy, educated, older, and Anglican, the American social fabric was altered by their departure. American history brands them as traitors. But most were just trying to maintain the lifestyles to which they had become accustomed. [See the article in “U.S. History”].

    How many New York “Loyalists” slithered back to England with the Red Coats or to Canada at the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War?

    No doubt the Loyalists remaining in the new Nation would loathe the notion of an “armed American citizenry.” Weren’t these Loyalists the progenitors of today’s “Neoliberal Globalist” “elites?”

    Of those who remained surreptitiously in the United States—many in New York—would they not operate as a “Fifth Column” to better insulate themselves from public observation and public accounting and quietly insinuate themselves throughout the States and the Federal Government, too?

    Do their actions not demonstrate their enduring hostility to the Country, the Nation’s Constitution, and the American People, as demonstrated in State and Federal dictates?

    In New York, this fanatical and enduring hostility toward a free, sovereign, and well-armed citizenry manifests as a refusal to recognize a person’s dire need to exercise his right to armed self-defense against violent predatory attack.

    Does not this State Government mindset explain the expansive time, money, and expense expended to destroy the exercise of the right to armed self-defense?

    Over time, it has become fashionable in some circles to express outrage toward firearms and those who wish to exercise their right to bear them. The New York Government no longer feels it necessary to hide its revulsion toward firearms and its visible contempt for those who cherish their sacred right to keep and bear them.

    To this day, and after several renditions made to the State’s Constitution, no individual right to armed self-defense exists or ever existed in the Bill of Rights of New York’s Constitution. And none is forthcoming.

    Even in New York’s first Constitution, reference to an armed person was specifically grounded in the notion of a “militia.” See discussion infra.

    This provision was dropped but would appear later in various iterations.
    However, reference to “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” would be relegated to statute only. You will not find the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” delineated in the State Constitution.

    Moreover, the ‘militia’ clause in the latest rendition of the State Constitution is not a “right,” for it does not appear in the State Constitution’s “Bill of Rights,” Article I, but instead, in Article XII, “Defense.” See discussion infra.

    The first NY Constitution, a creature of the Legislature, did include a portion of the Declaration of Independence. However, that, too, was dropped from all later versions.

    What explains these apparent anomalies between the first New York Constitution and later versions?

    Article XL of the original Constitution, enacted in 1777, says—

    “And whereas it is of the utmost importance to the safety of every State that it should always be in a condition of defence; and it is the duty of every man who enjoys the protection of society to be prepared and willing to defend it; this convention therefore, in the name and by the authority of the good people of this State, doth ordain, determine, and declare that the militia of this State, at all times here-after, as well in peace as in war, shall be armed and disciplined, and in readiness for service. That all such of the inhabitants of this State being of the people called Quakers as, from scruples of conscience, may be averse to the bearing of arms, be therefrom excused by the legislature; and do pay to the State such sums of money, in lieu of their personal service, as the same may, in the judgment of the legislature, be worth.

    And that a proper magazine of warlike stores, proportionate to the number of inhabitants, be, forever hereafter, at the expense of this State, and by acts of the legislature, established, maintained, and continued in every county in this State [emphasis my own].” See the article in the Historical Society of New York Courts.

    Did this early Constitution, enacted during the commencement of the American Revolution, serve to promote the false idea the New York Legislature stood with America’s Patriots when it did not and had sought to cloak where its true loyalties lay?

    And, knowing that 23,000 New York Loyalists did serve the Crown during the American Revolution, wasn’t it the State Legislature’s fervent belief and wish that New York’s militia could serve as a provincial military arm in service to George III and not to the Continental Army? Likely, so. Most of the provincial arm of the Crown (the militia) were New York Loyalists.

    Yet, New York’s militia would not be necessary after the British Empire lost the colonies. The State Legislature could dispense with it.

    Perhaps having recognized the U.S. would never again become a colony of the British Empire, the drafters of New York’s First Constitution may have quietly decided to remove any reference to the right of the people to keep and bear arms lest that force one day turn against those “elite.”

    The concept of a ‘militia’ for “defense” would undergo several iterations in the continuing development of the State Constitution. The aforementioned is the latest.

    Presently, New York Art. XII § 1, which consists of only one Section titled “Defense,” sets forth,

    “The defense and protection of the state and of the United States is an obligation of all persons within the state. The legislature shall provide for the discharge of this obligation and for the maintenance and regulation of an organized militia.”

    Reference to the “militia” appears prominently in two sections of New York law: the State Constitution and New York’s Civil Rights Law.

    In the latter instance, it appears with the independent clause “the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed.” However, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed” appears only once in New York law: the Civil Rights Law. See discussion, infra.

    The “elites” have always controlled the New York Government, and wealthy, powerful “elites” have assumed firm control over the Federal Government.

    They have always been suspicious of the “Common Man,” who happens to claim a right to armed self-defense to safeguard life and well-being.

    That threat to the “Common Man” in America now comes from those who control the levers of power inside the Country. They have joined forces with ruthless elements outside it. New York’s militia is in service to Tyrants.

    New York revised its Constitution four times since first ratifying it in 1777, eleven years before the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788.

    The first New York Constitution did not have a formal Bill of Rights. The State Legislature would add that ten years later.

    That first Constitution, enacted in 1777, was “statutory” (i.e., as enacted by the New York Legislature, not the people at the “Ballot Box”). The State’s first Bill of Rights was statutory as well. The New York Legislature enacted it in 1787.

    New York’s first true Constitution (the second version, 1821) required a vote by the people to become effective. Read about this in History of the New York Courts (PDF).

    One must wonder: Did not the average person in New York, “the Common Man,” wish to include language in the “Bill of Rights” of the State Constitution, that mirrored the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution? Was there any debate on the subject?

    The New York Legislature had no interest in that and never offered it as an amendment to be voted on by the people. The Legislature opposed the idea, given the import of such an amendment in a document of the nature of a “constitution,” unlike a run-of-the-mill statute.

    A right to armed self-defense, reflecting the language of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, did eventually make its way into the “Law” of New York—New York Statute (not in the State’s Constitution).

    A person must wonder why it appeared at all in New York Law.

    Was this done merely to placate those New Yorkers who insisted on some language somewhere in New York Law?

    That language would never appear as a Constitutional Right for New Yorkers. And, applying the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to the States—through the U.S. Supreme Court imprimatur—would not occur until the McDonald ruling in 2010.

    Even then, it took over a century for that to happen.

    “The right of the people to keep and bear arms,” as it appears in New York Law, is almost identical in wording to the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

    However, it appears in the New York Statute. This means it is a manmade construct only, not a natural law right preexistent in Man.

    The Legislature intentionally kept “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” out of the New York State Constitution to prevent anyone from proclaiming it as natural law bestowed on Man by the Divine Creator.

    The statutory right is in Article 2 (Bill of Rights) of the Civil Rights Law, NY CLS Civ R § 4 of the Consolidated Laws of the State of New York.

    However, it is important to point out that this “Bill of Rights” in New York’s Civil Rights Law does not have the same weight as the State’s Constitutional “Bill of Rights.” Therefore, it is not considered fundamental, unmodifiable, and eternal.

    The notion of two Bill of Rights in New York law is understandable but no less shocking. The Legislature has drawn a bright line between “rights” it treats as manmade and temporal and those it accepts as “natural law” and eternal.

    Those forces that control the people of New York have refused to acknowledge the right to self-defense (of which armed self-defense is but an aspect) as a natural, “eternal” law).

    In New York, true self-defense does not exist in the person. The New York Government does not recognize it and begrudges those who assert it. That explains the obstacles the New York Government has created to frustrate those citizens in New York who desire to exercise it.

    Self-defense is a prerogative of Government that it bestows on a person as a revocable privilege.

    This explains why the Government talks incessantly about “Public Safety” that accrues to the Government and carefully avoids mention of “Personal Safety” that accrues to the individual.

    The New York Legislature enacted the Statute pertaining to the right of the people of New York to keep and bear arms on February 17, 1909. It remains in effect as originally enacted. The New York Government has repeatedly shown this New York “Civil” Right to mean little, as the phrase “cannot be infringed” is routinely, vigorously, infringed by the State Government.

    The Democrat-Party-controlled Legislature in Albany has not sought to repeal the Statutory right of the people to keep and bear arms or modify its language to date. It doesn’t because it need not do so and likely doesn’t wish to make waves by doing so, at least now.

    Instead, the Legislature has used subterfuge and wile to slowly chisel away at the exercise of the right—an insidious, inexorable process, but one leading to the same result, albeit without fanfare and bravado.

    This would likely be less easy for the Legislature to accomplish if the Right existed in Article I of the State Constitution instead of Article 2 of the State’s Civil Rights Law.

    To urge a substantial number of the New York public to support the slow strangulation of armed self-defense in New York, the State Government and a collaborative, sympathetic Press have continuously used propaganda to gain the public’s cooperation with or, at least, acquiescence with its policy aims pertaining to exercise of that right.

    That Government policy does nothing to serve the public’s interest in securing its safety and well-being. The Government aims to corral and control the civilian populace.

    The State aims to render the New York public impotent, wholly dependent on the Government to provide for the public’s safety and well-being.

    The lack of a constitutional framework for exercising the right to armed self-defense in New York inevitably results in constant frustration for the citizens who reside or work there.

    The State does nothing concrete to ensure effective “Public Safety.” Yet it creates roadblocks that constantly frustrate the public’s rights and responsibilities and the need to ensure its “Personal Safety.”

    This frustration is aptly reflected in the State’s nascent anti-Second Amendment legislation.

    That very early legislation preceded the Sullivan Act, but it laid the groundwork for it and more sophisticated, complex, and all-encompassing legislation subsequent to Sullivan through the ensuing decades and centuries.

    The New York Government has given New Yorkers no reprieve. It constantly devises ever more insidious policies to constrain the exercise of the right to armed self-defense.

    Next, we will examine the precursors to Sullivan, the seeming reasons for its enactment, and its import.

  9. Did Trump Accuser Get Special Treatment Over Unlicensed Gun?
    By Cam Edwards | 11:31 AM | April 15, 2024

    It sure looks that way.

    When E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued Donald Trump in civil court alleging that he sexually assaulted her, was on the witness stand in a follow-up defamation lawsuit in January, she stated under oath that she had an unlicensed firearm in her home. For most New Yorkers, admitting to a felony or being caught with an unlicensed pistol would have resulted in felony charges, but instead the 80-year-old received a friendly visit from officers in her hometown.

    The chief of police in Warwick, New York, visited Carroll at her home on Feb. 15 “to discuss some open issues,” the report states, including Carroll’s disclosure of the handgun while she was on the witness stand Jan. 17.

    During the second day of the civil trial, Carroll had told the federal court in lower Manhattan that she kept a “high standard revolver, nine chambers” at home with ammunition. “By my bed,” she said.

    “I still do not have a license,” Carroll added.

    John Rader, the reporting officer, said in his report that he “offered to secure the weapon at the police station’s property for safekeeping.”

    Carroll and a member of her security team surrendered the gun a day after Rader visited, and the firearm was being held until Carroll receives a New York pistol license, the report said.

    https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2024/04/15/did-trump-accuser-get-special-treatment-over-unlicensed-gun-n1224520

  10. ,STRONG>WAYNE ROOT: Why Isn’t Every Republican Leader in America Asking 24/7, “Who is the Real President? Who is Making the Decisions That are Destroying America?” Because We All Know It Isn’t Joe Biden.
    by Assistant Editor Apr. 15, 2024 12:45 pm142 Comments

    By Wayne Allyn Root

    Is there anyone left who doesn’t see that Joe Biden is not the president? Joe Biden isn’t running the show.

    Everyone in Washington DC knows Joe Biden is for all intents and purposes brain-dead. Everyone knows he should be in a nursing home with a sign around his neck listing his name and phone number in case he wanders off. Everyone knows he wears diapers. Everyone knows he doesn’t know what year it is, or most of the time, where he is, what he’s reading on the teleprompter, or what he’s signing.

    This is the worst kept secret in history: Joe Biden is a brain-dead zombie puppet.

    Biden is a wooden dummy and someone is the ventriloquist. Biden is the frontman for the biggest scam in world history.

    So, why isn’t every Republican politician in Washington DC and America asking “Who is in charge? Who is running the country? Who is making the decisions that change our lives and our children’s future? Who is giving the orders?

    Someone is making ridiculous, absurd, insane decisions. Someone wants America destroyed. Someone wants America weak and impotent. Someone wants to turn Americans into serfs and slaves, dependent on government to survive.

    Someone wants America part of a One World government with all other poor and powerless nations of the world.

    Who made the decision to leave the border open and invite the whole world in- including murderers, terrorists, Jew-hating Muslim radicals, Hamas, Hezbollah, MS-13, and Chinese military-age males? Who would want this?

    Who made the decision to leave the border open- thereby allowing all the fentanyl and other deadly drugs in the world to flow into the USA and kill over 100,000 Americans a year? Who would benefit from that?

    Who made the decision to add half billion dollars a year to the national debt to pay for 20 million new illegal aliens? Why do we need them? Who benefits?

    Who made the decision to treat illegal aliens better than U.S. citizens, and better than even our hero military vets?

    Who is making the decision to allow the violent criminals out with “no bail?” Look around- almost every crime in America is committed by criminals arrested or convicted 5 times, 10 times, 20 times, 50 times. Why are they walking the streets? Why are they still breathing? Why aren’t they in prison for life, or given the death penalty?

    Who is making the decision to “feminize” the U.S. military and base it on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), CRT, climate change, and transgender ideology?

    Who made the decision to release billions of dollars to Iran right before they funded one of the worst terror attacks in history upon Israel? Who gave them the green light to attack Israel twice without America lifting a finger to stop them?

    Who made the decision over the weekend for the United States to not support Israel’s counterattack against Iran?

    Who made the deadly decision to keep the printing presses running 24/7 to create the worst debt and worst inflation perhaps in our lifetimes, and thereby destroy the middle class?

    Who made the decision to hurt the oil and energy industries and reverse America’s energy independence under President Trump? Who would want us dependent on our enemies in the Middle East, Russia and Venezuela?

    Who made the decision to not refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at the exact moment World War 3 appears to be imminent?

    The world is on fire because someone gave the order to abdicate our role as world leader. Who made that decision?

    Who made the decision to weaponize our government against President Trump? And to violate the U.S. Constitution in order to censor and silence conservatives?

    Who made the decision to mandate against their will every employee in America with an untested, experimental, emergency-use-only, vaccine based on OSHA rules?

    Who gave the order to demonize and slander Ivermectin as a veterinary medicine for pigs and horses- even though it is now proven to be safe and effective for humans versus Covid, and could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives? Someone didn’t want those American lives saved. Why?

    I could go on for hours.

    Someone is making all these devastatingly wrong decisions that are intentionally destroying America. Why isn’t every Republican politician in America asking out loud, “Who is President? Who is making these decisions?”

    And we should be saying it 24/7 until the election. Everyone in DC knows Biden can’t control his bladder, he’s certainly not running the country.

    So, who is? Why are we allowing the greatest nation in world history to be destroyed by an unelected mysterious stranger, or foreign interests?

    We know Joe Biden is reading teleprompter. We know his mic is cut off, if he strays from prepared words. We know the Easter Bunny led him off the White House lawn when reporters asked too many questions. We know his wife Jill often leads him off stage. We know he can’t walk up short stairs without tripping. We heard him actually say he doesn’t know what he’s signing.

    We know Obama said he was “going to fundamentally change America.” We know Obama if he was elected gas prices would skyrocket.

    I believe Obama is the real power behind the throne. Obama is giving the orders.

    But who is his boss? The Deep State? China? The CCP? George Soros? Klaus Schwab? Valerie Jarrett? Satan?

    Someone is the head of the snake giving the ultimate orders to destroy America. Someone is ordering this communist and globalist takeover of USA. Someone is turning our government against the people. Someone is being bribed billions of dollars to destroy us.

    Why isn’t every GOP politician in America asking these questions LOUDLY 24 hours a day in the media and in television commercials?

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/04/wayne-root-why-isnt-every-republican-leader-america/

  11. IDF says air base hit in Iran attack running as usual
    By Emanuel Fabian
    Today, 9:00 pm

    Footage of the damage caused to the Nevatim Airbase in the Iranian missile attack, on April 15, 2024. (Screen capture/ X)
    Footage of the damage caused to the Nevatim Airbase in the Iranian missile attack, on April 15, 2024. (Screen capture/ X)

    IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari in a press statement says Nevatim Airbase is running as usual following the Iranian missile and drone attack.

    He says the “attack was foiled almost without [any of the projectiles] entering Israeli airspace.”

    He says the damage caused to infrastructure at Nevatim was “minor.”

    He says four missiles struck the base: one near a runway, two in open areas, and one near a building, causing slight damage to it.

    He says repairs will be made in the coming days.

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-says-air-base-hit-in-iran-attack-running-as-usual/

  12. (Richard: Keep your musket clean and your powder dry your bug out bag packed your E and E round planed and watch your 6.)

    Huge Fire Erupts at Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, the U.S.’s Primary Producer of 155mm Artillery Shell Bodies
    by Jim H?ft Apr. 15, 2024 6:30 pm193 Comments

    A huge fire erupted at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, according to initial reports.

    The blaze at this crucial facility, responsible for producing the metal bodies of the U.S. Army’s 155 mm artillery shells, prompted an immediate response from local firefighting units.

    NEPA Fire Photography first reported the incident, noting that Scranton firefighters were actively battling a structure fire at the Army Ammunition Plant location on Cedar Avenue.

    The Scranton Army Ammunition Plant (SCAAP), a key component of the national defense infrastructure, is operated by General Dynamics and plays a pivotal role in manufacturing artillery projectiles for the U.S. military.

    The situation appeared dire as “heavy smoke venting from the roof” was reported, with firefighting crews working tirelessly to control the blaze.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/04/report-huge-fire-erupts-scranton-army-ammunition-plant/

  13. (Richard: For many decades Activist Judges have been ruling to take power away from both Congress and the Judges and give that power to Bureaucrats who are overwhelmingly left wing to radical far left wing. The current Supreme Court is slowly, legally overturning those decisions when cases affecting those rulings reach the Supreme Court, the biggest case (so far) was when SCOTUS restored the abortion issue to the States instead of keeping it a Federal Issue. The ruling on Chevron (if it follows the Constitution) will be another decision that is going to bring the Left Wing Protesters out in force,

    With the current political tension in the US the Federal Court System needs it own protective force to serve and bodyguards for all Federal Judges.)

    Sayonara, Chevron

    It’s time for the Supreme Court to jettison the doctrine known as Chevron deference, which forces federal courts to surrender their judicial function to the unaccountable bureau­crats of the administrative state.

    This past January, the high court heard arguments in two cases—Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relent­less Inc. v. Commerce Department—that present the opportunity to do just that. A decision in these cases is expected by June.

    Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution vests the “judicial Power of the United States” in “one supreme Court” and “such inferior Courts as the Con­gress may … establish.” As this language makes clear, the Supreme Court is the head of the judicial branch of our federal government. It sits atop the judiciary and super­intends the decision-making of lower courts through the opinions it hands down.

    The Chevron line of cases is an exercise of the Supreme Court’s super­intending role over the judicial branch. It is a set of instructions to the lower courts about how they are to exercise their judicial function when review­ing agency actions that involve formal interpretations of a statute the agency is charged with admin­istering.

    Under Chevron, the courts are told to defer to the agency’s inter­pre­tation if the part of the statute at issue has more than one plausible reading, even if the court believes there’s a better interpretation that’s more faithful to the statute Con­gress enacted.

    Right away we notice something strange about this instruction: In its unanimous 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court is telling the lower courts to abdicate a portion of their judicial power—to cede it to administrative agencies.

    What is judicial power? It’s the power to interpret the law. When it comes to statutes, it’s the final power to decide what the statute requires in particular cases, and thereby deter­mine the mean­ing of the statute through precedential holdings.

    Judiciary Committee reports in the House and Senate accompanying enactment of the Admin­istrative Procedure Act in 1946 both stated that “questions of law are for the courts rather than agencies in the last analysis.”

    That means, consistent with the teach­ing of Marbury v. Madison, that the federal judiciary, and ultimately the Supreme Court, has the final word on what federal statutes mean. This is true even when the courts are review­ing prior interpretations by agencies, such as interpretations reached by an agency in the course of promulgating a regulation to implement the statute.

    Chevron is inconsistent with that understanding.

    Why is it important for courts to have the final word on questions of law? Because the federal courts are structurally independent and non­biased.

    Under the Constitution, fed­eral judges are appointed for life. Their com­pensation can’t be reduced while they’re in active service on the bench. And the Judicial Code of Con­duct pro­vides that judges will not decide cases in which they’ve had personal involve­ment or have a personal interest at stake.

    In contrast, agency officials who craft interpretations of statutes in support of the agency’s preferred goals are not acting independently or impartially.

    So why would the Supreme Court ever have instructed the lower courts to abdicate their judicial func­tion to the agencies?

    Well, when it handed down its Chevron opinion in 1984, the Supreme Court was react­ing with some exasperation to a persistent pattern of flawed judicial inter­vention by the lower courts, par­tic­u­larly the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the court that hears the greatest volume of challenges to agency actions.

    In the ’60s, ’70s, and early ’80s, the judges of the D.C. Circuit—exemplified by Chief Judges David Bazelon and Skelly Wright—developed a habit of micro­man­aging the regu­latory agendas of federal agencies on the basis of the court’s own pre­ferred policy outcomes.

    D.C. Circuit pre­ce­dents often relied on broad inter­pre­ta­tions of “con­gres­sional intent,” usually conjured from the vagaries of a statute’s legislative history with no rigorous analysis of text or statutory structure.

    Chevron was a potent dose of strong medicine, and it did the trick: With one opinion, the Supreme Court put a stop to the excesses of the D.C. Circuit, without having to correct the many separate errors in each line of pre­ce­dents on a case-by-case basis.

    At the time, conservative officials in the Reagan administration welcomed the Chevron decision because it gave them license to turn away from Jimmy Carter-era regu­la­tory policies and steer the agencies toward President Ronald Reagan’s priorities.

    One of those officials had been Anne Gorsuch, then admin­is­trator of the Environmental Protection Agency, whose “bubble rule” was at issue in the Chevron case. (In a classic example of what goes around, comes around, she was the mother of current Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has become perhaps the court’s leading skeptic of judicial deference doctrines.)

    But presidents and their political appointees weren’t the only ones in the executive branch who benefited from Chevron, of course. It also empowered the many unelected bureau­crats who were beavering away in the swamplands of the administrative state.

    And since 1984, we’ve come to know the consequences.

    Chevron deference created perverse incentives for all three branches of government. Courts were tempted to find ambiguity in statutory language, so they could avoid the pesky chore of deci­phering complex laws.

    Agencies, both at the level of political leadership and in the bowels of the bureau­cracy, were tempted to innovate and push the bounds of their statutory authorities in reliance on judicial deference. And Congress was tempted to let administrative agencies address the most difficult problems.

    Over the years, with the ascendancy of the Chevron framework, the regulatory muscles of the executive branch have become bulked up on steroids, while the other two branches have withered away in important respects. Chevron isn’t the only reason for this, but it’s a significant factor.

    Judicial decisions applying Chevron deference have little or no precedential value. Other than declaring some phrase in a statute ambiguous, a court that defers to the agency’s interpretation doesn’t reach any hold­ing on what the statute means, so we lose the consistency that comes from an estab­lished judicial interpretation of the law.

    And agencies are given a radically wide compass to change their approach to admin­is­tering statutes—with 180-degree swings from one presidential administration to the next.

    Meanwhile, Congress has retired from the field altogether. Rather than do the hard work of legislating to take on major issues of national importance—some per­ceived as emergencies—Congress lets the agencies deal with the issues under the vague phrasing of decades-old statutes that weren’t enacted to address those issues.

    In recent years, the situation has become intolerable.

    For example, the EPA has assumed power under the Clean Air Act, a law passed in the 1970s, to regulate carbon dioxide emis­sions, even though these efforts by the agency don’t fit sensibly within the statutory frame­work. Through its carbon rules, EPA is forcing revolu­tionary transformations in the automotive and power indus­tries—some­thing Con­gress didn’t vote to approve.

    And during the coronavirus pandemic, the Occupational Safety and Health Admin­istration, not Congress, tried to impose a vaccine mandate on private industries using workplace safety laws that previously weren’t applied that way.

    In response to such out-of-control administrative actions, the Supreme Court developed the so-called Major Questions Doctrine, which assumes, absent a clear and specific grant of authority to an agency, that Con­gress reserves for itself the power to decide whether to impose new regulatory requirements that carry major eco­nomic or poli­tical con­se­quences for the nation.

    Application of this doctrine is still under develop­ment in the high court, but it promises to be one effective way to rein in certain types of agency overreach.

    In most cases, though, there’s an easier solution—the good old-fashioned canons of statu­tory inter­pre­ta­tion, applied by independent and impartial courts. The Supreme Court must issue a revised set of instruc­tions to the lower courts, replacing Chevron with a reaffirmation of the role of the judi­ciary as the final arbiter of all questions of statu­tory interpretation in the review of agency actions.

    Nothing prevents the Supreme Court from making this correction in the two cases currently pend­ing on its docket. Chevron is an exercise of the court’s prudential power to super­vise the judicial functions of the lower courts; it’s not a statutory or con­sti­tu­tional doctrine, and it’s not subject to any strong form of stare decisis (which means “to stand by things decided”).

    Eliminating Chevron deference would help restore balance among the three branches of government.

    Agency interpretations based on administrative experience and technical expertise would carry persuasive weight with the courts but wouldn’t be controlling—the courts would have the last word on the best interpretation of the statute. Agencies would retain policy discretion in administering complex statutory schemes, but within a narrower com­pass and subject to review for arbitrariness and capriciousness.

    Of course, there’s the possibility that court review of agency actions could morph back toward the bad old days of activist judges such as Skelly Wright. But the Supreme Court’s con­tem­porary approach to textualism, with a strong emphasis on the original pub­lic meaning of statu­tory language and a focus on the structure of statutes, rather than malleable notions of “legislative intent,” will help break these tendencies.

    Most important of all, Congress, we can hope, would find the motivation again to legis­late where there is truly a national need to extend federal regulation into new areas or to answer new challenges confronting the nation—just as the Founders envi­sioned.