Sebastian – Page 533 – Shall Not Be Questioned

More Independence Day Insurrectionism

Rumor has it, on this day, 235 years ago, a bunch of right-wing militia whack jobs signed their name to this document which supports this insane insurrectionist idea promoted by the NRA:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Sometimes I really believe our opponents would probably rather still be British. It’s hard to believe the ideas they peddle without thinking that. Of course, they will never say that, because that puts them further outside the mainstream than they already are. But it’s hard for me to see how you accept the United States of America when its founding document is essentially a justification for violently overthrowing its previous government.

Pool Mystery Explained

Remember the story from a few days ago about a woman drowning in a pool in Fall River Massachusetts? But the body wasn’t found for two days. And the pool was open. It would seem this mystery has an explanation:

An initial investigation showed the water in the pool was murky from the time the pool opened for the season last Saturday. Visibility tests conducted Wednesday revealed a diver couldn’t be seen at a depth of 3 1/2 to 4 feet below the surface of the water.

Unfortunately I was eating when I read that.

“He did tell two lifeguards – one said she was on break, and had to leave and the other told him they were going to do a pool check,” the woman told the newspaper. “But he told me they never did.”

So it would seem the Commonwealth of Massachusetts can’t even run a public swimming pool, yet folks want us to believe they are competent enough to control all our health care?

An Analogy for Fast and Furious

From Tam, who thinks Rep. Cummings is proposing the opposite of a solution:

Given the revelations on Operation Fast & Furious, this is like finding a guy climbing through a broken window in your living room wearing a ski mask and an ADT uniform, and when you shine the flashlight in his face, having him pull his mask off and try to sell you a burglar alarm system because of the rash of break-ins in the neighborhood. Seriously, this is the Justice Department equivalent of the proverbial fireman that moonlights as an arsonist so he can heroically put out fires.

The only purpose of this operation is one of two things, to create a problem that will then require more funding and more bureaucrats to solve, or was a deliberate attempt to run the numbers up to justify further restrictions. This probably isn’t really an and/or situation though, and if I had to put money on it, the primary goal was the former, and if it made the case for the latter, that would have just been icing on the cake.

Prepared Testimony in Cummings Hearing

As you may have heard, Rep. Elijah Cummings and his other sympathetic friends in the Democratic Party had a closed symposium designed to deflect attention off the gun walking scandal surrounding Fast and Furious. The conclusion was meant to result in this:

This bill allows law enforcement officials to track the sales of multiple guns, end unlicensed gun purchases, formally define gun trafficking, and ease evidentiary requirements to revoke gun licenses.

I’m very interested in to see language in this bill just to figure out what they are trying to slip past. I can promise you that criminals will not be the target of whatever bill comes out of this, given the players involved in this charade. You can find the prepared testimony of participants here. The hearings were off limits to cameras, as I am aware NRA News attempted to get in and were denied. Likely they don’t want to give us time to organize opposition to whatever they are cooking up.

I Thought Cops Favored Gun Control?

Local police in Wisconsin favor the new concealed carry law. Shocking what happens when you bother to look beyond big city police chiefs appointed by big city politicians.

Veteran Denied Second Amendment Rights

Garry McCarthy think federal gun laws are racist. By contrast Chicago’s are just fine by him. For Chicago’s un-racist gun laws, they seem to be denying an awful lot of African Americans:

He once legally owned a gun, but lost his privileges roughly 15 years ago after firing a gun in his backyard to scare a pack of dogs. Since then, he said, there’s been incident after incident at his home, including fires, broken windows and other disturbances.

I heard his attorney last night on Cam & Company, and his line of argument is that such a minor ordinance violation, such as this one, cannot be grounds for denying a fundamental constitutional right. That sounds like a good line of reasoning.

DiFi: No Guns for Political Dissidents

Diane Feinstein is getting on her closing the foreign felon loophole hobby horse again. For those unaware, about six years ago the Supreme Court ruled that the Gun Control Act’s prohibition, worded that someone convicted of certain offenses “in any court,” only applies to convictions and adjudications in American Courts. Feinstein wants to extend that to foreign courts, because clearly we can’t have Cuban dissidents, or other such dangerous persons who were not good Comrades, and displeased the party.

The fact that foreign courts routinely defecate on what we would regard as due process, even in civilized countries such as Japan, apparently is not a concern to DiFi. This is not surprising, since I doubt she’s all that thrilled about due process here, at least not when it comes to rights not valued by the left.

Do Newspapers Even Hire Editors Anymore?

I was reading an article about a cat hoarder (these seem to happen about once every few months in this area) from the newspaper of record where I grew up, and I was amused at the sad lack of editorial oversight:

Shelter workers and volunteers spent much of Wednesday afternoon vaccinating and bathing the cats, as well as applying flee vaccine.

One of the best flee-removal treatments, Calgiano said, was Dawn soap.

â€œIt kills fleas on contact,â€ she said.

I was completely unaware there was a flee vaccine on the market now. Amazing what the animal health divisions of pharmaceutical companies are coming out with these days. The big problem with cats is that some of them just get the wanderlust, and then one day you never see them again. No parent will ever have to explain to teary-eyed little Mary why Rufus the cat wandered off. We truly live in miraculous times.

But all snark aside, I know the business is tough these days, but what I think boggles the mind is they got it right on the first and fourth try.

Crapping on the First Amendment Because You Hate the Second

This looks to me like a pretty clear cut First Amendment violation by a Chicago suburb:

â€œWithout legal authority and in violation of the Constitution, my client, a federally licensed firearms dealer, was delayed by the village when he initially applied for a weapons dealers business license in Norridge,â€ Maksym said.

â€œWhen village officials realized they couldnâ€™t stop him from obtaining a gun dealerâ€™s license, they arbitrarily imposed more restrictions on him without any legal basis.â€

After failing to keep Kole from opening, Maksym said, his client was restricted by the village from advertising.

That should be a slam dunk in court. It might be permissible for a local governmental entity to regulate advertising generally, but it do it on the basis of content has no basis. I just hope his attorney is decent. They should not be able to condition the exercise of one constitutional right on the surrendering of another.

Last Day of Work

Today is my last day on the job. I will receive my last paycheck, along with a generous severance. Despite being short on things to do for the past few days, I do have one last task I need to do today. Next Tuesday I will do something I’ve never done in my life, which is file for unemployment. Because my entrepreneurial adventure has definitely fallen through (for now), I will begin my job search then as well.

Ten years ago I was 27, and this was an entrepreneurial adventure for me then, as I was one of the early employees. It’s only fitting I should be among its last. I survived through a lot of bad times, and I have to admit, looking back, it was mostly bad times. It was an A+ idea turned over to a D- management team, who proceeded to essentially blow through millions of dollars without ever giving the A+ idea a chance. We shed the D students a few years ago, but it was too late. I still want to give that A+ idea a chance, but I now have no money to do so.

It makes one wonder how many revolutionary ideas have been lost in the course of human events because they people who were tasked with developing and nurturing those ideas were complete morons with no understanding or appreciation for the idea or the people who created it. That might accurately describe our country, sadly, but my involvement in politics and this company is because I don’t accept that outcome gracefully.