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Court Packing? Jurisdiction Stripping? No! Optimize Quality

Posted by M. C. on December 16, 2024

Design quality into judicial processes, get informed when appointing judges, and summarily impeach judges who fail to support the Constitution.

Court Packing? Jurisdiction Stripping? No! Optimize Quality

By James Anthony

Progressives want to advance their agenda by remaking courts:

  • Senator Sheldon Whitehouse sponsored and the current senate’s judiciary committee passed a bill that would create a process to solicit ethics complaints against supreme court justices, and use inferior courts to investigate the complaints.
  • Current president Joe Biden and vice president Kamela Harris called for term-limiting justices by only letting them hear appeals for 18 years.
  • Senator Ron Wyden introduced a bill that would add 6 justices in 12 years, block justices from using their power to offset congresses unless two thirds of justices agree, require justices to submit to IRS audit and publication of their tax returns, and let litigants motion for recusals and require that justices reply in writing.
  • Harris called for Democratic senators to enact such bills by bypassing the 60-vote filibuster cloture rule. (Filibuster cloture is unconstitutional, but Harris wanted to end it in order to then defy the Constitution.)
  • Now senators Peter Welch and Joe Manchin have introduced a constitutional amendment to freeze the number of supreme court justices at nine, limit terms to 18 years, and override appointment of chief justices by promoting the most-senior justice.

Conservatives want to advance their agenda by limiting courts:

  • Jurisdiction stripping has been advocated to legislatively remove some judicial power, for example over immigration and marriage.

Politicians are playing politics here and there, not protecting individuals’ rights overall.

Like the Constitution defines processes to secure individuals’ life, liberty, and property, judicial regulations should got the next step deeper here by defining processes to speedily produce just opinions.

Word processors, databases, clerks, friends of the court, and legacy practices produce overwhelming discovery, complex argumentation, long delays, and severely-throttled throughput. Critical legal cases becomes like Omnibus bills—complicated by design, and unjust. Bundling the government censorship of social media case Missouri v. Biden into its current ponderous mass has denied swift relief to each litigant and has victimized millions more.

Under current legislative controls, the judicial process strips litigants of property and unduly deprives them of rights for years. Many others can’t get any justice at all.

Justice—or injustice—is an emergent property of a system that encompasses all of society.

Justice needs to begin with generally good behavior, and with limited, clear, just statutes. Just and equitable remedies require good investigations, prosecutions, defenses, judges, and juries.

Justice is produced under government monopoly control currently. There are no customers supervising producers of justice’s components and selecting for ever-better producers.

Instead, justice producers need to be disciplined internally, by having government people use their offsetting powers to make exceptions and regulations and constitute inferior tribunals, to appoint, and to summarily impeach.

Justice is produced, or not produced, like any product: by completing projects, and on each project applying scarce resources to optimally trade off between time, cost, and quality.

Justice would be produced better by making and utilizing the following regulations:

See the rest here

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Questions That Only Libertarians Are Asking

Posted by M. C. on October 26, 2024

by Laurence M. Vance

It is only libertarians who are asking these questions and getting to the real issues. It is only libertarians because libertarianism is based on the timeless principles of individual liberty, economic freedom, private property, and a government limited to the protection of these things. Libertarians don’t just hold to these principles when it is expedient or popular to do so. This is what sets them apart from the proponents of every other political philosophy.

Questions That Only Libertarians Are Asking

Although on the surface, Democrats, liberals, socialists, and progressives seem to be ideological opposites of Republicans, conservatives, nationalists, and constitutionalists, and although both groups are often contrasted with moderates, populists, centrists, and independents, in reality, every one of these groups has something in common: their opposition to libertarianism.

Libertarianism

Libertarianism is the philosophy that says people should be free from individual, societal, or government interference to live their lives any way they desire, pursue their own happiness, accumulate wealth, assess their own risks, make their own choices, participate in any economic activity for their profit, engage in commerce with anyone who is willing to reciprocate, and spend the fruits of their labor as they see fit — as long as their actions are peaceful, their associations are voluntary, their interactions are consensual, and they don’t violate the personal or property rights of others.

Libertarians maintain that as long as people don’t infringe upon the liberty of others by committing, or threatening to commit, acts of fraud, theft, aggression, or violence against their person or property, the government should leave them alone and not interfere with their pursuit of happiness, commerce, personal decisions, economic enterprises, or what they do with their body or on their property.

Libertarians thus believe that —

Individuals, not society or the government, should be the ones to decide what risks they are willing to take and hat behaviors they want to practice.

Everyone should be free to pursue happiness in his own way — even if his choices are deemed by others to be harmful, unhealthy, unsafe, immoral, unwise, stupid, destructive, or irresponsible.

Every crime needs a tangible and identifiable victim who has suffered measurable harm to his person or measurable damages to his property.

Markets should be completely free of government regulation, licensing, restriction, and interference.

No industry or individual should ever receive government grants, subsidies, loans, or bailouts.

The functions of government should be limited to prosecuting and exacting restitution from those individuals who initiate violence against, commit fraud against, or violate the property rights of others.

Contrary to Democrats, liberals, socialists, progressives, Republicans, conservatives, nationalists, constitutionalists, moderates, populists, centrists, and independents — who all may claim to believe some of these things — libertarians believe these things consistently and without exception.

The issues

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Here’s Why Tearing Down Satanic Statues Is Perfectly Acceptable In Our “Constitutional Society”

Posted by M. C. on December 26, 2023

If they hate the cultural roots of this country so much then they can always leave. They choose not to, and instead scheme to upend everything we used to stand for. So no, I shed no tears for the progressives or the satanists (almost the same thing at this point) or the globalists when their mocking statues are cut in half. After years of trespasses they are finally facing some blowback. As the leftists like to say, freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom from consequences.

AltMarket

By Brandon Smith

In recent articles I’ve been discussing the ways in which the political left exploits the principles of a society as a shield to destroy that society. In other words, if a nation has a certain historic regard for freedom, they will try to destroy that nation while under the protection of those freedoms. If you point out what they’re doing and try to stop them, they then argue that you are “violating your own principles,” the same principles which they are trying to tear down.

It’s a form of psychological warfare designed to create a Catch-22: If the target population sits back and does nothing in the face of the cultural onslaught, their heritage and their beliefs are systematically dismantled. If people take action to disrupt the saboteurs, they are accused of being hypocrites who don’t actually value the freedoms they claim to value.

However, this little mind game relies on a certain false relationship. It requires that the population under attack continues to see the saboteurs as integral members of that society with the same freedoms and the same protections. They are Americans just like us, and therefore we have to treat them merely as citizens in disagreement even though they would like nothing better than to see our culture burn.

Globalists and woke leftists often openly boast about their agenda to deconstruct western society and replace it with their own ideological cult. They are not simply in disagreement, they have declared war.

They’ve been treating conservatives and patriots as the enemy for quite some time, while we continue to treat them as fellow citizens. They tried to erase all of our freedoms permanently during the covid panic (which they perpetuated through false information). They tried to create a government apparatus working with social media corporations for mass censorship. They tried to create punishments for people who spoke against the establishment narrative. They supported vaccine mandates that would have enslaved Americans for years to come. They almost got what they wanted, too.

They then twisted the events of the Jan 6th protests and declared war on us again. They fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowds, got a violent response, and then acted as if the reaction was an “insurrection.”

They have targeted our children with political and sexual indoctrination in an effort to groom them into willing servants to the woke cause. They have saturated our media from commercials to movies with an endless stream of DEI propaganda, all while claiming WE are “terrorists” because we refuse to spend our money on woke products.

When someone is actively at war with you they are no longer a part of your community or tribe.  They can’t claim to be Americans while also planning to undermine everything that makes America what it is. When someone is working tirelessly to destroy the constitutional principles you hold dear, they don’t get to use those same freedoms as a buffer against retaliation.

An enemy in war is meant to be defeated; their “rights” are secondary to this goal.

Again, this is not a political disagreement. This is not a friendly debate among countrymen with the best of intentions. This is not a cultural speed bump on the way to mutual benefit. This division is irreparable. It cannot be salvaged. This is about survival. THIS IS WAR.

This is why I smiled when I read the story of Michael Cassidy, a former US Navy fighter pilot who destroyed a satanic statue of Baphomet on display at the Iowa State Capitol Building. The political left is in an uproar on social media, and as expected they argue that this incident is proof that conservatives are “authoritarians” hellbent on dictatorship. They say the statue has a constitutional right to be there if any other religious symbols are allowed to be there – But does this really matter to the situation?

My personal feelings about organized religion are complicated, but I still recognize the replacement tactics being used by the political left to undermine the west; they have been clearly targeting Christianity for many years.

See the rest here

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Temperature Change

Posted by M. C. on September 25, 2023

The lefties in the 1970s claimed global cooling would do us all in and it was the fault of capitalism. Then, after there were a few hot years, the liberals in the 1990s claimed global warming would be the end of us all and it was the fault of, guess what, yes, the free enterprise system.

https://substack.com/inbox/post/137354911

A reader of mine, whose name shall remain anonymous, has attributed to me a stance this is not mine. To the best of my knowledge I never said, let alone wrote, anything to the effect that a small increase of temperature every year would not have dire consequences, eventually. That is the viewpoint he attributes to me. I never made any such claim, to the best of my memory, in any public talk or debate; certainly, I never published anything supporting anything like that. Rather, here are my views on temperature change.

The lefties in the 1970s claimed global cooling would do us all in and it was the fault of capitalism. Then, after there were a few hot years, the liberals in the 1990s claimed global warming would be the end of us all and it was the fault of, guess what, yes, the free enterprise system. Then there were a few cool years and the “progressives” in the 2010s claimed temperature change would have dire consequences and it was the fault of the evil private property and profits-based system. The latter of course is tautologous in that no state of affairs of the weather could refute this claim.

Clever pinkos. Note how they continually change how they want us to refer to them. You would adopt this policy, too, gentle reader, if you were as mistaken as they are in all such matters and wanted to shield yourself from criticism. “Hey, that’s not our view!” they might say. “It was those other guys.”

Note, also, that weathermen can hardly predict their way out of a paper bag — for a few days hence, let alone a week or more. You have to take pretty much everything they say with a grain of salt. Ditto for meteorologists, who predict weather for decades hence, even centuries.

See the rest here

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Black and White and White and Black

Posted by M. C. on August 7, 2023

Similarly, capitalizing “black” into “Black” will somehow improve the lot of this demographic. One might as well do a rain dance to call forth a change in the weather.

https://substack.com/inbox/post/135783951

Walter Block

Wokeism has taken over much more than merely academia. It has functioned as a tapeworm, also, in Wall Street, Hollywood, high tech, even the military. This DEI virus has seeped into the very warp and woof of our entire society. It is akin to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. An intellectual pox takes over the populace, does its damage (although happily, much less so here than there, at least so far), and then, hopefully, goes back from whence it came; hell, presumably. The first step in eradicating this attack on civilization is to at least be award of the degree of this malignity.

              Consider several instances which are pervasive even amongst conservatives. They are amongst the least influenced by this pernicious doctrine, but even they have succumbed to some degree. For example, the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, no pinko operation, they, continually use the ill begotten phrase, “Ms.” (This eviscerates the distinction between the married and unmarried state for women, and thus tends in the direction of undermining that precious institution).

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              Exhibit “A,” the new kid on the block, constitutes spelling “black” with capital letters (e.g., “Black), when the word applies to people, while refusing to do so for whites. It refers to them in the lower-case format. Why oh why would any sensible person do that? Don’t men (I use this word advisedly) of good will wish to demonstrate commonalities, not divergences between the two races? And, yet, it is the rare periodical that refuses to engage in this deleterious capital letter practice.

              Why is this harmful, even from the perspective of the “progressives?” (They are not progressive; they are regressive!) One of their main motifs is equality, equity, egalitarianism. They complain, often by far from always justifiably, that white and black people are treated unequally, the latter invidiously. They all too often get the short end of the stick. But in this case, that is exactly what they are supporting: treating the two races differently for no rational reason. Had this practice been started by whites, or conservatives, there would have been complaints to the high heavens that this constituted racism.

See the rest here

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Progressives Have Corrupted Not Only Money, but Its History as Well | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 27, 2023

So not only was silver already an internationally recognized money, but the earliest recorded states were already corrupting domestic money markets. Just as more modern governments would do thousands of years later with gold and silver, these Sumerian authorities mandated a fixed exchange rate between the two commodities, leading people to use the artificially overvalued one—in this case, barley—while the government hoarded the other.

https://mises.org/wire/progressives-have-corrupted-not-only-money-its-history-well

Connor O’Keeffe

As modern monetary theory (MMT) gains prominence in the political sphere, it has revitalized interest in some older theories about the origin of money—namely, the state and credit theories of money.

The credit theory of money says that money is simply a unit for measuring debt. And the state theory of money, or chartalism, as it is often known, says that this measurement was created by the state. These days, the two theories are often combined and championed by proponents of MMT who argue that most of the economic constraints put on government are imaginary because the government can simply create money.

The MMT debate is about the nature of money itself, and these theories about the origin of money are central to understanding this alternative way of thinking that’s gaining popularity on the progressive left. However, when one looks, it’s clear that both the theory and history presented as evidence for the state and credit theories of money don’t hold up, especially when compared to the Austrian alternative.

Readers of this website are likely familiar with the Austrian theory of the origin of money, developed by Carl Menger and synthesized by Ludwig von Mises. But to review it quickly, money developed as a way to make trade easier. At some point in the past, humans began using their property to produce goods beyond what the natural environment had provided.

Certain goods became valued, not just for direct consumption but also because of their salability. In other words, people started wanting certain goods because they knew others would trade for them. A good used in this way is called a medium of exchange. Thanks to the network effect, one or a small number of media of exchange would become nearly universally accepted among a society. That’s when it becomes a money.

Historically, precious metals became monies. Currencies were simply a unit of weight in a precious metal. Once a money had been established, people could specialize their labor, and the number of prices—that is, records of past exchange ratios—to keep track of was greatly reduced. That makes entrepreneurship, production, and therefore civilization as we know it possible.

The important insight here is that money gets its value as a money from what it’s able to buy and that it, therefore, must have originated out of a good or commodity produced for some other purpose that was then found to be particularly saleable.

The state and credit theorists reject this entirely as bad theory disproven by the historical record. They instead frame money as a unit of debt.

Debt, credit theorists say, is something that has been around far longer than money. It’s the obligations people have to one another. If a person gives a neighbor some livestock, that neighbor is then obligated to repay the benefactor in kind at some point in the future. They are in debt. Similarly, if one assaults someone else or destroys their property, they are obligated to pay restitution to the victim—or the victim’s family—and are therefore in debt.

Credit theorists argue that money is simply a unit that governments invented to quantify debt. Some say it arose as early states attempted to quantify restitution payments for violent crimes. This unit of debt is then imposed on everyone by the government through taxes. Only then are these state-created IOUs used as a medium of exchange.

In contrast to the Austrians, these theorists see money not as a social institution developed through cooperation but as a state institution imposed on people through violence. It’s not only a disturbing and rather sad view of people and society, it’s also bad theory.

See the rest here

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The Biggest Problem With The Western Left Is That It Doesn’t Exist

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2023

I’ll bet there would be of lot of Easterners that would be happy if there were no Eastern left, but there aren’t because they are dead. I don’t like government in general but I do like free markets that prevented me from getting polio, help me get around in my car, let me listen to good music, I don’t like phones but they occasionally come in handy. I may be blind but I don’t see communists doing much beneficial.

https://substack.com/inbox/post/125500811

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

The biggest problem with the western left is that it doesn’t exist.

To look at a lot of leftist discourse today you might think the left’s biggest problem is that some leftists have the wrong beliefs about this or that issue, or that the left pays too much or not enough attention to identity politics, or places too much or not enough emphasis on electoral politics, or is too sympathetic toward enemies of the US empire or not sympathetic enough, or that this or that faction gets it all wrong — but it’s not. The biggest problem is that there aren’t anywhere remotely close to enough leftists to get anything done in the west today.

And by leftists I of course don’t mean Democrats or “progressives” or anyone who just wants a few adjustments to be made to the capitalist empire so that they can afford medicine or a college degree or whatever. I mean real socialists, communists and anarchists who oppose capitalism and imperialism and seek the drastic, revolutionary changes this civilization urgently needs. Those who understand that the system is not broken and in need of repair, but is working exactly as intended and is in need of complete dismantling.

This latter category has barely any meaningful existence in the western world. The “western left” in modern times is either controlled opposition or what amounts to a glorified online message board. That’s not our fault; the empire has poured vast amounts of wealth and effort into making that happen. But we do need to be real about it, and we do need to fix it.

And it’s just so strange to me that this doesn’t dominate all leftist discourse all the time. The fact that the western left is a tiny politically impotent minority with nowhere near the numbers needed to accomplish its goals is the single most significant thing about the western left, by a long, long way.

https://twitter.com/PolitsturmInter/status/1408164275500158977

I mean, if you were a general who was setting off to war, and you only had a handful of soldiers to fight against an entire enemy nation, that would be the single most glaring fact in your attention. You wouldn’t be spending your time arguing about military strategies or the history of equestrian combat, and you certainly wouldn’t be wasting your energy fighting against those who are basically on your side. Front and center of your attention would be the fact that you don’t have enough troops to fight this war, and how can you get more.

If you’re an architect who’s been hired to construct a skyscraper, and your workforce shows up and it’s just one guy with a plastic toy hammer, that’s going to be the focus of your attention. You’re not going to be poring over your blueprints and books on architectural theory and musing about the finer points of foundational integrity, you’re going to be trying to figure out how to get more workers to build this damn thing.

So you’d think that would be the case with the western left as well, because we find ourselves in more or less the same kind of situation. But it isn’t. To look at the writings of a lot of western leftists you’d think the best way to enact your ideology in the world is to spend your time arguing with other leftists using esoteric Marxist jargon about obscure points that nobody outside your tiny echo chamber knows about or cares about, or to sit back smugly knowing better than everyone else while waiting for the contradictions inherent in capitalism to bring about its demise.

If you look at organizing and demonstrating it’s not much better. You’ve got sparsely attended meetings with increasingly atomized sects, antiwar protests with a handful of people and one banner, and some LARPers dressed in black punching racists and transphobes here and there to make believe they’re fighting a real revolution against real power. Which is the same as nothing.

The first and foremost priority of the western left should be to create more western leftists. You don’t do that by having all the correct opinions and reading all the correct books and proving yourself the most correct in argument after argument, and you don’t do it by waiting for western material conditions to deteriorate like a bunch of fundamentalists awaiting the Rapture. You do it by reaching out to people, winning hearts and minds, showing them that everything they’ve been taught about their nation and their world is a lie, and showing them that things can be better.

I don’t claim to have all the answers on how to address this dilemma, I’m just highlighting a massive, glaring problem that doesn’t get the tiniest fraction of the attention that it should get. I address this problem the best way I know how with my own work, but I’m just one person with one mind. I hope to see many more minds pointed at this issue in the future, so that we can all come up with solutions and fix this thing.

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Progressives Want to Eliminate Wealthy Entrepreneurs but Need the Wealth They Create | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on May 14, 2023

The zero-sum mindset that fuels envy will only be diminished when societies promote economic freedom to afford more opportunities to generate wealth. When people are free to prosper, they become less likely to engender a zero-sum approach to development and more appreciative of success because it’s now a greater possibility. Rather than wealth redistribution, the solution to envy is progress powered by economic freedom.

https://mises.org/wire/progressives-want-eliminate-wealthy-entrepreneurs-need-wealth-they-create

Lipton Matthews

Being perceived as anti–working class is a cardinal sin in American politics. Working-class people are seen as the unappreciated engine of American growth. Hillary Clinton discovered this lesson when she was criticized for calling Donald Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables.” But interestingly, expressing contempt for the upper class is quite tolerable.

Rich people are frequently ridiculed by comedians and depicted as snobs in popular culture. Shows like SpongeBob SquarePants and The Simpsons present affluent characters in an unflattering light. Such characters are seldom portrayed as virtuous entrepreneurs who are rewarded for delivering value. Usually, viewers are led to think that the rich are the source of all social ills.

Typically, negative depictions of working class or poor people would evoke controversy, but upward classism is tolerated. Sociologist Rainer Zitelmann has written extensively on upward classism and the rich in public opinion. Zitelmann’s research covers how rich people are viewed in Western countries, and his findings are unsurprising.

According to the results of Zitelmann’s study, rich people, like other minority groups, are often scapegoats who are blamed for social malaise. However, he observes that the perception of the wealthy is determined by education. In Germany, England, and America, better-educated people have a more favorable view of the rich. A possible explanation is that educated people have higher incomes and are connected to the rich, so their views are more realistic and less tainted by stereotypes.

Their education also makes it easier for them to appreciate the significance of the rich in creating value for society. Social enviers, by contrast, have warped perceptions of the rich. Zitelmann documents that such people assign negative traits to the wealthy. Because their views are shaped by a zero-sum mentality, envious people think that when some gain others must lose.

Ordinary people benefit tremendously from the inventions of the ambitious and intellectually gifted. The ingenuity of oilman John Davis Rockefeller made the American economy more productive in the nineteenth century, and today our lives are made more convenient by the efficiencies of tech companies like Amazon and Google. Without the traits of the rich, we would lack modern innovations.

But unfortunately, most people don’t differentiate the progressive rich who accumulate wealth by delivering value for society from those who increase their wealth by relying on government subsidies or political connections. Hence, we are primarily concerned with the value creators and their attributes that culminate in the formation of dynamic businesses.

In undertaking his study, Zitelmann found that the rich are high in conscientiousness and openness to experiences. Other studies assert that rich people have a great propensity for risk. Most rich people are entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs suffer from high failure rates, so this indicates that people who excel in business are not just competent but also perseverant.

See the rest here

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Due Process or Transgender Protection on Campus? | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on May 2, 2023

People who oppose due process are opposing common decency in the legal treatment of others. With bitter irony, they do so in the name of protecting the vulnerable—in this case, the gender identified. Anyone who needs protection against common decency and truth is not pursuing justice. They want privilege and power. If the voice of reason can still be heard, people need to hear it now.

https://mises.org/wire/due-process-or-transgender-protection-campus

Wendy McElroy

College campuses have long been battlegrounds between due process for those accused of sexual misconduct (innocent until proven guilty) and legal privileges for alleged victims who many automatically believe (guilty until proven innocent).

The front line is Title IX, the 1972 federal law designed to curb sex discrimination in schools. President Joe Biden’s Department of Education (DOE) wants to add gender identity to the mix. The players in this renewed conflict are Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who has introduced a bill to champion due process rights on campus, and Biden’s DOE, who is expanding the definition of discrimination.

The specific issue addressed by the DOE is athletic eligibility. The issue is a political flash point that revolves around the question, “Should transgendered male-to-females compete in women’s sports or is their strength advantage unfair to biological females?” This article examines the competing and overlapping provisions of the draft Title IX regulation, the 2023 draft sports regulation, and Kennedy’s bill.

The Biden executive order 14021 (March 8, 2021) that sparked the current conflict is entitled “Guaranteeing an Educational Environment Free from Discrimination on the Basis of Sex, including Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity.” It is a statement of intent. On April 6, 2023, the DOE rolled out an implementation mechanism for the executive order “Proposed Change to its Title IX Regulations on Students’ Eligibility for Athletic Teams.”

The language in the 116-page document is confusing and vague, but the core of it redefines terms such as “discrimination” and favorably includes gender identity into the framework for athletic eligibility. The opening summary states that the DOE will “set out a standard that would govern a recipient’s adoption or application of sex-related criteria” that might “limit or deny a student’s eligibility to participate on a male or female athletic team consistent with their gender identity.” This regulation presumes transgendered athletes are able participate in their chosen categories unless the school identifies safety reasons to not allow this.

Backlash from progressives has been swift. The “Proposed Change” is insufficiently protrans, they claim. “These regulations specify methods schools may employ to determine a student’s sex, including invasive physical examinations,” complains the transgender journalist Erin Reed.

Moreover, the DOE document would give school districts the final say on whether injecting gender identity into athletics is problematic. Progressives react with horror. Actually, this is no issue at all. As with past DOE recommendations, schools are likely to over comply not only due to the extreme liberal bias on most campuses but also to avoid a catastrophic loss of federal funds. The “Proposed Change” makes this threat explicitly.

See the rest here

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Anti-Gunners Should be Careful What They Wish For | AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

Posted by M. C. on January 10, 2023

“Progressives” may wish they hadn’t opened this door. If we’re going to go back to a historical understanding of parental rights, so much for bills aimed at giving the state the final word on puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery without parental consent. So much for school boards siccing the feds on parents protesting subversive agendas.

https://www.ammoland.com/2023/01/anti-gunners-should-be-careful-what-they-wish-for/#axzz7pt8bU1op

So what did these guys think about armed felons and armed children? What? They didn’t? (Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States/Howard Chandler Christy/Public domain)

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Matthew Schindler, the defense attorney for Kneko Tyray Moore, a convicted felon, states that the definition of ‘the people’ in the Second Amendment is not limited to law-abiding responsible citizens,” a Thursday letter to the editor in The Oregonian summarizes. “Schindler’s theory is that the government can’t demonstrate that the criminal charge is not consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulations.”

Not so fast, say legal critics.

“The Supreme Court ‘characterized the holders of Second Amendment rights as “law-abiding” citizens no fewer than fourteen times,” Portland federal prosecutor Leah Bolstad argued back, claiming that “notably excludes convicted felons,” and citing Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s admissions in the Bruen decision that the ruling “doesn’t disturb ‘the longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons.’”

What’s absent from that argument are Founding-era citations to back it up and connect “longstanding” to the founding era. That’s because they didn’t.

From Justice Breyer’s dissent (arguably the one thing he got right):

“‘[P]rohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill [and] laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms’ have their origins in the 20th century… ‘Founding-era legislatures did not strip felons of the right to bear arms simply because of their status as felons.’”

It’s not a stretch to surmise they did not have a major recidivism problem with murderers because they were hanged, and lesser felons received long and hard punishments. That, and an armed populace raised in a militia culture that would not tolerate, let alone breed predators and dependents meant the social cancer of collectivist prosecutors turning known threats loose to continue victimizing the productive citizenry just wasn’t the issue modern-day collectivists have turned it into.

And like the maxim (OK, mine) says, anyone who can’t be trusted with a gun can’t be trusted without a custodian.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

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