I didn’t mention this at the time, but Mark Steyn has the latest absurdity. Yes, almost two years after our request for an en banc rehearing of the panel’s decision, we have to refile because they decided to amend the ruling with two footnotes.
Category Archives: Law
The Stupidity Of Gun Buy-Back Programs
Kathleen Cairns, a WBFF Baltimore journalist, tweeted a picture of a woman who was surrendering a 9mm. She hoped to use the money from the program to buy an even bigger gun.
Good for her.
Carter Page
Ten pieces of evidence he’s the most diabolical Russian spy evar:
As of now, Carter Page hasn’t been charged with so much as lying to the FBI or filing a faulty tax return, let alone Russian spying. He endured the most intrusive, intimidating methods the government has at its disposal. He was the subject of media leaks. His reputation was destroyed. If he’s never charged with being a Russian spy, he’s either that slippery … or it would suggest that the top intelligence officials who targeted him were either incompetent or corrupt. It would seem to border on criminal.
I don’t think it “borders” on criminal.
[Update a few minutes later]
The results of the second interview of the corrupt James Comey. I’ve never seen such a disgusting display of arrogant sanctimony. And no, “Republicans” did not pay for the dossier. They initially hired Fusion GPS, but it was the Clinton campaign who paid for the dossier itself. I wonder if Comey really doesn’t know that?
[Noon update]
More thoughts from Neo-Neocon:
Here Comey is repeating MSM and Democratic talking points about Fusion which have been shown to be untrue. Republicans had zero to do with the funding of the dossier, as Comey either knows or should know if he’s at all competent. What he probably does know, however, is that Republican involvement is the fiction the MSM was pushing and that many many Americans probably believe that to be the case, so Comey’s answer will appear to make some sense to those people even though it is based on a falsity.
Comey’s lack of specific interest in who funded the dossier (if he really didn’t know and didn’t ask, which may or may not be the case) would have come from his need to get that investigation going and to use the dossier to jumpstart it no matter what. Why question its provenance if you’re already dedicated to using it despite the fact that Trump’s enemies paid for it, which should have made it highly suspect as a source?
Of course, it turns out that Trump’s oppponent’s campaign funded it, which if anything would make it even more suspect than if other Trump enemies had funded it. But to Comey, all of that was irrelevant (or at least he’d like us to think it was irrelevant). In his previous career, had he really lacked curiosity to that degree? I doubt it very much. But he’s a clever enough lawyer to use it as an excuse now. He’d prefer that we think him a fool rather than a knave, if he has the choice of shaping our opinion.
I say “knave.” The man is no fool, not by a longshot.
Knave indeed.
Gun Control
A statistician changes her mind after actually looking at the data:
“A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible,” Libresco concludes. “We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.”
Libresco says she still does not endorse gun ownership, “but I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them.”
What a concept.
ObamaCare
I disagree about pre-existing conditions, though. That requirement completely screws up the insurance markets. We need a different solution for that issue.
Constitutional Hardball
Yes. Asymmetric? Not so much.
And related: Why campaign finance violations won’t bring down Trump.
[Update later in the morning]
Looks like Mueller and Weismann may be up to some hanky panky: The case of the missing/altered 302s.
[Update a couple minutes later]
And Mueller destroyed the Strzok-Page texts before the IG could review them. How convenient.
Michael Cohen
…pled guilty to something that is not a crime.
Despite all of the jean creaming among the Democrats and other Never Trumpers over this, it’s pretty weak tea, and has nothing to do with Russian collusion. I find Trump despicable, but if he were on trial for this, I’d vote to acquit.
The Mueller Investigation
It’s just missing one thing: A crime.
The Climate Wars
The first shots are being fired in western Europe:
Who pays for environmental virtue?
The gilets jaune revolt begs the issue: who pays to save the planet? The Paris accords absolved the very countries driving emission increases — China and India — from mandating emissions cuts until 2030, leaving the burden largely on the backs of the West’s own middle and working classes.
Yet many of these people need fossil fuels to get to work or operate their businesses. Tourists may gape at the high-speed trains and the Paris Metro, but the vast majority get to work in cars. More than 80 percent of the Paris metropolitan area population lives in the suburbs and exurbs, in an area nearly the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.
Like the revolutionaries of 1789, people are enraged by the hypocrisy of their betters. In pre-revolutionary times, French aristocrats and top clerics preached Christian charity while indulging in gluttony, sexual adventurism and lavish spending. Today they see the well-off and well-connected buying their modern version of indulgences through carbon credits and other virtue-signaling devices. Meanwhile, as many as 30 percent of Germans and as many as half of Greeks are spending 10 percent or more of their income on energy, the definition of “energy poverty.” This is occurring while these policies prove sadly ineffective in reducing emissions while the much disdained US leads the large countries in cuts.
It’s not about saving the planet; it’s about the “elites” (who are elite in name only, not in talent or competence or intelligence) signaling their virtue to their peers, while defecating on the commoners and telling them it’s cotton candy.
[Update a while later]
It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost exactly nine years since I wrote this piece about the Precautionary Principle. And nothing has changed.
The Facebook App
Yet another reason I’ve never installed it on my phone.