Female Voices: Nina Simone.
Damned AWA had to mess my Female Voice of the week and post “Feeling Good”, but I shan’t be stopped, and I bring you this song which I believe has nothing to do with sweetening.
Chumming the waters for Race Baiting
When you see headlines like this:
Headline accompanied with commentary like this.
You cannot help but elicit this mental image:
And, of course, who wouldn’t be outraged about the violent death of such a peaceful human being? Why are you a doubting heartless asshole?
Maybe because journalists and the Media in general are now a bunch of lying provocateurs and propagandists?
That was a 5-foot-long garden hoe being swinged like an axe as the soon-to-be deceased rushed toward the responding officer.
The victim was Autistic which may have contributed to the issue, but that does not give him a free pass to murder anybody.
And certainly, does not forbid anybody from use deadly force to stop him.
I wonder why…
Canada is done.
Surreal.
Police now tell you to keep your car keys by your door so criminals can safely take your car without having to attack your family.
Crime. Chaos. 8 years of Trudeau. pic.twitter.com/DaRppBvYC7
— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) March 14, 2024
What’s next? “Dear Canadian women, if attacked by a rapist, close your eyes and think of Ottawa?”
There is an opportunity here not to be wasted. Tell Illegal Aliens that Canada is now officially allowing and helping criminals and you will see them flocking northbound in a hurry.
TikTok turmoil (the J.Kb response)
I, on the other hand, am totally fine with banning TikTok.
I understand the free speech argument against it, and that why I’m in favor of the ban.
TikTok is not a free marketplace of ideas.
We know that the Chinese government curates the feed. They do it in China and they do it here.
It’s deliberate to manipulate people.
TikTok promoted the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel users and limited pro-Israel users.
China is invested in building a relationship with Iran.
We know pro-transgender children users are promoted in the US and banned in China.
China uses TikTok as a weapon against the US by manipulating what we see.
We should absolutely ban TikTok to reduce China’s influence on American pop culture.
And if that sets precedent in the US, wherein any social media that is manipulates instead of being a free marketplace of ideas is squashed, I’m for it.
The ChiComs and billionaire tech-bros shouldn’t have the power to cureate what we see to manipulate us.
TikTok Turmoil
Some of you may have heard that the House voted to ban TikTok. It now goes to the Senate, and if it passes there, to the President.
I will admit, I don’t understand some of the finer points involved in this fracas. As someone who stepped into the World Wide Web as an adult, I knew that this particular form of media would save everything. If I put it onto the web, into an email, on a video, then it would be saved forever. I instilled this knowledge in my children, though I have been somewhat less successful in making them understand it. For them, there has ALWAYS been an World Wide Web. Regardless, I know that if it’s online, then people have access to it. That’s why I don’t store credit card info or personal information online. So how is TikTok any different than other social media?
After talking with people who are more “in the know” than myself, I believe that the only real difference is that it’s China holding onto the information. It was pointed out to me that if anyone with a security clearance has TikTok, then it’s possible for the Chinese to put two and two together to make classified documents. That seems like a fairly reasonable reason to keep TikTok out of government and military offices… but then again, I can’t think of a reason why a General or a military scientist would be indulging in TikTok on base anyhow. Still, that doesn’t mean the general public should have their toy taken away.
The information that TikTok contains in its gizzards is available from many places. While it may not be as easy to pull the pieces together, it’s still all there. If it’s online at all, then everyone has at least potential access to it. This is why I don’t have a problem using Temu. I know that the information being gathered by Temu is much the same as the information being gathered by Amazon and other places. If China really wants to sift through 170 million users’ worth of information, mining for a gold nugget, then let them. Maybe it’ll keep them too busy to do other obnoxious things.
More important than all of the above, though, is the knowledge that if TikTok is axed, then other social media platforms won’t be long in joining them. Whether it’s Truth Social, or X, or Facebook, someone will get their panties in a knot and court will happen, and the TikTok ban will be used as precedent. This is 100% a case of those unintended consequences we often talk about. Republicans need to NOT shoot themselves (and the rest of the country, thank-you-very-much) in the foot by passing this along. The American people, in droves, have decided they like TikTok. I happen to like it myself, though that’s not germane to this discussion. If our government “takes it away,” there very well might be hell to pay, and there absolutely will be unintended consequences galore.
Why I don’t air travel, part 164.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – A Nashville International Airport employee was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence as she left work on Wednesday morning.
Mahealani Robert, 52, is charged with DUI.
On March 13 at about 10 a.m., officers were dispatched to BNA regarding a “possibly intoxicated employee,” according to an arrest report. Officers ran the employee’s information and found out which vehicle she was driving.
…
Roberts later agreed to the tests but failed, police said. Her blood alcohol content was .245, more than three times the legal limit to drive, according to the report. She was taken to jail without incident.
BNA employee arrested for DUI after leaving work, police say (wsmv.com)
If her blood alcohol level was that high, she did not get wasted between clocking out and getting on the road, she was soused on the job. I hope she was not in a high-security-sensitive position.
The Good Guys Dunk on the state
B.L.U.F.
A fun little trip through the FPC and SFA’s briefing on what “in common use” means to the Fourth Circuit court.
Text comes first.
Then history. If the arm is in common use, the history analysis has been done by the Supreme Court, we win.
(1400 words)
The Tip-Off
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), the Supreme Court “employ[ed] and elaborate[d] on the text, history, and tradition test that Heller and McDonald require[d] for evaluating whether a government regulation infringes on the Second Amendment,” 597 U.S. at 79 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). Specifically, the Court explained that “when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. To justify its regulation, the government … must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Id. at 17. The Bruen analysis thus begins with an examination of the “plain” or “bare” text of the Second Amendment. See id. at 44 n.11. This is an exercise determining what the words of the Second Amendment meant at the time of ratification, and it largely involves using dictionaries—although Heller and Bruen have already done the work to explain the contemporaneous definitions of key words in the Amendment. If the plain or bare text is implicated, the challenged law is presumptively unconstitutional, and the burden is on the government to show both (1) that there exists a historical tradition of regulation that carves out an exception from the protection of the Amendment and (2) that the modern restriction fits into that tradition. Id. at 28–29.
—No. 105 Dominic Bianchi v. Anthony Brown, No. 21-1255, slip op. at 1 (4th Cir.)
—No. 105 Dominic Bianchi v. Anthony Brown, No. 21-1255, slip op. at 1 (4th Cir.)
As noted, the correct response to a court asking about “in common use” or the state claiming that the plaintiffs bear the burden, is to simply point to the Supreme Court’s own words.
If the plain, or bare, text of the Second Amendment covers the conduct, then the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.
The state is attempting to move the courts from “plain or bare text” to “nuanced meaning of the text” or, worse still, “interpretation of the text”.
If the state or court wants the meaning of “arms” to be evaluated in the context of “dangerous” or “unusual” or “primarily of military use”, they are not looking at the plain text. They are looking past the plain text.