(750 words)
The state of Texas, as well as many other states, are tired of being over run by illegal aliens. Having begged the federal government to do their job, Texas and Arizona have had enough and have stepped up to do the job of Customs and Border Patrol.

Texas initiated Operation Lone Star after the Governor declared a border security disaster, in 2021.

One of the initiatives was buying and placing concertina wire fencing on the US side of the border on private (and state?) lands. Not federal land. Texas received the permission of the landowners before placing the fencing.

This created conflict between the Customs and Border Patrol and the State of Texas.

8 U.S.C. §1357(a)(3) gives access to private land within 25 miles of the border, without warrant, to the feds. 8 U.S.C. §1357(a)(1)-(2) allows for the interrogation and arrest of anybody attempting to enter in violation of law. 8 U.S.C. §1226(a) allows them to arrest and detain noncitizens pending a removal decision.

NOTE: The previous paragraph is paraphrased from DHS filings and should not be trusted as a true representation of those sections of 8 U.S.C.

Now we get to the legal fictions and the realities of the world.

Legally, Border Patrol agents have the legal right to arrest illegal aliens as they cross the border illegally. The state of Texas and its people cannot stop the Border Patrol from doing this.

The legal fiction is that Texas was stopping the Border Patrol from doing its job by putting up these barriers, keeping the Border Patrol away from the illegal aliens.

Nobody would have an issue if that was the case, the Border Patrol could arrest and detain those illegal aliens until they are kicked out of the country.

The reality on the ground was different from the legal fiction. On the ground, C&BP were cutting the wire and allowing illegal aliens to enter and NOT arresting or detaining those that they let through.

As part of the legal fiction, they might load those illegal aliens into transport, take them to the bus terminal and release them. They were “detained” for the duration of the bus trip.

We saw videos of C&BP using a fork lift to lift the wire so that illegal aliens could walk through the wire.

Texas filed suit in federal court, STATE OF TEXAS v. US Department of Homeland Security, 2:23-cv-00055, (W.D. Tex.). The suit asks the courts to enjoin the federal government from cutting, destroying or removing the border fence/wire that Texas had installed.

Texas lost. There are 34 pages of excellent analysis and history by the judge who says “The feds are full of it. What they claim and what they are doing are not the same. Texas has good reason for what they are doing.”

The judge then respected the law. I don’t like the decision, but reading his reasons, it is clear why he did. The Judge applied the Winter factors and found that the plaintiffs (Texas) did not reach the bar in “likelihood of success”.

That is to say, the state of Texas was unable to show, at the preliminary stage, that they were likely to succeed on the merits.

This did not mean that Texas had lost, just that the court wasn’t going to issue that preliminary injunction. Given that they had issued a TRO, this indicates that the Judge is doing it correctly.

Texas then appealed to the Fifth Circuit court. There, the Fifth circuit did issue the preliminary injunction pending final judgement. This means that enough of the panel believed that the State was going to succeed on the merits.

DHS then appealed to the Supreme Court on the emergency docket, requesting that the injunction be vacated. The Supreme Court vacated the injunction.

So what does this mean?

It means that the feds can go back to cutting fences.

That’s it.

Nobody is violating the Supreme Court’s ruling.

There is no constitutional crisis.

Texas can put up more barriers. They can lock gates, they can keep the BP away from their fence.

This case is in an interlocutory state. That means it isn’t finished yet. It will now proceed to a final judgement, on the merits.

We already know that whatever happens, it will be appealed to the Fifth Circuit. We already know that it will be appealed from the Fifth Circuit to the Supreme Court.

That is the decision we need to wait for.

If you look, there are several YouTube channels that are discussing Thursday’s oral arguments in front of the Ninth Circuit. The tea leaves suggest that the three judge panel will not issue their opinion until after the en banc issues their opinion on Duncan v. Bonta. The panel did not ask questions that make you feel like The People will win this case.

I am continuing to work on the Casinator

Many things. And don’t get started on GT&D. That is a nightmare but useful.

I recently started using a “highlighter” on quotes. Is that helpful to you?

Here’s hoping you all have a great weekend.

B.L.U.F.
Another explainer about the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. More references, more better. Mexico and the blood vultures are so eager to find their way around the PLCAA.
(2000 words)

No, they got away with it because the Connecticut Supreme Court didn’t want to follow the constitution nor congress.

15 U.S.C. §7903: The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act

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B.L.U.F.
Mexico sued S&W and other manufacturers. They claim that but for those evil gun makers, the cartels would not have guns.

The district court said, “PLCAA applies. Get the out of my courtroom”.

Mexico appealed, the First Circuit says the case can go on. The price of your firearms just went up, again.
(1400 words)

The first pages of the opinion issued by the First Circuit court tell us that The People have lost another round. It takes nearly 30 pages to find out why, though.

The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) was put in place by a bipartisan congress to stop those anti-gunners that were filing nuisance suits against entities in the firearms’ industry. FFLs and manufacturers, primarily.

Since the PLCAA passed, those same anti-gunners have been trying to find a way around it. On the media front, they make the false claim that “only the gun industry can’t be sued”. This has never been true.

The arms industry is the only industry where people attempt to hold the manufacturer responsible for the acts of a third party. The standard example would be a wife suing Ford because her husband was killed by a drunk driver driving a Ford F-150.

Or worse, suing because her husband was that drunk driver and was killed in a traffic incident which he caused.

It doesn’t make sense. The argument is based on two shaky, and false, foundations: 1) There is no need for guns, 2) If they didn’t make guns, nobody would be killed.

I’m reminded of this quote:

Because the horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It’s that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great.”

[Six Questions for Slavoj Žižek, Harper’s Magazine, November 11, 2011]

And I’m not sure those who wish to disarm us are “good people”. They do horrible things, though.
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On Saturday, I found I needed a couple of items. Both were produced in China. I placed my order on Saturday evening, and they showed up yesterday by noon.

In the ’70s, my mother would have all of our gifts for her parents wrapped and boxed and ready to ship by early November. We would go to the Greyhound bus depot to ship them to Wisconsin from wherever we were in the country. In general, we could get packages by the Post Office in a couple of weeks.

In the ’60s, you could send a letter to a mail order location and “allow four to six weeks for delivery”.

Earlier, it took longer. The time it took to transport goods was much longer than people think.

We had stage coaches and riders to carry packages and mail before then.

But if you needed to move goods, the way to do it was by sea.

As a sailor, you would sign aboard. The ship would load with goods. The ship would sail to its destination. There it would put in for repairs. You could sign aboard for the return trip or stay.

In the ’70s, I read Two Years Before the Mast. It tells one such story. From the time Richard Dana left Boston in 1934 to California, it was two years before he returned. He published his memoir in 1840, describing his voyages.

Whenever I hear this song, I am taken back to that voyage in my mind’s eye. Fighting to keep a ship afloat in foul weather.

Or the NSFW version:

B.L.U.F.
Filler. Yapping about medicine and my kids having a tough time after oral surgery.
(550 words)

It has been a long weekend for us, here at the house.

On Friday, the kids finally got in to see the oral surgeon. A few hours later, they no longer had wisdom teeth.

My youngest has been having a hard time of it. They gave them a total of 5 does of Oxy and 600 mg Ibuprofen.

They were able to eat some soup today. The broccoli in it was too hard, so we had to put it in the blender.

My youngest son only had 3 wisdom teeth to remove. He’s been doing much better than his sibling.

I am so proud of him. He got up this morning, decided he wanted scrambled eggs. He made them himself and made extra for his sibling and made sure they ate some protein.

He spent most of the day on his computer playing games with his friends, yelling and laughing. I think he over did it as he looked a bit sore today.

So what is it about modern medicine? Well, first and foremost, it is freaking amazing.

While both kids are sore, there was no pain while their teeth were extracted.

They have antibiotics and pain meds for recovery. The odds of something bad happening is nil.

We saved up the money to cover the parts of the surgery that insurance didn’t cover. It was still something that we could do.

My wife has had 4 knee replacements. We are not bankrupt from medical bills.

I know that there are people who are not as fortunate as us.

On the other hand, I have a hard time with the people who say that they cannot afford health care.

I have a friend who has not had insurance in years. When her appendix burst, it was handled on an emergency basis. They took care of her. They didn’t worry about money until afterward.

When they learned she had no insurance, they got her to the finance people, and they basically paid for that surgery from their uninsured patients fund.

While they were taking pictures of her appendix before starting the surgery, another organ photo bombed the x-rays. The radiologist, with an abundance of caution, said it could be cancer, and she had to have it inspected.

That was another expensive procedure, as they had to take x-rays from the inside. Again, it cost her very little.

Years ago, I watched a show where a couple was trying to live as “poor folk”. The man got a job and the woman stayed at home, I think. She was prone to UTIs. She got a UTI. She knew it was a UTI.

Instead of scheduling an appointment to see a doctor or going to an urgent care clinic, they decided to go to the Emergency room.

They reported that it cost hundreds of dollars just to get antibiotics.

I’ve been there too. A friend without insurance got an infection. $100 at the urgent care clinic and they walked out with a bottle of antibiotics after the doctor reviewed her symptoms.

There are options. Make plans if you need to.

(It was a babble or pictures of ice and snow while telling Miguel that he should be happy he lives in the warm country)

B.L.U.F.
Don’t let the government cheat! Plain text first. Know what it means. K.I.S.S. it. Is it an arm? Are they a member of The People? Do they want to keep or bear?

Done!
(1550 words)

While Justice Thomas said that the inferior courts had gone one step too far in their two-step analysis of Second Amendment challenges, the Heller Court did lay out a two-step analysis.

Heller said that the first step was to determine if the proposed conduct implicated the plain text of the Second Amendment as understood at the founding. The second step was for the state to provide historical analogues of the modern infringement from the time of the founding.

The inferior courts cheated. They took the Heller methodology and just assumed that the modern infringement was unconstitutional without deciding.

This allowed them to say, “We will assume an ‘assault weapon’ ban is assumed to be unconstitutional. Moving on, we look at how bad your rape is, if it is bad bad, then we’ll use strict scrutiny. If it is only a bad rape, then we’ll use intermediate scrutiny. The government then has the burden to show that they have a good reason to be raping you.”

Justice Thomas slapped the inferior courts around. He explained that the inferior courts, when deciding a Second Amendment challenge, must first determine if the proposed conduct touches fingers with the plain text of the Second Amendment. If it does, then the inferior court moves to the second and final step, can the state prove a history and tradition of regulations from the founding which are analogous to the modern infringement.

The Heller Court analyzed every word and phrase of the Second Amendment. They have laid out the meaning of the plain text of the Second Amendment. There is no “It depends on what your definition of is, is”. It is defined.

The plain text of the Second Amendment is implicated if a member of The People wants to keep or bear arms.

Is means IS!

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