It has been a busy week in the courts. Multiple cases heard before circuit courts. Supreme Court Opinions issued. Busy busy busy.

Hagar has been a bit busy, but I’ll see where her next article is.

We just learned about the State of Massachusetts deciding to make the state a “sensitive place”.

The other week, somebody asked for a review on some interesting caliber of ammunition. I was hoping J.Kb. was going to step up to the plate and write about it. I just don’t have any inclination to purchase a firearm in that caliber just to write a review about it.

Do you have any recommended sites to monitor for Second Amendment related legal or legislative events?

Does anybody want to hear about processing squirrels? I’m learning, slowly, how to flesh a squirrel hide. It is an interesting process that I’ve failed at four or five times now. Once I get past the fleshing part, I’ll be moving on to the process of tanning the hide.

Government over stepping its bounds has been of interest to me for many years. I take notice when something comes past that is especially egregious. We talk about how long we’ve been fighting for our rights, this is the story of a couple that has been fighting the EPA since 2004.

Some of this is from memory, some is prompted by some of the cited sources in this case.

In 2004, the Sacketts purchased a 1/2 acre of land near Priest Lake in Idaho. This was their dream property, they were going to build their dream home there. Thier property was set back from the lake, with a road between them and the lake.

They got all the required permits and started construction. Part of that was site preparation. This included flinging in some areas that got boggy when it rained. There was no running water from their property to the lake. There was no standing water on their property.

They got big puddles when it rained.

Along came the EPA, who told them that they needed to get a permit from the EPA because they were erasing a federally protected wetland—Oliver Milman, US supreme court shrinks clean water protections in ruling siding with Idaho couple, The Guardian (May 2023). Since they had not gotten a permit before starting the site preparation, the EPA found them in violation.

They were told to put the property back the way it was. If they did not, then they would be fined something like $10,000 per day. When they attempted to get a hearing to challenge the ruling, they were told “yes, but if you are found in violation, you will be held liable for the $10,000 per day fine.”

In other words, to challenge the ruling, the Sacketts would need to be prepared to pay all the outstanding fines.

They decided to fight this. The Pacific Legal Foundation took up their case.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court found in their favor.

More coming tomorrow now that I have a better idea of why my citation engine is/was failing.

Meanwhile, feel free to read the article that irritated me enough to start another of my short articles on legal stuff:

US supreme court shrinks clean water protections in ruling siding with Idaho couple

Ruling by conservative-dominated court shrinks scope of landmark law to protect America’s waterways

Expert sounds the alarm after U.S. Supreme Court sides with couple wanting to build house at protected site

The decision came at a time when the Clean Water Act was being strengthened by the EPA and the Biden administration.

Cam Edwards covered this Monday or Tuesday of this week. The Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts is working on an analysis of the bill. I’ve not read it, I don’t want to read it.

If you live in Massachusetts, if you travel through Massachusetts, you need to be aware of the proposed law. Once it hits the courts, I’ll look at the cases.

According to my sources, “Dude” is non-gendered, so according to my sources this is not a sexist rant.

I’m an old fart. I do “dude stuff”. I’m no longer shocked when other people can do the same things I can do, but I do have certain expectations, and I’m continuously let down.

“Dude Stuff” is when the boss comes over to you and asks “Can you open this?” and shoves a taped up package at you. You are the dude, so you flick your wrist and a 3.49in blade pops open for you to cut the tape. The boss looks in shock at the “huge knife” and tries to figure out where it came from, so fast.

“Dude Stuff” is your daughter coming to you with a necklace, hopelessly tangled and twisted, knowing that the dude in her life will just fix it. And you do.

“Dude Stuff” is the dishwasher that is getting water flowing back into it from the sink. Knowing that there should be a check valve or something else to keep that from happening. Seeing the water flow into the dishwasher sump when a pot is emptied into the sink, but not when water is just running.

Oh, the discharge hose needs a blight ABOVE the outlet to keep the bad water from flowing downhill into the dishwasher.

“Dude Stuff” is going out to do a safety inspection on the roof rack that your child just installed and instantly seeing that the cross bolts aren’t tightened, looking for why they came from the factory like that, and knowing that the rack needs to be adjusted for size and knowing how to do that.

“Dude Stuff” means you get handed the Fitbit to change the band because they “couldn’t figure out how”.

All of these and 1000s more are “dude stuff”. It is that ability to look at something and know what should be done next. Or to know how to figure it out.

I was speaking with Hagar, and we were talking about the rape statistics in this country. This is something we’ve talked about before.

As I see it, there are three or four different types of rapists out there. The first is the “accidental” rapist. These are the situations where a man and a woman are interacting, and the situation is such that she only decides it was rape the next day. Those situations where she is a little too drunk to consent. It is the situation where she thought she was saying “no” and he didn’t hear “no” but “I’m not on any birth control.” He takes out his condom and thinks it is ok to proceed, while she doesn’t actually say anything, he should have just known.

Hagar inserts the “Yesterday it was ok, today it is rape” situation. Those situations where one of the two had a birthday and turned 18. They do the same thing after his birthday as they were doing before and suddenly, he’s guilty of statutory rape.

The next situation is what I call “One and done.” It is rape. The rapist should be caught and, when found guilty, properly punished. This is a horrific crime and should be treated as such. The difference is that after that one time, the rapist never rapes again. One rapist, one victim.

The final group is what I call “serial rapists”. These are the monsters that have raped somebody, decided they liked it and then rape more. One rapist, multiple victims.

It is my unfounded belief that these serial rapists are what account for the majority of victims.

It is no less horrific if a rapist only has one victim one time, or one victim multiple times, it is a crime for which proper punishment should be given.

These are the monsters that haunt people’s nightmares.

In a bar, a woman is speaking with her friends. A man walks up and quietly asks if he can buy her a drink. She looks him up and down and tells him to get lost. He leaves, rejected.

Shortly after, another man walks up. He’s carrying a drink for her. He hands it to her and talks her up. He doesn’t really take her simple brush-offs. She has a short relationship with him. Maybe as short as the one night.

She gets bitter and posts to social media about how all men are just creeps. How all they are interested in is her body, and she’s never found a man who wasn’t shallow and crass.

She’ll never find a good dude because it is the man who takes “no” for an answer and leaves that is much more likely to be the good man she is looking for rather than the one that held his ground.

The men and women of today are not going through the same dance as 50 years ago. What they are looking for is different from their parents. YOLO is something that happened in the past, but it was the unusual, not a life philosophy.

We aren’t bringing up our children to be able to do “Dude Stuff”. We are lucky if they can tie their own shoes. Not a joke. My grandson is likely to never have to tie his shoes. Even the shoes he has with laces are really Velcro.

Somewhere our society lost something small yet important. How to do “Dude Stuff”.

I think there are about ten different songs I’ve listened to recently that have the same sort of theme. This happens to be one of the older ones.

B.L.U.F. What was supposed to be a short article regarding why we see “self-defense” in so many challenges turned into a 5000-word article covering the opening statements of the NFA hearings in 1934 plus random musings on yelling fire and other historical legal stuff.

If you get anything out of this, please at least click the like button. I’m having trouble justifying to myself the effort I’m putting into these articles.

Boris, you are correct. I agree that it is extremely irritating to hear, over and over again, that our rights are dependent on “self-defense” or being a member of the militia or “sporting purposes” and on and on and on.

This is a stepping stone. It took us a long time to get back to this level of Second Amendment protected rights.

Consider the testimony in Congress over the National Firearms Act.
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According to one of the lawyers that speaks on Second Amendment rights, the policy of the courts on accepting amicus curiae from anybody is a rather recent policy change with the courts. It used to be that you had to show real reasons to be considered a friend of the court.

Of the hundreds of pages submitted to the Supreme Court in —Oliver Milman, US supreme court shrinks clean water protections in ruling siding with Idaho couple, The Guardian (May 2023) most are from amicus curiae submissions. In appeals, it is the same. There are the actual pleadings by the parties, and then there are all the amicus curia submissions.

In To be blunt, Bruen fails to adhere to even basic academic standards – P.J.C. I write about Patrick J. Charles. He submits amicus curiae briefings in many of these Second Amendment cases. The courts almost always grant him permission to submit.

He is just one guy. He doesn’t belong to any group. His claim to fame is that he has written a number of books advocating for infringing on the Second Amendment and calling anybody and everybody who thinks that the right to “keep and bear arms” gives an individual the right to keep and bear arms an idiot or worse.

It is very uncommon to see a person or entity submit a motion for leave to file an amicus brief and then to have the court reject it. When this, ORDER re: Motion for leave to file amicus brief. John Cutonilli’s motion to file an amicus brief is DENIED. [74] showed up in Celeb Barnett v. Kwame Raoul I needed to find out why.

The first question to ask is, “Who is John Cutonilli?” A quick Google search turns up “Cutonilli v. State of Maryland”. This is a reference to a case from 2015.
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