Your Right to Own a Gun

For John, BLUF:  Civil Rights is more than just voting.  They can be about gun ownership.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Why Black Americans Are Buying More Guns

Here is the sub-headline:

The people who bear the brunt of rising violent crime are taking steps to protect themselves.

From The Wall Street Journal, by Jason L. Riley, 7 June 2022, 6:13 pm ET.

Here is the lede plus two:

“The issue we face is one of conscience and common sense.”  So said Joe Biden last week in a prime-time plea for more Second Amendment restrictions.  The president is right on both counts, just not in the way that he and other gun-control enthusiasts imagine.

Voters have noticed that cities where shootings occur almost daily also have some of the strictest gun laws.  Using common sense, they’ve concluded that more gun-control legislation probably isn’t the solution because criminals by definition don’t respect laws.  Many of the same people likewise find it unconscionable that elected officials would make it more difficult for law-abiding residents of high-crime neighborhoods to arm themselves for protection.

Someone might remind Mr. Biden that the past two landmark Supreme Court rulings on gun control were fueled by black plaintiffs who simply wanted to defend their homes and their families.  Moreover, they hailed from cities controlled by liberals who have done an extraordinarily bad job of protecting low-income minorities from criminals.  In a 2008 case, District of Columbia v. Heller, the court affirmed that the right to bear arms is an individual right and that you don’t need to be part of a militia to exercise it.  One of the initial plaintiffs was Shelly Parker, a black computer-software designer who decided to challenge the district’s handgun ban in court after a 7-foot-tall neighborhood drug dealer tried to break into her home one evening and threatened to kill her.  “What I want is simply to be able to own a handgun in my home, in the confines of the walls of my home—nothing else,” she told National Public Radio.

I suspect that we really don't know much about Blacks and guns and how for quite a while after the Civil War Caucasians of various stripes woked to deny Blacks their Constitutional Rights.

One wonders if Black on Black crime in big cities is a result of denying Black American their Second Amendment Rights?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

The Dastardly President Trump

For John, BLUF:  It is going to be interesting between now and 3 November.  Buy more popcorn and enjoy the show.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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On Criminal Justice, Biden Has No Moral Standing Over Trump

From New York Magazine, by Reporter Zak Cheney-Rice, 8 March 2020.

Here is the excerpt Professor Althouse started with:

Trump is going to try dampening black voter enthusiasm for Biden by contrasting the two men’s criminal justice records.  The framing will be simple:  Trump signed a bipartisan criminal-legal reform bill, the First Step Act, and has been generous with his pardon powers toward unjustly imprisoned black people, like Alice Marie Johnson.... ...Trump’s status as a self-styled reformer is laughable, [but] Biden’s record is grotesque.  Most of its lowlights occurred in the 'tough on crime' 1980s and 1990s... [when] he viciously characterized people who commit crimes as sociopathic 'predators' who are beyond rehabilitation.  He cast then-President Bush’s escalation of the War on Drugs as lacking 'enough police officers to catch the violent thugs, enough prosecutors to convict them, enough judges to sentence them, or enough prison cells to put them away for a long time.  He authored the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act [that]... expanded the death penalty, eliminated education funding for imprisoned students, created harsher sentencing guidelines for a wide range of crimes, and increased funding for local police departments and corrections departments....  Perhaps more than any other official of the era, he embodied the Democratic impulse to outflank Republicans from the right by locking more people in jails and prisons.  He helped catalyze the most dramatic expansion of the carceral state in the history of the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world.  He said he was 'not at all' ashamed of his involvement as recently as 2016....

First point.  Our incarceration rate is very high.  Second point.  It may well be driven by the welfare reforms of the 1960s, as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan told us a half a century ago.

The third point is that to Progressive writers the President seems to have some sort of Midas touch, in that everything he touches turns out bad, even when it is better than his Democratic Party opponents.  I frankly don't care if his actions are from a desire for justice reform or are from political calculation.  Either way we get to a better place.

I would observe that the President does seem to be playing this game at several levels, while his opponents are playing at a single level.  Does he prefer his opponent be Senator Sanders or does he prefer it be former Vice President Biden?  Or does he really want former SecState Hillary Clinton?  Or is he indifferent, but enjoys watching the speculation, like entertaining himself by throwing a twig to a little puppy on a lazy afternoon?

In the end the Progressive journalists will think that President Trump is sneakily stealing Black voters by offering them things.  Things like jobs, better wages, less police abuse, better criminal justice outcomes.  They will follow Miss Greta Thunberg and say, "How dare you!"

Hat tip to Ann Althouse.

Regards  —  Cliff

The Spying State

For John, BLUF:  Spies are going to spy.  Congress is supposed to protect us from that.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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From Twitter:

nstapundit.com @instapundit 20 hours ago
A 2015 memo from then-Attorney General @EricHolder reveals that the feds can use FISA to spy on journalists.

Which leads to this article:

Newly Released Eric Holder Memo: Feds Can Use FISA to Spy on Journalists

Here is the sub-headline:

And the guidelines for spying on journalists may be even looser under Trump.

From Reason, by Mr Joe Setyon, 18 September 2018.

Here is the lede plus one:

The federal government can use the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to spy on journalists.  So said a pair of 2015 Justice Department memos, including one from then–Attorney General Eric Holder.

FISA is controversial in itself. The act is supposed to be used to justify surveillance on foreign targets.  But as Reason's Scott Shackford has explained, intelligence agencies often use it to secretly spy on American citizens, sometimes without a warrant.

Did Attorney General Eric Holder not recall the outrage over the FBI, under Director J Edgar Hoover, spying, against the Constitution, on the rev Martin Luther King?  Apparently not.

Then there is this counter-intuitive assertion:

While the memos date to the Obama era, the Trump administration seems willing to snoop on journalists as well.  Earlier this year, the Justice Department demanded the phone and email records of New York Times reporter Ali Watkins in an attempt to find out whether her source, a former Senate aide, had leaked classified information.

Eddington suspects the guidelines for spying on journalists under President Donald Trump may be "looser" than they were under Obama, especially given Trump's "almost daily stated antipathy towards the press as a whole."

Regardless of who's in the White House, one constant remains:  The federal government doesn't seem to have any problems with going after journalists.

Do the editors at Reason realize that because of the Mueller investigation Mr Trump has little to no control over the Department of Justice.  I am not sure we can even call it the Sessions DOJ.  It is probably the Rosenstein DOJ.  It sure seems that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, as part of his silent coup, is trying to make it so.

At the end of the day, however, the point needs to be made that the Department of Justice, rather than thinking of the FISA Court as a limited tool, is widening its use beyond where they should.  It is time for Congress to revisit this statute.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Privilege

For John, BLUF:  One problem facing us with regard to racism is that any solution will likely have winners and losers.  Someone will have to admit to be wrong, or admit that their ancestors were wrong or that they failed to step up when the chance was given.  We need a way for everyone to be a winner.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Atonement as Activism

Here is the sub-headline:

Today’s consciousness-raising on race is less about helping black people than it is about white people seeking grace.

From The American Interest, by Professor John McWhorter, 24 May 2018.

Here is the start:

By the age of 50, you have lived long enough to remember being a mature adult in what is now a distant era.  I recently recalled a conversation I had as a graduate student in 1991 that demonstrates a key change in America’s “conversation” on race over the past 30 years.

A white humanities graduate student was a member of a campus organization that had brought black activist and filmmaker Marlon Riggs to campus to give a talk.  The student recounted that in his critique of racism, Riggs had leveled some potshots at the students themselves.  This surprised and hurt her, as she had supposed that Riggs would consider her and her friends on his side in having invited him to speak.

Today, that same graduate student would be much less likely to take remarks like Riggs’s that way.  Rather, today’s “woke,” educated white people would quite often lap up being apprised of the racism inside of them by a black speaker they paid, lodged, and fed.  That speaker as often as not today is Ta-Nehisi Coates, who charismatically limns America as a cesspool of bigotry in his writing and in talks nationwide, and is joyously celebrated for it by the very people he is insulting.

I was thinking, nearly a decade ago, that maybe we were heading into an age of better race relations, what with the election of President Obama and the appointment of Attorney General Eric Holder.  A decade of lost opportunities.

I think that the Marxist critique has gotten in the way.  People succeed in the United States due to Anglo-Saxon Privilege.  They adopt it.  It isn't about "White" people.  You can see it in Cameroon, where the Anglo-phone Citizens, collectively, do better than the Franco-phone.♠  And when they emigrate to the United States they fit right in.

Later on Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  On the other hand, it looks like the English are giving up their Anglo-Saxon Privilege.

Trump Expanding His Base

For John, BLUF:  Of course he is and an improving economy helps, Speaker Pelosi notwithstanding.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Is President Trump looking to win over African American voters?

Yes, next question.

From The Los Angeles Daily News, by Ms Susan Shelley, 9 June 2018.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Roseann the Insensitive

For John, BLUF:  Ms Roseanne Barr leaped too far out and no one can bring her back without her doing a lot of penance.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Idiot …

From Commentator Rob Eno, originally from Lowell, 30 May 2018.

Here is the item:

You can’t say this … I can’t believe I need to type this in 2018.  At no time is it acceptable to compare a black person to an ape, gorilla, or any other primate.  It’s disgusting, its racist, and it’s horrendous.  Roseanne Barr should have known that, and her tweet likening Valerie Jarrett, who is black, to a character from “Planet of the Apes” was disgusting.  I’m not faulting ABC for firing her.  I’d have done the same thing.

That doesn’t mean that ABC and Hollywood don’t have double standards.  Of course they do.  But defending Roseanne is not the hill any of us should want to die on, because what she did is indefensible.

Hyperbole … You can always count on the media to take an event and spin it out of control.  That’s what MSNBC’s Chris Hayes did last night.  Hayes tweeted:

Roseanne’s problem turned out to be that she far too authentically represented the actual worldview of a significant chunk of the Trump base.

What Hayes and his ilk don’t get is hot takes like that are exactly why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.  People felt emboldened to vote for Trump because no matter what they did, the elites like Hayes were going to call them racist backwoods yokels.

Ms Valerie Jarrett was on President Obama's White House Staff, as Senior Advisor to the President, and lasted eight years in that job.

But Rob is correct.  If you want more Trump the way to get more Trump is to denigrate those who support Mr Trump.  Remember, as the analysis of the 2016 Election, The Great Revolution, tells us, Mr Trump flipped the Electoral College in several states by attracting some 80,000 people who had voted for Senator Barack Obama in 2008 and President Obama in 20212.  They were looking for hope and change and in 2016 they didn't see it coming from Senator Clinton, so switched to Mr Trump.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Valerie Jarrett

Another Assessment of Year One

For John, BLUF:  I totally misread the headline.  It is the author who is an African-American Mother and Veteran, not President Trump.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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My take on Trump's first year as an African-American mom and veteran

Well, of course it is Fox News.  This Opinion Piece is from Ms Kathy Barnette, 20 January 2018.

Here is the lede plus three:

Much has changed since President Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2017. But one thing has remained constant – the anger and vitriol directed at the president from the left, many Democrats, many in the media, and even some folks who call themselves Republicans. Few presidents have been so demonized and denounced.

The president has been accused of being incompetent, a racist, mentally ill, senile and corrupt. Investigations of his alleged collusion with Russia to win the election go on and on and on with no end in sight.

Use these guidelines to save more, make the most of your contributions and build a retirement income plan. The resistance to President Trump has gotten so hysterical that Jen Statsky, a writer and comedian who has written for “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon;” Parks and Recreation” and “Broad City” even tweeted that “if you support Trump you should have your children taken away, etc etc.”

Now that we’ve arrived at the one-year mark of the Trump presidency, I’ve done some soul-searching regarding my support of the man elected by the American people to lead our nation. As a black woman, a mother and a veteran, am I doing the right thing to continue backing President Trump? Is he really as awful – even evil – as his critics claim? Are his ideas half-baked and dangerous? Is he harming the nation I love?

Nice item, worth reading.  She points out that he is making a difference, and that is important.

Exit question.  Which group in America is most hurt by illegal immigration?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff