On the failed assassination attempt of President Donald Trump

It has been reported, I can't say how reliably, that the would-be assassin was an antifa member. It is essential that we Americans make every effort to confine our response to these events toward other antifa members to no more than shunning them ... AND NOTHING MORE!

Thankfully, per early reports from the Pennsylvania hospital that Trump received medical care from afterwards, Pres. Trump seems to have survived with relatively minor gunshot wounds. The early imagery looks like he was shot in the right side of his head at the point his right ear joins his skull. The lack of blood visible in his hair around the wound site makes it seem the bullet travelled entirely through the gristle the upper portion of his right ear consists of, instead of his brain.

Vote for who you like, but reject as violently as necessary any and every attempt to deny us our opportunity to express our political choice.

 

Barack Obama owes Donald Trump a big one

Barack Obama ordered the extra-judicial murder of a teenaged US citizen via drone bomb. Thanks to Donald Trump via the Supreme Court that changes the "murder" to simple "death", having no legal burden for anyone to further justify, since no one from any jurisdiction (whether recognized by the US government or not, so any treaty to the contrary is now null and void), has the legal authority to prosecute any such accusation.

It is now US law that no living president (current or former) may be prosecuted for any action taken "within the ambit of the official duties of the Office of President of the United States". Since every living president ordered arguably criminal actions during their term of office, all of them - Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, and even Jimmy Carter from his hospice bed, was liable potentially to criminal prosecution in any US court from any source - US domestic or foreign. Leaving my personal preferences aside, this is probably the best possible outcome for the future security of the US. Apparently, early legal interpretations of this "still wet ink" ruling are that civil laws regarding the US President is now also the standard for liability for criminal actions taken while in office. And it is effectively impossible to sue a President for actions taken while in office.

That all said, no president has ever had the authority to issue an unlawful order (as defined by the UCMJ) to the US military, who are each and severally prohibited from obeying any such order in any case, so bombing his political opposition is right out, and the same - or effectively so - applies to unlawful orders or instructions to non-military US government employees or "officers of the United States". This most recent SC ruling doesn't add any authority to the powers of the Office of the President, it "merely" extends the by-now traditional civil protections to potential criminal actions as well. The established laws governing impeachment remain in place under this ruling.

I think this ruling is not going to satisfy anyone, but it's still a necessary action by the Supreme Court to protect the government office in which "all of the executive branch authority" of the US government is assigned. Yes, all of the legal cases against Donald Trump must be overturned due to the fact that all of them include actions taken by him while he was still in office at the time he did (or didn't) do the deed.

Ask yourself, do you dislike Trump so much you would destroy the  entire country to attack him?

US Election 2024

These next dozen years or so will tell the tale, but these next 6 months is our national Road To Damascus moment.

RIP Diane Feinstein

 Now, let's see how long it takes Gavin Newsom to appoint himself as her replacement.

The Trump Indictment #2? #3?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxCDVOmGPlo

2024

 So, as announced earlier today, it looks like the 2024 US Presidential election choices will be Trump/? vs Kennedy/?. No matter who gets elected, Americans are gonna be the winners.

Me Quoting Me

As indictment does not equal conviction, neither does prosecution equal guilt. Conviction without guilt may be the greatest tragedy known to humanity, and the ultimate reason sentence should always be filtered through the lens of mercy.

Me

Beating a Silver Lining out of the political clouds

Visiting with my buddy Mike a few minutes ago, in response to my noting the most recent predictions for the mid-terms being House R's 250ish and Senate R's at 54, he asked what they could do to force a policy change from the Biden admin. I suggested a 2 pronged strategy; first, if the new Speaker (presumably McCarthy) and the Senate Maj Leader (McConnell) can dig around deep enough to find the courage to refuse any funding legislation unless and until Pres Biden revokes all of the EO's he signed restricting US domestic oil production and "stop stealing the gas from American fuel tanks", along with initiating impeachment proceedings beginning in January, 2023 against every member of the Biden Admin subject to such actions, would result in a much greater willingness to negotiate honestly within the House and Senate. By initiating 25th amendment proceedings against Biden himself at the same time, the next 2 years should offer an entirely different domestic political discussion if nothing else.

My belief is that it isn't really necessary to "defeat" the Biden Admin so much as it is necessary to force the secondary and tertiary levels of federal government to operate in an unambiguous (which is to say legally attributable) fashion by tying up the Cabinet-level appointees and their immediate subordinates in defending themselves before numerous Congressional committee hearings. This potentially allows the subsequent administration obvious constitutionally sound political grounds for "corrective" legislation starting in 2025 aimed at those levels of government (not to say the Deep State :)) who expose themselves during this period of time.

Surviving the next 2 years if not a single penny more gets shoe horned into the economy will be challenging, so economic hard times are indeed at hand, but the only way to defeat an entrenched opponent is to structure events such that the opponent has no time to design and mount active opposition for long enough to effect substantive change (in classical strategic terms, by changing the ground upon which their efforts are predicated). One immediate tactic to facilitate this future effort would be to organize a letter/email campaign directed at all US Senators to vote "no" on any further monetary legislation during the current term of Congress. At all. No exceptions.

Final note; if the election predictions hold up, there is a plausible possibility for the 2024 election to empower a sufficiently numerous Republican majority at the federal government and state Governor's levels sufficient to impose Constitutional Amendment(s) in 2025/6, but it is necessary to design and organize that effort beginning now.

Tulsi Gabbard - American

 My only comment about Tulsi Gabbard's political and philosophical journey is to note that no one's single step is ever "enough". The journey is the thing of consequence and must be judged in that context.

I've already stated my personal position regarding Lt. Col. Gabbard's political choices on these pages. That said, lets all just see what the future brings.

Magic 8-Ball SEZ

 Staking my claim:

TRUMP/DESANTIS 2024

DESANTIS/GABBARD 2028 & 2032

We need someone at the top of the Executive Branch that has executive branch experience with US space policy ASAP, and Tulsi is gonna need a couple years yet to come to terms with how her party has left her (and so many of the rest of us) behind.

"... all US citizens in Russia and Ukraine should depart immediately."

The US State Dept. has "updated" its official instructions to US travelers in Russia and Ukraine, warning all US citizens depart either country "immediately". This seems to be the news report Jack Posobiec tweeted about earlier today.

"American nationals should immediately leave Russia and Ukraine, the State Department said Thursday, citing potential arrest by Russian security officials."

So, probably not the invasion by US/NATO troops I speculated about on the Twitter.

Thankfully.

Hopefully.

I wish the Obama Curse* wasn't real.

(*"Never underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up."

SSDD

Back in the pre-internet days of 1992, there was a trial of four Los Angeles police officers for their actions while arresting Rodney King the previous year. In my personal experience from the time (I lived in Sylmar, CA at the time - not exactly ground zero, but I could see the helicopters circling over the arrest site), I predict that the Chauvin trial in Minneapolis will follow essentially the identical script.

The state trial, despite Minnesota AG Keith Ellison's best efforts to the contrary, will end in an acquittal of Officer Chauvin due to his third-party documented compliance with Minnesota state law and Minneapolis Police Department policies and procedures in place at the time of the final arrest of George Floyd in 2020. Also like the acquitted Los Angeles police officers 30 years ago, Chauvin will be arrested within days of his acquittal by the US DoJ for violating Floyd's civil rights, even though the arrest was entirely legal, and Chauvin at the least will be convicted by a federal jury with all of his personal property preemptively seized by the US government at the time of his federal arrest.

If he's smart, Chauvin will have already begun negotiating a federal plea deal as I write this, that ends up with him being a felon, but with as little federal prison time as community service sentencing will permit. Maybe he will be able to keep some of his personal possessions.

Whatever else Derek Chauvin experiences in the rest of his life, he can be certain that it will be very, very different to anything he has experienced so far.

UPDATE 4/22/2021: If anyone needs evidence as to why I haven't won the lottery yet, herewith submission #1.

Twice Not Guilty

 Today, Saturday, February 13, 2021, President Donald J. Trump was - again - formally determined to be Not Guilty of any prosecutable act he took as President via the constitutionally mandated legal process (Impeachment). This being so, it follows that there can be no additional prosecution of any action he committed during his presidency. Donald J. Trump enjoys the exact same legal (and other - see: Former Presidents Act) protections as do former Presidents Barrack Obama, George W. Bush, William Jefferson Clinton, and Jimmy Carter (the name variant he used to be sworn into office).

The argument could be made that he does so twice as much as his fellow Presidential alumni, though I have to admit that smacks more than a little of being praised with faint damns.

The current attempts by a Georgia prosecutor to indict former President Trump must now be regarded as unlawful and possibly criminal in nature. IANAL but I believe that absence of authority to do something constitutionally (at either State or Federal levels of constitutional authority) is entirely and only that. Since the US Constitution mandates that Impeachment and Removal From Office are the only means whereby a President may be prosecuted directly for actions taken while in office (and such Removal being the only mechanism making a former President subject to prosecution post-tenure in office), President Trump now enters the exact same legal status as do all of America's still-living former Presidents.

I wish him and all of his colleagues every lawful success in their post-Presidential lives.

Go Marker

 Donald J. Trump did not kill himself.

A Molehill To Die On

The Trump Administration, and to an extent the GOP more generally, argue that there has been fraud committed in the 2020 election for the US presidency. I have heard/read it argued that since there appears to be an insufficiency of fraud to alter the projected outcome the media has announced, we shouldn't make any effort to discover the extent of the fraud or punish the perpetrators. 

The question seems to be that there hasn't been enough cheating to merit any corrective action being taken. Let me offer this analogy; the Democratic party seems to be arguing that the amount of rape that occurred in Nanking isn't enough to justify any effort at punishing the occupying Japanese troops in 1937.

In the several states in which criminal influence on the 2020 election can be proven to ordinary US criminal standards, the ballots that cannot be proven to have been counted honestly must be dis-allowed. The individuals that can be proven to have made that occur should be prosecuted for that crime(s). If that action changes the electoral outcome (one way or another), then that is the result of the 2020 election. The states appoint the electors the legal vote count establishes. The Electoral College informs the Congress, which then certifies the election, just as the Constitution requires.

The amount of criminality prosecuted makes no difference as far as the legitimacy of the election (or the identity of the candidate subsequently sworn into office) is concerned, so long as the Constitutional requirements are satisfied. It should be the minimum standard expected by any citizen that legal, transparently honest elections be the only acceptable mechanism allowed to determine US elections.

Like rape, a little bit of fraud is unacceptable, and anyone arguing otherwise must be considered to be pursuing an equally unacceptable outcome.

Point of Order, Ms X

In an overall quite unobjectionable post at The Adventures of Roberta X, I do feel it necessary to point out her oversimplification of the concept of "press".

Specifically, this:

When I wrote about law enforcement apparently targeting journalists, in reports a Federal judge found so credible he grated a temporary restraining order, I received a few comments.  They were...heated.  Vitriolic.  The people who wrote them are free to hold such ideas, of course.  I'm not obliged to post them on my blog, but I will quote from them in order to address the significant concerns they raise.

Followed later in the post by this:

 As for "lefty so-called journalists," there's nothing in the Bill of Rights that limits press freedom to one political leaning or another: John Stossel, Glenn Greenwald, Sean Hannity, Rachael Maddow and some nitwit with a blog are all protected from government interference, even when they're offering up nothing but opinion. " It is generally understood that the government is expected to not shoot them, especially when they have taken pains to make themselves identifiable as "press.

My thanks to Roberta X for including me in her list of protected examples.  :)

All of which to frame my question; what is the practical distinction between "press" and "activist", and does the one necessarily preclude being the other? If so, by what degree, and by what discernible measure available to the average onlooker?

As justification for my questions, I submit the documented actions of Canadian journalist/activist Lauren Southern. A paid (and therefore professional) journalist for online media companies, Southern nonetheless actively participated in the activities she was reporting on as a clearly identified member of the "press", an activity she continued to various degree in her subsequent professional iteration as a documentarian.

As Ms. Southern's past actions make clear, there is a very real distinction that needs to be made between those who "report" from within the ranks of those committing a "political action", and those who clearly, physically delineate the separation between themselves and those they are reporting on, regardless of whether, or by what means, they mark themselves and/or their apparel.

Unless and to the degree the effort is undertaken to make that distinction between press (those observing and commentating on others visible, or at least demonstrably known to them, but of which they are discernibly not a part) and activists (those who participate in the activities which they may or may not be also reporting on - regardless of any 1st Amendment-begging disguise they may affect while doing so), there can never be any practical means for police (who are by design the action arm(s) of government's enforcement efforts) to make any reliable distinction between them. Are we as a society to accept that any random seditionist or scofflaw is to be permitted carte blanche because of a questionable mastery of a Sharpie pen? Taking the opposite tack, where in the 1st Amendment is delineated the means and mechanisms by which "press" must be identified to qualify for the stipulated freedoms therein?

As should be clear by now, the concept of "freedom of speech" and "freedom of the press" are not at all simple in their instantiation, nor are they amenable to simplistic applications of theory or principle by any of the involved parties. Those who choose to take active part in reporting on events of the day, especially those who do so in the moment, necessarily must also assume an elevated degree of personal responsibility for what befalls them as a result of their immediate presence to events. Similarly, we citizens should make a regular practice of joggling the elbows of our state and national legislators to craft legislation that assists government (and citizens more generally) making spontaneous distinction between bystander observers, and those involved more directly, a greater degree of likelihood.

It truly is essential that a self-governing people have ready access to knowledge of events effecting the function of their society. Reliably being able to discern who said what to whom, and within which topic or activity that all took place, really has to be the minimum necessary knowledge base that any society needs to develop the means for its citizens to obtain in a clearly discernibly biased fashion. Unless and until we do that, we are going to continue to suffer examples of police applying the tactic(s) of the day (more commonly night) to all and sundry they come in contact with "in the heat of the moment", and the content of the news of the day to be opaque and misleading at best. I think we can all agree that the status quo is far less than desirable, but the currently available alternatives seem at best less than satisfactory either.

Oklahoma, the Sooner AND Later state.

Granted that nobody really knows what the Supreme Court ruling issued today regarding tribal reservation land within the Oklahoma state boundaries, at this point in time (hours after the SC ruling was published) the only change in the legal status quo appears to involve tribal members being charged and prosecuted for state law violations committed within tribal reservation territory as established when Oklahoma was made a US state. As with all tribal reservations recognized by the US government, federal law enforcement has the primary responsibility for investigating and prosecuting crimes committed by tribal members on tribal reservation lands.

Of course, the interwebs are going  ... what's the clinical term? Batshit Crazy, that's it!

This is certainly going to make the rest of 2020 much more interesting, but I don't think anything substantive will happen in the next several months. What needs to happen is that the Secretary of the Interior needs to immediately establish a commission to address the consequences of this latest SC ruling between the involved parties (the US .gov, Oklahoma state .gov, the various tribal interests involved, at the least - and hopefully most) to determine what they regard as an equitable resolution available under existing legal agreements. Only if that fails of an acceptable resolution should Congress be invited to finally complete Oklahoma's acceptance to statehood by declaring the resolution to the tribal reservation question that Congress failed to resolve at the time.

He said, He said.

Kim du Toit posts an argument on the practical necessity to occasionally modify the rights Americans are recognized to possess by our national Constitution, which I have linked to below. It's a well-written argument, as is his usual fashion, which I urge you to read in full, as otherwise what follows won't make a lot of sense. Below is my comment to Kim's post in full (and you probably ought to go read his post first):

File this comment under: Bone; picking thereof.

Your post is quite well argued, Kim, as is your usual. However, in this case, I think you overlook a necessary distinction.

Numerous US courts have ruled that rights cannot be restricted or denied, even temporarily, so your basic premise is flawed as both a practical matter and as a point of law. It is further well established that the mutual exercise of immutable rights can, and routinely are, subject to lawful constraint, so as to provide the maximum opportunity for all citizens to exercise their rights without violating other’s exercise of their rights.

The distinction between possessing rights and exercising rights is not just a pedantic one, I submit, as your post makes clear.

There already is a substantial body of law regulating the exercise of rights by US citizens and residents. Whether, how, and to what extent those laws should be modified (or removed) ought to be a routinely ongoing topic of discussion at all levels of social and political discourse in our country (and any reader of this blog knows that to be the actual case). Framing discussion about emergent or transitory circumstances threatening human existence (or even only general welfare) in terms of specifically limited exercise of rights, which would necessarily include return to the status quo, avoids the question of infringement upon, or denial of, rights entirely.

How you frame an argument is often more than half the battle of winning it, and I suggest you’ve framed this particular argument poorly. Preempt the concept of denying rights by confining the discussion to ways and means of temporarily adapting existing regulations on the mutual exercise of rights between citizens.

http://www.kimdutoit.com/2020/06/11/rocks-and-hard-places/

Given: There WILL be cops ...

... and by cops, I mean organized efforts to impose legal restraint upon everybody.

The inescapable failure inherent to this whole "defund the cops" idea is that it completely reverses the problem. Cops enforce the laws of the legal jurisdiction that employs them. If you want cops to enforce laws differently, change the laws cops are required to enforce. Change the training cops receive so as to change the ways and means they are trained to use to enforce the laws. Change the courts so as to remove the unlawful separation of responsibility from actions taken ("qualified immunity" has no basis in written law, but is instead the intended result of the US Supreme Court ruling in  Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982)  ,and is generally defined as follows:

"Specifically, qualified immunity protects a government official from lawsuits alleging that the official violated a plaintiff's rights, only allowing suits where officials violated a “clearly established” statutory or constitutional right. When determining whether or not a right was “clearly established,” courts consider whether a hypothetical reasonable official would have known that the defendant’s conduct violated the plaintiff’s rights. Courts conducting this analysis apply the law that was in force at the time of the alleged violation, not the law in effect when the court considers the case.

Qualified immunity is not immunity from having to pay money damages, but rather immunity from having to go through the costs of a trial at all. Accordingly, courts must resolve qualified immunity issues as early in a case as possible, preferably before discovery.

Qualified immunity only applies to suits against government officials as individuals, not suits against the government for damages caused by the officials’ actions. Although qualified immunity frequently appears in cases involving police officers, it also applies to most other executive branch officials. While judges, prosecutors, legislators, and some other government officials do not receive qualified immunity, most are protected by other immunity doctrines."  See: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/qualified_immunity

 IANAL but "qualified immunity" seems to be an obvious extension of "judicial immunity" by the Supreme Court which itself is a matter of written law (see: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1983).

Is this a desirable condition of American jurisprudence? Call or write your state's Attorney General's office, call or write your state's Governor's office, call or write your Member of Congress and your state's Senator's offices, register your opinion and legislative desires with them. Make your voice heard, agitate with those who have the ability to make the needed change(s). But do so from an inescapable minimum condition of existence; there will be cops, because we need cops - preferably one's determinedly working from a clearly delineated position of neutrality between the generally conflicting interests of members of US society.

The assertion that "the law is what it is" is probably made only slightly less frequently than is "the law is an ass", but equally inescapably, the law is ... and in some form or another will continue to be. That being so, it is desirable and necessary to frequently review the law, and those who are employed to enforce it. Not just cops, prosecutors, and judges either; there is a serious argument being made that the US (at all levels of governance, not just federally) has too many laws, too many of which are already part of previously existing legislation (which is how a law is legally made - executive orders that do not specifically reference an enabling act of legislation do not have force of law no matter how hard or often a Governor or President says otherwise).

Changing the laws of the US (again, at all levels of governance) would be the most certain means of reforming police interactions with the general public. Changing police training to reflect the enforcement requirements of the law would complete the reform process. Doing all of that at the federal level would almost certainly be necessary to achieve at least some degree of national uniformity of enforcement (and achieving that degree of uniformity would itself be a drawn out process, if only due to the complexity of competing interests inherent to the multi-level nature of US legal and political structure). While a dramatic performance before the House Ways and Means Committee demonstrating the sheer volume of federal legislation (and how much less is actually required to achieve the same - arguably better - levels of public protection) would certainly be entertaining, the reality is this will be a long and contentious effort requiring multiple iterations of change.

Personal note: I lived in S. California during 1991 and '92. I'm quite familiar with the events surrounding the arrest of Rodney King and the prosecution of his arresting police officers (I lived roughly a mile away from the arrest scene). I fully expect that the essentially identical legal process will play out in Minnesota, probably during the 2020/21 winter months (for what I regard as obvious reasons). The officers will be found "not guilty" by reason of qualified immunity in state court, and in very short order thereafter found "guilty" in federal court of violating George Floyd's civil rights, for which they will be imprisoned for a number of years. It goes without saying that Floyd's family will receive a financial settlement from Minnesota.

If we are going to achieve this change in US laws and how they are enforced, and I agree that we should if we wish to continue as citizens of a recognizably USA, then we must begin to organize the mechanisms necessary to doing all of that.

Or, we can just go ahead and form the national circular firing squad and do it that way.

Chinese Takeout and Delivery

I'm currently re-reading David Hackworth's book About Face (I'm at the part where he is recalling his reaction to the lack of Lessons Learned by the US Army regarding counter-insurgency and anti-guerrilla operational requirements in Vietnam circa early-1966 while assigned as escort officer to S. L. A. Marshall). I'm wondering if we in the US aren't going through something similar right now as regards PRC offensive actions against us (not to mention the rest of the world).

It seems not unreasonable to assume that the PLA (along with its subordinate Naval and Air Force components - everyone in the People's Republic of China military is a soldier, whether assigned to an army, navy or air force position) is willing to regard the current coronavirus pandemic as a useful model for determining the various responses to be expected to future, deliberate offensive actions against the US and other countries. It is also well known, if not often commented upon in the US media, that the PRC is active throughout the North and Central American region, whether via the PLA, PLAN, PLAAF, or other PRC agencies.

It occurs to me that now, during the current largely shut down status of so much of US national activity (industrial, commercial, governmental), that an effort by the PLA to develop a guerrilla organizational structure from within the ranks of the existing Mexican smuggling gangs shouldn't be all that out of the question.

The PLA has disrupted Nicaraguan government and societal stability to further the PRC's construction of a canal through that country to rival the Panama Canal, the resulting violence having effect on human migration patterns out of Nicaragua (from there into Guatemala, from there into Mexico, from there …). The PRC is well known to have established relationships with Mexican drug cartels to supply them with drug or drug precursor materials. Mexican "drug cartels" are in actual fact drug and anything else smugglers, so how outlandish an idea is it to suppose the PLA isn't working right now to supply Mexican smuggling gangs with the means to also smuggle a ready-made-to-order guerilla insurgency into the US as well?

The PRC is demonstrably willing to actively work to permit the wide-spread dispersal of this latest coronavirus around the world; why wouldn't they equally be willing to inflict a plausibly deniable physical attack on the US by "Mexican bandits"?

I can offer no evidence for this guerilla warfare scenario other than my willingness to not presume my enemies stupidity. Is that sufficient to justify investigating the current reality on the Mexican ground, before it "just appears out of nowhere" here on US ground?