Roundup
(1) Here’s Alan Dershowitz on the January 6th propaganda theater and the ACLU – not that anyone on the left cares anymore what Dershowitz says:
During a recent appearance on the Just the News, Not Noise television show, the professor emeritus of Harvard law school and longtime First Amendment defender made clear that his support of the ACLU has come to an end.
On Thursday, Dershowitz told co-hosts John Solomon and Amanda Head that nothing former President Donald Trump said on January 6 rose to the level of incitement of a mob – a charge for which Trump was impeached for the second time.
The only people, Dershowitz said, who would argue that Trump’s language on January 6, 2021 could be exclusionary under the First Amendment are “what used to be called the ACLU.”
The ACLU’s name has become Orwellian.
(2) Two differing opinions on the compromise gun law in the Senate. John Hinderaker thinks it’s pretty good for the most part. It does contain something of which I think a lot of people here will approve:
For buyers under 21 years of age, [the bill] requires an investigative period to review juvenile and mental health records, including checks with state databases and local law enforcement.
As I understand it, the NICS system currently does not have access to juvenile justice records. Thus an 18 or 19 year old will show up as having no record, and therefore no impediment to buying guns. And yet, juveniles commit a high percentage of violent crimes. This strikes me as a good step in the direction of not coddling juveniles to the extent we have in the past.
However, here’s a writer at RedState who thinks it’s a bad bill. I’m perhaps in the middle between the two opinions, because I recognize that red flag laws (also contained in the bill) can be abused by false accusations, as can closing the “boyfriend loophole.”
(3) Here’s more from Caroline Glick about the similarities between Israel and the US at this point in terms of the ends-justify-the-means politics of the left, and their efforts to destroy both Netanyahu and Trump through lawfare. It’s really quite extraordinary and very depressing, but worth reading.
A royal warship that sank off the east coast of Britain more than 300 years ago while carrying a future king was unveiled by researchers on Friday who kept the discovery secret for 15 years to protect the wreck from damage.
I’m rather amazed they managed to keep the secret all that time. The king was the future King James II of England.
“Because the ship sank so quickly, nobody would have rescued anything,” Jowitt said, describing it as “a fantastic time capsule”.
Other artefacts include navigational equipment, personal possessions, clothes and wine bottles – some with their contents intact.
(5) Here’s a sloppy article that’s all too typical of much of what I read these days from some people on the right. I’m surprised it was published in The Federalist, a site that’s usually good. The author, a young woman named Kylee Zempel, is trying to make a point about the left’s use of tragedies such as Uvalde to ram through more and more gun control.
That’s not the part of the article with which I have a problem. My disagreement is with her false equivalence between the situation faced by the police at Uvalde and a recent shooting attempt at a Alabama school where, very very fortunately, all the outer doors were locked and the perp couldn’t enter the school, and police therefore were able to engage him outside the school and kill him, with none of them or any child or teacher being injured. I submit that, if the cops in Uvalde had been fortunate enough to encounter that particular situation – a perp unable to get in because of locked doors – we’d hardly be hearing about the town because the same result would have occurred as in Alabama.
It’s not that one set of police officers was so brave and the other so cowardly (I’ve written a lot already on why I think the latter designation for the Uvalde officers is way premature so I won’t go into that all over again here). It’s that the situations were very very different in terms of the set of circumstances the officers faced. The Uvalde outer doors did have locks that should have worked automatically – but tragically, one of them didn’t work that day. We don’t know why, but we know that this was the problem that launched the entire tragedy, and it wasn’t about the Uvalde officers either.
As I’ve said before, the Uvalde operation seems to have been disorganized and chaotic, with poor communication. The problem the officers had with keys is puzzling and strange, and may or may not have been the fault of the police; I don’t know yet. And I have said many times I will condemn them and fault them if I learn enough to know. It’s not premature to say they were disorganized and communication was poor. But it’s premature to call them cowards, as that article does (she also calls their failures “criminal”) and as so many do.
And I’m surprised that so many people on the right who have read what is written in the MSM so far about Uvalde seem to be looking at the MSM uncritically this time – even though we know how much they get wrong and how much they distort – without thinking of all the things that so far have been left unsaid and unasked, things we need to know before making more judgments.
On the Zempel piece (5): it was an *Alabama* school, not a Georgia school. Gadsden, Alabama.
Hubert:
Thanks, will fix.
IMO since a young man thought the ACLU was a Marxist operation
The HMS Gloucester is a awesome find, hope I see more of it
Whenever I think of James II, I think of “Lillibullero,” a tune that was composed by Henry Purcell and acquired some satirical lyrics by Thomas Wharton during the two years leading up to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. James had appointed a man named Richard Talbot as Lord Deputy of Ireland, and Wharton is imagining a sarcastic conversation between two Irishmen about the imminent arrival of the Catholic Talbot and its dire implications for the Protestants. The word “Lillibullero” itself originated as a password among Irish Catholics during the Irish rebellion of 1641. It’s been said that James knew his days as king were numbered when he heard the sentries outside his bedchamber whistling Purcell’s tune.
The tune was used as the ident for the BBC World Service for a number of years and is still the quick march for the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME).
Here are two versions, one sung with three of the original 11 stanzas of the 1686 version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9bmkDigt-s
And the REME band’s version, which includes the French tune “Auprès de ma blonde” as well as “Lilliburlero”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHRUPNy3Qds&ab_channel=knackwurstchen
As for James II himself, he was mocked by the Irish for years as Séamas an Chaca (“James the S–t” in Irish) after his speedy flight from the field after the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
I looked up the Alabama incident a day or two ago. The item I noted was that the guy threatening the school was unarmed, or at least any weapons he might have had were not mentioned. He was trying to take a cop’s weapon. Cops are trained for that, although it is very threatening and can easily go wrong. Not remotely the same as Uvalde.
}}} And I’m surprised that so many people on the right who have read what is written in the MSM so far about Uvalde seem to be looking at the MSM uncritically this time –
Gell-Mann Amnesia.
https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
— Michael Crichton (1942-2008) —
I read the article, and it was linked by a commenter here, but thought she jumped hip deep into the “we knows.”
Stoke the rage machine, get some clicks for going with the mob.
“A riot is an ugly thing.” She may get her credibility back.
(2) Many years ago I did a deep dive on the 2nd Amendment and came to this conclusion:
– The 2nd Amendment is the “Middle Ground”.
– And the middle ground is a desirable objective because it has a good chance of being a “stable” solution
***
Most discussions of Gun Control start with boundaries that eliminate half of the options. And any discussion of Gun Control needs to start with defining the “complete” negotiation framework (i.e., the polar opposite boundary of ‘no adult citizen can own a gun’ is not the 2nd Amendment).
Negotiation Framework:
• One boundary is: No adult civilian* can own a gun
• The other boundary is: All adult civilians must own a gun
* = civilian is defined as: Not a member of Law Enforcement or Military
With the complete negotiation framework properly defined, it is possible to determine what is the “middle ground”. Determining the middle ground is a desirable objective because it has a good chance of being a “stable” solution.
A Gun Control solution that Prohibits (no adult civilians) – or Mandates (all adult civilians) – would require significant time & money to implement and maintain.
Letting each adult civilian decide for themselves would require significantly less ** time & money to implement and maintain.
** = some time & money would need to be spent on factors that impact Gun Control (e.g., criminal penalties, mental health issues, underage)
The right to decide if they (adult civilian) wish to own a gun – or not own a gun – is the middle ground, and a stable solution.
The 2nd Amendment protects the middle ground and supports a stable solution.
Lastly, protecting the middle ground and supporting a stable solution makes the 2nd Amendment a “common sense” approach. And a common sense approach has the best chance of being widely accepted by the public – and standing the test-of-time (both attributes of the 2nd Amendment).
you ask the wrong question, what is the objective, the objective like o’brien told winston, is power, its not about a well informed citizenry, that can make decision, the State knows the people are a rabble, hence brechts commentary of the 17th of June riots, they decide what is speech, who should be protected and why, who will be fed, and in what ways, The Anglosphere, remember when that was a thing, what did it turn out for the most part, pieces of Oceania, Australian citizens beaten in the streets, canadian truckers dispossessed of their property, as for Airship One, well not nearly the worst, King John must wonder how easy it was to pen people like animals,
that guy:
Aren’t the boundaries actually these?:
• One boundary is: No adult civilian* can own a gun
• The other boundary is: All adult civilians have the right to own a gun if they choose to do so
TommyJay:
If that’s true, then it’s even more different than I thought. Utterly different.
why do we think it would be otherwise,
https://auronmacintyre.substack.com/p/gop-waves-the-white-flag-on-red-flag?sd=pf
The ACLU has declared itself to be an enemy of the Constitution. In doing so it has delegitimized itself.
The proposed compromise gun law will not be effective and thus merely a ratcheting toward more restrictive gun control.
“Trudeau — You can’t use a gun for self-protection in Canada…”
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/trudeau-you-cant-use-a-gun-for-self-protection-in-canada/
The similarities between Israel and the US at this point in terms of the ends-justify-the-means politics of the left are not surprising. The Marxist Left has ever had but one playbook.
I suspect that a number of people died getting the future King James II of England off that ship.
I agree that the situations in Uvalde and Alabama were decidedly different. I agree that the police in Uvalde would have reacted as was the case in Alabama.
“The problem the officers had with keys is puzzling and strange” neo
Since it is the most critical factor in the delay, it must be answered in an unequivocally straightforward and detailed manner that leaves no uncertainty as to exactly what occured.
‘Shit happens’ won’t cut it.
Geoffrey Britain:
I think the keys question will be answered some day – in a lengthy report many months from now.
At the moment, people are trying to sort it out because there are many parts to it.
Plus the MSM isn’t asking the question and other questions it should be asking.
It is usual for the participants to wait while the FBI etc. are doing an investigation. At this point, the MSM and the mob is also encouraging hatred of the police, and of course the FBI has shown its propensity for charging people for lying to them when sometimes they are merely mistaken or misremembering.
What is this demand for instant and complete clarity (not necessarily from you, but from many people)? Life doesn’t work like that when things like this happen. I’d like clarity too, but I understand that it takes time and effort.
neo asks,
“Aren’t the boundaries actually these?:
• One boundary is: No adult civilian* can own a gun
• The other boundary is: All adult civilians have the right to own a gun if they choose to do so”
The polar opposite of ‘forbidden’ is… mandatory.
The “other boundary” you cite is the stable middle ground. It’s our choice as to have or not to have.
Heinlein wrote of an imagined future society where everyone was armed or nearly so, such that criminals knew that a prospective victim was almost certainly armed and proficient in the use of their arms. “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”
It would be interesting to see if the end of dueling among the social elite* paralled a decline in overly formal and polite manners.
* my impression is that the ‘commoners’ did not engage in formal duels, the “Code Duelo” was practiced by the uppermost classes.
neo,
I certainly hope it will be answered. But in this you presume that the FBI can be trusted to offer as accurate a report as possible.
I see no basis for that expectation and little hope for it.
In allowing itself to be so politicized, the FBI has utterly destroyed its credibility. Given that the left, which clearly controls the FBI and is, as much as possible using every instance of gun violence to eventuate the disarming of the law abiding American… it is entirely likely that the FBI report will support (as much as possible) the Left’s efforts toward a gun control that effectively disarms the public.
@neo, @Geoffrey Britain
“The polar opposite of ‘forbidden’ is… mandatory”
• This is exactly the point I was making concerning what the ‘true’ negotiating parameters are.
“The other boundary is: All adult civilians have the right to own a gun if they choose to do so”
• This is exactly the point I was making concerning what “half” of the negotiating parameters middle ground consistent of.
• The other “half” is: All adult civilians have the right to not own a gun if they choose to do so”.
• That is the stable middle ground that GB and I wrote about (make sense).
• I’ll add that my impression is most people have been conditioned to think of the negotiating boundaries in much the same way neo expressed them – have not heard/ read others express way that I have – i.e., eliminate “half” of the negotiating framework from the start.
One can surely imagine just how busy the ACLU must be—ought to be?—these days:
“Have you heard about the 41 pro-life organizations and churches that have been vandalized in the last 40 days?”—
https://notthebee.com/article/41-pro-life-organizations-and-churches-have-been-vandalized-in-the-last-40-days
H/T Instapundit.
(Though it’s entirely possible they just haven’t read about it in the papers….)
Thanks for that PA Cat. I knew the tune but not the history behind it. Here is another well known Irish tune whose history you may not be aware:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6X69pej9Eg
Unfortunately there are some who are trying to ban the tune because it was the regimental march of General Custer:
https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/ireland-song-garryowen-banned-custer
Xylourgos–
I know about “Garryowen” because it’s the regimental march of the First Cavalry Division based at Fort Hood in Texas. The division still has a horse-mounted unit as well as the usual tanks and artillery. Its shoulder patch has a horse’s head on it.
Here is a link to a page about “Garryowen” as the division’s official regimental song– lyrics included as well as an mp3 file of the band playing the tune:
https://1cda.org/history/garryowen/
Something to tick off everyone
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/three-blind-kings-edward-luttwak
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/commemorating-614-%E2%80%93-congressional-baseball-frontpagemagcom/
Can’t the Democrats EVER tell the Truth?
“Jan. 6 panel gets caught spreading a whopper worthy of Russia collusion, Biden laptop;
“Capitol police chief says there is ‘no evidence,’ as Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney alleged, that a GOP lawmaker ran a reconnaissance mission for Jan. 6 protesters”
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/jan-6-panel-gets-caught-spreading-whopper-worthy-russia-collusion
N.B. The above question is, of course, rhetorical. They NEVER tell the Truth because they believe it pays to lie and then double and triple down. And they’re right…because they never have to pay any price for lying, cheating, stealing, corrupting. If it looks as though they might have to pay a price, all they have to do is change the rules and/or have the media cover it all up for them…and VOILA! Back to business as usual.
Regarding the upcoming election, they’ll have to find a way to steal it again or shut down the Republican party or shut down elections altogether.
Where we ended our last war
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10913819/How-Afghan-ministers-fled-country-millions-invested-luxury-homes.html
And just a few more whoppers…
“Raphael Warnock Blames Brother’s Drug Conviction on Systemic Racism. Court Records Tell a Different Story.”—
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/raphael-warnock-blames-brothers-drug-conviction-on-systemic-racism-court-records-tell-a-different-story/
“The tale of two seditions: Justice and House disagree over Trump’s Jan. 6 role”—
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3521753-the-tale-of-two-seditions-justice-and-house-disagree-over-trumps-jan-6-role/
“J6 Committee Walks Back Chairman’s Claim Of ‘No Criminal Referrals'”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/j6-committee-walks-back-chairmans-claim-no-criminal-referrals
H/T Powerline blog for all
They just can’t seem to help themselves….
(Are there any 12-step programs for politicians who can’t stop lying?…)
Back to the 2nd Amendment. When it was written there was no upper boundary to what citizens could have. I believe that up until 1934 there was no limit to what people could own. Every time the government enacts a gun “control “ law some freedom under the 2nd Amendment is taken away. The 2nd has nothing to do with hunting, it has everything to do with the human right to self defense and defense of the country. This is what the Founders wanted.
The tragedy at the Uvalde school represents a failure of multiple units of government. Most attention has been focused on the local police actions on the day of the shooting, but as you point out those actions are still very clouded. What we do know is that before that day the local police were ill-prepared, poorly trained and lacking with necessary equipment to deal with a sadly foreseeable crisis. That government failure rests not merely with the police chief, but with the elected official who failed their responsibility for oversight.
Your comment treats the fact that the door was not locked as a sort of random circumstance separating the Uvalde tragedy from the Alabama non-event, but it was not random. Government employees at the school failed to provide simple locking mechanisms for doors (or failed to maintain them) so that a closed door was automatically locked to the outside. Such mechanisms are commonly used for all sorts of businesses. This simple and inexpensive solution would have directly prevented this tragedy, but it goes largely unmentioned and the government employees responsible are not subject to the same scrutiny as the police who at least showed up. Similarly, the same sorts of simple and inexpensive door alarms and cameras that many of us have at our home – a few hundred dollar SimpliSafe –
would have given the teachers in the attacked classroom at least the extra 10 second warning they would have needed to lock the classroom doors. Speaking of classroom door locks, a few dollars for strategically placed key safes and labeled copies of keys could have allowed police to breach the doors.
Two days after the tragedy, I went to my granddaughters preschool with my daughter. At this private school, all of the common sense safety measures I have mentioned and more were in place. No one could enter the school except through a two door system and ID. All emergency exits to the outside automatically locked to the outside, all classroom doors could be locked automatically from strategically placed “panic” buttons and every classroom has video cameras for parent observation and security. The same system are in place in the Catholic and Montesori schools our other grandchildren attend. Why are so many government schools so short on common sense security and why does MSM never notice when the inevitable tragedy occurs. Money is not the problem, common sense security is not expensive, Cutting a few diversity administrators in public school system would buy a lot of self-locking doors, security cams and alarms.
We need to remind our selves that cops, teachers, elected officials and school administrators are all unaccountable bureaucrats. Until good folks at the local level wake-up and hold them accountable or take their kids outside of their control, tragedies like Uvalde will continue.
@ Miguel cervantes > “Something to tick off everyone”
Indeed.
Great interview of Luttwak – who I knew nothing about.
Many insights into Russia and Putin especially. (Questions in bold.)
@ PA Cat in re Purcell’s march Lilliburlero.
YouTube cued up another version, purely instrumental, very nice, but I had to laugh at one of the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrmyXr4hbBY
Folkekons: La Marche du Prince D’Orange (Lilliburlero) FolkBaroque
Colin McDonald
1 year ago
Beautifully played – seems a shame to have to record a long ago playground version with a refrain ‘Rumble and bump, and slide on your rump, Liliburlero, thumpetty-thump!’
John Witten on June 14, 2022 at 12:37 pm
Great comment about common sense, relatively inexpensive security protections.
I suspect there is a lot of “it can’t happen here”, or “it won’t happen here” mindset out there, so these measures are not considered or taken seriously enough, widely enough.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/GOP-Mayra-Flores-first-Mexican-born-17240888.php