Author Archives: Dana Pico

Posted on by

Democrats really, really hate our constitutional rights! (Part 2)

We noted, just yesterday, that Democrats really, really hate our constitutional rights! The immediate point of that article was to note how Governor Michelle Cordova[1]While the Governor of New Mexico does not respect her husband enough to have taken his last name, as per The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not show such disrespect to him, and always … Continue reading (D-NM) tried to ban the open or concealed carrying of firearms in the city of Albuquerque and its surrounding county, Bernalillo, including by residents who have gone through the process and obtained concealed carry permits, by executive order.

But Governor Cordova is hardly the only one who wants to take away your constitutional rights under the Second Amendment! Far-left Govenor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) wants to do the same.

Gov. Gavin Newsom Officially Calls for Convention to Change US Constitution

by Richard Moorhead • Friday, September 15, 2023 • 3:19 PM PDT

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is eyeing a change to the United States Constitution.

The state’s legislature on Thursday approved a resolution in support of Newsom’s call for a 28th Constitutional amendment, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The amendment would enshrine a list of Democratic gun-control policy priorities into federal law.

Can we tell the truth here? The “list of Democratic gun-control policy priorities” is really the bare minimum away with which the left believe that they can achieve under the Second Amendment. The left would like nothing more than to implement the New York law invalidated by the Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen 597 U. S. ____ (2022), laws which virtually prohibited the private ownership of firearms, even for self-defense, unless government officials judged that you had a good enough reason to be issued a permit . . . and living in a crime-ridden area wasn’t a good enough reason.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ought to be easy to understand:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

But, of course, there are always those, including those who are themselves guarded by armed men, who do not want Other People to be allowed to keep and bear arms. And thus we’ve had the Second Amendment violated for more than 200 hundred years, as various states passed laws to restrict Americans from owning firearms. In United States v Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876), the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment only prohibited the federal government from banning private ownership of firearms:

The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second Amendment means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress, and has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the National Government.

That the First Congress, which wrote the Second Amendment, would have thought that the right to keep and bear arms could ever be limited by governments, federal or state, when the first battle of our Revolution was fought because patriots in Massachusetts were resisting Royal Governor Thomas Gage’s firearms confiscation orders, and when many Americans were living on the frontier, needing guns to hunt for game, and to defend themselves from the Indians.

Under the ridiculous Cruikshank decision, states, counties, and municipalities could ban the private ownership of firearms. It took until District of Columbia v Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), for the Court to hold that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, and McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010) incorporated the Heller decision to apply to the states. A full 219 years passed between the ratification of the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court finally applying it to the states.

Back to the originally cited article:

California is requesting a Constitutional convention to enshrine the amendment. For the amendment to be considered, two-thirds of state legislatures would have to vote in favor of a convention, according to the Times.

The proposed “Right to Safety Amendment” would limit legal gun ownership to adults 21 and older, enact universal federal background checks on gun sales, create a mandatory “reasonable waiting period” for gun purchases, and ban the purchase of many forms of semiautomatic rifles.

The article as cited here included a photo of Governor Newsom behind a podium with the heading “Gun Safety Laws Work,” but unless the gun laws include the total prohibition of firearms, they really haven’t worked. As we noted yesterday, Governor Cordova stated:

We’ve passed common-sense gun legislation, including red flag laws, domestic violence protections, a ban on straw purchases, and safe storage laws; dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to a fund specifically to help law enforcement hire and retain officers; increased penalties for violent offenders and provided massive support to intervention programs,

yet she decided that those “common-sense” gun laws were not enough, as New Mexico, which has the third-highest firearms mortality rate in the nation. Chicago, which has strict gun control laws, is one of our nation’s leaders in homicides. And, as we have previously documented, in Pennsylvania, where the gun laws are uniform throughout the state, Philadelphia, with 12.08% of the Commonwealth’s population, had over half the homicides in the Keystone State. The numbers don’t lie.

The Democrats don’t want to look at the actual causes of violence, and have reliably informed us that criminals people only break the law — racist laws which were passed by white supremacists, I would like to point out — because they have been poor, disenfranchised, and condemned to live in disinvested-in neighborhoods segregated by redlining, and are struggling just to survive. Instead, they mostly ignore crime in the inner cities, and react only when an innocent is shot and killed, as Mrs Cordova did, as Mr Newsom did, because it is wholly politically incorrect to look into the actual causes of crime, the actual causes of shootings and killings.

It’s not as though the Democrats don’t know the truth; it’s that they can’t handle the truth, the truth that most crimes, and most shootings, and most killings do not occur because the laws are lacking, but because there are cultures in our larger cities which enable crime in those areas.

References

References
↑1 While the Governor of New Mexico does not respect her husband enough to have taken his last name, as per The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not show such disrespect to him, and always refer to married women by their proper names. We do not, however, change the direct quotes of others.
Posted on by

Democrats really, really hate our constitutional rights!

Vacations are wonderful, but for a blogger, they do have a downside. When I heard about the executive order by Governor Michelle Cordova[1]While the Governor of New Mexico does not respect her husband enough to have taken his last name, as per The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not show such disrespect to him, and always … Continue reading (D-NM) to ban the open or concealed carrying of firearms in the city of Albuquerque and its surrounding county, Bernalillo, including by residents who have gone through the process and obtained concealed carry permits, I really, really, really wanted to write about it, but, alas!, I didn’t have my computer with me.[2]I use a desktop, not a laptop, because I hate laptops, I despise laptops, I abominate laptops.

Mrs Cordova said, from the very beginning, that she expected legal challenges, but she waxed wroth when Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen, stated that his department would not enforce her order, because it was unconstitutional.

New Mexico governor’s gun ban draws bipartisan backlash

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s suspension of concealed and open carry gun rights in the Albuquerque area ignited opposition from Democrats and Republicans alike.

By Zoë Richards | Monday, September 11, 2023 | 7:28 PM EDT

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is facing harsh criticism from both sides of the aisle over her recently issued order suspending certain gun rights in Albuquerque and its surrounding county.

Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, on Friday announced a 30-day ban on the right to carry open or concealed firearms in public in an effort to curb gun violence and illegal drug use in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County. State police were tasked with enforcing the order, which carried fines for violations.

The announcement prompted a string of lawsuits and ignited opposition from Democrats and Republicans alike.

Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen, a Democrat, said Monday he would not enforce the ban, which he called “unconstitutional.”

This order will not do anything to curb gun violence other than punish law-abiding citizens from their constitutional right to self-defense,” Allen said at a news conference.

It’s unconstitutional. So there’s no way we could enforce that order,” he added.

It wasn’t just the Sheriff who saw the Governor’s order as unconstitutional; as reported by William Teach, both here and on his website, Federal District Court Judge David Urias issued a temporary restraining order:

blocking key parts of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s executive order suspending open and concealed carry across Albuquerque and the surrounding Bernalillo County for at least 30 days.

U.S. District Court Judge David Urias issued the order on Wednesday, blocking the portion of the order that prohibits lawful gun owners from carrying their guns in public for 30 days, ruling that it’s not enforceable.

“The violation of a constitutional right, even for minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury,” Urias said during the hearing.

State Attorney General Raul Torrez, also a Democrat, informed Governor Cordova that his office and he would not defend her order in court, saying that it was both unconstitutional, and wouldn’t have any meaningful impact on public safety. Plainly put, the Attorney General said what everyone ought to understand: the people shooting up Albuquerque aren’t the ones who go through the legal process to obtain concealed carry permits in the first place. Criminals are criminals precisely because they don’t obey the laws!

Naturally, the Governor was highly, highly upset that Sheriff Allen dared to defy her Führerbefehle:

“I don’t need a lecture on constitutionality from Sheriff Allen: what I need is action,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement in response to a request for comment.

Translation: the Governor doesn’t care if her diktat is actually constitutional, she expects the Sheriff to carry out her orders!

“We’ve passed common-sense gun legislation, including red flag laws, domestic violence protections, a ban on straw purchases, and safe storage laws; dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to a fund specifically to help law enforcement hire and retain officers; increased penalties for violent offenders and provided massive support to intervention programs,” she added. “We’ve given you the tools, Sheriff Allen — now stop being squeamish about using them. I will not back down from doing what’s right and I will always put the safety of the people of New Mexico first.”

Translation: the Governor believes that what she claims will increase the safety of the people of the Land of Enchantment trumps their constitutional rights!

Is Mrs Cordova saying that Sheriff Allen is not enforcing the “red flag laws, domestic violence protections, a ban on straw purchases, and safe storage laws,” as violations come to his attention? Have there been ‘red flag’ warnings in which law enforcement did not investigate and take action is warranted under that law? Have ‘domestic violence’ violations not led to arrests or prosecutions?

If there’s one thing the Democrats really hate, it’s the Constitution of the United States, and the enumeration of our rights. Benjamin Franklin, a man who dared to sign his name to our Declaration of Independence, said, “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately,” had something to say about people giving up their rights for a little bit of temporary safety, but, in reality, what Governor Cordova and many other Democratic politicians want to do, to Do Something about crime, will do virtually nothing about crime. Governor Cordova stated that New Mexico had “passed common-sense gun legislation, including red flag laws, domestic violence protections, a ban on straw purchases, and safe storage laws”, yet she also claimed that those things had simply not done enough. I have previously noted how a Lexington man didn’t care about an “emergency protection order/domestic violence order, and possession of a handgun by a previously convicted felon,” obtained one anyway, and wound up shooting and killing his estranged wife. The gang bangers in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, about whom I’ve expended a significant amount of bandwidth, haven’t been stopped from getting guns and shooting people by laws banning minors and previously convicted felons from having firearms, or people without permits from carrying them on the city’s mean streets.

Safe storage laws? When people buy firearms because they fear for their own safety, the last thing that they want is to have to unlock their firearms when bad guys are breaking into their homes!

But the Democrats don’t care about any of that! They want to be seen as Doing Something, even if it is unreasonable. When even the left-wing e-zine Slate says that she’s doing it wholly wrong, you know it’s bad:

Last week, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham declared a public health emergency over gun violence in her state and imposed a 30-day ban on public carry in Albuquerque. Lujan Grisham’s diagnosis of the problem is surely correct; her proposed solution, however, is astoundingly misguided. The governor has leveraged an emergency health law to suspend a right protected by state statute, the state constitution, and Supreme Court precedent. Whether that right should exist is beside the point; it does exist in New Mexico today, pursuant not only to court decisions but also democratically enacted laws. By suspending it unilaterally, Lujan Grisham has claimed an alarming new power to revoke well-established individual rights by executive order. And she has done so in the most blundering way possible, ensuring a backlash that will only empower citizens, activists, and politicians who view all firearm restrictions as an existential threat to personal liberty.

The population of Albuquerque, according to the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2022 guesstimate, is 561,008, of whom 49.8% are Hispanic, of all races, 37.4% are non-Hispanic white, 14.1% are biracial, 4.8% are American Indians, and 3.2% are black. Yet, when the Albuquerque Police Department released their 2023 homicide statistics as of July 2nd, they showed 54% of identified suspects as being Hispanic, 23% being black, 7% being Indians, and 16% as being white. If the problem is the gun laws, shouldn’t the problem affect every demographic group at least roughly equally?

The problem in Albuquerque is the culture in Albuquerque, just like it is in Philly, in St Louis, in Chicago, and everywhere else in the United States, but the Democrats can’s say that, now can they? Governor Cordova certainly seems unwilling to say that, so she goes after the people who are not the problem, the law-abiding citizens of the city. She’s rather attack people’s constitutional rights than actually identify and address the problems.

References

References
↑1 While the Governor of New Mexico does not respect her husband enough to have taken his last name, as per The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not show such disrespect to him, and always refer to married women by their proper names.
↑2 I use a desktop, not a laptop, because I hate laptops, I despise laptops, I abominate laptops.
Posted on by

He’s ba-aaack!

Ocracoke Island Lighthouse, photo by D R Pico

My thanks to William Teach, a “modern day pirate (of ice cream),” and the distinguished host of The Pirate’s Cove, for filling in for me while Mrs Pico and I went vacationating on Ocracoke Island, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

I had been unaware that the Dread Pirate Blackbeard was really named Edward Teach, until I saw it on a banner in one of the tourist-trap souvenir shops in Ocracoke. The elder Mr Teach had been killed off of Ocracoke, something commemorated with an historical marker near the old Coast Guard station in Silver Lake Harbor, by Lt Robert Maynard and the crew of the HMS Pearl on November 22, 1718.

The present-day Mr Teach is a graduate of East Carolina University, the athletic teams of which are the Pirates! Thus, we must consider, and accept, that the host of The Pirate’s Cove is indeed the worthy successor to his ancestor(?) of twelve generations past!

Finally, East Carolina’s colors are purple and gold, which speaks to me, as my alma mater, Mt Sterling High School had the same colors during its distinguished history!

Posted on by

You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Just plain senseless

People tend to try to make some sense of events that seem entirely senseless, but sometimes it’s an exercise in futility. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Nicholas Heyward-Walton, photo via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News.

Philadelphia man arrested, charged with shooting 80-year-old man in the head on Labor Day

Police arrested Nicholas Heyward-Walton on Tuesday, after accusing him of shooting an 80-year-old man in the head and neck on Labor Day.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Wednesday, September 6, 2023 | 2:29 PM EDT

Philadelphia police have arrested a man they say shot an 80-year-old in the head on Labor Day in what appears to have been a random attack, police said Wednesday.

The victim is now in critical condition, officials said.

Shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, police responded to the 2600 block of Tasker Street for a report of a shooting. When officers arrived, they found the 80-year-old man, whom police did not identify, unresponsive in the street, with gunshot wounds to his head and neck.

Police took him to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was in critical condition Wednesday, said Capt. James Kearney, head of the nonfatal shootings unit.

On Tuesday, police arrested Nicholas Heyward-Walton, 25, at his home on the 1500 block of South Bailey Street. He was charged with attempted murder and related offenses, police said.

No, of course the Inquirer didn’t include Mr Heyward-Walton’s mugshot; I got that from Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News. The left hate Fox 29, because they report all the serious crime news.

You know what else the newspaper didn’t include? Mr Heyward-Walton’s rap sheet! This fine young gentleman was already out on bond for crimes including terroristic threats, PA 18 §2706, which, depending on circumstances, is either first degree misdemeanor or third degree felony. He was released on August 14th on that one.

But the young man has previous convictions, including criminal mischief, PA 18 §3304(a)(1), a third degree felony, for which the penalty includes up to seven years in the state penitentiary, and criminal trespass, PA 18 §3503(a)(1)(ii), a second degree felony, which carries a sentence of up to ten years in prison.

So, guess to how many years Mr Heyward-Walton was sentenced. If you guessed zero, you guessed correctly. On October 6, 2021, he was sentenced to a maximum of two years probation! And yes, of course it was a plea bargain arrangement: the court record states: “Guilty plea – negotiated”.

Those two years are not quite up yet, so he could be sent straight to jail, but for only another month.

Yet, if the suspect had been sentenced to just two years in prison, and assuming he had not been released early, he would have still been in jail on Labor Day, and — assuming that he is the actual Labor Day shooter — his victim would not have been shot. If he had been sentenced to two years behind bars, he’d be looking forward to getting out of jail next month.

Instead, an 80-year-old man is in the hospital, fighting for his life, while this misunderstood 25-year-old is looking at, if his victim succumbs to his injuries, perhaps life in prison without the possibility of parole.

So, did District Attorney Larry Krasner do the suspect any real favors? Mr Krasner and his minions are very much opposed to ‘mass incarceration,’ but if Mr Heyward-Walton had been incarcerated for just those two years, he wouldn’t be looking at being incarcerated for the rest of his miserable life.

Would the suspect have learned anything had he been locked up? Would he have learned that hey, maybe prison isn’t a great place to be? Would he have been at least somewhat rehabilitated? There’s really no way of knowing. But what he did learn, by not being sent to jail, is that he could get away with stupid stuff, that Mr Krasner and his fellow travelers aren’t really interested in punishing anyone for crimes.

And here’s the kicker, the article’s final sentence:

There was no altercation between the victim and the shooter, said Kearney, and the shooting appeared to be random.

If this turns out to be the case, the shooting becomes truly senseless. Even someone with a room temperature IQ ought to know that trying to kill someone is something that would probably not be ignored.

Posted on by

Did $24 million of SEPTA’s money go up in smoke?

I am wryly amused. 🙂

In the left’s rush to phase out reliable gasoline-ort-diesel-powered vehicles, sometimes the amusing happens. The City of Brotherly Love, in its desire to go green, bought 25 battery-electric buses from California manufacturer Proterra in 2016.

It didn’t turn out well:

A Proterra electric bus battery caught fire in a South Philly SEPTA depot

There have been several battery-related fires in electric buses and cars.

by Ryan W. Briggs and Thomas Fitzgerald | November 11, 2022 | 12:08 PM EST

A battery power pack in a sidelined electric bus ignited Wednesday at SEPTA’s Southern Bus Depot, occupying city fire crews for hours and delivering another possible setback to efforts to build a low-emission fleet in Philadelphia.

No injuries were reported.

The transit agency bought 25 battery-electric buses from California manufacturer Proterra in 2016, but all have been parked at the depot since 2020 after discovery of cracks in bus frames and performance problems.

That third quoted paragraph is the money line: all 25 Proterra have been parked since 2020, because they were pieces of feces had problems. A SEPTA spokeswoman confirmed that the fire’s origin was traced to lithium ion battery units inside the bus.

Further down: Continue reading →

Posted on by

#COVID19: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!”

Despite a very significant drop in serious COVID-19 cases, the fear-mongers have to ramp up the fear!

We reported, last Friday, on the actual numbers. Using statistics taken from The Philadelphia Inquirer, not exactly an evil reich-wing news source, we did the actual math:

In Pennsylvania, weekly COVID hospital admissions rose from 281 cases on Aug. 5 to 403 cases on Aug. 19, the most recent week for which data are available through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 1,453 weekly COVID hospital admissions reported in the same week of August last year, according to the CDC.

Naturally, the Inky didn’t do the math, but we did: 403 cases in 2023 ÷ 1,453 cases the same week last year = 0.27735719201651754989676531314522, or 27.74%. COVID cases serious enough to require hospitalization are just 27.74% of what they were last year! If “In Pennsylvania, weekly COVID hospital admissions rose from 281 cases on Aug. 5 to 403 cases on Aug. 19,” we have to ask: how many people live in Pennsylvania? According to the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2022 population guesstimate, there were 12,972,008 living in the Keystone State. 403 ÷ 12,972,008 = 3.1066894192479683947157602739684e-5. That means that 0.003107%, 3.107 people out of every 100,000, of the state’s population were sick enough with COVID-19 to be hospitalized, and most of those hospitalized will survive.

In the story noting that First Lady Jill Biden tested positive for the Fauxi Flu, we quoted CNN’s report stating that there were “four new hospital admissions for every 100,000 people nationwide in the week ending August 19,” still a pretty low number, and a gross statistic which could mean anything from a range of 3.51 to 4.49 per 100,000. That was poor journalism, and our guess is that, if the number were any significant fraction over 4, CNN would have used that. But, even if it were in the higher end of that range, it’s still a low number.

Yet, once again, we get more media fearmongering! Continue reading →

Posted on by

Jill Biden has #COVID19

So, how many booster shots has she had, and on what schedule? What variant of SARS-CoV-2 did Jill Biden contract? Was Mrs Biden waiting on the mid-September release of the next variant of the booster? I guess that she should’ve masked up, the way the worry-warts and panic-stricken have been saying!

First lady Jill Biden tests positive for Covid-19

By Mary Kay Mallonee and Donald Judd, CNN | Updated 9:22 PM EDT, Labor Day, September 4, 2023 | Updated 7:26 AM EDT, Tue September 5, 2023

“First lady Jill Biden tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday and is experiencing “mild symptoms,” the White House said. President Joe Biden has tested negative.

The diagnosis has upended the first lady’s plans to begin teaching the fall semester at Northern Virginia Community College on Tuesday. She is working with the school to “ensure her classes are covered by a substitute,” Vanessa Valdivia, the first lady’s spokesperson, said. Continue reading →

Posted on by

Killadelphia: Street Justice! It seems as though the neighborhood didn't wait for the Philadelphia Police to make an arrest for the murder of Hezekiah Bernard

We asked, on the last day of August, how a 12-year-old boy can just disappear in the City of Brotherly Love, and nobody noticed until his dead body showed up in the trash more than a week later.

Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News provided the map of the two murder sites. Click to enlarge.

A teen killed Saturday in West Philly was a person of interest in a 12-year-old’s murder, sources say

Hundreds of comments on social media had called for vigilante justice against Tysheer Hankinson, who was considered by police to be a person of interest in Hezekiah Bernard’s death in August.

by Vinny Vella and Ellie Rushing | Sunday, September 3, 2023 | 2:25 PM EDT

An Upper Darby teen who was a person of interest in the killing of a 12-year-old boy found dead in a dumpster in Philadelphia last month and who himself had survived a shooting in April was killed early Saturday morning, law enforcement sources said.

Tysheer Shahe Hankinson, 16, was found just after 1 a.m. shot multiple times in his neck, face, left leg, and body on Poplar Street near 55th in West Philadelphia, according to police. Medics took him to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

There was no information about a suspect Sunday, and no murder weapon was recovered.

Hankinson was considered a potential suspect and person of interest in the death of Hezekiah Bernard, whose body, wrapped in plastic and shot in the head, was found in a dumpster outside of a public housing complex in West Philadelphia on Aug. 23, according to law enforcement sources. Bernard had been dead for at least 24 hours, investigators said.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s subtitle provided the real information: if there were “Hundreds of comments on social media had called for vigilante justice against Tysheer Hankinson,” then the people of the neighborhood knew who they believed killed young Mr Bernard. Continue reading →

Posted on by

The Democrats want Mitch McConnell out! They're hoping that Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, can steal the seat for his party.

The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal have noticed what everyone else knows:

Mitch McConnell Agonistes

The Beltway double standard on the health of public officials is something to behold.

by The Editorial Board | Friday, September 1, 2023 | 6:44 PM EDT

You can tell who’s loved and hated in Washington by the way they’re treated when they have a health issue. President Biden stumbles through his first term, and is tripping toward another, with nary a notice from the Democratic-media complex about his obvious physical and mental decline. But GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell freezes up twice in five weeks before the cameras and he’s supposed to resign forthwith.

Mr. McConnell, who is 81 years old, clearly isn’t the same since he fell and suffered a concussion in March. His speech has long been slow but it seems more labored now. The moments when he has frozen for 20 seconds or so, and had to be helped by colleagues or aides, are difficult to watch. Continue reading →