The reality is exactly the opposite. It is virtually illegal for anyone to have firearms in Washington, DC. So the protesters followed the law, leaving their firearms in the nearest location where it was legal for them to be. They rented a hotel in nearby Virginia, stashed the weapons there with a person tasked to ensure they didn’t fall into the wrong hands, and proceeded into Washington for the protest.
Instead of proving some nefarious plot, it shows me that the people involved were doing what they could to comply with the law. If they were actually trying to overthrow the government, it was the worst plot ever.
As an atheist, I still believe that the right to worship whatever god you wish is a basic freedom that this government was established to protect. I also do not believe that the government should have the power to lock us in our homes, COVID or not.
To further establish a set of rules allowing people to leave for massages, dining out, or pedicures while prohibiting church services is an even larger violation. For that reason, I think that SCOTUS got it right in the Tandon decision. I also think that Roberts has been compromised. They have some kind of leverage against him.
Still, the left has GOT to demonize the Supreme Court so that they can get the kind of changes in the system that they are looking for. You see, they have discovered how to rig elections, but all of that is in jeopardy as long as there is a branch of government that can’t be replaced with rigged elections. That means that, if the Communists Democrats want to seize power, the judicial branch MUST be brought to heel.
SCOTUS will be eliminated in practice, if not in name. Expect to see the likes of Justice Obama, Justice Clinton, and justices who are even more extreme. For that reason, stories like this need to be written by the left.
The “can’t yell fire in a crowded theater” trope is worn out bullshit. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote what is perhaps the most well-known — yet misquoted and misused — phrase in Supreme Court history: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”
Whenever a free speech controversy hits, someone will drag this phrase out as proof of limits on the First Amendment before using that limit as an excuse to violate other rights. Holmes’ quote has become a crutch for every censor in America, yet the quote is misunderstood. Those who quote Holmes might want to actually read the case where the phrase originated before using it as their main defense. If they did, they’d realize it was never binding law, and the case it comes from, U.S. v. Schenck, was overturned over 40 years ago.
U.S. v. Schenck had nothing to do with fires, theaters, or false statements. Instead, the Court was deciding whether Charles Schenck, the Secretary of the Socialist Party of America, could be convicted under the Espionage Act for writing and distributing a pamphlet that expressed his opposition to the draft during World War I. The pamphlet did not call for violence. It did not even call for civil disobedience. All it did was express opposition to the draft.
The Court’s description of the pamphlet proves it to be milder than any of the dozens of protests currently going on around this country every day:
It said, “Do not submit to intimidation,” but in form, at least, confined itself to peaceful measures such as a petition for the repeal of the act. The other and later printed side of the sheet was headed “Assert Your Rights.”
The crowded theater remark that everyone remembers was an analogy Holmes made before issuing the court’s holding. He was explaining that the First Amendment is not absolute. It is what lawyers call dictum, a justice’s ancillary opinion that doesn’t directly involve the facts of the case and has no binding authority. In fact, the statement was The actual ruling, that the pamphlet posed a “clear and present danger” to a nation at war, landed Schenk in prison and continued to haunt the court for years to come.
Two similar Supreme Court cases decided later the same year–Debs v. U.S. and Frohwerk v. U.S.–also sent anti-war activists to jail under the Espionage Act for the mildest of government criticism. Together, the three cases did more damage to First Amendment than any other set of cases in the 20th century.
It wasn’t until Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969 that Schenck and any authority it carried was overturned. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech–and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan–is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech is directed to incite or produce imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action. (Note that this is the same reason why Trump can’t be prosecuted for what he said in his speech on January 6)
Today, despite the “crowded theater” quote’s legal irrelevance, advocates of government overreach have not stopped trotting it out as the final word on the lawful limits of the First Amendment. That quote is worse than useless in defining the boundaries of the limits on speech or on government tyranny. When used metaphorically, it can be deployed against any constitutional right. This is intellectually lazy and is outright dishonest.
Like the original case, this statement is being used by a tyrannical government that is using it to violate the rights of people who are on the wrong side of the political debate.
The people being held due to their arrests stemming from the January 6 incident are being beaten and tortured by guards while in custody, reports Politico.
One Capitol riot defendant, Ryan Samsel, was severely beaten by correctional officers, is now blind in one eye, has a skull fracture, and detached retina. One of the prisoners reports that a guard declared, “I hate all white people and your honky religion.”
One attorney remarked that his client was taken to an area of the jail that was out of sight of security cameras, then beaten by guards. “I have seen Ryan. He has two black eyes to this day, two weeks later. All the skin is ripped off both wrists, which shows the zip ties and how tight they were,” said the attorney.
We continue to edge ever closer to the concentration camp phase, it is unreal.
Biden claims that tomorrow, he will sign an Executive Order requiring people to undergo a background check when buying a so-called “ghost gun.” I want to know just how that will happen.
Will he declare that an 80% lower is now a firearm? OK, so then a company will make 75% lowers. Are you going to outlaw paperweights? I just don’t see that working out.
Or will he make it illegal to sell a home made firearm? How would this be enforced? Will it work as well as making it illegal to sell unregistered drugs?
Even if he does issue it, any executive order he signs will have to clear the same hurdle as Trump’s bump stock ban. The courts have already ruled that an EO can’t be used to make law.
The quote that used to grace the top of this blog was from George Orwell’s 1984. It went like this:
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
There are those who are fighting the good fight and are trying to prevent our history from being erased, those who are trying to push back. I hope to be counted among them, even in some small part.
YouTube continues with their censorship of anyone who opposes the left. SCOTUS also just reversed a court decision that prevented Trump from blocking critics on his social media accounts, meaning that Biden and the rest of the commies are now free to block people all they want. We can’t have the counter-revolutionaries using the communists own tactics against them, can we?
So now that the stage is set, Homeland Security has announced that it will soon be scouring the Internet, looking for people who would speak out against the government. This blog, and others like it, will soon be an enemy of the state.
As I have been saying for months, the communist party left doesn’t really have ideas that work, so they must silence the opposition and use the force of government in order to make their (bad) ideas a reality. One of the first things that a Communist coup has to do, once it has a (tenuous, at first) grip on power, is it must silence the opposition. This cripples any would-be movement’s chances at organizing.
Then, they have ensure that they have a monopoly on force. That means removing the citizen’s ability to possess weapons, and means purging the military of counter-revolutionaries.
You can get your own space on this server by contacting me though the link under “Contact Me” at the bottom of this page, or you can donate to help offset the costs of operating this server by clicking the link under “Donate.” The best part of this, is that the server is in a European country that hates communists and there are numerous other layers of protection in place to ensure that I can keep talking for as long as possible. If you know me IRL, you know that I have a big mouth, and I am not scared to tell you what I think.
I am not making a dime on this website. In fact, it is costing me a good bit of money to keep it operational. Any bit of money helps me to offset that.
Alliteration aside, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department is reviewing (I read that as destroying) a female deputy’s career because her husband chose to exercise his First Amendment rights to assemble, to petition his government for redress of grievances, and his right to free speech.
Why? They are alleging that her husband was a member of the “Proud Boys” and he was charged with “obstruction of an official proceeding, knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and engaging in disruptive and disorderly conduct.” All misdemeanors, and the charges may even be unconstitutional, unless the government wishes to try and make it a crime to interrupt a government official. This would mean that a person yelling at President Trump from the gallery would also be committing a crime. Ridiculous.
At any rate, now they are talking about using cancel culture to create a “blood crime” whereby people will not only be punished for their own behavior, but for the behavior of their relatives. This smells of the sort of thing that was common under the Bolsheviks.
