Court Might Maybe Possibly Take Aim At Gun Control Laws With Brett Kavanaugh

By William Teach July 28, 2018 – 7:13 am

Almost no Democrats have interviewed Brett Kavanaugh. They like to fear monger on his nomination, as do their comrades in the media. This is supposed to be one of the “OMG, we’re doomed” type anti-Kavanaugh type articles

With Kavanaugh, Court Could Take Aim at Gun Control Laws

In February, less than a week after a gunman opened fire and killed 17 students and staff in a Parkland, Florida, high school, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas complained that the court was allowing too many gun control laws to go into effect across the nation.

For the past eight years, the high court has avoided major cases addressing the extent to which Congress or state lawmakers can pass laws that restrict firearms — and Thomas and other conservative justices have noted their objections. This time, it was a challenge to a California law that required an average person to wait 10 days after buying a gun to get it.

“The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court’s constitutional orphan,” Thomas wrote in a dissent. “And the lower courts seem to have gotten the message.”

But Thomas and the conservative wing of the Supreme Court could take aim at such laws if the Senate confirms President Donald Trump’s pick of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, whose history on the bench suggests he could press the court to jump back into the incendiary national debate over gun control laws.

The court has passed on opportunities since 2010 to hear challenges to laws that ban semi-automatic rifles, limit the number of bullets a magazine can hold, clamp down on who can get a concealed carry permit, institute waiting periods for firearm purchases, and more.

They may or may not decided to hear more cases taking on the gun grabbers. If they do, that could be a good thing for either side, because it would depend on the arguments given by the lawyers as to the Constitutionality of the laws. But, if the rulings go against the gun grabbers, would that be a bad thing? No. Because we have a 2nd Amendment, and most of the laws passed tend to negatively effect the law abiding citizens, not the criminals who use guns.

The issue will be among the controversial topics Kavanaugh is grilled about during confirmation hearings expected in late August or early September, although it could be overshadowed politically by Democratic concerns about health care and access to abortion.

Good luck with this line of questioning. It may play well with the unhinged Democratic Party base, but, it won’t do well with the rest of middle America. Laws that disarm law abiding Americans and ones that support abortion at any time aren’t winners.

(Care2) The Supreme Court could be one vote away from a pivotal change in jurisprudence on gun rights, making advocates on both sides of the gun debate very concerned about who will fill Justice Kennedy’s seat. Those who favor unfettered individual access to firearms are in luck: Trump’s nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, is in their camp.

Should gun-related litigation reach the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh may vote in favor of relaxing restrictions on gun ownership and explicitly affirming the strict individualist interpretation of the Second Amendment: the belief that the original intent of that amendment was to explicitly protect everyone’s individual right to own a gun.

Sounds like law abiding citizens should support Kavanaugh.

Read: Court Might Maybe Possibly Take Aim At Gun Control Laws With Brett Kavanaugh »

Posted in 2nd Amendment, Current Affairs, Democrats | Comments Off on Court Might Maybe Possibly Take Aim At Gun Control Laws With Brett Kavanaugh | Trackback URL

Good News: You’re Carbon Footprint Is Making Earth Hotter And Colder

By William Teach July 27, 2018 – 4:12 pm

And some people complain when I refer to ‘climate change’ as Hotcoldwetdry and that the people who believe this are members of the Cult of Climastrolgy (and lest someone complain that this is at Fox News, the article is by Chelsea Gohd from Space.com)

Climate change strengthens Earth’s ‘heartbeat’ – and that’s bad news 

It’s no secret that human activity is changing the climate, and one new study shows how our influence is seriously affecting Earth’s seasons and atmosphere.

Climate change is much more than rising temperatures and melting ice. In a new study, scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and five other organizations show that human action significantly affects the seasonal temperature cycle in the troposphere, or lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere — the layer that we live in where weather occurs.

Notice the focus on the lower atmosphere, because the upper atmosphere layers are really not cooperating with the computer models and fear-mongering.

In this new study, scientists examined seasonal temperature cycles in the troposphere and observed the profound impact humans are having on the atmosphere and our seasons. Most notably, the researchers found that because of carbon dioxide emissions, Earth’s seasonal “heartbeat,” or the contrast between hot summers and cold winters, is becoming stronger.

In other words, they’re claiming that mankind’s “fingerprints” (with no evidence shown) are making it hotter and colder. Cult.

More at Watts Up With That?, where Eric Worrell writes “Lucky climate science is settled, otherwise all these apparently conflicting climate predictions might cause real confusion.”

Read: Good News: You’re Carbon Footprint Is Making Earth Hotter And Colder »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | Comments Off on Good News: You’re Carbon Footprint Is Making Earth Hotter And Colder | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach July 27, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is a sea encroaching on mountains far inland, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is This ain’t Hell, but you can see it from here, with a post on your Friday feel good stories.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Climate Models Totally Predicted This Warm Summer Or Something

By William Teach July 27, 2018 – 10:24 am

The Cult of Climastrology is super happy that one of their hundreds of computer models finally bore fruit, as we see from this activist article at the Washington Post (note: the front page article includes the word How, while the single page article doesn’t)

How climate change is supercharging a hot and dangerous summer

In the town of Sodankyla, Finland, the thermometer on July 17 registered a record-breaking 90 degrees, a remarkable figure given that Sodankyla is 59 miles north of the Arctic Circle, in a region known for winter snowmobiling and an abundance of reindeer.

This is a hot, strange and dangerous summer across the planet.

Greece is in mourning after scorching heat and high winds fueled wildfires that have killed more than 80 people. Japan recorded its highest temperature in history, 106 degrees, in a heat wave that killed 65 people in a week and hospitalized 22,000, shortly after catastrophic flooding killed 200.

Ouargla, Algeria, hit 124 degrees on July 5, a likely record for the continent of Africa. And the 109-degree reading in Quriyat, Oman, on June 28 amazed meteorologists because that wasn’t the day’s high temperature. That was the low . It was the hottest low temperature ever recorded on Earth.

Montreal hit 98 degrees on July 2, its warmest temperature ever measured. Canadian health officials estimate as many as 70 people died in that heat wave.

In the United States, 35 weather stations in the past month have set new marks for warm overnight temperatures. Southern California has had record heat and widespread power outages. In Yosemite Valley, which is imperiled by wildfires, park rangers have told everyone to flee.

And on and on. None of this proves mostly/solely anthropogenic causation, other than potentially land use and the urban heat island effect, as portrayed by overnight warm temperatures.

The brutal weather has been supercharged by human-induced climate change, scientists say. Climate models for three decades have predicted exactly what the world is seeing this summer.

These same models failed to predict an 18+ year pause in rising temperatures, a minuscule rise in what was referred to as “statistically insignificant”. Suddenly, one year sorta comes close, so, utter doom!

And they predict that it will get hotter — and that what is a record today could someday be the norm.

“The old records belong to a world that no longer exists,” said Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Most of their other prognostications have failed to materialize, such as on tropical systems. Wildfires and tornado activity is actually lower than average. And these same models consistently fail to reproduce previous climate.

Read: Climate Models Totally Predicted This Warm Summer Or Something »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

TDS: Trump Backs Obama Expansion Of Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, Liberals Still Find Way To Blast Him

By William Teach July 27, 2018 – 7:14 am

This reminds me of the time when George W. Bush came out in favor of amnesty during his second term, and all the Democrats were like “wait, what, this is something we agree with”, and it took them about 24 hours to figure out a way to slam Bush for pushing their policy

(SF Gate/Associated Press) A dispute over acts of Congress in 1906 and 1937 has put the Trump administration in court — and into the unusual position of supporting a proclamation by former President Barack Obama.

Contrary to President Donald Trump’s numerous efforts to shred Obama’s legacy, U.S. Justice Department lawyers are in Obama’s corner as they defend his expansion of a national monument in Oregon.

That puts the Trump administration in direct opposition with timber interests that Trump vowed to defend in a May 2016 campaign speech in Eugene, 110 miles (180 kilometers) south of Portland.

However, that opposition may be temporary in a case full of ironic twists that centers on a unique habitat where three mountain ranges converge. It is home to more than 200 bird species, the imperiled Oregon spotted frog, deer, elk and many kinds of fish, including the endangered Lost River sucker.

A federal judge is being asked to consider limits of power among all three government branches. For the Trump administration, the case is about protecting the power of the president of the United States, even if it was Obama who exercised his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906 that allows a president to declare a national monument.

During his last week in office, Obama nearly doubled the size of Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in heavily forested southern Oregon, to more than 150 square miles (390 square kilometers). Commercial timber harvesting is prohibited in the monument except for ecological restoration, so logging companies and local governments were deprived of revenue from timber that was suddenly placed out of their reach.

Got that? President Trump (and there’s no mention as to whether Trump is personally involved in defending the expansion, or whether this is just the DOJ doing things) doesn’t really care about the environment, he’s just trying to protect the massive expansion of power afforded by his predecessor. Seriously, these people can’t just say “thank you” for protecting the area?

“I don’t see this at all as the administration siding with the environmentalists, but rather doing all they can to shore up presidential power,” said Rhett Lawrence, conservation director of the Sierra Club’s Oregon chapter.

The article does, in fact, highlight that the government lawyers involved are in fact “protecting” presidential power as it was handed to them by the Congress, going as far back as 1937, but, mostly it’s about those suing making the claim.

In December, Trump downsized two national monuments in Utah, following Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s recommendations. Zinke also has urged the president to shrink Cascade-Siskiyou and Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada.

A final irony: Even if Trump’s administration prevails in court in defending Obama’s expansion of the Oregon monument, the president might wind up reducing it.

Really? Provide proof. And this is the kind of thing that makes people not trust the media, when they’re pulling out a crystal ball and making an prognostication. There’s just no way Trump can win. His administration does something which his opposition should agree with, and they still find a way to blast him. It’s like dealing with a crazy girlfriend from one of those crazy girlfriend memes.

Read: TDS: Trump Backs Obama Expansion Of Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, Liberals Still Find Way To Blast Him »

Posted in Barking Moonbats, Donald Trump, Enviroweenies | Comments Off on TDS: Trump Backs Obama Expansion Of Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, Liberals Still Find Way To Blast Him | Trackback URL

Center For Amerikan Progress: Family Separations Fails To Deter Illegal Aliens Or Something

By William Teach July 27, 2018 – 6:57 am

Is anyone shocked that CAP has found a way to say that the policy doesn’t work as a deterrence, and that Newsweek was happy to run with it? As a sidebar, had Newsweek been using a right side source, they would have labeled them a far-right source. CAP couldn’t be further to the left

NO EVIDENCE FAMILY SEPARATION POLICIES DETER ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, STUDY FINDS

Neither family separation nor family detention have worked as effective “deterrents” to illegal immigration to the United States, according to a new study analyzing data on southwest border apprehensions over time.

In May, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said the “big name of the game” of separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border was “deterrence.”

“It could be a tough deterrent—would be a tough deterrent,” Kelly claimed in an interview with NPR.

However, after poring over 81 months of data from October 2011 to June 2018, the Center for American Progress has has found that neither family separation or family detention have worked as effective methods for discouraging immigrants from trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border outside of designated crossing points.

“The Obama administration used family detention in response to an increase in Central American families and unaccompanied children arriving at the southwest border. And the Trump administration has turned to family separation and to the detention of families,” Tom K. Wong, senior fellow for immigration policy at CAP, said in a statement shared online.

Perhaps had the same outlets having hissy fits now because Trump is in office published that this was going on then, and the Democrat elected officials done the same, it would have been broadcast far and wide.

In its analysis, CAP found that there was “no immediate or long-term decrease in apprehensions of families at the southwest border after the expanded use of family detention in July 2014.”

CAP said that the “expanded use of family detention” is “not statistically significantly related to decreases in the monthly number of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions of families at the southwest border.”

“Similarly, the monthly number of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions of families at the southwest border has not decreased as a result of family separation,” researchers said.

“In fact, the monthly number of apprehensions has increased after the administration’s zero tolerance pilot in July 2017.”

Let’s consider: 1st, the announced policy hasn’t been in the public eye long enough to make a difference. Second, could it be that border officials are detaining more families, rather than just catching and releasing? Third, this policy is surely butting heads with the Democratic Party talking points about letting families in to the country willy nilly, along with not separating them when caught. Remember, a lot of these so-called family units are crossing at places and times that they will easily be caught on purpose, hoping to be simply release with a promise *wink wink* to return for a hearing. And they’re bringing kids (we often do not know if the kids are even theirs) as a way of garnering sympathy and a free pass, rather than sending their kids separately.

Regardless, the policy hasn’t been in the public eye long enough to make a difference. If this is still a problem in a year or two, then we’ll know it doesn’t work. A wall. Quick deportations. One party (and a few squishes in the GOP) who do not support people unlawfully invading our nation.

Read: Center For Amerikan Progress: Family Separations Fails To Deter Illegal Aliens Or Something »

Posted in Democrats, Illegal Immigration | Comments Off on Center For Amerikan Progress: Family Separations Fails To Deter Illegal Aliens Or Something | Trackback URL

Rich Person’s Tesla Visualizes Global Warming Or Something

By William Teach July 26, 2018 – 3:46 pm

Nothing says “rich people pretending to Do Something while pushing for taxes on the middle and lower classes” like a painted Tesla Model 3, of which the lowest priced one puts in the upper luxury class

Photo of the day: Striped Tesla visualises global warming

You have to hand it to Tesla electric vehicle owners; they’re a devoted bunch.

Mark Hanson – known on Twitter as @NetZeroMN – has made it a point to give his Tesla EV its very own climate change makeover to start a conversation about global warming. (his blog post is here)

It’s not visions of parched earth or extreme weather events, but a simple striped gradation flickering from blues at the top into reds towards towards the bottom.

Via a sign in his car, he elaborates on what the stripes represent.

“The wrap on this car is inspired by Professor Ed Hawkin’s ‘Warming Stripes’ graphic,” Hanson explains.

Here’s what it looks like

Must be nice to drop $70k, $80k, $134K on a car made with all sorts of precious metals, leaving all sorts of messes behind. Even Salon finds that the car isn’t as green as you think.

Read: Rich Person’s Tesla Visualizes Global Warming Or Something »

Posted in Global Warming | Comments Off on Rich Person’s Tesla Visualizes Global Warming Or Something | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach July 26, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is a wonderful low carbon bike traversing carbon offset purchased trees, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Deplorable Climate Science Blog, with a post on the number of forest fires declining.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 31 Comments | Trackback URL

If You Can’t Spend 50 Cents On A Stamp, Are You Really Invested In Voting?

By William Teach July 26, 2018 – 10:56 am

The cost of a regular stamp this year is a whopping 50 cents. Think on that

From the article

In a move to boost voter turnout, Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday signed a bill that requires counties to prepay postage for mail-in ballots in California elections.

The measure was proposed by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego), who said it is necessary to remove an obstacle to voting, especially for young people who are less likely to use the postal system and have stamps in the age of emails and text messages.

“Once again, California leads the way to make voting more accessible to all of our citizens,” Gonzalez Fletcher said in a statement. “No stamps? No problem!”

State officials say the requirement would have cost county elections agencies some $5.5 million if it had been in place for the 2016 general election, when 8.4 million people voted by mail in California and the average cost of postage was 65 cents per envelope. After the law goes into effect at the beginning of 2019, counties will be allowed to file claims with the state seeking reimbursement of postage costs.

Why is postage so much in California? The official Postal Service rate is 50 cents. Regardless, if you can’t spend 50 cents, giving up one can of soda every two elections, are you really invested? Oh, wait, let’s make this cray-cray

Gonzalez Fletcher contended the current requirement to put a stamp on mail ballots is a de facto poll tax.

“Nobody should be disenfranchised because they forgot to put a stamp on their ballot,” she said.

Read: If You Can’t Spend 50 Cents On A Stamp, Are You Really Invested In Voting? »

Posted in Barking Moonbats | 12 Comments | Trackback URL

Chief Science Officer From Met Office Let’s The Cat Out Of The Bag On Current “Heat Wave”

By William Teach July 26, 2018 – 7:38 am

The Met Office is one of the chief suppliers of climate data to Warmists around the world, including the UN IPCC. So, this comment did not go over well with Warmists, such as at far left The Canary

The BBC was too late deleting a tweet that spoke volumes about its climate change reporting

On 24 July, Prof Stephen Belcher appeared on BBC Newsnight. As the Met Office’s chief scientist, he gave an expert opinion about the reasons behind soaring temperatures in Europe and around the world. But after the broadcast, the BBC tweeted:

“The heatwave that we’ve got is probably part of natural cycles in the weather” – The Chief Scientist at the Met Office, Stephen Belcher, explains the significance of this summer’s heatwave.

Although it subsequently deleted the tweet, it was too little, too late. The BBC needs to raise its game in reporting on climate change.

See, here’s what they see as the problem

https://twitter.com/loftymonkey/status/1022070976241131520

First, the Fox Derangement Syndrome is hilarious, especially when we’re talking about a pretty far left Progressive outlet like the BBC. Second, the full quote doesn’t change anything, because no inference as to whether the warming is natural, manmade, or some part of each is mentioned. Warm periods have been happening throughout the Holocene (and surely throughout the lifetime of the Earth’s atmosphere), and they were all pretty much natural. This one is no different.

Read: Chief Science Officer From Met Office Let’s The Cat Out Of The Bag On Current “Heat Wave” »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL
Pirate's Cove