Author: Papa Giorgio

Federal Law and 2nd Amendment Age Restrictions

Published by Papa Giorgio
  • It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defence [sic] of it, and consequently that the Citizens of America (with a few legal and official exceptions) from 18 to 50 Years of Age should be borne on the Militia Rolls, provided with uniform Arms, and so far accustomed to the use of them, that the Total strength of the Country might be called forth at a Short Notice on any very interesting Emergency, for these purposes they ought to be duly organized into Commands of the same formation.

— George Washington, Letter to Alexander Hamilton (Mount Vernon) | Friday, May 02, 1783

Second Militia Act of 1792 (WIKI)

  • The second Act, passed May 8, 1792, provided for the organization of the state militias. It conscripted every “free able-bodied white male citizen” between the ages of 18 and 45 into a local militia company. (This was later expanded to all males, regardless of race, between the ages of 18 and 54 in 1862.)

Larry Elder interviews Law Professor (UCLA) Eugene Volokh about the proposed age limits to purchasing long-guns. In fact, in a recent article by Larry, he notes the law regarding the age one is in the militia:

……The second point, often ignored, is the very purpose of the Second Amendment. It is to prevent government tyranny through the power of a citizens’ militia. Since many on the left denounce President Donald Trump as a “tyrant” or a “dictator” or a “Hitler,” they might find that the Second Amendment could come in handy. As to why a 19-year-old can legally get a gun, the Second Amendment refers to a “well-regulated militia” as necessary for our freedom.

And yes, a 19-year-old is part of the militia.

Section 311 of the U.S. Code Title 10 (as last amended in 1958) says: “(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and … under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.”……

The O.W.L. Conspiracy

Published by Papa Giorgio

A caller takes Michael Medved on a ride of his life. From owls to Russian sleeper agents. Yep… Medved gets em all – mind you, the caller could be having a bit of fun… but you never know. Makes you laugh either way. One comment on my YouTube humorously notes: “Medved said exactly the same thing a sleeper would say.”

South African Violence and Agricultural Shifts (It Begins)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The South African Parliament voted to confiscate land

from white farmers without payment last week.

On Sunday night Julius Malema called on his followers to go

after the white man and cut the throat of whiteness.

Julius Malema: Go after a white man…

We are cutting the throat of whiteness.”

(GATEWAY PUNDIT)

UPDATE via GAY PATRIOT

The wolves have voted: The sheep are to become dinner.

South Africa’s parliament on Tuesday passed a motion brought by the radical left party, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), to carry out land expropriation without compensation, a key pillar of the ruling ANC government and new President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The motion, which would include a review of the constitution, was brought by leader of the EFF Julius Malema and was passed by an overwhelming majority of 241 votes in favour versus 83 votes against the proposal.

The justification for the law is, of course, peace, justice, and equality.

“For a lasting peace‚ security and justice‚ land must be expropriated without compensation for equal redistribution.”

UPDATED VIDEO

THE NEW OBSERVER, has some stories about the issue:

At least ten White South African farmers have already abandoned their home country in the face of offers of land and ultimate citizenship of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, one of their largest farmers’ unions has announced.

The Transvaal Agricultural Union of South Africa (TAU-SA) confirmed in a statement that their memorandum of understanding, signed with the previous Georgian government in August 2010, would still be honored by the newly-elected government in Tbilisi.

[….]

Earlier, one of the first Boer farmers to move to Georgia under the scheme, 66-year-old Piet Kemp, was quoted as saying that “I have a new life here,” he explained.

“I try to make friends with all the people in Georgia, learning their culture. I have been here since 3rd of March, and I have not heard of one murder in Georgia in this time. I didn’t hear about any bank robbery. I didn’t hear about any one hijacking.”

“There is no security of land, absolutely no security of land in South Africa,” he stressed.

Kemp said that over the last decade he successfully helped hundreds of white farmers hold on to their farmland in face of legal challenges from black farm workers and squatters.  But now, he says white farmers face threats of farm seizures.

“They have done exceptionally great job over the years in South Africa, and to give them an opportunity to do the same thing here and for Georgian farmers to learn from the experience they will receive from their new neighbors, from the South African farmers,” said Georgia’s Canada-educated Economy Minister, Vera Kobalia.

Kobalia praises Sandra Roelofs, the Dutch-born wife of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, for promoting the program.  Dutch is the mother language of Afrikaans.

“It helped in terms of making them feel more secure in Georgia,” Kobalia noted.  “There is definitely that connection, the Holland connection in Georgia.”

[….]

“I do not want to live in constant fear,” the 67-year-old said emotionally as he recalled the widespread killings of other white farmers in South Africa. “We tried to defend our rights, but we lost this war.”

Amid the violence, Kemp said that he felt he had no choice but to leave.

“In Georgia there is no violence, the crime rate is extremely low. So I will never go back,” Kemp declared, comparing the situation here to the high violent crime rates back home, which include some 46 murders a day.

He sold his farm in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province, was given Georgian citizenship in 2011 and in March that year rented 700 hectares (1,730 acres) of land in the village of Sartichala, where he now cultivates maize and wheat.

“I moved to Georgia because I see tremendous opportunities here — there is a good climate, fertile soil and a good market,” he said.

Some of the recent radicalism is linked with communist/Marxist groups held in check by Mandela (as a leader among them). This restraining influence is gone now, and what many worry about may come true more-so than it has as of late.

An amazing story via LIBERTARIAN REPUBLICAN (<<<now defunct — which is too bad, it was a great site), take note that in the video seen at LR’s website the shirt being worn is that of Nelson Mandela:

No hyperbole. No exaggeration. This really happened.

Note – it’s not being covered at all in any of the American media. Only here at Libertarian Republican.

From Arutz7, “South African BDS Protesters: ‘Shoot the Jew’ — A South African protest against an Israeli musician quickly deteriorated into a call for the murder of Jews”:

Anti-Israel students and activists showed their “true colors” last Wednesday night, Jewish students at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa said.

Moving quickly from “anti-Zionism” to classic anti-Semitism, a melange of students and BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) activists began screaming “Shoot the Jews” at a concert featuring religious Jewish jazz saxophonist Daniel Zamir.

[….]

Of course, the South African blacks were urged on by Muslims in the crowd. 

Continuing:

Dozens of South African Muslims and BDS supporters gathered outside Wits’ Great Hall, with security personnel keeping them outside. Several scuffles were reported, and concert-goers were subject to a great deal of verbal abuse. 

At that point, said witnesses, the protesters broke into a sing-song chant of “kill the Jews,” (“Dubula e Juda” in Zulu), a take-off on a protest song sung in the 80s against whites. When questioned, Muhammed Desai, coordinator of the protest and leader of “BDS South Africa,” said that the protesters did not mean the term “kill the Jews” literally. (Emphasis added.)

Note – this “Kill Whites” song has been sung at political rallies by numerous political leaders in the South African left, including Nelson Mandela.

FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE noted this about the revival of this song and why many farmers/ranchers are on the move:

For decades, the country of South Africa was the focus of an international rallying cry against the injustices of apartheid. On June 17, 1991, South Africa’s Parliament abolished the legal framework for the practice of racial persecution. In 1994, Nelson Mandela and his Marxist African National Congress (ANC) assumed the reins of power. The international community looked away, satisfied that justice had prevailed. They continue to look away, even as South Africa has degenerated into another racist pit, best described by an Afrikaner farm owner: “It’s politically correct to kill whites these days.”

In July of 2012, Dr. Gregory Stanton, head of the nonprofit group Genocide Watch, conducted a fact-finding mission in South Africa. He concluded that there is a coordinated campaign of genocide being conducted against white farmers, known as Boers. “The farm murders, we have become convinced, are not accidental,” Stanton contended. “It was very clear that the massacres were not common crimes,” he added — especially because of the absolute barbarity used against the victims. “We don’t know exactly who is planning them yet, but what we are calling for is an international investigation,” he added.

The number of farm murders, or “plaasmoorde” as it is called in Afrikaans, is staggering. Over the last decade, it is estimated that at least 3000 Boers have been killed. Estimating the number of murders is necessary because the ANC has banned crime statistics from being compiled, claiming they scare off foreign investment.

[…..]

The ANC, whose leader Jacob Zuma was reelected with over 75 per cent of the total voting delegates at the ANC National Conference held in Bloemfontein last December, denies that genocide is occurring, insisting that such attacks are part of the larger crime problem. Yet a report filed by the South African Institute of Race Relations notes that while crime has ostensibly declined between 1994 and 2011, “substantial numbers” of police stations have manipulated their crime statistics. The report sub-headline underscores the corrupt nature of crime statistics in the country: “Is this a true reflection of the crime statistics in South Africa? Who knows!” it states.

What is known is that the ANC celebrated in 100th year anniversary with a song led by President Zuma himself. “Dubula iBhunu” or “Shoot the Boer” was a line in the lyrics of an apartheid-era song, “Ayesaba Amagwala” (“the cowards are scared”) that violates the South Africa constitution prohibiting the “advocacy of hatred that is based on race … and that constitutes incitement to cause harm.”  Yet Zuma apparently felt no compunction to refrain from singing it, because the ANC considers it an integral part of the anti-apartheid movement that is part of their heritage.

In 2010, Julius Malema, then leader of the ANC Youth League, revived the practice of singing the song after many years. After the South Africa High Court ruled it was hate speech, the ANC appealed. Last October, the ANC and AfriForum, a lobby group that wanted the song banned from public performance, reached an out-of-court settlement.

Dr. Stanton concluded that Malema’s revival of a song advocating murder moved South Africa from the fifth stage on his genocidal scale to stage six. When the South African judiciary ruled it to be unlawful hate speech, Genocide Watch put South Africa back at stage five. When President Zuma was caught on tape January 2012 singing, “We are going to shoot them with the machine gun, they are going to run/You are a Boer, we are going to hit them, and you are going to run/shoot the Boer…” South Africa was raised to stage six once again.

Stage six is known as Preparation: “Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. Members of victim groups are forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property is expropriated. They are often segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved.”

The sixth stage is followed by stage seven: Extermination….

[….]

Embedded in that platform is the idea that making peace with white South Africans following the end of apartheid has “hampered” the transfer of wealth to black South Africans. Thus, a “second transition,” was proposed, which even the see-no-progressive-evil New York Times was forced to concede represents a “sharp leftward shift for the A.N.C., which despite its roots has largely backed a free-market economy with minimal state intervention.”

Stanton sees a bigger picture. In a speech in Pretoria, organized by the Transvaal Agricultural Union, Stanton claimed the ANC was demonizing white farmers, who have been in South Africa since the 1600s, by calling them “settlers.” A Genocide Watch reports reveals the strategy behind those efforts. “High-ranking ANC government officials who continuously refer to Whites as ‘settlers’ and ‘colonialists of a special type’ are using racial epithets in a campaign of state-sponsored dehumanization of the White population as a whole,” it stated. “They sanction gang-organized hate crimes against Whites, with the goal of terrorizing Whites through fear of genocidal annihilation.”

ANC President Jacob Zuma continues to fan the flames of racial division. Last December, he admonished black South Africans for being dog owners, saying that doing so amounts to copying white culture. Zuma’s office contended the message was aimed at “the need to decolonize the African mind post-liberation.”….

Mandela sings song about killing whites!

The Lonely Conservative has a good commentary that one should read in full on his site… here is a teaser:

I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, especially when they still haven’t even been buried. (I also don’t like to speak ill of the Pope, although I’ve been tempted to at least speak ill of his ideology.) But I do think it’s important to add some perspective to the legacy of Nelson Mandela that you aren’t going to get from the media.

Those who escaped Cuba, and those who are still there, probably aren’t shedding too many tears this morning over the passing of Nelson Mandela, who seemed to have no problem with the ruthless ways of the Castro regime. Fellow travelers and all.

From JTF.ORG:

….Mandela also was always an enthusiastic supporter of Ugandan Muslim dictator Idi Amin, and Mandela met with his fellow terrorist Yasser Arafat in the 1970s to publicly deplore Israel’s “barbaric” rescue of innocent Jews who were taken hostage by PLO-Fatah airplane hijackers in 1976 and then flown to Uganda’s Entebbe Airport where Amin and Arafat planned to murder them.

To this day, Mandela strongly supports other “progressive” Third World dictators like Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Hafez el-Assad of Syria and Moammar Khadafi of Libya.

In South Africa itself, since Mandela and other savages seized power from the white minority, the country now has more than five times the homicide rate of Washington, DC, the murder capital of the United States….

…read more…

Some more commentary by Joel Pollak who offers a more fair-and-balanced [conservative] approach to Mandela’s legacy. And while Mandela was not anti-Israel… many in his own party and those he had as fellow contemporaries were. All that being said, we must remember Jerusalem’s Post commentary that Mandela was no Martin Luther King Jr., but more like a BILL AYERS type:

Imagine a person who planned acts of sabotage and incited violence, resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians and damage to public property. A man who embraced brutal dictators throughout the Third World, such as Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Cuba’s Fidel Castro, singing their praises and defending them publicly even as they trampled on the rights and lives of their own people. A person who hugged Yasser Arafat at the height of the intifada, hailed Puerto Rican terrorists who shot US Congressmen, and penned a book entitled, How to be a good Communist.

Picture all this and, believe it or not, you will be staring at a portrait of Nelson Mandela….

(JERUSALEM POST)

L.A. Times Visceral Attack On the Value of Life (Paso Robles)

Published by Papa Giorgio

(JUMP to Added Update)

While on vacation I remembered this reading by Dennis Prager of an LA TIMES article that enrages his sensibilities… why you ask? Exactly because the Left doesn’t use theirs. So a volume caution at around 8:22 to about 9:30 is required.

Here is my Facebook post as I was sitting for breakfast in the Central Coast wine country:

I am in the free breakfast area of the Best Western in Atascadero [Wine Tasting in Paso Robles] and the news item on the TV that caught my attention was the police officer not entering the school, risking his life to save the lives of children and teachers in that very recent school shooting. Instead, he took up a position outside the school… probably thinking that this position will assure his going home to his own family. (Who knows what was going through his mind, but self preservation was most probably the adrenalin enforced decision. All those calling the officer a coward would probably do the same.) And it is this natural “self-preservation” that would be in my mind the best argument for allowing teachers and staff to conceal-carry that would protect the most lives in such a situation. But, like that teacher who raised against the military being the lowest of the low, saying that bankers and scholars do not join the military, the Left seems to have a picture of an educated elite guiding them (an example of this is their belief that science is a consensus — at least in regard to global warming, not gender). They also have Utopian dreams of men in uniform laying aside self preservation in order to save them. Which is why the statement by William F. Buckley will always remain true: “I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” Which is why the gulf between the base of the GOP (conservative/libertarian roots) and the base of the Dems (socialist/progressives) will always exist. Doing many of life’s struggles oneself versus expecting others to do it for them.

Someone on Facebook wasn’t picking up what I was laying down. She responded thus:

  • While i’ll admit that self preservation is a driving force for many of us, many of us did not go to the academy and swear to an oath “to protect & serve”, which was failed completely. Now we are protecting him from violence? Who protected those children? He’s a cop, let him protect himself like he did those children. Any action he could have & should have taken may have saved even just one life, one less family paying for a funeral.

I expanded my view a bit:

  • I know two people at the elementary my boys attended that would be more than happy to conceal carry. And if their kids and they were to come under fire, their self-preservation would kick in and many children’s lives would be saved. Because of the natural instinct to live another day. That same instinct that stopped four officers from entering a school would have kicked in with armed staff and teachers. It’s Florida for God sake… There would have been more than a couple armed staff.

Now, more important than my editorial above, are cold hard facts in the face of the mantras. To wit, while in Paso Robles wine tasting, the wine tender at Rocky Creek (FACEBOOK PAGE – great wines BTW) mentioned that the United States has all the mass killings like the one in Florida. This just is not true. John Lott clears this up for us over at IBD:

…..President Obama talked about it a lot, including in June of 2015, after a gunman shot nine people in a Charleston, North Carolina church: “Let’s be clear: At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries,” Obama said. 

Days later, Sen. Harry Reid echoed his comments. “The United States is the only advanced country where this kind of mass violence occurs,” he said.

More recently, the tragic, preventable slaying of 17 students by accused gunman Nikolas Cruz elicited similar sentiments from Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, speaking in the Senate just  last Thursday: “This happens nowhere else other than the United States of America.”

Powerful remarks, and no doubt heartfelt. But a study of global mass-shooting incidents from 2009 to 2015 by the Crime Prevention Research Center, headed by economist John Lott, shows the U.S. doesn’t lead the world in mass shootings. In fact, it doesn’t even make the top 10, when measured by death rate per million population from mass public shootings.

So who’s tops? Surprisingly, Norway is, with an outlier mass shooting death rate of 1.888 per million (high no doubt because of the rifle assault by political extremist Anders Brevik that claimed 77 lives in 2011). No. 2 is Serbia, at just 0.381, followed by France at 0.347, Macedonia at 0.337, and Albania at 0.206. Slovakia, Finland, Belgium, and Czech Republic all follow. Then comes the U.S., at No. 11, with a death rate of 0.089.

That’s not all. There were also 27% more casualties from 2009 to 2015 per mass shooting incident in the European Union than in the U.S.

“There were 16 cases where at least 15 people were killed,” the study said. “Out of those cases, four were in the United States, two in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.”

“But the U.S. has a population four times greater than Germany’s and five times the U.K.’s, so on a per-capita basis the U.S. ranks low in comparison — actually, those two countries would have had a frequency of attacks 1.96 (Germany) and 2.46 (UK) times higher.”

Yes, the U.S. rate is still high, and nothing to be proud of. But it’s not the highest in the developed world. Not by a long shot…….

Another myth surrounds the AR-15 and the progression of semi-automatics from military to civilian use. The truth is just the opposite, via HOT AIR:

…..The third problem is a historical one. Semi-automatic rifles were originally created for the civilian market, but eventually made their way into the military. The Standard Catalog of Remington Firearms notes the old Model 8 “was the first successful American semi-autom sporting rifle.” It appears the M1 Garand is when semi-automatic rifles became focused on the military use first, before civilian use. One of these reasons is because developer Springfield Armory was owned by the U.S. government. It’s interesting to see how government focus on weapons development increased as the U.S. became more involved in international conflicts. It was really a role reversal with gun manufacturers making arms for the Pentagon, before selling it on the civilian market. Other semi-automatic rifles were still being developed and sold to civilians, but the M16 style was strictly for military.

Richard Mann believes one reason why the AR-15 jumped in popularity was because of the political footballing of the White House, starting after Barack Obama replaced George W. Bush who had replaced Bill Clinton. Mann suggested in GunDigest Shooter’s Guide to the AR-15 people started buying AR-15’s because they expected the Democratically held government to re-pass the Assault Weapons ban……

So much for the mantras I heard on vacation. I will share more in a review of my time in Paso.

UPDATED

Here is part of Prager’s article:

Why does the left oppose allowing a small number of highly trained teachers and other adults who work at schools to arm themselves?

When asked, their response is consistent: “It’s a crazy idea.” And “We need fewer guns, not more guns.”

A New York Times editorial offered the following argument against having any armed teachers: “Nationwide statistics on police shooting accuracy are not to be found. But if New York is typical, analyses show that its officers hit their targets only one-third of the time. And during gunfights, when the adrenaline is really pumping, that accuracy can drop to as low as 13 percent.”

But if that is an argument against armed teachers, why isn’t it an argument against armed police?

And that argument was Aristotelian compared to this one from a Los Angeles Times editorial: “If a pistol-strapping chemistry teacher had grabbed her .45 and unloaded on today’s gunman after he killed, what, one student? Three? Five? That would be good news?”

Of course, no murder is “good news.” But to most of us, one or three or five as compared with 17  murdered is good news. Only those who think it isn’t good news think permitting some teachers and other school staff to be armed is a bad idea.

Beyond such arguments, the left rarely, if ever, explains why allowing some teachers and other adults in a school to be armed is a crazy idea. They merely assert it as a self-evident truth……..

(read it all)

Armed Teachers vs. Anarcho-Leftist Government Militias

Published by Papa Giorgio

Didn’t President Obama just Tweet this?

  • Barack Obama to student activists: “We’ve been waiting for you. And we’ve got your backs” (USA TODAY)

GATEWAY PUNDIT writes:

Several hundred high school students staged a walk-out protest on Friday.

Students from Stagg, Edison, Chavez, Lincoln and Village Oak high schools walked out of class and in the streets creating traffic problems in the area as most streets were blocked off.

At least five students at the anti-gun protests were arrested.

The angry students were charged with battery on an officer, resisting arrest, taking an officer’s baton and vandalizing vehicles, including patrol vehicles, Stockton police said.

The student mob threw rocks and damaged both police and citizen vehicles.

I realize people are up in arms about Trump saying that teachers that wish to arm themselves should be trained and allowed ta do so. I know with the many failures of the FBI and more from the local Sheriff’s department (up to 50 red flags) — if I were a student I would feel safer being barricaded in a room with an adult with a gun.

BUT, this isn’t my point. My point is this…. were people upset when Obama wanted a civilian military? I suppose they would be armed via the 2nd Amendment (sorta like the red shirts in Venezuela):

Teachers cannot protect themselves and the students they have grown to love, but Obama can say he wants another military? Talk about double standards and selective outrage.

Excluded for the Sake of Inclusion

Published by Papa Giorgio

(CAUTION, Pat is an atheist, and thus he is VERY RAW in his points)

A society afraid of free speech is afraid of itself. Anyone who needs a safe space from other people’s opinions should be in therapy. The truth is incorrect and therefore inadmissible. The verdict is guilty, and the sentence is marginalization leading quickly to eradication. Pat Condell explains why we don’t belong in our own culture anymore (h-t, MOONBATTERY):

Also, included below is Pat’s removed video by YouTube, plus an intro to it:

Censored

Nobody’s feelings were consulted during the making of this video. Anyone who has a problem with that can drop dead.

This video was removed by YouTube two hours after it was uploaded. Google “feminists” don’t like criticism.

Restricted by YouTube, “A WORD TO THE CRIMINAL MIGRANT”, subtitled in Arabic, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Spanish, Swedish

NRA Political Donations Myth

Published by Papa Giorgio

THINK PROGRESS, a Leftist organization, back in 2012 went on to prove the following:

In a series of posts for Think Progress beginning today, I’ll detail what the data on the NRA’s involvement in elections actually tells us, and what conclusions we can draw about the status of an issue that has been largely dormant in our politics in recent years. The results of this analysis include the following:

  • NRA contributions to candidates have virtually no impact on the outcome of Congressional races.
  • An NRA independent expenditure (IE) campaign does not improve a candidate’s chance of winning.
  • The NRA’s endorsement, so eagerly sought by so many candidates, has almost no impact on the outcome of elections; the bulk of NRA endorsements go to incumbent Republicans with almost no chance of losing.
  • Despite what the NRA has long claimed, it neither delivered Congress to the Republican party in 1994 nor delivered the White House to George W. Bush in 2000.

[…..]

In a more recent post, GUNMART notes the under-funding of gun issues:

The liberal lie of the ‘Big Money NRA’ buying congress and funding their way to controlling our laws is a myth. Here is a look at the stats…

Now look at those dollar amount from those top special interests and compare and contrast those numbers to what the NRA’s real financial power is… They come in with a ranking of only 155th place among top lobbyists and 464th place among top contributions.

 

 

Dennis Prager Highlights Two WaPo Stories Debunking Leftist Positions

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dennis Prager gives credit where credit is due. The Washington Post debunks two widely believed stats gobbled up by the Mainstream Media (MSM).

The first story by WAPO fact checks Rubio’s statement about proposed laws making no difference in the recent school shootings:

The other story looks into the widely repeated claims about 18-school shooting already in 2018

Myth About Trump’s Unilateral Rescinding Obama’s Mental Health Law

Published by Papa Giorgio

Rush Limbaugh dismantles a lie from the Left expressed by Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue regarding Trump’s first few days in office and his rescinding an Obama era bill that was an Executive Order.

If the Left do not like this legal snafu of one President rescinding another’s E.O., pass laws through Congress dammit! U-n-l-e-s-s they just want to u-s-e the controversy to support their wild positions that have no reality in the real world. Here are the organizations who supported Trump’s action (via the WASHINGTON FREE BEACON):

…Officials at the American Civil Liberties Union opposed the rule and called for its repeal because the process did not include sufficient due process protections.

  • “The rule includes no meaningful due process protections prior to the SSA’s transmittal of names to the NICS database,” the group said in their letter. “The determination by SSA line staff that a beneficiary needs a representative payee to manage their money benefit is simply not an ‘adjudication’ in any ordinary meaning of the word. Nor is it a determination that the person ‘[l]acks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs’ as required by the NICS. Indeed, the law and the SSA clearly state that representative payees are appointed for many individuals who are legally competent.”

The National Council on Disability, Consortium for Citizens With Disabilities, and National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery all submitted letters calling for the reversal of the rule during hearings conducted by the Ways and Means Committee….

The WASHINGTON EXAMINER also looks into the pressure from right and left organizations

….This is why America’s new favorite charity, the American Civil Liberties Union (along with many other groups that are not particularly conservative or pertinent to gun rights per se) advocated and wrote in favor of what House Republicans did yesterday. This is from the ACLU’s letter of support:

On behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), we urge members of the House of Representatives to support the resolution disapproving the final rule of the Social Security Administration which implements the National Instant Criminal Background Check System Improvement Amendment Acts of 2007….

…In December 2016, the SSA promulgated a final rule that would require the names of all Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefit recipients – who, because of a mental impairment, use a representative payee to help manage their benefits – be submitted to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which is used during gun purchases.

We oppose this rule because it advances and reinforces the harmful stereotype that people with mental disabilities, a vast and diverse group of citizens, are violent. There is no data to support a connection between the need for a representative payee to manage one’s Social Security disability benefits and a propensity toward gun violence. The rule further demonstrates the damaging phenomenon of “spread,” or the perception that a disabled individual with one area of impairment automatically has additional, negative and unrelated attributes. Here, the rule automatically conflates one disability-related characteristic, that is, difficulty managing money, with the inability to safely possess a firearm.

The rule includes no meaningful due process protections prior to the SSA’s transmittal of names to the NICS database. The determination by SSA line staff that a beneficiary needs a representative payee to manage their money benefit is simply not an “adjudication” in any ordinary meaning of the word. Nor is it a determination that the person “[l]acks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs” as required by the NICS. Indeed, the law and the SSA clearly state that representative payees are appointed for many individuals who are legally competent…

…[R]egulation of firearms and individual gun ownership or use must be consistent with civil liberties principles, such as due process, equal protection, freedom from unlawful searches, and privacy. All individuals have the right to be judged on the basis of their individual capabilities, not the characteristics and capabilities that are sometimes attributed (often mistakenly) to any group or class to which they belong. A disability should not constitute grounds for the automatic per se denial of any right or privilege, including gun ownership.

So, if you donated the ACLU after President Trump’s executive travel ban, congratulations. Yesterday’s vote was your victory, too…..

The WASHINGTON TIMES also brings some historical clarity to the issue:

In recent years, advocates for the mentally ill created more boundaries for law enforcement and healthcare workers to forcibly hospitalize Americans who are suspected of being a danger to both themselves and others. The 1966 Lanterman Petris Short Act (LPS Act) was California legislation designed to reform the antiquated state of mental institutions in the state. 

It should be noted that LPS was signed by Governor Reagan in California but only after pressure from groups like the ACLU stepped in and sued on behalf of patients who were being involuntarily hospitalized. Other states followed suit with their own similar involuntary and voluntary commitment statutes.

According to U.S. Veteran’s Affairs, “Maurice Rodgers, spokesman for the California State Psychological Association, called the plan the “Magna Carta of the Mentally Ill,” while the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), officially in support of the legislation, raised objection to the fact that the patient had to personally petition for a due process hearing at the initial point in the commitment. 

Tying this all together for us is THE CZAR OF MUSCOVY:

….Later, the Carter administration signed into law the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, which largely promoted the same idea for national facilities. In 1981, when both parties in Congress agreed to the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, President Reagan signed that into law. One of it many provisions was to eliminate federal funding for community services and thereby transfer funding back to individual funding or state-funded efforts. Had Reagan even been aware of that part of the Act, he would have immediately realized the Act was negating the disastrous effects of the LPS he experienced as governor of California.

In other words, the State needs more funding control over mental health facilities, whether local, community, or state. Serious cases could still be funded through Medicaid, creating a virtual federal funding pool of money. This was formalized in the Mental Health Planning Act of 1986.

In effect, bipartisan policies recommended that the Federal government transfer government funding of community mental health facilities back to the states. State-funded facilities as well as privately-funded facilities were not affected by that policy. Reagan signed the bill into law as part of an overall spending cut package. As he would have known, complete state funding of facilities resulted in terrible mental healthcare, but state governments had an obligation to provide for this. However, in 1986, he also signed into a law another bipartisan solution to have Medicaid assist with funding. The laws closed not a single facility.

Ergo, to the liberals, REAGAN CLOSED THE MENTAL HEALTH FACILITIES. The fact that states closed some facilities and let staff go at others due to their own budget issues is unimportant because, of course, liberals hated Reagan. And still do.

[…..]

So when you hear the argument that Reagan closed the mental health facilities, ask the name of one health facility that Reagan actually closed. And when it closed. And how he closed it. And if you hear that Reagan closed it by extenuation of a funding cut, ask which particular bill he signed into law specified that particular facility be closed.

Or is it a case that bipartisan governments at the state and federal levels attempted to improve healthcare treatment and that bipartisan governments within the states screwed things up so badly that individual departments of health closed down less effective facilities? You will have lost the typical liberal at the word bipartisan….

A lifelong Democrat at the DAILY JOURNAL LETTERS ties this all in a neat bow for us:

…As a lifelong Democrat (of the Irish-Catholic-Labor variety), I think Reagan did some good things and other things I didn’t support. But one thing Reagan didn’t do was single-handedly “close down” mental hospitals thus triggering 40 years of mental health hell.

Two other forces actually determined the fate of mental health care in this state. You might call them acts with unintended consequences. Here’s the history.

In 1967, the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (LPS Act) a so-called “bill of rights” for those with mental health problems passed the Democratic-controlled Assembly: 77-1. The Senate approved it by similar margins. Then-Gov. Reagan signed it into law.

It was co-authored by California State Assemblyman Frank Lanterman, a Republican, and California State Senators Nicholas C. Petris and Alan Short, both Democrats. LPS went into full effect on July 1, 1972.

The bipartisan law came about because of concerns about the involuntary civil commitment to mental health institutions in California. At the time, the act was thought by many to be a progressive blueprint for modern mental health commitment procedures, not only in California, but in the United States.

Its main purposes were:

  • To end the inappropriate, indefinite, and involuntary commitment of mentally disordered persons, people with developmental disabilities, and persons impaired by chronic alcoholism, and to eliminate legal disabilities;
  • To provide prompt evaluation and treatment of persons with serious mental disorders or impaired by chronic alcoholism;
  • To guarantee and protect public safety;
  • To safeguard individual rights through judicial review;
  • To provide individualized treatment, supervision, and placement services by a conservatorship program for gravely disabled persons;
  • To encourage the full use of all existing agencies, professional personnel and public funds to accomplish these objectives and to prevent duplication of services and unnecessary expenditures;
  • To protect mentally disordered persons and developmentally disabled persons from criminal acts.

Initially, mental health advocates pushed for community-based mental health facilities that would replace the closed mental hospitals.

But that never happened because even though post-Reagan the legislature was still controlled by Democrats, no major funding for new community-based mental health facilities ever occurred. And that situation basically is still the case today.

The second force at work in the mental health care issue were the courts and what is known as “deinstitutionalization.”

During the 1960s, many people began accusing state mental hospitals of violating the civil rights of patients. Some families did, of course, commit incorrigible teenagers or eccentric relatives to years of involuntary confinement and unspeakable treatment. Nurse Ratched, the sadistic nurse famously portrayed in the book and film “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” became a symbol of institutional indifference to the mentally ill.

By the late 1960s, the idea that the mentally ill were not so different from the rest of us, or perhaps were even a little bit more sane, became trendy. Reformers dreamed of taking the mentally ill out of the large institutions and housing them in smaller, community-based residences where they could live more productive and fulfilling lives.

A mental patient could be held for 72 hours only if he or she engaged in an act of serious violence or demonstrated a likelihood of suicide or an inability to provide their own food, shelter or clothing due to mental illness. But 72 hours was rarely enough time to stabilize someone be held another two weeks for evaluation and treatment.

As a practical matter, involuntary commitment was no longer a plausible option…..

Who Will Google Silence Next?

Published by Papa Giorgio

Google and YouTube dominate internet search with over 75% of the market. If you disappear on Google, your ability to voice your opinion disappears too. PragerU is an educational non-profit that has had over 40 of their videos restricted by YouTube. That’s why they have recently filed a lawsuit against the tech giant. This is not just about PragerU being silenced – it’s about the targeting of dissenting opinions. Tomorrow it could be your point of view that is silenced.