Month: May 2019

 
From Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson:

Sortwell Owes Answers on Gun Incident

Gun owners are often their own worst enemies. At the national level, the scandals surrounding the National Rifle Association may do more to hurt the organization’s ability to defend the 2nd Amendment rights of gun owners than any particular election, court ruling or terrible mass shooting tragedy.

But it isn’t just the big incidents that ill-serve gun owners. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Rep. Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers) allegedly decided to show his gun to a Democratic legislative staffer, Savion Castro, to (allegedly again) demonstrate the supposed silliness of the sign banning guns outside the office Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison). Sortwell was visiting the office of Stubbs on an unrelated matter when the alleged incident supposedly occurred.

Stubbs, for whom Castro works, is demanding an apology from Sortwell. Sortwell told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he wouldn’t answer their questions. After disputing the Journal Sentinel’s account, Sortwell told WKOW he would not give his side of events because, he allegedly told the reporter, his constituents don’t care.

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From Frances Langum:

The founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America warns Trump against any pardoning of convicted war criminals.

So who is Donald Trump going to trust: an accused war criminal with a Fox News host in his corner, or the seven Navy SEALS who testified against the accused war criminal?

Don’t answer that.

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From The Onion:

ICE Agent Can’t Believe He Being Reprimanded For Child Who Died All Those Months Ago

“I accidentally killed this toddler, like, six months ago, but literally all my coworkers have had kids die during their shifts, so I don’t get why I’m being singled out all of a sudden,” said Thornton, noting that his supervisor assured him that the rebuke was “total bullshit,” but government policy meant it would have to be written up in his file.

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From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

To call the achievement of the Founders a sacrifice is to say that they did not deem the ideals set forth in the Declaration as worthy of their fighting for; that the idea that the individual’s life belongs to him and not to any collective and not to any ruler was less of a value to them than what they pledged in defense of it; that they did what they did anyway without personal conviction or passion; that the Declaration of Independence is a fraud. To say that America was born out of sacrifice is a grave injustice and, in fact, a logical impossibility.

World history produced a steady parade of human sacrifices, and the overwhelming result was a steady stream of blood, tears,and tyranny. The Founders stood up not merely to the British Crown, but to the whole brutal sacrificial history of mankind to turn the most radical set of political ideas ever conceived into history’s greatest nation.

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From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

This post could also be titled, The Myths We Tell Our Children. The other day, I attended a sporting event for one of my granddaughters. As I was sitting there, a grandmother was explaining to her young grandson the history of The Great Black Swamp, and in particular Stryker, Ohio. Grandma breathlessly explained how the French “settled” the Stryker area. In her mind, local history began and ended with white people. Sadly, this view of history is all too common, especially in white monocultures such as rural northwest Ohio.

As Grandma regaled her grandson with stories of early French settlers, I snickered, thinking, Native Americans sure would find this history interesting. You see, long before white Europeans arrived on the scene, Iroquois, Wyandot, Hopewell, and Ottawa people roamed the forests, swamps, and waterways of northwest Ohio. While it is certainly true that the French established and platted the town of Stryker, that doesn’t mean that they were the first people to walk/inhabit the land. They weren’t.

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From Tommy Christopher:

Take the Hint People! Nancy Pelosi Tells Reporters Impeaching Trump May Be ‘Unavoidable’

“You said that the president may have engaged in impeachable offenses, yet today you are saying you’re not on a path to impeachment,” CNN’s Manu Raju said, and asked “Can you explain why you are opposed to launching an impeachment inquiry when many of your members want to do it?”

“Let me be really very clear,” Pelosi said. “The president’s behavior in terms of his obstruction of justice, the things that he is doing, it’s very clear, it’s in plain sight, it cannot be denied. Ignores subpoenas, obstruction of justice. Yes, these could be impeachable offenses.”

“You might understand it better if you remember these three things,” Pelosi continued. “We want to follow the facts to get the truth to the American people. With a recognition, two, that no one is above the law.”

“And three, that the president is engaged in a cover-up,” Pelosi said. “And that is what my statement is. How we deal with it, is a decision that our caucus makes, and our caucus is very much saying whatever we do, we need to be ready when we do it.”

“And I do think that impeachment is a very divisive place to go in our country,” Pelosi said, and concluded by adding “But we can get the facts to the American people through our investigation, that may take us to a place that is unavoidable in terms of impeachment, or not. But we’re not at that place.”

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From Michael John Scott at MadMikesAmerica:

Jon Voight, the less than relevant eighty year old father of Angelina Jolie, took to Twitter on Friday night to proclaim his love of President Trump in a pair of videos that said the president’s job “is not easy” as he has to fight “the left and their absurd words of destruction,” though he has “made his every move correct.”

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Memorial Day is upon us.

• At The Moderate Voice, Dorian Estuardo de Wind greets the coming day of remembrance, recalling the Morse code he used while serving our country, and celebrating one brave prisoner of war who used it to blink out a secret message to the United States in full view of his captors.
   
• Green Eagle listens with some skepticism to the drumbeats of war, including easy to win prospective battles, and hears the echoes of war drums of years ago.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger goes to the experts to find out how great a danger Iran poses to the United States.
   
• Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass takes note of a group of often ignored activists fighting for reproductive rights.
   
• Max’s Dad has a few vulcanic thoughts about anti-abortion laws.

Continue reading “Memorial Day, War Drums, Climate, Reproductive Rights, Immigration”

 
From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

Sometimes, I find it amazing the things that people feel obligated to do over the things they are genuinely supposed to do. Take former White House Counsel Don McGahn, who defied a subpoena out of a sense of obligation, perhaps, to President Trump, despite the real possibility of being held in contempt of Congress and any penalties that might pertain to that.

It’s questionable that Trump has a legitimate reason to direct McGahn not to testify–he is a former, not current, employee of the White House, and he would have been questioned regarding things he already discussed in about 30 hours of questioning by the Special Counsel’s team. I’m just an old D-list blogger, but that doesn’t look like his testimony should fall under anything like executive privilege to me. It seems less questionable, though, that Trump has a less-legitimate purpose in having McGahn refuse to testify; one of the more disturbing items in the Mueller report is that McGahn was told by Trump to fire Mueller, didn’t do it, and then was advised by the White House to publicly state that Trump never tried to obstruct justice (even if it seems like he knew Trump did).

If requesting McGahn dodge the hearing is another form of obstruction, we’ve got like, three layers of obstruction, right there.

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