Liz Cheney Is Chicken Little, Screaming: 'Democracy Is Falling!' (No, It's Not, Liz)

by Jim Thompson for RedState 

Last year, useful fool Liz Cheney agreed to act as Pelosi’s J6 “vice-chair.” She hasn’t disappointed. She’s asked scripted questions like a good parrot, without a breath of critical thinking or circumspection.

The committee has spent millions of dollars gathering “proof,” then spent thousands of hours pouring over evidence. The best this Soviet-style show trial has done is refer a couple of witnesses to the DOJ for prosecution. Their crime? Failing to toe the party line.

After millions of dollars spent, and thousands upon thousands of documents and records, the committee still found it necessary to manipulate evidence.

What has the committee actually proved against their singular target, Donald Trump? I still don’t know. As a trial attorney, I’ve watched with dismay as the committee submits “evidence.” All of it is designed not to prove guilt, but rather to entertain a TV audience.

Take, for example, the committee calling Cassidy Hutchinson on Tuesday for a “special session.”

She was brought in for this “special” session, much like producers of TV dramas call in a “special guest star.” After all, this is for show, not evidence. Her testimony was almost entirely irrelevant, littered with opinion, and/or based on hearsay and double hearsay. Almost none of what she said was based on her witnessing anything, and for me, the worst is the lack of anyone to push back. There’s no cross-examination but there are pundits writing romance novels in support. The left’s second favorite lawn gnome ate it up. Why? Because he’s a fool.

It’s easy to convince a willing TV audience and tiny bootlickers like Rick Wilson when you ask leading questions of salacious acts from a witness, who witnessed nothing. They might as well have called an actor to recite lines, because an actor would have the same knowledge of the facts. Additionally, she continually said, “something to the effect of.” If she’s claiming she heard something you don’t “quote” a witness and then say: “He said something to the effect.” He either said it, or he didn’t. He either did it, or he didn’t.

Assuming this charade went to trial in my state, I’d demand and likely get an Ev Code 402 hearing (to determine preliminary facts). Before she hit the stand, we’d determine if she could be called at all. None of her hearsay and double hearsay would be allowed. Her testimony about Trump’s outbursts are interesting but irrelevant and prejudicial (a separate Ev Code 352 motion would be offered). Before the seat Hutchinson was sitting in was cold, cold water was being dumped on her claims.

Her claim that Trump went full ninja in the Beast grabbing a steering wheel, then grabbing the neck of a secret service agent is pure TV fiction. It never happened according to the people she claims said it and did it.

Her claim that she wrote a note was quickly disputed by the lawyer who actually wrote the note (a fact that the committee was already aware of before the question was asked).

None of her inconsistencies have subsequently mattered to Vice-Chair Liz Cheney. Cheney has gone on talk shows to claim Hutchinson has credibility. No, she doesn’t, Liz. Liz claims that democracy is at stake. No it isn’t, Liz. Liz will soon be just a political memory, and good riddance.

Liz Cheney can play Chicken Little until November and scream “Democracy is Falling!, Democracy is Falling!” but it’s not. Cheney, along with the show trial, is about to crash and burn. Democracy, fortunately, will survive.

X22, On the Fringe, and more- July 1st

 

Hope you all enjoy this fantastic holiday weekend! Here's tonight's news:

Trump Is the Greatest Man Alive

What leftist, on the verge of losing his power in Washington, and yet possessed of the means of retaining it through violence, would have walked away as Trump did?

by Dan Gelernter for American Greatness

A Trump aide testified that the president tried to grab the steering wheel of the presidential limo so he could go to the Capitol on January 6, 2021. After the aide’s testimony, Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) embraced her, as though expressing solidarity with someone who has just been through a tremendous ordeal. You could say that Washington and Hollywood have finally converged, turning into a single giant Oscars ceremony that no one is watching.

Trump supporters (myself included) are not in a particularly receptive mood for further intimidation, so what is the establishment trying to achieve with their January 6 circus? The mystery was solved for me the other day when I was having dinner with a close friend of mine, a middle-left sort of guy: He is what the media generally likes to call an “independent voter,” part of the segment that theoretically can go either way in an election. In reality, my friend had never voted for a Republican in his life—until Trump.

For all the hysteria over Trump’s divisive tweets, the truth is that Trump is the only unifying figure in modern political history: He persuaded millions of people who had never voted for any Republican, indeed for any president, to vote for him. During his first term, he increased his share of the vote with every segment of the population, except college-educated whites. No Republican since Reagan received such broad support from so many groups. And he won their support not by pandering to their sub-category interests or to the things that set them apart, but by appealing to them as Americans. 

My middle-left friend, in admitting to me that he had supported Trump in the last election, quickly added that he was now embarrassed by his support because of January 6: Because it has apparently been established, by the establishment, that Trump “incited” the “riot” on Capitol Hill. So, of course, my friend couldn’t consider supporting Trump again (or at any rate, would never be able to admit to it in polite society).

Here’s my question to the January 6 committee: If Trump made a call for violence on January 6, how could I possibly have missed it? I was glued to the TV all day. I watched Trump’s speech; I hung on every word. I recognized it as a pivotal moment in American history: We were about to certify an unelected, illegitimate president. It was an impending catastrophe that only the boldest possible action could have prevented. 

If Trump had called out to the nation in his January 6 speech—if he had said, “We must stop this, come to Washington with your guns!”—millions of Americans would have come. The response would have been massive and overwhelming. You can bet your boots that Ashli Babbitt would not have been the only person shot and killed that day.

Trump easily—easily—could have started a civil war. He had only to make the call. Millions would have answered it. America was watching and waiting. But Trump never made that call, and Washington knows damn well he didn’t.

If you ask me, Trump has shown greater restraint than any man alive in the world today. Greater restraint perhaps than almost any man in history: For there are very few men, even in small and trivial nations, who could launch a civil war if they chose to do it. That sort of following—so wide, so deeply committed, and so much on the precipice of fury unleashed—is truly rare. The fact that Trump did not call upon his supporters to do violence on January 6 is singular, incredible: What leftist, on the verge of losing his power in Washington, and yet possessed of the means of retaining it through coercive force, would have walked away as Trump did?

Now the establishment—the Liz Cheneys, the Nancy Pelosis, the Mitch McConnells and Mitt Romneys—are terrified because they know Trump still has that following. They know the nation, left to choose its own president, would choose Trump again. And they can’t possibly let that happen. 

Trump is the only real threat—not to world peace and stability, not to economic security or energy independence, but to the power of the elites. The elites want that power more than anything—they cannot walk away—and they are willing to do anything, even destroy the entire planet with war or disease, sooner than they would see Trump become president again.

But they ought to be careful. The next time they steal an election, it may not take a speech to start a civil war.

Analysis: Joe Biden Rips the Mask off During NATO Summit

Sister Toldjah reporting for RedState 

We reported earlier on the embarrassing display put on by President Biden on a world stage during a NATO Summit press conference in Spain.

Not only were the usual non-sensical ramblings uttered, but Biden went on a rant about the United States Supreme Court that, quite frankly, proves perhaps more than anything else he’s done since his swearing-in ceremony that he’s a man who is morally unfit for public office.

For those who missed it, here’s the exchange between Biden and the reporter who teed up a question from the left for him on the Friday Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade (bolded emphasis added):

Reporter: “America is Back” was your motto at the first NATO Summit last year. And you’ve come to this summit here and the one in Germany after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned constitutional protections for abortion, after the shootings in Buffalo and Texas, at a time of record inflation, and as new polling this week shows that 85 percent of the U.S. public thinks the country is going in the wrong direction.

How do you explain this to those people who feel the country is going in the wrong direction, including some of the leaders you’ve been meeting with this week, who think that when you put all of this together, it amounts to an America that is going backward?

Biden: They do not think that. You haven’t found one person — one world leader to say America is going backwards. America is better positioned to lead the world than we ever have been. We have the strongest economy in the world. Our inflation rates are lower than other nations in the world. The one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States on overruling not only Roe v. Wade, but essentially challenging the right to privacy.

We’ve been a leader in the world in terms of personal rights and privacy rights, and it is a mistake, in my view, for the Supreme Court to do what it did.

[…]

And the Supreme Court — we have to change that decision by codifying Roe v. Wade.

Watch:

Biden made it clear while here in the U.S. that he was upset by the ruling, so much so that he instructed his administration including DOJ Attorney General Merrick Garland to orchestrate an end-run around the decision made by the Supreme Court if at all possible. Biden’s call to action was something HHS Sec Xavier Becerra apparently took to heart when you consider he dangerously teased earlier this week that his department was considering ways to help provide transportation from one state to the other for women seeking abortions, a potential violation of the Hyde amendment.

While a Cabinet Secretary to the President of the United States openly hinting and without any remorse that they are considering breaking federal law should set off all kinds of alarm bells, the supposed leader of the free world trashing our nation’s highest court on foreign soil is beyond the pale and, in my opinion, tells us more about who Joe Biden really is, with none of it being good.

He’s not just the feckless leader beholden to far-left special interest groups we’ve always known him to be, but he’s also a bitterly divisive man who talks who out of both sides of his mouth about “disrespecting our democratic institutions” when politically convenient, painting his opposition as traitors when they supposedly do it but portraying himself as a “defender” of Constitutional rights when he actually does it.

Let us pause for a moment and reflect on all the times Biden accused Republicans including former President Trump of “undermining our democracy” or whatever by merely questioning election results, and then contrast his past statements and their past statements with what he said not just in the immediate aftermath of the SCOTUS ruling but also during the Madrid press event:

Last I checked, the “muh norms and institutions” people were also further embarrassing themselves by enabling a third-hand “witness'” fantastical tale about Trump trying to forcibly take over “the Beast” from Secret Service agents during the Capitol riot. Also, last I checked, Joe Biden had a penchant for trashing his country in order to score cool points with the “woke” crowd, something we learned about him before the 2020 election and something that obviously (and unfortunately) hasn’t changed a bit, no matter how hard he tries to hide it.

Flashback: This May Be The Defining Video of Joe Biden’s Presidency

United Nations 'has no power,' Pope Francis says

 

Pope Francis clarified he did not mean to offend UN leaders, adding that the organization has helped before in places such as Cyprus.  

Pope Francis spoke to Argentina's national news agency, Télam, in a longform interview. The questions and discussion were conducted in Pope Francis's native language, Spanish.

The pontiff fielded questions on a variety of topics including climate change, the pandemic, poverty and his own decade of the papacy. 

At one point in the interview, Pope Francis was asked about the endurance and longevity of "multilateral organizations" — and whether they are able to affect peace. Notably, the pontiff spoke about the role of the United Nations and dismissed the organization as powerless.

"After World War II, trust was placed in the United Nations. It is not my intention to offend anybody, I know there are very good people working there, but at this point, the UN has no power to assert its authority," the pope said.  

Pope Francis stated that he did not mean to point fingers or offend anyone with the observation — and that the UN can occasionally offer meaningful help — but ultimately the charter of the UN does not allow it to be of much use.

He continued, "It does help to prevent wars, and I’m thinking of Cyprus, where Argentine troops are collaborating. But in order to stop a war, to resolve a conflict like the one we are seeing in Europe right now or like others around the world, it has no power. I don’t mean to offend. It is just that its constitution does not give the organization that kind of power."  

In a meeting with over a dozen Catholic bishops visiting the Vatican from Brazil, Pope Francis discussed his health and plans for the future of his reign. The pope told visiting Archbishop Roque Paloschi that resigning from the Holy See "does not cross his mind," according to the Portuguese edition of the Vatican's official news service.

However, the pope did not feign great health, reportedly telling the bishops that he was facing many challenges, but that he wished to live the life God gave him until the end.  

https://www.foxnews.com/world/united-nations-has-no-power-pope-francis-says   

The Jan. 6 Committee Is Causing Never Trumpers To Lose Their Minds

So many right-of-center commentators want so badly to be liked by the left they’re willing to ignore the truth about the Jan. 6 committee.

by John Daniel Davidson for The Federalist

Something is very wrong with the supposedly right-of-center media outlets and commentators treating the Jan. 6 committee like something other than the appalling Stalinesque show-trial that it is. In particular, the Washington Examiner and National Review both ran embarrassing, delusional op-eds about the hearings this week. The Examiner even ran an editorial declaring, “Trump proven unfit for power again.”

Why is Trump “unfit for power”? Because of former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony on Tuesday. It was hailed by the corporate press as “explosive” and “damning,” featured on the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, and replayed ad nauseum on all the cable news shows.

Before we get to the Examiner and National Review, we need to talk about the Hutchinson testimony. Hutchinson, who was billed as a star witness for the committee, did indeed make a number of explosive claims on Tuesday. The problem is that she didn’t actually witness anything. Her hearsay claims were blown to pieces almost as soon as they appeared, in some cases because people with firsthand knowledge immediately came forward to dispute them, and in other cases because the claims themselves were ridiculous on their face.

Perhaps the most outrageous accusation from Hutchinson was that on Jan. 6 an enraged President Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of his presidential vehicle and lunged at his security detail when he was told he could not join the protesters marching from the White House to the U.S. Capitol after his rally.

Hutchinson admitted she had no firsthand knowledge of this alleged physical altercation between Trump and his security detail, and said she was relaying a conversation she had with Tony Ornato, White House deputy chief of staff for operations, and Bobby Engel, head of Trump’s security detail.

Not long after Hutchinson testified, NBC News’s Peter Alexander reported that Engel and the Secret Service agents inside the vehicle with Trump that day say the president didn’t try to grab the steering wheel and didn’t assault any agents. Later, a Secret Service spokesman told Alexander that all the agents who were in the president’s SUV on Jan. 6 are “available to testify under oath, responding to [Hutchinson’s] new allegations.” 

Politico later reported that the Jan. 6 committee didn’t even reach out to the Secret Service before airing Hutchinson’s testimony: “Anthony Guglielmi, the service’s chief of communications, told Politico that select committee investigators did not ask Secret Service personnel to reappear or answer questions in writing in the 10 days before asking Hutchinson about the matter at the hearing.”

But that wasn’t the only problem with Hutchinson’s testimony. She also claimed to have written a note about a potential Trump statement meant to quell the rioting at the U.S. Capitol. In fact, the note was written by Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann.

“The handwritten note that Cassidy Hutchinson testified was written by her was in fact written by Eric Herschmann on January 6, 2021,” said a spokesperson for Herschmann. “All sources with direct knowledge and law enforcement have and will confirm that it was written by Mr. Herschmann.”

All of this was known and reported, at least in part, the same day Hutchinson testified before the committee. That didn’t stop the Examiner’s editors from going along with the rest of corporate media and simply regurgitating Hutchinson’s outrageous and disputed claims before concluding, “Hutchinson’s testimony confirmed a damning portrayal of Trump as unstable, unmoored, and absolutely heedless of his sworn duty to effectuate a peaceful transition of presidential power.”

Hutchinson’s testimony did no such thing, and the ridiculous moral preening of the Examiner’s editors doesn’t make her account any more credible. If anything, Hutchinson unwittingly confirmed that the Jan. 6 committee is a farcical show-trial, the purpose of which is to criminalize political opposition to Democrat Party rule and advance the false narrative that President Trump is not just responsible for the Jan. 6 riot, but that he’s guilty of treason. 

You have to wonder what’s wrong with these editors that they would publish such garbage. Do they not realize that one of the propaganda goals of the Jan. 6 committee is to elicit these kind of editorials? Mission accomplished, Liz Cheney!

Even worse in some ways was the take from Tim Carney, a columnist for the Examiner and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (who, to be fair, has had a hard time thinking clearly about Trump lately). On Wednesday, long after the problems with Hutchinson’s testimony were widely known, Carney penned an unintentionally hilarious column headlined, “Ignore Democrats’ distractions: Here’s how Trump proved his unfitness on Jan. 6.”

Ah, yes, because the thing we need to focus on here isn’t the phony hearsay testimony from a patently unreliable witness in a Soviet-style show trial being conducted by House Democrats, but how we can spin this episode to scold the right about how Trump wasn’t a “good shepherd.” It’s like Carney sits around thinking up ways to help the left, even when their deceptive schemes are exploding in real time.

For its part, National Review posted a long-winded column Tuesday night by Andrew McCarthy declaring Hutchinson’s testimony to be “devastating,” even though key parts of it had already been called into question by people with firsthand knowledge. Since then, McCarthy has penned two additional posts about how the Jan. 6 committee has undercut this “devastating” testimony from Hutchinson, and how the fact that its hearsay is “part irrelevant and part inaccurate.” (McCarthy, for those who don’t know, is a former federal prosecutor who over the course of his punditry threw cold water on the mere suggestion that former FBI director James Comey was dishonest, that Robert Mueller was out to lunch, or that the FBI would ever try to obtain a FISA warrant on abject nonsense, despite later writing a book refuting himself.)

I recount this depressing spate of commentary not because it’s compelling but because it’s representative of a weird tic on the right to run interference for the left while scolding and betraying the people whose side you’re ostensibly on. I don’t know if it stems from a burning desire to be liked by their leftist peers and cultural tastemakers at The New York Times and The Atlantic, or if they really just want to write for those outlets and be on the Sunday shows.

Or maybe they secretly despise the right and need to feel like they’re sticking to their principles and speaking the truth to their own side. Maybe it makes them feel righteous and noble.

I don’t know. But I do know that the testimony we heard on Tuesday was a farce, that the Jan. 6 committee is an abysmal spectacle and an abuse of government power, and that anyone on the right who can’t see that should either hang up his commentator hat or go ask The Atlantic to host his newsletter. I hear it’s nice work, if you can get it.

WH Economic Council Chair Says Biden 85% Disapproval Irrelevant When Making Economic Transition to New and Permanent Energy Program

National Economic Council Chairman Brian Deese essentially confirms what everyone suspected about Joe Biden’s polling, approval and disapproval.  It is quite obvious to everyone now that Biden is a disposable figurehead for the people inside the administration and government who are going full speed ahead with the Green New Deal via executive and regulatory action.

During a CNN segment Deese is challenged by the 85% disapproval and he ignores the opposition from the American people by saying the White House needs to “remind people as we go through this period” where energy costs are skyrocketing because climate change goals are unsustainable, during this economic “transition” they have made other progress.  WATCH: 

Joe Biden represents the once in a lifetime opportunity for every ideological leftist in government to carry out the most extreme energy policy without regard to political consequence.  Biden doesn’t even know what they are doing; that’s why there are conflicts between his statements about energy policy and the factual activity that is taking place around energy policy.  Biden couldn’t name the Interior Secretary if his life depended on it.

The extreme elements around Biden are taking advantage of his cognitive and intellectual deficit.  Obama told everyone Biden was an idiot, and now the Obama ideologues are using that idiot to fundamentally change America.   It is clear what they are doing; unfortunately, almost everyone in media and the leadership of both parties are pretending not to know what is happening.

AOC Accuses Supreme Court of a 'Coup' After 2020 Election-Related Case Is Taken Up

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

The hits just keep on coming for the Democrat Party as this year’s Supreme Court term comes to a close. Obviously, the decisions have taken center stage, with Roe v. Wade being overturned, the Second Amendment getting affirmed, and the EPA being prevented from turning itself into its own fourth branch of government.

But after the decisions finished dropping on Thursday morning, the next shoe to drop was what cases would be taken up for the next term. One case already has the left losing its ever-loving mind: Moore vs. Harper.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the news especially hard, declaring the Supreme Court was enacting a “coup” and seeking to end presidential elections. As I wrote about Elizabeth Warren’s doom-spelling reaction to the EPA decision, the strategy of proclaiming everything the end of the world is incredibly stupid because then nothing is the end of the world. AOC does even begin to understand that, and she’s having a banner week of rhetorical freakouts.

With all that said, you might be asking yourself why Democrats are so up in arms about the Supreme Court taking up this case. The answer is simple: They see it as a blow to their ability to direct elections in their favor.

Specifically, during the 2020 election, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided to override the state’s constitution and its legislature in order to allow universal mail-in balloting. At the time, it was clearly an improper and abusive decision, but it helped Joe Biden greatly against Donald Trump, so Democrats loved it. If the Supreme Court ends up curtailing the power of the courts to override elected legislatures in making voting laws, it would end the left’s best tool in ensuring they can stack the deck, and we just can’t have that, can we?

AOC and her cohorts want the courts to have the power to dictate voting policies without the input of voters, full stop. If they lose that, they lose the ability to help dictate election outcomes as they likely did in Pennsylvania. The same goes for the drawing of congressional districts. In the past census cycle, court after court attempted to interfere in the district-drawing of legislatures, mostly in Republican states at the behest of leftwing activist groups. In the end, enough things went the GOP’s way to limit the damage, but it could have been much worse.

To summarize, while Democrats scream about “democracy,” all the Supreme Court has done is once again hand power back to the people. And frankly, after 50 years of the high court delivering blow after blow to conservatives, it’s pathetic to see the left behave the way they are. Jumping in a lake comes to mind.

Biden Wants A Filibuster Carve-Out — But Only For Democrats

… but that’s not how it works.

by David Harsanyi for The Federalist

Joe Biden was in Madrid yesterday attacking American institutions. “The one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States,” the president said of the Dobbs ruling, which sent the abortion issue back to the democratic process where it belongs. (Is this the first time in American history that a president has criticized a branch of his government on foreign soil?)

Biden went on to say that he wants to “codify Roe v. Wade into law,” and “[i]f the filibuster gets in the way … we should provide an exception to the filibuster to deal with the Supreme Court decision.”

Now, it’s become tedious to point out the shameless, unmitigated hypocrisy of the Democrats on the filibuster. Once upon a time, Biden called the filibuster “one of the pillars of American democracy,” and now he agrees with his former boss that it’s a “relic of the Jim Crow era.” Biden, who knows a bit about Jim Crow, had nothing to say on the matter from 2017-2020 when Democrats deployed the filibuster more than 300 times during the Trump administration — easily a record.

In 2017, in fact, 30 Democrats signed a letter written by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, defending the filibuster as an imperative tool in maintaining the “deliberative” composure of the legislature. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., argued in 2018 that abolishing the filibuster “would be the end of the Senate.” He was right then. And maybe that’s the point. Now that his party is unable to unilaterally dictate policy, he says the filibuster has a “death grip” on American democracy.

Anyway, you’ll notice that Biden’s carve-outs only apply to his party’s legislative priorities. Last year, the president also advocated for a filibuster carve-out so Congress could cram through a bill that would have overturned thousands of voter-integrity laws around the country and created a corrupt national election infrastructure. That exemption was justified by the hysterical notion that asking a voter for ID, among equally rational regulations, was an assault on democracy.

What special justification is there for creating a carve-out for codifying Roe? It is a highly divisive issue. Polls show that the idea of codifying Roe nationally isn’t particularly popular. And when more voters learn that the president’s preferred policy would legalize abortion through all nine months of pregnancy on demand for any reason, paid for by taxpayers, it will be even less popular. This is why Democrats need to circumvent legislative norms in the first place. But since states can now, thanks to the Supreme Court, legislate their own abortion policies, there is no need for federal regulation.

Moreover, there is no such thing as a carve-out, anyway. After Harry Reid blew up that 60-vote threshold for short-term political gain in 2013, perhaps under the impression that Democrats would be running Washington for the foreseeable future, his party paid a heavy price. Today, one imagines Democrats believe that they’ll either be able to demand the parties live by two sets of rules when the time comes — as they do with so many other issues — or their long-term goal is to hollow out the filibuster.

I lean toward the latter point of view. The progressives’ crusade to end the filibuster is a Constitution-eroding, radical play to nationalize politics by empowering slim and fleeting majorities to institute wide-ranging, generational policies. First, they make the mistake of believing their own press, which constantly tells them their ideas are immensely popular. Second, they make the mistake of believing that Republicans won’t have the nerve to do the same. They used to be right about that, though it’s a risky proposition these days.

Whatever the case, just as there was no such thing as a carved judicial filibuster exemption specially crafted for Democrats, there will be no special exemptions for the legislative filibuster. In 2024, Republicans may well be in a position to repeal any new Roe-codifying law and pass an abortion ban. There is absolutely no reason for Republicans to allow Democrats to make carve-outs and not do it themselves. Back and forth it would go, with states and municipalities constantly being impelled to change their policies. Few things would be more destabilizing than allowing one party to overturn state laws and rely on centralized federal control without consensus or compromise. That is far more destabilizing than any SCOTUS ruling.

Abortion isn’t a federal concern just as it wasn’t a constitutional concern. And the filibuster, as usual, does the nation a great service.

Supreme Court Vacates Large-Capacity Magazine and Assault Weapon Bans in a Preview of What's Coming Next

streiff reporting for RedState 

The epic decision by the US Supreme Court declaring that the Second Amendment was a fundamental Constitutional right and not some kind of 18th-century artifact (Supreme Court Rules You Can’t ‘Bear’ Arms Unless You Can Carry Them for Self-Defense) has become a wrecking ball, demolishing petty and harassing laws anti-gun states have fashioned to make life difficult, if not hazardous, for gun owners. Shortly after the decision was announced, some hard-core anti-gun states gave up their unconstitutional limits on open/concealed carry (‘Bruen’s’ Domino Effect: California and New Jersey Drop ‘Good Cause’ Clauses from CCW Requirements).

Another hammer blow came on Thursday. Orders issued by the Court vacated decisions by the Third, Fourth, and Ninth Circuits and returned them “for further consideration in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen.”

Third Circuit

Issue: A New Jersey law limiting magazine capacity to 10 rounds was upheld.

Association of New Jersey R... by streiff at redstate

Fourth Circuit

Issue: Maryland’s assault weapon ban was upheld.

Bianchi vs. Frosh by streiff at redstate

Ninth Circuit

California

Issue: A California law limiting magazine capacity to 10 rounds was upheld.

Duncan vs. Bonta by streiff at redstate

Hawaii

Issue: Hawaii’s strict licensing requirements for carrying a handgun were upheld. READ: BREAKING. Ninth Circuit Just Made a Second Amendment Ruling That Will Leave You Shaking Your Head.

Young vs. Hawaii by streiff at redstate

The Hawaii case is a slam dunk as the facts are nearly identical to Bruen, but the other cases are interesting. The Supreme Court seems to be saying that state laws banning large-capacity magazines and assault weapon bans are illegal. This is Maryland’s list of prohibited long arms; there is also a list of banned pistols.

Forcing courts to use the strict scrutiny and historical use tests, the large-capacity magazine cases and the assault weapon case will have a hard time surviving. Large-capacity magazines have been around for years and are the most common variety. Moreover, the sheer volume of assault weapons in private hands will make it hard to restrict ownership.