Tag Archives: Illinois

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Daily Broadside | Texas Can Arrest Illegals But Illinois Judge Rules Illegals Can Carry Guns

Sorry I missed yesterday. Went to bed early with a headache.

Tuesday was Illinois’ primary voting day, so the missus and I carried out our civic duty. I was disappointed in the turnout … our voting precinct location was super quiet around 5:30 PM. I suppose there could have been more voters that came after work, but there was no line, no wait while we were there.

Empty.

I guess if the result is a foregone conclusion, voters aren’t motivated to show up. I vote as a matter of principle. Exercise your right to vote, just like you exercise your muscles.

Two really interesting developments concerning illegal aliens flooding our country. First, the US Supreme Court rescinded its stay on a Texas law that provides for the arrest and deportation of illegal aliens.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted its freeze of a Texas immigration law which allows state and local law enforcement to arrest illegal immigrants and empowers state judges to deport them.

The Court’s six conservative justices dismissed the Biden administration’s emergency appeal, allowing the law to remain in effect while the issue is adjudicated by lower courts. The majority did not explain its reasoning, as is typical, but Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, issued a concurring opinion explaining that Texas should be allowed to enforce its law until a lower court definitively strikes it down.

Note that the case has not been decided yet. This ruling was about whether the Texas law can continue to operate while the case is decided. It can, which means that Texas will begin to enforce its new law against illegal immigration.

Good.

Second, an astonishing ruling from a federal judge appointed by Obammy in (*ahem*) Illinois gives illegal immigrants the right to carry guns. I repeat: foreigners who are in this country illegally, who have no business being here, are allowed to carry.

A federal judge in Illinois has found that the Constitution protects the gun rights of noncitizens who enter the United States illegally.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman on Friday ruled that a federal prohibition on illegal immigrants owning firearms is unconstitutional as applied to defendant Heriberto Carbajal-Flores. The court found that while the federal ban is “facially constitutional,” there is no historical tradition of firearm regulation that permits the government to deprive a noncitizen who has never been convicted of a violent crime from exercising his Second Amendment rights.

“The noncitizen possession statute … violates the Second Amendment as applied to Carbajal-Flores,” the judge wrote. “Thus, the Court grants Carbajal-Flores’ motion to dismiss.”

Coleman, a President Obama appointee, cited the landmark Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), which established a new standard to determine whether a law violates the Second Amendment. Since Bruen, a multitude of federal and state gun control measures have been challenged in courts with mixed results. 

The “new standard” referred to is that the government must show that each regulation “is consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” This gets a little complicated, because there is federal law that prohibits noncitizens who are illegally here from possessing a firearm.

Carbajal-Flores is an illegal immigrant who, on June 1, 2020, was found to be in possession of a handgun in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. He was subsequently charged with violating a federal law that prohibits any noncitizen who is not legally authorized to be in the U.S. from “possess[ing] in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.” 

In an April 2022 decision, Coleman denied Carbajal-Flores’ first motion to dismiss his indictment, finding that the ban was constitutional. However, Carbajal-Flores asked the court to reconsider that ruling following the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen and appellate decisions in the Third and Seventh circuits that considered whether people convicted of nonviolent crimes can be prohibited from possessing firearms.

Basically, the foreigner here illegally is challenging what he and his lawyers consider a conflict between the federal law prohibiting possession of a gun, and the “new standard” that SCOTUS created to determine whether a law violates the Second Amendment.

I am not a lawyer and I don’t play one on TV, so while this decision makes no sense to me on the surface, there are likely legal subtleties that are playing out under the surface.

For instance, how is someone who is violating our law with their very presence here somehow covered by the US Constitution, which was written by and for US citizens?

If illegals can carry guns, what does that mean for the 10 million illegals that have poured over our southern border over the last three years of the treacherous Brandon administration?

The article didn’t say whether Carbajal-Flores had concealed-carry license. If he didn’t, why do Illinois citizens have to have one? If he did, how did he get one if he’s an illegal alien?

From my go-to newspaper, The Epoch Times:

The ruling drew a range of reactions from people in the legal community.

“Supreme Court has said the ‘people’ are members of the political community,” Larry Keane, a lawyer for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, wrote on X. “Illegal aliens in US are not part of the political community and thus do not have 2A rights.”

Kostas Moros, a lawyer who represents the California Rifle and Pistol Association, said that he also saw the issue that way.

“Bruen asks for a historical tradition of modern regulation that justifies the modern law, and one plainly exists here,” he wrote, noting that groups that have been disarmed in the past, including loyalists, have the common thread of being “outside of the political community.”

What gobsmacks me is that the judge considers the new standard to overrule the clear language of the federal law prohibiting possession by illegals. We have a group of activist judges who are making novel rulings that violate the letter and the spirit of the law.

This ruling is particularly troubling because of news like this:

The leader of a notorious street gang that has been terrorizing business owners and residents in Colombia’s capital was arrested earlier this week in Texas, where he was seeking asylum.

Venezuelan national Aderbiss Pirela was taken into custody by federal and local agents in New Braunfels, outside San Antonio, on Tuesday, Homeland Securities Investigations confirmed Wednesday. 

Pirela, according to Colombian authorities, is the second-in-command of ‘Los Satanás,’ and was one of the seven most wanted murderers in Bogotá. 

My recommendation is that you haven’t yet, arm yourself and buy ammo—lots of ammo.

And don’t forget that the muttonhead and his cabal in the White House are the ones who have done this to us.

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Daily Broadside | Pile On! Illinois Joins the States Trying to Kick Trump Off the Ballot

Anti-Trump Coloradoans have appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove Trump from the GOP’s presidential primary ballot, pending review of SCOTUS.

Colorado voters seeking to remove former President Trump from their state’s GOP primary ballot responded Thursday to the former president’s appeal, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to disqualify him from appearing on the ballot for another term.

“The Court should decline Trump’s invitation to second-guess the Colorado Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Colorado Election Code,” the court filing said.

Trump isn’t second-guessing their interpretation of the election code; he’s challenging their conclusion that he led an insurrection and therefore could be removed from the ballot.

On Wednesday, Trump asked the justices to reverse the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling to disqualify him from the Republican primary ballot for engaging in an insurrection.

In our country, a person is innocent until proven guilty unless they’re a bitter clinger MAGA Republican deplorable. Then a group of judges can determine innocence or guilt based not on a trial with evidence and witnesses before a jury of peers, but on whatever they claim an “insurrection” is.

Of course, the Colorado Supreme Court’s fevered decision is catching on in other states. It’s like the Chinese Lung Pox, but it’s a virus of the mind rather than the body.

Amid ongoing legal battles over his removal from the Republican primary ballots in Maine and Colorado, former President Donald Trump faces a new challenge to his eligibility for high office, this time in Illinois.

A group [sic] five Illinois voters, represented by Free Speech for People, has filed a challenge to Trump’s eligibility under the 14th Amendment, contending that his actions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot constituted “insurrection” and disqualified him from the presidency, The Hill reported.

“Trump gave aid and comfort to enemies of the Constitution by, among other things: encouraging and counseling the insurrectionists; deliberately failing to exercise his authority and responsibility as President to quell the insurrection; praising the insurrectionists, including calling them ‘very special,’ ‘good persons,’ and ‘patriots’; and promising or suggesting that he would pardon many of the insurrectionists if reelected to the presidency,” the filing claimed.

These kind of hysterical denunciations are the Left’s specialty—long on impressive sounding accusations, short on actual evidence. To wit, not one of the 1,069 J6 political prisoners in the Garland Archipelago has been charged with the crime of sedition or insurrection.

Not one.

But here we have five—count them, FIVE—Illinois voters who have, again, decided without evidence or a trial or a jury, that Trump is an insurrectionist and is disqualified from the presidency. (The five objectors are all men. Where is the diversity I was promised?!)

Again, the irony here is that they represent “Free Speech for People” which, judging by it’s grotesquely colored website that promotes abolishing the Electoral College and replacing it with a national popular vote, is a progressive non-profit that wants to “restore our democracy.” (Funny—when I think of “restoring” something, I think of taking it back to how it originally was, not breaking it from it’s foundational design. But I’m sure that’s just me.)

In their Petition, the Objectors rely on the decisions of Colorado and of Maine, both of which determined that Trump engaged in insurrection. But they also cite “multiple judges and government officials” who claim that January 6 was an insurrection (p. 60).

Again, just because “multiple judges and government officials” have claimed it was an insurrection doesn’t make it one. Frankly, the fact that “multiple judges and government officials” have claimed it was an insurrection makes me all the more suspicious that it was the farthest thing from an insurrection.

I’m not claiming that there was no violence or that things didn’t get broken. But I am claiming that there is actually no evidence whatsoever that Trump engaged in an insurrection, except as claimed by people who defined what happened as “an insurrection.” It was a march on the Capitol that got out of hand and, as we’ve come to learn, was facilitated by the Capitol Police and, most likely, by the FBI.

If it had truly been an insurrection, there would have been an organized assault with guns and a lot of people would’ve died on both sides. Not one of the protestors has been charged with having a firearm on them. As it stands, the only people to die were protestors who were shot or beaten to death by the Capitol Police. It was a Reichstag moment, and the progressives have milked it for all it’s worth.

But the smart people who rule us have all decided that Trump is guilty of “engaging in” an insurrection. He’s the only one. Must’ve been quite a feat, Trump pulling that off all by himself.

The activist judges in Colorado got the ball rolling and now the rest of the states are piling on. Our country is beginning to turn yellow, like a banana republic.

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | Writing More Laws Won’t Solve the Problem. Plus You’re Trampling My Rights

Sorry I was AWOL last week. Lots of factors at play. Upside was keeping my eyes off the screen; downside was a lapse in my snappy, incisive commentary on the circus that is the United States of America these days.

I happen to live in Illinois and our esteemed governor, JB Pritzker, signed a broad ranging “assault weapons” ban in January this year that requires owners of any guns on the banned list to register them with the authorities by December 31, 2023. They can keep such guns (how benevolent! how gracious!) but if that person doesn’t register them with the Illinois State Police before the end of this year, they risk being fined or jailed or both.

This is, of course, an extreme infringement on our Second Amendment rights: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

INFRINGE, verb
1 : to encroach upon in a way that violates law or the rights of another

Whenever there is some kind of law or regulation enacted on the ownership of firearms, there you have an infringement. Making me fill out paperwork and register with the government is an infringement on my right to “keep and bear arms.” Making me pay a fee in order to own a gun is an infringement. A “right” in its purest form is not something that a government bestows or manages, but something that I already have, free and clear from government interference.

Yet that doesn’t stop the “””elected””” bureaucrats from trying to manage speech, religion, guns or any of a dozen other things that the US Constitution guarantees to its citizens.

Illinois citizens are fighting back.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – A firearms retailer and a national gun rights group have filed an emergency plea with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to block Illinois’ assault weapons ban.

The plea argues that law-abiding citizens in Illinois are facing irreparable injury as their fundamental right to keep and bear arms is being infringed.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied an emergency request for an injunction made earlier this year. I’m not overly confident that this will fare any better.

Meanwhile, the Illinois State Police is urging gun owners in the state to register their assault-style weapons in compliance with the Protect Illinois Communities Act. The legislation prohibits the sale of 170 firearms, but owners of previously possessed weapons can maintain them if they are registered with the state before January 1, 2024.

This is where it gets interesting. The Illinois State Police are urging Illinoisians to register their guns, but Illinois sheriffs are not being so supportive.

At least 74 Illinois sheriff’s departments vow to defy state assault weapons ban
The sheriffs say they believe the law violates the Second Amendment.

By Peter Charalambous
January 13, 2023, 6:01 PM

Just days after Illinois became the ninth U.S. state to ban assault rifles, the state already hit a roadblock to implementing the law: defiant sheriff’s offices.

At least 74 Illinois sheriff’s departments have publicly vowed to defy elements of a recent gun-control law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, which banned assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and switches. The offices have vowed to not check if weapons are registered with the state or house individuals arrested only for not complying with the law.

You might pass the legislation, but enforcing it is a whole other world.

I don’t support this legislation. It came on the heels of a heinous crime in a community not far from where I live, as described in the Response in Opposition to Renewed Application for Injunction Pending Review filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by the City of Naperville and the State of Illinois.

“On July 4, 2022, a shooter armed with a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle and 30-round magazines opened fire on an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois. This weapon made it possible for the shooter to fire 83 rounds in less than a minute, killing 7 and wounding 48. A Highland Park ordinance prohibited the sale of assault weapons, but the shooter had legally purchased the murder weapon elsewhere in llinois.”

Yes, a heinous crime committed by a kid who bought the gun legally. The reaction by our state legislators—the Democrats—is to ban anyone and everyone from having any gun they deem an “assault weapon” so that such crimes are no longer committed.

A noble goal, but impossible to achieve. All they’re doing is stripping law-abiding citizens of their rights. The problem isn’t the gun; the problem is the person who’s using the gun.

This is where we try to use laws to tame the human heart—an impossible task. The only thing that can change a heart is the love of Christ, and that can’t be legislated.

For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:5-6)

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Daily Broadside | Leftist Lunacy in Illinois Gives Foreigners Policing Powers

Of all the insanity and intentionally destructive acts of the anarchists who hate America and the rule of law, I give you Illinois Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzger’s latest defilement of common sense and respect for the citizens of this formerly great country.

Illinois Gov. Jay Robert Pritzker has signed into law a bill allowing non-citizens to become police officers over the objection of the biggest police union in the state, which called it a “potential crisis of confidence in law enforcement.”

Mr. Pritzker signed HB3751 into law on July 28, allowing non-citizens to apply to become police officers in Illinois with immediate effect, provided that they’re legally authorized to work in the United States.

Foreign nationals who are legally authorized under federal law to work in the United States or any foreign national who “is an individual against whom immigration action has been deferred by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) process” but who is authorized to possess a firearm can now apply to become a police officer in Illinois, according to the text of the bill.

Federal law states that only U.S. citizens can serve as police officers and deputies but laws and legislative efforts in a number of states have changed that in the face of staffing shortages.

Any guess which states are having “staffing shortages”?

The biggest police union in Illinois calls it a “potential crisis of confidence in law enforcement.” You bet it is — just as the Leftists have planned. It’s just the capstone atop demonizing and defunding the police at every turn since St. George Floyd died of drug induced stress after trying to pass a forged $20 at his local Cup Foods for a pack of cigarettes in May 2020.

The Chicago Police Department (CPD), alongside many other departments across the United States, is hemorrhaging officers faster than it can find qualified applicants. Data suggests that the CPD has lost more than 3,300 officers and staff between 2019 and 2022, but has hired just 1,600 people to fill vacancies after a wave of quits by officers demoralized by the anti-police riots and calls to “defund the police” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death.

Now that the anarchists’ have achieved their cause célèbre and Democrat-run cities are dealing with a shortage of officers and out-of-control crime — like Chicago — what better way to replenish their forces than with illegal aliens who will do the jobs Americans aren’t allowed to do, like enforce the law?

Perfect!

Not only are Illinois elites ignoring federal law, precedent, and common sense, but they’re giving the big double-barreled middle fingers to the citizens.

Can you imagine an armed foreigner pulling you over and demanding to see your license and registration? How about arresting you for demonstrating outside an abortion clinic, now that Pritzker has also signed into law the “Deceptive Practices of Limited Services Pregnancy Centers Act” targets crisis pregnancy centers using “deception, misinformation, or misrepresentation to interfere with access to abortion services or emergency contraception.” Of course, what any of that means is left ambiguous, not to mention that abortion service providers are exempt from the law.

The new policing law, which gives to non-citizens the power of law enforcement over American citizens, turns any sense of civic order on its head. It would be as if I moved to Spain and was given the power and the authority — a gun and a badge — over the nationals themselves without being a citizen myself. Imagine how offensive that would be to native Spaniards.

Well, same here. It’s like outsourcing law enforcement to the U.N.

Giving foreigners a gun and a badge is not only offensive, but it is troubling, too. If J.B. Pritzker and his minions in the Illinois government are willing to flaunt federal law in favor of non-citizens, what other laws are they willing to flaunt? If a foreigner makes an error in enforcing the law, will the Illinois system of justice favor the non-citizen or the citizen?

If you have to ask, you haven’t been paying attention.

Some Illinois Republicans pushed back on the bill, but only seven out of 40 House Republicans in the 118-member chamber opposed the amended bill after it passed the Senate 37-20.

During the debates on the Senate floor in May, Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet) said, “To hand the power to arrest and detain a citizen of this state, or a citizen of any state in the United States, to a noncitizen is a fundamental breach of democracy. It is antithetical to the police power of any state.”

Giving people who do not have legal status to become the enforcers of U.S. laws also diminishes the citizenship of native Americans, and I don’t mean American Indians. What does citizenship mean if a foreigner can exercise authority over a natural citizen?

If we’re giving police power to a non-citizen, what’s next? Can a non-citizen run for elected office? Why not? Pritzker has already given illegals driver’s licenses and has considered giving them some limited voting rights.

I have an idea. Let’s have a non-citizen run for governor to replace J.B. Pritzker.

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Daily Broadside | 80 Illinois Sheriffs Won’t Enforce New Gun Ban

About a week ago or so I wrote about the new Illinois law that bans the sale of military-style firearms, despite it being clearly unconstitutional. At the end of the column, I said that Democrats use lawfare to make citizens sue for their rights.

Legal challenges have already been filed against the law, which we thought might be our only recourse, but lo and behold, sheriffs in 80 Illinois counties have vowed to not enforce the law. They have all issued similar statements in explaining their decisions. For example, here is the statement that Monroe County, Ill., Sheriff Neal Rohlfing issued.

Part of my duties that I accepted upon being sworn into office was to protect the rights provided to all of us, in the Constitution. One of those enumerated rights is the right of the people to keep and bear arms provided under the 2nd Amendment.

The right to keep and bear arms for defense of life, liberty and property is regarded as an inalienable right by the people.

I, among many others, believe that HB 5471 is a clear violation of the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution.

Therefore, as the custodian of the jail and chief law enforcement official for Monroe County, that neither myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the State, nor will be arresting or housing law abiding individuals that have been arrested solely with non-compliance of this Act.

These sheriffs have obviously banded together to defy Pritzker and are turning it into a conflict between enforcing state law and protecting the Constitution of the United States. The state may not infringe on the rights of the people through the law, and the police may not infringe on them through enforcement.

Here’s a map of the counties declining to enforce the gun ban law, effectively making themselves sanctuary counties.

Map of counties of Illinois which will and will not be enforcing Illinois’s new Assault Weapon Ban from MapPorn

This of course did not sit well with the hard-left, anti-Constitutional Pritzker, one of the many governors who shut down their states during COVID and kept renewing their emergency powers.

Gov. JB Pritzker warned that law enforcement “will in fact do their job” on enforcing Illinois’ new gun ban or else they “won’t be in their job” as some sheriffs have announced they will not enforce it.

The Illinois sheriffs are showing us one way through the constant barrage of anti-constitutional overreach by government at all levels, whether local, state or federal. Just like certain cities and states declared they were “sanctuary cities” where they would not enforce federal law concerning illegal aliens and turning them over to ICE, so the same tactic can be used by those who respect the Constitution of the United States.

How this plays out over the next year will be a good test of this strategy.

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Daily Broadside | Lurch Fetterman’s Lump Losing to Dr. Oz in PA Race

Daily Verse | John 11:48
“If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

Tuesday’s Reading: John 13-14

It’s November and one week to Go Time. A week from today will either be a red wave of tsunami-sized proportions or a trickle of red leaking through an overflowing toilet in Arizona. For now, I’m feeling optimistic that we will see a flood of Republican wins washing away Democrats for at least a generation.

There’s a lot going on in these last days of campaigning. Here in Illinois, which always votes Democrat because of Chicago and Springfield, Republican Darren Bailey is 17 points down to Democrat incumbent Gov. Pritzker according to a Civiqs poll (Oct. 24) listed at FiveThirtyEight.com. Over at 270toWin.com Bailey is down by an average of almost 16 percent. He’s unlikely to pull off an upset.

However, things are looking brighter in other races across the U.S.

One of the most high-profile races features Dem Lt. Governor John Fetterman, who is now behind in his Senate race with Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz, who surged to the front after the Disastrous Debate Debacle featuring Fetterman’s mental deterioration after his stroke in May. That the media and the Dems (pretty sure I just repeated myself) have conspired to hide his mental state from voters and having repeatedly assured us that he was just fine, is not playing well with undecided voters.

Four polls conducted since the day of the one and only U.S. Senate debate in Pennsylvania have showed Dr. Mehmet Oz leading John Fetterman by two or three points, still within the margin of error, but suggesting Republicans are coming home to their party’s nominee while undecided voters are breaking for Oz over Fetterman. 

Just a word about Fetterman and the Dems hiding his condition. I have sympathy for Fetterman and sincerely hope he heals, physically. But I have zero compunction about noticing his condition and asking questions.

In the world of progressive utopia, we’re not supposed to notice, you know. We’re supposed to be passive and simply clap for Anyone Doing Anything. Noticing Fetterman’s mental difficulties is “ableist” according to Mrs. Fetterman and his performance during the debate should be lauded just because Fetterman and his Lump showed up.

He’d never get my vote anyway because of his hoodie-wearing, blue-collar progressive, anti-freedom ideology. Practically speaking, however, if Fetterman has an auditory processing disorder and can’t function even with compensation such as “closed captioning monitors to follow both the moderator questions and Oz’s remarks” (which, by the way, Oz didn’t have to agree to, yet did, thereby not being “ableist”) — what does that mean for processing debates at the highest levels of government?

I’ll tell you what it means: he can’t and won’t be able to process and will simply be a rubber stamp for the Democrats, albeit a very large rubber stamp. He won’t be able to think independently — but truthfully, he wouldn’t anyway.

All this to say, so called “journalists” and the Democrat party lied about his condition right up until they couldn’t hide it anymore. If anyone is “ableist,” it’s these monsters who enable a mentally deficient half-wit to run for national office.

I’m not the only one who thinks Fetterman isn’t fit for high office. Talk to the centrist Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, one of PA’s largest newspapers, which just endorsed Oz.

“We believe Mr. Oz is the better bet for Pennsylvania,” the board wrote, before writing that Fetterman’s health stemming from the stroke he suffered earlier this year was not an issue for them.

We’RE NOt aBLeIST!

“His lack of transparency, however, in refusing to release his medical records is troubling. It suggests an impulse to conceal and a mistrust of the people. All candidates for a major elected office should release their medical records, as did Mr. Oz. If you want privacy, don’t run for public office,” it added.

[…]

The board wrote that Fetterman’s “life experience and maturity” were also concerns because he “lived off his family’s money for much of his life,” and had “little experience in holding real jobs or facing the problems of working people.”

LOL … a lazy do-nothing wants to continue being a slacker, just with more money and prestige.

It also cited Fetterman’s lack of apology over in an incident in which he pulled a shotgun on an unarmed Black jogger after hearing gunshots, and his flip-flop on supporting fracking.

HOw daRE yOu, rAciST!

“Mr. Oz is extraordinarily wealthy, but achieved his worldwide fame and success largely through his own talent and determination,” the board wrote. “Unlike most Republican politicians, candidate Oz spent a lot of time in poor urban neighborhoods, talking to people and, most important, listening and learning.”

Bottom line is that Dr. Oz is up 3 points and holding. Still within the margin of error, but the momentum has shifted to him. I suspect that we’ll see him win that race.

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Daily Broadside | Passings By Edition

Daily Verse | Job 28:28
“And he said to man, ‘The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding.'”

Friday’s Reading: 29-31
Saturday’s Reading: 32-34

Friday and the close of another week as we scratch one more mark on the walls of the Indignity Hoosegow whose warden can’t read a complete sentence (much less carry on a coherent conversation with anyone) and whose staff are determined to make even the thin gruel they call food as tasteless and as expensive as possible.

There’s so much going on that it’s impossible to cover it all in anything approaching some kind of depth, not least because the news cycles so fast these days and I only write once per day. As we head into the weekend, here’s some interesting stories that I’d love to write more about, but time doesn’t allow.

In deep-blue Illinois, which holds the dubious distinction of levying the highest state and local tax rates in the U.S. on its residents, they are focusing on the things that matter to voters, such as renaming the Asian carp.

Three guesses why and the first two don’t count.

The renaming is being done for a couple reasons:  Racism, for one, and to make the fish sound more appealing …

… Charlie Wooley, Director of the Great Lakes regional office said they “wanted to move away from any terms that cast Asian culture and people in a negative light.”

You know, now that you mention it, I have heard a lot of Asians carping about the name.

Nah, not really. This is just another example of something that literally no one is complaining about but woke administrators have to do something to get their raise.

I remember when I was younger going to the orange and aqua blue Howard Johnson’s restaurants. Now they’re all gone.

America’s final Howard Johnson’s restaurant — a 7,500-square-foot single-story diner, which had sat off Lake George, NY’s Route 9 for almost 70 years — has closed its doors, ending an era for what was once the nation’s largest restaurant chain. It’s also now for sale — and for a price that won’t break the bank. 

The nostalgia for me comes not from the food but their ubiquitous presence on family road trips.

Here’s a headline I could never imagine reading: Hot air balloon collides with train in Wisconsin.

The balloon struck a northbound Canadian National train. The occupants of the hot air balloon, three adults, suffered injuries in the crash; 2 of them were flown to Froedtert Hospital by Flight for Life. The third person was taken to Froedtert by ambulance. No other injuries were reported.

Apparently the balloon was in distress, as you can see in the picture accompanying the article. Thankfully all of them survived and are recovering at home.

If you have a spare half-million, you could be the next proud owner of a Rare Apple-1 with original components and Woz’s signature going up for auction next week.

Grewal is the founder of The AAPL Collection, one of the largest private collections of vintage Apple products. The collection now has nearly 200 Apple computers, and Grewal wants more people to be able to see these products in person. That’s why the proceeds from the sale of this Apple-1 will be used to take his “Apple museum” to more places.

This particular Apple-1 is even rarer because most of its components are still the originals. More than that, the computer is signed by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak.

In 2021, Mr. Grewal had the opportunity to meet Steve Wozniak, aka Woz, who autographed the Apple-1. Woz chose to sign the CPU of this particular Apple-1 and was enthusiastic to see one of his creations in such remarkable condition. Only a few Apple-1 computers bear the signature of their creator, and this is the only example known to be signed on its iconic white ceramic 6502 processor.

The computer is expected to go for between $460,000 and $485,000. If you buy it based on reading this blog, my cut is $10,000.

Finally, a word about our American right to keep and bear arms.

Such carnage [Ukraine-Russia conflict] should evoke strong sentiments from any red-blooded American who believes that the defense of liberty from foreign or domestic tyrants is a fundamental human right. Still, many Americans can’t imagine such a scenario occurring here. That is exactly the eventuality, however, that our Founding Fathers had in mind when they enshrined the Second Amendment in our treasured Constitution. In fact, it was considered important enough that it was placed immediately below the bedrock human functions of free exercise of religion, speech, the press and assembly. The Framers knew that, without the protection afforded by the people’s possession of arms, the guarantees of the other rights were mere words on paper.

During the course of my private and professional life, I’ve had the privilege of traveling in at least 30 countries—some near the area now engulfed in war. In each case, the people’s access to firearms was, by way of comparison to my own life experience, restricted significantly or prohibited outright. In time, I concluded that there simply is nowhere else on Earth where the private ownership and use of firearms is exercised as it is here in America.

Have a great weekend.

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Morning Links | 28 Apr 20

(Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

Good morning! It’s day 4,337 of the Yangtze Peril lock down and I admit that I’m starting to get a little tired of this. Generally speaking, I lean towards introvert and work from home full time, so being in “lock down” is just reinforcing my natural state. However, even I’m getting antsy about the duration of so-called social distancing restrictions and think it’s high time we reopen the country.

If there’s a riot for freedom, count me in.

Your links today include a restraining order issued against Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker over the extension of the state’s stay-at-home order; the “delusional beliefs” we’re indulging during the crisis; the Border Patrol at the beach in California; shocking information surfacing in the Michael Flynn case; and someone seeking to make a trophy out of one of the stars of “Duck Dynasty.”

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