April 15th Tax Day vs April 19th Freedom Day
Today is April 15th, AKA “Tax Day,” because income tax reports are due to be submitted to the IRS by close-of-business today. Or at least American taxpayers are required to submit a somewhat detailed extension request today, because America’s tax laws and regulations are incredibly arcane and complicated. Everyone deserves the same opportunity to file the most law-abiding self-benefiting income tax report they can do.
(This is why I use a certified public accountant. There is no possible way in a zillion years that I would ever be able to fully understand or properly apply the tax laws and regulations to the income I have earned over the year. Yes, I have a very understanding CPA, someone who works with me, who goes over line items. The cost is worth it to me, given the potential consequences for making even small mistakes.)
April 15th symbolizes the government’s Sheriff of Nottingham coming to take away our money and our things, by threat of force. Nothing says “You are a serf and a powerless peasant” like having to bow and scrape before the mighty tax collector. It is worth noting that Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has submitted legislation that will remove all armed law enforcement roles and duties that the IRS has somehow accreted over the years, and sell off the agency’s weapons and ammunition. Isn’t it strange that the IRS of all agencies has amassed a huge armory and stockpile of ammunition?
Contrast today, April 15th Oppressive Government Compliance Tax Day, with the upcoming April 19th, which I am hereby naming Freedom Day. It is strange that we rarely ever hear about April 19th as a holiday or even a day of note, even though our great American freedom started exactly 250 years ago on April 19th…
On April 19th, an armed dispute erupted between American colonists and the British Army, in the towns of Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, outside of Boston. What came to be known as “The shot heard ’round the world” was fired April 19th, 1775, on the Lexington town green. It is unknown who exactly fired this first shot, Minute Man or British regular, but what ensued was the beginning of the American experiment in democratic rule: Government of, by and for The People, and nor by king or powerful army.
What is most noteworthy about the April 19th fatal confrontation beween the colonists’ militia men and the British “regulars” is that the individual American citizens were almost as well armed as the Redcoats. Each militia member carried a long gun, an edged weapon like a long hunting knife or a short sword or a hatchet, and plenty of lead and black powder ammunition for a prolonged fight. British military personnel were armed with the latest and best of all weapons, but the quality of the Patriots’ armaments were often not too far behind.
This model of the 1775 Minute Man militia member has stood the test of time, as a great many Americans today are also well armed and well provisioned with ammunition. This model of an armed free citizen, capable of standing up to an oppressive and lawless government, was later enshrined in the 1787-1789 Second Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees that all Americans can own and openly carry firearms at all times.
To me, what a strange and wonderful juxtaposition this week represents: Oppressive Tax Day backed by government force, vs. Freedom Day, the day that individual Americans collectively stood up for all oppressed individuals around the world. I think the takeaway message of this week is this: Pay your taxes, but keep your family well armed and always prepared, and always coordinate with those who share your freedom-loving views.
Some evocative images of April 19th 1775 and the resulting Bunker Hill battle by artist Don Troiani:
Artist Don Troiani’s depiction of the Minute Man patriots at the Lexington Green, April 19th 1775
Artist Don Troiani’s depiction of the Patriot militia at the Concord Bridge on April 19th, 1775
Artist Don Troiani’s depiction of the American patriots at the Battle of Bunker Hill
Easy to fix FBI-DOJ staffing mis-steps
Both the DOJ and the FBI have made strange choices in staffing since the new administration took office on January 20th. Yes, there have been some firings, but nothing like the cleaning house that was promised because it is so badly needed.
Probably 80% of the sitting FBI and DOJ employees, and probably the same holds true for DHS, as well, are far-left America hating lawless political partisans. There is no room, no place for any employee with this kind of attitude in our federal government, much less in our law enforcement branches. When your staff are stacked against you and everything you desire to achieve, then you must clear them out. Fire them, re-assign them, get them out of the way. Otherwise, you will fail, because these people will undermine you at every step.
In their place you (you being the erstwhile senior manager/ executive of the FBI-DOJ-DHS i.e. Kash Patel and Pam Bondi) must hire completely new replacements, who are loyal to the American Constitution. Loyal to the rule of law, not to political parties. Who see the American people as the sheep they are guarding, not the sheep they are eating.
Yesterday the elevation of a deep insider FBI agent named Jensen raised an internet ruckus. Jensen is infamous for being the person who led the charge against Americans he designated as “domestic terrorists”: Soccer moms concerned about their kids’ education in public schools, religious Catholics, gun owners, religious Protestants, registered Republicans, etc. In other words, Jensen clearly does not fit into the Trump Administration, or any administration dedicated to the rule of law, and yet…he was just promoted to run the FBI Washington DC Field Office.
Why are the federal law enforcement agencies not hiring temporary replacements from the ranks of retired state investigators from places like Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida, Texas, Missouri, North Dakota or from retired military criminal investigators? These are all highly experienced criminal investigators from places that can be ideologically trusted more than others. If they simply took over the FBI-DOJ-DHS for a few years while new and superior recruits were brought on line, a great deal of the holdover damage would be erased.
If you want to drain the DC Swamp, this is how you would do it. But in some ways, it looks like the DC Swamp just took over the DOJ and FBI.
Fair trade, not free trade
When I ran for Congress (at that time the PA 10th inhabited by Democrat Tim Holden, which included about all of Schuylkill County and parts or all of Berks, Lebanon, Dauphin and Perry counties) in 2009-2010, I remembered and repeated a phrase from my long ago 1980s political activism days in Centre County – Fair trade, not free trade.
Despite being fifteen years ago, this phrase caught on with our voter audiences. They really liked it, and many voters I met while campaigning had personal stories about their family’s various jobs in then-shuttered factories. And I was reminded of watching a high tech glass and industrial mirror factory close up shop in State College, PA, around 2000. It was the old Corning branch there on the Benner Pike. Literally sat there and watched the workers carefully, lovingly package up their machinery for its trip to the “new” factory in China. Some of the workers went over to train their Chinese counterparts, before returning to State College without a job.
Funny thing that President Trump’s tariff policy amounts to this exact summation of the more or less running bank account that every responsible nation keeps with all other trading partners. The fact that only most nations are tariffing American made goods at high rates, while enjoying very low tariffs on their products imported into America, is a sign of what ails us Americans: We think we can give give and give away everything we have, and we are too big to fail from it all. Which is nonsense.
Interestingly, we see the same argument about illegal immigration and endless government spending: No limits, America must take and absorb all of the costs that the world places on us…Everything is “free free free” except, of course, it isn’t free. These policies come with huge costs to Americans.
Free trade, as in giving away our trade imbalances for free, which enriches everyone else and impoverishes Americans, is a sign that our policy makers and indeed our own voters falsely believed that America is such a huge fountain of bounty and wealth that it can endlessly sustain this. What a silly and dangerous fantasy.
Sending our factory jobs, indeed our actual factories with all of their equipment and machinery, abroad to be re-born in China, Vietnam, India and elsewhere was nuts. It sent our means of production, our workers, our jobs, and our money out of America. All America got in return was maybe cheaper and junkier versions of what we had once made here, at a high quality. And yet this “free trade” thing picked up steam as big American corporations and their pet politicians began to take on a global view of trade. No longer were companies based in Delaware “American.” Rather, many of these companies’ senior leaders considered them to be global citizens that just happened to find a perch in America.
This off-shoring of everything America makes, grows, produces went on unchecked for a good thirty years, until everyone began to notice the downside, the cost. Just about every East Coast and Mid West state now has its own “rust belt” area. Areas filled with hulking, empty brick buildings and over-grown parking lots next to rivers and highways tell the sad tale of America’s economic downfall, and our nearing ruin.
Sure, we had a lot of government spending in the past twenty years to temporarily make up for the job losses, the depressed wages, the looming home foreclosures. But that spending is unsustainable. It is “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” It is simply printing Dollars for the sake of printing them. Less and less stands behind them. And yet someone standing way back there in the background was making a ton of money off of this screwy policy, while the rest of us Americans lost from it.
And so now we have a bold and very natural pro-America policy, the equalization of tariffs, making trade fair, not free, and the whole world is suddenly going upside down. My 401(k)! My dog’s retirement account! Oh my God, what will happen?
Folks, relax. Do a bong hit or have a glass of red wine. Our American world is not only not going to end, it is going to return to our glory days. Yes, it takes time, it will take time, so don’t be a bunch of prissy little Gen Z weenies demanding immediate gratification. America is worth fighting for, and these dueling tariffs are the opening salvo. Round One.
You know what is kind of oddly funny about that Fair trade, not free trade slogan? As apt as it is right now, I got that from some 1980s Centre County union workers, which trade or factory or coal mine they were in, I no longer recall. But they were right. And Trump is right. And we Americans are all aligned together on this to Make America’s Economy Great Again…
All together now, breeeaaathe…
No pain, no gain
The old gym motto “No Pain, No Gain” applies to the much-needed economic shakeup the Trump Administration is bringing to the entire planet. If we Americans do not put up with a little temporary pain and necessary readjustment now, for our own good, then we will enjoy no huge gain later on. It takes work to then earn and enjoy resulting benefits.
President Trump’s promise to American citizens was that he would return us to glory days, a golden age, which we richly deserve. Trump is correct that America has been the world’s piggy bank for decades, due to the huge tariff and trade imbalance. We should add that being the world’s piggy bank is an unsustainable and unfair arrangement paid for by the long forgotten American taxpayers, who see very few benefits in return for handing over their hard-earned cash to every Tom, Dick and Harry the American bureaucracy could dream up.
As we have learned over the past eight weeks from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), trillions of American taxpayer dollars have been illegally mis-spent on millions of dubious schemes, ideas, organizations, and fantasies, many of which directly aimed at harming the United States. American taxpayers have been funding their own sworn enemies through agencies like USAID, DHS, EPA, HHS, and the Department of Education.
In other words, domestic enemies here in America were running the federal government, and using our tax money to damage and destroy America. This egregious situation is only in addition to the lopsided international tariff arrangement that has grown out of control since about 1920.
The tariff situation is egregious by itself. All kinds of countries we Americans think of as “allies” have had heavy tariffs placed on importing American food and manufactured products, including milk and dairy, steel, etc. Many of these countries’ governments paid what minimal tariffs that the USA had in turn on products being imported into America, in effect buoying up their own private businesses.
America did not do that for our own businesses, and in fact America has had very low to no tariffs on most imports. And now after essentially handing over our own wealth and manufacturing sectors to foreigners for decades, we are tired of being the economic piggy bank or punching bag or host body for all of these takey-takey people around the world. It is hard to understand why Americans, particularly working and taxpaying Americans, support this large imbalance and wealth transfer from America to the world.
And yet, as we see, plenty of working Americans are arguing against tariff parity, and are setting fire to Tesla cars and dealerships as a form of protest against DOGE finding and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money. Do you have to be mentally ill to belong to that one political party? Do you have to be self destructive to be a voting member of that one political party?
Do you have to hate America, Americans, the rule of law, and everything great about America to belong to that one political party?
Why would any normal American belong to that one political party?
Just as DOGE is causing Americans to take a long hard look at federal government mismanagement, Trump’s tariff parity is going to cause a shake-up in our international trade relationships, no doubt. It is going to cause some re-arrangements of pricing and products we are used to having easily available to us. For example, cheap Chinese crap on Amazon is probably not going to be as cheap any longer. And yesterday the Princess of Patience and I went to look at a new car for her, and we see how the new tariff parity might effect car prices. We learned that those foreign-brand vehicles already ordered and in the pipeline are not subject to tariffs (our family is positively prejudicial in favor of Toyota vehicles).
Of course, foreign brand vehicles made here in America are not subject to tariffs, either, and many Toyota cars and trucks are made in America.
Long and short of this subject is give these policy changes time to work. Already America is seeing immediate positive responses from many foreign trading partners, who are lowering their own tariffs because they know that their own industries cannot afford to absorb Trump’s tariffs. They will lose their export markets if they lose American buyers. So just be patient, remember that this is all being done for your own good and your own bank account, and know that it will work out well.
Putting up with these changes is like making deposits into your bank account. You might feel like you are missing opportunities to party with your money in the short term, but in the longer term you will be very happy.
American guinea pigs
A long time ago, guinea pigs were used for scientific experimentation. Feminine makeup, tool impacts, eye and ear capabilities, G-force and rotational effects on their brains and orientation, chemicals and drugs, and much more were all tested on what many Americans viewed as family pets. Like with most other small, cute, furry critters, the optics of the most egregious of these tests conducted upon them did not sit well with the American or European publics. And so most guinea pigs became liberated from the horrors of quasi-scientific testing.
Enter the human as the new guinea pig. There are so many of us humans on Planet Earth, and especially so many Han Chinese, that the value placed on a single human being is being dramatically reduced to measures of momentary comforts of the people standing around (post-birth infanticide), the organs in a human body (China), and hacked-up teenaged trans-sexual Frankensteins. At one time, Americans, at least, highly valued human life. Not anymore.
Today, we allow our American selves to be subjected to all kinds of unknown, un-volunteered scientific tests, conducted by distant Han Chinese politicians and scientists. Covid-19 was the first time we became fully aware of Chinese biowarfare testing being conducted upon our entire American population, but there were plenty of past strong hints that our health was being meddled with, and watched.
Unusually stronger and stronger influenza strains over the past two decades come to mind. Once correctly called the “Asian flu”, as these influenzas in fact come from Asia, wokeism/ political correctness demanded that Americans stop calling it what it was. Probably inspired by the prompting of a host of Chinese academics burrowed into American universities, where ridiculous ideas seem to come from non-stop.
Well, here we are in late March, 2025, and a lot of Americans are struggling with the strangest cold virus family doctors have seen (several family doctors told me this). I myself have had this weird cold virus for over three months now, and although the hacking cough stopped last week, the nasty mucous continues. I feel like crap, am low energy, and every time it seems I am past it, it comes back. Normal cold viruses last a week, maybe ten days. Like many others who have caught this “cold”, I am past ninety days. This is not just not normal, it is orders of magnitude waaaayyy not normal.
Several friends and acquaintances have experienced this cold virus much worse than I, getting pneumonia and being hospitalized. Many of my friends simply had its endless hacking cough for months. My own family physician told me “We are seeing a lot of it and we don’t know what it is.”
Well, I am going to venture a guess at what this is: Yet another Chinese bioweapon being tested on the American public.
What made me curious about this virus was the day I was exposed to it. I was flying back from a southern fishing trip in December, and a guy in the seat behind me was coughing, hacking, and sneezing his head off. Strangely, he made no attempt to cover his mouth, and everyone around him was objecting loudly to his unpolished behavior.
And what was his most unexpected behavior, as he was a white guy in his mid sixties, short hair, wearing a button down Oxford shirt, chinos, and Dockers. This very epitome of Middle Income propriety was behaving like someone raised in a cave. Very odd clash of how someone presented in public and how they then acted in public. Everyone raised as this guy was raised knows that you cover your mouth when you cough and sneeze, and yet he deliberately did not. Almost like he was trying to share his misery with those around him.
I remarked to the Princess of Patience next to me, “It’s like the airport scene in the Twelve Monkeys movie, where the deadly pandemic virus is exposed to the public.”
And then a week later, sure enough, I showed symptoms that now over three months later are by far the worst, longest, and strangest cold I have ever had. Too many people I know have had a similar experience. Normal viruses last a week. This far outlier thing has to have been made in a lab. Add to that the remarkably bad Asian bird flu this year, resulting in egg shortages, and we have two or three data points to plot on an X-Y graph. The R² is looking like almost a perfect 100.
And so now I share with you, the public, a curiosity in my mind that will not cease: Are people being paid to go forth into the American interior and deliberately spread experimental viruses created in Chinese labs, for the purpose of both damaging America and using us as a giant colony of guinea pigs?
Why wouldn’t China do this? China is already at war with America at every contact point between our two nations. China’s concept of “total war” includes making war against our public health, as much as it includes economic war and aircraft carriers. America’s freedoms can be an Achilles heel in this fight, and we had better get a handle on what is being done to us before China’s domestic allies here on our soil (America’s domestic enemies) begin demanding that we again curtail our freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, etc.
America must really get control of its borders and know exactly who is here and why they are here, before something much worse happens. God only knows what the imperialistic Han Chinese CCP is concocting in their genetic engineering bioweapons labs right now, with the goal of eliminating us.
[Edit: I apologize for the many small mistakes and the slow editing process to fix them all day. I feel like wombat sh*t, which is to say, kind of weird and uncomfortable, and not totally focused] UPDATE 4/8/25: TOLDJASO!
Eye for eye, order for order
Unelected over-reaching judges driven by blatant partisan political activism are trying to thwart the will of The People by issuing decisions (“orders”) on Trump Administration activities that are far outside their courts’ constitutionally defined jurisdictions. Something like nearly 100% of these decisions in the past twenty years have been issued against President Trump alone, which shows that Democrat Party judicial tyranny is the same as Democrat Party executive branch tyranny. These people will burn down America’s constitutional norms simply to hold on to power.
Executive branch decisions that are solely the jurisdiction of the executive branch are not up for question or “orders” by the judicial branch. But this elementary separation of powers fact is not stopping these political activists in black robes, and something needs to be done to stop their power grab, to restore balance to the galaxy.
That some people, especially John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, want these outlandish decisions to be adjudicated through the lengthy, time-consumptive appellate process means just one thing: They want to stop President Trump’s agenda from being implemented by any means necessary. No matter how illegal or unconstitutional, they want the judiciary to be the sole arbiter of the judiciary’s own unconstitutional over-reach.
In other words, “We have investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing.” The judiciary is so far mostly siding with itself in hogging more power than the Constitution grants to judges, and is unlikely to stop itself from hogging even more power.
This is not an acceptable way to run the American republic, and some thing or many things must be done to fend it off. Some are talking about impeaching the most rogue, most lawless, most openly partisan of these judges, such as James Boasberg and Beryl Howell. OK, one survey I saw showed a 2:1 margin in favor of impeaching them, so get on with it, US House Speaker Mike Johnson. Impeachment will probably send a good signal, even if conviction and removal in the US Senate is not guaranteed. Impeachment hearings will tie up a judge’s work load and cause it to be re-distributed to other active judges.
Another way to end this radical judiciary’s assault on democracy is to take away their funding, and to then re-organize the courts, and then even more clearly defining their jurisdictions in the reorganization process. All of this is the sole purview of Congress, and while the Republicans have the majority, so should they act. So get on it with it, US House Speaker Mike Johnson, and do your duty.
Another way to respond to these lawless activist judges is to simply ignore their decisions. Issue blunt and stinging rebukes to their overeach, and carry on with executive branch activities as if they had never been involved. This will cause the Democrat Party’s mainstream media outlets to scream that there is a “constitutional crisis,” but again, I think there is sufficient new media firepower to over-ride that dead horse with the response that whatever “crisis” exists is solely due to the judicial branch’s inability to stay in its own constitutional lane.
However, there is a potential hybrid response the Trump Administration can make, that I am advocating here. While I have not seen anyone else write about it, I am certain plenty of politically active people have been thinking it: For every dingbat leftwing anti-America judicial “order”, such as Boasberg demanding that hardened illegal alien criminals – murderers, rapists – be returned to America from where they were legally deported to, the executive branch must issue a commensurate order in response.
For example, President Trump can issue an executive order requiring Judge Boasberg to personally retrieve all the illegal aliens he wants returned to America. With no promise that said wildman judge will be allowed back into America.
Or President Trump can issue an executive order that countermands exactly the precise wording of whatever unconstitutional order Judge Beryl “Howlin Wolf” Howell has issued.
Thus, this whole “crisis” becomes a battle of equal orders, from the rogue judiciary against the executive branch, and from the executive branch back against the power-hogging judiciary. This “eye for an eye” order-for-order response will flesh out the visible constitutional symmetry that President Trump’s administration needs the public to see. No longer will this situation be cast as “The courts have spoken…,” which always goes against the Republican president, but rather, it will be two co-equal branches of government issuing co-equal orders against one another, each order cancelling out the other.
An eye for an eye, an order for an order. And if the judiciary refuses to follow the executive orders, then so shall the executive branch be free to ignore the wild judicial orders, as well. True constitutional parity restored.
Judges Gone Wild
Years ago, hell probably decades ago, who the hell can remember any more, an entire film and entertainment genre was spawned based on amateur videos of “college girls” acting foolishly during Spring Break. The videos showed young, scantily clad women drunk and casual with their bodies, behaving badly or naughtily. Their carefree public exhibitions of what used to be private behavior fit within the free-wheelin’, whimsical attitudes of the 1980s.
Then followed cops gone wild, truckers gone wild, old people gone wild (usually hitting one another with their canes), and moments later, the adult movie industry riffed on the theme with whatever variations the human mind can possibly contrive, and well, here we are.
The general idea stuck, and is now a part of America’s daily lexicon. The “… Gone Wild” moniker has now come to represent how almost all human beings have a hidden wild side, a capacity for indecorous or careless behavior in view of the ogling public, regardless of income or education or upbringing. “And we have the videos and photos to prove it,” is what makes it all so enjoyable to the viewer.
Now we have a pretty fascinating addition to the Gone Wild entourage, that being some American judges. Turns out, highly educated people wearing ominous black robes and sitting in severe command of their court rooms, theoretically laying down the law of the land, have a capacity for indecorous behavior as well. Not just any judges, but overwhelmingly (92%) judges nominated by Democrat Party presidents.
Described as the “resistance judges,” a host of far-Left politically radical judges have issued decisions that have nothing to do with the American law, but everything to do with a personal commitment to opposing everything the Trump Administration does. If someone brings a lawsuit against the Trump Administration in one of these judges’ court rooms, there is a very high likelihood that the judge will rule against President Trump, regardless of what the law or the Constitution say. And then the judge will follow up with all kinds of non-judicial orders and demands for information that these judges have no business seeing.
It is as if these judges are trying to take over the day to day decision making of the executive branch. Which is so crazy, destructive, and unconstitutional that it has landed the judges in the Gone Wild category.
Recall that the American government is formed of three co-equal branches, each with their own lane, their own bailiwick, their own distinct role: Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. Judges are not lawmakers, and their decisions are not law, nor are their decisions the final word on the law. As originally designed, the courts were simply to say if an executive or legislative decision was constitutional, or not. Judges have no right to make law and policy out of thin air, creating detailed government actions.
However, a hundred years of aggressive judicial expansion into performing the roles of the executive and legislative branches has resulted in a culture of un-earned deference to judicial activism. As if Judges Gone Wild deserve the same respect as judges who are cautious and careful with their decisions, who follow the plain letter of the law and Constitution, and who steer clear of acrimonious and often highly personal decisions.
This deference to wild people wearing black robes cannot stand, because the entire arrangement of our three separate branches of government is disintegrated. When a judge assumes the power of the executive branch, and begins making executive branch decisions, you do have a crisis. And the system must respond in kind and restore order and balance.
Yes, we all understand the political Left does not care about order or balance, but rather prefers chaos, destruction, mayhem and violence. The entire Democrat Party seems devoted to destroying America, hurting American citizens, protecting waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer funds, and burning Tesla dealerships and cars. But the entire American body politic is not Leftist, but rather centrist, i.e. at the middle where balance is found, and I cannot imagine that regular, normal taxpaying Americans will stand for this ongoing violence and lawlessness, even if some wild judges say it must continue.
Such as a Democrat president illegally imports ten million illegal aliens into America without response from the courts, which then immediately demand that none of the violent criminal illegal aliens be deported by the incoming Republican president. This is lawless, wild behavior by radical judges who do not respect the rule of law. It is a “legal” insurrection against the American People by a handful of un-elected people who are supposed to know better. But their commitment to chaos and destruction outweighs their respect for the carefully crafted legal system.
Presently there are discussions about how to address these Judges Gone Wild: Defund their offices, eliminate their offices, ignore their lawless decisions, impeach them. None of us know how this is going to turn out, but one thing is certain, the American People overwhelmingly voted in 2024 for a hard-about turn and change from this same lawlessness and Government Gone Wild behavior. It is difficult to understand how the Democrat Party is going to gain voter support while it stands for general lawlessness, placing violent criminal illegal aliens above the interests of our own American citizens, or continuing to waste and fraudulently abuse hard-earned taxpayer money.
But I guess the Democrat Party is not really thinking logically about the outcomes of their actions. They are in Gone Wild mode, come what may.
Over twenty years two thirds of injunctions were issued against Trump by nearly 100% far-left Democrat appointed district judges. Lawfare much?
Vote: NRA Board of Directors
The National Rifle Association board of directors election is happening right now, and your vote counts a lot. And a lot is at stake. The organization is recovering from decades of bureaucratic malaise and overspending, personal ego battles among leaders, and frankly, the overstayed-your-welcome of its longtime Executive VP, Wayne LaPierre. The more people asked Wayne LaPierre to step down, the more he clung to power, hogged public attention, and damaged the careers and lives of those NRA staff and associates whom he perceived to be less than groveling to him.
The NRA has had some rough times, no doubt, and other worthy groups like Gun Owners of America have seized the opportunity to grow their market share of the 2A crowd. But it is still a fact that the NRA is the best sheriff in town to take on the anti-freedom tyrants. Though NRA has had some internal drama (and so has GOA), no one does its job better. NRA still deserves your membership, your support, your donation when purchasing things at Midway.
Yes, Donald Trump is now president, and so no, the federal government is not presently at war with our 2A rights and the groups that protect them, like the NRA. But presidents come and go, and our advocates like NRA must be able to stay in the fight, during the good times and the bad.
Presently there is an internal contest going on at NRA, at the board level and amongst some of the staff, about Whither NRA. There is an effort to keep the “old regime” folks around, when what is needed is a complete overhaul, a housecleaning, an NRA 2.0. For that to happen, new voices and fresh faces have to be voted onto the board. I happen to know a few of the board members (spanning all positions on Whither NRA), and I have been asking them what their opinions are about some of the new faces and some of the old faces.
Couple of recommended NO votes: Larry “Bathroom Bud” Craig (for God’s sake, NRA, have you no shame?), Sandra Froman (been a board member for long enough now, thank you), Joel Friedman, a fantastic 2A stalwart who tied himself too closely to Wayne LaPierre and the old NRA establishment.
Recommended YES votes:
- Knox Williams of the American Suppressor Association. I do not own suppressors, nor am I interested in suppressors. My gun interests are in the circa 1775-1925 range. However, a lot of new gun owners are very into suppressors and the modern sporting rifles they connect to. Young people like Knox Williams speak this new language and are necessary for the NRA to walk effectively into the 21st century.
- Jonathan Goldstein, a well known Second Amendment attorney from here in Pennsylvania.
- Al Hammond, Mitzy McCorvey, Anthony Colandro, Charles Hiltunen, Isaac Demarest, Todd Ellis, and Jim Wallace are all fresh voices much needed on the NRA board.
Your official NRA ballot is due before April 6th, 2025, so get it in the mail, pronto.
Back to basics, America
We have a Republican Party crisis here in Pennsylvania, and in Dauphin County, and this blog will be addressing these problem children soon. However, the real friction happening between lawless, rogue judges and the Trump Administration is the most defining issue of the day.
As most politically interested and involved readers already know, a real contest of wills is developing betwen the Trump Administration on the one hand, and politically radical / rogue/ lawless politically activist judges on the other hand. This contest may seem alarming to some people, but it is a perfectly natural and healthy aspect of how our Constitutional republican form of government is designed to operate.
With three separate but co-equal branches of government forming an equilateral triangle, but made of living, breathing people, and usually the most aggressive, power hungry, conniving people at that, American government is designed to have friction. That friction results in constant contest, and a constant creative renewal, as all three branches naturally seek to exert as much dominance as they can get away with over the other two branches. Or as much outright control of the decision process as the other branches will concede.
So when grotesquely overreaching politically corrupt activist judges, like James Boasberg, “order” the executive branch to turn around planes carrying lawfully deported violent gang members to foreign destinations, and return said violent deportees to American soil for the judge’s evaluation, we can expect some friction to result. The executive branch, and its chief executive/ military commander in chief (the president), is well within its rights and within its sole discretionary function when it engages in illegal alien deportation, as defined by the US Constitution.
The Trump Administration is under no duty or obligation to do whatever some judge tells them to do. Judicial Tyranny might be a goal for some Americans, but it is not something anticipated or accepted by the Founders and writers of the Constitution.
Not every situation or question or policy is justiciable, meaning that not every question can be resolved in a court of law. Some things, like deportations and war and a host of other subjects and government functions, are the sole purview of the executive branch. Neither the legislative branch nor the judicial branch have anything to say about it. It is not their “lane.”
Or, the judicial and legislative branches can try to say something about a given policy, but the best way to force the executive branch to follow is to pass a law requiring it.
In this particular case, President Trump blasted Boasberg’s unconstitutional overreach, and called for his impeachment, which is built right into the Constitution. Then US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in turn criticized the President for his calls to impeach said America-hating radical, James Boasberg. While Roberts personally dislikes Trump, he is defending his judicial branch more than anything, and trying to take power away from the executive branch.
This is all normal stuff, even if America has not seen this kind of constitutional friction in a long time. To my mind, this activity just shows that the various parts of the government machine are working properly. It took a Donald J. Trump to actually test run the American machinery for the first time in about seventy years. What is scary is how aggressive the judicial branch has been about hogging power over the past fifty years, and how little pushback the executive branch did until now. Presidents and Congress alike keep conceding judicial review as though the judicial branch is some sort of hallowed gathering of super smart and pure minded arbiters of fairness. Ha! Judges are just politicians in black robes, as one of my Penn State professors used to say.
Don’t worry, America has been down this path before in recent times. The Obama Administration, especially, engaged in a ton of simply ignoring judicial holdings and decisions and demands and orders; Obama DOJ lawyers were repeatedly held in contempt by a number of judges over the tenure of that administration. Not one judge got up out of his or her chamber to go enforce their order in person…nor could they.
And that’s the rub here: Crazy judges and even crazier Justices who allow some members of the judiciary to run wild, without restraint, can expect constraint by the branches they impact. Especially the executive branch.
Judicial review is not sacrosanct, it is not wide-open, nor can judges simply demand obedience to whatever or wherever their egos or political interests take them (or in the case of corrupt Judge James Boasberg, where his family’s wallet takes him on policy questions). Judges’ credibility depends upon the dignity and caution with which they discharge their duties.
When judges like Boasberg run bloody roughshod over America’s Constitutional geometry, and when justices like John Roberts do nothing to rein Boasberg in, but rather defend the indefensible, then they pretty much deserve what they have coming: Impeachment by the US House of Representatives, and being simply ignored by the Chief Executive and Commander in Chief as he does what his job requires him to do.
As one US president said in a similar moment of great friction, “Let the judge come and enforce his order himself.”
And no, that judge did not attempt to personally force the executive branch machinery to bend to his will. He astutely stood down and granted to the Chief Executive that which was his, and which still remains his. If Justice John Roberts wants Americans to respect his office and his decisions, then he must act similarly. We have to get back to the basics of running American government.