Posts Tagged → Court
Labor: To work for something of value
Today is Labor Day in the USA, and while it might have some bad Marxist roots with the early unions, the fact is that it has also evolved into the uglier side of capitalism, which is an orgy of shallow consumerism. Big retail sales of everything from underpants to mattresses to cars, America today is awash in carnival tents and men in top hats and coat tails, barking loudly at the masses to step right up and buy the latest greatest gadget or whatever.
Not too long ago, labor unions played such an important role in American politics (and in British politics, for that matter), that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet knew precisely what Labor Day was about. That most Americans, especially our youth, make little or no mental connection between Labor Day and the people who labor away with their hands and bodies to make things of value for us, for them, is the real take-away meaning of today’s national holiday.
But how could young people know, or older Americans recall, what Labor Day is about if nearly all of our labor has been curiously shipped overseas, and to our enemies, no less? A factory job was the family and church and community- sustaining source of income from the 1930s until about 2000, when the last of our American factories were carefully packaged up and sent to China. Now we have 25 years of no no labor and no factories, just Rust Belt husks of buildings, churches, and communities across the Eastern and Mid-Western USA. No wonder our kids are clueless about Labor Day.
However, our snickering elected officials know precisely what Labor Day is about, because it is still directly relevant to them. These self-anointed elites who seek to dominate all of us use our labor to enrich themselves, through the mis-appropriation and mis-spending of our tax monies. This self-destructive activity happens most and worst in liberal “blue” states run by the Democrat Party, where voters enable single-party rule without the checks and balances of multi-party competition. That this repetitive voting pattern is self-defeating seems not to matter to leftist messianic utopians, whose Big Government god requires nonstop sacrifice and endless cash invested in friendly “businesses”.
Where does this endless cash come from, which enables the extravagant “public servant” aristocracy? YOU.
You labor, pay high taxes on your income, and that tax money is taken for messianic utopian policies, like disproven climate change nonsense, that enriches other blue aristocrats who are invested in these schemes.
Ideally, you, the citizen, pay taxes to the government so the government can pay for services to you, the citizen: Firemen, policemen, public education in math, history, and spelling, public roads, trash pickup, etc. This is the social compact of democratic representative government; you get concrete services in return for relinquishing your own money to the Tax Man.
But when government becomes detached from the symbiotic relationship, and begins doing things for itself, and ignoring the citizen, you have tyranny. This is becoming brutally apparent in Britain, France, and liberal states in America. California is an especially scary place because of how far out of alignment the state government is with the citizenry. No services, but instead illegal migrants, homeless encamped in private front yards, general lawlessness, and the highest of high taxes to boot. Complete breakdown of the social compact between citizen and government, and don’t you dare step out of line.
This failure continues because most of the citizenry continues to vote for a single dominant political party that hates the citizenry. In liberal venues, hating yourself is the greatest of virtue signals, and is highly rewarded with public acclamation. I myself could not live in such an unsustainable and bizarre place. The people there are living off of the banked fumes of once-great capitalist endeavors there, now either departed or departing for Texas, Tennessee, or Florida.
Last week Britain’s highest court ruled that the illegal migrants overwhelming British society – built with citizen labor taxes – have higher value and more rights than the citizens themselves. Such brazen detachment from the long established democratic social compact means the British citizens are now mere money sources, slaves, really, infested by and under the boot heel of a parasitic government and its new stakeholders, the illegals, who contribute nothing and demand everything.
Even the British Union Jack flag is being outlawed on the streets of Britain, because it “offends” the illegal border invaders! Say the “wrong” thing about this, do the “wrong” thing about this, and you actually go to jail. True tyranny, not freedom, not democracy.
Britain is headed to civil war, as any nation would be where the government has turned against the people it is supposed to serve, and upon whose tax-paying largesse the government depends. The same thing is happening here in American blue states, where entrenched single party rule, based on a taxpaying slave-political elite slave owner relationship, is about to be confronted by a fed-up federal government trying to hold the Union together. Something of value worth laboring for, again, as it was in 1861.
This is the meaning of Labor Day today.
Anatomy of a primary election
On May 20th, Pennsylvania held its primary election. Mostly local seats and judgeships were on the ballot, which are definitely important, but the real prizes were the PA Commonwealth Court and the PA Superior Court. As has come to be usual here and in many other states, the conservative/ independent-minded grass roots fielded their candidates and the state Republican Party fielded its candidates.
And as usual, the PA Republican Party was directly involved in the selection of the primary election candidates, their endorsements, their negative attacks, funding, etc. When a political party gets in between The People and their choice of candidate, the party always loses in the long run. When The People believe the party does not share their views or values, and is only pursuing the selection of certain candidates who will be malleable and loyal to the party, then The People lose faith in the party.
Here in PA there is real animosity between grass roots conservatives and the PA GOP establishment.
This election we had grass roots candidate Maria Battista vs. PAGOP candidate political establishment-endorsed Ann Marie Wheatcraft for Superior Court judge. Battista had run before as the GOP endorsed candidate, and had lost to the grass roots candidate. This time around, for whatever reason, she was on the outs with the PAGOP and on the in with the grass roots groups, like Lycoming Patriots. Wheatcraft had the PAGOP endorsement and money.
For the Commonwealth Court we had well known Second Amendment attorney Josh Prince vs. unknown state bureaucrat attorney Matt Wolford. Bureaucrat Wolford was mysteriously endorsed by the PAGOP, even though he has worked most of his career at the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection, an agency that no matter which incarnation it embodies, and regardless of which political party is running it, nonetheless is associated with heavy-handed regulations and lawless bureaucrats who routinely beat up on private landowners and businesses. Not exactly a likely place to give birth to a solid Republican candidate for any office, much less a judgeship.
The long and short of these two races is that Battista the outsider defeated Wheatcraft the moneyed insider, and Wolford the party endorsed yet unknown bureaucrat and mystery “Republican” defeated grass roots favorite Prince. Moreover, Prince was endorsed by numerous organizations, like Gun Owners of America, Firearms Owners Against Crime, etc.
These are strange results.
Normally voters align with outsiders or insiders, but not with one candidate here and not that one over there. And yet that is what happened in this election. Normally, big endorsements gain big traction for candidates, but we saw no evidence of that in the Prince vs Wolford race. Despite his many big endorsements, Prince was utterly crushed even in very conservative rural counties, like Lycoming and Elk, where he was known, liked, and should have won handily. And yet, in these same counties, Battista blew off Wheatcraft’s doors.
Aside from a crooked vote tallying scheme, I have no explanation for this odd outcome that defies all odds and conventional thinking. Except for one possible variable that tends to get overlooked these days, and that is ballot position. That is, where does the candidate’s name fall on the ballot – top, middle, or last.
Studies have shown that ballot position does matter, or it can matter, but much less so when voters feel compelled to look up candidates on the internet. With its easy information access, the internet has been the great leveler of campaigns everywhere. Big campaign money cannot always defend a candidate’s bad record, which will be all over the internet, visible to the voters who but follow a few clicks on a search engine.
Battista had top and Prince had bottom on their respective ballots. Meaning that the 3/4-4/4 super voters who make up the primary election electorate, were unsure of who to vote for and simply and superficially chose the first name they saw for each position. That could explain the opposite results we got for both candidates, Battista and Prince.
As we see here, the voters have to want to know something about the people they are voting for in order to defeat the ballot position factor, as well as overcome often superficial campaign advertising. And so we learned a hard lesson here: The vaunted and lauded super voters did not necessarily do super research into the candidates. They apparently did not bother to look up the candidates before walking into the voting booth. They simply saw a name at the top and made their choice.
And that is the gory anatomy of Pennsylvania’s 2025 primary election, God help us all.
Does ballot position really determine who a lot of primary election super voters choose? From this election, it would seem so.
Elk County is a very conservative rural place where DEP bureaucrats are hated like poison ivy. The 2025 results there make no sense, unless ballot position is the primary factor.
Doesn’t it seem mean spirited to not even mention candidate Josh Prince? Doesn’t it further alienate his supporters? What is that all about?
I have never seen election results like this. If conservative rural Lycoming County super voters feel so strongly about conservative candidate Battista, they for sure would have felt just as strongly about conservative candidate Prince. And yet…the results seem to prove that ballot position is the most important determinant
Dauphin County
Dauphin County
Upcoming Primary Election recommendations
Pennsylvania’s primary election (Democrat vs. Democrat, Republican vs. Republican, and sadly, no one else vs. anyone else i.e. fewer choices for voters) is coming up in a few weeks. On May 20th, Pennsylvania voters should all be going to vote for candidates they believe will best represent their interests in our self-run government.
Through voting, We, The People, select our fellow citizens to represent us, to be a voice for us, to make sound choices for us, in the giant government blob. Why more Pennsylvanians do not vote, why so many fail to vote, eludes me. Nothing is more important than casting your vote, and yet, historically, few people vote overall, and especially in primaries. Voting is not difficult. It does not take money, or good looks, or nice clothes, or a lot of time, or a fancy car. You, the voter, simply have to make it a 15-30 minute priority on one day in the Spring, and then again one day in the Fall. You go to your voting precinct and vote for those candidates who best represent your views, religion, ideology, whatever. Many elections are really close, and every vote counts. Your vote counts, so do it.
In the state-wide Republican primary races, Ann Marie Wheatcraft is the superior candidate for Judge of the Superior Court. Judge Wheatcraft is hard on criminals and supportive of crime victims, which is how good judges should be and how they used to act. Now, it seems popular for judges to themselves break the law and to also throw Americans aside in favor of hardened criminals. As if the hardened criminals are somehow victims who need the judge’s protection. That appears to be the upside down mindest of Maria Battista, Wheatcraft’s opponent. No thanks. America has had quite enough of this nonsense.
Vote for Ann Marie Wheatcraft for Superior Court.
Joshua Prince is the by far and away best possible candidate for Judge of the Commonwealth Court. Josh has distinguished himself for decades as a court room force for good and for sticking up for the little guy against government over-reach. I know from personal experience, as Josh Prince has represented me personally, and a group I am a member of (FOAC), in a Harrisburg 2A lawsuit we simply had to bring (and which we won). Josh’s demeanor in the court room is impressive, steady, clear, and really organized. I have seen him run rings around attorneys touted as the best of their kind.
I have nothing personal against candidate Matt Wolford, but like so many grass roots voters, I am frustrated by the behind-closed-doors process that got Matt Wolford into his candidacy. Matt Wolford is a product of the Republican Establishment, which across America, and especially in Pennsylvania, is one of the biggest failures of any sort of organization. This is a cookie cutter group that time and time again loses easy races and then says “Aww shucks, we’ll get ’em next time,” even though there is no next time. With the Democrat Party aggressively gerrymandering the voting map, and engaging in motor-voter registration of illegal aliens and last minute changes to voting laws, honest elections look like a thing of the distant imagination. So campaigns must be hard-fought, which is not the PAGOP’s forte.
Of all the GOP groups across America, the PAGOP is especially mostly run by election consultants, who get paid well, whether they win or lose. Pennsylvania GOP politics is all about getting political management and consulting contracts, which has yielded a bitchy and mean-spirited entitlement attitude among the consultant class. They like candidates who will bend the knee and give them consulting contracts when they win. They do not care about policy or philosophy of government; every vote to them is a question of horse trading for money.
While I am on this bitchfest, let us point out that Dauphin County was one of the few PA counties to LOSE Republican voters in 2024. While the rest of PA was moving right with increased Republican voter registrations and votes, Dauphin County regressed. And Dauphin County has been regressing for years. It is probably due to the fact that the Dauphin County GOP chairman spends all of his time on…. high paying political consulting contracts, instead of focusing on winning elections.
To me, politics should not be about making money. But then, I never won any of my election races, which were run strictly on policy. Perhaps if more people like me and Josh Prince did get elected, America would be in better shape.
Anyhow, Matt Wolford comes out of this failed insular, unprincipled, and artificial process, which always seems to yield the most tepid, boring, unimpressive candidates who then go on to lose to aggressive Democrats. Let’s not do that again.
Vote for Josh Prince for Judge of the Commonwealth Court.
Here in the county court system, we have the Court of Common Pleas, where the most basic cases are heard. This is where you, the voter, want a most stable and normal person sitting up there on the bench, judging you. Two great candidates for this role deserve your vote: Fran Chardo and Jim Zugay.
Fran is the current District Attorney of Dauphin County. A more stand-up, normal, clean hands guy you will not find in American politics, anywhere. Fran is even keeled, does everything by the book, is a great listener, and will be exactly the kind of fair-minded judge you want looking back at you when you get carted into court for making some first-time-ever stupid decision that you regretted the moment you did it. Good guy.
Vote for Fran Chardo for Court of Common Pleas.
The other candidate for the Court of Common Pleas who deserves your vote is Jim Zugay, a long-time Dauphin County steadfast functionary and do-er git-er-done kind of guy. Jim has been (I think) Dauphin County Recorder of Deeds, among several other important county roles. And let me tell you straight up: Jim Zugay does not like me, because I am a pain in the butt. Jim is a serious, level headed, by-the-books guy, and he does not like bitchfesty people like me asking annoying questions that are not about getting the job done right now. I admire Jim for that, even though he grimaces when we encounter one another at social events.
Vote for Jim Zugay for Court of Common Pleas.
No, please do not vote for Katy Kennedy-McShane for this judge role. Yes, Katy and her husband are boxers, which is cool, and yes, they work with disadvantaged minority kids, which is very very cool and meritorious. But Katy’s ideological/ philosophical perspective on legal outcomes is not Constitutionalist. Rather, Katy will be a judicial activist, trying to make herself into judge, jury and executioner, or rather judge, legislator, and chief executive, all in one. This failed approach to judicial review has created so many problems by now that America is having a tough time sorting them out. Our constitutional rights cannot withstand this ongoing leftwing assault.
America and Dauphin County need judges who rely on precedent and the Constitution to make narrowly applied decisions. That’s Chardo and Zugay. America cannot take another activist judge, and Katy Kennedy-McShane will be an activist judge. No, no, no.
Finally, Graham Hetrick is the handsomest, most debonair coroner in American history. Few men who carry a gun and badge are better looking or better dressed or nicer or smarter than Graham. For some reason, a lot of coroners are colorful characters, and Graham is the most colorful of them all, while also maintaining stellar standards. The guy had his own national TV show, and smitten lady friends from lives past in distant states would call me out of the blue to ask “Do you know Graham Hetrick? OMIGOD can you get me his autograph, Josh, dear?”
Graham probably has this same electrifying effect on the dead, too, as well as justice for the dead. Vote for him. Dauphin County needs his steady hand in crime solving.
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.
Send in Delta Force to DC Govt offices?
President Trump was sworn in to office three days ago, on January 20th, and within 24 hours he had signed something like a hundred executive orders. Maybe more. I lost count. One Trump executive order covered 78 EOs signed by Joe Biden.
Two Trump policies in particular have garnered widespread discussion and deserve focus: The pardoning of roughly 1,500 January 6th political prisoners and hostages held by the Federal DC Swamp, and the immediate suspension of all DEI activities and staff in federal offices.
Every pardoned J6 hostage was required to be released from jail immediately, and every DEI staff person was required to leave office and stay out of federal offices. With all DEI activities ended, there was no reason for those staff to remain in office. The pardons are a legal directive, and when the rule of law prevails, the pardoned immediately walks out of jail to their relatives or friends.
In response to President Trump’s executive directives, open insubordination, really an open insurrection and mutiny against the government, by public taxpayer funded employees has unfolded. Many of the DEI staff were simply moved into new positions with new titles in their agencies, instead of going on administrative leave, as their boss directed them to do.
Many of the J6 political prisoners are still being held in jail, and some have been badly beaten by prison staff within just the last 24 hours. Other J6 hostages have been deliberately flown and released into remote places far away from their homes and families, with no money, hardly any clothes, some wearing only prison slippers in the dead of winter in cold parts of America.
We are witnessing a raw power contest between the entrenched and heretofore unaccountable federal bureaucrats (Deep State or Administrative State), and their chief executive, their boss, the president of the United States. The president has issued directives, and the bureaucrats are telling him “Go eff yourself, we are not going to listen to you.”
Emboldened by decades of weak executive leadership and zero accountability (I have my own crazy war stories I can tell from my years working for the Federal government in DC three decades ago) (for a federal worker to get fired, both Heaven and Hell must be moved simultaneously, which is impossible to happen), federal employees are thumbing their noses at the president. I don’t think they are consciously daring him to follow up on his authority. Rather, the bizarre and artificially insulated, cozy culture that surrounds most federal workers has shielded them from ever experiencing real accountability, and it seems they do not expect to experience it. They can’t even imagine it.
From where a lot of outsiders stand, it sure looks like a large portion of the federal workforce has declared its autonomy from the chief executive, and is in the beginning of a full out insurrection against the American people, the Constitution, the rule of law. Recall that the American people chose this chief executive, this chief commanding military officer, this president. So when federal bureaucrats and military officers tell this president to Eff Off, they are telling the American people, the democratic process, the Constitution, and the rule of law to eff off.
We have not even begun to see the full DOJ, FBI, CIA, or Pentagon insurrrection, or a real showdown between ICE and lawless jurisdictions aiding and abetting illegal invaders.
And so, one concludes that President Trump must do the updated version of what President Lincoln did under similar circumstances in 1861: Send in the troops and secure Washington, DC.
In 2025, however, the US military is not riven by North-South/ Pro-Slavery-Anti-Slavery divisions, as Lincoln faced, or like George Washington faced between Patriots and Loyalists in the Revolutionary War. Rather, President Trump now faces a federal bureaucracy and a great portion of the US military that sees itself as autonomous from and removed from the American people. So who can President Trump rely upon to enforce his lawful orders and directives?
Sad to say, there are only a few military units that have withstood the anti-America, anti-democracy DEI onslaught, and who remain purely loyal to the constitutional chain of command and to their oaths of office: The elite American warriors, including the Navy SEALs, the Green Berets, and Delta Force commandos. These are the people who President Trump can most reasonably rely upon to see that his orders are being fulfilled in a timely fashion.
These are the people who President Trump needs to send into the J6 prisons, the FBI headquarters, the CIA headquarters, the ATF headquarters, the Pentagon, with full arrest powers, to ensure that the constitutional chain of command is being honored. Or in the alternative, that the insurrectionists are arrested and processed through the proper courts.
And I would suggest that the proper courts to hold trials of the insurrectionists are all out in the hinterlands, like western Nebraska, northern Idaho, Wyoming, west Texas, where judges still know how to properly mete out justice.
Had my day in court
Literally had my day in court yesterday, in the Dauphin County courthouse in Downtown Harrisburg. After nearly ten years of taxpayer-funded expensive stonewalling and dodging and delaying, Harrisburg City’s expensive taxpayer-funded attorneys (Lavery) were forced to actually litigate.
Harrisburg City was forced to actually argue for and explain why it has maintained three patently illegal ordinances on the books for years. At issue are city ordinances that criminalize carrying guns in a public park, discharging a firearm within the city limits, and failing to report a lost or stolen gun.
Each of these ordinances is subject to state pre-emption, because Pennsylvania state law clearly prohibits any political subdivision, like Harrisburg City, from creating its own gun regulations. This is in order to avoid a crazy-quilt pattern of gun laws within a state, where just crossing from one municipality to another, one township to the township next door, with a firearm, could result in an unintentional felony and violent arrest and incarceration. No society can operate like that, whether it’s gun regulations, abortion regulations, car regulations etc.
So, somehow the elected officials of Harrisburg City believed they were above the law, and they passed these illegal city ordinances. A group I belong to FOAC-ILLEA and Firearms Owners Against Crime, filed suit against the city many years ago, to compel the city to remove these illegal ordinances. After all, what is the purpose of having illegal laws on the books? What is the purpose of having illegal laws on the books, and actually spending hundreds of thousands of Harrisburg taxpayer dollars fighting to keep said illegal laws in place?
I will tell you why these ordinances are on the books: Harrisburg City wants to have the threat of these ordinances to use against people the city doesn’t like. People with different political beliefs, maybe the wrong skin color, maybe the wrong religion, you name it, these illegal ordinances can and will be used by city leaders for purely political and punitive purposes.
Even if the city charges someone with these ordinances and eventually loses in court, the city will still have won. Because the criminal process is the punishment. Simply dragging someone through the expensive, scary legal process from being arrested and handcuffed, having their person and home ransacked by police, being jailed, having to get a lawyer, maybe losing your job, is pretty bad punishment. So even if the city eventually loses a criminal prosecution with any of these ordinances, they will have really hurt someone.
And that is the purpose of ALL liberals everywhere, to scare and control and punitively hurt and damage people who disagree with them. Especially gun owning individuals who represent an armed citizenry capable of pushing back against tyrannical government. Like all liberal-run Democrat Party bastions everywhere across America, Harrisburg City desires to control its citizens, not represent them.
And so yesterday we finally got to sit in Judge Andrew Dowling’s court room and have a real, genuine legal offense-defense. It was something out of a Hollywood movie, with real court room drama, an occasionally piqued or openly amused judge, a sharp litigator (Joshua Prince) and a defense attorney who – no lie, no embellishment here – actually bellowed “I am being bushwhacked! This is an ambush!” after the judge reminded him that he was the attorney who said let’s move this trial to this date today.
Being the plaintiff of record from Harrisburg City itself, I had my opportunity to testify from the witness stand. I was cross examined at length, sometimes with real humor, by the defense counsel. I really don’t believe myself to be a “lawbreaker” when I am defying a patently illegal law, and it was nice to see the attorney have to concede that. I also enjoyed recounting how, during the catastrophic flood of 2011, I walked up and down my block and adjoining blocks with a shotgun and a handgun, to deter looters. That raised eyebrows, and led to an interesting line of questioning from the defense counsel and thumbs-up from my fellow plaintiffs.
Other plaintiffs, Howard Bullock, who lives outside Harrisburg City but who works within it, and Jim Stoker, president of FOAC, also took the witness stand, and were also cross-examined. All three of us did well representing our case. And the bushwhacked lawyer who raised ridiculous objection after ridiculous objection, including once to his own statements (the judge kindly reminded him that he was now arguing against himself), was clearly deflated after Judge Dowling said he would issue a decision on this trial.
Nearly ten years of Harrisburg taxpayer gravy train defending the indefensible are about to end for Lavery Law! And for me, the rule of law is being established, our flag of freedom being firmly planted in a small county court room far from the public eye. Not one news reporter was present, not one City employee, nobody but us freedom fighters, the judge and his staff, and the hapless bushwhacked lawyer.
Once again the forgotten taxpayer is out of sight, out of mind, though a holding of any sort in this case will then raise questions about why Harrisburg City spends hundreds of thousands of rare taxpayer dollars so frivolously and carelessly.
It was a great day for the law and a great day to be in court forcing the law to be upheld by striking illegal laws from the books. Thanks to attorney Joshua Prince for representing the rule of law, and to Judge Dowling for running his court room fairly and often with real humor and sharp observations.
(L to R) Plaintiff Howard Bullock, attorney Joshua Prince, attorney Kevin Fenchak, attorney Dillon Harris, plaintiff Yours Truly Josh First, and plaintiff Jim Stoker of FOAC fame in the Dauphin County courthouse yesterday.
Supreme Court’s recent decisions reveal deep DC Beltway Bandito mentality
While all other American institutions – private, non-profit, for-profit, our entire military, the Cat Ladies Survival League, the Backyard Bird and Squirrel Protective Association, the Republican Party, the Democrat Party, the media, Hollywood, professional sports, the medical profession and its various Medical Associations, the legal profession and its various Bar Associations, and the entire federal government apparatus – have been Borg captured and bent to the Borg Left’s purposes, completely against the will of the vast majority of the American citizenry, there has remained one lone institution that has appeared to resist the capture:
The US Supreme Court.
Against the decades-long tidal wave of berserker Democrats and somnulent Republicans only the US Supreme Court has appeared unbroken, pure, un-woke, and integrity-bound to the US Constitution backbone and nervous system that binds all American citizens together as a living, breathing, functioning One Nation Under God.
And yet, with its recent holdings we repeatedly see not so much glimpses into the Court’s true soul, but rather flashes of the oft hidden but actual volcanic fire seething beneath our collective feet. For as much as the Court has tried to appear united and above the frightening political fray, it too is subject to the worming rat-gnawing effects of leftist wokeism. For as much as it has placed several unanimous holdings before the American citizenry in recent months as evidence of the level headedness of the Court’s members, it also holds a growing threat of Borg tyranny.
Three stalwart Borg leftists – Kagan, Sotomayor, and Katanga – maintain a unified beachhead on the shores of the US Supreme Court and America’s last residual semblance of the rule of law. Regardless of how obvious the legal question, these three ardent Marxists always vote for more, bigger, and more powerful government at the expense of We, The People as a people and as individuals whose rights are supposed to be protected from government overreach by the courts.
There is not one single public policy issue or individual rights question that does not get the Marxist treatment from these three members of the bench. And so one cannot really be surprised to see them vote against presidential immunity in the case of Trump. Because like all of the other politicians on their Borgian Marxist Democrat side of the aisle, Kagan, Katanga, and Sotomayor also lust for the blood of the one person who stands in their way, Trump. This morning’s holding by the Court reveals that such a simple question of presidential immunity (having none would result in a president being unable to do his job) can only hold naked political interests for three of the nine justices.
If left unchecked, in a simple matter of time, that number will grow to four and then a majority of five, and then American citizens will have no individual rights left under the federal jackboot.
This skepticism is justified by other recent holdings and indecisions by the Court: The First Amendment is not violated or even infringed by the Biden Administration’s active coercion of social media companies to conduct the censorship-by-proxy of American citizens’ speech critical of the Biden Administration. Subpeonaed political activist Steve Bannon must go to jail for failing to appear before the incorrectly convened J6 Committee, while lawless AG Merrick Garland flaunts all legal procedure, including precisely that which has ensnared Bannon, to hold onto and cruelly wield an unbridled official monopoly on violence.
The list of outright fraudulent decisions and spineless indecisions by the Court reveals that the three Borg Marxists are not just a beachhead, and not just a taste of things to come for our rights. Rather, the insular, disconnected, corrupt, and self-serving DC Beltway Bandito culture is seeping through all skin pores and lung tissue and hearing and tasting orifices of the supposed five or six “conservative” justices on the other side of Kagan, Katanga, and Sotomayor. We cannot trust or rely on the US Supreme Court to guard us, because this institution is also being captured, just in slow motion and in our sight.
It may be that if or when the American People sort out this constant assault on our rights on their own terms, that only Justices Thomas and Alito will remain fit to form the core of the new Supreme Court. The rest? Well, what does any assertive free people do with traitors?
“Peace” protestors don’t want peace
All of the so-called “peace” protestor people don’t actually want peace, they want endless conflict that gives them something to live for. They thrive on conflict, and so they actually work to promote conflict, even while they say the opposite.
The so-called “peace” protestor people started out back in World War I, as a mix of anti-America communists and socialists trying to hurt America, along with well meaning Mennonite non-violent resistors who nonetheless did their duty as medics and orderlies when called upon. But by World War II, the so-called “peace movement” had swelled to include pacifist Quakers (who were being taken over by leftists by the 1950s and then fully by anti-America hippies in the 1970s), communists, socialists, and generally disaffected liberals who said nothing about communist Russia’s misdeeds, but rather heaped increasing scorn upon the capitalist United States. The so-called “peace” people are really just America haters, not lovers of peace.
Today’s so-called “peaceniks” argue for “conflict resolution” conditions that, contrary to stated aims, are guaranteed to cause conflicts to fester and continue, not end decisively. And that is because these people are not interested in actual peace, which means the absence of conflict.
Rather, they want outcomes that are consistently against the interests of democratically run countries and against people there living in peace. And that is a hard thing to sell, the national suicide-by-peace thing. They know it, but they absolutely live for it, because the adrenaline rush of living for something so impossibly majestic and messianic is positively hypnotic.
Despite the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which really started in 2014 when Ukraine declared full soverignty from Russia and claimed eastern regions that have overwhelming Russian citizenry, and which has resulted in catatstrophic environmental and human death and physical damage beyond belief, note that the so-called “peace” people are really nowhere to be seen. No campus riots, no shutting down bridges or highways. Pretty quiet. Same goes for China’s many brutal militaristic adventures, and Cuba+Venezuela+Nicaragua non-democratic authoritarianism.
Same goes for the UN and its anti democracy allies lowering flags to half-mast out of respect to Iran’s Butcher of Tehran, Ebrahim Raisi, who without due process or rule of law was personally responsible for thousands of political dissidents being tortured to death or executed by slow hanging for many years. Actual Iranians living in Iran have been partying since Raisi’s chopper went down and burst into flames.
But when it comes to ten million underdog Jews (worldwide) defending themselves against two BILLION bullying Muslims (worldwide) attacking them everywhere across the planet, why… stop the press, turn college campuses and streets and bridges upside down, and call out the law on those troublesome Jews.
So now, the so-called International Criminal Court and the so-called International Court of Justice are issuing their own anti peace demands and ridiculous arrest warrants for Israeli leaders who are in the middle of defending the sole democracy in the entire region from hordes of very non-democratic and very Medieval barbarians at every corner of the New Jersey-sized country.
Never mind that Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Convention (neither is America), and thus not subject to these self-appointed kangaroo courts’ purported jurisdiction. What is important here is that the so-called “peace” people have been trying to dislodge Benjamin Netanyahu by any means possible for years, and thereby greatly diminish Israel’s ability to defend itself. Like him or not, Netanyahu has proven to be a very tough and reliable defender of Jewish survival in a hostile world, while most of his would-be opponents are desperate to be international media darlings and… people of “peace” at any cost.
The so-called “peace” people want to force on Israel, and on the world, a so-called “palestinian” country beyond the one that already exists in the nation called Jordan (80% of the original Palestine Mandate, 75% of the population identifies as “palestinian”), which they say will bring utopian peace and happiness and an absence of suffering and conflict to the region. It’s always for some mystical “peace” or “for the children” with these people.
By pushing this idea of another “palestinian” state, the peace people are incentivizing Hamas and the other Islamic terror groups to keep on committing attacks on Israeli civilians and holding out for everything, instead of accepting what is reasonable. The “peace” people’s intervention and resulting continuation of this conflict, and their constant encouragement of so-called palestinians to remain defiant and demand everything, as opposed to settling for something, has left the Abraham Accords in tatters. So much for peace from the peaceniks!
If there is one thing we have all learned since October 7th, 2023, it is that the decades of genocidal indoctrination have turned the Muslims living in Gaza and nearby areas into gleeful bloodthirsty murderers. So if Hamas’ October 7th child raping and baby burning massacre were indeed bizarrely rewarded with a formal state from which Hamas could continue to launch more massacres and random rocket attacks, they would do so.
In other words, the so-called “peace” people will get their desired conflict continuation, so that they can continue to wring their hands and write sanctimonious op-eds and pass endless judgment upon people and situations they themselves would never find themselves in (because brave men guard them day and night), and basically feel all mission-driven and holier-than-thou.
And we know that all of the Islamic actors in control of the ICJ, ICC and UN are using these institutions to try to damage Israel. After all, there is no actual Muslim pro-Israel/ pro Jewish/ pro peace peace movement; because that would be actual peace, which we know the self proclaimed peace people both Muslim and non do not really want.
The adrenaline rush and personal meaning high that “peace loving” enabling white liberals get from conflict continuation must be a lot stronger than heroin. Heroin users are satisfied to shoot up and then fall down in a corner somewhere and sleep off their haze, whereas the so-called “peaceful” white liberals keep pouring gasoline on the conflict fire that threatens to consume the entire world.
Self-anointed peaceniks and judgmental hypocrites, the AFSC never misses an opportunity to lie about Israel. What is the alternative to a ground invasion of Gaza by Israel? Should Israeli citizens shoot random bombs onto the heads of random Gazans in retaliation for the October 7th massacre? Note that AFSC makes zero mention of the massacre. Because the AFSC does not believe in peace, it hates Jews
Notice how AFSC fails to mention that Hamas is the sole cause of all of Gaza’s problems, including the theft of daily international aid deliveries. No mention of Israeli hostages, no mention of daily Israeli victims of Gaza rockets. AFSC is just “Israel is bad Israel is bad” all the time. The AFSC people do not want peace, they want dead Jews
Lawless Democrat Party, Round 168
With (Democrat) Colorado’s supreme court election interference and subjective non-legal nonsense attack on American democratic norms (throwing President Donald Trump off the Colorado ballot for things he has never been accused of much less convicted of) (and of course the Democrat Party is waging a non-democratic war against RFK Jr and other Democrat Party candidates for president by booting them off the ballot, too), we see, yet again, that there is one American political party that will burn down America in order to rule over its ashes. Destroy democracy to save democracy. Or something nonsensical like this. Hint: If you love and value democracy, then you don’t destroy it. You let it work unimpeded. Only fascists impede democratic systems.
And what mystifies me is that tens of millions of Americans are yet still registered with this one political party. How? Why? Are you folks not paying attention to the dozens of illegal, rogue, un-American, cruel, unfair, and lawless things this political party is doing in your name?
Let’s see… two fake and lawless impeachment processes, of a sitting president and then a former president, without a shred of due process…a patently lawless and illegal raid on the president’s home…four fake indictments based on novel interpretations of un-used laws and laws that clearly require a lot more than has been gathered together to bring an indictment…dozens of lawfare civil suits meant to harass and wear down the victim and gag the victim from running for election…and now throwing Trump off various state ballots. Because you know, Americans can’t just choose their elected leaders, they must be chosen for them by people who just know better.
None of this assault on democracy is from a substantive or reasonable place, folks. All these faux legal attacks are based on creative nothing and are an abuse and mis-use of the American legal system to “get” political opponents, and one political opponent in particular. This is not normal behavior. This is lawlessness. This is fascism.
Now we know how the German Nazis rose to power. No matter how evil they were, how unfair they were, how cruel they were, how destructive of Germany itself they were, tens of millions of Germans yet still waved the Nazi flag and screamed in adulation of Adolf Hitler.
How on earth any normal adult American is still a registered Democrat and still proudly waving their Democrat Party registration in the air is beyond my comprehension, unless I finally admit to myself that my friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues are actually Nazis in fact or in waiting. I mean, you all know how bad your political party is behaving, and yet you remain loyal and active, helping it implement its evil, lawless agenda.
I just want to point out that in the end, things did not go well either for the 1860s Democrats nor for the German Nazis. In both instances, at enormous cost in human suffering, the world’s normal people ended up stopping the Democrats’ and the Nazis’ evil behavior, holding them accountable, and trying to ensure they did not come back and do it all again.
While Germany was de-Nazified after World War II, America was never de-Democratted. Because the anti-slavery abolitionist Republicans were too nice and believed too much in a national reconciliation after the Civil War, they allowed the defeated Democrat Party to persist and continue. And they put up statues in Arlington Cemetery that symbolized peace with the evil Democrat Party. And sure enough, like the killer cancer it is, the Democrat Party is now back in force, having infected and infested everything in America with its cancerous ideology and behavior, bent on destruction of the host body and everyone living on it.
We all know how this is going to end, folks. If the Democrat Party continues its war on democracy, and keeps on making We, The People‘s vote irrelevant or non-existent, then The People will go back to 1861 and 1941 methods, and clean up your lawless Democrat Party mess the hard way. Only this time, the normal people are going to demand a real accounting from those who enabled and implemented this disaster. It would not surprise me if in the end, the basic voter rolls resulted in a house-by-house resolution. Not necessarily French Revolution style, but given how disgusted so many Americans are, because they are so badly victimized by the Democrat Party, it would not surprise me one bit.
God prevent this from happening. Please God, open the eyes of the people who have the right hearts and who are only loyal to the old Democrat Party they once knew, and not to the evil thing it has once again become. Lift the fog from their eyes, God, and help them see the errors of their way, and change their hearts to do evil no more.