Tag: law

“The last time I checked Illinois citizens are also Americans and Americans don’t get ruled”

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Judge Mike McHaney for Appellate Court

Mike McHaney is a judge on the Illinois Fourth Judicial Circuit Court. He was appointed to fill the vacancy left by Kathleen P. Moran and was elected to the seat in 2010. McHaney was retained in the general election on November 8, 2016.

On April 27, 2020, Clay County Circuit Court Judge Michael McHaney granted a restraining order against Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s (D) 30-day extension of the state’s stay-at-home order.  Judge McHaney has overseen two suits against Illinois governor Pritzker’s stay-at-home order, in both cases issuing a stay for the individuals who brought suit.  In the latest one, however, is the language that I think qualifies him for the Federal Appeals courts:

Since the inception of this insanity, the following regulations, rules or consequences have occurred: I won’t get COVID if I get an abortion but I will get COVID if I get a colonoscopy. Selling pot is essential but selling goods and services at a family-owned business is not. Pot wasn’t even legal and pot dispensaries didn’t even exist in this state until five months ago and, in that five months, they have become essential but a family-owned business in existence for five generations is not.

A family of six can pile in their car and drive to Carlyle Lake without contracting COVID but, if they all get in the same boat, they will. We are told that kids rarely contract the virus and sunlight kills it, but summer youth programs, sports programs are cancelled. Four people can drive to the golf course and not get COVID but, if they play in a foursome, they will. If I go to Walmart, I won’t get COVID but, if I go to church, I will. Murderers are released from custody while small business owners are threatened with arrest if they have the audacity to attempt to feed their families.

Our economy is shut down because of a flu virus with a 98 percent plus survival rate. Doctors and experts say different things weekly. The defendant cites models in his opposition. The only thing experts will agree on is that all models are wrong and some are useful. The Centers for Disease Control now says the virus is not easily spread on surfaces.

The defendant in this case orders you to stay home and pronounces that, if you leave the state, you are putting people in danger, but his family members traveled to Florida and Wisconsin because he deems such travel essential. One initial rationale why the rules don’t apply to him is that his family farm had animals that needed fed. Try selling that argument to farmers who have had to slaughter their herds because of disruption in the supply chain.

When laws do not apply to those who make them, people are not being governed, they are being ruled. Make no mistake, these executive orders are not laws. They are royal decrees. Illinois citizens are not being governed, they are being ruled. The last time I checked Illinois citizens are also Americans and Americans don’t get ruled. The last time a monarch tried to rule Americans, a shot was fired that was heard around the world. That day led to the birth of a nation consensually governed based upon a document which ensures that on this day in this, any American courtroom tyrannical despotism will always lose and liberty, freedom and the constitution will always win.

Bravo, Judge. Bravo.

I Can Find Nothing to Disagree With in This Piece

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I am a pessimist by nature, shocking admission, I know.  But being a pessimist I am very seldom disappointed, and occasionally pleasantly surprised.

I do not expect to be pleasantly surprised by the fallout from this:

Forget About Seeing Any Justice For Obamagate

Excerpt:

Allow me to disabuse you of your naïve delusion that we still live in a country with a justice system and break it to you that no one is going to jail for what was done to Flynn, or for the unmasking business, or for the Russia hoax or, for that matter, for any of the corrupt Dem/foreigner collaborations exemplified by the payoffs received by stripperphile and Bolivian folk medicine enthusiast Hoover Biden.

No one.

To quote David Burge, aka Iowahawk: “We live in a nation of laws in the same way people on ‘Hoarders’ live in houses of cat food boxes.”

President Trump Starts to Drain the Swamp

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J. Christian Adams weighs in on the weaponization of the Justice Department.

Justice is no longer blind. Investigations, charges, and even prison terms depend on the ideological views of the targets.

If you are a friend of the president, the Justice Department “career lawyers” will do all they can to find a venue in the District of Columbia where they know a rabid population of Democrat jurors will do all they can to send you to Big Sandy.

If you doubt me, you haven’t heard of Tomeka Hart, the nasty partisan jury foreman in Stone’s trial who should have never been on the jury in the first place.

The Scales of Justice come in two versions, one for Democrats and one for Trump.

Let’s examine those Justice Department “career lawyers.”

It is now plain that “career lawyer” isn’t a euphemism for unbiased and impartial. It’s exactly the opposite. It usually means Democrat, leftist, elitist, culturally hostile to middle America and feverishly anti-Trump.

Read the whole thing.

Why Doesn’t “Gun Control” Work?

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Perhaps because it ISN’T ENFORCED.

Police have arrested this felon four times in the last four months.
A loaded gun, a ballistic vest, multiple magazines and 18 rounds of loose ammunition.
That’s what police say they discovered inside a vehicle parked in an alley in the 1000 block of Beech Street in St. Paul last Saturday night.

The man in the driver’s seat has been arrested four times since September. Each time officers found firearms, say court records, which detail just three of the arrests.

Steven Michael Lincoln, 25, a convicted felon from Ham Lake, isn’t allowed to carry guns.


Hasn’t stopped him. Neither has the “Felon in Possession” laws, obviously. He should be spending five years in Club Fed, but I guess actually enforcing the laws on the books would overload the Justice System or something.

I’m reminded, once again, of an Ayn Rand quote:
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
And then selectively enforces them.

Edited to add further evidence:

NJ gave Texas church gunman plea deal that wiped out gun felony

Opponents of the Second Amendment Don’t Like the First, Either

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Progressive Governments’ Economic War on the NRA Fails in Court

Not long ago, progressive state and local officials nationwide were vowing to take down the hated National Rifle Association by targeting its pocketbook. When city authorities in Los Angeles and San Francisco gave that idea a try, they were following the lead of Governor Andrew Cuomo, who had unleashed New York financial regulators to go after the gun-rights organization’s access to insurance and banking services.

Now all three are facing a reckoning in court, based not on the Second Amendment but on the First. Without needing to even consider the issue of gun rights, federal courts are recognizing that boycotts enforced by government power can menace free speech and free association.

The amusing part is that the public officials themselves are helping to provide the basis for these rulings by tweeting and speechifying about how much damage they intend to do the NRA.

 “Gun Control” isn’t about guns, it’s about control, and that pesky Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution stand in our rightful rulers way!

Enforcement of the Brady Act?

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In 2010 a Justice Department study looked at the efficacy of the Brady Background Check, the one that requires all purchasers of firearms from Federally licensed dealers to undergo an FBI (or State law enforcement) background check prior to purchase. The purchaser fills out BATFE form 4473 stating that they are not a prohibited person for a myriad of reasons. If they check one box wrong, the background check does not happen and the sale is denied. If they do check all the boxes correctly and they are a prohibited person, they just signed a confession to a Federal felony that carries a five year sentence.
In the 2010 study, Enforcement of the Brady Act, 2010: Federal and State Investigations and Prosecutions of Firearm Applicants Denied by a NICS Check in 2010 (PDF) the report noted that of the 76,000 firearms purchase denials in that year – some 47% of which were for “a record of a felony indictment or conviction” – a grand total of 62 cases were referred for prosecution.
Things have NOT improved. The General Accounting Office released a report, Few Individuals Denied Firearms Purchases Are Prosecuted and ATF Should Assess Use of Warning Notices in Lieu of Prosecutions
The takeaway from this study?
In fiscal 2017, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives referred about 12,700 denied purchases to its field divisions for investigation. As of June 2018, U.S. Attorney’s Offices prosecuted 12 of these cases.
2010, 35,000 denials due to felony conviction or indictment, 62 referrals for prosecution. 2017, 12,700 denials, 12 prosecutions.
If they’re not going to USE the law, what’s it for?
Oh, and the law didn’t work, so we need to DO IT HARDER!!

Stupid Should Hurt

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By far the most viewed, upvoted and commented on answer I have ever given at Quora was a question about concealed-carry vs. open carry.  I mentioned it here a little while ago.

Since the three mass shootings last week I’ve been answering a slew of gun control questions.  Someone I respect over on Facebook today posted about this yo-yo: “You’re presuming guilt of a crime he hasn’t committed. Want attention, surely. Up to no good? Debatable.”

Here we’re going to part company. Somebody shows up at a public venue carrying a long gun who is not obviously law enforcement, I’m going to assume the worst and try to put them down. I’m glad the firefighter didn’t dump a mag into this idiot, but had he I would have voted to acquit. The “debate” can occur in the courtroom. If he was wrong, only ONE person would have been shot.

I’m glad the CCW carrier didn’t do a mag-dump into the idiot, but if he had I would vote to acquit.

It may not be illegal to walk around in public tacticooled out, but it’s STUPID, and stupid should hurt.