Archive for November, 2021

Apple Backs Down On Phone Scanning Plans

From Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Since August, EFF and others have been telling Apple to cancel its new child safety plans. Apple is now changing its tune about one component of its plans: the Messages app will no longer send notifications to parent accounts.

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Politico: Dems Need To Drop The Gun Rhetoric

From Politico:

Democrats need to learn how to talk about firearm rights and crime issues without demonizing millions of voters who own guns. What Democrats don’t realize is that the very voters they are losing by the tens of thousands each cycle are also the people who account for the largest surge of new firearm sales.

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Lara Smith of The Liberal Gun Club Discusses Rittenhouse Verdict

From Slate:

It’s always been complicated. Who’s the good guy with the gun? Was Rittenhouse a bad guy who became a good guy? Was he always a bad guy? Were there bad guys and good guys in the crowd who were armed? I think the answer is always complicated. But I think it’s different than a mass shooting. It’s different than somebody who goes to the crowd with the idea that I’m going to kill people. And I think that’s really important to keep in mind, especially for people on the left, that he didn’t go there to kill people, even though him being there was just the worst judgment in the world and stupid and he never should have been allowed to be there. And it’s a true failure of our society that no one said to a 17-year-old kid, “You don’t go do this because you might shoot somebody. Even if you don’t want to. You don’t go do this.”

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The ACLU Has Lost Its Way

From Reason:

More troubling is the response to the verdict from an organization that should know better: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In a statement reacting to the verdict, ACLU-Wisconsin Interim Executive Director Shaadie Ali lamented the “deep roots of white supremacy” in Kenosha that prevented Rittenhouse from being “held responsible for his actions.”

In a Twitter thread, the ACLU complained that Rittenhouse was not held accountable for his “conscious decision to travel across state lines and injure one person and take the lives of two people protesting the shooting of Jacob Blake by police.”

One might have expected that an organization dedicated to the preservation of civil liberties would not so cavalierly take the side of prosecutors against the concept of self-defense. In the past, the ACLU has done terrific work shining a light on prosecutorial misconduct—the tremendous power the state has to stack the deck against defendants. The ACLU purports to believe that all people, even the guilty, deserve due process protections. The organization is evidently outraged by the verdict: Is the ACLU outraged that the prosecutor tried to argue that Rittenhouse exercising his Miranda rights was evidence of his guilt?

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The Rittenhouse Verdict And The Gun Issue

From Cam and Company:

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Former NYT Employee Admits The Times Held Kenosha Riot Report Until After The Election

From Nellie Bowles:

When I was at the New York Times, I went to Kenosha to see about this, and it turned out to be not true. The part of Kenosha that people burned in the riots was the poor, multi-racial commercial district, full of small, underinsured cell phone shops and car lots. It was very sad to see and to hear from people who had suffered. Beyond the financial loss, small storefronts are quite meaningful to their owners and communities, which continuously baffles the Zoom-class.

Eventually the election passed. Biden was in the White House. And my Kenosha story ran. Whatever the reason for holding the piece, covering the suffering after the riots was not a priority. The reality that brought Kyle Rittenhouse into the streets was one we reporters were meant to ignore. The old man who tried to put out a blaze at a Kenosha store had his jaw broken. The top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer had to resign in June 2020 amid staff outcry for publishing a piece with the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too.” 

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Progressives: Do As I Say Not As I Do

From Foundation for Economic Education:

But as Applebaum notes, progressives are in fact making decisions based on self-interest—he uses the word “greed”—not altruism. This should come as little surprise, and it would be perfectly fine if progressives were acting on self-interest in a market economy; but they are not. They are using the law in perverse ways to their own benefit—all while maintaining the belief that they’re acting out of altruism.

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Republic of China (Taiwan) Upgrading Its F-16 Fleet

From The War Zone:

Originally, the ROCAF expected to receive 144 F-16Vs, which are conversions of its existing F-16A/B jets, but this number has since been reduced to 141 through attrition in its existing Viper fleet. Lockheed Martin upgraded the first two ROCAF F-16Vs, the first of which took to the air in October 2015, and these served as pattern aircraft for Taiwan’s Aerospace Industry Development Center (AIDC) to complete the remaining upgrades locally.

Work to retrofit the whole fleet is due for completion by the end of 2023. The next wing to be equipped with the upgraded jets will be the 5th TFW at Hualien Air Base on the northeast coast. While the F-16V name is applied almost universally to these aircraft, AIDC still confusingly refers to them as F-16A/B Block 20 MLUs.

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Louisiana Denies Chase Bank Bond Deal Because of Gun Control

From The Advocate:

Louisiana officials Thursday blocked banking giant JP Morgan Chase from participating in a bond refinancing deal, in Republicans’ escalating effort to keep some large investment firms sidelined from state work because they limit business with firearm manufacturers.

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Data Scientist Warns of Election Meddling By Google

From Newsbusters:

Psychologist and researcher Dr. Robert Epstein, PhD exclusively explained the worrisome implications of the Axios-Google Trends project to MRC Free Speech America. “The more you know about people, the easier it is to manipulate them,” Dr. Epstein warned.

Dr. Epstein explained the implications of Google having this knowledge. “Among other things, this allows Google to keep a close eye on voters who are undecided and whose opinions can still be changed,” he said. “The detailed information they have about each and every one of us allows them to effectively shift opinions with biased search results, search suggestions, answer boxes, answers on personal assistants (Google Home and the Google Assistant on Android phones), YouTube videos, targeted messages, and more.” 

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Congress Investigating FBI Raid of Project Veritas

From Fox News:

Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and James Comer, R-K.Y., joined Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., on Thursday in demanding information from the Justice Department (DOJ) regarding the recent raids of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe‘s residence and those of his associates.

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CMMG Announces ARs in 4.6×30

From Guns.com:

Missouri-based CMMG on Tuesday announced the first firearm made for the American consumer market chambered in 4.6×30 – the FourSix.

Designed originally by Heckler & Koch in the 1990s for a low-recoiling NATO Personal Defense Weapon program – competing against FN’s 5.7×28 for the same purpose – the 4.6x30mm is a rimless bottlenecked cartridge that performs well under 150 yards with a small size that allows guns chambered for it to carry a lot of rounds. 

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NBC Tried To Dox Rittenhouse Jurors

From The Federalist:

Judge Bruce Schroeder announced Thursday morning that MSNBC would no longer be permitted in the courtroom of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial after someone who identified himself as a producer working for MSNBC was pulled over and arrested when he blew a red light while following a bus transporting the jurors.

The man identified himself as James J. Morrison, employed by MSNBC, and said he had been instructed by MSNBC’s Irene Byon in New York to follow the jury bus, according to the judge.

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Police/Military Experience Does Not Equal Gun Expert

From Washington Examiner:

You see it all the time in news media. Former law enforcement officials or military personnel are asked to opine on how guns or gun laws work. It doesn’t matter if that person’s position had anything to do with firearms or if they’ve even fired a gun in the past decade.

The mistake is to some extent understandable. People in law enforcement or the military take gun safety training at some point in their career. So, everyone who ever served must know everything there is to know about guns. Right?

Well, of course, that’s not actually the case. Many military members only ever go through basic training and never handle a gun again after that point. Police officers in most major departments, even ones on active duty, are only required to requalify twice a year after their own training courses.

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The 14th Amendment And Gun Laws

From The Federalist:

On its face, this law clearly violates the spirit of the Second Amendment. Conservatives arguing to overturn it, however, find themselves in the awkward position of arguing against long-standing conservative principles like constitutional federalism and state sovereignty. Implicitly, in this case, the argument for gun rights relies on a century of progressive precedent known as the “incorporation doctrine.”

Activist courts have used this legal theory to impose left-wing policies top-down onto the states. Conservatives are right to insist on a consistent standard; if the Constitution means no school prayer in Kansas, then it also means the right to carry a gun in New York City.

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