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Congressman Schneider goes after the NRA tax exempt status,
Congressman Schneider goes after the NRA tax exempt status, but he has a problem himself.....
Updated: an hour ago
On 2/6, Congressman Schneider escalated the attacks on the NRA’s tax exempt status.
Democratic Representative Brad Schneider of Illinois reiterated his call for an Internal Revenue Service investigation into the National Rifle Association, citing the Trace’s April 2019 investigation with The New Yorker. In a new report released on February 6, he compiled numerous allegations of self-dealing and financial misconduct at the gun rights nonprofit and concluded that “American taxpayers are subsidizing the NRA’s scheme.”
A member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Schneider last year requested documents from the NRA and its vendors as he sought more information on possible violations of its tax-exempt status. But he says the organization stonewalled his queries and blocked its former public relations firm, Ackerman McQueen, from cooperating.
Ok, fine (even though that whole thing with the New Yorker was an orchestrated hit job by Everytown). But what about Rep Schneider’s past dealings/influence over not for profits, specifically Everytown/Moms Demand Action?
So, the congressman contacted Moms Demand Action and asked them to contact public schools (taxpayer funded) in order to setup an event for him by using Everytown’s resources. The email that MDA sent states Schneider told them to do it. Schneider, on the other hand.....
On Saturday, I had the chance to meet and speak with students from more than a dozen area schools at a workshop program organized by Moms Demand Action. These young people are incredible. Their passion and energy are changing the debate on gun safety and setting an example for their elected leaders.
Uh, Congressman, MDA said YOU wanted them to organize it in 3/9/18 email. So which is it? Maybe this should be investigated further, as if you’re able to use a not for profit to setup events for your own purpose, that’s a huge no no in the 501C world.
It’s also interesting that Rep. Schneider is the one who spearheaded the investigation into the NRA in Congress two months after his little event in March.
Politifact is FAKE NEWS [Viva Frei]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knfLORnwSQA
(Not a website, you'll need to jump through hoops like a trained tiger if you haven't already. Really a shame but at least it's still better than TV.)
Long story made short, everyone's favorite Canadian law dawg got his nose rubbed in politifact's taint, and the result is quite an entertaining little rant.
Presidential Bash exit codes
Dear Mr. Trump,
For your cyber convenience, here is a selected subset of Bash exit codes I have compiled just for you:
1 Operation not permitted
2 No such file or directory
13 Permission denied
25 Inappropriate ioctl for device
29 Illegal seek
31 Too many links
32 Broken pipe
52 Invalid exchange
57 Invalid slot
62 Timer expired
67 Link has been severed
69 Srmount error
74 Bad message
78 Remote address changed
87 Too many users
95 Operation not supported
111 Connection refused
113 No route to host
117 Structure needs cleaning
125 Operation cancelled
126 Required key not available
128 Key has been revoked
129 Key was rejected by service
130 Owner died
troll of the union address
Minutes ago, Rush Limbaugh was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Then Trump praised the "heroes" at ICE, and told several sob stories about crime by illegal immigrants.
Now BSing about the middle east.
This ought to provide excellent media distraction from the Iowa SNAFU?
typical 'Do as I say, not as I do' liberal activist
Saginaw and Bay City News
Saginaw woman who led anti-violence march faces gun charges
SAGINAW, MI - Months after organizing an anti-violence march in the wake of a several shootings in the city, a Saginaw woman faces gun charges after police allege she threatened an employee at a salon.
Sparkle N. Roby, 34, on Wednesday, Sept. 18, appeared in Saginaw County District Court for arraignment on three counts of felony firearm and single counts of felonious assault, carrying a concealed weapon, carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent, and felon in possession of a firearm.
Prosecutors say Roby on July 22 had an altercation with an employee at Unique Styles Beauty Salon in Saginaw and said she’d come back with a gun. She left the business, then returned with a pistol and waved it around, yelling for the employee, prosecutors allege.
Roby left the salon when she heard police were being called, prosecutors said. No one was injured, but police said several people were in the salon at the time.
Authorities issued a warrant for Roby’s arrest on Monday, Sept. 16. The next day, police arrested her during a traffic stop.
Roby, speaking with MLive on Thursday, said she expects the case against her to be dismissed.
“They’re all false claims,” she said. “I don’t know the person who made the report.”
Earlier this year, Roby organized the Take a Step Walk. The June 1 march was in response to several shootings and two homicides that occurred in Saginaw in a few weeks’ time.
In May, she told how her life has been affected by violence in Saginaw.
In 2005, her best friend Brandy Boose, 20, was killed in a drive-by shooting as she slept in bed with her infant. Two years later, Roby’s 26-year-old sister Tekisha R. Curry — a mother of five children — was fatally shot during a late-night birthday party in 2007.
In 2015, Roby found herself in legal trouble for witness intimidation for twice threatening a female who was a witness against her brother, Brandon Sims, who is serving 26-50 years in prison for the 2014 shooting death of Keyonus Mobley.
“When I was put in that situation, I had never been in that situation, and I learned that I never wanted to be in that situation again,” Roby told MLive in May. “I was able to grow and learn from the experience.”
She ended up pleading no contest to one count of intimidating a witness by committing a crime and/or threatening to kill or injure. As a convicted felon, Roby is prohibited from possessing guns.
In 2018, she regained custody of her sons, who had been removed from her home in 2010. They also became motivation for her.
“I learned to use my time more wisely and started doing more positive things and ever since then things have been going more positively for me,” Roby said.
Roby, who has bonded out of jail, is to appear for a preliminary examination at 2:15 p.m. on Oct. 2.
U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)-“A Saginaw woman who organized an anti-violence march has accepted a plea deal her felony gun case,” Saginaw and Bay City News reported Saturday. “Sparkle N. Roby, 34, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, appeared before Saginaw County Chief Circuit Judge Darnell Jackson and pleaded no contest to single counts of felonious assault, felon in possession of a firearm, carrying a concealed weapon, and carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent.”
As part of the deal to get the plea, prosecutors agreed to drop three “felony firearm” counts stemming from an incident where witness testimony said Roby returned to a beauty salon with a gun to threaten an employee she’d had an argument with moments before.
That hardly lives up to the “authoritative” lecturing Roby gave the media when interviewed for her “Take a Step Walk.” Perhaps if “reporters” giving her free publicity had been more interested in doing a balanced job, they could have asked her on camera about her prior deal after threatening to kill a witness against her brother, now serving 26 to 50 years for shooting a man to death. She pled out on that too, making her a “prohibited person,” forbidden by law to have a gun. And just to re-emphasize, she had faced two charges for the death threat.
Roby evidently learning nothing makes Judge Jackson’s decision to allow her to be free on bond pending sentencing all the more curious. Based on results she has demonstrated extreme anger and cognitive dissonance issues and has shown a penchant for threatening to kill witnesses. Allowing a demonstrable menace unrestrained access to others is irresponsible and dangerous, although hardly unexpected considering how prosecutors and the courts have continued to show leniency to this repeat offender.
What’s also hardly unexpected is that so many “anti-violence” activists are violent themselves, particularly the ones who rail against guns and then end up using them. Cases in point:
The anti-gun Democrat politician charged with shooting her husband to death.
The “school shooter” who advocates for citizen disarmament.
The “Stop the Violence organizers” who beat a man so severely he vomited blood.
An “anti-violence” pamphlet distributor, working for the State of Illinois, who “accidentally” shot his accomplice in the head during a home invasion.
The “anti-gun advocate” busted for illegally selling firearms.Hell, for that matter, look at Leland Yee, or all those criminal Bloomberg mayors.
There are plenty more examples. Here are some I talked about 15 years ago for a GUNS Magazine column:
The gun and ammunition straw purchasers for the Columbine killers who apparently decided going full anti-gun would make things easier on them.
The Million Mom March sponsor who got a .45 and paralyzed a man she wrongly thought had killed her son.
Another Million Mom Marcher, this one a chapter president, who was busted with drugs and a gun with a filed-off serial number by police investigating a drive-by shooting.
“Long Island Lolita” Amy Fisher, who had her anti-gun epiphany after shooting her sex partner’s wife in the face.Then there’s my personal “favorite” for insane hypocrisy, Columbine killer Eric Harris, whose “Guns in Schools” report concluded, “a school is no place for a gun.” And guess who agreed with him:
“First, we believe in absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance, totally safe schools. That means no guns in America's schools, period … with the rare exception of law enforcement officers or trained security personnel.”
The projection in the gun-grabbers is strong, and it’s fair to surmise how much of not trusting others with guns arises from knowing what’s in their own hearts. In any case, that should not be allowed to have any bearing on the rights of those who suffer no such moral defects and impulse control issues, and the bottom line and undeniable truth is, anyone who can’t be trusted with a gun can’t be trusted without a custodian, a concept that evidently escaped Judge Jackson in the Roby case.
And unlike the gun-grabbers, “our side” even insists on full due process before meting out legal consequences.
Nationwide injunctions exceed judicial power, Gorsuch says
Justice Gorsuch Compared Nationwide Injunctions to the One Ring From ‘Lord of the Rings’
Justice Neil Gorsuch invoked J.R.R. Tolkien’s tri-part epic “The Lord of the Rings” in a Monday concurrence that suggested the Supreme Court may need to curtail the use of nationwide injunctions.
Gorsuch likened nationwide injunctions to the One Ring, an artifact of malevolent power whose destruction is the driving action of Tolkien’s saga. The justice alluded to the ring as he reviewed the history of litigation regarding the Trump administration’s public charge rule, which will take effect after the high court lifted two injunctions entered against it Monday afternoon.
A lengthy inscription on the band proclaims that the One Ring shall “rule them all.” Gorsuch found that domineering promise an apt descriptor for nationwide injunctions, which remain in force regardless of the outcome of other lawsuits on a given subject.
“Despite the fluid state of things — some interim wins for the government over here, some preliminary relief for plaintiffs over there — we now have an injunction to rule them all: the one before us, in which a single judge in New York enjoined the government from applying the new definition to anyone, without regard to geography or participation in this or any other lawsuit,” Gorsuch wrote.
Nationwide injunctions exceed judicial power, Gorsuch says
Gorsuch argued that nationwide injunctions raise fundamental questions about judicial power. The Constitution does not give federal judges freestanding authority to strike down laws or award damages. Instead, the courts are empowered to resolve specific “cases and controversies” that unfold in the real world between adversarial parties.
Since the judicial power extends to those particular disputes, it follows that courts only have power to bind the parties before them, Gorsuch said. But when a judge-ordered remedy reaches beyond a particular case, Gorsuch suggested courts are transformed from venues for dispute resolution into something else entirely.
“When a district court orders the government not to enforce a rule against the plaintiffs in the case before it, the court redresses the injury that gives rise to its jurisdiction in the first place,” Gorsuch wrote. “But when a court goes further than that, ordering the government to take (or not take) some action with respect to those who are strangers to the suit, it is hard to see how the court could still be acting in the judicial role of resolving cases and controversies.”
What’s more, Gorsuch said nationwide injunctions are contrary to our legal tradition. When new legal questions emerge, many different lower courts reach their own conclusions — sometimes divergent — over a long period of time.
In turn, higher courts review those results, then announce controlling principles for future cases. The hope is that higher courts can issue quality, well-informed decisions with the benefit of multiple inputs from the lower courts.
Nationwide injunctions interrupt that process, Gorsuch said, turning ordinary disputes into emergencies.
“By their nature, universal injunctions tend to force judges into making rushed, high-stakes, low-information decisions,” Gorsuch wrote.
“The rise of nationwide injunctions may just be a sign of our impatient times,” he added. “But good judicial decisions are usually tempered by older virtues.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, who joined Gorsuch’s Monday opinion, sounded similar notes in a concurrence to the 2018 travel ban decision. Like the public charge rule, the administration’s travel sanctions were subject to multiple nationwide injunctions.
“These injunctions did not emerge until a century and a half after the founding,” Thomas wrote. “And they appear to be inconsistent with longstanding limits on equitable relief and the power of Article III courts. If their popularity continues, this Court must address their legality.”
Trump administration searches for solution
Nationwide injunctions have beset the Trump administration since the president took office. By the Justice Department’s telling, the federal courts have entered about 40 injunctions against the executive branch since 2017. In contrast, only 27 nationwide injunctions were issued in the entire 20th century.
Vice President Mike Pence said that the administration would look for an appropriate case to challenge nationwide injunctions in the Supreme Court during a May 2019 speech to a Federalist Society conference in Washington, D.C.
The question cannot reach the high court on its own. Rather, the justices can only address the question if it is part of an ongoing dispute.
That could leave the government in something of a bind, however, as it raises the possibility the administration would have to lose a case on the merits in order for the justices to reach the injunction question.
That’s because the high court has no reason to decide on an injunction when the government wins and successfully defends its policy. If the challengers lose, they aren’t entitled to anything. Only after the challengers prevail is the question of a remedy relevant.
Liberals and conservatives alike have obtained nationwide injunctions to attain their litigation goals.
Republican state attorneys general used such orders to good effect in the waning days of the Obama administration. Those injunctions, obtained from right-leaning trial courts in places like Texas, blocked an Obama-era policy on transgender bathrooms and a companion initiative to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
– – –
Kevin Daley is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Background Photo “The One Ring” by Rodrigo Olivera. CC BY 2.0.
The worst disastrophe
Which is the most worsest?
A disaster of epic pacifications.
A disaster of epic paginations.
A disaster of epic palindromes.
A disaster of epic panhandlers.
A disaster of epic paragraphs.
A disaster of epic pedestrians.
A disaster of epic pejoratives.
A disaster of epic penetrations.
A disaster of epic penmanships.
A disaster of epic perfectionists.
A disaster of epic perforations.
A disaster of epic performances.
A disaster of epic permissions.
A disaster of epic persecutions.
A disaster of epic personalizations.
A disaster of epic perspirations.
A disaster of epic persuasions.
A disaster of epic philanderers.
A disaster of epic pigmentations.
A disaster of epic plagiarizations.
A disaster of epic polarizations.
A disaster of epic pollutions.
A disaster of epic polymerizations.
A disaster of epic pontifications.
A disaster of epic populations.
A disaster of epic porcupinizations.
A disaster of epic portentous.
A disaster of epic portions.
A disaster of epic positions.
A disaster of epic possessions.
A disaster of epic possibilities.
A disaster of epic posteriors.
A disaster of epic postmortems.
A disaster of epic potbellies.
A disaster of epic practicalities.
A disaster of epic pragmatists.
A disaster of epic prattling.
A disaster of epic preaching.
A disaster of epic precautions.
A disaster of epic precipitations.
A disaster of epic precisions.
A disaster of epic preconceptions.
A disaster of epic preconditions.
A disaster of epic predeterminations.
A disaster of epic predictions.
A disaster of epic prejudices.
A disaster of epic premonitions.
A disaster of epic preoccupations.
A disaster of epic preparations.
A disaster of epic preponderances.
A disaster of epic prequels.
A disaster of epic prerequisites.
A disaster of epic prescriptions.
A disaster of epic presentations.
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A disaster of epic pressurizations.
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A disaster of epic presuppositions.
A disaster of epic pretensions.
A disaster of epic prevarications.
A disaster of epic preventatives.
A disaster of epic pricing.
A disaster of epic priorities.
A disaster of epic prioritizing.
A disaster of epic privatizations.
A disaster of epic privileges.
A disaster of epic probabilities.
A disaster of epic procedures.
A disaster of epic processes.
A disaster of epic processions.
A disaster of epic proclamations.
A disaster of epic procrastinations.
A disaster of epic procreations.
A disaster of epic proctologists.
A disaster of epic profanations.
A disaster of epic professionalizations.
A disaster of epic proficiencies.
A disaster of epic profitabilities.
A disaster of epic prognostications.
A disaster of epic programing.
A disaster of epic progressions.
A disaster of epic prohibitions.
A disaster of epic prohibitionists.
A disaster of epic projections.
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A disaster of epic prolongations.
A disaster of epic promiscuously.
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A disaster of epic pronouncements.
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A disaster of epic proofreading.
A disaster of epic propagandas.
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A disaster of epic propellants.
A disaster of epic propensities.
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A disaster of epic prophylactics.
A disaster of epic proposals.
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A disaster of epic prosecutions.
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A disaster of epic protections.
A disaster of epic protestations.
A disaster of epic protestors.
A disaster of epic protrusions.
A disaster of epic provocations.
A disaster of epic psychoanalyzeations.
A disaster of epic psychopaths.
A disaster of epic publications.
A disaster of epic pulsations.
A disaster of epic pulverizations.
A disaster of epic punctuations.
A disaster of epic purifications.
A disaster of epic puns.
A disaster of epic pyromaniacs.
Other, please specify in comments.
(Somehow I didn't think this one would work very well as an SN Pole question.)
That didn't take long
If any person, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, or harass any person, shall use a computer or computer network to communicate obscene, vulgar, profane, lewd, lascivious, or indecent language, or make any suggestion or proposal of an obscene nature, or threaten any illegal or immoral act, he shall be is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. A violation of this section may be prosecuted in the jurisdiction in which the communication was made or received or in the City of Richmond if the person subjected to the act is one of the following officials or employees of the Commonwealth: the Governor, Governor-elect, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor-elect, Attorney General, or Attorney General-elect, a member or employee of the General Assembly, a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, or a judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia.
You'd think they'd at least get the 2A out of the way before they go balls out after the 1A. Remember this shit next time you get butthurt because someone tells you the Democrats are authoritarian shitstains.
[Update]: Deathmonkey was kind enough to point out that this was in fact a Republican-passed bill from 2K that is being reaffirmed/reenacted by the Democrats, as well as adding the ability for the state to prosecute in Richmond no matter where the crime was committed if it's against state-owned property or a politician. Let's hear it for bipartisan fuckwadery! This would have been updated sooner but this is the first time I've looked at it since Thursday around lunchtime. Sorry, you're just not as interesting as The Roomie's kids who arrived a couple hours later.
(What, you thought I'd support it if Republicans had a hand in it? You must be new here.)
State of Emergency
Tens of thousands of armed citizens came to protest in VA, said what they had to say, and harmed nobody at all. Then they left. But not before cleaning up after themselves. Talk about pissing the ones trying to sell the progtard narrative off. I did laugh.
Review: Dell Inspiron 11 3000
I had been looking for a replacement for my old Acer Aspire One for years. It was my favorite computer, small form yet capable. It’s had problems with age, so I bought a used HP laptop at a pawn shop a few years ago, but it’s far too big for a lap. They should call those big “laptops” portable desk computers.
I bought another used one from a computer place last year. It, too, was way too big for a lap.
I finally looked on the internet, not expecting to find a lap-sized laptop. But I did. A Dell, only an inch bigger than the Acer. But Dell’s web site refused to sell it to me.
So I bought it from Amazon for about two hundred. Dell had wanted three.
I charged it and turned it on, and was faced, of course, with installing Windows when it should be ready to run; the “new machine setup” was far more onerous than installing Mandrake in the early 2000s.
Then I was faced with the horrible Windows Ten. This is the absolute worst operating system I’ve ever used (I never used eight). Microsoft is the only entity I’ve ever encountered that would remove usability, functionality, and features and then call it an “upgrade”.
Case in point: File manager traded menus for that awful “ribbon” interface and lost the drop down that allowed you to quickly select which app opens a file. Now you need a right click. Usability? Who needs that?
They added ads to Solitaire and took away the function that quickly ends a game.
They mangled the start menu.
But what’s worse, in Windows 7 they added something incredibly unintuitive and annoying, and made it a hard to change default, since they completely change the interface with every iteration: gestures. I’d forgotten bout them since I’d disabled them in the Acer a decade ago.
Gestures make lots of sense on a touchscreen, but not on a touchpad. I finally found the setting to shut them off, and the right mouse button stopped working. Fixing it was frustrating.
Getting on the network, finally, was no problem. Now to install all the programs I need. The computer refused to install programs, while showing me how to go to its unintuitive process for shutting that particularly annoying “feature” off. In fairness I do know folks for whom it would be essential.
Then I finally started paying attention to the hardware. There was no network jack, but doesn’t really need one with wi-fi, even if its wi-fi is old and weak. But it does have an HDMI jack, which I thought might solve a problem I had.
Disney launched its streaming service for seven bucks, and I wanted to see the beginning of Star Wars Episode 3 in 4K. It was awesome in the theater. So I signed up, since I had a smart 4K Sony TV. The trouble is, the app locks the TV up. Disney works fine on the tablet, but if I cast it to the TV the sound and picture are out of synch, and it isn’t 4K.
So I fired up Firefox, logged on to Disney+, and there are multi-second screen freezes. Chrome, Opera, and Edge all did the same thing. I don’t know if it’s a hardware or software problem.
While on the internet I discover that this is the first computer I remember owning that had no page up or down keys; rather, its page up/down keys move up and down one line. I also discovered that it had no LAN jack, which isn’t much of a hassle since it has wi-fi, even if the wi-fi is slow. However, using this computer to back up a terabyte of data from one network drive to another was a terrible idea; it’s been going for a full week and is only 91% complete.
There are also four USB ports and one new port I’d not seen before that probably isn’t very useful.
It does have a touch screen, making Windows 10 less awful, but not much less. It’s a convertible; the screen bends all the way around to the computer’s back, making it a tablet. However, unlike any other tablet, it has no way to automatically discern screen orientation. You have to tell it manually, which is a pain.
As I mentioned, it’s a replacement for the ten year old Acer. It has twice the processor speed, twice the memory (more memory than any computer I’ve owned) and half the drive space. I only use the drive for application and temporary files, since I have a 3 TB network drive, so that’s no problem.
But it boots no faster, apps load no faster, and Audacity is dog slow. It was ten times faster on the old one. At first I thought maybe the old computer was 32 bits and this is 64, and I got the idea that maybe I was running a 32 bit program on a 64 bit computer; none of my old 32 bit games will even install.
So I logged on to Audacity’s site and found the answer at https://www.audacityteam.org/download/windows/.
WINDOWS VERSION............RECOMMENDED RAM/PROCESSOR SPEED.MINIMUM RAM/PROCESSOR SPEED
Windows 10 (32- or 64-bit).4 GB / 2 GHz....................2 GB / 1 GHz
Windows 8 (64-bit)
Windows 7 (64-bit)
Windows 8 (32-bit)
Windows 7 (32-bit) (except Starter) 4 GB / 2 GHz............1 GB / 1 GHz
Windows 7 Starter ..................2 GB / 1 GHz............512 MB / 1 GHz
The Acer had Windows 7 starter with two gigabytes of RAM. So I installed the latest 64 bit version, and it was actually a little faster than the Acer.
In short, it isn’t a bad little computer as long as you’re running newer 64 bit programs, but on a scale of one to five, I give it a two. I wouldn’t recommend it.
A question: does anyone know how I can run those old 32 bit games on a 64 bit machine? It seems someone should have written an emulator.
