« February 2018 | Main | April 2018 »
March 2018
Boycotts and tortious interference with contract
So David Hogg and company are contacting Laura Ingraham's advertisers, threatening to boycott unless they stop advertising on her show. I wonder if they are familiar with the tort (roughly personal injury) of tortious interference with contract, or with a business relationship?
I'd think this is a prime case because (1) they aren't boycotting her, nor unconditionally boycotting the companies (that is, because they don't like Office Depot per se). They're threatening to boycott the companies unless they break off their relationship with her. (2) The motivation is not even a policy difference. It's meant to get even with her for her making a statement, a true statement (that Hogg had been turned down by four colleges).
Discovery might be fun... who's behind the March organization? Who really leads it and funds it? What conversations did they have about boycotting her? Who else might be liable?
Joyce Malcolm gets a nice write-up at National Review
Article here.
Man who lost his sister at Parkland High not allowed to speak at March for our Lives
Story here. He wanted to memorialize her and to call for better school security, so he didn't fit in with real agenda, which is neither safety nor lives, but gun control.
I notice David Hogg didn't lost a family member...
Andrew McCabe's firing
Being a former GS-14 and knowing something of the federal retirement system, I meant to research and blog on the effects of McCabe being fired just before his retirement date. Then I found someone else, more expert than I, had already covered the subject. He shows they hysterical media accounts of McCabe losing his pension, and how the actual impact is that he'll have to wait until 57 to start drawing his full pension, instead of doing so at 50. (I believe he could claim his pension right now, but the payments would be somewhat reduced.),
The retirement system hinges on age and years of service. For most federals, at age 60 you can retire with 20 years of service. For law enforcement, due to the risks and strenuous work environment (tho I doubt McCabe has had to run foot races against suspects or break up fist fights in a long time), you can retire at 50 with the same 20 years. So he's doing a lot better than most federal employees as it is. Since the article estimates his net worth at eleven million, he can probably get by.
Thought for the day
What didn't stop the recent Maryland school shooter:
Maryland's registration of guns and requirement of a permit to own;
Its universal background check;
Its one-gun-a month limit;
Its prohibition on magazines holding more than ten rounds;
Its very restrictive permit to carry system;
The Federal creation of "gun free school zones"
Its prohibition on handgun carry by the underaged.
What did stop the shooter:
A good guy with a gun, at the scene.
But I read somewhere that this doesn't work
A good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun.
Multiple officials, and his own mother, wanted Florida shooter mentally committed
Turns out that, years before he committed the school shooting, two school counselors and the school security guard (yes, that one) recommended that the shooter be committed, based on his cutting himself, telling another classmate to get a gun and use it on people, drinking gasoline, etc.. But no one acted on it.
What is telling to me is that they all "recommended" this. Nobody did anything, all passed the buck (I suspect to the principal, who probably had nowhere to pass the buck and so they settled for ignoring it). If a kid had nibbled a cookie into the shape of a gun, they probably would have imposed discipline, because the kid was harmless and so it was safe to beat up on them. But with a person who was really a problem, it was best to ignore it or pass the buck. Which in a way is a metaphor for modern gun (and crime) control.
UPDATE: Speaking of which, a New Jersey school suspends students because they posted pictures of themselves at a shooting range, on a non-school website. School policy allows suspension of a student "reported to be in possession of a weapon of any type for any reason or purpose on or off school grounds." For any reason, and on or off school grounds. Punishment for posting a photo in any venue, of a lawful activity... sounds like a First and a Second Amendment violation to me. So this is the standard: truly violent cases will be overlooked, peaceful exercises will be punish, because dealing with the first is risky while dealing with the second is safe.
Interesting cartoon....
State age discrimination law and firearm sales
There have been "virtue signaling" moves by some retailers to cut off rifle sales to persons aged 18-21, although federal law permits long arm sales to them. The federal age discrimination statutes, I think, don't cover retail sales or discrimination against the young. NSSF, however, reminds us that many states have age discrimination statutes that may.
Amen to that!
No one would accept, in any other national discussion, the level of ignorance seen in the gun debate.
The title says it all....
"Ted Cruz Brings Entertainment Value To MSNBC As He Uses Joe Scarborough For A PiƱata."
"Here is the whole interview. Enjoy...that is if you are into watching gratuitous cruelty."
Waco article on The Hill
A great article by Jim Bovard. He mentions and links to an ATF report I got through a three-year FOIA lawsuit, and which shows that the raid was a publicity stunt. In its aftermath, the agency claimed they could not arrest David Koresh peacefully, since the undercover agents stationed across the street to monitor things didn't know what he looked like, and never saw him leave his building.
The ATF report relates what three undercover ATF agents did on February 19, nine days before the raid and gunfight.
They went shooting.
With David Koresh.
At the outset, they had all the guns and Koresh was unarmed.
Virtue signalling and brainlessness
A Virginia US House candidate signals her virtue by supposedly disabling the family's AR-15.... by cutting the barrel off and making it an unregistered NFA firearm, on video, whose manufacture or possession is a felony punishable by up to ten years' imprisonment.
Since she is a Privileged Creature, doing it in A Good Cause, I am sure she will not have to worry about arrest....
Dramatic shootout in San Francisco
Officers at about five yards range confront a man wanted for homicide, he fires on them, they fire 65 shots in 15 seconds, two officers go down. The only thing that kept it from worsening is that nobody was hit.
Steve Halbrook on the Parkland murders
At the Independent Institute.
"The expired 1994 Clinton ban on "assault weapons"--a propaganda term for modern sporting rifles--had zero effect on crime. A Department of Justice study verified that. Yet a similar ban is now advocated because government failed to act and prevent the murders."
Hat tip to Alice Beard...
Merchant-imposed age limits for guns may violate anti-discrimination laws
At least in Oregon. Note that restricts on age discrimination are purely statutory (the courts have never, to my knowledge, treated them as constitutional in the way they treat discrimination based on race) and that those statutes can cover private persons rather than governmental entities.
Hat tip to Alice Beard...
My latest book got a good review in Washington Times
Review here, by Tom Gresham.
""I'm From The Government and I'm Here To Kill You" should shock a nation, and Congress, into action. There may be no one in Washington, however, who wants these reforms, and that is the most frightening takeaway from this riveting ground-breaking book."
It's promotional webpage (which earns me another 90 cents off every Amazon and B&N order linked off it) is here.