Please ask him to use any influence he has to have Alex Jones hire the lawyers he has now to advise him on the little problem he has in Congress.

It’s gonna be more fun than recess in heaven.

Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot 3 people, killing two, was acquitted yesterday by a jury in Kenosha Wisconsin. Taking almost 30 hours for deliberation, the jury showed careful diligence in arriving at its verdicts, yet those verdicts were not only unjust; they exposed the raw and tragic truth that when it comes to gun violence, our justice system can no longer actually deliver justice.

The killings and the resulting verdicts defy logic.  An underaged teenager illegally possessing a firearm that was illegally bought by a straw purchaser crossed state lines to join an illegal police action by an unauthorized self-styled “militia”.  He then left the group that was “guarding” businesses and wandered into the crowd that was protesting police brutality.  Rittenhouse, displaying the maturity of a 17-year-old, walked into an angry crowd protesting a police shooting and was then shocked at those people’s reaction.  Had he walked into the crowd without an AR-15 strapped to his chest, probably nothing would have happened; with an AR-15 he almost guaranteed to provoke a response, and he got it, in spades.  Rittenhouse fired a number of shots, hitting three people and killing two of them.  But for him toting an AR-15 in plain sight, this tragedy would not have happened.

Let’s go through the crimes committed by Rittenhouse and his compatriots.  First, the straw purchase.  Rittenhouse’s friend, Dominick Black, aged 20, bought the gun for him because he was too young.  That purchase violates federal and state laws, and Black has been charged, but not tried.  Second, Rittenhouse was charged with minor in possession, but just as final arguments began in his trial, the judge, citing a ridiculous reading of the statute, ordered the charge dropped.  The technicality he cited? An inconsistency in the law that said minors can’t carry a weapon unless it has a long barrel.  The defense had argued this technicality, and the judge bought it, effectively rendering the entire law toothless and unenforceable.  The remaining charges were first degree reckless homicide, two counts of first degree recklessly endangering safety, first degree intentional homicide, and attempted first degree intentional homicide.  The defense argument was simple – self-defense.  They painted Rittenhouse as a good intentioned teenager who was attacked by vicious rioters while trying to protect property and provide medical aid.  The judge, acting more like defense co-counsel rather than the trial judge, went along with this argument, banning the term “victim” or “victims” for those who were shot, but allowed them to be called “rioters”, “looters”, and “arsonists”.

But worse than the judge putting his foot on the scales of justice is the idiocy of today’s gun laws in most US states.  Many states, like Texas, have undone two centuries of common-sense gun laws by perverting the meaning of the Second Amendment through decades of junk law that now permeates federal and state case law.  Intended as a protection for the newly founded US government by providing for a citizen army made up of militias under state and local authority, the Second Amendment has been turned on its head from providing for the common defense to enabling any idiot to own and carry a gun in public.  This effort, driven by gun manufacturers and their lobbyists, with a big assist from Antonin Scalia and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, is virtually complete. Just this year, Texas joined nineteen other states that eliminated all licensing requirements for the open carry of guns in public.  It already allowed open carry of guns, but eliminated all licensing and training requirements, falsely calling such a radical practice as “constitutional carry,” which is nonsense.  All but a handful of states now allow the open carry of firearms in some form or another.  What could possibly go wrong?

Guns are now a fixture in political rallies and protests.  This practice is almost exclusively on the right wing of the political spectrum where outrage is fueled by systemic disinformation which drives the outraged to show up in body armor, helmets, and toting loaded firearms.  Guns and politics don’t mix, have never mixed, and will never mix, but now threats of physical violence and actual violence is commonplace during protests.  Troublemakers often pose as legitimate protestors for the sole purpose of starting destruction and violence, like they did during the George Floyd protests of 2020.  They then use the trouble they caused as an excuse to carry firearms to “protect” businesses and property, mostly owned by white people.

And now, after the Rittenhouse acquittals, we can’t put the genie back in the bottle.  The lesson learned in this trial is that self-defense is a winning argument even when the person claiming self-defense actually started the incident.  The fact is that, but for Rittenhouse wandering into a protest with a locked and loaded AR-15, no one would have died that night in Kenosha.  HE provoked the protestors by openly carrying a weapon of war into a political protest that was already very tense.  When people responded to his provocation, he then shot them, killing two, and then successfully defended that action in court by pretending that the incident began at the moment protestors responded to his provocation.  We have a very similar argument going on right now in Georgia, where three white men chased, confronted, and threatened an unarmed black man, Ahmad Aubrey, who was simply jogging through a neighborhood.  After pulling out a shotgun, one of the defendants then murdered Aubrey.  Their legal justification?  Self-defense.  As ridiculous as that sounds, the trial is in Georgia, and the jury is made up of 11 white men.  I have virtually no expectation that justice will be done in that case either, and I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut that the defense cites the Rittenhouse acquittals as precedent.

I quit the NRA in the 1980s when it went nuts and Charlton Heston started screaming, “From my cold dead hands!” at every meeting.  Being a gun owner, I have been actively opposing for well over a decade the radical gun culture that permeates Texas.  Our politicians have totally failed us, even failing to protect other Texans from gun nuts in the goddam state capitol, creating the necessity of installing panic buttons in every politician’s office to summon state troopers in the event a gun nut gets upset.   Death threats against anyone that gun nuts don’t like is commonplace.  Outrage from disinformation has created an alternative reality where up is down, left is right, the earth is flat, and the sun rises in the west.  Gun nuts even bring guns to protests against science based public health policy.  Career health officials are being driven from office by these threats, and now school board members and their families must be protected by police.

This is insanity that cannot be altered by reason, so I’m changing tactics.  Tomorrow I’m trotting my happy ass down to Guns ‘r Us and buying myself a nice AR-15 with all the trimmings – a couple dozen boxes of ammo, a pile of 30 round mags, and body armor and a tactical sling.  I’ll guarantee that if a couple hundred of us protesting for social justice, fair elections, and racial equality start showing up armed to the teeth, especially those with non-white skin, the politicians will change their tune in a hurry, calling for protection from “radical leftists”.  Nothing else has worked, maybe this will.  After all, we can’t depend on elected officials or even the courts to protect the common good; it’s time to use some of the same tactics as the other side to level the playing field.

The Republican Party of Texas is buying books – lotsa books. That is problematic because apparently there are no book stores in Texas.  They had to go all the way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to buy books.

They are giving those books away to “party supporters.”

Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen spent some time with us this morning wondering whose book they’re buying.  We figured that Dan Crenshaw and Ted Cruz both had books out long enough to be in the $2 range.  But, please don’t forget that Texas Ted, Vol. II is still on a bookshelf somewhere because we know that Amazon will sell it to you.  Vol. II wraps up those loose ends about the Kennedy Assassination that were left dangling in Vol. I.

If we hear whose books they bought, we’ll let you know.  Meanwhile, let your imagination go wild.

Admittedly, this is more of a message for my friends and family that find themselves on the other side of this thing. So, those of you that are regulars around here can excuse my ranting for the time being. I just have to vent.

I’ve grown to understand that gun culture is going to be a thing. I’ll never condone it but I understand it exists. I’ll never understand the point of view that someone can bring a gun into a situation, openly carry it, wave it around, and then claim self-defense when something bad happens. I’m not a lawyer or a legal scholar, so I’ll just have to argue that from a purely logical/philosophical point of view.

So, the legal justifications for what happened in Wisconsin are what they are. I wasn’t in the court room. I don’t know what the full slate of evidence looked like. Maybe the jury had no other choice given what was presented to them. What I will never get is the beating of the chests after the fact.

If you are justifying the deaths of two people based on mistakes they made previously in their life then you are a despicable human being. No one deserves to die like that. It doesn’t matter what they had previously done. The kid couldn’t have known their criminal history and didn’t even know if they had looted, rioted, or burned anything down. Even if they had they didn’t deserve to die anymore than this kid.

How anyone can be happy about anyone losing their life and then call themselves pro life is beyond me. That road is a bottomless pit of human depravity. It is the last bastions of any kind of tenous hold on a smidgeon of moral authority. Whether anyone thinks this kid is legally responsible, he is morally responsible. We are responsible for everything we do in this world.

I’m told he wants to become a nurse. My sincerest hope is that he can make the most of this opportunity he doesn’t deserve. Maybe, just maybe he can save enough people to come somewhat close to making up for the two lives he took. I’m not sure how that is even possible, but I don’t wish anything bad or nefarious happen to him. This isn’t about him anymore. It’s about the rest of us and whether we can gain some perspective of things. I’m really trying hard to do it right now.

For the past ever-how-many months I have achingly suffered from writer’s block.  I have jobs that require me to type 750 – 900 words in a row that more or less connect to each other and – on top of that – have a theme.  I simply don’t understand why they send me a paycheck except for the fact that my writing has agony written all over it and they feel bad about that.

Nobody is more aware of this than my family.  Hence, my child-in-law sent me this message done in a fancy meme:

Holy damn cow. Sprinkle the holy water! I have been raised from the dead. Okay, maybe not dead, but certainly raised from the lethargic, so just sprinkle the glitter.

Within an hour of receiving that, I had outlines for three short stories, including one involving a love triangle between a veterinarian, a reporter, and the Luling Watermelon Queen, a feature story on never letting an expensive balconette bra interfere with your life, chapters 1, 8, and last chapter of a pretty good semi-sexually graphic cozy mystery, and a couple of long overdue thank you notes.

So, this is to thank my child-in-law. Buff, I’m not saying this because you’re my only child-in-law, but you are the best child-in-law ever.  I know the change won’t happen overnight but thank you for showing me the sidewalk. I think I can get to the corner now.

For those of you semi-addicted to the Alex Jones case like I am, I have something fun for you.  The lead attorney in the Texas Sandy Hook case did an interview with two guys who have a podcast.  They have a relatively small but devoted fan base.  This is the attorney’s second appearance on their podcast because they are fun and he enjoys explaining Texas law to them and their audience.

You can hear it right here.  The show runs 2 and half hours but the attorney is only on for an hour.  You can skip to 8 and half minutes for the beginning because that’s when Mark Bankston comes on.  The reason I’m sharing it here is that it’s directed toward non-attorneys.  However, it’s also directed at a much younger audience than we are so that’ll explain the language.

You might want to save it for a rainy day when you can’t put the crops out or sell World Book Encyclopedias door to door. Enjoy.

And just because you need to smile today —