Today, Dan Patrick (who I regard as a lunatic) announced that he didn’t have enough votes to pass the Unqualified Carry Law that allows any idiot to openly (or concealed) carry a handgun in public without ANY licensing requirement.  He did say that if he got enough votes, he would advance the bill, and was looking for advice from the NRA and other gun advocacy organizations. Swell.  Thankfully, law enforcement is opposed to this bill for obvious reasons.

Gun nuts in Texas have been pushing the notion of Unqualified Carry for about 7 or 8 years now, even coining the term “Constitutional Carry” which doesn’t exist.  What it really is is Unqualified Carry, that is, the ability of anyone to carry a handgun openly without a permit and with no mechanism for law enforcement to examine a carrier’s qualifications.  The one successful thing the gun lobby, lead by the NRA, has done is to rewrite the Second Amendment over the last 5 decades pushing the notion that the Founders envisioned a society where guns are omnipresent; nothing could be farther from the truth, but it took decades of junk law based on manipulated and faked data to finally get this rewriting incorporated into caselaw. This rewrite culminated in the Heller decision, written by Antonin Scalia, who overturned two centuries of caselaw declaring the the Second Amendment was all about guns for everyone which it wasn’t. The Second Amendment was established to enable the new government to defend itself from 1) foreign enemies, and 2) insurrection.  All this bullshit being peddled about an armed citizenry being able to overthrow the US government for “tyranny” is just that: bullshit.  We saw the logical result of such bullshit on January 6th when brainwashed morons stormed the US Capitol to stop democracy from functioning and to force their own will on 300 million Americans.

Back to the present effort to undo remaining gun laws in Texas, and let’s be blunt; there is one reason, and one reason only for gun nuts and their various organizations to push Unqualified Carry, and that is to allow criminals and other unqualified individuals easy access to firearms so manufacturers can sell more firearms.  That’s it, period, end of sentence.  Gun nuts, lead by really crazy gun nuts, have been brainwashed by decades of bullshit published by the gun lobby that society must be the omnipresence of deadly firearms because society is evil and everyone must protect themselves and their families from scary dark people, socialist politicians, and government tyranny that they can’t define.

To make matters worse, Texas allows unregulated private sales and internet sales of ammunition and gun parts including 80% receivers which allow criminals who can’t put their hands on a firearm to just build one.  To take away the permitting requirement for handgun carry opens the floodgates for criminals, many of whom who have pushed for Unqualified Carry because they can’t get a license due to their past criminal records.

When a law is being considered, the question needs to be asked: Will this law make citizens lives better or safer?  Because this law puts more guns in unqualified hands, the answer is a resounding no.  The Unqualified Carry law won’t improve any lives (except criminals).  Because it will put more guns on the street, it will make law enforcement more difficult, risk law abiding citizens’ lives, AND enable criminals to carry guns without being challenged.  It will greatly complicate police officers’ jobs while a crime is being committed, and will slow their response.  In short, there is no good reason, no great need, and no problem that will be solved by allowing Unqualified Carry.   It’s already proven that the presence of guns increases violence, increases crime, and increases deaths.  This law will do no good, and cause a lot of grief for Texans, as if we needed that.

You’ll probably recall the videos showing a Metropolitan Police officer being dragged down the steps on the west side of the building and beaten by Trump insurrectionists.  These self-described “patriots” beat this officer with poles of their flags and his own baton.  They stole is ammunition, his radio, and other equipment.  They tased him several times. When they started screaming, “Kill him with his own gun!”, he cried out that he had kids at home.  A few rioters who had not completely lost their souls stepped in and saved his life. He was rescued and sent to the hospital.

The officer’s name is Michael Fanone; he is an undercover narcotics detective who rushed with his partner to the Capitol when he heard about the attack.  For his efforts, he was almost killed by Trump insurrectionists.  He was interviewed today by CNN, and the reporter asked him what he wanted to say to the rioters who saved him from being killed.  His response?

“Thank you, but fuck you for being there.”

El Jefe unilaterally declares this to be the Quote of the Week.

Every single person who set foot on the Capitol grounds yesterday carrying out Trump’s orders is guilty of the law noted above.  This crime is felony, punishable by incarceration for up to 20 years.  The law reads:

“If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”

This idiot is Jake Angeli, a well known Qanon conspiracy theorist who regularly shoots off his mouth at demonstrations.  He led the way into the Capitol yesterday with other rioters, and took part in taking over the Senate Chamber and was photographed on the dias. Yes, that’s a spear he’s carrying with an American flag tied to it.  He took a leadership role in this riot and sacking of the Capitol Building, and then, like the vast majority of these rioters simply walked out a free man.  To my knowledge he is still walking free.  He dresses like this to admittedly “attract attention”.  Like many Trumpists and “sovereign citizens” he obviously believes he’s above the law and can act with impunity (up to now, at least, he seems to be correct in his suppositions since he hasn’t been arrested in the past for his conduct.  At minimum, he’s now in violation of the Seditious Conspiracy law, as well as likely a number of other state, local, and federal laws.

This guy’s face is everywhere, so my question is, why in the hell is this criminal still walking the streets?  He, and everyone who participated in this riot and destruction of the Capitol building are criminals.  These criminals must be rounded up, jailed, charged and tried, and I mean swiftly.  The only way you stop this kind of behavior is to begin to swiftly bring these people to justice.  Charge them with crimes; confiscate their weapons, make to do actual serious jail time.  Only when we start enforcing the rule of law can we put a stop to this kind of protest.  This is not a First Amendment issue; this is a criminal sedition issue.  When Trump’s goons set foot on the Capitol Hill grounds, the protest ceased being a demonstration and became a felony.  We need to treat it that way, and I mean now.

In the “I told you so” department, Trump tweeted out his displeasure yesterday that US attorneys in charge of Roger Stone’s felony convictions recommended a 7 to 9 year sentence.  As a reminder, Stone was convicted of lying to Congress about his involvement with the hacking by Russians of the DNC server and coordinating with WikiLeaks, lying to the FBI, and federal witness tampering, not trivial convictions.  Not long after his tweet, Bouncing Bill Barr’s DOJ backpedaled the sentence saying it was reconsidering.  In response and protest, two federal prosecutors resigned.

It’s not like we didn’t know that this was going to happen.  Now the we have Trump Unchained, I’m shocked he hasn’t just given Stone an outright pardon, the Medal of Freedom, and an appointment as head of, say, the Bureau of Land Management.

The corruption of this administration is wide, deep, and getting wider by the moment.

Ken Starr is as worthless as cornflake recipes.  It always stuck me as odd that while chancellor of Baylor University he purposefully averted his eyes to rape on campus, but was horrified at a consensual blow job a few years before.

However, while he was prosecuting Bill Clinton for something completely unrelated to an Arkansas land deal (See what I did there, Trump?), there was a memo produced that has been hidden in the national archives for two decades.

“It is proper, constitutional, and legal for a federal grand jury to indict a sitting president for serious criminal acts that are not part of, and are contrary to, the president’s official duties,” the Starr office memo concludes. “In this country, no one, even President Clinton, is above the law.”

And it was written by a conservative law professor.

This produces a couple of questions, though.

Can Trump he tried as an adult?

How will we find handcuffs that small?