Israeli sources are saying that the US will not remove the terrorist designation from the Iranian IRGC. If so, what is the US end game on dealing with Iran’s nuclear program?
Correct. The plain English is clear–the right to “bear arms” is explicitly linked to membership in a “well regulated militia.” Scalia abandoned his ‘doctrine of original intent’ to manufacture his opinion.
What do you suppose would happen if NY just ignored the SCOTUS and went on enforcing its state law? How many divisions does the SCOTUS have? The SCOTUS will have made its decision, now let them enforce it.
Title 10 of the US Code declares that ‘all male citizens between the ages of 18 and 40’ are members of an ‘unorganized militia’, which can easily be transformed into a ‘well-ordered’ one if necessary, no doubt.
Pete Arredondo, the school district police chief who led the troubled initial response to the Uvalde mass shooting, graduated from the city’s high school and was recently elected to the Uvalde City Council.
Mr. Arredondo has served as the chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s police force, which is separate from the city police, for the past two years. Steven C. McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said on Friday that Mr. Arredondo was in command of the scene during the shooting and had made the “wrong decision” to hold officers back from trying to breach the classroom. …
In Uvalde, Texas, some of the worst fears about the police response to the school shooting rampage were confirmed on Friday when state law enforcement officials acknowledged that more than an hour lapsed after the shooting began, as the police waited to enter the classroom where students were trapped inside.
In an emotional and at times tense news conference, Steven C. McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, gave the most detailed accounting of the shooting yet, diverging in substantial points from the original timeline given by officials.
Most of the time the gunman was at the school, Mr. McCraw explained, he was inside the classrooms where nearly all of the killing took place, while as many as 19 police officers waited outside in the school hallway. Multiple people in the classrooms, including at least two students, called 911 over that horrifying stretch, begging for police. But apparently believing that the suspect had barricaded himself in the classroom and that “there were no kids at risk,” the police did not enter the classroom until 12:50 p.m., 78 minutes after the shooter walked inside.
“From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision,” Mr. McCraw said. “It was the wrong decision. Period.” …
Above all else, activists and politicians at the gathering sought to divert pressure to support popular overhauls like expanded background checks by seizing on the issue of school safety.
One by one, the gun rights activists and politicians who showed up at the National Rifle Association convention on Friday said they were appalled, horrified and shaken by the massacre of 19 children and two adults a few days earlier in Uvalde, Texas.
One by one, they then rejected any suggestion that gun control measures were needed to stop mass shootings. They blamed the atrocities on factors that had nothing to do with firearms — the breakdown of the American family, untreated mental illness, bullying on social media, violent video games and the inexplicable existence of “evil.”
Above all, they sought to divert pressure to support popular overhauls like expanded background checks by seizing on the issue of school safety, amid reports that the gunman in Uvalde gained easy access to Robb Elementary School through an unguarded door.
Former President Donald J. Trump, speaking at the event’s keynote session late Friday, called for “impenetrable security at every school all across our land,” adding that “schools should be the single hardest target.” …
Wayne LaPierre, the embattled head of the N.R.A., opened the convention by calling out “the evil” of the attack in Uvalde. Then he quickly pivoted to saying the federal government could not “legislate against evil,” and said Mr. Biden’s gun control proposals would restrict “the fundamental human right of law-abiding Americans to defend themselves.” …
Mr. Trump’s appearance was the high point of the convention for many in attendance. But what he said — he veered off script into his accustomed litany of complaints and digressions after discussing school safety — was arguably less important to the N.R.A. than simply his decision to honor his commitment to come. …
Turn your back and Vicodin is the new heroin. I have been taking the same dose and amount of Vicodin for a decade. I have irreparable nerve damage to my foot. Doesn’t kill the pain, but makes it manageable.
Moving to a new state I choose a PCP who renews my prescription but tells me that is their limit as they do not do pain management on an ongoing basis. Gives me a referral to such a practice and while detailing my history (including the most recent ultrasound) they tell me they can do the Vicodin, but that I need to take a urine test to make sure I am taking Vicodin right now (and not selling it or something) before they can do so. Test results take around 30 days. So I will be about two weeks short of meds.
Then to top that off, the Doctor suggests I take an MRI since my last one was 6 years ago. Of course I say yes, as it seems this is a step I have to take to get my meds. Knowing of course that an MRI is a complete and total wast of time as it will show absolutely nothing. My problem is an expansion through the fascia consisting of nerves and blood vessels. Swelling and inflammation can easily be seen by just looking at the foot. Most MRIs will not even show that.
Our medical system. As Run has shown many times, Fee for Service is responsible for 1/3 of all Medicare payments being wasted dollars. Unless this Doctor is brain dead stupid, he knows fully well this MRI is totally wasted.
That seems like an odd length of time for a urine test. Vicodin is hydrocodone with acetaminophen. Sometimes employers have you take it. My one employer had me take one before they hired me. Cheap-ass employers get it back in a week. Sounds like this doc is testing you to see if you will panic. Hope you took one before you were tested.
Maybe trying to see how you react? I would be pissed if they came back in a few days and told you, you were cleared. Its like, “what do you think I am a “junkie?”
No, I think the purpose was as I had stated, that I am taking vicodin instead of selling it. I was friends with my orthopedist in AZ and had to take a urine every 3 months or so for that specific purpose he told me.
I thought the month was nonsense. Not a whole lot of choices out here unless I do to Seattle. Only 14 miles as the crow flies, hour and a half by car unless you want to take the ferry, and I do not do boats.
With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates falling to defeat in recent primaries, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.
Donald J. Trump had cast this year’s primaries as a moment to measure his power, endorsing candidates by the dozen as he sought to maintain an imprint on his party unlike any other past president.
But after the first phase of the primary season concluded on Tuesday, a month in which a quarter of America’s states cast their ballots, the verdict has been clear: Mr. Trump’s aura of untouchability in Republican politics has been punctured.
In more than five years — from when he became president in January 2017 until May 2022 — Mr. Trump had only ever seen voters reject a half-dozen of his choices in Republican primaries. But by the end of this month, that figure had more than doubled, with his biggest defeat coming on Tuesday when Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia thrashed a Trump-backed challenger by more than 50 percentage points. Three other Trump recruits challenging Kemp allies also went down to defeat.
The mounting losses have emboldened Mr. Trump’s rivals inside the party to an extent not seen since early 2016 and increased the chances that, should he run again in 2024, he would face serious competition. …
The Biden administration has approved sending long-range multiple launch rocket systems to Ukraine, a significant transfer that could hugely aid Ukraine’s defense of its territory in the Donbas region, U.S. officials said on Friday.
The transfer will likely be announced next week, said one official who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss security matters. The weapons in the transfer will include mobile rocket launchers that can shoot much farther than the launchers Ukraine is using now.
Although officials have not provided details on exactly which types of rockets the United States will provide, the one used most often by the Pentagon is the M31 GMLRS, for Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System — a satellite-guided precision weapon that carries roughly the same amount of explosives as a 500-pound, air-dropped bomb.
It can fly more than 40 miles, well beyond the range of any artillery Ukraine now uses. According to a report published by the Congressional Research Service in June, the Pentagon has spent approximately $5.4 billion to buy more than 42,000 such rockets since 1998.
For that reason, there had been some skittishness among administration officials that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, could view the transfer as provocative. …
The United States plans to include High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or Himars, multiple-rocket launchers that move on wheeled truck chassis, in the next weapons package for Ukraine, the officials said.
The launchers will join the 155-milimeter howitzers that the United States began sending to Ukraine last month, as Russia moved to a new phase of the war, focusing on seizing more territory in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
Himars trucks can carry a pod loaded with either six GMLRS rockets or one larger guided missile and can quickly relocate after firing. The pod system, in which each rocket or missile is pre-loaded into a disposable launch tube, can be quickly mounted onto the truck and discarded after launch, offering a distinct advantage over Russian artillery rocket systems in which rockets have to be loaded one by one.
A pod of six GMLRS rockets can be fired in a matter of seconds and could cause as much damage to a target as an airstrike with guided bombs. …
For the third year, Americans are greeting the unofficial start of summer shadowed by the specter of the coronavirus amid rising covid-19 cases and hospitalizations across the country.
The United States is recording more than 100,000 infections a day – at least five times higher than this point last year – as it confronts the most transmissible versions of the virus yet. Immunity built up as a result of the record winter outbreak appears to provide little protection against the latest variants, new research shows. And public health authorities are bracing for Memorial Day gatherings to fuel another bump in cases, potentially seeding a summer surge.
It’s a far cry from a year ago, with predictions of a “hot vax summer” uninhibited by covid concerns. Back then, coronavirus seemed to teeter on the brink of defeat as cases plummeted to their lowest levels since spring 2020 and vaccines became widely available for adults. Even the vaccinated and boosted now grudgingly accept the virus as a formidable foe that’s here to stay as governments abandon measures to contain it.
As the virus morphs and the scientific understanding of how it operates shifts with each variant, Americans are drawing their own lines for what they feel comfortable doing. …
More than half of the U.S. population is living in areas classified as having medium or high covid-19 levels by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The latest cases have yet to overrun hospitals, but that could change as the virus spreads among more vulnerable people. The dominant strains circulating in the United States are the most contagious thus far. …
Experts had hoped that the explosion of the omicron variant this winter, estimated to have infected a quarter of Americans who hadn’t already been infected, and the subsequent spring wave of omicron’s even more transmissible subvariants, would provide a buffer against future surges.
But an emerging body of research suggests those infections will not confer lasting protection as the virus’s latest iterations show remarkable ability to escape immunity. Experts say the recently infected who also received booster shots can count on at least several months of immunity, while the unvaccinated should expect little protection. …
Experts say vaccines are still showing durability in protecting people against severe illness. But the initial burst of antibodies from shots or infections fades after several months, said Celine Gounder, an infectious-diseases specialist and senior fellow at Kaiser Health News. That means the virus can develop into an infection before the body’s immune system kicks in. …
For most Americans, coronavirus has faded from the foreground.
More than half say they are not too concerned or not at all concerned with coronavirus, according to a May survey by Monmouth University.
Nearly three-quarters say they hope to vacation this summer and less than a third say coronavirus is a major factor in their plans, according to a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll. The Transportation Security Administration on Thursday reported screening more than half a million additional fliers a day compared with the same day last year.
Experts are paying close attention to the Southeast for a potential covid resurgence because the region did not experience as many cases in the spring as the Northeast, and rising temperatures are driving people indoors. …
… Children having their tomorrows taken away. Small sacrifice if we can keep our guns. Why not let every deranged loner buy an assault weapon?
… It is within our power to stop schools from becoming killing fields.
We have simply decided not to do it.
The shooter in Uvalde slipped into a fourth-grade classroom at Robb Elementary School, ominously announced, “Look what we have here” and fired more than 100 rounds.
The local police did nothing to stop the human sacrifice. Nineteen officers loitered in the hall for as long as 78 minutes as children died.How can you justify keeping assault weapons on the open market when police officers don’t engage with them, even with kids’ lives on the line?
As the officers waited, not bothering to break down a barricaded door, the 19 lambs went to slaughter, trapped in a blood-soaked classroom with an 18-year-old madman. In a haunting tableau, one little girl smeared herself with her dead friend’s blood to appear dead. Meanwhile, desperate parents tried to climb over a chain-link fence to save their children. The police, doing nothing more useful, kept busy by handcuffing at least one parent trying to get into the school. …
Israeli sources are saying that the US will not remove the terrorist designation from the Iranian IRGC. If so, what is the US end game on dealing with Iran’s nuclear program?
To Barkley’s comment on Scalia’s “reasoning” in Heller, I submit that Scalia wasn’t being a grammarian; rather, he was being a politician.
@jackd,
Correct. The plain English is clear–the right to “bear arms” is explicitly linked to membership in a “well regulated militia.” Scalia abandoned his ‘doctrine of original intent’ to manufacture his opinion.
What do you suppose would happen if NY just ignored the SCOTUS and went on enforcing its state law? How many divisions does the SCOTUS have? The SCOTUS will have made its decision, now let them enforce it.
Title 10 of the US Code declares that ‘all male citizens between the ages of 18 and 40’ are members of an ‘unorganized militia’, which can easily be transformed into a ‘well-ordered’ one if necessary, no doubt.
Scalia was the fellow who opined that capital punishment was NOT unconstitutional because ‘although it might be considered cruel, it was not unusual‘.
In the times when the Constitution was drafted, it would not be surprising to discover that the word ‘and’ could have the same meaning as ‘or’.
So, the term ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ (as forbidden in the Bill of Rights’ is actually synonymous with ‘cruel or unusual punishment’.
‘It Was the Wrong Decision,’ Police Say of Delay in Confronting Gunman
NY Times – May 27
Seventy-eight minutes elapsed before the police confronted the gunman, officials say.
NY Times – May 27
At NRA Convention, the Blame Is on ‘Evil,’ Not Guns
NY Times – May 27
Turn your back and Vicodin is the new heroin. I have been taking the same dose and amount of Vicodin for a decade. I have irreparable nerve damage to my foot. Doesn’t kill the pain, but makes it manageable.
Moving to a new state I choose a PCP who renews my prescription but tells me that is their limit as they do not do pain management on an ongoing basis. Gives me a referral to such a practice and while detailing my history (including the most recent ultrasound) they tell me they can do the Vicodin, but that I need to take a urine test to make sure I am taking Vicodin right now (and not selling it or something) before they can do so. Test results take around 30 days. So I will be about two weeks short of meds.
Then to top that off, the Doctor suggests I take an MRI since my last one was 6 years ago. Of course I say yes, as it seems this is a step I have to take to get my meds. Knowing of course that an MRI is a complete and total wast of time as it will show absolutely nothing. My problem is an expansion through the fascia consisting of nerves and blood vessels. Swelling and inflammation can easily be seen by just looking at the foot. Most MRIs will not even show that.
Our medical system. As Run has shown many times, Fee for Service is responsible for 1/3 of all Medicare payments being wasted dollars. Unless this Doctor is brain dead stupid, he knows fully well this MRI is totally wasted.
EM:
That seems like an odd length of time for a urine test. Vicodin is hydrocodone with acetaminophen. Sometimes employers have you take it. My one employer had me take one before they hired me. Cheap-ass employers get it back in a week. Sounds like this doc is testing you to see if you will panic. Hope you took one before you were tested.
Maybe trying to see how you react? I would be pissed if they came back in a few days and told you, you were cleared. Its like, “what do you think I am a “junkie?”
No, I think the purpose was as I had stated, that I am taking vicodin instead of selling it. I was friends with my orthopedist in AZ and had to take a urine every 3 months or so for that specific purpose he told me.
I thought the month was nonsense. Not a whole lot of choices out here unless I do to Seattle. Only 14 miles as the crow flies, hour and a half by car unless you want to take the ferry, and I do not do boats.
Trump’s Primary Losses Puncture His Invincibility
NY Times – May 28
US plans to send long-range mobile rocket launchers to Ukraine
COVID was vanishing last Memorial Day. Cases are five times higher now
Washington Post – May 28
Fun fact:
Guns are not banned at the NRA concention
except when Donald Trump is making his speech.
The Secret Service is to blame, not the NRA.
America’s Human Sacrifices
NY Times – Maureen Dowd – May 28