Interesting Items 3/26 -

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy -

In this issue:

1. Shooting
2. Mob
3. Concealed
4. Burning
5. Sacketts
6. Grandstanding
7. Mandate

1. Shooting. The hot story late in the week was the month old shooting of a suspended high school 17-year old football player, Trayvon Martin. He was passing through a gated community at around 1 AM and was followed by the local neighborhood watch. An altercation ensued and the neighborhood watch guy shot him after being attacked. Police did not arrest the citizen. The politicians and the state run media got themselves involved late last week, cranking up the levels of outrage and racial animus to heights unseen since the Duke Lacrosse team rape case. I expect this one to turn out much the same way. The media was in high dudgeon making every attempt to paint this as a white guy shooting a black kid. They ran photos of the kid as a 12-year old. MSNBC whitened the photo of the shooter so as to highlight this as a white on black homicide. Unfortunately, the guy is a very mixed race Hispanic with a number of blacks in his family. All the usual suspects from the racialist industry turned out including Sharpton, Jackson, and Farrakhan. Obama got himself involved stoking the fires of racial hatred Friday with remarks about if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon. As of this writing, there is a state prosecutor involved. Erik Holder’s (In)Justice Department is also getting themselves involved. As the days go by, the transcript of the various 911 calls are being released, including of the screams of the shooter for help as he was on the ground being pounded by the kid. One of the reasons he was not arrested was that he had a broken nose and damage to the back of his skull, which likely led the cops to believe it was a self defensive shoot. Also during the week, more details of the life of young Trayvon Martin come out, and they are not pretty details. There is an old Bill Parcells observation after some young players on his team got themselves into altercations at 3 AM; and that is that nothing good ever comes when you are out at the bars that late. Perhaps that observation also can be applied to being out in a strange neighborhood at 1 AM.

2. Mob. Ann Coulter wrote a book entitled: Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America. In it she describes the leftist use of mob tactics to further their aims. And we sure see it happening in this case. Not only do we have all the race hustlers out in full throated roar for vengeance, we have the Community Organizer in Chief himself out in front of the mob stirring the pot. The New Black Panther Party is out with a $10,000 bounty for the capture of the neighborhood watch shooter. They claim to have significant donations from sports and entertainment stars and hope to have that pot up to $1,000,000 by the end of the week. Spike Lee Tweeted the shooter’s home address to all of his followers. Only it turned out that the address Tweeted was the wrong one and he has now put an elderly Sanford couple at risk. I hope he has a LOT of money to defend his putting this couple at risk from the mob. One might wonder why the media and the politicians waited an entire month to stoke up the fires of outrage over the shooting. One reason could be that the Fluke / Limbaugh affair had run its course and it was time for the next phase of the Obama for President reelection campaign. Another may be that this was to deflect attention from the ObamaCare hearings in the SCOTUS this week. A third might be so as to deflect attention from mass marches nationwide for religious freedom last Friday. Make no mistake, this is what the Obama campaign will be all about - stoking fires of racial hatred among blacks. One might wonder about the backlash among Hispanics at being called white and being tossed to the screaming mob. This is not going to turn out well, as I don’t think the public is going to play along with the mob this time around.

3. Concealed. One of the criticisms against the neighborhood watch guy was that he was out playing cop. What do you think a neighborhood watch is all about anyway? It is neighbors keeping watch on one another’s’ homes, property and livelihoods. Attack this guy for doing a neighborhood watch, and you lay the foundation for all neighborhood watches nationwide - which is perhaps what the left wants. Perhaps they want us to cower in our homes while they run wild in the streets. The other thing about the shooter was that he was a concealed carry guy. One of the basic things they teach in all concealed carry classes is that if you pull the trigger to defend yourself, your entire life has instantly changed. Regardless of the righteousness of the shoot, even if there are no criminal charges filed, there will be civil charges by the family of whomever you defended yourself from. You will spend a tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars defending yourself from lawfare by the family of the perfect angel you either hurt or killed. Finally, if the case is sufficiently political, like this one has been made, you will also get to fight the feds in court. With this potential crushing burden of legal fees, it is always an amazement that anyone will get themselves a concealed carry permit. Even more amazing is the fact that number increases every single year - as it should.

4. Burning. Interestingly enough, the Florida shooting was not the only racially motivated attack in the news last week. There was another story about a 13-year old Middle School student who was followed home by a pair of 16 year olds. They grabbed him on his porch, poured gasoline on his head and lit him. There are conflicting reports about the burn injuries to the 13-year old. Oh by the way, the 13-year old was white and the pair of 16-year olds was black. The perps reportedly said “This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve, white boy.” Apparently the kid had the temerity to ask the wrong question to a black teacher with an attitude in class and was upbraided for not having the right skin color. The attack happened the last week in February and the media blackout has been almost complete. But there was no hate crime in this instance. (/sarc)

5. Sacketts. The SCOTUS smacked down the EPA in a unanimous opinion early last week in Sackett vs EPA. The case involves a couple who purchased some land that had been zoned as residential. There are homes surrounding the property. They proceeded to bring in some fill to build their home. Enter the EPA with a threatening letter defining the area filled as a wetland, ordering its complete restoration along with a long laundry list of things to do that had nothing to do with the original condition of the land. The letter was backed up with threats of fines in excess of $70,000 / day once the compliance order was issued. But the EPA never issued a compliance order, nor did the EPA allow the Sacketts to appeal the threatened compliance order. Instead the EPA used vague promises to someday reconsider the compliance order once issued. All the while, the clock would be ticking at double fines for filling wetlands at $70,000 / day. Essentially the EPA is using the coercive threat of fines after a compliance order as a way to get landowners to buckle. In their argument to the SCOTUS, the EPA tried to make the case that judicial review of their compliance orders once threatened would be too big a burden for the government to bear. Note that the Sackett’s land does not appear on the EPA’s national registry of wetlands. The SCOTUS found that once a landowner is notified of a pending compliance order, they can immediately take the EPA to court - which is a huge change in way the EPA has been running roughshod across property rights for decades. This is a great opinion and a victory for property owners nationwide. Essentially the SCOTUS defended the turf of the federal judiciary from the regulatory state. Thank God for small miracles.

6. Grandstanding. Feeling the heat from $4 / gallon gasoline, the Obama reelection campaign set up a campaign event at the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline in Oklahoma. During the event, Obama took credit for the construction of a privately held, state regulated pipeline from Oklahoma to a refinery in Texas. I don’t think the show worked, as there is this minor gap of over 1,700 miles between the Canadian oil sands where the oil will come from and the terminus in Oklahoma. Nice try; no cigar.

7. Mandate. In a Friday evening document dump, Kathleen Sibelius; HHS issued their ObamaCare rules for contraception services. Despite everything you heard from the WH crawfishing away from the fight, they double down by giving themselves the power to determine what constitutes a ministry; ordered all colleges to provide insurance that will cover contraception; and finally orders all plans to cover reproductive services for free. So much for backing down. So much for religious liberty.

More later -

- AG