Anonymous Web Angel(GFZ)

The petition for writ of certiorari before judgement has been filed.

The state has until March 13, 2024, to respond. We should see a spat of the regular suspects chiming in over the next 3 weeks on why this case should not be heard by the Supreme Court.

This petition was submitted to Chief Justice Roberts.

We want to see when it is distributed to conference.

There is some interesting timing going on. Oral arguments are calendared for 2024/03/20, 7 days after the response is due.

I’m not quite sure how you can as an individual care about students, but as a group not do so. — Paul Koning

There is study of people as a group that is very successful. We know how people, in mass, will respond to different stimuli.

This is one of the reasons that mobs are so dangerous. They react as a “mob” and not as individuals.

Some of the worst mass casualty events in our recent history have come about because of mob mentality.

Look at the doors of your home, the screen door, if any, opens outward, the main door opens inward. Now look at the majority of business doors. They open outwards. This is so universal that people will insist on pulling on business doors that open inwards, even with signs.

This is because of that mob mentality. When an individual is trying to exit and needs to pull the door open, they will do so, not issues. The people behind him will give them room to do so.

In a mob event, the people in the rear will push forward, causing the people in the front to be pushed forward, making it impossible to pull the door open. This leads to crush deaths at the front. The people in the rear are then trapped.

Unions are controlled mobs. The people at the top manipulate the lower down, and they use mob manipulation to accomplish these things.

What this means, is that good teachers, and there are many of them, will sacrifice their time, their emotions, and their money to help their students. Many of those teachers purchase extra supplies for their students. Spend time out of contract hours to help students. Will invest their emotions in the success of their students.

This is the individual acting as an individual.

I listen to the complaints of teachers. One of the huge issues today is safety in the classroom. I’m not talking about “school shootings”. I am talking about out of control students.

Every year, one or more of the elementary school teachers is injured by a k-5 student seriously enough to require a trip to the hospital.

Every week, a classroom is taken over by a student and the classroom is evacuated for the safety of the other children.

Every day, there is a story of another student who is holding a class or school hostage. I’m not talking about nationwide, I’m talking about a single school.

So it was time for contract negotiations. The biggest issue I’ve heard from any teacher is classroom safety. Instead of talking about classroom safety, the union was thrilled they got another pay raise. As were the teachers.

As far as I can tell, not a single teacher has bothered to ask, much less demand, that their union work towards a safe working environment for their members.

They are afraid of “rocking the boat” or “the union can’t help”.

This is mob mentality. The union isn’t willing to do battle for the students and the safety of their members, they just want more dues, they want more money. The teachers hear they are getting another pay raise and are happy.

I despise what unions have become.

(1500 words)
Out in California, Virgina Duncan has been fighting the state and the Ninth Circuit court since 2019. Her case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was Granted Certiorari, the decision of the Ninth Circuit was Vacated, and the case was Remanded (GVR).

The Ninth Circuit court then kicked the case back to the district level for more “fact finding”. The California statute was found unconstitutional, again at the district level. It was appealed to the Ninth Circuit court, where games were played.

A year and a half after Bruen Virginia is still being screwed by the state.

At the same time as the Supreme Court GVR’d Duncan v. Bonta, they also GVR’d Bianchi v. Frosh. Yes, the same day, at about the same time.

The Fourth Circuit Court took a different approach. They acted rapidly, and a three judge merits panel heard the case in December of the same year. This is amazingly fast for the appellate courts.

Then they sat on the case. For over a year, they sat there, doing nothing.

Finally, in January, we heard that the Fourth was going to hear the case en banc. Normally, the three judge merits panel would have issued their opinion.

The plaintiffs (good guys) have taken a highly unusual step. They have moved for a writ of certiorari from the Supreme Court before the appellate court issues their opinion.

Here are some highlights from the motion for writ of certiorari.
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(1000 words)
As I’ve stated before, my wife is a teacher. She is absolutely spectacular at teaching.

She is not so good at understanding ramifications, potential outcomes, and intentionally setting people up for failure.

Back in 2002, she was required to be a member of the teacher’s union. At one of the regular meetings of the faculty and staff, the new government regulations were explained to them.

In particular, under the new government mandates, they could no longer hold students back, they had to be advanced. In addition, it was explained how the new regulations made it almost impossible to expel or even have out of school suspension.

There were also new requirements, from the state, requiring that all students be included. For the most part, marking the end of special education classes for students at need.

This is how it was related to me 20+ years ago, so my memory could have left some things out.

The teacher’s union was incensed that the horrible Republican Congress and President would step in where they didn’t know what they were doing and how this new mandate would destroy the education industry.

Well, they were right, in part. It destroyed our education system. The industry is doing fine.

What was the horrible, horrible legislation that brought down this new mandate from on high?
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I wanted to write about something more interesting and stumbled down a rabbit hole. The interesting case is the one of Hunter v. Cortland Housing Authority.

For many years, Section 8 or Public Housing Assistance leases have included a clause in the lease agreement that obligates tenants, [n]ot to display, use, or possess or allow members of Tenant’s household or guest to display, use or possess any firearms (operable or inoperable) or other weapons as defined by the laws and courts of the State of New York anywhere on the property of CHA. — CHA’s Residential Lease Agreement.

In different words, the lease requires renters to give up their Second Amendment protected rights. The right to any arms for self-defense.

Of course, we know that the bad guys have plenty of weapons in public housing.

This particular filing is to have the case dismissed for lack of standing. The CHA claims that the federal court lacks subject matter jurisdiction.

I don’t know. I wanted to know, instead I got this:

Let’s break this down.

The plaintiffs say that their Second Amendment Rights are violated because they are not allowed to display, use, or posses arms in their homes.

In response, the state argues(?) that the plaintiffs ignore how hard it is to regulate people in public housing.

The plaintiffs assert that because they are low income, they are denied the right to possess any firearm. I read into this that the full argument is that they can’t afford to safely store firearms off the property.

The state argues that doesn’t count. They could do it, that’s all that is required.

The state filed that steaming pile on 2024/01/03. A year and a half after Bruen. 16 years after Heller. 14 years after McDonald. Yet, they believe that the plaintiffs have to prove something more than their proposed conduct is within the scope of the protections of the Second Amendment.

Is the proposed conduct within the scope of the protections of the Second Amendment?

Yes!

The burdens then shifts to the state to prove a history and tradition of analogous regulations from the time of the ratification of the Second Amendment.

It is obvious that they know this as well. The final lines, talking about how public housing is “new” so there couldn’t be any regulations in 1791, so they are allowed to infringe as much as they want.

Justice Thomas’ powerful language regarding one step too far when discussing means-end didn’t seem to register with the state when they asked the court to considering the balancing of the many interests.

The state didn’t provide a single regulation from the founding era. Not one.

Argh!!!!

[xCiteBib]

I’ve been experimenting with highlighting. It seems to be working ok. My test subjects have not known what I was testing yet have given good feedback.

There have been a couple of bad opinions out of the Ninth and Hawaii’s supreme Court. Makes me angry to read them.

Casinator is on hold right now.

Last Friday, a client contacted to tell me they had a situation. I asked if the client was down or did I have 30 minutes for lunch? I got my 30 minutes. I got back to things blowing up. Turns out that it was more urgent than I understood it to be.

That took me into multiple meetings, hours, and hours of fixing, and it is still going on. I’m in the process of learning another programming language, while attempting to get documentation for a software package that has been EOL for more than 15 years.

Lots and lots of fun.

Thank you for all the great comments. I feel bad when I dump 3300 words on you guys, then realize that I’ve culled that from 50,000+ sometimes and I guess it isn’t as bad as all that.

Have a fantastic day and a better weekend.

At the time, it had been over 20 years since the Maui Police Department had issued a permit to carry to a member of the public.

What a messed up state, where they believe that Wilson was somehow obligated to apply for a “firearm license”. I’m not sure what a “firearm license” is, maybe somebody in Florida has heard of them. And there is no reason for him to have applied for a CCW. It is NOT required.

In the same way, Wilson’s remark, as quoted, did not say he purchased the firearm from an FFL. Only that he had legally acquired it in Florida.

The reason that Wilson lacked standing is that he didn’t bother to pay for and go to the trouble of applying for a permit that would not be granted. There is plenty of case law that says a person does not have to do something that they know will fail before they have standing.

The Hawaii supreme court has been thumbing their noses at the US Supreme Court since at least 1974. “Merely another source of authority” and “not hesitate to adopt the dissents … [we] believed the dissent was better reasoned than the majority”. What arrogance.

There is more of this profoundly unreasoned opinion. The gist is that they claim that the state constitution provides more rights to the defendant, and thus the state constitution should be followed. Then interpret the state constitution in a stricter light than the Supreme Court does the US Constitution.

This reasoning is half right. The rights of The People should always be the greater of the state’s constitution and the federal constitution. But when what is more restrictive than the other, the one that offers more protection wins.

Enjoy your second dose of courts doing stupid things.

Judge Benitez wrote a powerful final judgement in Rhode v. Bonta. He said, “Ammunition is within the scope of the Second Amendment, see [xCite item=”3GPYVIGP” pos=0 pos=0 pos=0]” and [xCite item=”6R5C4HCQ” pos=1]. Besides, we had testimony provided by Robert Spitzer and Michael Vorenberg, this proves that the Second Amendment is implicated.

Not only that, it was remanded to Judge Benitez to evaluate in light of the Bruen opinion. All pretty good indicators that the conduct, purchasing ammunition, is within the scope of the Second Amendment.

He explained clearly that this met the first step of the Heller, the plain text of the Second Amendment.

On December 12, 2022, he ordered the state to bring forth “relevant statutes, laws, and regulations” from the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment (1791) through 20 years after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868+20=1888). He further required that the state provide that in a spreadsheet, in chronological order.

The state refused to follow instructions. Instead of 1791 through 1888, they provided 54 entries from 1403 through 1787. They then provided 53 entries for the allowed time period.

2 possession by a minor
1 without cause to carry or drunk
50 Racist restrictions

That’s it within the allowed time frame. All 50 of those racists laws were declared unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.

They provided another 40 that were after 1888.

In other words, for “history and tradition”, the state could bring forth only 3 regulations, from 1853, 1868, and 1881.

The Judges with clown noses, Clifton and Thomas, wrote:

Nken v. Holder is a 31-page opinion from the Supreme Court in 2008. The question is about stays vs. injunctions and if the Fourth Circuit had the power to stay a deportation of an illegal alien.

The Supreme Court said, Traditional stay factors, not the demanding § 1252(f)(2) standard, govern a court of appeals’ authority to stay an alien’s removal pending judicial review. [xCite item=”FYFEG2K6″ pos=2].

The “traditional stay factors” are outlined in [xCite item=”C97QH2PX” pos=3]. The most important Winter factor is the likelihood of success on the merits.

For these to judges to suggest that the Winter factors were not properly used is a profound error. To not even bother to say why, these homo sovieticus prove they are more interested in putting their thumbs on the rights of The People than they are in following the law.

Judge Callahan, on the other hand, understands that he is a member of an inferior court, sworn to uphold The Constitution above petty tyrants.

[xCiteBib]

B.L.U.F.
A look back at a case that was used against us for many years. Today, it can be used in our favor to combat any attack on our Second Amendment protected rights through “it isn’t really an arm”.
(3300 words)

Wow, that is powerful language from the Seventh Circuit court. They are saying that the lower court done messed up, big time. You don’t normally think of the Seventh Circuit court as siding with The People on anything, much less a Second Amendment challenge.

It gets better
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I’ve been on a classical kick these last few weeks.

Enjoy this Star Wars music Holst’s The Planets: Jupiter.

And in a normal setting:

Which chapter do you like the best? I vote for Mars, but then again, I do like the God of War.