Chris Johnson

Today is the start of a near week-long event at The Fort at No 4. I believe it is called, “The Rendezvous.” It is an 18th century reenactment event.

Ally will be there the entire time, she fired the bake oven last night to get it ready to use today.

This is one of those things that is/was a lost art.

A bake oven is a brick enclosure that is part of the hearth and chimney. To use it, you heat it with a wood fire until it is “hot enough”, then you let the fire die down or transfer the fire to the hearth.

At that point, you can put your bread or pies or whatever else you are baking in the bake oven. The residual heat from the bricks then bakes everything.

And here is the lost art, you have to prefire the oven. If you attempt to bake the same day you fire, the oven isn’t going to work as well as it should. The reasons is simple and make perfect sense, once you know.

In the 1700s, those bake ovens were used daily or nearly so. They were always dry, they were always a bit warm.

Today, those ovens only get fired when we have a multi day event with people staying in the cabins. Between times, not only do the bricks cool to ambient temperature, they also absorb water. Lots of it.

That first firing is mostly to drive the water out and to bring the entire mass of bricks to a reasonable temperature.

Lighting

When we arrived yesterday, the cabin was dark, by modern standards. Moving in and out of the cabin, talking to people, your eyes don’t fully adjust.

After the last goodbyes, Ally and I sat down to eat dinner.

We lit two taper candles.

That was enough. The light from the windows was fading, but casting long shadows in the cabin.

I don’t know if I could have read a printed page, but it was close.

But here is perspective for you. When we are watching TV at night, we have two 60 watt equivalent lights running. When we are using the kitchen, even in daylight, we will have 5 60 watt equivalent lights running.

Each light puts out around 800 lumens. A standard candle produces 13 lumens. The “moonlight” mode on my EDC flashlight is 15 lumens.

Because we were burning beeswax candles, we were getting around 30 lumens from those two candles.

And it made a huge difference. It felt like the cabin was alive and ready.

My biggest issue with being at the Fort after dark is how quiet it is.

I’m sitting at my desk. I can hear the keys clatter, I can hear the disk drives moving in my computer, the fans spinning in my computer, the sound of CPU fans in the next room, the hum of something.

When I used to babysit the Cray X/MP, I took to wearing ear pro when I was going to be in the machine room for any length of time. I was in the machine room when we had a power outage. The sound of silence in the room hurt.

Sometimes it feels like that at The Fort.

I’m currently working on a new website for them. It will be much more than just a website, but it is consuming much of my time. I still have to make a 4 TPI acme nut, lead screw, cap, and handle. I’m hoping to work on that this weekend.

I need to grind a right-hand external 4TPI acme cutter for the lead screw. This will be fun!

We have heard, over and over again, how some scum was released back into society to do more evil.

In my opinion, the worst of these is when a criminal alien is released into society when the authorities know he has a detainer. Why would anybody allow someone who was picked up for a crime to be released to commit more crimes when they can have them removed from the country?

The answer is partially word games and partially legal games.

A detainer is a warrant, of sorts. It is a warrant issued by an administrative judge, not a part of the judiciary.

We have been taught that the police are not allowed to enter your home without a warrant. In some cases, they can’t enter your house, even if they have a warrant.

Sanctuary cities and states have been using this to allow criminals to roam our streets freely.

If the locals are doing their jobs correctly, they should do a search for warrants on anybody they arrest. This will pick up both judicial and administrative warrants. If warrants exist, that person should not be released until those warrants are cleared.

In sanctuary locations, the locals have not been informing ICE when they have a criminal alien in custody.

This means that ICE needs to look through the records of everyone who is taken into custody, searching for people with warrants. If they find a person with an outstanding warrant, they must pick them up before they are released.

If there are only administrative warrants, ICE is restricted on what they can do.

They cannot enter non-public locations to detain a criminal alien.

They can arrest the criminal alien if they are in a public location. Thus, they could pick them up while they are shopping or driving around. They can detain them at work, if they have permission of the owner to enter the non-public locations, or if the criminal alien encounters them in a public location.

In other words, a criminal alien can hide at work or home. If they leave the protection of those non-public locations, they can be detained.

On the other hand, if they have a judicial arrest warrant, they can go into non-public locations to affect the arrest.

That warrant allows them to enter the home or apartment of the criminal alien, if that alien is legally the homeowner or lessee. They cannot enter a third party’s dwelling with an arrest warrant.

A judicial arrest warrant allows them the legal authority to enter some non-public areas, such as jails, prisons, and courtrooms.

In addition, if they can get a search warrant for the criminal alien, that warrant will name the location where they can enter without permission to search for the criminal alien. If they find them, they can then arrest them with an arrest warrant.

ICE and the rest of the feds are now getting judicial warrants as well as the administrative warrants. This allows them to arrest criminal aliens, regardless of the “sanctuary” status.

More progress.

I have heard this song many times. I love Eartha’s voice, and her ability to tell a story.

This is the first time I’ve seen her singing. Wow.

Justice Sotomayor used to be the least talented Justice on the Supreme Court. Ketanji Brown Jackson said, “Hold my beer!” and took that title.

During the oral arguments, Sotomayor asked:

When a case is opened, the plaintiffs can make a motion for a temporary restraining order. This is another name for an injunction. A TRO should last no more than a couple of weeks, should maintain the status quo and should not grant final outcomes. Sorry for the poor English.

Thus, a TRO might stay an execution. This is the current status, so no change, maintaining the status quo. This is within the normal understanding of a TRO.

The TRO should not release the prisoner. That is a final outcome. That might be what the plaintiff is requesting, to be set free. That is what the final judgment would or would not grant.

In some cases, the plaintiff can be ordered to provide a bond before the TRO is issued. For example, the plaintiffs want the state to payout $2 billion as part of the TRO. They can be ordered to post a $2 billion bond before the defendants are required to pay out the $2 billion.

By the end of the TRO, the arguments for and against a preliminary injunction should be fully briefed. If there are any oral arguments to be made, those will have also been made.

The judge will then issue a preliminary injunction/stay as the TRO lapses, or will not issue the preliminary injunction/stay, which means the TRO lapses and nothing takes it place.

In general, TROs and Preliminary Injunctions are only granted to the parties of the case. The judge can issue a TRO blocking the execution of prisoner A, but unless prisoner B is also a party to the suit, the TRO does not apply to them.

If the case is a class action suit, once the class is granted, then orders of the court apply to the entire class. If the parties are an organization, the injunctions might apply to all members of the organization.

So what happens in Sotomayor’s hypothetical if there are no universal injunctions?

First, I don’t believe that we are going to have a situation where there are no universal injunctions. I believe that Sotomayor is correct, we need to preserve that capability for the judiciary.

What I believe would actually happen is that a true universal TRO would be issued. This would have a limited lift time.

Blocking the deportation of TdA for two weeks is a pain, but not unbearable. Blocking the deportation of TdA for the duration of a drawn out court case is unacceptable.

Blocking the confiscation of guns for two weeks for everybody is just as bearable.

This would give the inferior court time to certify the class, if such was needed, and to do a proper evaluation of the request for a preliminary injunction.

As the Supreme Court said in A.A.R.P v. Trump, the inferior courts MUST answer the merits question of the Winter factors. They cannot side step this.

In the case of TdA, the government will win on the merits. They have been granted the authority to remove criminal aliens from the United States by the Constitution and Congress. The most that might be justified is the process might require enough time for an attorney to become involved.

In the case of a gun confiscation, the plain text of the Second Amendment would be implicated. There is no way around that. There is no regulation in this Nation’s history of arms regulation that is analogous to an outright gun confiscation. The People are likely to win on the merits. Having a Constitutionally Protected right violated is unrepairable harm. The balance of equities lies with The People who have been harmed. Being denied your rights outweighs any state harm. The public has no interest in upholding an Unconstitutional Law or Regulation.

For the Circuit courts that would suddenly find that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms only applies to Nerf guns would cause a nearly instant circuit split, which would get appealed to the Supreme Court.

In addition, it would be physically difficult to confiscate all guns.

I wasn’t expecting this opinion this quickly. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the 15th, they issued their opinion on the 16th. It is only 24 pages long.

This case has many concurrent issues running through it. It is important to focus on what the opinion actually does, how it does it, and what the legal issues the Court is attempting to resolve.

What the holding is, what it means

The Supreme Court has issued an injunction stopping the deportation of TdA terrorists while the Fifth Circuit Court issues a new opinion. This injunction stands until the Supreme Court issues their opinion in this case after being fully briefed and oral arguments given, OR if the Court denies certiorari, OR neither party appeals from the Fifth Circuit Court.

This Supreme Court Order vacates and remands the case back to the Fifth Circuit with specific instructions:

I hope you realize what a slap in the face the highlighted section is to the inferior courts. The inferior courts are well aware of the Winter factors. They are well aware of the order in which the factors should be evaluated.

This line is written to all inferior courts. It is a blunt warning that the inferior courts should apply the Winter factors, correctly, to any injunction (or stay) being granted.

The second part is the Supreme Court punting. They want somebody else to do the heavy lifting on “what notifications need to be given to afford a terrorist due process?”

The J.G.G. plaintiffs are claiming it is 30 days. The state has argued that 24 hours is more than enough. The Fifth is likely to come down with something closer to the state’s standing.

Another part of this, is that there is a question of “adequate notification.” The plaintiffs want the notifications to be in English and Spanish. The state provided the notifications in English only. Since these people are in the United States, it seems reasonable to ask that they figure out how to read an English document or get a translation.

And, as one pundit on X put it, the government should give notification to every criminal alien they currently have detained, and any new ones they pick up, a notification of deportation. This will start that clock running and whatever time is finally determined, the state will be that much closer to the time limit.

Finally, this injunction is not going to keep any of these criminal aliens in the United States.

If you are in our country illegally, you can be deported. That is a full stop. If you are a criminal alien, you can be deported.

Trump declared TdA to be Alien Enemies, then used the Alien Enemies Act to deport them.

He did not need to use the AEA!

All the focus on the AEA is a distraction. The Trump administration could load all those terrorists on to planes tomorrow morning as criminal aliens and ship them down to CECOT with no issues. As long as they don’t use the AEA for the source of authority.

What wasn’t addressed

The Solicitor General in oral arguments and in the briefings advanced the argument that universal injunctions are bad. That these rogue, inferior court judges do not have the authority to block the executive with nationwide injunctions.

This opinion does not address universal injunctions.

When Democrats are in office and a court issues a universal injunction, Sotomayer, Kegan, and Jackson Brown are in full agreement with the rest of the court that universal injunctions are wrong.

When Republicans are in office and a court issues a universal injunction, Sotomayer, Kegan, and Brown believe that universal injunctions are great.

Legal Games

This case should not be in front of the Supreme Court. It is here because of games played by the plaintiffs (bad guys).

The D.C. District court, having had their hands slapped, were on warning not to take cases outside their jurisdiction. This meant the case was filed in Texas, where the terrorists are housed, pending deportation.

The lawyers for the plaintiffs opened the case, then called the judge and demanded action. The transcript of that call was entered into the record by the judge. He was not happy.

The call was an ex parte communication. This is in violation of the Code of Conduct for Federal Judges, Canon 3(A)(4)) and Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 65(b)(1).

Regardless, the judge in the case was working on the complex issues involved in this case.

After the judge filed his remonstration of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, the plaintiffs filed a motion for a TRO.

They demanded the judge respond within 42 minutes, or they were going to appeal the case. 133 minutes after filling the motion, they filed an appeal to the Fifth Circuit.

The Supreme Court majority, seven justices, felt that the plaintiffs were right in appealing. Thomas and Alito dissented.

The case was moving rapidly, the judge was responding to the motions being filed. The important aspect of the judge’s response was he had given the state 24 hours to respond.

The plaintiffs knew this before they filed. The judge had pre-emptively told the state they had 24 hours to respond.

The plaintiffs didn’t like this. They felt that the judge should issue the injunction as if he were a robed, rogue D.C. district court activist, litigating from the bench. This Texas judge wasn’t a slave to the leftist agenda. He was doing his job correctly.

Conclusion

If Thomas and Alito are on one side of the argument, and you are on the other side, you are wrong. Having been there myself, I know of what I speak.

Alito and Thomas are superb at what they do. Trust them.

Final Thoughts

The Supreme Court majority was making judgments about what the inferior courts should have done with 20/20 hindsight. There are things in the record now that were not there when the lower courts issued their orders and opinions. Thomas and Alito point this out and tell the majority to follow proper procedures.

We often talk about government interference. We are forced to talk about race, constantly.

Just as most gun control laws are racist in nature, designed to disarm blacks so that racist assholes could murder them, marriage license serve a similar purpose.

What is a marriage license?

In short, it is the government’s permission to perform a religious or secular ceremony declaring somebody to be your partner.

It is also a legally binding contract. At the moment you sign that contract, you have agreed to a set of laws, enforced by threat of force, on how you separate, what it costs to separate, and who will decide the access you will have to your children.

Many entities recognize that license as granting you special privileges and services.

In other words, that license is what your spouse uses to get on your insurance or for you to get on theirs. It sets the rules for custody and property. It details death benefits.

All of this in an implied contract.

Having signed that contract three times, I know what the contract implies.

How did marriage license come to be?

Before the War of Northern Aggression, the southern states had laws against blacks and whites marrying. It wasn’t allowed.

That didn’t mean that white men weren’t dipping their wick when they wanted. It didn’t mean there weren’t mixed race babies.

This didn’t bother them. If it popped out of a slave, it was a slave that would be a slave until emancipated or death. If its skin color was too dark, it was a slave until emancipated or death. Racist as hell.

I’m sure there were some “bucks” that were servicing white women, but that wasn’t acknowledged at all.

After the unCivil War, many of those racist laws were struck down. The rules against mixed marriages went away as they were rules for slaves, not laws.

So laws were passed. These laws were designed to work around certain federal restrictions on racist behavior.

The gist? To be legally married, you need to have a license from the government, granting you permission.

The requirements to get that license weren’t relevant enough, so we’ll just do that later.

Blood Tests

Ostensibly, the marriage license protected against inbreeding, transfer of STDs, and mixing of blood.

You know, that thing that got the German’s in so much hot water in the 1938-1945 time frame. Mixing races with a government designated inferior race.

The reason Los Vegas became a marriage destination wasn’t the Gambling, Food, and Shows. It was because there were no blood tests and no waiting.

You and your bride-to-be could fly into Vegas in the morning, be married by noon. Be broke by 5pm. Be on a plane back home by 7pm. Arriving with your beautiful wife to an empty airport.

But we need records!

Absolutely, we need records. Does the government require a record of your marriage? Not really.

But we want to stop people from marrying somebody else while still married!

What business is it of yours how many spouses a person has?

Well, we don’t want people defrauding insurance companies!

Sure. But is the least intrusive method?

The fact is, that before those racist laws came into existence, and the government took over record keeping, births, deaths, and marriages were recorded. They were recorded in the family bible and at the church where you married.

Those records are still trusted today. Finding a family bible with those records in them is a treasure trove for people doing genealogy.

There is no record keeping that requires government involvement.

But what about the children!

Yep, that’s an important thing. What about the children?

Bluntly, most people getting married have no idea what the contract they are signing implies. They are likely not even thinking of that.

It is the same with pre-nuptials. Why are you talking about pre-nuptials when we are about to get married? Don’t you love me? Don’t you trust me?

The needs of the children need to come first. Notice the word “need”, not “want”. If you separate, you still have a responsibility to your children.

Property

Let’s pretend you are wealthy, you’ve got an entire $1000 in your bank account. You get married in California. How much money do you have in your bank account?

The correct answer is $500. Your spouse now has $500 in your bank account.

As one cynical lawyer explained it to me, a 50/50 state is where she starts with 50 percent of everything you own, the rest of the divorce is her working to get 50 percent of what you have left.

An extreme example is during John Denver’s divorce. His wife was going to get 50% of everything he owned. He took a chainsaw to their wedding bed and cut it down the middle, giving 50% to her.

Of course the judge didn’t see it the same way, but that’s neither here, nor there.

All of these can be handled by actual, explicit contracts.

We had a constructed family a few years back. The family owned 125 acres of woodland and farm land as well as a large house, a barn, and a couple of out buildings. One part of the family put up the down payment. My lovely wife and I were putting our salaries into the homestead.

When the constructed family was destroyed, we needed to split up the household assets.

I had been stupid, I trusted and didn’t get a good contract.

The toxic person who destroyed the family had planned it that way. Her husband was responsible for the finances. Every penny she or her husband brought in went to paying down the mortgage. The money my wife and I brought in went to “maintenance” and “living expenses”. And he had records to prove all of that.

The amount of their down payment plus the total of all of their salaries was about 1/3 of the total contributes my wife and I made.

That was entirely my fault for failing to have a good contract in place.

Contracts

The legal books are awash with contract law. There are lawyers who have spent and will spend their entire career doing contract law, the last courtroom they saw was the mock court in school.

We know how to write good contracts. We know how to read contracts. We can write a contract that will cover what needs to be covered.

Do you want your spouse to have survivor benefits? Put it in the contract. Do you want child support to be 50/50? Put it in the contract. Do you want 50% of the first 5 years of your spouse’s income after you put them through school? Put it in the contract.

Is it challenging to think of all the things that should be in that contract? Yes. Are there people that can do it? YES.

Conclusion

Let’s go back to a time when marriage was a religious or secular event, and contracts were contracts.

I admit that I have horrible organizational skills. I use different tools to account for that lack.

I love me some Kanban and it looks so pretty when I start. And then it gets left behind.

Git allows me to make cheap commits. It allows cheap branches.

The development model should be “Create Issue. Create a branch to match issue. Work the issue on the branch. Resolve issue on branch. Merge master to issue branch. Resolve conflicts. Merge the issue branch back to master and delete the issue branch.”

I have a branch which was “Add MD5 to images”. By the time I was ready to commit, I had almost 40 files that had been modified. I spent about an hour making commits. Moving to different branches to get the changes into the right branches.

Once that was done, my workflows kicked the commit because of issues. Four hours to create typing stubs and to lint the added code. Painful.

Why? Because I got the md5 done but was in the middle of using the new code, then a higher priority issue popped which got its branch but which …

About once every two weeks, I have to spend a day organizing to get things back to reasonable.

I love working at the Fort at No 4. The current director is wonderful. She is also in over her head and struggling to get everything done that needs to be done.

This leads to her moving from most important to next most important until there is no organization, no completion.

Yet, she keeps it all going. I don’t know how she does it.

Today we had a longish meeting to go over Use Cases for the new website.

For me, use cases are formalized brainstorming. Every use case is written as

“As {Actor} I {Want|Need} {something}”

The something needs to be well-defined, and it must be a single thing. You don’t write, As a web visitor, I want to be able to read the EULA and the Privacy Statement.

That is two different use cases.

As we were working our way though one section of use cases, she told me that the process of writing use cases for the website was helping her to organize her job as the director.

Which is an extra benefit.

I’m a bit tired right now. I stayed up way too late Tuesday Night, 0300 late. I’m in the making good progress, fighting my way through the tangled web of code.

Today will be an even better day.

Now all I need to do is find time to read some more court documents, without taking my blood pressure through the roof.

I learned situational awareness very quickly one night at University.

It was sometime after 2300, I was talking to a co-worker at the entrance to his cubicle. Since I was focused on our conversation, I wasn’t aware that somebody had walked up behind me.

My first indication was when I felt somebody pulling my knife from my right hip pocket. Without thinking, I turned, blocked the arm holding the knife and started to punch my attacker in the throat.

This is the sort of thing that happens when you are young, have been training in martial arts, and are scared you are about to be killed.

Well, I pulled the punch because I recognized it was a cop. First time I’d seen a cop in the building in over 8 years of “living” there. Last time I saw a cop in the building.

It made me aware. To this day, I never leave my back to an entrance or place where trouble might come from. I walk into a location, I choose a place with my back protected and clear sight of most, if not all, the exits. It is just me.

Part of being aware, is knowing when it is time to be elsewhere. The clues are often right in front of you. Ally has seen me go from relaxed, to being on a hair trigger in just a few seconds. She’s seen me shift my stance, move, so I have cleaner shot lines. And I’ve never been in a situation where I needed to draw.

One of the first places I learned to avoid, was groups of blacks. It just wasn’t worth the risk. It is never worth the risk.

I lived for four years in a section 8 apartment complex. I wasn’t getting government assistance, but every unit in the complex was section 8 eligible, and most of the people living there were on section 8. In that complex, there were maybe three white families, including mine.

The house across from us was a crack house. We invited the cops to observe from my office if they wanted to. They didn’t. The dealers had a 1-mile straight view to the only entrance to the complex. If the cops showed up, they had plenty of time to ditch the drugs and guns.

I learned to avoid my neighbors. My kids’ bikes were stolen four or five times. Locked to a rack, locked in the shed. It didn’t matter. It was just something that happened.

So here is the thing, before I was in middle school, I never considered skin color in my threat assessment. 1 week in high school in Calvert County, Maryland, and I did.

I was coming from Rhode Island, we arrived in Maryland, my first day of school started with a 30-minute wait for the bus, followed by a 25-mile bus ride to the school. I was picked on every single day on that bus. I hated it. I hated going to school.

I was able to observer a half dozen black kids get off the bus, head into a tar paper shack that they called home. We knew they were on welfare. We knew because the house looked like that, but there were often 2 or 3 new Cadillacs in the (unpaved) driveway.

The gym teacher would open the locker rooms an hour before school started. Why? Because many of those kids didn’t take showers at home. They would take advantage of the school showers.

The school system was using merit grouped classes. They were labeled A through F. In class A there were 30 kids. One black kid. In B there were 30 kids, I think 5 blacks. In Classes D and F there were 30 kids each, and no white kids.

The school was at a constant low rumble of violence, never breaking out in shootings or knifings, but about once a week, some black kid would be expelled for starting a fight. Most of the targets of those fights were white kids.

By the end of the first month, I was tired of being around blacks. For the following years that we lived in Calvert County, my parents shelled out money they couldn’t afford to, so that my brother and I could attend a private catholic school.

I’ve been told that it is extremely racist to say “13 do 50”. Why? Because what it says is that while blacks constitute about 13% of the population of the United States, they account for around 50% of all violent crime. It might be all crime.

It is actually worse than that. About 6.4% of the United States population, black males, account for over 50% of violent crimes.

In reading the 2019 UCR, the raw numbers are 1,488,876 whites arrested for violent crimes. 779,089 blacks were arrested for violent crime. By the percentages, that 62.97% white and 32.95% black.

Simplifying, if there is a pool of 100 people, 13 of them would be black, 4 others, and 83 white. There would be 51 women and 49 men.

If that pool was pulled from those arrested for violent crimes, 51 would be black, 4 others, and 45 white. 73 would be men and 27 women.

The next “math” would be to say what the odds of a violent crime being committed against you by white, black, or other. This is not as easy, it depends on the victim’s race.

What is true is that where blacks congregate, there will be violence and crime.

Here is the sad part of this, it is likely that most blacks are good people. The issue is so bad that even if they are good people, we don’t know it.

We will often look at a bad cop getting away from it. Where are the good cops stepping up and putting a stop to the bad cop’s actions? It is difficult to find that person.

We see blacks acting out. Where are the people from the black community stepping up and putting a stop to the bad actors? It is difficult to find that person.

I’m tired of looking at a video of violence breaking out and seeing that it is blacks doing it. I’m tired of looking at looting videos, and before they even zoom in, I know that they will be mostly blacks. I’m tired of seeing kids and the elderly sucker punched by blacks.

I think many of us are getting tired of it.

My father used to say, “I’m color-blind by an act of congress.” When evaluating the sailors who served under him, he was blind to the color of their skin. He was taught to judge people by their character.

He and my mother taught me the same. Judge people by their character. I want us to start moving towards an integrated society where I can trust the person beside me to act responsibly, regardless of the color of their skin.

Maybe Val’s version is better?

Here’s the album version

Regardless, it is one of the tracks from my youth that lives on.