Category: Update

“The North Carolina General Assembly wrapped up this year’s chief work session Thursday,” explains Gary D. Robertson for the Associated Press, “after overriding Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes, putting a constitutional amendment about citizens and voting on the November ballot and sending to Cooper’s desk many additional bills.”

Kyle Ingram, writing in the Raleigh News & Observer, describes the override vote as having “passed the House and Senate with bipartisan support.”

Bipartisan support?

“Yes,” Paul Jacob clarifies (via email), “I’d say so: The votes were 104-12 in the House and 40-4 in the Senate.”

The Lake Gaston Gazette-Observer quotes North Carolina’s leaders for the measure, who insisted that “‘President Joe Biden has been asleep at the wheel the past four years, letting millions of people illegally cross the border into our country. Now, as voters are fleeing the Democratic party in droves, Democrats are seeking to fill the gap by extending voting rights to noncitizens,’ Sens. Brad Overcash (R-Gaston), Buck Newton (R-Wilson), and Warren Daniel (R-Burke) said. ‘To combat this movement, we are empowering North Carolinians to approve a constitutional amendment to make it crystal clear that our elections are for U.S. citizens only.’”

“The constitutional amendment heading to the ballot seeks to change language in the state constitution to clarify that only U.S. citizens at least 18 years of age and meeting other qualifications shall be entitled to vote in elections,” explains the AP. “Voting by noncitizens is already illegal, but some supporters of the amendment say the current language in the constitution could be challenged so that other people beside citizens could vote.”

The market for organ transplants faces extreme supply problems. One is not allowed to sell one’s own organs, and even if it were legal to do so, the ethical and legal problems are obvious, since most organs are not optional. We have two kidneys and two eyes, for example, and can do with just one each, but others we must have to live. Now most organs come from those who donate their organs for harvesting after death (at which point they are no longer needed). And this makes getting patients replacement organs quite tricky, since organs are not fungible.

But there is one source for ready organs: China. But there the supply problems have a workaround: the government and its clandestine businesses simply take them from prisoners, criminal and dissident and persecuted alike.

Related to this is Delaware’s House Concurrent Resolution No. 143, which seeks to “encourage the Delaware medical community to educate the citizens of Delaware about the forced organ harvesting that occurs in China, in the event they decide to travel to China for an expedited transplant.”

Among the resolution’s many Whereases are:

• extensive and credible reports have exposed the People’s Republic of China’s engagement in the vile practice of forcibly removing human organs for transplant; and
• this practice violates not only ethical guidelines of medicine but also Chinese tradition that requires bodies to be preserved after death, which contributes to the country’s deficient registration for organ donation; and 
• the Chinese government claims that ninety percent of organ transplant sources come from executed prisoners; and 
• in 2016, a bombshell investigative report, estimated that China is performing sixty thousand to ninety thousand transplants per year which disputes China’s claim that they conduct only ten thousand transplants per year; and 
• this evidence suggests that deceased prisoners’ organs are being removed without their consent and prisoners are possibly being murdered based on the organ market’s demand; and
• nonemergency cases were quoted in weeks, while in other countries, patients can wait years for a transplant; and 
• this evidence suggests that deceased prisoners’ organs are being removed without their consent and prisoners are possibly being murdered based on the organ market’s demand; and
• both American and Chinese media outlets have reported instances of American patients traveling to China for organ transplants due to the significantly shorter wait times.

A report on this resolution appeared in The Epoch Times: “On June 20, the Delaware House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution condemning the Chinese regime’s lucrative industry of forced organ harvesting. The resolution aims to raise awareness about the risks associated with traveling to China for expedited organ transplants.”

The subject of the Chinese organ harvesting horror has been covered by Paul Jacob previously, including in April.

“The blame is on the Chinese regime no matter how COVID-19 arose, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said on June 18.” This is the lede from “‘China’s to Blame’ Regardless of How COVID-19 Came About, Senator Says,” by Eva Fu, June 19th in The Epoch Times.

At StoptheChinazis.org, the problem of actually determining the cause was identified: “it’s hard to come up with a ‘definitive’ conclusion regarding these matters when key players are heavily invested in the institutions that funded the Wuhan labs. A general consensus on the lab origin theory would imply guilt on many, many participants, including multi-millionaire government functionaries such as Antony Fauci.”

Nevertheless, taking a step back and coming to a conclusion on what needs to be done isn’t difficult. 

Sen. Mitt Romney called for an end to funding gain of function research during a contentious Senate hearing Tuesday on the origins of COVID-19, saying no one will every know with certainty whether the virus responsible for millions of deaths was created in a Chinese lab or emerged from a market selling live animals.

“We know what action we ought to take to protect from either. So why there’s so much passion around it makes me think it’s more political than scientific but maybe I’m wrong,” the Utah Republican said during his questioning of the expert witnesses appearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Lisa Riley Roche, “What Utah Sen. Mitt Romney says about the origins of COVID-19‚” Deseret News, June 19, 2024.

Romney’s liberal and forgiving “no matter how” statement is not universally shared. Professor Richard Enbright, of Rutgers University (also a laboratory director) insisted that “[o]nly after there is an acknowledgement that there is a very real possibility — not a remote possibility, but a very real possibility — of a lab origin will there be the political will to impose regulation on this scientific community that has successfully resisted and obstructed regulation for two decades.” 

At the conference, Enright had earlier stated that there is “zero evidence” for a zoonotic origin of COVID-19.

“The Supreme Court ruled on June 14 that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) exceeded its authority,” reports Sam Dorman in The Epoch Times, “when it interpreted a federal firearms statute to outlaw the use of bump stocks.”

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion in the case, Garland v. Cargill. “We conclude that semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ because it does not fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger,’” Justice Thomas explained.

The vote was 6–3, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing a dissent joined by the other two liberal justices. Her dissent suggested that bump stocks effectively make semiautomatic weapons into machine guns.

A bump stock is a firearm accessory that allows users to shoot at a continuous rate, resulting in hundreds of rounds fired per minute.

“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” she said.

Sam Dorman, “Supreme Court Strikes Down Bump Stock Ban,” The Epoch Times (June 14 and 15, 2024).

The core argumentation in the case did not focus on the Second Amendment, which says that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Instead, much back and forth tried to convince, as Dorman explains, “the justices that the phrases ‘automatically’ and ‘single function of the trigger’ within federal law (The National Firearms Act) either did or didn’t apply to bump stocks.”

As such, Garland v. Cargill is a constitutionally murky case.

Of course, most reactions depended not on the constitutional rectitude but on the outcome.

A statement from President Biden called for Congress to “ban bump stocks, pass an assault weapon ban, and take additional action to save lives — [s]end me a bill and I will sign it immediately.”

By contrast, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) responded by suggesting the decision restored the proper separation of powers between the executive and Congress.

“In our Constitutional republic, Congress makes the laws, not the administrative branch,” he wrote on X. “The Supreme Court just acknowledged this in a 6 to 3 decision invalidating Trump’s bump-stock ban.”

Sam Dorman, Ibid.

Though bump stock add-ons to rifles are now legal in these United States, the issue remains contentious: there’s been a Supreme Court decision, but the people and the politicians aren’t decided.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is the first independent candidate since Ross Perot to make a plausible run for the presidency of these United States. That does not please the Powers That Be. Or, we should say, the Duopoly (Republican and Democratic) Powers that run our elections.

They do not like competition.

Especially competition that might actually succeed.

The ruling Democrats, especially, fear RFKj. As Paul Jacob wrote in October of last year, the Biden Administration has balked at providing security for the candidate, though it that is indeed the usual courtesy.

It is almost as if Biden were saying: get shot; see if I care.

No joke.

The usual roadblock to an independent challenger who might upset the plans of the smoke-filled rooms is the elaborate set of ballot access hurdles set by the two parties in each of the fifty states and the several territories. Paul wrote about that in April.

But now CNN steps in to do the dirty work, with clever interpretations of campaign regulations that, the establishment’s toady hopes, will prevent RFKj from debating the former president and the current president on stage:

The last thing Trump and Biden want is someone who might make them look bad on the pandemic response — as Bobby Kennedy would — and challenge them on their war policies.

Trump and Biden seemed awfully eager to join in a debate, though one has to wonder: did they know all along that they would not have to debate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.?

Trump is on record saying he will not.

RFKj has filed a lawsuit against CNN, and we can expect much back-and-forth among the relevant parties up until the scheduled event on June 27. If it actually takes place. If the aging candidates all survive till that date.

Last weekend, we brought to you the spectacle of Donald Trump addressing the Libertarian Party in convention to nominate their presidential candidate. Donald Trump was not selected.

Who was? Well, after many ballots, the LP’s candidate is Chase Oliver. The Wikipedia entry begins:

Chase Russell Oliver (born August 16, 1985) is an American political activist, sales account executive, HR representative and nominee of the Libertarian Party for the 2024 United States presidential election. Oliver was the Libertarian candidate for the 2022 United States Senate election in Georgia and the 2020 Georgia’s 5th congressional district special election.

Mr. Oliver is the woke opposite of what the dominant faction in the party (called the Mises Caucus, which won most of the internal party seats, again, at this convention) was planning for and hoping for and working towards, but their candidate, Michael Rectenwald, lost on the penultimate round of balloting.

There were many typically political shenannigans involved in the selection, and the state of Oliver’s candidacy is up in the air, at least in one sense: most of the smart money is that he will nowhere reach the 3 percent level in the general election that Trump taunted his booers at the convention.

If he does well, however, that would effectuate a major shift in Libertarian Party politics.

On May 3, Paul wrote about the then-upcoming appearance of former President (and current candidate) Donald Trump before the Libertarian Party quadrennial presidential nominating convention, amusingly and perhaps tellingly given the motto “Become Ungovernable.”

Much has been made of the invitation. The same invitation was also extended to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (who, like Trump, accepted) and to President Joe Biden (who did not accept). A typical reaction to Trump’s scheduled appearance at the convention can be gleaned merely by reading the title of a recent Washington Post op-ed by Peter Goettler, President of Cato Institute: “Trump is hardly libertarian. But neither is today’s Libertarian Party” (May 23, 2024).

Well, the horror and dark thoughts about the appearance can now be judged by the facts, not speculations. The event happened. On Friday, RFK spoke, and was mostly courteously received. On Saturday — yesterday — Trump gave a perhaps too-long but mostly rational case for why Libertarians at the convention should endorse him, or at least, as citizens, vote for him. He also promised to place a libertarian in his cabinet. Additionally, Trump pledged to commute Ross Ulbricht’s sentence “on day one” if elected. It was an extraordinary occasion. But the crowd was restless, and there were a lot of boos.

Most truthful statement? “This is the first time in U.S. history that a presidential candidate of a rival party will address the convention of a party that is presumably gathering to nominate its own candidate.”

Juiciest statement? “[T]he Libertarians want to vote for me, and most of them will.”

But is it true? Will libertarians vote en masse — or even as a majority — for Trump?

Today the Libertarians vote among their candidates for the presidency and vice presidency to choose the party’s 2024 presidential ticket. Which will presumably garner the mere (?) 3 percent of the vote that Trump mocked them for.

Here at Common Sense the subject of Oregon’s “red” county secession movement — to move the border to form a “Greater Idaho” — has been addressed several times. Such movements being slow creatures, the advances move along andante. Perhaps Andante con moto.

The story was in the news again this week. For example, Tim Pool brought it up and mused again about the new “civil war” possibility:

But it is also in the papers. Newsweek, for example:

On Tuesday, Crook County in Oregon became the 13th county to approve a proposal to secede from the state and join neighboring Idaho by 53.5 percent of the vote against 46.5 percent, as part of what supporters are calling the “Greater Idaho” project.

Backers of the plan argue the more conservative areas of eastern and central Oregon are currently dominated by liberal-leaning cities such as Portland and Salem and argue their interests would be better represented in traditionally Republican Idaho.

James Bickerton, “Oregon Counties Voting to Join ‘Greater Idaho,’” Newsweek, May 23, 2024.

Talk of secession shouldn’t automatically conjure up “civil war” fears. The American experience in 1860 is the exception: usually secession is the peaceful alternative to unrest, avoiding civil conflict.

Rather early in pandemic there appeared a set of conspiracy theories to the effect that Great Britain’s National Health Service had used the coronavirus plague as an excuse to kill old people, thus pumping up the numbers of COVID deaths and fanning the flames of the pandemic panic while also thinning out the aging herd, relieving stress upon the medical system — which was said to be a paramount concern elsewhere, too.

As fuel for this theory were wild tales that the NHS had purchased vast quantities of Midazolam, a drug sometimes used in conjunction with other drugs at end-of-life situations.

What is the state of this accusation?

Well, Dr. John Campbell has been vlogging about Scotland’s COVID-19 inquiry, dealing with widespread malpractice regarding DNR (“Do Not Resuscitate”) orders in the country. Last week, Dr. Campbell provided an overview of where the Midazolam/COVID story is right now:

Note that Dr. Campbell is not taking seriously the extreme version of the Midazolam conspiracy theory, as cooked up early in the pandemic by David Icke. According to this accusation, there never was a new virus, and Midazolam was being used to kill thousands of patients to perpetrate a total fraud.

That theory seems a complete fantasy. But is the weaker version of the theory, where, for reasons not altogether clear, some COVID patients were given up on and “put out of their misery” — against the spirit and letter of the laws, as well as against the Hippocratic oath?

There does appear to be some evidence for that in Great Britain. We will see how this plays out. Though it may look like the fantasied projection of unhinged minds, the anecdotes are piling up, so perhaps we shouldn’t dismiss it at the start of inquiry.

Besides, we know that in several welfare states, Canada especially, euthanasia is all the rage — new subsidies and protocols by government to kill patients by “suicide,” designed (some say) to cut costs.