Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says, “I am not enacting martial Law”… but her words betray her

She says she is not: (via WXYZ-TV)

 

But, if she is not, what the hell do you call this?

(WXYZ) — Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed a new Executive Order reducing the number of people allowed at assemblages and events.

The new Executive Order reduces the allowable number to 50. A previous Executive Order had reduced it to 250.

It comes on the heels of new guidance from the CDC and will go into effect Tuesday, March 17 at 9:00 a.m. and will remain in effect until April 5 at 5:00 p.m.

The order provides an exception from its prohibition on assemblages for health care facilities, workplaces not open to the public, the state legislature, mass transit, the purchase of groceries or consumer goods, and the performance of agricultural or construction work.

“My number one priority remains to protect the most people we can from the spread of coronavirus,” said Governor Whitmer in a news release. “We are all better off when all of us are healthy, and that’s especially true for the most vulnerable. These aggressive actions are aimed at saving lives. My administration will continue to do everything we can to mitigate the spread of the disease and ensure our children, families, and businesses have the support they need during these challenging times. We are going to pull through this together, just as Michigan has done in the past.”

Dear Mrs. Stupid Democrat,

You can not call it martial law, but when you issue an order, not allowing people to gather; that’s damned martial law.

First amendment states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievance

So, call it what you wish, but it is a forcing of the state government to force people to do something. That is martial law.

Michelle Malkin Fired from YAF?

It appears to be the case.

Via The Daily Beast:

A conservative group cut ties with right-wing columnist Michelle Malkin on Sunday over her support for an anti-Semitic internet personality, ramping up a growing conservative civil war centered on college campuses.

Malkin’s firing from Young America’s Foundation, whose speaker’s bureau had booked Malkin for speeches across the country for the past 17 years, marks the latest battle between supporters of Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and more establishment conservative figures. 

 

“Michelle Malkin in no longer part of YAF’s campus lecture program,” a YAF spokesman said in an email to The Daily Beast. 

Malkin didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

As for Malkin, she says:

I’ve done YAF events for nearly 20 years. Usually, such speeches are aimed at the left and the Democrats to show how they’re wrong or evil or have double standards or how they’re the real haters or the real racists. All those things are true and I have made these arguments in earnest many, many times over the years. But tonight is not about you, Lefties. Tonight, my remarks are directed at the young men and women of this country who identify as America First conservatives. How many proud Americans standing up for American freedom and sovereignty do we have in the room?

I know what it’s like to be in your shoes, feeling marginalized on a crazy college campus for standing up for your pro-life, pro-gun, pro-free speech, pro-Western values and fighting for your country. I also have two teenagers who have been through experiences like you have, sitting in classrooms where abject stupidity and emotionalism have replaced logic, reason, and the pursuit of truth.

That is why I will not be using my platform and my position to insult you, marginalize you, and shout you down. Just a couple of days ago here on this very campus, former Fox News hostess Kimberly Guilfoyle sneered that young conservative men in MAGA hats asking inconvenient questions were rude losers who could only get dates online and who were embarrassing their parents. Another YAF speaker, Ben Shapiro, repeatedly denigrated an entire movement of young men who watch a YouTuber named Nick Fuentes and are seeking answers to tough questions about where America is headed as masturbating losers in their basements who share memes. As a mom with brilliant right-thinking kids who, yes, live in my basement, and, yes, share memes, I found these obsessive references to young people’s dating lives and habits by prominent conservative media personalities much older than their targets to be tellingly defensive and touchy. Also: creepy.

[….]

Here’s my message to the new generation of America Firsters exposing the big lies of the anti-American open borders establishment and its controlled opposition operatives: If I was your mom, I’d be proud as hell.

No, I do not agree with every last thing they’ve said or written or published or tweeted or thought with their inside or outside voices. But I will not disavow any of them and I will not join the de-platforming witch hunters who hypocritically call themselves free speech and culture warriors. I disavow violence. I disavow hatred of America. I disavow the systematic bipartisan betrayal of American citizens, students, and families by cynical politicians who promised for 25 years to build a wall, end the diversity visa lottery, end chain migration, and other memorized talking points. I disavow Republicans who told us to hold our noses and vote for open borders sellouts because we support the Second Amendment and are against abortion and we had no other choice.

I can see her point, as for Nick Fuentes; he’s a bomb thrower, like Michael Savage. I do not watch him, as I find him quite annoying. I am all for the defense of Liberty in America, I just wish we could find better spokespersons for this movement. 😞

God Bless Shepard Smith at Fox News Channel

For this gem of a smack down of Donald Trump: (H/T to Mediaite)

https://youtu.be/weHjxfa4bvA

Shepard Smith is correct, we need NATO, no matter what people like Pat Buchanan might say.

Washington Times: Congress must repeal and replace the Patriot Act

This is very good.

Via The Washington Times:

The Patriot Act was fashioned with good intentions, but it has been dragooned to serve bad purposes. It was enacted during the national panic that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to protect Americans from the enemy. Now it’s employed by government busybodies to treat Americans themselves as the enemy.

Fed up with the abuse, certain lawmakers on Capitol Hill are pushing legislation to repeal the act. While we share their outrage, repeal without a workable substitute could leave the nation vulnerable to a new generation of evil. There’s surely a solution that preserves safety without trampling liberty. Congress must find it.

{….]

“The natural progress of things,” observed Thomas Jefferson, “is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” Even he couldn’t have imagined a government capable of collecting almost every word written and spoken across the land. An individual’s right to the privacy of his expressed thoughts is his best defense against groupthink, the herd mentality that takes root when the people allow themselves to be hoodwinked by the crafty and the clever. Hillary Clinton’s keeping her emails private in ways others cannot is a reminder that the governing class always tries to figure out how to exempt themselves from the requirements they impose on others.

If Congress thinks the Surveillance State Repeal Act goes too far, as we do, it still must enact reform that restores the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against warrantless searches and respects the distinction between the innocent and the suspicious. The war on terror must never become a war on liberty.

I find it very commendable that the Washington Times is taking a principled stance against the Patriot Act.

Memo to Cass Sunstein: Paranoid This, Dillhole!

This sort of crap right here is what really burns my butt.

Via Reason’s Hit and Run Blog:

The specter of “paranoid libertarianism” continues to haunt American liberals. Hot on the heels of Sean Wilentz’s recent fretting in The New Republic that Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and Julian Assange have undermined the case for big government by drawing too much attention to various instances of big government malfeasance, former Obama administration official Cass Sunstein has now weighed in with his own contribution to the genre, an op-ed titled “How to Spot a Paranoid Libertarian.”

According to Sunstein, paranoid libertarianism is characterized by such pathologies as “a presumption of bad faith on the part of government officials–a belief that their motivations must be distrusted,” as well as “a belief that liberty, as paranoid libertarians understand it, is the overriding if not the only value, and that it is unreasonable and weak to see relevant considerations on both sides.”

Sunstein tries very hard to make that sound like dangerous and exotic stuff, but in fact what he’s really describing is mainstream American jurisprudence when it comes to such vast areas of the law as free speech, voting, abortion, privacy, and gay rights. In those areas, our judicial system basically operates exactly as Sunstein describes: it subjects government regulations to what lawyers call strict (or intermediate) scrutiny. In essence, judges presume that the government has acted illegitimately when it legislates in such areas, and therefore forces the government to shoulder the burden of proof and justify its actions with extremely convincing rationales. Why do the courts place these government actions under the microscope? To protect the people’s liberty to speak, vote, associate, and enjoy various forms of privacy. One more thing: American liberals overwhelmingly favor this approach in such cases.

Politically, I consider myself a paleoconservative, rather than a libertarian. However, I do harbor a deep mistrust of my Government; and I have since 9/11. My mistrust of the Government proceeded Barack Obama. I was one of the wise people, who knew for a fact, that absolutely nothing would change in Government, with a change of political parties.

So, Cass Sunstein can take his or her, (I don’t know which) condescending, elitist, attitude towards those of us who still believe in civil rights, liberty and the Constitution of the United States of America and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine! 😡

As the writer I quoted above said, much of what this Sunstein, which sounds like a Jewish last name, by the way —- is disparaging, is a staple among liberals, who actually care about such things, such as civil rights and the like. Funny how that works, isn’t it? How ironic is it, that some immigrant from a nation of jewelers would take a swipe at true American values, such as liberty.

It is this sort of idiocy, that fuels people like David Duke and his ilk; and rightfully so. What more can one expect from the same group of people, who put the Savour of this World, The Lord Jesus Christ on the cross?