Category Archives: Government

You Can’t Buy Back What You Never Sold

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Only two of the firearms in my collection were ever sold by the federal government, a Model 1903 Springfield rifle I inherited from my father-in-law and an M1 carbine that I’ve owed for decades. Even though there were at least two intervening owners between the government and me for both rifles, I suppose it would be technically possible for the government to say it wanted to buy them back, but they’re not for sale.

Now, about my AR15 … Mine is a Colt Sporter in 7.62x39mm. That’s an odd chambering for an AR15, but the cartridge is legal for deer in Maryland—the more common .223 Rem/5.56 NATO round isn’t—and it’s my preferred deer rifle for hunting in the woods. I didn’t buy it from the the government, and even if Colt were to make an offer, it’s not for sale.

BTW, the Springfield is an interesting collector’s item. It was produced just after World War One, so it was one of the first made using the improved heat treating process for the receiver. It also has the cutout for a Pedersen Device.

An Unintended Consequence

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Hillary Clinton carried Colorado during the 2016 election, but when the state’s electors met to vote, one of them refused to vote for her. The Colorado Secretary of State replaced that elector with one who would vote for Clinton. The original elector sued the Secretary of State, claiming that his removal was illegal and that the State could not bind him to vote in a particular way. Yesterday, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the elector’s favor.

One consequence of a state’s inability to bind electors to vote a particular way is that the states who are members of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact cannot legally require their electors to cast their votes in any particular way.

The Democrats’ plan to sabotage the Electoral College may have been stopped by the action of a Democrat elector.

Success Is Not An Option

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Paul Mirengoff has a post over at PowerLine about why Kamala Harris is dropping in the polls. Among the reasons he suggest is her record as a prosecutor in California.

Her main problems, though, stem from her time as a prosecutor. I think they are symptomatic of problems that Democrats will have running for president if they were actually in charge of something governmental.

There was a time when running something governmental, as opposed to being a legislator, appeared to be an advantage in a presidential run. State Houses were a fertile ground for successful presidential candidates.

But that was before the Democratic Party turned sharply to the left. Now, the things one must do as an elected state official, such as prosecuting criminals, are likely to upset the left.

Congresscritters can promise pie in the sky with ice cream by and by, vote for the Right Causes, never actually deliver (Bernie as a total of three bills passed into law) all that free stuff (Bernie as a total of three bills passed into law)—and still stay in the good graces of the Democrat base.

With Harris stuck at 5 percent, along with Pete Buttigieg who governs a city, the three poll leaders are Senators or former Senators. I don’t count Biden’s vice presidential days as running anything. Nor should Sanders’s time as mayor of Burlington, Vermont 30 years ago count for much. (As for Hillary Clinton, the most recent Democratic nominee, her Senate time caused fewer woes than her time running the State Department).

Read the whole thing.

I believe Mirengoff is correct. We should expect the Democrats to nominate a candidate without a record of successfully making things happen in the Real World but with plenty of politically correct legislative votes.