Ghost guns: yes on this order

Does it surprise anyone that the National Rifle Association would oppose President Biden’s executive order to get rid of that thing called “ghost guns”?

I didn’t think so.

The NRA has condemned Biden because he wants to stop the basement manufacturing of guns that have no serial number or any identifying features that allow authorities to track their origin.

According to The New Republic: “These updated regulations make clear that parts kits that can readily be converted into assembled firearms will be treated under federal law as what they are: firearms. And the manufacturers and sellers of these kits will be subject to the same federal laws as all other gun manufacturers and sellers,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in an op-ed published in USA Today on Monday. The new rule will amend the definition of “firearm” and “frame and receiver” to cover kits and components that create ghost guns, allowing them to be treated like firearms under federal law. It will also require manufacturers who sell components to assemble into ghost guns to be licensed and run background checks on potential buyers.

Biden Finally Makes a Move on the Ghost Gun Scourge | The New Republic

I want to understand the notion that the NRA is going to pitch that regulating the manufacture of these weapons infringes on the Second Amendment guarantee of the “right to keep and bear arms.” It doesn’t.

This needs to be restated: Law-abiding citizens need not acquire these weapons to “keep and bear arms.” They can purchase mainstream firearms manufactured by actual gun makers. These firearms have appropriate serial numbers that allow authorities to keep tabs on the source of these firearms — without affecting anyone’s ability to own them.

I applaud the president for signing this order.

As John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety noted, “Ghost guns look like a gun, they shoot like a gun, and they kill like a gun, but up until now they haven’t been regulated like a gun.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Where do we go post-Roe?

Abortion isn’t an issue that occupies much of my conscious thought, but occasionally I do wonder about the future of a woman’s world if (and likely when) the U.S. Supreme Court finds a way to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark ruling that made abortion legal in this country.

The court will issue a ruling before the end of its current term that appears — by all that I heard and read so far — spell the end of Roe as we have known it since the court issued its ruling in January 1973.

The SCOTUS declared that the U.S. Constitution gave women the right to govern their bodies. That they had the right under the Constitution to terminate a pregnancy. Anti-abortion activists have been fighting like crazy ever since to overturn the ruling.

They now appear to have enough of a majority on the high court to end it. States, such as Texas, have taken it on their own to seriously restrict women’s right to obtain an abortion. Texas has made it illegal for a woman to end a pregnancy at the six-week mark … before many women even know they are pregnant. Now comes Oklahoma, our northern neighbor, to make it a crime for someone to obtain an abortion.

Think of the irony here. Conservatives who used to bristle at what they determined to be “too much government interference” now embrace the notion of government interfering with women’s most painful decision.

I believe it was President Bill Clinton who once said his intent was to make abortion “legal but rare.” I share that goal.

As for the future of abortion, I just need to reiterate a point I long have made. I cannot advise a woman to obtain an abortion. Why? That isn’t my call. Nor is it the call of any legislator, or member of Congress, or president or judge. It belongs to the woman most intimately affected.

That is where the decision should remain.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Social media produces kindness

Many of you know my thoughts on social media. It at times gives me grief, but then again it can result in positive thoughts and actions among those who consume its content.

I heard a story today on a morning TV news show about a group of Tarrant County, Texas, athletes who are playing benefit baseball games to assist people in need. How did they get the word out to round up athletes to take part? Social media.

My wife noted this morning how social media outlets have produced these acts of kindness and compassion. Back in the Dark Ages when we were that age, she reminded me, we didn’t have that kind of instant communication available. Many of us did do wonderful things for people in those days, but we often had to look hard for opportunities, as they weren’t presented to us regularly on smart phones and computer tablets … which didn’t exist!

We would volunteer our time though our houses of worship or through schools.

These days, we hear about youngsters gathering up their resources at the latest alert they get via social media and distribute some of their treasure to those who need it.

This is an example of social media bringing out the best among our young people. Yes, I know there are those who act out badly as a result of bullying and other social media contacts.

I just want to offer a good word to those young people who — when alerted via social media about suffering that occurs around them — put their high energy to work for the good of others.

Y’all make us proud.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Cheney: We have enough

Let it never be said that Liz Cheney lacks backbone or courage, particularly in light of her service on a House of Representatives committee assigned to find the motives and the cause of the 1/6 insurrection.

The Wyoming Republican this weekend declared for all the world to hear that the select panel has more than enough evidence to issue a criminal indictment referral to the Justice Department implicating the 45th president of the United States on felony charges.

She disputed reports of friction among committee members. Cheney told media outlets over the weekend that the committee has gathered enough evidence to issue a report to Attorney General Merrick Garland that suggests Donald Trump committed at least two felonies while seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election result.

Now comes the question: Will the committee make the referral? I believe it will. I also believe it will do so relatively soon.

The corollary question, though, is this: Will the AG act speedily to deciding whether to indict the former POTUS? I don’t know the answer to that one. Nor do I believe he should be hasty.

Garland has made it abundantly clear that he will “follow the law” wherever it leads. I believe he is an honorable man who won’t be pressured, bullied or coerced into making a partisan political decision.

However, today I want to reserve my salute to Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the select committee, who is standing on her own belief that no one — not even the POTUS — is above the law. Moreover, she has said repeatedly that she took an oath to be faithful to the Constitution and not to an individual.

That is the essence of public service.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Why not respond in kind?

My perch in the cheap seats as I watch the Ukraine War play out way over there gives me a chance to wonder about something: If we are so fearful of Russian cyberattacks, why don’t we threaten to unleash our own cyber weapons against them?

The U.S.-Russia cold war might be taking a new form to replace the one that formerly featured nuclear weapons pointed at each other back in the days of the Evil Empire, when Russia was called The Soviet Union.

I don’t want my retirement account to be sucked dry by some cyber spook hunkered in some Moscow bunker. However, we live in the world’s most technically sophisticated nation. We have uber-geeks prepared to do all kinds of harm if given the lawful order from on high to do so.

It seems we are capable of crafting a cyber policy that we could make public — without revealing, of course, the tactical aspects of what we intend to do. Tell the Russians what kind of damage we can do to their cyber system and then — as we did during the other Cold War — dare them to launch an attack on us.

It would be a form of Mutually Assured Destruction 2.0.

It therefore would be equally MAD for the Russians to perform any funny stuff if we are ready to respond in kind.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Impossible to endorse these actions

My ability to comprehend the depravity being brought to Ukrainians is being taxed to the max. Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin invaded a sovereign nation intent on occupying its capital city within three days.

His supposedly vaunted Russian military machine has failed in its mission. That has not stopped Putin from violating what appears to be every standard of decency established by the Geneva Convention in his effort to subdue Ukraine.

He has bombed and shelled hospitals, schools, churches, apartment buildings and has killed thousands of civilians. The scenes of destruction brought against Ukraine belie another truth about this war, which is that Ukraine is putting up one hell of a fight to fend off the invaders. Hence, the failed mission to march into Kyiv.

What happens next is anyone’s guess. The two sides supposedly are “negotiating” a possible end to the hostilities and yet the Russians also are reportedly gathering in eastern Ukraine and preparing for another all-out assault.

What remains arguably the most confusing element in all of this is how Putin can function day to day realizing that virtually the entire planet is aligned against him. The destruction and the visual images of the casualties his troops have left behind have turned this man into an international pariah.

There can be no coming back from the depths to which this individual has taken his nation.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

GOP pledges grim future

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

When the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate pledges to make life difficult for a Democratic president and his Democratic colleagues in the Senate, we had better sit up and pay careful attention.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has a proven record of employing his enormous obstructive skills to block legitimate efforts to move the country forward if they will benefit the agenda being followed by the right wing of his party.

Republicans appear poised to take over control of Congress after this year’s midterm election. If they do, the rumbling we hear comes from those Republicans who intend to exact revenge on Democrats. It will come in the form of blocking appointments or derailing legislative proposals. Hell, it might even result in Republicans unplugging congressional investigations into the criminal activity perpetrated on 1/6 by the previous GOP president.

This isn’t how good government is supposed to work.

McConnell exhibited his obstructionist skill in February 2016 when, after Justice Antonin Scalia died, he blocked then-President Obama’s attempt to replace Scalia with a SCOTUS nominee. It was “too close” to a presidential election that at the time was months away, McConnell said. He played his hand skillfully, as the GOP nominee won the election that year and then was able to push through three SCOTUS picks before his term ended in 2021.

The final pick was rammed through the Senate just weeks before the 2020 election, which made McConnell’s “too close to the election” call in 2016 nothing more than a ruse.

Don’t bet your last bitcoin that Congress will flip from Democratic to Republican control this year. But in case it does, then we had better prepare ourselves for a politically bloody clash.

It won’t be pretty.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Yes, tax churches too

Annette Ferrell is a Dallas resident who, in a letter to the Dallas Morning News, posed a question that I believe I am prepared to answer.

She wrote this in today’s newspaper: Am I the only one shocked that churches recommend political candidates? Are pastors announcing or suggesting which candidate to support to their flock? Am I mistaken that our nation was built on religious freedom from domination of any religion? Is it time to tax the churches?

Let’s see. OK, my answer is that, yes, it is time to tax churches the way we tax other institutions.

The Constitution declares only that Congress shall make no law that establishes a state religion. Beyond that, the nation’s government document is virtually silent on the issue of religion, although it does declare in Article VI that there should be “no religious test” demanded of political candidates. I suppose, though, that taxing authorities have deemed houses of worship to be untouchable, that they shouldn’t be taxed because they — ostensibly, at least — are not involved in the political process.

Well, many of them damn sure are involved.

Here’s an example I want to share briefly about something I witnessed during my first year in Texas. I attended a political rally in the spring of 1984 — in a church in Beaumont. It featured a stemwinder of a speech from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Baptist preacher who that year was running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Jackson had the place rockin’ with his rhetoric. It was, from a political standpoint, one of the most electrifying events I’ve ever witnessed.

The setting, though, did give me pause. That it occurred in a church troubled me at the time.

If we fast-forward to the present day, we see churches becoming involved in the election of Republican candidates for high office. Preachers have developed clever ways of dancing around their political activity. Their involvement is unmistakable.

If politicians must make their pitches in houses of worship, then the government has every right to assess tax liabilities on those places.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Beto has a shot?

You know, there once was a time — not many weeks ago — that I considered Greg Abbott a shoo-in for re-election as Texas governor.

That Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke didn’t have a Democrat’s chance in blazing hell of defeating the Republican incumbent.

Today? I am not so sure about that gloomy forecast.

Am I going to predict a Beto O’Rourke victory this November, breaking the GOP vise-grip on statewide elected office, ending the Republican dynasty at the top of the Texas political food chain?

Not … on … your … life!

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

However, I am going to suggest that the Abbott-O’Rourke contest well might become one of those races that the national media will be watching with intense interest.

This won’t surprise any readers of this blog, but my fervent hope is that O’Rourke defeats Abbott. The governor has become show horse, a guy who wants to elevate his personal political profile with an eye toward seeking the White House in 2024. Abbott’s idiotic pledge to send “illegal immigrants” to Washington, D.C., to hand the problem to the feds is an example of a politician looking to make headlines without offering the hint of a solution.

He doesn’t have a solution. Abbott has no interest in working with Democrats or seeking cooperation from President Biden.

I have no clue about how O’Rourke might handle this matter were he elected governor. I feel confident, though, in suggesting that O’Rourke, who hails from El Paso, knows plenty about border issues and he does not favor an “open border” policy.

Nor do I believe that O’Rourke is going to single-handedly disarm Texans by stripping us of our firearms. He knows better than to mess with the Constitution! That won’t stop Abbott and his cabal of demagogues from portraying O’Rourke as a soft-on-crime liberal.

I want this race to remain competitive. I want O’Rourke to make Abbott answer for the way the state handled the 2021 winter freeze. I want O’Rourke to offer a reasonable alternative to the Abbott posturing in the face of crisis after crisis.

What’s more, I want O’Rourke to tell Texans how he plans to govern and how he intends to end the state’s war against its gay residents, how he intends to make voting easier, not harder, for Texas.

And I want Beto O’Rourke to remain firm against the attacks that are sure to come from Greg Abbott.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Liar endorses Quack? Wow!

Donald “Former Liar in Chief” Trump has given his “full and complete endorsement” for Mehmet “The Quack Doc” Oz in the race for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania.

The two are made for each other.

I won’t belabor the point about Trump, as you’ve heard enough from me about him. Oz, though, deserves a brief mention.

Oz has remained friends with Trump over the years. Indeed, Trump’s endorsement seems to rest chiefly on Oz’s TV career, something with which Trump has some familiarity. Oz also proclaimed Trump to be in “excellent health,” which Trump also values more than policy pronouncements.

‘Romney 2.0′: Trumpworld Implodes Over Ex-POTUS’ Endorsement Of Dr. Oz (msn.com)

I call Oz a “quack” because of his endorsement of a product he once said produced “miracle” medical results. No serious physician ever would proclaim any product to result in a “miracle” in human healing. It ain’t scientific, man!

Trumpworld reportedly has gone ballistic over the endorsement. Imagine that!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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