Things seem to be broken on the site. (Where “seems to be” is equivalent to the “alleged” in news reports of someone caught on camera cutting off someone’s head.)

1. I’m looking into it.
2. I gotta admit, it’s kinda stumping me at the moment.
3. It’s probably not Big Country Expat’s recent post which caused the problem.

UPDATE: Sounds like some dripping shit-stain hacked BCE’s account and did something to this site. Mike’s contacting tech support to see what can be done.

Update by Barry: Everything appears normal now, except clicking on comments results in page not found…

Update by SteveF: Er, that’s kind of the primary symptom of the site not being normal.

     When the wheel turns under your hand, you must watch your words. – Ursula Le Guin

     This is a piece I feel obligated to write. I don’t want to write it. It comes near to being an insult to my readers’ intelligence. It’s mandatory even so. The yammerers of the Left have made it so.

     Here’s the text of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United 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 grievances.

     It’s noteworthy that of all the rights mentioned in the original Constitution, or any of the Amendments, only the First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law.” The other Amendments speak of rights without mentioning any particular possible abridger or infringer. Even when Civics was a routine part of American education, insufficient attention was drawn to that difference. Few lecturers dared to speak of the reason for it.

     The reason is simple: The Bill of Rights was a compromise document. Its drafters urgently desired that all thirteen colonies sign onto it. For that reason, they had to make room for certain practices that existed in those colonies at that time. Just as several of the colonies legislatively protected slavery, several had laws that did infringe upon the freedom of speech and religion. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire had an established church: the Congregational Church. Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia had established the Church of England. Several colonies had laws against public vulgarity and blasphemy as well.

     When the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment federalizes all the rights mentioned in the Constitution, such that no state government could pass laws abridging or infringing them, those established churches and laws infringing on freedom of expression were history, de facto if not de jure. It was a landmark in judicial practice, as never before had the Court deliberately ignored the plain language of the First Amendment, nor the care with which the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment had averted any talk of rights. For comparison, here’s the complete Fourteenth Amendment:

     1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

     2: Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

     3: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

     4: The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

     5: The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

     Read it closely. You won’t find the word rights anywhere in it. Moreover, note that the original ten Amendments in the Bill of Rights don’t say anywhere that “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” That too was deliberate. The whole point of those Amendments was to keep Congress from legislating about the rights mentioned there.

     There’s a whole education in those differences… and damned near no one even thinks to mention them today.

     The above is my gesture at providing some real and important information, something worth saying that my readers might not know. The rest of this piece will be of a different color.

     Various Leftist figures, many of them in the media, have felt their positions shaken because of viciously intemperate remarks they’ve made in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The most recent is Jimmy Kimmel. ABC announced that it has suspended Kimmel “indefinitely” for his statements, and has pulled his late-night show from its schedule “for the foreseeable future.”

     Other Left-aligned figures have called such actions on the part of media organs offenses against freedom of speech. They’ve striven to equate those things with Biden Administration strong-arming of various organs into muting conservative voices of note. There is some justice to those claims, as the Federal Communications Commission has been involved:

     FCC chairman Brendan Carr has threatened to take action against ABC after Jimmy Kimmel said in a monologue that “the MAGA gang” was attempting to portray Charlie Kirk‘s assassin as “anything other than one of them.”
     Appearing on Benny Johnson’s podcast on Wednesday, Carr suggested that the FCC has “remedies we can look at.”
     “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

     I can’t approve of that, but it’s just one more example of the perniciousness of licensing. Whoever’s in power decides what will and what won’t be considered licit under a license; note the etymology. Just as they have with tax law, left-wing Administrations have used licensure to suppress voices contrary to their preferences before this. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.

     All that having been said, when governments are not involved in a pressure campaign to punish intemperate remarks, “freedom of speech” as guaranteed by the federalized First Amendment is not an issue. Media barons are fully within their rights to hire, fire, and discipline their employees on whatever basis those barons find appropriate. If well-known media giant Octopus Corp. should decide that some fire-breathing conservative is hurting its bottom line, terminating his employment is merely one more corporate decision. We in the Right might not like it, but it would have nothing to do with “freedom of speech.”

     Both Left and Right have been inconsistent about this. Newspapers – say, remember newspapers? I do – have routinely selected and dismissed commentators on the basis of what their readerships tell them they want to read. That’s not a freedom-of-speech issue. Neither is it when a broadcaster or cablecaster does the same. Even so, the partisans of dismissed commentators will try to make it one. This only confuses the issue of freedom of speech still further.

     Similarly, when a business loses customers and patronage because one of its owners or employees has said or done something customers find repugnant, no freedom-of-speech issue exists. Indeed, the customers are exercising their freedom of speech: i.e., their right to disapprove and to take their business elsewhere. It’s moderately distressing that anyone should need to say this, but such are the times we live in.

     What’s strangely humorous is that many on the Left, having been chastised for belittling Charlie Kirk’s murder or attempting to gloss over its horror, are asserting something akin to a right to be free from criticism. I cannot imagine where or how such a notion originated. It certainly wasn’t honored on the Left when the Bidenites were in power. But people stung by the popular lash will say anything.

     Other, better known commentators have reframed the matter in the best possible terms: There is freedom of speech, but there is no freedom from consequences. All actions have consequences. Word gets around, as I’ve said far too many times already. People will decide with whom to associate from several criteria, and what a man says to others is one of them. With whom he associates is another… and several persons of relatively moderate disposition have discovered that to their chagrin, as well.

     Yes, your words are protected by the First Amendment. That means that, with the exception of incitement to violence, they are not criminally actionable. But the First Amendment cannot limit the freedom of others to regard you as they see fit, including on the basis of your words.

     Words matter. Watch yours, for others surely will.

https://instapundit.com/IMPEACH PRESIDENT AUTOPEN:

That’s Chazzzzz Martin, the Fascist who would have had everyone at Coldfury jailed for daring to question the WuFlu Narrative.

These people are execrable.

It was obvious from Day One, after they Frauded the Basement Campaigning Pedo Sniffer Biteme into Office, that he was not in charge of his faculties, his administration OR his bowels.
So, for 4 years these people like Chazzzzz Martin said not a Peep about the fact that SOMEONE else was running the Country. Holding the Nuclear Codes. Screwing America.

Nah, that wasn’t important enough to matter THEN. But NOW, now that Biteme is out and the damage has been done, all of these people are jammering with their panties in a twist about it, like right here and right now, this matters a wit compared to the Lawfare and Insurrection the Judiciary is engaging in. The Resistance.

They can all FOAD and I hope for their FA they get the same FO that the actual perpetrators get. Well, if the actual perpetrators ever “get” anything.
Which is a whole ‘nother rant for another time when my blood pressure is back down.

The 8647 “Movement” is the latest TDS phenomenon. At first glance, it seems that this is just more unhinged losers whining about how Trump Won and lamenting.

However, I have noticed that there seems to be a something that seems innocuous TDS at first glance ahead of every attempt to Get Trump. Especially ahead of the Assassination attempts.

8647 coming from people like Comey and Whitmer (who used 8645? same same though) seems more ominous to me.

Is this a Trigger Signal to an Asset (or Assets) they’ve been grooming for years to “activate”? I hope Trump’s Security Team is taking this one more serious than it might appear.

Some light, some political, some insightful. I think that “insightful” is the right word.

Hayes Carll does one for those that think the weather controllers are behind taking away his girl…

Some of you, those born after 1980, might look at this picture and wonder what it is. They’re people, they look like women, but something’s off about them. Were they AI generated?

Nope, that’s not it at all. The reason the women look strange is because this picture is from the 1960s, before the food pyramid and ready-to-heat meals. Before freedom to “express yourself” and the urge to put on a bizarre appearance in order to get attention. Before “my body, my choice” was extended to facial tattoos and piercings. There’s no green hair, no underwear worn as outerwear, and not a one of these ladies comes anywhere near 180 pounds.

One other thing. Look closely. Not a madam’s apple in sight. Bizarre, right?

Hey, I’ll give this thing a shot. After all, if Scrolled and Drisc-Rolled Dripsicle Ed at Insty can write twenty pages of links with seemingly no commonality and still keep his posting privileges, how hard can it be?

I just heard Trump’s press secretary (whose name I have been unable to find; one might almost think that such news is blacklisted) say that several “major” “news” organizations are no longer invited to the White House briefing room and that invitations are open for bloggers, streamers, and such to apply for press passes.

Go for it, Mike! You can be the greatest one-legged musician, blogger, and White House correspondent that the world has ever seen!

Why are we deporting illegal aliens/non-uniformed members of an invading army? It’s a terrible waste of resources. There’s the money and jet fuel and what-not that it takes to return the pieces of shit to their native shitholes.

But that’s not the worst of it. We have a terrible shortage of blood and transplant organs, we are told. We have tens of millions of non-persons. Why are we wasting this valuable resource?

Reportedly stated by Bill Belichick

Damn, I’m in love.

This being a NC based blog (or it was 🙂 ), a bit of NC news:

UNC Hires Six time Super Bowl Champion Coach

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/presidential_immunity_personal_versus_presidential_duties.html

https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/06/01/complex-systems-wont-survive-the-competence-crisis/

https://libertarianinstitute.org/blog/rip-british-army-1415-2024/

https://www.barnhardtmemes.com/

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-5124-the-russian-steamroller

https://www.2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com/p/breaking-exposing-the-cia-so-the

https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/washington-moves-on-to-plan-b/