Last Call For Ridin' With Biden, Con't

President Biden rolled out new gun safety regulations at the site of January's deadly Monterey Park shooting, signing a new executive order for tougher gun purchase background checks.

The executive order would direct Attorney General Merrick Garland to clarify the statutory definition of who is "engaged in the business" of selling firearms, an authority the administration official said was detailed in sweeping bipartisan gun legislation Biden signed into law last year after the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

"This news would mean fewer guns will be sold without background checks, and therefore fewer guns will end up in the hands of felons and domestic abusers," the official said on a call with reporters previewing the order.

The National Instant Background Check System carried out more than 31 million background checks on people looking to own firearms or explosives last year, FBI data shows.

The administration official said it is not clear how many new background checks the executive order would result in.

The order also urges members of Biden's Cabinet to promote effective use of extreme risk protection orders, or "red flag" laws, in 19 states and Washington, D.C., by partnering with law enforcement agencies, health care providers and educators.

Through the order, Biden will also encourage the Federal Trade Commission to compile a report examining how gun manufacturers market firearms, including to minors.

 

By defining who counts as a gun seller, more people will need to make background checks. It would also clarify red flag laws and focus on gun marketing.

 

These are all solid moves under recently passed regulations. The usual "Congress never gave the Executive this authority" BS won't work, because Congress did exactly that last year.

Biden is using the power he's been given.

The Road To Gilead Goes Through South Carolina

As I've been warning from the beginning, Republicans were always going to criminalize women getting an abortion as soon as Roe v Wade was disposed of, and South Carolina is wasting no time in trying to not only put women who get an abortion in prison, but to make it a capital felony in the state where women will face death row and a possible firing squad.

 

MEMBERS OF THE South Carolina State House are considering a bill that would make a woman who has an abortion in the state eligible for the death penalty.

The “South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023” would amend the state’s code of laws, redefining “person” to include a fertilized egg at the point of conception, affording that zygote “equal protection under the homicide laws of the state” — up to and including the ultimate punishment: death.

The bill was authored by Rep. Rob Harris, a registered nurse and member of the Freedom Caucus; it has attracted 21 co-sponsors to date. (Two former co-sponsors — Rep. Matt Leber and Rep. Kathy Landing — asked to have their names removed as sponsors of the bill. Leber and Landing could not be reached for comment.)

Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican who represents South Carolina in the U.S. House, took to the floor on Friday to call attention to the bill, which she sees as part of a “deeply disturbing” trend. (Multiple Texas lawmakers have floated the idea of executing women who have abortions in the past. Those bills, proposed before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, failed.)

“To see this debate go to the dark places, the dark edges, where it has gone on both sides of the aisle, has been deeply disturbing to me as a woman, as a female legislator, as a mom, and as a victim of rape. I was raped as a teenager at the age of 16,” Mace said. “This debate ought to be a bipartisan debate where we balance the rights of women and we balance the right to life. But we aren’t having that conversation here in D.C. We aren’t having that conversation at home. We aren’t having that conversation with fellow state lawmakers.”

Asked about exceptions for victims of rape, which Mace raised in her remarks on the floor, Harris told Rolling Stone, “There are other bills with exceptions, but will do little or nothing to save the lives of pre-born children.” He went on list exceptions the bill does contain, including: “a ‘duress’ defense for women who are pressured/threatened to have an abortion” and “medical care to save the mother’s life… The functional language in that scenario is whether the baby’s life is forfeited ‘unintentionally’ or ‘intentionally’.” (Asked if he saw any irony between being a member of the so-called “Freedom Caucus” while proposing such harsh restrictions on reproductive freedoms, Harris responded simply: “Murder of the pre-born is harsh.”)

In 2021, legislators in South Carolina — which has experienced difficulty obtaining drugs to carry out executions by lethal injection — revived the electric chair and firing squads as methods to kill inmates convicted of capital crimes. (The South Carolina Supreme Court is currently weighing the constitutionality of that law after a lower court found lawmakers who passed the law “ignored advances in scientific research and evolving standards of humanity and decency.”)

 

This isn't one of those "complete nutbar fringe asshole" bills that has no chance of passage, this legislation has more than 20 sponsors. Republicans have two-thirds supermajorities in both chambers and even if GOP Gov. Henry McMaster vetoed something like this, overriding him is very possible.

Understand South Carolina Republicans are going to try to put women on death row for evacuating clumps of cells from their own bodies. They are going to charge women with felony  infanticide, such a wholly ridiculous prospect that it can only be called fascist misogyny.

We've gone from "protecting the unborn" to trying to put women on death row put before firing squads, and all within nine months of losing Roe.

Didn't take long, did it?

Ron's Gone Wrong, Kyiv Edition

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, gearing up for his run at Donald Trump in 2024, at least agrees with him one one thing: if elected, Republicans will abandon Ukraine and NATO to Vladimir Putin and Russia.

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has sharply broken with Republicans who are determined to defend Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, saying in a statement made public on Monday night that protecting the European nation’s borders is not a vital U.S. interest and that policymakers should instead focus attention at home.

The statement from Mr. DeSantis, who is seen as an all but declared presidential candidate for the 2024 campaign, puts him in line with the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination, former President Donald J. Trump.

The venue Mr. DeSantis chose for his statement on a major foreign policy question revealed almost as much as the substance of the statement itself. The statement was broadcast on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” on Fox News. It was in response to a questionnaire that the host, Mr. Carlson, sent last week to all major prospective Republican presidential candidates, and is tantamount to an acknowledgment by Mr. DeSantis that a candidacy is in the offing.

On Mr. Carlson’s show, Mr. DeSantis separated himself from Republicans who say the problem with Mr. Biden’s Ukraine policy is that he’s not doing enough. Mr. DeSantis made clear he thinks Mr. Biden is doing too much, without a clearly defined objective, and taking actions that risk provoking war between the U.S. and Russia.

Mr. Carlson is one of the most ardent opponents of U.S. involvement in Ukraine. He has called President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine a corrupt “antihero” and mocked him for dressing “like the manager of a strip club.”

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness with our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” Mr. DeSantis said in a statement that Mr. Carlson read aloud on his show.

Mr. DeSantis’s views on Ukraine policy now align with Mr. Trump’s. The former president also answered Mr. Carlson’s questionnaire.

It's pretty clear that both Trump n DeSantis would give Ukraine and basically Europe over to Putin in exchange for help against China, when anyone with half a brain already knows that Putin and Xi Jinping are buddies looking to split up the rest of the world between them going forward once they deal with America.

Either way, Putin know that a Republican in the White House in 2024 will get him everything he wants and he has every reason to help the GOP. Question is whether he backs Trump, an unreliable but easily manipulated dunce, or the more ambitious, intelligent (relatively) but more wary DeSantis who would turn on Putin at the drop of a hat.

The answer of course for us here is Biden or Harris.