Military Veterans and Patriots

Tag: Colorado

  • SCOTUS Rules on Colorado Ballot Case

    SCOTUS Rules on Colorado Ballot Case

    The Supreme Court handed down a ruling in the Trump v Anderson, the Colorado ballot access case. In an unsigned opinion, the Court reversed the Colorado supreme court’s ruling that Trump be barred from Colorado ballots on the grounds he was an insurrectionist and therefore ineligible.

    I’m not going to get into parsing the entire decision, I’ll leave that to others who are more well versed in the law. What I will say is this ruling was a resounding slap across the face of the CO supreme court. The opinion made it very clear that the States do not have the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for federal elections.

    I will note that you may see some differing analysis on the order, with some saying that the order does and does not do certain things. The single question before the Court was a relatively simple one:

    “Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in ordering President Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot?

    Page 3, Per Curiam Order in the matter of Trump v Anderson

    The Court ruled on this question and this question alone. It did not rule on whether or not Trump was guilty of insurrection. That question was not before the Court.

    Keep in mind, concurrences and dissents do not count as a matter of law. You are likely to see lots of commentary about the concurrences written by Sotomayor and Barrett. While an interesting footnote to history, they are a waste of paper. The 13 page Per Curiam order is the only one that matters.

  • Random News And Notes

    Random News And Notes

    Let’s start with the elephant in the room. The Colorado supreme court just ruled Trump ineligible for the CO primary ballot. The usual suspects on both sides have already covered this ad nauseam, so I won’t go into much depth here. I personally (IANAL) think they’re out of their ever loving minds. The legal basis they quoted is section 3 of the 14th amendment. This despite no conviction or even charges relating to insurrection. Suffice to say, this is going to end up in front of SCOTUS and damned soon.

    The crisis at the southern border is getting worse.

    If you extrapolate those numbers out, more than 5 million illegals will have entered the country by January 2025. The worst part is, these numbers are only going to go up.

    The 5th circuit court of appeals just issued a stay on the federal removal of concertina wire at the border in Texas. The court ruled that the government cannot “damage, destroy, or otherwise interfere” with the concertina wire fence erected in the Eagle Pass area. There is an exception (that I’m sure will be overused) for medical emergencies. Texas installed the razor wire as part of Operation Lone Star, a border security initiative, to stop the flow of illegal immigrants. 

    A Hamas leader just admitted what we all knew already. Ahmad Kahlot, senior Hamas member and director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabaliya said that Hamas uses hospitals as bases of operations.

    The confession was made while Kahalot was being interrogated by Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security and intelligence agency.

    Terrorist supporters defaced the steps to the Lincoln Memorial last night. They wrote free gaza and other graffiti in red paint. Conservators started the cleanup as soon as the damage was discovered.

    It seems I have something new to report on the Red Sea area every time I do one of these. This time it’s the fact that nearly all large container ship has rerouted away from the Bab el Mandeb and the Red Sea. So much for Prosperity Guardian. (BTW, if you want to know what’s what in international maritime trade, Sal is your one-stop shop. He has a very good YT channel and tweets about the subject regularly.)

    Strieff over at RedState wrote a good piece on the Houthis. Part of that article covers the economics of TF 153. Here’s an excerpt with the relevant info:

    The kind of a purely defensive strategy isn’t sustainable. It does not make sense to fire missiles costing up to $4 million at a drone, but the vertical launch systems (VLS) holding the missiles can’t be replenished at sea. The disruption of the West’s supply chain is not something we should tolerate. For a few dollars more, we could level everything in Yemen associated with missile attacks and piracy.

    What he said. . .

    Got a news story to share or something to say about any of the items above? Drop it in the comments below.

  • Boulder Shooter Identified

    Boulder Shooter Identified

    By now you all know about the horrific shooting that occurred at a King Sooper in Boulder. 10 people, including a police officer are dead, and several more injured.

    The prevailing media narrative is that it was due to white supremacy and lax gun laws.

    https://twitter.com/JulieDiCaro/status/1374203139927183360

    That narrative just got blown up. The Boulder PD has identified the suspected shooter. He is one Ahmad al-Issa also known as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, a foreign national.

    https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1374378598061154311?s=20

    Prior to the announcement of the suspect’s name, there were calls for stricter gun laws.

    As of this writing, the motive of al Issa is unclear. His brother described him as an anti-social paranoiac to the Daily Beast. That said, given the shooter’s name, we can’t at this point rule out some sort of radicalization or terrorism as a motive.

  • United 777 Loses Engine Over Denver

    United 777 Loses Engine Over Denver

    Yesterday, United flight 328 bound for Hawaii from Denver international had an uncontained catastrophic failure of its right engine.

    https://twitter.com/michaelagiulia/status/1363241125495136267?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1363241125495136267%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2021%2F02%2F20%2Fplane-lands-denver-engine-catches-fire-debris%2F

    The Boeing 777-200 airliner had 210 passengers and 10 crewmembers aboard at the time of the incident. The plane successfully landed back at DIA shortly after the engine failure.

    Debris from the incident was scattered over Bloomfield, a suburb of Denver. There are reports of some damage, but miraculously, no one was injured or killed.

  • SCOTUS Issues Ruling on Church Limits

    SCOTUS Issues Ruling on Church Limits

    The United States Supreme Court granted a preliminary injunction in the case of High Plains Harvest Church v. Colorado. The case is similar to the one in New York that challenged the arbitrary attendance limits imposed on churches and synagogues.

    https://twitter.com/KevinDaleyDC/status/1338868956598136833?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1338868956598136833%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2020%2F12%2F15%2Fsupreme-court-colorado-first-amendment-houses-of-worship%2F

    In addition to the injunction, which prevents the state from imposing attendance limitations, the order also remands the case back to the appeals court for reconsideration in light of Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. New York.

    The unsigned order had a dissent signed by Justice Sotomayor and joined by the two other liberals on the court. Sotomayor suggested the case was moot, as Colorado had lifted the restrictions previously.

  • Wildfires Burn Across the West Coast

    Wildfires Burn Across the West Coast

    Wildfires continue to burn across California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Montana today. Hurricane-force winds and high temperatures kicked up wildfires across parts of the Pacific Northwest over the holiday weekend, burning hundreds of thousands of acres.

    In California, helicopters were needed to rescue more than 200 people trapped by the fast moving blazes over labor day weekend. An additional 164 were choppered out of Sierra National Forest today. The smoke from the California fires could be seen as far away as Las Vegas.

    Smoke fills the Vegas sky. Photo by Jo.

    In Washington, a wind driven fire destroyed most of the town of Malden in the eastern part of the state and forced evacuations in Oregon. A fire burning near Davenport, Washington, grew to 70,000 acres by Tuesday morning and was 0% contained, according to the Washington Department of Natural Resources. Washington Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz said on Twitter that about 300,000 acres had burned so far. “As of this morning, we have 9 large fires,″ Franz tweeted on Tuesday. “We had 58 new wildfire starts in the last 24 hours.″

    In Oregon, thousands of people were without power as crews battled large fires in Clackamas County on Tuesday morning. Over 40,000 people south of Portland were without power. In Marion County, which includes the state capitol of Salem, a blaze prompted evacuation orders Tuesday in the western foothills of the Cascade Range.

    A fire near Red Feather Lakes, Colorado, more than tripled in size over the Labor Day weekend and had consumed almost 140 square miles by Monday afternoon as it moved through rugged terrain with lots of dead trees that had been killed by beetles, fire spokesperson Ronda Scholting said. The fire was only 4 percent contained. “You can’t stop it in that steep country,” she said.

    Related: 2 Million Acres Burned in California

    Montana officials hope a bout of cooler weather, with snow forecast, will help them tamp down the Bridger Foothills Fire burning in timber northeast of Bozeman. It started Friday and spread across more than 11 square miles (28 square kilometers) over the weekend amid warm and windy conditions. The BobCat Fire started last week southeast of Roundup and charred more than 46 square miles. It burned at least 10 structures and grew by several square miles Sunday.