Raw Story:

Police Chief Andrew Spencer resigned this week after it was revealed that he shot and killed an innocent dog that was in a cage and meant no one any harm. To make matters even worse, he took the puppy to a firing range and killed it there because he did not want to deal with finding its home.

Spencer found the dog and managed to get it into a cage using a catcher pole. He then wrote in his report that he had planned to take the dog to a shelter where it would be “destroyed,” but then he got another call about a car accident so he decided to do it himself.

The report said that he had planned to go to “the cheapest vet to destroy the dog at the cost of the city.” However, the report continued “Due to the higher priority call and the imminent destruction of the dog, I decided it was best to destroy the dog and respond to the accident.”

After the fact, Spencer claimed that the dog was charging at people in the neighborhood. However, he said that he did not believe that the dog bit anyone, otherwise he would have had it taken to the vet and tested for rabies.

Also, at the time the dog was shot, it was in a cage and thus not a threat to anyone. If Spencer just had a little bit more patience and compassion, he would have found that the family of the lost puppy was looking all over the town for him. Owner Elizabeth Womack said that her puppy Chase was extremely peaceful and friendly animal.

Womack wrote on her Facebook page how she attempted to contact the police and was lied to on several occasions about the incident. Eventually, she was told by the police Chief that he shot and killed her dog, and that they would be free to identify him if they wanted to go dig him up.

CheaperThanDirt.com:

In October 2015, Winchester issued a recall and important safety notice for Winchester XPR rifles.

XPR rifles have the potential to fire an unintended round when the safety switch is manipulated. During continuous product testing, Winchester found that moving the safety switch on the XPR rifle “may cause movement in the trigger system that could result in unintended firing of certain XPR rifles.”

As such, Winchester is recalling all XPR rifles. Winchester is replacing certain trigger group parts in all Winchester XPR rifles free. Winchester requests all owners of XPR rifles send their rifles for retrofitting.

This is the right way to do it, the responsible and ethical way.  If you find a problem, recall it and fix it.  Unlike what Remington did with the Model 700 Walker Fire Control.

Hispanic voters vow to punish the GOP.  But, but, but, I thought they were solidly in our camp, conservative, religious and all that?  Isn’t that what we were told?

David Codrea:

No doubt the press will show up, but funny thing — there’s not a lot in the “news” announcing things at this writing.  My guess is, they don’t want it to turn out like Bloomberg’s bus tour, where they kept stops secret because they didn’t want subsidized “supporters” outnumbered. Still, look for the media to give the handful of indignant zealots who do show up inordinate exposure, and to position their camera shots to make it look like the events draw widespread public participation.

It’s because they’ve lost.  No, I’m not saying stand down.  We can never stand down.  Evil knows no end until the very end, i.e., judgment day.  I’m saying that moms have lost, but as a Leopard cannot change its spots, so too the moms cannot help but be collectivists.

LEOs and gun free zones.

In a statement Thursday, Police Chief Steve Conrad expressed surprise that some of his officers weren’t allowed inside the downtown theater.

“Given today’s climate, we would think most businesses would welcome armed and well-trained police officers, on or off-duty, to help out should there be a problem,” Conrad wrote.

Oh go cry me a river.  And what about concealed carriers?  Oh, I see.  You’re more “specialer” than we are.

From Mike Vanderboegh.  This seems to me to be very important.  I might talk to my daughter the Nurse Practitioner about this.  Read it.

After watching this, I’ve decided that The Captain’s Journal will call for a ban on guns for all one-armed men born on the third Thursday of April.  After all, you never know when they will become a terror problem.

Or not.

This is must-watch video.  Mark Steyn is at his best.

Sadly, if you read the comments at WRSA, they get random very quickly, and they go off the rails in places.  Not Islamists, but cops are our worst enemy.  We don’t want to talk about jihad, but rather, how much we hate cops.

Look folks, I’m hard on bad cops, but this kind of single-mindedness is a sign of immaturity and lack of ability to focus and a short attention span.  The subject wasn’t cops, it was Mark Steyn on the civilized world.

I’ve even seen comments at WRSA where they sided with the rioters in Ferguson because they were fighting the same fight as us.  Ridiculous.  I’m not any more colleagues, friends, or brothers with the rioters in Ferguson than I am the Islamists.  They are all my enemy.  If you’re looking for friends, court the right kind of people.  Don’t hang with the bad.

Nothing … and I repeat … nothing … can placate or mollify my loathing of Lindsey Graham of S.C., whom I loath about as much as I do State Senator Larry Martin of S.C.  But this exchange between the loathsome Lindsey Graham and the director of the FBI is priceless.

Donald Sensing, via WRSA:

Title 8, Section 1182 of the U.S. Code provides in relevant part:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Bryan Fischer adds the following very informative analysis.

The Constitution gives Congress unilateral authority over the issue of immigration and citizenship in Article I, Section 8: “The Congress shall have Power … to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” In Article I, Section 9 we find that until 1808 the individual States had authority to decide which persons were “proper to admit.” After 1808, deciding who was eligible for immigration into the United States was the exclusive province of the central government. Congress has unilateral authority to decide who it is “proper to admit” to the United States, and there are no limitations on that authority.

There is no constitutional right, of course, to immigrate to the United States. It is a privilege, not a right. And we the people have given to Congress authority to set parameters for immigration for our protection, our cultural unity, and our national security.

This is all well and good, but Bryan gets to the real meat of the issue when he addresses the Biblical data.

For those of us who are evangelicals, there is a second question, which is of greater importance than the first. We not only want to know if an immigration ban is constitutional, we want to know if it is biblical. Did God himself ever impose such an immigration ban?

The answer is yes.  With the fledgling nation on the edge of the Promised Land, God instituted a permanent ban (“forever”) on immigration into Israel from two nations, Ammon and Moab.

“No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever.” ~ Deut. 23:3 (ESV)

This was not an arbitrary ban. It was not imposed on either the nations of Edom or Egypt, as Deut. 23:7 makes clear. There were good common sense reasons for God’s ban on the Ammonites and Moabites. “They did not meet you with bread and with water on the way, when you came out of Egypt … and they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor … to curse you” (Deut. 23:4).

Ammonites and Moabites were not allowed to immigrate because of their historic animosity toward the people of God and their commitment to weaken them and defeat them. Where such conditions exist today, a similar ban on foreign immigration would have biblical precedent.

Now obviously exceptions could be made and were made on a limited basis. Ruth, for instance, was allowed to immigrate into Israel from Moab. Ruth rejected the ancient hostility of her people toward Israel and embraced its culture and its God. “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:17). In other words, she happily assimilated in every way, included in religious matters, to her newly adopted nation.

She was not only welcomed, but found a place in the line of descent that led to the birth of the Savior of the world.

The bottom line: a ban on immigration from nations which have demonstrated abiding hostility toward the United States is both constitutionally and biblically permissible.

This is effective medicine.  Usually when so-called Christians talk about immigration, they wax emotional on the need for us to care for people.  State policy and security are the last thing on their minds when they say things like that.

I often hear Leviticus 19:34 cited – “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God,” (NASB).  Folks often do this to shame Christians into accepting open borders.

But as the Biblical data above shows, shaming people isn’t on the list of seminary-approved Biblical hermeneutical techniques.  One way to tell that the emotional Christian isn’t thinking through this issue is that she latches onto the problem of the moment, rather than seeing the broader implications of her position.  For example, she may want to take in Syrian immigrants, but she doesn’t give poor Chinese equal numbers, of Kenyans, or Ethiopians (who are more likely to be Christian), or the poor in Bangladesh.

The U.S. can’t take in everyone, and the logical end of the emotional position that wants to take them in is not only the destruction of what wealth remains within family structure in America, it is the destruction of the social, cultural and religious heritage of the country.  There isn’t enough wealth to go around – there isn’t even enough wealth to pay our own bills.  The root problem here is that the Church has no business declaring state policy concerning immigration.  The province of the church is the administration of grace, while the province of the state is the administration of justice.  Confusing the two means the state is involved in redistribution of wealth, and the Church is trying to influence policy concerning national security.

Each of these institutions should mind their own business, and in the case of the state, that means the country’s policy has no business considering graciousness, kindness or love when it comes to immigration.  As Clint Eastwood said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Rolling Stone:

In a major defeat for the National Rifle Association, the Supreme Court decided this week not to take up a challenge to one of the toughest gun-control statutes in America, a law on the books in Highland Park, Illinois.

Politico:

I am a lifelong Democrat. I proudly boast an “F” rating from the NRA. And, yet during my 2014 gubernatorial campaign in Texas, I supported the open carry of handguns in my state.

It is a position that haunts me.

Every few months, on the heels of a shooting that devastates a different corner of America, we find ourselves arriving at exactly the same place: Republicans offer their prayers; some offer up the idea of focusing our attention on mental health; almost none of them mention guns. Democrats talk background checks, magazine limits, closing the gun-show loophole and, ultimately, get exasperated. In the wake of the San Bernardino and Planned Parenthood shootings, the conversations we’re having now are almost exactly the same. Meaningful gun reform still seems as distant as it did when the Manchin-Toomey bill, which would have required background checks on all commercial gun sales, failed in 2013, mere months after 20 children and six adults were killed in a mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

As baffling as this would appear to an outside observer, I know why we keep ending up here. I know why because, even with my history of supporting sensible gun laws, I was cowed by the political realities of my state. Me, a Democrat who wasn’t afraid of making waves when it came to strapping on a pair of pink sneakers as a state senator and filibustering an anti-abortion bill for 13 hours. I might be doggedly progressive most of the time, but when it came to staking out my position on the open carry of handguns in a red state, none of that mattered.

[ … ]

I wanted the campaign conversation to be about education funding, equal pay for women and access to health care—not guns. But this was Texas. Fifty-eight percent of voters in the state think gun restrictions should be either loosened or left alone.

Against that backdrop, I chose to do something that was cleverer than it was wise. I decided to take a position in favor of open carry

Poor, poor Wendy.  But this smacks of repentance of the sin of freedom and liberty, something the progressives will never allow.  So a public explanation, turning, and confession is needed if her sins are to be washed away.  But the sin, notice well, isn’t some untoward dalliance, but rather the sin of caring too much.  If she is to be elected, says she, then the conversation must turn about the issues she can affect.

Thus, she compromised, but the compromise was over something that marks the difference between slave and free men, and the slaves will never allow her to feign being free.  This issue is too important.  It would have been better for her to have put this issue more bluntly.  Her statement should have read something like, “I know I supported open carry, but I lied about that and had I been elected I would vetoed every attempt to pass such legislation.”

Following this more Alinsky-like strategy would have made her a hero.  Now she’s just a goat.  Finally, notice what haunts her.  It isn’t letting her husband fund her way through law school and then divorcing him, or preventing further restrictions on abortion in Texas.  No, the screams of the babies she helped to murder don’t haunt her dreams.  It’s failure to stand firm on gun control.

Don’t worry, Wendy.  We all knew you were lying when you supported open carry, and this confession doesn’t make us think any differently about you.  You were a whore then and you’re still a whore today.

David Codrea:

Get this, you monstrous foreign collectivist, who came to this country to escape Nazi horrors and enjoy the Blessings of Liberty: How twisted and evil that you now work to undermine the very reasons why the Holocaust your family fled from will never happen here, at least without those issuing and carrying out the orders hanging from lamp posts. Because WE WILL NOT DISARM.

No, we won’t.  And that may mean war in numerous forms, some mundane, some terrible.  But war it will be if the rulers insist.

David Codrea:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” Ephesians tells us. That we do, but it manifests itself in the physical world, and that’s where down payments on the final price are made.

We are facing dark days. We cannot lose courage and we cannot lose faith. And we cannot know what price will be required from each of us.

We are to move forward with courage.

From Uncle, Amitai Etzioni a the Huffington post says we need domestic disarmament.  Uncle responds:

I don’t think progressives understand how that will play out. Those sitting on the sidelines cheering on the disarmament effort are as much fair game as those doing the disarming.

That’s strong tea from Uncle.  And a sign of the times.