Category: US Politics

The possession of “high capacity” magazines will be a fourth degree felony in New Jersey beginning Tuesday morning.

Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed the ban on magazines holding over 10 rounds in June, and it takes effect December 11.

The Conservative Review reports:

When the clock strikes midnight Tuesday morning, anyone in New Jersey who owns a magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition is officially in possession of illegal contraband and is deemed a fourth-degree felon. Unlike previous magazine bans, this one retroactively bans people from even owning such magazines in their homes, even though they had been purchased legally.

The ban was challenged in court after it was signed, but last week the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld the ban. Breitbart News reported that a three-judge panel from the Third Circuit voted 2 to 1 to uphold the ban.

Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, was the panel judge who voted against the ban. He argued that the ruling treats the Second Amendment as protecting second-class rights, unequal with other rights. He wrote, “The Second Amendment is an equal part of the Bill of Rights. We must treat the right to keep and bear arms like other enumerated rights, as the Supreme Court insisted in Heller. We may not water it down and balance it away based on our own sense of wise policy.”

On a practical note, “high capacity” magazines are not the key element to mass public attacks in America. Rather, the key element is time. Attackers target gun free zones and this gives them time to carry out their evil machinations at their leisure. It creates a scenario where an attacker can pause and reload as much as he likes. Breitbart News reported that the Parkland shooter paused five times to reload during his attack, but unarmed teachers and staff were powerless to intervene.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

On this week’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) advised President Donald Trump not to give in on his demand for $5 billion in border wall funding.

Graham said, “If I were the president, I would dig in and not give in on additional wall funding. I want the whole $5 billion because the caravan is a game-changer.”

He continued, “After the caravan, if you don’t see the need for additional border security, you’re just not paying much attention. So Mr. President, dig in, do not give in when it comes to the wall.”

He added, “If I were the president, I’d say, I want two years of wall funding, and I’ll give legal status to the DACA recipients. That’s a good deal for the country.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

According to a review of its expenditures, rapper Jay-Z’s college scholarship fund does not seem to be doing much good for the few students who receive its grants.

The singer’s Shawn Carter Scholarship Fund gave out what might seem like an impressive $407,250 in grants last year. However, it appears that individual students did not find the grants very helpful, according to the New York Post.

Individual students only got between $1,000 to $2,500 each, “barely enough to cover books,” the paper wrote.

The money reportedly went right to the colleges, not to the students, with $32,000 going to Virginia State University for an undisclosed number of students.

The fund, administered by the singer’s mother, Gloria Carter, took in $742,118 in 2018, most of which came from Jay-Z himself.

The charity claims it tries to help needy students, but it also charges the students $200 each to participate in the program and only 32 students signed up last year.

It also appears that large amounts of the fund’s money go to cover special events. For instance, the fund spent $44,581 to pay for a bus tour of traditionally black colleges last year. And its annual toy giveaway at Marcy Houses in Brooklyn cost $8,452.

The Shawn Carter fund was not the only spending the “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” singer put toward education. With 2018 earnings estimated at $76.5 million, Jay-Z and his pop star wife, Beyonce, dolled out ten scholarships of $100,000 each this year, the cash going for the 2019 school season.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.

California, a state with every gun control imaginable, witnessed an 18 percent rise in firearm homicides from 2014 to 2016.

This rise in firearm homicides comes despite the fact that Democrats, gun control groups, and the establishment media constantly claim that states with the strictest gun controls see lower rates of violence and death.

California has universal background checks, gun registration requirements, red flag laws (i.e., Gun Violence Restraining Orders), a ten-day waiting period for gun purchases, an “assault weapons” ban, a one-gun-per-month limit on handgun purchases, a minimum firearm purchase age of 21, a ban on campus carry, a “good cause” restriction for concealed carry permit issuance, and controls on the purchase of ammunition. The ammunition controls limit law-abiding Californians to buying ammunition from state-approved vendors–all of whom are in-state sellers–and adds a fee to any ammunition bought online, also requiring that ammunition to be shipped to a state-approved vendor for pickup.

Additionally, the state mandates gun free zones in businesses where alcohol is sold for on-site consumption. Therefore, the few concealed carry permit holders in the state must enter myriad restaurants without any means of self-defense. This provides a target-rich environment for attackers who want to be sure no one can shoot back when they strike. We last saw this on November 7, 2018, when an attacker opened fire with a handgun in the gun-free Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California.

Despite all the stringent gun controls a bill filed by Assemblyman Marc Levine (CA-D-10) admits California firearm homicides were up between from 2014 to 2016. The bill says, “Although California has the toughest gun laws in the nation, more effort is necessary to curtail gun violence. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation found that from 2014 to 2016 gun homicides increased 18 percent.” In light of this gun control failure the language of the bill goes on to suggest more gun control.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

If we are to treat campaign finance reporting violations as grave offenses, the first person in the dock ought to be Hillary Clinton — not Donald Trump.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sentencing memorandum for Michael Cohen on Friday repeated claims that Cohen violated campaign finance rules at the direction of then-candidate Donald Trump.

The media and their Greek chorus of Democrats are delighted, with incoming House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) calling the alleged crimes “impeachable offenses,” and incoming House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff speculating about jail time.

It is not clear, however, that Trump broke the law.

First of all, the payment of “hush money” — the key issue — had a personal purpose quite separate from the campaign.

And as Alan Dershowitz noted when the claims first surfaced, “if Cohen was merely acting as a lawyer for Trump and advancing the payments, with an expectation of repayment, then it would be hard to find a campaign finance crime other than failure to report by the campaign.” He added: “Failure to report all campaign contributions is fairly common in political campaigns in the United States.”

Moreover, it is a matter of public record that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) paid Fusion GPS via an intermediary, the Perkins Coie law firm, to conduct opposition research on Trump — which became the dubious Russia “dossier,” which led to the FBI investigation of Trump’s aides.

Furthermore, the Clinton campaign and the DNC falsely reported their expenditures to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as “legal services.” The amount of money was in the range of several millions of dollars — more than ten times the $280,000 that Trump is alleged to have paid to women claiming to be his mistresses.

As Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal noted in August:

The Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS to compile a dossier against Mr. Trump, a document that became the basis of the Russia narrative Mr. Mueller now investigates. But the campaign funneled the money to law firm Perkins Coie, which in turn paid Fusion. The campaign falsely described the money as payment for “legal services.” The Democratic National Committee did the same.

Prosecutors can claim all they want that they are applying the law equally, but if they only apply it to half the suspects, justice is not served. Mr. Mueller seems blind to the national need for—the basic expectation of—a thorough look into all parties.

Mueller is not the only one who is blind. The media and the Democrats are deliberately creating a double standard for one reason: to oust Trump — for a likely non-crime, unrelated to Russia “collusion.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

ICE warned New Jersey. Update to this story.
More here.

Via Washington Examiner:

Foreign nationals from 24 countries — including four people with Interpol warrants for their arrests — were among the 105 arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a five-day sweep.

The agency announced the arrests Friday in a news release.

“Our focus has been and will continue to be on arrests of illegal aliens who have been convicted of serious crimes or those who pose a threat to public safety,” said John Tsoukaris, director of the Newark field office.

The people arrested ranged in age from 18 to 65 years old. The agency said more than 80 percent had either prior convictions or pending charges for a variety of crimes, including sexual assault on a minor, child abuse, possession of narcotics, distribution of narcotics, extortion, DUI, fraud, domestic violence, theft, possession of a weapon, robbery, promoting prostitution, aggravated assault, resisting arrest, endangering the welfare of a child, credit card fraud, insurance fraud, shoplifting, and illegal re-entry.

The agency said the pre-planned sweep targeted criminal aliens, illegal re-entrants, and other immigration violators.

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