Bob Hugin is right: Harboring illegal aliens is illegal

How can some people argue that more gun laws will make us safer, when the laws that we have aren't being obeyed?  It's like printing more money during a period of hyperinflation:  It turns legal tender into toilet paper. 

And that's what happens when state and local governments pick and choose which national laws they will obey and which they'll ignore.  They turn the whole concept of having laws into a joke and turn the statute book into a toilet roll.

If you are a radical libertarian, maybe that is a good thing.  Anarchy in the U.S.A.!

But for most of us -- those who depend on the law for clean water, unadulterated food, breathable air, automobiles that don't explode on the road, buildings to work in that don't fall down, streets that are free from the fear of assault, homes to sleep safely in at night -- for those who depend on rules that society lives by, a world without rules is a scary place, a new barbarism.

It takes humility to live in a democracy.

You make your arguments.  Sometimes you win.  Other times you lose.  There is always tomorrow. 

And then you have groups like Make the Road Action (what kind of name is that?) and people like Sara Cullinane.  They can't accept ever being on the losing side.  If they lose the debate and something becomes law that they don't like, they feel it is their right to ignore it.  It's kind of like those arguments offered by the Sovereign Citizen movement. 

The trouble is that when they win the argument and something becomes law that they do like, other people will follow what they did and ignore it.  And soon, there will be no laws that everyone agrees to follow and so, no law.

Sara Cullinane and her group issued an attack on U.S. Senate candidate Bob Hugin today for saying on the Rich Zeoli radio program that the "idea of sanctuary cities is just illegal."  Yes, the idea of state and local governments defying national law was kind of settled during the 1860's -- and later, during the 1960's.

Now "states' rights" groups like Make the Road Action and "states' rights" folks like Sara Cullinane can and should work to deconstruct the federal government's hegemony over many aspects of state and local jurisdiction.  But this must be done legally, through the painstaking process of democracy, not by simply picking and choosing the laws you will ignore and those you will obey.

Sara Cullinane made the mind-numbingly silly argument that local government cooperation with regards to people here illegally -- some who are victims of human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and slavery -- was akin to making them "foot soldiers for ICE."  That is like saying that local government cooperation with regards to anti-terrorism -- "see-something, say-something" -- is akin to making them "foot soldiers for Homeland Security."

Sara, don't be stupid.  Cut the rhetoric, grow up, and get real.  A great many illegal immigrants are victims of coercion, exploitation, and trafficking.

Human Trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, second to drug dealing and tied with arms dealing.  Recently, the FBI announced that it had uncovered and arrested 42 child sex traffickers in New Jersey.  The Star-Ledger reported that the 42 were arrested on charges that included sex trafficking, child exploitation and prostitution.  A total of 84 children were rescued during the operation.  Human Trafficking is modern day slavery and it is happening while you write your next press release.

Child trafficking is a $32 billion-a-year industry and is on the rise in all 50 states, according to the U.S. government.  4.5 million of trafficked persons have been sexually exploited and nearly 300,000 Americans under 18 have been lured into the commercial sex trade.  The National Human Trafficking Hotline reported that in 2016, human trafficking in the United States increased by 35.7% -- in one year! 

If you really want to help people, get on the right side.  Stop shilling for the human traffickers and work with law enforcement.  And don't attack a guy like Bob Hugin for telling the very obvious truth.

Is it one law for Bob Menendez, another for everyone else?

More evidence that we live in an oligarchy and that the political class gets privileges that the rest of us do not.  Take gun laws, for instance.

If an average person who resides in or visits New Jersey takes "possession" of a rifle, he or she is breaking the law and the police wouldn't hesitate to make an arrest.  Here are those laws:

2C:39-5 Unlawful possession of weapons.

c.Rifles and shotguns. (1) Any person who knowingly has in his possession any rifle or shotgun without having first obtained a firearms purchaser identification card in accordance with the provisions of N.J.S.2C:58-3, is guilty of a crime of the third degree.

2C:58-3  Purchase of firearms. 
b.Firearms purchaser identification card.  No person shall sell, give, transfer, assign or otherwise dispose of nor receive, purchase or otherwise acquire an antique cannon or a rifle or shotgun, other than an antique rifle or shotgun, unless the purchaser, assignee, donee, receiver or holder is licensed as a dealer under this chapter or possesses a valid firearms purchaser identification card, and first exhibits said card to the seller, donor, transferor or assignor, and unless the purchaser, assignee, donee, receiver or holder signs a written certification, on a form prescribed by the superintendent, which shall indicate that he presently complies with the requirements of subsection c. of this section and shall contain his name, address and firearms purchaser identification card number or dealer's registration number.  The said certification shall be retained by the seller, as provided in paragraph (4) of subsection a. of N.J.S.2C:58-2, or, in the case of a person who is not a dealer, it may be filed with the chief of police of the municipality in which he resides or with the superintendent.

The law is very clear, and average folks have been arrested for having only the briefest possession of a rifle.  So when U.S. Senator Bob Menendez staged a press conference in order to do a public relations video about having even tougher gun laws, he should have left the rifle on the table.  But instead, he picked it up to use it as a prop.  Whoops... looks like he broke the law.

There is clear case law on this...

https://casetext.com/case/crossroads-gun-shop-v-edwards

Plaintiff Raymond Schneider is a licensed gun retailer doing business as "Crossroads Gun Shop" in Pennsauken, New Jersey. On or about November 1, 1985 Schneider began the operation of a pistol target range immediately adjacent to his gun shop. For a fee, plaintiff would allow certain individuals to rent pistols from him and fire them on the range, regardless of whether these customers had valid firearm purchaser permits under N.J.S.A. 2C:58-3a. Subsequently, state police officers visited the premises and advised Schneider that this practice was illegal and should terminate. In response, plaintiff has filed this declaratory judgment action for a construction of the statute and the Attorney General has now made a motion for summary judgment which is presently before the court.

But check this out.  When Congressional candidate Steve Lonegan attempted to press the matter and file a criminal complaint with police, the local police department was too afraid to accept it.  Do they know better than to piss off an oligarch?

https://www.facebook.com/follow.lonegan/videos/999605093531711/?notif_id=1523571445413865&notif_t=live_video

Stay tuned...

The dishonesty of Democrat Lacey "Kooky" Rzeszowski

The first thing that strikes you about Lacey Rzeszowski is her kind of attractively kooky intensity.  But then all that saccharine language hits you square in the brain and you remember where it was that you heard this false earnestness before -- it was on television, in those badly acted 1980's soap operas. 

And then there's the lies she tells.

Hold on to your shorts, because here comes a big one...

"Statistics tell us that the states with the weakest gun laws are the ones whose citizens suffer the most from gun violence."  Well, not really.

Here's a tip for Kooky Rzeszowski -- never claim "sanity" when inverting statistics.  Dyslexia maybe, sanity no.

The District of Columbia has the toughest anti-gun laws in America... and the highest murder rate. 

States with pro-Second Amendment gun laws like New Hampshire, Wyoming, West Virginia, and Colorado all have vastly lower murder rates than New Jersey.

There are cultural and socio-economic factors that are far more accurate in predicting the level of gun violence than is the presence of so-called "anti-gun" legislation.  If merely passing laws mattered all that much, then illegal drugs would have been unavailable the whole time Kooky Rzeszowski was growing up and going to college -- as they would be today.  And yet, somehow we suspect that the wealthy enclave in which she resides is not entirely free from the sale of illegal drugs.  Even if Kooky scrapped the Constitution and repealed the Bill of Rights, why would she believe mere laws would make guns any more difficult to buy than narcotics?

What new laws do is send men with guns into new areas of "enforcement."  If Kooky really believes that "Black Lives Matter" or indeed, that any lives matter, she should think long and hard before criminalizing something else.

In his famous article on the subject, conservative columnist George Will argued that "overcriminalization" was responsible for the death of Eric Garner, a sidewalk merchant who was killed in a confrontation with police trying to crack down on sales tax scofflaws.  Will raised the question of how many new laws are created by state legislatures and by Congress in the rush to be seen to be "doing something." 

In other words -- it is not the police who are the problem, it is the politicians who send them.  The cops only go where they are ordered to go.  It's the damnable politicians who give the orders.  And Kooky wants to give more orders, not less.

Will's brilliant column is a must read for folks like Kooky Rzeszowski -- who jump in with a solution even before the reason has yet to be determined.  Legislators preparing to propose their next round of laws that will end up being enforced by men with guns should think before they legislate.  An excerpt from Will's column is printed below:

America might at long last be ready to stare into the abyss of its criminal-justice system.

By history’s frequently brutal dialectic, the good that we call progress often comes spasmodically, in lurches propelled by tragedies caused by callousness, folly, or ignorance. With the grand jury’s as yet inexplicable and probably inexcusable refusal to find criminal culpability in Eric Garner’s death on a Staten Island sidewalk, the nation might have experienced sufficient affronts to its sense of decency. It might at long last be ready to stare into the abyss of its criminal-justice system.

It will stare back, balefully. Furthermore, the radiating ripples from the nation’s overdue reconsideration of present practices may reach beyond matters of crime and punishment, to basic truths about governance.

Garner died at the dangerous intersection of something wise, known as “broken windows” policing, and something worse than foolish: decades of overcriminalization. The policing applies the wisdom that when signs of disorder, such as broken windows, proliferate and persist, there is a general diminution of restraint and good comportment. So, because minor infractions are, cumulatively, not minor, police should not be lackadaisical about offenses such as jumping over subway turnstiles.

Overcriminalization has become a national plague. And when more and more behaviors are criminalized, there are more and more occasions for police, who embody the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence, and who fully participate in humanity’s flaws, to make mistakes.

Harvey Silverglate, a civil-liberties attorney, titled his 2009 book Three Felonies a Day to indicate how easily we can fall afoul of America’s metastasizing body of criminal laws. Professor Douglas Husak of Rutgers University says that approximately 70 percent of American adults have, usually unwittingly, committed a crime for which they could be imprisoned. In his 2008 book, Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law, Husak says that more than half of the 3,000 federal crimes — itself a dismaying number — are found not in the Federal Criminal Code but in numerous other statutes. And, by one estimate, at least 300,000 federal regulations can be enforced by agencies wielding criminal punishments. Citing Husak, Professor Stephen L. Carter of the Yale Law School, like a hammer driving a nail head flush to a board, forcefully underscores the moral of this story:

Society needs laws; therefore it needs law enforcement. But “overcriminalization matters” because “making an offense criminal also means that the police will go armed to enforce it.” The job of the police “is to carry out the legislative will.” But today’s political system takes “bizarre delight in creating new crimes” for enforcement. And “every act of enforcement includes the possibility of violence.”

Carter continues:

It’s unlikely that the New York Legislature, in creating the crime of selling untaxed cigarettes, imagined that anyone would die for violating it. But a wise legislator would give the matter some thought before creating a crime. Officials who fail to take into account the obvious fact that the laws they’re so eager to pass will be enforced at the point of a gun cannot fairly be described as public servants.

Garner lived in part by illegally selling single cigarettes untaxed by New York jurisdictions. He lived in a progressive state and city that, being ravenous for revenues and determined to save smokers from themselves, have raised to $5.85 the combined taxes on a pack of cigarettes. To the surprise of no sentient being, this has created a black market in cigarettes that are bought in states that tax them much less. Garner died in a state that has a Cigarette Strike Force.

To continue reading... http://www.nationalreview.com/article/394392/plague-overcriminalization-george-will

George Will is a Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist at The Washington Post.  The above column was published on December 10, 2014.