The Supreme Court granted review on a 2nd Amendment case this week. This is the first time since 2009 that it has done so, and many are speculating that this may be a test to see how the Supreme Court reacts which could lead to more 2nd Amendment cases.

From National Review's David French:

Under this law, if you want to transport your gun to a shooting competition outside the city, you can’t. If you’re fortunate enough to own a second home, you can’t even take your own weapon to your own home. You can’t take it to any other shooting range. If you leave your house for an extended period, your gun has to stay in your vacant home. If you’re going to another location — where you have the right to possess or even carry the gun — the weapon can’t travel with you.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/the-supreme-court-has-taken-a-strange-gun-rights-case/

This seems like it should be a fairly simple case. The idea that you can't transport a weapon that you own to anywhere other than a designated place by government is ridiculous.

Article from Mother Jones on so-called "Democratic Socialism":

But I do have one question left: plenty of other rich countries have tried this before, and eventually they’ve all given up because it doesn’t work as well as social democracy or some other form of mixed capitalism. So why will things be different this time?

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/08/i-still-have-one-question-about-democratic-socialism/

Mother Jones is clearly a very leftist outlet, which is fine because they don't hide it. I'm glad the author of this article recognizes and calls out that "Democratic Socialism" is really just socialism. I'm even more glad that he asks why socialism would be better than some sort of system with mixed capitalism.

Once again we come back to the most basic question of, "who's going to pay for all these social benefits"? You can tax the rich all you want, but eventually there's nothing left to tax. This is why Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio can't answer these questions, because they don't have a sufficient answer. Simply saying "make the rich pay their fair share" isn't enough anymore, because the next logical question becomes, what is that fair share and who decides what it is?

Justice Kennedy has informed the president that he will retire, effective July 31, 2018.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy will retire from the highest U.S. court, giving President Donald Trump another chance to fundamentally reshape the top of the judiciary.

In a statement, the Supreme Court said the 80-year-old Kennedy will step down effective July 31. The judge called it "the greatest honor and privilege to serve our nation in the federal judiciary for 43 years, 30 of those years in the Supreme Court." Kennedy wants to spend more time with his family, even though they were content with him staying on the court.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/27/anthony-kennedy-retiring-from-supreme-court.html

I hope Trump nominates someone in the mold of Scalia. If he does, and when this person is confirmed, it was shift the Supreme Court for the next generation. The Democrats are about to go into panic mode. Once Trump nominates someone it will be up to McConnell to usher him/her through the Senate and to the confirmation vote. This will likely be a bitter process, especially on the part of the Democrats.

Thanks to Justice Kennedy for his years of service and I wish him well in retirement with his family.

I don't always agree with George Will or Mitch McConnell but I think Will raises some interesting points in this article. McConnell, despite his flaws, has been able to get a lot of judicial nominations confirmed, including taking a huge gamble on blocking Merrick Garland's nomination and subsequently getting Neil Gorsuch confirmed to the Supreme Court.

The largest tax reduction in 31 years has contributed to the best economy in 18 years. Defense spending is up, many Dodd-Frank banking rules and the Obamacare individual mandate have been repealed. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, blocked for 38 years, has been approved, as has a reconfigured National Labor Relations Board, a source of much Obama-administration mischief. The Congressional Review Act, under which Congress can disapprove many regulations issued by federal agencies, has been used 19 times since it was enacted in 1996 — 18 of them in this Congress.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/mitch-mcconnell-wins-long-game-for-conservatives/

The FCC has repealed Net Neutrality in a 3-2 vote today. From Ben Shapiro at The Daily Wire:

The level of panic set off by the end of net neutrality is utterly out of proportion to the actual effect that end is likely to have. The basic debate over net neutrality is actually a reasonable one: is the best way to ensure a better internet for consumers to ban internet service providers (ISPs) from charging certain content providers more for their use of bandwidth than others, or is it to free ISPs to charge what they want, thereby incentivizing ISPs to compete with one another to offer different services at different prices?

https://www.dailywire.com/news/24691/breaking-net-neutrality-repealed-left-loses-its-ben-shapiro

I'm surprised nobody has posted anything about this yet. Yesterday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Trump was going to rescind DACA after 6 months. Trump is (rightfully) leaving it up to Congress to deal with but of course everyone is having a melt down over this and calling it "cruel" and any other thing they can think of. Here's a few points by Ben Shapiro:

The administration will stop consideration of new applications for legal status beginning today;

Those whose current permits expire between now and March 5, 2018 can apply for a new two-year permit. They must do so before October 5;

Some so-called DREAMers — people under the age of 16 and below the age of 31 brought into the country by parents before 2012 — will be granted new legal status. Others won’t.

Even after March 5 — the deadline for enforcement of immigration law, according to the Trump administration — the Trump White House says it won’t start deporting DREAMers in serious numbers, but will continue to follow the Obama administration’s focus on “criminals.”

http://www.dailywire.com/news/20625/trump-unveils-strategy-killing-obamas-executive-ben-shapiro

The article is worth the read.

The Washington State Attorney General and the New York Attorney General have announced plans to file a federal lawsuit to prevent Trump from doing this. This is silly because it's an executive order which, while having the full effect of a law, is in fact not a law and can be rescinded, modified, or changed by the next, or any, president. I wouldn't be surprised if the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals somehow finds a "legal justification" to halt Trump from rescinding this.

President Trump sent his first full budget proposal to Congress this week. It's got some interesting bits in there and some I don't agree with. Notable is the nearly 30% decrease in the Department of State budget which I disagree with, an approximately 10% increase in the Defense budget and lots of cuts to the arts, which I'm fine with. I would actually like to see bigger cuts to the Department of Education.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/23/politics/trump-budget-cuts-programs/

All in all it's actually a pretty good budget proposal though it's likely not going far in either chamber of Congress. This is the time for Republicans to step up and do what they were elected to do.

Here is a link to the official White House budget proposal document:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/omb/budget/fy2018/budget.pdf

The Republicans are going to try to pass this bill in the House, again, today. They're saying they have the votes this time. Even if they do, it'll be a much tougher fight in the Senate. I hope the entire thing fails because it's not an Obamacare "repeal and replace" bill at all.

WASHINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives was set on Thursday for a cliffhanger vote to repeal Obamacare, as Republican leaders worked to deliver President Donald Trump a win for one of his top legislative priorities.

House Republican leaders have expressed confidence the bill would pass and several party moderates who previously objected to it got behind it on Wednesday, giving the effort new momentum.

http://news.trust.org/item/20170504100736-68gw1

If this bill is signed into law, the Republicans will not care about repealing Obamacare at all. Once Obamacare was injected into the federal government and onto the lives of Americans, it was likely to remain permanently, even if its form was altered. The Republicans are obviously just fine with federal healthcare so long as they are the ones who pass it, not Democrats.