Sidebar: Sunday School 5/29/22: Extra Credit

In this week's Sunday School Extra Credit lesson, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) was in the guest chair, chatting with Dana Bash in CNN's State of the Union classroom.

I want to focus on a specific part of his conversation with Bash; here's what he said when she first broached the subject of 'red flag' laws, which allow schools, family members, and others to contact law enforcement if they perceive someone to be a threat to themselves or others, and to have guns removed if a threat is confirmed.

You would think, from the trolls on the Internet, that I'm the number one advocate for red flag laws. That's a bit of a myth perpetuated by my own side. Now, truthfully, I think there's a lot of problems with red flag laws, especially at a national level.

Crenshaw would vote against a national 'red flag' law, and on a similar law for his own state, the site of multiple mass shootings. 

What's up with his comment about Internet trolls? What would make them think he favors red flag laws? If I had to hazard a guess, it'd be because they found the found the tweets he sent in 2019, after the mass shooting in Dayton, OH, which was just a day after the mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart. Take a look.

Darn those trolls for thinking he supports these laws, designed to stop potential bad guys from, you know, becoming actual bad guys who slaughter adults and children in schools, churches, and Walmart - in his own state, and others.

And what's that TAPS Act he talked about? According to the bill, it would task Homeland Security to put a task force together; the group would

"provide recommendations to the appropriate committees of Congress...on the development and implementation of a national strategy for preventing targeted violence through behavioral threat assessment and management... "

The bill defines "behavioral threat assessment and management,"  Too. (Note: I'll use BTAM, to make it easier.). BTAM is a

systematic and evidence-based process of (A) identifying individuals who are exhibiting patterns of concerning behavior that indicate an interest, motive, intention, or capability of carrying out an act of violence; (B) investigating and gathering information from multiple sources to assess whether an individual described in subparagraph (A) poses a threat, based on articulable facts: and (C) the subsequent management of such a threat, if necessary.

And who should be involved in developing that process? A group of experts with BTAM experience from non-governmental organizations, local and state BTAM units, local or state prosecutors, and educational institutions. 

In addition, experts from the following federal agencies would also participate: Secret Service, FBI, US Marshals Service, NCIS, Capitol Police, and the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Justice, State, and Veterans Affairs. That's a strong group of experts - I mean, they've got the gang from NCIS and Criminal Minds in there, for Pete's sake. 

And, from the text of the bill, the 'targeted violence' that they want to prevent is defined as

any incident of predatory violence with respect to which an identifiable individual or group focuses an attack on particular target. 

It's in our national security interest to develop best practices and guidelines on how to deal with targeted violence. 

Sounds pretty good, right? And, it also sounds like these are the kinds of things folks who administer red flag laws would need to know, to help them do their jobs. But, not so fast. Here's the Heritage Foundation's take on things; and we know that what Heritage says is what the Rs very often go with.

When law enforcement officers and school officials are properly able to distinguish true threats from nonthreats, they are less likely to pursue inappropriate interventions that wrongly infringe on the rights of people who aren’t dangerous. 

And, Heritage also makes clear this is not creating a red flag law, and of course, they don't like those. 

The TAPS Act does not authorize or fund these types of laws at any level of government. The legislation would, however, ensure that—regardless of whatever laws already exist at a state or local level—law enforcement officers and educators can make better decisions about potential threats to public safety. 

That’s the kind of public safety bill that America actually needs in the wake of tragedies—not extreme gun control measures that largely punish law-abiding, non-dangerous citizens, but training that empowers us to identify and stop specific threats before they turn tragic.

It would seem, according to Crenshaw and the Heritage folks, that the preferred answer is to give law enforcement the training they need to do their job, but not the actual laws that allow them to do it.  

And he thinks the "Internet trolls" are nuts? 

TGIF 4/3/20

A little over a year ago, I joined my husband in retirement.

Before  that, I worked at home for several months, and so my husband and I have had a lot of time to get acclimated to this #AloneTogether stuff that many of my friends, and possibly many of yours, are now being forced to get used to -- and I'm glad that we didn't have to learn how to do this under the pressure of a pandemic, I've got to tell you. I hope you and yours are doing well, and hanging in.

Anyway...What a week, right?

More states have moved to mandatory statewide social distancing, but there are still eleven states where no such requirements are in place, or where only certain regions of the state is under some kind of requirement. Which is confusing to the experts on the White House Task Force, for sure, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who thinks we should be under a national order.

The tension between federally mandated versus states' rights to do what they want is something I don't want to get into, but if you look at what's going on in this country, I just don't understand why we're not doing that — we really should be.

Now, about the argument about whether the feds or the states should be making the decisions? I stumbled upon this commentary by Stephen Moore, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and now of the Heritage Foundation. Like former House Speaker Paul Ryan, he's an Ayn Rand devotee. He notes in his commentary that, in many surveys, Rand's Atlas Shrugged "rates as the second most influential book of all time, behind the Bible." I'm not well versed enough on either book to comment, but anyway -- here's what he has to say about all of this.

We are living through the Ayn Rand dystopia right now. We have given police-state powers to the government to shut down "nonessential businesses" and tell the people whether they can play golf or go for a hike. Some of these measures may make sense based on public health, but at what point are we degrading the rights of individuals to choose risks for themselves? 

I'd say we're at the point when allowing people their selfish rights can unnecessarily endanger the rest of us, but maybe that's just me. Like I said, I'm not big on the Bible, but I know about that Golden Rule thing, and since I wouldn't ignorantly infect anyone else with the coronavirus, I don't think anyone should be selfishly giving it to me.

Meanwhile, speaking of Dr. Fauci, he's being memorialized with a bobblehead, and at the same time he's getting a security detail, due to threats from, well, from people I don't even know how to describe. The bobblehead, though? For every doll sold, $5 of the purchase price will be donated to the American Hospital Association for their efforts to obtain PPE for healthcare workers.

The pandemic is making a mess of our election processes; 15 states have postponed or changed how they're holding primaries. Not only that, but the DNC has pushed out their convention from mid-July to mid-August. The RNC is still planning on holding theirs as originally scheduled, in late August, although I supposed both of the events are still subject to change. And of course, it makes one wonder whether these are even necessary anyway?

On the Dem side, there's no official indication yet on whether That Guy From Vermont will step aside and endorse Papa Joe Biden, but there is indication that he still gets grumpy whenever people ask him about it. When Whoopi Goldberg demanded to know what his path to victory was, "because this feels a little like it did when you didn't come out when Hillary Clinton was clearly the person folks were going for," he 'sniped'

People have a right, last I heard, people in democracy have the right to vote for the agenda that they think can work for America, especially in this very, very difficult moment. We are assessing our campaign, as a matter of fact, where we want to go forward, but people in a democracy do have a right to vote. 

He also pointed out, or snapped, the article linked above says,

I'm sitting in my home right now. I'm not holding a rally in Wisconsin because of the nature of campaigns right now. 

And speaking of Wisconsin, that's the only state still holding a primary next Tuesday, out of the eleven that were scheduled. A federal judge has declined to delay the primary, but he's not really happy about it, it seems. US District Judge William Conley made clear that he disagreed with the state's decision to go forward with the election, but he explained that he was constrained to consider only the constitutional rights of voters - not public health." In his decision, he noted

Without doubt, the April 7 election day will create unprecedented burdens not just for aspiring voters, but also for poll workers, clerks and indeed the state. As much as the court would prefer that the Wisconsin Legislature and Governor consider the public health ahead of any political considerations, that does not appear in the cards. Nor is it appropriate for a federal district court to act as the state's chief health official by taking that step for them. 

On, Wisconsin, or something.

Back to the presidential race, I will echo the thoughts of many that Papa Joe is in a horrible position here. First of all, he's not good sitting in his basement trying to connect - he's old school, and does better in person. Second of all, he's not in office now, and so can't point to all of the things he's doing to make a difference, like TGFV can do. And third, and maybe most importantly, he's stuck in Delaware while the president is babbling on television for as long he wants, every day. Every. Single. Day.

TGIF, everyone. Be safe.

Quick Takes (v21): Now is Not the Time

Quick Takes

I opted not to attend Sunday School today, but I did want to check in with a quick take on timing.

As in, how one defines a good time for something, vs. a bad time for something, vs. the possibility that there will NEVER be a good time for something. Ready?

I'm not sure anyone is making a direct connection between climate change and hurricanes, but there may be some correlation, some of the science suggests: water temperature. The warmer the water, we're told, the stronger the hurricane.

And there seems to be at least some agreement that the waters in the gulf and the Atlantic are warming, whether it's a cyclical thing, or the result of man-influenced climate change. But - we're not allowed to talk about that: it's one of those conversations.  

You know - the kind we're not supposed to have right now. Because the Heritage Foundation told us it would only make things worse.

Here's why, according to a study referenced in the link above:

The bottom line in this analysis is that both observations of the past decades and models looking forward to the future do not suggest that one can explain the heavy rains of Harvey by global warming, and folks that are suggesting it are poorly informing the public and decision makers.

So: now, as we are trying to deal with the aftermath of two massive hurricanes, with potential rebuilding costs of $180B (Texas) and perhaps $200B (Florida), not counting the rest of Harvey and the damage to other US territories in the Caribbean, we shouldn't be gumming up the works, the conservatives tell us.

Further, these policies (addressing climate change - ed.) will destroy economic wealth, meaning fewer resources would be available to strengthen infrastructure to contain the future effects of natural disasters...

But, while this is not the time to talk about climate change, it is the time to talk about economic wealth.  Because the president said so, at his Camp David Cabinet meeting on September 9th (emphasis added):

To create prosperity at home we'll be discussing our plan for dramatic tax cuts and tax reform. And I think now with what's happened with the hurricane I'm going to ask for their speed up. I wanted to speed up anyway but now we need it even more so. So we need to simplify the tax code, reduce taxes very substantially on the middle class and make our business tax more globally competitive. We're the highest anywhere in the world right now...

So, to recap: it's never a good time to talk about climate change and man's possible impact on it, certainly not when we're dealing in the moment with two catastrophic hurricanes, because talking about "climate change" puts wealth at risk and without wealth we can't recover from disasters which might be influenced by man's impact on the climate.

But, it's always a good time to talk about reducing taxes on human people, and especially on bricks and mortar people, because that helps take our minds off two catastrophic hurricanes that are particularly devastating to those who already have so little.

Got it?