Richard Mack first came to national attention when, as sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, he successfully brought the lawsuit Mack v. United States (re-named Printz v. United States, when Mack\u2019s suit was joined with that of Sheriff Jay Printz of Ravalli County, Montana), arguing Congress had no legitimate power to order local law enforcement officials to conduct background checks under the 1993 Brady Bill, or \u201cHandgun Violence Prevention Act.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mack and Printz won a significant Supreme Court victory for states\u2019 right and limits on federal power, though many authorities now argue the decision had little practical effect, since most police agencies seem pleased as punch to earn a profit charging law-abiding citizens to submit to fingerprinting and other indignities in order to be licensed to exercise what was previously considered their \u201cright\u201d to keep and bear arms.<\/p>\n
(Effect in \u201cpreventing handgun violence\u201d? Since criminals seem little deterred from carrying without permits, while the hassles and expense of complying with the law do presumably disarm at least some crime victims who might otherwise carry, the law has accomplished the opposite of its stated purpose, of course.)<\/p>\n
Sheriff Mack, a Utah native who\u2019s now running for Congress in Texas (21st District, against Lamar Smith, who the sheriff describes as a \u201cRepublican in Name Only\u201d), also serves on the board of Oath Keepers, an outfit supporting government officers who vow to keep their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution, even when ordered to do otherwise. (God bless \u2019em.)<\/p>\n
A former undercover narc, he\u2019s authored books and does public speaking on gun rights, states\u2019 rights, and \u201cthe farce otherwise known as the drug war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Best of all, I\u2019ve never known Richie Mack to put on any airs.<\/p>\n
Mack is one of the organizers of an all-day event — not open to the public — on the proper role of county sheriffs under America\u2019s scheme of \u201cdual sovereignty,\u201d to be held for county sheriffs and other top law enforcement officers in Las Vegas Monday. Among the presenters Monday will be former IRS special agent Joe Banister, who was told by the IRS to pack his things and get out when he asked why he and his cohorts weren\u2019t regularly reading their Miranda rights to taxpayers before asking them to provide information which could be used against them in court (along with some even more inconvenient questions about who precisely owes the personal income tax, given that many of the statutes used in IRS enforcement refer specifically and only to federal employees.)<\/p>\n
Former Libertarian presidential candidate and constitutional expert Michael Badnarik is also expected.<\/p>\n
But while Monday\u2019s event is law-enforcement-only, the group has scheduled an open-to-the-public event from 6 to 10 p.m. on \u201cthe proper role of the county sheriff\u201d at the Tuscany Hotel & Casino, 255 E. Flamingo, (Las Vegas) 893-8933.<\/p>\n
Presenters at the Tuesday evening public shindig will include Sheriff Mack himself, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America (who promises to address gun-running crimes committed by the Obama Justice Department under the rubric of \u201cFast and Furious\u201d), and sheriffs Joe Arpaio of Phoenix and Bradley D. Rogers of Elkhart county, Indiana.<\/p>\n
Libertarian historian and economist Thomas Woods, author of the 2009 book \u201cMeltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse,\u201d and the more recent \u201cRollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse\u201d (now there\u2019s an optimist) is scheduled to speak on state supremacy and nullification at a closed, Monday banquet. It appears neither Mr. Woods nor Mr. Banister will be present Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n
Pre-register for Tuesday evening at $10 at www.cspoa.org, or pay $15 at the door; for more information contact Sam Bushman at libertyroundtable@gfmail.com or 801-756-9133.<\/p>\n
# # #<\/p>\n
Behind all the smoke screens about whether the Keystone XL pipeline jobs now blocked again by Barack Obama would be \u201ctemporary\u201d or \u201cpermanent\u201d (It seems to me the Obama administration got all excited about borrowing and taxing to fund \u201chome weatherization\u201d jobs – which would be far from \u201cpermanent\u201d even if they ever actually existed), let us lock eyes with the gorilla in the room: If they\u2019re \u201cfocusing like a laser\u201d on jobs, it appears to be the kind of laser that vaporizes whatever you point it at.<\/p>\n
Barack Obama and the far-left multicultural dwarves with whom he has stacked his cabinet embrace the nihilist mythology and\/or aim to buy the votes of \u201cgreen\u201d lunatics who believe the shale fracture technology used to extract Canadian \u201ctar-sand\u201d oil will produce dreaded \u201cgreenhouse gases\u201d (primarily carbon dioxide, necessary to life on earth) that will fry the planet, despite the facts that a) The globe has not substantially warmed since 1997; and b) mankind\u2019s contribution to global warming is so minimal that nothing short of the eradication of our species is likely to affect global temperatures by as much as a single degree – even if the Indians and Chinese were on board with this \u201clet-them-shiver-in-the-dark\u201d lunacy, which they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n
(By the way, if we don\u2019t agree to refine the oil, it\u2019ll still be produced – the Canadians will just ship it to Red China.)<\/p>\n
National Public Radio (or is it now \u201cAmerican Public Media\u201d?) brings us endlessly repeated droning interviews with people who want to discuss whether Mitt Romney is an evil capitalist and whether he pays \u201cenough\u201d taxes, while their investigative teams evince a complete lack of interest in the fact that the CURRENT president learned his economics (by his own published declaration) at the knee of communist Frank Marshal Davis, and started his political career in the living room of former Weather Underground member William Ayers, who told the New York Times in September of 2001, \u201cI don\u2019t regret setting bombs. … I feel we didn\u2019t do enough.\u201d (I believe he lost a perfectly good girlfriend that way.)<\/p>\n
Who is Barry Soetoro? Why haven\u2019t people who write entire books about Romney\u2019s years at Bain Capital found out for us whether Mr. Soetoro\/Obama\u2019s high-school nickname was really \u201cBarry the Stoner,\u201d who paid his college tuition, whether he applied as a foreign student — whether, in fact, he ever attended classes, at all?<\/p>\n
Irrelevant? This president won his first elections in Illinois not on the issues but by disqualifying his opponents, spent an inordinate amount of time in Springfield voting \u201cpresent\u201d on any remotely controversial issue, and is now clearly intent on destroying America\u2019s free-market economy.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not worth a look?<\/p>\n
Do you realize oil production on the \u201cpublic lands\u201d (which the federal government has no right to own or control in the first place) is down 40 percent since this gang moved in (per both Bloomberg and Heritage), while new offshore drilling permits are essentially at zero? And this in the very decade when new oil, coal and gas fields adequate to keep us well supplied for CENTURIES have been newly discovered, ON THIS CONTINENT.<\/p>\n
Gasoline prices should be tumbling.<\/p>\n
It takes years to develop new energy resources. Ergo, the absurd diversion of vast funds into unworkable \u201cgreen energy schemes\u201d will not merely cause electric bills to skyrocket- purposely further crippling our economic recovery – but will take years to recover from, even after sanity is restored.<\/p>\n
Grill the GOP hopefuls, by all means. But do you mean to tell me the issues above aren\u2019t worth as much investigative energy as Newt Gingrich\u2019s serial marriages, or the fact that Mitt Romney earned $21 million, paid $3 million in taxes, and gave another $3 million to church and charity? (Oh, the bounder!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Richard Mack first came to national attention when, as sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, he successfully brought the lawsuit Mack v. United States (re-named Printz v. United States, when Mack\u2019s suit was joined with that of Sheriff Jay Printz of Ravalli County, Montana), arguing Congress had no legitimate power to order local law enforcement officials […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,8,13,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-election","category-2nd-amendment","category-drug-war","category-law-enforcement"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-fl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=951"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":968,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951\/revisions\/968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}