West Coast, Messed Coast™ – Democrat Fairy Tales Edition

It’s story time this week in the West Coast, Messed Coast™ report. Let’s grab that thin book over there and gather ’round.

Story Time

Once upon a time in Democrat Land, the Kingdom was full of individuals who believed in the precepts of the Bill of Rights – especially the First Amendment, and, amazingly, even the Second Amendment! The individuals liked Democrat Land.

As time went by, however, leaders of Democrat Land grew discontented and offended by words in the Bill of Rights. So they “improved,” replaced, and redefined them. They created new words and concepts and burned the old ones. All workers became victims and victims were virtuous.

They commenced teaching those new ideas to the groups of workers in their fiefdom. Ere long, the new way of thinking, passed down by oral history, became the received wisdom for all groups of workers in Democrat Land. This went on for many, many years and soon, independent thought, individualism, and exceptionalism became extinguished. They renamed the fiefdom the Peoples’ Democrat Land.

One day many years hence, in 2020, a man in Washington, D.C., found a dusty tome behind his bookcase. He fished it out, blew off the fluff, and discovered, to his surprise, an ancient copy of The Constitution and Bill of Rights. Memories of his grandparents’ stories about the old Democrat Land came flooding back.

He realized that he and his friends had forgotten what it was like to speak freely, laugh at old Mel Brooks movies, or nod and cackle at Dave Chappelle’s stand-up. People whose ideas differed from his own were no longer fascists. He could see again.

Comes now, the Peoples’ Democrat Land annexation of Twitter. Though the man had been sanguine about the takeover, he grew concerned when the principality censored people with differing viewpoints. He complained.

And that’s how Congressman Ro Khanna became a bit of a hero in the Twitter Files saga. The Silicon Valley Democrat’s emails to Twitter poohbahs, uncovered in the first tranche of Twitter Files documents, showed Khanna complained that censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story based on the hackneyed excuse was lame and transparently political. Khanna reminded Twitter executives of the New York Times v Sullivan Supreme Court case giving publishers wide latitude to publish sensitive materials. While Khanna didn’t mention it, the Pentagon Papers story contained national security secrets and were based on stolen files by Daniel Ellsberg and was still allowed to be printed by The Times after legal moves by the White House to scuttle them.

If The New York Times had published the Hunter Biden laptop story, it would have been fine, even if derived from hacked material – which wasn’t the case with the censored The New York Post story.

If there is a hack of classified information or other information that could expose a serious war crime and the NYT was to publish it, I think the NYT should have that right. A journalist should not be held accountable for the illegal actions of the source unless they actively aided the hack.

So to restrict the distribution of that material, especially regarding a Presidential candidate, seems not in keeping of the principles of NYT v. Sullivan.

For that, the last honest man in the Peoples’ Democrat Land gets an atta boy.

Twitter may not officially be a publisher, but it’s a public square, and executives knew the laptop was real but “handled” the story for the Big Guy, according to Twitter Files.

The intelligence community and FBI were holding weekly meetings with Twitter censors, which is where the First Amendment rubber meets the road.

And Donald Trump wasn’t the only one Twitter tried to hurt. During the Twitter Files Part 2 tranche, Elon Musk confirmed that documents show that Twitter “shadow banned and suppressed tweets from political candidates while they were running for office,” which is, obviously, election interference.

Wow! Elon confirms that Twitter shadowbanned and suppressed tweets from political candidates while they were running for office. ELECTION INTERFERENCE! pic.twitter.com/6WEe36mtJQ

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 9, 2022

Gun Nuts

The gun-nut Left continues to go after the guns of law-abiding citizens in favor of guns in the hands of criminals. The efforts are causing more legal recoil in Oregon.

Voters narrowly approved Measure 114 in Oregon in November, which produced a hail of lawsuits. After a move by the state attorney general, a federal judge, and then another judge, the unconstitutional law is frozen in place for the time being.

The unconstitutional law requires a permit to purchase a gun, law enforcement training at training facilities that don’t exist, no way to pay for the new regime, and a 10+ round magazine ban.

The Bruen decision hasn’t stopped the Left’s effort to make it as difficult as possible for citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights.

With that in mind, here we go again in Washington state, where there’s now a concerted effort by the governor and attorney general to outlaw all semi-automatic rifles and institute a permit-to-purchase scheme ala Oregon.

Advocates point to a recent shooting by a criminal suspect at Ingraham High School in the Seattle area for the need to ban “assault” rifles. The mentally disturbed 14-year-old who committed the shooting used a handgun.

“One or None”?

Hapless White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre made a spectacle of herself, as usual, in the briefing yesterday when she tried to feed the hatchlings in the press nest the story that they had no choice but to trade a jailed Russian weapons trafficker for WNBA “star” Brittney Griner and not include a retired Marine in a Russkie jail on trumped up charges.

“That was the choice: one or none, and not ‘which one.’ It was either none or one,” KJP regurgitated from the podium. And so we had the most unseemly bridge-of-spies moment on the tarmac of an airport where the prisoners crossed paths, and the members of both prisoner camps hugged the terrorist.

But was it “one or none”? Here’s the lead from News12 in San Jose:

Dateline: San Jose, California, Author: Joe Dana Published: 3:24 PM MST December 8, 2022

As news of Brittney Griner’s release from Russia spread Thursday, a second American who was imprisoned in that country was finally able to fly home, 12News has learned.

Sarah Krivanek has been imprisoned in Russia since last December. The 46-year-old woman from San Jose, California, moved to Russia four years ago to be an English teacher and was wrongly implicated in a domestic violence dispute, said Krivanek’s close friend to 12News in September.

[…]Krivanek was sentenced to a year and three months in prison but served just under a year. She was released in November and has spent a month in a holding facility for deportees.

At first, she was ignored by the State Department. And now she’s home. Former Marine Paul Whelan is still in a Russian jail.

Do you believe in coincidences?

Till next time, keep your head up so you know if it’s really raining or they’re just peeing on your leg, West Coast, Messed Coast™ readers.