Freedom
Last Friday, the Governor of New Mexico issued an order that she claims suspends the U.S. Constitution. I’ll give you a second to reread that first sentence. Yeah, you’re right. She can’t do that. Governor Michelle Grisham issued an executive order declaring a state of emergency and stating that citizens of Albuquerque and the surrounding county are temporarily banned from carrying firearms. She did this in response to a road rage incident in the city where an 11-year old boy was shot and killed. While certainly tragic, there is no emergency exception to the Second Amendment, and Governors have no power to suspend the Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court decisions in D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v City of Chicago have found the Second Amendment to be an individual right that federal, state and local governments cannot abridge except in very limited circumstances. On Wednesday this week, U.S. District Judge, David Urias, issued an injunction blocking the Governor’s ban citing Heller and McDonald.
Free Speech
This week the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals enforced an injunction a lower court had issued against federal agencies in the Biden Administration that forbids the agencies from communicating with social media companies. The Court found that the Biden Administration has been coercing social media platforms into censoring conservative speech. The case, Missouri v. Biden, was brought by a group of state Attorneys General. I have written about the case here. You may recall that the District Court Judge, Terry Doughty, first issued the injunction, symbollically, on Independence Day this year. Judge Doughty in issuing the injunction stated, “This is the most important free speech case in American history.”
Process
This week the U.S. House of Representatives formally launched an impeachment inquiry of President Biden. Impeachment inquiry is different from impeachment. While impeachment is the bringing of formal charges, the inquiry is the investigation preceeding the charges. The House is investigating the President’s ties to what appears to be his family’s influence peddling scheme. The House Oversight Committee investigation has uncovered that nearly 30 million dollars has been funnelled from foreign countries, including China and Ukraine, through 20 shell corporations and deposited into the bank accounts of 9 different Biden family members, including a 14 year old granddaughter. The impeachment inquiry will give the Congress the highest level of investigative and subpoena power to determine whether the President participated in these corrupt dealings.