It’s Too Much to Expect People to be Responsible

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In every clip I’ve seen of Noem today, she’s saying something she can’t know or that is a lie. She also undercuts 2A to say carrying ammo is a problem on its face. I know it’s too much to expect people to be responsible, but this is opposite of a grown-up doing the job.

Mary Katherine Ham @mkhammer
Posted on X, January 24, 2026

It is way beyond having hope of most people to be responsible. Things are more chaotic than I think I have ever seen them. Emotions are running very high. Most people cannot even determine what is reality. Part of the problem is the media lies, selective reporting, and deliberate distortion. Part of it is that many people don’t even believe in the existence of an objective reality. And part of it is that reality is a really tough problem. We are left with people blinded by emotion, without knowledge of how to determine a reality they don’t even believe exists, with deliberate lies as the basis to make decisions on how to interact with the rest of the world.

The dollar is worth less than 1/5000th of an ounce of gold and will buy less than 1/100th of an ounce of silver. The nation debt is nearly $40 trillion.

I just want my underground bunker in Idaho to be finished and stocked before things go really sour.

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97 thoughts on “It’s Too Much to Expect People to be Responsible”

  1. If this were a Democratic administration, we would expect such stupidity from their spokesmen and appointees.

    The thing is, while “the right” generally has some level of actual standards other than just “exercise power” and ejects people for doing things against those standards and morals more generally at least SOMETIMES, that’s doesn’t really improve the pool of talent just all that much.

    Political types (which unfortunately very much includes their underlings and such) have thing horrible tendency to spout whatever would be *convenient* for them IF it was true. The ones on “our side” aren’t nearly as much better about that as we wish they were.

    That’s not to say that was Noem did was OK (far from it), just pointing out that we should set our expectations properly. “Our” side is going to do that kind of stupid WAY too often to get all upset and surprised every time.

    It sucks, and it’s not “fine” or “ok” or “acceptable”… but it is reality.

  2. Actually lots of people are being responsible: in Minnesota they’re organizing their resistance and finding ways to push back the ICE thugs and fight the government, and in Seattle we’re starting to do the same in anticipation of similar lawless government action here.

    I’m even having some success getting liberals on my feed to consider arming themselves and getting training, and even those who are reluctant now see the value of the 2A and are supporting it. Pretty ironic that in our great national divorce liberals are getting custody of the 2nd amendment.

    • We hold elections to determine laws, so no one should be violently protesting and interfering with the law being enforced.
      If you don’t like a law, you vote for people who campaign to change it. If you want a law, you vote for people who campaign to implement it. Living with the outcome of elections is the whole point of democracy.
      Incidentally, virtually all our current immigration laws were passed with significant support from Democrat legislators and/or Democrat Presidents.

      • Actually, he did vote for the people that wrote those laws. They were all Democrats with Ted Kennedy being especially prominent

      • Neither Pettit nor Good were “violently protesting.” Pettit was standing there recording, as is his legal right to do when they decided he needed to die. Good was trying to follow the instruction to “get out of the way” given by one of the ICE agents yelling at her. Neither of them were, say, breaking into the capitol building and taking a dump on Nancy Pelosi’s desk and screaming “Get Pence!” while assaulting police officers. Republicans are in no position at this point to complain about violent protest.

        As for “our immigration laws,” none of them say law enforcement gets to violate the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 14th amendments to the Constitution (or any of the others, for that matter). And if you think they do, I don’t want to hear any more discussion about RKBA, because clearly you don’t believe in the Constitution to begin with, either the letter or the spirit.

        • Your framing of the evidence is quite “interesting.” I will elaborate tonight after work if no one else gets to it before I do.

        • “Neither Pettit nor Good were “violently protesting.””

          You are correct about Good, at least. I’m waiting a few days to say much on Pretti, but Good wasn’t “protesting”, she was actively obstructing legal police activity. And that incident was, no pun intended, a good shoot. Perfectly legal and reasonable.

          The Pretti situation is still too new to say for sure – much too ambiguous for now. We’ll find out over the next few days.

          But Pretti was definitely in the same camp as Good – actively interfering with lawful police operation. Doesn’t mean he should be killed, but does mean he was a criminal. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” applies fully, whether the officer in question reacted perfectly or not. “Don’t criminally interfere with active and legal police activity” is right up there with “look both ways before you cross the street” for things to do to avoid getting killed. Notice: that doesn’t justify an officer any more than it justifies a driver, but you can still very easily end up dead.

          • “actively interfering with lawful police operation. Doesn’t mean he should be killed, but does mean he was a criminal.”

            Interfering. Right. So no more recording ICE unless you say “pretty please” and do so from far away enough that you won’t catch anything untoward on video. Got it. You’d do well in journalism school, that’s totally how they teach recording government actions for purposes of holding them accountable.

          • Recording in a public place is not interfering, per SCOTUS; it is protected First Amendment activity.

            Physically inserting oneself into an active scuffle involving law enforcement agents attempting to detain someone, even to help the one being detained, IS interfering. We don’t know why the other person Pretti appeared to be trying to help was being detained, but she(?) was and he appeared to be attempting to help her(?).

            Beyond that, I’m not going to Monday-morning-armchair-quarterback anything. As BOTH sides say — in appropriate critique to what BOTH their opponents are claiming — the investigation is not done, so while some video has been released, we don’t really know exactly what happened yet.

          • My impression of Petti’s “help the woman” is not what common understanding would be of that phrase. I would understand it to be, “Help her to her feet.” Or, “Pick up her dropped belongings.” What I see in the video is helping her continue the interference with law enforcement activities.” He was not facing the woman he was “helping.” He was, at best, protecting her from the officer.

            One might even be able to claim that the officers were surrounded by any angry mob and being physically attacked. The woman was pushed away, and Petti continued the aggression in the opening left by the woman.

          • The level of submission you’re asking of liberal protesters does not map to the level asked of conservatives. Are you ok with the double-standard? Or is the theory that liberals are by definition “bad” and therefore must submit, and conservatives are “good” and therefore get wide latitude? The latter seems to be a common idea here, and very convenient: once you can re-classify those who disagree with you as “enemy combatants” rather than protestors you can just shoot them and be done with all that messy civiliation/law stuff.

          • I am “asking” that people follow the law or not complain when they violate the law and bad things happen. That “ask” applies to law enforcement, J6ers, and others.

            To date, I have not seen any ICE officers clearly violate the law. It is plainly clear that some ICE protesters have.

            You will not find anything (yet) from me calling the protesters “enemy combatants.” I see that as a reasonable hypothesis. But I have not yet seen clear evidence of that.

          • Where’s the line between protest and insurgency in your mind? And, for that matter, at what point is “insurgency” unreasonable? Going to the point elsewhere in this (very convoluted) thread, the idea that protest has to be disorganized or else it’s a “funded and trained enemy” strikes me as absurd. And if having an organized protest and/or group of people means they’re now “insurgents” or “enemy combatants” again makes it very difficult to understand how *any* protest outside of the most spontaneous is acceptable.

            Lots of folks on the right have had very organized groups that are well funded and trained for…well…as long as I’ve been alive. The J6 rally was organized, and the attack on the capitol was organized, mostly by the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, who have large, well funded, and well trained organizations.

            Why do folks on the right get to have organized resistance to the government and still not get called “insurgents?” Pretty convenient that term only applies to folks on the left.

            Put another way, just how strident are folks on the left allowed to get in their protest? Folks on the right broke into the capitol, assaulted police, vandalized the building, and were all pardoned. Does the left get the same consideration?

          • I would look up the legal definition and go with that, but you are asking for the lon in my mind… When there is organization and planning to commit illegal physical acts against legitimate government people and/or property.

          • The J6 folks committed illegal physical acts against government people and property. I assume you would consider them insurgents?

          • Was it planned to do that? Or did it spontaneously evolve into that? In my mind, I would concede to legal definitions, spontaneously would be a riot while planned many hours or days previously, it steps over the line into insurrection.

          • “So no more recording ICE unless you say “pretty please” and do so from far away enough that you won’t catch anything untoward on video.”

            PLENTY of people were ACTUALLY “just recording”, and that is absolutely fine. Notice that none of them got shot, either.

            That you have to lie about obvious and recorded things he was doing says enough. Are you being paid to lie to us about obvious things? Or does it just make you happy to do so?

            Or have you drunk the koolaid so thoroughly that you “ignore
            the evidence of your eyes and ears” and just actually believe easily checked (and false) things? It is, after all, the Party’s “final, most essential command”.

          • “The other people didn’t get shot but he did, therefore he must have been doing something bad.”

            Logic. Definitely not your strong suit.

          • ““The other people didn’t get shot but he did, therefore he must have been doing something bad.”

            Logic. Definitely not your strong suit.”

            Lying about what I said is yours, though.

            He was not “just filming”. That is stated as fact because it is fact, as attested to by everyone actually there.

            Basic, logical facts:

            1) Pretti was not “only filming”, he had a physical altercation with police, NOT started by the police.

            2) LOTS of other people were there. Some of them also did that, but most didn’t.

            3) Lots of people were filming.

            4) One of the people who voluntarily got into a physical altercation with police got shot.

            5) none of the people who were “just filming” got shot.

            6) YOU claimed that he was “just filming”. This is false.

            7) YOU claimed that I was designating “just filming” as something the police could shoot people for. This is also false.

            The logic is fine. Your lying isn’t.

            This is not hard stuff.

          • Please show evidence of him starting a physical altercation that would constitute “interference.”

          • No one can say whether she was trying to run over the ICE agent but he certainly had a reasonable suspicion that she was, thus self defense.

          • “No one can say whether she was trying to run over the ICE agent ”

            Then the word “try” should be excised from our language.

            We make that judgement *all the time*, regarding something that someone *appears* to be “trying” to do.

            If one is on the process of doing X and is interrupted, one of the most common ways to describe that is “trying” to do X.

            Sometimes it’s humorous – saved from falling off the roof? “Stop trying to kill yourself, eh?”

            And sometimes its not, but that objection being made is being made in bad faith – it’s not an objection raised when the word is used just the same in other circumstances.

            (Your point about the shoot is correct, of course.)

    • “Actually lots of people are being responsible: in Minnesota they’re organizing their resistance and finding ways to push back the ICE thugs and fight the government, and in Seattle we’re starting to do the same in anticipation of similar lawless government action here.”
      So, arresting and deporting criminal aliens is “lawless government action”????
      Hint:
      It’s one of the only lawful actions the government has taken in a 100 f’in years!
      And only a commie would think owning a pimp’d Sig 320 is being responsible. Also, I just have to comment that the 320 is the prefect commie liberal handgun. As it is the one gun that just might up and shoot a bunch of people all on its own. Just like they tell us guns do.
      And thanks to your comrade for showing us there is more than one way to get killed by owning a 320.

      “I’m even having some success getting liberals on my feed to consider arming themselves and getting training, and even those who are reluctant now see the value of the 2A and are supporting it. Pretty ironic that in our great national divorce liberals are getting custody of the 2nd amendment.”
      HAHAHAHAHA! Thanks John, I needed that! (although my sides are hurting.)
      You should get all your friends together and invest in Sig. Then all run out and buy 320’s. Drive the stock prices up.
      Win-win for society as a whole.
      As for national divorce?
      Maybe a little military history is in order.
      Hint;
      City never fair very well in civil wars. Never. And you will do to yourselves what Sherman did to Atlanta if someone just shuts off your electricity. Let alone the rest of your supply lines.
      Mr. Bracken says it best;
      “A plan to ride the tiger is totally different than actually riding one.”

      • “So, arresting and deporting criminal aliens is “lawless government action?”

        No, doing so without obeying the law is. For example, due process, legal representation, proper orders for search and seizure, etc. Bush 2, Obama, and Biden all deported more people than Trump, but they didn’t have riots because they actually followed the law.

        And of course if the law meant anything to these people they’d have the shooters for both Good and Petit on administrative leave pending an independent investigation. Instead, they’re back on the job in different locations, with no investigation happening for Good (according to the DOJ it’s not necessary) and only an internal investigation *maybe* happening for Petit. Every cop in the country who ever shot anybody and had to go through the whole process is just shaking their head at how ICE is getting off scot free.

        And really this isn’t about immigration, it’s about control: Bondi says if MN releases their voter rolls they’ll back off. To which I say, “Sure, they’ll give you the voter rolls…redacted just like you redacted (the small portion you’ve released of) the Epstein files.”

        It’s just hysterical hearing the right talk about lawful behavior at this point. You don’t have a leg to stand on. Not so much as an atom to stand on.

        • “No, doing so without obeying the law is.”

          Yes, which is *WHAT THEY ARE DOING*.

          I would not want to live in the world in your imagination – it sounds like a horrible place.

          • What part of “due process” do you find confusing? See, Bush 2, Obama, and Biden all managed to follow the law, including due process and habeas corpus, and as a result there weren’t riots in the streets. Trump/Miller decided they didn’t need to obey the law, and we get what we now have.

            For example, Miller said “Mass deportation is not a legal debate; it is a logistical exercise. The American people gave us a mandate to secure the country, and that mandate cannot be subverted by a mountain of paperwork or a line of lawyers stretching from D.C. to the border.”

            That pesky paperwork. Following the law is such a hassle, let’s just skip it.

          • Please read: https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/overview_deport_process-20181221.pdf

            And note the source; it’s a non-profit resource center that exists to help immigrants, not any government agency or “Right-wing” outfit.

            TL;DR: A deportation order doesn’t just happen; it’s usually — barring serious criminal acts on the subject’s part — the result of months or years of petitions and court hearings, before a judge, with the subject allowed legal representation.

            If ICE has an arrest warrant related to a deportation order, that case has already been through immigration court hearings — again, for which the subject was given the chance to appear with counsel — and a judge has signed both the arrest and deportation orders.

            In any other case, that would be considered “due process” by any reasonable person.

            Some of the warrants and orders ICE is acting upon now have been in place for years, but previous administrations tied their hands. Just because it took a while and you weren’t paying attention when the subjects’ due process happened, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

          • “What part of “due process” do you find confusing? ”

            The part where you are complaining about even *STARTING* the process.

            Can’t have “due process” without a PROCESS of some kind. They have a deportation order, they have some kind of claim that he’s here illegally that’s received some level of vetting (and no it’s no the same level of “due process” as other things, because you have no right to be here if you’re not a citizen – well-settled laws with rulings from SCOTUS on it), then you go find them and arrest them, they receive their due process, and at the end, since it’s pretty easy to determine if someone is here legally or not so they aren’t going to waste the time on people who aren’t, nearly all of them will get deported.

            But there is step in the PROCESS where they get arrested, and as best I can tell, you are completely against that for, well, pretty much anybody. No amount of evidence seems sufficient in actual practice.

            We have 10s of millions of people here illegally, with 10+ million of them arrived in the last administration. There is a *bad faith* effort on the part of a big chunk of the left to “end around” all the laws about immigration by just getting them IN the country, then delaying and obstructing any effort at all for years, decades if possible… THEN claiming that it’s been too long, so they should get to stay.

            You don’t like it? Neither do I. Neither does essentially anyone on the right, as best I can tell (I’d be shocked if there is literally no one… there’s always somebody under a rock somewhere). Unless you have some other solution to the problem that isn’t just a bad-faith time-waster to keep as many people as possible as long as possible no matter who or why, then a WHOLE LOT of people aren’t interested.

            Follow the law on due process, sure, I’m for it, but what you’re demanding is several orders of magnitude more than that.

          • Well here we start to have agreement (sorry, I probably should have warned you to sit down first). I’m all for a process for immigration. That process should be clear, efficient, fair, and fully transparent to everyone involved, including outside observers.

            From what I can tell, the “process” for arresting people isn’t related to their criminal status, it’s related to their skin color. I say this because I run a fencing company with Latino workers, who tell me about the people who are getting picked up, their history, and how it went down. And from their telling, the people they’ve seen get picked up and who they’ve heard others tell them about (in one case an uncle, in another a room mate, in another a cousin) there’s no criminal record, no warning, and no reason other than they were in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong skin.

            For comparison, white folks who committed a civil infraction (and that’s what “illegal immigration” is, a civil infraction that is at most a misdemeanor) get a nice letter saying “you did an oopsie, please come to the office and pay a fine or talk to the judge or whatever’s appropriate for your oopsie.” But that’s not the process for brown folks. They get cornered in a Home Depot parking lot by a bunch of guys in masks with guns who throw them into a van and drive off, leaving their car just sitting there. (Actually there was a story in the Times last week about ICE doing that on I-5 and just leaving the car on the median.) And have you ever tried to get ahold of a loved one in one of the ICE jails? You have to have their inmate number. How do you get that number? You don’t, it’s “confidential.” Which is ICE’s way of saying “fuck you, we’ll do what we want.”

            So, sure: process. Love it. As soon as we have one that isn’t completely barbaric I’ll be happy to support it.

            Side note: you could also go the other way with this process: you could take all the energy you’re using to deport the illegal folks and instead of deporting them, give them a process to sign up for a green card or a visa and get legal, and then you’d save money on deportations and keep a workforce here (and obviously still deport the criminals). But since we hate the brown people, I really doubt that’s gonna happen. ICE is now heavily populated with Atomwaffen and Proud Boys, so keeping brown people around is the last thing they want.

          • “I say this because I run a fencing company with Latino workers”

            There it is.
            Johnny is a communist slaver wanting to keep his slaves handy.
            And then he compares yourself to abolitionists.
            That’s rich.

          • Nice. Can you convince them to be slaves for significantly less than what I’m currently paying them? It’s really hard on my margin. Between that and Uncle Don’s tariffs the fencing biz is really biting the big one when it comes to actually being profitable these days.

          • Ah yes, weren’t you telling me not to read people’s minds in a previous post when I said someone was “trying” to do the thing they did?

            But here you are, reading all of our minds. Just like I explicitly mentioned. “RAAACCIIIISSSTTT!!!”

            If you check who is here illegally, and then look at a map, AND you start thinking independently from the NPC swarm, you’ll see that the primary countries where illegal immigrant countries are A) near us, geographically speaking, and B) populated by people who, when we arrest them, you will call “brown people”.

            If you bother to look at the stats on who is here illegally, you will see that it is *******OVERWHELMINGLY****** people that, when we arrest them for being here illegally, you will call “brown people”.

            Of course, when you look at the world population, you’ll see that *the majority of the world population*, by a LOT, is people who, when they are arrested for being here illegally, you will call “brown people”.

            For the record, ***I don’t care*** what their skin color is. If we find illegal immigrants of Irish descent, German descent, Swedish descent, we should arrest them and deport them just like any other.

            But no, you know it’s really racism, because you can read our minds.

            Of course, MTHead’s comment about you just wanting to use the “brown people” as cheap labor is also dead on.

            Evergreen – Democrats: “but who will pick our crops?!?”

          • Oh, and how could I miss this gem?

            “For comparison, white folks who committed a civil infraction (and that’s what “illegal immigration” is, a civil infraction that is at most a misdemeanor) get a nice letter saying “you did an oopsie, please come to the office and pay a fine or talk to the judge or whatever’s appropriate for your oopsie.” But that’s not the process for brown folks. They get cornered in a Home Depot parking lot by a bunch of guys in masks with guns who throw them into a van and drive off, leaving their car just sitting there.”

            Right, because “here is your fine that you can pay, or you can come to the courthouse to contest it, *or we will issue a warrant for your arrest*” is nothing more “oh, you did an oopsie.”

            And, just in case you are as ignorant of other happenings in this country as it seems for everything else we talk about, we actually DO have a program where they not only invited to self-deport, **the government will give them thousands of dollars to do it**.

            As it happens, if I getting a parking fine or speeding ticket or “other infraction”, I am not given the option to get PAID for it.

            So yeah, they are getting treated ***BETTER*** than any of us citizens, regardless of our skin color, for their “civil infraction”.

            Now, if I don’t take the opportunity offered me in that happy little “oopsie” letter to go spend time at the courthouse to clear it up or spend money for the fine (or, more likely, both), I get an arrest warrant issued… and if the illegal immigrant doesn’t take the opportunity to GET PAID THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS for their “oopsie”, they get an arrest warrant issued for them.

            And somehow, that’s to MY advantage. If you actually believe that, you are dangerously disconnected from reality.

          • A couple problems with your theory ““here is your fine that you can pay, or you can come to the courthouse to contest it, *or we will issue a warrant for your arrest*” First, they’re only going to get a summons, not a warrant. Two, the courts are swamped with misdemeanor cases, so pursuing the trivial ones is lowest on their priority list…you can avoid dealing with a misdemeanor for quite a while before anybody will even notice the delay. And three, there’s actual data showing white folks aren’t going to have a warrant issued:

            “White people facing misdemeanor charges were nearly 75 percent more likely than Black people to have all charges carrying potential imprisonment dropped, dismissed, or reduced to lesser charges.”

            https://eji.org/news/americas-massive-misdemeanor-system-deepens-inequality/

            So when I say there’s a difference in how the legal system, and in this case the immigration system in particular, treats brown people vs. white people, we have the receipts. The existence of a “get in the van” crowd is very much outside the norm when it comes to misdemeanor crimes, by several orders of magnitude.

          • Please provide some more details. Are you saying that people, of the wrong skin color, are being nabbed and deported even if they are here legally? Or that only people of the wrong skin color and illegally here are being deported? The first is obviously wrong, illegal, and I would encourage there be a law passed which compensates the victims their legal fees, lost wages, and reputational injury via the liquidation of assets of the criminals who illegally deported them.

            The people here illegally who happened to be deported because they were more easily identified by their skin color, I give more of a shrug. They should have known and accepted the risk when they came here. The illegals of a lighter skin tone have natural camouflage. They deserve deportation just as much, but it is going to take more work to hunt them down.

          • Yes, and ICE has been doing that from the very beginning. For example, from 2013:

            https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/yes-us-wrongfully-deports-its-own-citizens

            And then from this year:

            https://factually.co/fact-checks/justice/are-us-citizens-deported-under-ice-0e6d8e

            https://nipnlg.org/news/press-releases/ice-deports-man-claiming-us-citizenship-laos-despite-federal-court-order

            https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/27/us/children-us-citizens-deported-honduras/index.html

            And then my favorite: they’re trying to deport *native americans.* Tell me again how this isn’t just racism?

            https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/trump-immigration-raids-citizens-profiling-accusations-native-american-rcna189203

          • If you can get your legislative delegation to introduce a bill holding the individuals responsible for this to compensate their victims, I will write letters and make blog posts in support of it.

        • “No, doing so without obeying the law is.”

          “Former President Bill Clinton signed a 1996 law establishing expedited removal, a fast-track deportation that allows for deportations without going before an immigration judge. Although people’s due process protections are limited under expedited removal, the process is not exempt from due process.”
          Yup, and ICE has removal orders for everyone you’all be obstructing them from removing.
          But none of that matters as all this is to cover up the communist elite’s fraud.
          Which for all we know Trump might be in on. Since he isn’t going after it in million different smarter ways.

          • Did you even read what you just pasted in?

            “Although people’s due process protections are limited under expedited removal, the process is not exempt from due process.”

          • A quick Google search turns up these cases right up top:

            Organization Legal Action Argument
            ACLU Doe v. Mayorkas/Homan (2026) Challenges the lack of “Notice to Appear” (NTA) for long-term residents.

            NWIRP Emergency Injunctions Claims ICE is deporting individuals with pending stay-of-removal requests.

            City of Chicago Sanctuary Litigation Claims federal agents are ignoring judicial warrants in favor of “administrative” ones.

            The number of stories about due process being subverted take pages and pages in a Google search. I can cut and paste more if you like.

          • Ya, I did.
            Is the last sentence the only part you read???
            “Deportations without going before an immigration judge.”

          • No, I read the others, but that one was the only one that was germane to the discussion….

          • No, I read the others, but that one was the only one that was germane to MY ARGUMENT….
            There, I fixed it for you.

    • “Fight the government”… that sounds suspiciously like insurrection. I thought you libs got all excited when that happened.

      And what’s with the “getting custody” statement. If a divorce happens, I suspect there won’t be much of a custody battle. Did you know that out of the thousands of counties in the USA, only 9 counties account for over half of the ICE protesting?

      • Isn’t it funny how the counties that have lots of ICE activity and protests aren’t actually the ones with the most illegal aliens? Those would be in Texas and Florida. It’s almost like this isn’t about enforcing the law and instead about political control. And Auntie Pam has said they’ll back off if only MN will turn over their voter rolls, so apparently it’s the *voter rolls* that are important, not the deportations. Go figure.

        • Yup, turn over the voter rolls and they could roll up both the invaders and the communists.
          Pretty smart actually.

        • “Isn’t it funny how the counties that have lots of ICE activity and protests aren’t actually the ones with the most illegal aliens? ”

          Yeah, it is. The ones with more illegal aliens just honor the ICE wavers, so that ICE doesn’t have to go there and get people themselves. Saves SO SO SO much trouble.

          They also don’t call ICE the “gestapo” or claim they are “at war with the Federal government”.

          “It’s almost like this isn’t about enforcing the law and instead about political control.”

          You are conflating important facts. You need to look at how many of those illegal immigrants in Texas and Florida are successfully removed – that is the “apples to apples” comparison to have a chance of even *suggesting* what you are outright claiming.

          See, when the police stop turning the violent criminals out into the streets explicitly to *avoid* ICE, then ICE has to go find them. When you turn those violent criminals over to ICE directly from the jail, you very largely don’t have to do that. It’s not hard.

          There are “blue” areas of the country that understand that, that aren’t doing this incredibly stupid (to put it much nicer than they deserve) thing, and that aren’t having these problems.

    • Not sure why you hate your children so much you’d like them to be a despised and discriminated-against minority in their own country.

      • That side-eye you’re feeling? That’s all the native Americans looking at you.

        • “That side-eye you’re feeling? That’s all the native Americans looking at you.”

          You even make the mention, but still don’t address the actual point that example makes.

          That’s a GREAT example of why border control is a good thing. It’s not their land anymore because they didn’t/couldn’t do that.

          Same as Texas, actually. Another great example of why that’s bad.

          You don’t like those examples? Think the evil white people did bad stuff? Fine. Don’t be like the people THOSE evil white people (who are all dead now) took advantage of BACK THEN and let other people take advantage of us the same way NOW.

  3. It really is impossible to tell what happened in the latest ICE shooting as it was a big scrum. Interesting that there was a pushback from most of the gun rights groups because of some comments by leadership. It’s not like the Federales have ever been in favor of armed citizens. People like to dump on the ATF but it really is all of them. FBI, Marshals, Secret Service have all had atrocities laid at their feet. Now we get to see whether ICE gets to join that group. The pictures show them with something that looks like body cams on their vests so perhaps that will shed some light.

        • There will be no jury, because he will not be charged, because the DOJ won’t let him anywhere near a courtroom. Same as the guy who killed Good. So we’re left with what we have in lieu of a functional justice system. Or functional government, for that matter.

          • “There will be no jury, because he will not be charged, because the DOJ won’t let him anywhere near a courtroom. Same as the guy who killed Good. So we’re left with what we have in lieu of a functional justice system. Or functional government, for that matter.”

            Generally speaking, you are actually correct about that, you’re just decades late to the party and supporting people that either A) doesn’t apply to (the Good incident was a perfectly good shoot, no pun intended) or B) doesn’t apply nearly as well as to certain other groups in the fairly recent past (the Ruby Ridge incident, for instance, or Waco… where the Feds intentionally murdered a LOT of people including kids, and nobody ever paid the price for it) – the Pretti incident, while not yet perfectly clear one way or the other, was not obvious entrapment followed by killing unarmed people in the general vicinity for, basically, giggles, like Ruby Ridge; Pretti was involved, was participating in organized obstruction of justice, was a criminal, which doesn’t make everything fine (or not fine – the evidence will make that determination), but does make it LESS bad than plenty of other examples.

          • Sorry you’re so triggered. So, other than the chaos being seen in some large blue sanctuary cities, what do you see as the big issue. Do you support having large numbers of illegal aliens, many of them convicted criminals, living unhindered in the US? Do you want to see them living on the taxpayers dime? And if that’s the case, doesn’t that mean that a justice system that should be deporting them is not functioning properly?

          • “Do you support having large numbers of illegal aliens, many of them convicted criminals,”

            Except they’re not. Hell, convicted criminals don’t even constitute the majority of people ICE has deported:

            https://www.politifact.com/article/2026/jan/23/Kristi-NoemICE-detention-criminal-conviction-70/

            Are there some criminals among the immigrant population? Sure. Feel free to deport them. But this bullshit line about how immigrants are all just a bunch of criminals poisoning the country is demonstrably false by anyone who isn’t biased against immigrants.

          • If you’re part of the 20-30 million that came into the country under Biden.
            You’re a criminal.

          • “Are there some criminals among the immigrant population? Sure. Feel free to deport them”

            And how should we go about doing that in areas that don’t honor the ICE hold requests, but instead turn them loose in the community?

            Oh right, by having ICE go get them. Which you are against.

            So, “feel free to do this perfectly legal thing, but I’m going to call it illegal and support criminal behaviour to prevent it.”

            Got it.

      • Oh wow! Look everybody!
        The communists are finally noticing that the government kills people for defying them.
        Your comrade must have been the first one ever!
        Guess that’s how you act when you ain’t the one’s doing the killing anymore. Hey John?

  4. The Left have found a wedge issue and they will drive it with cunning.

    Pay closer attention.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/01/23/right-wing-federal-agents-ice-immigrants/ (behind paywall, I’ve read only an excerpt)
    https://reason.com/volokh/2026/01/25/second-amendment-roundup-four-points-on-the-wolford-argument/ (do see the comment thread)

    Very few people in the DJT administration understand the 2A the way we—Joe and his happy few commenters—think it should be understood, though that situation is far better than we had under Obama or Biden, or would have had with Harris. Even fewer DJT officers will, under stress or with a hostile interviewer, answer questions about it competently and convincingly.

    Don’t let the bastards drive the wedge.

  5. Between Scout and Johnny S. It’s being called pretty plain today.

    “There is no way to de-escalate. Our system was designed to avoid an existential political crisis, not adjudicate one. Everything we have, our elections, courts, laws, constitution, and legal system are all built on the presumption that all existential political questions have already been answered. They have no way to arbitrate between one side that demands remigration as a matter of national survival and another that demands dissolving all borders as a moral imperative.”
    NC Scout.

    “I just want my underground bunker in Idaho to be finished and stocked before things go really sour.”
    Better hurry Joe.
    Cause the only one going to win this one is satan.

  6. I am disappointed.

    In your post “I Admire Their Ability to Lie,” you grabbed a false claim about the Charlie Kirk shooting and called it out point by point.

    But when Kristi Noem and the administration start spinning obvious nonsense, you quote Ham’s saying it’s “too much to expect people to be responsible,” and then you go even further, saying it’s “way beyond having hope of most people to be responsible.” From there, the focus shifts to “the media lies, selective reporting, and deliberate distortion” and to “most people” not being able to determine reality.

    If someone on the left said something this stupid, you’d be quoting it, asking what color the sky is in their world, and calling them out as aggressively as you did in that earlier post.

    Instead, we’re watching senior officials manufacture a story out of thin air and undercut 2A in the process. These are perfect “Quote of the Day” candidates:

    The President of the United States said:
    “This is the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!)”

    DHS Secretary Noem said:
    “I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.”

    FBI Director Kash Patel said:
    “You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”

    • And as we can see. Everyone is falling for the communist talking points/word magic.
      Even Trump and the administration.
      The comrade didn’t go there to “protest”. He went there to obstruct. Just like the other commie fool that got shot.
      He wasn’t a “protester”, he was an enemy combatant.
      Not that Trump or anyone else in power knows what their talking about.
      Legally, illegally, or any otherwise.
      War sucks.
      And make no mistake. That’s what were in.
      I wouldn’t be surprised to find out everyone in power is in on it.

      • When the Russians flood the Ukrainian border with fresh recruits or mercenaries, knowing that most of them will end up dead, the Ukrainians have been calling them “meat assaults”. Looks like the liberals behind the scenes are doing the same – getting half-wits like Good and Pretti all riled up for “protesting” and other hijinks. If a few (or a lot) get killed, they really don’t care at all. In fact, fueling the “chaos” with a few martyrs is good for business. I’d be not surprised at all if a few purple haired grannies got killed under false flag circumstances, just to add to the media circus.

        • Eric Schwalm
          @Schwalm5132
          “As a former Special Forces Warrant Officer with multiple rotations running counterinsurgency ops—both hunting insurgents and trying to separate them from sympathetic populations—I’ve seen organized resistance up close. From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters, cutouts, dead drops (or modern equivalents), disciplined comms, role specialization, and a willingness to absorb casualties while bleeding the stronger force slowly.

          What’s unfolding in Minneapolis right now isn’t “protest.” It’s low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook.

          Signal groups at 1,000-member cap per zone. Dedicated roles: mobile chasers, plate checkers logging vehicle data into shared databases, 24/7 dispatch nodes vectoring assets, SALUTE-style reporting (Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, Equipment) on suspected federal vehicles. Daily chat rotations and timed deletions to frustrate forensic recovery. Vetting processes for new joiners. Mutual aid from sympathetic locals (teachers providing cover, possible PD tip-offs on license plate lookups). Home-base coordination points. Rapid escalation from observation to physical obstruction—or worse.

          This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a SF team sergeant nod in recognition. Replace “ICE agents” with “occupying coalition forces” and the structure maps almost 1:1 to early-stage urban cells we hunted in the mid-2000s.”

          Yup, it ain’t protests.

          • “I’ve seen organized resistance up close”

            I find this bit interesting. So do I understand correctly that the only valid form of protest is disorganized protest? That if a group of folks sets up ways to communicate with each other and help each other make a protest more effective, that’s no longer protest? Just how chaotic and disorganized does a group of people have to be to qualify as “valid protest?” We have right to peaceably assemble, but only if we do it spontaneously and without any planning? I think the founders would like to have a word on that point.

            All this discussion of C2 and OPSEC is just a way of demonizing your opposition so you can claim they’re enemy combatants and thus the laws don’t apply to them.

          • But you’all ain’t just standing out there along side the road with signs, are ya?

            John S.
            “I’m even having some success getting liberals on my feed to consider arming themselves and getting training, and even those who are reluctant now see the value of the 2A and are supporting it. Pretty ironic that in our great national divorce liberals are getting custody of the 2nd amendment.”

            Listen to your own rhetoric lately?

          • So the 2A doesn’t apply to liberals? Just you and Kyle Rittenhouse?

            Pick a lane.

          • “So do I understand correctly that the only valid form of protest is disorganized protest?”

            You are dishonestly changing out the noun.

            “Protest” is fine. Organized, disorganized, all fine.

            “Resistance” including violence against law enforcement, deliberate obstruction, and such like that, organized or unorganized, is NOT fine.

            The organization goes to show that it is deliberate, that it is planned. If it was “protest”, that would be fine. Great, even.

            But it’s not. Your dishonesty is tiresome.

          • “Protest, but don’t resist.”

            “Comply, or die.”

            These new mottos coming from the right are quite something. Though really they all boil down to the same thing: OBEY.

            The founders would be proud.

            I’m sure Ammon Bundy has his t-shirt on order:
            https://www.logotypes101.com/logo/obey

          • Resistance and disruption of lawful activities are not protected by the First Amendment, the Second, or any other constitutional provision.

            Comply or be subject to lawful police response.

          • So the abolitionists who hid slaves from the slave hunters, they should have complied, since at the time that was the law?

            Laws don’t define right and wrong, they define what’s popular. Sometimes they need to be resisted. And if political resistance doesn’t work, physical resistance might be necessary. Folks on this blog have said that many times over (albeit from a different side of the fence).

          • I have no quibble with the underground railroad and the associated activities that did not involve physical violence. As soon as they make physical contact the lines start getting blurry.

            At the other end of the spectrum, if the government were loading people of a particular color/religion/political-belief/etc. in railroad cars to be transported to the death camps, I would (perhaps very quietly) encourage many people to exercise the skills they learned at Boomershoot and do their best to not get caught.

            In the current situation under discussion, I seriously question the ability of the protestors to distinguish between ICE attempting to deport a violent criminal and deporting someone whose greatest crime was crossing the border illegally. If they are protesting the deportation of all of them, which is my understanding, then I have near zero sympathy for them. That time and energy should be expended pushing for legal change rather than creating a situation where the rights of innocent legal residents are infringed by the violent criminals the protesters are protecting.

          • ““Protest, but don’t resist.”

            “Comply, or die.””

            That is not remotely what I said.

            Are you capable of responding to me without lying? I’m beginning to think you are not.

            What the left is calling “resistance” includes many directly and explicitly illegal things, like obstructing the lawful activities of the police, including with violence.

            That’s not OK. It’s criminal. Sometimes, it is indeed going to get people killed, sometimes even with insufficient cause on the part of the party doing the killing (police or not). It’s a bad thing. Stop supporting it.

            You want to peacefully protest? FEEL FREE. You want to lodge strong complaints? FEEL FREE. You want to support policy changes? FEEL FREE.

            You want to get a crowd together and physically block people on public roads? On purpose? Bang on their windows (which is violence)? Make them afraid? Every single person involved should go to jail, regardless of party or morality of the situation – if you check, you’ll see that the really serious “peaceful resistance” types that knew they were breaking the law claiming it was the moral thing to do *expected* to go jail… because they were breaking the law. The objective was to get the law CHANGED with their examples.

            You want to get a crowd together a get violent with the police? That SHOULD end badly for people involved (yes, including the extremely few who did that on January 6th – that’s yet another reason politicizing that whole thing and dirtying it up with arresting every rando in the wrong area and throwing them in solitary till they killed themselves was bad – the whole thing was sullied, and even the actually guilty got set free). Sometimes, that will even be “shot by the police” badly. Most of the time, that will be reasonable, but sometimes, it won’t, and officers can and do go to jail for it (though not often federal ones……. I have a post about that, above).

            But like playing in traffic, that bad result is *EXPECTED*, and no amount of “the driver went to jail” OR “the kid was at fault” makes it OK to play in traffic or the kid played in traffic not dead or the driver not have lifelong nightmares about the kid who died on their car. Which is one of many reasons why doing that kind of stupid stuff is bad.

            Stop supporting it. And stop lying about those of us pointing this stuff out.

          • “Laws don’t define right and wrong, they define what’s popular.”

            That’s sort of true – it’s what’s popular… among the lawmakers. Otherwise, we;d have voter ID required in the Constitution by now – it’s **overwhelmingly** popular, even among Democrats.

            However, in this case, it’s much easier than that. Ejecting people from the country who came here illegally is morally right, save in __extremely__ limited circumstances.

            Every country in the world does it. Every single one. Have all of your life, all of my life. People who aren’t citizens don’t get a vote on it. We have no obligation to them, just as, once they are out of our country, we have no authority over them, save the “authority” of force (“international law” is a joke and its own bad punchline).

            “So the abolitionists who hid slaves from the slave hunters, they should have complied, since at the time that was the law?”

            You’re on the opposite side of that equation: you want to keep your nearly slaves who work for lower wages because they aren’t citizens.

            But besides that, many of them DID go to jail for breaking those laws, and those who used force for it were prosecuted for it. I don’t know of any specific examples, but it would be surprising if no one died “resisting”.

            Eventually, the laws were changed in that case.

            But of course, you also have the Civil War, where one side preemptively “resisted” to a MUCH higher degree than obey laws (which weren’t on the books yet, but were expected to be due to the change in state counts) they declared to morally wrong. We all know how that turned out.

            You can make the claim, but if you actually resist before you have convinced people to change the laws, you will be rightly prosecuted… just as the civil rights protestors in the 60s and the followers of Gandhi in India and other examples all expected and accepted.

            There’s no pass for it, just because the SPECIAL people decided it’s immoral. The lawmaking process is indeed flawed, but what you are suggesting, where the “special” people just get to *decide* which laws to follow, is FAR FAR FAR FAR worse. Go look at “nobility”, historically speaking.

          • “you want to keep your nearly slaves who work for lower wages because they aren’t citizens.”

            Small problem with your argument: they’re in some cases citizens, in others green card holders, and in all cases legal. And they don’t get “lower wages,” I actually pay above market because they do good work and I want to keep them…that’s the free market for you. If you think anybody is a “slave” at this point, at least in the fencing biz, you haven’t tried hiring for it. The good ones can (almost) name their price.

          • “they’re in some cases citizens, in others green card holders, and in all cases legal.”

            Then they have nothing to fear from ICE, and your fear-mongering about losing your workers is BS.

            That was the only nit you had to pick, then?

            If only they could magically come up with more white people who are here illegally (when every single source anyone can find agrees that the actually population of illegal immigrants is what you would call “brown people”), then it would be OK?

            Crime is not evenly distributed, not by sex, not by race, not by *ANYTHING*. It’s committed by those who choose to commit it. That’s reality.

            And the reality is that illegal immigrants are ***OVERWHLEMINGLY*** what you have, in this thread, called “brown people”.

            ICE could do literally every little thing absolutely perfectly (I don’t claim that level of perfection, not remotely), and it would still be almost entirely “brown people” getting deported.

    • “I’ve seen organized resistance up close”

      I find this bit interesting. So do I understand correctly that the only valid form of protest is disorganized protest? That if a group of folks sets up ways to communicate with each other and help each other make a protest more effective, that’s no longer protest? Just how chaotic and disorganized does a group of people have to be to qualify as “valid protest?” We have right to peaceably assemble, but only if we do it spontaneously and without any planning? I think the founders would like to have a word on that point.

      All this discussion of C2 and OPSEC is just a way of demonizing your opposition so you can claim they’re enemy combatants and thus the laws don’t apply to them.

      • Once again, in your own words.

        John Schussler on January 26, 2026 at 8:30 am said:

        “Actually lots of people are being responsible: in Minnesota they’re organizing their resistance and finding ways to push back the ICE thugs and fight the government, and in Seattle we’re starting to do the same in anticipation of similar lawless government action here.”

        • Yes, we’re organizing, and I repeat, is the only form of valid protest disorganized? Or is it ok for conservatives to have organizations and funding and training, but not liberals?

          Again, pick a lane.

          • OK, so you are organizing a planned armed resistance to the removal of criminal invaders.
            Your just couching it under the 2A.
            Got it.
            And you communist have always been big supporters of the 2A, right?
            And were the hypocrites all of a sudden?
            You know you’all have burned woman and children alive for that right?
            Then cheered afterward.

          • Your entire post is stuff I didn’t say, so I guess go argue with yourself for a while if that’s fun. I only have so much energy for rebutting straw men.

            I look forward to your defense of the 2nd amendment for all citizens, and your full-throated support of its legal exercise by them.

            Though I gather from your comments about Pettit’s gun that only certain guns meet your bar for “acceptable” so maybe “full-throated” is too much to expect.

          • Here, let me post exactly what you said;

            “Actually lots of people are being responsible: in Minnesota they’re organizing their resistance and finding ways to push back the ICE thugs and fight the government, and in Seattle we’re starting to do the same in anticipation of similar lawless government action here.

            I’m even having some success getting liberals on my feed to consider arming themselves and getting training, and even those who are reluctant now see the value of the 2A and are supporting it. Pretty ironic that in our great national divorce liberals are getting custody of the 2nd amendment.”

            And Kyle wasn’t protesting. He was defending himself against pedophile communists.

            And just so you know. The 2A was wrote to save the constitutional order.
            Not destroy it.
            (Something you communists have avowed to do, and are actively doing.)
            If that makes me a hypocrite to you communists?
            I can live with that.
            Bring it.

          • “Yes, we’re organizing, and I repeat, is the only form of valid protest disorganized?”

            It’s not the level of organization that determines whether or not it’s fine.

            But, if it’s NOT fine, then the level of organization goes to mindset, malice aforethought, that kind of thing.

            It’s difference between murder 1, murder 2, and murder 3, for instance. They are all bad, but planning it advance proves you set out to do the crime, while a “heat of the moment, did something dumb” action is viewed *less* badly.

            To continue that analogy, if the action is “saying hello”, whether you planned it in advance or not doesn’t matter. If the action is “killing someone”, it does.

            You are swapping out the ACTION being taken from “something bad” to “something OK”, then complaining that we are being unreasonable about it.

            “Again, pick a lane.”

            Again, stop lying.

  8. Rittenhouse was not violating the law. Interference with law enforcement performing their lawful duties is.

  9. It is insurrection sure enough but the really dangerous insurrection is that of the judges

  10. Communism is a grift for the lazy and malicious.
    Pure and simple.
    Every communist from Marx to Obama and everyone in between is running a scam to cover their incompetence as a human.
    Shirk their responsibility to society. And steal whatever they desire without having to work themselves. Or face the consequence of their acts.
    The heart of a communist is a slaver.
    And what we’re witnessing in the blue hives of America are slavers fighting desperately to keep their grift alive.
    They are failures as humans, and we will fail with them if we allow them to continue.

  11. “And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

    “For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

    “And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” Revelation 18:2-4

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