6 thoughts on “Pre-Blizzard Open Forum”

1. I got fished while I was at the first St. Patrick’s Day Parade after COVID. The reporter asked me the usual about how I felt being there and I said it was great to be back, then she asked me if I wasn’t worried that all these people were out here without masks. I said we were all grown-ups here and responsible for our own health and safety decisions. That’s when she gave up. Did she really think I, a middle-aged white man in an FDNY hat, was going to give her a pro-mask statement?

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2. We also have a funeral to attend today. A former boss (and a friend) died last month and his service is at 11. But Gina is sick this morning and there are bound to be a LOT of people there, so we’re not sure. We’ll decide in an hour.

   We have a chance for a little snow tonight into tomorrow (a couple of inches), but what we lack in snowfall we make up for with cold. It’s -12 this morning with a windchill of -36.

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3. In the meantime, this week I finished “Cyrano de Bergerac” and read “The Call of the Wild”, “Slaughterhouse-Five” and “Fahrenheit 451”. I’m halfway through Stoker’s “Dracula”.

   Not a single one of them referenced the name Donald Trump.

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4. Today on “What’s Pissing Jeff Off”:

   I’m part of the Board of the local Habitat for Humanity Chapter. We recently completed our latest build and had our key ceremony, and were looking for where we’d target for our next build.

   One of the options was a government owned subsidized housing unit. A local government agency has a mandate to purchase homes and rent them out as a percentage of an indigent person’s income…. Which usually isn’t much. The agency doesn’t have much of a budget, the rental income isn’t that great, and they don’t have much of a mandate to do things like repairs or upkeep. As every landlord in the history of ever knows is inevitable on a long enough scale, a tenant will eventually ride your property hard and put it away wet, in these cases uninhabitable, and they tend to just get boarded up and rot. I don’t even know that the agency *should* repair them. These houses are derelict, and the agency will never recoup the cost of repairing them by renting them for $400 a month to indigents who will probably ride it hard and put it away wet again.

   Towns hate this, because the properties are eyesores. The agency hates this, because these houses tend to rack up bylaw citations, and it’s not like they’re bad people, they just don’t have a budget. So we step in. Habitat would buy these homes for $1, gut them, bring them up to code, and get new homeowners into them. This was a win for everyone: A family gets a home, the town loses an eyesore, the agency loses a liability.

   Well, there was recently a change in government, and the new government has decided in their infinite wisdom that the agency absolutely does not have a mandate to sell these properties, and stopped all current and future deals. Of course, they didn’t budget anything to actually deal with the properties either, so… yeah. I guess we just wait until some squatter comes along and burns them down.

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5. If you wonder why the left and right can’t get along, check out this explanation of leftist thinking:

   Why Conservatives Defend ICE

   Republicans deplore the mayhem in Minnesota—but blame protesters and Democrats for it.

   Internet archive link to the complete article: https://archive.is/20260122190907/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/ice-conservatives-minnesota-dhs-protests/685705/

   Their basic premise is that ICE is, by default, in the wrong and the protesters are in the right. I’m not a big fan of some of the conduct of ICE, but darn it, they’re in the legal right when deporting people here illegally. If protesters are interfering with ICE, they’re the criminal. The protesters are defending and supporting criminals, and in some case pretty bad ones too.

   My only solace is they’re in the minority by a good margin. The protesters are making a bunch of noise. This is why Trump won, in spite of his issues. He’s the first mainstream politician to actually do something on the issue, and it is a HUGE reason he won.

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6. An interesting article.

   https://reason.com/2026/01/23/ice-demonstrates-why-we-need-the-second-amendment/

   ICE Demonstrates Why We Need the Second Amendment
   The right to keep and bear arms is about resisting tyranny.
   J.D. Tuccille | 1.23.2026 7:00 AM

   Share on FacebookShare on XShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL Add Reason to Google
   An armed, masked protester | Tom Hudson/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom
   (Tom Hudson/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom)
   This week, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes warned that her state’s Stand Your Ground law makes confrontations between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the public potentially dangerous. Mayes, a Democrat, thinks she’s scoring points against the self-defense law while raising a caution to ICE agents, but she’s really underlining a feature of America’s political culture. It’s not Stand Your Ground that puts masked government agents in peril, but this country’s noble history of resistance to overbearing government and the Second Amendment in which that tradition is embodied.

   You are reading The Rattler from J.D. Tuccille and Reason. Get more of J.D.’s commentary on government overreach and threats to everyday liberty.

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   ‘This Is a Second Amendment State’
   “It’s kind of a recipe for disaster, because you have these masked federal officers with very little identification, sometimes no identification, wearing plain clothes and masks,” Mayes told 12 News’s Brahm Resnik. “And we have a Stand Your Ground law that says if you reasonably believe that your life in in danger, and you’re in your house, or your car, or on your property, that you can defend yourself with lethal force.”

   “Now, you’re not allowed to shoot peace officers,” she clarified when pressed in the interview by Resnik. But “if you’re being attacked by somebody who is not identified as a peace officer, how do you know? If somebody comes at me wearing a mask—by the way, I’m a gun owner—and I can’t tell whether they’re a police officer, what am I supposed to do?”

   “This is a don’t-tread-on-me state,” she added. “This is a Second Amendment state. This is a state with a lot of guns in it.”

   Mayes seems to have confused Arizona’s Stand Your Ground law, which specifies there’s no duty to retreat when attacked in public, with Castle Doctrine, which recognizes people’s right to defend themselves on their property. Both are common in the U.S., though Castle Doctrine is more prevalent. Both could also come into play in confrontations with ICE or other state agents. But it’s Castle Doctrine that matters when “you’re in your house, or your car, or on your property” and goons kick in the door.

   The Right To Defend Yourself From Police
   Jurors in Burleson County, Texas, recognized the importance of such principles when, in 2014, they declined to indict Henry Goedrich Magee for killing a cop who participated in an early-morning no-knock raid on his home. Police hadn’t properly identified themselves.

   On the other hand, a Bell County, Texas jury found Marvin Guy guilty of murder for a police officer’s death in a similar no-knock raid in 2023. That said, the jurors rejected a capital murder charge.

   Exercising self-defense rights against law-enforcement officers is a gamble. But there’s precedent for recognizing that right when government agents misbehave in ways that endanger life and liberty.

   A similar situation could have easily occurred this month when ICE raided the home of Chongly Scott Thao in St. Paul, Minnesota. As CBS News reported, “ICE agents broke his door down without a warrant before detaining him at gunpoint. Videos show agents bringing him out in the cold with little more than a blanket and his underwear.” As it turned out, ICE not only invaded the man’s home, but they had the wrong guy. They were ultimately forced to release Thao after terrifying him and his family. Who could have blamed him if he’d opened fire as they stormed through the door?

   As that case demonstrates, bad government behavior comes not just from failing to provide proper identification, but from a range of overbearing behavior. Second Amendment advocates have long recognized this point – at least the consistent ones have.

   ‘That They Are a Law Enforcement Officer…Does Not Mean You Are Obliged To Allow Yourself To be Killed’
   In 1995, the National Association of Radio Talk Show Hosts awarded radio personality and former Watergate figure G. Gordon Liddy a Freedom of Speech Award for urging resistance to violent raids by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) at a time when anger was rising (as it has again) against that agency’s abusive enforcement of gun regulations. “Shoot twice to the body, center of mass, and if that does not work, then shoot to the groin area,” he advised. He later specified that “if somebody is shooting at you, using deadly force, the mere fact that they are a law enforcement officer, if they are in the wrong, does not mean you are obliged to allow yourself to be killed.”

   That sounds a lot like scenarios we’ve seen with ICE, which not only neglects ID but often uses brutal tactics. The founders and other luminaries of the republic might have gone even further.

   “If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government,” Alexander Hamilton advised in The Federalist Papers, No. 28.

   Thomas Jefferson’s personal seal bore the saying, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

   “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers,” noted U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story in his commentaries on the Constitution.

   As self-defense advocates often emphasize, the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms not just for hunting and target shooting, but so people can resist government when it inevitably steps out of line. One of the more dramatic such incidents occurred in 1946, when returning war veterans found corrupt officials in charge of Athens, Tennessee, and tossed them out with gunfire and dynamite.

   Many Americans Oppose ICE Tactics
   That many Americans find ICE as reprehensible as self-defense advocates view the ATF is clear from the protests in Minneapolis that have resulted in several shootings, including the killing of Renee Good. Recent polling by CBS/YouGov finds that a majority of Americans (61 percent) believes ICE is “too tough” in the way “it stops or detains people” and 52 percent say ICE operations make communities “less safe.”

   In separate polling, 56 percent call Good’s shooting unjustified. A slight plurality (47 percent) approves of anti-ICE protests. “Equal shares of Americans support and oppose abolishing ICE (45% vs. 45%).”

   An agency that almost half of Americans believe should be abolished, and that a majority believes is shooting people without justification—that is, committing murder—is a prime target for self-defense.

   Fans of the right to keep and bear arms have rightly pointed to the Second Amendment as protecting the ability to resist abusive government officials. ICE is in the process of demonstrating why that constitutional amendment, and the freedom it protects, are so important.

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