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Joe Biden Does Not Understand the Second Amendment

When it overturned California’s 10-round magazine limit last Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit emphasized what Americans commonly do when they exercise their constitutional right to armed self-defense. Joe Biden, by contrast, thinks the relevant question is how many shells Americans are allowed to have in their shotguns when they hunt migratory birds.

Those two approaches represent the difference between judges who take the Second Amendment seriously and politicians who only pay lip service to it. Biden’s presidential campaign, which promises a raft of new gun restrictions while barely nodding toward the Constitution, shows the extent to which the right to keep and bear arms has become a partisan issue, a development that does not bode well for civil liberties.

The Biden campaign’s website mentions the Second Amendment just once, saying, “It’s within our grasp to end our gun violence epidemic and respect the Second Amendment, which is limited.” Even that grudging acknowledgment is more than the Democratic Party’s platform offers.

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Facebook Introducing a ‘Virality Circuit Breaker’ to Prevent Spread of Viral Content

According to a recent report from the Interface newsletter by Verge reporter Casey Newton, Facebook is piloting a new program that will monitor viral posts that gain millions of views to ensure that they don’t violate community standards.

The Verge reporter Casey Newton reports in the newsletter the Interface that social media giant Facebook is developing a new program to fight viral misinformation on the platform. In the newsletter, Newton lists suggestions made by the Center for American Progress (CAP) to prevent the spread of certain content on the platform.

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The Non-Voter

Like the largest political group in America, the non-voter, I completely ignored this year’s Democratic convention. Like an overwhelming majority of Americans I didn’t watch any speeches, didn’t go online to read hot takes spinning those speeches, and I didn’t fight on Twitter over whatever happened.

Instead I spent the week doing what I usually do, and what most people do, which is getting on with my life by working, talking to friends and family, watching sports, playing video games, whatever.

If I am going to continue to do this I will keep ignoring the silly details of the election and focus instead on keeping my head above water, and when election day comes, I will probably forget about it, or if I remember it, will simply shrug and say, “Too busy. Doesn’t matter anyways.”

For many Americans, as they see it, politics, especially presidential politics, doesn’t matter. It is a far removed thing that every few years makes a lot of noise, pestering them with ads and phone calls, and when over, forgets about them or screws them over. It is like that flower they see on TV that attracts big crowds because it blooms every seven years and smells of rotting flesh.

Each election there are three choices and the winner is always not voting. In 2016 100 million people chose this option, far far more than people who voted for Trump. Or Clinton. “None of the above” effectively wins every presidential election, and it isn’t even close.

That is a pretty damning indictment of our political system and suggest understanding non-voters is more important than a Joe Biden speech watched by less than 10% of adults, and far more important than what a bunch of DC insiders think of it.

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Virginia Plans Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccinations For All Residents

As Friday’s hospitalization numbers across the Sun Belt appear to confirm CDC head Dr. Robert Redfield’s assertion that the American COVID-19 outbreak has peaked and is starting to fade, the State of Virginia is setting a new precedent by seriously discussing forcing Virginians to be vaccinated with whatever rushed-to-marked candidate the FDA approves first.

During an interview that aired on Friday, the state’s health commissioner said he planned to invoke state law to make vaccinations mandatory – once a western product is available, presumably.

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