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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

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90% of New Yorkers defy the state’s new gun registration law

Rebellion: A report in New York strongly suggests that more than 90% of the population is refusing to register their weapons as required by the new gun control law rammed through the legislature after the Sandy Hook massacre.

The article also notes that sheriffs and the rank-in-file have no intention of enforcing the registration part of the law either.

This story illustrates why it is essential we take great care in the laws we pass. If we write bad laws, we not only oppress innocent law-abiding citizens, we foster contempt for the law, which in the end can cause the collapse of civilized society and even more oppression.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

5 comments

  • Edward

    It isn’t just the laws passed, it is also the enforcement of them and the leadership’s attitude toward them. A president’s influence is strong: America’s youth and their culture were dramatically changed when President Clinton redefined sexual relations.

    Is it possible that New Yorkers are merely observing Obama’s lackadaisical attitude for following laws?

    Obama himself has violated his own signature law, Obamacare, so many times that it is hard to keep count.

    Millions of Americans are now scofflaws when it comes to Obama’s signature law. Of the 45 million people who didn’t have health insurance in 2013, only about 5 million followed the law and signed up in 2014.

    Obama violates the Constitution (the supreme law of the land) for many of the policies that he enacts, bypassing Congress as though they don’t matter and only get in his way.

    Then there are those around the president who likewise are careless about following laws. Tim Geithner was nominated and approved despite having misreported his taxes — and he was put in charge of taxes. (The taxing agency has proved itself pretty careless with the law, too.) Obama’s Attorney General said that he would never prosecute “my kind,” meaning that he would willfully let people that he favored get away with crimes (which seems to include people who work for the Obama administration).

    If the President of the United States and his administration can set the example of being contemptuous of our laws, why shouldn’t the rest of us — including New York’s sheriffs — become equally contemptuous, even of Obama’s laws?

  • Cotour

    Two observations Edward,

    1. One technicality, the Constitution is the frame work of American law from which all law is developed, it itself is not law in the respect that you might mean.

    And

    2. The Sheriffs of N.Y.S. are elected officials and are defying Governor Cuomo’s opportunistic un Constitutional, both by the U.S. Constitution and the N.Y.S. Constitution, and political move after the horrible Sandy Hook massacre by a mentally ill boy who was empowered to do what he did by his irresponsible mother (and father IMO). A purely reactionary and political pandering move about ridiculous rules for individuals to follow.

    Remember “you don’t need 10 bullets to kill a deer” as Cuomo is famous for saying, like that has anything to do with the second amendment or anything else.

  • mpthompson

    General enforcement of these laws doesn’t matter much. What’s more important is they allow more tools for selective enforcement in the future against inconvenient people.

    Are you a progressive running for a congressional district? Is your opponent breaking a law that 90% of gun owners are ignoring? Great, club him or her over the head with it. Bonus points if you can get your opponent arrested and on the evening news in handcuffs.

    Is a local uppity business owner failing to service some imagined protected class du jour? Great, go after the business owner with this law if they happen to be a gun owner too.

    Nothing is more thrilling to a progressive than a law that 90% of the people are ignoring as it is useful in so many ways.

  • Edward

    Cotour,

    Two observations:

    1. I keep recommending that you read the US Constitution sometime. Now would be a good time to do so. Please take special note of Article VI, Section 2:
    “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”
    http://constitutionus.com/#a6c2

    To abridge the relevant part: “This Constitution … shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”

    2. The point is that being a scofflaw is increasing in popularity, in Obama’s America (land of the formerly free).

    3. Oops — three observations: It seems that we disagree on more than we previously thought.

  • Cotour

    Maybe I am splitting hairs here. I am trying to come up with distinct examples of Obama violating more current laws passed as a result of the Constitutional structure but I believe that he is really an overall offence to the fundamental intent of the entire thing, from the body of the document right through to any and all law passed as a result of it.

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