Articles by Herschel Smith

Donald Sensing, via WRSA:

Title 8, Section 1182 of the U.S. Code provides in relevant part:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Bryan Fischer adds the following very informative analysis.

The Constitution gives Congress unilateral authority over the issue of immigration and citizenship in Article I, Section 8: “The Congress shall have Power … to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” In Article I, Section 9 we find that until 1808 the individual States had authority to decide which persons were “proper to admit.” After 1808, deciding who was eligible for immigration into the United States was the exclusive province of the central government. Congress has unilateral authority to decide who it is “proper to admit” to the United States, and there are no limitations on that authority.

There is no constitutional right, of course, to immigrate to the United States. It is a privilege, not a right. And we the people have given to Congress authority to set parameters for immigration for our protection, our cultural unity, and our national security.

This is all well and good, but Bryan gets to the real meat of the issue when he addresses the Biblical data.

For those of us who are evangelicals, there is a second question, which is of greater importance than the first. We not only want to know if an immigration ban is constitutional, we want to know if it is biblical. Did God himself ever impose such an immigration ban?

The answer is yes.  With the fledgling nation on the edge of the Promised Land, God instituted a permanent ban (“forever”) on immigration into Israel from two nations, Ammon and Moab.

“No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever.” ~ Deut. 23:3 (ESV)

This was not an arbitrary ban. It was not imposed on either the nations of Edom or Egypt, as Deut. 23:7 makes clear. There were good common sense reasons for God’s ban on the Ammonites and Moabites. “They did not meet you with bread and with water on the way, when you came out of Egypt … and they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor … to curse you” (Deut. 23:4).

Ammonites and Moabites were not allowed to immigrate because of their historic animosity toward the people of God and their commitment to weaken them and defeat them. Where such conditions exist today, a similar ban on foreign immigration would have biblical precedent.

Now obviously exceptions could be made and were made on a limited basis. Ruth, for instance, was allowed to immigrate into Israel from Moab. Ruth rejected the ancient hostility of her people toward Israel and embraced its culture and its God. “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:17). In other words, she happily assimilated in every way, included in religious matters, to her newly adopted nation.

She was not only welcomed, but found a place in the line of descent that led to the birth of the Savior of the world.

The bottom line: a ban on immigration from nations which have demonstrated abiding hostility toward the United States is both constitutionally and biblically permissible.

This is effective medicine.  Usually when so-called Christians talk about immigration, they wax emotional on the need for us to care for people.  State policy and security are the last thing on their minds when they say things like that.

I often hear Leviticus 19:34 cited – “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God,” (NASB).  Folks often do this to shame Christians into accepting open borders.

But as the Biblical data above shows, shaming people isn’t on the list of seminary-approved Biblical hermeneutical techniques.  One way to tell that the emotional Christian isn’t thinking through this issue is that she latches onto the problem of the moment, rather than seeing the broader implications of her position.  For example, she may want to take in Syrian immigrants, but she doesn’t give poor Chinese equal numbers, of Kenyans, or Ethiopians (who are more likely to be Christian), or the poor in Bangladesh.

The U.S. can’t take in everyone, and the logical end of the emotional position that wants to take them in is not only the destruction of what wealth remains within family structure in America, it is the destruction of the social, cultural and religious heritage of the country.  There isn’t enough wealth to go around – there isn’t even enough wealth to pay our own bills.  The root problem here is that the Church has no business declaring state policy concerning immigration.  The province of the church is the administration of grace, while the province of the state is the administration of justice.  Confusing the two means the state is involved in redistribution of wealth, and the Church is trying to influence policy concerning national security.

Each of these institutions should mind their own business, and in the case of the state, that means the country’s policy has no business considering graciousness, kindness or love when it comes to immigration.  As Clint Eastwood said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Rolling Stone:

In a major defeat for the National Rifle Association, the Supreme Court decided this week not to take up a challenge to one of the toughest gun-control statutes in America, a law on the books in Highland Park, Illinois.

Politico:

I am a lifelong Democrat. I proudly boast an “F” rating from the NRA. And, yet during my 2014 gubernatorial campaign in Texas, I supported the open carry of handguns in my state.

It is a position that haunts me.

Every few months, on the heels of a shooting that devastates a different corner of America, we find ourselves arriving at exactly the same place: Republicans offer their prayers; some offer up the idea of focusing our attention on mental health; almost none of them mention guns. Democrats talk background checks, magazine limits, closing the gun-show loophole and, ultimately, get exasperated. In the wake of the San Bernardino and Planned Parenthood shootings, the conversations we’re having now are almost exactly the same. Meaningful gun reform still seems as distant as it did when the Manchin-Toomey bill, which would have required background checks on all commercial gun sales, failed in 2013, mere months after 20 children and six adults were killed in a mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

As baffling as this would appear to an outside observer, I know why we keep ending up here. I know why because, even with my history of supporting sensible gun laws, I was cowed by the political realities of my state. Me, a Democrat who wasn’t afraid of making waves when it came to strapping on a pair of pink sneakers as a state senator and filibustering an anti-abortion bill for 13 hours. I might be doggedly progressive most of the time, but when it came to staking out my position on the open carry of handguns in a red state, none of that mattered.

[ … ]

I wanted the campaign conversation to be about education funding, equal pay for women and access to health care—not guns. But this was Texas. Fifty-eight percent of voters in the state think gun restrictions should be either loosened or left alone.

Against that backdrop, I chose to do something that was cleverer than it was wise. I decided to take a position in favor of open carry

Poor, poor Wendy.  But this smacks of repentance of the sin of freedom and liberty, something the progressives will never allow.  So a public explanation, turning, and confession is needed if her sins are to be washed away.  But the sin, notice well, isn’t some untoward dalliance, but rather the sin of caring too much.  If she is to be elected, says she, then the conversation must turn about the issues she can affect.

Thus, she compromised, but the compromise was over something that marks the difference between slave and free men, and the slaves will never allow her to feign being free.  This issue is too important.  It would have been better for her to have put this issue more bluntly.  Her statement should have read something like, “I know I supported open carry, but I lied about that and had I been elected I would vetoed every attempt to pass such legislation.”

Following this more Alinsky-like strategy would have made her a hero.  Now she’s just a goat.  Finally, notice what haunts her.  It isn’t letting her husband fund her way through law school and then divorcing him, or preventing further restrictions on abortion in Texas.  No, the screams of the babies she helped to murder don’t haunt her dreams.  It’s failure to stand firm on gun control.

Don’t worry, Wendy.  We all knew you were lying when you supported open carry, and this confession doesn’t make us think any differently about you.  You were a whore then and you’re still a whore today.

David Codrea:

Get this, you monstrous foreign collectivist, who came to this country to escape Nazi horrors and enjoy the Blessings of Liberty: How twisted and evil that you now work to undermine the very reasons why the Holocaust your family fled from will never happen here, at least without those issuing and carrying out the orders hanging from lamp posts. Because WE WILL NOT DISARM.

No, we won’t.  And that may mean war in numerous forms, some mundane, some terrible.  But war it will be if the rulers insist.

David Codrea:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” Ephesians tells us. That we do, but it manifests itself in the physical world, and that’s where down payments on the final price are made.

We are facing dark days. We cannot lose courage and we cannot lose faith. And we cannot know what price will be required from each of us.

We are to move forward with courage.

From Uncle, Amitai Etzioni a the Huffington post says we need domestic disarmament.  Uncle responds:

I don’t think progressives understand how that will play out. Those sitting on the sidelines cheering on the disarmament effort are as much fair game as those doing the disarming.

That’s strong tea from Uncle.  And a sign of the times.

We know many things about the attack at Benghazi, much more than the administration wishes we did.  First of all, my military readers knew within 24 hours that this was the result of a well-planned, well-coordinated combined-arms attack with the use of crew served weapons (e.g., see DirtyMick’s comments), not the result of some ridiculous YouTube video.

We also know that weapons were being moved through Libya to Syrian insurgents, those whom we now know as ISIS.  We know that this was illegal, immoral and ill-advised, and was being funded by the U.S. government.  I also said three years ago that I didn’t believe administration claims that no assets were available for response to the battle.

Finally, I completely disemboweled the administration’s excuse that we don’t deploy troops into battle without good, real-time intelligence.  We do that all of the time.  Nothing this administration has said has been honest.  Now we come to find out, due to the hard work of Judicial Watch, that I was right.

Judicial Watch today released a new Benghazi email from then-Department of Defense Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash to State Department leadership immediately offering “forces that could move to Benghazi” during the terrorist attack on the U.S. Special Mission Compound in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. In an email sent to top Department of State officials, at 7:19 p.m. ET, only hours after the attack had begun, Bash says, “we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.” The Obama administration redacted the details of the military forces available, oddly citing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemption that allows the withholding of “deliberative process” information.

Bash’s email seems to directly contradict testimony given by then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta before the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2013. Defending the Obama administration’s lack of military response to the nearly six-hour-long attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Panetta claimed that “time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response.”

The first assault occurred at the main compound at about 9:40 pm local time – 3:40 p.m. ET in Washington, DC.  The second attack on a CIA annex 1.2 miles away began three hours later, at about 12 am local time the following morning – 6 p.m. ET.

Leon Panetta knows more than he has said, and what he has said has been primarily prevarication and obfuscation.  The same is true of David Petraeus, and General Ham, who knows things very important for us to know, hasn’t spoken on this.  We will all find out what assets were available, who told them to stand down, and who chose to leave good men to perish in Libya that fateful night.

We will know the truth one day.  All of it.  God knows it now, and He will hold you accountable, whether I am in a position to do that or not.

Finally, I am willing to bet that everything I say and have said about Benghazi will be proven accurate and correct.  I have said “As to what I suspect – but cannot yet prove – the movement of weapons to terrorists was becoming hard to hide, and the whole operation had ripened to the point of rottenness.  Stevens had to be moved out and told to shut up about what he knew.  Even if the administration didn’t plan the military operation to take down the consulate at Benghazi, they nevertheless used it to hide their tracks.”

Somebody prove me wrong.

Chicago Tribune:

Authorities say no charges will be filed against an Uber driver who shot and wounded a gunman who opened fire on a crowd of people in Logan Square over the weekend.

The driver had a concealed-carry permit and acted in the defense of himself and others, Assistant State’s Attorney Barry Quinn said in court Sunday.

A group of people had been walking in front of the driver around 11:50 p.m. Friday in the 2900 block of North Milwaukee Avenue when Everardo Custodio, 22, began firing into the crowd, Quinn said.

The driver pulled out a handgun and fired six shots at Custodio, hitting him several times, according to court records.  Responding officers found Custodio lying on the ground, bleeding, Quinn said.  No other injuries were reported.

Authorities say no charges will be filed against an Uber driver who shot and wounded a gunman who opened fire on a crowd of people in Logan Square over the weekend.

The driver had a concealed-carry permit and acted in the defense of himself and others, Assistant State’s Attorney Barry Quinn said in court Sunday.

A group of people had been walking in front of the driver around 11:50 p.m. Friday in the 2900 block of North Milwaukee Avenue when Everardo Custodio, 22, began firing into the crowd, Quinn said.

The driver pulled out a handgun and fired six shots at Custodio, hitting him several times, according to court records.  Responding officers found Custodio lying on the ground, bleeding, Quinn said.  No other injuries were reported.

Now, go to Google News and search on Logan Square for any other reporting of this event.  There is none.  America has been saturated with reporting on gun violence and this administration’s call for more gun control, but nothing on the prevention of another mass shooting by a concealed carrier.

It doesn’t fit the narrative, does it?  And yet, he didn’t wait for the police (who would have been too late to do anything about it anyway), he didn’t run for cover, he didn’t go wild and shoot up the entire area and kill innocents, but instead he apparently ran towards the sound and laid his own safety aside for that of others.

Who could ask for anything more out of concealed carriers?

Reader and commenter Menckenlite concerning guns and mental health.

Control freaks love psychiatry, a means of social control with no Due Process protections. It is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. See, e.g., Boston University Psychology Professor Margaret Hagan’s book, Whores of the Court, to see how arbitrary psychiatric illnesses are. Peter Breggin, Fred Baughman and Thomas Szasz wrote extensively about abuses of psychiatry. Liberals blame guns for violence. Conservatives blame mental illness. Neither have any causal connection to violence. The issue is criminal conduct, crime. Suggesting that persons with legal disabilities are criminals shows the nonsensical argument of this politician and his fellow control freaks. Shame on them.

Oftentimes my readers can say things better than can I.  The above quote is a perfect example.  Obama now wants guns from these 47,000 people.

Leaving the federal government in charge of anything is the surest way to screw it up.  I’m sure it is indeed a problem for the air marshals.  But the biggest issue for me isn’t related to errors and screwups, as prolific as they may be with the *.gov.  Another thing this conversation suffers from is confusion of the terrorist watch list with the no-fly list.  They are not at all the same thing.  Obama wants you to be confused, he revels in it, he will use it to his advantage.

If a terrorist is inside America, deport him.  If a terrorist is trying to get in, bar him.  Close the borders immediately and completely, and the issue of ne’er-do-wells perpetrating crimes and terror via our border will go away.  But since we won’t close the borders, we aren’t serious about this problem, at least not yet.

In the mean time, Obama doesn’t really want 47,000 people to turn in their guns.  He doesn’t care in the least about errors and screwups.  He wants so-called anti-government types on the list, or in other words, people who believe in God, people who believe in the constitution, people who believe in their right to bear arms, and people who think the *.gov is too intrusive and the executive branch too powerful.

And therein lies the problem.  Under Obama’s schema, the executive can put anyone on the list for literally any reason.  I sometimes disagree with Volokh, but in this case I think he nailed it.

… we don’t deny constitutional rights based just on suspicion? If you think you can prove someone is a terrorist, lock him up. If you have probable cause to think he’s a terrorist, and think you can develop proof beyond a reasonable doubt, arrest him. Even if you have only suspicion, follow him, ask people about him, and so on. But if you don’t have enough to prosecute or even arrest someone, you can’t take away his constitutional rights, even if you suspect he’s a terrorist (or if you suspect he’s a drug dealer or a gang member or whatever else).

This is the nexus between mental health and terrorism.  Unfortunately for those who suffer from mental health issues, they are misunderstood and badly characterized, in large measure because everything that occurs due to the existence of evil in the world is falsely ascribed to mental health.

The nexus has to do with the how the progressives treat them.  The commonality is an end run around due process, and the progressives no more regret that for believers in the constitution than they do for those who suffer from mental health maladies.  In fact, the progressives would likely see everyone cast into the same boat – those who suffer from mental health maladies, a category including all conservatives or libertarians.

Don’t fall for the rhetoric.  It’s a smoke screen, a ruse.  Obama and his ilk don’t really care about terrorism in the way you do.  They want to take your guns.  Isn’t it telling and ironic that while collectivists want to ban people from buying guns by executive fiat, Donald Trump is open to the idea.  Or was I being redundant by saying “collectivists” and Donald Trump?”

“He makes my feet like hinds’ feet, and sets me upon my high places.  He trains my hands for battle, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.  Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation, and thy right hand upholds me; and Thy gentleness makes me great,” Psalm 18:33-36.

The New York Times has published a call for gun control in the wake of the Islamist actions in San Bernardino.  An excerpt follows.

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.

The Washington Post has a pitiful, confused and yet halting agreement with the editorial, as if the writer, in terrible fear for her life, doesn’t know what else to do.

Then, there are those matters that are beyond practical political reach. Suffering, death, danger and maltreatment aside, a policy solution to these problems simply has no real path, no viability at all.

And in this moment, it would seem that any and all policy related to guns would belong in that third group. Gun control — or any discussion of a coordinated effort to stem the tide of gun deaths that set this country apart from almost every other industrialized nation — is going nowhere. It’s a reality we acknowledge regularly on this very blog, most recently on Saturday morning, the day the New York Times saw fit to devote its first front-page editorial in 95 years to gun control.

There are numerous reactions to this editorial, most of them edging towards the “this means war” sentiment.  I want to take a different approach to this call for more gun control, and all of those like it across America.

It’s tempting to take the approach of commenter Mike Bishop at WRSA, who says “The Manhattanites have about as much relevance in my personal, local, life, as a rookery of penguins.”  Mike is right, and such gun control will never obtain, but it goes much deeper than relevance.

There is a war between light and darkness, and it has been advancing since the very beginning.  Statism and Islam are different facets of the same stone (there are other facets), and they are merely the societal manifestations of the struggle between light and darkness.  The war occurs individually and corporately, and while men see the consequences and effects of the war, and get brief glimpses into the deeper things, in large measure we don’t truly see the battle in the heavens.

Angels and demons are warring in the heavenly places, and there is war within the souls of men.  God isn’t barely victorious, nor does be barely win.  Nay, He sits and the heavens and scoffs at the rulers of the world.  It will all end as He has said it will.

“For I am God and there is no other; I am God and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not yet been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’,” Isaiah 46:9-10.

As for individual men, there are those who are lost.  The New York Times editorial board is lost.  No, not collectively, but individually, each and every one of them.  The war is over in their soul, or better, it never occurred.  There are those men who have been given a taste, and who know the truth, but who suppress it in unrighteousness.  They will never find peace or rest, not now and not in eternity.

But there are those who would be lost if left to their own devices, who know their sins, but who have been awakened by the sovereign hand of Almighty God, who reaches down in His kind providence and bestows His love on them.  They are saved by grace and through faith, not of their works, lest they should boast.

For this last category, God “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world … He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself … according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,” Eph 1:4,5,11.

If the former believes that upon death their bodies cool to ambient temperature and then get planted or burned, and that’s the end, they are merely observers to the great war, not even pawns.  They are worse than irrelevant.  They see the effects, but cannot effect change.  For those of us who believe, there are no volunteers to this war.

We were created for it, and we were drafted to this army.  Our volunteering occurred simultaneously with our being called, and upon being called, we had no other choice.  The sheep know their master’s voice, and only follow Him.

Oh, to be sure, I won’t give up my weapons, not a single one of them, and I will defend myself and my family as we are threatened, whether by the state or other actors.  I will do so because I have been taught by my master that I must do so.  But it goes deeper than a few guns.

I know that the New York Times editorial board, for all their bluster, isn’t relevant to this war because they don’t even know there is one.  Looking for peace, they may as well slash their wrists and bleed before Baal for fire to come down from heaven as to look to the state for a solution to evil.

I have been called with a heavenly calling, like all of His people, not of themselves, but of His great mercy and from before the foundation of the world, to fight this great war.  The war is present everywhere and all of the time, whether visibly and by implements of fighting, or in our souls for our devotion and affection of the divine.

It has become commonplace to charge people carrying weapons with cowardice.

PARIS—For most of the last two centuries, Europeans have been puzzling over their American cousins’ totemic obsession with guns and their passion for concealed weapons. And back in the decades before the American Civil War, several British visitors to American shores thought they’d discerned an important connection: people who owned slaves or lived among them wanted to carry guns to keep the blacks intimidated and docile, but often shot each other, too.

In 1842, the novelist Charles Dickens, on a book tour of the United States, saw a link between the sheer savagery of slave ownership and what he called the cowardly practice of carrying pistols or daggers or both. The author of Oliver Twist listened with a mixture of horror and contempt as Americans defended their utterly indefensible “rights” to tote guns and carry Bowie knives, right along with their “right” to own other human beings who could be shackled, whipped, raped, and mutilated at will.

Charging us with sin is the devil’s game, and in my corner as defender is the Son of God who has paid the price, past, present and future.  I’ll just let Him handle it.  I am unaffected by the game.  Since I am a warrior in the great war of all time, how can any man say that I am a coward?

Coward if left to his own devices, sinner, and even worthless worm.  But saint by the shed blood of the lamb, warrior in the great war, at battle ever since being called, at battle until the end of my life, servant of the most high king.  My days are in His hands.  I will live all of the days to which I have been ordained, and will not perish until it is time that I meet my savior and master.  Who can understand this except those who have been called?

“You will not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day,” Psalm 91:5.

David Codrea on the Maryland Deputy Attorney General:

“My complete answer, off the record, is we should ban guns altogether, period,” he said. “If you want gun practice with a gun, you can go to the gun range and then you leave it there and you go home.”

He said, in his opinion, personal ownership of firearms should be limited to law enforcement and to individuals who pass licensing tests, pay a tax, have insurance and, as technology allows, have fingerprint trigger locks.

This isn’t substantially different from what we already knew about the gun controllers.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

Both this controller and the Deputy AG are willing to go some distance towards their goals in order to achieve long term full compliance with their view of the world.

Never trust a “gun controller” because of the second word in the phrase.  There is no limit to the control a controller wants to exercise in his quest to control you.

Read David Codrea’s piece on dismissal of the post-1986 machine gun ban challenge appealed.  A good candidate for comment of the week comes from Woody Woodward, who says:

Had the ATF been around in the early 1900’s Browning, Garand, and Williams would have been sitting in a federal prison and we would be speaking either Japanese or German today. ATF apparently adheres to the premise that, “The law is what we say it is, at any given time, and there’s nothing you can do about because we are a governmental agency.”

Bravo, Woody.  Bravo.  I’ve noted before that one side effect (unintended or otherwise?) of gun control laws is to weaken the ability of the U.S. to design, fabricate and service guns.  For example, when is the last time a U.S. manufacturer fielded an open bolt design for a light machine gun?  Who has the contract for SAWs for the USMC?

Via Mike Vanderboegh, Dave Workman:

Today is the one-year anniversary of the implementation of Washington state’s Initiative 594, a gun control and registration measure disguised as a “universal background check” that has – as demonstrated by headline after headline – been an absolute failure in crime prevention, according to the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

In a blistering news release late yesterday, CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, who helped spearhead the opposition to I-594 last year, noted, “Despite public records requests to agencies around the state, we can find no record of any enforcement of this new law in the year since it took effect. The only discernible impact of the law has been to inconvenience honest gun owners and add more red tape to gun shows.”

Oh go cry me a river, Dave.  I don’t remember all of that “opposition” Alan spearheaded.  In fact, I recall just the opposite.  In what world do you live?

Via Uncle, cops are just like you and me, only better.  Retired cops exempted from magazine ban.

From reader Mack, this:

The theodicy of federal government seeks to defend the goodness of government in the face of tragedy.Progressives tend to believe that government — if made to have sufficient size, scope, and proper management over the affairs of man — will fix or at least seriously mitigate the problem of evil in the world. Conservatives tend to believe that human nature is flawed and inclined toward bad things.

Mack comments that Molly sounds a lot like me.  Yup.