Monthly Archives: October 2019

A Judge Got One Wrong

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Recall Florida’s citizens, by a 2:1 margin, voting up a State constitutional amendment restoring to convicted felons (except murderers and sex offenders) their right to vote on completion of their criminal sentences.

Recall, further, Florida’s government passing a law that required these felons to pay off their outstanding fines, fees or restitution—in other words, actually to complete their sentences, including court-imposed financial requirements.  This law went further: it provided mechanisms for relief from those financial penalties so the felon could complete their sentences more quickly after release from jail:

  • payment of the financial obligation in full
  • a court’s dismissal of the debt
  • conversion of the debt to community service

That last is instructive: community service is one of several sanctions, whether in addition to or in lieu of jail, applied on felony conviction. Community service in this guise thus stands as the State’s explicit recognition that a felon has not completed his sentence until he has completed all of it, including financial penalties.  That community service also is used to sanction misdemeanors and civil wrongs in no way alters that simple truth.

Now Federal District Judge Robert Hinkle has chosen to overrule the will of the citizens of the State: he’s issued an injunction that bars Florida’s Secretary of State and County Supervisors of Elections

from preventing plaintiffs from registering to vote solely because they can’t pay a financial obligation. He cited an appellate court ruling that held that “access to the franchise cannot be made to depend on an individual’s financial resources.”

Never mind that the law does not bar a right to vote based on a voter’s financial resources but on a felon’s having completed his sentence.

Never mind, either, that the law provides two means of relief from the financial portion of the felon’s sentence.  With his injunction, Hinkle has both removed the possibility of relief from financial distress, thereby making even more difficult an already arduous journey back to society, he’s removed much of the incentive for the felon to try.

This is another example of activist judges making political decisions in direct contravention of the political arms of a government, for all that this injunction is temporary, pending next year’s trial on the merits.

Censorship

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Its name is Jack Dorsey.

The social media company led by CEO Jack Dorsey [that would be Twitter for those of you playing along at home] said in a Tuesday blog post that it will not allow users to like, reply, share or retweet offending tweets, but it will let users quote-tweet them so they can still express their own opinions.

Dorsey has reserved to himself the right to decide how an opinion is expressed on his medium.  Quote-tweet a tweet he finds personally objectionable but not simply retweet it?

Under the guise that the twitterer, within Dorsey’s magnanimity, will be allowed to express his own opinion through quote-tweeting.  Never mind that liking, replying, sharing, or retweeting also are expressions of the relaying twitterer’s opinion.  That’s not allowed.  Jack Dorsey, in all of his awesomeness, will decide how a user must express himself.

Free speech, including its manner of expression, is what Jack Dorsey personally approves.  It’s nothing at all to do with any endowment of inalienable rights.  Dorsey Knows Better.

A Thought on Brexit

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Supposedly, Great Britain and the EU are close to agreement on a deal governing the former’s departure from the latter. Absent a deal, Great Britain will leave the EU on its own terms.  That last is, I maintain, the best way out.

However.

There remain, as of Wednesday morning, three sticking points to any sort of deal, according to EU Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier.

  • Customs arrangements for the island of Ireland
  • The issue of giving Northern Irish authorities a greater say over regulatory arrangements, and the ability to veto them
  • Guarantees of a level playing field—that Britain will not be at an unfair advantage when it comes to business regulation

Customs arrangements for the entire island—even though one part of the island is a sovereign nation and EU member and the other part is a member country of the United Kingdom.  There should be nothing to discuss here. A major reason for the successful Leave vote was for Great Britain to regain control over its own borders—including its national border across the island of Ireland.

Giving Northern Ireland—that part of Great Britain—veto authority over the national government’s “regulatory arrangements”—devolution hasn’t gone that far, nor should it. This sticking point is nothing more than a naked early step in dismantling Great Britain in punishment for its effrontery in voting to leave the Holy Brussels Empire.

Guarantees of a level playing field—Great Britain is justified in seeking such guarantees, but it won’t get them, unless it accedes to what Brussels will define as “fair.”

These…sticking points…illustrate with crystalline clarity the EU’s bad faith in dealing with Great Britain—and they illustrate with equal clarity why a no-deal-Brexit is optimal for Great Britain.

Unfortunately, British PM Boris Johnson, in an agreement just concluded with Barnier, appears to have surrendered to the EU on the matter of Great Britain’s border with the Republic of Ireland:

Northern Ireland will remain part of the UK’s customs territory and will be an entry point into the EU’s single market. No customs checks will be done on the border between [the Republic of] Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Johnson surrendered on the second sticking point, also:

The Northern Irish assembly will have to give consent after Brexit for the region’s continued alignment with the EU regulatory regime every four years.

This cedes control of the British border to the EU, with all that that portends for the nation’s future. British sovereignty now hangs, ironically, on whether Labour MFWIC Jeremy Corbyn can deliver his party’s no vote.  Nigel Farage, Brexit Party head and strange bedfellow of Corbyn’s on this, also has come out against the deal, as have the Democratic Unionist Party, which in coalition with the Tories give Johnson a one-vote majority on most things, and the Scottish National Party, which have been NeverLeaveNoWay all along.

It could be, of course, that Johnson has included these poison pills so as to get this last minute agreement rejected by Parliament, and he can get his no-deal exit from the EU. That raises the question, though, of whether Johnson is that Machiavellian.

Johnson wants an up-or-down vote from Parliament Saturday.

A House Impeachment Vote

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), as soon as she returned from the House’s vacation this week, announced that she would not hold a floor vote on whether President Donald Trump should be impeached and the associated investigation should begin forthwith.  Many pundits say Pelosi’s refusal flows from her desire to protect some number of Progressive-Democrats purported to be vulnerable in the 2020 elections.  This is naïve.

Neither Pelosi nor the Progressive-Democrat House caucus that she leads are interested in the slightest in any actual impeachment.  Nor does that disinterest have anything to do with whether there’s a realistic expectation of getting a conviction in the Senate, with the effort’s failure constituting vindication for Trump.

No, the reason Pelosi won’t have the vote is because, her Party having failed to invalidate the 2016 election and canceling American voters’ decision, she’s now bent on prejudicing the 2020 election by extending the smear campaign that the Progressive-Democrats began the day after Trump’s election: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D, MI) in her election victory speech promising to “impeach the mother**.” The move gained steam with Progressive-Democrats’ formally announced invalidation effort made shortly after Trump’s inauguration: Congressmen Al Green (D, TX) and Brad Sherman (D, CA) circulating their Impeaching Donald Trump Resolution that May, and Congressman Steve Cohen (D, TN), along with six other Progressive-Democratic Congressmen, formally introducing Articles of Impeachment.

The smear has continued with Congressman Adam Schiff’s (D, CA) promise of incontrovertible evidence of Trump’s guilt…of something…until the Mueller report disappointed Party, continues with Congressman Jerrold Nadler’s (D, NY, Chairman, House Judiciary Committee), Schiff’s (Chairman, House Intelligence Committee), and Congressman Elijah Cummings’ (D, MD, Chairman, House Oversight Committee) secret Star Chamber inquisitions, from which Schiff has been leaking strategic tidbits, and Wednesday evening with Congressman Eric Swalwell’s (D, CA) announcement on Fox News‘ The Story that Trump is guilty and the hearings are just procedural, a claim of already determined guilt that he’s made several times over the last couple of weeks.

Floor vote for an impeachment proceeding?  Not for a baker’s dozen of months.

Misinformed

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In his piece for Fox News about LeBron James quizzing NBA Commissioner Adam Silver over a General Manager’s tweet, Ryan Gaydos opened with this:

Amid the firestorm ignited by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet supporting pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong

This is backwards. Morey simply tweeted a truth. The firestorm was ignited by the cowardly, picayune, and avaricious responses of the NBA and of arrogant ignoramuses like LeBron James and Steve Kerr to the PRC’s manufactured outrage.

Gaydos should know better, or is he one of those who are misinformed or not educated about this?