Monthly Archives: February 2022

There’s a Hint

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Approval of Pfizer vaccinations against the Wuhan Virus for kids under 5 years old has been delayed as Pfizer has opted to test more before looking for approval. The vaccines don’t seem to work as well as hoped against the Omicron variant. But this part of the reasoning in the linked article jumped out at me.

So few study subjects [those kids], whether vaccinated or unvaccinated, developed Covid-19 during testing thus far that the small number of Omicron cases made the vaccine appear less effective in an early statistical analysis, the people said.

There’s a hint there both about the kids’ baseline susceptibility and about the virus situation at large.

An Appellate Court Gets One Right

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The Tenth Circuit has issued a temporary injunction against President Joe Biden’s (D) rule requiring outdoor recreational groups under contract to the Federal government or doing their business on Federal property to pay their employees $15/hr, whether the value of those employees’ work output is that valuable or not.

The “plaintiffs have demonstrated an entitlement to relief from the minimum wage order in their particular circumstances,” the court ruled, and enjoined the government from enforcing the $15-an-hour minimum wage mandate, which recreational companies said would force some of them out of business.
The court also granted the request because it found the plaintiffs were “likely to succeed on the merits” and “suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief.”

The Pacific Legal Foundation had brought the case last fall, arguing that

the requirement amounts to “an executive power grab to force a social agenda through federal contractors.”

That power grab, as the PLF argued, is barred by our Constitution:

Only Congress can make law setting minimum wages. The president can’t establish a minimum wage through administrative fiat. The Constitution says that only Congress can make laws that bind the public.

Indeed. This is what Art I, Sect 1, makes that explicitly clear:

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Biden-Harris knows this full well, as do his Cabinet Secretaries in on or otherwise supporting the grab.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party pushing its social engineering agenda with no regard for statute or Constitution—those are just speed bumps on their road to control.

The Judge is Mistaken

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Federal Judge Lee Rudofsky, of the Eastern District of Arkansas says he’ll toss an ACLU suit against that State’s new voter redistricting law unless Biden-Harris’ DoJ joins the suit.

His rationale is this:

After a thorough analysis of the text and structure of the Voting Rights Act, and a painstaking journey through relevant caselaw, the Court has concluded that this case may be brought only by the Attorney General of the United States[.]

Rudofsky is sort of correct to make his threat—the suit should be dismissed. There is no advantage or disadvantage to any race in the new voter map, only to this or that political party. All voters, after all, look alike under law, including voter law.

However, the judge has made a number of errors in this. First, there’s no need to delay a dismissal of the case. DoJ has already communicated its decision to not be a party through its current non-participation.

Second, State districting for Federal elections is an internal State matter per Art I, Sect 4:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Place of Chusing Senators.

DoJ is not Congress, and Congress has not asked—nor is it likely to—DoJ to make a case. It’s more basic than that, though. Congress can intervene in a State’s voting law only to make changes to existing law; it cannot rewrite State law, or originate State law for that State.

That and maybe Something Else

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Fracking-based energy production is not expanding at anything like a useful rate, even as oil approaches $100/barrel, which only benefits Russia while harming us American consumers.

America’s largest frackers are reporting huge profits but plan to keep oil production in low gear this year, adhering to an agreement with Wall Street, even as prices approach the $100-a-barrel mark for the first time since 2014.

That “agreement” consists of

commitments they made to limit production and return more cash to shareholders, an effort to win back investors who fled the industry after years of poor returns.

That’s certainly a factor. However, even as President Joe Biden (D) claims he wants these producers to produce more in the face of those rising costs, he’s also spending far more energy begging OPEC—and Russia!—to produce more.

There’s another factor that may be strongly informing these producers’ decisions, though.

Maybe these producers just don’t trust Biden, given his openly declared war on our hydrocarbon energy industry—on the frackers—and Biden’s refusal to undo all—any—of his anti-carbon regulations and his other bars aimed explicitly at limiting oil, natural gas, and coal production.

Maybe they think Biden would only resume his war against them once the present energy and resulting inflation crises pass.

They wouldn’t be far wrong.

Gun Control

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In the matter of Bianchi v Frosh, a Maryland gun control case in which the State has

designated specified firearms as assault weapons and prohibited them from being transported into the state or from being possessed, sold, transferred, or purchased in the state[]

Mountain States Legal Foundation has filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to take up the case. The article itself is worth the read, but what drew my eye is this position of the Fourth Circuit in its appellate ruling in Kolbe v Hogan, Jr. referenced in passing by JtN.

Are the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines “like” “M-16 rifles,” i.e., “weapons that are most useful in military service,” and thus outside the ambit of the Second Amendment?  The answer to that dispositive and relatively easy inquiry is plainly in the affirmative.

This test manufactured by the Fourth Circuit deliberately ignores our history and the actual text of our Second Amendment.

A significant fraction of the artillery—cannons—our Continental Army used in our Revolutionary War were privately owned, as were the powder and shot privately manufactured and provided. A significant fraction of our combat ships—privateering ships—in our nation’s Revolutionary War were privately owned, as were the powder and shot privately manufactured and provided.

The Fourth Circuit’s test also deliberately ignores another bit of our history: our Second Amendment was written as defense against an overreaching, abusive government like the one we fought that war to be free of. And our Declaration of Independence outlines the duty of all Americans: [W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations…it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…. which requires suitable weaponry.

The Fourth Circuit’s test also deliberately ignores the text of our Second Amendment: the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. There’s not a jot or a tittle in there of “except if a government official, including a judge, thinks otherwise.” Nor is there a single minim about government being authorized to specify the purpose for which an American citizen might choose to arm himself and to bear those arms.

The Fourth Circuit’s opinion can be read here.