Due Process, Progressive Style

Posted on 20 February 2014 by eehines

During a confab at the University of Virginia concerning college students and sexual misconduct, the following remarks were made in all seriousness:

Amanda Childress, Sexual Assault Awareness Program coordinator at Dartmouth College, a position newly created just for her:

Why could we not expel a student based on an allegation? If we know that a person is reasonably a threat to our community, why are we not removing them and protecting the safety of our students? It seems to me that we value fair and equitable processes more than we value the safety of our students. And higher education is not a right. Safety is a right. Higher education is a privilege.

This is a preview of Due Process, Progressive Style. Read the full post (357 words, estimated 1:26 mins reading time)

Progressive Gun Rights

Posted on 17 February 2014 by eehines

…are what government says they are. Last week, though, the 9^th Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, struck down a San Diego County, California law that asserted exactly that. This law

requir[ed] residents to show a “pressing need” in order to get a permit to carry weapons in public.

However,

The judges found that in order to receive a permit, a person need only show a desire to defend himself outside the home.

Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, writing for the court, clearly does understand the situation. Addressing three other Appellate Court rulings upholding public carry restrictions (a fourth Appellate Court struck such restrictions), he wrote

This is a preview of Progressive Gun Rights. Read the full post (349 words, estimated 1:24 mins reading time)

Keystone XL’s Fate

Posted on 15 February 2014 by eehines

Here are two Congressmen who oppose building this pipeline.

Senator Tim Kaine (D, VA):
- $15k-$50k stake in Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, intent on building a Keystone competitor pipeline
Congressman Alan Lowenthal (D, CA):
- $15k-$50k stake in Enbridge Energy Management
- $1-$15k in Kinder Morgan Energy Partners
- $15k-$50k stake in Kinder Morgan Management; these three also are intent on building Keystone competitor pipelines

Crony capitalism, indeed.

Permanent link to this post (66 words, estimated 16 secs reading time)

Silencing Critics

Posted on 3 February 2014 by eehines

It isn’t enough that the Obama administration, and Democrats generally, are so terrified at the Conservative message that the President sicced his IRS on Conservative political entities in an effort to suppress their political speech as it was expressed as financial support for Conservative and Republican candidates in the 2012 elections.

Now they’re attempting to codify that suppression with a new Treasury rule for the IRS regarding what Democrats will permit 501(c)(4) entities to do in the coming elections.

Here is what a 501(c)(4) entity is, according to the Legal Information Institute:

This is a preview of Silencing Critics. Read the full post (470 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)

A Conservative’s Thoughts on Rights and Duties, their Duality, and some Implications

Posted on 27 January 2014 by admin

I have a new pamphlet out, A Conservative’s Thoughts on Rights and Duties, their Duality, and some Implications; a link to the Kindle version of it (the only version, currently) has been added to the sidebar at right.

I touched on rights and duties and their duality in my book A Conservative’s Manifesto, but only tangentially to a larger discussion of Conservative principles. However, an understanding of individual rights and individual duties, especially their nature as individual endowments rather than as attributes of groups of men or as grants from some men acting in a “government’s” name, forms a critical part of Conservative thought. Now, with us Americans broadly divided on what our rights and duties really are, or even whether the government should have them instead of us, is the time to expand on that peripheral discussion and to address the matter directly.

This is a preview of A Conservative’s Thoughts on Rights and Duties, their Duality, and some Implications. Read the full post (269 words, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)

Free Speech, Progressive Style—Renewed

Posted on 13 December 2013 by eehines

The Wall Street Journal has the sordid tale. A week and a half ago, Third Way Founder, Trustee, and Andrew Cuomo ex-aide Jon Cowan and Third Way Founder and Chuck Schumer ex-aide Jim Kessler wrote an opinion piece. The Third Way is a think tank that thinks from the Left.

Maybe you remember the op-ed: Cowan and Kessler used it to suggest that Americans aren’t quite as liberal some might think based on New York City’s strong election of someone like Bill de Blasio as mayor, that Social Security is nearly bust, and that wealth redistribution actually is pretty unpopular with most of us.

This is a preview of Free Speech, Progressive Style—Renewed. Read the full post (268 words, estimated 1:04 mins reading time)

Whose Politics?

Posted on 17 November 2013 by eehines

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) and Chuck Schumer (D, NY) have their knickers in a twist because Senate Republicans successfully blocked the accession to the DC Circuit Court of President Barack Obama’s nominee, Cornelia Pillard. These two, and their…colleagues…are upset over what they claim are Republican political blocks.

No, guys. Obama is making nakedly political nominations. He should stop playing politics with the nation’s courts.

Additionally, as part of their panty-wadding, Reid and Schumer are threatening, again, to do away with the filibuster altogether:

Republicans are inching closer and closer to that line. I’d hope they’ll turn back[.]

This is a preview of Whose Politics?. Read the full post (150 words, estimated 36 secs reading time)

Veteran’s Day

Posted on 11 November 2013 by eehines

I first posted this in 2011. It bears repeating today.

Thank you for all who have, and are, serving. And because I couldn’t have said it better, I’ll let Mike Royko, late of the Chicago Tribune, via BlackFive, say it from his 1993 column.

I just phoned six friends and asked them what they will be doing on Monday.

They all said the same thing: working.

Me, too.

There is something else we share. We are all military veterans.

This is a preview of Veteran’s Day. Read the full post (804 words, estimated 3:13 mins reading time)

Conflict of Interest

Posted on 5 November 2013 by eehines

…or just rank cynicism by a Progressive Know Better government?

President Obama on Wednesday defended his signature health care law in a speech from Boston, saying that people who are losing their insurance plans because of the law should start shopping around for better coverage.

Never mind that these people already had good enough coverage, by definition: it’s the coverage these folks had bought voluntarily. But President Barack Obama has a solution for all those folks being dumped, willy-nilly, into the market for insurance: shop in his newly opened ObamaMart store.

And

This is a preview of Conflict of Interest. Read the full post (303 words, estimated 1:13 mins reading time)

A Thought on a Judicial Shutdown

Posted on 18 October 2013 by eehines

Somewhat moot, with a bill to reopen the government having been passed and signed into law Wednesday night, but the subject is useful in its own right. During the shutdown, the courts were at a real risk of running out of funds and having to shut down.

Fed up with the shutdown and sequester budget cuts, judges are mounting a “work-in.”

More than two dozen federal courts have avoided furloughs by designating all of their staff essential….

Those two dozen include the Appellate Court of the 2^nd Circuit.

This is a preview of A Thought on a Judicial Shutdown. Read the full post (275 words, estimated 1:06 mins reading time)

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