Category Archives: regulation

Too Far

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Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) has reintroduced his Terror Intelligence Improvement Act, his bill to allow Government to block suspected terrorists from obtaining firearms. This bill, far from improving anything, is a long step back from our rights under our Constitution. As Dana Loesch summarized it in her newsletter (behind a paywall after this month; subscribe now for a discount on her subscription price),

The bill would also provide more authority for law enforcement agencies to go after suspected terrorists, while safeguarding law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment and due process rights.

But, as Loesch goes on to point out, that’s internally contradictory. It’s simply not possible to restrict American citizens’ rights while protecting those same American citizens’ rights. A suspect is just that—a suspect, and so still innocent, regardless of suspicion.

Then, however, Loesch makes her own mistake.

If lawmakers want to stop suspected terrorists placed on a watch list from buying firearms they need to indict them.
I have no problem with this.

I do have a problem with that. All a prosecutor has done with an indictment is convince a secret group of men and women that he has probable enough cause to hale the indictee—possibly an infamous ham sandwich—into criminal court for trial.

The indictee still is innocent; he hasn’t been proven otherwise in that criminal court.

It’s true enough that we do restrict innocent men—we lock them up; we make them wear ankle bracelets; we make them pay a significant something of value to be released, under restrictive conditions, from jail pending trial; and so on.

But those restrictions are done in open court where the prosecutor must convince the judge that his proposed restrictions are warranted, and he must do so in the face of the defendant’s right to answer the proposed restrictions.

Simple indictment isn’t enough. If the suspected terrorist must be denied his 2nd Amendment rights (in the present context), let the prosecutor show in open court that his suspicion is well enough founded that his suspect should be locked up.

As a practical matter, too, that’s the only way to deny such a suspect firearms—outside of jail, there simply are too many means of access to firearms, legal or not.

Beyond that, there’s another, better, way to protect us from terrorists, whether those persons are armed or not. That is for Government to get out of the way of the first responders to any situation—us citizens who happen to be already on scene when the action goes down—carrying our own firearms.

Opposition

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Republicans in the Senate put Progressive-Democrats on the record on a number of amendments to Party’s budget reconciliation move—itself a deliberate act to sideline any dissent—which Republicans offered during a Thursday afternoon through Friday morning vote-a-rama. Party’s budget reconciliation then was voted up strictly along party lines.

Here’s some of what the Senate’s Progressive-Democrats oppose. Notice that every one of these would have enhanced Americans’ national security, economy, and individual liberty had they had the support of even a single Progressive-Democrat.

  • 50-50 on a failed amendment to support the border wall
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment supporting the free exercise of religion
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment to oppose packing the Supreme Court
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment opposing stimulus checks for people in prison
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment opposing the Biden administration’s move to restrict oil and gas leasing on federal lands
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment opposing a federal carbon tax

Controls

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Governments at the State level (look for this to become nationalized under the Biden administration) are trying to force high school students and their families to give up to those State governments (and potentially to the Federal government) their families’ financial condition as a condition of graduating from high school.

Notice that. Petty academic considerations no longer would be sufficient criteria for graduating from a supposedly academic facility. Letting Government peer into private wallets and purses are about to become a primary criterion for fitness to graduate.

The rationalization for this invasion is to guide more high school students toward college. (I’ll elide, in this post, the idea that college isn’t for everyone; a significant fraction—possibly a majority—of high school seniors would be much better off in a trade school or community college learning a trade.)

The government preferred financial record to be executed, according to these governments, is the FAFSA form—the Free Application for Federal Student Aid—which gives access to government academic grants. In Florida, high school seniors who eschewed the FAFSA form missed out on $100 million in Federal Pell grants, for instance.

What’s not discussed in these coming mandates is that the form also gives government access to our bank account contents. If the goal is to guide more high school students toward college, an alternative answer is for high schools, their districts, and the State and Federal governments to do a better job of publicizing the plethora of Federal (and State, etc) grants and other funding sources. That publicity does not need letting governments to peer into private accounts to achieve.

That alternative is so plain that questions arise regarding why Governments choose not to consider it.

Rules for Thee-In-Chief

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Recall that President Joe Biden “one day one,” or thereabouts, issued an Executive Order requiring all personnel—no exceptions or caveats contained in his EO—to wear masks at all times on Federal property (among other locations).

Recall, further, that just hours after he signed that EO, Biden was maskless at the Lincoln Memorial along with daughter Ashley and “older grandchildren,” who also were maskless.

Asked about that, White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki said that Biden has “bigger issues” to worry about than following his own rule about wearing a face mask on federal property, including, apparently, “celebrating” a “historic day in our country.”

Psaki concluded her answer with the mask mandate had “sent a message” to the public.

Indeed, it has.

Rules are for the little people. Progressive-Democrats and their doings are too important for such petty things.

Diversity vs Diversity

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Nasdaq—the tech-oriented stock exchange (no irony there)—is demanding companies listed with it

appoint within the next four years no fewer than two “diverse” directors: at least one woman, and one person from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group or someone who identifies as LGBTQ. Any company failing this requirement would be obligated to explain why.

The SEC must approve the demand before it has legal effect, but look for the Biden SEC to grant that.

Nasdaq, and the rest of the social justice warrior-ettes and virtue-signalers, miss the point of diversity, though. Or they don’t miss the point; they just don’t care.

Diversity of thought, diversity of approaches to problem solutions, most assuredly is something desperately needed in the boardroom. And in the C-suites, in middle management, on the production floor. And in schools, legislatures, and other political entities. (Voucher and charter schools already have this kind of diversity, in the main.) And in the mainstay of our private economy, mom-and-pop and other small businesses. Diversity of irrelevant characteristics like race, gender, or anything other will fall out of hiring for diversity of thought.

That’s even the logical outcome of those who push for diversity based on those irrelevant characteristics: all men are fundamentally equal in capability, these worthies say, regardless of color, gender, or….

Diversity done for the sake of diversity of race, gender, any other form, however, is just bigotry for the sake of bigotry, regardless of claimed purpose for the bigotry.