Category Archives: rights

Birthright Political Seat

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In last Tuesday’s Texas Progressive-Democratic Party primary runoff election “for a recently redrawn House seat,” ex-Progressive-Democrat Congressman Colin Allred (from a pre-redraw district) defeated incumbent Progressive-Democrat Congresswoman (from a pre-redraw district) Julie Johnson by 54%-46%.

This is upsetting to senior Party members, even as the upset itself is surprising by its existence. The upset is centered on Johnson being Texas’ only openly LGBTQ Representative in Congress, as if that matters in some way.

For instance, here are Congressmen Mark Takano (D, CA) and Ritchie Torres (D, NY), Party’s Equality PAC co-chairs:

It’s no secret that, without Julie, Texas—and likely the entire South—will lose openly LGBTQ representation in Congress. Many in our community remain deeply hurt by Colin Allred’s decision to challenge one of our own.

The effrontery of Allred—that seat belonged to the LGBTQ community.

The dismay also is typical of Party’s attitude toward blacks. Johnson is white, and Allred is black. That man should have remembered his place, which is squarely in back of the LGBTQ community.

Never mind that, by solidly choosing Allred in the primary, Party voters themselves clearly demonstrated their overall preference for Allred, if not their overall dissatisfaction with Johnson.

The Nub of the Matter

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An article concerning the nature of “sex work” and the debate over whether it ought be decriminalized and destigmatized, there was this characterization:

On [one] side are those arguing for total decriminalization, which lifts all laws regulating the buying and selling of sex acts.

And this, from a woman who ultimately escaped from the environment:

Prostitution is someone using their money and power to get someone else to provide a service for them. You’re literally paid to be a product that is used and discarded.

There it is, in all its glory, from the life of an individual once in the environment and from the broad movement looking to decriminalize “sex” work. It isn’t about sex; it’s about faceless male gratification, for whom the woman isn’t even a human being; she’s just a body temperature, organic inflatable sex doll. It’s not even a matter of buying a selling sex; it’s only renting a warm doll for a hour or a night, otherwise akin to renting a power tool.

Say, though, that in an amoral yet otherwise ideal world, this work is entirely legalized. On what basis would we believe the women involved really are engaging in it on their own initiative and entirely free of coercion? Pimps will still be there, now legalized as agents or brokers for the firms renting these commodities. And they’ll still control the women, who they engage with, what they’ll do—be required to do under the terms of their employment—during those engagements.

Would a woman be free to leave one…employer…for another whenever she chose to do so? Would she be free to leave the…industry…altogether and seek employment doing other things wholly apart from being a rented sex doll? Those answers seem obvious.

Tellingly, too, the movement wholly ignores the men who are trafficked or pimped out as male prostitutes, and worse, the movement wholly ignores the children, of both sexes, who are trafficked for sex.

The answer to “sex work” isn’t to legalize it. It’s a multipart question: help the women (and the men and children) recover from the damage done by their present strait and then learn other means of earning a living—a legitimate living and one in which they keep all of their wages. In parallel, hammer severely the traffickers and pimps making these victims—and that’s what the women (and men and children) are to five nines significance—”available.” Hold criminally liable the customers of these pimps and traffickers for receiving illegal goods. They’re certainly not customers of the women; they’re receivers of the pimps’ and traffickers’ product. And publicly shame those customers for their abuse of the women whose bodies are the product they rented.

Disregarding our Constitution

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Here they go again. This time it’s Virginia’s Progressive-Democratic Party-dominated legislature and Governor who think our Constitution is just something to be used or ignored at Party convenience and that, in the immortal words of a Leftist “journalist,” isn’t binding on anything and it’s hard to understand, being over 100 years old (or, as he later “corrected,” more than 200 years old.

This time, it’s Party’s disregard of our 2nd Amendment and of Supreme Court rulings holding that keeping and bearing Arms is an individual inalienable right of which a well regulated militia is a beneficiary not the purpose and that the keeping and bearing cannot (not just may not) be regulated except in consistence with our nation’s traditions. That last includes, explicitly, firearms that are in widespread lawful use—these cannot (not just may not) be restricted from our possession of them.

Virginia’s reigning Party has banned what it’s pleased to call “assault” weapons along with the 30-round magazines that are an integral part of the semi-automatic rifles that are subject to the ban. This is in direct and deliberate violation of our 2nd Amendment and is a nose-thumb at our Supreme Court.

This miscarriage is now in both Federal and State courts, looking to get this blatantly unlawful Party gun grab tossed. It should, in the end, be tossed, but honest citizens shouldn’t have to spend the time or treasure going through this.

It’s time to remove this lawless Party from the halls of political power at the next election and in subsequent election cycles.

Leakers and their Leaks

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The lede publishes the shameful leak in summary form.

Israel set up a clandestine military outpost in the Iraqi desert to support its air campaign against Iran and launched airstrikes against Iraqi troops who almost discovered it early in the war, people familiar with the matter including US officials said.

Who leaked this stuff? Those US officials and people familiar need to be identified and prosecuted for their mishandling of classified material. This sort of leak damages our nation’s and Israel’s national security, revealing as it does critical, secret operations and methods and techniques each of our two nations employ in the pursuit of defeating our enemies. It also unnecessarily embarrasses another nation, making this sort of operation more difficult to set up and execute in the future. That, in turn, makes our prosecuting the next war we’re forced to fight even more expensive in treasure, equipment, and lives.

To what end? What material good comes from publishing these leaks? Yes, yes, we all have a right to know, but at what cost does the knowing right damn now come? The primary gain in the immediacy is just clicks and status for journalists and their publishers for being the ones to publish.

The press does get to print this stuff, as irresponsible as publishing national secrets is, because the Ellsberg case involving the unauthorized leak (pardon the redundancy) of the Pentagon Papers made legal the receipt of and profit from that receipt of stolen goods, as long as the receiver/publisher is a press outlet.

But the leaks that get such information into the hands of an irresponsible press remain illegal, and the ones doing the leaking are still criminal by their leaking. They need to be prosecuted vigorously and sanctioned heavily.

Gerrymandering

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The subheadline laid it out.

Rep. Steve Cohen’s long career is evidence that the motive is partisan.

Which is a big so what. Partisan gerrymandering perhaps ought to be as illegal as racial gerrymandering, but it isn’t.

The editors partially addressed the so what at the end of their piece:

The Tennessee gerrymander is simply a GOP effort to divide a compact, populated area into multiple stringy districts for partisan gain, which is precisely what Democrats did in Virginia. It’s bad for competitive elections, but it isn’t racist.

The rest of this story is that there’s no “ought to be” IMNSHO regarding the legality of partisan gerrymandering. It’s a violation of the 14th Amendment’s requirement of equal protection of the laws. Competitive elections can occur only when that gerrymandering loophole is closed also.