Category Archives: rights

A Death Penalty Revival

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Former President Donald Trump (R) revived the use of the death penalty after a hiatus of some duration, and President Joe Biden (D) has moved to deprecate the death penalty anew, even if inconsistently so.

I confess to being conflicted regarding the death penalty. There are some crimes so heinous that they cry out for execution of the criminal. Rape, especially of children, and premeditated murder come to mind for me, along with mass and serial murder.

However, the error rate in getting convictions for these crimes is high enough to give me pause. Some errors are the result of police error in the investigation, police or prosecutorial misconduct in the runup to trial, prosecutorial or judicial error during trial, or prosecutorial misconduct during trial. These instances are very rare, but they happen. Another reason for my reluctance is improving technology. Increasing ability to analyze DNA data—even the basic ability to handle DNA as evidence at all—reveals what becomes erroneous trial and conviction today even when those convictions of yesterday were correctly obtained given the evidence then available.

Thus: it’s easy enough to execute a criminal tomorrow. But if he’s executed today, and tomorrow we learn that he was wrongly convicted, we can’t undo his execution.

It’s maddening, on the other hand, for the survivors of the criminal’s crime to suffer the delays defense attorneys and “liberal” Others throw up to obstruct and delay an execution, and those delays deny justice for those survivors.

One at least partial solution would be to streamline the death penalty appeals process. Require attorneys bringing a case for delay or sentence reduction to something less than execution to present all of their objections in a single case, to include consolidation of all of the several separate lawyer cases into a single, class-action if you will, case. Perhaps, allow a single additional appeal based on truly newly developed evidence.

That won’t address the errors later discerned with improving technology. However, we can’t allow heinous criminals to escape the death penalty on the basis of inherently speculative potential future technology advances.

Probably Won’t Be Invited Back

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Newly elected Argentina President Javier Milei was invited to the World Economic Forum. He had some things to say while he was there.

Today I’m here to tell you that the Western world is in danger. And it is in danger because those who are supposed to have defended the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inevitably leads to socialism and thereby to poverty[.]

And

Unfortunately, in recent decades, motivated by some well-meaning individuals willing to help others, and others motivated by the wish to belong to a privileged caste, the main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism. We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world, rather they are the root cause.
Do believe me, no one [is] in a better place than us Argentines to testify to these two points[.]

And this:

The case of Argentina is an empirical demonstration that—no matter how rich you may be, or how much you may have in terms of natural resources…or how many bars of gold you may have in the central bank—if measures are adopted that hinder the free function of markets, free competition, free price systems, if you hinder trade, if you attack private property, the only possible fate is poverty.

And this, moving in a slightly different direction:

I would like to leave a message for all businesspeople here…you are social benefactors, you’re heroes[.]
Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral. If you make money, it’s because you offer a better product at a better price.

The WEF persons probably won’t have him in to any more of their assemblages.

Frank Fleming added this regarding our own administrations’ [sic] failures at successive WEF confabs:

Why can’t we get a guy like this in America? This is supposed to be our thing[.]

Unfortunately, those motivated by the wish to belong to a privileged caste vastly outnumber those well-meaning individuals willing to help others, and so the damage that flows from gatherings like the WEF will continue.

A complete transcript of Milei’s speech can be read here. A video of his speech can be viewed here on Disclose.tv’s X account (@disclosetv).

Racism, Arrogance Against Election Integrity

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In the aftermath of the 2020 election confusions in Georgia (both general and runoff), that State passed its Election Integrity Act that, among other things, shortened Georgia’s early voting period from nine weeks to four, reduced the window for mail-in ballots, and moved the deadline for registering to vote to 29 days before an election.

The Sixth Dist. of the Afr. Methodist Episcopal Church, the Ga. State Conf. of the NAACP, and The Concerned Black Clergy of Metro. Atlanta Inc., joined by the Federal government’s DoJ, sued to strike the law as voter suppressing—the stricter voting period unfairly discriminates against Black voters, among other complaints.

This was a nakedly racist suit that used a manufactured racism beef as the core of their argument. Federal District Judge JP Boulee issued a preliminary injunction upholding the law. With particular reference to the Act’s runoff requirements, he wrote,

Plaintiffs presented evidence that Black voters are more likely to vote early. Plaintiffs did not present any evidence, however, which would show why Black voters would disproportionately struggle to vote during the new early voting period

And [emphasis added]

In short…the Court is not persuaded that evidence showing that black voters use early voting more often is sufficient to show that the Runoff Provisions, which shorten the early voting period, will have a disparate impact on black voters. In other words, without more, generalized evidence related to the use of early voting is not sufficient to automatically show that this particular provision, which pertains to one aspect of runoff elections, is discriminatory.

And

Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to show that the Runoff Provisions have a disparate impact on black voters. Indeed, Plaintiffs failed to show that eliminating the registration period before a runoff election disproportionately impacts black people. Plaintiffs also failed to show that reducing the early voting period and not mandating weekend voting has a disparate impact. The Court thus weighs this factor in favor of Defendants and against a discriminatory purpose finding.

“Plaintiffs” just expected their unsubstantiated claim to be taken as dispositive fact. Their arrogance runs as deep as their racism.

Regarding the specific question of Plaintiffs not getting their preferred way, Boulee noted the 11th Circuit’s precedent, binding on his court (the 11th Circuit includes Georgia):

The Court acknowledges that the Legislature did not include the alternative option that Plaintiffs would have preferred [a one- or two-week longer voter registration period]. Importantly, the Eleventh Circuit has held that the failure to “‘include the alternative option[s] that Plaintiffs would have preferred’ is not evidence of discriminatory intent.”

That’s the arrogance of Plaintiffs being handled.

The dishonest nature of the plaintiff’s beef is illustrated in Footnote 6 of the Boulee’s ruling [emphasis added, cites omitted]:

6 As to the other named organizations, the Court is not convinced that Plaintiffs established an injury based on a diversion of resources. By way of example, Plaintiffs argued that “[i]t is false that Common Cause ‘says nothing about runoffs,’ . . . Common Cause testified about its voter participation efforts in both the ‘2020 Primary and Runoff election cycles.'” A close look at Plaintiffs’ evidence, however, does not show that Common Cause diverted its resources to counteract the Runoff Provisions. Instead, Common Cause’s representative stated that “[a]s part of the organization’s voter participation efforts, Common Cause GA provided free personal protective equipment (PPE), food, and water to persons, including voters, at or around polling sites, in Fulton County during the 2020 Primary and Runoff election cycles.” Simply put, the fact that Common Cause elected to give out water and other gifts during a runoff election does not show that it diverted resources away from its ordinary activities to counteract the Runoff Provisions.

These plaintiffs, their judgments clouded by their racism and arrogance, are just making things up and claiming them to be true without even a pretense of substantiation.

The judge’s ruling can be read here.

Maybe the Judge Isn’t Entirely Correct

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A Florida man was charged by the Feds for possessing a firearm in a US Post Office facility. A Federal district judge ruled the law governing his arrest to be unconstitutional.

US District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, an appointee of former President Trump, cited a 2022 landmark US Supreme Court decision that expanded gun rights when she handed down her ruling Friday that dismissed part of an indictment charging a postal worker with illegally possessing a gun in a federal facility.

So far, so good. But:

[T]he judge declined to dismiss a separate charge for forcibly resisting arrest.

The “forcible resistance” consisted of the man running when Federal agents tried to “detain” him. This is where I have a problem. I don’t see anything wrong with resisting arrest when the arrest is pursuant to a non-law, a law that is unconstitutional. The charge itself was legitimate, since the agents, in good faith, were trying to arrest him, and he ran (notice that: he ran, he did not fight); however, once the underlying law was ruled unconstitutional, the arrest pursuant to it became illegitimate, and the charge of resisting that arrest should have been dismissed.

Pick One

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Progressive-Democratic Party politicians insist that illegal aliens should be allowed to go anywhere they want as they wait—months to years—for their court dates.

But they want travel documents on those Americans who are transporting them by bus.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is demanding that nearly two dozen charter bus companies sending New York City-bound migrants to “transit” stops in the Garden State provide advance notice.

And this:

For each migrant bus, Murphy is asking the companies to disclose the number of single adults traveling alone; the number of passengers traveling as part of a family, including the number of families with children under 18; the number of children under 18; and the number of chaperones (other than family members) for otherwise unaccompanied minors.

Notice that. Murphy doesn’t care who these illegal aliens are so they can be tracked until the show up for their court date—or dishonestly don’t show up—he just wants to know how many they are. While demanding to know what bus companies are transporting them.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party demonstrating its utter contempt for us ordinary Americans.