Category Archives: rights

More Government Intrusion

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Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D, MI) has proposed a new law that would require firearm sellers to

have a compatible gun lock available for every firearm for sale [and it] shall be unlawful for any person to offer a firearm for sale unless the person offers for sale a secure gun storage or safety device that is compatible with the firearm [and a] penalty of not more than $1,000.

This is the Progressive-Democrat politician seeking to dictate what us average Americans must have in our homes and to dictate to our private businesses what they must sell. That latter, especially, is textbook fascism: “private” enterprises may [sic] produce and sell what they wish so long as that production and sale are compatible with government diktats regarding what production and sale are permissible.

Never mind that, per the NRA (that Left-hated 2nd Amendment organization),

Firearm manufacturers already provide a lock with every gun that is sold, and anyone looking for additional gun locks can get them free through Project Childsafe, an industry program that provides free gun locks to anyone who wants one.

The NRA is being generous, though, to suggest that Rep. Tlaib isn’t educated on this topic. No, she’s a highly talented and intelligent politician, well-educated, and a member of the Elite Left. She knows full well what the firearm manufacturers do, and she’s fully conversant with Project Childsafe.

This is just another Government power grab by the Progressive-Democratic Party, as those personages keep trying to chip away at the individual liberties and duties of us average Americans.

We need to keep this sort of thing in mind through the next 17, or so, months. And beyond.

Project Childsafe can be seen here.

A National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

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The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact wants to put together a coalition of States whose Electoral College votes aggregate to 270—the minimum majority required to elect the President and Vice President—and which coalition then would allocate their Electoral College votes to the national popular vote winner, instead of to the popular vote winner of the particular State.

This is a naked attempt to defeat the purpose of the Electoral College as it is constituted in our Constitution.

This is what Art II, Section 1, says about the Electoral College:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress….

This is what the 12th Amendment of our Constitution says about the duties of those Electors:

The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President….
…
…if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote….

Notice that. The intent of the Electors of the Electoral College is to give each State its own, individual, voice in the election of our President, to place each State on an entirely equal footing with each of the other States.

The Compact, however, argues that

The compact points out that in the 2012 presidential race all 253 general-election campaign events were in just 12 states, and two-thirds were in just four states.
“Thirty-eight states were completely ignored,” the compact concludes.

The Compact wants to subsume those individual State voices into the tumult of a collective. This not only deprecates each State, it’s plainly unconstitutional. Worse, what this Compact wants to do is have its collection of States whose Electoral College votes total 270 to be the sole determiner of our President and Vice President—to explicitly ignore every one of the other States. Their votes simply wouldn’t count at all.

The Compact argues further that each State’s legislature can decide who the State’s College Electors are in any way the legislature wants to do. That’s true; see the Art II quote above. However, the legislature may not dictate to its Electors what their duties are—for whom they must vote. The 12th Amendment’s stricture has already determined that, and in this venue our Constitution supersedes the State’s wishes. The Electors must cast their own votes, not the national population’s votes.

The Compact complains that it’s somehow unfair for a Presidential candidate to get all of a State’s Electoral College votes when the candidate “won” the State with only a bare plurality instead of an outright majority in those States that have winner-take-all allocations. No Compact is needed to address this perceived unfairness. The State(s) in question can amend its allocation, if the citizens of that State wish it.

The Compact is doubly unconstitutional; even the name gives the game away. Here’s what Art I, Sect 10, of our Constitution says about interstate compacts:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress…enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State….

The States involved in this Compact think they’re getting around this minor Constitutional impediment by not strictly formally entering into an agreement. But the intent is clear, from the Compact’s title through its statement that

The National Popular Vote interstate compact will go into effect when enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—that is, enough to elect a President (270 of 538).

No wink and nod and fingers crossed nonsense can cancel the fact of their intent to form this Agreement or Compact among the States.

The Compact’s pushers know this full well. But what else would be expected from the Left? After all, as Ezra Klein, then of The Washington Post, put it during reign of the Progressive-Democrat Barack Obama in a canonical example of the Left’s contempt for law,

[Y]ou can say two things about it [the Constitution]. One, is that it has no binding power on anything. And two, the issue of the Constitution is not that people don’t read the text and think they’re following. The issue of the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person and differs depending on what they want to get done.

Our Constitution, our laws—who cares? Us average Americans do.

If the Governor Does It…

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Under a just-passed and signed law in Illinois, any Constitutional-based challenge to a State law can be filed only in two counties: Cook and Sangamon. These are the counties that house the failed “city” of Chicago and the State’s government town of Springfield. The rationalization is that inconsistent court decisions about important public issues have repeatedly caused confusion. We can’t have actual court discussions and disagreements in a variety of lower courts, with the differences resolved on appeal—which usually leads to clarity at least; although it takes judges who hew to the text of the statute and of the Constitution to provide legitimate clarity. Those cross-court differences also produce, usually, better discussions of the principles at hand for the appellate courts to consider.

But wait, there’s more. And the more illustrates just how in thrall to public unions is the State’s governing Progressive-Democratic Party:

The venue changes don’t apply to “claims arising out of collective bargaining disputes” between Illinois and the unions.

…that means it’s legal. The courts—and the citizens of Illinois—can just sit down and shut up.

Opening up for Election Fraud

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Washington’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Jay Inslee has signed into law yet another pathway to illegal voting. This new election law

allows people to register online to vote in the state by providing the last four digits of a Social Security Number and an electronic signature.

Never mind that those “last four” are broadly publicly available. Never mind that electronic signatures far too often don’t even remotely resemble a person’s actual signature: it’s done by clicking a link labeled with words to the effect of “by clicking this link, you’re certifying you are who you say you are and electronically signing,” or by presenting a signature field wherein you squiggle something with your finger or with your mouse.

Now anyone can vote in Washington, and do so multiple times; the putative voter needs only access to multiple “last fours,” and then he can “electronically” sign multiple voter forms.

What a boon for Washington citizens, especially the non-real ones.

Government Attacks on Us Citizens

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First, it was Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland agreeing with a National School Boards Association letter to him labeling American parents who object to school board decisions regarding sexualizing their children’s education as domestic terrorists and his subsequent ordering an FBI investigation into our parents. The NSBA has since retracted the letter, and Garland insists he meant no such thing, but where is the evidence that he’s called off the FBI’s investigation, or that the FBI has stopped?

Then it was Biden’s DoJ’s FBI memorializing in an internal memo the FBI’s position that traditional Catholics should be considered, and treated consonantly, to be in the same category as violent extremists. FBI Director Chris Wray has since claimed to have ordered the memo’s rescission, but where is the evidence the FBI isn’t still investigating traditional Catholics—or any other Catholics, or any group of Americans of any other religious adherence?

Now it’s Biden’s Department of Homeland Security. The subheadline says it:

Clergy, spouses, bartenders should keep tabs on “middle-aged” women who are “increasingly fervent” against abortion, white men who rant about government online and go to rallies, domestic terrorism materials say.

This tab-keeping actually is an older assault, dating from 2021, but they’re only now being exposed, pursuant to an FOIA request by America First Legal.  The “concerns” are the outcome of a series of Choose Your Own Adventure videos intended by DHS to instruct us ignorant American citizens in identifying and mitigating “radicalization and potential violence.” Because pro-life Americans, along with white male Americans who disagree with the government and attend political candidate (or other) rallies, and (divorced) mothers suspecting government connections to child abuse and trafficking are domestic terrorists.

JtN notes that it’s not clear whether DHS ever actually made the videos, but DHS didn’t respond to JtN‘s Sunday (7 May) requests for comment. DHS’ decision to remain silent on the matter emphasizes the lack of clarity of whether the department did not make the videos or, more importantly, whether the department is acting sub rosa on the information garnered during the proposal stage.

This is part and parcel with Progressive-Democratic Party members constantly deriding the concept of MAGA—we’re all MAGA extremists, or MAGA Republicans—in their disdain for the concept of Making America Great Again. Instead, it’s disagree in any way with the Progressive-Democratic Party-run government and be labeled, in one form or another, an Enemy of the State.

Elections do, indeed, have consequences, and we need to inflict some in the fall of 2024.