Category Archives: rights

Whose Choice Is It?

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And whose property is it?

A new law being seriously considered by lawmakers in New York City could strip landlords of the ability to perform criminal background checks on prospective tenants.

Because landlords shouldn’t be able to control who rents their property, shouldn’t be able to protect the interests of their existing tenants—who have, by dint of their rent agreements, have some property of their own in the landlord’s buildings.

This law means it’s city government property; landlords possess the buildings only in fee from the city lords.

Republican Councilwoman Inna Vernikov has the right of it:

A bill which would prohibit landlords from conducting criminal background checks of potential tenants. Murdered someone? Beat up your girlfriend? Robbed? Stabbed your neighbor? No problem. Come live among us!

Certainly felons, even violent felons, shouldn’t be blanketly denied a second chance, shouldn’t be blanketly denied an opportunity to demonstrate that they’ve rehabilitated themselves, shouldn’t be blanketly denied an opportunity at redemption.

But that should be the choice of the property owner, the landlord; it cannot be, legitimately, a choice forced upon the property owner, in a one-size-fits-all diktat by the Lords of the city.

A Deliberate Move by the Progressive-Democratic Party

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…against American citizenship and American citizens.

The Progressive-Democratic Party-backed Washington, DC, city council voted 12-1 (!) to allow anyone resident in the city for at least 30 days to vote in city elections. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) didn’t have the courage to take an open position, one way or the other, on the bill; she allowed it to become the law of the city by simply not signing it. The new city law is so broadly written that illegal aliens and foreign college students would be able to vote, and

There’s nothing in this measure to prevent employees at embassies of governments that are openly hostile to the United States from casting ballots.

Now, courtesy of Bowser and her city council, anyone in the Russian, or the PRC, or the Venezuelan, or the… embassies can vote to choose the city’s elected officials up to and including the Mayor. To hell with what American citizen voters resident in the city want or vote for (or against).

Now the matter goes to Congress—the city being a Federal enclave—and those worthies have 30 days to vote it down. It’ll be instructive to see whether there are enough Party politicians in each house of Congress with enough understanding of the meaning of patriotism, and especially of the meaning of “American citizen,” to strike down this bill. As The Wall Street Journal editors put it, Let’s see the roll call.

Any Excuse

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…to extend an “emergency” in order to continue Government’s expanded powers and reduced individual liberties, an expansion that depends on that continued emergency. Here’s the Children’s Hospital Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics in a letter to President Joe Biden (D) and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra (D):

…unprecedented levels of RSV happening with growing flu rates, ongoing high numbers of children in mental health crisis and serious workforce shortages are combining to stretch pediatric care capacity at the hospital and community level to the breaking point[.]
…
Your ongoing response to COVID-19 has successfully supported strategies to mitigate the impact of health care capacity issues for adult patients. Please take this action to allow these same strategies to be employed in service of our nation’s children.

Understand that this is the same American Academy of Pediatrics that promotes “gender-affirming care”—gender-affirming: destigmatizing gender variance—in children who, even at their tender age, think they’re confused about their sex—including in some cases puberty blockers. The Children’s Hospital Association also actively supports gender-affirming care. These are entities wholly unqualified to have medical or psychological opinions regarding the health and well-being of our children.

Notice, also, that this same hysterical “overloaded hospital” bleat was made during the Wuhan Virus situation—and no, hospitals were not, in the main, overloaded then. On the contrary, those Wuhan Virus situation strategies did nothing useful regarding the virus, but they did hammer our economy and do long-term damage to our children while expanding government powers over us average Americans.

Withal, keep in mind the origin of any shortages of medicines or medical facilities for handling the present outbreaks of respiratory virus and influenza in our children.

This situation is a direct result of school lockdowns and other moves to isolate our children from each other and from adults outside the immediate family, lockdowns and other moves that were pushed zealously by Progressive-Democratic Party politicians, teachers union managers, these medical “experts,” and the Left generally.

This forced isolation blocked continued development of our children’s immune systems, which left our children vulnerable to viruses against which they would have developed natural resistance absent that shameful, deliberate isolation. It’s no wonder viral outbreaks in our children are spiking.

We might have expected these Medical Wonders to understand and predict the impact of isolation on children’s immune systems and prepare for just these outbreaks.

No, this demand to extend a “medical” emergency is just another naked power grab by Party and Party supporters.

Censorship

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Elon Musk is, among other things with Twitter, taking steps to reduce or eliminate “accounts” that impersonate real persons without attribution.

[Musk] said Sunday that impersonating accounts will be permanently suspended unless they are specified as parody.

And yet, there are those on the Left who object to honesty in tweeting.

Jessie Hill, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, said Monday that by banning accounts that make fun of him, Mr Musk could have a chilling effect on speech on Twitter.

This is a typically cynical Leftist distortion of the facts. Musk isn’t banning accounts that make fun of him, he’s banning accounts that claim to be him, or that claim to be any other person.

Make fun of Musk to our heart’s content. Just expect Musk, at least occasionally, to answer in kind. Which actually will add fun to the matter.

National Digital ID

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The Senate’s Progressive-Democratic Party-dominated Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (as are all Senate and House committees in this Congress so dominated) passed out of committee a plan to impose a national digital ID system for US citizens—the better for Government tracking of its subjects.

Supporters claim that such national IDs could be

the key to unlocking access to financial services, various government benefits and educational opportunities, as well as a number of other critical services.

What they ignore is that such things also could be key to freezing those same items when they’re held by those of whom Government disapprove—just as the Progressive-Democrat-run IRS targeted conservative political action entities, and as the Progressive-Democrat DoJ is (still!) targeting mothers who object to school board wokeness as domestic terrorists, and as the Progressive-Democrat-dominated FBI still is targeting Trump-supporters, and as the Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is naming half of us average Americans pseudo-fascists.

Jay Stanley, a Senior Policy Analyst for the ACLU on national digital IDs:

…digital IDs could prove to be a privacy nightmare. “But digital is not always better—especially when systems are exclusively digital.”
“There’s a reason that most jurisdictions have spurned electronic voting in favor of paper ballots, for example,”

That’s the best purpose that a national ID could serve—and it’s anathema to individual liberty. But it’s part and parcel of Party’s avowed purpose of “fundamentally transforming America.”

No.

We already have a national ID. It’s our passports. The critical difference is that generation of and possession of a passport is strictly voluntary and done solely on the initiative of each individual American citizen.

What’s next from the Progressive-Democrats? Internal travel documents? They tried that, after all, in some areas at the height of the Wuhan Virus situation, barring travel unless the traveler could present suitable vaccination papers to relevant authorities.