Independence Day

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I posted this in 2012; it bears repeating.

On this day 235 and more years ago, a group of Americans got together and, pledging their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor to each other while relying on the protection of divine Providence, took our country free from tyranny and set us on a new, wholly experimental course.

These men openly acknowledged both our right and our duty to throw off any government that too badly violates its moral obligations to us sovereign citizens, that for too long abuses our liberties and our individual responsibilities.  At the same time, though, they acknowledged that routinely rebelling at every small offense was equally wrong: Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.  Yet those light and transient offenses want correction along with those abuses and moral failures.

And so, while fighting (and many dying) for our newly born nation and during the immediately ensuing years of a troubled peace, these men, with others from the newly independent and united States joining them, in a second phase of our experiment invented a wholly new form of government.  They created a government that would recognize the essential sovereignty of the members of a voluntarily formed social compact over our compact’s government, and they gave that government a structure and a strictly limited set of authorities designed to maximize our control of government and our ability to maintain that control.

They also invented a wholly new mechanism for throwing off an abusive government and replacing it with one more suited to our needs and to our control: a set of elections that would let us turn all the rascals out of one house of our legislative body every two years, that would let us depose the whole of the other house of our legislative body in sequential one-third increments every two years, and that would let us fire the chief executive of this government every four years—any and all whom we found wanting during their time in office.  This invention was accompanied by another invention of these men: a judiciary that sat, neither above nor below our executive and legislative, but equal to and separate from them—a third powerful check that granted stability to the whole.

We are here today arguing amongst ourselves, usually with great passion, over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, climate change, Benghazi, emails, immigration, viruses, our role in the world, a Presidential election, and a host of other things, too, both momentous and trivial.  And we could not be without the genius and the sacrifice of those men those 235 and more years ago.

As you sit around by your barbecue, or at the beach, or wherever you may be, hamburgers and hotdogs and other meats in hand, beer nearby, children screaming and yelling in their own happinesses, take a moment to think about that.

Lawlessness and Instability

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Much is being made of the situation that will obtain in the Gaza Strip when Hamas’ war is ended and (ideally) with Hamas utterly destroyed. Worries about Gazan civilian lawlessness and general instability throughout the Strip abound, should there be a lack of governance in that aftermath.

It’s certainly true that an effective governing body, or bodies should the Strip be subdivided as some are proposing, but there’s another factor that’s not addressed.

That’s the behaviors of the civilians involved. Desperation and privation are harsh task masters, but they needn’t be controlling slavers. There’s nothing preventing the Gazan civilians from supporting each other rather than spending their meager resources supporting surviving Hamas terrorists in the latter’s attacks on Israel. There’s nothing preventing Gaza’s civilians from supporting each other rather than lethally competing with each other for those meager resources.

It’s even likely that foreign aid would flow more freely were the Strip’s civilians to move to support that flow rather than ransacking and looting it, or allowing surviving Hamas terrorists to steal it.

But that would require those Gazan civilians to behave like a worthy and virtuous people—not by Western standards, even, but by their own Quran requirements.

Count me naïve for pointing that out, but there it is.

Mostly Immune

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The Supreme Court, last Monday, issued its ruling on former President Donald Trump’s (R) Presidential immunity case. In a 6-3 ruling, the Court held that he has that for official acts committed while in office. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Court, in part:

Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.

The necessity of a strong measure of (criminal prosecution) immunity is absolutely essential. Roberts made this point early on [citations omitted]:

The President “occupies a unique position in the constitutional scheme,” … as “the only person who alone composes a branch of government,”[.] The Framers “sought to encourage energetic, vigorous, decisive, and speedy execution of the laws by placing in the hands of a single, constitutionally indispensable, individual the ultimate authority that, in respect to the other branches, the Constitution divides among many.”  They “deemed an energetic executive essential to ‘the protection of the community against foreign attacks,’ ‘the steady administration of the laws,’ ‘the protection of property,’ and ‘the security of liberty.'” The purpose of a “vigorous” and “energetic” Executive, they thought, was to ensure “good government,” for a “feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government.”
…
Appreciating the “unique risks to the effective functioning of government” that arise when the President’s energies are diverted by proceedings that might render him “unduly cautious in the discharge of his official duties,” we have recognized Presidential immunities and privileges “rooted in the constitutional tradition of the separation of powers and supported by our history.”

It’s necessary to keep in mind, too, that the Framers wrote President as an energetic, vigorous, decisive, and speedy executer of the laws and as one whose ability to act decisively and speedily is necessary to the protection of the community against foreign attacks in an environment of a failing Articles of Confederation. That treaty didn’t even have a feeble executive, rather it was devoid of any sort of Executive or executive power altogether. The treaty itself was so feeble that it was powerless to fund itself; and it was (soon to be) fatally unable to act against the steady drumbeat of British violations of the Treaty of Paris that codified our independence and against British incursions into our nascent nation’s western territories.

I have a problem, though, with absolute immunity for anyone for criminal acts, whenever they may have been conducted. A line does need to be drawn—and I don’t have any ideas on where, yet—between prosecuting a President for his criminal acts and making up crimes, à la Jack Smith, in order to prosecute a President that some don’t like.

Maybe a line drawn on consequences: the prosecutor and “senior” members of his team who go after a President or former President on some alleged criminality, on that President’s/former President’s acquittal, go straight to jail to serve, without parole, the mid-range sentence that the alleged crime calls for. Consecutively, if multiple crimes are charged and acquitted.

One of the questions that follow this ruling will hinge on the circle: is a criminal act an official act? Can it be? There is some case law that bars things done “under color of law;” that principle would seem to apply to “under cover of official act.”

It’s not going to be an easy question to resolve.

The Court’s ruling can be read here.

If It Were Truly a Nonevent

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden was rambling, shambling, and at times utterly incoherent in his remarks during last week’s debate.

There now is hue and cry to find a way to get him off this fall’s Presidential election ballot, and equally vociferous pushback by Biden’s staff and handlers in the White House.

Congressman Stephen Lynch (D, MA):

I think we have some decisions to make as a party. We’ve got to have that discussion immediately[.]

Congresswoman Susie Lee (D, NV) said she didn’t know whether another Democrat would be better positioned to beat Trump in November. But,

she said Democrats “absolutely” need to talk about how to move forward after the debate. “It was awful[.]”

The New York Times was blunt:

[T]he greatest public service Mr Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election. As it stands, the president is engaged in a reckless gamble.

And so on.

Now, the pushback.

Progressive-Democrat (and black woman, because Party makes such a big deal of those two irrelevancies) Vice President Kamala Harris:

This race will not be decided by one night in June, it will be decided by you [Biden].

A carefully anonymous “senior Biden adviser:”

We think there’s going to be a lot of twists and turns here[.]

Congressman James Clyburn (D, SC):

Those of us who are more interested in substance than style, we are still saying that on substance, Joe Biden is the best thing that has happened to this country in the last few years[.]

And so on.

If Biden’s performance in last week’s debate were truly a nonevent, though, wouldn’t Biden’s handlers, supporters, and potential donors simply ignore it and move on? Wouldn’t those Party members and supporters whose knickers are in such an uproar be quite a bit calmer, in the aftermath? After all, their main mentor, ex-President Barack Obama (D) is:

[B]ad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know[.]

This isn’t much ado about nothing; it is, rather, those staffers and handlers protesting far too much. Of course, some of the loudest supporters in that aftermath have to come out full-throatedly supportive of Biden, at least publicly, lest they functionally disqualify themselves as self-centered ghouls and vultures.

The Disingenuosity of the Left

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The Texas Supreme Court upheld a Texas law that bans gender-affirming care for transgender minors. The Court in its 8-1 decision wrote

We conclude the legislature made a permissible, rational policy choice to limit the types of available medical procedures for children, particularly in light of the relative nascency of both gender dysphoria and its various modes of treatment and the Legislature’s express constitutional authority to regulate the practice of medicine

Tellingly, the Court explicitly ruled only that the state law was constitutional, not what treatment a minor who suffers from “gender dysphoria” should have.

Just as tellingly, the Left is busily distorting the facts.

Lynly Egyes, Litigation Director at Transgender Law Center:

The court’s decision to reject safe and affirming care will have lasting impacts on all people in Texas[.]

There is nothing safe about the transgender treatments currently on offer, for minors or adults. They are, by their nature, highly and permanently destructive of the individual’s body, with follow-on effects on the individual’s mind.

Neither are the treatments “affirming” as they are done to minors. Minors don’t have the capacity to determine what’s best for themselves, including what gender they wish to manifest themselves as. That’s what parents do.

The Court’s opinion can be read here.