What’s Their Limiting Principle?

Posted on 6 October 2017 by eehines

Progressives, as The Wall Street Journal puts it,

believe that every human problem can be solved with a policy tweak. A ban here, a background check there, and, voila, no more mass shootings.

But what’s their limiting principle? What level of gun control would satisfy them? What fundamental concept would make them believe they’ve gone far enough with their tweaks, checks, bans on an American citizen’s access to the means of defending himself and his family? Besides their empty rhetoric of “I wouldn’t do that, I wouldn’t take all your guns away…,” I mean.

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A Referendum

Posted on 4 October 2017 by eehines

Catalonia is trying to have one (had one as you read this) on whether the Autonomous Community should completely separate from Spain. It’s turning violent as the Spanish military organization with police duties, the Guardia Civil, and the more civilian Policía Nacional, are using hammers and other such tools to break into locked buildings within which voting is occurring and truncheons and rubber bullets to try to block Catalans from entering and voting.

Nearly 850 civilian casualties had been inflicted by late Sunday, Dallas time.

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A Couple Thoughts on the NFL Players’ “Protests”

Posted on 28 September 2017 by eehines

The Wall Street Journal ran a couple of pieces on this, one by Matthew Futterman and Andrew Beaton (Behind the NFL’s Frantic Scramble to Hit Back at Trump) and the other an op-ed by Jason Riley.

The former centered on the purported disarray among the NFL’s management, players, players union, owners, and coaches as they tried to figure out how to ride the tiger they’d turned loose with their “protests.” The latter was a sort of coming-of-age piece wherein Riley went from national anthem sitter to a national anthem stander.

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A Bit of Snark

Posted on 27 September 2017 by eehines

Because it’s my blog, and so I get to.

Gene Malcolm (@spike012002) has a tweet up:

Next, Japanese businessman will start wearing business suits. When will this cultural appropriation end?

There also is a joke wandering the rounds:

Q: What’s the difference between Los Angeles and yogurt?
A: One of them has a living culture.

Which makes me wonder, in the context of Malcolm’s tweet: between LA and yogurt, which is inflicting cultural appropriation?

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The Not Good Enough Legacy

Posted on 25 September 2017 by eehines

Here are some stats regarding Obamacare’s impact on our poor, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.

More than one in three of taxed [via the individual mandate penalty] households earned less than $25,000, which is roughly the federal poverty line for a family of four.

And

More than 75% of penalized households made less than $50,000 and nine in 10 earned less than $75,000.

And

Fewer families paid the tax in 2015 than in 2014, yet government revenues increased to more than $3 billion from about $1.7 billion, as the financial punishment for lacking coverage increased.

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Due Process and Colleges/Universities

Posted on 23 September 2017 by eehines

Recall the Department of Education’s 2011 egregious and cynically biased Dear Colleague Letter and its attack on due process and equal protection under law. Things are being restored to legitimacy under the Betsy DeVos DoEd via interim guidance just issued.

Colleges can now apply a higher standard of proof when determining guilt in sexual misconduct cases and must offer equal opportunity for the accused and accuser to have legal advisers participate in their hearings, according to interim recommendations issued by the US Department of Education on Friday.

Because

The Education Department on Friday formally rescinded guidelines issued by the Obama administration in 2011 and 2014….

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More Mueller Leaks

Posted on 22 September 2017 by eehines

Even Howard Kurtz seems to be catching on, as he wrote for Fox News.

Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation leaks are continuing apace.

Suddenly, there are a whole lot of leaks about Paul Manafort.

Could this, just possibly, be the special counsel’s way of putting pressure on President Trump’s former campaign chairman?

And

[T]he detailed nature of the leaks is also troubling. As a onetime Justice Department reporter, I can tell you that such leaks in a criminal investigation are rare, as well as illegal.

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Antifa, a Gang

Posted on 20 September 2017 by eehines

David Pyrooz and James Densley had some thoughts on this in Monday’s Wall Street Journal. They’re on the right track in that they urge Antifa be formally designated a gang with all the social—and legal—ramifications that would flow.

There are a couple of points I’d like to make or emphasize.

[D]on’t be fooled by Antifa’s diffuse structure. Conventional street gangs are pretty disorganized too.

Diffuse isn’t, of necessity, disorganized: the Bloods and Crips, which Pyrooz and Densley cite in their piece; the Black P-Stone Nation; al Qaeda; and the Daesh all are diffuse, by design, and well organized.

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The PRC and Bitcoin

Posted on 20 September 2017 by eehines

The behavior of the People’s Republic of China regarding bitcoin has purpose far beyond controlling bitcoin. As background, The Wall Street Journal had this assessment of the PRC’s financial industry:

China has digitized its financial sector faster than any other nation.

The reason for their rapid pace is this according to Li Lihui, a spokesman for the National Internet Finance Association of China, and it has nothing at all to do with a sovereign nation’s legitimate desire to control its own currency and money supply:

A goal of China’s monetary regulation is to ensure that “the source and destination of every piece of money can be tracked[.]”

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Our Pledge of Allegiance and God

Posted on 19 September 2017 by eehines

A Detroit teacher is forced onto leave now because she forced a student to stand for the class’ routine recital of our Pledge of Allegiance. Used to be, such disrespect was handled in exactly this way, and quite properly so.

The boy actually had a good reason, though, even if he misunderstood what the pledge of allegiance is about:

God said don’t worship anything other than me, don’t worship any idols, and pledging to a flag would kind of be like worshiping it[.]

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