Another Progressive-Democrat State Government…

…favors illegal aliens over its citizens. New York is opening State government jobs to illegal aliens.

New York is allowing migrants with federal work authorization to apply for thousands of temporary government jobs, [Progressive-]Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul said.

And

I have 10,000 openings in the New York State workforce. These are all legal people.

They’re legal only in a very narrow, legalistic sense. They’re illegal aliens who’ve been—wrongly, I claim—granted temporary work permits.

Hochul also is lowering the requirement to have at least a minimal education, a minimal English language proficiency, and appropriate certifications as criteria for getting these jobs. In sum, she’s extending diversity hire ideology to include illegal aliens.

The larger question, though, is why these jobs aren’t held for the State’s low-paid or jobless citizens and resident aliens—non-citizens present legally?

President Joe Biden’s Disdain for Israel

It’s made manifest in just the last few days, as if his constant pressure on Israel to agree a ceasefire, which would only allow the terrorist Hamas to rest, refit, and resume terrorist attacks, hadn’t already made his dislike clear.

Recall that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) has committed to putting forward a stand-alone bill that would fund Israel in the latter’s fight for survival against the terrorists in the current Hamas-instigated war.

Now Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden has said he’ll veto that bill if it makes it to his desk [emphasis in the original].

The Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 7217, making emergency supplemental appropriations to respond to the attacks in Israel for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other purposes.
The Administration spent months working with a bipartisan group of Senators to reach a national security agreement that secures the border and provides support for the people of Ukraine and Israel, while also providing much-needed humanitarian assistance to civilians affected by conflicts around the world. … The Administration strongly opposes this ploy which does nothing to secure the border, does nothing to help the people of Ukraine defend themselves against Putin’s aggression, fails to support the security of American synagogues, mosques, and vulnerable places of worship, and denies humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom are women and children.

If the President were presented with H.R. 7217, he would veto it.

This is Biden’s attitude toward Israel. He doesn’t like the nation, and he doesn’t like its Prime Minister. The bill doesn’t do those other things by design—that’s the nature of stand-alone, single subject bills. And it makes clear that Biden does not actually support Israel; he’s merely using that nation, holding it hostage—along with our own border security—against his getting his personal political way and his blocking anything Republican.

[T]his bill is another cynical political maneuver. If Biden were serious about supporting Israel, he’d call what he views as Republican gaming and sign the bill, then say, “Next.” Instead, he’s doing what he’s accusing Republicans of doing: playing politics with another nation’s survival.

We all need to remember his duplicity next November.

Joe Biden Had A Deal

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden had a deal with Venezuela’s MFWIC, Nicolás Maduro: if Maduro would allow Maria Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader, to run in a free, unfettered election for the Venezuelan office of President, Biden would lift the oil and gas sanctions former President Donald Trump (R) had imposed over the Maduro government’s continued and rank misbehaviors.

And so it came to pass that Biden lifted those sanctions.

However.

On Thursday Venezuela’s president of the national assembly said Ms Machado won’t be allowed to run. The next day Mr Maduro’s hand-picked Supreme Court echoed that declaration, upholding the ban, with charges that she had engaged in conspiracies against the regime. The only “conspiracy” is that she opposes the regime.

Who benefits from the deal that lifted the oil sanctions? Not the US. Venezuela’s government men and women do. The People’s Republic of China does.

Either Joe Biden is incapable of matching wits with a thuggish dictator’s machinations, or he knew this would be the outcome, and he agreed the deal anyway. Either way, Joe Biden is unfit for a second term.

Dishonesty Doesn’t Always Pay

The intrinsically mendacious press industry—the industry that spiked the Hunter Biden laptop story; that pushed Russia collusion; that announced no more balanced reporting, instead picking one political side in the news it presents; that cherry-picked Wuhan Virus data and associated vaccine and alternative palliative data; whose LA Times announced it would no longer print Letters to the Editor from readers who disagreed with the press guild’s predetermined “climate” narrative; and on and on—that industry, has seen 2024 start off with a layoff bang.

  • Los Angeles Times announced last week that would terminate at least 115 reporters, roughly 20% of its staff
  • TIME magazine laid off 15% of our unit members, with additional layoffs in edit and business
  • several Sports Illustrated staff members were let go, though not all of them, it turns out
  • National Geographic terminated all staff writers
  • Pitchfork is being merged into GQ, and all Pitchfork employees are being terminated
  • NBC News terminated “50 to 100” employees

Some press unions are protesting the layoffs and pending layoffs.

  • New York Daily News struck over chronic cuts ordered by the paper’s owner
  • Condé Nast struck for 24 hours to protest planned cuts

Those unions, IMNSHO, are self-identifying who goes in the next layoff round.

All of that is just in January. The year is yet young; it’s a start.

A Death Penalty Revival

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.