Tag Archives: freedom

A Misapprehension

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Former Vice President Mike Pence (R) is the one misapprehending this time, and he laid it out early in his Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Where conservatives have historically viewed politics as the art of the possible, progressives see politics as a path to alter society beyond recognition in a quest for material equity, environmental nirvana, or other alleged perfections. Progressives invariably try to destroy whatever stands in their way.

That last sentence lays bare his misunderstanding. Perfecting our society has nothing to do with today’s progressives’ goals, goals hard-sought after by today’s Progressive-Democratic Party and epitomized by that sentence. Were Party interested in perfection, it would adopt a more patient approach and seek to bring along those presently disagreeing with them. Instead, Party politicians try to destroy whatever stands in their way.

For further proof, see Party’s plans, annunciated by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D, NY) remarks and his chief minion for this, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D, MD):

The Supreme Court is a disgrace. In the new Congress, we’re going to have to do something about this Supreme Court, and let me be very clear: everything is on the table—everything to deal with this corrupt MAGA majority.

And, as paraphrased by the WSJ‘s editors:

[Raskin] recently introduced a bill that would deny the Justices the power to choose which cases they hear. Under the SCCOTUS Act, petitions would be reviewed by a rotating committee of 13 random appellate judges. This is such a radical change that it’s hard to imagine all the implications.

Jeffries sees the Court, especially the conservative Justices, as corrupt because the majority seeks to adhere to what our Constitution and any statute before them actually say, rather than what the other Justices too often insist: that, in the manner of former Justice Thurgood Marshall, the Court should rule on what they want and expect the law to catch up, with the added fillip that if the law isn’t catching up quickly enough, these Justices will rewrite them from the bench.

Raskin would actually corrupt our Court by packing it to thirteen Justices because thirteen appellate circuits. He ignores in his revisionism the history that the number of appellate circuits had been growing beyond nine long before Congress set the number of Justices at nine. In fact, though, that’s just his covering excuse for adding four activist, progressive men and women to the Court, men and women who view our Constitution and statutes as suggestions to be ignored or modified as they see fit.

Pence’s piece loses its import with his lack of understanding of the underlying problem, even as he’s entirely correct in his conclusion: it’s time for Republicans, and especially the dismayingly meek Republicans, to get up off their backs and address these problems loudly and firmly. In particular, this includes Vice President JD Vance (R), who’s busily toadying up to Big Labor in his desperation to become our next President.

Else we lose our Republic.

The Strength and the Weakness

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In a Wall Street Journal article regarding Binance’s complicity, allegedly unwitting, in financing Iran’s behaviors despite sanctions to the contrary, there’s this tidbit that is the subject of my post.

The funds are part of billions in crypto transactions that have flowed through Binance to networks financing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the two years preceding the current US-Iran war, according to Binance compliance reports, blockchain data, foreign law-enforcement officials who track terrorism financing, and other crypto researchers and nonpublic documents.

It’s those blockchain data and their role in backtracking to the source of the funding that concerns me.

Blockchain is a highly useful, incorruptible means (so far; hackers and ever-improving computers include blockchain in the cyber arms race between the good guys and the nefarious) of proving the provenance of what’s being tracked, which is mostly financial transactions (again, so far). But that surveillance capability, in the hands of a government (and at bottom, there’s no practical way to keep it out of the hands of government) can be very dangerous to individual privacy, even to individual liberty.

We the People, and free citizens elsewhere in the free world, need especially to be vigilant and to respond quickly when government misuses that capability.

Sitzkrieg

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As President Donald Trump (R) seeks a deal with the terrorists reigning over Iran, two primary problems continue: the need to foreclose altogether the terrorists’ ability to acquire, even to do research and production of preliminary materials for, nuclear weapons, and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz without constraint—viz., tolls,  “protection” fees, etc, any semblance of Iranian control over this international water—and those terrorists’ insistence that Iran should be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons and should have control of the Strait.

In pursuit of that deal, Trump and Iran’s thugs agreed and have largely maintained a ceasefire for these last five weeks, to allow space for negotiations to proceed. During this time, all the terrorists have done is repeat their demands in varying terms: they will continue their drive to acquire nuclear weapons and they will continue to control the Strait and charge their tolls and protection vig. Oh, and they will have all sanctions lifted and frozen accounts unfrozen.

Those reigning over Iran are continuing to demonstrate their bad faith and their decision to not negotiate in any serious manner. The terrorists are, in Trump’s own phrase, just tapping us along.

It’s time to put an end to this sitzkrieg. It’s time to begin reducing to rubble the terrorists’ ability to move oil and natural gas from their wells to their refineries and ports by breaking the pipelines at the wells, destroying those refineries, and closing those ports while destroying the pipelines, roads, and railroads entering them. It’s time to eliminate the factories that produce war materiel and civilian/military dual use materiel and to destroy those factories’ input sources and routes. The terrorists’ missile and drone stockpiles, launching facilities, and production ability must be eliminated. The terrorists’ mosquito fleet of small boats must be sunk, and the naval and naval-usable ports must be destroyed. The assault must continue apace and without letup until the terrorists are physically incapable of continuing or have agreed terms.

If the terrorists decide to engage in serious negotiations, they must send decision-makers, not intermediaries, to the table. Safe passage can be granted to these persons while the attacks on the terrorists’ war-making and shipping-threatening capabilities continue apace.

Disregarding our Constitution

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Here they go again. This time it’s Virginia’s Progressive-Democratic Party-dominated legislature and Governor who think our Constitution is just something to be used or ignored at Party convenience and that, in the immortal words of a Leftist “journalist,” isn’t binding on anything and it’s hard to understand, being over 100 years old (or, as he later “corrected,” more than 200 years old.

This time, it’s Party’s disregard of our 2nd Amendment and of Supreme Court rulings holding that keeping and bearing Arms is an individual inalienable right of which a well regulated militia is a beneficiary not the purpose and that the keeping and bearing cannot (not just may not) be regulated except in consistence with our nation’s traditions. That last includes, explicitly, firearms that are in widespread lawful use—these cannot (not just may not) be restricted from our possession of them.

Virginia’s reigning Party has banned what it’s pleased to call “assault” weapons along with the 30-round magazines that are an integral part of the semi-automatic rifles that are subject to the ban. This is in direct and deliberate violation of our 2nd Amendment and is a nose-thumb at our Supreme Court.

This miscarriage is now in both Federal and State courts, looking to get this blatantly unlawful Party gun grab tossed. It should, in the end, be tossed, but honest citizens shouldn’t have to spend the time or treasure going through this.

It’s time to remove this lawless Party from the halls of political power at the next election and in subsequent election cycles.

In Which I Agree with Michelle Obama and Angel Reese

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But maybe not for their reasons. In an interview on Obama’s podcast, WNBA star Angel Reese said,

The media has not always been great for me. And I’ll take a fine. I’ll catch a fine, especially in a WNBA. I’ll have a fine before I have to go to media and feel like my back is against the wall[.]

Obama repeatedly agreed with Reese over these and similar comments during the interview.

I tend to be hard over on the 1st Amendment and our freedoms of speech and association. It’s wrong that the WNBA and the other professional sports leagues require players and managers/coaches to present themselves to press inquisitions before, during, and after games. Athletes and their coaches and managers shouldn’t lose those basic rights just because of who they are.

Those rights to speak or not and to associate with pressmen formally or informally or not at all are independent of whether the press treats those it summons to their audiences badly or fawningly. Meeting the press should be an entirely voluntary affair. Nobody makes pressmen show up for these; neither should anyone else be required.