Tag Archives: freedom

Because There Isn’t Enough Regulation

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Nature abhors a vacuum, and so do Democrats. The vacuum Democrats abhor, though, isn’t a natural one, it’s manmade—gaps in regulation. Americans are just too stupid to manage our own lives, on our own, insist Democrats, and so Democrats demand to regulate our lives for us. For our own good, you see. And for the good of Democrats’ political power. Here are two examples.

In Houston, the Liberal city government didn’t think bathroom accommodations for those who can’t accept who they are should be a matter of negotiation between employer and employee or prospective employee.

More importantly, the Liberal city government thought religious beliefs should be a matter appropriate only to Sundays in churches and not available in the workaday world or to the men and women who operate businesses in the city.

The Liberal city government didn’t think such perks or rights should be competitive offers in free market competition among employers for labor—the way “full dental” was exactly such a competition offer in the last century. So, after having an outright city ordinance struck in court, they put the regulation to the city’s voters in full expectation of being able to ram it through, with the help of millions of dollars from outside Liberals and Democrats.

Houston’s mayor, Annise Parker, even sought to justify this regulatory overreach:

No one’s rights should be subject to a popular vote[.]

No, they shouldn’t. But the Liberal, looking to fill a regulatory vacuum, did exactly that; she put Christians’ and employees’ in general rights to a popular vote.

In San Francisco, the regulatory vacuum involved what private property owners should be allowed to do with their private property when the Liberal city government and its special interest supporters object to those uses.

In another referendum, San Frisco voters rejected the city’s efforts to limit short-term housing rental, a move made by a number of house owners to earn a few extra bucks letting a room to freely agreeing renters needing a place to stay.

[T]enants-rights organizations, a group representing landlords, a hotel workers’ union and hotel associations

all supported the limiting measure because it might compete with their interests. Freedom to compete—or even just to earn some money in an enormously expensive city—should be limited because, well, because competition must be regulated. The argument they put forward wasn’t even intended to be a serious one. Such room-letting would drive up housing costs. By reducing demand for housing, I suppose.

Both of these moves were demonstrations of how much the Left—the Progressives in government and the Democratic Party at large—abhor American citizens’ behavior being unregulated. Americans are just too dumb to handle our own affairs; every action we take has to be regulated to the last detail.

Remember these Democratic Party attempts next year.

“About Time the US Made a Stand in South China Sea”

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That’s the headline of Joseph Bosco’s piece in Real Clear World, and he’s right.

However, we’ve no made such a stand, yet; all that’s happened is that a single destroyer was sailed “within 12 miles” of a Spratly island. What’s needed to truly take a stand is to sail an armed flotilla a closely as may be safely, from a navigability and maneuverability perspective, accompanied with low overflights by fighters.

This should be done with every Spratly island having PRC activity, it should be done with the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, and we should have flotillas cruising the Taiwan Strait.

As Bosco also noted, it would be beneficial if other nations—he suggested Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and ultimately all of ASEAN—participated in these sailings. However, the sailings are necessary, even if done unilaterally.

No more namby-pamby hemming and hawing.

South China Sea

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In a Wall Street Journal article opening with on the Republic of Korea’s Defense Minister Han Min-Koo remarks about the need for freedom of sea and air navigation in and over the South China Sea to be settled in accordance with international law, and Japan’s participation in trilateral talks with the RoK and the People’s Republic of China on a host of questions, the PRC’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi had this to say:

I wonder what Japan has to do with the South China Sea[.]

This deliberately disingenuous remark—the Sea “hosts” sea lanes that carry trade to Japan as well as the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and us—requires Wang to answer the question of what the PRC has to do with the South China Sea? Other than its naked grab for it, I mean.

A Destroyer Sailed

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Lu Kang, Director-General of the People’s Republic of China Foreign Affairs Ministry’s Department of Information, complained about the USS Lassen’s passage through the waters surrounding the Spratly Islands in the southern part of the South China Sea.

The warship, USS Lassen, illegally entered waters near relevant islands and reefs within China’s Nansha Islands without permission from the Chinese government. To this the Chinese side expresses its strong discontentment and resolute opposition.

No, no permission was necessary for an American naval vessel—or any other nation’s vessels, military or civilian—to sail through the international waters surrounding the Spratlys.

To this the Eric Hines side expresses its strong contempt and resolute opposition to the PRC’s naked sea grab. After all, those islands and their surrounding international waters do lie within Brunei’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

The Chinese side strongly urges the US side to negotiate seriously with China, immediately rectify its mistakes, and not to undertake any risky and provocative actions that threaten Chinese sovereignty and security interests.

Sure. When will the PRC begin to negotiate seriously, immediately rectify its mistakes, desist from its ongoing risky and provocative actions that threaten the sovereignty and security interests of the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, and the other nations around the South China Sea?

Oh, and withdraw its military equipment from those international waters and return them to PRC territory?

“The Law Must Change”

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There are a couple of cases before the Supreme Court in this session involving questions of excessive punishment. One case involves a defendant on death row in a case where a jury rendered a majority advisory verdict applying the death penalty on the defendant’s conviction of murder, with the judge having the final say. The argument here is that this

violates a 2002 precedent that defendants are entitled to have a jury, rather than a judge, determine a death sentence.

The other case, though, is the one that interests me. In this case, a 17-year-old, a juvenile under the definitions extant at the time, was convicted in 1963 of murdering a sheriff’s deputy and given a life without parole sentence. His appeal asks the Court to make retroactive its 2012 ruling that

juveniles cannot automatically be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

The government agrees with the defendant in this case, which may or may not be an appropriate thing to do in such matters, depending on the facts of a particular case.

What’s of critical importance here, though, is the government’s argument in supporting the defendant. Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben argued

The law must change to accommodate the compelling interests in having the characteristics of youth that mitigate culpability considered in the sentencing process[.]

That’s absolutely true. Laws passed by our elected representatives must change to accommodate society’s changing compelling interests. But the courts cannot do that. The courts’ role is strictly limited under our social compact to striking a law down if it violates our Constitution and to applying the law as it is written if the law is Constitutional. The task of making law, or of modifying existing law, is solely within the province of our legislature, our elected representatives, since making or modifying law is purely a political matter and not at all a judicial one.

The Supremes, if they’re to be true to their oaths of office, must reject the appeal. The Justices certainly can, in their published opinion(s) on the case, advise the Congress to make changes the Justices individually or collectively think appropriate, but they may not legislate from the bench.