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Tag Archives: freedom
Right Answer, Wrong Dissent
The Washington State Supreme Court issued a ruling favorable to the State’s charter schools last Thursday. The question before the court was whether those charter schools were violating the State’s constitution by receiving funding from the State’s lottery facilities. Writing for the court, Justice Mary Yu wrote in plain words,
Charter schools are not rendered unconstitutional just because they do not operate identically to common school[.]
She expanded on that in addressing the plaintiffs’ argument that the charter schools lacked voter control, holding that, as The Seattle Times paraphrased her,
Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
In the wake of a series of explosive devices being sent to or received by Progressive-Democrats and others of the Left like George Soros, ex-President Barack Obama (D), ex-Progressive-Democrat Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D, CA), Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D, FL), CNN offices, and others we get this:
Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a joint statement…”Time and time again, the President has condoned physical violence and divided Americans with his words and his actions….”
The EU and National Sovereignty
Poland enacted a law at the start of the year that lowered the mandatory retirement age of all of its judges from 70 to 65. This resulted, among other things, in the required retirement for 27 of the nation’s 72 Supreme Court judges (a too-big Court, anyway IMNSHO, and they ought not be replaced, but that’s a separate story).
The ruling Law and Justice (PiS [Prawo i Sprawiedliwość]) party says the changes are necessary to a justice system they say is controlled by an untouchable “caste” of judges steeped in communist-era mentality.
The European Union has demurred.
Mao Lives
The People’s Republic of China, the home of rule by law (not rule of law), has retroactively legalized its “internment” camps, which the government is using to jail reeducate recalcitrant Muslims in its western province of Xinjiang.
Chinese authorities in the far-northwestern region of Xinjiang on Wednesday revised legislation to permit the use of “education and training centers” to combat religious extremism.
So far—so far, mind you—a million Muslims are…housed…in those camps.
The camps are strongly reminiscent of those of President Xi Jinping’s early predecessor, Mao Tse-tung. Mao sent 16-18 million children and millions more adults to his “reeducation” camps.
Guilty Until Proven Innocent
The tentacles reach far—even into the origin of Western concepts of individual liberty. A British court has ordered
the wife of a jailed Azerbaijani banker to explain how she and her husband could afford their multimillion-pound London mansion or face having it seized.
Government does not have to prove the illegal origin of the money. No, the holder of the money must prove her innocence. Here is the outcome of the British government’s legislation ostensibly aimed at allegedly dirty money held by people with political connections or suspected of serious crime.
A Newly Conservative Court?
Jess Bravin, writing in The Wall Street Journal, thought so.
When Justice Brett Kavanaugh takes the bench Tuesday, it will mark the culmination of the Republican Party’s 50-year drive to cement a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
At the least, he argued,
[A] five-justice majority more sensitive to regulatory and litigation costs on business should tip more outcomes toward industry and employers, imposing higher bars for workers, consumers and environmentalists, according to legal experts who have studied the court and Justice Kavanaugh’s jurisprudence. At the same time, the new majority is likely to show more sympathy for social conservatives resisting the encroachment of gay rights and access to contraceptives, as well as greater tolerance for state initiatives to curb the availability of abortion.
The Supreme Court
As I write this (Saturday morning), Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh has not been confirmed; although, that seems more likely than I had thought Friday morning before the cloture vote. Nevertheless, here’s why we need another textualist Justice on the Court—from the words of another Supreme Court Justice.
Associate Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said Friday she fears the high court may lack a justice going forward who would serve as a swing-vote on cases….
And
Kagan said at a conference for women at Princeton University that over the past three decades…there was a figure on the bench “who found the center or people couldn’t predict in that sort of way.”
It’s a Start
The Trump administration has agreed to sell $330 million worth of spare parts to the Republic of China. The spares will support the RoC’s F-16s, C-130s, and other of the island nation’s military aircraft.
It’s a start. However, we need to do more. We should be selling uprated F1-16s, F-15s, and A-10s to them. We should be selling missile defense systems to them and brokering deals between the RoC and Israel for the latter’s Iron Dome and Arrow missile and rocket defense systems. We should be selling the RoC anti-ship and anti-aircraft weapons systems. We should be selling them land-attack cruise missile systems.
Feinstein’s Weapons Distortion
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D, CA) isn’t only dissembling in the course of her Progressive-Democratic Party’s shambles-making of the Judge Kavanaugh Supreme Court Justice confirmation process. She’s dissembling regarding our right to keep and bear Arms, also. Using the hoo-raw the Party created during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings (she’s the Ranking Democrat on that committee), she had this comment in the lead up to a question she had for Kavanaugh:
I’m talking about your statement on “common use.” Assault weapons are not in common use.