A Judge’s Error

Posted on 16 January 2019 by eehines

The Trump administration had expanded rules allowing employers to opt out of being required to provide birth control coverage to their employees at no cost to the employees, so long as the opting out was convincingly based on religious or moral grounds. Federal District Judge Haywood Gilliam of the Northern District of California has issued an injunction blocking enforcement of the expansion while an underlying lawsuit against the expansion is underway.

Ordinarily, blocking an enforcement while the underlying case proceeds is no big deal, but this one is just plain wrong. Gilliam based his ruling in significant part on the premise that

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Religious Bigotry?

Posted on 11 January 2019 by eehines

North Dakota wants to let its high schools teach a Bible studies class, and the ACLU (among others) has gotten its institutional panties in a twist over it. State Congressman Aaron McWilliams (R) has a bill moving through the State’s legislature that would achieve that. He said

The intention of this bill is to provide an option to schools to teach a class on the bible from a historical perspective. My position is that no religious text should be excluded from being taught as it relates to the historical or philosophical influences in our history or on our society today.

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Of Course They Can

Posted on 4 January 2019 by eehines

President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China increased pressure on the Republic of China to surrender and be “unified” with the PRC.

Mr Xi said differences in political systems can’t be used as an excuse to resist unification.

Of course they can. Those differences are what makes the two nations separate from each other. Never mind that the two have been independent of each other ever since the mainland under Mao Tse-tung won then-China’s civil war and drove the Kuomintang off the mainland onto the island of Taiwan, with Mao then creating the PRC. The reason for the civil war was precisely those differences, differences over which the Communists were willing to kill those who opposed them.

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Too Much Retrenchment

Posted on 27 December 2018 by eehines

Christian Whiton, in an op-ed for Fox News‘ online outlet, espoused a large retrenchment and withdrawal of the US (he couched it in terms of withdrawal of our troops only) from Europe and the Middle East. In one region, though, he’s badly mistaken and goes much too far (he’s mistaken in the other areas, too, but this really stands out).

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Faith in the PRC

Posted on 14 December 2018 by eehines

The People’s Republic of China is broadening the reach of its religion.

Officials have threatened to close the Early Rain Covenant Church in the central city of Chengdu by the end of the year in keeping with new religious-management regulations, according to several congregants who said they had been waiting for the net to fall. In coordinated raids starting Sunday night, police detained Pastor Wang Yi and more than 100 of the church’s 500 members, said Li Yingqiang, a church leader.

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Ukraine and Russia, Again

Posted on 30 November 2018 by eehines

The Wall Street Journal had an editorial on this earlier, but they’re selling the Ukraine situation short along with several others.

The [Russian] attack violated a 2003 treaty that designated the Azov Sea as shared territory between Russia and Ukraine.

Sadly, this accepts as fait accompli the existing invasion, partition, and occupation of Ukraine by Russia.

The attack, and that invasion, partition, and occupation, also violated, and violate, the Budapest Memorandum, which the Western signers (the US and UK) appear too timid to enforce—even though we’d be confronting a country whose economy is roughly akin to that of the Black P-Stone Nation, and whose morals are those of MS-13.

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Another Betrayal

Posted on 28 November 2018 by eehines

Recall Russia’s latest provocation (which amounts to an act of war), consisting of ships of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet ramming a Ukrainian tugboat and firing on and seizing the Ukrainian three-ship flotilla of which that tug was a part along with the “detention” of the crews of the three ships.

Germany—Chancellor Angela Merkel—has magnanimously offered to mediate the matter.

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Guns and Killings

Posted on 27 November 2018 by eehines

This, from no less a Liberal outlet than the Chicago Tribune. John Lott, Jr, Crime Prevention Research Center President, provided some gun-related killings statistics for the Tribune. He began by defining what constitutes mass killings, a term too often bandied about without definition. The FBI’s definition is what he used.

shootings must claim four or more lives in a public place
shootings must be carried out simply with the intention of killing
- excluded are gang fight killings because they tend to be motivated by battles for drug turf
- excluded are murders incidental to other crimes

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Mexico Says It’s Not a Safe Country?

Posted on 26 November 2018 by eehines

President Donald Trump has said that the US and Mexico have reached an agreement—at least in principle (although Trump is his usual more definitive self)—that those seeking asylum in the US will remain in Mexico until their asylum cases have been heard and acted on by the US. The Washington Post has claimed to quote incoming Interior Minister Olga Sanchez Cordero as saying so, too.

However, Sanchez Cordero says that she said no such thing to WaPo. In fact, she says that no such deal, no Remain in Mexico program—”of any sort”—exists. Given that newspaper’s record of honest reporting, I believe Sanchez Cordero.

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Unfair Elections

Posted on 19 November 2018 by eehines

At least they’re unfair if a Progressive-Democrat doesn’t win, if a Republican wins instead.

Progressive-Democratic Party ex-Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton:

If she [Georgia Progressive-Democrat candidate for Governor Stacy Abrams] had a fair election, she already would have won[.]

Never mind that, according to Abrams and her team, all the votes haven’t been counted. Just declare the Progressive-Democrat the winner and skip all the time wasted on petty counting of votes.

Progressive-Democratic Senator from Ohio Sherrod Brown:

If Stacey Abrams doesn’t win in Georgia, they stole it. It’s clear, I say that publicly.

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