Tag Archives: freedom

An Early Model

Posted on by
Reply

The Georgia Senate has passed, and sent to the Georgia House, election reform legislation that could be a model for other States to follow—while, say I, encouraging—requiring, really—the Federal government to butt out.

Some highlights:

  • eliminate no-excuse absentee voting and
  • limit mail-in ballots to individuals who qualify based on specific criteria
    • people who are physically disabled
    • are over 65 years old
    • are eligible as a military or overseas voter
    • have a religious holiday around election day
    • work in elections
    • somehow need to be outside their voting precinct during the early voting period and election day
  • eliminate no-excuse absentee voting
  • require voter identification to request an absentee ballot
  • require Georgia to participate in a nongovernmental multi-state voter registration system to cross-check the eligibility of voters
  • allow mobile voting units to be used only to replace current brick-and-mortar voting facilities, not supplement them
  • set up a telephone hotline to receive complaints and reports regarding voter intimidation and election fraud, and require the State’s Attorney General to review them within three days

You’re Not Like Us

Posted on by
Reply

Bion Bartning, Co-founder of Eos Products and Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism President, wrote in Sunday‘s Wall Street Journal of his children’s experience in what used to be (my characterization) a top-drawer private school, New York City’s Riverdale Country School.

The lower-school head had earlier written that “it is essential that parents/caregivers and educators acknowledge racial differences (as opposed to a ‘colorblind’ stance)” and offered reading recommendations such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility.” Families at Riverdale are encouraged to join school-sponsored “affinity” groups to bond with people from their ethnicity or skin color.

Then the Bartnings raised concerns to the school’s administration.

I have always felt a strong connection with Martin Luther King Jr’s dream of an America where people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I advocate genuine antiracism, rooted in dignity and humanity. But the ideology underlying the “racial literacy” guide distributed by the school wasn’t like that. Instead of emphasizing our common humanity, it lumps people into simplistic racial groupings. It teaches that each person’s identity and status is based largely on skin color, and leaves no place for people like me, who are of mixed race [he’s an immigrant who’s Mexican/Yaqui and Jewish] or don’t place race at the heart of their identity.

The school master’s response—when it got around to it? It was buried at the end of an email exchange about another matter entirely:

I wonder if this might be a good moment to think whether or not this is the best school for you and your family—being philosophically misaligned is never a very good experience for all concerned.

[B]eing philosophically misaligned is never a very good experience for all concerned. That just adds to it. Wrong think demands expulsion of the wrong thinkers.

This is a naked repudiation of our nation’s years of effort toward the equality of opportunity that flows from integration. This is a demand for a return to the racist segregation of the last century. The Left is resuming, in spades, to its racist history.

Too Far

Posted on by
Reply

Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) has reintroduced his Terror Intelligence Improvement Act, his bill to allow Government to block suspected terrorists from obtaining firearms. This bill, far from improving anything, is a long step back from our rights under our Constitution. As Dana Loesch summarized it in her newsletter (behind a paywall after this month; subscribe now for a discount on her subscription price),

The bill would also provide more authority for law enforcement agencies to go after suspected terrorists, while safeguarding law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment and due process rights.

But, as Loesch goes on to point out, that’s internally contradictory. It’s simply not possible to restrict American citizens’ rights while protecting those same American citizens’ rights. A suspect is just that—a suspect, and so still innocent, regardless of suspicion.

Then, however, Loesch makes her own mistake.

If lawmakers want to stop suspected terrorists placed on a watch list from buying firearms they need to indict them.
I have no problem with this.

I do have a problem with that. All a prosecutor has done with an indictment is convince a secret group of men and women that he has probable enough cause to hale the indictee—possibly an infamous ham sandwich—into criminal court for trial.

The indictee still is innocent; he hasn’t been proven otherwise in that criminal court.

It’s true enough that we do restrict innocent men—we lock them up; we make them wear ankle bracelets; we make them pay a significant something of value to be released, under restrictive conditions, from jail pending trial; and so on.

But those restrictions are done in open court where the prosecutor must convince the judge that his proposed restrictions are warranted, and he must do so in the face of the defendant’s right to answer the proposed restrictions.

Simple indictment isn’t enough. If the suspected terrorist must be denied his 2nd Amendment rights (in the present context), let the prosecutor show in open court that his suspicion is well enough founded that his suspect should be locked up.

As a practical matter, too, that’s the only way to deny such a suspect firearms—outside of jail, there simply are too many means of access to firearms, legal or not.

Beyond that, there’s another, better, way to protect us from terrorists, whether those persons are armed or not. That is for Government to get out of the way of the first responders to any situation—us citizens who happen to be already on scene when the action goes down—carrying our own firearms.

Coverup

Posted on by
2

And so it begins in earnest, again.

The Biden administration will ask U.S. attorneys appointed by President Trump to resign from their posts….

In particular,

…John Durham, the US district attorney in Connecticut who was named special counsel to investigate the origins of the FBI probe into the 2016 election, will resign from his position, but he will stay on as special counsel….

Special counsel. Sure. With much more circumscribed authorities and duties. Durham’s investigations will be slow-walked, now.

As will DoJ’s “probe” into Hunter Biden’s tax behaviors, People’s Republic of China business dealings, and “other transactions”. Even though the prosecutor overseeing that activity will stay on that task, look for it to be slow-moving as well, ultimately just petering out quietly.

Opposition

Posted on by
Reply

Republicans in the Senate put Progressive-Democrats on the record on a number of amendments to Party’s budget reconciliation move—itself a deliberate act to sideline any dissent—which Republicans offered during a Thursday afternoon through Friday morning vote-a-rama. Party’s budget reconciliation then was voted up strictly along party lines.

Here’s some of what the Senate’s Progressive-Democrats oppose. Notice that every one of these would have enhanced Americans’ national security, economy, and individual liberty had they had the support of even a single Progressive-Democrat.

  • 50-50 on a failed amendment to support the border wall
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment supporting the free exercise of religion
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment to oppose packing the Supreme Court
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment opposing stimulus checks for people in prison
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment opposing the Biden administration’s move to restrict oil and gas leasing on federal lands
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment opposing a federal carbon tax