Tag Archives: freedom

Rule By Law

Posted on by
Reply

Rather than Rule of Law, which is how we do things here.

The men and women of the government of the People’s Republic of China change the nation’s laws whenever convenient to their personal aims and whenever convenient to their personal power. This is how those men and women have acted, have preserved their power, since the beginning of the days of Chinese emperors.

Two current examples: their enactment in 2017 of an intelligence cooperation law that requires all PRC companies, whether state-owned or “private,” to cooperate with any intelligence community request for information, including about any company affiliate or customer wherever in the world that affiliate or customer might be.

There’s also the just-enacted law that permits the PRC government to remove—outside of the courts—anyone in the Hong Kong governance apparatus of whom the emperor’s men the men and women of the PRC government might decide to disapprove.

Now we come to the Progressive-Democratic men and women of the Wisconsin State government.

At a special meeting that lasted more than five hours, [Progressive-]Democrats on the state elections commission sought to change recount guidelines after the Trump 2020 Campaign filed a petition to review the state’s votes in Dane and Milwaukee counties.

Existing State law on the matter had become inconvenient to those Progressive-Democrats, so—time to change the rules. As Reince Priebus noted,

The Trump campaign sent the Wis Election Comm. $3 mil and filed its petition for a recount. Then the WEC immediately called a special meeting to change certain recount rules that deal with the issues brought up in the petition? You can’t make this up!

Here are Progressive-Democrats in action.

WaPo Contempt

Posted on by
Reply

The Washington Post is at it again. Abolish the electoral college, its editors demand. And they thereby display the same contempt for ordinary Americans, our Constitution, and our federal republic structure as did Herb Croly, Woodrow Wilson, and more recently Ezra Klein, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi, among a long list of today’s Leftists and Progressive-Democrats.

The electoral college, whatever virtues it may have had for the Founding Fathers, is no longer tenable for American democracy.

After all,

Right now, our presidential elections are conducted by 51 separate authorities, each with its own rules on registration, mail-in balloting and more. Each state counts its own ballots, and each decides when recounts are needed.

You bet. That’s right there in that pesky Constitution, because federation. That’s where the individual States, by design, are nearly on a par with the central government. That’s so a far away, remote government cannot rule the roost with its one-size-fits-all diktats. Those pesky States just keep getting in the way of Progressive-Democrats’ need to implement their Know Better policies. Absolute control from the center would make that so much more convenient. Here’s Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the need for a Progressive-Democrat majority, reigning from DC:

[Jake Tapper, interviewing Ocasio-Cortez]: Are you going to work with more moderate Senate Republicans to try to pass something in the House that can get through the Senate?
[Ocasio-Cortez]: Well, I’m going to be spending my next couple of months doing everything that I can to extend help and offer support…that we secure a Democratic Senate majority, so that we don’t have to negotiate in that way[.]

Back to WaPo‘s need to clear away the obstacles to Leftist control of the promise of American life.

Small states already have disproportionate clout in our government because of the Senate, in which Wyoming’s fewer than 600,000 residents have as much representation as California’s 39.5 million.

With the Electoral College having far more popular representation than the Senate, surely, these wondrous exemplars of what passes for journalism will be demanding proportional representation in the Senate, too. Truly equal representation gives the dinky States, those locales too small to be worthy of notice, ‘way too much representation.

A Misapprehension

Posted on by
Reply

John Yoo, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY), and others, are suggesting that, given the apparent irregularities (because I’m being polite) in several States’ ballot acceptance and counting procedures, “the courts may decide the election.”

McConnell, et al., misunderstand the situation. The courts won’t decide anything. This election has been decided by American voters. It may take the courts to enforce our decision, though.

There would seem to be strong cases, too, for reversing those…irregularities. Our Constitution’s Article I, Section 4 says pretty explicitly that State legislatures set the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections… and that Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations. There’s no wiggle room there.

State non-legislative officials—elections board commissioners, Secretaries of State, governors, et al.—do not have the legal capacity to alter States’ laws, for instance, deadlines for receiving ballots, requirements regarding signature comparison and witness signatures on absentee ballots and mail-in ballots. They do not have that capacity even under the guise of emergencies like the Wuhan Virus situation.

In particular, the virus situation was in full bore by last spring, and both Congress and the States’ legislatures have had months in which to adjust election laws to account for the virus’ impact—and they universally chose to make no adjustments.

Those non-legislative officials’ adjustments are not merely illegal, they’re unconstitutional.

Full stop.

An Electoral College Thought

Posted on by
Reply

Spitballing here.

The Left worries that the Electoral College abolished, because its use renders the popular vote for President/Vice President irrelevant. The Right argues that that preserves representation of the States qua States in the election of our President and Vice President. That was the intent of our Founders when they wrote our Constitution, and the intent of We the People when we ratified it.

Under our current Electoral College setup, each State gets a number of President/Vice President electors equal to the sum of the number of Representatives it’s allowed in the House and the two Senate seats it has in the Senate.

Here’s a thought that emphasizes both the popular vote and the States’ equal representation in the selection of President/Vice President.

Do away with the Electoral College as it stands, and replace it with a one State, one President/Vice President vote, and that vote is determined by that State’s popular vote. If a State’s popular vote favors one candidate, that State’s Electoral vote goes to that Presidential/Vice Presidential candidate.

That provides truly equal State representation in the election—just as each State has, by design, equal representation in the Federal Senate—while that representation is determined by that State’s popular vote.

Of course this would require a Constitutional amendment.

Another Thought on Defunding

Posted on by
Reply

This one concerns the US Marshals Service.

The US Marshals Service released a statement Friday noting they have recovered 27 missing and exploited children in Virginia as a result of what they called “Operation Find Our Children.”

There’s this, too, from Jeffrey Rosen, Deputy Attorney General, concerning “Operation Find Our Children” more generally:

While this Virginia operation is the most recent recovery of endangered and missing children led by the US Marshals Service this year, we have also recovered more than 440 kids in Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, Louisiana, and other states. Because of this initiative, the recovered children are now out of harm’s way.

This is the sort of thing that will be lost should the Progressive-Democrats’ police defunding movement reach the Federal level.

This list of local police agencies that have been supporting “Operation Find Our Children” illustrates the depth of the risk from the Left’s police defunding movement:

  • Metro Transit Police Department
  • Virginia State Police,
  • Alexandria Sheriff’s Office
  • Chesterfield County Police Department
  • Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office
  • Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office
  • Hampton Police Department
  • Henrico County Police Department
  • Norfolk Police Department
  • Prince William County Police Department
  • Portsmouth Police Department
  • Richmond City Police Department
  • Roanoke City Police Department
  • Virginia Beach Police Department
  • Virginia Department of Corrections