Tag Archives: freedom

“Hurting Relations”

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The People’s Republic of China greatly reduced its export of addicting drugs for the criminal trade into the United States after former President Donald Trump (R) pressured PRC President Xi Jinping to do so. Under Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden, Xi has resumed and vastly increased his nation’s addicting drug export, particularly of fentanyl and of fentanyl precursors into Mexico for transshipment and Fentanyl manufacture and shipment into our nation.

The fact that Xi so greatly increased his export of this drug and of its precursors, targeting us, is a clear illustration of Xi’s attack on us without going kinetic. He’s already supported, just in the two years of the Biden administration, the export into our nation enough fentanyl to completely exterminate us, were it not for the Biden-undermanned CBP.

Now Wang Wenbin, the PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Information Department Deputy Director, speaking for the PRC’s Foreign Affairs Department and in turn for Xi, objects to even the slight umbrage Biden is beginning to show.

The Treasury Department said Friday that the sanctions against Wuhan Shuokang Biological Technology Co, Ltd, Suzhou Xiaoli Pharmatech Co, Ltd, Yao Huatao, Wu Yaqin, Wu Yonghao, and Wang Hongfei are “part of a whole-of-government effort to counter the global threat posed by the trafficking of illicit drugs into the United States that is causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans annually, as well as countless more non-fatal overdoses.”

Here’s Wang:

China, in the spirit of humanitarianism, has been trying to help the US as best it can….

And

…US [move] to impose sanctions “seriously undermines” bilateral cooperation between the two countries over drug control….

How humanitarian of the PRC to sedate us before killing us.

What sort of cooperation, what sort of relationship of any sort, can we have with an enemy nation that already is at war with us, economically and via poisoning as many of us as it can with its drug war? We are not undermining relations; the PRC already has been doing so, for years.

The Only Party Governing

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Helen Raleigh, of The Federalist, wants President Joe Biden (D) to clarify his Taiwan policy to the American people and America’s allies.

Anyone who believes that the US should remain strategically ambiguous about whether it will help defend Taiwan so as not to “provoke” China doesn’t understand the thinking of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and especially its current leader, Xi Jinping.

She went on:

Although the CCP never ruled Taiwan, its obsession with the self-governing island is rooted in the party’s insecurity—the CCP wants to be the only party that governs China and sees Taiwan as a threat to the party’s legitimacy.

Here, though, she needs her own clarity. The CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, is the only party that governs the China that’s on the mainland, the People’s Republic of China. The Republic of China, the nation that sits on the island of Taiwan, is a separate nation, never governed by the PRC (which she backhandedly acknowledged later in her piece), and will only be “governed” by the PRC through naked invasion and conquering.

Here’s some strategic clarity: Biden needs to completely repudiate the 50-yr-old betrayal of the Republic of China, support the RoC’s application to rejoin the UN, and especially (re)extend formal recognition of the nation, to include exchange of embassies. This needs to be done in conjunction with the actual delivery of the billions of dollars of weapons already sold to the RoC and already paid for by the RoC, as well as the sale and transfer of yet more weapons suites. Also in conjunction with this, Biden needs to send the Navy sailing close to the PRC-occupied islands of the South China Sea and patrolling the Taiwan Strait.

And get out of the way of our rebuilding our own defense establishment: his current proposal is a cut, in real terms, of our defense spending.

False Entries

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DA Alvin Bragg’s indictment accuses the defendant [former President Donald Trump (R)] of the crime of FALSIFYING BUSINESS RECORDS IN THE FIRST DEGREE in thirty-four counts.

Thirty-four counts of made and caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise…, all of them centered on voucher entries into a Detail General Ledger, and check stubs and invoices kept…somewhere.

Thirty-four counts of intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof…. leading into the sentences claiming those false entries. But nowhere does Bragg say who he thinks was the target of the “defraud,” nor does he say what that “another crime” is. Absent a defraud victim, there is no defrauding. By withholding what that other crime is, Bragg is denying the defendant his opportunity—his right—to answer the charge of that other crime.

False entries. Maybe—maybe—three real counts, but cut apart and expanded in 34 of them.

Withholding what that “another crime,” though, 34 times…. How about: false indictment.

 

Bragg’s charging document, the output of his grand jury, can be read here.

“Orderly Implementation”

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Judge Katherine Menendez, of the Federal District of Minnesota, has ruled a Minnesota State law barring 18-20-yr-olds from obtaining handgun carry permits in Minnesota to be unconstitutional.

Based on a careful review of the record, the court finds that defendants have failed to identify analogous regulations that show a historical tradition in America of depriving 18- to 20-year-olds the right to publicly carry a handgun for self-defense. As a result, the age requirement prohibiting persons between the ages of 18 and 20 from obtaining such a permit to carry violates the Second Amendment.

She based that argument on the Supreme Court’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v Bruen ruling in which the Court explicitly required a showing of a national history of regulation of the type contemplated in this or that gun control legislation.

What’s of particular interest here, though, is Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s reaction to Menendez’ ruling. He wants the judge to stay her ruling pending a potential State appeal, or in the alternative, a stay for 60 days to allow for its orderly implementation.

The first is common enough and not entirely unreasonable. It’s normal to stay a ruling that has a chance of being overruled on appeal in order to prevent the harm that can be done to the ultimately winning side before it wins the appeal.

The last is utterly disingenuous, though. It doesn’t take 60 days to stop blocking 18-20-yr-olds from exercising their Constitutional rights. It doesn’t take a day to do that, with the possible exception of a Sunday, when legal firearm sellers are closed and might need until Monday to receive the rescission of the State law. After all, nothing has changed in any of the other, still in place, requirements surrounding obtaining a firearm; all that’s happening is the removal of one of those requirements.

FISA Revamp

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Congress may be moving to revamp the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which among other things, creates a secret Federal court that empirically allows the Federal government to spy on American citizens in the United States—one of whom was a representative of citizens of Illinois whom they had elected to Congress—without a warrant.

[Congressman Austin, R-GA] Scott said lawmakers on the committee want to address who in government can query the database, who can be targeted and who must sign off on such warrantless surveillance. He also suggested there is some support for adding lawyers to the secretive process to help defend the rights of Americans who are being surveilled without their knowledge.

The problem with those first three…suggestions…is that there already are limits on who can query, who can be targeted, and who must sign off, and each of those limits have been routinely violated by FBI and intelligence personnel. There’s no reason to believe that new limits won’t similarly be blithely ignored.

The problem with that last is even larger: the secret process still would be secret, the lawyers supposedly defending the targeted Americans’ rights would be secret, they would be appointed by the same government that has been abusing FISA surveillance powers right along, and there would be no way for us American citizens to assess the skill with which those “defense” lawyers defend, or even their level of zeal.

It’s promising that there is finally a recognition that the FISA process is flawed in some way.

However, what’s truly required is to abolish altogether the Star Chamber that is the secret FISA Court. Scott made the case for abolishment—although he didn’t intend that—when he told JtN that there was clear evidence that the law’s past safeguards have been breached by the FBI and intel agencies. Given that, there’s no reason to believe those FBI and intel agency personnel won’t “breach” any new safeguards, also.