Tag Archives: government

Lawless Press

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The Supreme Court issued a ruling Wednesday that the press doesn’t like, and the press is calling for President Joe Biden (D) to blithely ignore the ruling and go on about his business. By odd coincidence, the Court’s ruling reinstated a Trump administration rule that a lower court had struck down.

Democrats condemned the decision, but some reporters went even further and called for the Biden administration to ignore the Supreme Court.

For instance,

Former Niskanen Center Vice President for Research Will Wilkinson posted a Twitter thread explaining why he believes the White House should ignore SCOTUS decisions.

It’s been done before.

How many divisions has the Pope?

How’d Stalin’s question work out, in the end, for the Soviet Union?

And before that, regarding a John Marshall-led Supreme Court ruling on a Cherokee-Georgia dispute:

John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.

That worked out poorly, also.

Nevertheless, here’s the press calling for any lawful thing disagreeable to its convenience to be ignored.

The press doesn’t want us to be a nation of laws, but a nation of men who will decide on the basis of what’s convenient to the press’ progressive ideology.

Some Questions

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Then-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden was asked some questions by Senator Ron Johnson (R, WI) regarding Biden son Hunter and Biden’s relationship with Hunter’s “business” dealings.

  • How could former Vice President Biden look any Ukrainian official (or any other world leader) in the face and demand action to fight corruption?
  • Did this glaring conflict of interest affect the work and efforts of other US officials who worked on anti-corruption measures?
  • Did Burisma, its owner, or representatives receive special access to, or treatment from, US agencies or officials because of Hunter Biden’s role on the board of directors?
  • Was there anything corrupt or unethical about the financial transactions between Hunter Biden and Burisma?
  • How did State Department officials responsible for promoting anti-corruption measures in Ukraine react to Hunter Biden joining Burisma’s board of directors?
  • Exactly when, and for what reasons, did the US government decide to condition a $1 billion loan guarantee for Ukraine on the termination of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin?
  • What was the reaction within the Obama administration when the replacement prosecutor general, Yuri Lutsenko, closed the case investigation of Burisma and its owner? Did Vice President Biden and other US government officials believe that justice had been served and their anti-corruption efforts were successful?
  • Why did you meet with Devon Archer at the White House on April 16, 2014? What was discussed? Did you discuss anything related to Ukraine, Hunter Biden, or Burisma?
  • Were you aware that Devon Archer joined the board of Burisma six days later?
  • Were you aware that Burisma’s owner, Mykoloa Zlochevsky, was generally viewed as a corrupt oligarch and that his London bank account containing $23 million had been seized by British officials only 15 days before Hunter Biden joined the board of a company he owned?
  • Was Hunter Biden aware that British officials had seized Zlochevsky’s bank account?
  • When did you first become aware of Zlochevsky’s and Burisma’s reputations for corruption?
  • Do you believe Zlochevsky and Burisma are corrupt?
  • Were you aware in April 2014 that Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma?
  • When did you first become aware that Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma?
  • When did you first become aware of how much Hunter Biden was being compensated by Burisma?
  • Why do you believe Burisma recruited and paid Archer and your son to be on its board?
  • What skills or knowledge do you believe Hunter Biden possesses that qualified him to be on Burisma’s board and receive $50,000 to $166,000 per month for his and his partner’s services?
  • What exactly had Shokin done that caused you to threaten to withhold $1 billion in desperately needed aid from Ukraine if President Poroshenko didn’t fire him?
  • What do you know about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China?
  • What do you know about financial benefits your brothers and sister-in-law have obtained because of their relationship to you?

Biden ran away from answering them at the time. Just the News has some updates to those questions.

  • In April 2014, you gave a speech in Kiev calling for Ukraine to expand its natural gas production, Burisma’s core business. In private emails, Hunter Biden and Archer took credit for the language in the speech. Why did you make the request and did your son or his business partner have anything to do with it? (NEW)
  • State Department officials have testified your son’s work for Burisma while you oversaw [as vice president] Ukraine policy created the appearance of a conflict of interest and they further wrote in a classified email in 2016 that the conflict had undercut US anticorruption efforts in Ukraine. How do you respond to those criticisms? (NEW)
  • A 2017 series of memos referred to a Chinese business deal your son was involved in that reserved 10% equity for the “big guy.” What did you know about it and were you that “big guy?” (NEW)
  • Emails on your son’s laptop now in the hands of the FBI refer to shared accounts or bills between you and him. Did your son ever give your any money, gift or financial benefit from his business dealings? (NEW)

Will now-President Joe Biden (D) continue to run away from them? Will today’s press continue to ignore or spike them?

Yewbetcha and yewbetcha.

Political Disapproval of Private Enterprise Production

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are touting the withdrawal of Sarah Bloom Raskin from the nomination to the Federal Reserve Board’s Vice Chairman position, laying that defeat off to this:

But Ms Raskin’s most significant opponent was her oft-expressed view that the Fed and other regulators should deny credit to companies that produce or heavily consume fossil fuels.

It’s good that this one failed, but it’s just an early skirmish.

The problem is broader than this. It’s dangerous to our republican democracy that anyone would be nominated to the Fed or to any Executive Branch position who would willingly abuse that position’s authority to discriminate against any government-disapproved American enterprise.

Gun Control

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In the matter of Bianchi v Frosh, a Maryland gun control case in which the State has

designated specified firearms as assault weapons and prohibited them from being transported into the state or from being possessed, sold, transferred, or purchased in the state[]

Mountain States Legal Foundation has filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to take up the case. The article itself is worth the read, but what drew my eye is this position of the Fourth Circuit in its appellate ruling in Kolbe v Hogan, Jr. referenced in passing by JtN.

Are the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines “like” “M-16 rifles,” i.e., “weapons that are most useful in military service,” and thus outside the ambit of the Second Amendment?  The answer to that dispositive and relatively easy inquiry is plainly in the affirmative.

This test manufactured by the Fourth Circuit deliberately ignores our history and the actual text of our Second Amendment.

A significant fraction of the artillery—cannons—our Continental Army used in our Revolutionary War were privately owned, as were the powder and shot privately manufactured and provided. A significant fraction of our combat ships—privateering ships—in our nation’s Revolutionary War were privately owned, as were the powder and shot privately manufactured and provided.

The Fourth Circuit’s test also deliberately ignores another bit of our history: our Second Amendment was written as defense against an overreaching, abusive government like the one we fought that war to be free of. And our Declaration of Independence outlines the duty of all Americans: [W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations…it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…. which requires suitable weaponry.

The Fourth Circuit’s test also deliberately ignores the text of our Second Amendment: the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. There’s not a jot or a tittle in there of “except if a government official, including a judge, thinks otherwise.” Nor is there a single minim about government being authorized to specify the purpose for which an American citizen might choose to arm himself and to bear those arms.

The Fourth Circuit’s opinion can be read here.

Proving Their Point

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Freedom Convoy convoy/protests, in salute to and support of, the Canadian Freedom Convoy are planned for Brussels and France. The convoys have the same purpose, too: to protest the Wuhan Virus vaccine mandates and health papers “passports” required by the Belgian and French governments and to demand their end.

But.

A wide perimeter around the city of 1.1 million would be set up to keep an excess of trucks out of the center of Brussels.
Brussels Mayor Philippe Close said in a Twitter message that officials decided to ban the “Freedom Convoy” protest because organizers failed to seek permission to hold the event.

Imagine that. Needing Government permission to protest Government’s diktats.

And this:

Citing “risks of trouble to public order,” the Paris police department banned protests aimed at “blocking the capital” from Friday through Monday. Police will put measures in place to protect roads and detain violators.
Blocking traffic can lead to two years in prison, 4,500 euros (more than $5,000) in fines and a suspended driver’s license, the police department said in a statement.

Don’t you dare question your Government Betters.

Which proves the point of the truckers’ protests most admirably.

And, the proof has gone live.

Parts of the French “Freedom Convoy” made it to the Arc de Triomphe monument, where French police tear gassed them to drive them away and deny their protest.

The irony abounds.