Tag Archives: morality

Redrawing Districts

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The Supreme Court is hearing a case, Merrill v Milligan, that concerns whether Congressional districts will be drawn in accordance with census outcomes concerning the distribution of American citizens in a State, or whether they will (continue to) be drawn to favor race in a State.

Alabama, the State in question in Merrill, redrew its Congressional districts as a result of the 2020 census outcome and kept substantially the same districts with substantially the same population distributions as the prior district map, making tweaks at district boundaries to account for minor population moves. The plaintiffs in the case, though,

argue the map should be redrawn so that Alabama has two majority-Black districts instead of just one….

Alabama, on the other hand, is arguing

that should the lawsuit prevail, the state will be forced into an unconstitutional practice of prioritizing race in creating election rules….

Alabama also would be forced to violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which explicitly bars (re)districting on the basis of race. There is only one legitimately correct outcome to this case, and it favors Alabama. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has the right of it, having written in other venues that Section 2 of the VRA, the center of the present case, has

involved the federal courts, and indeed the Nation, in the enterprise of systematically dividing the country into electoral districts along racial lines—an enterprise of segregating the races into political homelands that amounts, in truth, to nothing short of a system of political apartheid.

Absolutely. Under law, all American citizens are equal. All American voters are the same: we’re Americans. There are no white Americans and black Americans and Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans—under law there are only American Americans.

Requiring us to be set apart by race in our interactions with our government is nothing but racism written into our laws. And that’s contrary to our Constitution, which is supreme over Congressional statutes like the VRA and its Section 2. Here’s the relevant clause of our 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting…the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Voting is at the core of assembly, and it’s at the center of redressing our grievances with Government: it’s where we come together to fire those Government persons with whom we are most dissatisfied and to hire replacements for them.

It’s time for the Court to rule, decisively, in favor of drawing Congressional district boundaries according to the distribution of American voters, and to stop drawing them to favor one group of Americans while disfavoring other groups of Americans.

What, Exactly, Are You Doing?

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken, through his Press Secretary Ned Price, is insisting two things.

One is that the (not so) dearly departed JCPOA

is [sic!] the most effective means by which to permanently and verifiably ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.

This has been shown to be a straight up lie almost since its parameters became public. All the JCPOA did was permit limited inspections—but not of Iranian military facilities where most of the nuclear weapons development and uranium enrichment process were occurring—and the JCPOA had an expiration date, upon which all sanctions would be lifted and all limits on Iran’s nuclear weapons program would expire.

The other is the State Department views Iran’s nuclear potential as an overriding threat. Nevertheless,

We are doing everything we can not only to support the human rights and the aspirations for greater freedom of the Iranian people, but also to hold accountable those within the Iranian system that are responsible for…violence against the Iranian people[.]

But still,

When it comes to Iran, though…there would be no greater challenge to the United States, to our partners, and to the broader international system than an Iran with a nuclear weapon.

That last might—might—be a valid priority in a cynical, long-term, Machiavellian sort of perspective. It does the Iranian people who are being imprisoned, or killed, or both today for their protesting against their current condition no good at all, though.

Which raises the question: what, exactly are you doing, Mr SecState, to support the human rights and the aspirations for greater freedom of the Iranian people? Lay it out in concrete, measurable terms—no glittering generalities, not fatuous claims of “everything we can.” What fills out this “everything” of which you speak?

Sack Them

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Now the USAF Academy has torn it apart.

A diversity and inclusion training by the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado instructs cadets to use words that “include all genders” and to refrain from saying things like “mom” and “dad.”

And

“Some families are headed by single parents, grandparents, foster parents, two moms, two dads, etc.: consider ‘parent or caregiver’ instead of ‘mom and dad,'” the presentation states. “Use words that include all genders​: ‘Folks’ or ‘Y’all’ instead of ‘guys’; ‘partner’ vs. ‘boyfriend or girlfriend.'”
“Not ‘Colorblind’ or ‘I don’t see color,’ but Color Conscious,” it adds. “We see Color/Patterns AND VALUE people for their uniqueness.”

This is openly racist and sexist spew, it’s unacceptable anywhere in our nation, it’s especially unacceptable in those institutions where we train our military leaders—and it’s deliberately designed to keep our military personnel segregated, in a number of senses of that term, one from another.

This has gone ‘way too far. It’s time to sack SecDef Lloyd Austin, CJCS General Mark Milley, and to reassign all of the Pentagon’s current military staff who are focused on academic “training” and the military Academies’ Command and Staff personnel, to the combatant commands—in theater, not to command headquarters. Send the associated civilians back to the private sector.

It’s time these worthies lived in the destruction they’re seeking to wreak.

The Press Censors

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And it tries to whitewash history, pretending what it’s censoring never happened.

The latest example is provided by NBC. That press outlet tweeted this, saying that Hispanic illegal aliens were just trash:

Now, as Molly Hemingway, Federalist Editor-in-Chief, has noted, NBC has cravenly deleted their tweet.

NBC didn’t—doesn’t—have the integrity or moral courage to leave the tweet in the public’s history with a note acknowledging its error. No, the press outlet has chosen instead to cower away, hide its tweet, and try to gaslight us average Americans into believing that the bigoted tweet never occurred at all.

Hemingway is being generous, too. NBC and its allies don’t just look horrific. They are horrific in the depths of their racist bigotry.