Tag Archives: politics

A Third Reason

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors opined at length on the need for Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden to end his campaign for reelection. Among other things, they described one of Party’s rationalizations for Biden’s staying the course:

Ignoring the ballots that voters have already cast for Mr Biden in primaries across the US would undermine democratic decision-making and anger the party’s core supporters.

The editors offered two reasons for why that rationalization is erroneous.

[T]he estimated 4,672 delegates to the Democratic national convention—most of whom were selected in primaries, caucuses, or local party conventions—are a microcosm of the party, not a self-appointed cabal of insiders.

And

[Delegates] aren’t robots. Although delegates pledged to a particular presidential candidate are expected to vote for that candidate, the official party selection rules leave room for judgment, saying that pledged delegates “shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” Delegates pledged to Mr Biden could conscientiously claim that new information has induced them to change their minds[.]

There’s a third reason, too, and this does directly address Party’s claimed concern for “democratic decision-making.”

Party went to great pains to limit primary voters’ choices to just one: Biden himself. Party pressured potential competitors against competing at all, and took active steps even to deprecate serious consideration for folks like Cornel West and Jill Stein, folks that most “democratic decision-makers” would have had no trouble assessing on their own. One potential candidate who was gaining traction, Robert F Kennedy, Jr, was interfered with and subverted so much that he felt driven to leave the Progressive-Democratic Party altogether and mount a separate, third-party campaign—where he’s getting anywhere from 8%-15% support in the polls. The one alternative candidate who was allowed into the primary campaign, Congressman Dean Phillips (D, MN), was sufficiently timid that he chose not to enter until it obviously was too late for him to have any sort of impact.

A MAGA Supreme Court?

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Who says the current Supreme Court is a MAGA court? Relatedly, who objects to Making America Great Again?  The Wall Street Journal‘s editors provided some insight to the Court’s rulings for last year and this.

First, an aggregate statistic: of all the cases decided in 2023, nearly 46% were decided unanimously, the second highest percentage of unanimity of the prior four years—second only to 2022’s unanimity rate. And both of those years had those evil Trump appointees Justices Neil Gorsuch, Bret Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. That court also had the Progressive-Democratic Party’s darlings, Justices Sonya Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Some 2024 cases decided unanimously:

  • Colorado can’t remove Donald Trump’s name from its ballot as an “insurrectionist” under the 14th Amendment
  • pro-life doctors lack standing to sue the Food and Drug Administration over the abortion pill mifepristone
  • the National Rifle Association can sue a New York regulator for coercing insurers to stop doing business with gun-rights groups

Among the 8-1 and 7-2 cases:

  • Justice Clarence Thomas writing for the Court to uphold Progressive-Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (MA) CFPB funding scheme
  • a refusal to close the constitutional door to a wealth tax
  • government can, indeed, disarm an alleged—not convicted at trial—domestic abuser via a civil restraining order

Of 22 cases decided by 6-3 votes, 11 had “mixed” majorities. Among these:

  • three conservative and three liberal Justices ruled that the federal government had unconstitutionally pressured social-media websites to delete user posts
  • six Justices, including Ketanji Brown Jackson, ruled that prosecutors had stretched the law too far in charging a number of January 6 rioters with obstructing Congress

Who says, and who objects? The Progressive-Democratic Party’s politicians dishonestly proclaim this Supreme Court, which adheres to the text of our Constitution and the statute(s) before it, an extremist and MAGA court, using the latter adjective as though it were a pejorative. The Progressive-Democratic Party’s politicians object to Making America Great Again—here demonstrated by their sneering at the concept of MAGA.

Lawlessness and Instability

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Much is being made of the situation that will obtain in the Gaza Strip when Hamas’ war is ended and (ideally) with Hamas utterly destroyed. Worries about Gazan civilian lawlessness and general instability throughout the Strip abound, should there be a lack of governance in that aftermath.

It’s certainly true that an effective governing body, or bodies should the Strip be subdivided as some are proposing, but there’s another factor that’s not addressed.

That’s the behaviors of the civilians involved. Desperation and privation are harsh task masters, but they needn’t be controlling slavers. There’s nothing preventing the Gazan civilians from supporting each other rather than spending their meager resources supporting surviving Hamas terrorists in the latter’s attacks on Israel. There’s nothing preventing Gaza’s civilians from supporting each other rather than lethally competing with each other for those meager resources.

It’s even likely that foreign aid would flow more freely were the Strip’s civilians to move to support that flow rather than ransacking and looting it, or allowing surviving Hamas terrorists to steal it.

But that would require those Gazan civilians to behave like a worthy and virtuous people—not by Western standards, even, but by their own Quran requirements.

Count me naïve for pointing that out, but there it is.

Mostly Immune

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The Supreme Court, last Monday, issued its ruling on former President Donald Trump’s (R) Presidential immunity case. In a 6-3 ruling, the Court held that he has that for official acts committed while in office. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Court, in part:

Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.

The necessity of a strong measure of (criminal prosecution) immunity is absolutely essential. Roberts made this point early on [citations omitted]:

The President “occupies a unique position in the constitutional scheme,” … as “the only person who alone composes a branch of government,”[.] The Framers “sought to encourage energetic, vigorous, decisive, and speedy execution of the laws by placing in the hands of a single, constitutionally indispensable, individual the ultimate authority that, in respect to the other branches, the Constitution divides among many.”  They “deemed an energetic executive essential to ‘the protection of the community against foreign attacks,’ ‘the steady administration of the laws,’ ‘the protection of property,’ and ‘the security of liberty.'” The purpose of a “vigorous” and “energetic” Executive, they thought, was to ensure “good government,” for a “feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government.”
…
Appreciating the “unique risks to the effective functioning of government” that arise when the President’s energies are diverted by proceedings that might render him “unduly cautious in the discharge of his official duties,” we have recognized Presidential immunities and privileges “rooted in the constitutional tradition of the separation of powers and supported by our history.”

It’s necessary to keep in mind, too, that the Framers wrote President as an energetic, vigorous, decisive, and speedy executer of the laws and as one whose ability to act decisively and speedily is necessary to the protection of the community against foreign attacks in an environment of a failing Articles of Confederation. That treaty didn’t even have a feeble executive, rather it was devoid of any sort of Executive or executive power altogether. The treaty itself was so feeble that it was powerless to fund itself; and it was (soon to be) fatally unable to act against the steady drumbeat of British violations of the Treaty of Paris that codified our independence and against British incursions into our nascent nation’s western territories.

I have a problem, though, with absolute immunity for anyone for criminal acts, whenever they may have been conducted. A line does need to be drawn—and I don’t have any ideas on where, yet—between prosecuting a President for his criminal acts and making up crimes, à la Jack Smith, in order to prosecute a President that some don’t like.

Maybe a line drawn on consequences: the prosecutor and “senior” members of his team who go after a President or former President on some alleged criminality, on that President’s/former President’s acquittal, go straight to jail to serve, without parole, the mid-range sentence that the alleged crime calls for. Consecutively, if multiple crimes are charged and acquitted.

One of the questions that follow this ruling will hinge on the circle: is a criminal act an official act? Can it be? There is some case law that bars things done “under color of law;” that principle would seem to apply to “under cover of official act.”

It’s not going to be an easy question to resolve.

The Court’s ruling can be read here.

If It Were Truly a Nonevent

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden was rambling, shambling, and at times utterly incoherent in his remarks during last week’s debate.

There now is hue and cry to find a way to get him off this fall’s Presidential election ballot, and equally vociferous pushback by Biden’s staff and handlers in the White House.

Congressman Stephen Lynch (D, MA):

I think we have some decisions to make as a party. We’ve got to have that discussion immediately[.]

Congresswoman Susie Lee (D, NV) said she didn’t know whether another Democrat would be better positioned to beat Trump in November. But,

she said Democrats “absolutely” need to talk about how to move forward after the debate. “It was awful[.]”

The New York Times was blunt:

[T]he greatest public service Mr Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election. As it stands, the president is engaged in a reckless gamble.

And so on.

Now, the pushback.

Progressive-Democrat (and black woman, because Party makes such a big deal of those two irrelevancies) Vice President Kamala Harris:

This race will not be decided by one night in June, it will be decided by you [Biden].

A carefully anonymous “senior Biden adviser:”

We think there’s going to be a lot of twists and turns here[.]

Congressman James Clyburn (D, SC):

Those of us who are more interested in substance than style, we are still saying that on substance, Joe Biden is the best thing that has happened to this country in the last few years[.]

And so on.

If Biden’s performance in last week’s debate were truly a nonevent, though, wouldn’t Biden’s handlers, supporters, and potential donors simply ignore it and move on? Wouldn’t those Party members and supporters whose knickers are in such an uproar be quite a bit calmer, in the aftermath? After all, their main mentor, ex-President Barack Obama (D) is:

[B]ad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know[.]

This isn’t much ado about nothing; it is, rather, those staffers and handlers protesting far too much. Of course, some of the loudest supporters in that aftermath have to come out full-throatedly supportive of Biden, at least publicly, lest they functionally disqualify themselves as self-centered ghouls and vultures.