Tag Archives: responsibilities

Contemptibly Unsurprising

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Israel has uncovered evidence that UNRWA operatives personnel participated in Hamas’ 7 October ’23 butchery inside Israel, and the nation has passed that evidence along to relevant authorities, including to the UN.

The commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East announced Friday that UNRWA was suspending the alleged participants and launching an investigation.

Suspended their employees—ooh—that’ll show them. UNRWA will conduct an investigation? Say, rather, UNRWA will whitewash itself.

This unsurprising behavior by the UNRWA is merely an extension of its long and active support of the terrorist gang that is Hamas and its Gaza Strip predecessor, the Palestinian Authority, reaching at least as far back as the terrorists’ 2014 attacks on Israel, when the UN agency served as weapons storage facilities for Hamas’s predecessor.

It’s long past time for our own government to stop its timid finger-wagging and take more serious action about the UNRWA’s terrorist support than temporarily paus[ing] all additional funding to the agency and the moderately firm words of welcome[ing] the decision to conduct such an investigation and Secretary General Guterres’ pledge to take decisive action to respond, should the allegations prove accurate.

That more serious action should begin, but not stop, with formally announcing that, aside from permanently halting funding to this UN terrorism-supporting agency, all further statements by the UNRWA will no longer be heard and no action in response to them will be taken, and more concretely on the one hand, getting out of the way of Israel and letting that nation prosecute its existential defense in the war Hamas is waging, and on the other hand, actively supporting the nation in its defense for its own survival.

Racism, Arrogance Against Election Integrity

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In the aftermath of the 2020 election confusions in Georgia (both general and runoff), that State passed its Election Integrity Act that, among other things, shortened Georgia’s early voting period from nine weeks to four, reduced the window for mail-in ballots, and moved the deadline for registering to vote to 29 days before an election.

The Sixth Dist. of the Afr. Methodist Episcopal Church, the Ga. State Conf. of the NAACP, and The Concerned Black Clergy of Metro. Atlanta Inc., joined by the Federal government’s DoJ, sued to strike the law as voter suppressing—the stricter voting period unfairly discriminates against Black voters, among other complaints.

This was a nakedly racist suit that used a manufactured racism beef as the core of their argument. Federal District Judge JP Boulee issued a preliminary injunction upholding the law. With particular reference to the Act’s runoff requirements, he wrote,

Plaintiffs presented evidence that Black voters are more likely to vote early. Plaintiffs did not present any evidence, however, which would show why Black voters would disproportionately struggle to vote during the new early voting period

And [emphasis added]

In short…the Court is not persuaded that evidence showing that black voters use early voting more often is sufficient to show that the Runoff Provisions, which shorten the early voting period, will have a disparate impact on black voters. In other words, without more, generalized evidence related to the use of early voting is not sufficient to automatically show that this particular provision, which pertains to one aspect of runoff elections, is discriminatory.

And

Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to show that the Runoff Provisions have a disparate impact on black voters. Indeed, Plaintiffs failed to show that eliminating the registration period before a runoff election disproportionately impacts black people. Plaintiffs also failed to show that reducing the early voting period and not mandating weekend voting has a disparate impact. The Court thus weighs this factor in favor of Defendants and against a discriminatory purpose finding.

“Plaintiffs” just expected their unsubstantiated claim to be taken as dispositive fact. Their arrogance runs as deep as their racism.

Regarding the specific question of Plaintiffs not getting their preferred way, Boulee noted the 11th Circuit’s precedent, binding on his court (the 11th Circuit includes Georgia):

The Court acknowledges that the Legislature did not include the alternative option that Plaintiffs would have preferred [a one- or two-week longer voter registration period]. Importantly, the Eleventh Circuit has held that the failure to “‘include the alternative option[s] that Plaintiffs would have preferred’ is not evidence of discriminatory intent.”

That’s the arrogance of Plaintiffs being handled.

The dishonest nature of the plaintiff’s beef is illustrated in Footnote 6 of the Boulee’s ruling [emphasis added, cites omitted]:

6 As to the other named organizations, the Court is not convinced that Plaintiffs established an injury based on a diversion of resources. By way of example, Plaintiffs argued that “[i]t is false that Common Cause ‘says nothing about runoffs,’ . . . Common Cause testified about its voter participation efforts in both the ‘2020 Primary and Runoff election cycles.'” A close look at Plaintiffs’ evidence, however, does not show that Common Cause diverted its resources to counteract the Runoff Provisions. Instead, Common Cause’s representative stated that “[a]s part of the organization’s voter participation efforts, Common Cause GA provided free personal protective equipment (PPE), food, and water to persons, including voters, at or around polling sites, in Fulton County during the 2020 Primary and Runoff election cycles.” Simply put, the fact that Common Cause elected to give out water and other gifts during a runoff election does not show that it diverted resources away from its ordinary activities to counteract the Runoff Provisions.

These plaintiffs, their judgments clouded by their racism and arrogance, are just making things up and claiming them to be true without even a pretense of substantiation.

The judge’s ruling can be read here.

Immigration TBD Notices

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The Supreme Court is considering a case involving an illegal alien who was…paroled…into the US on his promise to appear in court for his asylum hearing on the specified date, which was named as TBD on his release/parole paper. Later, when a date came open, the illegal alien was emailed his date certain, and when he didn’t appear, he was tracked down, arrested, and is in deportation hearing status. The illegal alien claims he never got the emailed notice, and his case has wound up before the Supremes.

The government’s position is that the two-step notice—replacing “TBD” with a specific date via a later correspondence—is perfectly fine, noting the “thousands” of illegals who do show up on the date appointed via the second correspondence, and noting also how unfair it would be to them for the Court to void the system. The illegal alien’s position is that the two-step notice doesn’t fit the statute.

My beef is not with the arguments themselves, but with the Biden administration’s couching of its position. Biden’s Assistant Solicitor General Charles McCloud, who is making the argument before the court, is threatening the Court if they don’t rule Biden’s way. McCloud:

We are very concerned that those hundreds of thousands of cases could be injected back into the immigration system.
So…that already substantial increase we have seen is going to turn into an avalanche.

I have two problems with that. First, convenience to the government is not a valid criterion with which to decide whether to follow the law. Name the date in the first place rather than the shortcut of TBD. If the government can’t meet the schedule, that’s when a second notice would be useful. Follow the law is the uncaveated requirement for government officials. Government convenience is irrelevant.

Second is the claimed need to refile immigration cases against illegal aliens, with that leading to an avalanche of cases. The “avalanche” business is risible on its face. It’s only necessary to see the rate at which illegal aliens already (don’t) appear for their clearly stated court dates (those claimed thousands who do appear are against the millions of illegal aliens, just during the present administration, who are “paroled” into our nation with future dates who have not appeared) to see that no avalanche will occur. The only hard work would be to fill out the standard forms giving notice of failure to appear and tasking the relevant police authorities with tracking down the missing illegal aliens and haling them in to a deportation court.

That last is a work load that never would have occurred and wouldn’t be necessary today, had this administration and too many prior ones not skipped that last step, and had this administration actually kept our border secure, a failure that has only made the enforcement side of the problem worse. And that brings us back to my prior point about convenience to the government.

Racism Strikes Deep

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Chicago’s Progressive-Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson is making his go-to move regarding the influx of illegal aliens Chicago is experiencing (I don’t say “suffering;” that’s what Texas and Arizona border cities and towns are doing): he’s playing his race card in objecting to Texas’ Republican Governor Gregg Abbott helping the illegal aliens flooding across his State’s border to accept Brandon’s open-arms invitation of them with his loud and proud sanctuary city status.

…Johnson condemned Governor Greg Abbott…in a recent MSNBC appearance, arguing he has been “attacking” cities run by Black leaders with waves of migrants.

No, Abbott is transporting illegal aliens, all of whom are volunteers for the trip, to sanctuary cities. Providing sanctuary to illegal aliens is the destination selection criterion. That cities that satisfy that criterion happen to be run by Progressive-Democrats is just that—an irrelevant happenstance. And that those Progressive-Democrats running sanctuary cities happen to be black is just that—an even further remote irrelevant happenstance.

Only a racist manufactures a race beef when there is no beef to be had, and it’s especially pernicious when the race card player knows full well there’s no race beef to be had.

It’s all on the Federal Government?

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Give us more Federal money, Denver’s Progressive-Democrat Mayor Mike Johnston and his Progressive-Democrat-run city counterparts are demanding.

Johnston previously warned that the border crisis will “crush city budgets around the country,” as he expects 10% of Denver’s entire budget to go toward aiding migrants.
“I have called the White House,” Johnston told [Fox News‘ America’s Newsroom] hosts Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino. “We’ve told them we need more federal aid. That’s why there’s dollars in that supplemental budget to do that.”

New York City’s Progressive-Democrat Mayor Eric Adams:

The federal government must take responsibility and lead on this humanitarian crisis[.]

Chicago’s Progressive-Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson:

We need the federal government to lean in and provide more financial assistance. All of our cities have reached a point where we are either close to capacity, or nearly out of room.

Progressive-Democratic Party politicians, and their Leftist supporters at large, always demand more of other people’s money while accepting recognizing no responsibility of their own for the outcomes they’re facing.

It’s true enough that the Biden administration needs actually to defend our borders; working that successfully would go a long way to stem the flow into all of our nation’s cities, but especially into our border cities and towns. These are the places that are being truly overrun; those Leftist whiners aren’t getting but a taste of what Biden’s failure to perform is inflicting there.

Still, there’s much that these Party mayors can do on their own initiative, for the benefit of the cities over which they reign. It begins with those mayors recognizing that they (nor does our nation at large) do not have a problem with a flood of migrants. They have a problem with a flood of illegal aliens.

They then could proceed with stopping inviting these illegal aliens into their cities with open arms: they could stop being sanctuary cities for these illegal aliens.

Johnston then could stop burning 10% of his city’s budget on aiding his illegal aliens and instead commit that money to removing the illegals and getting them back out of our nation. That could well take up less than those 10%, also. His cronies in the other sanctuary cities could take similar action regarding their illegal aliens.

‘Course, that would reduce their opportunity to whine and take away an excuse for demanding more OPM.