Author Archives: eehines

Should be a No-Brainer

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As The Wall Street Journal‘s editors put it,

Get ready for what could be another landmark Supreme Court case. On Friday the Justices agreed to consider whether majority-minority Congressional districts drawn to comply with the Voting Rights Act are compatible with the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee.

The Court has asked the litigants in Louisiana v Callais to assess whether creation of a second majority-minority Congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments.

This is long overdue, as states are now caught in a vice. If they weigh race too heavily, they can run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause. But if they ignore race, they can be sued for violating Section 2. Louisiana’s House map is a prime example.

It is long overdue, from as far back as 1965 when the Civil Rights Act was first enacted. The relevant clause of the 14th Amendment is in its first Article:

No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The 15th Amendment is even more explicit:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Favoring one group of Americans over another—which especially in the zero sum game of voting favors one group at the direct expense of another—denies both groups equal protection of the laws by that favoring. Tailored to the right to vote, creating a voting district to favor one group on the basis of race or color explicitly abridges the voting rights of those citizens in that district who are not members of the favored race or color while simultaneously exaggerating the voting rights of those who are members.

This should be a no-brainer: Louisiana’s voting districts, drawn as they are on the basis of race, are unconstitutional, and the Voting Rights Act, which mandates such favoritism is itself unconstitutional. Any use of race, however seemingly slight, to create a district or any policy that considers race is unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court should listen to and heed its recently prior ruling that any consideration of race in college/university admissions is unconstitutional.

Bureaucratic Interference

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The lede laid out the problem, but the news writer missed it.

The agencies under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy are getting squeezed between old-guard staff who object to Trump administration priorities on one side, and prominent conservatives and business interests on the other.

Old-guard staff are well worth listening to and taking their input, especially their objections, seriously. But, this:

The dynamic is creating a minefield between Make America Healthy Again and deregulation for current leaders and new appointees.

No, it does not create any sort of minefield. The situation really is quite straightforward and simple, requiring only some managerial will.

Staff inputs, especially those objections, legitimately, apply only during the investigation, ideation, and discussion/debate phases. Once the decision has been made, though, here by Kennedy or his designated subordinate—CDC Director or Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director, for instance—it then becomes the duty of old-guard staff, every single one of them, to carry out that decision with zeal and enthusiasm. Their objections or disagreements no longer matter and should no longer exist.

If an old-guard staffer does not believe s/he can carry out that decision in good conscience, then his duty is to resign, not to refuse to execute or to passively resist.

If an old-guard staffer—or a newer hire—does resist the decision or obstruct it passively, then the relevant manager must fire the staffer. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya has an opportunity here. In a kerfuffle over whether NIH would create a list of DEI-related words to be banned from grant recommendations, he issued a directive barring any such lists.

[B]ut some program officers “took it upon themselves” to create ad hoc, unofficial lists.

Those program officers should be identified and fired for cause.

I Have another Question

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FBI Director Kash Patel has uncovered burn bags/room filled with hidden Russia Gate files, including the Durham annex.

Regardless of the current disposition of those bags’ contents (Patel is declassifying them and intends to release them), my question is this: what level of negligence has it been that those burn bags have not been burned and still exist after all these years?

While it’s presently convenient that those burn bags remain unburned so their contents can be released after suitable (limited) redacting, the negligence is a threat to our nation’s security. The individuals responsible for that security negligence need to be identified and fired for cause.

The Peel is Double-Sided

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President Donald Trump (R) seems to be looking to peel the People’s Republic of China away from supporting Russia in the barbarian’s war on Ukraine.

[Trump] has also come to believe that the key to putting more pressure on Russia is to peel China away from its economic and other support for Moscow.
We hear that was part of the message that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent brought to Sweden this week. Mr Trump wants the big trade deal with China that eluded him in the first term. But Mr Bessent is pitching a larger detente if President Xi Jinping is willing to stop supporting Mr Putin’s war.

This is against the backdrop of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s and PRC President Xi Xinping’s declaration of their no limits partnership and unbreakable friendship, their trade deal that lets the PRC develop—with PRC laborers and their families—Siberian resources and import into the PRC a significant fraction of those resources, and the PRC’s current large purchases of Russia’s existing oil and natural gas production and the PRC’s shipment to Russia of arms and logistical support for those arms.

Stipulate Trump succeeds in separating, at least somewhat, the PRC from Russia, in getting Xi to walk back, or just to water down, his commitments to Putin. With that demonstration of Xi’s reliability, for how long does Trump, or any of us, think Xi would maintain any commitment to us, or even simply to maintain any damping down of his support for Putin or the barbarian’s war effort? Long enough for Ukraine to succeed in driving Russia back out would be sufficient, but that can’t be relied on.

The effort (and, potentially, the ensuing success) may well be worth the risk, but that risk needs to be well understood before the effort goes too far. That’s especially so regarding these risks:

[Xi’s] abiding goal is to bring Taiwan under Mainland control, and his military is practicing maneuvers that would be part of an attempted blockade of the island. Would Mr Trump be willing to weaken US support for Taiwan?

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors cast Trump’s effort as a potential Nixonian move, a potential (re)opening of the PRC. While Nixon’s move seemed like a good idea at the time, though, in retrospect, it was a huge and expensive (along a number of dimensions) mistake.

I Have a Question

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In partial response to President Donald Trump’s (R) refusal to pay Progressive-Democrats $1 billion in released foreign aid and NIH funding—variously a bribe or an extortion payment, depending on who’s talking—in order to get Party Senators to agree to speed up the nomination confirmation process that Party has been busily stonewalling, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) had this:

Sooner or later, Donald Trump—Mr “Art of the Deal,” or so he claims—is going to have to learn that he has to work with Democrats if he wants to get deals, good deals, that help the American people[.]

My question, and the answer illustrates the intrinsically partisan and obstructionist nature of Party, is this: when will “Democrats” work with Trump? When will “Democrats” work with Republicans generally? Party’s determined refusal to do so is harming us American people about whom Schumer and his Party so piously pretend to care.