Author Archives: eehines

Speculative Lawsuits

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A collection of Leftist State Attorneys General led by New York’s Letitia James has filed an amicus brief in an existing suit against the Federal government over President Donald Trump’s (R) move to defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That might leave American banks without a government watchdog, they claim in their brief.

Furthermore, [t]he AGs didn’t accuse any banks of wrongdoing. These AGs further claim

The absence of a functioning CFPB…creates a regulatory vacuum even greater than what existed before the Great Recession. The very large financial institutions that compete with state-chartered banks will have carte blanche to loosen their regulatory compliance and profit accordingly.

Further, as cited by The Wall Street Journal,

The AGs argued that the administration is creating a regulatory gap that will encourage the largest banks to game the system by taking a more lax approach, while smaller state-chartered banks will still be subject to state supervision.

Might. Will have. And those two possibles in the latter: “will encourage” and “will still be.” These are purely speculative, with no harm being alleged. No actual wrong doing, in so many words, is being alleged. Basing a law suit, or even an amicus, on speculation about an unknown future—however likely plaintiffs might claim that future to be—is anathema in the American legal system. The requirement to allege—credibly—actual harm already done prevents a potful of frivolous, of politically motivated, of purely fee-seeking lawsuits where no harm exists, even where no harm is likely to exist in some nebulous future.

The Leftist AGs’ move is typical of the Left’s and their Progressive-Democratic Party politicians’ lawfare business.

This is yet another reason why it’s so difficult for us average Americans to have nice things in our nation. It’s time to start requiring plaintiffs to pay the defendants for the costs of lawsuits which plaintiffs bring and lose, and to require those providing amicus briefs on the side of plaintiffs to share in paying those costs.

Presidential Authority

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President Donald Trump (R) is moving to reassert a President’s authority over the Executive Branch of our Federal government, lately signing an Executive Order that imposes new White House supervision over so-called independent agencies.

The editors of the WSJ center their support for this on

Article II’s command that the President “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” If Congress has charged such agencies with enforcing laws, then the President should be able to supervise how they do their job.

They’re right as far as they go, but the matter is far more basic than that. The first sentence of Section 1 of our Constitution’s Article II lays out the foundational nature of an American Presidency:

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

Our Executive Branch is run by a single executive officer, not by a committee of board members, especially not by an executive and a number of other executives operating independently of him and of each other.

This is the unitary executive, as some legal scholars term it. It’s long past time it got restored. Trump is entirely correct in this matter.

Birthright Citizenship for Children of Illegally Imported Slaves

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Jason Riley, Upward Mobility columnist for The Wall Street Journal, in his op-ed last Wednesday has hung his hat on the universality of birthright citizenship on the citizenship granted the children of slaves who were illegally imported, and so as persons were present illegally. In support, he cited the 14th Amendment’s All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States clause and noted, correctly IMNSHO, the centrality of that subject to the jurisdiction thereof phrase to the hook for his hat.

Riley’s claim vis-à-vis those illegally imported slaves’ children is this:

Although the US banned the importation of slaves in 1808, an illegal international slave trade continued for decades. ….
According to the legal scholar Gerald Neuman, by the time the 14th Amendment was ratified, there were tens of thousands of black people in the US who had been brought here illegally. Naturally, some of them later bore children. It thus would seem that for authors of the Citizenship Clause, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” included the children of parents in the country without authorization.

Therein lies the failure of Riley’s argument. The Trump administration’s argument—and one I’ve made in these pages—is that illegal aliens and birth tourism mothers are not subject to our nation’s jurisdiction because, in the first instance, they’ve placed themselves outside our jurisdiction from the beginning by entering our nation illegally—in direct and deliberate contravention of our jurisdiction’s laws—and in the second instance, withholding themselves from our jurisdiction however legally they may have entered because they have no intention of staying or in any way breaking the bonds of their loyalty, citizenship, or still-accepted jurisdiction of their home nation.

Those illegally imported slaves, on the other hand, on their emancipation actively and consciously accepted the jurisdiction of our nation and our nation’s laws. They accepted and sought American citizenship, whether before or after their children were born.

Progressive-Democrats Punishing Victims

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There are growing numbers of young adults and adults who underwent surgical and/or hormonal procedures as children or younger adults who, recognizing their mistakes (or their parents’), want to detransition as far as reversing the hormonal and surgical treatments can take them.

Those persons, those efforts to correct their mistakes, are a growing embarrassment to the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians and their Leftist supporters. Last week, the Progressive-Democratic Party in Colorado struck back at those detransitioners—hard, and dangerously to their health and lives.

The Colorado General Assembly’s House Judiciary Committee late Tuesday [18 February] considered legislation, introduced last week, to allow patients who underwent “youth gender transition procedures”—puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to remove healthy genitals and breasts—before age 26 to sue their providers for damages up to age 38.

At the end of their “consideration,” however, after Progressive-Democrat after Progressive-Democrat after Progressive-Democrat absented themselves from listening to much/most of the witness testimony, Party, which holds the majority, tabled the bills indefinitely, effectively killing them.

This is what Party thinks of us Americans. This is what Party thinks of our children, young people who regret the medical procedures they undertook to more closely resemble the opposite sex. Do not contradict us, and especially, do not embarrass us is the ideology of Party.

Chlorinated Water and Cancer Risk

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The New York Post‘s headline screams

Chemical found in US drinking water is linked to 15% higher risk of colorectal cancer, 33% for bladder cancer

The chemical in question is a collection of trihalomethanes (THM)—chloroform, bromodichloromethane, dibromochloromethane, and bromoform—that can form when chlorine reacts with water. Chlorine is routinely added to our nation’s potable water by water producers in order to eliminate bacteria and viruses from our drinking water. Chlorine is very effective at that.

The second paragraph in the Post‘s article lays out the…fear:

A new analysis out of Sweden reports that disinfecting water with chlorine creates chemical byproducts that can increase the risk of bladder cancer by 33% and colorectal cancer by 15%.

What’s the baseline rate of those cancers in the US, though? How big an increase are those 15% and 33% bumps? Those bits of context, critical to understanding the true nature of these risks, are elided by the news outlet.

Here are some data with which to fill in those gaps. According to the American Cancer Society,

[T]he lifetime risk of developing colorectal cancer is about 1 in 24 for men and 1 in 26 for women.

According to the National Cancer Institute,

Approximately 2.2% of men and women will be diagnosed with bladder cancer at some point during their lifetime

Applying the increased risk values to these really quite low baseline probabilities, we get

• likelihood of men getting colorectal cancer rises from 4.2% to 4.8%
• likelihood of women getting colorectal cancer rises from 3.8% to 4.4%
• likelihood of men or women getting bladder cancer rises from 2.2% to 4.2%

Keep in mind the lifetime nature of those risks, which is nicely matched by the lifetime practice we have of drinking chlorinated tap water. Thus, it’s certainly true that these increases are worth watching, especially the bladder cancer risk increase, but these already very low baseline risks remain quite low even with chlorinated water.

Further balancing those risk increases are the enormously reduced risk of infection by serious and debilitating water-borne disease.