Author Archives: eehines

A National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

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The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact wants to put together a coalition of States whose Electoral College votes aggregate to 270—the minimum majority required to elect the President and Vice President—and which coalition then would allocate their Electoral College votes to the national popular vote winner, instead of to the popular vote winner of the particular State.

This is a naked attempt to defeat the purpose of the Electoral College as it is constituted in our Constitution.

This is what Art II, Section 1, says about the Electoral College:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress….

This is what the 12th Amendment of our Constitution says about the duties of those Electors:

The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President….
…
…if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote….

Notice that. The intent of the Electors of the Electoral College is to give each State its own, individual, voice in the election of our President, to place each State on an entirely equal footing with each of the other States.

The Compact, however, argues that

The compact points out that in the 2012 presidential race all 253 general-election campaign events were in just 12 states, and two-thirds were in just four states.
“Thirty-eight states were completely ignored,” the compact concludes.

The Compact wants to subsume those individual State voices into the tumult of a collective. This not only deprecates each State, it’s plainly unconstitutional. Worse, what this Compact wants to do is have its collection of States whose Electoral College votes total 270 to be the sole determiner of our President and Vice President—to explicitly ignore every one of the other States. Their votes simply wouldn’t count at all.

The Compact argues further that each State’s legislature can decide who the State’s College Electors are in any way the legislature wants to do. That’s true; see the Art II quote above. However, the legislature may not dictate to its Electors what their duties are—for whom they must vote. The 12th Amendment’s stricture has already determined that, and in this venue our Constitution supersedes the State’s wishes. The Electors must cast their own votes, not the national population’s votes.

The Compact complains that it’s somehow unfair for a Presidential candidate to get all of a State’s Electoral College votes when the candidate “won” the State with only a bare plurality instead of an outright majority in those States that have winner-take-all allocations. No Compact is needed to address this perceived unfairness. The State(s) in question can amend its allocation, if the citizens of that State wish it.

The Compact is doubly unconstitutional; even the name gives the game away. Here’s what Art I, Sect 10, of our Constitution says about interstate compacts:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress…enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State….

The States involved in this Compact think they’re getting around this minor Constitutional impediment by not strictly formally entering into an agreement. But the intent is clear, from the Compact’s title through its statement that

The National Popular Vote interstate compact will go into effect when enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—that is, enough to elect a President (270 of 538).

No wink and nod and fingers crossed nonsense can cancel the fact of their intent to form this Agreement or Compact among the States.

The Compact’s pushers know this full well. But what else would be expected from the Left? After all, as Ezra Klein, then of The Washington Post, put it during reign of the Progressive-Democrat Barack Obama in a canonical example of the Left’s contempt for law,

[Y]ou can say two things about it [the Constitution]. One, is that it has no binding power on anything. And two, the issue of the Constitution is not that people don’t read the text and think they’re following. The issue of the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person and differs depending on what they want to get done.

Our Constitution, our laws—who cares? Us average Americans do.

Cowardice and NATO

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This characteristic might seem a non sequitur as it applies to NATO, given that entity’s support for Ukraine in the war the Russian barbarians have inflicted on it.

But maybe it’s apt. NATO is planning for a successor to current Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, a Norwegian, whose term expires at the end of this year. Currently favored to succeed him is another Nordic, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.

Poland objects, and since the Secretary-General must be chosen unanimously, that would seem to put an end to that choice. Poland’s primary objections are two. One is that Denmark is one of the majority of NATO member nations what have welched on failed to meet their obligations to support NATO with spending equal to 2% of their national GDPs. What could we expect of Frederiksen, then, in leading NATO actually to strengthen its military capability, goes this objection.

Poland’s larger objection, though, is less an objection to the Dane and more a preference for a leader of an Eastern European nation, one that once was an SSR of the late and unlamented (at least in civilized circles) Soviet Union, or Poland. Such a one would have an up close and personal understanding of the threat Russia poses and how much that threat is expanded by the barbarian’s invasion of Ukraine. Poland’s President Andrzej Duda wants someone from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, or Poland; although he is leaning toward Estonia and that nation’s Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas.

That brings me to the title of this post.

[S]everal Western nations are wary that naming a secretary-general from the eastern flank would be too provocative, as it brings the alliance’s leadership to Russia’s doorstep.

This is shameful timidity, and it has no place in a defense alliance whose avowed duty is to confront and defeat aggression, at least against a member nation (although NATO troops—not only national troops—have fought elsewhere, also). Thus, this objection puts a premium on installing Kallas, or Lithuania Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, or Latvia Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, as much to inject backbone into NATO constituent nations as to advise Russian President Vladimir Putin that his barbarians are not welcome outside of Russia.

Full stop.

One More Reason…

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…to disband—not merely defund—the Federal Bureau of Investigation, relocate the bureau’s [sic] databases and forensics labs to small towns in the Midwest, reassign the line agents to the Marshals Service and Secret Service, and to return all other FBI personnel from field office agent in charge on up through Director to the private sector—not to any other assignment in the Federal government—and reallocate the FBI’s putative budget dollars to other uses, including payroll funds to the Marshals Service and the Secret Service to cover those added agents.

Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX), during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, quizzed FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate regarding an FD-1023, alleged recordings between a Burisma executive and Hunter Biden and between that executive and then-Vice President Joe Biden (D), and FBI supposed investigations of the allegations therein. Abbate’s repeated answer was nothing but FBI stonewalling:

I’m not going to comment on that, Senator.

And

I’m just not going to comment on information we’ve received [regarding] investigations or other matters.

And

This is an area that I’m not going to get into with you, Senator.

In the course of all of this, Abbate uttered the FBI’s Stonewall of Stonewalls:

I’m going to answer within the parameters that we operate in.

Those are FBI parameters, and for the most part, they’re useful. But the overarching, the controlling, parameter within which the FBI operates is the requirement to be responsive to Congressional oversight questions—in the present case, to be responsive to Senate Judiciary Committee oversight questions.

Congressional oversight requirements supersede FBI internal procedures, as Congressional oversight requirements do all Executive Branch agency internal procedures.

The FBI has long since outlived its legitimacy.

Libraries, Book Banning, and Funding

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Illinois’ Progressive-Democrat politicians, including the State’s Governor, JB Pritzker, have produced a law that will withhold State funds—Illinois citizens’ tax monies already remitted—from libraries that “ban books.”

The only books being banned, though, are books on the subjects of LGBTQ+, the gay culture, and transgenderism, including books nominally on these subjects that contain graphic sexual images, that are inappropriate for young children—and they’re not even being banned, just withheld from children too young to read them or to be exposed to pornographic imagery.

Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias actually insists with a straight face that the threat to withhold State funds from libraries that move to withhold access by children to these sexualizing books is not really a matter of State centralization of librarians’ decisions.

Local librarians [he says] “have the educational and professional experience to determine what’s in circulation. Let them decide.”

Sure. They can decide as long as their decisions are approved by the State.

This is an example of the price organizations pay when they accept government funding. The strings attached are more akin to chains.

These libraries need to adjust their budgets and funding sources to eliminate the need for Illinois government-allocated dollars and go right ahead withholding from children, on age-based criteria, sexualizing, transgenderizing books.

Pro-Green Hysteria, or…?

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The Biden White House recently has canceled or delayed some projects that are critical to American economic prosperity and to American economic independence from our enemies.

On Tuesday [6 Jun] the US Army Corps of Engineers revoked a Clean Water Act permit granted by the Trump Administration for the NewRange copper and nickel mine in Minnesota’s Duluth Complex.

That copper and nickel is critical to the Biden administration’s push for a green transition to battery cars (and to a host of legitimate electric and other projects). Green aficionados objected, despite the fact that the region already is well-mined for iron ore, and in entirely environmentally sound ways. No more mining.

And:

[Biden’s] Interior Department last month delayed a decision on whether to let Alaska build a 211-mile road to a critical minerals mining area.

The Trump administration had approved this one, but green aficionados objected. Hence the delay.

And:

[L]ast Friday [2 Jun] Interior removed from oil and gas development hundreds of thousands of acres of public land in New Mexico within 10 miles of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park.

The folks affected by that development project, the Navajo Nation, badly wanted and whole heartedly approved it for the tens of millions of dollars in oil and gas royalties it would have produced for these Native Americans (whom the Left and the Progressive-Democrats in Congress and the White House pretend to favor). But green aficionados objected. No oil or gas development here, and no prosperity for Navajos.

These project cancelations and delay mean that, in the words of The Wall Street Journal‘s Editors, [t]he US will have to import the minerals from arsenals of autocracy like Russia and China.

Are these moves motivated by Biden’s pro-green hysteria or by Biden’s softness toward the People’s Republic of China? Or maybe both?