Category Archives: culture

The Pope

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…gets another one wrong.  If he was accurately quoted by ANSA (Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata, an Italian news agency) and by the SIR agency of the Italian bishops’ conference—or by CRUX, which claims the quotes—that is.  They quoted him as

denouncing the pre-natal tests that can result in parents choosing to terminate a pregnancy if the fetus is malformed or suffering other problems.

The Pope is aiming his fire at the wrong target.  Families intending to have the baby rather than abort it could benefit from pre-natal tests that find that the “fetus is malformed or suffering other problems.”  Such foreknowledge would give the family months in which to prepare financially, emotionally, physically, to join/generate support groups, all to increase the family’s ability to receive and nurture the baby.

Once again, the Pope is thinking with something other than his God-given rationality.

Child Abuse, Continuing

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In the ongoing dispute over separating children from their illegal immigrant parents (OBE with President Donald Trump’s EO ending the practice) Progressive-Democrat Senator Bob Casey (D, PA) said this:

Infest? We’re not talking about insects, these are children!  You are talking about kids who are scared, alone and being held in cages. You have the power to stop it, do it.

Casey isn’t talking about children, though, he’s talking about weapons he and his Progressive-Democrat fellows want to use for their personal political gain. These are not children in Progressive-Democrat eyes, they’re just mechanical tools for them to use.

Casey and his colleagues have the power to stop it, do it. They need to stop blocking legislation to reform immigration, bills that would fix this and would take care of the DACA children—goals they’re only pretending to want.

Progressive-Democrats’ weaponizing of children is despicable. They have the power to stop it.  Do so.

Privacy!?

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You ain’t got no privacy.  You don’t need any stinking privacy!

Using facial recognition software in combination with image storage houses like drivers license databases can be highly useful in tracking down criminal suspects.

But the combination can be highly dangerous, too, as this attitude by Joseph Michael, Washington County Deputy State’s Attorney in Maryland, demonstrates:

the expectation of privacy ends when you sit down and smile at the government desk.

Pinellas County (FL) Sheriff Bob Gualtieri argued

This is no different than if I laid out all those photos in front of me…and said “No, that doesn’t look like him, that doesn’t look like him, here we go, that’s him[.]”  The only thing is I am doing it in a different way, a more automated way, a more efficient way.

Sometimes that faster, more automated—human-removed—way is less efficient, though, as it removes thought and care and consideration of individual liberty from the process, favoring as it does getting a conviction over getting a just outcome.

Michael’s attitude illustrates the conundrum.  His attitude, the attitude of a Government Man, is precisely why we have a Bill of Rights in our Constitution.  His attitude is just an extension of “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you should let Government snoop if it wants to.”  Folks like Gualtieri can be better trained.  Folks like Michael are unfit for office in a free country.

Reform at the FBI?

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FBI Director Christopher Wray said he takes the DoJ IG report castigating the FBI’s performance on the Clinton email scandal seriously.

He [Wray] ordered training for senior executives on the report’s lessons….

Really? These guys are senior executives–they already knew what they were doing, and they knew at the time that what they were doing was wrong. They should be fired for cause.

So far, it looks like Wray is just engaged in the emptiness of sound and fury.

Cynical Union

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Recall President Donald Trump’s Executive Order limiting the amount of time public union employees can spend doing union business during their work day.

The American Federation of Government Employees has demurred and gone into court to seek an injunction blocking enforcement of the EO.  AFGE General Counsel David Borer insisted

We will not allow this or any other administration to trample on the Constitutional rights of federal workers[.]

This cynical claim is based on Borer’s insistence that his members’ freedom of association right is violated by the EO.

This, of course, is nonsense.

There is no constitutional violation here. No association right is violated by requiring union member employees of a government institution to do the work of the institution when they’re on institution time and the taxpayer payroll.  Union members remain free to associate with a union or with each other in a union.  They remain free to conduct union business.  There is no constitutional obligation, though, for taxpayers to pay anyone for associating or for doing non-work related tasks.

This is a case that should result in a declaratory judgment that the law—the supreme Law in this case—is on the side of the government.  Alternatively, it should be tossed on its face and Borer and such of his staff as are participating in bringing this case, as well as the AFGE, strongly sanctioned for wasting the court’s time with such a blatantly frivolous case.