Since the Progressive-Democrats in the Senate are dead set on shutting down the Federal government (I won’t argue the utility of the government being shut down or by how much it actually would be) for the sake of their own petty political egos, it’s time to get rid of the filibuster on all matters relating to the budget, spending, and revenues.
It’s time to put an end to the obstructionism of these Precious Ones.
Full stop.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) is upset over his administration’s having been called soft on crime by that impertinent man, Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions, after all, said that New York
continues to see gang murder after gang murder, the predictable consequence of the city’s “soft on crime” stance.
De Blasio’s response? He transferred the target of the remark to the police themselves, pretending to wonder why the AG has
insult[ed] the men and women who do this work every day, who put their lives on the line and who have achieved so much?
Never mind that this is a naked distortion. Sessions clearly laid the lackadaisical enforcement attitude on the city’s administration—which would include Da Mair (oh, wait—that’s the late Mayor Richard Daley (D). But who can tell the difference, anyway?). It’s the “men and women who do this work every day” who are the ones dangerously hampered by de Blasio’s position on law enforcement.
This is an example of why we can’t have nice things in Democrat-run cities and towns.
British Prime Minister Theresa May called for a snap election (early next June), and her public reason was that Whitehall was too divided for her to be able to negotiate effectively with Brussels over the terms of the British departure from the EU. She wanted a mandate from the people.
Yesterday the British Parliament voted in favor of her call (under a 2011 law, the PM no longer can require a snap election on his/her own initiative; two-thirds of Parliament’s 650 seats must agree) by 522-13, much wider than those two-thirds (the Scottish National Party was among those who abstained from the vote).
Her real reason, magnified by the implosion of the Labour Party, is that her own Conservative Party, the majority party in Parliament, is itself too fractured. Conservatives can’t agree among themselves over the nature of Britain’s departure: should it be a hard, sharp, prompt break, or should it be a graduated withdrawal? Should there be compromise with Brussels over immigration into Great Britain, should there be a continuation of British payments into the EU in return for freer access to the EU’s common market?
Here’s what’s interesting to me about the aftermath of that June snap election (not the election itself, which general outcome seems a foregone conclusion). Polls, pols, and pundits all think the Conservatives can gain as many as 100 seats in Parliament, which would give them 430 out of the 650 seats, just three seats shy of a two-thirds majority (not so small aside: the election is scheduled to occur before the size of Parliament shrinks to 600 seats).
I’m curious about whether she gets those 100 seats, and I’m curious whether a seat gain of any significant size will reduce her party’s fractiousness or magnify it.
Her win in the snap could backfire on her.
…is back and in full force in Russian-occupied Crimea. Russian dissidents—Tatars, this time—are being “diagnosed” as insane and locked away in “psychiatric” hospitals.
Since the annexation of the region three years ago many ethnic Tatar activists who oppose the occupation have been arrested and subjected to abuse and imprisonment in outdated mental institutions, said Robert van Voren, a Dutch human rights activist and political scientist.
“The number of cases has increased considerably over the past few years, in particular against Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian activists who oppose Russia’s annexation,” he added.
Just as in the Soviet Russian gulag, conditions are appalling and along with Russian treatment of the “inmates” are intended to retrain them to ways of which Russia approves. Emil Kurbedinov, a Crimean civil rights lawyer focusing on Tatar civil rights and himself locked up for 10 days, had this:
Some are placed in isolation and are denied their basic needs, such as access to a toilet. Others are housed with multiple people suffering from severe mental health conditions.
The activists are interrogated about their alleged involvement in “extremism” and their views of the government. They are also deprived of the right to speak with their family, or meet their lawyer on a one-to-one basis without a guard being present.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
There is some concerning Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ moves at DoJ concerning local police forces and local policing. An example is provided in the lede to a recent Wall Street Journal article:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision this week to review concessions by local police departments accused of misconduct is part of a seismic shift at the Justice Department, which has quickly changed its emphasis under the Trump administration from protecting civil rights to promoting law and order.
Of course, there is no dichotomy between protecting civil rights and promoting law and order. Indeed, the two are inseparable: it isn’t possible to protect civil rights without promoting law and order: it’s those laws and the order they engender that are at the foundation of civil rights—which themselves are matters of those laws and that order.
The confusion extends to the Federal government’s role in overseeing local police institutions, including particularly “consent” decrees concluded or in progress involving Federal demands for police department reforms satisfactory to the Federal government. Sessions has ordered a review of these and has taken steps to begin rescission of some. However,
Officials in Baltimore and Chicago say they remain committed to overhauling police forces….
These officials say they’ll proceed within the parameters of existing consent decrees, but the illustration remains: local officials are fully capable both legally and morally to overhaul, to reform, without Federal involvement, and that’s as it should be. Each locale is different, and each local police force will need its unique and locally oriented reform. Federal involvement might be needed to clear away impediments to reform, but it is not needed to mandate the nature or structure of reform.
In the end, reasonable men can debate the methods of law and order, and reasonable men can argue whether current law is sufficient for civil rights (beyond that, the question of current law’s adequacy in implementing inalienable rights has been debated since the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, and before). The immutable fact remains, though, that there are no civil rights, no matter what laws might assert, without laws being enforced—law and order. And that is, of necessity, a local matter.