Category Archives: ethics

They Knew…

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…or they did not. Regarding the massive welfare fraud going on in Minnesota, a (Republican-led) House Oversight and Accountability Committee report says that Minnesota’s Progressive-Democratic Party governor, Tim Walz, and the State’s Progressive-Democratic Party Attorney General, Keith Ellison, knew all about it from early on and made the conscious decision to do nothing about it, instead choosing to punish those officials rude enough to object to the fraud.

There are two possibilities here. One is for Walz and Ellison to deny all knowledge, either directly or via weasel-word deflections. In this case, the two would be lying through their teeth.

The other possibility is that they wouldn’t be lying in denials, and they really didn’t know about all that fraud occurring under that not so watchful eyes. In this case, they would be confessing their incompetence and unfitness for senior (or any other) government position.

With either possibility and with the Progressive-Democratic Party’s continued support for them or for either of them, Party will be demonstrating its general unfitness for any leading role in our government.

Not Relevant

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There is a property dispute in Wisconsin centered on a property owner owning a stretch of lake front beach and a neighbor who insists on traipsing across that private property beach, often with his dog, despite repeated warnings, signs, and calls to the police to get him to stop. It even went to trial, and the trespasser fined some $313.

But that’s not the end of it.

In response to the fine, the trespasser

argues it is absurd to say he could wade past but not put a foot higher up the shore.

His pretense here is from his arrogance. It doesn’t have to be not absurd to him; the distinction is set by law, it is quite clear, and all he need do is obey it. His arrogance doesn’t stop there, though.

My personality is such that if I’m confronted with it I don’t back away from [the argument over his access to the property owner’s property[.]

As if his arrogance justifies anything.

And this argument from the presiding judge, who despite her remark, had the integrity to rule on what the law says rather than what she thought it ought to say:

…a decision favoring the landowner over the public was out of touch with the practices in other states.

This isn’t relevant. We’re a federal republic. What other States do regarding privately owned beachfront property has nothing to do with how Wisconsin treats privately owned beachfront property. “Out of touch with the practices in other states” is a non sequitur.

Irrelevant

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In the ongoing struggle between Progressive-Democrat-run States and the Federal government, the Attorneys General of New York, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont have filed suit in the DC District Court in an attempt to undo an administration deal with TotalEnergies that has the latter ceasing its US-centered offshore wind projects and instead starting work on developing US oil and natural gas projects.

The Progressive-Democrat AGs’ argument centered on this:

We are fighting back to stop this illegal agreement that threatens to erase over a thousand union jobs and cheat millions of New Yorkers out of clean, affordable energy[.]

The “illegal agreement” bit is nakedly conclusory and has no merit in any guise. Stipulate the other factors are accurately presented. They are, though, purely business decisions made within a political and economic framework that is solely within the purview of the political branches—i.e., those two which are elected by We the People—and regarding which, the courts have nothing legitimate to say.

The AGs’ argument is wholly irrelevant and without merit in court. It is worthy of debate in the Congress and the White House only.

The role of judges. and of Justices who are a subset of that group and sit at the group’s top, under our form of government is to check the political branches from excess. Their means of doing so are at once powerful and limited. Judges must apply our Constitution as it is written, and must assess the constitutionality of any statute before them in a particular case. If the judges determine the statute to be constitutional, they must apply it as it is written. If they find the statute unconstitutional, they must strike it.

In particular, judges may not alter or disregard any part of our Constitution in favor of their own view of what it ought to be in order to achieve their own view of societal needs or of justice. Nor are they permitted to alter in any way the statute before them to suit those personal views of societal needs or of justice; they must strike it or apply it.

The deal between the administration and TotalEnergies is entirely legitimate from a legal standpoint, and it should be upheld in the district court, the DC Circuit, and at the Supreme Court.

At It Again

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Section 702 of FISA is up for renewal, and President Donald Trump (R) has nominated Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte for DNI after the incumbent Tulsi Gabbard announced her resignation to be with her husband, who’s been diagnosed with cancer.

Progressive-Democrats, obstructionist Never Trump-No To Republicans to the core, are saying they’ll block Pulte’s confirmation unless they get what they want in FISA’s renewal legislation.

Regardless of what we might think about FISA and its Star Chamber court or of Pulte’s fitness for DNI, it’s time for Republicans to locate their spine, recovery a measure of unity, and use their majority to simply ignore these Progressive-Democratic Party politicians and move ahead. Who will become DNI has nothing to do with whether FISA should be renewed. This is just Party attempting to extort their way into control.

A Misapprehension

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Former Vice President Mike Pence (R) is the one misapprehending this time, and he laid it out early in his Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Where conservatives have historically viewed politics as the art of the possible, progressives see politics as a path to alter society beyond recognition in a quest for material equity, environmental nirvana, or other alleged perfections. Progressives invariably try to destroy whatever stands in their way.

That last sentence lays bare his misunderstanding. Perfecting our society has nothing to do with today’s progressives’ goals, goals hard-sought after by today’s Progressive-Democratic Party and epitomized by that sentence. Were Party interested in perfection, it would adopt a more patient approach and seek to bring along those presently disagreeing with them. Instead, Party politicians try to destroy whatever stands in their way.

For further proof, see Party’s plans, annunciated by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D, NY) remarks and his chief minion for this, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D, MD):

The Supreme Court is a disgrace. In the new Congress, we’re going to have to do something about this Supreme Court, and let me be very clear: everything is on the table—everything to deal with this corrupt MAGA majority.

And, as paraphrased by the WSJ‘s editors:

[Raskin] recently introduced a bill that would deny the Justices the power to choose which cases they hear. Under the SCCOTUS Act, petitions would be reviewed by a rotating committee of 13 random appellate judges. This is such a radical change that it’s hard to imagine all the implications.

Jeffries sees the Court, especially the conservative Justices, as corrupt because the majority seeks to adhere to what our Constitution and any statute before them actually say, rather than what the other Justices too often insist: that, in the manner of former Justice Thurgood Marshall, the Court should rule on what they want and expect the law to catch up, with the added fillip that if the law isn’t catching up quickly enough, these Justices will rewrite them from the bench.

Raskin would actually corrupt our Court by packing it to thirteen Justices because thirteen appellate circuits. He ignores in his revisionism the history that the number of appellate circuits had been growing beyond nine long before Congress set the number of Justices at nine. In fact, though, that’s just his covering excuse for adding four activist, progressive men and women to the Court, men and women who view our Constitution and statutes as suggestions to be ignored or modified as they see fit.

Pence’s piece loses its import with his lack of understanding of the underlying problem, even as he’s entirely correct in his conclusion: it’s time for Republicans, and especially the dismayingly meek Republicans, to get up off their backs and address these problems loudly and firmly. In particular, this includes Vice President JD Vance (R), who’s busily toadying up to Big Labor in his desperation to become our next President.

Else we lose our Republic.