Category Archives: ethics

Some Things Must Go Both Ways

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The opening of the Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt remains a sometime thing.

A deal to open the border crossing has been held up…by Egyptian concerns that Israel hadn’t given assurances it would pause airstrikes and by Israeli insistence that trucks entering via Egypt be thoroughly searched, Egyptian officials said.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, in particular:

Unfortunately, Israel has not yet allowed humanitarian aid to enter Gaza[.]

Israel has a big enough problem from its practice of telling Gazans where and when (if on short notice) Israel will strike. The idea is to let Gaza’s civilians in the target zone leave before the strike goes in. Those warnings, though, also let the terrorists alternatively trap the civilians there in order to run up the body count of innocents or, with longer term risk to Israel, let the terrorists escape among the evacuating civilians.

The other problem, though, is Egypt’s reluctance to let the trucks, allegedly carrying humanitarian-related supplies, to be searched before being allowed into Gaza. It’s very likely that the vast majority of those trucks would be carrying only humanitarian-related supplies, but some likely would be smuggling supplies for the terrorists in Gaza, also. It wouldn’t take very much of those latter to sustain the terrorists and to support their continued attacks on Israel.

Israeli reluctance is entirely justified. Israel is acting to not allow terrorist supplies to enter Gaza; the humanitarian aid is collateral to Egypt’s refusal to allow the trucks to be searched.

Because Of Course

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The State Department, finally, is beginning to work on arranging charter flights for those Americans and their families currently trapped in Israel by American airlines’ timidity in flying into that nation.

But. But, but, but.

US law requires billing Americans for evacuations.

One of the first duties of government is to protect the citizens for whom it is responsible. But our government will send a bill to those for whom its exercising that responsibility. I’ll come back to this in a bit.

Meanwhile, illegal immigrants collect free assistance.

That’s actually illegal aliens; it’s disappointing that Just the News still acts like it doesn’t understand that. Anyway….

[T]he Biden administration’s generous financial support for the accommodation and relocation of illegal [aliens] to the United States.

Bill Americans, but pay the illegal aliens.

The law mandating requiring Americans to pay for their own evacuation needs to be changed. Americans who traveled in good faith—e.g., to Israel—should not have to pay to be saved from the dire circumstances that get inflicted on them by exogenous forces; that should be on the governments (yes, on us taxpayers’) nickel. Only those who foolishly, willfully travel to known danger zones—e.g., to Gaza, or Iran, or (today) the People’s Republic of China—should be required to pay for their ride out of the trouble they got themselves into. That’s long-term, though.

In the near-term, the Biden administration needs to stop flying—or transporting by any means—or providing any other form of financial support to illegal aliens. The only thing they should get at no further cost (they’ve already paid a high price to enter our nation illegally) is a ride back to their North American home countries or simply back into Mexico for non-New World illegal aliens. And that free ride should occur immediately on apprehension.

Full stop.

DoJ Wrist-Slaps Again

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And again, with the light tap the Biden-Garland DoJ favors one of their own, a man who leaked the tax returns of Progressive-Democrats’ Enemy No. 1, Donald Trump, and those of a multiplicity of the Evil Rich.

According to the Justice Department, Charles Littlejohn, 38, disclosed the tax returns of “thousands of the nation’s wealthiest individuals” to news organizations and tax information associated with a “high-ranking government official” to a second news outlet.

Garland’s idea of non-tiered justice in his DoJ:

He [Littlejohn] pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax return and return information.

All one count out of the plethora of instances. The price he faces? A max of 5 years. For leaking thousands of returns. He’s let off with a single count and a light sentence. Even if the judge gives him the max, he’ll be out much sooner, for time served (if any) and for “good behavior.”

This is Garland’s definition of non-tiered.

It Doesn’t Get any Clearer than This

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The citizens of California want to have a State referendum on taxes, specifically a vote on the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act, in November 2024. The Act would limit the State government’s ability to raise taxes on those good citizens.

Progressive-Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom has joined John Burton, ex-State Progressive-Democratic Party Chairman, in an emergency(!) petition to the State’s Supreme Court to get the initiative removed from that election. The measure if passed, Newsom and Burton worry, would gut the administrative state and shift the longstanding balance of powers in California back toward the State’s legislative branch.

Gut the administrative state. Increase the power of the citizens’ more direct representatives in their House and Senate.

To hell with democracy, especially to hell with representative democracy.

…voters will be harmed if the Measure appears on the November 5, 2024 ballot….

The State Knows Better and must not be constrained by these…commoners.

As goes California’s State Progressive-Democratic Party, so goes the national Progressive-Democratic Party.

This is what’s on the national ballot—however sotto voce—in 2024.

Choosing not to Understand

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The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has broadened an existing injunction that bars various Federal agencies from colluding with social media to censor speech to include the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The court wrote, in part,

CISA used its frequent interactions with social-media platforms to push them to adopt more restrictive policies on censoring election-related speech. And CISA officials affirmatively told the platforms whether the content they had “switchboarded” was true or false….
Thus, when the platforms acted to censor CISA-switchboarded content, they did not do so independently. Rather, the platforms’ censorship decisions were made under policies that CISA has pressured them into adopting and based on CISA’s determination of the veracity of the flagged information. Thus, CISA likely significantly encouraged the platforms’ content-moderation decisions and thereby violated the First Amendment[.]

Here’s the Federal government’s overt decision to not understand the matter of free speech as it appeals the ruling to the Supreme Court [paraphrased by Fox News]:

the government faced “irreparable harm” because [5th Circuit Federal Judge Terry, who ordered the first injunction] Doughty’s order may prevent the federal government from “working with social media companies on initiatives to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.

This is, to use the legal jargon’s term, a steaming crock. The order in no way bars the Federal government—its bureaucrats and its political appointees—from working with social media companies. It only bars the Federal government’s from defining what speech constitutes “grave harm,” and it bars those personnel from pressuring social media to implement those definitions and then to censor speech based on those definitions.

The order in no way bars the Federal government’s personnel from working with social media companies to publish, also (not instead of), those folks’ own, answering, speech that debates the information an original speaker has offered and with which the Federal government’s bureaucrats or politicians disagree.

The Biden administration personnel know that full well; hence their conscious decision to pretend to not understand the basic principle of free speech and why the Federal government is Constitutionally barred from interfering with it. The grave harm stems from those government personnel’s attempt to disregard the First Amendment.

The 5th Circuit’s ruling can be read here.