Category Archives: law

A Step in the Right Direction

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Against the backdrop of the multi-billion dollar Medicaid fraud being pulled off in Minnesota and so far only partially uncovered (for all the dozens of indictments and convictions), a fraud that centers on sending those billions of dollars overseas, comes this move by Missouri’s State Treasurer Vivek Malek:

Missouri State Treasurer Vivek Malek told Just the News he is teaming up with the state legislature to impose new requirements that remittance payment businesses ensure that customers are lawfully in the United States before they can send money to foreign countries….

It’s not just Somali immigrants and illegal aliens resident in Minnesota, either.

“It has been found that at least $4.4 billion in remittances sent to Mexico have been tied to cartel money laundering through small wire transfers,” [Malek] said. “Cartels don’t sneak money across the border or throw the bag across the border. They wire it. And if we are serious about crushing cartels, we have to shut down their financial arteries.”

This is a strong move, and it’ll be instructive to see which States—Progressive-Democrat-run vs Republican-run—start taking similar steps. State by State legislation, though, is patchy, incomplete, and slow. What’s needed is the same move done at the Federal level. Treasury should monitor such transmissions, blocking those sent by inappropriate senders—illegal aliens, for instance. Treasury has ample authority under our Constitution’s Commerce Clause.

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations….

Remissions of US money to foreign relatives of those present in the US, whether legally so or illegal alien, is pretty clearly Commerce with foreign Nations.

Drug Mistake

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President Donald Trump (R) signed an Executive Order that reclassified marijuana from a Schedule 1 drug (highly dangerous and tightly controlled) to a Schedule 3 drug (not so dangerous, not so tightly controlled, but still illegal at the Federal level.

This is a mistake.

Leave aside all the dangers of modern-day marijuana or its unproven medical uses (multiple studies conflict with each other on the effectivity of a variety of constituent chemicals).

If the purpose really was to improve access for research (to, among other things, address those medical uses and those dangers), there was a simpler way to do that. Schedule 1 drugs are, in fact, deucedly difficult to obtain, even for researchers. However, that could have been addressed by setting up a licensing facility that would ease access to marijuana by approved laboratories and approved researchers working in those laboratories specifically on marijuana research.

It still can be. Trump’s EO can be rescinded, and that licensing facility still can be stood up.

Typically Liberal “Misunderstanding”

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It’s William Galston, this time. Galston, in his op-ed for last Tuesday’s The Wall Street Journal disparaged SecDef Pete Hegseth’s alleged disdain for the laws of war.

Leave aside the fact that Galston cynically and deliberately chose not to cite any of these laws of war. Instead, he actually wrote extensively about Hegseth’s supposed disdain for rules of engagement. In this vein, Galston generalized, without logic or facts, Hegseth’s disdain for particular rules into a disdain for all rules of engagement.

However, Galston’s more serious…error…is this. Rules of engagement are not Laws of War. RoE are the particulars, tailored to specific combat and short-of-combat environments, intended for particularized implementation of those general laws of war. Yet he opened his piece with this lede, and his piece continued solely in that vein.

It’s no surprise the US Navy’s September 2 strike on an alleged drug-carrying boat near Venezuela has been controversial. The man who now leads the Defense Department has ridiculed the laws of war throughout his military career.

I’m not that convinced, though, that Galston’s mistake is a misunderstanding Given his high skill as a journalist for a leading news outlet, for whom words are his stock in trade, I lean more toward outright distortion in his use of rules of engagement and laws of war interchangeably.

Oh, and one more “leave aside:” The controversy surrounding that second strike is entirely a journalistic construction. Those of us with actual military experience and who are not trading on that experience for political gain see no fault in sending in a second strike to finish a task that the first strike had not completed.

Contradiction in Terms

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This time, regarding President Donald Trump’s (R) move to remodel and expand the White House East Wing so that, among other things, important diplomatic events involving large groups of dignitaries, their significant others, et al., can be held indoors inside a facility fitting for the occasion rather than outdoors, in the White House’s back yard, in tents.

Leftist critics, of course, object. One of their more risible objections is this:

Critics say Trump barreling through bureaucracy to reshape an iconic piece of American history reflects a wider disdain for democratic norms.

Never mind that giving an unelected bureaucratic authority functional veto power is what violates democratic norms.

Red Tape Redundancy

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A letter-writer in Monday’s Letters section of The Wall Street Journal was rightly concerned about red tape redundancy, but he missed the mark on one form of it.

One can’t work with children without undergoing specific training and, in many states, extensive background checks. There’s value in those measures, but how about some coordination?
While living in New Jersey, I was fingerprinted for my teaching license in Somerset County and, later, in Middlesex County, despite having permanent certification in New York. I was then fingerprinted for gun purchases, coaching recreational soccer, and teaching Sunday school. At some point, it all becomes too exhausting.

There’s nothing redundant about being checked via immutable personal characteristics at each of those application points. Fingerprinting is an important way of determining that the person doing the applying is who he claims to be. Those multiple applications may or may not be by the same person.

Having been IDed by fingerprints and confirmed to be the same person across those multiple applications, though, there should be no need to repeat the rest of the applications beyond what’s unique to the function being applied for. Those repeats are what would be redundant and want better coordination.