Category Archives: politics

Still Not Ready

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The Progressive-Democratic Party’s Biden administration has had how many months since the leak of the Supreme Court’s then-putative Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that was going to overturn Roe v Wade (and which subsequently was published and did overturn Roe) in which to prepare a response?

This administration has had how many more months since the Supreme Court agreed to hear Dobbs in the first place in which to prepare a response?

This administration has known for how many years that the Supreme Court had had three textualist Justices appointed, Justices that would adhere to the text of our Constitution rather than rule in the activist manner, and so had a 5-3 majority (with Chief Justice John Roberts voting the way he thought legacy demanded) of textualists? Years in which this administration could have been preparing the outlines of responses to the Supreme Court’s various rulings?

And President Joe Biden (D) is only now coming up with an intrinsically fragile Executive Order with which to address the matter of abortion?

Regardless of what any of us might think about abortion or the Dobbs ruling or the overturning of Roe, this…tardiness…of response should give us all pause. This is an administration, and this is a Progressive-Democratic Party (that has had control of both houses of Congress for how long, now?), that seem incapable of planning ahead, of preparing responses (much less backup responses) to events that are coming down the pike and that are eminently visible in the distance on that pike.

A government that operates only via its rearview mirror is a government dangerous to the national weal and to the national security.

Where in the World….

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…is Joe Biden?

Adding to the long list of European heads of state that have visited Ukraine and met face-to-face with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv and to the long list of American Congressmen who have done the same, Senators Lindsey Graham (R, SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D, CT) have met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv, just last Thursday.

Which raises anew the questions: where in the world is President Joe Biden (D)? Of what is he so terrified that he won’t go to Ukraine and meet with Zelenskyy face-to-face?

It’s not that Biden is unable to hack the trip itself; he’s been to Brussels in the last few months, after all.

Maybe Time to Start Holding them Liable

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The heads of the FBI and of Great Britain’s MI5 have a warning for American and British businesses regarding

the threats posed by Chinese espionage, especially spying aimed at stealing Western technology companies’ intellectual property.
In a rare joint appearance on Wednesday at the headquarters of MI5, Christopher Wray, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Ken McCallum, Director-General of MI5, urged executives not to underestimate the scale and sophistication of Beijing’s campaign.
“The Chinese government is set on stealing your technology—whatever it is that makes your industry tick—and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market,” Mr Wray told the audience of business people. “They’re set on using every tool at their disposal to do it.”

Too much of that information aggregates to national security levels, and the lackadaisical protection of it threatens our security indirectly via the degradation of our two nations’ economic capabilities relative to the People’s Republic of China and directly through exposing our defense information to theft. That means business laxness—outright laziness in too many cases—cannot be excused with the companies involved being left simply to take their lumps.

Wray emphasized the matter as it concerns the US.

We want to send the clearest signal we can on a massive shared challenge—China…if we are to protect our economies, our institutions, and our democratic values.

To do that, business executives—particularly CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs, and their deputies—need to do their part and start taking seriously their own obligations to protect company secrets and other proprietary information, along with information of a national security kind.

It may be, then, that business executives need to start being held personally liable, civilly and criminally, for security breaches that allow hackers to steal their companies’ information. The businesses that employ them may need, as legal persons, to be held similarly liable for such breaches.

Relations with the People’s Republic of China

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Maurice Greenberg, Chairman and CEO of CV Starr & Co, an insurance and investment company with subsidiaries domiciled in the PRC and Hong Kong, said in his Wall Street Journal Wednesday op-ed that he wants the US to “rebuild relations” with the People’s Republic of China.

It is in our national interest, now more than ever, to do all we can to improve U.S.-China relations.

And

The US and China have a long history of collaboration dating to before World War II. When the People’s Republic of China reopened to the world, the US extended favorable trade terms to foster China’s economic growth….

What Greenberg ignored is that the People’s Republic of China has no relation to the pre-World War II China beyond sitting in the same geography. What he also ignored is that since the PRC “opened” and we extended favorable trade terms, the PRC has been running a campaign of stealing our intellectual property through outright theft, hacking, and coerced transfers as a condition of doing business within the PRC. That nation also has been running a parallel campaign, using the same techniques, to steal our national defense and foreign policy secrets.

Frank talks can build trust relationships with the PRC? No, the only thing we can trust of what the PRC’s government men say is their commitment to replace us on the world stage and to subordinate us to them.

We don’t to rebuild relations with the PRC. Let the PRC want to build, from the beginning, relations with us.

It Shouldn’t Have To

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The Wall Street Journal house opinion subheadline tells the tale:

The Supreme Court asks for action under laws against picketing homes.

Federal law prohibits protests in front of demonstrations outside judges’ homes with a view to influencing their rulings, or to harass them for rulings rendered.

Virginia State law

bans picketing private residences or assembling to “disrupt any individual’s right to tranquility in his home.”

Maryland has a similar law that

prohibits picketing “in front of or adjacent to any private residence.”

Critics insist that the Federal law is an unconstitutional infringement on free speech. Others claim that the Virginia and Maryland laws aren’t content neutral—both allow labor dispute pickets—and so are similarly unenforceable.

The claims are risible. These are the laws on the books, and no court has yet ruled on their constitutionality. Until that happens—and it could, were some backbone found somewhere and the laws actually enforced and subsequently challenged—they are the law of the land. They must be enforced.

Full stop.

DoJ’s Progressive-Democrat Attorney General Merrick Garland’s blatant refusal to enforce the Federal law is clear, present, and more than ample grounds for impeaching him for his deliberate refusal to perform his duties.

The Maryland and Virginia Governors’ hesitance is cowardice and should be an item of consideration at the ballot box when the time comes.