Category Archives: rights

Undoing a Unilateral “Presidency”

Posted on by
2

Lahnee Chen closed his Monday Wall Street Journal op-ed of a similar title with this:

By revoking Mr Obama’s executive actions, and beginning the arduous task of identifying and addressing his many other unilateral moves, the next president wouldn’t have to jettison the entire Obama legacy.

But our next President should.

On the next president’s first day in office, the president could simply issue an executive order revoking all of his predecessor’s executive actions, except those necessary for national security or the basic functioning of government. This includes Mr Obama’s executive orders, but also a flood of presidential memorandums and directives, as well as informal guidance and orders from federal agencies, that he has used to reshape federal policy.

Not “except for.” Every single one. Don’t waste time sorting through the mess to find the occasional nugget that might be useful. Rescind every single one. The next President should issue his own few Executive Orders regarding those narrow areas of national security and the basic functioning of government. That last, especially, doesn’t need many, since government can, and should be, shrunk drastically by the next President and the next two (at least) Congresses.

In the name of actual transparency, this item, too. Those Presidential Memoranda don’t need to be, and so they’re not, published in the Federal Register, and so the public has very limited access to them. The next President, on day two, should publish those memoranda. Every single one of them.

Keep in mind this, too. It’s not only Obama’s legacy. It’s our nation’s legacy, it’s the legacy of us citizens, it’s your and my legacy. It needs to jettisoned in its entirety, every single syllable. For our national honor.

Government Transparency

Posted on by
1

President Obama favors government by executive order. How about this one: a Presidential directive requiring every appointee and bureaucrat to attest to the existence of any private email, texting or instant-messaging systems being used for government work. All off-the-reservation documentation must cease. Private email is for personal needs.

The chances of this happening are nil. Opacity has served the Obama Administration’s political purposes if not the country. A sunnier day will have to wait until 2017.

Here’s an action that doesn’t necessarily have to wait on an Executive Order (which, being only temporary, would be a suboptimal answer, anyway): call every Department and Agency head before the House Government Reform Committee and separately and sequentially before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee to certify under oath to each that the Department or Agency he heads has no private email correspondence going out over government servers, no government emails going out over private servers, and that all government business is conducted over and only over government servers—three separate, if overlapping, sworn certifications, each made separately to the two committees. For any such head who does not make that sworn certification, cut his organization’s budget by 10%. Do it again at the start of the next budget cycle.

Don’t ask these heads, pretty please, to come on over; subpoena their patooties to testify on the first day of the week following the subpoena.

That’ll likely have to wait until 2017, too, though, to get any teeth.

Whose Phones Are They?

Posted on by
Reply

Apple Inc’s move to make it easier to block ads on iPhones and iPads is troubling publishers and heightening tensions with its Silicon Valley neighbors.
…
Putting such “ad blockers” within reach of hundreds of millions of iPhone and iPad users threatens to disrupt the $70 billion annual mobile-marketing business, where many publishers and tech firms hope to generate far more revenue from a growing mobile audience. If fewer users see ads, publishers—and other players such as ad networks—will reap less revenue.

Yeah, and? I sympathize with publishers and tech firms and…ad networks…over their loss of revenue from their ads not being viewed—about as much as I sympathize with other advertisers over the loss of revenue from their bulk snail mail brochures going unread directly from my mailbox to my trash can.

My house is my own, and advertisers have no authority, no right, to enter it to pitch their wares, or for any other reason at all, without my prior permission to come in. If I wanted to be a curmudgeon about it, I could—quite legally and morally—take steps to prevent them from entering my property at all to gain access to my doorbell. That I don’t is only because such a measure would interfere with the access to my door that my friends and those friends who are still strangers should have.

So it is with my cell phone. It’s my cell phone, not those advertisers’, and if I don’t want them to clutter up my phone with their digital brochures, then they have no choice but to comply with my wish that they not come knocking at all.

Here’s Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next:

The ad-blocking problem is real and growing, and ad-blocking on iOS is only going to accelerate it.

Problem for whom? Not for the property owners. We’re not your piggy bank.

I don’t often agree with Apple, but on this question I say a hearty well done.

Finger Pointing

Posted on by
Reply

There is, presently, a kerfuffle over local cities—many of them sanctuary cities—turning loose illegal aliens with records of violent crimes, rather than holding them for Immigration and Customs in response to the latter’s detainer requests. Most famously, two of those released went on to commit horrific crimes upon their release.

Here’s the thing:

The issue, says [San Luis Obispo Sheriff Ian] Parkinson and dozens of other sheriffs and police chiefs across California and Arizona, is that, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement routinely asks departments to hold prisoners like [Francisco Javier Chavez, out on bail after being charged in an attack which left a toddler with two broken arms, a broken femur, a compressed spine, a urinary tract infection, and a 107 degree fever] until they can take custody of them for deportation, the local law enforcement officials believe doing so will expose them to lawsuits. They cite court cases including the March, 2014, US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruling in Galrza v Szalczyk that held states and localities are not required to imprison people based on ICE “detainer” requests, and that states and localities may be held liable if they participate in wrongful immigration detentions.

“I am not aware of any County in California that is honoring detainers, simply because we can’t,” Parkinson said. “We have to follow the law or the threat of violating the law ourselves,” Parkinson said, citing a Court decision issued approximately one year ago. “The law actually does not give us the right to place an ICE hold, unless there is a warrant for them.”

ICE? They insist

there is no requirement that it obtain a judicial warrant to compel law enforcement agencies to hold suspects and that a detainer is sufficient.

Yeah, you do, guys. At least within the 3rd Circuit’s jurisdiction. And even if you don’t, your bleating of “Not my job” is only getting honest Americans—children included—killed. Quit hiding behind excuses, get off your office-bound patootie, and get the warrant.

On the other hand, there’s nothing blocking the sheriffs and police from dropping a dime on ICE when they’re about to release such a one, so an ICE agent can be present to pick up the illegal alien as he walks out the door. Not doing this is on the locals.

Should judges be releasing these guys on bail? Probably not, but a) that’s a different story, and b) the judges are bound by what the laws in their jurisdictions say about bail requirements.

Gotta Regulate

Posted on by
Reply

Senator Elizabeth Warren has discovered a bit of financial activity that she can’t regulate, and she wants to regulate it.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) on Monday sent letters to six financial regulators saying she is troubled that the big banks and other financial firms backing Symphony Communications Services LLC may use the new tool to skirt regulatory and legal requirements, as well as escape enforcement action by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other regulators.

Symphony’s sin? Their words on their publicly accessible Web page.

Symphony is designed to meet the cyber-security and compliance needs of financial firms.

They also tout their ability to guard against government spying.

Never mind that Symphony also says,

The use of Symphony does not change regulators’ ability to obtain messages from our clients. Symphony delivers messages to its clients to download, decrypt, and archive, and they are able to provide those messages to regulators just as they would with other compliant messaging systems.

Symphony is plainly acknowledging that message handling is the sole responsibility of the correspondents, and not at all that of the pipeline.

Senator Warren (and FBI Director James Comey) are prime examples of the need of private citizens and our enterprises for protection from government spying—even domestic spying. They’re already having some success, too, in browbeating Symphony:

Symphony’s current website doesn’t appear to contain the language Ms Warren raises in her letter.

What’s in that message? Inquiring Progressive minds want to know.