Category Archives: rights

Another Federal Judge

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…gets it right.  US District Judge Eric Melgren has ruled that Kansas and Arizona can, indeed, require proof of citizenship as a criterion for registering to vote in Federal elections: American elections are for American citizens only.  The second clause of the 14th Amendment is pretty clear on this.

Melgren ruled, in part,

Because the Court finds that Congress has not preempted state laws requiring proof of citizenship through the National Voter Registration Act, the Court finds the decision of the EAC denying the states’ requests to be unlawful and in excess of its statutory authority.  Since the Court’s decision turns on the plain statutory language, the Court need not resolve the question of whether the Constitution permits the EAC, or Congress, to disregard the states’ own determination of what they require to satisfactorily determine citizenship.

As the Kansas City Star pointed out,

Nationally, voting rights experts contend that the court’s ruling—if it survives on near-certain appeals—could open the door for more states to enact laws requiring voters to produce documents proving their citizenship.

One can certainly hope so.  Like I said: American elections are for American citizens only.

Melgren also noted

The Constitution gives each state exclusive authority to determine the qualifications of voters for state and federal elections.  Article I, section 2, clause 1—often called the Qualifications Clause—provides that the voters for the US House of Representatives in each state shall have the same qualifications required for voters of the largest branch of the state legislature.  The Seventeenth Amendment adopts the same requirement for voters for the US Senate.  The US Supreme Court has read these provisions to conclude that the states, not Congress, set the voter qualifications for federal elections.

Melgren went on to note that the same Clause also grants Congress the power to overrule the States’ rules statutorily—and that the Congress has not done so.  We can look forward to further Democratic Party efforts to sully our elections by attempting to get Congress to force the States to accept anyone as voter, citizen or not.

Melgren’s ruling can be read here.

The People are not Sovereign

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…government is.  Or so says Czar of all the Russias President Vladimir Putin.

Of course people wanted change.  But [people] cannot impose illegal change…you need to use only constitutional means.

Never mind that the will of the people is what gives “constitutional means” legitimacy, since those means are the will of the people given concrete effect.  But not in Putin’s world.  In his world view, “constitutional means” are what government says they are, and government is constituted the way the men populating the organs of government say it is.  No people, no citizens, are involved.

Putin also insisted that [Interim President] Oleksandr Turchynov was

not legitimate.  From the legal perspective it is Mr. Yanukovych who is president.

No.  Plainly no.  From the legal perspective, Yanukovich had lost all legitimacy the moment he lost the consent of the Ukrainian people to be their President.  That he had lost that consent is amply demonstrated by all those months in the streets—and not only in Kiev—by the people protesting, at first his actions, and ultimately his political status.  The firmness of their will is corroborated by the violence against and the murders of the protestors sanctioned by that government, and the people’s continued protests despite those atrocities.

Putin also has announced that he has no obligation to respect the wishes of the Ukrainian people as expressed in the upcoming May governmental elections, if he doesn’t get the results he wants.

Never mind that exactly those elections are what will express the will of the people, if the elections are allowed to go forward freely and fairly.  The only interference there will be “such terror as we see now” in the form of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The only “terror as [Putin] see[s] now” is his own terror of the will of the people—perhaps of the will of the Russian people, as well.

Finally, this:

Putin said Tuesday that Moscow reserved the right to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine by any means necessary….

This was Hitler’s excuse for Sudetenland.  However, the “ethnic Russians” are Ukrainian citizens, not Russian citizens, and it is the responsibility of the Ukrainian government to protect its citizens.  If Putin is claiming a right (oddly, not a duty) to protect the badly abused citizens of another sovereign nation, than we have to ask: where is his duty in Syria, in northern Korea?  Oh, wait….

For Progressives, Some Lives are More Important than Others

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King Cove sits 11 miles southeast of Cold Bay in Alaska, a distance that often takes a lifetime, under current conditions, to travel.  That’s because there is no road between the two towns, only an over-water boat path, and a small airport in King Cove that’s weather-closed a third of the year.  Cold Bay has an all-weather airport, though.

The residents of King Cove want—need—a road connecting the two towns, and they’ve been fighting the Federal government for one for 30 years.  The Feds get the veto authority because the land route for the gravel road (all that the locals are asking) runs through Federal land.

Whence the need?

Cove residents say a road is necessary so they can reach an all-weather airport in Cold Bay that will transport them to Anchorage, about 625 miles away, for medical treatment.  They say that in emergency situations, it’s a matter of life and death.

According to local Aleutian elders, 19 people have died since 1980 as a result of the impossible-to-navigate weather conditions during emergency evacuations.

That’s the lifetime it takes to get from King Cove to Cold Bay under current conditions.

Never mind that; the Federal government has its own priorities.

[T]he Department of Interior announced it was rejecting plans for a proposed land swap that would allow the road to be built.  The Dec 23 decision cited the negative environmental impact on grizzly bears, caribou, and water fowl like the Pacific black brant.

“(Interior Secretary Sally Jewell’s) decision on King Cove was heartless and wrong, and her message to me ever since has been that I need to ‘just get over it and move on,'” Senator Lisa Murkowski(R, AK)….

And

During an August visit to Alaska, Jewell was told that building a road that connects King Cove and Cold Bay was vital.  But in December, Jewell rejected the road saying it would jeopardize waterfowl in the refuge.

“She stood up in the gymnasium and told those kids, ‘I’ve listened to your stories, now I have to listen to the animals,'” State Representative Bob Herron (D)….

That land swap?  Alaska had offered over 43,000 acres for the 1,800, or so, needed for the short road.

But animal welfare is more important to these Feds than human lives.

Random Pseudo-Thoughts on Free Speech

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Erin Ching ’16, of Swarthmore College, without a trace of irony:

What really bothered me is, the whole idea is that at a liberal arts college, we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion.  I don’t think we should be tolerating [Christian thinker Robert George’s] conservative views because that dominant culture embeds these deep inequalities in our society.

Sandra Korn, ’14, of Harvard:

[T]the liberal obsession with “academic freedom” seems a bit misplaced to me.  After all, no one ever has “full freedom” in research and publication.  Which research proposals receive funding and what papers are accepted for publication are always contingent on political priorities.

And

…why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of “academic freedom”?

This is what we’re teaching at our colleges and universities?  Maybe there’s too much “academic” freedom for the students, and not enough teaching of rigorous thinking.  Which flows from too much “academic” freedom of a different sort for the professors and their failure to teach the techniques of rigorous thinking.

h/t Robby Soave of The Daily Caller

A Progressive Government’s Free Speech

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Senators Bernie Sanders (I, VT) and Brian Schatz (D, HI) are gathering colleagues’ signatures on a letter to the networks asserting that they’re ignoring global warming.

It is beyond my comprehension that you have ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, that their Sunday shows have discussed climate change in 2012, collectively, for all of eight minutes….

And

Sunday news shows are obviously important because they talk to millions of people, but they go beyond that by helping to define what the establishment considers to be important and what is often discussed during the rest of the week.

What [the networks] are saying is, climate change is a non-important issue, it is an irrelevant issue, and yet the scientific community tells us that it is the greatest crisis facing this planet….

By God, you’ll talk about what Big Government wants you to talk about, and you’ll talk about it when we want you to.  Or you’ll rue the day….