Category Archives: rights

Redrawing Districts

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The Supreme Court is hearing a case, Merrill v Milligan, that concerns whether Congressional districts will be drawn in accordance with census outcomes concerning the distribution of American citizens in a State, or whether they will (continue to) be drawn to favor race in a State.

Alabama, the State in question in Merrill, redrew its Congressional districts as a result of the 2020 census outcome and kept substantially the same districts with substantially the same population distributions as the prior district map, making tweaks at district boundaries to account for minor population moves. The plaintiffs in the case, though,

argue the map should be redrawn so that Alabama has two majority-Black districts instead of just one….

Alabama, on the other hand, is arguing

that should the lawsuit prevail, the state will be forced into an unconstitutional practice of prioritizing race in creating election rules….

Alabama also would be forced to violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which explicitly bars (re)districting on the basis of race. There is only one legitimately correct outcome to this case, and it favors Alabama. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has the right of it, having written in other venues that Section 2 of the VRA, the center of the present case, has

involved the federal courts, and indeed the Nation, in the enterprise of systematically dividing the country into electoral districts along racial lines—an enterprise of segregating the races into political homelands that amounts, in truth, to nothing short of a system of political apartheid.

Absolutely. Under law, all American citizens are equal. All American voters are the same: we’re Americans. There are no white Americans and black Americans and Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans—under law there are only American Americans.

Requiring us to be set apart by race in our interactions with our government is nothing but racism written into our laws. And that’s contrary to our Constitution, which is supreme over Congressional statutes like the VRA and its Section 2. Here’s the relevant clause of our 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting…the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Voting is at the core of assembly, and it’s at the center of redressing our grievances with Government: it’s where we come together to fire those Government persons with whom we are most dissatisfied and to hire replacements for them.

It’s time for the Court to rule, decisively, in favor of drawing Congressional district boundaries according to the distribution of American voters, and to stop drawing them to favor one group of Americans while disfavoring other groups of Americans.

It’s a Start

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Congressman Andrew Clyde (R, GA) has legislation he intends to introduce that would bar

federal officials from collaborating with Big Tech to censor Americans’ voices and create some legal recourse for those harmed by free speech infringement.

Explicitly, Clyde said,

It would also give an opportunity for those people who have been harmed by it to take legal action[.]

It’s a promising start, but I suggest a couple of fillips. One is to explicitly bar the agencies and departments of which those officials are a part from spending any money on the collaboration.

The other is to hold the agency and department heads and deputy heads personally liable for violating this law, regardless of who in their organization actually did the deed(s): these two are the MFWICs, and nothing goes on in their organization without their permission, if only because these two create the culture within which the misbehavior occurs and/or have the lax enforcement processes that let this sort of misbehavior go “unnoticed.”

In addition to that, and as a means of giving teeth to the responsibility deeming, the legislation should explicitly remove sovereign immunity and qualified immunity as defenses for the organization heads and deputy heads and the person(s) who actually did the deed.

Clyde needs to follow through on this, with the added fillips, as soon as Republicans gain majorities in both houses of Congress (whenever that happens), get the bill passed, and get it signed into law—or force President Joe Biden (D) to veto it, thereby demonstrating Progressive-Democrats’ continued insistence on government censorship of us citizens’ speech.

But We Need to Take your Guns Away

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A bad guy armed with a shotgun walked into a Florida store with the intent of robbing it. And bragged about being “from Chicago” in the process.

I got a big (expletive) (expletive) gun, but I’m not from around here is what I’m saying. I’m from Chicago bro.

Then, as paraphrased by Fox News, this armed thug

 ask[ed] the employee what kind of weapon he is holding.

Which the employee showed him, whereupon the thug left.

The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, the county where the attempted armed robbery occurred, has the right of it [emphasis added]:

He then fumbles for words, resorting to meaningless babble about being from Chicago. Words seem to fail you when your felony attempt is thwarted by lawful and righteous force.

But the Progressive-Democratic Party and its (what has become) mainstream Leftist supporters want us all disarmed. The store’s employee should have been left unarmed, helpless, and possibly murdered during the course of this robbery attempt.

Cashless Bail and Flight Risk

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Illinois has passed its cashless bail law, euphemistically styled the SAFE-T Act (Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today Act—how cute, how misleading). This is a law that will allow lots of suspects accused of violent crimes to walk without even needing a hearing—an Illinois magistrate can simply release the suspect, functionally, on his own word that he’ll appear in court when called to do so.

Supporters of the law, set to take effect at the beginning of next year, point out it does not prohibit detention and that anyone deemed a flight risk can be detained.

This is as cynical as it is disingenuous.

The degree of flight risk isn’t the only factor that should be used in assessing bail amounts; it isn’t even the most important. What’s central to bail consideration, or should be central, is the nature of the crime alleged and the degree of risk to the people in the local community from having the accused walking free among them.

A man accused of a violent crime needn’t flee in order to commit (further) violent crimes; indeed, most crimes (like politics) are local. And now he has a collection of targets in the local area against whom to commit further violence: witnesses against him, and their families.

What, Exactly, Are You Doing?

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken, through his Press Secretary Ned Price, is insisting two things.

One is that the (not so) dearly departed JCPOA

is [sic!] the most effective means by which to permanently and verifiably ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.

This has been shown to be a straight up lie almost since its parameters became public. All the JCPOA did was permit limited inspections—but not of Iranian military facilities where most of the nuclear weapons development and uranium enrichment process were occurring—and the JCPOA had an expiration date, upon which all sanctions would be lifted and all limits on Iran’s nuclear weapons program would expire.

The other is the State Department views Iran’s nuclear potential as an overriding threat. Nevertheless,

We are doing everything we can not only to support the human rights and the aspirations for greater freedom of the Iranian people, but also to hold accountable those within the Iranian system that are responsible for…violence against the Iranian people[.]

But still,

When it comes to Iran, though…there would be no greater challenge to the United States, to our partners, and to the broader international system than an Iran with a nuclear weapon.

That last might—might—be a valid priority in a cynical, long-term, Machiavellian sort of perspective. It does the Iranian people who are being imprisoned, or killed, or both today for their protesting against their current condition no good at all, though.

Which raises the question: what, exactly are you doing, Mr SecState, to support the human rights and the aspirations for greater freedom of the Iranian people? Lay it out in concrete, measurable terms—no glittering generalities, not fatuous claims of “everything we can.” What fills out this “everything” of which you speak?