Category Archives: rights

No, Congress Can’t Do That

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William Galston, in his last week’s Tuesday op-ed, expressed concern about the growing power (as opposed to authority) of American Presidents, and he proposed a solution.

[I]t [is] be up to Congress to write legal language defining clearly the limits of presidential power.

Even were the President to sign off on such legislation (or Congress to override his veto), anything more than a tweak to a Congressionally-enacted statute (viz., the Electoral Count Act tweak to which Galston referred) would be blatantly unconstitutional. (The ECA may itself be unconstitutional given how vague our Constitution is on the role and authorities of Electors and the sitting Vice President in counting Elector votes for President.)

Galston’s solution, which accrues power (as opposed to authority) to Congress, is every bit as dangerous (aside from its unconstitutionality) as accruing power to the Presidency. Galston’s move ignores the fact that not only did we rebel against a monarchical chief executive, we also wrote our Constitution to prevent the concept of Congressional (Parliamentary) Superiority from taking hold in our republican nation.

Our Constitution is quite clear on the matter, both in text and in that text’s construction of a Federal government whose powers (as well as authorities) are divided equally among the three branches of Legislature, Executive, and Judiciary. These are three branches equal in their powers and authorities. Congress cannot take it on itself to limit the power, or authority, of a rival branch.

If Congress is serious about reining in what it views as an overweening Executive, if it is not simply bleating virtuously in attempts to gain political points, it will propose the Constitutional amendment that tightens the reins and then convince the American citizens of at least 38 States to ratify its amendment.

There’s More To It Than Just Race

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors opined recently on race-based gerrymandering. Their second paragraph was this:

In recent years, the Justices have considered challenges to maps in Texas, South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana. They punted last term on deciding the Louisiana case (Louisiana v Callais) that they will reconsider Wednesday. They will also take up the question of whether the intentional creation of majority-minority districts violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the Fifteenth Amendment’s prohibition against abridging a citizen’s right to vote based on race. The right answer is yes.

The editors are absolutely right on this.

They missed a Critical Item point, though, as they closed with this:

The Justices would do the country and themselves a favor by correcting the Gingles error and declaring that the Constitution forbids race-based map-making. As the Chief wrote in a 2006 redistricting opinion, “it is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”

Here’s the Constitution on citizen representation in our Federal government.

Article I, Section 2:

The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative….

14th Amendment, Article 1:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

14th Amendment, Article 2:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.

Our Constitution also forbids political party-based (faction-based in the Founders’ terms) map-making. Our Constitution also takes clear precedence over statutes, including 1965’s Voting Rights Act requiring racial gerrymanders or putative statutes allowing gerrymandering by political party.

What our Constitution does require, and all that it requires, is that Representatives’ districts have substantially equal populations of American citizens.

Full stop.

They Won’t Sign

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The lede has it.

Major media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN have said they won’t agree to a new Defense Department policy restricting journalists’ communication with military sources.
Those who don’t sign on to the new policy must forfeit their Pentagon press badges and won’t be issued new ones.

Among the restrictions being applied by DoD internally is

military personnel need approval before sharing information with the media, even if it isn’t classified. It says members of the media should be aware that agency “personnel may face adverse consequences for unauthorized disclosures.”

That should always have been the case. For far too long, there has been inconsistent, even contradictory, messaging coming out of DoD as a result of leaks, to say nothing of security failures in too many of those leaks. The journalism guild, of course, is spilling its collective ink pots over this.

The policy drew rebukes from press-rights organizations, which have highlighted the role journalists have played in revealing wasteful spending, conflicts of interest and misconduct.

This is self-serving and disingenuous. Pressmen should go back to doing original reporting instead of repeating each other’s rumors and printing leaked “information.” Pressmen surely understand—as the rest of us do—that leaks and their leakers are unreliable sources, and pressmen should rely instead on whistleblowers and other sources with the integrity of speaking on the record.

Their disingenuousness extends: the news outlets aren’t even being required to signify their agreement with the policy limiting DoD personnel’s interactions with the press; their signatures would merely indicate their understanding of the policy and the implications for DoD personnel.

News outlets don’t have an intrinsic right to wander the halls and poke into rooms in the Pentagon, nor do they have any need to do so, accosting any DoD personnel they happen on. Not even their self-proclaimed specialness gives them that.

It’s entirely appropriate, since the outlets won’t sign, to confine their writers to the various services’ public affairs offices, and it’s entirely appropriate to require all DoD personnel, military and civilian, who are encountered by a news writer, to refer those pressmen to the PAO and to refuse further interaction with the pressmen.

There are far too many leaks from government agencies, and those from DoD can have particularly dangerous national security implications. There are, also, far too many pressmen who don’t care a fig about national security, only about their personal bylines and notoriety.

Useless Argument

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Amid the hue and cry over Jimmy Kimmel’s TV show being put on hiatus over his lies about Charlie Kirk and his murderer—some saying the government shouldn’t be in the business of pressuring news outlets and others saying Kimmel got what he deserved—there is this argument, as articulated by Ben Shapiro among others:

But I do not want the FCC in the business of telling local affiliates that their licenses will be removed if they broadcast material that the FCC deems to be false. Why? Because one day the shoe will be on the other foot.

What Shapiro, et al., are eliding, though, is that the shoe has been on the other foot since at least the 2016 Presidential campaign season. That’s when The New York Times announced in a front page article that its news room would no longer attempt balanced coverage; it was so dismayed over then-Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump that its news room would pick a side and openly bias its supposedly objective news writing to favor whoever the Progressive-Democratic Party candidate might be.

Not so long later, a broadcast news outlet announced that there were not two sides to every story, and it began nakedly favoring the Left’s side.

The bias became blatant when the Progressive-Democrat-run Executive Branch began pressuring—threatening—social media outlets if they didn’t start suppressing Conservative commentary.

The bias became overt election interference when CNN participated in the circularly created Russian interference to favor Trump’s election hoax by publishing the “intelligence experts'” letter.

This then was followed by all news outlets (save The New York Post) spiking all “reporting” on the Hunter Biden laptop.

As a result of the Post breaking that story anyway, social media blocked it from posting on the social media outlets.

Then we had Progressive-Democratic Party Congressmen, of whom California’s Adam Schiff is one of the more infamous examples, overtly lying about then-President Donald Trump (R)’s being in cahoots with Russia. Schiff expanded on this with his lies about having the intelligence reports (from the same intelligence community of the letter infamy) to prove it.

I’ll elide the argument that CEOs who fold under mere pressure are unfit for their positions. That the Left and Party politicians have a long and hoary prior history of this pressure and overt action against free speech is no excuse for Republicans to do the same. Spare me, though, the foolishness that one day the shoe will be on the other foot. It already has been, for far too long.

Note: As I write this post (22 September 2025) ABC has taken the position to restore Kimmel to his show and airtime with effect 23 September 2025.

Business Executive Cowardice

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There is a great deal of loud bodice-ripping angst over the Trump administration having “bullied” Disney and ABC into putting Jimmy Kimmel’s late night TV show on hiatus for the time being.

It’s much ado about misplaced nothing, though. Bullies have only the power their putative victims choose to surrender to them; business executives only feel pressure because they choose to wallow in the perception.

FCC chief Brendan Carr threatened ABC affiliates’ broadcast licenses if they/ABC didn’t kowtow and deal appropriately with Kimmel and his TV show? This is a canonical example of choosing to wallow. Threats aren’t deeds, even when they from a high level government functionary. They need to be watched carefully lest they become deeds, but watching is the only action required. Certainly not kowtowing.

I claim that executives who fold under “pressure,” even when the “pressure” is yapping from government personages, are cowards and unfit for their posts. The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are more genteel about it.

The furor is wildly overstated when it claims an iron curtain of Trump censorship is descending on American media. If CBS and ABC, two networks that have lately bowed to the president, gave half a hoot, they would easily have prevailed on First Amendment grounds if they put up a fight.
That is, if they prized their network TV businesses sufficiently as businesses, as opportunities to display stewardship, or even as instruments of influence. But they don’t.

Indeed. Short term expensive, to be sure, to Just Say No, and hale the government into court. But long-term much lower cost, especially when compared to the great and growing cost of always surrendering.

The editors closed with this:

Mr Trump hasn’t got powers of intimidation other presidents didn’t have. He just meets less resistance.

I write it again: such executives are unfit for their positions.