New FBI Headquarters

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The FBI wants a new headquarters building, and the GSA has identified the new location for it, in Greenbelt, MD. The FBI had wanted Springfield, VA, and they’ve raised ethics concerns over the GSA’s site selection process. Those concerns, however real, are in the rumble seat compared to the problem either site presented: both are far too deep inside the DC bubble. One is just 11 miles southwest of Capitol Hill, and the other is just 12 miles northeast of Capitol Hill.

Better locations would have been well outside that bubble, out where us ordinary Americans, us folks with whom the FBI is supposed to be interacting and protecting, live. Places like McPherson, KS, or Broken Bow, NE, or Calvin, OK. Places in our heartland.

There’s more to this, too.

At the [J Edgar] Hoover Building, officials have quick access to prosecutors in the Justice Department’s headquarters across Pennsylvania Avenue.

That’s fine. DoJ headquarters needs to be moved out of the DC bubble, too, for the betterment of our nation. Whichever of those heartland towns (or another like them) gets the FBI headquarters (were my wish to be favorably answered), DoJ HQ should be relocated to another of those towns.

If you don’t know where the towns are without consulting a map, that’s the point.

Here’s a Thought

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(No comments from the peanut gallery.)

Time is rapidly decreasing to get a budget passed in time to prevent a Federal government partial shutdown. There are those who fear that, and many of those distort the situation by claiming that it would be a total shutdown and one that would push all grandmas and grandpas off the Social Security cliff and deny wages for our soldiers. The hysteria is strong in those, but let’s take it seriously for a moment.

Here’s a solution. Assume Congressman Andrew Clyde (R, GA) is correct in his prediction that the House will finish passing all 12 of its appropriation bills by the supposed deadline of 17 November. To the extent the shutdown hysteria needs to be taken seriously, there will need to be an extension/additional Continuing Resolution in order to give the Senate time to deal with the appropriations bills, the House-Senate Conference that will be necessary to resolve any differences, and that CR. I’m eliding here the idea that Senators themselves need no funding in order to do their jobs and work these bills. They can work for free for the time being.

If the Senators, led by Progressive-Democrat Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY), but really only 60 of the 100 are needed, are serious, they’ll need under Senate rules only about a week to consider and pass or vote down an appropriation bill. Since Senators all are very proud of their ability to “walk and chew gum,” as they love so quaintly to put it, they can consider all of the appropriations simultaneously and in parallel with their handling of the CR. This is especially true given the size of each Senator’s staff and the size of the Senate-as-a-whole’s staff.

It should take only a day for the Conference Committee to resolve any differences, and an additional day for the respective houses to pass or reject the Committee’s recommendations.

Thus: pass a CR containing spending at the latest pre-Wuhan Virus Situation level, good for nine days. That’s sufficient time for the Senate to act on the CR and the appropriations bills.

And pass no further CRs. Full stop. If the Senate as a whole chooses to reject any of the House bills, or the CR, the Senate—Republicans as well as Progressive-Democrats, depending on how the Republicans vote—will have demonstrated that they’re more interested in their political games than they are in the weal of their constituents and of our nation at large. They should be left, with apologies to Hosea, to reap the whirlwind: it hath no budget; the funds shall yield no meal.

A Sanctuary State Governor Doesn’t Like Being Called on to Deliver Sanctuary

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Massachusetts’ Progressive-Democrat Governor Maura Healey is upset that so many…persons…are accepting her invitation, via her State’s determined sanctuary status, to come on in. The State’s right to shelter housing requirement is just fine. Until it isn’t.

[T]he governor of the “right-to-shelter” state is suggesting there are “a lot” of other places in the US migrants should be sent.

Sure. But there are only sanctuary States and cities for illegal aliens to go to. And Massachusetts is one of them.

There are a lot of places in the country where people can go once they cross into the United States[.]

You bet. And folks who come into our nation legally go there promptly, and they don’t contribute to overwhelming their destination’s facilities. As for the illegal aliens, once they cross into the United States, there are three primary places to which they can, or should, go: one is to border detention facilities, where they should be processed for immediate deportation. Another is to jail in the jurisdiction in which they’re caught, where they can be processed for prompt deportation. The third place is to sanctuary jurisdictions—like Healey’s Massachusetts in the present case—that make themselves accessories to the crime of illegal entry into our nation, and those sanctuary places can suffer the fiscal, if not legal, consequences of their aiding and abetting.

Dangerous Settlement

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Bob Updegrove, a Virginia-based photographer, has settled his case against the State of Virginia and its Virginia Values Act, which barred “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in housing, public and private employment, public accommodations, and access to credit. The Act includes denying folks their right to demur on the basis of their religious beliefs.

Citing the recent 303 Creative LLC v Elenis Supreme Court case, Updegrove’s case was ultimately dismissed by both parties in appeals court on the agreement that he would not be forced to take part in same-sex weddings.

Agreement. Settlements start out being dangerous, since they’re binding only on the parties to the litigation, and they depend on the agreeing parties adhering to their agreements. In the Updegrove case, the settlement does not prevent the State from enforcing its Act against other photographers, other graphic designers, or anyone else who objects to something based on their own religious beliefs.

Worse, it depends on Virginia’s AG, Jason Miyares’, word. Which he immediately exposed as questionable:

“As Attorney General, my highest duty is to the federal Constitution. I am pleased that with the settlement, the law is upheld at no cost to the taxpayers and Mr Updegrove’s First Amendment rights are preserved,” he added.
The attorney general, however, still maintains the authority to enforce the Virginia Values Act, including against Updegrove, based on conduct outside the complaint.

Updegrove’s First Amendment rights are not circumscribed by the bounds of this specific case. His rights extend throughout his life, yet Miyares has just committed to attempting to cut short those rights whenever he can find something outside this settlement on which to do so.

Better would have been to force the matter through the courts and get Virginia’s Act itself cut short on the basis of the Supreme’s 303 Creative LLC v Elenis ruling.

Veteran’s Day

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I first posted this in 2011; I added to it in 2014.

Thank you for all who have, and are, serving.  And because I couldn’t have said it better, I’ll let Mike Royko, late of the Chicago Tribune, via BlackFive, say it from his 1993 column.

I just phoned six friends and asked them what they will be doing on Monday.

They all said the same thing: working.

Me, too.

There is something else we share. We are all military veterans.

And there is a third thing we have in common. We are not employees of the federal government, state government, county government, municipal government, the Postal Service, the courts, banks, or S & Ls, and we don’t teach school.

If we did, we would be among the many millions of people who will spend Monday goofing off.

Which is why it is about time Congress revised the ridiculous terms of Veterans Day as a national holiday.

The purpose of Veterans Day is to honor all veterans.

So how does this country honor them?…

…By letting the veterans, the majority of whom work in the private sector, spend the day at their jobs so they can pay taxes that permit millions of non-veterans to get paid for doing nothing.

As my friend Harry put it:

“First I went through basic training. Then infantry school. Then I got on a crowded, stinking troop ship that took 23 days to get from San Francisco to Japan. We went through a storm that had 90 percent of the guys on the ship throwing up for a week.

“Then I rode a beat-up transport plane from Japan to Korea, and it almost went down in the drink. I think the pilot was drunk.

“When I got to Korea, I was lucky. The war ended seven months after I got there, and I didn’t kill anybody and nobody killed me.

“But it was still a miserable experience. Then when my tour was over, I got on another troop ship and it took 21 stinking days to cross the Pacific.

“When I got home on leave, one of the older guys at the neighborhood bar — he was a World War II vet — told me I was a —-head because we didn’t win, we only got a tie.

“So now on Veterans Day I get up in the morning and go down to the office and work.

“You know what my nephew does? He sleeps in. That’s because he works for the state.

“And do you know what he did during the Vietnam War? He ducked the draft by getting a job teaching at an inner-city school.

“Now, is that a raw deal or what?”

Of course that’s a raw deal. So I propose that the members of Congress revise Veterans Day to provide the following:

– All veterans — and only veterans — should have the day off from work. It doesn’t matter if they were combat heroes or stateside clerk-typists.

Anybody who went through basic training and was awakened before dawn by a red-neck drill sergeant who bellowed: “Drop your whatsis and grab your socks and fall out on the road,” is entitled.

– Those veterans who wish to march in parades, make speeches or listen to speeches can do so. But for those who don’t, all local gambling laws should be suspended for the day to permit vets to gather in taverns, pull a couple of tables together and spend the day playing poker, blackjack, craps, drinking and telling lewd lies about lewd experiences with lewd women. All bar prices should be rolled back to enlisted men’s club prices, Officers can pay the going rate, the stiffs.

– All anti-smoking laws will be suspended for Veterans Day. The same hold for all misdemeanor laws pertaining to disorderly conduct, non-felonious brawling, leering, gawking and any other gross and disgusting public behavior that does not harm another individual.

– It will be a treasonable offense for any spouse or live-in girlfriend (or boyfriend, if it applies) to utter the dreaded words: “What time will you be home tonight?”

– Anyone caught posing as a veteran will be required to eat a triple portion of chipped beef on toast, with Spam on the side, and spend the day watching a chaplain present a color-slide presentation on the horrors of VD.

– Regardless of how high his office, no politician who had the opportunity to serve in the military, but didn’t, will be allowed to make a patriotic speech, appear on TV, or poke his nose out of his office for the entire day.

Any politician who defies this ban will be required to spend 12 hours wearing headphones and listening to tapes of President Clinton explaining his deferments.

Now, deal the cards and pass the tequila.

– Mike Royko

Next, because this is a day of remembrance and of honoring our surviving veterans, take another moment to visit here and take in Mark Toomey’s piece.

And follow his advice at the end.