Naïve Foolishness

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors did it this time. In their editorial regarding FISA, they had this:

The law lets the intelligence community gather information from foreigners overseas and store it in a database. That database can then be searched for communications on matters of national security. If Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon start texting a New Jersey phone number, the New Jersey number is worth a follow-up.
All information in the database is legally gathered, and in 2024 Congress added safeguards against abuse. All queries for American information need prior bureaucratic approval and receive regular audits.

Safeguards. Queries for Americans’ information need bureaucratic approval? How is this any sort of safeguard? Any administration’s bureaucrats can easily approve searches for bureaucrat/administration disapproved Americans. Those bureaucrats are primarily senior FBI officials. To see how well this will work, it’s only necessary to recall AG Eric Holder’s promise to be then-President Barack Obama’s (D) wingman, rather than keeping DoJ independent. Recall further, those FBI senior officials. The FBI works for the AG. The Holders of the world will be back, and folks already are disdaining acting AG Todd Blanche of being no more than President Donald Trump’s (R) man.

Then there’s the FISA court, a by-design secret Star Chamber court where only administration-approved persons get to know the proceedings. That’s bad enough, but even when the Star Chamber was confronted with falsified search warrant requests, it chose not to take any serious corrective, much less punitive, action.

The Star Chamber needs to be abolished. Article III courts are fully capable of issuing sealed warrants that become public only on their being served. That also would apply enforceable safeguards on warrant issuance—they would be issued only by those Article III courts; there would be no recourse to a secret court.

A Solution to “Rigging” Elections

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California’s election process provides the canonical example of the problem. “Rigging” is in euphemism quotes (not the press’ over- and mis-used scare quotes) because the perception of rigging an election is as important as any actual rigging. The problem with California’s election procedure is this:

California sends mail-in ballots to all registered voters who have until Election Day to send them back. Many ballots don’t arrive at county election offices until days later. … The result is a large number of provisional ballots are cast that require more scrutiny. All of this prolongs vote-counting.
The state also lets third parties including unions, campaigns and political parties collect and return an unlimited number of ballots on voters’ behalf—a practice known as ballot harvesting.

And

An ID isn’t strictly required to register to vote. Those who don’t furnish one to register are supposed to present one when they vote for the first time in a federal election, though this requirement isn’t strictly enforced. The state lists a gym card, drug prescription and even a sample ballot as acceptable forms of ID. …
County election officials aren’t required to check whether a voter is a citizen or, well, even a person.

And

State regulations also allow late-arriving ballots to be counted even if they lack a post-mark as long as they include a handwritten date on the envelope.

None of that is fraudulent per se, but it sure makes fraud possible—there are no checks that assess the legitimacy of any ballot.

The solution is straightforward, even if politically difficult with timid Republicans and self-interested Progressive-Democrats rife in each house of Congress. Nevertheless, Article I, Section 4, of our Constitution

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations….

allows this solution. Congress can easily specify a nation-wide election rule that mandates these criteria:

  • only American citizens can vote in a Federal election
  • proof of citizenship must be provided at registration
  • mail-in ballots are available only when a voter requests one
  • the only voters eligible to request one are military personnel stationed outside their voting precinct or business persons on business travel outside their precinct on Election Day
  • mail-in ballots must be received by the end of Election Day in order to be counted. Ballots received after then cannot be counted
  • early voting cannot start before the second weekend before Election Day and can run through the Monday immediately preceding Election Day
  • there can be no third-party collection of ballots; each must be cast in person during early voting or on Election Day; mail-in ballots must be put into a mail receptacle for delivery. Unpostmarked ballots cannot be counted

Keeping the voting process universal across American citizens and simple not only is eminently possible, it would vastly reduce both election fraud and the perception of election fraud.

They Knew…

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…or they did not. Regarding the massive welfare fraud going on in Minnesota, a (Republican-led) House Oversight and Accountability Committee report says that Minnesota’s Progressive-Democratic Party governor, Tim Walz, and the State’s Progressive-Democratic Party Attorney General, Keith Ellison, knew all about it from early on and made the conscious decision to do nothing about it, instead choosing to punish those officials rude enough to object to the fraud.

There are two possibilities here. One is for Walz and Ellison to deny all knowledge, either directly or via weasel-word deflections. In this case, the two would be lying through their teeth.

The other possibility is that they wouldn’t be lying in denials, and they really didn’t know about all that fraud occurring under that not so watchful eyes. In this case, they would be confessing their incompetence and unfitness for senior (or any other) government position.

With either possibility and with the Progressive-Democratic Party’s continued support for them or for either of them, Party will be demonstrating its general unfitness for any leading role in our government.

Not Relevant

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There is a property dispute in Wisconsin centered on a property owner owning a stretch of lake front beach and a neighbor who insists on traipsing across that private property beach, often with his dog, despite repeated warnings, signs, and calls to the police to get him to stop. It even went to trial, and the trespasser fined some $313.

But that’s not the end of it.

In response to the fine, the trespasser

argues it is absurd to say he could wade past but not put a foot higher up the shore.

His pretense here is from his arrogance. It doesn’t have to be not absurd to him; the distinction is set by law, it is quite clear, and all he need do is obey it. His arrogance doesn’t stop there, though.

My personality is such that if I’m confronted with it I don’t back away from [the argument over his access to the property owner’s property[.]

As if his arrogance justifies anything.

And this argument from the presiding judge, who despite her remark, had the integrity to rule on what the law says rather than what she thought it ought to say:

…a decision favoring the landowner over the public was out of touch with the practices in other states.

This isn’t relevant. We’re a federal republic. What other States do regarding privately owned beachfront property has nothing to do with how Wisconsin treats privately owned beachfront property. “Out of touch with the practices in other states” is a non sequitur.

Dominic Green Asked

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In his lede, Green asked

Which is worse, a young Englishman bleeding out in handcuffs while police ignore his cries for help, or the vice president of the United States expressing his opinion about it?

What JD Vance, the supposedly miscreant Vice President, said was this:

Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies, abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, through his spokesman (apparently because Starmer is too timid to speak for himself on this),:

accus[ed] unnamed foreigners of “trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets….”

How does Green’s question even exist? Given the naked bigotry demonstrated by the British police and by the government that created that police department, there can be no question of relative morality here. The one is an accurate commentary; the other is naked, state-sanctioned, and this time murderous, bigotry.

Nor was Vance’s statement in any way an interference in British democracy. There was no push for the British to do anything differently, only an objection to what that government has chosen to allow on its streets. If there was any pressure from Vance’s remarks, it was only because his words struck hard into what passes for a conscience in that government’s collective mind.

There’s a hint on the whole interfere in our democracy matter, though:

The administration-adjacent Elon Musk, whose X website outflanks Britain’s speech laws, told his 28.5 million followers to share the Nowak footage “to everyone you know,” so that all can see how the police “cravenly kowtowed to his murderer.”

Outflanks Britain’s speech laws. Maybe the nation that increasingly restricts what is permissible speech and that increasingly shrivels religious freedom is becoming less and less a democracy in the first place.