Clemency

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President Donald Trump (R) has said he’ll cancel all of the Executive Orders and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden that Biden instead signed with an autopen. Potentially, Trump could go farther.

Trump could potentially revoke Biden’s legislation or the dozens of pardons he issued, including to family members. Biden also gave thousands of commutations at the end of his presidency. Still, legal scholars say there is no mechanism to undo clemency after it is granted.

The prior question, regarding clemency, though, is whether it was granted in the first place. That would hinge on, among other things, whether the autopen was used illegally by others—viz., he didn’t authorize its use—to grant those clemencies. That will be hard to prove.

There’s also the question of the legislation signed into law by autopen. Even were it shown that the legislation signed by autopen was illegally signed, canceling that legislation would be a dicey matter legally—the laws have been in effect for some years—and practically: canceling that legislation would reopen, even more explosively than at the time, the arguments and conflicts that accompanied those legislations during their development and passage. Especially since all of the legislation would have to be canceled if one of them is. Trump won’t be able to pick and choose which to cancel.

Back to clemency: Trump would be able, functionally, to pick and choose which clemency act to cancel or to retain; he can simply reissue clemency for specific cases.

He cannot simply reissue specific legislative acts.

Any of that autopen-related withdrawal, though, will come at very considerable political capital expenditure. As a lame duck President, Trump doesn’t have much of that. But with three-plus years left in his term, is this clemency question the place to spend that capital?

Maybe not. Almost certainly not on the matter of legislation.

Religious Bigotry

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West Virginia had a requirement that all school students get vaccinated against the Wuhan Virus (my term, not the State’s), regardless of religious views regarding vaccines or how the vaccines are structured or made or from any other religious perspective. The State permitted no religious opt-outs at all. Raleigh County Circuit Judge Michael Froble waved the BS flag at that requirement and has ruled that parents can, indeed, opt their children out of the vaccination program based on their religious beliefs.

The larger question is why a lawsuit and judicial ruling was needed in the first place.

Is the State’s bar of religious exemption demonstrative of religious bigotry by the relevant State officials? Not necessarily. Some religion-based objections aren’t actually based on religion, but those false assertions are quite rare. It is strongly suggestive of officials’ religious bigotry, though.

Arrogance of a Progressive-Democratic Party Politician

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Congressman Adam Smith (D, WA) is the only Party politician, so far, to claim to know of and to identify illegal orders issued by President Donald Trump (R).

Yeah, I think the order to blow up those boats in the Caribbean without any, you know, actual probable cause, national security justification, or any declaration of war or armed conflict by the US Congress, I think it is illegal. That’s a legitimate opinion to hold, and it’s a legitimate opinion to express.

With that, he gives the game away.

It is a legitimate opinion to hold, and it is an opinion legitimately expressed by most American citizens. Military members must get over a much higher bar in order to express their opinions of an order’s legality with a view to disobeying it or encouraging their fellows to disobey it.

The order must be adjudicated illegal, and the military member must be prepared to suffer the consequences of disobedience or of fomenting disobedience should a court determine the order legal. On the other hand, all of us citizens, all of our politicians, can yap away at will without consequence.

Smith’s opinion that an order is illegal does not make it so. That he does not recognize that in the context of the Six’ video those politicians are potentially seeking to foment disorder explicitly in the military ranks—which would be seditious—not in the political ranks, is demonstrative of Smith’s self-important arrogance.

Consolidating Bigotry

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That’s what Progressive-Democrat and Socialist Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s Mayor-elect, is moving rapidly to do. By naming Tamika Mallory to his Committee on Community Safety, set up to transition NYC to his governance, Mamdani is consciously bringing antisemitic and racist bigotry into his city government.

Mallory is a Black Lives Matter activist, a Louis Farrakhan acolyte, and a close ally of Linda Sarsour. BLM is well-known for its racist and identity politics bigotry. (Its ties to communism strongly supports Mamdani’s socialism, also.) Farrakhan likens Jews to cockroaches and considers them evil incarnate. Sarsour is infamous for her trashing of Israel because of its Jewish nature and for her more general antisemitic bigotry.

NYC residents are about to reap what they’ve sown. For the next four years they are going to live in interesting times. In spades.

Cards on the Table?

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That’s the breakthrough being touted by Just the News regarding “peace” talks between Ukraine and Russia.

This week for the first time, Kiev and Moscow articulated specific visions for a peace deal. And while they remain apart on big issues like land borders and NATO membership, the two sides have a meaningful framework that eluded past negotiations and presidents.

This is inaccurate. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been clear on Ukraine’s vision for peace, and equally specific the requirements for achieving one from the outset following the barbarian’s renewed invasion of his nation four years ago. He has demanded Russia’s departure from Ukraine and specific, material mechanisms for guaranteeing his nation’s sovereignty against renewed barbarian invasion.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has been equally clear on his requirements for peace. He has demanded recognition of his occupation of Crimea as a Russian oblast, the ceding of all of the Donbas to Russia as additional Russian oblasts, disarmament of Ukraine, and guarantees that NATO will never accept Ukraine.

It’s hard to get any more specific than these; the two sides’ cards have been on the table all along.

There’s this bit of foolishness, also, from Congressman Andy Biggs (R, AZ):

If you’ve ever negotiated anything, and virtually everybody has, if you don’t understand what you want and what the other side wants, you can never get to yes.

This operates from the false premise that “yes” by Ukraine is in any way useful or would be at all reliable given to whom and to what Ukraine would be saying “yes.” It’s not possible to say “yes” to a barbarian that routinely welches on each of its commitments, including, during its present invasion, its universal violation of every cease fire to which it has pretended to agree. That’s local. More universal is the barbarian’s routine violation of international law, particularly including the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of civilians in occupied territories and the targeting of civilians in the course of a campaign. Russia’s atrocities—rape and butchery of women and children in occupied Ukrainian cities and its targeting hospitals, churches, residential neighborhoods, and children’s schools during repeated attacks are well documented.

The real breakthrough, the only breakthrough with any security or moral validity, is to transfer to Ukraine the weapons, ammunition, and logistics it says it needs; in the numbers it says it needs them; and on the schedule it says it needs them. The UA has shown its superiority these last four years over the barbarian hordes, despite the barbarian’s superiority in numbers. The only advantage the barbarian has is that it’s far better supported by its allies, Iran and the People’s Republic of China. Ukraine could win the barbarian’s war decisively were the West, led badly by the US, to find some spine and set about supplying Ukraine at least as effectively as are the barbarians’ benefactors supplying the barbarian.