Tag Archives: culture

Hypocrisy at the State Level

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Congresswoman Mary Lou Marzian (D, Louisville, KY) has proposed—and she’s serious about it—House Bill 396, under which

Kentucky men would have to visit a doctor twice and have signed permission from their wives before obtaining a prescription for Viagra or other such drugs for erectile dysfunction[.]

She insisted

it is merely an effort to protect men’s health and ensure they are informed about a drug with potentially dangerous side effects.

“I want to protect these men from themselves,” said Marzian[.]

She compounded her hypocrisy:

This is about family values[.]

Leaving aside the fact that it isn’t government’s role to protect anyone from himself—only a Democrat insists on so intrusive a government—the lie in her claim of concern about men’s health is shown in her subsequent comments about her purpose in proposing this bill.

[S]he acknowledged the bill is a pointed response to several anti-abortion measures in the current legislative session, including Senate Bill 4, which requires a woman seeking an abortion to get counseling 24 hours in advance of the procedure from a health professional.

This bill is about family values and about men’s health? She wrote in a related op-ed for the Louisville, KY, Courier-Journal:

A rash of anti-abortion bills have been filed, and one is now law, that places extreme hardship and emotional stress upon women and strips away their rights to make choices about their health, future and well being.

And

The conservative movement sweeping Kentucky has put women in the cross hairs of its battle to take over government at all levels, and it’s time we recognize this hypocrisy for what it is.

As these legislators and our governor increase efforts to mandate their presence in our doctor’s examining rooms I believe it is time we regulate men’s reproductive choices.

No, Marzian is simply railing at those who oppose abortion, and being logically inconsistent in her plaints—and as a highly intelligent and accomplished woman she knows she’s being inconsistent, hence her hypocrisy—and placing those who oppose abortion in Kentucky in the cross hairs of her battle to intrude government into the lives of Kentucky citizens—including Kentucky’s babies.

There’s nothing in opposing abortion that concerns women’s health or their reproductive choices, there’s only concern for a human’s life, that baby’s life who hasn’t yet been born. That tale takes up after the “reproductive choice,” made voluntarily or otherwise, already has been made. Now there’s a baby whose right to life must be addressed.

Family values? Nonsense. The baby is as much a part of that family as are the mother and father. Marzian’s bill is simply another Liberal shot at those who oppose abortion; it has nothing at all to do with family values. As far as she’s concerned, the unborn baby is unimportant; the baby’s extreme hardship and emotional stress, his choices about his health, future and well being are beneath her notice.

An Appropriate Response

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Freedom from Religion Foundation cried foul after the group noticed a “God Bless America” banner that employees at a post office in Pittsburg, KS, had erected after Sep 11, 2001. A lawsuit filed by FFRF on behalf of a Pittsburg resident forced the banner down in late January[.]

This is the timidity of the local postmaster, or perhaps it’s the political correctness of his bosses up the government food chain.

However.

When news of the banner’s banishment spread, a business in the area, Jake’s Fireworks, printed 1,200 “God Bless America” yard signs and 300 banners. Jake’s gave away all of the signs within 45 minutes, according to the Post.

This is entirely appropriate.

More Disingenuousness in Government

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Mens rea is a criminal law concept that says in order to commit a crime, a man must have intended to commit the crime; he must have had a “guilty mind.” Lack of this guilty mind doesn’t mean the man didn’t do anything wrong; he may well have, and a trial and a jury can make that determination—it would be civil wrong, for which he still would be held accountable on that jury deliberation. He just didn’t commit a crime.

In addition to the current move in the Senate to reform sentencing and jail terms, some Senators want to clarify the specifics of mens rea in criminal law.

The House Judiciary Committee last year passed a bill on mens rea…reform that would create a default standard for criminal intent in instances when no standard exists. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte would like to see it pass along with sentencing reform.

However.

Both Senator Chuck Grassley (R, IA) and President Barack Obama (D) disagree with mens rea reform and for largely the same reasons, and they’re moving to block this reform.

Grassley is blocking it because

…strengthening the requirements for criminal intent would make it harder to convict corporations than under the current amorphous state of the law.

Obama wants to block it because

…a default standard of criminal intent would make it harder to prosecute companies for regulatory violations.

This is a cynical reading of Government’s role in trials. The purpose of bringing charges and having trials isn’t so prosecutors can get convictions and look good in the shower or otherwise have something to show for their taxpayer-funded paychecks. The purpose of standards of guilt or innocence in criminal law—or civil law, to stretch for a time the definitions of guilt and innocence—is not to stack the deck against the defendant.

The purpose of these things is to provide justice for the people wronged and for the people accused.

Full stop.

A Thought on Gun Rights

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The city of Lowell, MA, and its police chief have one. It’s dead wrong, too. The city’s new law, pushed by its Police Superintendent, William Taylor,

requires residents applying for a license to carry handguns to write “an essay” and pay upwards of $1,100 for training.

Aside from the outlandish cost being just another means of denying licenses to American citizens (training required in Texas, for instance, costs around $300), there’s this, from police department spokesman, Captain Timothy Crowley:

If you want a license to carry a firearm unrestricted wherever you want and whenever you want, the superintendent is just looking for some documentation as to why. That is not unreasonable to most people.

Yes, it is unreasonable to most people. It’s also wholly and cynically unconstitutional. Here’s what the 2nd Amendment says on the matter:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Notice that. There’s nothing in there that says, “Shall not be infringed unless Government disapproves the man’s reason.” There’s nothing in there that even grants Government a right to ask, much less to know, a citizen’s reason to keep and bear his Arms. Just for clarity’s sake, too, the Supreme Court has ruled that this is entirely an individual right, and not a collective one.

No. The only legitimate way to require licenses to keep and bear is, after training, on a will issue basis.

Full stop.

An Opportunity

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…in the hands of competent authority.

ISIS fighters who fled to the terror group’s Iraqi stronghold of Mosul after being defeated in Ramadi were burned alive in the town square, sources told FoxNews.com, in an unmistakable message to fighters who may soon be defending the northern city from government forces.

Several residents of Mosul recounted the grisly story for stateside relatives, describing the deadly reception black clad jihadists got when they made it to Mosul….

Notice that. These were guys who’d either rejected the martyrdom of dying in place or who had recognized a lost position and departed in order to resume the fight in another place and time.

Here’s the opportunity: guys like this aren’t going to be allowed, in Tacitus’ words, to “fight and run away, To turn and fight another day.” No, they’ll die, anyway, a grisly death of the sort reserved for the enemies of the Daesh. So: make it easy for them to surrender rather than retreat.

Of course, that would require their Arab or Kurdish captors, of whatever sect of Islam, to treat them with some semblance of humanity. But that’s another opportunity, this time for Arabs and Kurds, of whatever sect of Islam, themselves.