Tag Archives: ethics

“Rights” and Precedent

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There is considerable discussion concerning whether a constitutional right to an abortion existed and was taken away by the Supreme Court’s just released ruling on Dobbs or whether, as Justice Alito emphasized in his Dobbs opinion for the Court that such a right never existed, it was merely the creation of Roe and then claimed again in Casey.

And therein lies the point of this post.

There is no right to an abortion contained in our Constitution, whether couched in the 14th Amendment or in any other part of the document—not literally, not figuratively, not encompassed in any penumbra.

Nevertheless, the claimed right has been, and rightly so, the law of the land since the 1973 Roe ruling, as are all Supreme Court rulings the law of the land from the moment of publication of the ruling. But it’s not a very durable law.

That’s a problem with Court rulings, a problem closely analogous with Presidential executive actions: Executive Orders and the like. Any “right” created by a Court ruling can be withdrawn by a subsequent Court ruling, just as any Presidential executive action can be withdrawn by a subsequent President.

The rights acknowledged in our Constitution, in contrast, can only be undone by a supermajority of us American citizens, through a supermajority of our States.

A Supreme Court precedent should be deeply respected. However, as Justice Clarence noted in his Gamble v United States concurrence,

In my view, the Court’s typical formulation of the stare decisis standard does not comport with our judicial duty under Article III because it elevates demonstrably erroneous decisions [whosever view of erroneous, I add]…over the text of the Constitution and other duly enacted federal law.

And [emphasis added]

This view of stare decisis follows directly from the Constitution’s supremacy over other sources of law—including our own precedents.

By their nature, no precedent can be the final word, else we’d have neither Brown nor Citizens United nor Janus, and we’d have only war to which to resort regarding rulings like Dred Scott and the war organizations like Ruth Sent Us and Jane’s Revenge currently threaten over Dobbs, that politicians like Chuck Schumer threatened if Court rulings didn’t go his way, that Cori Bush and Maxine Waters currently threaten, and that Federal government officials like Merrick Garland and Joe Biden indirectly threaten with their refusal to enforce Court rulings of which they personally disapprove.

Voice Mimicry

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Amazon is bragging about a new capability it’s developed for its Alexa service. It’s bad enough that Amazon can eavesdrop on private, often highly personal, conversations through its Alexa device.

Now the device can mimic voices—including those of deceased persons—and Amazon says, with a straight face, that this is so cool.

On the other hand, so much for voice recognition as part of a two- (or more) factor authentication regime.

And, here’s another forger’s tool brought to market.

I suppose this might be an improvement in certain circles….

Airbus Thinks It’s Special

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Or at least, more important than the existence of a nation.

Airbus is pushing against sanctions on Russian titanium sales, amid a flurry of restrictions on the export of other Russian goods ranging from vodka to steel.

After all,

About 65% of Airbus’s titanium supply comes from Russia, according to consulting firm AlixPartners.

Of course, Russia should be let off the hook regarding its naked and barbaric invasion of Ukraine, and Ukraine should be made to pay with its existence for Airbus’ consciously developed business decisions. Airbus Chief Executive Guillaume Faury:

We think sanctioning titanium from Russia would be sanctioning ourselves[.]

And

Russian titanium sales are “one of the few areas of business where it is in the interest of no party to disrupt the current situation,” he told reporters at an aviation gathering in Doha, Qatar.

Because Ukraine and Ukrainians are just bits of trivia and flotsam, not worth the notice. This is in stark contrast with Boeing:

…before the war purchased about one third of its titanium from Russia, said at the onset of the invasion of Ukraine that it would suspend its titanium joint venture in Russia and halt purchases of the metal from there.

It’s true enough that Russia is the second largest producer of titanium in the world (behind the People’s Republic of China). On the other hand, Ukraine is—or was before the barbarian’s invasion—the fifth largest producer of titanium.

However, Russia doesn’t even make the list of the top fourteen nations with titanium reserves.

Pulling Patriotic Products

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Harris Teeter, a supermarket chain, used to sell, among other things, products that were distinctly pro-American—things with slogans like “Give me liberty or give me death” and “America, love it or leave it.”

Then a customer complained about their presence on store shelves—they were insensitive, after all, in light of recent mass shootings. Apparently, being pro-American, being patriotic, is insensitive today. Never mind that slogans like these have been around for decades and all the way back to the runup to our Revolutionary War.

Harris Teeter promptly folded.

Thanks for reaching out. As soon as these items were brought to our attention we put a recall request into place and these items are being removed from all store locations.
We appreciate your concern[.]

Not to be outdone, another person complained to Kroger, a chain of supermarkets and department stores, about the presence on its shelves of coozies with Arms Change, Rights Don’t printed on them. Not to be outdone by Harris Teeter, Kroger promptly folded and pulled the coozies.

Harris Teeter and Kroger may think this is a sound business decision, but it’s likely they’ve badly misread their customer base. In any event, it’s certainly true that the recall is decidedly unpatriotic and amoral.

Maybe it’s time we Americans educated these two store chains about the nature of their customer base by no longer being their customers.

Border Control Failure

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…by our Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden and his pet (Harry Reid’s term) DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas:

Lawmakers in Congress are sounding alarm after 15 illegal migrants with suspected terrorists [sic] ties were caught crossing the border in a single month, raising worries that some might eventually reach the stage of launching an attack.

Failure? Customs and Border Protection agents caught them, didn’t they? How is that a failure?

Congressman Andy Biggs (R, AZ) said border agents are increasingly overwhelmed processing the nearly quarter million illegal migrants who are crossing monthly and that means more dangerous players are sneaking across perilously undetected.
“You have probably 80,000 to 100,000 people coming into the country that we don’t interact with, we don’t we see them, we don’t stop them,” Biggs told Just the News.

That’s a rough estimate, to be sure—”don’t see” means don’t see. However, say it’s an overestimate by 100%—that’s still 40,000-50,000 illegal aliens not interacted with at the border, and that’s a large population within which terrorists could be mixed and go undetected and so uncaught. It only took 19 terrorists to perpetrate 9/11. On the other hand, if Biggs’ estimate is an underestimate by half, the number of terrorists getting in could be much larger.

That doesn’t get to the so-called got-aways—illegal aliens spotted crossing our border but who escape capture and succeed in penetrating to our interior and secreting themselves. By Mayorkas’ own April testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee, there were nearly 390,000 got-aways in FY21. In April 2022 alone, there were 58,000 got-aways, nearly double the monthly average of Mayorkas’ FY21 admission. How many of those got-aways are terrorists or have terrorist ties?

Catching 15 potential terrorists out of all of that is no success. Not at all.