Tag Archives: ethics

It Shouldn’t Have To

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The Wall Street Journal house opinion subheadline tells the tale:

The Supreme Court asks for action under laws against picketing homes.

Federal law prohibits protests in front of demonstrations outside judges’ homes with a view to influencing their rulings, or to harass them for rulings rendered.

Virginia State law

bans picketing private residences or assembling to “disrupt any individual’s right to tranquility in his home.”

Maryland has a similar law that

prohibits picketing “in front of or adjacent to any private residence.”

Critics insist that the Federal law is an unconstitutional infringement on free speech. Others claim that the Virginia and Maryland laws aren’t content neutral—both allow labor dispute pickets—and so are similarly unenforceable.

The claims are risible. These are the laws on the books, and no court has yet ruled on their constitutionality. Until that happens—and it could, were some backbone found somewhere and the laws actually enforced and subsequently challenged—they are the law of the land. They must be enforced.

Full stop.

DoJ’s Progressive-Democrat Attorney General Merrick Garland’s blatant refusal to enforce the Federal law is clear, present, and more than ample grounds for impeaching him for his deliberate refusal to perform his duties.

The Maryland and Virginia Governors’ hesitance is cowardice and should be an item of consideration at the ballot box when the time comes.

Energy Crisis—It’s What We Deserve

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Ignorant peasants that we are, we’re too dependent on fossil fuels. High prices and energy shortages are our due. The words of folks like the Sierra Club’s personage are just—to coin a phrase—code words for “stop arguing, and do it our way.”

Here’s Kelly Sheehan, Sierra Club’s Senior Director of Energy Campaigns:

Concerns about energy shortages in Europe and the spiking fossil fuel costs Americans are experiencing are both symptoms of our continued reliance on fossil fuels[.]

Shape up, guys. She added this:

As long as we rely on volatile global commodities like oil and gas, we’ll always be vulnerable to geopolitics and the whims of greedy fossil fuel executives.

Yeah, because making profits is so evil. Never mind that profit is what starts and grows companies, starts and grows supporting companies, starts and grows employment, starts and grows companies that cater to the needs and wishes of those employees—creates and increases prosperity all around.

Oh, and that volatility? Much, if not most, of that comes from the uncertain, varied, and varying regulations applied, adjusted, withdrawn by virtue-signaling government personnel and from the uncertainty of granting (and later withdrawing) exploration and production leases and permits for a host of fossil fuel-related projects also effected by virtue-signaling government personnel.

Geopolitics? The instability here is amply illustrated by the Netherlands government’s attack on farming(!).

Inflation and the high cost of energy, from gasoline and diesel to fuel our transportation and shipping vehicles to electricity and natural gas to heat and cool our homes and work places, are most assuredly on the ballot this fall and will be there still in the fall of 2024.

“Technical Expertise”

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In The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v EPA, in which the Court ruled that the EPA had badly overstepped its bounds, the Editors pointed out that

[t]he dissenters bemoan that Congress lacks the expertise to regulate technical subjects such as climate change.

This is a cynically offered sophistry by those activist Justices. There’s nothing preventing an inexpert Congress from consulting experts. Congress does, after all, hold the occasional hearing on matters related to legislation under consideration.

California Progressive-Democrats Strike Again

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This time, it’s the California’s Attorney General, the Progressive-Democrat Rob Bonta, who released the personally identifiable information of thousands of California’s firearm owners and concealed carry permit holders.

In the name of transparency, he claims. Oh, and that much transparency was an accident, he claims.

The information “accidentally” released includes

the person’s full name, race, home address, date of birth, and date their permit was issued. The data also shows the type of permit issued, indicating if the permit holder is a member of law enforcement or a judge.

This is what Bonta said in his Press Release, put out last Monday, regarding his “transparency” move:

The dashboard [Bonta’s 2022 Firearms Dashboard Portal] is accessible though DOJ’s OpenJustice Data Platform. The announcement will improve transparency and information sharing for firearms-related data and includes broad enhancements to the platform to help the public access data on firearms in California, including information about the issuance of Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) permits….

You bet he broadly enhanced public access to data about firearm ownership and concealed carry permit holders.

This sort of thing doesn’t happen by accident. Bonta knows who is in the IT section of the California DoJ that he runs. He knows who did the software adjustment to release the data from the department’s concealed carry permit holder database. That those folks have not been fired for cause, much less arrested by his California Bureau of Investigation or Bureau of Firearms agents, speaks volumes about Bonta’s role in this attack on honest American citizens, who also are citizens of California.

That Bonta hasn’t resigned now that his release (yes, his release—he’s the one in charge; he’s the one who authorized the release) has been exposed says volumes about his continued approval of the release.

This is a continuation of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s attack on our 2nd Amendment rights, just a few days after the Supreme Court upheld them, explicitly, in striking down New York’s law requiring a citizen to get government permission to exercise his right by satisfying a government bureaucrat that he has a “need” and is a proper—in the bureaucrat’s eyes—citizen.

Update: Corrected the opening sentence, which had mistakenly omitted the first half due to a copy/paste fit of sloppiness.

Wuhan Virus Lethality in Children

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A thought on this. Using data from the CDC, Fox News points out that children

aged 0-17 make up about 22.3% of the US population but have accounted for about 0.1% of all Wuhan Virus [my term] deaths.

According to the CIA’s World Factbook, the US population is 337.3 million; those 22.3%, then, amount to 75.2 million children. According to worldometer, there have been (as of 25 Jun 22) a skosh over 1 million total deaths in the US from or related to the virus.

That works out to [0.001 x 1,000,000] 1,000 deaths among those children. Which works out to a mortality rate of a tiny skosh over 0.1% for children overall—not a likelihood given a case or a likelihood given an infection.

That puts the likelihood of a child dying from the Wuhan Virus down in the range of that child getting a serious side effect from one of the Virus’ vaccines.

That absolutely makes the decision to vaccinate a child a matter solely for the parent and doctor (and perhaps an older child) to decide and not for any government to require through CDC “guidelines.”

In fact, vaccinating a child really seems indicated only for those children with serious comorbidities which this virus might potentiate. That’s the only metric worth weighing against the (low) probability of one of those side effects.