Tag Archives: ethics

I Disagree

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(Surprise.)

Oklahoma’s Attorney General John O’Connor (R) thinks banning “assault weapons” (whatever those are in the real world) looks like a big action, but it really isn’t.

Banning assault weapons looks like it’s a big action, but it really isn’t a big impact. We’re going to dance around all this, Neil, for a long time, but the fact is it’s criminals and people with some type of either long-term or temporary mental illness or depression. That’s the culprit. Only those people shoot people outside of our military.

He’s wrong. While such a ban would have little impact on availability to criminals and the insane, it would have a very large impact on us average Americans‘ ability to see to our own needs and purposes.

But the truly large impact would be on our Constitution and so on our individual rights (and duties). If allowed to stand, such a ban would degrade our 2nd Amendment, weakening it against additional and steadily broadening bans until our 2nd Amendment no longer exists in any material form.

On the Matter of the Capital Police…

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…officer entering a Republican Congressman’s Capital Building offices and photographing his writings on his office white board. There’s this from the Capital Police Department Inspector General:

The officer reported that during a routine patrol he found the door to [Congressman Troy (R, TX] Nehls’ office was wide open and “nothing was being used to prop the door open.” The officer said he entered to ensure there was no danger, then discovered the writings on the white board and photographed them because he considered them suspicious.
But the inspector general reviewed the doors to Nehls’ office and could not replicate keeping any of the congressman’s office doors open without having them propped by an item.
“All three doors only opened inward into the office suite and would close automatically when released,” the IG noted. “All three doors also automatically locked when closed during the examination.
“The only method of keeping one of these doors open on its own would be to prop it open with an object or to set the lock bolt in place when the door was open, in which case the door would only partially close due to the lock bolt preventing the door from fully closing.”

The officer personally considered what was written on the white board—legislative plans, according to Nehls—”suspicious.” And he lied about the door being wide open and unpropped.

Hmm….

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

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Germany and France have two of them. They were mentioned (although not as such) in a Wall Street Journal piece centered on Russia’s slow grind gains in Ukraine’s Donbas.

The first self-fulfilling prophecy:

Germany and France, which have sent limited heavy weapons so far, are skeptical about whether Ukraine can realistically drive the invading Russian army back to its positions when the war began on February 24.

Which Germany and France are making all the more difficult by their decision to withhold serious amounts of weapons and ammunition from Ukraine.

The second self-fulfilling prophecy:

Berlin and Paris are particularly anxious to avoid an accidental escalation into a direct clash with Russia….

Which surrenders the initiative to Russia and guarantees their continued backing down by telling Putin that such threats work.

We really need a mutual defense alliance with the Three Seas Initiative and a redeployment of American forces out of Germany into Poland and the Baltics.

What’s the Logic?

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President Joe Biden (D) has decided to forgive all $5.8 billion of the loans outstanding still held by the folks who went to any of the Corinthian Colleges institutions.

[T]he remaining 560,000 borrowers will be eligible for automatic discharges of their remaining Corinthian federal student-loan debt. All remaining federal loans held by anyone who attended a Corinthian school between its founding in 1995 and its 2015 closure are eligible.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona:

As of today, every student deceived, defrauded, and driven into debt by Corinthian Colleges can rest assured that the Biden-Harris administration has their back and will discharge their federal student loans[.]

Either the Corinthian students were cheated, or they were not; I have questions. Notice that I’m eliding the question, here, of why us average American taxpayers should be on the hook for the misbehaving Corinthian Colleges’ pecadilloes.

Why does only some of the debt—the unpaid balances—get canceled? Why don’t the amounts already paid by those students with remaining debt balances also get returned?

Why aren’t the Corinthian students who paid off their debt—and there are quite a number—eligible for recompense?

Is Biden actually saying, with a straight face, that the students were cheated only to the extent they still owe money?

Help me understand the logic of this.

It’s All About the Power

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DoJ has decided to appeal US District Judge Kathryn Kimball’s (Middle District of Florida) lifting CDC’s mandate requiring masks on airplanes, buses, and in transit hubs. The judge’s reasoning was that the mandate exceeded CDC’s authority and so was unlawful.

DOJ’s objection and reason for appeal is highly instructive.

None of the district court’s quarrels with the CDC order comes close to showing that the CDC has acted outside the “zone of reasonableness.”

And (as paraphrased by Reuters)

the CDC findings in early 2021 provided “ample support for the agency’s determination that there was good cause to make the order effective without delay.”

What the law actually allows or bars be damned. Law is irrelevant; Government definitions of “reasonableness” is all. No, we won’t work to change the law; no, we won’t try to convince our fellow Americans—those beneath us—to change the law.

This goes hand-in-glove with this Progressive-Democratic Party-run government’s decision to appeal the order barring lifting Title 42. “We know better. Leave us the power.”