Questions for Biden

Mollie Hemingway has quite a few over at The Federalist. Read them all.

I have a couple more:

Joe—can I call ya Joe?—you’ve said the new Georgia voting law is Jim Crow on steroids because, in part, it closes voting polls at 5pm. Quote the paragraph in the law that does that.

Joe, you’ve said the new Georgia voting law is too restrictive and suppressive of voters. Compare Georgia’s voting law with Delaware’s on:

  • number of days for early voting
  • no excuse absentee ballots (compare with New York’s voting law, too)

Joe, identify the party that invented Jim Crow laws.

One Party Reign

Congressman Don Beyer (D, VA), Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, has this on working with Republicans to do things (assuming “things” need doing, which isn’t always the case, especially by Government):

I would personally prefer that it [President Joe Biden’s multi-trillion dollar “infrastructure” plan] was fully paid for but I’m not going to insist on it. If we can get it half paid for, that’s a huge step forward….

Debt profusion doesn’t matter. It’s only money.

Working with Republicans on actual infrastructure? Here’s Beyer again:

[W]e’re not going to not do it because they won’t come along. … But at the end of the day, if they’re going to say no, then we will proceed with the reconciliation.

Come along. Either do things our way, quietly, or we’ll simply ignore you. That’s the Progressive-Democrat view of unity.

And it’s not just on infrastructure. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) is pushing for robo-reconciliation. Here’s the current rule [emphasis added]:

Under the 1974 Budget Act, Congress once each fiscal year can pass via simple majority vote a budget resolution for federal revenue and outlays.

And

Mr Schumer’s office is telling the Senate parliamentarian he wants more. His claim rests on Section 304 of the Budget Act, which allows for “a concurrent resolution on the budget which revises or reaffirms the concurrent resolution on the budget for such fiscal year most recently agreed to.” In English, Mr Schumer says he should be able to pass more bills with a mere 51 votes as “revisions” to underlying budget resolutions.

No need to talk to Republicans at all on money matters. They’re obstructionist tightwads, anyway. Again, it’s only money. Especially since it’s OPM.

Progressive-Democrats aren’t interested in bipartisanship.

Pesky Democracy

We’ll have none of that here. Much too noisy. Much too disordered. Much to great a risk to our rule.

And so the People’s Republic of China has extended its despotism further into Hong Kong.

China has sharply reduced the number of directly elected seats in Hong Kong’s legislature in a setback for the democracy movement. The changes were announced Tuesday after a two-day meeting of China’s top legislature.
In the new make-up, the legislature will be expanded to 90 seats, and only 20 will be elected by the public. Currently, 35 seats, or half of the 70-seat legislature, are elected.
China’s top legislature approved amendments to Hong Kong’s constitution on Tuesday that will give Beijing more control over the makeup of the city’s legislature.

Those 20 will be carefully selected by the PRC’s Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress:

Local national-security officials will also get effective veto power over election candidates, allowing authorities to bar opposition figures from elected office.

This is not the behavior of a civilized, much less enlightened, nation. It is, though, of a piece with the barbarism of genocide against the Uyghurs, the occupation of Tibet and the South China Sea, and the threats of war against the Republic of China.

What’s Important in a Jury

The jury in the Derek Chauvin case, concerning the cop who’s accused of murdering George Floyd, is seated, and much is being made of its “diversity.”

…settled on [the first] 13 jurors, including five men and eight women in the trial against Derek Chauvin. Of those, seven identified themselves as white, four as Black, and two as multiracial.

And

The seated jurors include a chemist, an auditor, a nurse, a nonprofit executive, and a retiree. At least four of the 13 are married, and one is engaged. Two identified themselves as single parents, including one woman who said she is a widow.

And

The jury is significantly more racially and ethnically diverse than the general population in both Minnesota as a whole and in Hennepin County….

Never mind that what our legal system promises—it’s carved in stone above the entrance to our Supreme Court building—equal justice under law. Nothing about specially identified subgroups in that promise.

Never mind that our Constitution promises—requires—the equal protection of the laws for all Americans:

nor shall any State…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws

Nothing in there, either, about specially identified subgroups of Americans.

Never mind that our Constitution further promises—requires—that jurors comprise an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed. Nothing in here about specially identified subgroups of Americans.

Never mind that the only diversity actually required—or necessary—is that the jurors be US citizens. There’s nothing about skin color, business role, sex, marital status, or anything else in any of that.

The identity politics—in our courts, yet—that is being so enthusiastically touted is nothing more than the racist segregation of identity politics, dividing by design particular subsets of American citizens from each other.

As a Supreme Court Chief Justice once said, the way to end discrimination is to stop discriminating. Until that happens, neither the people nor the defendant can have any expectation of a truly fair and impartial trial, with a believable outcome.

Arrogance

The head of the Progressive-Democratic Party, President Joe Biden, has no immediate plans to visit our southern border in person and see for himself the crisis exploding there.

…he intends to travel to the southern border “at some point,” telling reporters that he is in no rush to visit because “I know what’s going in those facilities.”

He already knows what’s going on; he doesn’t want to be confused with facts.

Or, Biden is channeling Gold Hat:

Facts? I ain’t got no facts. I don’t need no facts. I don’t have to see any stinkin’ facts!

Wow.