Special Treatment?

Or just another sordid example of the Left’s double standard?

Recall the 29 cops, including SWAT members who did the dawn raid on an old man’s home in order to arrest that dangerous criminal Roger Stone.

Compare that with the treatment of a member of the Hollywood elite, Lori Loughlin, who’s accused of bribery and other crimes related to the current college admissions scandal.  She’s being permitted to present herself at a local police station at a time of her convenience pursuant to the allegations.

Loughlin has made arrangements to surrender when she returns to Los Angeles, TMZ, the celebrity news site, reported.

It may be true that Loughlin “working in Vancouver, Canada” at the time arrest warrants went out, but Canadian authorities have shown themselves capable of on-the-spot arrests—like with a Huawei executive.

She has, eventually, found it personally convenient and reported to an FBI station.

Hmm….

Wisconsin Progressive-Democrats for Choice

The newly elected Wisconsin Governor, Progressive-Democrat Tony Evers, has made plain the Party’s definition of “choice.”  Choose to do it our way.

Evers’ current budget proposal

caps voucher enrollment in 2020, entirely phases out the program for special-needs students and blocks the creation of new independent charter schools.

No need for all those charter schools.  Progressive-Democrats want to avoid confusing us with such a plethora of decisions to make; they’ll protect us by deciding for us.

With not too many apologies to a hypothetical Joseph:

My dear fellow, there are in fact only so many choices the mind can contemplate in the course of an evening. …there are simply too many choices, that’s all. Cut a few, and it will be perfect.

Witness Tampering?

Michael Cohen told House investigators this week [the week ending 8 Mar] that staff for Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D, CA) traveled to New York at least four times to meet with him for over 10 hours immediately before last month’s high-profile public testimony….

Schiff and his staff conducted these “meetings” in secret and without minority party representation (here Republican) present.

Then

One by one…Cohen fielded questions on precisely the same topics that the sources told Fox News he discussed with Schiff’s staff during the sit-downs in New York.

Sure looks and sounds like tampering.

Expanding Government for Freedom

That’s the Progressive-Democrats’ Orwellian claim about their HR1 bill, just passed on party lines.  It’s for the children, too.  If it saves just one life….  Here is some of what’s in the bill:

Mandates a nationalized system to publicly finance federal elections. It would allocate federal money to match certain small-dollar donations 6-to-1 and deposit those funds in campaign accounts.

We already can designate, on our tax returns, a donation to a Federal fund for Presidential campaigns; the monies to be divided equally between the political parties.  That’s been a complete failure over the years, with the amounts designated falling, and private money going directly to the parties, candidates, PACs, etc, expanding. The Progressive-Democrats’ answer is to “correct” that by forcing us to donate to political campaigns in even larger amounts, whether we want to or not.

Requires several classes of politically active organizations, including tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups, to disclose donors who have given $10,000 or more during an election cycle.

Because anonymity is as anathema to Progressive-Democrats as it is critical to free speech and to liberty generally.

Changes the membership of the Federal Election Commission to five members, with the president’s party in the majority, from its current six members, evenly split between Democratic and Republican appointees.

Because balancing the membership also is anathema to Progressive-Democrats: they desperately need a purely partisan facility for overseeing our elections.

Fortunately, Republicans still have a majority in the Senate.

A Few Impertinent Questions about Hate Speech

One of the things French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed for strengthening of the European Union’s governance—the EU’s Government—is

enhanced protection against hate speech

In particular, in his op-ed For European renewal [emphasis Macron’s]

creating a European Agency for the Protection of Democracies, which will provide each Member State with European experts…European rules banish all incitements to hate and violence from the Internet

This is to be done under the guise of

respect for the individual is the bedrock of our civilisation of dignity.

My questions aren’t specific to Macron, though, or to the EU—they’re general in their application.

How is it respect for the individual that Government tells him he’s too mind-numblingly stupid to decide for himself to what speech he should attend and what speech he should ignore, to what speech he should provide answer—and how? To tell him he’s too cowardly to respond coherently and that Government must…protect…him?

How long will it be, do you think, before Government decides that speech that counters hate speech—Louis Brandeis’ instruction—is itself hate speech, thereby allowing the original to stand unchallenged?

When will we recognize that Government’s enforced silence is not, cannot be, the answer to “hate speech?”

When will we recognize that the enforced silence of Macron’s proposal is itself hate speech?