Of What are they Afraid?

President Donald Trump has formed his commission to look into national-scale voter fraud, as promised, and that commission has asked each of the several States for a potful of voter roll information.  Even though the commission has asked for a broad range of data, it has emphasized that it wants only the data that are publicly available according to the respective States’ laws.

Nevertheless, a significant number of States have chosen to refuse to supply the data.  Virginia Governor Terry McAuliff (D), for instance, wondered with a straight face “what voter fraud?  Who—us?”

I have no intention of honoring this request. Virginia conducts fair, honest, and democratic elections, and there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in Virginia[.] … At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump’s alternative election facts, and at worst is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla also has refused.

…not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally.

Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes:

Kentucky will not aid a commission that is at best a waste of taxpayer money and at worst an attempt to legitimize voter suppression efforts across the country[.]

Look who’s prejudging the outcome of an investigation that’s just getting underway.

I fail to understand why these folks want to obstruct the investigation.  After all, what better way to shut down Trump than to show, via his own commission, that his voter fraud beef is bogus?  Unless the beef is valid, and these guys have something to hide.

Naw.  Couldn’t be.

Look Who’s Talking

Congressmen Jamie Raskin (D, MD), Sheila Jackson Lee (D, TX), and Anthony Brown (D, MD), and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D, DC) are pushing a bill that would remove President Donald Trump under the 25th Amendment because, as these Progressive-Democrats insist, Trump is mentally unfit for office.

Indeed, Raskin has said he’s been thinking about this bill since he was elected last fall.  He insists now

This is a president who seems increasingly at odds with everyone and everything around him[.]

With no trace of understanding the irony of this person making this claim after having refused to attend the President’s inauguration.  In fact, the only persons Trump is at odds with are Progressive-Democrats like Raskin and his fellows in both houses of Congress, and that only because they’ve made it their business, through their leaders Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), to oppose everything Trump or Republican.

Notice a pattern there?

Paranoia: typically includes thinking of a persecutory nature, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. Making false accusations and the general distrust of others also frequently accompany paranoia.

This is a textbook description of the Progressive-Democrats’ mindset ever since they lost the elections last fall, including this time the Presidential election.  This has been what the Progressive-Democrats in Congress have been doing since the Trump administration took office, with one specious (to be generous) charge after another: of “Russia collusion,” of “interfering with Comey’s investigation,” of “Trump obstructing justice,” of “Republicans will kill thousands of people with their health care reform,” of “Republicans only want to give tax breaks to the rich,” all at the expense of doing the people’s business in Congress.

Plainly, there is need of such a bill.  But it needs to be aimed at members of Congress who have put their irrational conspiracy theories ahead of their duties to the point some members are no longer capable even of high functioning.

The Meaning of “Is”

The four liberal Justices on the Supreme Court are still confused.  One of the underreported (the Wall Street Journal did its part here) end-of-term decisions that the Supreme Court announced was its ruling in California Public Employees’ Retirement System v ANZ Securities, Inc.  The Court held that the law means what it says, neither more nor less.

The case revolved around whether Calpers could proceed with a 2011 complaint over securities the pension fund purchased from offerings in 2007 and 2008. The Securities Act of 1933 says that in “no event” shall an action be brought “more than three years after the security was bona fide offered to the public.”

But Calpers’ 2011 filing was too late; it was past that three-year limit (even if only by months relative to the 2008 offerings).  Not minding how special Calpers is (a legend in its own mind as my wife puts it), the Supreme Court held that

the three-year limit “admits of no exception” and “creates a fixed bar against future liability[.]”

Interestingly, the ruling was only by a 5-4 vote.  The liberal faction of the Court was just as self-important, or perhaps confused, as Calpers in disdaining the law: with their four votes they ignored, or were confused by, the meanings of “no event” and of “three years.”

Sanctuary Cities

For the Left it means sanctuary from inconvenient laws.  Nevertheless, the House has passed two bills aimed at eliminating such sanctuary by reducing the ability of local cities and counties to give sanctuary to illegal aliens.  One such is the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act, which looks to persuade—notice that: not force, as many on the Left insist it does—locals to hold folks in jail who’ve already been arrested by locals for local violations for up to 48 hours in response to an ICE detainer.  Kate Steinle was murdered by an illegal alien who had just been released—deliberately in contradiction of an ICE request.  Opponents, though, insist that

cooperation [with ICE] would undermine trust in law enforcement in immigrant communities….

This is just cynical: requiring that laws be obeyed (NSCA, after all, only requires existing procedure be followed) undermines respect for law and law enforcement.  Sure.

The other bill, “Kate’s Law,” for the unfortunate Ms Steinle, whose murderer was a five-times deported and reentered illegally alien, would successively increase the price of repeatedly illegally reentering the US after deportation.  The protests from the Progressive-Democrats in Congress are just as loud and foolish on this one.

It’s stupid, it has nothing to do with the criminal act that was done against Kate Steinle, which was a terrible thing[.]

Except that it has everything to do with that “terrible thing.”  Had the law been in effect at the time, it’s possible—likely, even—that Steinle’s multiply-deported and reentered murderer would have been in jail at time and Steinle would be alive today.  Of course, maybe not, too, but as the Progressive-Democrats are wont to say, “If it saves just one life….”

Oh, wait….

Fake News

During a recent White House press briefing, the White House press representative Sarah Huckabee Sanders was answering a question from another reporter, when Brian Karem, of the Prince Georges County Sentinel, interrupted her and his colleague (I suppose his words were more important than others’ so he was going to say them regardless of who actually was speaking) to whine about the NLMSM being called out by the Evil Administration for press’ penchant for publishing misleading rumors disguised as fact.

You’re inflaming everybody right now with those words[.]

Huckabee Sanders didn’t dignify his arrogant rudeness with a response.

Karem took his beef to MSNBC News and Chris Matthews’ show:

There are reporters who have given their lives to get news to the public and to be labeled as “dishonest” and “fake news” rankles me[.]

Indeed there have been reporters who’ve sacrificed their lives, sometimes via miserable and lingering deaths, to get news to the public.  The whining, worse, today’s inflaming pseudo-journalism and the dishonesty of reporters who print deliberately unsubstantiated rumors purveyed by carefully anonymous “sources” sullies and insults the memory of those reporters.

Guys like Karem rankle me.  But he has gotten his 15 minutes of fame with his rant.