Tag Archives: freedom

Selling Out Ukraine

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with Russian President Vladimir Putin a few days ago in the Russian city of Sochi, which is next door to Russia-partitioned Georgia and a short Black Sea hop from Russian-occupied Crimea and eastern Ukraine.  While the two talked of many things: of cease fires—and peace keepers—and pipelines—of Iran—and deals—and things—and why the region is boiling hot (they didn’t get to flying pigs), one thing they discussed jumped out at me.  Deutsche Welle cited Merkel as insisting that

…the Minsk accord was the “only basis” to achieve peace in eastern Ukraine….

The Minsk accord (Minsk Protocol) is a 2014 “agreement” among Ukraine, Russia, and a rebel gang calling themselves Donetsk People’s Republic that implemented a cease fire in Ukraine’s Donbass region, comprised of the oblasts Donetsk and Luhansk on Ukraine’s border with Russia.  The accord codified Russia’s occupation of those two oblasts and the resulting partition of Ukraine with the rebel gang fronting for Russia.  The accord carefully did not address Russian-occupied Crimea.

Merkel plainly has walked away from the much prior (1994) Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.  This agreement consists of three included agreements that guarantee the territorial and political integrity of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, and it was signed by the US, the UK—and Russia.  The core of the Budapest Memorandum consists of these six guarantees as they pertain to Ukraine:

  1. Respect Ukrainian independence, sovereignty, and the existing borders
  2. Refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine
  3. Refrain from using economic pressure on Ukraine in order to influence its politics
  4. Seek immediate UN Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, “if [it] should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used”
  5. Refrain from the use of nuclear arms against Ukraine
  6. Consult with one another if questions arise regarding these commitments

This is Germany’s sellout of Ukraine.  We need to start correcting our own failure regarding the Budapest Memorandum.  I’ve written elsewhere of the need for a NATO-like mutual defense pact among the US, the Baltic States, Poland, and Ukraine, among others in eastern (and eventually northern) Europe.  It’s time to get a move on.

Congressional Intent

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In a piece centered on Federalism and the Supreme Court’s ruling that Congress cannot require individual States to ban sports gambling, there’s this bit at the end of the article that interests my grasshopper mind.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in concurring, protested the Court’s analysis of Congressional intent.

The Court also determined that PASPA’s [Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act] prohibition on sports gambling advertising can’t be severed from the law. But as Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his pithy concurrence, the Court’s severability analysis requires courts to make “a nebulous inquiry into hypothetical congressional intent.”

On this, I disagree with Justice Thomas. In Connecticut National Bank v Germain the Supremes held

…that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there.

If Congress had intended sports gambling advertising to be severable, it would have said so in PASPA. Congress did not say so; arguing the possibility of severability would be Thomas’ own inquiry into congressional intent.

Offensive

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Three dentists in North Carolina dressed up in traditional clothing of an American Indian, a Japanese, and a Scot in order to run an advertisement under the catchphrase “Everyone smiles in the same language!”

Oh, the hoo-raw.  SJWs crawled out through their baseboard holes on this one, proclaiming the ad to be “ignorant and offensive” and racist.

No.  What’s ignorant and offensive is the naked racism of manufacturing a beef where there is none for the sole purpose of supporting the professional victim industry.

Felons and Voting

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In general, felons have no voting rights—it’s part of their punishment for having committed their crimes.  There also are growing movements to restore voting rights to felons—they are, after all, US citizens.  (I’m eliding here felons who aren’t citizens; they have no voting rights to restore.)

It’s a debate worth having, but a couple of misunderstandings need to be cleared up first.  These misunderstandings are illustrated in a recent Wall Street Journal article.

As the midterm elections draw closer, Dameon Stackhouse is eager to cast a ballot, but he can’t under New Jersey law because he remains on parole after more than a decade behind bars for second-degree robbery.

If he’s on parole, he’s still serving his punishment for his crime; he’s only entered a new stage of that punishment.  With his punishment still in progress, he shouldn’t get his right to vote back.  On successful completion of his parole—successful completion of the punishment society has said is required for his crime—then it’s worth seriously considering reenfranchising him and others in similar situations.

And this, from Stackhouse:

We have no say [without a right to vote].  This is one of the worst things you can do to a citizen.

No, Stackhouse did this to himself with his decision to commit his crime; no one else did this to him as a citizen.  His apparent inability to accept responsibility for the outcomes he created with his misbehavior in addition to the misbehavior itself does not suggest that his rehabilitation is being entirely successful.

I am spring-loaded to restore the franchise to those who’ve successfully completed their punishment—for the vast majority of crimes, there should be an endpoint to the punishment short of death, whether by execution or old age.  But the punishment must be completed before reenfranchisement.

The Special Counsel Authorizing Letter

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House investigating committees have demanded that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein turn over his letter to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and Rosenstein has refused to do so.  Now, in a case Mueller brought against ex- and brief-Trump Campaign Manager Paul Rosenstein, the presiding Federal judge TS Ellis has demanded that Mueller turn over to him an unredacted copy of that letter, and he’s given Mueller two weeks to comply, which works out to 18 May.

We’ll see. Two weeks is much too long to give Mueller to produce his copy of Rosenstein’s authorizing letter; 36-48 hours is plenty—especially since Mueller’s team plainly has that copy always ready to hand; they are, after all, responsible persons.

Ellis also needs to be prepared to jail Mueller and possibly Rosenstein for contempt if Mueller doesn’t meet the deadline, whether Ellis’ or mine, or Rosenstein won’t allow him to, and keep them locked up until the letter is produced.

President Donald Trump could speed things along by declassifying the letter, if Mueller/Rosenstein try to hide behind that. This is a national affair, and We the People need, and have the fundamental right, to know what Government’s unelected bureaucrats are doing under the pretense that it’s in our name.