Tag Archives: freedom

Press Mindset

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This is from an AP article, but I suggest it’s typical of the press generally. The AP is reporting on a case involving the drunk driver-involved deaths of two children and the immediately subsequent shooting death of the drunk driver. The father of the two children is accused of

killing a drunk driver in a fit of rage after his two sons were fatally struck in 2012 on a rural road in Southeast Texas.

His defense attorney says [the father] is a good man, a grieving father, and not a murderer. At the same time, his defense hasn’t publicly suggested who else might be responsible for [the drunk driver]’s shooting death.

Notice that last. According to the press, the father must, if not outright prove his innocence, at least offer plausible alternatives.

No. The press’…misunderstanding…notwithstanding, no such defense obligation exists. It’s on the prosecution—the government—to prove any defendant’s guilt; no police work, no investigative work at all, is required of the defense. Full stop.

A Gun Control Loss

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The gun rights sheriff incumbent, David Clarke Jr, defeated his Democratic primary challenger for the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) County job (and he’s in because there’s no Republican challenger for the fall general election). This also had been, among other things, a referendum on ex-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control philosophy, as that one had thrown down $150,000 on TV ads in his own attempt to influence the election.

However, primary challenger Milwaukee Police Lt Chris Moews‘ own justification for gun controls demonstrates the fallacy of the gun control position:

If I have the opportunity to defend myself and my family I will do so to the best of my abilities but I’m certainly also going to call 911 if I have the ability because I need the cavalry to come and help me.

Indeed. Because the cavalry—those police on the other end of that 911 call—are minutes away, plus the time to make the call, the man on the scene is the one who must deal first with the situation.

Moreover, as Moews intimated, it might not be possible for the man on the scene to make the call, leaving him without aid in facing the threat.

And there’s Moews’ implied strawman that an armed man wouldn’t call 911 at all.

Forcing that man to remain unarmed maximizes the danger to him.

Negotiate with Terrorists?

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Democratic Party Presidential contender and current Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) had some thoughts from the Progressive side of the situation unfolding in Iraq. In supporting President Barack Obama’s tepid moves vis-à-vis ISIS, the Yezidis, and the Kurds, Warren said this:

It’s a complicated situation right now in Iraq and the president has taken very targeted actions to provide humanitarian relief that the Iraqi government requested, and to protect American citizens. But like the president, I believe that any solution in Iraq is going to be a negotiated solution, not a military solution. We do not want to be pulled into another war in Iraq.

Warren added this, exposing Progressives’ misunderstanding, generally, of what is required to destroy a terrorist entity:

It’s a very complicated situation in Iraq. The president has now taken two very targeted actions, and those two actions will change the mix of what’s happening in Iraq, and we’ll have to just monitor it[.]

Of course it’s wholly insufficient for us to toss our shoes onto the field and expect the terrorists to cut and run. A cynical man might suggest that the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party is projecting its own world view onto hardened thugs.

And just to seal the muddle, Andy Metzger of MassLive, summarized Warren’s position thusly, taking her at her word that she actually was serious:

While calling for a negotiated solution, Warren said the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is a terrorist organization and the US does not negotiate with terrorists, while leaving open the possibility the US could assist the Iraqi government negotiating with ISIS.

How, indeed, does one negotiate with terrorists? Never mind that this administration has brought this on the Iraqi people, the Kurds, and itself when it abandoned Iraq three years ago under its disingenuous claim that it was “leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.”

We’re entering a very dangerous period in the life of our nation. The Progressives of the Democratic Party simply are unable to see the error of their ways, and they want, post-2014, post-2016, to continue the obviously disastrous policies of the Obama administration.

The White House as Tax-Writing Authority

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Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew originally (originally: three weeks ago, in mid-July) acknowledged he had no authority to alter the tax implications of US businesses reincorporating overseas in order to reduce their US tax burden.

Now he’s looking at (not for) ways to “meaningfully reduce the tax benefits after inversions take place” because reducing a company’s cost structure, the legally and fiscally required behavior of any company’s managers, by making use of this “unpatriotic tax loophole” is unpatriotic. I’ll ignore the fact that what’s unpatriotic here is the usurious tax rates charged American companies and the zeal with which this administration attacks American companies for worrying about their bottom line more than they worry about government imperatives in order to get to a different point. As The Wall Street Journal put it,

So now we have a President in an election year looking for a way to raise taxes on corporations after he couldn’t get Congress to agree. Has anyone asked Treasury’s career lawyers or the Office of Legal Counsel? Someone should. And when the next President arrives in 2017, one of his first acts should be to release publicly all of the OLC memos making the legal case for Mr Obama’s many illegal acts, assuming there are any.

And if there are not, the next President should release far and wide the empty file folder that would be this administration’s lack of consultation with the law or with any government lawyers.

Ukraine, Russia, and the US

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Matthew Rojansky, Director of the Kennan Institute of the Wilson Center, had some thoughts on this during a live interview on Fox News, and repeated in Fox’ online feed. These remarks were made in the context of a warning that Russia will use the Russian surrogates’/Ukrainian separatists’ situation as a pretext to invade Ukraine to resolve a cynically made-up “humanitarian crisis.”

We don’t want a war. We cannot win a war against Russia. You know, this is not Al Qaeda. This is not the government of Saddam Hussein. This is the Russian Federation, the inheritors of the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal. We cannot get dragged into this war. But by the same token, the Ukrainians can’t win it by themselves.

If we keep going with sanctions, it’s a dead-end process. We can continue to do it for moral reasons to show that we’re doing something, but we’ve also got to have an endgame negotiation that the Russians are part of.

He’s right, and he’s wrong. He’s right that we don’t want war; no sane nation does. He’s right that Ukraine can’t win their current war by themselves.

But he’s terribly wrong where it counts. Of course, we can win a war against Russia. Indeed, he implies that Ukraine can win such a war, if only they’re not alone. No, the only way we could not win would be for us to give it up before it starts—”we can’t win” is just a dangerously defeatist mindset.

It’s that mindset, too, that is contributing so heavily to Ukraine’s current strait. Russian President Vladimir Putin has the measure of President Barack Obama and of Obama’s key cabinet players, and Putin is confident he can act as he pleases and the US will make no meaningful response. Putin is confident that we’ll do something “for moral reasons to show that we’re doing something” but that something will be confined to more wrist-slap sanctions. Putin most carefully has observed the American administration’s penchant for “leading from behind,” which many people more accurately identify as leading the retreat.

Rojansky also is wrong that the endgame negotiation must be something of which the Russians are part. Certainly, it would be nice if the Russians were part, but they really have very little useful to say in the matter until they stand down from Ukraine’s eastern border; until they stop shooting at the Ukrainian army from within Russia; until they stop supplying the…separatists…with arms, artillery, SAMs, ammunition, and so on; until they withdraw from their occupation of Crimea.

No, the right answer is to ratchet up the economic pressure on Russia with real sanctions and openly and effectively helping Ukraine (and Europe) find non-Russian sources of oil, gas, and other goods, and to ratchet up the pressure on Russia by supplying Ukraine with arms and ammunition.

And to openly and publicly recognize that the Russian nuclear threat has only the credence we choose to give it. If we’re not threatened by it, it is no threat. It is no threat because Russia does not want a war with us, either, and especially, Russia will not go nuclear over eastern Ukraine.

Update: Corrected the second paragraph, beginning “If we keep going with sanctions…,” to indicate it was part of Rojansky’s remarks, and not part of my writing.  I apologize for the error.