Tag Archives: freedom

That Was The Point

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The subheadline on a Sunday Wall Street Journal article says it all.

European voters have viewed the process so negatively that even EU-skeptic parties have mostly dropped talk of leaving the bloc or the euro

That was the entire motive for Brussels’ extended bad faith pseudo-negotiations with Great Britain after those uppity citizens voted to go out from the European Union. To be sure, Brit politicians, who insisted they Knew Better than their subordinate citizens, contributed to the mess with their own combination of arrogance and incompetent negotiating, but they just played into Brussels’ hands, they did not create the chaos.

Brussels, with its antics, has successfully cowed other nations that were restive and contemplating leaving into sitting down and shutting up.

That could change if the UK secures a trade deal with the EU that gives it greater national sovereignty without hurting its economy and Brexit comes to be seen as a success for Britain.

What the new government in the UK needs to internalize and then keep uppermost in its collective mind, though, is that the nation doesn’t need much of a trade deal with the EU, especially if that deal does not acknowledge the national sovereignty of a newly freed Great Britain.

Great Britain is in a position to cut a good trade deal with the US and to cut another one with the member nations of its global Commonwealth—either bilaterally or with the group as a whole.  The success of those deals could well revive sentiment of those currently cowed EU-skeptic nations.

Congressional Supremacy

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Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin (D, MI) was asked by Bill Hemmer on his Fox News show Friday morning after the Nadler Committee voted to send Articles of Impeachment to the House how she would vote on those Articles.

Slotkin led off by making a big deal about her CIA training (in objective analysis), then assuring us all that she would not vote based on polls, she would not be pushed one way or another, she would not vote based on newspaper articles.  No, she would vote on her gut and on what she thought was right.

Not one word, not one syllable, not a single minim of voting the way her constituents—her employers—instruct her to vote.  She hasn’t even asked her employers for their instruction.  She’s been elected, now it’s too Hell with her bosses.

Parliamentary Supremacy is alive and well in the Progressive-Democratic Party in the House.

And that stinks.

Voting Rights

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On the whole, convicted felons lose their right to cast votes in our elections for the rest of their lives. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D) wants to restore this right to nonviolent felons.

It’s been a truism in our American jurisprudence and our American society that when a miscreant—a felon in the present case—has paid his debt to society (nominally including a measure of “make whole” his immediate victim), he should be allowed to start over, reenter society, and try to live honorably and on his own efforts rather than continuing to be dependent on society, a dependence begun with his dependence on our prison system for his existence as well as for his punishment.

Now, some crimes want a lifetime punishment, and a few demand the criminal’s life in compensation to society and to the victim.  Most crimes, though, have punishments that society has determined to be sufficient at a smaller price than the criminal’s life or life span.  These crimes are identifiable by their finite jail terms with parole following after release or by their having been suspended on the criminal’s good behavior during the period of suspension.

Many of those short-of-life crimes are violent crimes; Beshear wants to limit his action to non-violent crimes.

In principle, I agree with that.  When a man’s debt has been paid, his bill should be so marked, including with additional detriments, like a fundamental right of citizenship—voting—also lifted.  But we need to be careful with the definition of “non-violent.”  I suggest that a con job is non-violent, or a burglary of an unoccupied building.  I suggest, though, that dealing drugs is not at all non-violent, even if no guns are used: it destroys lives.  Drug dealing has no merely temporary effects.  I suggest, further, that identity theft, for all that no guns may have been involved, is far from non-violent.  Identity theft can destroy a life as thoroughly as drugs: it takes financial resources necessary for the victim’s present life and his future life.

Again, I agree, in principle, with the concept of restoring a citizen’s right to vote to a felon whose crime was non-violent and who has completed his sentence in every respect, including restitution.  But we need to know the details of Beshear’s specific proposal before we can agree that he’s on the right track.

“Peace” in Donbas

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Russia and Ukraine say they have agreed a ceasefire, to be effective by year’s end, in eastern Ukraine, currently occupied by Russia (along with Crimea) and Russia-instigated and -backed “rebels.”  It’s an unsatisfactory ceasefire.

There is no agreement on a timetable for free elections in the occupied eastern oblasts, even assuming the dubious need at all for elections there separate from the regular national elections. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wants Russian troops out of those oblasts before the elections; Russia’s President Vladimir Putin insists merely that Ukraine should give those oblasts autonomy before the elections. Zelenskiy is right: elections have no possibility of being free with Russian troops occupying the region.  It’s an unsatisfactory ceasefire.

Zelenskiy had hoped for more from these…discussions…among Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany.

Many questions were tackled, and my counterparts have said it is a very good result for a first meeting. But I will be honest, it is very little; I wanted to resolve a larger number of problems[.]

Not only was Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine given short shrift, the subject of the Crimean Oblast didn’t even come up. I suspect that was one of the larger number of problems Zelenskiy wanted resolved. Unfortunately, Germany, though an actual signatory to the Budapest Memorandum, which guaranteed Ukrainian territorial integrity if it gave up its nuclear weapons after the dissolution of the USSR (which Ukraine did), long ago utterly betrayed Ukraine with its decision to walk away from that agreement. Merkel reinforced her government’s perfidy with her decision to ignore the fate of the Crimean Oblast in the just concluded talks.  Russia also is a signatory, but dishonesty and betrayal are the norm with that nation.  The Crimean Oblast will continue to be partitioned off and occupied by Russia.

It’s an unsatisfactory ceasefire.

Short and Sweet

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I watched the Nadler burlesque show that’s masquerading as the House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing yesterday so you didn’t have to.  Here is the short and sweet of it.

The three Progressive-Democrat law professor witnesses each opened their opening statements by saying President Donald Trump was guilty and should be impeached even before they knew the impeachment charges being preferred.  They couldn’t know the charges because the Judiciary Committee has not written the articles of impeachment. Indeed, the committee chairman, Jerry Nadler (D, NY) has refused—and he refused repeatedly during yesterday’s show—even to say when the next hearing would be held or what witnesses would be called.

Those three Progressive-Democrat law professor witnesses went further: they pronounced their guilty verdicts even before they expressed their opinions of what might constitute an impeachable offense.

Like any burlesque show, we know how this will end because the script and choreography have long been written.