Tag Archives: government

Gun Control…Ignorance

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…or outright dishonesty.  As one demonstration, we have a breathtakingly ignorant claim from the Congresswoman who’s pushing a gun control bill in the House of Representatives.  Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D, CO) actually said this, out loud and in public, about firearm magazines and the usefulness of banning them:

These are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now, they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available[.]

For another demonstration, we have Barack Obama’s similarly ignorant (or, in his case, deliberately distorting) claim about the weapons used in the Sandy Hook massacre—the latest crisis this Progressive is trying not to let go to waste.  It’s interesting to note, also, that he made this remark at one of his campaign stops in in San Francisco [emphasis in the original].

…it is possible for us to create common-sense gun safety measures that respect the traditions of gun ownership in this country and hunters and sportsmen, but also make sure that we don’t have another 20 children in a classroom gunned down by a semiautomatic weapon—by a fully automatic weapon in that case, sadly.

Leaving aside his arrogance in presuming—contra the 2nd Amendment—that the Federal government has authority to determine the permissible purposes for owning weapons, Obama knows two things about this: he knows that that Lanza killed his victims with a semi-automatic rifle, not a fully automatic one, and he knows the difference between a semi-automatic rifle and a fully automatic one.

It’s Bad

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…when the court pokes fun at a case.

In Bayou Lawn, et al., v Department of Labor, Bayou Lawn, the Chamber Of Commerce of the United States of America, the National Hispanic Landscape Alliance, the Silvicultural Management Associates, Inc., and the Professional Landcare Network, among others, objected to a number of wage rules and bureaucratic requirements related to the H-2B visa program that had been promulgated by DoL.  Among other things, these groups doubted DoL’s authority even to write such rules.

Nor were DoL’s rules insubstantial:

These rules would decrease the maximum number of months an employer may employ an H-2B worker from ten to nine; require employers to guarantee that H-2B employees will work at least seventy-five percent of the hours certified in any twelve-week period and, if not, pay the employees the difference for the time not worked; require employers to pay non H-2B workers’ wages and benefits at least equal to those paid to H-2B workers if the two perform “substantially the same work;” require employers to pay for the round-trip airfare and subsistence costs of H-2B workers; and impose additional bureaucratic requirements, such as the filing of job orders, performing extensive domestic recruitment, and applying for a temporary labor certification.

A Federal court in Florida agreed and enjoined DoL from enforcing its rules.  DoL appealed, even while conceding that it had no actual authority for promulgating these rules [emphasis in the original]:

The DOL does not dispute that it has no express authority to make rules for the H-2B program.

Rather, DoL argued in all seriousness,

DOL counters that its authority may be inferred from the “statutory scheme [that] shows a Congressional intention to grant [it] rulemaking power.”

And here is the scheme that DoL argued [emphasis still in the original]:

[Federal law] instructs the Secretary of DHS to consult with the “appropriate agencies of the Government” in resolving whether to grant a foreign worker a visa upon the “petition of the importing employer.”  Although there is no grant of rulemaking authority to DOL in this statutory section, DOL asserts that as the result of the permission it grants to DHS to consult with it, DOL “has authority to issue legislative rules to structure its consultation with DHS.”  The end result, in DOL’s view, is that it is empowered to engage in rulemaking, even without the DHS.

The 11th Circuit thought this pseudo-reasoning…foolish.

We reject this interpretation of “consultation.”  Under this theory of consultation, any federal employee with whom the Secretary of DHS deigns to consult would then have the “authority to issue legislative rules to structure [his] consultation with DHS.”  This is an absurd reading of the statute and we decline to adopt it.
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DOL was designated a consultant.  It cannot bootstrap that supporting role into a co-equal one.
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DOL next argues that the “text, structure and object” of the INA evidence a congressional intent that DOL should exercise rulemaking authority over the H-2B program. This would be a more appealing argument if Congress had not expressly delegated that authority to a different agency.

And so on.

Just what is the competence level in this administration?

The 11th‘s ruling can be read here and here.

 

h/t Law Blog

The Arrogance of Government

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Here is an example of why we have a Constitution that explicitly limits the power of the Federal government and within that Constitution a Bill of Rights that both explains those limits and explicitly reserves the infinity of remaining rights and powers to the people and to the states.

This example, though, is by one of those state governments, the government of Maryland which also says it’s legal for approved gangs to commit trespass and terrorize children inside their own homes.  State Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller (D, Dist 27) said this in all seriousness:

We’ve allowed them to manufacture.  We’ve allowed them to sell, and we’ve cut back on their paperwork.

Notice that: government has allowed.  Because government will make these decisions, because what a manufacturer—or anyone—can do is only what a government will permit.

Never mind that the Maryland Constitution says this in Article I of its Declaration of Rights:

That all Government of right originates from the People, is founded in compact only, and instituted solely for the good of the whole….

In other words, government works for the people, and what government can do is what the people will permit, not the other way around.

Oh, wait, this is just Progressives disregarding yet another Constitution that’s more than 100 years old, confusing, and not binding on anything.

Another Victory over Big Government

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Here’s the long and the short of it, as summarized in The Wall Street Journal:

A federal judge this week struck down a controversial set of laws allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to seek people’s records without a court’s approval, saying the strict secrecy orders demanded by the laws are not constitutional.

US District Judge Susan Illston (Northern District of California) ordered the government to stop sending national security letters or to stop trying to enforce gag orders related to them, but she stayed her order pending the government’s appeal.

Of course, it’ll go to the 9th Circuit, which means it will go on to the Supreme Court, so the fight isn’t over.  But this is an excellent start.

Illston’s opinion decried these violations of Americans’ individual freedom:

[The] pervasive use of nondisclosure orders…creates too large a danger that speech is being unnecessarily restricted.

She added [emphasis added]:

[T]he statute impermissibly attempts to circumscribe a court’s ability to review the necessity of nondisclosure orders.  …the NSL nondisclosure provisions significantly infringe on speech regarding controversial government powers.  …  As written, the statute expressly limits a court’s powers to modify or set aside a nondisclosure order to [certain] situations….  The statute’s intent…is incompatible with the court’s duty to searchingly test restrictions on speech.

There are two problems with these letters.  One is that they allow searches without a court’s warrant.  The FBI can use them to search for phone data and for financial and electronic records, and all the FBI agent needs is his Field Office Special Agent in Charge to say it’s all jake.  This is a clear violation of our 4th Amendment.

The other problem worsens this exponentially: the FBI can require (or could before Illston’s ruling) the recipient of the letter to keep quiet about his receipt—denying the owner of the records any opportunity to respond to the search before it happens.  This also denies two critical aspects of the 1st Amendment: that right to speak of receipt and the duty of a court to adjudicate any allegation of a 1st Amendment violation.

Illston’s ruling can be read here.

War, Politics, and Power

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Karl von Clausewitz noted that war is an extension of politics.  President Barack Obama, with his reliance on drones and seeming decision utterly to eschew capture (with its attendant intelligence value), is making simple killing an extension of politics.

What is the impact on political power of this evolution?

After Attorney General Eric Holder’s evasive testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about drone use, Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) filibustered John Brennan’s confirmation as Director CIA, and this finally convinced Obama to have Holder write a letter to Paul, which says in its entirety:

It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: ‘Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?’  The answer to that question is no.

But what does it mean to be “engaged in combat?” It means whatever the President needs it to mean.

As Richard Fernandez noted in an aptly titled post [emphasis added],

Lawyers have rarely been able to contain power.  As practical matter power is constrained only by politics, which as Clausewitz once observed can be another name for another thing….

He went on:

Power is limited by the degree to which an executive authority can enforce obedience.  It is constrained by the extent to which authority can expect an order to be followed.  It is bounded by the fear of political repercussions; by the dread of losing office and ultimately, by the apprehension that having lost office a person might face jail.

Obama has assured us through his pressman, Jay Carney, that neither he nor his Justice Department would never abuse such power.  And Obama is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men.

But with an expansive and expanding government, and Obama’s apparent extension of the tools of politics, our hold on government is growing tenuous.  We cannot allow this to continue.  As a man once said, elections have consequences.  We’re seeing some of those consequences.  It’s time to have different election outcomes.