Tag Archives: government

“Prerogatives”

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The Just the News lede lays the matter out clearly and in its most basic terms. In an article centered on FBI whistleblowers blowing the whistle on the FBI’s intrinsic political bias, that lede read

House Republicans think federal agencies have become a weapon against their own apolitical employees and the constitutional rights of Americans. House Democrats think House Republicans have become a weapon against the prerogatives of federal agencies.

There it is in stark terms. Republicans (not just House Republicans) and Conservatives strongly favor limited government. Progressive-Democrats (not just House Progressive-Democrats) and the Left generally strongly favor expansive government.

It doesn’t matter to those Progressive-Democrats and their Leftist supporters that the prerogatives of federal agencies are strictly limited by the bounds of the statutes that create those agencies and that then give them the frameworks within which they engage in their statutorily mandated and limited activities. Neither does it matter to them that the prerogatives of the Federal government are just as strictly limited by our Constitution, which strictly enumerates the powers of government in Article I, Section I, and then creates a wide and deep moat around those enumerated powers with the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

The Republicans and Conservatives in the House, far from being a weapon against agency prerogatives, are finding their own voice as the voice of We the People, who as the sovereign in our nation determine what prerogatives our government and any of its agencies may (not can) have and for how long.

South Dakota’s Purity Caucus

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The State’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, is being taken to task for—supposedly—overstepping State constitutional bounds in the way her executive branch agencies propose legislation and introduce it into the legislature.

South Dakota’s very own Purity Freedom Caucus is claiming that those agencies

“overstepped their authority” by exploiting a loophole in the state lawmaking process that allows agencies to introduce bills without a legislative sponsor….

In the present case, South Dakota’s Department of Labor and Regulations submitted two bills to the State’s House Commerce and Energy Committee, and the committee’s chairman then sent the bills directly to the House floor rather than first having it processed by his committee—debate and vote.

Congresswoman Tina Mulally (R), treasurer of the legislature’s Freedom Caucus, complained that all of this circumvents the power of the legislature, and

The governor and the executive agencies seem to conveniently forget we have three branches of government, not one[.]

There are a number of things about this. One is that the Caucus beef in the particular case is with the Commerce and Energy Committee chairman, not any entity in the Executive Branch. It was the committee chairman’s decision to skip the committee process, not that of anyone in the DLR.

Another is that South Dakota, indeed, has three branches of government, and they’re coequal; the Executive is not subordinate (nor superior) to the Legislative. Furthermore, the State’s legislature still has to act on the proposed legislation—to shelve it or debate it, and if debating, then to shelve it or vote it up or down. Nothing in the State’s constitution says otherwise.

But the largest thing is the internally contradictory business about executive agencies overstepping their authority by exploiting a loophole. If there is a loophole, there are no related boundaries. That’s pretty tautological.

If members of the self-identified Freedom Caucus doesn’t like the loophole being used, they should move to close it rather than whine about its being used.

More Destruction

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I alluded earlier to the destruction the current crop of DoD managers are wreaking on our military establishment.

Here’s a specific example, all too canonical.

The upstate New York military academy [West Point] is removing 13 items that reference the Confederacy, including a portrait and bust of General Robert E Lee, its superintendent before the Civil War, the Washington Examiner reports.

This revision of our nation’s military history is being done on the express approval of SecDef Lloyd Austin. Because erasing history, including critical military history, is the best way to teach military principles, successes, and failures to our future military officers.

We can’t get rid of the SecDef and his syndicate in the Office of the Secretary of Defense soon enough.

Correct Beef, Inadequate Correction

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Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) and Congresswoman Ashley Hinson (R, IA), in their 27 December Fox News op-ed, correctly identified a critical problem with our military as deconstructed by the Progressive-Democratic Biden administration: Commander-in-Chief Biden’s and DoD’s preference for wokeness in over combat effectiveness of our military service men and women. As they put it,

[T]he US Air Force Academy had cadets participate in a seminar that instructs them against using the word “terrorist” and to avoid gender specific phrases. When we’re training cadets how not to offend terrorists rather than how to destroy them, we need to seriously review our priorities.

However, the corrective action they suggested is wholly inadequate.

When Republicans take control of Congress next year, we must return the military’s focus to its core mission. We should start by firing every last Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer on the Department of Defense’s payroll. All unnecessary and onerous administrative training, especially so-called “extremism” trainings, should be eliminated.

Leaving aside the erroneous claim of “control of Congress”—Republicans will have a majority only in the House of Representatives—the Cotton-Hinson proposal can be no more than Step 3. Eliminating those personnel will by itself change nothing; the individuals would be promptly replaced by others of similar ilk by the managers at the top.

The first step in return[ing] the military’s focus to its core mission is the Critical Item. The personnel in the Office of the Secretary of Defense must be fired—every single one of them, from SecDef Lloyd Austin on down. At the same time, all of the incumbent personnel in the Offices of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard also must be fired.

The second step is another Critical Item, and it must deal with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Every officer and senior NCO in the JCS beginning with CJCS Mark Milley and his staff and including each of the Service Chiefs and their staffs must be relieved and either retired or reassigned to the Combatant Commands to serve in situ in actual line jobs—whether combat, supply, or maintenance.

Without a complete replacement of the current crop of managers—they cannot be called leaders—removing the subordinate personnel will have no effect.

To those who warn that such a sweeping, essentially simultaneous turnover of the top management of our military establishment will leave our military rudderless and without direction, consider: the Combatant Commands remain intact (so far—the damage being done hasn’t materially harmed those Commands, yet). And: with the current crop of managers at the top, our military establishment already is without direction and has been—dangerously so—for the last two years.

They Don’t Clash

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New Jersey has a new gun control law, one which Governor Phil Murphy (D) signed just last week.

Under the new law, concealed carry is not allowed in “high-density” locations, places with vulnerable populations or where there is First Amendment or government activity.

New Jerseyans can’t exercise their Second Amendment rights where they’re exercising their First Amendment rights? How does that work, exactly? The two sets of rights are synergistic, not conflicting.

And of what is Murphy’s government so terrified that his administration’s “activities” need to be protected from the people for whom he works?

There’s this fillip, too:

The new law also restricts who is ineligible to obtain a carry permit, including those with an outstanding arrest [warrant]….

But not convicted of the charge. So much for innocent until proven guilty in New Jersey.

And

…four endorsements of character from non-related references must be provided with applications.

Those four endorsers, too, each will be…interviewed…by Murphy’s government men. Murphy’s government not only is tracking New Jersey citizens who have firearms, now he intends to track those who support those who have firearms, also.

Never mind that the Supreme Court’s rulings in NY State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen, District of Columbia v Heller, and McDonald v City of Chicago individually and together acknowledged that the right of us Americans to keep and bear Arms is an individual right rather than a collective one, and that they acknowledged that we don’t have to satisfy Government of any sort of “need” or “suitability of purpose” in our keeping and bearing. Never mind, either, that the rulings also required carry permit issuance to be based on strictly objective criteria, not on a government functionary’s wholly subjective assessment of “character” references.

The opening line of our Constitution—the opening phrase—is We the People of the United States.  It’s our Constitution, not Government’s. We are sovereign in our nation, not Government. It’s our obligation to enforce our rights; Government can act (and should), legitimately, only to assist us, not to usurp our duties. We defend our nation; Government acts in our name for us, not in its own name for itself.

Our Second Amendment rights are critical to all of that. Without our individual, personal keep[ing] and bear[ing] Arms, we cannot do any of that. That’s why our right shall not be infringed. Especially where First Amendment or government activities are occurring.

This is one example of why we can’t trust gun control pushers. They have no understanding whatsoever of our Bill of Rights and, by extension, of our Constitution.