Tag Archives: government

The Senate and the Republic

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Senator Jeff Merkley (D, OR) has said the quiet part aloud (to coin a phrase). His immediate venue is the coming Progressive-Democrat effort to Federalize our nation’s elections, which by our Constitution are set by each State’s own legislatures and only modifiable under narrow circumstances by the Federal Congress.

You can think of January as a moment when two different forces are converging. One is the functionality of the Senate and the other is the functionality of our republic.

No, these are not different “forces” at all. The functionality of our republic depends on our Federal Senate remaining the bipartisan body that it was designed to be. In the present case, that requires the Senate’s filibuster function to remain as it is, which enforces the Senate’s bipartisan nature.

It gets worse, though:

[Progressive-]Democrats have called passing new elections legislation their priority, arguing that minority voters need protections from new state rules.

This is Party being openly, loudly and proudly racist. There are no minority voters or “other” voters or non-minority voters. There are only American voters. As a man said not so long ago,

There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there’s the United States of America.

Even if that man turned out actually to not believe his words, the concept he pretended to espouse is true, nonetheless.

But, then, this is just another aspect of the Progressive-Democrats’ drive to fundamentally change America. The next year, and the two years after that, are going to be very dangerous times for our Republic.

Contempt

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A Wall Street Journal piece centered on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) supposed plan to bring President Joe Biden’s (D) and his Progressive-Democratic Party’s “Build Back Better Act” to a Senate floor vote in January, and therewith dare Senator Joe Manchin (D, VA) to vote against it, had the following highly instructive bit buried toward the end.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D, WA), Chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, castigated Manchin over his decision regarding the Progressive-Democrats’ reconciliation bill:

We cannot hang the futures of millions of Americans on the words of one man who represents a state that has a tiny percentage of the country’s entire population.

Never mind that Senators and Representatives, at least nominally, work for their constituents and not for Party or the nation at large. Never mind, either, that pesky 10th Amendment, much less the 9th Amendment.

This is the utter contempt that Progressive-Democrats have for our Constitution and for the federal republican structure of our government that our Constitution creates.

This is the utter contempt that Progressive-Democrats have for us average Americans.

Everything from the center, and the center over everyone.

Laws and Rules

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The Progressive-Democrats are unhappy that they haven’t had their way with our government, and so they insist on changing the rules so they can get their way forever after. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) took note of this from the Senate floor last Thursday.

In the span of a few hours, one Senate Democrat had renewed calls to nuke the Senate and break the rules, and another published a national op-ed arguing that Democrats should attack the rule of law and pack the Supreme Court.
Two frontal assaults on two branches of government, proposed in the space of about two hours. Entire generations of statesmen would have seen either one of those unhinged proposals as Armageddon for our institutions.

But this is the Progressive-Democratic Party. If they can’t have their way within the law, within the rules, they’ll change the law, change the rules. If they can’t change the law or the rules, they’ll simply ignore them.

The government of the People’s Republic of China, and of the predecessor nation on the mainland, operates and operated the same way. If the men of those governments don’t—didn’t then—like the outcomes of specific laws, or if the people become too unruly (in those government men’s eyes) under existing law, they alter the law to suit those men.

This is not to say the Progressive-Democratic Party is the same as the Communist Party of China. The attitudes and techniques of the two, though, are quite similar, and they produce the same outcome: a nation whose citizens are ruled by government men rather than a nation under law where all citizens are equal, including those government men, and government is subordinate to the citizens.

Fundamentally Transform America

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Hillary Clinton, Progressive-Democrat and once a candidate for President and always a carper about the unfairness of her loss, now worries that were Donald Trump (D) to run for President again in 2024 and win, it

could be the end of our democracy.
Especially if he had a Congress that would do his bidding, you will not recognize our country[.]

“Our” America, says Clinton. She means her Progressive-Democrat travesty of a democracy were Party able to achieve its proudly stated goal of fundamentally transforming our nation with the socialist-driven economic policies they’re pushing so hard to enact and the racist and sexist identity politics moves they’re pushing so hard to implement.

That’s an America average Americans don’t want. We prefer a nation closer to that of our founding—limited government, personal responsibility, personal obligation, with that limited government stepping in only as a last resort, not the default.

Whether Trump runs and wins, or another Republican or Conservative President runs and is elected in 2024 to go with—hopefully—a majority Republican and Conservative House and Senate, we most definitely need to block the Clinton/Progressive-Democrat version and undo the damage Party already has done.

“Trial” Doesn’t Mean the Same to Progressive-Democrats…

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…as it does to the rest of us. This is in the subtext of Aaron Kliegman’s Just the News piece regarding Progressive-Democrat Congressmen pushing for a revival of their Bivens Act proposal, which would

allow citizens to recover damages for constitutional violations committed against them by federal law enforcement officials.

Kliegman, though, also pointed out another effect of the Act’s simple proposal:

the legislation would incidentally offer a path to civil remedy for those imprisoned without trial for alleged involvement in the January 6 Capitol breach who say they’ve been mistreated by federal authorities to sue.

That’s certainly true, but I suggest that the prisoners held on claimed beefs related to the 6 January riot already have strong Constitutional grounds for dismissal of the charges and denial of qualified immunity against many of the gaolers–the prison warden included.

Most of them are being held without bail and without being actually charged, hence the “claimed beefs.”

They’re being unconstitutionally held on at least three counts:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury….

That’s from the 5th Amendment. No indictment or even the convening of a Grand Jury has occurred. That it’s allegedly an infamous crime is amply demonstrated by the number of Progressive-Democrats who are loudly proclaiming the riot to have been an insurrection.

…nor shall be compelled in any criminal case…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law….

That’s also from the 5th Amendment. Plainly the prisoners are being denied their liberty without due process; they’re being held for indefinite periods on no charges and no bail opportunity.

…the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial….

That’s from the 6th Amendment. This count has two specifications: they aren’t even accused yet, except by those Progressive-Democrats, but not formally in court, and they’ve been denied a speedy and public trial for so long that they cannot ever have a speedy trial.

Plainly, “speedy trial,” or merely “trial,” don’t have the same meaning for Progressive-Democrats that the terms have for us average Americans, for whom they have such contempt.

Those worthies’ pronouncements notwithstanding, the only cure here is the prisoners’ unconditional release with all current proceedings against them dismissed and any future proceedings related to the riot barred from being brought.