Tag Archives: morality

Another Judge Gets One Right

Posted on by
Reply

Recall that the Fairfax County School Board, last year, changed the admissions policy for its elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology from one of straight merit to one of discrimination to favor some racially preferred children and to disfavor some racially…not preferred…children. This racist policy was objected to in court by a broad coalition of average American residents of the county. In US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Claude Hilton waved the racism flag and struck the racial preferences scheme.

Hilton ruled in part [citations omitted, emphasis added],

The Board’s main problem is its focus on the goal to have TJ [Thomas Jefferson] reflect the demographics of the surrounding area, described primarily in racial terms. Far from a compelling interest, racial balancing for its own sake is “patently unconstitutional.” The Board cannot transform racial balancing into a compelling interest “simply by relabeling it ‘racial diversity.'” The school districts in Parents Involved tried various verbal formulations to deflect from their intent to racially balance schools through race-based transfers. The Board here did not even bother with such “verbal formulations.” Board members and high-level FCPS [Fairfax County Public Schools] actors did not disguise their desire for TJ to represent the racial demographics…. Whether accomplished overtly or via proxies, racial balancing is not a compelling interest.

And

…steps…could have been implemented before the Board defaulted to a system that treats applicants unequally in hopes of engineering a particular racial outcome.

And

The proper remedy for a legal provision enacted with discriminatory intent is invalidation.

We may be making progress toward correcting the blatantly racist policies of the Left.

The ruling can be read here.

What Should our Courts Look Like?

Posted on by
Reply

President Joe Biden (D) said in his speech Friday announcing his selection of DC Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee for the Supreme Court that “it’s time our courts looked like America.”

Nothing could be less accurate or more Extreme Left.

Our Article III courts—and our State and local courts, as well—are not, and were not, designed to reflect the demographics of our nation. That’s the role of the political arms of our governments, Federal, State, and local. Those political arms are populated by men and women elected by their fellow citizens to be Representatives, Senators, President of our nation, and analogously at the State and local levels. Those are the folks who should look like the demographics of our nation and their State and district constituents. And they do—that’s what our elections achieve, however clumsily.

Our courts were set up, instead, to be independent of those political arms, independent of demographics. The judges and Justices appointed to those courts were given lifetime appointments explicitly to keep them independent of politics. Our courts were created and the judges/Justices are appointed to them for the sole purpose of applying our Constitution and any statutes before them in any particular case as they were written.

Doing that requires no particular demographic on the bench nor any pattern of demographics. It requires only that they honor our Constitution, which holds that legislation is the sole province of the Congress, and that they honor their oaths of office, which hold them to upholding and defending our Constitution and to treat all men and women before them equally under law, without favor or preference of any sort—including demographic.

Being a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences is irrelevant to the role of a judge or Justice. Being a black is irrelevant to the role of a judge or Justice. Being a woman is irrelevant to the role of a judge or Justice. Being an American citizen applying the text of the Constitution and the statute(s) as they are written is the role, the only role, of a judge or Justice.

Applying gender or race, or religion, is simply bigotry. Selecting a person for judge or Justice because of gender or race, or religion, is simply bigotry.

Full stop.

An Accurate Read of the Emasculated West

Posted on by
1

This time, it’s not Russian President Vladimir Putin or People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping. It’s Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his very early Friday morning (our time) statement.

This morning we are defending our state alone. Like yesterday, the world’s most powerful forces are watching from afar[.]

Indeed. Safe and comfortable in their seats high in the coliseum as they watch the mayhem down on the sand.

And:

Did yesterday’s sanctions convince Russia? We hear in our sky and see on our earth that this was not enough.

And this:

Today, I have asked 27 European leaders whether Ukraine will be in NATO. I have asked directly—everyone is afraid, no one answers.

Finally,

But we are not afraid. We are not afraid of anything. We are not afraid to defend our country, we are not afraid of Russia, we are not afraid to talk to Russia, we are not afraid to talk about anything, about security guarantees for our country, we are not afraid of talking about neutrality, we are not NATO members at the moment. But what guarantees will we get? And most importantly which countries will give us those guarantees?

What will Ukraine get in the way of guarantees? What would be the value of those guarantees, were any to come? The Budapest Memorandum was a guarantee by the US, Great Britain, and Russia of Ukraine’s political, economic, and territorial integrity if they gave up their nuclear weapons. Those three signatories betrayed Ukraine when they welched on the Memorandum. The first Minsk accords? They were another early betrayal of Ukraine and codified the Budapest “guarantee’s” destruction, a betrayal perpetrated by those same three signers. Minsk II? Again, betrayal. These are the countries that will give new “guarantees.” And now Putin invades.

“No one answers.” The “sanctions” levied by Biden-Harris and his timorous fellows in Europe are insulting in their weakness. The ex-comedian who leads a nation under attack has far more courage and deserves—as does his nation—far more aid, concrete aid, than he’s getting. Aid far more constructive than cheers for his nation and tongue-clucks for Russia, safely delivered from those high up seats.

Sadly, disgustingly, I have to share Zelenskyy’s contempt for these Western…persons…but most especially for Biden-Harris; he, and they, are not leaders. Merely cheerleaders in the stands.

Ending Secret Laboratories

Posted on by
Reply

Dr Marty Makary, Islet Transplant Surgery Chief and Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, wants to do away with them, and he wants to start with the CDC’s. I think he doesn’t go far enough.

Despite housing treasure troves of critical COVID data on vaccines and on natural immunity, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has only been releasing slivers of data that support its own scientific dogma.

And, closing his op-ed,

The CDC has a pattern of hoarding data in order to cherry-pick the findings it likes and then publish them in its own journal, called MMWR [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report].

The CDC’s—CDC Director Rochelle Walensky’s—rationale for this utter dishonesty is that us average Americans are just too grindingly stupid to understand the data if they were released for our perusal. Here’s Kristen Nordlund, CDC Health Communication Specialist [Aside: be sure to crook your pinky finger when you read that. Most such positions are “Press Secretary.” Nordlund’s title is an indication of just how self-importantly precious the CDC is, in addition to the agency’s fundamental dishonesty]:

Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted[.]

Makary also says,

If I were advising President Joe Biden [D], I would tell him that the CDC needs to restore the public trust by making all CDC data available in real-time for researchers around the country to access and to study.

The problem in the CDC’s case is that the dishonesty extends far beyond the agency’s laboratories and personages making the editorial [sic] decisions on what information to withhold from a dull and uncomprehending populace. I often call for a broad removal of an organization’s top management, sometimes extending the call into middle management.

It isn’t possible for the CDC to have trust in it restored, even with that broad personnel turnover. All of the data in the CDC’s databases need to be released immediately, certainly. However, merely releasing the data would leave the dishonest bureaucrats managing the agency and doing the “work” in it in place. The CDC’s cancer of dishonesty has broadly metastasized far beyond Stage IV. The dishonesty is terminal, and the CDC needs to be disbanded altogether—not merely have its budget zeroed out; the Center must be completely removed from the Federal government—and all of its personnel returned to the private sector, not reassigned elsewhere in government.

If the nation truly needs a medical agency for managing the (medical) diseases extant in our nation or that enter it, such a facility must be built anew, from the ground up.

Bureaucrats Exercising Personal Power Because They Can

Posted on by
Reply

The Biden-Harris administration is urging Americans in Ukraine to get out of that nation as fast as they can go. Biden-Harris even trotted out his National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, to issue a panicky plea for our citizens to get out—because Biden-Harris intends to strand those who don’t make it out just as thoroughly as he did in Afghanistan.

Enter Biden-Harris’ State Department bureaucrats.

The US State Department is requiring American citizens fleeing Ukraine into Poland to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination, according to a press release issued Saturday.
US citizens are allowed to enter Poland through its land border with Ukraine, but the State Department says those evacuating “must present a valid US passport and proof of COVID-19 vaccination.”

On top of this [aside: this seems a tacit Biden-Harris administration admission that vaccines against the Wuhan Virus don’t proof folks against subsequent infection as Biden-Harris had originally touted.]

Travelers are also encouraged to present a negative test result from a PCR or antigen COVID-19 test, which will facilitate entry into Poland[.]

This is just Biden-Harris’ bureaucrats exercising power for the sake of the exercise.

Even stipulating, arguendo, that the threat of the unvaccinated spreading the Wuhan Virus is real or has serious consequences, there are just too many ways for State to handle American “travelers'” who lack vaccination/negative test proof after their entry into Poland from Ukraine for this demand to be anything other than the ego trip of power.

State’s statement containing these barriers requirements can be read here.