Tag Archives: political parties

Progressive-Democrats and Religious Freedom

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Progressive-Democrats want to vastly curtail, if not eliminate altogether, religious freedoms. You recall those—the core part of our 1st Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….

The Secular Democrats of America PAC, an arm of the Progressive-Democrat movement, counts the Trump administration’s actions to advance religious freedom a national security threat. Moving radically beyond merely eliminating our national motto because it dares mention God, this crowd denounces our national heritage and our belief in ourselves as a Christian nation (which is a distortion of theirs; we actually hold ourselves to be a Judeo-Christian nation).

In a 28-page list of “recommendations” this crowd sent to Progressive-Democrat President-Elect Joe Biden, they included the following:

  • withhold federal funds from any faith-based organization perceived as discriminatory on the basis of religion
  • repeal non-medical exemptions based on religious grounds
  • mandate inclusion of non-religious advisors at all faith-based gatherings at the White House
  • Biden (apparently personally) should discourage politicians from using the words “God” and “country” while speaking

So, this part of the Progressive-Democratic Party wants Government to tell religious organizations they are not allowed to practice their religion and receive the same government funding other organizations get. Government must heavily deprecate religious practices.

This crowd also insists on dictating what speech an elected official might use and who he must have in his meetings: “elected official” because there’s no reason to believe this demand, once acceded to, won’t spread far from the White House.

Biden has chosen not to comment on these recommendations. His considered silence smacks of agreement with it. If Republicans don’t hold the Senate, it’ll be a long four years of destruction.

Joe Biden’s Defense Policy

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In the context of commenting on Biden’s selection of retired Army General Lloyd Austin to be his Secretary of Defense should he become President, James Carafano wondered what Biden’s defense policy actually would be.

We know very little about what kind of defense policy a Biden presidency will deliver. The issue hardly came up on the presidential campaign trail. … The nomination of Austin doesn’t give us much of an answer.

I disagree. I think we’re pretty clear on what Biden’s defense policy will be.

This is the man who opposed the killing of bin Laden.

This is the man who decried the killing of Soleimani.

This is the man who wants to rejoin the Iranian nuclear weapons development deal.

This is the man who wants to rejoin the Paris Climate business, a business that will do grave damage to our economy while explicitly favoring the People’s Republic of China economy.

This is the man who insists the PRC is no competition, is “not a patch on our jeans,” whose Government and Party personnel “are not bad folks, folks.”

The Biden defense policy will be one of abject appeasement and a continuation of Obama’s retreat.

The People’s Republic of China and Private Economies

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The government of the People’s Republic of China does not trust the people over whom it reigns. This is illustrated by its broad distrust of those folks’ private enterprise.

Xi Jinping, long distrustful of the private sector, is moving assertively to bring it to heel.

And

The government is installing more Communist Party officials inside private firms, starving some of credit and demanding executives tailor their businesses to achieve state goals.

And

The push is driven by a deepening conviction within the country’s leadership that markets and private entrepreneurs, while important to China’s rise, are unpredictable and not to be fully trusted.

Bringing the PRC into the World Trade Organization, engaging with the nation economically—even helping the nation economically—in order to enhance freedom and prosperity for the ordinary folks of the PRC was worth the try those 50 years, more or less, ago.

It’s clear now, though, and it’s been clear for some decades, that the government men of the PRC have no intention of enhancing that freedom of prosperity. Those men intend only to enhance their power domestically, to dominate neighboring nations, and to set the global world order, replacing not just us, but the West altogether.

Yet this is the PRC that Joe Biden wants us to cozy up to.

Pocket Veto

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This week, the House passed the National Defense Appropriation Act with enough votes that, if repeated, would override a Presidential veto.

President Donald Trump has said he’ll veto the bill because it doesn’t include repeal of Section 230, which confers immunity from publication-related liability on Facebook, Twitter, Alphabet, and a few others.

Now the bill goes to the Senate for passage, and then to the President.

Here’s the thing, folks. As I write this post, it’s 9 December. Congress recesses at COB 18 December.

If Congress doesn’t extend its session and not go on recess as currently scheduled, the President can simply not sign the bill into law, and it’ll be pocket vetoed with no opportunity for an override vote in each house.

Here’s what Article I, Section 7 of our Constitution has to say on Presidential vetoes [emphasis added]:

If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.

We’re already inside those 10 days.