Russia Threatens

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday warned Romania and Poland they could find themselves in the sights of Russian rockets because they are hosting elements of a US missile shield that Moscow considers a threat to its security.

Never mind that this is a blatantly bogus beef and a naked threat.  The defensive missile shield cannot, by its very nature, be a threat to any naiotn other than one that’s planning an offensive attack.  Sort of like Russia already has done to Georgia and Ukraine at gunpoint, and to the Baltic States—each of the three—with cyber attacks.

Putin is beginning to act on his threats, too, thereby confirming the need for a missile shield.

Russia conducted a successful flight test of a developmental anti-satellite missile on Wednesday that is capable of destroying satellites in orbit, American defense officials said.

And

The launch marks another major milestone for Moscow’s efforts to develop weapons capable of destroying US navigation, communications, and intelligence satellites, a key strategic advantage.

This was a direct ascent missile firing, too.  A direct ascent shot means the missile did not have to orbit and then close with the target satellite; it could go from launch straight to satellite attack and impact.  This sort of attack takes hours off the launch to destruct time.

But, of course, this represents no threat to us.  Mm, mm.

What Hath Obamacare Wrought

The Wall Street Journal provided an amazing graphic in its Wednesday edition.ObamacarePremiumIncreasesEven accounting for bad estimating by the health coverage plan companies, this is a clear illustration of the depth of President Barack Obama’s (D) lie when he said insurance costs would go down by roughly $2,500 per year.

It’s also going to get worse: a number of programs intended to buffer these providers against such increase needs expire in 2017, including “risk corridors,” which then will be funded solely by health coverage providers’ own wealth redistribution “premiums” paid into the program by profit-making providers for the sake of money-losing providers.

Hate Crime

Louisiana is poised to enact a law that would make it a hate crime to target police officers and other first responders.

Dubbed the “Blue Lives Matter” bill,  HB 953 would expand the state’s hate-crime law to include police officers as a protected class, as well as a broad swath of uniformed employees and emergency volunteers.

Bigotry as a factor to be applied in sentencing?  Maybe.  But that, like all sentencing, should be for a jury to decide, not a government with a one-size-fits-all sentencing “guideline,” the (limited) feasibility of which, anyway, stems only from overparsing crimes.

An Aspect of Europe We Might Want to Emulate

Or at least one nation of Europe….

Germany has preliminarily approved an immigrant assimilation law.

Under the draft integration law, which now goes to parliament for approval, migrants would have to fulfill certain requirements, such as taking special classes, and authorities would be entitled to decide where in the country they should live. Those who don’t comply could face sanctions.

At the same time, the integration law aims to facilitate access to the job market and to apprenticeship programs for refugees, allowing them to more quickly earn a living.

Among the requirements:

  • language training
  • education in German laws
  • education in cultural basics
  • states will be able to decide where refugees should live in their state…avoid the creation of ethnic ghetto

We already do—or used to do—a pretty good job of assimilating our immigrants.  One thing we could benefit from, though, is a mechanism to better control initial living locations, so as to mitigate our own Little [China/Italy/Syria/etc) problem and to improve assimilation.

And so to better preserve our American culture.

Voting Rights

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Ohio officials to reinstate a week of same-day registration and early voting before an election, finding a 2014 state law eliminating the practice violated the Constitution by depressing African-American voting.

Judge Michael Watson said this in his ruling:

They have greater time and resource limitations that may prevent them from waiting in line on Election Day and are less likely to vote absentee.

Never mind that there are no impediments to voting absentee.  Not economic, transportation, time, [or] child-care constraints that increase the cost of voting.

This is a bad ruling.  Not only has he misstated the impediments, he also has applied the wrong solution to his claimed wrong.  The second paragraph of the 14th Amendment prescribes the penalty to be applied to a State that has deprived some of its voting-eligible citizens of their right to vote.  Which, of course this judge knows, since he explicitly cited that paragraph in his ruling.

Judges like this are forcing an end to early voting altogether and requiring voting to go back exclusively to in-person on election day or by absentee ballot.

‘Course, that might not be a bad outcome in its own right.  Absentee ballot voting also is early voting.  And couch potatoes need go no farther than their mailbox to vote.

Watson’s ruling can be seen here.