Tag Archives: politics

Two Mistakes

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One by folks on the far right and one by The Wall Street Journal. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R) gave the Republicans’ response to President Barack Obama’s vaporous SOTU.

Her conservative critics unloaded. “Trump should deport Nikki Haley” went one tweet. The next morning on Fox & Friends, Donald Trump declared that Gov Haley is “very weak on immigration.”

Of course, these are slurs and comments utterly devoid of facts, as the WSJ noted.

The woman who says “illegal immigration is not welcome in South Carolina?” Who signed a law toughening the state’s illegal immigration reform act, which requires employers to verify the immigration status of new hires? Who has fought President Obama’s bid to resettle unvetted Syrian refugees? And whose state has joined 16 others in a lawsuit against Mr Obama for what they say is his unconstitutional executive order on illegal immigration?

But then the WSJ committed its own error.

A party that rejects Nikki Haley as a spokeswoman is one that doesn’t really want to build a governing majority.

Conflating these criticizers with Republicans also is a claim devoid of fact, beyond the most narrow, literal sense.

More Spending, More Foolishness

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It’s a two-fer that only President Barack Obama could propose with a straight face.

The Obama administration is proposing to extend a financial sweetener the federal government offers states that expand their Medicaid programs, in a bid to persuade more to do so before the president leaves office.
White House officials said President Barack Obama will ask Congress to include three years of full federal funding of expansion for any state that extends eligibility for the program to most low-income residents. Officials said the proposal will be made in Mr Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget, to be released Feb 9.

More Federal spending. Billions of dollars of spending to persuade States to expand their Medicaid programs, an addictive “offer”—addiction to Federal dollars.

And that’s the foolishness. Obama is promising to do this for three more years. Three years in which to get the suckered States hooked on the Federal government’s street corner product.

This move of his hasn’t anything at all to do with low-income citizens. It has everything to do with vote pandering.

In an election year.

A State Appellate Court Error

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The Maryland Court of Special Appeals has postponed the trial of a police officer charged with second-degree murder in the death of Freddie Gray last April.

That officer was Caesar Goodson, the second officer to go on trial. The putative reason for the delay is the hung jury on the first trial, of William Porter. The Baltimore prosecutor has said that Porter’s testimony at Goodson’s trial (and at the trials of a number of the other officers charged in Freddie Gray’s death) is central to their case. With Porter still under trial, and with a Federal case against Porter still possible, his testimony could be incriminating, and the appellate court wants to fully adjudicate the legitimacy of the prosecution’s forcing Porter to testify.

So, for the sake of government convenience, another defendant’s trial is delayed, that defendant’s 6th Amendment right to a “speedy…trial” is annulled.

Of course, the prosecutor is prepared to proceed with the trial, pretty much by definition, else she would not have charged the defendant. That she finds it difficult to proceed without Porter is irrelevant. There’s nothing in that 6th Amendment that says “speedy…trial, except when the government demurs.”

This delay is wrong.

Progressives and Language

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Democratic Party ex-Presidential candidate and Vice President Joe Biden had this to say, this time about our Constitution:

…Second Amendment says which he [Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (D, VT)] has of late, the Second Amendment says you can limit who can own a gun.

What the words on the Constitution’s parchment say:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

However, to Progressives, words have exactly the meanings Progressives say they have. Not more, not less. And so “shall not,” of course means “shall.”

All the rest of us should just shut up. We don’t understand the words.

An Opportunity

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…in the hands of competent authority.

ISIS fighters who fled to the terror group’s Iraqi stronghold of Mosul after being defeated in Ramadi were burned alive in the town square, sources told FoxNews.com, in an unmistakable message to fighters who may soon be defending the northern city from government forces.

Several residents of Mosul recounted the grisly story for stateside relatives, describing the deadly reception black clad jihadists got when they made it to Mosul….

Notice that. These were guys who’d either rejected the martyrdom of dying in place or who had recognized a lost position and departed in order to resume the fight in another place and time.

Here’s the opportunity: guys like this aren’t going to be allowed, in Tacitus’ words, to “fight and run away, To turn and fight another day.” No, they’ll die, anyway, a grisly death of the sort reserved for the enemies of the Daesh. So: make it easy for them to surrender rather than retreat.

Of course, that would require their Arab or Kurdish captors, of whatever sect of Islam, to treat them with some semblance of humanity. But that’s another opportunity, this time for Arabs and Kurds, of whatever sect of Islam, themselves.