Tag Archives: regulation

Abortion “Rights”

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Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D, CA) wants to further erode Federalism in our nation’s structure and have the central government pass on certain kinds of State laws before those laws can be…permitted…to take effect.  Harris’ position and proposal is well summarized in the sub-headline of the article at the link:

The Democratic presidential hopeful wants the Justice Department to review state laws restricting abortion before they would take effect

Since a core principle of our nation, acknowledged in our Declaration of Independence, centers on our Creator-endowed right to life, and it is the duty of any government, especially including ours, to protect the lives of those in its care—or even simply within its jurisdiction—I offer an alternative requirement, albeit one that parallels Harris’ attack on our federal structure.

The Justice Department should review state laws permitting abortion, particularly with a view to assessing their impact on life, before they would take effect

This would enable the central government to protect the baby’s life from being aborted in any but the most extreme circumstance.

It should be clear, after all, that abortion has absolutely nothing to do with women’s right to control their own bodies and everything to do with the baby’s—who in any abortion procedure has no one to speak for him—right simply to maintain his body.  Abortion has absolutely nothing to do with women’s “rights” generally and everything to do with the baby’s right to life.

Except in the minds of Progressive-Democrats.

Blowing Up Settlements

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The one being sabotaged here is between Facebook and the FTC over the FTC’s proposed settlement of Facebook’s “mishandling” of consumer privacy data, including surrendering millions of consumers’ personal information to Cambridge Analytica.

FTC Chairman Joseph Simons has the (Republican) votes he need to impose the settlement, from the FTC’s perspective, on a 3-2 partisan vote.  He’s quite rightly trying to get at least one of the Progressive-Democrats on the board to vote with him, but they’re bleating that a $5 billion fine and other controls don’t go far enough.

This is naked obstruction, though, based on a cynically manufactured beef.

Another impediment to the settlement is a textbook example of why Federal agencies ought not be spring-loaded to settle cases with miscreants.  “Settlements,” should be vanishingly rare, and they should occur only after the teeth from a history of court cases have been manifested.  This time, the block is whether

to name Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a respondent in the complaint that would be filed by the agency as part of the settlement. Naming Mr Zuckerberg as a respondent could make him liable for future privacy missteps—and give the FTC leverage if it should seek to remove Mr Zuckerberg from the company’s management in the future.

Whichever party wants this included, it’s an entirely legitimate inclusion.

“Facebook representatives,” though, object, and they say Facebook will not accept a settlement that includes this.

There’s nothing here for Facebook to accept or reject, though. Facebook screwed up with consumers’ private, personal information, and the screwups identified in this putative settlement are just the latest in a long string of such…errors.  That those prior misbehaviors are not part of this case does matter in determining the price to be paid in this instance, but they should inform the FTC’s willingness to go to court rather than itself settle for a settlement.

There should be no settlement on the table or on offer in any guise.  The case should be in the courts, moving apace—the FTC should not allow Facebook’s lawyers to drag things out, and neither should the courts—with a court judgment sought. That judgment should include, at minimum, a company fine of $5 billion or more, Zuckerberg named as correspondent, and Zuckerberg personally fined for his role as the MFWIC condoning, if not actively authorizing, such privacy invasions and sales.

The Supremes, Liberals, and Abortion

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The Liberal, Living Constitution, wing of the Supreme Court is up in arms over losing a case with precedential implications.  The proximate case concerned Franchise Tax Board v Hyatt, in which the Supreme Court overturned a 40-year-old precedent that held that States are not required to grant legal immunity to other States in interstate lawsuits.  I won’t go into that because that’s not the crux of the matter.

Instead, that Liberal wing, led by Justice Stephen Breyer, objected to the precedent reversal not on its merits or on the merits of precedent overturning/preservation, but on the premise that overturning this precedent would lead to overturning the abortion ban restrictions in Roe v Wade.

[L]iberal Justices warn that conservatives by overturning Hall will “encourage litigants to seek to overrule other cases.”

This actually is an unqualified Good. Error should be corrected whenever it’s discovered.

That Liberal wing bellyached further:

It is far more dangerous to overrule a decision only because five members of a later Court come to agree with earlier dissenters on a difficult legal question[.]

This makes no sense, though. It took only five members of the prior Court to make the mistake in the first place, for all that other members might have agreed with it.

And the NLMSM weighed in, showing the Liberal wing’s worries about abortion.

“Clarence Thomas Just Showed How Supreme Court Would Overturn Roe v Wade,” declared one columnist. [Jay Michaelson of the Daily Beast]

This, though, is just another bit of Liberal disingenuosity. Roe is technologically-based. The circumstances under which States are permitted to regulate abortion to the extent of banning them are based on viability of the baby, which the Roe Court suggested began around the third trimester. Modern medical technology makes babies viable much earlier, and so abortions can be restricted much earlier—wholly within Roe.

Though I wouldn’t mind the question coming to court so that the technological aspect can be better emphasized.

A Misunderstanding

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Senator Cory “Spartacus” Booker (D, NJ) has one in spades. The article at the link was centered on Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Robert Francis O’Rourke’s mild disagreement with Booker’s position on gun control, but one of the false premises that inform Booker’s misunderstanding was exposed.

Booker argued that just as a driver’s license demonstrates a person’s eligibility and proficiency to drive a car, “a gun license demonstrates that a person is eligible and can meet certain safety and training standards necessary to own a gun.”

First, Booker’s analogy is badly flawed.  A drivers license does not at all demonstrate a person’s eligibility to drive a car. Eligibility to drive comes from the person being a US citizen (or, according to many Progressive-Democrats, from their presence in the US and in a State, whether that presence is legal or not) of a State-determined minimum age, and from no other criteria.  The drivers license then demonstrates a minimum level of proficiency and knowledge of State driving laws. Other restrictions on driving then impact whether the person will be allowed to retain that license; they do not change his eligibility criteria to drive, for getting a license.  Indeed, that license must be granted on a will-issue basis on satisfactory completion of training; licensing courses cannot be used to restrict driving.

On the larger issue, a person is eligible to own a gun and to bear it solely from his status as a citizen of the United States.  Here’s what the 2nd Amendment says:

…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

There’s nothing in there about eligibility criteria. The only addenda to that are State-mandated criteria related to whether the person has a violent felony history.  All a gun license demonstrates is that State-mandated levels of safety and training standards, which include knowledge of State laws, have been met.  And that license must be granted on a will-issue basis on satisfactory completion of training; licensing courses cannot be used to restrict owning and bearing.

Disarmament

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The Progressive-Democratic Party wants to disarm us. That’s made clear by Party Presidential candidate and Senator Cory “Spartacus” Booker’s (NJ) gun control plan.  Senator Spartacus wants, among other requirements [emphasis added]:

  • prospective gun owners must prove to the FBI that they’ve completed a gun-safety course to obtain a federal gun license
  • that federal license would be required to purchase a firearm
  • a federal background check on virtually all sales
  • the federal license would be good for only five years
  • current firearm owners would have to get this federal license, also
  • limit handgun purchases limited to one per person per month

This can only be taken as an assault on the federal republican nature of our nation and a backdoor assault on our 2nd Amendment.

Background checks already are required by the feds in order to purchase a firearm.  States already require licenses—which themselves carry safety courses as part of the licensing procedure—in order to carry firearms on public property (a couple of States have Constitutional Carry capabilities, instead).

No, this expansion of background checks and federalizing the licensing requirement can only be for building a Federal database of who has weapons.

Background checks to screen prospective owners and buyers for felony records can be useful—at the State level—but when the checks are used to build a database of weapons owners, which is the only purpose for requiring existing firearms owners with their proven track records, to get federally licensed, those checks become a lethal danger to individual liberty. Such databases are too easily used by governments at all levels of jurisdictions (the Federal level is only the most powerful) to seize legally owned weapons under any guise that seems convenient—whether an “emergency” or a claimed domestic violence threat.

Even the domestic violence bit might seem legitimate, but for the process for the accused to get his weapons back and government’s demonstrated intransigence in returning other seized property after the seizure has been deemed erroneous.  One has only to look at the lengthy nature of the proceedings for getting weapons back.  One has only to look at the outright refusal of jurisdictions to return confiscated vehicles, even cash, seized under drug or money laundering claims proven erroneous.