Tag Archives: responsibilities

Republican Gadflies

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Karl Rove talked about health care coverage prospects in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, and that triggered a thought in my pea brain.

Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) has announced that the House plan on offer, a plan designed to be passable through reconciliation, with later phases of repeal and replace for completing the task, is dead on arrival, and the House shoe start over and produce a more comprehensive plan in this first phase.  But Cotton has chosen to not offer a plan of his own, or outline what a plan acceptable to him would look like other than to address taxes and to more fully repeal right damn now Obamacare, or even to offer the tactics he’d use to get the new plan—which could not be done through reconciliation—past a Progressive-Democrat filibuster.

Congressman Jim Jordan (R, OH) similarly demands a broader bill right damn now, but he, too, has chosen to offer no tactics for getting his bill past a Senate Progressive-Democrat filibuster.  He’s just using the copout excuse that that’s the Senate’s problem.  Oh, and Jordan also declines to identify the value of a bill that can’t be passed.

Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) at least has offered an actual plan, but he, too, has declined to identify how he expects to get his plan past a Progressive-Democrat filibuster.

These gadflies keep demanding that everyone else put up (these three’s demands) or shut up.  It’s time these three put up; otherwise, they’re just porch dogs, yapping from the safety of their stoops.

Multitasking

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Whatever happened to it?

I’m reading between the lines on a Wall Street Journal op-ed from the weekend.

While the press corps chases accusations of Russian-Trump election collusion and illegal Obama Administration wiretaps, few noticed the Pentagon’s first public confirmation last week that the Kremlin is violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).

The specific problem that seems to have escaped NLMSM notice is this:

General Paul Selva, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that Russia has deployed a land-based cruise missile that violates the “spirit and intent” of that arms pact. “The system itself presents a risk to most of our facilities in Europe and we believe that the Russians have deliberately deployed it in order to pose a threat to NATO and to facilities within the NATO area of responsibility,” General Selva told the House Armed Services Committee.

Even the process of developing of this system is an INF violation.

Used to be folks could do more than one thing at a time.  Walk and chew gum, for instance.  Or write news articles about two different subjects and figure out how to put them on the same front page.

Or maybe this lack is a measure of the depth of the NLMSM’s TDS affliction.

Empty Rhetoric

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A Progressive-Democrat attacked a journalist who was covering the latest CPAC convention…for his hairstyle.  Samantha Bee, the host of Full Frontal on TBS, took one look at the journalist and ran a segment in her show that included imagery of the journalist, who had a hairdo that might have been called a high-top fade in other circumstances (imagery at the link) and the remark

This year, the bow ties were gone, replaced by Nazi hair, Nazi hair, Nazi hair[.]

Never mind that the man is fighting an aggressive brain cancer, stage 4 glioblastoma.  That didn’t matter to Bee.

Not until the man’s sister call Bee out, anyway.  Then she tweeted that mealy-mouth pseudo-apology with its risible excuse.  There are two things about that “apology.”  One is that she did know because like any responsible adult Hollywood denizen, Bee had her intern check on the journalist and his hairstyle before putting her segment together, and then she ran it anyway.

The other thing is that, in her haste to demonize anyone not of the Left, she didn’t bother to check any facts related to the matter; she just ran with her segment.

But wait—there’s more.  The journalist she attacked turns out to be a registered Democrat.

The paranoia of the Left has gone so far out of control they even attack their own in their knee-jerk lashouts.

A Circular Judge-Made “Law”

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A jury can’t deliberate impartially and independently if its deliberations are going to be overseen by the presiding judge or any other government representative.  Such government oversight smacks of Bushel.  Yet that’s what the Supreme Court has decided must be in certain cases.

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled courts must review typically secret jury deliberations when a juror relies on racial or ethnic stereotypes to convict a defendant.

The 5-3 opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy found the Constitution’s call for a colorblind justice system outweighed traditional interests in promoting robust jury deliberations and protecting verdicts from challenge.

In an all too typical case of lawmaking from the Bench, Kennedy wrote

A constitutional rule that racial bias in the justice system must be addressed—including, in some instances, after the verdict has been entered—is necessary to prevent a systemic loss of confidence in jury verdicts….

And so, with his opinion, Kennedy usurped the authority of We the People and legislated on his own (lack of) authority.  It may be that such a statute, even an Amendment to our Constitution, is necessary, but that’s a political decision, and so it’s exclusively for us to decide, not a lone judge (or five lone judges in the present case).

Note that Kennedy’s “constitutional rule” is not, in itself, a direct attempt to amend our Constitution or otherwise to legislate.  It is, instead, a backdoor attempt, by creating a judicial rule that directs how the Constitution or a State’s law must be applied from outside of the plain text of the thing.

Aside from that, in order to legitimize (arguendo) such a penetration of the secrecy of jury deliberations, the existence of racial bias must first be shown.  Yet how that bias can be shown without penetration the cloak of secrecy has been elided by the five justices.  Kennedy centered his new rule on a juror in the present case voluntarily speaking up, but this is a thin reed, indeed.  Not all jurors will come forward, and of those that do, not all can be believed.  Especially with the former situation extant, under Kennedy’s rule there no longer can be equal protection under law—only “protection” when it suits a juror, and hopefully a juror with no axe to grind.

No, the answer is a proactive one, and it’s one that already exists: pre-trial juror selection.  A suitably qualified lawyer—and so are they all, all qualified lawyers—can tease out bias in a juror while the juror still is only prospective, and exclude him.

Disingenuous Targeting

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Recall that President Donald Trump has signed a revised Executive Order that imposes a short moratorium on entry into the US from six (down from seven under his original EO) Middle Eastern countries.  Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin has filed suit in Hawaii’s Federal District Court to try to block this new EO.  The EO, Chin claims, will damage Hawaii’s

economy, educational institutions, and tourism industry; and it is subjecting a portion of the state’s citizens to second-class treatment and discrimination, while denying all Hawaii residents the benefits of an inclusive and pluralistic society.

This is disingenuous.  The folks whose entry is being temporarily blocked represent a vanishingly small per centage of Hawaii’s tourist population.  The foolishness of “damage” to educational institutions I’ve already addressed regarding a Washington Federal judge’s ruling on the earlier EO.  Chin’s beef about Hawaii citizens is nothing more than a cynically dragged red herring: the EO doesn’t even address American citizens, much less those who also are citizens of Hawaii.  This EO impacts only some refugees and potential immigrants.

About those refugees and potential immigrants: Chin made this charge in his filing, and he actually kept a straight face as he filed it:

This new executive order is nothing more than Muslim Ban 2.0.  Under the pretense of national security, it still targets immigrants and refugees.

Of course, the EO cannot be a ban; it’s a temporary moratorium with an expiration deadline.  More than that, it cannot be a ban of Muslims; it impacts only about 10% of the world’s Muslims.

Of course, it does target potential immigrants and refugees—those are folks outside our nation, and they are not citizens of our nation.  As such, these people have no right to enter our nation without our prior permission, nor do we have an obligation to let them in.  That’s what nation means, that’s what borders are for.

Nor do we know who these folks are, really—which is why the EO imposes the moratorium: to give State and DHS time to improve our vetting procedures, another requirement of the EO, and a requirement carefully ignored by Chin.

Of course Chin knows all of this.  The utter disingenuousness of this Democrat’s charge ought to get his filing dismissed on its face.