Tag Archives: rights

More Disingenuosity

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The Supreme Court has ruled—7-2—in favor of the Little Sisters of the Poor and other organizations. The Court upheld the Trump administration’s rule exempting these employers from an Obamacare requirement to provide insurance coverage that includes contraception.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the Court:

We hold today that the Departments had the statutory authority to craft that exemption, as well as the contemporaneously issued moral exemption. We further hold that the rules promulgating these exemptions are free from procedural defects.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.

…this Court leaves women workers to fend for themselves, to seek contraceptive coverage from sources other than their employer’s insurer, and, absent another available source of funding, to pay for contraceptive services out of their own pockets.

Ginsburg is being disingenuous in this. Contraceptives are dirt cheap in Walmart and drug stores. It’s no great burden for “women workers” to pay for contraception “out of their own pockets.” If it’s a burden to seek “contraceptive coverage” from other sources, that’s the direct result of Obamacare driving up the cost of all coverage.

Ginsburg is being sexist in this. Condoms are nearly as cheap and even more widely available. But Ginsburg is blithely assuming that contraception is solely the responsibility of the woman.

It’s Been Going On for a Year

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This is what Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, in a series of tweets, said so weakly about antifa on 2 July 2019 after that gang assaulted journalist Andy Ngo and others, putting them in the hospital:

Portland has always been a beacon of free speech. We are proud of that history.
— Mayor Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) July 1, 2019

But in the last couple of years, some have increasingly used their opportunity to exercise their 1st amendment rights, as an opportunity to incite violence.
— Mayor Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) July 1, 2019

Over the weekend some chose to engage in violence in Portland, which is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.
— Mayor Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) July 1, 2019

Wheeler then said ‘twarn’t him:

I wasn’t even here. I wasn’t even in the United States. I was with my family in Ecuador on a wildlife tour.

Because he was out of all contact with the world.

No, wait–his Number Two wasn’t following the command set and instructions he’d left behind when he went on his trip.

No, wait–no one was following the corporate culture he’d so carefully set up when he took office.

Now we have this:

Police in Portland, OR, declared a riot around 11 pm local time Saturday as Independence Day marked the 38th consecutive day of civil unrest in the city.

Not peaceful protesting for 38 days, civil unrest—and Saturday was the second consecutive day the police have had to declare a riot and move to disperse the gathered thugs and rioters.

Riot? The “gathering” was shooting fireworks, not into the air in celebration, but directly at the Multnomah County Justice Center. Yes, riot.

This is another example of Progressive-Democrat governance.

Revolution

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On the eve of the 2008 Presidential election, then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama (D) bragged

We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

In 2015, then-Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D) insisted

[D]eep seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.

Current Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden is declaring via tweet

Joe Biden @JoeBiden · 14h
We’re going to beat Donald Trump. And when we do, we won’t just rebuild this nation — we’ll transform it.

Progressive-Democrats like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ilhan Omar (MN), Rashida Tlaib (MI) all are calling for the elimination of police departments. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) are demanding nakedly wealth redistributive tax codes.

Progressive-Democrat supporters are busily assaulting, attempting to tear down (and too often succeeding) statues to our Founders and to heroes who supported and fought for equality under law for all Americans—statues to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln (including a statue celebrating the emancipation and Lincoln’s welcome of a rising, newly freed black to his new life), Ulysses Grant, Frederick Douglass, Mathias Baldwin, the Shaw Memorial.

Now we have this, from Jamal Chapel:

We need a revolution in order to overthrow this system, bring a whole new communist world into being that can actually ensure the rights of black and brown people.

This is the fundamental change we’re in for if we elect a Progressive-Democrat government. And not just this fall. Ever.

Disingenuosity

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Thy name is TikTok. India has banned TikTok along with a potful of other PRC apps on national security—cybersecurity—grounds. In response, TikTok’s CEO Kevin Mayer said that

Chinese authorities had never requested the data of their Indian users, and even if they had, the company wouldn’t comply.

Right.

“Never requested” is a cynically offered non sequitur. Not having been asked is entirely separate from never will be asked.

It’s more serious than that, though. The People’s Republic of China enacted a law in 2017 that requires all PRC-domiciled companies to comply with PRC intel community requests for information. Not “pretty please,” not “strongly encouraged.” It’s “stand and deliver, stand in violation of law.”

This past week, the PRC enacted an additional law, that while nominally aimed at Hong Kong, has the effect of fleshing out that 2017 law. This latest rule by law enactment tells the PRC government that it’s authorized to go outside the nation’s borders to enter other nations to arrest and bring to the PRC for trial those who violate or threaten PRC national security. Mayer’s pious claim that TikTok wouldn’t comply with such a request would be a clear violation—in PRC government eyes—and subject him and his staff to arrest and removal to the PRC.

Article 38 of that law specifically says this:

This Law shall apply to offences under this Law committed against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from outside the Region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the Region.

Beijing has long said that Hong Kong is critical to the PRC’s national security—and that’s the PRC’s rationale for this additional law. From that, any company not complying with an intel request, by threatening PRC security, offends against Hong Kong.

Mayer knows that. He’s not an ignorant or oblivious man.

A Judicial Error

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The Supreme Court has ordered a restructuring of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: its single director, removable only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office, among other things, was an unconstitutional abridgment of Executive Branch authority.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Court, said that the

setup meant the CFPB’s director was unaccountable to the executive branch, creating an unconstitutional diminishment of presidential power.
“The CFPB’s single-director structure contravenes this carefully calibrated system by vesting significant governmental power in the hands of a single individual accountable to no one[.]”

And then,

To address the problem, the court changed the CFPB removal provision to make the director subject to presidential removal for any reason.

That’s the error. The Court’s position of the unconstitutionality of the CFPB’s structure is entirely correct. The Court’s remedy is entirely wrong.

With this ruling, the Court has unconstitutionally legislated from the bench, a thing it does far too often for far too long.

The correct remedy would have been to strike the CFPB entirely as unconstitutional and return this inherently political matter to where it belongs: the political branches of the Federal government, Congress and the Executive Branch for new legislation. And to We the People, the owner-boss of our Government, both the two political and the judicial branches.