Tag Archives: rights

Biden and Lawlessness

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden has his staff bailing out those arrested for taking part in the riots that are so dishonoring George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer and that are so thoroughly dismembering the peaceful protests of that murder and the city’s handling of it.

At least 13 members of Joe Biden’s campaign staff have made donations to a group that helps Minneapolis protesters get out of jail on bail, according to a report.

Only about a sixth of those arrested are outside “agitators,” Antifa and other Left-wing radicals. But it only takes a small fraction to ignite and keep lit the riots—they are not protests—in what is already an emotional environment like the one surrounding the murder of Floyd, and especially one that’s exacerbated by the isolation of the last two and three months caused by the various State and local governments’ lockdown orders.

Of course Biden and his staffers know these agitators are among those rioters. It’s instructive that he wants them released along with the rioter-criminals.

Never mind that Biden says out loud that he opposes cash bail as modern day debtors prison, this is what his actions say he really believes—rioters should walk. Antifa provocateurs should walk. He claims that

burning down communities and needless destruction is not [legitimate]. Violence that endangers lives is not. Violence that guts and shutters businesses that serve the community is not.

But he’s contributing to their walking.

A Judge Makes a Clear Ruling

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It’s “only” a Temporary Restraining Order by a county judge—Clay County, Illinois, Judge Michael McHaney—but the judge’s ruling is clear, plain spoken, and he speaks for Americans all across these United States.

Since the inception of this insanity, the following regulations, rules or consequences have occurred: I won’t get COVID if I get an abortion but I will get COVID if I get a colonoscopy. Selling pot is essential but selling goods and services at a family- owned business is not. Pot wasn’t even legal and pot dispensaries didn’t even exist in this state until five months ago and, in that five months, they have become essential but a family-owned business in existence for five generations is not.
A family of six can pile in their car and drive to Carlyle Lake without contracting COVID but, if they all get in the same boat, they will. We are told that kids rarely contract the virus and sunlight kills it, but summer youth programs, sports programs are cancelled. Four people can drive to the golf course and not get COVID but, if they play in a foursome, they will. If I go to Walmart, I won’t get COVID but, if I go to church, I will. Murderers are released from custody while small business owners are threatened with arrest if they have the audacity to attempt to feed their families.
These are just a few of examples of rules, regulations and consequences that are arbitrary, capricious, and completely devoid of anything even remotely approaching common sense.
State’s attorneys in this state, county sheriffs, mayors, city councils and county boards have openly and publicly defied these orders followed by threats to withhold funding and revocation of necessary licenses and certifications unless you obey.
Our economy is shut down because of a flu virus with a 98 percent plus survival rate. Doctors and experts say different things weekly. The defendant cites models in his opposition. The only thing experts will agree on is that all models are wrong and some are useful. The Centers for Disease Control now says the virus is not easily spread on surfaces.
The defendant in this case orders you to stay home and pronounces that, if you leave the state, you are putting people in danger, but his family members traveled to Florida and Wisconsin because he deems such travel essential. One initial rationale why the rules don’t apply to him is that his family farm had animals that needed fed. Try selling that argument to farmers who have had to slaughter their herds because of disruption in the supply chain.
When laws do not apply to those who make them, people are not being governed, they are being ruled. Make no mistake, these executive orders are not laws. They are royal decrees. Illinois citizens are not being governed, they are being ruled. The last time I checked Illinois citizens are also Americans and Americans don’t get ruled. The last time a monarch tried to rule Americans, a shot was fired that was heard around the world. That day led to the birth of a nation consensually governed based upon a document which ensures that on this day in this, any American courtroom tyrannical despotism will always lose and liberty, freedom and the constitution will always win.

The TRO was granted in favor of the plaintiff against the defendant, JB Pritzker, in his capacity of Governor of Illinois on two of three counts.

Censorship

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Twitter has made itself an open, enthusiastic censor of political speech.

Twitter applied…fact-checking notices late Tuesday to two tweets from the president about the potential for fraud involving mail-in ballots. With a small label—”Get the facts about mail-in ballots”—and a link to more information, Twitter alerted its users that those claims were unsubstantiated.
The tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots,” a Twitter spokesman said.

Never mind that Twitter’s “fact” checking is done by the likes of CNN and The Washington Post.

Pay no attention to the man behind the Twitter curtain either, Twitter’s Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, whose job entails “election security and misinformation,” is virulently anti-Republican and anti-Trump, and he’s quite crude about it:

Today on Meet The Press, we’re speaking with Joseph Goebbels about the first 100 days…—What I hear whenever Kellyanne [Conway] is on a news show.

And

I’m just saying, we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason.

And

Yes, that person in the pink hat is clearly a bigger threat to your brand of feminism than ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

And

How does a personality-free bag of farts like Mitch McConnell actually win elections?

From all of that, it’s clear: if @Jack thinks a tweet is…inaccurate…especially since he’s relying so heavily on CNN and WaPo and a person like Roth for his “checking,” than the tweet likely isn’t that far off.

Those tweeting who get one of those Get the facts labels should wear those labels like the badges of honor they are, and they should put those labels on their cars under their driver’s side window. Accumulate five, and they’re Twitter Aces.

Limit FISA Surveillance?

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Certainly, the process is beset with vast, and serious, problems.

Mr [DoJ Inspector General] Horowitz’s staff reviewed a sample from a recent five-year period, October 2014 to September 2019, during which the eight FBI field offices applied for more than 700 surveillance warrants on US persons. Each of the reviewed files contained errors, inconsistencies and omissions. After reviewing the report, the FISA court’s Chief Judge James E Boasberg issued a rare public order. He told the government to undertake steps to ensure the accuracy of FISA applications. Yet inaccuracy isn’t the only problem. The use of FISA against a US citizen presents a fundamental threat to civil liberties. It essentially suspends the Constitution.

The problems, though, aren’t limited to FBI misbehaviors, the FBI being the proximate target of Boasberg’s order. The existence of these errors and the long-time existence of this sort of error each and together demonstrate that men of government, when able to exercise their power in the darkness of secrecy, cannot be trusted to stay true to the straight and narrow, to the strictures of integrity.

After FISA was enacted in 1978, FBI Director William Webster set the standards for its use.

And those standards have been violated.

Over the years FISA has been amended to allow for the surveillance of Americans. But there were safeguards.

Even with that legislative drift, the evolving safeguards have been violated.

It’s enough.

Limiting FISA surveillance must begin with eliminating the Star Chamber that is the FISA Court. That court is lawless enough already, as its ready and unquestioning acceptance of false warrant applications demonstrates. Its secret proceedings, along with that history, lend no credibility to the premise that, were its approvals limited by statute to foreign nationals, that it would honor those limits any more than have the men coming before it with applications to spy on American citizens foreign nationals who happen to be corresponding with American citizens.

Nor has that secret court ever been necessary, even did it behave properly. It exists to facilitate secret surveillances supported by secret warrants. Our Article III courts, and our State courts, have long been checked out on sealing—keeping secret—warrants, and subpoenas, until it comes time actually to serve them. Our courts, and our States’ state-level and local police departments, have long been checked out on conducting quiet surveillance—while under the careful eye of our public courts and of us citizens of the United States and of the State wherein [we] reside.

The existence of this Star Chamber is at the heart of the suspension of our Constitution about which Baker wrote at the link.

An Expansionist Germany

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Not military expansion, but a more insidious one: legal expansion.

The German government must come up with a new law regulating its secret services, after the country’s highest court [Federal Constitutional Court] ruled that the current practice of monitoring telecommunications of foreign citizens at will violates constitutionally-enshrined press freedoms and the privacy of communications.

And:

The key legal question was whether foreign nationals in other countries were covered by Germany’s constitution….

Why, yes, yes they are. Because German sovereignty reaches deep inside other nations’ borders, other nations’ legal and political jurisdictions, overrides those nations’ own sovereignty. Germany’s laws not only apply outside German borders, they apply inside other nations’ borders.

The Court’s judges’ hearts may have been in the right place, but this sets an ugly precedent regarding the allegedly inherent superiority of German sovereignty.