Tag Archives: rights

A Thought on a Tweet

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President Donald Trump, during Friday’s “impeachment” hearing with erstwhile US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, tweeted in his inimitable style a critique of her job performance over the years.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump · Nov 15
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.

Some are suggesting that Yovanovitch wouldn’t have known about the tweet had not House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D, CA) read it out to her during her testimony, and so there couldn’t possibly be any intimidation.  Others argue the so what aspect of that; Trump’s tweet would serve to intimidate future witnesses and to intimidate Yovanovitch were she to return for additional testimony.

Especially damning, Yovanovitch testified—under oath—in answer to Schiff’s question about the tweet, that she found it intimidating.

But damning to whom?

Yovanovitch, at the time of her ambassadorship in Ukraine (and elsewhere), was a high-level US Government representative, and she still is by extension from her “plum job” at Georgetown. Her confessing to being intimidated by petty (in several senses) criticism of her job performance tells other governments, including those of our enemies, that our government can easily be pushed around.

That emboldens our enemies to act overtly against our interests, even against us.  It tells our friends and allies that we’ll fold in a crunch, including theirs.

That’s a threat to our national security.

US Olympic Committee

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Now styled US Olympic & Paralympic Committee, the body objects to being held accountable for its abominable handling of the sexual abuse of so many of its athletes for so long—indeed for its active suppression of complaints about those abuses.  The Senate Commerce Committee voted to send to the floor for debate and vote a bill that would authorize

Congress to vote to dissolve [the USOPC] board of directors and terminate any national governing body, which run specific sports within the U.S.

USOPC Chief Executive Sarah Hirshland had sent the Committee a letter threatening objecting to that:

[USOPC Chief Executive Sarah] Hirshland had told members of the Senate Commerce Committee: “The International Olympic Committee has made clear that Congress assuming the power to dissolve the USOPC board would violate the Olympic Charter and endanger our recognition by the IOC as a National Olympic Committee.”

Hirschland had gone further:

The International Olympic Committee has made clear that Congress assuming the power to dissolve the USOPC board would violate the Olympic Charter and endanger our recognition by the IOC as a National Olympic Committee.

In the end, the Committee called her bluff.

One of Hirschland’s few supporters, though, was Senator Mike Lee (R, UT) who made his usual libertarian-esque argument that

Washington had no right to act as judge, jury and executioner over the committee…and that the US should hold itself to higher standards than China in the operation of its Olympic movement. He also said that passing the bill would heighten IOC scrutiny on the US committee.

Because the IOC is such a paragon of virtue, too.

I often agree with Lee, but here, he’s mistaken. The protection of our children from predators is one area where the Federal government must play a role, albeit not exclusive of the States’ equally necessary role. I do agree with him, though, that we should hold ourselves to higher standards than those the People’s Republic of China employs in the operation of its Olympic movement.  This bill is a step in that direction.

If You’ve Got Nothing to Hide

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Congressman Eric “Nuke ’em” Swalwell (D, CA) has come up with yet another bit of his distortion of our Constitution.

If the president of the United States is innocent, he will send the firsthand witnesses, John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney, to Congress.  If he’s guilty, they’ll stop us from hearing it, hard stop.

Because Guilty. He’s accused.

This is precisely the sort of invasive, prurient, government arrogance against which our Founders, the authors of our Constitution, and us citizens led the fight against, wrote into our Constitution, and ratified—including the 4th Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Swalwell must get a warrant.  He doesn’t get to peek through our windows—even through an opposing politician’s or associates of an opposing politician’s windows—just because his prying mind wants to peek.  Nothing to hide? Our privacy is all we have to hide, and it’s sufficient that we choose to protect it.  If we’re innocent? We start out that way; it’s on Swalwell and his Government cronies to prove we’re not.

And this gem:

I wanted the American people to see that these [William Taylor and Gordon Kent]…share what they saw as far as wrongdoing….

Except by their own admission under oath during the Wednesday’s hearing they saw absolutely nothing as far as wrongdoing. All they could do was describe things they’d heard others say, through an often highly convoluted grapevine.

Even Congressman Nuke ’em knows this, or he wasn’t watching the hearing. This is a measure of the level of integrity that our Progressive-Democrat politicians hold.

What Do We Have So Far

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Wednesday’s “impeachment” hearing is in the can, and here’s what we know from it.

All Acting Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and State Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent could offer throughout the entire 6-ish hours of testimony was hearsay and supposition.

Taylor repeatedly said he’d heard this, or someone reported to him that, or it came to him through a chain of tellings and retellings. “I heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy (who heard it from a guy).” He also insisted that Progressive-Democrat claims of wrongs done by President Donald Trump vis-à-vis Ukraine were his understanding, too, even his clear understanding.  Yet when directly asked how he arrived at his understandings, all he could say was, “Well, I heard it from a guy….” Even his in-hearing “revelation”—that Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland thought Trump, in the runup to and during the telecon, only cared about a Biden investigation—was nothing more than that Taylor had heard it from guy: Sondland reporting to Taylor Sondland’s own “understanding.”

Sondland’s understanding? Congressman Jim Jordan (R, OH) spelled out an example of Sondland’s…understandings:

Ambassador Taylor recalls that Mr [Tim] Morrison told Ambassador Taylor that I told Mr Morrison that I had conveyed this message to Mr [Andriy] Yermak on September 1, 2019, in connection with Vice President Pence’s visit to Warsaw and a meeting with President [Volodymyr] Zelensky[.]

When asked if either had talked to Zelenskiy or Trump or Trump associates themselves, both Kent and Taylor had nothing to say except that they had talked to none of the principles or associates of the principles.  All they had was their grapevines.

There were, though, some actual facts revealed in Wednesday’s hearing:

  • Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said—repeatedly and on the world stage during multiple press conferences that he held—there was no pressure, no influence attempted
  • Despite Progressive-Democrat Intelligence Committee members’ claims that Trump had intimidated Zelenskiy into beginning or publicly announcing the need for investigations under threat of aid cut-off, Zelenskiy began no investigations, made no such public averrals. The aid was released shortly after the telecon
  • Ukraine’s government didn’t know aid had been held up until long after the telecon
  • Ukrainian aid had been held up over skepticism about endemic Ukrainian corruption; it was released when the White House staff became satisfied that Zelenskiy and his staff were “the real deal”
  • Progressive-Democrats, having failed in their quid pro quo quest, now are turning to the even more difficult to prove extortion/bribery (they can’t decide which) charge
  • Intel Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D, CA) continues to refuse to allow the principle witness to this affair, the reputed whistleblower—whose own claim is based solely on hearsay—to be called to testify
  • By extension, Schiff also won’t allow the whistleblower’s reputed sources to be called to testify

This is the level to which the Progressive-Democratic Party has sunk.

Today’s hearing will be…interesting?

National Sovereignty

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The Paris Peace Forum met earlier this week; fortunately, we didn’t send any government representative to it.  National sovereignty, this claque held, is a danger to the world.

French President Macron advocated for multilateralism and a “balanced cooperation” between the nations.

Balanced cooperation is good, but that requires not the open borders and come one, come all—no matter who the one or the all are—but coalitions built for specific times and purposes.  And those coalitions, even treaties between or among States requires…nation-states with actual borders, nation-states with internal, coherent cultures, nation-states that put their own interests first.

Easy immigration, certainly, but immigrant prospects who are carefully vetted before they’re allowed in, immigrant prospects committed to assimilating into the culture of the nation they wish to enter and become a part of.

National sovereignty, nationalism.

Emmanuel Macron doesn’t want this.

… unilateralism is “very risky. …  Nationalism is war.”

Never mind that balanced cooperation requires nations actually to be willing to cooperate with each other to do something that’s necessary.  The necessary thing needs doing, though, whether or not nations are willing to cooperate, and that requires, occasionally, unilateralism.  Occasions like Iran, openly and bluntly committed to the destroying Israel and supporting terrorism throughout the world, rapidly pursuing nuclear weapons—while Europe not only stands by, but actively funds Iran’s effort with trade and efforts to circumvent unilaterally applied economic sanctions.

Occasions like the People’s Republic of China seizing and occupying the South China Sea, with only the US willing even a little bit to object, the PRC’s economic, intellectual property, and technology thefts while Europe not only stands by, but actively seeks out new trade deals with the PRC.

Occasions like Russia occupying and partitioning parts of Georgia and Ukraine, engaging in cyber war against each of the Baltic States, deploys tactical and intermediate range nuclear weapons on its western border while Europe stands by and watches—and actively facilitates Russia’s ability to export natural gas to…Europe.

But nationalism, putting one’s own nation ahead of an amorphous multiculturally international entity is anathema.

This is who one of our putative friends is.