Tag Archives: rights

Red Flag Law in Action

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It seems an old veteran in Massachusetts had his legally-owned firearms confiscated by the local police—for no reason at all, other than a waitress chose to call the cops on him after eavesdropping on a part of a private conversation he was having with a friend in her restaurant. The waitress’ uninformed tattling also got him fired from his school-crossing guard job.

While he was at a local diner, [Stephen] Nichols was speaking to a friend about a school resource officer who apparently was constantly leaving his post to go for coffee in the morning.
Nichols said he was worried somebody would come in and “shoot up the school” while the officer was out on one of his coffee runs.

The waitress, having eavesdropped on only part of Nichols’ conversation (and I fail to see how she could not know she’d snooped on only part of the conversation), reported the “shoot up the school” part to the police.

There’s more:

[Tisbury Police Chief Mark] Saloio and another officer relieved Nichols of his crossing guard duties while he was in the midst of performing them and subsequently drove to his home and took away his firearms license and guns.
“He came up and told me what I said was a felony but he wasn’t going to charge me,” Nichols said of Saloio.

No charges, but his firearms were seized, anyway by the government’s officers.

And this:

Asked if he was given a letter or any paperwork for the seizure of his license, Nichols said, “No he just told me to hand it over so I took it out of my wallet and handed it to him.”
Nichols said he has been licensed for firearms since 1958.

Nichols has since had his crossing guard job reinstated, but the State still refuses to return to him his firearms license and his firearms.

This is the Progressive-Democrats’ (and too many Republicans’) red flag law in action.

The restaurant where this PC sewage went down is Linda Jean’s in Oak Bluffs, next door to Tisbury on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.  Linda Jean’s owner, Marc Hanover, appears to be trying to wash his hands of the whole sordid affair.

He said he believes one of his servers “overreacted.”

Hanover apparently has chosen to do nothing about his waitress, whose anonymity has been carefully protected, even as the woman has dragged a good man’s name through the mud.

A Judge Got One Wrong

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Recall Florida’s citizens, by a 2:1 margin, voting up a State constitutional amendment restoring to convicted felons (except murderers and sex offenders) their right to vote on completion of their criminal sentences.

Recall, further, Florida’s government passing a law that required these felons to pay off their outstanding fines, fees or restitution—in other words, actually to complete their sentences, including court-imposed financial requirements.  This law went further: it provided mechanisms for relief from those financial penalties so the felon could complete their sentences more quickly after release from jail:

  • payment of the financial obligation in full
  • a court’s dismissal of the debt
  • conversion of the debt to community service

That last is instructive: community service is one of several sanctions, whether in addition to or in lieu of jail, applied on felony conviction. Community service in this guise thus stands as the State’s explicit recognition that a felon has not completed his sentence until he has completed all of it, including financial penalties.  That community service also is used to sanction misdemeanors and civil wrongs in no way alters that simple truth.

Now Federal District Judge Robert Hinkle has chosen to overrule the will of the citizens of the State: he’s issued an injunction that bars Florida’s Secretary of State and County Supervisors of Elections

from preventing plaintiffs from registering to vote solely because they can’t pay a financial obligation. He cited an appellate court ruling that held that “access to the franchise cannot be made to depend on an individual’s financial resources.”

Never mind that the law does not bar a right to vote based on a voter’s financial resources but on a felon’s having completed his sentence.

Never mind, either, that the law provides two means of relief from the financial portion of the felon’s sentence.  With his injunction, Hinkle has both removed the possibility of relief from financial distress, thereby making even more difficult an already arduous journey back to society, he’s removed much of the incentive for the felon to try.

This is another example of activist judges making political decisions in direct contravention of the political arms of a government, for all that this injunction is temporary, pending next year’s trial on the merits.

Censorship

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Its name is Jack Dorsey.

The social media company led by CEO Jack Dorsey [that would be Twitter for those of you playing along at home] said in a Tuesday blog post that it will not allow users to like, reply, share or retweet offending tweets, but it will let users quote-tweet them so they can still express their own opinions.

Dorsey has reserved to himself the right to decide how an opinion is expressed on his medium.  Quote-tweet a tweet he finds personally objectionable but not simply retweet it?

Under the guise that the twitterer, within Dorsey’s magnanimity, will be allowed to express his own opinion through quote-tweeting.  Never mind that liking, replying, sharing, or retweeting also are expressions of the relaying twitterer’s opinion.  That’s not allowed.  Jack Dorsey, in all of his awesomeness, will decide how a user must express himself.

Free speech, including its manner of expression, is what Jack Dorsey personally approves.  It’s nothing at all to do with any endowment of inalienable rights.  Dorsey Knows Better.

A House Impeachment Vote

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), as soon as she returned from the House’s vacation this week, announced that she would not hold a floor vote on whether President Donald Trump should be impeached and the associated investigation should begin forthwith.  Many pundits say Pelosi’s refusal flows from her desire to protect some number of Progressive-Democrats purported to be vulnerable in the 2020 elections.  This is naïve.

Neither Pelosi nor the Progressive-Democrat House caucus that she leads are interested in the slightest in any actual impeachment.  Nor does that disinterest have anything to do with whether there’s a realistic expectation of getting a conviction in the Senate, with the effort’s failure constituting vindication for Trump.

No, the reason Pelosi won’t have the vote is because, her Party having failed to invalidate the 2016 election and canceling American voters’ decision, she’s now bent on prejudicing the 2020 election by extending the smear campaign that the Progressive-Democrats began the day after Trump’s election: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D, MI) in her election victory speech promising to “impeach the mother**.” The move gained steam with Progressive-Democrats’ formally announced invalidation effort made shortly after Trump’s inauguration: Congressmen Al Green (D, TX) and Brad Sherman (D, CA) circulating their Impeaching Donald Trump Resolution that May, and Congressman Steve Cohen (D, TN), along with six other Progressive-Democratic Congressmen, formally introducing Articles of Impeachment.

The smear has continued with Congressman Adam Schiff’s (D, CA) promise of incontrovertible evidence of Trump’s guilt…of something…until the Mueller report disappointed Party, continues with Congressman Jerrold Nadler’s (D, NY, Chairman, House Judiciary Committee), Schiff’s (Chairman, House Intelligence Committee), and Congressman Elijah Cummings’ (D, MD, Chairman, House Oversight Committee) secret Star Chamber inquisitions, from which Schiff has been leaking strategic tidbits, and Wednesday evening with Congressman Eric Swalwell’s (D, CA) announcement on Fox News‘ The Story that Trump is guilty and the hearings are just procedural, a claim of already determined guilt that he’s made several times over the last couple of weeks.

Floor vote for an impeachment proceeding?  Not for a baker’s dozen of months.

Misinformed

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In his piece for Fox News about LeBron James quizzing NBA Commissioner Adam Silver over a General Manager’s tweet, Ryan Gaydos opened with this:

Amid the firestorm ignited by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet supporting pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong

This is backwards. Morey simply tweeted a truth. The firestorm was ignited by the cowardly, picayune, and avaricious responses of the NBA and of arrogant ignoramuses like LeBron James and Steve Kerr to the PRC’s manufactured outrage.

Gaydos should know better, or is he one of those who are misinformed or not educated about this?