Tag Archives: rights

The Doings of a Star Chamber

Posted on by
Reply

Here are some, from the House Intelligence Committee’s canonical Star Chamber, chaired by Congressman and Intell Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D, CA):

a single, printed transcript of every interview…of its impeachment inquiry. Only members of the three committees…allowed to view that printout, and only in the presence of a Democratic staffer

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R, NY) has the right of this one:

Ms Stefanik—an elected member of Congress who sits on the Intelligence Committee—will be babysat while reading by an unelected employee of the Democrats.
“It’s outrageous, and it’s an abuse of power,” Ms Stefanik said in an interview. “Every constituent across this country deserves to have their members have access to all the facts.”

Here’re more of Schiff’s Star Chamber rules:

  • witnesses locked behind secure doors
  • shield the whistleblower who prompted this “impeachment” proceeding from cross- much less direct examination
  • public, press, representatives of his selection barred from secret, though unclassified, hearings
  • carefully scripted and executed leaks and accusations
  • Progressive-Democratic staff supervision of Republican members
  • bar Republicans from calling opposing witnesses
  • withhold official documents including nearly two dozen letters from the committee…that had not been uploaded to the committee repository
  • Republicans not allowed to know the questions Schiff is asking
  • refuse to allow White House counsel in the room to hear the accusations against the president

This is what we can look forward to under a Progressive-Democratic Party reign.

Secular Authority and Morals

Posted on by
Reply

A letter writer in a recent Wall Street Journal‘s Letters to the Editor section, demurred from Attorney General William Barr’s remarks on secularism and religion at the University of Notre Dame’s Law School and de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. The letter’s author wrote,

Our society can teach morality, ethics, civility, self-reliance, and humility without reference to religion or any particular faith. Children can be taught….

Certainly, such principles can be taught.  But how to enforce them? Relying on Government for enforcement means relying on the men who are in Government from time to time, men with views on the legitimacy of those principles and the means of their enforcement that are as variable as those men. And each man’s views will vary over time.

No, moral and ethical principles are universal and timeless, and the only even moderately sure way of enforcing them is through appeal to a higher power—in fine, to religion, which is what our republic’s founding documents do, and our Founders did.

There are Bribes

Posted on by
Reply

…and there are bribes.  Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam tried to bribe the good people of Hong Kong the other day.  She gave her annual address on her policies for the coming year, and in it she “promised” (because we’ve seen the value of her commitments in her promise to completely withdraw and rescind her draft extradition law, a promise on which she has since welched)

to boost the supply of low-cost homes, offer mortgage assistance for first-time buyers, and increase mass-transit fare subsidies

if only Hong Kong’s people would just shut up, go home, and submit.

Those folks didn’t, and don’t, believe her.

Mrs Lam’s speech this week “has not really focused on the protest itself,” a 26-year-old demonstrator…said Sunday.

And tens of thousands of Hong Kong’s finest hit the streets again Sunday, to be met with tear gas and water cannon firing abrasive, dyed liquids shot at them by Hong Kong’s increasingly thuggish police.  It’s true enough, some demonstrators also have resorted to violence—lighting fires in street intersections, trashing some store fronts, the rare Molotov cocktail tossed at those police.  It’s also true enough that incitement to violence, even when the incitement comes from police, is not, by itself, an excuse for responding with violence.

However, given that Lam and her city government have utterly ignored the desires of the people over whom she reigns as PRC President Xi Jinping’s satrap, their increasing frustration and violence are completely understandable.

Lam’s bribes, which insult those citizens’ integrity and intelligence, only add fuel to that frustration.

Free Speech and Social Media

Posted on by
Reply

Facebook MFWIC Mark Zuckerberg has come out against private enterprise censoring politicians’ speech or the news we citizens choose to consume.

Sort of.

Zuckerberg wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal in which he pushed back, a little, against Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth’s (D, MA) demand that he censor President Donald Trump’s commentary on Facebook.  But he continues to show that he doesn’t take free speech seriously.

He wrote

…a strict First Amendment standard would mean allowing content like terrorist propaganda or bullying.

“Would mean” means Zuckerberg continues to feel free to impose his personal version of censorship on the rest of us.

At Facebook, we’re focused on addressing viral misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm, like misleading health advice. We’ve built specific systems to remove threats such as child exploitation. In countries at risk of conflict, we take down content that could lead to imminent violence or genocide, and we’ve built systems that can detect risks of self-harm within minutes.

Then he wrote, with a straight face,

There are diverging views on what people consider dangerous.

But Zuckerberg’s view is Better.  He’s even developing Algorithms to execute on his superiority.

Which is another reason to insist in a strict First Amendment standard. We have perfectly fine laws dealing with conspiracy to commit crimes, incitement to violence, child (and other) pornography, human and drug trafficking, etc. Those laws are correctly applied through our legal system.

No private enterprise should be in the business of defining for itself or its Precious Woke management what constitutes conspiracy or incitement.

Full stop.

Red Flag Law in Action

Posted on by
Reply

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.