Tag Archives: rights

Charging Assange

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Julian Assange, of Manning and Wikileaks infamy, has been indicted on violations of the Espionage Act in addition to the existing charges pending against him.

Naturally, the NLMSM is in an uproar over this putative attack on a free press.

…reignited debate over whether pursuing Mr. Assange for publishing classified information could lead to other cases against journalists who receive government secrets.

There are a couple of things on the NLMSM’s artificial dudgeon, though.  One is that a free press also has to be a responsible press—which includes respect for the law and acceptance of the consequences where the press engages in civil disobedience.  We’re all big boys and girls, though, the press’ and the Left’s contempt for us notwithstanding.  We’re fully capable of recognizing irresponsibility when we see it and disdaining pseudo-journalism when it’s presented.

The larger thing, though, is the role of law in our nation.  We’re either a nation of laws, or we are not.  We’re all equal under law, or some of us get special treatment—descending us into rule by law instead of rule of law.

The laws regarding receiving stolen goods are quite clear: that’s a crime, and the recipient(s) on conviction go to jail.  Except when it’s a journalist who receives the stolen property.  See, for instance, the news outlet that received and published the stolen Ellsberg papers, along with the hue and cry over holding Julian Assange—who’s not even a journalist, for all that he pretends to be—to the consequences from his having received the documents Manning had stolen and sent to him.

A free press requires journalists be allowed to break the same laws the rest of us must obey?  What’s the value of a press that cannot be trusted, that demonstrates its lawlessness by freely receiving stolen goods and profiting from the receipt by publishing the stolen material?

Here’s an alternative—a bare minimum of movement of the NLMSM back within the reach of the same laws the rest of us must obey.

Upon receipt of the stolen material, the news outlet and the receiving journalist must immediately return the originals of the material to the robbed entity and identify to law enforcement the person(s) and/or entity from which the material was received.  Upon return, the news outlet would be free to publish based on its copies of the stolen material.

Should the journalist or news outlet refuse, the journalist (or the news outlet’s chief editor, if the receiving journalist cannot be clearly identified) should be jailed until the originals are returned and the delivering person/entity identified.

Of course, overriding the above is whether the stolen material is classified (the Manning theft, for instance).  In this instance, the material and the receiving news outlet and its personnel would be subject to laws pertaining to (mis)handling classified material.

Union “Dues”

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Now the taxpayer looks to be on the hook.  At least in New York.

[O]n May 1, New York’s state Senate voted to let strikers get benefits one week after walking off the job—essentially putting them on equal footing with those who are laid off.
If Governor Andrew Cuomo signs this bill, he’ll effectively be using New York’s unemployment-insurance program to subsidize union strikes, upending the balance of power between workers and management.

Union strikes are little indistinguishable from extortion, except that they’re legal. They’re used to threaten a company’s ability to function—to survive—unless they surrender to union demands.  “Nice little business you got here. Be too bad if something was to happen to it.”

In a way, though, Cuomo’s pandering makes sense. Since unions can’t commandeer pieces of the paychecks of non-union workers anymore, they have to make up the money loss from somewhere.

Enter the victim-taxpayer.

An Ill-Informed Candidate

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On Fox News‘ Claremont, New Hampshire town hall with Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg Sunday, Buttigieg had this to say about abolishing our Electoral College.

“States don’t vote, people vote.  …if we’re going to call ourselves a democracy,” the US should move to a popular vote system.

When the moderator, Chris Wallace, asked further about that, particularly comparing the voice of small States like New Hampshire with large States like California, Buttigieg gave an unresponsive answer about how New Hampshire wouldn’t be harmed by abolishing the Electoral College because New Hampshire is one of the first-to-vote-in-primaries States.

There are so many things wrong with Buttigieg’s remarks; here are a couple biggies.

We don’t call ourselves a democracy.  We don’t call ourselves that because we are not a democracy; we are a republican democracy consisting of a federation of States.  As a republican democracy, States do, indeed, vote, doing so alongside citizens (not just “people”), and that’s by design.  The Great Compromise in the final agreement on our Constitution was the creation of the Senate as a separate house in our Congress, which body would give equal representation to the States as States—the two Senators per State structure.

This was intended to produce a number of outcomes.  Two of these were a guarantee that our nation’s member States all would be on an equal level among each other within our central, federal government; large population States would not dominate small population States.  Thus, we would not be a popular democracy with its inevitable devolution through a tyranny of a majority into mob rule.  We would, instead, be a republican democracy with greater protections for and balance of the rights of the minority along with the rights of the majority.

Associated with that is the Electoral College, which functionally extends the protection of small States from domination by large States to the election of our President and Vice President.  States are allocated a number of Electors equaling the sum of the number of Representatives a State has, which is based on that State’s population, and its two Senators.  Thus, States vote as States for these candidates alongside the citizens, with the citizens represented, in addition to their individual votes, a second time, indirectly through their State’s Electors.

Within that, Buttigieg’s facile answer that New Hampshire wouldn’t be harmed because it’s an early primary voter ignored similarly small States like New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and others—none of whom are early voters.  Rather, his answer was (how to put this delicately) dismayingly ignorant.

Anyone who paid attention in eight grade Civics knows all of this.  A man so ignorant of the structure of our republican democracy and the reasons for that structure simply is unqualified for the office of President.

The Supremes, Liberals, and Abortion

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The Liberal, Living Constitution, wing of the Supreme Court is up in arms over losing a case with precedential implications.  The proximate case concerned Franchise Tax Board v Hyatt, in which the Supreme Court overturned a 40-year-old precedent that held that States are not required to grant legal immunity to other States in interstate lawsuits.  I won’t go into that because that’s not the crux of the matter.

Instead, that Liberal wing, led by Justice Stephen Breyer, objected to the precedent reversal not on its merits or on the merits of precedent overturning/preservation, but on the premise that overturning this precedent would lead to overturning the abortion ban restrictions in Roe v Wade.

[L]iberal Justices warn that conservatives by overturning Hall will “encourage litigants to seek to overrule other cases.”

This actually is an unqualified Good. Error should be corrected whenever it’s discovered.

That Liberal wing bellyached further:

It is far more dangerous to overrule a decision only because five members of a later Court come to agree with earlier dissenters on a difficult legal question[.]

This makes no sense, though. It took only five members of the prior Court to make the mistake in the first place, for all that other members might have agreed with it.

And the NLMSM weighed in, showing the Liberal wing’s worries about abortion.

“Clarence Thomas Just Showed How Supreme Court Would Overturn Roe v Wade,” declared one columnist. [Jay Michaelson of the Daily Beast]

This, though, is just another bit of Liberal disingenuosity. Roe is technologically-based. The circumstances under which States are permitted to regulate abortion to the extent of banning them are based on viability of the baby, which the Roe Court suggested began around the third trimester. Modern medical technology makes babies viable much earlier, and so abortions can be restricted much earlier—wholly within Roe.

Though I wouldn’t mind the question coming to court so that the technological aspect can be better emphasized.

Great Britain’s Retreat from Liberty

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Or, perhaps they’ve been routed by the forces of Government Knows Better.

This incident occurred last January, but there’s no evidence since that the Brits—their government, anyway; there are pockets of concern, as this incident also indicates—have regained their spine.

A man has been fined after refusing to be scanned by controversial facial recognition cameras being trialled by the Metropolitan Police.
The force had put out a statement saying “anyone who declines to be scanned will not necessarily be viewed as suspicious”. However, witnesses said several people were stopped after covering their faces or pulling up hoods.

Here’s Detective Chief Superintendent Ivan Balhatchet, Scotland Yard’s lead for facial recognition:

The technology used in Romford forms part of the Met’s ongoing efforts to reduce crime in the area, with a specific focus on tackling violence.
As with all previous deployments the technology was used overtly.

That’s utterly disingenuous.  Being open about dragooning citizens to give up their privacy for the convenience of Government does not at all mitigate the fact of being forced to surrender individual privacy to Government for no reason other than that Government is…curious.

A man declined to be tracked by a warrantless government, and he was punished by that government for his effrontery.  Never mind that warrants and the requirement to have them were invented by the English centuries ago.