Tag Archives: rights

Bullies

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Recall how Google, last week, outed a Conservative employee and his critique of Google personnel practices, then bullied him with public opprobrium, then fired him.

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai was going to have an all-hands town hall this week to address the matter, but then, after employees expressed concerns

about their safety and worried they may be “outed” publicly for asking a question in the Town Hall[,]

he cancelled the whole affair.  The company put the original teapot tempest into the public’s eye, but when allegedly faced with the same outcome for themselves, they skittered back into their baseboard holes in the walls.

Aside from the breathtaking hypocrisy of this sorry charade, this illustrates an old maxim: bullies are cowards, and Google management and Google’s Precious Ones employees are just the same.

Gun Control

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A bill is making progress in Congress that would allow concealed carry license holders, whose license was issued in one State (their State of residence) to concealed carry their weapons in all States: the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017.  The bill also would require such a carrier to abide by the laws of the State they’re visiting, including all of that State’s gun-free zone designations.  In this way, the reciprocity law is similar to drivers license reciprocity, under which it’s legal to drive in any State so long as the driver both is licensed in his home State and obeys the driving laws of the State he’s visiting.

Naturally, the bill has lots of resistance in the coastal States and cities—jurisdictions run by Progressive-Democrats.  The California Police Chiefs Association President Edward Medrano, for instance, has these objections:

The bill would erode local control of issuing concealed carry permits, as the arbitrariness of the issuing authority rules would reduce the requirements for concealed carry to the lowest common denominator.  Further, the lack of a national database for concealed carry permits makes it functionally impossible for a law enforcement officer in the field to determine the legal compliance of an individual carrying a concealed firearm.

Both of these objections are disingenuous.  The requirement for concealed carry is quite simple, and it’s laid out clearly in the 2nd Amendment [emphasis added]:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The “lowest common denominator” objection also illustrates the utter illogic of Medrano’s objection.  It is the multiply varied local jurisdiction rules that are arbitrary.  The lowest common denominator standard, accepting that characterization arguendo, would be easily understood and widely so, since it would not at all be arbitrarily varying.  Too, a required reciprocity like that in the Act, would put the onus for keeping up with local jurisdiction variability and arbitrariness where it belongs: on the individual and not on the government’s men.

Beyond that, no national database of concealed carry permits is needed.  Most States issue concealed carry licenses and require the license holder to have that license in his possession at all times—just like his drivers license.  A few States don’t require licenses to carry concealed, but those States are easily identified—by the drivers license the holder still must have with him at all times.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (OK, an interior mayor, but a Progressive-Democratic Party one nonetheless) argue that the reciprocity act would

essentially force the localities to give full faith and credit to permits that are issued on less rigorous grounds [and] remove local governments’ ability to maintain sensible gun standards.

Because full faith and credit is a terrible thing.  We’ve also seen what Progressive-Democrat “sensible gun standards” amount to: a citizen having to show to a government official’s satisfaction that a need to carry exists.  The Supreme Court has already ruled on the illegality of that arrogant nonsense.

Progressive-Democrats like New York’s District Attorney Cy Vance is even arguing that reciprocity would give Daesh terrorists (and other terrorists, presumably) a leg up.  This is just a cynically offered red herring of a scare tactic.  Guys like Vance carefully ignore the fact that the leg up is that of an armed citizen or group of us confronted with an already armed terrorist.

The Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act needs to go through without any delay.

Asset Forfeiture

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions has withdrawn President Barack Obama’s (D) blanket hold on asset seizure, but with safeguards.  I think those safeguards need improvement.

Stop sharing seized assets with local law enforcement.  Each State has its own laws regarding asset seizure by local law enforcement; these laws should be respected and not bypassed.

Also:

Sessions’ new guidelines say that state or local agencies seeking forfeiture under federal law must demonstrate probable cause within 15 days of the seizure. The sponsoring federal agency must notify the property’s owner within 45 days, so he can challenge it, including by going to court.

This is much too slow.  These agencies already have probable cause, or they couldn’t have conducted the raids and seizures in the first place.  Where a seizure is made pursuant to an unwarranted but otherwise legitimate stop or arrest, the seizure has its probable cause in the same process with which the police after the fact justify their stop/arrest.

The sponsoring agency knows at the moment of the seizure what it’s seized and what it intends to do with it; there’s no reason for a 45-day delay in notification other than to make the seizure as irrevocable as possible and, in the case of financial asset seizure, to make as great as possible the cost to the owner of his property’s recovery.

Finally, absent an actual conviction, there shouldn’t be any asset seizure outside the strictures of the already existing civil and criminal sections of the RICO statute.  That law provides sufficient grounds for seizure prior to conviction, when the seizure is made solely on the basis of an accusation.

International Censorship

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France wants to enforce a “right to be forgotten” law (recently enacted by the EU that allows persons to demand publicly available information about them to be erased from links in search engine results) inside other nations than the EU membership—inside the United States, for instance.  Google, et al., is demurring, and France has taken the matter to the EU’s highest administrative court, the Court of Justice.

The case will help determine how far EU regulators can go in enforcing the bloc’s strict new privacy law….

It has wider implications than that. It will set a legal precedent, explicitly for the EU to reach inside the United States and censor our Internet, and that won’t be limited to EU privacy sensibilities, or EU views on censorship.

It’s broader, still. It will set a precedent for the PRC, which can intercept messaging images and erase them from the message before the intended recipient gets the message, to be exercised inside the US.

The Court of Justice ruling—likely to be in favor of France—will need to be explicitly rejected by us, with strong cyber consequences taken against the EU on its every attempt to enforce this first step at rank censorship against us.

Free Elections

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The Progressive-Democratic Party version is playing out in California.  The good citizens of the state senatorial district straddling Orange, San Bernardino, and Los Angeles counties want to recall state Senator Josh Newman (D), who voted for a 12/gal gasoline tax increase.  A successful recall also would jeopardize the Progressive-Democrats’ supermajority in each house of California’s legislature, and so the one-party rule that’s currently devastating the state but accruing political power to those Progressive-Democrat incumbents.

Can’t have that.

This is where free elections, Progressive-Democrat style, comes in.

Turnout in special elections typically drops more for Democrats than Republicans. So Democrats last month passed legislation adding procedural hurdles that would delay the recall election from this fall to next June’s midterm primary, when liberal turnout is expected to be higher.

And

Democrats are also imploring the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission to upend a campaign-finance law that voters approved in 2000.
…
Yet Democrats now say legislators should be allowed to donate unlimited sums to their colleagues.

That would allow Progressive-Democrats in the state’s “safe” districts to pour money into Newsom’s defense.  Can you hear the screams from the Left that decried so piteously the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling?  I’m having trouble making them out.

Yeah, this will be a fair and free recall election, all right.