Tag Archives: rights

Free Speech in Illinois

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Particularly, free speech in Progressive-Democratic Party reigned-over Illinois. A charitable organization, Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender, wants to register as a charitable organization in Illinois, but it’s being blocked by the State’s Secretary of State, Alexi Giannoulias.

Giannoulias’ rationalization is that a State law, the General Not for Profit Corporation Act, bars the use of terms like “regular democrat,” “regular democratic,” “regular republican,” “democrat,” “democratic” or “republican”  in any organization’s name without the party’s prior permission. It doesn’t matter that these terms are entirely generic and not—nor being generic, can they be—trademarked or copyrighted in any way.

DIAG is being blocked from registering in Illinois because it opposes Party’s support for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions so they more closely resemble the opposite sex over those procedures’ permanent effects, especially in children. The use of “Democrats” in the organization’s name is just an excuse, and DIAG, along with Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, have sued the State and Giannoulis over the legitimacy of that part of the law.

This is the level of free speech that Party allows in Illinois: what is freely spoken is what Party says its subjects are free to speak.

“That’s Unconstitutional”

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Many politicians, primarily but not exclusively of the Progressive-Democratic Party, when they decry the actions of President Donald Trump (R) loudly declaim that whatever it is that he’s doing is “unconstitutional.”

It’s instructive that these worthies usually omit to cite the clause of our Constitution that’s supposedly being violated, but when they do cite something, they center their claim on the 10th Amendment.

Here is what that Amendment says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Article I, Section 10, lays out specific powers prohibited to the States:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it’s inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Included in the powers not delegated is this one from Article II, Section 3:

…he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed….

Here is what the Supremacy Clause of our Constitution says, from Article VI:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

There is nothing in the supreme Law of the Land  that has been delegated to the States or to the people. That supremacy has been retained by the Federal government, and that supremacy includes actions of Federal law enforcement agencies and their personnel in the course of their enforcement of Federal laws in Progressive-Democrat-run “sanctuary” jurisdictions; the latter’s protestations to the contrary are irrelevant.

No part of a President’s authority or obligation to enforce the Laws are reserved to the States. Nor does the 10th Amendment’s delegations include any State-level authority to block or otherwise interfere with Federal law enforcement actions.

Public Keeping and Bearing

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Our Constitution’s 2nd Amendment is brief and crystal clear:

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 Supreme Court has already ruled, several times, that a well regulated militia is an outcome facilitated by individuals keeping and bearing arms, it’s not the purpose of that. The Court has further clarified that to mean shall not be infringed is nearly all-encompassing, with only a few carefully enumerated locations that can bar individuals from bringing their firearms. That short list includes locations like polling places, post offices, public-accessible private facilities like places of business that post clear signs prohibiting them on the premises. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc, et al. v Bruen is one example of this.

Hawaii wants to outlaw carrying firearms altogether, having devised and enacted a State law that bars carrying anywhere—private enterprises, even other folks’ homes—unless those places are explicitly posted permitting the carrying. As the Wall Street Journal‘s editors correctly note,

A shop could theoretically post a sign on the door—or the parking lot entrance?—saying it doesn’t object to concealed carry. But it’s easy to see why a proprietor might hesitate, since a “Pistols Welcome” banner might alienate other customers. Businesses have an incentive to accept whatever is the default.

Hence the effective ban on carrying firearms that the State is attempting. The State argues that

[a] default of no guns…fits Hawaii’s custom and “unique history,” dating to King Kamehameha III, who banned weapons in 1833.

Bruen, though, says otherwise.

[W]hen the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct, and to justify a firearm regulation the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

The Nation’s historical tradition, not any particular State’s personal choice. Bruen is as crystalline as is our basic right under the 2nd Amendment. Hawaii’s statute needs to be struck down completely.

Tension?

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The Supreme Court has taken up the question of whether Louisiana’s redistricting effort for its Federal Congressional representation is legitimate, or not. The Just the News‘ news writer, the unusually (for JtN) anonymous “Just the News Contributor,” posed the central question before the Supreme Court:

In Louisiana v Callais, the Supreme Court is confronted with a direct tension between two legal commands: the VRA’s mandate to protect minority voting rights and the Constitution’s limits on race-based decision-making by the state.

There is—or should be—no tension here. Our Constitution says this in Art VI:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land….

In Marbury v Madison, the Supreme Court made clear that conflicts between statute and Constitution must be resolved strictly and solely in favor of what our Constitution says, and every Supreme Court decision since has hewed to the ultimate supremacy of our Constitution. Any tension can exist only in the minds of activists and activist judges and Justices.

Nor can there be any half-measure wherein some level of race-based discrimination is OK. Any race-based discrimination or “preference” in political gerrymandering is too much and a violation of our Constitution. Here’s the 14th Amendment on the matter:

No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The clause does not say No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, except when it’s convenient to do otherwise.

Full stop.

“Multicultural”

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A news writer for The New York Times, Peter Baker, in typical journalism guild, misstated American culture in an interview with the left-wing network PBS‘ Washington Week With the Atlantic, as excerpted by The Wall Street Journal.

One of the things that they’ve [the Trump administration] been very successful at, and I would expect to see more of, is their war on DEI, on the notion of diversity, equity and inclusion, the notion that diversity is an admirable goal, even if you don’t necessarily want quotas. They have managed in just a very short amount of time to create a new culture in the country—not just in the government, across the board—where private employers feel the need to retreat from DEI. And you’re going to see, I think, an acceleration of that in the second year…. I think the question, though, is in a multicultural country, at some point does that begin to go too far for people and by the midterms?

Leave aside Baker’s blithe assumption that there’s nothing intrinsically racist or sexist in DEI, which favors approved races and the approved gender at the direct, deliberate expense of disapproved races and the disapproved gender. Those favoring criteria, however far down the selection tree they might be, are explicitly and by design racist and sexist.

More than that, the United States is not a mix of race, of old-world cultures, of religions, or of whathaveyous. The Unites States is a nation of a single culture, one unified by a common belief in a basic system of intrinsic rights: to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness and of a limited government granted to which by our nation’s sovereign citizens only enough power and authority to protect those intrinsic and basic rights.

Baker’s bald claim that the United States is a multicultural country is as cynical as it is wrong.

Even that queen of European identity politics, Germany’s ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, ultimately recognized that multiculturalism is an abject failure. And that’s something that Americans have known since our inception, if unevenly put or kept in effect.