Right Wing Granny

News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

Right Wing Granny

Using The Law Against Your Political Opponents

The story below is one of the things that makes me wonder about the future of America. Somehow we have lost the concept of equal justice under the law and many legal actions have become totally political.

On Tuesday, The Washington Examiner reported the following:

A POLITICIZED, GROSSLY UNFAIR LAWSUIT AGAINST TRUMP. Former President Donald Trump testified Monday at the trial of the lawsuit, filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James, alleging that Trump inflated the values of his real estate properties to receive lower interest rates on loans. It’s important to note that Trump has already lost the case. The judge, Arthur Engoron, weeks ago pronounced Trump guilty of the actions alleged, and what is going on now in court is the penalty phase, in which Engoron will decide whether to confiscate Trump’s business empire.

The punishment will be extraordinary and unprecedented. This is how Axios has described it: “Former President Donald Trump is at risk of losing the New York real estate empire that the rest of his career was built on. Forcibly dismantling Trump’s company is so unusual that no one is quite certain how it would play out.”

Engoron could decide to cancel the business certificates of all of Trump’s companies. “If the business certificates were canceled,” Axios continued, “the relevant assets — which include Trump Tower, Trump Park Avenue, 40 Wall Street, and Trump National Golf Course Hudson Valley — would be put under the control of a court-appointed receiver, who operates much like an executor of an estate. The receiver would continue to manage the properties, but also could be allowed by the court to sell some — particularly if cash was needed to pay off legal penalties or creditors. Trump, who views himself as a consummate dealmaker, would not be at the negotiating table.”

That is a punishment so out of line with the behavior alleged in this case that it boggles the mind. It is made possible by two factors: a bad law and a hyperpoliticized attorney general. On the bad law, New York’s Executive Law 65(12), the former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote: “The law doesn’t require a showing of harm. The state need not prove the defendant even intended to defraud anyone, much less actually defrauded someone. It need not be established that any creditor or financial institution even relied on the defendant’s misrepresentations, that those misrepresentations were material, or that anyone was actually fooled by them.” There need be no victim — after all, in this case, no bank or financial institution is suing Trump for cheating them, nor does there need to be any crime involved — in fact, prosecutors looked at the same evidence and declined to charge Trump.

Hopefully this case will eventually suffer the same fate as the case against former Virginia Governor Bob McDonald. However, the damage done in getting there will be immense and inexcusable.

Upholding The Constitution

The New York Post is reporting today that the Supreme Court has ruled that Presidential electors must cast their votes for the person who won the majority of the votes in their state.

The article reports:

The ruling, just under four months before the 2020 election, leaves in place laws in 32 states and the District of Columbia that bind their share of the 538 electors to vote for the states’ popular-vote winner.

The states’ Electors almost always do so anyway.

The unanimous decision in the “faithless elector” case was a defeat for those who want to change the Electoral College, and who believed a win would lead to presidential elections based on the popular or total number of votes.

But it was a win for state election officials who feared that giving more power to electors to make their own choice would cause chaos — and even lead to attempted bribery.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court that a state may instruct “electors that they have no ground for reversing the vote of millions of its citizens. That direction accords with the Constitution — as well as with the trust of a Nation that here, We the People rule.”

The justices had scheduled arguments for the spring so they could resolve the issue before the election, rather than amid a potential political crisis after the country votes.

This was a unanimous decision. When was the last time all the justices on the Supreme Court agreed on anything?

This decision makes sense if you understand the purpose of the Electoral College. The Electoral College was put in place by our Founding Fathers so that a group of densely populated states would not be able to elect a President without the support of less populated states. Without the Electoral College, New York, California, New Jersey, and Connecticut would elect our President. Smaller states would never see a candidate, nor would their votes count. That is what the Electoral College was put in place to prevent.

A Step In The Right Direction

By now most Americans have realized that China is not our friend–they have stolen intellectual property for years, the have manipulated their currency to gain trade advantages, and they have gifted the world with the coronavirus. Well, someone in Washington is attempting to take action to prevent further bad behavior.

The Washington Free Beacon reported yesterday that Republican Senator John Kennedy and Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen sponsored a bill in the Senate that could prevent some Chinese companies from listing their shares on U.S. exchanges unless they follow standards for U.S. audits and regulations. The bill passed by unanimous consent. It still has to pass the House of Representatives and be signed by President Trump.

The article reports:

“The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act” bars securities of any company from being listed on any U.S. securities exchange if it has failed to comply with the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s audits for three years in a row.

The measure also would require public companies disclose whether they are owned or controlled by a foreign government.

The bill is written to apply to all foreign companies, but it is targeted at China, and follows intense criticism of Beijing by Republican President Donald Trump that has been echoed by Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

Trump and other officials in his administration insist that China mishandled the novel coronavirus during the early weeks of an outbreak that has spread into a global pandemic that has killed more than 320,000 people and cratered global economies.

Beijing denies such allegations.

“There are plenty of markets all over the world open to cheaters, but America can’t afford to be one of them. China is on a glidepath to dominance and is cheating at every turn,” Kennedy said in a statement.

“For too long, Chinese companies have disregarded U.S. reporting standards, misleading our investors,” Van Hollen said.

Let’s hope this bill becomes law.

In Case You Were Wondering Where The Holdup Was…

Breitbart posted an article today about Congress’ attempt to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. As usual, Washington is playing politics and not getting things done.

The article reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on Sunday that she has decided to move forward with her own emergency coronavirus relief package.

Pelosi spokes just hours before the Senate was scheduled to take a procedural vote that would lead towards a final vote on a bipartisan economic relief package. The bill would provide economic relief after the coronavirus epidemic ravaged the country’s economy.

“From my standpoint, we’re apart,” she said.

Subsequently, Senate leaders decided to delay a planned vote to 6 p.m. Sunday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on the Senate floor on Sunday that he intended for the legislation to be bipartisan and aimed at helping the American people.

“What we have is a compromise product which contains ideas, contributions, and priorities on both sides and which could become law as soon as tomorrow,” he said. “In other words, it’s just about time to take yes for an answer.”

…Pelosi said that Republicans and Democrats are still “talking” but that there is no need to meet McConnell’s Monday deadline for a Senate vote on the coronavirus package.
Senate Republicans and the White House have insisted that they will continue to push for the $1.6 trillion economic relief package, which would include $350 billion in support for small businesses and $250 billion for unemployment insurance. The package would also include direct cash payments to individuals around $1,200 per individual, with additional funds going to families with children.
Politico reported Sunday that “it’s not clear how Pelosi’s plan would work — committee chairs have been frenetically compiling ideas for a legislative package, but are not yet ready for legislative text.”
Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-SD) said this weekend, “The Democrats are getting some of the things they’ve asked for. They’re getting what they wanted on unemployment insurance.”
It seems as if Washington is functioning as usual. Congress will continue to work and get paid while many Americans lose their source of income because of the coronavirus. They are playing politics rather than doing what they can to help Americans in a crisis.

A Law Professor With Principles

The Gateway Pundit posted a link to Professor Jonathan Turley’s opening remarks at the Nadler impeachment panel on Wednesday. Professor Turley’s entire remarks can be found here.

These are a few of his opening comments:

Jonathan Turley:  I would like to start, perhaps incongruously, with a statement of three irrelevant facts. First, I am not a supporter of President Trump. I voted against him in 2016 and I have previously voted for Presidents Clinton and Obama. Second, I have been highly critical of President Trump, his policies, and his rhetoric, in dozens of columns. Third, I have repeatedly criticized his raising of the investigation of the Hunter Biden matter with the Ukrainian president. These points are not meant to curry favor or approval. Rather they are meant to drive home a simple point: one can oppose President Trump’s policies or actions but still conclude that the current legal case for impeachment is not just woefully inadequate, but in some respects, dangerous, as the basis for the impeachment of an American president. To put it simply, I hold no brief for President Trump. My personal and political views of President Trump, however, are irrelevant to my impeachment testimony, as they should be to your impeachment vote. Today, my only concern is the integrity and coherence of the constitutional standard and process of impeachment. President Trump will not be our last president and what we leave in the wake of this scandal will shape our democracy for generations to come. I am concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger. If the House proceeds solely on the Ukrainian allegations, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president.7 That does not bode well for future presidents who are working in a country often sharply and, at times, bitterly divided.

Democrats take note. You will not be in power forever and someday the tables will be turned. Would you put up with this bogus impeachment?

Can’t Both Viewpoints Have A Parade?

Last weekend there was a Straight Pride Parade in Boston. A group of people decided that since there have been gay pride parades, they should be able to have a straight pride parade. As expected, there were protestors in attendance. Some of them were not very nice.

The Washington Times is reporting today that some of the people who misbehaved during the parade, who expected to get off with a slap on the wrist after being arrested, are not necessarily getting off that easily.

The article reports:

Two Boston Municipal Court judges refused to throw out the charges against the 18 defendants who appeared Tuesday in court, frustrating defense attorneys and prosecutors who sought to have minor charges dismissed, as reported by local news outlets.

Judge Thomas Horgan also told out-of-towners that they risked 90-day jail sentences if they set foot in Boston for any reason other than court and lawyer appointments, rejecting one defendant’s request to visit relatives in the city’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

“Stay out of Boston,” said Judge Horgan, according to the Boston Herald.

The article continues:

Meanwhile, Larry Calderone, vice president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, praised the courtroom outcome, noting that many of those arrested came from outside the city and state and accusing them of coming to “create havoc.”

He said the four officers injured have not been able to return to work yet, and that the union wants the offenders “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

“A lot of the assaults that happened during the day, you only knew of a few of them,” Mr. Calderone told reporters outside the courtroom. “Many officers were assaulted throughout the day with bottles of urine being thrown at them, bottles of chemicals, bottles of unidentified material, rocks.”

The city is looking into complaints that police used excessive force during the event.

“Multiple times I asked why I was arrested, he said ‘for calling me a pig,’” Joshua Abrams, who was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, told WBZ-TV before his arraignment. “Well, that’s my First Amendment right to do so.”

If Mr. Abrams was resisting arrest, that is a crime. This is how protestors who cross the line from protest to assault need to be treated. Enforcing the law serves as a warning to those who want to cause trouble that they will be held accountable for the trouble they cause. The First Amendment allows protest; it does not allow assault.

As a side note, American Greatness reported the following yesterday:

Far-left Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley lent a helping hand to violent antifa agitators over the weekend after a number of them were arrested on assault and battery charges.

The two “Squad” members urged their followers on Twitter to contribute to the bail fund for the “counter-protesters” who tangled with law enforcement while protesting the Straight Pride Parade in Boston on Saturday. A masked Antifa protester told reporters that the violence was necessary in order to shut up Straight Pride marchers.

This is the fact of the new Democrat party. If you are for law and order, there is no way you can support this. I have not yet heard any Democrats denouncing these tweets.

Usurping Parental Rights

Yahoo News posted a USA Today article about a 14-year-old school child who decided that she was a boy. The story is heartbreaking because the parents tried to provide the help the child needed, and the school undermined them every step of the way.

The article reports:

In April 2016, my then 14-year-old daughter became convinced that she was my son. In my attempt to help her, her public school undermined me every step of the way.

Throughout my daughter’s childhood, there were no signs that she wanted to be a boy. She loved stuffed animals, Pocahontas and wearing colorful bathing suits. I can’t recall a single interest that seemed unusually masculine, or any evidence that she was uncomfortable as a girl.

The only difficulty she had was forming and maintaining friendships. We later learned why: She was on the autism spectrum. She was very functional and did well in school, helped by her Individualized Education Program (IEP), a common practice for public school students who need special education.

At her high school, my daughter was approached by a girl who had recently come out at school as transgender. Shortly after meeting her, my daughter declared that she, too, was a boy trapped in a girl’s body and picked out a new masculine name.

The school began treating the girl as a boy and addressing her with masculine pronouns. The parents were unaware of this. When they found out about it, they requested that those in the school call her by her legal name at all times. Their request was ignored–the school continued to address her by a masculine name and masculine pronouns.

The article continues:

We met with the school district’s assistant superintendent, who told us the hands of school personnel are tied and that they had to follow the law. But there was no law, only the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleagues” letter of May 2016 that said schools need to officially affirm transgender students. Just three months later, in August 2016, a federal judge in Texas blocked the guidelines from being enforced. And in February 2017, the Trump administration rescinded the Obama-era guidelines, leaving it to the states to set their own policies.

I also learned that the ACLU has sent threatening letters to schools stating that it is against the law to disclose a student’s gender identity, even to their parents. But this letter appears to misunderstand federal law. The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act requires that schools allow parents to “inspect and review” their child’s education records as long as the child is under 18.

The article then reveals the peer pressure in the world of psychology:

We had our daughter evaluated by a psychologist approved by the school district. He told us that it was very clear that our daughter’s sudden transgender identity was driven by her underlying mental health conditions, but would only share his thoughts off the record because he feared the potential backlash he would receive. In the report he submitted to us and the school, he did not include these concerns that he would only share in person.

Please follow the link to the article to read the rest of the story. I need someone to explain to me how this sort of behavior by schools is in any way helpful to our children.

I Guess It’s Hard To Admit You Didn’t Win

Some people just don’t know how to lose gracefully. Unfortunately, some of them are in the news on a fairly regular basis. Joseph Goebbels said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.” Right now the Democrat party is attempting to prove that theory.

The National Review posted an article today with the following headline, “The Stacey Abrams Myth Becomes the Democratic Catechism.” The article is referring to the fact that despite losing the election for Governor of Georgia, Stacey Abrams has been telling the media at every opportunity that the election was stolen from her. She cites various reasons–racism, voter suppression, etc. Well, that is simply not true, but she keeps repeating the lie.

The article reports:

The claims of voter suppression rest primarily on the fact that as Georgia secretary of state, Kemp enforced a statute passed by a Democratic-majority legislature and signed by a Democratic governor in 1997. It required the voting rolls to be periodically purged to remove names of voters who were dead, or who had moved away or were incarcerated. Under this law, 600,000 names of people who hadn’t voted in the last three elections were removed from the rolls in 2017 by Kemp’s office.

Those who were removed got prior notification in the mail about the impending purge, and they were given a menu of options to retain their registration. Moreover, it took four years to complete the process by which a name was removed. The reason so many names were taken off in 2017 was that a lawsuit by the Georgia NAACP had delayed the routine enforcement of the law for years before the organization eventually lost in the U.S. Supreme Court.

If you assume that most of the 600,000 were Democrats who were denied the right to vote — rather than voters who were deceased or who had moved or been jailed — that gives credibility to Abrams’s story. But there aren’t many people stepping forward since November 2018 to say they were wrongfully removed from the rolls, let alone the tens or hundreds of thousands necessary to substantiate Abrams’s claim that the election was stolen.

The other argument that purportedly backs up the stolen-election claim is that lengthy lines caused by the closing of 212 precincts in the state since 2012 deterred Georgia voters from turning out. But Kemp had nothing to do with that, since all decisions on consolidating voting stations were made by county officials. Which means if there were fewer precincts and longer lines in Democratic-majority counties in Georgia, it was almost certainly due to the decisions made by local Democrats, not Kemp or a national GOP conspiracy.

When examined soberly, Abrams’s claims evaporate. Kemp’s win was no landslide, but his 1.4 percent margin of victory didn’t even give her the right to demand a legal recount. Demographic changes may mean that Georgia is trending away from the red-state status it has had in the last decade, but Stacey Abrams lost because Republicans still can turn out majorities there even in years when the odds favor Democrats.

But by continuing to swear to the lie that the election was stolen, Biden, Buttigieg, and every other Democrat who repeats that claim while paying court to Abrams and hoping to win African-American votes are poisoning the well of American democracy.

What Stacey Abrams is doing is not constructive. If she wants to be Governor of Georgia, she needs to run until she wins or she gets tired of running. Meanwhile, she needs to admit that she lost and move on. Voter roles need to be purged periodically. In North Carolina, we have a number of people well over the age of 100 voting. I question that. I suspect before they purged the voter rolls, Georgia had the same situation.

Priorities

Hot Air posted an article yesterday stating that the New York State Senate is getting ready to rid the state of a group of major criminals–people who text while walking.

The article reports:

As in Hawaii and some municipalities in, of course, California, it would impose fines between $25 and $250 on people for texting, browsing online, emailing or playing games on their cellphone while in a crosswalk.

Because obviously New York has no crime anymore and no serious wrongdoing that hasn’t already been addressed by authoriuties, police or parking cops will have plenty of time to watch the hands of everyone using a crosswalk in a state with about 39 million hands.

Of course, on paper such a rule might make sense. But is it government’s role to fight crime or combat select individual’s lack of common sense? And what about the impact on YouTube where, a friend informs me, many people go for repeated guffaws watching cellphone users walk into light-poles and water fountains?

“If they’re going to get killed crossing the street not paying attention,” said Lyles Press, “that’s their fault. I don’t see why you need to legislate common sense.”

Texting while walking is stupid–it takes a few seconds to stop walking and text what you need to text. However, I really think the New York State Senate has other more important issues it needs to address. In January of this year, The New York Post reported that more people are leaving New York than any other state. Shouldn’t the New York State Senate be thinking about laws that would make New York State a more attractive place to live? Shouldn’t they be thinking about ways to fight crime or end drug addiction or homelessness in their state? Darwin will take care of the people texting while walking, New York Senate, you might consider working toward making your state a better place to live.

Trying To Keep The Drip Going

Someone once told me that the Grand Canyon was the result of water dripping on a rock. I’m not sure if that is true, but it is an interesting thought. The Congressional Democrats are actually setting out to prove or disprove that theory.

Yesterday John Solomon posted an article at The Hill titled, “Note to Team Mueller: If you don’t indict, you can’t incite.” Those are wise words that could actually do a lot of good in healing the divide in America if they were heeded.

The article states:

I’ve covered the Justice Department for three decades, and seldom have I seen a story like the one published in The New York Times this week under the headline, “Some on Mueller’s Team Say Report Was More Damaging Than Barr Revealed.”

What concerned me most is that the story’s anonymous allegations reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the role prosecutors play, including special counsels such as Robert Mueller.

The job of prosecutors is not, as the Times headline suggested, to pen “damaging” narratives about people they couldn’t indict. And it’s not their job to air those people’s dirty laundry, or that of suspects outside of a grand jury room or a courtroom.

Mueller concluded there wasn’t evidence President Trump colluded with Russia to hijack the 2016 election, and therefore no indictment was warranted. And he punted on the question of obstruction, leaving his bosses — Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — to determine that there wasn’t enough evidence to indict the president on that charge.

And, most significantly, there were no other people charged. That means Trump legally could not be named as an unindicted co-conspirator in an obstruction plot.

Many of the Democrat Congressmen (and Congresswomen) who are calling for the full, unredacted release of the Mueller Report are lawyers. They know that the full Mueller Report includes both Grand Jury testimony and classified information. They know that Grand Jury testimony is not public information and often contains things that may be misleading or have a negative impact on an innocent person’s life. Theoretically they are also aware of the rules regarding the handling of classified information. So if they understand the law, why are they requesting that the Attorney General break the law? Actually, the subpoena for the Mueller Report is simply part of a larger strategy.

The Attorney General is compelled by law to deny the subpoena. This sends the case to the courts where it will be tied up for at least two years–through the 2020 presidential election. I am sure some of the actions of whatever court is involved will keep the story in the news through the election.

Recently someone familiar with the report noted that the summaries in the report, written by highly partisan investigators contain classified information or Grand Jury testimony. If Congress has the full report (or even the redacted version), they can selectively leak things (that might be misleading) to keep the collusion-delusion in the headlines. Victor Davis Hanson noted in a recent article that the Russian investigation was a soft coup attempted by the deep state. I have no reason to believe that the attempt is over.

A Good News Story

On December 18th, a website called Flathead Beacon posted an article about Col. George Bristol, a Marine who retired to Whitefish, Montana, after serving 38 years in the Marine Corps.

The article reports:

Last summer, Bristol read a news story about the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force headed up by Det. Jeanne Parker and reached out to offer his services.

Parker was initially hesitant about bringing in a volunteer to the ICAC Task Force, especially considering the sensitive nature of their work. But that changed after she sat down for coffee with Bristol.

“When I left that meeting, I knew I had found the perfect man for the job,” she says.

When a child goes missing, law enforcement tries to determine if a crime has occurred and if the child is in immediate danger. If law enforcement believes the child may have been kidnapped or hurt, a full-fledged investigation is opened. But if it’s apparent that the child is a runaway, Bristol is called in.

Bristol interviews the child’s parents, classmates and friends in an effort to create what he calls “a pattern of life” that reveals where the child usually goes. Since this past summer, Bristol has helped bring more than two-dozen children home. Afterwards, Bristol helps the children and their families connect with services to help resolve, or at least improve, their situations at home.

Parker says Bristol’s work is particularly important because runaways are in danger of becoming human-traffic victims. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, one in five runaway juveniles became sex-trafficking victims in 2015. The primary reason runaways are at risk to become human-traffic victims is that within a few days of being away from home, they get desperate for food and shelter. If Bristol doesn’t get to them first, there’s a good chance someone with bad intentions will.

The important fact in this story is that one in five runaway juveniles became sex-trafficking victims in 2015. The article explains that part of the reason for Bristol’s success in finding and helping runaway children is the fact that he had a tough childhood and ran away in his younger years. He credits the Marine Corps for helping him get his life in order. Bristol is a beautiful example of someone who turned a negative aspect of his life into something that could help others. We can all learn from his example.

 

 

Unbelievable

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about a recent statement by Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Representative Nadler told CNN’s Jake Tapper that President Trump’s hush money payments to two women with his own money are impeachable offenses.Somehow lost in this discussion was the fact that Congress paid has paid out $17 million in the past 10 years, public records show, for unwanted sexual advances by unnamed lawmakers.

The offenses were by unnamed lawmakers. And the money came from taxpayers. So paying women to be quiet with your own money is impeachable, but paying women to be quiet using taxpayer money is acceptable. Wow. Who knew?

The article includes the following tweet:

That is an interesting question.

In Keeping With His Efforts To Further The Careers Of Women In The Law Profession…

The Federalist Papers reported today:

Brett Kavanaugh, the newest Supreme Court justice, just made history, even though he’s been on the job barely 24 hours:

A day after the bitter fight over his nomination ended in his elevation to the Supreme Court, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh was in his new chambers on Sunday, preparing for the arguments the court is to hear as it enters the second week of its term. …

Justice Kavanaugh met with his four law clerks, all women — a first for the Supreme Court — in chambers that had until recently been occupied by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who has moved to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s old chambers. …

Justice Kavanaugh said in his testimony last month that he had started to take action to address the underrepresentation of women among law clerks after reading a 2006 article in The New York Times noting that only seven of 37 Supreme Court clerks were women.

“A majority of my 48 law clerks over the last 12 years have been women,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “In my time on the bench, no federal judge — not a single one in the country — has sent more women law clerks to clerk on the Supreme Court than I have.”

Indeed, as Liptak notes, he can expect to see some familiar faces:

This term, six of his former clerks are working at the Supreme Court, double the number of any other appeals court judge. Four of them are women.

The article also notes that Brett Kavanaugh has also appointed more African-Americans than Ruth Bader Ginsburg has in her entire career.

The article also mentions Judge Kavanaugh’s role in helping women become law clerks at the Supreme Court:

On the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh hired 25 women and 23 men as law clerks. His four clerks from 2014 to 2015 were women, and 21 of the 25 he hired went on to U.S. Supreme Court clerkships. His 48 clerks represented diverse background and viewpoints.

With Kavanaugh’s elevation, law school graduates lose an opportunity for an appellate clerkship with one of the top “feeder judges” to the justices who are now his colleagues.

Kavanaugh sent 39 of his 48 clerks to the Supreme Court, including clerks serving justices in the current term. Although most of those clerks have gone to the conservative justices—with Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. hiring 13, the largest number—Kavanaugh sent two each to justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, and one to Stephen Breyer. No former Kavanaugh clerk has gone on to clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The man the Democrats and the media attempted to paint as a monster who abused women turns out to be one of the major mentors of women working in the law profession in Washington. So much for the honesty and reliability of information provided by the Democrats and the media.

The Right To Try Bill

Yesterday President Trump signed a “Right to Try” bill. The bill had been introduced in the Senate on January 24, 2017. It passed the Senate in August of 2017, The bill passed the House of Representatives in May 2018.  This is the link to view the text of the bill.

Yesterday The New York Post posted an article on the bill.

The New York Post reported:

President Trump signed a bill on Wednesday that will let terminally ill people use experimental drugs, citing the meds’ ability to save “tremendous numbers of lives.”

…The measure gives terminally ill patients the ability to seek drug treatments that​ haven’t been fully approved by the FDA.

More than 1 million Americans die from a terminal illness each year, the White House said.

During the ceremony, Trump also said that in two weeks, major drug companies will announce “voluntary drops in prices.”

Hopefully this bill will be helpful to medical research and will keep all of us healthier for longer.

I’m Not Overly Optimistic, But It’s A Start

Last Thursday The Hill posted an article about the FBI’s handling of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Why is this important? Because, as anyone who has ever held a security clearance knows, there are very strict rules for handling classified information. It is obvious that those rules were broken. The question then becomes, “Does America have equal justice under the law?” George Orwell stated in Animal Farm, ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ Have we reached that point in America?

The article in The Hill reported some upcoming events regarding the investigation:

House Republicans are preparing to conduct the first interviews in more than four months in their investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe.

A joint investigation run by the Judiciary and the Oversight and Government Reform committees has set three witness interviews for June, including testimony from Bill Priestap, the assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, and Michael Steinbach, the former head of the FBI’s national security division.

Multiple congressional sources confirmed Priestap’s interview. Steinbach confirmed to The Hill that he would be appearing.

The third witness is John Giacalone, who preceded Steinbach as the bureau’s top national security official and oversaw the first seven months of the Clinton probe, according to multiple congressional sources.

The article notes:

Since October, the panel is believed to have interviewed only two witnesses — of about 20 potential witnesses — infuriating conservative members who are eager to uncover what some have characterized as “corruption.”

The pace of this investigation is disturbing. It causes me to wonder if it is being slow-walked in the hopes that the Democrats will take Congress and the investigation will go away. At that point we will have a totally corrupt government that does not represent the American people.

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted the following statement:

Never, ever, ever trust a member of the Washington DC UniParty.  Write it down; underline it; stick a reminder on your bathroom mirror -if needed- in order to see it when you brush your teeth twice daily; do what ever it takes not to forget the fundamental aspect to avoid consigning yourself to a life of ‘Battered Conservative Syndrome‘.

I am hoping this statement will be proven false. I am not optimistic, but I am hoping.

The Real Numbers

Posted by a Facebook friend:

GunStatisticsThe Second Amendment protects law-abiding Americans. To undermine the Second Amendment is to allow criminals with guns to terrorize law-abiding citizens without guns. Hillary will appoint judges who will not support the Second Amendment. Donald Trump will appoint judges that will uphold the Second Amendment. The choice is yours.

The Political Left’s War On Guns

Yesterday Hot Air posted an article about the closing of the last gun shop in San Francisco. It wasn’t that the gun shop was not making a profit–the regulations finally forced the gun shop to close down.

The article reports:

The new city laws were so far over the top that it’s difficult to imagine them surviving a court challenge, but the owners apparently don’t feel like converting their entire operation into little more than a legal defense fund to keep fighting the liberal legislature. They were going to force them to record videos of every customer in the store and keep those videos available permanently. The personal information of every customer would have to be turned over to the police department each and every week even if there wasn’t a hint of an allegation that any crime had taken place. In short, the rules were designed to force the shop to harass their own customers mercilessly to the point where no reasonable person would want to shop there anyway.

The Obama Administration has been waging a war on guns and gun owners for a few years now. In June 2014, I posted an article about Operation Choke Point, an outgrowth of the President’s Financial Fraud Task Force, established by President Obama by Executive Order in 2009.

I quoted a Daily Caller article that reported:

Operated under a cloud of secrecy by the Department of Justice and in coordination with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Operation Choke Point forces banks to keep a closer eye on companies in industries that are deemed “high risk”, including gun and ammunition dealers, coin dealers, payday lenders, and debt consolidation service providers.

As a result of this government interference, a gun shop in Massachusetts was forced to close its doors when it was denied a line of credit from his bank because of the fact that he sold guns.

Americans are guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment states:

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.

We need public officials that respect the Constitution that they took an Oath of Office to uphold.

Defenseless In The Theatre

Yesterday Breitbart.com posted an article about the shooting in the movie theater in Louisiana. Unfortunately, even though it is well-intentioned, declaring a place a gun-free zone does not protect people, it simply means that potential victims of an attack will be unable to defend themselves.

The article states:

One thing we know even now, just hours after the tragic shooting took place, is that the gunman did not adhere to the Conduct Policy. He ignored the gun ban, he ignored the bans on violence, intimidation, and physically threatening behavior, and he ignored the rules against “unlawful conduct.”

Just like so many attacks before–from Nidal Hasan’s 2009 Fort Hood attack to James Holmes’ 2012 Aurora theater to the 2013 attack on the DC Navy Yard–gun free zones put law-abiding citizens at a disadvantage because law-abiding citizens are the only ones who obey them. People with criminal intent are not phased by “No Guns Allowed” signs or a Conduct Policy that says no firearms can be brought into the theater.

Even if you are someone who chooses not to own a gun (which I am), at some point you have to realize that until you can find a way to take guns from criminals and people who do not respect life and leave guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, gun control is a really bad idea. One person who was practicing his right to concealed carry could have ended this tragedy almost as quickly as it began. Gun-free zones are an invitation to violence.

This Is Truly A Sad Day For America

The Supreme Court today chose to rewrite ObamaCare rather than do its duty as a court and rule on the case at hand.

CBS News is reporting:

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the nationwide tax subsidies under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, in a ruling that preserves health insurance for millions of Americans.

The justices said in a 6-3 ruling that the subsidies that 8.7 million people currently receive to make insurance affordable do not depend on where they live, under the 2010 health care law.

The outcome is the second major victory for Obama in politically charged Supreme Court tests of his most significant domestic achievement.

Chief Justice John Roberts again voted with his liberal colleagues in support of the law. Roberts also was the key vote to uphold the law in 2012. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a dissenter in 2012, was part of the majority on Thursday.

The National Journal is reporting:

The decision, Scalia wrote, “rewrites the law.”

We should start calling this law SCOTUScare,” he wrote.

He continued: “Rather than rewriting the law under the pretense of interpreting it, the Court should have left it to Congress to decide what to do about the Act’s limitation of tax credits to state Exchanges, Scalia wrote.

Scalia took issue with the majority’s interpretation of the language of the Affordable Care Act. The law states that in order for people to qualify for health care subsidies, they need to be “enrolled in through an Exchange established by the State.” The majority upheld that by “state,” the law intended to mean individual state exchanges or exchanges set up by the federal government. If the Court had ruled the other way, more than 6 million people would have been at risk of losing their coverage. Their ruling rejects a lawsuit that aimed to gut federal health-care subsidies for people in 34 states.

“The Secretary of Health and Human Services is not a State,” Scalia wrote. (The majority argued that gutting the subsidies for the state exchanges would result in a “death spiral” for the market places and that “It is implausible that Congress meant the Act to operate in this manner. “)

It is not the duty of the Supreme Court to write law. The Supreme Court can only examine legislature to see if it aligns with the U.S. Constitution. This right of review was established in 1803 with the Marbury v.. Madison case–it was not written into the original U.S. Constitution. although the concept was mentioned in Federalist No. 78:

It is far more rational to suppose, that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority. The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.

In the case of King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court rewrote the law and exceeded its authority. We have reached the point in America where the U.S. Constitution is no longer the law of the land. Unless the American people begin to pay attention to what is happening and take action (an Article V Convention of States is looking really good right now), we will lose our representative republic.

The Legislature Got It Right–The Court Got It Wrong

Two of the key provisions in North Carolina’s new voting law have been overturned by a a 2-1 ruling of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Yahoo News posted an article yesterday explaining the details.

The two parts of the law that were overturned were same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting. The court claimed that to end these practices would disenfranchise some voters. I beg to differ. The reason the legislature ended same-day registration was that it did not provide ample time to check the address information given by the voter. A friend of mine, a North Carolina resident, checked the voter registration in her town and found that there were five people registered at her address that did not live there. I don’t know whether those five people had voted in recent elections or not, but if they did, they cancelled the vote of legal voters–disenfranchising legal voters. Stopping out-of-precinct voting is a good idea because ballots are different in different precincts–precinct elections include local candidates that vary by precinct. If a person votes in the wrong precinct, he may not get to vote for the officials in his precinct–thus he is disenfranchising himself!

The article reports:

State House Speaker Thom Tillis, the Republican challenging incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, said he and state Senate leader Phil Berger, also a Republican, would appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The article at Yahoo attempts to portray the passage of this law as a political issue related to the Republicans wanting to take the Senate. The question we need to ask is, “Why does ensuring the integrity of our elections give a political advantage to Republicans?”

The new North Carolina voting law is a step toward more honest elections. Why are there politicians who are fighting this?

 

From The Young Conservatives Website

The following cartoon is from the Young Conservatives website:

branco min wage cartoon

The article below the cartoon states:

A survey of American economists found that 90 percent of them regarded minimum wage laws as increasing the rate of unemployment among low-skilled workers. Inexperience is often the problem. Only about two percent of Americans over the age of 24 earned the minimum wage.

Advocates of minimum wage laws usually base their support of such laws on their estimate of how much a worker “needs” in order to have “a living wage” — or on some other criterion that pays little or no attention to the worker’s skill level, experience or general productivity. So it is hardly surprising that minimum wage laws set wages that price many a young worker out of a job.

Support of an increase in the minimum wage is political–it is  not based on economic realities. Unions support it because it allows them to negotiate for higher wages. Eventually this cycle leads to inflation and hurts low-income wage earners the most.

It Really Was No Big Deal

Yesterday The Daily Signal posted an article about this week’s election in Mississippi. The article wasn’t about the candidates or even about who won–it was about a part of the election that got very little publicity.

The article reports:

Mississippi’s new voter ID law got its first run in the June 3 primary, and the sky did not fall. Despite the tiresome and disproven claims by opponents that such laws cause wholesale voter disenfranchisement and are intended to suppress votes, Mississippi “sailed through” its first test of the new ID requirements, according to The Clarion Ledger, the newspaper of Jackson, Miss.

Any government-issued photo identification could be used in order to vote. The State of Mississippi provided free identification to anyone who did not have identification.

The article further reports:

Contrary to the claims of those who say large numbers of Americans don’t have an ID, Mississippi estimated that only 0.8 percent of Mississippians lacked an ID.  In fact, even that may have been an overestimate since the state had to issue only about 1,000 voter ID cards. All those who forgot their ID on Tuesday also could vote by an affidavit as long as they returned and showed an ID within five days.

The article concludes:

As Sid Salter from the Clarion Ledger put it, the voter ID law was a “non-event” and “voters expressed little, if any, inconvenience at the polls due to the new law.” So how is the new law being covered by the media? Instead of reporting that the voter ID law is “sailing through,” the mainstream media has instead elected to remain silent. As Hosemann said, “No news is good news.”

Just for your entertainment, I found a list of things the federal government,  some states and some businesses require identification to do at a website called usmessageboard.com:

1. Boarding an airplane
2. Writing a check
3. Cashing a check
4. Using a credit card
5. Driving a motor vehicle
6. Applying for a business license
7. Applying for permission to hold a protest or rally
8. Securing employment
9. Purchasing a house or real estate
10. Renting a domicile
11. Renting a motor vehicle
12. Purchasing a firearm (Includes BB guns)
13. Applying for a hunting license (waived for 16 and 17 year olds when their legal guardian provides a photo ID)
14. Applying for a fishing license (waived for 16 and 17 year olds when their legal guardian provides a photo ID)
15. Purchasing alcoholic beverages
16. Purchasing tobacco or products that contain nicotine
17. Purchasing a motor vehicle
18. Initial registration of a motor vehicle
19. Applying for a building permit
20. Receiving prescription medicine
21. Purchasing OTC medicine that contains pseudoephedrine
22. Serving on jury duty
23. Getting a bank account
24. Cash transactions of $5000.00 or greater
25. Sales tax exemption for people aged 80 and above

I suspect that most Americans have been involved in one or more or these transactions in their lifetime. Asking for a photo identification to vote is not any more intrusive than asking for a photo identification for any of the above activities.

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We Saw How Well It Worked For The Indians

Today’s Daily Caller posted an article about a suggestion the Obama Administration has made to change the legal system in Hawaii.

The article reports:

President Barack Obama’s administration has quietly suggested it is willing to create a two-tier race-based legal system in Hawaii, where one set of taxes, spending and law enforcement will govern one race, and the second set of laws will govern every other race.

The diversity proposal is portrayed as an effort to create a separate in-state government for people who are “native Hawaiians.”

The problem with this suggestion is that it is unconstitutional:

But the proposed measure to increase legal diversity is illegal because the president doesn’t have the power to grant one group of Americans the status of a separate government, she said.

“There is no constitutional basis for conferring such status, and Congress has repeatedly refused to confer this status,” said Carissa Mulder, a spokeswoman for two members of the federal Commission on Civil Rights.

“This seems to be yet another case of the Obama administration ignoring the law to achieve its policy objectives,” she added.

This proposal will not bring unity to Americans–it will separate a group of Americans along racial lines. That sort of separation is not good for the country or the people involved. We saw how well it worked for the Indians.

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The Battle For The Second Amendment

I apologize in advance for the fact that this will be a rather long article, but I missed the beginning of this story, so I need to catch up.

On March 16th Freedom Outpost posted a story about a raid by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) on Ares Armor.

According to the article:

Ares Armor sells what are called “80% lower receivers” to allow a buyer to make his own AR-15 rifle. According to federal law,”The term ‘firearm'” includes “the frame or receiver of” a weapon, but one that is only 80 percent complete does not fall under that category.

When ATF agents began nosing around Ares Armor and started asking questions, the store obtained a temporary restraining order prohibiting the agency from seizing its product line and customer list. A hearing was scheduled for March 20 to litigate the issue.

However, on Saturday, ATF agents raided Ares pursuant to an ex parte order — an order obtained without notice to the other party, in this case Ares — and did just what Ares feared, according to the amateur video below.

You can see the video by following the link to freedom outpost. The article at freedom outpost also explains how the ATF managed to get around the restraining order.

Freedom Outpost posted an article yesterday showing the state government’s response to this raid.

The article reports:

On the heels of the illegal ATF raid on Ares Armor, Idaho Governor Butch Otter signed into law S1332, a bill which will effectively nullify federal gun laws. The nullification legislation will prohibit state enforcement of any future federal act that relates to firearms, accessories or ammunition.

S1332, or as it is commonly referred to as the Idaho Federal Firearm, Magazine and Register Ban Enforcement Act, passed both the house (68-0) and senate (34-0) unanimously.

The article further states:

Other states such as Alaska and Kansas have passed similar legislation. Missouri is in the process of pushing similar legislation through for a second time, after Governor Jay Nixon vetoed the Second Amendment Preservation Act last year. Several other states have introduced their version of the Second Amendment Preservation Act to nullify federal gun laws, including Florida, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Arizona.

The legislation rests on a well-established legal principle known as the anti-commandeering doctrine. Simply put, the federal government cannot force or coerce states into implementing or enforcing federal acts or regulations – constitutional or not. The anti-commandeering doctrine rests primarily on four Supreme Court cases dating back to 1842. Printz v. US serves as the cornerstone. According to that doctrine:
 
“The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program…such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty.”

It is unfortunate that we have come to a point where the states have to defend the U. S. Constitution because the federal government is ignoring it.

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Law Enforcement In Connecticut Knows What the Second Amendment Says Even If The Lawmakers Don’t

Yesterday The Examiner posted an article about the latest development in Connecticut’s war on gun owners.

The article reports:

Gun rights legal expert and activist David Hardy reported Friday that 250 law enforcement officers in Connecticut have signed an open letter stating that they will not enforce the new anti-gun and magazine laws, which they consider to be a violation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

David Hardy is reporting that Tyler Jackson, the head of the Connecticut Peace Officers Association, has emailed him a letter stating that the head of the Connecticut Peace Officers’ Assn has released an open letter stating that the police will not “be party to the oppression of the people of the state by enforcing an unconstitutional law.” So far 250 LEOs have cosigned the letter.

The Second Amendment states:

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.

Why is the State of Connecticut attempting to disarm its citizens?

Moving to North Carolina from Massachusetts has been something of a culture shock in a number of areas. One of those areas is the attitude toward guns. Generally speaking, I can assume that wherever I am in North Carolina there are probably at least three or four people around me with concealed carry permits that are carrying guns. Although I am not particularly interested in carrying a gun myself, I feel perfectly safe in the midst of people who do concealed carry. Actually, I feel safer than I did in Massachusetts. I know if someone comes into the mall with bad intentions, he will be met with a number of armed citizens with good intentions. That’s a good thing. Most of the mass shootings we have had have been in gun-free zones. People who intend to harm people generally like to do it where they will meet the least resistance. I have no problem with gun permits, but guns should not have to be registered, and they should not be subject to seizure by the state or federal government. Taking guns away from law-abiding Connecticut citizens is not gun control–it is disarming the civilian population–never a good idea!

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