Conservatives finally getting around to using the law

Texas AG follows up on Elon Musk's complaint about Media Matters and it's about time conservatives start using the law against the left. They refuse to do so at their own peril. The culture war can only be won if you actually, you know, fight it.

Abortion activists breaking the law

 Tim Pool, on abortion activists going after SCOTUS justices at home:

Consensus is not science

Consensus is not science. Einstein's theory of relativity is widely believed to be the most accurate model of space time we have.  But it's still just a theory because it has yet to be proven as a law of physics. That's not to discredit Einstein, but rather to point out that as advanced as his thinking was, as accurate as it was, as peer reviewed as it was, it is still not considered complete fact.  That's because it is not complete.  Perhaps if Einstein had another 100 years to work on it, he may have been able to do even more with it.  Unfortunately no one has that time, and others have had to take up the torch as it were. Einstein's view of space and time was in fact counter to the consensus at the time.

So far we have a theory of physics of the universe that explains a tremendous amount, but none of it is a Law.  We have laws of thermodynamics, the law of gravity, and other scientific laws but nothing so grandiose as to be able to claim "the science is settled".  Remember that Al Gore dictum about global warming?  It's the same now with Dr. Fauci proclaiming his word on COVID is law. Wear a mask, don't wear a mask, get a vaccination, get your 5th booster shot, now it's safe for kids.  He seems to think he's the king of science.

At one point the consensus was that the earth was flat and another consensus was that the universe revolved around the earth.  Now people like Fauci have taken the idea of consensus one step further to the point that the universe revolves around their dictates.

When someone tells you the science is settled, just tell them the earth is no longer flat. Any scientist who says something is inarguable is not a real scientist.  They want you to simply accept their opinion. The dangers in that extend far beyond the boundaries of science. After all, the man said it himself:

"Science can flourish only in an atmosphere of free speech." 

~  Albert Einstein

Wait, this isn't real, right?

 This is way too specific, not to mention creepy.

Did you know USMCA is not yet law?

Mitch McConnell announced the USMCA deal, which was passed by congress very late in 2019 after they sat on it for a very long time, will be passed in the Senate within a week.  It's not yet the law of the land. Good news though, it will be very soon.

NY Abortion Law Insanity

This is just crazy.

3 things you need to know about the left (just from today only)

Things you need to read about the left, from just today:

1. You knew it already, now you have proof.  Democrats want illegal immigration amnesty, because votes:

The Center For American Progress (CAP) Action Fund circulated a memo on Monday calling illegal immigrants brought here at a young age — so-called “Dreamers” — a “critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success.”...

CAP Action’s memo says protecting DACA is not only a “moral imperative” for Democrats, it also key to getting votes.

“The fight to protect Dreamers is not only a moral imperative, it is also a critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success,” reads Palmieri’s memo, obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“If Democrats don’t try to do everything in their power to defend Dreamers, that will jeopardize Democrats’ electoral chances in 2018 and beyond,” reads the memo. “In short, the next few weeks will tell us a lot about the Democratic Party and its long-term electoral prospects.”

It's already told us a lot about Democrats' cynical views on human worth - a vote is a vote, right? 

2. They don't care about the law, just their agenda. Anti-Trump FBI agent Peter Strzok, he formerly of the Mueller probe on Russia collusion is even more sinister than previously imagined. He may have been one of those leaking of information to the media inapporpriately.

The Hill article says contacts between the FBI and the media aren’t necessarily problematic but given Strzok’s involvement in two major cases (Hillary emails and Russian collusion) and his previously uncovered bias for Hillary and against Trump, what he said to reporters prior to the election seems worth investigating.

3. They advance their agenda at any cost, even if erstwhile allies get hurt in the process. Hillary Clinton was trying to sting Green Party candidate Jill Stein with fake Russia collusion.

“This is a year’s worth of a smear campaign that began actually by some Democratic party operatives after the embarrassing emails revealed collusion by the Democratic party with Hillary Clinton’s campaign in order to interfere with our election,” Stein said. “The same people who launched that smear campaign are now celebrating that I’m being investigated, really as a consequence of this smear.”

Stein then addressed a widely circulated image of her at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s table at a 2015 banquet honoring the Russian propaganda channel RT.

Is there any part of the Democrat party that is not corrupt at this point?

The legislative tipping point has officially been passed

When laws become so ubiquitous that the Justice Department can't quantify how many federal laws exist, governance by executive fiat becomes something that goes unchallenged.   According to the Library of Congress blog,

In an example of a failed attempt to tally up the number of laws on a specific subject area, in 1982 the Justice Department tried to determine the total number of criminal laws. In a project that lasted two years, the Department compiled a list of approximately 3,000 criminal offenses. This effort, headed by Ronald Gainer, a Justice Department official, is considered the most exhaustive attempt to count the number of federal criminal laws. In a Wall Street Journal article about this project, “this effort came as part of a long and ultimately failed campaign to persuade Congress to revise the criminal code, which by the 1980s was scattered among 50 titles and 23,000 pages of federal law.” Or as Mr. Gainer characterized this fruitless project: “[y]ou will have died and [been] resurrected three times,” and still not have an answer to this question.

When the Justice Department takes that long to determine the number of criminal laws, just a portion of federal law, exist, a tipping point has been passed.

No, Sotomayor, THIS is what's insulting...

According to a CBS report, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor has stated that labeling illegal immigrants as criminals is insulting.

Sotomayor was asked at a talk at Yale Law School later in the day about her use of the term “undocumented immigrants” rather than the traditional illegal alien. Sotomayor characterized the issue as a regulatory problem and said labeling immigrants criminals seemed insulting to her.

“I think people then paint those individuals as something less than worthy human beings and it changes the conversation,” Sotomayor said.

Firstly, no one is painting them as "less than human". That's a mis-characterization of the opinions of those who oppose illegal immigration.  It's unfair to the point of absurdity.  But that's often the point when liberals talk about conservatives.  Mis-characterize their positions and then ridicule them.  That's right out of the Alinsky playbook (which can still be countered by the way).

Secondly, if I could direct your attention to the dictionary definition of the word criminal:

: involving illegal activity : relating to crime

: relating to laws that describe crimes rather than to laws about a person's rights

: morally wrong

The word illegal is in the definition of criminal. Not unexpectedly, the definition of illegal includes criminal as a synonym, below the definition.

: not allowed by the law : not legal

: not allowed by the rules in a game

Illegal immigration is called illegal because it is being done outside the law. The very definition of illegal indicates criminal activities. It is not the right of a non-American citizen to become one, without due process, and a legal application to become a citizen, or even a visitor.

What is insulting Justice Sotomayor, is that your opinion has been elevated to the level of the Supreme Court - the ultimate arbiter of legal justice in America - when it appears you do not even understand the basic concepts of law (at least, in this instance).

Interestingly, there's an article at PolicyMic that leverages the global warming crowd's tactics of changing the labels and argues that we should stop using the very term illegal immigrant. The points it makes are a likely reflection of Sotomayor's thinking on the issue.

Aside from the fact that the term "illegal immigrant" is not legally accurate, it completely dehumanizes and wrongfully criminalizes millions of people instead of their actions.

The point is their actions are indeed illegal (even in the cases when it is unintentional like it may be with second generation illegal immigrants).  The word, used in conjunction with the word immigrant, is a way to differentiate between illegal and legal immigrants. Period.  We don't say illegal jaywalkers because the fact that it is illegal is implied - there is no 'legal' jaywalking .

The other arguments made in the PolicyMic article by the way, are fatuous and based on the clichéd and ridiculous notion that American immigration laws are "draconian".  That point isn't even worth a counter-argument.  However, if you want one as Forbes noted, the United States is the most legal immigration friendly country in the world in raw numbers.  Without getting into a debate about the right level on a percentage basis (based on infrastructure and the relative ability to absorb more immigrants), the United States ranked in the top 25 of countries around the world.  That's not bad.

Illegal immigration must be addressed, and it must be addressed intelligently.  What the left, including Justice Sotomayor, are doing, is promoting a political advantage for themselves under the guise of acting humanely.  No one is suggesting rolling up in trucks and deporting children back to Cuba by force like Bill Clinton did.  Well, almost nobody.  But letting everyone in with amnesty will be as successful as a one-size-fits-all health care solution.

A law a Democrat president wants repealed?

Liberals claimed no link exist

Democrats love to add new regulation, and new laws as if that solves everything.  You never hear of anything they'd go back and reconsider, let alone repeal (I give you Obamacare and Medicaid as examples).  But president Obama has stepped up and found a law he'd like repealed.  Of course it is one that comes as no surprise and doesn't even matter any more.

Via Yahoo:

The law that green-lighted the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq is still on the books ― but maybe not for much longer if President Barack Obama has his way, the White House said on Tuesday, two years after he declared the war officially over.

“The Administration supports the repeal of the Iraq AUMF,” national security spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told Yahoo News, referring to the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

But it did.

Obama frequently cites the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq as one of his key foreign policy successes. He has repeatedly defended the pull-out, even as he pursues a strategy to leave only a residual force of maybe 8,000 to 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after 2014. His administration recently promised it would not put boots back on the ground in Iraq in response to the current bloody chaos that threatens its stability.

But leaving the Iraq military force authorization in place could probably come in handy if he, or a future president, wanted to send troops in.

Send drones, repeal teeth.

It would seem that he truly fears the next president undoing his troop withdrawal.   The troops are gone and he's not sending them back in.  The other political way to consider this is that the president may want a Republican controlled Congress and Senate to have to re-vote to authorize force should action become necsssary if al Qaida makes progress in Iraq in the months to come.  He'd thus put the GOP congressmen and women on the record for suppporting going back.

But the reality is that the Congress isn't likely to act upon the president's desire to repeal this law.  So it really just becomes a non-story and another attempt at a diversionary tactic to try to shift attention away from Obamacare as it continues to flounder along.

Quick hit: Supremely Disappointing Court

Just happening this morning, the Supreme Court has ruled Arizona's law that requires proof of citizenship for voting purposes illegal.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states cannot require would-be voters to prove they are U.S. citizens before using a federal registration system designed to make signing up easier.

The justices voted 7-2 to throw out Arizona's voter-approved requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "Motor Voter" voter registration law.

Federal law "precludes Arizona from requiring a federal form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself," Justice Antonia Scalia wrote for the court's majority.

The court was considering the legality of Arizona's requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "motor voter" registration law.

Is it just me or does this seem like a 10th Amendment issue?  We'll need more details to determine the decision's logic, but if this is supposed to be a conservative court, I'm not impressed.

Saturday Learning Series - A Reminder

A little simpler this Saturday, but a reminder of the legislative process as it's supposed to work.

Obama going on my Dictator Watch?

I haven't provided a Dictator Watch update in quite some time. The truth is that it's been a very touchy subject for me since the President abdicated a meaningful position on the rigged election in Iran and the subsequent brutality of the Ahmedinejad/Khameni regime. But it's an area that needs attention, especially in light of events this last week and especially yesterday. More on that in my next Dictator Watch - my next post.

One important insight can be drawn from the Iranian election scenario. Specifically, if you notice the approach that the President chose to take, one of non-intervention and a weak pronouncement of displeasure, you can see the beginnings of an M.O. That modus operandi was evident in the situation in Honduras.

When the military overthrew the country's President Zelaya, and turned over authority to -------, they were doing so because of an attempt to circumvent the country's Constitution.

The ousted president, who was in office since 2006, had wanted to hold a referendum that could have led to an extension of his non-renewable four-year term in office.

Most conservative bloggers, rightly, focused on the fact that the President was being tougher on a country trying to keep it's democracy intact (albeit by non-democratic means) than he was on the brutal and evil Iranian regime. He called the coup illegal.

Overlooked though, was the fact that the President, busy taking the side of the socialists, provided two more clues to his behavior. Firstly, the condemnation and non-involvement approach was yet again on display. Secondly, and not surprisingly, he values the rule of law more than he values the right and freedoms of the people that those laws are imposed upon, who ostensibly, they are designed to protect.

That view is evident his approach to governance at home. While many parts of the legislation Democrats are attempting to enact seem Constitutionally questionable, if they can make it through and face the inevitable Supreme Court challenges then they are the rules. Similarly when the President spoke in the past about the Constitution being a bill of 'negative rights', he entirely misses the point of the Constitution.

Th Constitution does not grant rights to individuals, it takes as given inalienable rights and then sets about the task of trying to prevent them from being taken - by government. The point seems lost on a President who seeks a Supreme Court Justice with empathy. Isn't justice supposed to be blind? Color, gender, ethnicity, religion and the like are not supposed to matter. Neither is empathy.  What is supposed to matter is the facts in the case at hand, and what the laws say about those facts. That one party in a given case is poor and the other rich is not supposed to be a factor in the court's decision. If the poor person was in the wrong, he doesn't deserve special consideration beyond whatever facts are relevant to the case (e.g. the wrong done was clearly accidental versus deliberate).

Obama, a student and professor of the legal discipline, should know this. And he does. That is why he is furthering the march towards a re-write of the rules of the game in as large of incremental steps as he believes he can get away with. Will he attempt to alter the Constitution? Not likely. He just needs to change how people interpret it. That's less invasive and can accomplish the same task with less pain to him and his cause.

Does that make President Obama a dictator? No it doesn't. It does make him dangerous, and not in a good I'm-going-to-fix-a-bad-system way. It does make him a force for negative change - subtly removing pillars of American democracy in the name of one specific vision of social justice. And it makes him antithetical to real liberty and equality (that's a post for another day). But it does not make him a dictator.

He is using his time in office to push the country as far left as he can as fast as he can without derailing his own train. While he can come off as arrogant and dictatorial there are many appropriate words for the President. Dictator is not one of them.

United States Constitution: 2nd Ammendment

United States Constitution: 2nd Amendment.

Amendment II

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.

Let's keep this simple, instead of arguing over what the first half of the sentence means, focus on the right the Amendment imparts. Whether the purpose of the Amendment was for the purposes of a militia or not is immaterial - the right is explicitly stated.

The reason: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state".

The right: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Simple - the right is stated. No other amendment is subject to the requirement that the rationale for it's inclusion is justifiable. Even so, the rationale is stated - freedom. That is rationale enough, one would think. Likely the reason the right was second in the Bill of Rights was because of it's importance.

Perhaps it is for the express purpose that it was a little more controversial, even then, that a rationale was provided. However, the right is written in the Bill of Rights portion of the Constitution. The argument for weapons bans should be a tough road to travel and inevitably should not be successful.

The right to acquire arms however is another story. The rationale for background checks is reasonable, especially since 9/11. Certain people, those who pose a potential risk to the life and liberty of others, should not find it a simple task to obtain weapons. And where they are a proven threat, it should be impossible. Then, there's everyone else.

Border Security basics

Let's start with the basics:

The United States of America, is a nation. Dictionary.com has as it's primary definition of nation, the following:

a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own

And according to the American Heritage Dictionary, sovereignty is defined as

A nation or state's supreme power within its borders. A government might respond, for example, to criticism from foreign governments of its treatment of its own citizens by citing its rights of sovereignty.

Dictionary.com, "sovereignty," in The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Source location: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sovereignty. Available: http://dictionary.reference.com. Accessed: January 06, 2009.

The United States, according to these definitions, has a sovereign right as a nation to take actions as a nation that are in the best interest of its citizens. By extension, it's 'legal' citizens. Furthermore, those actions will need to take many forms. National Security is an important aspect of the responsibilities of the U.S. government, which in itself covers a broad spectrum of things from National Defense to cryptography. But the security of the nation is also dependent on secure borders.

For example, it is necessary to ensure that drugs are not smuggled into the country. It is important to ensure terrorists cannot enter the country. It's important to ensure hazardous materials and spoiled food products and killer bees do not enter the country. There are myriad examples why control of one's own borders is imperative for national security, and of course, those things, as best as possible are all legitimately screened upon entry. So why not people?

Would it not be in the nation's sovereign interest to ensure that people enter legally, and those who enter legally are chosen for the right reasons? Whether those reasons are political asylum, needed labor skills or because of family ties, is a secondary issue (important, but for another time to discuss). And if it's true that the United States must act in it's sovereign interests as a nation, then it must control the flow of immigration and to a less direct extent, emigration at it's borders.

Whether someone arrived illegally today, or 6 years ago, the same underlying principle applies - the US must protect it's citizens in every way necessary, and illegal immigration can cause a number of problems for citizens (potential crime, potential cost burdens, employment displacement, and many others). Therefore the government MUST intercede at the border to ensure that those entering the country are on legitimate visitor visas (These include the B1, H1B, L1, E1, and E2 visas.) or are legally existing or becoming citizens or have Green Cards. It's the government's job to do this.

Border Security Temperature Check.

Having a porous border security system has allowed by some accounts 12 million illegal immigrants to be in the country. That's approximately 4% of the existing US Government census population. 1 in 25 people are in the country illegally, and roughly 57% of those illegal immigrants are from Mexico, and another 24% from Latin American countries. Combined that is about 9.7 million people. How many are in jobs illegally? How many are criminals? How many require medical attention annually, or subsidized schooling? Obviously if the US were connected by a common border with Asia, the demographics of the illegal immigrants would be vastly different. It's not about being xenophobic - it's about managing your national resources and your economy and enforcing your laws within the boundaries of your own sovereignty. There are obvious costs and there are hidden costs.

The national interest is not served by having them in the country simply because they want to be in America (yet still identify as Mexican/Chilean/Venezuelan/etc. in many cases). And this is a potentially gaping hidden cost. If you have an electrical engineer from Columbia who wants to get into America legally but cannot because of a quota, that quota is established based on what America believes it can handle in a given year. If 25,000 less illegals were here, another legitimate, skilled laborer could be in a job in America that might otherwise go unfilled.

Personally, I'd rather see a skilled tradesman with a Green Card working for Delta than an unskilled laborer working in an agriculture field making sub-minimum wage by an employer skirting the law in order to compete on price for his lettuce heads. And to argue that those lettuce heads will go unpicked otherwise is a misguided argument. The company will either use higher paid labor or find an American willing to work at below minimum wage to do the same job. We keep hearing they don't exist, but I'm sure they do. Alternately, the market-warping minimum wage could be abandoned or modified at least.

Immigration itself is not a bad thing, so long as the existing infrastructure can cope with the growth. Illegals make that growth harder to control and can only be offset by reducing the number of legitimate entrants.

Southern border security has been beefed up.

[Graphs below are from the Congressional Research Service Report For Congress - Border Security: The Role of the U.S. Border Patrol]

Border Patrol Appropriations have also risen dramatically.

Yet attacks on border patrol agents have gone up. Hopefully because of an increased presence and therefore increase exposure to illegal immigrants and not because of an increasingly violent migrant population.

And more importantly apprehensions have gone down.

The problem is that increasing border patrols isn't working. An estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants per year are entering the country, with no downturn in sight except for successful apprehensions. Money and bodies aren't the problem - the effectiveness of the methods being used is the problem. A better method exists for border security. One that works well with Obama's promised mega-super-duper-infrastructure-spending-pallooza.

Tomorrow I will continue with Part 2 - What to do about the border.