Category Archives: Law

Schooling Beck On Trump’s Nullification Promise

Constitution, Donald Trump, Elections, Glenn Beck, Law, Liberty

“Schooling Beck On Trump’s Nullification Promise” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Former Fox News Channel broadcaster Glenn Beck, now of The Blaze TV, has been warning theatrically of an inchoate catastrophe should the country choose Donald J. Trump “as its next president.”

Trump “will be a monster much, much worse” than Barack Obama, says Beck. …

… “Where are the people who say we stand with the Constitution,” protested Beck. Trump fails to talk about the Constitution in depth, he blathered.

True. Trump is not a TV talker. Moreover, all candidates who talk about the Constitution “in depth” are dishonest. For there is no Constitution left to talk about. That thing died over the course of centuries of legislative, executive and judicial usurpation. That’s why when Iraqis were composing their Constitution (after no. 43 destroyed their country), the late Joe Sobran recommended we give them ours because we don’t use it.

Mention of the Constitution means nothing. It’s on the list of items candidates check when they con constituents. Beck went on to OMG it about Trump saying this: “President Obama’s irresponsible use of executive orders has paved the way for him to also use them freely if he wins the presidential race.”

Amen—provided Trump uses executive power to repeal lots of laws, not make them. We live under an administrative “Secret State.” Very many, maybe most, of the laws under which Americans labor ought to be repealed. The only laws that are naturally inviolable are those upholding life, liberty and property.

Trump, thankfully, has proclaimed: “the one thing good about executive orders: The new president, if he comes in – boom, first day, first hour, first minute, you can rescind that.”

Beck has protested. He apparently accepts the inherent legitimacy of Barack Obama’s executive orders. Beck also seems to believe that the Constitution, or some other higher order, demands that people continue to labor under burdensome government edicts forever after, and that to promise repeal is the act of a progressive.

“Ted Cruz,” countered Beck, who has since endorsed candidate Cruz, “is the guy who says he’s for certain principles and will be tethered and tied to them, exactly like Ronald Reagan was.”

Well, another of Eland’s discomforting observations about Reagan is that he “enhanced executive power through questionable means. Although presidential signing statements, accompanying bills passed by Congress, had been around since George Washington, Reagan began to use these signing statement to contravene or nullify Congress’s will without giving that body a chance to override a formal presidential veto.”

There’s nothing necessarily progressive about overturning laws that have been passed.

There is nothing sacred about every law an overweening national government and its unelected agencies inflict on the people. “At the federal level alone,” the number of laws totaled 160,000 pages,” in 2012. By John Stossel’s estimation, “Government adds 80,000 pages of rules and regulations every year.” According to the Heritage Foundation, “Congress continues to criminalize at an average rate of one new crime for every week of every year.”

America has become a nation of thousands-upon-thousands of arbitrary laws, whose effect is to criminalize naturally licit conduct. …

… Read the rest.“Schooling Beck On Trump’s Nullification Promise” is now on WND.

Donald Trump Articulates The Impotence Inherent In State Law

Islam, Jihad, Law, Republicans, Terrorism

“So, they [terrorists] can kill us, but we can’t kill them? That’s what you’re saying”!! Donald Trump was incredulous, responding to Rand Paul in denial and defiance, last night, at the Las Vegas, CNN-Facebook Republican presidential debate.

Trump’s reality based observation is correct. Strictly speaking, law guarantees “the aggressor has all the rights because he places himself outside positive—national or international—law. The victim, being a law abider, has no rights, because his only recourse to justice is through the state.”

This impotence I attempted to confront on October 5, 2001, in “Facing the Onslaught of Jihad.” Read it.

Why Does Paul Ryan Conflate Bill Of Rights With Refugee Bill Of Goods?!

Constitution, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Law, Reason, Republicans, UN

Paul Ryan is no Ted Cruz. Ryan’s illogical statements already grate. On Fox News, the other day, Paul Ryan disavowed a religious test in accepting refugees. We believe in religious freedom, he said, hence a preference for Christians over Muslims is “not who we are.” (I dissect the “not who we are” cudgel in tomorrow’s WND column.)

Wait a sec, Mr. Ryan, the so-called right to immigrate here irrespective of religion is not the same thing as the right of religious freedom. From the fact that Americans have a constitutional right to religious freedom, it doesn’t flow that refugees from all faiths must be welcome.

Don’t panic. As it is, the US privileges Muslims: “2,098 Syrian Muslim refugees were allowed into America, but only 53 Christians.”

As reported by Breitbart.com, demographic change in the US is entirely the product of legal admissions–”it is a formal policy of the federal government adopted by Congress.” Thus,

Another major source of Middle Eastern immigration into the United States is done through our nation’s refugee program. Every year the United Stated admits 70,000 asylees and refugees. Arabic is the most common language spoken by refugees, and 91.4 percent of refugees from the Middle East are on food stamps.

In the same Fox News exchange, it transpired that Ryan loves our refugee laws—they are important legislation, he said on that occasion. But why? Like most positive law, US refugee law is written by and for special interests, starting with one of the most corrupt UN agencies, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Besides who approved these refugee laws? Likely fewer than 535 law makers legislating on behalf of 323 million people who have to live with the law’s consequences.

UPDATED: On Refugee Reparations & Paul Ryan’s Weasel Words

Barack Obama, Bush, Constitution, Critique, Democracy, Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Law, libertarianism

Bush, Cheney, Clinton and Obama started the wars that eventually caused entire Middle-Eastern populations to be on the move. Personally, I think these American politicians and their respective cabals (Samantha Power and the Rices, Condi and Susan) should pay reparations, out of their personal fortunes, to Iraqi, Syrian and Afghani refugees. No qualifying test required.

Libertarian justice aside, Laura Ingraham has been ahead of Ann Coulter in evolving away from establishment Republicans and their weasel words, as was noted in this space, in July of 2014. Now Ingraham is doing her listeners a service by alerting them to how “Paul Ryan is using the language of the Left to advocate a new Republican way forward”:

“By opposing a ‘religious test’ for refugees, the new House Speaker Paul Ryan is ‘using the language of the left,’ ‘the language of Obama.'”

“Nobody is talking about a religious test,” counters Ingraham, “we are talking about a test of leadership, for the American people to finally see their leaders—Obama and the Republicans—standing up for the American people.”

Not quite. A religious test is inherent in refugee legislation, as religious persecution is grounds for a request for asylum. However, and by the sound of it, Americans are sick and tired of laws passed in contravention of their rights and interests.

More materially, there is nothing in the thousands of bills dreamed up by representatives, annually, that remotely approximates the will of a self-governing people and their exclusive interests. I mean, poor, working-class whites are dying in inordinate numbers in the US. Who do these local refugees turn to for redress? The left-liberal establishment (GOP included), which finds the exotic more sympathetic?

UPDATE: As Christians die across the Muslim world, America’s leaders feel the urgency of importing more Muslims:

Jeff Sessions (R-AL), “chairmen of the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations and Immigration and the National Interest subcommittees respectively, issued the following statement, 11/17. It’s a little soft, but better than most:

… Under our nation’s current policy, the President simply brings in as many refugees as he wants. Refugees are entitled to access all major welfare programs, and they can also draw benefits directly from the Medicare and Social Security disability and retirement trust funds – taking those funds straight from the pockets of American retirees who paid into these troubled funds all of their lives.

Our immigration and refugee policies must serve the interests of our nation and protect the security of the American people. After admitting 1.5 million migrants from Muslim countries on lifetime visas since 9/11, it is time to assist in relocating Muslim migrants within their home region rather than relocating large numbers to the United States. It simply cannot be our policy to encourage a mass migration of entire populations from their homelands, a strategy that will only further destabilize the region and bring threats of terrorism deep inside our shores.” …