Category Archives: Law

UPDATED: Prima Donna Paul Ryan Gets His Work-Life Balance & Much More

Business, Constitution, Government, Law, Neoconservatism, Politics

According to historian Clement Wood it is an unwritten law followed “scrupulously,” “although omitted from the Constitution,” that the Speaker of the House of Representatives possesses “the czar-like power” “to recognize only such members as he pleases, and thereby strongly to influence legislation.”

After playing hard to get, pampered prima donna Paul Ryan has agreed to be the czar-like Speaker of the House. (Were you to ask neoconservative kingpins like William Kristol and John McCain who they’d tap for that position, any position, the Ryan/Rubio duo would be the choice. Bear that in mind.)

Ryan haggled until his “conditions” were met. These were for him “to emerge as House Republicans’ unity candidate, endorsed by the three major factions of House Republicans”—the Freedom Caucus, especially—and to “have enough flexibility to spend time with his wife and kids in Wisconsin.” (TIME)

Ryan’s feminist worthy demand for work-life balance—it got the girls on CNN hot, especially Andy Cooper—really irks. Try telling a major high-tech company that you want to enjoy work/life balance, and they’ll tell you in deeds more than in words that you can have your balance, but expect to remain at the same grade till you retire (or are nudged into retirement on account of “laziness”), and don’t expect good performance reviews or raises.

The pampered parasitical political class goes on about Donald Trump tweeting late into the AM. Successful tycoons are accustomed to staying up till the wee hours.

In any event, poor baby got his wish.

Here is Ann Coulter on other unappealing aspects of Speaker-to-be Paul Ryan.

UPDATE (10/24): “Fox’s Charles Payne Calls Work-Life Balance ‘A Bunch Of Crock’ And Calls For Children To Work More.”

Perp Walk U.S. Central Command Leadership

Foreign Policy, Government, Law, Middle East, Military

Imagine a large private company that invests half a billion dollars in a training program for a large workforce only to find that the program has failed, and that only 4-5 of those that underwent the training are kind of prepared to do the job they were trained to do. Imagine, further, that the company’s CEO decides not to scrap the program and fire those that dreamt it up—but, rather, to retain the program and merely shift its focus.

The creditors or the shareholders would have a field day in the courts (is it a derivative action that shareholders bring to “redress harm to the corporation caused by management?”) There might even be a perp walk or two.

Via RT:

The US State Department did not have a straight answer for RT’s correspondent when asked about why the program to train and equip ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels had failed, or why it believes the new version that is said to solely equip the rebels would work.

The State Department said the US has dropped the training program and decided to focus on just the equipping part of the plan.

“There is a pause being put in place, while we focus more on the equipping side of those groups that are in Syria now and have proven competent against ISIL [Islamic State, ISIS/ISIL],” State Department spokesperson John Kirby told RT’s Gayane Chichakyan at a Friday briefing. …

MORE.

These sort of scandals are an every day occurrence. And nothing is done. No one pays. China is known to execute officials for lesser embezzlement.

The US government and military, in this case I think Central Command is responsible, is terribly corrupt. It never has to account for ongoing embezzlement and it makes no pretense about having a fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers.

UPDATED: It takes A Special Kind Of Stupid To Lose Moral High-Ground To Planned Parenthood

Conservatism, Federalism, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Morality, Republicans, Uncategorized

Progressives are evil, immoral; as clueless as the pope in their arrogant ignorance of the American political system and the role of government in the American federal scheme.

But one has to be a special kind of stupid to lose the moral high ground to the 500,000 dollars-a-year babe (Cecile Richards) and her congressional harpies, who plump for public funding for Planned Parenthood.

THAT Republicans certainly are. (I say this as a libertarian who doesn’t see how, in a free world, one can agitate for the arrest of a woman for what she does with her property: her body and all that’s in it. I do, however, see a clear and logical way to argue the outlaw of late-term abortion. The reasoning I’ll share in a new book.)

Progressives are gloating: “The GOP still has nothing to show for its anti-Planned Parenthood campaign.”

UPDATE: What I mean by outlawing” late-term abortion is arguing convincingly—well, almost convincingly, since it’s pretty hard—against the practice of late-term abortion based on libertarian reasoning. Libertarian law turns on private property rights and the non-aggression axiom. You cannot initiate aggression against a non-aggressor. To aggress against a woman for what she does to her body, however much you abhor the practice, flies in the face of libertarianism.

So the challenge is arguing for that aggression in the case of a late-term child. It’s almost impossible logically, but I think it can be done. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I’m interested in hearing from religious libertarians how they’d argue for outlawing abortion. Ron Paul is anti-abortion. Not sure it works in libertarian law. But please share. Don’t bother specifying that abortion should not be funded by the state. We all agree. In fact, this is the central silliness of the Repubs; they can’t explain to silly bimbos that to defund abortion is not to ban abortion.

14th Amendment Jurisprudence For Dummies

Ann Coulter, Constitution, IMMIGRATION, Law

Perhaps Judge Andrew Napolitano, to whom Ann Coulter has already offered corrective feedback, should familiarize himself with 14th Amendment Jurisprudence:

… the cases in the first few decades following the adoption of the 14th Amendment leave the strong impression that it had something to do with freed slaves, and freed slaves alone:

– Supreme Court opinion in the slaughterhouse cases (1873):

“(N)o one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in (the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments), lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.”

– Supreme Court opinion in Ex Parte Virginia (1879):

“[The 14th Amendment was] primarily designed to give freedom to persons of the African race, prevent their future enslavement, make them citizens, prevent discriminating State legislation against their rights as freemen, and secure to them the ballot.”

– Supreme Court opinion in Strauder v. West Virginia (1880):

“The 14th Amendment was framed and adopted … to assure to the colored race the enjoyment of all the civil rights that, under the law, are enjoyed by white persons, and to give to that race the protection of the general government in that enjoyment whenever it should be denied by the States.”

– Supreme Court opinion in Neal v. Delaware (1880) (majority opinion written by Justice John Marshall Harlan, who was the only dissenting vote in Plessy v. Ferguson):

“The right secured to the colored man under the 14th Amendment and the civil rights laws is that he shall not be discriminated against solely on account of his race or color.”

– Supreme Court opinion in Elk v. Wilkins (1884):

“The main object of the opening sentence of the 14th Amendment was … to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black, and whether formerly slaves or not, born or naturalized in the United States, and owing no allegiance to any alien power, should be citizens of the United States. … The evident meaning of (the words, ‘and subject to the jurisdiction thereof’) is, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. … Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterward, except by being naturalized. …”

One has to leap forward 200 years from “the founding of the republic” to find the first claim that kids born to illegal immigrants are citizens: To wit, in dicta (irrelevant chitchat) by Justice William Brennan, slipped into the footnote of a 5-4 decision in 1982. …

Read “Honest Columnist Forced to Correct No. 1 Cable Show.”