Category Archives: Private Property

Donald Trump’s Outlandish Abortion Comments Mirror Republican Confusion

Donald Trump, Law, Private Property, Republicans

In defense of Donald Trump’s outlandish abortion comments; Republicans themselves are vague and confusing on the matter. I’ve never heard a Republican say outright that “only the person performing the abortion should be punished.” If this is the official GOP position, it seems as bizarre as Trump’s statement. I can see why he was confused. Why punish service provider and not service seeker?! (Don’t tell me; spare me.)

Background via BBC News:

US presidential hopeful Donald Trump has withdrawn a call for women who have abortions to be punished, only hours after suggesting it.

He had proposed “some form of punishment” for women who have abortions if they were made illegal.

But after strong criticism, Mr Trump repeated the Republican party line that only the person performing the abortion should be punished, not the women.

The Republican front-runner supports a ban on abortions, with some exceptions.

Abortion has been legal in the United States since 1973 after a landmark Supreme Court ruling.

Only the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment has the power to overturn Roe v Wade and make abortion illegal.

I would have thought that Republicans ought stick to reality. In America, “women have the right de jure to screw and scrape out their insides to their heart’s content.” The only question is, should taxpayer rights, especially the rights of the anti-abortion faithful, be compromised to fund the procedure.

I would have thought that Republicans ought to explain that when feminists and their media lickspittles speak of “abortion rights,” they mean federal funding for abortion. Nothing else. A “right” to undergo an abortion is to be distinguished from a right to federal funding of your abortion. Don’t conflate “abortion rights” with federal funding for abortion.

More about the distinction in “From Benghazi To The Abortion Killing Fields.”

But Republicans have, understandably, confused Mr. Trump. By now, Trump, however, should no longer be winging it.

UPDATED (5/3): TRUMPVille: Immigration, Cons For Amnesty & Assassination, CPUKE, Cruze, Marco N’ Max

Conservatism, Donald Trump, IMMIGRATION, Private Property, Republicans

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UPDATED : Feds Have No Right To Conscript APPLE (Big Gov. Guy Gates)

Business, Constitution, Jihad, Private Property, Technology, Terrorism

It’s one thing for the federal government to subpoena “the data on the iPhone 5C” of jihadi murderers Rizwan Farook and wife Tashfeen Malik. It’s quite another for the FBI and prosecutors to demand “Apple produce software that would give investigators access to the iPhone at issue.”

A warrant for the information of the killers is perfectly reasonable. For this, the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution provides:

The Fourth Amendment requires the government to present to a judge evidence of wrongdoing on the part of a specific target of the warrant, and it requires that the warrant specifically describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized. The whole purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to protect the right to be left alone — privacy — by preventing general warrants.

In the case of the Fockers, I mean the Farooks, there is ample probable cause.

Probable cause is a level of evidence sufficient to induce a neutral judge to conclude that it is more likely than not that the government will find what it is looking for in the place it wants to search, and that what it is looking for will be evidence of criminal behavior.

But for a magistrate to order that Apple make an application to assist the Feds in doing their work: That’s tantamount to conscripting the company to involuntarily work for the feds. There is no warrant in the Constitution for that!

In fact, the involuntary conscription of someone’s labor, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished in 1865.

This is why I get frustrated when people waffle about the need for someone to enforce the US Constitution. What Constitution? Surely it’s time to realize the Constitution is, for the most, a dead letter? Alas, in the fullness of time, a provision will be found for this new violation. Allusions will be made to our “changing, dangerous world.”

UPDATE (2/23):

Smash The Spoils System, Baby: South Carolina Brings It

Donald Trump, Elections, Private Property, Republicans

The menagerie of morons that is American media—these crooked, scripted, bought-and-paid-for insiders—are finally, but not quite, grasping Donald’s appeal to average folks. The gaffes and impolitic statements are the hallmark of a man who tells the truth as he see it, without dressing it up in the raiment of politically enforced propriety. Most ordinary people would do the same if they’d live to tell the tale:

Via The New York Times’ Frank Bruni:

… people voting for [Trump] aren’t evaluating him through any usual ideological lens. They’re not asking what kind of Republican he is. They’re not troubling themselves with whether the position he’s selling today matches the position he was selling yesterday or even what that old position was.

They want to try something utterly different—utterly disruptive, to use the locution du jour—and that leaves them, on the Republican side, with the options of Trump and Ben Carson. Trump has the fire.

Who said so in June in “A Candidate To ‘Kick The Crap Out Of All The Politicians’”? (Watch this space for my forthcoming book.)

… Trump didn’t just win South Carolina, and he didn’t just win it by a margin of 10 points. He won it despite what looked, over recent days, like a concerted effort to lose it. He won it after what appeared to be one of the worst weeks that a candidate could have.

It began at the most recent debate, where he trashed the last Republican president, George W. Bush, and accused him of lying to the American people as he led them into war in Iraq. He sounded like a liberal Democrat. Republican primary voters, especially those in the South, aren’t typically receptive to that.

Over the next days, Trump sounded even more like a liberal Democrat, at least as described by Ted Cruz, who went after him relentlessly, armed with Trump’s own past statements in support of abortion rights and Planned Parenthood. [We libertarians are accused of so sounding, too, because we know you cannot compel free individuals not to do certain things with their private property—their bodies—however, you can defund a thing that ought not to be funded in the first place, because there is no constitutional warrant for it.]

The week got messier from there. Trump picked a fight with the Pope. Trump picked a fight with Apple. It became evident that no personage or brand, no matter how beloved, was safe from his wrath.

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