Tag Archives: law

Death Panel: The Spectacle of Obama-TrumpCare Continues to Disappoint – Everyone and in the Most Ridiculous Ways

16 Friday Jun 2017

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I suppose “fund it so we can kill it” ranks up there with “pass it so we can find out what’s in it.” It’s no cause to hunt them down on the diamond, but the current GOP crop has to be the most ridiculous bunch of idiot losers in legislative history. Has anyone any idea where the ObamaCare repeal/replace/repeal and replace/amend/screw up is possibly going? It seems the GOP doesn’t:

Top congressional Republicans have delivered a surprising plea to the Trump administration: Don’t sabotage the Affordable Care Act while we try to repeal it.

Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander on Thursday became the second GOP committee chairmen in as many weeks to urge the administration to continue payments of subsidies to insurance companies that are considered crucial to stabilizing the individual market and preventing sharp premium increases.

Under President Trump’s direction, the administration has refused to guarantee that it will pay the subsidies, which are known as “cost-sharing reduction payments” and help insurers keep down deductibles for low-income customers while still making a profit. The decision has infuriated Democrats and insurers alike, and several companies have cited the uncertainty caused by the administration as the reason for exiting Obamacare exchanges in certain states and counties.

In an unusual alliance, Republicans in Congress are now joining the effort to pressure Trump to make the payments even after they sued the Obama administration over their legality three years ago. “These payments will help to avoid the real possibility that millions of Americans will literally have zero options for insurance in the individual market in 2018,” Alexander told Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, at a hearing on Thursday. “We have a collapsing individual market as a result of the Affordable Care Act, and as part of a transition from a collapsing market to a stable market in which Americans have more choices of insurance at a lower-cost, I believe Republicans will need to temporarily support some things we don’t want to do in the long term, and I would hope Democrats would do that as well.”

You, our man, do what we sued the other guy to stop a few years ago. In the meanwhile, we’ll busy ourselves doing nothing.

These fools could have: 1) fixed the current system; 2) replaced it with … anything, or; 3) just plain repealed it. They could have done this already. The same crowd rammed a full and complete repeal through Congress a few years back when Obama was in the White House. Naturally, he vetoed the Bill. They could do the exact same thing now, with Trump ithcing to sign off on it. A Bill to do that is ready right now and has been in the House hopper since January. Instead they dally and posture in the most pitiful manner possible.

And people vote for this?! Some pay money to support this?

Obama and Co. gave America a failed policy from the start. Just about everyone with an IQ north of room temperature knew that. They still know it. The Democrats, the media, and the medical/insurance scam industry are already starting to shift the blame for the systemic failures of the doomed-from-the-start law to the GOP and even Trump. Congressional Republicans are moving Heaven and Earth to help justify the shift.

Again, the healthcare options are, in order of best to worst:

  1. Free market system (never again in the USA);
  2. Universal coverage through private distribution (the Swiss system – also not likely);
  3. Universal socialist coverage (the Soviet system – possible and better than:);
  4. Continuing to prop up the ObamaCare tax and obscure system (where we are);
  5. The let’s drag our feet while everything goes to hell, start a repeal and yank it, again and again, Republican approach – prop up what we once sued to stop; let it all fall apart; get people good and shooting angry; stop the mandates but keep the taxes; etc., etc., etc.; and
  6. Outlaw healthcare and put everyone on arsenic…

It’s amazing, given the comparison, that numbers 3 and 6 actually seem somewhat attractive.

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The Daily Hatch.

Please, please remember this come November of 2018 and 2020.

Eulogy for a Decent Judge: Hon. Marvin Shoob, 1923 – 2017

13 Tuesday Jun 2017

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I just read that retired Federal Judge Marvin Shoob died. He was 94. And he was, in my opinion, a thoroughly decent jurist and a gentleman.

Marvin Shoob, the embodiment of an independent federal judiciary and a jurist who consistently protected the powerless and disadvantaged, died Monday at his home in Atlanta. He was 94.

Shoob retired in February 2016 as a senior U.S. District Court judge after 36 years on the bench.

“It has been an honor and privilege to serve as a United States district judge,” Shoob wrote in a letter, announcing his retirement. “For this opportunity, I am most grateful.”

The AJC recounted some of his more famous decisions, decisions that don’t all necessarily square with my legal outlook:

Among his most noteworthy decisions, Shoob ruled licensed firearms owners could not carry guns into parts of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport; Fulton County had to improve conditions at his overcrowded, dangerous jail; Cobb County had to remove its Ten Commandments display at its courthouse; and Georgia had to place residents with development disabilities into community settings, not making them institutionalized — a ruling upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1999.

I disagre(ed) with all of these except for the jailhouse case. That’s okay, as minds can differ, and do. However, it is not the disagreements I remember, but my single case before Judge Shoob, my only case ever in the Northern District.

My guy was sued in the N. Dist. over a copyright issue. Due to his misplaced reliance on the lies of a certain unnamed mega-transnational insurance company, he found himself with a default judgment. He also found himself in a court far from home and far from where the alleged transgression supposedly happened.

Judge Shoob did three things for us: First, he “opened default” as a matter of fairness; he believed the maxim that “justice abhors a default”. It was the decent and legal thing to do. Second, he transferred the case, at our request, to the Southern District – where it really belonged. Home field advantage is real and never hurts. Third, he put a verbal whipping on the opposing counsel, who had been until that point … haughty to say the least.

Once back home, we wrapped the case (a really ridiculous but eye-opening matter) up with a neat little settlement. That was … seven, eight? years ago??? Without Judge Shoob’s interventions, the case might still be in court.

Come to think of it, he’s the same federal judge that slapped down Georgia’s illegal “implied consent” law, not too long ago, as a violation of Due Process. Another sound decision for freedom.

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Rich Addicks/AJC.

God’s speed, Marvin Shoob.

Big Brother Forever! On With the FISA 702 Extension

07 Wednesday Jun 2017

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This would be the same Trump administration that, just a short while ago, complained about being spied upon by this very program…

The Trump administration endorsed a full extension of the intelligence community’s most controversial snooping powers Wednesday, saying that the public has gotten the wrong impression about tools that are designed to target foreigners but, increasingly, have ensnared Americans as well.

Thomas P. Bossert, President Trump’s top counterterrorism adviser, in an op-ed in the New York Times, said they are backing a new bill introduced this week to permanently extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the part of the law that allows snooping.

Mr. Bossert said the public will have to trust the government’s assertions that the program is valuable, since most of its successes have to remain classified. But he said Section 702 intelligence helped thwart the New York City subway bombing plot.

“Simply put, the use of this authority has helped save lives,” Mr. Bossert wrote.
Section 702 allows intelligence agencies to collect vast amounts of information from foreign sources located outside the U.S. as part of antiterrorism investigations. Communications with Americans can, however, be snared.

The section is slated to expire at the end of this year, and security hawks and civil liberties advocates are now battling over whether to extend it.

Extended it shall be! “Trust us, we’re from the government.”

Undoubtedly the program may have saved some lives. Others seem to have fallen between the cracks. There was that …. Fourth …. something? No mind.

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Telegraph.

Amazing. No, actually it’s typical. Back to the TeeVee (which is watched and watching…).

Good Cop, Bad Citizen, Crazed Law

30 Tuesday May 2017

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I noticed two things this morning.

One was that WordPress assigned one of my previous Police State articles as a related companion to last night’s terrorism post. Two years ago I was concerned about the militarization of the domestic police in the U.S. Things have gotten only a little worse since then.

Second, was a new, somewhat-related column out there…

Now, as Eric Peters recounts, one Republican lawmaker would have the militarized police nearly immune from any consequences of their illegal activities towards We, the People.

Naturally, the solution to the problem of police abusing their authority is to hold them less accountable when they do exactly that.

Leave it to “law and order” Republicans such as Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Ted Poe to evolve such logic. They have put forth the Black and Blue – whoops, Back the Blue – act (see here) which would make it harder to sue run-amok law enforcers in civil court to recover damages resulting from actions undeniably illegal – while at the same time imposing more severe penalties on Mundanes who affront the holy person of a law enforcer than those imposed on Mundanes who do exactly the same thing.

Look for this law to pass. Republicrats always want to be seen as “tough.” Trump will go right along to show support for “the brave men and women in uniform.” Democraps really don’t care.

Some federal judge may show a little concern, maybe five years from now; he might undue the extra (double jeopardy) excessive self-defense penalties against victimized citizens. Or he may not. The immunity from civil prosecution will stand. One wonders (if one is so inclined) if this prohibition includes 1983 (federal civil rights) actions – frequently the only recourse in the event of police brutality.

In Old England (and in the Colonies and the early Republic) there was a common law doctrine that a person (and witnesses) had a right and even an obligation to forcibly resist illegal police activity. Ancient history. Today it is virtually impossible to hold a wayward officer accountable. Soon it may be completely impossible.

Most officers I have ever known or encountered are/were decent and honest. That’s good because the bad ones are about to get more than a pass. It will be more like a rubber stamp of approval. Progress and such.

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EP.

The Humanity of It All

29 Monday May 2017

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Two stories of late, slightly related:

First, a federal judge overturned Lee Boyd Malvo’s life sentences without parole. Malvo was one of the “D.C. Snipers” who reigned terror around the nation’s capital back in 2002. I remember this episode, one because it was in close proximity to 9/11 and, two because it figured slightly (perhaps notoriously) into my original white paper on Posse Comitatus (it certainly got John Anderson’s attention).

A federal judge threw out a convicted D.C. sniper’s four life sentences Friday because he was 17 when he was originally sentenced.

U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson in Norfolk, Virginia, ruled that Lee Boyd Malvo has a right to be re-sentenced in new sentencing hearings due to a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that made it unconstitutional for juveniles to receive mandatory life sentences in prison without parole, the Daily Mail reported.

He will likely be sentenced to life again – with the possibility of parole (which probably won’t ever happen). Malvo was the co-defendant with and likely catamite of John Allen Muhammad; both were Muslims with a bone to shoot with white, Christian America. The “better-than-that” mercy of the American justice [SIC] system.

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If Obama liked rifles…. Breitbart News.

Second, no such mercy was shown to the 28 Coptic Christians gunned down recently on a bus in Egypt. By some sort of odd coincidence the shooters in this case were also Muslims.

As many as 10 attackers in 3 SUVs stormed the bus dressed in military uniforms and wearing masks, before demanding that the passengers recite the Muslim profession of faith, according to witnesses. Then, the gunmen opened fire. Some 22 people were wounded.

Only three children survived the attack, the Copts United news portal reported. The victims were on their way to visit a monastery to pray.

Survivors claimed the killers left behind flyers about the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which begins Friday evening.

The religion of peace, leaving orphans to read pamphlets.

This is a war. It’s a war of annihilation directed at all the West. Little has changed in 15 years. When will come the awakening?

 

Yeah, About Those Laws

25 Thursday May 2017

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There are really two sets of laws: one for you and one for the government. Both are made by the government. (Strictly talking positive law, here).

“Your” laws work like this: They mandate that you must have a driver’s license from their DMV. You break your law, you go to jail.

“Their” laws work like this: They are legally prohibited from using biometrics at their DMV. They break the law, the law is broken.

An example of their lawlessness regarding their own laws from Vermont:

The Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles has been caught using facial recognition software — despite a state law preventing it.

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont describe such a program, which uses software to compare the DMV’s database of names and driver’s license photos with information with state and federal law enforcement. Vermont state law, however, specifically states that “The Department of Motor Vehicles shall not implement any procedures or processes… that involve the use of biometric identifiers.”

The program, the ACLU says, invites state and federal agencies to submit photographs of persons of interest to the Vermont DMV, which it compares against its database of some 2.6 million photos and shares potential matches. Since 2012, the agency has run at least 126 such searches on behalf of local police, the State Department, FBI, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

The law they break: 23 V.S.A. § 634(c).

It’s called a double standard. You pay for it. Then you pay for it again. Dandy system.

VTstatutes

Books for you. Books for them. State of Vermont.

Gunning For Glory: Omnibus Second Amendment Court Case Doomed From Start; Yet, Unlooked for Smaller, Ordinary Victories Appear

15 Monday May 2017

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The day or week, I can’t recall, I mentioned a federal court case from Kansas, U.S. v. Cox,  No. 6:15-cr-10150-JTM-01, 02 (D. Kan., 2016). Cox ran a firearms business, in Kansas, and without an Imperial license. Nominally “protected” by Kansas law, he felt the federal formality unnecessary. The Empire took issue and prosecuted him for breaking its illegal gun control laws.

As part of his defense, Cox challenged those laws – all federal gun control, in fact. He sought a declaration of the truth, that all of these laws run afoul of the Second Amendment. He lost. His Motion to Dismiss and his entire position failed; a jury convicted him of something.

Some maintain hope that either the Tenth Circuit or the Supreme Court will reverse the injustice. I, having tried federal firearms cases and knowing the system like few others, know better. I didn’t need to look far into this matter. The legality really doesn’t matter. Freedom from D.C. comes only when D.C. goes the way of Rome. The good news, by that measure, is that it is now about 470 A.D. Tick, tick, tick.

However, the smaller victories come forth on a near daily basis. Today, even the looniest of the lefties – once the most ardent gun grabbers – open tote ARs in the streets. Given enough time, and if they don’t shoot themselves in the process, this may actually turn them into real Americans. The rest of us are armed to the teeth and enjoy one legal success after another.

State after state after state, the gun controls continue to break down. For example, one jurisdiction after another passes some form of “campus carry”, allowing guns at colleges. This improves safety and civic atmosphere. It also has other, unexpected but tangible, benefits.

The prospect of a man or men, armed, in the classroom, drives the communist professors nuts. It also drives them out the door.

An associate professor at the University of Kansas has publicly resigned in protest of the school’s new weapons policy allowing students to carry concealed guns on campus.

Jacob Dorman, an associate professor of history and American studies at the university for the past 10 years, had his resignation letter published Friday by the The Topeka Capital-Journal.

“Kansas can have great universities, or it can have concealed carry in classrooms, but it cannot have both,” he wrote. “Let us not let the NRA destroy the future of the state of Kansas with a specious argument about the Second Amendment.”

Actually, professor, they can have both. The facts of the new law and your departure prove that. This could have far-ranging positive ramifications.

Cox lost but the students of higher education in Kansas won. (The geographic location of both these stories was a coincidence.

The students, now free to carry, are free from the fear of the likes of Abdul Artan or Dylan Roof. Freedom and safety, together. Very nice. And, with the riddance of people like Dorman, they now stand to actually get an education.

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This map is already out of date. NCSL.

Dorman, formerly a KU “history” professor, theorized both Amerika and the Harlem “Renaissance.” He wrote a both about chosen black Israelites and is writing one about Black Muslim black magic in the Orient … or something. All to do with Amerikan history, you know. He’ll now do that some place else. Going forward, the Kansas students, while actually learning, will have to come up with their own fantastic fairy tales.

The morals, here, are several. Live free. Humor the idiot empire; pay their bribes and buy their licenses and laugh. Project and protect freedom and intellectualism on campus. Watch the SJWs run.

This is real American history in the making.

Once More Unto the … Here They Go Again

04 Thursday May 2017

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Republicans plan their – what, 80th?? – whack at repealing or replacing the ACA, with a House vote set for tomorrow.

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote Thursday on a controversial Republican bill that would repeal and replace key parts of Obamacare, the GOP’s majority leader said Wednesday night.

“We’re going tomorrow, yes we are,” said Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

Asked he if had the votes to win passage of the bill, McCarthy told NBC News, “Yes we do.”

“We will pass this bill,” McCarthy said. “I feel great about the [vote] count.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said several days ago that he would not hold the vote without having those winning votes in hand.

No idea if this is the same plan floated a few months ago and aborted at the last second. Honestly I’m beginning to forget what the law is all about and who these “Republicans” are… We’ll see…

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Sack / Star Tribune.

Of course, Speaker Ryan could pull the vote tonight depending on what his magic eight ball says.

There is a Case Out There…

27 Thursday Apr 2017

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Bob Owens at Bearing Arms is excited about a case in federal court in Kansas, U.S. v. Cox, No. 6:15-cr-10150-JTM-01, 02 (D. Kan. 2016), that sort of threatens the imperial lock on firearms. Bob thinks this case could (possibly) undue all federal gun control laws.

The federal trial of a Kansas man for manufacturing and selling firearms and silencers without a federal license could very well turn out to be the pivotal case that not only challenges the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act of 1934, but also every federal firearms law ever passed in a battle that will determine whether it is the states or the federal government that has the constitutional right to pass gun laws.

Put bluntly, this could be huge.

Or it could not be huge. In fact, I am confident it will fail entirely. Cox’s Motion to Dismiss, stating all his Constitutional overreach claims, has been denied. In fact, Cox and his co-defendant have already been convicted. Their hope now, what little there is, rests either in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court. In order words, they have no chance.

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NRA-ILA.

This case would be important for several reasons if we still had a Constitutional Republic. We don’t. Every single federal gun control is undoubtedly unconstitutional. But the Constitution and the rule of law are now things of the ancient past.

The government simply does as it pleases, lawful or otherwise, and the people accept it  – or go to prison. Rights are now illusory unless they are non-rights asserted by non-citizens or terrorist invaders or banking corporations.

I may or may not look further into this matter. For now, just abide by the edicts of Washington or suffer as Cox does. Your state is no protection at all against Mordor.

Happy Thursday. I’m semi-lie today from Five Points Cigars in Athens. Nice place.

Yeah, About that Constitution Thing…

05 Wednesday Apr 2017

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Butler Shaffer explains the painfully obvious about the “rule of law” and the Constitution in America:

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops – no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

In case any reader still clings to the platitude that the American political system is based on the proposition that ours is “a society of laws, and not of men,” I urge you to pay close attention to the events of recent years. Political behavior does not exist in abstractions, such as the “state,” or the “government,” or a “constitution,” but is activity engaged in by such men and women who find the machinery of state power a useful device for accomplishing ends that they value. Those who desire to control others through access to the tools of violence that define the state, have rationales to convince their intended victims of the “rightness” of their rule. From explanations such as “God’s will” to the “divine right of kings,” the authority of some to enjoy coercive power over others – along with their subjects’ duty of obedience – is so engrained into the minds of people as to seem as self-evident as the forces of gravity.

…

The Constitution, itself, should remind us that “laws” do not exist in a vacuum, but are the products of human action which, in turn, is behavior driven by people pursuing their self-interests. With legislation created by a political system that enjoys a monopoly on the legal use of force, it is clear that laws are but the means by which some people pursue their ends at the expense of others.

From the very creation of the national government, to how its different branches would act, there has always been a fuzziness as to the meaning of words used in the Constitution. This is due to the fundamental nature of all words. Being abstractions, their application to real-world events inherently depends upon their interpretation. When the Supreme Court tells us that it will have such authority, it is telling us that the government thus created by this document will be the interpreter of its own supposed “limited powers.”

…

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Tommy Kaye.

Some lament that “we should just get back to ” the system as originally established by the Constitution. I agree that would be preferable to the way things are now. However, it was that Constitution, that stronger central government model, that set in motion what we currently endure. It was a monster designed to grow and concur. And it did.

Spooner observed, long ago: “But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

Sad but true. And, at this time, it’s all a moot point.