Category Archives: Law

Business, Economics, Law, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary

Birthright Citizenship

32 Comments

I’m hearing that The Donald is proposing putting an end to it. That’s too bad, because I think it’s a good idea that will now be tainted by the source. Here’s what I wrote about it almost exactly five years ago:

if it were my choice, I’d much rather grant citizenship to someone who was willing to brave a desert and river crossing to get to this nation, learn the language and the civics, and work for a living, than someone born here who takes the nation for granted and refused to accept those responsibilities. Who is more deserving of the vote — the immigrant who has worked for it, or the native who spurns its requirements and demands public largesse? Or worse yet, a native who gangs with others to prey on his own neighbors? Why should someone, regardless of their behavior and level of social responsibility, be a citizen of this great nation through the sheer luck of having been born here, when many other true Americans who weren’t born here but “got here as fast as they can” are not?

Note that this isn’t about civil rights, at least not the traditional negative rights as stated in the Bill of Rights. Both citizens and civilians would have rights to free speech, rights to fair trials, even rights to bear arms if they’re not felonious, but voting is not and should not be a right — it should be a privilege, because, as noted above, it’s one that many will otherwise abuse to the detriment of their fellow residents, should they not be responsible and willing to pull their own weight, choosing instead to rob them at the ballot box.

Immigrants in fact tend to be harder working and more grateful to be here, though the Latin-American influx may be different because they aren’t necessarily coming to stay.

[Update a while later]

This isn’t exactly the same, but it would have much the same effect: Tom Tancredo is once again proposing that voters pass the same test that one must to become a citizen.

Works for me. And I have become long-inured to falsely being called a racist.

Education, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

A Perfect Feminist Storm

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I’ve joked for years that I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body, but someone should seriously do this to make their heads explode:

In the Perfect Storm scenario, the ex-boyfriend, when called before the tribunal, refuses to bow down. He does not beg for a lawyer. He does not offer pathetic, chauvinistic attacks against his victimized accuser. He does not beg for mercy.

Instead, the accused ex-boyfriend claims that the charge against him cannot possibly be true. The reality, he says, is that during the time he was dating his accuser, his gender identity was feminine. Not only was his gender identity feminine, it was also lesbian — and to the extent his appearance on campus was externally masculine, he behaved that way because he had discovered that he had much greater sexual success as a lesbian (with sexual success defined as encounters with other women) when those same women believed he was a man. He knew, however, at all relevant times, that he was a lesbian having sex with the woman now hiding behind a screen and accusing him of the heteronormative crime of rape.

Not only does the accused ex-lesbian boyfriend deny the charges against him, he counterattacks.

It would deliciously highlight the contradictions of the fascist SJWs.

Humor, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Mark Steyn’s New Book

6 Comments

Some commentary from the author on its reception so far.

I’ll be interested to see what people like Phil Plait have to say. I suspect they’ll try to pretend it doesn’t exist.

[Thursday-morning update]

Thoughts (and a lot of excerpts) from Judith Curry.

I’m not sure that the fact he’s making a lot of money on the book reduces his chances of getting damages from Mann. I’m sure he would have preferred to have been writing other books, and he needs the money for his legal defense.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Hillary’s FBI Investigation

15 Comments

Sorry, apologists, but yes, it is a criminal probe.

With all the laws being violated, how could it not be?

I’m trying to recall the last time the presumptive nominee of a major party was under investigation by the FBI. And failing.

[Update a while later]]

“People need to know whether she’s a crook.”

Really, after the history of the 90s, is there any doubt about that? But she’s their crook, supported by a party of long-time thieves and liars.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Hillary And Huma

79 Comments

…have until the end of the week:

I noted that Judge Sullivan recently reopened the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Judicial Watch to obtain emails from Huma Abedin, the top Clinton aide who is married to infamous and disgraced former Congressman Anthony Wiener. Judge Sullivan reopened the case when he learned that Clinton and her staff used personal email accounts to conduct government business. This is a flagrant violation of the Federal Records Act and jeopardizes national security—prompting rapidly escalating concerns of countless ramifications internationally, nationally, and criminally.

Over at the WaPo, Marc Thiessen explains Hillary’s very serious legal problem:

The Clinton e-mail scandal reached a new level of seriousness when the intelligence community inspector general found classified information from five intelligence agencies in e-mails housed on Clinton’s private server. It is against the law to remove classified information from government facilities and retain it after you have left office and have no official reason to possess it.

Just ask Sandy Berger. In 2003, Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser was caught removing five classified documents from a secure reading room at the National Archives, as he prepared to testify before the 9/11 commission.

A Justice Department investigation ensued and in 2005 Berger reached a plea agreement in which he was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material instead of a felony. He was sentenced to two years of probation and 100 hours of community service and was stripped of his security clearance for three years. Prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed on a $10,000 fine, but the judge raised it to $50,000. In 2007, in order to shut down a disbarment investigation by the District of Columbia bar, he relinquished his license to practice law.

That was for unlawfully removing and retaining just five classified documents.

Clinton has apparently been caught removing at least five e-mails containing what we now know to be classified information and retaining them on her personal server in her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., after she left office. And in the weeks ahead, that number will probably grow to the hundreds, if not thousands.

Hey, laws are for the little people.

Business, Law, Media Criticism, Space, Technology and Society

The Virgin Galactic Mess

39 Comments

There’s a long story at The Daily Beast about it. The author gets this wrong, though:

There has never been any doubt about who the Number One Passenger is going to be: Branson himself. Soon after last year’s crash he was repeating an ambition aired many times before—that he looked forward to going up—and taking his son Sam and daughter Holly with him. The idea was that seats for the Bransons would be installed in the cabin behind the pilots as soon as SS2 had achieved the apogee height in tests. (That probably couldn’t happen without the FAA approving an operator’s license, whether Branson realizes this or not.)

There’s no such thing as an “operator’s license.” In theory, if he’d wanted to, Branson could have been aboard the flight that destroyed the vehicle last fall, and the FAA would have had nothing formal to say about it.

Meanwhile, Andy Pasztor has his take at the Journal (do a Google search on the article title to read it). This quote seems a little disingenuous:

According to a summary of that interview released by the NTSB earlier this week, Mr. Hardy also said that “he had never seen an applicant [for an FAA launch permit] make the assumption that a pilot would not make a mistake” as part of a formal hazard analysis.

How many has he seen that actually had pilots involved?

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Huma’s Special Treatment

8 Comments

Gosh, it’s like it’s corruption and cover up to the core:

By allowing it, Clinton wasn’t just helping a friend boost her income. She was increasing the potential leverage of the Clinton machine, and in ways that could, and maybe did, benefit the Clinton Foundation.

The Abedin scandal is thus related to the “Clinton cash” scandal.

It is also related to Hillary’s email scandal. According to Grassley, the State Department investigators have “reason to believe that email evidence relevant to [its] inquiry was contained in emails sent and received from her account on Secretary Clinton’s non-government server, making them unavailable to [the investigators’ office] through its normal statutory right of access to records.”

Laws are for the little people.

[Update a while later]

Then there’s this:

The finding against Abedin, which she disputes, is that she was improperly paid while on leave. According to Sen. Grassley’s description of the investigation’s findings, Abedin’s time sheets indicate that she never took vacation or sick leave during her four years at the State Department. However, the investigation discovered that Abedin did, in fact, take time off, including a 10-day trip to Italy. In emails, she told colleagues that she was out “on leave.”

Just FYI, if you’re a government contractor, falsifying a time sheet is a firing offense.

Anyway, it’s pretty clear that when Her Highness said that she used a private server “for convenience,” she meant that she would find it very inconvenient for her political career for people to learn the contents of her emails.