Section nine of Article I of the Constitution says that “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” Bills of attainder were used and abused by the English crown to target specific people or groups of which it disapproved. If a person was “attainted,” his civil rights were forfeit. He became a pariah. His property could be seized, and he could face imprisonment or execution.
We don’t acknowledge that we promulgate bills of attainder in this country, but that is essentially the judgment that has been pronounced against Donald Trump. It was the aim of Robert Mueller’s darkly farcical investigation, the purpose of Trump’s two impeachments, and the aim of the kangaroo court known as the House’s January 6 Select Committee, Liz Cheney (D-Georgetown) presiding. Her work there, she said, was to make sure that Donald Trump never got near the Oval Office again. I think it was only a rumor that Cheney had special copies of the Constitution printed with an addition to Article II providing her with a veto over who was allowed to be president of the United States.
Donald Trump has been singled out, he has been attainted, by the ruling elites of this country. As Michael Anton pointed out last summer, “The people who really run the United States of America have made it clear that they can’t, and won’t, if they can help it, allow Donald Trump to be president again.” What will the deep state do to prevent Trump from winning? Anton sketches several possibilities from having Trump declared ineligible because he allegedly sparked an “insurrection” on January 6, 2021 to simple cheating at the ballot box.
Then there is Plan F.
What happens then? Well, in the words of the ‘Transition Integrity Project,’ a Soros-network-linked collection of regime hacks who in 2020 gamed out their strategy for preventing a Trump second term, the contest would become ‘a street fight, not a legal battle.’ Again, their words, not mine. But allow me to translate: The 2020 summer riots, but orders of magnitude larger, not to be called off until their people are secure in the White House.
Archive of posts filed under the Politics category.
Isn’t Vulcan Still Part of the Federation?
Where’s Kirk when you need him?
US Construction Firm Says Mexican Forces Seized Its Property…Vulcan Chairman and CEO J. Thomas Hill Said the Seizure Was “Illegal.”
Just The News | March 20. 2023 | Madeleine HubbardVulcan Materials, a U.S.-based construction firm, says that armed Mexican forces took over its marine terminal in southeast Mexico.
Former Trump intelligence official Cliff Sims tweeted a video Saturday of the alleged illegal seizure earlier this month.
“This is insane,” he wrote in the post, which shows Mexican military officials, police officers and others entering the facility.
He said the Mexican company CEMEX joined with government forces to enter Vulcan’s private property, which they “continue to illegally occupy.”
Former Trump National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe also condemned the apparent seizure.
“Getting pretty used to the Biden administration letting China and Russia kick sand in our faces (Covid and fentanyl deaths, spy balloons, taking down U.S. MQ-9 Reaper)—but now Mexico, too?,” he tweeted Saturday. “The Biden administration needs to engage immediately to defend a U.S. company and to protect U.S. interests. This is the only deep water port on the Yucatán Peninsula. Significant geopolitical and economic implications.”
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttegieg, only down in Mexico at the time for Pon Farr, declined to comment.
Author Has a Way With Words
HOLD ON THERE: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Says Not ALL Deposits at ALL Banks Are “Insured”
Hotair | 03/16/2023 | Beege Welborn
i.e., Your deposit in Your bank.
Well, quit your grinnin’ and drop your linen – there’s been a rules change.
Apparently, the Biden administration has decided to pick winners and losers.
…“I’m concerned about the precedent of guaranteeing all deposits and the market expectation moving forward,” Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the committee’s ranking member, said in his opening remarks.
Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma pressed Yellen about how widely the uninsured deposit backstops will apply across the banking industry.
“Will the deposits in every community bank in Oklahoma, regardless of their size, be fully insured now?” asked Lankford. “Will they get the same treatment that SVB just got, or Signature Bank just got?”
Yellen acknowledged they would not.
EXCUSE ME, WHUT?
…Uninsured deposits, she said, would only be covered in the event that a “failure to protect uninsured depositors would create systemic risk and significant economic and financial consequences.”
Lankford said the impact of this standard would be that small banks would be less appealing to depositors with more than $250,000, the current FDIC insurance threshold.
“I’m concerned you’re … encouraging anyone who has a large deposit at a community bank to say, ‘we’re not going to make you whole, but if you go to one of our preferred banks, we will make you whole.’”
“That’s certainty not something that we’re encouraging,” Yellen replied.
Just so the Biden Admin’s stance is clear:
If you’re a Silicon Valley VC, a Chinese foreign national, or an unprofitable green start-up – you’ll be bailed out.
But if you’re a farmer, a factory worker, a small business owner or a local bank that supports them – wait and see… pic.twitter.com/mpghONOYHS
— Will Hild (@WillHild) March 16, 2023
I feel sick that I now live in the Soviet Union (of the preferred elites, who are only those proven to contribute to approved causes). Constant benefits for them, unceasing punishment for everyone else. A Politburo counting election returns and announcing the winners. The KGB suppressing dissenters, and spying on not only citizens, but on the highest government officials — Congressmen, Senators, Justices — to whom they are not answerable, and blatantly refuse to answer.
Physically ill.
Just in Case There’s Anyone Out There in Africa Who’s Forgotten About Our Rich and Competent President
it was a total embarrassment.
“Particularly in Prosper Africa Deal Room. That sounds like something we shouldn’t be saying, you know, Prosper Africa Deal Room. I kept asking, ‘Where’s the Deal Room?’ I think I’m looking at it,” Biden said.
. . . and after a break . . .
“mobilizing $8 billion in public and private finance to help South Africa replace coal-fired power plants with renewable energy sources and develop cutting edge energy solutions like clean hydrogen.”
— Grabien News | 12/14/2022
Biden’s Non-Binary Nuclear Waste Guy Brings a Lot of Non-Binary Baggage
Russian Election Interference! Brittney Griner Not Given Multiple Absentee Ballots
The Media Won’t Show a Wide Shot of the Crowd at a Trump Rally, But for Another Reason.
Republicans: “Doggummit, We’ve Sure Put Our Foot Down — Hard — On . . . Uh . . . “
Blastocyst From the Pastocyst
Reminder:
The Supreme Court can do a LOT, lot worse than remove its official sanction from a surgical procedure.
They can order it to be required.
(Just skip ahead to the bold text, for a summary.)
Have you all been quadruple-vaxxed, yet, they want to know . . .
274 U.S. 200
47 S.Ct. 584
71 L.Ed. 1000
BUCK v. BELL, Superintendent of State Colony Epileptics and Feeble Minded.
No. 292.
Argued April 22, 1927.
Decided May 2, 1927.
Mr. I. P. Whitehead, of Lynchburg, Va., for plaintiff in error.
[Argument of Counsel from pages 201-202 intentionally omitted]
Mr. A. E. Strode, of Lynchburg, Va., for defendant in error.
[Argument of Counsel from pages 203-205 intentionally omitted]
Mr. Justice HOLMES delivered the opinion of the Court.1
This is a writ of error to review a judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeals of the State of Virginia, affirming a judgment of the Circuit Court of Amherst County, by which the defendant in error, the superintendent of the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded, was ordered to perform the operation of salpingectomy upon Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in error, for the purpose of making her sterile. 143 Va. 310, 130 S. E. 516. The case comes here upon the contention that the statute authorizing the judgment is void under the Fourteenth Amendment as denying to the plaintiff in error due process of law and the equal protection of the laws.2
Carrie Buck is a feeble-minded white woman who was committed to the State Colony above mentioned in due form. She is the daughter of a feeble-minded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feeble-minded child. She was eighteen years old at the time of the trial of her case in the Circuit Court in the latter part of 1924. An Act of Virginia approved March 20, 1924 (Laws 1924, c. 394) recites that the health of the patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives, under careful safeguard, etc.; that the sterilization may be effected in males by vasectomy and in females by salpingectomy, without serious pain or substantial danger to life; that the Commonwealth is supporting in various institutions many defective persons who if now discharged would become a menace but if incapable of procreating might be discharged with safety and become self-supporting with benefit to themselves and to society; and that experience has shown that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, imbecility, etc. The statute then enacts that whenever the superintendent of certain institutions including the abovenamed State Colony shall be of opinion that it is for the best interest of the patients and of society that an inmate under his care should be sexually sterilized, he may have the operation performed upon any patient afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity, imbecility, etc., on complying with the very careful provisions by which the act protects the patients from possible abuse.3
The superintendent first presents a petition to the special board of directors of his hospital or colony, stating the facts and the grounds for his opinion, verified by affidavit. Notice of the petition and of the time and place of the hearing in the institution is to be served upon the inmate, and also upon his guardian, and if there is no guardian the superintendent is to apply to the Circuit Court of the County to appoint one. If the inmate is a minor notice also is to be given to his parents, if any, with a copy of the petition. The board is to see to it that the inmate may attend the hearings if desired by him or his guardian. The evidence is all to be reduced to writing, and after the board has made its order for or against the operation, the superintendent, or the inmate, or his guardian, may appeal to the Circuit Court of the County. The Circuit Court may consider the record of the board and the evidence before it and such other admissible evidence as may be offered, and may affirm, revise, or reverse the order of the board and enter such order as it deems just. Finally any party may apply to the Supreme Court of Appeals, which, if it grants the appeal, is to hear the case upon the record of the trial in the Circuit Court and may enter such order as it thinks the Circuit Court should have entered. There can be no doubt that so far as procedure is concerned the rights of the patient are most carefully considered, and as every step in this case was taken in scrupulous compliance with the statute and after months of observation, there is no doubt that in that respect the plaintiff in error has had due process at law.4
The attack is not upon the procedure but upon the substantive law. It seems to be contended that in no circumstances could such an order be justified. It certainly is contended that the order cannot be justified upon the existing grounds. The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck ‘is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization,’ and thereupon makes the order. In view of the general declarations of the Legislature and the specific findings of the Court obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.
Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11, 25 S. Ct. 358, 49 L. Ed. 643, 3 Ann. Cas. 765. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
5
But, it is said, however it might be if this reasoning were applied generally, it fails when it is confined to the small number who are in the institutions named and is not applied to the multitudes outside. It is the usual last resort of constitutional arguments to point out shortcomings of this sort. But the answer is that the law does all that is needed when it does all that it can, indicates a policy, applies it to all within the lines, and seeks to bring within the lines all similary situated so far and so fast as its means allow. Of course so far as the operations enable those who otherwise must be kept confined to be returned to the world, and thus open the asylum to others, the equality aimed at will be more nearly reached.6
Judgment affirmed.7
Mr. Justice BUTLER dissents.
Pelosi
It is, sadly, time to talk about Nancy Pelosi. If this doesn’t get me thrown in solitary for eight months, I don’t know what will. I think I might like it, though.
She is so close to the Oval Office she can practically taste it. The icing on the cake would be shoving the cake in Donald Trump’s face.
All she has to do is show that Biden is incompetent, and Kamala is ineligible. Not dificult. First woman president!
I say go for it, Nancy. There is a Clintonesque barrier (i.e., the two people ahead of you are not dead yet), but you have to pass that to see what’s in it.
Her family has had questionable morals. Morals are not for everyone. Nor are bans on hair-styling.
She owns a vineyard. Coincidentally, on Martha’s Vineyard, she was dis-invited from Obama’s superspreader birthday party. But she has her own party, and she didn’t get that by being Ms. Nice Guy. Her own daughter warned that she could cut your head off before you knew it. Nancy also said she preys for Donald Trump every day. I believe her.
Thousands, or millions, of people die in drunk-driving accidents each year, or each day, leaving her vineyard, or would if it was owned by Donald Trump.
In a famous news clip, when asked if the Individual Mandate for Obamacare was legal (the Supreme Court ruled it was not), her response was “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
The question was. That giant gavel, though, was not.
Groundbreaking Essay on Political Economy
The Grand Dalliance
Boris Compares Himself and Biden to Churchill and Roosevelt
Breitbart | 06/11/2021 | Jack MontgomeryPrime Minister Boris Johnson has compared himself and President Joe Biden to wartime leaders Sir Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
… As in, all four are dead from the neck up?
The American president is helpless on stairs?
Kamala wants a “Lend Leash” agreement?
Kurt Schlichter on How To Spot a Good Republican
[G]etting more votes than the Democrat – who is always terrible – is a very, very important part of electoral victory, though you would not know that from the GOPe’s actions. Its members seem to think the goal is polite defeat, but us unwashed Jesus people who like guns and America and don’t live near Washington have this weird notion that candidates should attempt to win their elections.
Maybe we should try that in 2022.
Now, a good Republican candidate needs to do several things to keep from failing at the starting line. These things are pretty basic, and they are not hard. You just need a spine, though in our party, vertebrae sometimes seem to be in short supply.
A good Republican candidate needs to understand the entire campaign is about President Asterisk and the economic and social havoc he is causing for normal Americans.
A good Republican candidate needs to know what time it is – that is, he needs to understand that wokism is a terminal illness if not treated by amputation.
A good Republican candidate needs to get that we are the party of law and order, on our streets and on the border.
A good Republican candidate needs to know that every institution hates us, and that we owe the institutions no deference or respect.
A good Republican candidate needs to know that we are not the party of big corporations but of working people and small business.
A good Republican candidate needs to get that the only commonsense gun control is a clear sight picture, proper grip, and good breath control as you squeeze the trigger.
A good Republican candidate needs to loathe the media as much as it loathes us.
A good Republican candidate needs to understand that we still love President Trump and that we will not support anyone who joins the liberals in attacking him.
— Idea: In 2022, Let’s Nominate Candidates Who Aren’t Awful
Townhall.com | May 13, 2021 | Kurt Schlichter
Tuesday Night Open Thread: “John Stuart Mill, Of His Own Free Will…”
… was apparently quite good at predicting American government in 2021:
There are nations in whom the passion for governing others is so much stronger than the desire of personal independence, that for the mere shadow of the one they are found ready to sacrifice the whole of the other. Each one of their number is willing, like the private soldier in an army, to abdicate his personal freedom of action into the hands of his general, provided the army is triumphant and victorious, and he is able to flatter himself that he is one of a conquering host, though the notion that he has himself any share in the domination exercised over the conquered is an illusion.
A government strictly limited in its powers and attributions, required to hold its hands from overmeddling, and to let most things go on without its assuming the part of guardian or director, is not to the taste of such a people; in their eyes the possessors of authority can hardly take too much upon themselves, provided the authority itself is open to general competition.
An average individual among them prefers the chance, however distant or improbable, of wielding some share of power over his fellow-citizens, above the certainty, to himself and others, of having no unnecessary power exercised over them.
These are the elements of a people of place-hunters, in whom the course of politics is mainly determined by place-hunting;
where equality alone is cared for, but not liberty;
where the contests of political parties are but struggles to decide whether the power of meddling in every thing shall belong to one class or another, perhaps merely to one knot of public men or another;
where the idea entertained of democracy is merely that of opening offices to the competition of all instead of a few;
where, the more popular the institutions, the more innumerable are the places created, and the more monstrous the overgovernment exercised by all over each, and by the executive over all.
…
the multiplication of public employments [is] always popular with the bureaucracy-ridden nations of the Continent, who would rather pay higher taxes than diminish, by the smallest fraction, their individual chances of a place for themselves or their relatives, and among whom a cry for retrenchment never means abolition of offices, but the reduction of the salaries of those which are too considerable for the ordinary citizen to have any chance of being appointed to them.
…
the tendency is strong in representative bodies to interfere more and more in the details of administration, by virtue of the general law, that whoever has the strongest power is more and more tempted to make an excessive use of it; and this is one of the practical dangers to which the futurity of representative governments will be exposed.
Plus:
But it appears to me indispensable that the signature of the elector should be affixed to the paper at a public polling-place, or if there be no such place conveniently accessible, at some office open to all the world, and in the presence of a responsible public officer. The proposal which has been thrown out of allowing the voting papers to be filled up at the voter’s own residence, and sent by the post, or called for by a public officer, I should regard as fatal. The act would be done in the absence of the salutary and the presence of all the pernicious influences. The briber might, in the shelter of privacy, behold with his own eyes his bargain fulfilled, and the intimidator could see the extorted obedience rendered irrevocably on the spot; while the beneficent counter-influence of the presence of those who knew the voter’s real sentiments, and the inspiring effect of the sympathy of those of his own party or opinion, would be shut out.
— Considerations on Representative Government (1861)
Do you have something you’d like to share? A link? A joke? Some words of wisdom? A topic to discuss? It’s our nightly Open Thread, and you have the floor.
Arizona Scores Again
By the way, wasn’t there some stupid ‘woke’ ban on Arizona Iced Tea a while back? How’d that go?
Arizona gives Democrats a taste of their own sanctuary medicine
American Thinker | 10 Apr, 2021 | Silvio Canto, Jr.It finally happened. Arizona has gone “sanctuary” and wait until the Democrats go ballistic screaming that laws have to be respected in the U.S.
This is from Fox News:
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a gun rights law this week that preemptively protects gun owners in the state from any federal gun control laws that are passed, according to reports.
The Second Amendment Freedom Act was signed two days before President Biden announced several executive actions, including asking the Justice Department to propose a rule to stop “ghost guns,” which are “kits” people can buy legally, then assemble to create a functioning firearm without a serial number.
“That was a proactive law for what is possible to come out of the Biden administration,” Ducey told KTAR-FM radio in Glendale, Ariz., on Wednesday, adding the bill doesn’t change any current laws.