Tag: law

Really, Twitter?

It is beyond ironic to see Twitter, of all companies, attempting to hide behind “freedom of speech”:

Twitter Inc on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit to block an order by the U.S. government demanding that it reveal who is behind an account opposed to President Donald Trump’s tough immigration policies. Twitter cited freedom of speech as a basis for not turning over records about the account, @ALT_uscis. The account is claimed to be the work of at least one federal immigration employee, according to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court.

Tell it to Milo. Hell, tell it to me. Even when you think SJWs can’t surprise you with their shameless lies and hypocrisy anymore, they still somehow manage to do it.

How could the legal freedom of someone else’s speech mean that you don’t have to turn over your administrative records when ordered by the relevant authority?

Shutting down the enemy

Hungary has the brains to starve the parasite:

Hungarian lawmakers on Tuesday approved legislation that could force the closure of a prestigious Budapest university founded by US billionaire investor George Soros, sparking fresh protests. The English-language Central European University (CEU), set up in 1991 after the fall of communism, has long been seen as a hostile bastion of liberalism by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government.

MPs in the 199-seat parliament, dominated by Orban’s Fidesz party, voted 123 in favour and 38 against the legislation affecting foreign universities operating in Hungary.

The new rules ban institutions outside the European Union from awarding Hungarian diplomas without an agreement between national governments. They will also be required to have a campus and faculties in their home country — conditions not met by the CEU.

Failure to comply would mean the CEU could not accept new student intakes from 2018, and possibly close by 2021.

Their next step should be to target all foreign-funded NGOs. NGOs are the stealth army of everyone from the CIA and the Roman Catholic Church to wealthy private parties. If I were in government, I would not permit a single foreign NGO to operate within my country’s borders. They reliably do far more harm than good, as the recent series of color revolutions and civil wars tends to demonstrate.

Jailing sanctuary city sheriffs

Texas Gov. Abbott is making a strong case to succeed the God-Emperor in 2024:

On Newsmax TV’s “The Steve Malzberg Show,” Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) said he will confront the issue of cities that refuse to comply with immigration law by signing legislation that could jail sheriffs of sanctuary cities.

Abbott said, “We have been pushing a piece of legislation in Texas that is going to pass that I will be signing into law that imposes even sterner penalties on counties. It will include things such as further defunding them. It will impose fines. And it could impose jail time for these sheriffs to enforce the laws. Oddly enough these sheriffs could wind up behind the very bars they are releasing these criminals from.”

I know nothing about this guy except that he’s coming out strong on both corporate interference in state politics and sanctuary cities. It’s good to see.

The issue of States’ Rights was settled in 1865. Ignore the mendacious appeals to federalism by the Left. Hell, ignore all of their mendacious appeals to our ideals. We don’t have any ideals any more because we don’t live in Pangloss’s ideal world.

Victory first.

When the die was cast

The Zman looks at when Rome’s fate was sealed:

The die was most likely cast when the Republic began to compromise its own rules for limiting and distributing power. The system they had created was a reflection of the tribal realities of the early republic. In order to keep any one family from gaining too much power, they systematically limited the time anyone served in office. The system also forced an apprenticeship on those who went into public life. This had the benefit of making public men buy into the system. Therefore they were willing to defend it.

That meant the system had a policing mechanism to sort out enemies before they could cause trouble. An ambitious young man could not skip any steps on his way up the ladder, so once he got up the ladder, he was not agreeing to any changes in the process. Defending the system was a way to defend one’s prerogatives, but also a way to defend the system from lunatics. Verpus Maximus may be smart and talented, but he was not only going to wait his turn, he was going to do all the jobs necessary to prove his worth.

This system started to break down with the rivalry of Sulla and Marius. Sulla was the first man to hold the office of consul twice. He also got away with marching an army on Rome itself, in order to defeat his rival, Marius. Both of these acts were supposed to be disqualifying, but exceptions were made for expediency. Sulla sided with the Senate so the Senate bent the rules to serve themselves. A good case can be made that this is the point when it was all over for the Republic.

It was just a matter of time before someone used Sulla as a precedent.

The die-casting point that sealed the fate of the USA is a little bit easier to determine, in my opinion. The 1965 Naturalization Act that eliminated the restrictions on immigration by national origin is the obvious one.

Notice that in both cases, it was abandoning tradition and loosening vital restrictions that proved to be the fatal act.

Tortious interference

Although the specific elements required to prove a claim of tortious interference vary from one jurisdiction to another, they typically include the following:

  1. The existence of a contractual relationship or beneficial business relationship between two parties.
  2. Knowledge of that relationship by a third party.
  3. Intent of the third party to induce a party to the relationship to breach the relationship.
  4. Lack of any privilege on the part of the third party to induce such a breach.
  5. The contractual relationship is breached.
  6. Damage to the party against whom the breach occurs.

Any of those elements missing?

UPDATE: Since some people seem to want to go on the warpath, let me be perfectly clear here: Amazon is not to blame. I even suspect that it is entirely possible that Tor Books is not to blame either, based on a) when the book was pulled and b) the fact that the book has shown as Live for nearly 24 hours but still does not have a page on any Amazon site. The most likely scenario, in my opinion, is a rogue low-level SJW employee, possibly two, in a specific department.

I have already spoken to the manager of one department and they have begun to investigate why Corrosion is Live but not available. They’ve done everything we asked and we have no problem with the way we have been treated.

No exit, no entry

Here is an easy win for the God-Emperor:

Approximately 30 countries are refusing to accept the deportations of illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes in the U.S., according to Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar.

While these countries are refusing to accept the deportations of these criminals, the U.S. government is still issuing visas and student visas to citizens of those countries, according to the Texan congressman. There is already a law on the books which allows the U.S. to hold visas from a country that is not taking back its criminals, but according to Cuellar, the U.S. is not enforcing it.

“We’re not enforcing it, which is amazing. So now my intent is to go back to our committee on appropriations and affect their funding until they do that,” Cuellar told Sharyl Attkisson, host of Full Measure, in an interview.

Cuellar, a Democratic member of the House Committee on Appropriations, told Attkisson that the Supreme Court has ruled that illegal immigrants arrested for criminal activity can only be held for a certain period of time before they must be released.

Forget the student visas. If a country doesn’t accept its own repatriated citizens, the God-Emperor would be wise to refuse entry to all citizens from that country until it does. Why not throw in a 100 percent tariff on all trade goods from that country while we’re at it?

And until those countries give in, which they will, ship all the repatriates-in-waiting to Guantanamo.

Not even pretending

The God-Emperor has unmasked the lawlessness of the Left’s pretense at the Rule of Law, and in doing so, is building a strong case for acting outside of the Left-dominated deceptively titled “justice system”:

His basis for doing so was an extraordinary interpretation of the right to travel and the freedom of association, which before, has only been associated with U.S. citizens,” Barnes continued. “Every court decision in the 200 years prior to this has said that people who are not citizens of the United States, who are not present within the United States, have no First Amendment constitutional rights. The Constitution doesn’t extend internationally to anybody, anywhere, anyplace, at any time. Instead, this judge said it did, as long as you had a university here who wanted to assert, quote-unquote, the foreigner’s rights, or you had some physical person here. In this case, it was one of the leading Muslim imams in Hawaii; he wants to bring over various family and friends from the Middle East.”

“The Hawaii judge’s decision says he has a First Amendment constitutional right to do so because he’s Muslim. It was one of the most extraordinary interpretations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment ever given, which is that because these are Muslim countries that were banned where the issue of terror arises from that that meant they had a special right to access the country and visit the country,” he said.

“As long as there is somebody here that wants them here, no president can ever preclude them from coming here. He basically gave First Amendment rights to everybody around the world and gave special preferences to people who are Muslim under his interpretation of the First Amendment,” Barnes summarized.

“So it’s an extraordinarily broad order. Its legal doctrine has no limits. If you keep extending this, it means people from around the world have a special right to access the United States, visit the United States, emigrate to the United States, get visas to the United States. There wouldn’t be any limit, and the president would never be able to control our own borders. It would be up solely to the whim of a federal judge who effectively delegated it, in this case, to a Muslim imam in Hawaii,” he contended.

Barnes noted that the judge did not “cite any prior decision” that has ever established this astonishing new quirk of the Constitution.

“Just last year, the Supreme Court implicitly said the opposite, when they said your right to association does not include a right to bring foreigners into the United States, in the Din decision,” he pointed out. “Now, there were several concurrences, so the binding precedent of that has been left open, but he does not even reference or mention or discuss the decision. He doesn’t even mention the statute, the main statute that gives the president the right to ban any alien from the country, for any reason the president deems appropriate, for any temporary time period, that the president yesterday cited in his national speech. Like the prior Ninth Circuit decision, the Hawaii judge never mentions the decision at all.”

“So there’s no real legal precedent. He’s taking three or four different concepts that have been applied in completely different areas of law, that only ever have historically applied to U.S. citizens, and he’s magically adding it to foreigners and acting like that’s always been the case when it’s never been the case,” he said.

There is no way to pretend that what these courts are doing is in any way compatible with democracy, law, tradition, history, or even Western Civilization. What we are witnessing is a literal breakdown of civil society and a descent into structural lawlessness. This has been a long time in the making, but it is becoming increasingly impossible to even pretend that there is a coherent or meaningful legal structure of any kind in the United States.

2nd travel ban blocked

The federal judges are doubling down against the President:

The state of Hawaii says an imam from Honolulu has legal standing to assert the First Amendment claim of religious discrimination when challenging President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban.

Hawaii’s case for a temporary restraining order to block the ban is being heard Wednesday in federal court in Honolulu.

The judge told lawyers that he is more interested in constitutional claims and wanted to know who had such standing in the lawsuit.

Attorney Colleen Roh Sinzdak says a Muslim plaintiff in the lawsuit, Ismail Elshikh, has such standing to challenge the ban. Elshikh says the ban prevents his mother-in-law, who lives in Syria, from visiting family in Hawaii.

Sinzdak says Elshikh and all Muslim residents in Hawaii face higher hurdles in reuniting with family members because of their faith.

She says that harm applies to all residents, not just Muslims.

If this genuinely surprises or demoralizes you, do remember at whose grave the God-Emperor was laying a wreath recently. This is all just setting the stage. This is just recon.

Executive Order: improving efficiency

And eliminating unnecessary or redundant agencies.

Presidential Executive Order on a Comprehensive Plan for Reorganizing the Executive Branch

EXECUTIVE ORDER

– – – – – – –

COMPREHENSIVE PLAN FOR REORGANIZING THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1.  Purpose.  This order is intended to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the executive branch by directing the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (Director) to propose a plan to reorganize governmental functions and eliminate unnecessary agencies (as defined in section 551(1) of title 5, United States Code), components of agencies, and agency programs.

Sec. 2.  Proposed Plan to Improve the Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Accountability of Federal Agencies, Including, as Appropriate, to Eliminate or Reorganize Unnecessary or Redundant Federal Agencies.  (a)  Within 180 days of the date of this order, the head of each agency shall submit to the Director a proposed plan to reorganize the agency, if appropriate, in order to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of that agency.

It would certainly be a blow to the Deep State if the God-Emperor started with the CIA and the NSA. Looks like the lull period is over and it’s back to the grand offensive.

Target: Bannon

The opposition media is desperate to take down Steve Bannon by any means necessary:

The issue of Bannon’s legal residency has been simmering since last summer, shortly after he became chief executive of Trump’s campaign. The Guardian reported in an Aug. 26 story that he was registered to vote at a then-vacant house and speculated that Bannon may have signed an oath that he was a Florida resident to take advantage of the state’s lack of state income taxes.

In California, where Bannon had lived and owned property for more than two decades, income tax can exceed 12 percent.

Bannon has not responded to repeated requests by The Washington Post to discuss the matter. Two Post reporters sought to independently verify his residency claims, using a wide array of publicly available information.

They obtained utility bills, court records, real estate transactions, state driver reports and the checks he wrote to pay municipal taxes in California. They interviewed neighbors, spoke with landlords and tracked his Breitbart-related activity.

In the digital age, when most Americans leave a clear footprint of their whereabouts, Bannon left a meandering trail filled with ambiguity, contradictions and questions. The Post found that Bannon left a negligible footprint in Florida. He did not get a Florida driver’s license or register a car in the state. He never voted in Florida, and neighbors near two homes he leased in Miami said they never saw him. His rent and utility bills were sent to his business manager in California.

Bannon’s former wife occupied the premises, according to a landlord and neighbors.

At the same time Bannon said he was living with his ex-wife, she was under investigation for involvement in a plot to smuggle drugs and a cellphone into a Miami jail, a law enforcement document obtained by The Post shows.

The Post learned that state prosecutors in Miami have an active investigation into Bannon’s assertions that he was a Florida resident and qualified to vote in the state from 2014 to 2016. In late August, investigators subpoenaed Bannon’s lease of a Coconut Grove home and other documents. They also contacted the landlords of that home and another that Bannon leased nearby, and sought information from a gardener and handyman who worked at one of the homes, according to documents and interviews.

Because state laws do not clearly define residency, making a false registration case can be difficult.

The danger, as I can personally testify, is that some state agents are willing to lie, ignore conclusive evidence, and make blatantly false residence claims. The Minnesota Department of Revenue eventually gave up and settled its absurd case against my father, two years after illegally seizing his house there for “unpaid taxes”, because it relied upon an agent pretending that two flights, one back to Florida and another one up to Minnesota, had not taken place even though my father provided the electronic and paper evidence that he had been on them. Erasing those flights added several nonexistent weeks to his time in Minnesota, just enough to permit them to make a false claim of his residence there and claim that he owed taxes that he manifestly did not.

Agencies love the nebulous “footprint” standard, which they prefer to the hard and fast residency laws that clearly enumerate the number of days one has to be physically present in a state in order to be a resident there. Some dirt, you see, is so magic that it sticks to you wherever you go.

In my father’s case, the entire family knew the MDR claim to be false, because we had all been with him at his house in Naples at one point or another during the time he was supposedly in Minnesota. But the agent ignored literally all the evidence, documentary and testimonial, in order to lay the foundation for a false residence claim. He’s dead now. Karma can be a bitch.

Anyhow, this would be an excellent time for the God-Emperor to return the favor and order investigations into the personal lives of the Post reporters who are so determined to dig up dirt on Bannon.