Tag: law

The war for free association

Is eventually going to have to go to either a) Congress or b) the Supreme Court, given the wide range of contradictory court decisions.

A Kentucky appellate court on Friday ruled that the Christian owner of a printing shop in Lexington had the right to refuse to make T-shirts promoting a local gay pride festival. The dispute represents the latest court fight testing the limits of antidiscrimination protections for gays and lesbians following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 landmark ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide. The cases have led to a number of state court rulings against Christian-owned businesses that refused to bake cakes, design floral arrangements or take portrait photographs for same-sex weddings.

This would be an easy win for the God-Emperor. An executive order protecting free association for business owners would be extremely popular with every Christian who doesn’t want to bake a gay cake, every Jew who doesn’t want to print a Nazi t-shirt, and every black who doesn’t want to arrange flowers for the KK.

The fact is that everyone has the intrinsic human right to refuse to provide their services to anyone for any reason whatsoever. The only question is whether governments and laws respect that right or illegitimately infringe upon it.

Discrimination is both a logical necessity and an intrinsic human right.

Corrupt Hillary Clinton

Someone was a very naughty girl while playing Secretary of State Barbie:

While secretary of state, Hillary Clinton made a personal call to pressure Bangladesh’s prime minister to aid a donor to her husband’s charitable foundation despite federal ethics laws that require government officials to recuse themselves from matters that could impact their spouse’s business.

The Office of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina confirmed to Circa that Mrs. Clinton called her office in March 2011 to demand that Dr. Muhammed Yunus, a 2006 Nobel Peace prize winner, be restored to his role as chairman of the country’s most famous microcredit bank, Grameen Bank. The bank’s nonprofit Grameen America, which Yunus chairs, has given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative.  Grameen Research, which is chaired by Yunus, has donated between $25,000 and $50,000, according to the Clinton Foundation website.

As the God-Emperor said, she’ll be in jail.

Responsible governing means failure

Rush Limbaugh quite reasonably asks why anyone should vote for Republicans if the result is simply more of the same old swamp:

Why is anybody voting Republican, if this is what happens when we win?

We won the House, we won the Senate, we won the White House, and the Democrats thwarted everything we supposedly said we were going to do with our victory. Well, I don’t want to use the word “we,” ’cause I’ve got nothing to do with this. This is another reason why I do not get close to these people. I do not… I would not relish having to have you call here today and make me justify what all happened here, had I been out there promoting and ballyhooing. That’s why I keep my distance from these people, ’cause I don’t have any control over what they’re gonna do or say, what their policies are going to be.

But I think this illustrates a much larger problem that we are going to have to recognize, and it’s the real reason Donald Trump was elected. It’s the real thing that he has got to do, and he’s got to start doing it. And it is not going to happen if he continues to work with Republicans, because it is obvious, for whatever reasons — and we can get into them — the Republican Party has no intention of defunding Planned Parenthood, no intention of defunding sanctuary cities. They don’t want to pay for a wall. Who knows what they really want in Obamacare. But then again, is it really the Republicans? I think there’s something much larger going on.

There’s no reason to keep electing Republicans if this is what we’re gonna get with this budget deal, which pays — continually pays — for sanctuary cities, funds Obamacare, funds the EPA, gives money to Planned Parenthood and no money for the wall. If you’re asking, “What am I voting for Republicans for?” you have a legitimate question. This is one of the reasons Donald Trump was elected. This is the swamp. This is what needs to be drained: The way the budget happens, the way legislation happens, who’s responsible for it. I’ll tell you where I’m going with this. I want to go back and play a sound bite from me on Friday’s program. This is the direction that I’m thinking this has to go…

Where’s Trump on this? For crying out loud, Trump’s elected president! Trump’s got a mandate. This was clearly part of it. Like building the wall, like any number of other things, repealing and place Obamacare was mentioned at every rally, so why doesn’t the president go in there and tell them what-for?

Let me try to explain this as best I can. When I saw this headline, it brought some things into focus for me, because this is gnawing at the edges here of irritation. The impression that I’ve had — you’ve had it, too — that something’s out of whack, something’s not right. We won the election. I’ve described it, I don’t see the glow of victory on Republican faces. I don’t see optimism. I don’t see happiness. I don’t see confidence. I don’t see an attitude that says, “Man, what an opportunity we have.” And as I say it’s just been eating away at me.

It seems to me that this is precisely what the presidential veto is for. Trump needs to be willing to call the bi-factional ruling party’s bluff. Let them shut down government. Let them show the entire country how unnecessary it is.

And build the damn wall. It’s pretty simple. No big beautiful wall, no second term. The wall is Trump’s “no new taxes”. If he doesn’t build it, for any reason, he loses his base. All the other stuff, being presidential and responsible and exhibiting gravitas and sportsmanship is irrelevant.

The God-Emperor should begin each day by looking at his schedule and telling himself two things.

  1. Does this help me build the wall? 
  2. Does this help me drain the swamp?
If anything on his schedule does not fit into those two categories, he should cancel it and replace it with something that does.

Busting Black Bloc

The first of 212 Black Bloc protesters arrested on Inauguration Day has pleaded guilty.

A Florida man with the radical “black bloc” protest network has pleaded guilty to felony rioting and assault for his role in the Inauguration Day chaos in the District. Dane Powell, 31, of Tampa, was the first to enter a guilty plea on felony charges brought against 212 protesters accused of rioting and vandalizing property during the Jan. 20 melee surrounding President Trump’s swearing-in ceremony.

Scheduled to be sentenced July 7, he faces a possible six years in prison for breaking windows and throwing a “brick, large rock or piece of concrete” at officers after joining a mob of masked black bloc protesters who moved en masse across 16 blocks in about 30 minutes, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The God-Emperor should, in his mercy, offer him the option of a nice helicopter ride in lieu of spending so much time in prison.

The authorities, they are no longer uniformly amenable.

Perspectives on law

John Derbyshire quotes George Orwell, and in doing so, explains why civic nationalism failed as a substitute for American nationalism.

The masses still more or less assume that “against the law” is a synonym for “wrong.” It is known that the criminal law is harsh and full of anomalies and that litigation is so expensive as always to favour the rich against the poor: but there is a general feeling that the law, such as it is, will be scrupulously administered … An Englishman does not believe in his bones, as a Spanish or Italian peasant does, that the law is simply a racket.

The English People, Collins, 1947

This is why it was never possible for the USA to survive as Constitutional nation respecting the Rights of Englishmen once non-English people were permitted to become citizens. No other people shared the Englishman’s view of the law. The Northern Europeans didn’t grasp the concept of its theoretical limits. The Southern Europeans saw it as a racket to benefit the powerful and the well-connected. The Jews and Irish saw it as a game to be exploited for the benefit of their tribes.

And once that respect for the law disappears, it cannot easily be restored. It’s infectious. I certainly take a much more lax, even disrespectful, approach to things like restricted parking than I ever did prior to our move to Italy. I can recall being in Spain, near a crowded market, waiting for my friend to pick up meat from the butcher. There were no parking spaces, but there were some places reserved for taxis.

At first, I started to drive past them, and then I thought, “wait a minute, I’m in Spain. As if anyone is going to care.” So, I drove into the taxi space and was able to wait there as long as I required without anyone paying even the slightest attention.

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.