Posts Tagged → law
Some thoughts on PA deer season
We are already halfway through our two-week deer season in Pennsylvania, and already many hunters are discussing the merits of the first-ever Saturday opener. Pennsylvania has had a Monday opener for many decades, and where I grew up not only did the schools close on that Monday, there was a festive atmosphere that was palpable for the week leading up to it.
Gotta say, both Saturday and Monday were the quietest first days of deer season that I have ever heard. Very few shots heard either day, an observation made by a lot of other hunters.
One cannot help but wonder if the holiday atmosphere and the special quality of taking a work day off to gather together with family and friends to hunt has been lost with the Saturday opener. Yes, it would be ironic, because the change was done to expand hunting opportunities, given that most people do not work on Saturday like they do work on Mondays. But for many hunters it seems that having deer season now begin as just another weekend event of many other weekend events caused it to lose its specialness.
We shall see from the deer hunting results!
Separately, Pennsylvania now has a both a new trespass law and a new private land boundary marking law. Private land can now be marked “POSTED – NO TRESPASSING” by simply painting a vibrant purple paint stripe at least eight (8) inches long and one inch wide every 100 feet along the boundary of any private property. Seems that I am not alone in having my Posted signs ripped down by jealous jerks. Seems like I am not alone in working really really hard to create good whitetail deer habitat on my land, only to have some jealous people decide that it is so unfair that they can’t take advantage of all my hard work and also hunt there. So they rip down Posted signs and help themselves to my land and the land of many, many other private property owners.
Last Saturday we experienced a hunter trespassing on us, along with his young son. Why they would expect to be allowed to pass through the middle of our property, a place we hardly ever go because it is a deer sanctuary, is beyond imagination. They literally walked right through a long line of Posted signs, as if they did not exist. Their thinking seemed to be “So what if we ruin your hunting? We are simply trying to have a good hunting experience ourselves.”
But someone’s good hunting experience should never come at the expense of someone else’s hunt, especially if it results from trespassing on their property.
Think about it this way: A property owner spends all year toiling to make his property attractive to deer, and he creates sanctuaries around the property where not even he will go beginning in September, so the deer can relax there and not feel pressured. And then someone else who is not invited decides that they either want to hunt on that same property, or they want to pass through it to get to some other property, like public land. When they pass through, they disturb the deer and greatly reduce the quality of the hunting there.
Is this OK behavior?
As someone who works hard on his property to make it a quality hunting place, I can say that it is not OK behavior. It is a form of theft; trespassers are stealing from private property owners.
Dear trespassers – do you want people stealing from you? No? OK, so then you know how we feel when you steal from us. Don’t do it!
It will be interesting to see how the new trespass law and the new boundary marking law begin to change one of Pennsylvania’s least desirable cultures – the culture of defiant trespass. That just has to change.
Hope everyone has a productive, fun and safe rest of the season. When it is over, we begin our trapping season and small game hunting.
SB 619 captures tug of war between big government and the citizenry
SB 619 is PA state senator Gene Yaw’s fix to a problem that should not even exist. And yet, this bill is being greeted by so-called environmental advocates as some sort of “attack” on environmental quality and environmental protection.
Senate Bill 619 is about one simple thing: Making Pennsylvania state government regulators spell out exactly what is, and what is not, an environmental spill that is so bad that it contaminates waterways and is a violation of our state “clean streams” law.
You would think that in late 2019, 243 years after the founding of America, all state governments would be run by responsible adults who are committed to the wellbeing of their fellow citizens first and foremost. A commitment like that would first and foremost be to the rule of law and the due process rights that undergird and frame everything that is American representative government. Simply put, the government cannot willy nilly decide for itself, based on ambiguous, general, opaque, undefined, arbitrary standards, what is an environmental contamination, and what is not an environmental contamination.
In representative government, We, The People are entitled to know our boundaries, where the borders are to our behavior, and where the government gets to step in and correct us. This understanding keeps us from making decisions in good faith that end up getting us entangled with government enforcers who hit us with fines and penalties for making an incorrect decision.
Presently, and unbelievably, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has no clearly defined standards for what qualifies as a reportable spill and contamination into a waterway. PA DEP’s entire standard is, get this, for real: “We will know it when we see it.”
Folks, I am not exaggerating, I am not making this up. This is how much infinite latitude the state government has now and wants to maintain. This means that literally every time something – a cup of coffee, a can of paint, a bucket of mine sludge, or any miniscule part thereof – falls from its original container into the environment, and into or next to a waterway, it must be reported to PA DEP. And PA DEP reserves the right to fine whoever is responsible, irrespective of whether or not that spill involved anything dangerous, toxic, or at such a small dilution that it is de minimus in its effect.
In practice, this means that PA DEP both chases its tail going after ridiculously unimportant “spills” that pose no threat to anything, which underserves the citizenry who underwrite PA DEP’s budget, and that the agency also holds a huge arbitrary hammer over the head of every single citizen, contractor, and industrial or commercial operator in or passing through the Commonwealth. While being arbitrary is bad enough, reports from the field – you know, the little people who actually work outside getting stuff done for the rest of us consumers – is that plenty of PA DEP staff use that arbitrary standard in capricious ways. These PA DEP staff are, simply put, empowered to be vindictive and petty little tyrants whenever they want to be.
To their shame, the opponents of SB 619 are acting as if the bill is some sort of assault on environmental quality, when it is not, not even close. The PA Fish & Boat Commission is actually on record opposing SB 619 because it allows for “interpretation” in the law. This is embarrassingly bad government to say things like this. Needless to say, the private sector opponents of SB 619 say even worse and less accurate things than the PFBC has written.
Can you imagine something so horrid as there being two sides to a story, some “interpretation” about what happened, and not having just one omnipotent government agency position, take it or take it, because you can’t leave it, because the government agency has 100% of the say in what happened, and you can’t figure it out until some government employee tells you? Is it really so terrible to rein in our government agencies and require them to live by defined standards like the rest of us have to live? Like our Federal and State Constitutions require? Like a whole bunch of other states already have?
SB 619 simply asks PA DEP to establish criteria and standards so that the citizenry and the industries they work in can know when they are following the law, and when they are not. It asks government employees to live by the rules everyone else must live by. It asks government to not engage in arbitrary and capricious behavior, which undermines everything our Republic and our Commonwealth are about. You know, that liberty and freedom stuff that seems so insignificant to the self-appointed guardians of environmental quality. One thing is clear: My fellow environmental professionals may care about the environment, but they do not care about democracy or good government.
This bill is not about environmental quality, it is about democracy, the role of government, good government, government transparency and accountability, and limits on government power. It represents the tug of war going on nationwide between people who want unfettered big government power, and those of us who want government to live within the Constitutional boundaries everyone else lives in.
SB 619 needs to be implemented now.
(c) 2006 Bonnie Jacobs
Arsonists burning down America accuse NRA + good gun owners
If you have any interest in what is happening in America, and no I do not mean the latest Hollywood family-rotting junk movie release or the latest sound-alike violent-thug rap song on iTunes, but rather the latest and most serious sociopolitical developments in the greatest and freest nation in the world, then you must watch the brief footage of last week’s Philly shoot-out (posted below).
Nothing captures what is happening in America, and why it is happening, better than the headline-grabbing shoot-out between ultra violent career criminal Maurice Hill and the Philadelphia police.
- Despite facing scores of Philly police officers armed with AR15s and M4 automatic versions of the AR15 rifle, Hill was neither killed nor did he out-gun the police facing him, though he did lightly wound six officers who were brave enough to boldly charge into the building in which he held a hostage
- Hill is a many-time convicted illegal drug and gun felon who was legally barred from owning any guns at all, including a sporting rifle like the AR15
- Hill is a many-time convicted violent felon, whose many violent crimes with firearms landed him in court many times, but not doing any real jail time afterwards. As a result, Hill was a classic catch-and-release career criminal who should be in jail for decades but who is free among good law abiding people to purvey his happy life of crime, all gratis of liberal judges and district attorneys.
- Hill did not have to commit his latest violent crime, but he was enabled by white liberals who hold that criminals like Hill are “victims” and law-abiding Americans are criminals
- Hill was cheered on by dozens of local citizens, who also aggressively jeered the police officers there, threw trash on them, and challenged them to physical conflict
- Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney immediately showed up on the scene and blamed the police, blamed guns, blamed private ownership of guns, blamed the National Rifle Association, blamed the American voters and taxpayers. Kenney did not blame career criminal Maurice Hill for the situation, nor did he blame the culture of violence in which Hill grew up and which is reinforced daily by violent Hollywood movies, violent anti-police rap music, an activist media that blames American freedoms, and white liberals like Mayor Kenney
For decades white liberals like mayor Jim Kenney have performed arson on America, and now they are blaming law-abiding gun owners and the non-gun-owning citizens who support their rights for the resulting conflagration.
For many decades white liberals in politics, in the media, in academia, in public and private schools, in unions, in the destructive anti America groups like the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center, and especially in the corrupting Hollywood media-entertainment octopus complex have done their utmost to set fire to America and burn it to the ground.
White liberals’ singular goal appears to have been to eventually re-make America into some different new utopia polity with an all- powerful government at its center, instead of the sovereign citizen voter whose power has always been diffused across the country, as demonstrated by the genius Electoral College. Having a powerful centralized government and no individual rights will allow liberals to force Americans to live exactly the way liberals think they must live, to make the “correct” choices.
And part of this white liberal arson program is to then blame the victims of their arson. Which means that after destroying America’s cities, ruining the families and communities of American Blacks and turning them into part of the fake liberal grievance factory, creating lawlessness by willfully failing to enforce the law (immigration, gun laws) on the one hand and then breaking the law on the other, white liberals can turn around and demand more “gun control” and demonize innocent Americans who have done nothing wrong.
Disarming law-abiding citizens is the primary goal of white liberals. Liberals have no interest in controlling crime, as proven by their judges’ and DAs’ failure to enforce gun laws on the books across the nation. Rather, they seek to remove the one great barrier to their dreams of unfettered tyranny, an armed citizenry.
White liberals own the Philly shoot-out. Maurice Hill is a direct product of white liberals and the Democrat Party; Maurice Hill is the left’s latest and greatest creation. Because Hill both implements the violent chaos and bodies in the street that the left needs to blame their political enemies, and he embodies the fake grievance victim who is never responsible for his violent actions.
Maurice Hill enables the Democrat Party to blame guns, blame America, blame Americans, and so the Democrat Party will continue to produce as many Maurice Hills as they can. I think there were about 56 Maurice Hills in Chicago last week, and about 34 the week before, despite all of Chicago’s cutting-edge “gun control.”
Like Chicago, Philadelphia now burns, and the Democrat Party cheers.
You want to end violent crime, and help American Blacks? Stop voting for Liberal Democrats, and start voting for officials who promote old-fashioned values like following the law, making good choices, foregoing immediate gratification for eventual big success, self reliance, community, family.
Home is Where the Heart Is
Home is where the heart is, goes the old and proven adage.
Home is that place you love, where you feel safe, loved, comfortable, surrounded by the fruits of your labors, like a flower garden behind a hand-laid stone wall, a manicured lawn, a bird bath or bird feeder, a porch for sitting on after a day of work. Maybe you raised a family in the home, and on bedroom walls in a couple places hidden from paint touch-ups there are some old finger prints from children who are now with families of their own. After putting so much work and love into your home, you naturally feel love for it. Just the memories alone inspire you!
So yes, your heart resides there, in your home, the ultimate symbol of all your efforts, the fruits of all your labors.
And so this is all true for those of us who have worked in and paid taxes here in America, our home, our house. Our Social Security payments, mine since I was fourteen years old, our volunteering for charitable organizations and Little League, our playing by the rules and laws of America, being good citizens. Always building the country up, making it a cozy and safe home for those who live here, who contribute to it, who will move here with the intention of participating in it.
And yet, unbelievably, America now houses people like US Reps Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and other elected representatives, who are actually openly advocating for tearing down the national house, our home, America. These people are openly working every day to destroy the home that you and I have built. Along with “free” healthcare, income, education, and even a “free” home for people who have come here illegally, never paid anything into Social Security, and who themselves fly the flags of the other nations from which they come, where their hearts remain.
None of us lifelong taxpayers will ever get any of this “free” stuff, even though it is our tax money that creates it in the first place!
Can you imagine if some stranger walked into your house and began tearing the place apart, and offering to hand out your furniture, clothing, your food to passersby on the street outside? It would be even worse if it was someone you had invited in, so they could participate in all of the wonderful opportunities America offers to anyone willing to work hard. Well, this all is exactly what is happening with Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and all of their supporters and enablers.
So it is a natural thing, an understandable and totally human thing, for our elected President to say “If you don’t like America, then go home to your parent countries.” He is definitely speaking for a majority of Americans. This should be no surprise to anyone. Every other country does the same. In every other country what Omar, Tlaib and their political party are doing would correctly be seen as treason and an intolerable act of war against the nation.
Like a lot of Americans, I applaud President Trump for writing this in one of his public messages the other day. Good for him. He understands that this current illegal invader situation is not sustainable. Not financially, not economically, not legally, not socially, and not politically. It is a testament to how good we Americans are at heart that this has been allowed to go on at all. We have such a strong generosity, even if we can’t always afford it. Americans are a giving people. Very few other nations, if any, will allow foreigners to literally walk into their nation and begin demanding free this and free that, tear down the border so anyone can literally walk in; it is quite insane. In most other countries, you would either be killed outright, or jailed, or expelled. Understandably.
Yes, we understand that there is a political party that has turned this illegal, lawless, anti-human, anti-America behavior into a business model, a way to gain political power. But just because that one political party is using and abusing the democratic process to achieve non-democratic results does not make this situation acceptable.
So I applaud President Trump for speaking out on behalf of the nation he was elected to lead, the home he was sworn to protect. He is doing what any American president is supposed to do. Anyone now opposing his standing up for America and our rule of law is openly a declared enemy of America.
America: Love it as it is, or leave it, as it is. And no, you cannot take our stuff with you. We worked for it, we built it, it is ours. It is not yours.
Re: Disaster Named Harrisburg, Kudos to Judge John McNally
Dauphin County Judge John McNally made me feel so proud the other day, because he held the City of Harrisburg liable for all the major bullhooey it has poured onto mere citizen Mike Brenner. Brenner has literally been fighting City Hall because City Hall brought the fight to him.
Brenner made the mistake of leasing his property to the Harrisburg City Public Works Department, where men and machines are stored. After the city stopped paying rent to him for the use of his property, but nonetheless occupied the premises and allowed it to fall into disrepair like the rest of Harrisburg has, Brenner went to court.
Who wouldn’t go to court in these circumstances? The law is the law is the law, and no one is supposed to be above the law. The law is supposed to apply to everyone equally, and especially to government agencies and entities.
Well…the temerity of this citizen! Who is he to expect just compensation from the City of Harrisburg?! Who is he to expect the city to live up to its legal obligations?
So instead of being a standup guy and paying Brenner what he has been long owed, Mayor Eric Papenfuse decided that the city would not only renege on its signed lease with Brenner, but then commence eminent domain proceedings against him to take the property by force.
So here we have a county judge who recognizes corruption and evil when we and he sees it, as personified by the sweaty faced lump of Jello that is Eric Papenfuse, and he issues a decision that the city must actually live up to its lease terms and pay Brenner what the city owes him. Never mind that what the city is doing, what Eric Papenfuse is doing, is downright evil and the very definition of abuse of official power.
Does anyone wonder why Harrisburg has fallen to pieces over the past four decades, with most taxpayers fleeing to better locales? All my life I have either visited my family here, or lived here, and it just keeps getting worse and worse.
Thanks only to Judge John McNally, Harrisburg City’s mayor is getting the comeuppance he has long been due to receive. Now let’s see the citizens of Harrisburg wake the hell up and begin voting for better human beings to make our city’s official decisions for us. We cannot afford losers like Papenfuse to continue to bankrupt Pennsylvania’s capital city with petty coercion and minor league control games.
p.s. When first elected as mayor, Papenfuse swore that people would go to jail for the fraudulent incinerator debacle that bankrupted the city. Several years later he has swept it all under the rug. Eric, you are an incompetent, lying sack of sh*t, and you cannot go back to running your used bookstore soon enough. Then let the federal charges begin to rain down on his sweaty, greasy head.
p.p.s. I am a plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit against my beloved city over its patently illegal anti-gun ordinances it passed several years ago. Papenfuse has also engaged in a lot of virtue signalling with that unnecessary lawsuit, while costing us taxpayers yet more money. The guy is a disaster.
A culture of protest, a culture of animosity
If you desire to see the raw underbelly of an overly tolerant democracy, then watch or listen to today’s US Senate hearings on Judge Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh is a smart, friendly, humble, kind of nerdy, bookish federal judge who had the audacity to be nominated to the US Supreme Court.
Why audacity? Because he is not super liberal. Because he does not walk in lock-step with the media arm of the Democrat Party. Because he has a judicial philosophy that is directly connected to how America was founded. He does not run around making legal judgments that are contrary to the US Constitution.
All this makes him audacious in the eyes of people who would use the US Supreme Court to achieve de facto legislative results they cannot get in the US Congress. Kavanaugh is audacious in some people’s eyes because he dares to fill a vacant seat on the Court, and play a constructive role in administering US law and jurisprudence.
To me, it looks like the most boring job in the world. Though at one time, in the heat of my youth, I aspired to be a constitutional scholar and actually studied a lot of constitutional law at Penn State and in graduate school (Vanderbilt) in preparation for it. My uncle has argued twice in front of the US Supreme Court, and on his second trip I was honored to help draft an Amicus brief and sit in the audience while the justices grilled both sides.
But now, look at how even Kavanaugh, The Most Boring Man In The World, is attacked and dragged through the mud by opponents of a lawful society. A shameless howling mob greeted him and the entire world today in one of the world’s most hallowed democratic chambers, the US Senate. To watch and listen to Kavanaugh’s opponents today in The People’s chamber, you would not know that we live in the most civilized nation.
From the 1960s to present, a culture of protest has developed to the point where the ends justify the means. That is, if someone opposes a political issue or a political person, they can go batshit crazy in front of everyone and put on the most foolish antics, with the craziest accusations, and the most violent and destructive behavior, because they are simply protesting.
And because they are protesting, they must be correct, is how they think. And if people oppose them, or have a majority in a legislative chamber or on a court, then every possible brick must be thrown in order to stop them…is how they think.
Where protest has its healthy roots in the First Amendment’s guarantee of peaceable assembly and petitioning the government, today’s protests are anything but constitutional. They are violent and hate filled, lawless and vile, cruel and destructive of people and property.
A very real culture of animosity has resulted out of the 1960s, and it is a bad thing, a toxic thing, corrosive and uncivilized. Its practitioners do not wish to live and let live; they desire control above all, and the use of angry mobs and threats to intimidate their opponents into acquiescence.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Hungary fell the same way. Slowly but surely the Communists there used a combination of violent mobs and corrupted police and courts to eliminate their political opponents. The Hungarian Communists used democratic processes and institutions to achieve non-democratic, tyrannical ends. Hungary went from one of Europe’s great nations to completely oppressed under the Communist boot. Only through uprising and great sacrifice were the Hungarian people freed once again, long after many horrible repressive crimes had been committed.
That same thing is now happening today with the national Democrat Party, whose hatred for the common person, the working person, the taxpayer and citizen, America’s “normal” and boring people, like Judge Kavanaugh, is so overwhelming that it can no longer be controlled.
If you love America, if you enjoy your simple pleasures and the basic freedoms we have here, then tell your US senators you support Kavanaugh, and do not vote for Democrats. The national Democrats do not have your interests at heart. Democrats care much more for illegal aliens (purported “victims”) who murder and rape our children than they care for you or me, taxpaying citizens who have worked hard to build this nation.
A good, decent man, a Justice Kavanaugh will restore some semblance of lawful and constitutional behavior to America, and the howling mob opposes that. Don’t let them win. They are not “protestors,” they are angry, lawless destroyers who pretend they are under the protection of the First Amendment.
Speaking of campaign contributions
Is anyone tallying the in-kind political campaign contributions donated by the US media, Google, FakeBook, Twitter, and the rest of Silicon Valley to one particular political party?
The hoopla surrounding the pairing of FakeBook user data with Cambridge Analytica sounds like someone committed a crime. But that is only because conservatives did it, and they actually paid money for it. As opposed to Google and FakeBook, which practically lived full-time at the Obama White House.
For free. As in they donated their private user data to one political party for free. Without disclosure, without attribution.
Google and FakeBook in particular have been working hand-in-glove with just one political party, and especially with the past Obama administration, giving away user data for free, and artificially suppressing users opposed to the Obama revolution.
Recall how typing into the Google search engine variations of “Hillary Clinton crime criminal” would generate ridiculous results, like “Hillary Clinton’s position on crime control” complete with a smiling glamor shot of Hillary Clinton. Nowhere in Google’s search results would be anything about how Hillary Clinton was an actual criminal, or a suspected criminal who had been and was being criminally investigated.
That is worth money.
And how about that September 2016 Barron’s Weekly, with the grinning glamor photo of Hillary Clinton under the headline “Time for President Hillary?”
This kind of free promotional advertising is worth huge bucks.
And the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times were all proud to openly promote Clinton and attack Republicans. Not just in their editorial pages, but in their “news.” Their “news” reporting became wall-to-wall political advertising and attacks.
The US media has been an obvious mouthpiece for this one political party and its candidates, cheering them on and covering up for them. Big bucks, folks, huge contributions.
What’s that you say, what about Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity?
Folks, if the US media just did their jobs as reporters – facts instead of activism – there would be no demand for Limbaugh or Fox News or Breitbart. Only because the media is a wholly owned subsidiary of one political party is there a demand for other views to be aired. And that is going to happen somewhere.
God forbid there are literally a handful of news outlets not controlled by the establishment media and their political party!
So what is the value of all this collusion between Google, and FakeBook, and Twitter? All the user data they gleefully provided to the Obama White House and the 2012 Obama campaign? You know, the private user data that the Obama campaign gloated about in public.
Someone needs to get to the bottom of this. I’d just ballpark the in-kind contribution value at about a billion dollars. At least. And none of it was officially disclosed on campaign disclosure documents.
All illegal behavior and political contributions, folks. A lot of fines, and maybe jail time for people. But because the chosen side did it, it’s fine, apparently. Well, not to me, it isn’t, despite the mainstream media’s unwillingness to report it.
Get a special investigator and prosecutor on this right away. Hold these law-breakers accountable. Because we all really care about upholding the law, right?
2017 Year in Review
Looking back on 2017, it is tempting to list all of great accomplishments, and the few failures, of the new administration in DC.
One could spend a week discussing them all, but for the sake of time, here is one person’s opinion about what we have gained, and what we have yet to gain, from the new administration.
Gains
Where haven’t the citizens of America gained under the policies of the new administration?
From tax reform to ending executive policies designed to bully American citizens through the illegal use of government coercion, President Trump is daily deleting prior executive orders, and often substituting his own pro-freedom policies in their stead.
One gain has been the reining in of the US EPA, a place at which I used to work as a policy and legislative staffer, and which has long had an unprofessional staff culture of political activism substituting for careful reasoned decisions, shaped by law, in the interest of the American People. Fundamental transformation of USEPA was long overdue. The same can be said for NOAA, a huge source for fake climate change junk science, which is now getting a new chief who actually is a meteorologist and who does actually know a thing or two or three about Earth’s climate. How refreshing.
Another gain has been the moving of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. No, this decision is not about Israel, it is about Western Civilization, of which tiny outpost Israel is the canary in the coal mine. Trump made this decision in the face of United Nations opposition, the same corrupt UN that is run by the biggest tyrannies in the world. He made this decision in the face of violence and threats of violence pouring forth from literally every single Muslim nation. The embassy move draws a stark contrast between a Christendom determined to survive, and everyone else. Sorry, the Jews are just the foil here, not the cause celebre.
Failures
If there is one friction point of real consequence in Washington, DC, it is that surface where the federal judiciary meets the executive branch.
Populated with political radicals, the federal judiciary has rogue judges who routinely use their positions to legislate from the bench, not adjudicate within the constitutional confines of their actual duties. They try to implement specific policies, instead of determining whether or not the question before them is simply constitutional, or not. They continually usurp powers from the executive branch, to the point where these judges have set themselves up as the actual bureaucrats running America.
Got a grievance? Bring it before the right federal judge, and you could get a very detailed, specific holding directing the executive branch of government to implement a certain policy in a certain way under a certain time frame.
The first problem here is that the judiciary rarely has actual jurisdiction in these subjects, because they are wholly functions of the executive branch. Immigration is one such area. Immigration and borders are clearly left to the executive branch to run. And yet America has federal judges who routinely issue holdings they believe will block the implementation of the executive branch’s functions. And these same federal judges will do the same things repeatedly, defiantly, even after the US Supreme Court has struck down their previous decision. These rogue judges are using their official positions to advance social justice causes.
A similar policy subject is gun regulation.
Despite the US Supreme Court’s Heller decision and others like it, lower courts routinely issue holdings on gun regulation that are in direct, clear conflict with US Supreme Court decisions.
A third policy subject is transgenders in the military. Recently a federal judge held that the US military must accept transgenders, ignoring the clear separation of constitutional powers between the executive branch and the judiciary. The executive branch has sole discretion over who it allows into the warfighting military, and civilian courts have zero jurisdiction. For a federal judge to insert himself into military matters is a clear violation of the US Constitution.
The second problem with this is, this is not the way the court system works.
Lower courts are always bound by the holdings of higher courts and by the duties and roles clearly spelled out in the US Constitution. Judges who disregard the higher courts and the Constitution, and instead issue their own politically motivated holdings, are destroying the rule of law in America. They are far overstepping their boundaries, and trying to make law and policy instead of deciding law or remanding a decision back to the political process. In essence setting themselves up as dictators who make all legislative, policy, and legal decisions.
If these rogue judges are successful, America’s court system will become meaningless. It will be a random assortment of competing political decisions governing hundreds of millions of citizens, made by a small handful of unelected people in black robes. These are decisions that are supposed to be hashed out through the political process by elected officials, accountable to the American People through elections and votes.
So, the failure here for the Trump Administration has been an unwillingness to simply disregard these rogue judges, and then move ahead with the administration’s immigration policy, foreign policy, and military decisions. Moreover, Trump’s administration should be openly calling for the impeachment and removal of these rogue judges. Official abuse of power is the most serious threat to American representative government, it must be confronted head-on, and that is not happening. Why is a mystery, because if there is one hallmark of this presidency, it is this president’s willingness to and enjoyment of directly communicating with the American People in the clearest terms.
Conclusion
The rogue judges issue highlights a scary fact that most establishment Republicans are loathe to address, and that is how liberals will do absolutely anything to impose their will on the American People.
The liberal lust for power and control, as marketed through “social justice” causes, means that their ends always justify their methods. It means that all officials with liberal opinions have to do is claim a higher moral ground, higher than existing law, and implement their views through their official role, no matter if it clearly contradicts established law, procedure, and policy.
This of course is not how any democracy or republic works. It is politically unsustainable (it is patently illegal), but it is evidence that liberals will burn down America in order to wrest control of it from the American People, or to prevent their political opponents from running it as the result of elections that liberals are unhappy with. It is also evidence that establishment Republicans have zero fight in them, because they do not believe in anything more than making more money than a person has use for.
If there is a need for a new political group in America, it is one that is focused on documenting official abuses by federal judges, and then working to hold them accountable. Impeachment and removal from the bench is what is needed.
So, in conclusion, 2017 was a very good year, an exciting year, and we can hope for more of the same in 2018.