Posts

Posted on

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Posted on

Our Independence Day

(Riffing a bit on Bill Pullman’s immortal line, of course.)

My own little insurrection:

We came home from Fort Wayne last night around dinnertime, so we decided to stop at a pizza joint about a mile from home to pick up some of their delicious bread sticks to go with frozen pizza we were going to have for dinner.

Sign on door: “No Mask Needed if Vaccinated.”

Rather than say, “fuck you”, turn on my heel, and go back to the car, I just fucking walked in. Screw ’em. I wanted my bread sticks (they make the best ones around IMHO), and they can’t legally demand my vaccination status. Which as anyone around here knows, is “negative”, because I refuse to take the fucking poison jab, and if you’re vaccinated, I can’t infect you anyway. (Or so the common wisdom goes; since the jab isn’t actually a vaccine, the idea is you’re only supposed to be able to get a mild version if you do get infected. Which seems unlikely since we’ve been at herd immunity levels for months.)

We were in Fort Wayne (as noted) almost all day yesterday, and the place is reopened — no masking signs, just a few social distancing signs (more of a “Please consider” as opposed to “We order you”), most of the floor stickers indicating a six-foot separation are gone, etc. Ate in the dining room at a Wendy’s for lunch. (As far as I know, all the fast food joints around here are still closed for indoor dining.) That’s only the second time I’ve eaten in a restaurant since March 2020, because Indianapolis is still being asshole about it (plus, half the places can’t find people to work because of the continuing government incentives not to). The other restaurant I’ve eaten in since March 2020 was a place in Brownsburg, which is just west of the Marion County line and thus not under the edicts and orders of the Indianapolis Supreme Soviet, er, City-County Council, and our abysmal wanna-be-totalitarian mayor. That was a couple of weeks ago, and all they had out was a sign that said, “Please don’t come in if you have these COVID-19 symptoms” and a list of about a dozen symptoms.

It’s over. Just like the Bidet mal-administration is going to be over. People are done listening to people claiming to be their betters and experts in all things.

In a week’s time, we need to let the assholes know, loud and clear: July 4 is OUR Independence Day from bullshit rules, regulations, and idiot “experts”.

And Bidet and the rest of the traitors can stuff their “no fun” plans right up their collective ass.

Posted on

Another 1-8 victory for Thomas

Unfortunately, while he was right on the merits, the majority went the other way.

In MAHANOY AREA SCHOOL DIST. v. B. L., Justice Thomas wrote a remarkable dissent and flayed his colleagues on the bench for failure to apply past jurisprudence and tradition, regarding how much power schools have to restrict the speech of their students, both in and out of school.

Let’s look at the majority opinion for a summation of what went on to cause this travesty of justice, at least according to B.L., the plaintiff.

B. L. (who, together with her parents, is a respondent in this case) was a student at Mahanoy Area High School, a public school in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. At the end of her freshman year, B. L. tried out for a position on the school’s varsity cheerleading squad and for right fielder on a private softball team. She did not make the varsity cheerleading team or get her preferred softball position, but she was offered a spot on the cheerleading squad’s junior varsity team. B. L. did not accept the coach’s decision with good grace, particularly because the squad coaches had placed an entering freshman on the varsity team

That weekend, B. L. and a friend visited the Cocoa Hut, a local convenience store. There, B. L. used her smartphone to post two photos on Snapchat, a social media application that allows users to post photos and videos that disappear after a set period of time. B. L. posted the images to her Snapchat “story,” a feature of the application that allows any person in the user’s “friend” group (B. L. had about 250 “friends”) to view the images for a 24 hour period.

The first image B. L. posted showed B. L. and a friend with middle fingers raised; it bore the caption: “Fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything.” App. 20. The second image was blank but for a caption, which read: “Love how me and [another student] get told we need a year of jv before we make varsity but tha[t] doesn’t matter to anyone else?” The caption also contained an upside-down smiley-face emoji. Id., at 21.

B. L.’s Snapchat “friends” included other Mahanoy Area High School students, some of whom also belonged to the cheerleading squad. At least one of them, using a separate cellphone, took pictures of B. L.’s posts and shared them with other members of the cheerleading squad. One of the students who received these photos showed them to her mother (who was a cheerleading squad coach), and the images spread. That week, several cheerleaders and other students approached the cheerleading coaches “visibly upset” about B. L.’s posts. Id., at 83–84. Questions about the posts persisted during an Algebra class taught by one of the two coaches. Id., at 83.

After discussing the matter with the school principal, the coaches decided that because the posts used profanity in connection with a school extracurricular activity, they violated team and school rules. As a result, the coaches suspended B. L. from the junior varsity cheerleading squad for the upcoming year. B. L.’s subsequent apologies did not move school officials. The school’s athletic director, principal, superintendent, and school board, all affirmed B. L.’s suspension from the team. In response, B. L., together with her parents, filed this lawsuit in Federal District Court.

Seems pretty straightforward, yes?  Well — nope.  The school district lost all the way up the line to the Supreme Court, on First Amendment grounds.

So you say, yay for the student, boo for the patriarchal authoritarian school district?

No.  Or at least, that’s not how Justice Thomas saw it:

JUSTICE THOMAS, dissenting.

B. L., a high school student, sent a profanity-laced mes-sage to hundreds of people, including classmates and team-mates. The message included a picture of B. L. raising her middle finger and captioned “F*** school” and “f*** cheer.”This message was juxtaposed with another, which explained that B. L. was frustrated that she failed to make the varsity cheerleading squad. The cheerleading coach responded by disciplining B. L.

The Court overrides that decision—without even mentioning the 150 years of history supporting the coach. Using broad brushstrokes, the majority outlines the scope of school authority. When students are on campus, the majority says, schools have authority in loco parentis—that is, as substitutes of parents—to discipline speech and conduct. Off campus, the authority of schools is somewhat less. At that level of generality, I agree. But the majority omits important detail. What authority does a school have when it operates in loco parentis? How much less authority do schools have over off-campus speech and conduct? And how does a court decide if speech is on or off campus?

Disregarding these important issues, the majority simply posits three vague considerations and reaches an outcome. A more searching review reveals that schools historically could discipline students in circumstances like those presented here. Because the majority does not attempt to explain why we should not apply this historical rule and does not attempt to tether its approach to anything stable, I respectfully dissent.

I’m not going to quote the whole thing, but here’s some of his citations indicating his colleagues did not do due diligence (blogger’s emphasis in bold):

Some courts made statements that, if read in isolation, could suggest that schools had no authority at all to regulate off-campus speech. E.g., Dritt v. Snodgrass, 66 Mo. 286, 297 (1877) (Norton, J., joined by a majority of the court, concurring) (“neither the teacher nor directors have the authority to follow [a student home], and govern his conduct while under the parental eye” because that would “supersede entirely parental authority”). But, these courts made it clear that the rule against regulating off-campus speech applied only when that speech was “nowise connected with the management or successful operation of the school.” King v. Jefferson City School Bd., 71 Mo. 628, 630 (1880) (distinguishing Dritt); accord, Lander, 32 Vt., at 120–121 (similar). In other words, they followed Lander: A school can regulate speech when it occurs off campus, so long as it has a proximate tendency to harm the school, its faculty or students, or its programs.

Also, immediately following (again, blogger’s emphasis in bold):

If there is a good constitutional reason to depart from this historical rule, the majority and the parties fail to identify it. I would thus apply the rule. Assuming that B. L.’s speech occurred off campus, the purpose and effect of B. L.’s speech was “to degrade the [program and cheerleading staff]” in front of “other pupils,” thus having “a direct and immediate tendency to . . . subvert the [cheerleading coach’s] authority.” Id., at 115, 120. As a result, the coach had authority to discipline B. L.

Our modern doctrine is not to the contrary. “[T]he penalties imposed in this case were unrelated to any political viewpoint” or religious viewpoint. Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U. S. 675, 685 (1986). And although the majority sugar coats this speech as “criticism,” ante, at 8, it is well settled that schools can punish “vulgar” speech—at least when it occurs on campus, e.g., Fraser, 478 U. S., at 683–684; ante, at 5.

The discipline here—a 1-year suspension from the team—may strike some as disproportionate. Tr. of Oral Arg. 31, 57. But that does not matter for our purposes. State courts have policed school disciplinary decisions for “reasonable[ness].” E.g., Burdick, 31 Iowa, at 565. And disproportionate discipline “can be challenged by parents in the political process.” Morse, 551 U. S., at 420 (THOMAS, J., concurring). But the majority and the parties provide no textual or historical evidence to suggest that federal courts generally can police the proportionality of school disciplinary decisions in the name of the First Amendment.

Finally:

The Court transparently takes a common-law approach to today’s decision. In effect, it states just one rule: Schools can regulate speech less often when that speech occurs off campus. It then identifies this case as an “example” and“leav[es] for future cases” the job of developing this new common-law doctrine. Ante, at 7–8. But the Court’s foundation is untethered from anything stable, and courts (and schools) will almost certainly be at a loss as to what exactly the Court’s opinion today means.

Perhaps there are good constitutional reasons to depart from the historical rule, and perhaps this Court and lower courts will identify and explain these reasons in the future. But because the Court does not do so today, and because it reaches the wrong result under the appropriate historical test, I respectfully dissent.

So do I, Justice Thomas.  So do I.  The majority, for all its passionate defense of the First Amendment, misses a number of crucial points and is therefore incorrect in its ruling.

I think Justice Scalia would have agreed with Justice Thomas.

Posted on

Another stupid federal holiday

“Juneteenth”.

Yet another excuse for a three-day weekend, this time to celebrate the end of slavery in Texas.  Note carefully:  IN TEXAS.  Not in the entire old Confederacy; the Emancipation Proclamation started that ball rolling on January 1, 1863, in all Confederate territories then held by the Union, and then followed Union troops as they reclaimed the rest of the South.  Which to me means that if we’re going to celebrate the end of slavery, New Year’s Day is perfectly fine for that.  Or if you’re a purist, September 22, 1862, was the date Lincoln issued the Proclamation.

Wikipedia (which of course should never be anyone’s go-to resource, but I’m in a hurry this morning) says of Juneteenth,

Celebrations date to 1866, at first involving church-centered community gatherings in Texas. It spread across the South and became more commercialized in the 1920s and 1930s, often centering on a food festival.

The date is literally the date of the arrival of occupying Union troops in Galveston, Texas, and the immediate application of the Emancipation Proclamation there.  Wikipedia again:

On the morning of Monday, June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston, Texas, to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its slaves and oversee a peaceful transition of power, additionally nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers.

So there you have it.  The only reason for this holiday’s existence is that it marks the official emancipation of slaves in the last state the Union occupied after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

Well, that, and as noted above, yet another excuse for a federal three-day weekend.  I read yesterday this brings the number of paid days off for the average Federal employee to 44, which is nearly nine weeks.  I wish I had nine weeks of paid days off.  I suppose the only good thing about this is it’s nine weeks they’re not screwing around in our beknighted country’s affairs.

Face it, folks, I live in Indiana.  We never had slaves, here.  My mother’s family didn’t arrive here until long after the Civil War ended, and my father’s family never held slaves, from their arrival in New York and Pennsylvania in the 1700s through their migrations to western Pennsylvania, northern Ohio, and Indiana, and I feel no obligation to hand over so-called “reparations” to my middle-class black neighbors who never were slaves.  I have trouble with this being enshrined as a national holiday.

And please note that I don’t have a problem with MLK Day, because Dr. King espoused a message of peace and harmony between the races.

Mark my words, Juneteenth will not be used for that — it will be used (and already has been, by the execrable Cori Bush, with Slow Joe’s signature fresh on the page) as yet another excuse to drive a wedge between Americans and to call for reparations for people who never were slaves from people who never held slaves.

The insanity will end when we finally decide we’ve had enough.  Have we had enough, yet?

Posted on

The governor is wrong (as usual)

I don’t read Abdul’s blog very often, because he tends to post a teaser and then a video I don’t have the time or patience to watch, instead of actually doing journalism and posting a real article.

However, I clicked on his blog today and lo and behold, I find our very own Dog-Daddy Gov is suing the state Attorney General over whether or not he can prevent state legislators from convening a special session during a declared emergency, and whether or not he can sue lawmakers when they are in session. Holcomb, the RINO prick, naturally says yes to both; Rokita, the sometime RINO prick, says, nope to both.

My own feeling (and I was just thinking this yesterday) is the legislature needs to get on its horse and find a way to meet virtually. If that requires an amendment to the state constitution, all well and good. But the legislature (IMHO) cannot be prevented from convening at any time by the governor, because of separation of powers. And I think legislative immunity probably is good enough to cover whether or not the Gov can sue legislators while in session.

In this particular case, Abdul actually wrote more than his usual single-sentence blurb before urging one to watch the whole thing (which of course is paid for by his sponsor). It might or might not be edifying; I don’t care, because I think Holcomb is full of shit on his best days, and I think the judge should listen to Rokita on this one.