Quote of the Day

In CCP’s China, one can find a Party Branch (党支部) in any workplace.

According to the CCP, its function is to propagate & implement the Party’s principles, policies, & resolutions.

In America today, we have a DEI office in every institution.

Xi Van Fleet @XVanFleet
Posted on X December 21, 2023

I read and really like her book.

Well, “like” in the sense of interesting and enlightening. She grew up in China during the cultural revolution and then moved to the U.S. where she now sees frightening similarities to her native country. Daughter Jaime refuses to read it because it sounds too dark.

Some of the terrible stuff in China would not fly in the U.S. because of the widespread ownership of firearms and a substantial number of the population tend to distrust the government and highly regard individualism. But other stuff can be seen closing in all around us.

Quote of the Day

Wednesday’s arguments focused primarily on this first theory: that adjudicating securities fraud before an administrative law judge violates the right to a trial by a jury. This right arises from the Seventh Amendment, which provides a jury trial in some civil cases. Current Supreme Court precedent breaks it down like this: When the U.S. government seeks to enforce a congressional statute that prohibits or punishes wrongdoing, it is enforcing “public rights.” And these enforcements don’t implicate the Seventh Amendment. That means they can be brought within an agency, before administrative law judges, who are shielded from removal by the commission. As Kagan put it on Wednesday, quoting major precedent, the Seventh Amendment “is no bar to the creation of new rights or to their enforcement outside the regular courts of law.”

This system is the only plausible way that the executive branch can carry out the duties assigned to it by Congress. Federal agencies rely on administrative adjudication to penalize polluters, scammers, abusive employers, crooked banks, and a whole range of unsavory parties. Obviously, these agencies can’t send anyone to prison, and their procedures must comply with due process. Their goal is to catch countless cases that would otherwise slip through the cracks—often because the harm involved applies to the public at large, or to potential harms that haven’t yet caused an injury. If the government had to bring these cases in federal court, the judiciary would be overwhelmed, its docket flooded with disputes that it lacks the time or resources to resolve by trial.

Mark Joseph Stern
November 29, 2023
The Supreme Court Has Figured Out How to Gut a Bunch of Crucial Federal Laws at Once

Emphasis added.

To refresh your memory on the 7^th Amendment:

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by Jury shall be preserved, and no fact, tried by a Jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

I’m not a lawyer, but the only exemptions to a jury trial granted by the 7^th Amendment is if the value must be less than or equal to $20 or the controversy is not a suit at common law. “At common law” appears to mean “cases that triggered the right to a jury under English law”. Article III protects the right to a trial by jury for all criminal cases.

So what are these regulations that Stern is so upset about? Are they criminal or are they civil? It would appear to be criminal cases to me. They are violations of laws created by congress, right?

So, it would appear to me that the only exemption Stern can hang his hat on when he claims the 7^th Amendment doesn’t guarantee a jury trial are those trials which involve less than or equal to $20.

Of course he doesn’t try to explain why these regulations are exempt. He just rants about how it is not practical to allow the defendants to have their right to a trial by jury. In other words, inconvenient constitutionally guaranteed rights must be ignored..

I suspect this mindset is common in those opposed to the 2nd Amendment as well.

Perhaps he would revise his option at his own trial.

Quote of the Day

These people are playing with matches… I don’t think they understand the scope and scale of the wildfire they are flirting with. They are fucking around with a civil war that could last a decade and cause millions of deaths… and the sad truth is that 95% of the problems we have in this country could be solved tomorrow, by noon… simply by dragging 100 people out in the street and shooting them in the fucking head.

Mr. Wheeler
June 2012
The Pig Trap

I’m not sure it is quite that simple. There is a huge “swamp” to be drained to reduce the size of our government to that which it is supposedly limited to by the U.S. Constitution.

That said, if it were possible to avoid the civil war as described by the execution of the appropriate 100 people I can see a case being made for that. It is similar to the adage, “A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords at dawn.”

Quote of the Day

Late Thursday, a gunfight broke out in a parking garage by Philadelphia International Airport when, according to police, a pair of officers saw a group of people trying to break into a car. One officer was killed — a 50-year-old father — and another was injured.

No one has been arrested in connection with the killing, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department told Insider.

In a statement, Krasner, a progressive Democrat, blamed the lack of arrests on state and federal gun laws.

Charles R. Davis
October 13, 2023
A Philadelphia police officer is dead and thanks to ‘gun-crazy’ politicians his killer is on the loose, DA says

Larry Krasner is the District Attorney of Philadelphia. He blamed the 2^nd Amendment for the lack of an arrest. Does he also blame the 5^th Amendment for the lack of convictions? It would be a lot easier to get confessions if people could be interrogated without an attorney present. And just imagine how many convictions they could get if the entire Bill of Rights were disposed of and torture was allowed and it was illegal to complain about it.

Gun control isn’t about safety. It is about control.