Protecting Your Civil Rights

For John, BLUF:  Protecting my rights as an ordinary Citizen means protecting everyone's rights.  Once some person or sub-group is identified as not being in a position to enforce his or its civil right those civil rights are like smoke.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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As the Left Trashes Due Process, Black Men Speak Up in its Defense

Here is the sub-headline:

The defenders of Western Civ are much more diverse than its enemies.

From The Stream, by Mr Mark Judge, 15 April 2021.

Here is the lede plus one:

For the past year I’ve been writing a series for The Stream about my experience in 2018.  That’s when my high school friend Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court.  To sink his nomination, the left used oppo research, bad acting, witness tampering, lies, and lapdog media.  Liberals peddled the false charge that Brett sexually assaulted a girl then named Christine Blasey when we were all in high school.  Journalists and operatives tried to bully and extort me into testifying against my friend, who was innocent.  (The story is going to be a book.)

After it was all over in October 2018, liberal Atlantic writer Jemel Hill went to Ozy Media’s “Take On America” town hall series in Baltimore.  The gathering featured over 100 black men in the audience.  Coming on the heels of the Kavanaugh battle, Hill was positive she was going to hear a lot of anguish over the Republican victory.

Instead, she heard support for Kavanaugh.  Hill reported:

On Tuesday night, I was in an auditorium with 100 black men in the city of Baltimore, when the subject pivoted to Brett Kavanaugh.  I expected to hear frustration that the sexual-assault allegations against him had failed to derail his Supreme Court appointment.  Instead, I encountered sympathy.  One man stood up and asked, passionately, “What happened to due process?”  He was met with a smattering of applause, and an array of head nods.

Perhaps there is a Brotherhood of the falsely accused.

Perhaps there are Black Citizens who wish to have their Civil Rights protected.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Trump Wins Again

For John, BLUF:  Sometimes it is better not to stir the pot.  And, odds are that in 2025 Mr Trump will be a retired two term President and Jim Acosta will be forgotten.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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How Trump won the Acosta lawsuit.

Here is the sub-headline:

You don't alway win by winning. That's too easy. The genius move is to win by losing.

From the eponymous blog of Retired Law Professor Ann Althouse, 16 November 2018.

Here are the last two paragraphs:

The judge framed it as a matter of process, which justifies Trump issuing a set of rules of decorum.  I assume the rules will include a requirement that a reporter who has received a response (whether it's to his liking or not) must relinquish the microphone, that there can be no physical interference with a staff member who reaches out to take the microphone, and that one much stop talking once the President (or press secretary) has moved on to the next questioner.

Any complaints about these rules and the prescribed consequences of violating them can be met with pieties about adhering to the judge's ruling.  Things must be done in an orderly way — in the press room and in a system of due process.  Any complaints premised on freedom of the press will be met with statements like "We want total freedom of the press" and we want perfect due process.  So here you are, here's notice of our rules of decorum. And that should be the end of the kind of questioning Acosta has become famous for.  Trump wins.

Best Comment so far:

Jupiter said...
These Democrats just can't seem to keep their hands off the White House interns.

11/16/18, 8:46 PM

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Protecting Our Rights

For John, BLUF:  A too quick move for punishment can leave justice in the dust.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Betsy DeVos Ends a Campus Witch Hunt

An OpEd by Mr Bret Stephens, 8 September 2017, in The Old gray Lady.

Here are two paragraphs from well down in the OpED:

The travesties of justice carried out under the new Title IX guidelines have been the subject of some excellent books and superb journalism, none better than Emily Yoffe’s in The Atlantic.  And yet the response of the progressive left has been indifferent or worse.

On Thursday, the social activist Amy Siskind tweeted that the conservative writer David French should “ST🁢U with your hackneyed due process talking point” after the latter pointed out that “campus kangaroo courts violate fundamental rights.”♠

"Hackneyed" due process?  Ms Siskind is ignorant.  Due process is what keeps the law on the rails.  And the Government, with its vast powers.

In the 1966 play A Man for All Seasons, the case is well put by Sir Thomas, talking to his Son-in-Law, Mr William Roper, MP.

William Roper:  So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More:  Yes!  What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper:  Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More:  Oh?  And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?  This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's!  And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?  Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

This is the kind of understand totally lacking on the part of the Antifa movement, and by Progressives who adhere to them and their approach to freedom.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  "Hackneyed" is a term used when legitimate arguments are not working.  It is a weak response.

Rubio Goes Progressive

For John, BLUF:  Moving to the bottom of my list, just above Christie.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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This blog post by Law Professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds sums it up for me.

WHY IS MARCO RUBIO joining with Democrats to sponsor a bill depriving college men of due process rights?

The thing is, once you make an exception for this or that special case you give the lawyers the thin edge of the wedge and they, using the simplest tool known to man, can then bring down the whole edifice of individual rights.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff