Reflections From a Murky Pond

There’s no forgiveness for Biden. Specifically, there’s no ill-conceived and illegal student loan forgiveness for him and whichever group of his handlers had him sign the Executive Order to cancel approximately $400 billion in voluntarily incurred student loan debt. His or their plan to buy a plethora of 2024 votes with federal monies is essentially dead in the water at this point.

First a federal judge in Texas blocked it. Then, just a days later and regarding a separate suit against Biden, a unanimous ruling by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis blocked it again via injunction. Most likely, if the Texas ruling goes for appeal, the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals will do as the 8th did. Even if they don’t, however, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals’ injunction against it will still stand until that Court reaches a final decision in State of Nebraska v. Joseph Biden, Jr..

😉 It’s dead, Joe. Shuffle away and forget about it.

Tags: 2024 Elections | America | Biden | College | Courts | Democrats | Federal Courts | Indoctrination | Politics | Student Loans | Vote Buying

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 16th, 2022 at 11:38 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

As of May 31, 2022 due to a California Appellate Court overruling a lower court’s legal decision, Four species of bumblebees – the Crotch’s bumblebee, the Franklin’s bumblebee, the Suckley’s cuckoo bumblebee and the Western bumblebee – are now eligible to officially become endangered species under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA). This means that the California Fish and Game Commission will now have a certain amount jurisdiction over those 4 species of bumblebee and their protection. Assuming, of course, that this decision isn’t overturned by a higher court.

The Poor Beleaguered Fish In Question

So yeah, for now and possibly for some time, bees are legally fish. And yeah, a lot of people are seriously lampooning the CA Appellate Court’s obvious and rank stupidity is declaring them so. But… all the complaints, insults, and jokes are misplaced. The bumbling idiocy happened way back in 1970.

The California Endangered Species Act was designed to protect “native species or subspecies of a bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant.” But, in 1970 when the law was actually written the definition of “fish” was written as, “a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals.” While it is patently obvious to anyone who can read for comprehension that “invertebrate” was meant to be limited to marine and aquatic ones, e.g., corals, sponges, and sea urchins, that’s not what was written into law.

Although the term fish is colloquially and commonly understood to refer to aquatic species, the term of art employed by the Legislature in the definition of fish in section 45 is not so limited.

— Associate Justice Ronald B. Robie

The important part of the portion of the ruling shown above is Term of Art. And in the legal field those terms have specific, explicit meanings, not implied ones. Purposivism will, far more often than not, fall before Textualism in the Courts.

In this case, the statutory definition of fish states it means a “wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals.” The statute may have an implicit limitation to marine and aquatic creatures, but the legislators didn’t state that explicitly, meaning no such limitation actually exists.

Frankly, if judicial error happened, it was by the lower court that ruled that bees aren’t per the term of art in play fish. So, if anyone should be lampooned, it should be the Legislature, who wrote a piss-poor law using hasty language and without thought of potential use case scenarios.

Nor, I choose to add, is this the first time the fishiness of a species has come into legal debate. One need only turn to the 1818 Maurice v. Judd case in NYC, where the court ruled that, statutorily speaking, whales were fish.

Tags: America | Animals | Bees | Bumblebees | California | Courts | Endangered Species | Idiocy | Language & Idiom | Law | Legal System | Outrage | Politics | Science | Stupdity | Taxonomy

This entry was posted on Friday, June 10th, 2022 at 5:02 am and is filed under Animals, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Periodically the news ripples slightly with news of federal agencies investigating Hillary Clinton and her staff about her use of an unsecured, private email server to conduct classified State Department business. Each time there’s a ripple various and sundry people rub their hands together and salivate, believing she’ll be indicted and possibly even convicted of one or more high crimes against America.

Even If Hillary Was Indicted…

Ah hope – it springs eternal in the breasts of men and is itself the wellspring of despair and disillusionment.

In this case and in this time Hillary Clinton is untouchable. She’s got a get out jail free card. She’s not only a Democrat, she’s the in-all-but-name Democrat Nominee for the 2016 Presidential Election. As every member of every agency that is supposedly investigating her is employed at the pleasure of Obama, Hillary will not be indicted until and unless a Republican is in the Oval Office.

Really! Can anyone in America truly believe that Obama would allow such a thing to happen to Hillary? No matter whatever the boy’s personal feeling about the Clintons might be, he’d never scuttle the Dems’ best and only hope to keep the White House. Hillary could literally hold the young women down while Bill raped them and Obama would do his level best to not let it affect her campaign.

Tags: 2016 Elections | America | Clinton | Corruption | Courts | Crime | Democratic Primary | Democrats | Despair | Espionage | Hillary | Hope | Law | Obama | Politics | Treason

This entry was posted on Friday, February 26th, 2016 at 9:21 am and is filed under 2016 Election, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

I love Mass spanking and, by that, I mean I truly love the latest ruling on spanking as a form of corporal punishment by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court somewhat less than I mean that I have any fondness for the actual act as a punishment. I have neither any fondness nor antipathy for spanking children.

I also  love how the lower courts got spanked. 😉

In 2011 Jean Dorvil was arrested in Brockton, MA on charges of assault and Battery for spanking his child. During the trial the judge made the odd remark, “If you’re in public with your kids, it’s not appropriate to discipline in this fashion.” Dorvil then lost his appeal based on the appellate court’s view that the child lacked the capacity to understand the discipline and that the father spanked her “when he was upset and angry.”

OK, so we have one judge that thinks that spanking is wrong and constitutes assault and battery if it’s done in public and another set of judges who thinks that spanking is wrong and constitutes assault and battery if the parent is angry when they spank the child. Combined, these two judicial statements imply that spanking is legally A-OK if it’s performed in private and if the parent is neither upset nor angry. Hence, by their statements, it’s perfectly fine in the privacy of your own home to spank you child if you just enjoy doing so.

No! That’s not what the courts meant…but it is what, in the language of the law, they said. They created an arguable defense with their idiocy.

Thankfully, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned Dorvil’s conviction and coded that parents have the right to use corporal punishment to discipline and safeguard their children. Even better, they specifically codified that that a parent or guardian may not be subjected to criminal liability for the use of force against a minor child under the care and supervision of the parent or guardian, provided that:

1. the force used against the minor child is reasonable;
2. the force is reasonably related to the purpose of safeguarding or promoting the welfare of the minor, including the prevention or punishment of the minor’s misconduct; and
3. the force used neither causes, nor creates a substantial risk of causing, physical harm (beyond fleeting pain or minor, transient marks), gross degradation, or severe mental distress.

Yeah, I love Mass spanking and, even more, I that the court now has this particular ruling on the books because legal precedence counts for more than legislative text.

Tags: America | Brockton | Children | Courts | Dorvil | Law | Massachusetts | Parental Rights | Parenting | Spanking

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2015 at 10:52 am and is filed under Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

The 9th Curcuit of the US Court of Appeals has reaffirmed that Constitutional and Civil Rights are not fully applicable or to be enjoyed by juveniles in the setting of a state-run school with their decision upon Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District.

They have ruled that it is no violation of students’ rights to force them to either leave school or change clothes for wearing shirts with the US Flag upon them on Cinco de Mayo. Such juveniles don’t have the same level rights as adults enjoy under the law.

Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District

SUMMARY
Civil Rights

The panel affirmed the district court’s summary judgment in a civil rights suit brought by high school students who were asked to remove clothing bearing images of the American flag after school officials learned of threats of race-related violence during a school-sanctioned celebration of Cinco de Mayo.

The panel held that school officials did not violate the students’ rights to freedom of expression, due process, or equal protection. The panel held given the history of prior events at the school, including an altercation on campus, it was reasonable for school officials to proceed as though the threat of a potentially violent disturbance was real. The panel held that school officials anticipated violence or substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities, and their response was tailored to the circumstances.

OPINION

McKeown, Circuit Judge:

First Amendment rights and the operational and safety needs of schools. As we noted in Wynar v. Douglas County School District, 728 F.3d 1062, 1064 (9th Cir. 2013), “school administrators face the daunting task of evaluating potential threats of violence and keeping their students safe without impinging on their constitutional rights.” In this case, after school officials learned of threats of race-related violence during a school-sanctioned celebration of Cinco de Mayo, the school asked a group of students to remove clothing bearing images of the American flag.

The students brought a civil rights suit against the school district and two school officials, alleging violations of their federal and state constitutional rights to freedom of expression, equal protection, and due process. We affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment as to the only defendant party to this appeal, Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez, and its denial of the students’ motion for summary judgment, on all claims. School officials anticipated violence or substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities, and their response was tailored to the circumstances. As a consequence, we conclude that school officials did not violate the students’ rights to freedom of expression, due process, or equal protection.

Given the text of the opinion in the 1969 case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District this was a solid legal decision on the part of the Court. Tinker did, after all, hold that school administrators could violate the constitutional and civil rights of students for the purpose of maintaining order and preventing disruption of the normal operations of the school.  As disruption in the form of violence was likely, Mckeown’s ruling, displeasing as it is, was right based upon earlier Court precedents.

It’d be better if the 9th Circuit had undertaken to decide that, even in the case of minors in school, “Hecklers’ Vetoes” are unconstitutional. Sadly, the 9th Circuit and Judge McKeown is particular has a trend in holding strictly to Tinker. Expecting a significant policy change isn’t really realistic.

A Small Thought Experiment

What actually happened was that during the school’s 2010 Cinco de Mayo celebration, a Hispanic Assistant Principal, Miguel Rodriguez demanded that some White students remove their shirts which had the US Flag on them because Hispanic students were likely to become violent towards them based upon both current and previous behavior by those Hispanic students.

That was not a violation of any the White students’ rights.

What could have happened in an alternate reality is that during that 2010 Cinco de Mayo celebration a Caucasian Assistant Principal, John Smith demanded that some Hispanic students remove their shirts which had the Mexican Flag on them because White students were likely to become violent towards them based upon both current and previous behavior by those White students.

Care to wager whether or not that would have been a violation those Hispanic students’ rights?

A Final Consideration

It might actually be that Tinker sets forth the correct constitutional rule in this case. Schools do have special responsibilities to educate their students and to protect them both against violence and against disruption of their educations. Thus a school might thus have and require the discretion to decide that prevention of disruption, even at the cost of suppressing speech, is acceptable.

That, however, does not address the fact that in parts of California it is utterly unsafe for White ,American students to wear or display our nation’s flag while at school due to the reasonable fear that Hispanic students will physically attack them for doing so. Worse, the only way that the schools can- or is willing protect them is by restricting their freedoms rather than punishing and/or reeducating the violent Hispanics.

Tags: 1st Amendment | America | California | Civil Rights | Constitutional Law | Courts | Federal Courts | Freedom | High School | Hispanics | Liberty | Politics | Racism | School | Society | Tyranny | Whites

This entry was posted on Friday, February 28th, 2014 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.