Impeaching Holder

Holder Contempt - I've got a noose with the boy's name on it. It's a shame I'll never get to use it.Rep. Pete Olson (R-TXs) and 10 other House Republicans have drafted four articles of impeachment against Holder. They plan on introducing these articles of impeachment as early as today, though the House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) won’t commit to moving forward with any of the resolutions of impeachment.

Yet Rep. Goodlatte has little or argument with the content of these resolutions. He’s just unlikely to act upon them.

Under Attorney General Holder’s watch, there has been a lack of leadership and a politicization of the Justice Department. Scandals from the Fast and Furious gunwalking operation to the seizure of reporters’ emails and phone records in national security leaks investigations have undermined the Department’s credibility and the American people’s trust. Attorney General Holder has also politicized the rule of law by refusing to enforce laws he doesn’t like.”

The only way to restore credibility at the Department of Justice is through an improvement in the quality of leadership. President Obama should make a change in the leadership of the Department of Justice to restore the confidence of the American people in our nation’s top law enforcement agency.

This combined with the expected utter lack of support from Speaker John Boehner (“R”-OH) means that the efforts to impeach and remove Attorney General Eric Holder from office are most likely doomed from the start and that Holder will remain protected from the consequences of his myriad high crimes and misdemeanors.

A Moral And Philosophical Divide

Perhaps prophetically, the House is divided morally and philosophically on the matter of Impeaching Holder or Obama.  The House Republicans fall into two camps: those who adhere to the philosophy of Deontology and those who follow the dictates of Consequentialism. With the Senate, still being firmly in the hands of the Democrats, very unlikely to convict Holder no matter what he has done there is no point beyond doing the right thing for its own sake for the House to indict him.

Obviously, the deontologists want to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do and the fact that nothing will come of it doesn’t really come into the picture insofar as they’re concerned.

Conversely but equally obviously, the consequentialists want to do the right thing but only if doing so will produce a beneficial and ethical result, which any attempt to impeach Holder won’t do since, even of the House indicts, the Senate won’t convict.

With such a fundamental philosophical and ethical divide, the House is unlikely to take any action against Holder.

The Politics of Hate and Othering

Of course, one must not make the mistake of attributing too much devotion to people, especially professional politicians. Most people don’t have a strong tendency towards letting their ethics and morality cause them to put themselves at risk. This is even more true of professional politicians since they want to keep their jobs.

This tendency towards amorality in favor of survival is exacerbated by Obama’s success, with the aid of the ever-complicit Lamestream Media, in the politics of division, hate, and othering. He’s has both successfully redefined bipartisanship and labelled any GOP dissent from his agenda as obstructionist, classist, and racist. That inherently has a chilling effect on many Republican politicians – as Obama and his handlers meant it to.

This has, from what little we’re allowed to know about him, has always been Obama’s preferred modus operandi. He divides people, gets his side to think of the opposition as the Other, and gets them to vote against them rather than to vote for him.

~*~

So, for both philosophical and materialist reasons, I sincerely doubt that the impeachment of Eric Holder will move forward at all. Most likely it won’t even be heard or debated by the House Judiciary Committee Chairman.

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Mitigating Gun Violence

In the wake of the tragic Newton School Massacre the gun grabbers are in the forefront of America’s news media again. This always happens whenever there’s a shooting that viscerally impacts the Middle Class’ sensibilities. Immediately after any such a tragedy various Liberal and Progressive elements start calling for sundry forms of bans upon weapons and ammunition in an attempt at supposedly mitigating gun violence in America.

Americans, of course, are at least equally invested in mitigating gun violence in America. Their chosen means of doing so just radically differ from those of the Liberal and Progressives. Both schools of thought, however, are horribly flawed insofar as probable long-term effectiveness are concerned.

Utilitarian JusticePerhaps a truly utilitarian approach is needed in these circumstances, one that actually addresses gun violence in America.

The rare but well-publicized spree killings aside, you cannot truly address gun violence in America without addressing the “Black Community.” Hence, that is where any real, pragmatic efforts need to be focused and enacted. Any other measures are absolutely assured of failure.

It’s a simple fact that Blacks make up only 12 – 13% of the US population but account for 56.4%% of the murderers who used firearms to kill in the country and 50.9% of the victims of murderers who used firearms.

Offenders
White Black Other
All Homicides 45.8% 52.2% 2.0%
Gun Homicides 41.9% 56.4% 1.7%

The above statistics are an aggregate of homicides between 1976-2005 and quite clearly show where the problem is and what demographic is consistently and disproportionately to their numbers causing it. They also clearly show that, if one wants to dramatically reduce homicides in general and firearm-related homicides in specific, then we have to address the problem of the “Black Community” instead of firearms.

If we took the utilitarian approach and exterminated, enslaved, sequestered, or exiled the Blacks, we’d immediately reduce homicides, especially firearm-related ones, by over 50%. Other crime statistics, unemployment numbers, and poverty rates would drop in similar manner.

If the wholesale remove of the Blacks from America is too extreme, given that many Blacks pose no threat to themselves or others, we could just exterminate, enslave, sequester, or exile the “scary looking” Blacks. This, while having a lesser salutary effect upon homicide statistics, would likely address the worst parts of the situation and eliminate the worst of the homicides.

An even less extreme methodology would be to simply sterilize, i.e., geld, all the Black males in America. While this wouldn’t address the problem in our times it would ensure that our children and our children’s children would not have to contend with the homicide statistics that our generation has to deal with.

NOTE: I’m not being sexist. It is simply that, as veterinary medicine has proven, neutering males is far cheaper and safer than spaying females.

Any of the above measures would curtail American homicides, especially firearm-related homicides, far more effectively and surely than any other measures that could be considered. That’s the primary advantage of the utilitarian approach; it’s results oriented and solely focused on providing the greatest good to greatest number of people.

Nor can there be any valid Constitutional argument against the extermination, enslavement, sequestration, or exile of the Blacks, in whole or in part. Our Founding Fathers and our later forbears never envisioned what the state of America would be with free Black population of any size living within her borders. The Constitution was designed as a “living document” to be amended and revised to reflect the changing circumstances of the country.

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Subjective Law

Elena Kagan - Obama's Solicitor General and Nominee to the US Supreme CourtPresident Obama’s chosen nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Elena Kagan has some “interesting” – read as willfully ignorant but not unexpected – views on the SCOTUS’ role in judging the constitutionality and therefor legality of laws, especially when it comes to Americans’ rights to freedom of speech and expression.

Obama’s Mini-me being his nominee makes more and more sense and it seems she bodes as ill for our nation as Obama so far has.

From CNS News:

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan said the high court should be focused on ferreting out improper governmental motives when deciding First Amendment cases, arguing that the government’s reasons for restricting free speech were what mattered most and not necessarily the effect of those restrictions on speech.

Kagan, the solicitor general of the United States under President Obama, expressed that idea in her 1996 article in the University of Chicago Law Review entitled, “Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine.”

In her article, Kagan said that examination of the motives of government is the proper approach for the Supreme Court when looking at whether a law violates the First Amendment. While not denying that other concerns, such as the impact of a law, can be taken into account, Kagan argued that governmental motive is “the most important” factor.

Yes, that’s right; Kagan believes that, while the deleterious effects of laws restricting American’s 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression can be taken into account by the Supreme Court, the government’s motives and intent should be the most important factor in their ruling. Ergo, Kagan believes that the government can limit we, the People’s constitutional rights if it’s in a good cause.

Kagan is, like Obama himself, Harvard educated so their shared belief that the ends justify the means is not in the least shocking, given their shared backgrounds.

It was a graduate and later professor at Harvard, Michael Wigglesworth who is attributed with first adding this sentiment to the body of American writings.

The End must justify the Means: He only Sins who Ill intends.

— Rev. Michael Wigglesworth
The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth

From the university’s founding consequentialism and subjectivism have been entrenched in Harvard’s curriculum and all or most of its graduates have been indoctrinated into these philosophies.

Yes, it makes perfect sense that a President such as Obama, who wants to “fundamentally change” America and has some serious issues with dissent would nominate Kagan, who believes that it’s OK to limit freedom of speech in a cause she or the Court approves of, to the SCOTUS.  However, this “the ends justify the means when the ends are just” mentality of Kagan’s is nothing but the misborn bastard hybrid of ignoratio elenchi and argumentum ad misericordiam, neither of which has any place in logical argument much less the highest court in America.

It does not matter whether it can be proven that the government had “the best of intentions” when enacting laws that impinge upon Americans’ unalienable rights, nor is their “noble” motives a cause to change or lessen the verdict against them. All that matters is whether or not the law or action in question violates the Constitution of the United States of America.

Elena Kagan has never had the chance to directly inflict the evils and stupidity of her views of the law upon Americans because she has never been a judge. It would be best for America if her lack of experience as a judge continued for the rest of her life.

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