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I wish I could say that these political prosecutions won’t increase. But they likely will. Authoritarians on the left are becoming even more brazen in their efforts to use the criminal justice system against political opponents.
The objective is clear: They seek to cow the public into abiding by their political views. With the threat of government force, they want to compel people to either embrace their political philosophy, or at least shut up about it. Dissent will increasingly become less tolerated if these officials are allowed to continue weaponizing the government.
Lo and behold, after apparently considering the consequences of losing the lawsuit and setting a precedent, Biden administration officials granted a permit to allow the mass to take place on the cemetery grounds: //
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares summed up the case, perfectly:
I’m pleased that the Petersburg Knights of Columbus was granted access to observe Memorial Day and gather to pray and mourn the loss of fallen military personnel. The First Amendment very clearly allows religious and non-religious groups to hold these types of gatherings on government grounds. It’s shameful and un-American that they were denied in the first place.
"Devout Catholic" Joe Biden was unavailable for comment. //
GBenton
12 hours ago
This Judeo-Christian drive at the heart of Marxism is about one thing: Our rights come from God and they hate that. They have to destroy God so they can have total power. They want to be god. //
anon-4az6
14 hours ago
I would disagree that anyone can be a Christian "at some level." Either you are or you are not. There are no degrees of Christian. ... //
Milldad anon-4az6
11 hours ago
Agree with the gist of your statement about being a Christian “at some level.” I think another New Testament description of such people is “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” Tragic.
Central to the former Justice Antonin Scalia law clerk's arguments in January and Thursday is that when a man becomes president, he becomes a part of the constitutional machinery, no longer a regular citizen.
In this construct, the president is always the president, and the only way to laicize him is through a House impeachment and a Senate conviction for conduct that then becomes vulnerable to criminal prosecution. //
etba_ss Cappy Hamper
2 hours ago
It is actually worse. Roberts is the worst sort of justice, where in an attempt to preserve the "integrity" of the Court and avoid wading into political matters, his decisions are always guided by politics, not the law. In an effort to appear above politics, he is the most political creature on the Court.
Not political in the sense of advancing one party, but political in that every decision is filtered through the lens of how it will be viewed, the consequences, attacks, and preserving the Court's power. He sees himself as the hero of the SCOTUS, whose job it is to protect its power far more than to correctly interpret the Constitution and the law. This is why he upheld Obamacare under the "tax" provision, while ignoring that he had to disagree with his own opinion to take the case up. This is why he wanted to uphold the LA law in Dobbs, but not overturn Roe.
I think it would be preferable if they had pictures of him. Instead, he really just is this cowardly, feckless, weak and depraved. //
Random US Citizen etba_ss
2 hours ago
Roberts has turned the SC in to My Lai--he's destroying the court in order to "save" it. History isn't going to look kindly on that, either because constitutional order will fail and Roberts attacks on the rule of law will be seen as one cause of the collapse, or because constitutional order will prevail (an unlikely outcome) and he'll be seen as an obstacle that had to be overcome.
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. //
anon-of-yo-biz
2 hours ago
Is it really being argued that Bin laden was a "political" enemy? Was Hitler a "political" enemy? Can we never object against tyranny, hatred, and murder unless we have compatible political or religious views? It seems that the word bigot has grow to include all forms of just resistance. //
Cafeblue32 anon-of-yo-biz
an hour ago edited
This is intentional. The left is destroying language by making specific terms no longer their definition, or getting rid of them altogether. The purpose of language is clear and precise comminication so as to not be misunderstood and creat a bunch of unneccesary problems.The left's purpose is to deconstruct language to be less clear, so specific sexes become they/thems, Catperson, or whatever the hell. They remove gender indicators in gender-specific languages. They use persons instead of men and women, family units instead of marriage and family, how is everyone instead of "How are you guys doing?" The more generic they can make the language, the more they can re-invent it to mean whatever they want it to mean.
And here we are-men are women, Israel is genocidal, Palestine is a legitimate state, Putin is ready to roll into New York, illegal able bodies men wearing expensive jeans and sneakers are refugees, illegal squatters are residents, the American flag is racist and the LGBTGFY flag is to fly high above them all everywhere an American flag is flown around ther world. Working class conservatives are racists and fascists while Palestininas calling for the end of Jews and demand for sharia law are freedom fighters. Etc etc.
Rush said it long ago: words mean things. That's why they work so hard to destroy them.
Edward Snowden @Snowden
·
This is a textbook case of Congressional capture. With a single briefing, the intelligence agencies routinely transform their most strident critics into the tamest of cheerleaders. //
Scott Adams:
If I correctly understand our system of government, when a president or leader in the Congress gets into office, someone in the CIA pulls them aside for “the talk” and completely changes their priorities.
The public is then told the leaders now have secret knowledge the public can never know.
But the leader has no way of knowing the “secret” information is true and in context.
That puts the secret-keepers in firm control of the government’s big decisions. If the secret-keepers agree with a government policy, they stay out of it. If they disagree with a policy, they say the UFOs will attack — or some other unverifiable thing — and by the way, we have recordings of every phone call you ever made, and scare the leaders into compliance.
Right in front of us. None of this is secret. //
Justin Truedope
2 days ago edited
I will splinter the CIA into ab thousand pieces and scatter them to the winds. -- JFK
JFK had sworn to get rid of the CIA and the Deep State but unfortunately, they got rid of him first. Remember that Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that President Donald Trump was “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community over its fake Russia narrative. He's probably repeated that same sentiment to Mike Johnson, who rightly interpreted it as a credible threat.
“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer had told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. What Chucky really meant was that he knows that the Deep State controls everything, including the Fake News narrative, but unlike President Trump, he's far too cowardly to ever try to do anything about it. #Trump2024 #VOTE
Debt is never truly canceled, only transferred. And Biden’s latest election year stunt could transfer nearly $150 billion of student loan debt onto your backs, even though 87% of American adults don’t have student debt. We need your help to fight back.
A groundbreaking new study commissioned by Revolver News concludes that COVID-19 lockdowns are ten times more deadly than the actual COVID-19 virus in terms of years of life lost by American citizens. //
Revolver News set out to commission a study to do precisely that: to finally quantify the net damage of the lockdowns in terms of a metric known as “life-years.” Simply put, we have drawn upon existing economic studies on the health effects of unemployment to calculate an estimate of how many years of life will have been lost due to the lockdowns in the United States, and have weighed this against an estimate of how many years of life will have been saved by the lockdowns. The results are nothing short of staggering, and suggest that the lockdowns will end up costing Americans over 10 times as many years of life as they will save from the virus itself.
when we won, when we had an injunction in place actually for the Biden administration to keep this very important protection in place, they ignored it. We had to go back in front of a judge time and time again to get them to abide by the law. But what we have found out from this administration — and Secretary Mayorkas specifically — is that he is willing, he himself is willing, to subvert the law, to believe that he is above the law, to lie and to commit a felony that this chamber now has said doesn't rise to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor — forever. That is the precedent forever. //
And as the back and forth in that United States v. Texas and Missouri case, from Justice Kavanaugh to the solicitor general of the United States indicated, what is the remedy here? And the Department of Justice's own lawyer said, 'Well, they have the remedy of impeachment.' But I guess we don't actually have that anymore. //
The Senate lost an opportunity to hear evidence to hold someone accountable today. //
anon-fe9p
an hour ago edited
This should give the answer to everyone demanding Biden's impeachment... If they wouldn't even hold the trial for Mayorkas there is no way they will hold one for Biden so voting to impeach him just became entirely irrelevant.
At this point they just need to keep the investigation going and keep feeding the information they gain about his corruption into the news cycle all the way through November so he can't get away from it. The political blow with voters is the only thing of any relevance that can come out of an impeachment inquiry now. //
kamief
an hour ago
Okay, here is how I see this.
The dems, must have known that if an impeachment trail where to happen, some things even worse was going to come out than what the impeachment was about? Correct me if that is a wrong assumption.
Otherwise, way play this out this way when they know that they are setting a rule that could come back to bit them in ass. How important is Mayorkas?
What am I missing? //
Sklish
an hour ago
There will be no more impeachments, ever. Chuck U has seen to that. Unless they try and impeach him for treason. If they ask for volunteers to carry out the sentence, there won't be enough ammo in stock to meet the demand.
California lawmakers are moving to create a "genealogy office" that would help determine an individual's eligibility for reparations. //
"Apologies alone are inadequate reparations to victims," it continued. "But when combined with material forms of reparations, apologies provide an opportunity for communal reckoning with the past and repair for moral, physical, and dignitary harms."
Despite their seeming determination to make amends for historical wrongs, California has never been a slave state. In fact, California's admission to the Union back in 1850 was contingent upon its entry as a free state, which meant that slavery was prohibited within its borders.
The GOP-controlled House failed to add an amendment proposed by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., that would have altered Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to mandate that federal authorities obtain a warrant before surveilling American citizens. Johnson and 85 Republicans joined Democrats in killing Biggs’ proposal through a tied House vote. //
The House passed the bill 273-147 to re-authorize the government’s use of FISA for the next two years, with 126 Republicans and 147 Democrats voting in favor. The bill must clear the Senate before it hits President Joe Biden’s desk for signature. //
the White House’s Jake Sullivan and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland “call[ed] members on the Hill” this morning to pressure them into squashing Biggs’ amendment.
Jake Sherman @JakeSherman
·
VERY intense W.H. lobbying effort on the warrant issue.
- Jake Sullivan/Merrick Garland made calls
- NSC attorney Josh Geltzer and Deputy homeland security adviser Jen Daskal were right outside the floor with representatives from DOJ/CIA to talk to members
On Monday, Donald Trump announced that his stance on abortion is that the states should decide the intricacies of their abortion laws within their respective territories. I found this to be a very solid move for a few reasons, chief among them is that it is the constitutional view, and it makes the abortion fight for pro-abortion groups that much harder to win. //
As I wrote later, the Republican Party could actually use this avenue of handing power to the states to great effect. They could remove a lot of the deciding power about a lot of subjects from the federal government, craft laws for the government that close the doors on these subjects forever, and hand all the deciding power to the states. They could rightfully bill it as giving the power back to the people.
This would have an insane amount of benefits. Not only would the Republican Party become the party of the people, but it would also result in far less chaos around the nation as power becomes more localized. //
I know this is a very solid path to take and that this iron is hot to strike thanks to the people being made well aware of just how bad centralized power can be, compliments of the Biden administration. The Democrats are well aware of the danger of this as well, and they actually reached out to corporate media sources to swiftly have them correct headlines about Trump's stance.
The House of Representatives failed to pass legislation renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a controversial provision allowing federal agencies to spy on noncitizens without a warrant.
Amid a strong push to “KILL FISA” from former President Donald Trump, more than a dozen Republican lawmakers voted against the measure, which would have renewed Section 702 for another five years. //
If Congress fails to pass legislation renewing Section 702 by the April 19 deadline, it is poised to sunset. This could signal that the tool might no longer be available for federal agencies to use for surveillance purposes.
In Federalist 83, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the plan of the Constitution is that the powers granted to Congress
“shall extend to certain enumerated cases. This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd as well as useless if a general authority was intended.”
This sounds so good. But it appears that he lied to us.
Perhaps Hamilton meant what he wrote at that time. But, once he became Secretary of the Treasury under President Washington, he did everything in his power to violate his own maxim. His scheme for the Bank of the United States is just one example. Where, o’ where does the Constitution provide Congress with the power to create a bank, or for that matter, any business corporation? Naturally, my question is rhetorical. //
And yet Hamilton, once he tasted power, quickly turned to “loose constructionism.” Indeed, his story is that of nearly every person in history who has exercised significant power. Man turns towards evil, and evil men (and women) love power. Many of us are familiar with Lord Acton’s “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” dictum. However, I think Erick von Kuehnelt-Leddin said it best: “A good man will not be corrupted by power, and a bad man will be corrupted with no power at all.” (Leftism Revisited, 317)
Hamilton’s problem is ours today in spades. Nearly all of us having fallen for the trap of loose constructionism, especially those who exercise power over us. We daily practice it- in the way we read our laws and the way we read things like the Bible. In fact, the proliferation of laws and regulations demands that we become loose constructionists, for if we tried to abide by the 4,000 plus new regulations our federal government promulgates each year, we couldn’t even live life. In this manner, the entire culture has been corrupted.
There are many today who support such things as a Convention of the States to redress the train wreck we are about to witness.
But unless we have a revival of strict constructionism, especially regarding higher law in our Constitutions and Scripture, we will merely change cars on the same doomed train.
I hear a lot about a "uni-party," or the belief that the Republican and Democrat parties are one and the same. While it's not entirely true, it's not necessarily wrong either. While there are definitely Republicans who would be more suited with a "D" next to their name, the Republican Party does have a number of people in it who actually understood their assignment.
The reason the "uni-party" label works so well is because the Republican Party might have different goals but ultimately, they think the way to achieve them is to do what Democrats do to achieve their goals, and that's to grow the government. //
If Republicans truly wanted to distance themselves from Democrats, then the solution is actually simple. They need to remember what their core purpose is. It's not to make laws, it's to unmake laws. At some point, Republicans largely lost their appetite for shrinking government and chose instead to grow it for their own purposes. //
The goal is to get power out of the federal government's hands, and not just on this subject. Any decision-making power we can take from Washington, we should. The Republican party's goal is ultimately to decentralize the power in America, not make the federal government bend to its will, which has always been a temporary thing and a losing battle in the long run. //
If Republicans truly want to stop the Democrats from exerting and abusing as much power as they do, the solution is to take that power out of their hands and give it to the people. As our government is constantly in a tug-of-war between two parties, it doesn't make sense to grow the federal government's power, which will only serve to make the abuse of power worse as time goes on.
Republicans should endeavor to shrink the power of the federal government whenever they're in office and the only laws they should write are laws that close the doors on the federal government's power for good. [forever] //
Cafeblue32 Laocoön of Troy
a day ago
Coolidge is more famous for what he didn't say and do than what he did. He was known for saying little, and his response to the recession he faced was to leave it alone and let business right its own ship, which it did in a matter of months, and led to the Roaring 20s. //
Laocoön of Troy Cafeblue32
a day ago edited
The post-WWI Republican Congress rejected the Treaty of Versailles. They passed laws removing US troops from Europe. They dismantled Wilson's endless agencies, commissions, boards, bureaus, and other administrative offices. They ended food rationing, price controls, censorship, the Gestapo-like American Protective League, and released German and other ethnic prisoners Wilson imprisoned for the duration of the war.
In my opinion the post-WWI Republican Congress was far more important. //
anon-js5k
a day ago
Recently, when Larry Elder was asked, if Trump wanted Larry Elder to be a part of his Cabinet, which department would Larry want to be the secretary for. His answer was quick and to the point. He said he would like to head the Department of Education and that his goal as Secretary would be to eliminate the department and subsequently his job as head of that department. That is what a true conservative Republican would do.
When Biden recently passed an order to make it harder to layoff or fire a government employee, Elder's response shows how to circumvent what Biden did. If the Department of Education no longer exist, firing is no longer an issue. The DoE should have never existed in the first place. By extension the national teachers would lose their clout with the federal government, both of which have too much power over local districts, including budgets and policies.
Two new reports on the US governmental response to COVID in 2020-2021 call into question the public health efficacy of some measures and make a strong case that some of the measures marketed as ways to keep us safe were counterproductive, if not outright harmful. The Hoover Institute looks at the effect COVID policies had on public education, while the Committee to Unleash Prosperity report gives an overview of all policies.
The Hoover Institute study is synopsized in New Report Details Horrifying Cost of Fauci’s Failures. Its basic theme is that COVID policies in education have yet to be felt or appreciated and will ripple through the world economy for years.
“Based on the available research on lifetime earnings associated with more skills, the average student in school during the pandemic will lose 5 to 6 percent of lifetime earnings,” they found. “Because a lower-skilled workforce leads to lower economic growth, the nation will lose some $31 trillion (in present value terms) during the twenty-first century. This aggregate economic loss is higher than the US GDP for one year and dwarfs the total economic losses from either the slowdown of the economy during the pandemic or from the 2008 recession.” //
But Florida was one of the few states, and perhaps the only large one, to make reopening schools a priority, despite the objections of teachers unions and media outlets that attempted to label the governor as “DeathSantis.”
And it’s going to pay off, relatively speaking. A figure presented in the research shows that Florida’s economic state loss in GDP is nearly equal to Pennsylvania, despite a population that’s nearly 75% bigger than Pennsylvania. And California’s estimated losses, roughly $1.3 trillion, are more than 116% higher than Florida, much larger than the population difference. Similarly, New York’s economic losses far exceed Florida’s, despite a smaller population. //
Lesson #1: Leaders Should Calm Public Fears, Not Stoke Them //
In my view, this observation is only valid if you assume the leadership during COVID cared about mitigating the panic. Rather, it seems that Fauci, Birx, and others deliberately ratcheted up panic for reasons that one can only speculate about.
Lesson #2: Lockdowns Do Not Work to Substantially Reduce Deaths or Stop Viral Circulation //
Lesson #3: Lockdowns and Social Isolation Had Negative Consequences that Far Outweighed Benefits //
In my view, this section misses the point because it takes at face value claims that lockdowns were instituted for public health rather than societal control reasons. //
the real purpose was to socially isolate families and fragment communities.
Lesson #4: Government Should Not Pay People More Not to Work //
Lesson #5: Shutting Down Schools Was a Major Policy Mistake With Tragic Effects on Children, Especially the Poor //
Lesson #6: Masks Were of Little or No Value and Possibly Harmful //
Lesson #7: Government Should Not Suppress Dissent or Police the Boundaries of Science
...This underutilization was likely a significant contributor to non-COVID excess deaths in the United States. //
Lesson #9: Protect the Most Vulnerable //
Lesson #10: Warp Speed: Deregulate But Don’t Mandate //
Conclusion: Limit Government Emergency Powers and Earn Back Public Trust
One result of the government’s error-ridden COVID response was that the Americans have justifiably lost faith in public health institutions. Lockdowns, school closures, and mandates were catastrophic errors, pushed with remarkable fervor by public health authorities at all levels. We recommend that Congress and the states define by law “public health emergency” with strict limitations on powers conferred to the executives and time limits that require legislation to extend. Additionally, term limits should be established for all senior health agency positions. Grantmaking should be independent of policy-making and public communication, and NIH funding itself should be decentralized or block-granted to the states. Congress should require full transparency of all Food and Drug Administration (FDA), CDC, and NIH discussions with immediate posting to public forums. //
It should be definitively restated that CDC guidance is strictly advisory and the CDC does not have power to set laws or mandates. The U.S. should halt all binding agreements with the World Health Organization until satisfactory transparency and accountability is achieved. Unless and until key institutions openly acknowledge that lockdowns, school closures, and mask/vaccine mandates were catastrophic errors that will not be repeated in the future, the American people will – and should – withhold their trust.
watch this video below that details quite a few of the big lies that were told about Donald Trump by the media. No matter how you feel about Trump, the important thing to pay attention to is the readiness and willingness of corporate media to tell falsehoods about him.
The video is over five minutes long because there are a lot of examples of this happening.
https://twitter.com/Sassafrass_84/status/1774901013629059379
What you're seeing is an active attempt by our own government to lie to and manipulate us with the help of corporate media and big tech companies, all for the benefit of one political party. This is one of the most heinous attempts at subjugation in the history of this country and given the Biden administration's open attempts to establish organizations within the government that dedicate themselves to policing information, you can bet that it's only going to get worse.
The tendency toward political centralization that has characterized the western world for many centuries, first under monarchical rule and then under democratic auspices, must be reversed.
-- Hans Herman Hoppe //
The truth is any post-breakup map of America would not resemble an electoral map following state lines, nor even a redrawing of state boundaries, such that the fantastical greater Idaho or Free State of Jefferson might exist as part of a wider Confederation of Constitutional Republics, or a Breakaway Philadelphia city-State join a Union of Progressive Democracies…
No. It’d be nothing so comprehensible or easily mapped to modern politics.
A post breakup America would probably look closer to this:
If you’re a sane person and your immediate reaction is: WHAT THE HELL AM I LOOKING AT!?
….Well that’s kinda the point.
(I really do apologize for all I’m going to have to digress)
For our purposes we can broadly divide history into 2 types of period… Periods of Centralizing trends, and periods of Decentralizing trends.
Gavin
5d
Occasionally, one comes across something that just stops one in one’s track and messes up the day’s schedule. This long (I mean … long) article by Anarchonomicon fits the bill.
After the State: The Coming of Neo-Medievalism and the Great Decentralization
The article is too long to summarize, but the basic idea is that history has seen long periods of centralized political control, and much longer periods of de-centralized control. The author predicts that the inevitable collapse of modern states will lead to “Neo-Medievalism” in which small political units will proliferate.
".… What you may have noticed is there’s really just two great centralizing eras in the history of western civilization… the 300-350 years from the start of Alexander’s conquests til the final centralization of the Roman empire under the Caesars… And the 250-300 year history of modern empire: From approximately 1700-1945. …
… The total number of autonomous Greek city states, which prevailed from the Bronze age collapse to the first conquests of Alexander, and only truly ended with the final roman conquest of all of Greece, numbered over 1000. …
… In the past 3200 years we’ve had only 600-800 years of truly centralizing eras where power concentrated, or merely continued without disintegration, when power didn’t dilute… But 2400-2600 years of Decentralizing eras where polities where shrinking and the ability to exert power across distance was eternally shrinking. …
… The Roman empire ended when all of its tech advantages were adopted by the Germanic tribes its was fighting… because those Germanic tribes had been trained in them while employed as roman mercenaries. Likewise the age of imperialism ended shortly after WW2 ended, because at that point every colony had a generation of young men who’d just been trained in western fighting styles. A process that began with the Irish declaring independence after WW1 and reached a fever pitch after WW2 when even the colonial white settler states set up by the British (who you’d think would be the apex of dependence, what with minority rule) declared independence. …
… Federal Authority, legitimacy, and even Seeing Like a State style legibility and intelligibility to the central government is collapsing in real time before our eyes… and far from panicking and trying to rescue their control over the body of the American Nation… the US Federal Government is accelerating the collapse of their own power through petty bureaucratic interests and short term political considerations. …"
Optimistically, the author concludes:
“… whatever successor institutions, aristocracies, and duchies devour the modern welfare states in a orgy of map redrawing and private fortune making will probably find that there is a great deal of economic and technological low hanging fruit just lying about. …”
It really is worth reading the whole thing.
European farmers are reshaping the political landscape across the Atlantic just months before the EU’s parliamentary elections.
recently I stumbled across the fact that, indeed, there is still such a thing as government cheese. In fact, there's a whopping huge amount of it, hidden away in caves in Missouri, and what's more, according to this March 2023 article in the Science Times, the story behind government cheese is a brilliant example of how screwed up things get when the government fiddles with markets.
Missouri cheese caves are deep within the Ozark Mountains' heart under Springfield. Made of converted limestone mines, the caves are perfectly kept at 36 degrees Fahrenheit to give an ideal environment for storing stockpiles of government-owned cheese.
It all started in the 1970s when the U.S. suffered from a national dairy shortage which was made worse by 30% inflation on dairy products. In response to the economic crisis, then-President Jimmy Carter decided to spend money on the dairy industry to encourage dairy production.
The government set A [sic] new policy where a two-billion-dollar budget was allotted to subsidize dairy products over the next four years. This plan was favorable to farmers but also led them to overproduce dairy products. The farmers became motivated to produce as much dairy as they could because they knew that whatever was not sold on the market would be bought by the government. //
Most dairy products were converted to cheese because they have a longer shelf life. By the early 1980s, the government-owned more than 500 million pounds of cheese. Because of this, the next U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, had to pass a law in 1981 enacting the public distribution of government-owned cheese. //
In the years that followed, the demand for cheese declined, but the production rate remained the same as the government continued to support dairy producers. As of 2019, the collection comprises almost 1.4 billion pounds of surplus cheese in the U.S.
So, the federal government, with your tax dollars, has produced 1.4 billion pounds of cheese and has it stored in caves in Missouri. //
All the cheese is still there, presumably awaiting another Ronald Reagan, who will crack open the cheese vaults and give back to the American people the cheese that they have, after all, already paid for. The problem is, that dumping a billion-and-a-half pounds of cheese on the market will have a brutal effect on cheese prices and American dairy farmers. It's difficult to see a good way out of this mess now. Once again the federal government has tossed a bunch of taxpayer money after a problem that would have resolved itself if just left alone. Forty years later, we are still paying for it. //
I'll keep saying it until I turn blue: Markets aren't perfect, but they generally get things right if they are left alone. The problem is that the government just can't leave them alone. And this is what happens.
Anya Bidwell, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, the organization representing Gonzalez claims the city arrested the former councilmember as retaliation for her constant criticism of the mayor and other officials.
“In America, we don’t arrest our critics," she said.
The arrest led to Gonzalez’s lawsuit against the city, which invoked qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that protects government officials from civil liability unless it is established that they violated a Constitutional right.
The Supreme Court’s eventual ruling on this case could reach far beyond Castle Hills. It could redefine the landscape of free speech and government accountability. Depending on how the court decides, it could become harder for government officials to use their positions to punish those who criticize them.