Category Archives: Issues

Clinton’s Folly, Twenty Years On

Tuesday, October 21st, marked the twentieth anniversary of the nuclear reactor agreement that the Clinton administration signed with North Korea, in which the Clinton negotiators, acting on behalf of a new, young, and inexperience President, recklessly and foolhardily agreed to the North Korean demands.

First and foremost, North Korea demanded that, in exchange for stopping work on their domestic development of nuclear power plants (which the west knew could produce weapons-grade fissile material), the United States and the international community would supply them with two light-water reactors (which could not), each of 1-gigawatt capacity.  But also, in addition to the reactors, the Norks demanded that, while the two new reactors were under construction, the US was to supply them with one-half million tons of heavy fuel oil each year until construction was completed.  These shipments, along with the reactor construction efforts, continued until, in 2002, it became manifestly apparent that the North Koreans were cheating in multiple ways, and the deal feel apart.

In an article yesterday from Commentary Magazine, HERE, author Michael Rubin writes in detail about the deal the Clinton minions struck (known as the Agreed Framework, as it was not a formal treaty), and their motives in striking it.  And what did South Korea, our allies, think of the deal?  An excerpt:

On October 7, 1994, President Kim Young Sam of South Korea blasted Clinton’s deal with the North, saying, “If the United States wants to settle with a half-baked compromise and the media wants to describe it as a good agreement, they can.  But I think it would bring more danger and peril.”  There was nothing wrong with trying to resolve the problem through dialogue, he acknowledged, but the South Koreans knew very well how the North operated.  “We have spoken with North Korea more than 400 times.  It didn’t get us anywhere.  They are not sincere,” Kim said, urging the United States not to “be led on by the manipulations of North Korea.”  While Kim Young Sam was right to doubt Pyongyang’s sincerity, his outburst drew Clinton’s ire.  The administration did not want any complications to derail a deal, and Clinton was willing to ignore evidence that might undercut the initiative.  Two weeks later, Gallucci and Kang signed the Agreed Framework.

Does any of this sound familiar?  Can you say “eye-ran”?

For more on the Agreed Framework, THIS link is to the WikiPedia page.

The “China Creep” Continues Apace in the South China Sea

A new report from the defense analysts at Strategy Page details the process by which China continues their encroachment on areas of the South China Sea (SCS).  An excerpt:

For over three decades China has been carrying out a long-term strategy that involves first leaving buoys (for navigation purposes, to assist Chinese fishermen) in the disputed water, followed by temporary shelters (again, for the Chinese fishermen) on islets or reefs that are above water but otherwise uninhabited.  If none of the other claimants to this piece of ocean remove the buoys or shelters, China builds a more permanent structure “to aid passing Chinese fishermen”.  This shelter will be staffed by military personnel who will, of course, have radio, radar, and a few weapons.  If no one attacks this mini-base China will expand it and warn anyone in the area that the base is Chinese territory and any attempts to remove it will be seen as an act of war.  The Vietnamese tried to get physical against these Chinese bases in 1974 and 1988 and were defeated both times in brief but brutal air and sea battles.  The Chinese will fight, especially if they are certain of victory.  All of this could end badly, with a major war no one wants.  That’s how these things develop.

The full article is HERE.

SCOTUS To Review “Disparate Impact” Travesty of Griggs versus Duke Power

The US Supreme Court doctrine of “disparate impact” first arose in the 1971 Griggs versus Duke Power Company case, in which SCOTUS ruled that Duke Power Company could not require a high school diploma and a minimum IQ from their successful job applicants.  The history of the doctrine and the case from which it sprang is explained very well in THIS somewhat technical article by Amy Wax, which appeared in the pages of the National Affairs quarter back in 2012.  Here is an excerpt from that article:

At issue in Griggs was the requirement that employees hired into service jobs at the power company’s facilities had to possess a high-school diploma and achieve a minimum score on an IQ test.  The plaintiffs argued that these rules disqualified too many black job applicants, thereby violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

The Supreme Court agreed, ruling that job criteria with an adverse or exclusionary effect on minorities — even if those criteria were “neutral on their face, and even neutral in terms of intent” — could violate the Title VII ban on race discrimination in hiring.  The Court further stipulated that employers could escape liability for “disparate impact” only if they demonstrated that their adverse selection practices had “a manifest relationship to the employment in question” or that they were justified by “business necessity.”  In examining the criteria for positions at the Duke Power Company, the Court found insufficient evidence to satisfy the job-relatedness defense, and so ruled against the utility.

According to the Griggs Court, the purpose of the newly established disparate-impact rule was to “achieve equality of employment opportunities” by removing “built-in headwinds” and “barriers that had operated in the past” to impede minorities’ workplace advancement.  In Griggs and several subsequent cases, the Court has repeatedly stressed that the doctrine’s goal is fully consistent with a competitive meritocracy — one in which businesses remain free to seek out, hire, and promote the best and most productive workers regardless of race and to adopt personnel practices that best achieve that result.  The purpose of the rule, according to the Court, is not to enact affirmative-action or group quotas for employment, but simply to eliminate arbitrary disadvantages suffered by minority job-seekers.

Despite this assertion, the development of the Griggs doctrine has proved anything but friendly to meritocratic objectives.  Although the Supreme Court has never held that all workplaces must be racially balanced, lower courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is charged with administering Title VII, have firmly embraced the presumption that the racial profiles of particular workplaces should reflect the racial composition of the broader population.

The Griggs case was decided by Justices Harry Blackmun, Thurgood Marshall, Byron White, Potter Stewart, John Harlan, William O. Douglas, Hugh Black, and Chief Justice Warren Burger, who wrote the opinion for the 8/0 unanimous majority.  Justice William Brennan took no part in the deliberations or in the decision.

Now there is a new case in which disparate impact is the linchpin, and the Supreme Court has agreed to take the case on appeal.  The designation is Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs versus The Inclusive Communities Project, Incorporated, and  Nicole Flatow of ThinkProgress has written a brief article about it.  According to Flatow, the case:

… concerns the placement of subsidized low-income housing in Dallas.  A community group that connects individuals with this housing under the federal Section 8 program for housing subsidies argued in a lawsuit that the state was approving developer tax credits for such housing only in low-income and minority-heavy neighborhoods, while denying Low-Income Housing Tax Credit applications in majority-white and majority-Hispanic neighborhoods.

This is an important case, as any ruling that effectively rescinds the disparate impact doctrine will have far reaching effects throughout the American economy.  And it is generally assumed that because SCOTUS has granted cert (agreed to take the case), there must be at least four justices who are in a frame of mind to overturn or rein in the “disparate impact” doctrine.  I certainly hope that view does not turn out to be wistful thinking.

The full article is available on the ThinkProgress website, HERE.

Midwives to the birth of the “Nuclear Navy”

At the Atlantic Magazine, their technical editor Robinson Meyer has up a fascinating account of the initial development of the submarine USS Nautilus, the first nuclear powered American Navy vessel.  Meyer’s account is drawn from a 1959 article, also published in the Atlantic, that was written by Commander E. E. Kintner, a subordinate to Hyman Rickover, the man now known as the “Father of the Nuclear Navy”.

I urge everyone to read the full account for themselves, HERE, but this excerpt will give some idea of what to expect:

At the 60th hour, however, difficulties began.  Carbon dust from the brushes depositing in the windings caused difficulty in the vital electrical generating sets.  Nuclear instrumentation, operating perfectly at the beginning of the run, became erratic, and the crews could not be sure what was happening within the reactor core.  One of the large pumps which kept the reactor cool by circulating water through it began making a worrisome, intermittent whining sound.  We had not had any check on “crud” build-up; we feared that heat transfer would be so reduced by this point that the core would burn up.  The most pressing problem, however, was caused by the failure at the sixty-fifth hour of a tube in the main condenser into which exhausted turbine steam was being discharged.  Steam pressure fell off rapidly.  The Westinghouse manager responsible for the operation of the plant strongly recommended discontinuing the run.  In Washington, the technical directors of the Naval Reactors Branch was so concerned that he called a meeting of all its senior personnel, who urged Rickover to terminate the test at once.  But the Captain was adamant that it should continue …

In this year, the sixtieth since the USS Nautilus, the United States Navy has an inventory of eighty nuclear powered vessels.  The crews of those ships owe a lot to Admiral Hyman G. Rickover’s dogged insistence that, unlike those to be built by the Soviets in ensuing years, American ship-borne nuclear powerplants be designed to be as near to indestructible as was humanly possible.

Trigger Happy Much?

Earlier this fall, on September 4th, South Carolina Highway Patrol officer CopsAbusePowerSean Groubert was parked behind a fuel station when he was passed by a pick-up being driven by a man who was, apparently, not wearing a seat belt.  Officer Groubert started his patrol cruiser up, and with his dash cam continuing to record video, followed the man into the fueling station.  Click the video below to see what happened next:

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Three weeks later, Officer Groubert was charged with “high and aggravated assault and battery”.  If you viewed the video, as I did, you may be forgiven for thinking that attempted murder would have been more appropriate.

Full article, from the online Reason Magazine, is HERE.

SCOTUS to decide how long is Too Long

Suppose a police or highway patrol officer notices that one of your tail-lights is out, and pulls you over. After warning you to get the light fixed (or maybe giving you a ticket), he begins to have a gut feeling that you have illicit drugs somewhere in your car. He asks if you are willing to CopsAbusePowerconsent to a search but you, being a sensible person, refuse. Your refusal makes him even more convinced that you have something to hide, and based on probability, he figures it has to be drugs.

At this point, the cop does not have anything that would constitute probable cause, but he is loathe to just let you go, so he orders you to sit tight while he calls in a drug-sniffing dog and his K9 handler.  You protest, and say to the officer that you have a pressing engagement soon, and ask how long you will have to wait.  The cop tells you that you must wait until the dog and his handler arrive, however long that may take.

So, what are the limits in this situation?  Does the cop have the right to blow your whole day if the handler and his dog are delayed?  Without arresting you for something, can he just detain you for an extra minute, an extra hour, two hours, three, what?

We may soon have a definitive answer.  Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take on appeal the Rodriguez versus United States case, a lawsuit which bears directly on the issue of traffic stops and their duration.  Here is an excerpt from the cert petition, the document in which SCOTUS outlines their justification for taking a case on appeal from a lower court:

This Court has held that, during an otherwise lawful traffic stop, asking a driver to exit a vehicle, conducting a drug sniff with a trained canine, or asking a few off-topic questions are “de minimis” intrusions on personal liberty that do not require reasonable suspicion of criminal activity in order to comport with the Fourth Amendment.  This case poses the question of whether the same rule applies after the conclusion of the traffic stop, so that an officer may extend the already-completed stop for a canine sniff without reasonable suspicion or other lawful justification.

What, exactly, is a “de minimus” intrusion, expressed in terms of time?  The lower court, from which the case was appealed, defined it as from seven to eight minutes.  In a similar case from Nevada (State versus Beckman), a lower court had said that nine minutes was too long.

Orin Kerr, a distinguished George Washington University law professor and one of the principle law bloggers at the Volokh Conspiracy, put up a post on this case back in February, as well as a second on October 2nd, HERE.  An excerpt from the first post:

Although the Supreme Court has held that the use of the dog is not a search, the length of a warrantless stop must be reasonable.  The officer can’t delay the driver forever.  This raises a question of Fourth Amendment law that has led to a lot of lower court litigation: If the officer has no reasonable suspicion that drugs are in the car — that is, he only has a hunch — how long can the traffic stop be delayed before the dog arrives and checks out the car?

My take is that ten minutes should be an absolute limit, less if the suspect has articulated an urgent need to be on his way.  By the end of next year, the Supremes will have defined a limit, or dodged the issue.  I’ll be interested to see which way they go.

In South China Sea News, U.S. to Re-Arm Vietnam

Yahoo News reported on Thursday of last week that the Obama administration, amid growing concerns about the Chinese antics in the South China Sea, has decided to ease the ban on selling military arms and equipment to Vietnam.  From the article:

“It’s useful in trying to deal with the territorial disputes in the South China Sea to bolster the capacity of our friends in the region to maintain a maritime presence in some capacity.”

Some 40 percent of the world’s seaborne trade passes through the sea which is claimed in part by Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, and Malaysia as well as China and the Philippines.

The full article is HERE.

American Sniper: Now On Track To Be A Movie

In early February I put up a short post, HERE, observing the first anniversary of the death of retired Navy Seal sniper Chris Kyle, the man who deployed four times to Iraq, and while on the battlefield there, was credited with a kill shot at an incredible range of 2100 yards.

Now comes word that his book, American Sniper, is to be made into a movie starring Bradley Cooper and directed by Steven Spielberg.  Details are HERE, and by the way, the book is now a part of the CCTPP lending library and available to prospective readers.

Is North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un out?

The British newspaper Daily Mail is reporting that 31-yo North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has not been seen in public for almost a month, and offers this as well as other reasons to think he may have been ousted as the secretive nation’s head of state.

The speculation seems to be that there is a power struggle between the recent leadership and a dissenting faction that wants to emulate China and move the country toward capitalism.  From the article:

A former North Korean counter-intelligence officer has claimed that Kim Jong-Un is no longer in control of the nation and is now just a ‘puppet leader’.

Jang Jin-sung, who used to be an influential officer in Kim Jong-il’s propaganda division, made the sensational assertion at a September conference in Holland attended by several elite exiles, it’s been reported.

The capital, Pyongyang, meanwhile, has been placed into lockdown with even the elite banned from entering or leaving, according to a respected news site.  This adds weight to Jin-sung’s claim, as a North Korean expert said that this kind of measure is only put in place when a coup has taken place – or is suspected.

The full article is HERE.  Now the question is, will President Obama rush Dennis Rodman over immediately to get the scoop, or will he wait for the New York Times account?

Oklahoma’s 1st Success Against the ObamaCare Subsidies

According to a piece put up yesterday afternoon by Craig Bannister at CNS-News, Oklahoma was the first state to file a lawsuit in Federal court challenging the Obama administration’s arbitrary decision to subsidize, via the HealthCare.gov Federal exchange portal, health care insurance even in those states that did not choose to establish a state-level exchange.  Their suit was filed in 2012, and the first decision has now come down from the District Court level in eastern Oklahoma.

A key passage from Judge Ronald White’s DECISION in the case (known as Oklahoma versus Burwell) is as follows:

The court holds that the IRS rule is arbitrary, capricious, and abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.706(2)(A), in excess of summary jurisdiction, authority or limitation, or short of statutory right, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 706(2)(C), or otherwise is an invalidation of the ACA [Affordable Care Act], and is hereby vacated.  The court’s order of vacatur is stayed, however, pending resolution of any appeal from this order.

The Obama administration will undoubtedly appeal, so the next step will be a consideration by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals (see map, below).  Since at least two conflicting decisions have already come down in other Circuit Courts, however, the case will almost certainly be folded into an appeal to the Supreme Court, probably in 2015.

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According to the article, HERE, this loss for the Obama administration is only the latest of the 71 court losses they have experienced (out of the 78 decisions handed down so far), and altogether, over one hundred lawsuits have been filed.

For further information on certain other cases filed against ObamaCare, the Beckett Fund is a useful resource.

Border Patrol Agent Ron Zermeno Does The Right Thing

… and blows the whistle on the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) decision in mid-summer to re-locate hundreds of Dreamers and other illegal immigrants from the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas to a town near you.

Ryan Lovelace of the online National Review has up an informative article detailing the DHS scheme, and the many warnings that Border Patrol (BP) agent Zermeno sent up the BP and DHS chains of command in an effort to dissuade them from surreptitiously dropping these illegals off at facilities that were often, if not usually, ill equipped to handle them.  Some revealing excerpts, focused mainly on Zermeno’s experience with DHS’s confrontation with officials and demonstrators in the southern California town of Murrieta:

on May 7, he received word from a senior agent of the federal government’s plan to send 140 illegal immigrants every 72 hours to the Murrieta Border Patrol Station, despite its inability to accommodate their arrival.  His disclosure says he was concerned for the safety of the agents because of reports that the detainees would be carrying infectious diseases, scabies, and lice.  The facility could not safely house the incoming women and children, he writes.

<snip>

Zermeno says in his disclosure that the order to relocate Central American immigrants to Murrieta was suspended and reinstated twice.  On June 27, it was reinstated for the second time, he writes, with the first group of 140 illegal immigrants set to arrive on July 1.  Murrieta mayor Alan Long says he was notified that the order would be reactivated on the afternoon of Friday, June 27.  Long tells NRO that he resisted the order in its first two iterations and expected he could continue to do so successfully.  The Murrieta facility was not equipped to house or process the immigrants: “There were no beds, there was no cafeteria, there was no place to make food,” Long says.  “It was a room with steel benches, a toilet and a sink next to it — all open.  Modest rooms could probably fit maybe 30 people each cell.”  As a result, county supervisor Jeff Stone offered the use of a fully staffed mobile hospital; Stone tells NRO that the hospital would have conducted health screenings, treated children for communicable diseases, and immunized them.  But federal officials rebuffed his offer, saying it would take too long to approve the facility and would also raise legal concerns about vaccinating foreign children.

Approximately 420 immigrants arrived during the first two weeks of July.  Nearly a third were diagnosed with scabies, many more were carrying infectious diseases, others had unknown illnesses, and at least one child — who was observed coughing up blood — was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

The full article is HERE.

A Poke In The Eye for all the Gun-Control Chicken Littles

Paul Valone’s gun rights group Grass Roots North Carolina (GRNC) issued an alert yesterday pointing out the fact that the 2013 NC General Assembly’s House Bill 937 was implemented just one year ago today.  From the text of the alert:

House Bill 937, which became effective on October 1, 2013, dramatically expanded North Carolina’s concealed handgun law into restaurants where alcohol is sold and consumed, assemblies of people for which admission is charged, parades and funerals, further into state and municipal parks, and even to a limited extent into educational properties.

As always when we expand concealed handgun laws, opponents and media naysayers predicted shootings in bars, guns stolen from vehicles at schools, and various other sorts of mayhem using platitudes like “guns and alcohol don’t mix.”

GRNC explained endlessly that concealed handgun permit-holders, by virtue of background checks and training, had proven themselves sane, sober and law-abiding since 1995, with a rate of permit revocation on the order of three tenths of a single percent.  We explained that permit-holders in restaurants would still be prohibited from imbibing alcohol.

But the dire predictions persisted.  Editorials ridiculed legislators.  UNC president Tom Ross sent UNC police chiefs to testify against the bill, claiming it would hamper their ability to protect students.  Gun control activists pushed restaurants to post against concealed carry.

It has now been one year since HB 937 became effective.  So what has happened?  Nothing.  GRNC monitors clipping services for gun-related incidents.  Just like Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee and other states which adopted restaurant carry, however, we have been unable to find a single instance of a concealed handgun permit-holder misusing a gun in a restaurant or educational property.

So, congrats, all you CCL and Open Carry practitioners, for keeping your cool.

The 4th Circuit Turns the NC Voter ID Law on its Head

UPDATE

As expected, SCOTUS over-ruled the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday (October 8th) and ordered that all provisions of the NC Voter ID Law would remain in effect for the November elections.  The unsigned ruling was based on a 7-2 vote, with Justices Ginsberg and Sotomayor dissenting.  The full story from WRAL is HERE.

ORIGINAL POST

According to an announcement by the NC Board Of Elections from earlier today:

The Fourth Circuit today reinstated same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting ahead of the General Election in November.  A divided panel ordered the lower court to enjoin enforcement of new election procedures that eliminated same-day registration and required that a voter cast her ballot in her properly assigned precinct.

NC Attorney General Roy Cooper is expected to appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court as soon as possible, probably this week, with the objective of getting SCOTUS to stay the 4th Circuit’s wacky decision.  There is good reason to believe that the Supreme Court would grant such a stay, and the details are HERE.

The 4th Circuit acted on a petition from multiple parties who oppose the NC Voter ID Law, lead by the NC League of Women Voters.

For Gun Sellers, Square Is Out

Everyone is familiar with the Square debit and credit card reader (pictured at right) sold for use with smartphones, are they not?  Well, due SquareCreditCardReaderto a change just over one year ago in their Terms Of Service agreement, Square has now joined PayPal in prohibiting the use of their service for transacting payments for firearms or ammunition.  This, of course, has put a crimp in the business model for many smaller gun dealers and sellers, particularly those that sometimes transact business off-site, such as at gun shows.

Jennifer Kerns has up an article at the Daily Signal blog with the details. An excerpt:

Last summer, around the same time the U.S. Department of Justice’s Operation Choke Point began pressuring banks to drop customers who buy or sell firearms, tobacco and other goods considered “not acceptable” by the Obama administration, Square quietly changed its terms of agreement.

The new terms stipulate that users of the Square card reader:

… will not accept payments in connection with the following businesses or business activities: …sales of (i) firearms, firearm parts or hardware, and ammunition; or (ii) weapons and other devices designed to cause physical injury.

Kern goes on to note that:

Today, the Square’s terms prohibit gun-shop owners from using the credit-card processor not only when they are conducting gun sales at their brick-and-mortar stores but even more so when they are offsite, representing their stores at gun shows where they often need the wireless Square Reader to ring up sales on smartphones or tablets.  Gun shows have been a target of anti-gun activists for nearly 20 years.

The full article is HERE.  And for those interested in alternative payment methods, check into the NRA Business Alliance, PistolPay, and PhoneSwipe services.

Jay DeLancy thinks the Georgia Peach has an ACORN core.

Earlier today, Courtney Coren of NewsMax posted an article about voter fraud in Georgia, and the article featured comments by Jay DeLancy of North Carolina’s Voter Integrity Project.

The suspect is a Democratic organization called “The New Georgia Project”, which is trying to reach a self-imposed goal of registering at least 100,000 new voters before the registration deadline for the November election.  According to DeLancy, a massive voter registration drive just before a major election was “standard ACORN protocol in the past”.

More from Jay DeLancy:

“Now ACORN, that criminal enterprise known as ACORN, no longer exists, but they just changed their name and moved on,” he explained.  “We smell ACORN down there.”

“What’s going on is they are registering a lot of people that are turning out to be fraudulent, so the secretary of state in Georgia is investigating this, and of course the usual suspects are calling it voter suppression, racism,” he said.

“But the bottom line is that they’re finding a whole lot of fictitious registrations already here as they move toward a goal of 100,000 registered voters in the last month before the voter roll is locked down,” he added.

Also according to DeLancy, the New Georgia Project is run by Georgia’s House Minority Leader, Representative Stacey Abrams, who is “closely associated” with Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn.

Take This Job and Shove It

The Wall Street Journal has up a short piece (no link due to the WSJ paywall) noting how the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in recent years has been “increasingly siding with employees who insult their employers.”  The following excerpt captures the essence of the piece:

Hooters drew some unwanted attention last spring when an NLRB administrative law judge ruled in favor of two employees who had been fired for cursing at a co-worker in front of restaurant guests.  The two fired employees claimed that their co-worker had fixed a bikini contest in her favor.  By allegedly arranging for her boyfriend and best friend to serve as judges, the woman was able to win the $300 first prize while earning the ire of two losing, er, contestants.

Now comes a paper in which attorneys at the Holland & Knight law firm note a disturbing NLRB trend of condoning profanity and insubordination among U.S. workers.  They’re warning employers about a pattern of board decisions “that attack sensible, long-standing management standards of conduct.”

Authors Frederick Braid and Loren Forrest note a recent case in which the board sided with an employee of an auto dealership who cursed out the owner in a meeting to discuss compensation.  The employee used words not fit for a family newspaper as he insulted the business owner, called him “stupid,” told him that nobody liked him and that he would regret it if he fired the abusive employee.  After the dealership went ahead and fired the worker, the NLRB ruled that the business had violated the National Labor Relations Act.  The NLRB said the employee’s behavior was neither “belligerent” nor “menacing.”

In a case involving Starbucks Corp. , report Messrs. Braid and Forrest, “the Board again reinstated an employee” who engaged in profanity-laced tirades against his manager.  “The first tirade occurred when the employee felt that his manager was slow to assist him during a busy day at Starbucks.  Instead of thanking his manager for the requested assistance, which the manager provided, the employee said, ‘about damn time.'”  The worker then used foul language and told his boss to “do everything your damn self.”

The NLRB decided the employee’s behavior was simply a pretext used by Starbucks to fire him for pro-union views.  In the Hooters case the NLRB also saw the foul language as simply a pretext to punish employees for exercising their right to engage in “protected concerted activity” regarding the alleged rigging of the bikini contest.  At the Obama NLRB, pretty much any behavior can be justified as protected employee “activity.”

President Obama, of course, has succeeded in packing the NRLB with liberal members, and this is just part of the results.  Just another reason why we must elect a Republican majority to the Senate in order to slow this sort of thing down over the next two years.

Doctors and Generals agree: Sending US soldiers to Africa to fight Ebola a Bad Idea

As most readers will know, about a week ago President Obama announced his intention to deploy about 3,000 American soldiers to Liberia to help manage that country’s Ebola outbreak.  If that struck you Troops4Ebolaas a mis-use of the U.S. military, you are not alone.  Chelsea Schilling of World News Daily reports these reactions:

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, has warned that the U.S. must “treat Ebola as a wake-up call.”

“What African troops are doing is shooting people who cross borders or violate quarantine,” Orient told WND, reacting to news of the U.S. troop deployment.  “Is that what we plan to support?”  She added, “Africans are already very suspicious of us.  How will they react to an army setting up hospitals?”

Orient called the planned U.S. deployment a “dubious mission,” warning that the nightmarish scenario could bring Ebola to America.  “There is definitely a risk,” she said.  “It seems irresponsible to send more people there when the ones already there are having trouble leaving.  Probably anyone who has been exposed should be quarantined for 25 days since the last exposure.”

Orient echoed the concerns of Elaine Donelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, who told WND, “I’m just appalled.  Judging from this, the United States seems to have a very confused vision of what ‘national security’ means.”

“But whether 3,000 American troops should be sent into that area of the world to deal with that problem, I do not see the justification,” Donelly said.  “Surely there are alternatives in the international health-care networks.”

WND also reported when retired Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin charged that sending American troops to combat Ebola in Liberia is “an absolute misuse of the U.S. military.”

The complete article is HERE.  And in related news, there is THIS detailed article on the severity of the problem in neighboring Sierra Leone.

Why does the ATF want to know if a Gun Buyer is Hispanic?

Earlier this week, Kelly Riddell of the Washington Times reported on a little-noticed change, dating back to early 2012, in which the Obama administration’s ATF changed the 4473 form to require a gun buyer to declare whether or not he/she was Hispanic.  For decades, the form has included a block in which the buyer was to declare their race, but the requirement for self-identification as to Hispanic origins is relatively new.

Some excerpts from Riddell’s article:

Requiring the race and ethnic information of gun buyers is not required by federal law and provides little law enforcement value, legal experts say.  And gun industry officials worry about how the information is being used and whether it constitutes an unnecessary intrusion on privacy.

“This issue concerns me deeply because, first, it’s offensive, and, secondly, there’s no need for it,” said Evan Nappen, a private practice firearms lawyer in New Jersey.  “If there’s no need for an amendment, then there’s usually a political reason for the change.  What this indicates is it was done for political reasons, not law enforcement reasons.”

and

During the time ATF revised its 4473 form to include Hispanic or Latino as an ethnicity, the Obama administration was building gun control cases by saying U.S. firearms dealers were supplying Mexican gangs with weapons and that violence related to the sales was seeping across the border.

In March 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Mexico City and gave a speech against American gun stores and owners — blaming them for the drug cartels’ violence.  Mrs. Clinton subsequently told CBS News that “90 percent” of the “guns that are used by the drug cartels against the police and military” actually “come from America.”

About a week later, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. made the same points at a gun trafficking conference outside of Mexico City.  In April, the president himself flew down to Mexico to inform President Felipe Calderon that Mr. Holder was going to review U.S. law enforcement operations, according to a 2011 report by the American Thinker.

This political worldview may have fueled decision-making at ATF, Mr. Nappen suggests.

and

Although gun advocates speculate on the reasoning behind changing the form, on one thing they are clear: Requiring ethnicity and race to purchase a gun is a clear government overstep, violating Second Amendment rights.

For the full article, click HERE.

Hobgood Strikes Again, but Roy Cooper Steps Up

The News-&-Observer put up a piece yesterday detailing the ruling of Judge Robert Hobgood on the school voucher case:

Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood ruled on Thursday that a 2013 law to use public money for tuition at private and religious schools violates the North Carolina constitution.

Then later in the article, this response from NC Attorney General Roy Cooper:

N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat who has raised concerns about parts of the Republican legislative agenda, quickly announced plans for his office to appeal, according to Noelle Talley, his spokeswoman.

“Our attorneys believe that this is a constitutional issue that must be decided by the appellate courts,” Talley said in a statement shortly after the ruling.

The full article is HERE.

More Chinese Provocations in the South China Sea

In a report from late Thursday by Bill Gertz in the Washington Free Beacon, it seems that the Chinese are continuing, even accelerating, their provocative reactions to the US military presence in the South China Sea.  From the article:

The P-8, a new, militarized Boeing-737 anti-submarine warfare aircraft, was conducting routine surveillance of the Chinese coast over the East China Sea on Monday when the incident occurred, said U.S. defense officials familiar with reports of the encounter.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jeffrey Pool had no immediate comment but said he would provide “an explanation of the event” on Friday.  The defense officials said the Chinese Su-27 interceptor jet flew within 50 feet of the P-8 and then carried out a barrel roll over the top of the aircraft—a move described by officials as dangerous and meant to threaten the surveillance aircraft.

It was the second threatening encounter of a U.S. surveillance aircraft this year.  In April, a Russian Su-27 flew within 100 feet of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 aircraft during another dangerous intercept over waters north of Japan.

One defense official said the Pentagon’s failure to produce a tough response to the April event likely spurred the Chinese to conduct the similar threatening intercept on Monday.

Chinese military officials have said they oppose all U.S. electronic surveillance flights and described ship-based monitoring of their facilities and territory an encroachment of sovereignty.  U.S. military officials have said the monitoring is carried within international airspace and thus does not violate international or Chinese law.

Is it too early to be describing the South China Sea as a “powderkeg”?  View the full piece, HERE.

Yep, the Bergdahl Swap was Illegal

Per a piece from earlier today by reporter Joel Gehrke of National Review, the US Governmental Account Office (GAO) has pronounced the Bergdahl swap to be illegal.  Here is the majority of the text from the article:

President Obama violated a “clear and unambiguous” law when he released five Guantanamo Bay detainees in exchange for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the Government Accountability Office reported Thursday.

“[The Department of Defense] violated section 8111 because it did not notify the relevant congressional committees at least 30 days in advance of the transfer,” the GAO report said.  “In addition, because DOD used appropriated funds to carry out the transfer when no money was available for that purpose, DOD violated the Antideficiency Act.  The Antideficiency Act prohibits federal agencies from incurring obligations exceeding an amount available in an appropriation.”

The GAO rejected the idea that the action was legal and sidestepped the Obama team’s suggestion that the law is unconstitutional.

I assume heads will soon be rolling.  The full article, only one paragraph longer than the above, is HERE.

New development in NC Board Of Dental Examiners vs. FTC

Back in late January, I put up a post (HERE) on the Federal Trade Commission’s anti-trust suit against the NC Board of Dental Examiners, in which I mused that the case might end up in SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the United States.

Well, it has.  But, although SCOTUS has accepted the case, it will not be heard until the next term.  However, two groups have already filed briefs with the court in support of the FTC’s side of the argument.  Here’s an excerpt that encapsulates the essence of the argument put forth by the FTC:

The central legal question in this case is whether the North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners – which consists almost entirely of licensed dentists selected by other licensed dentists – should be entitled to the benefit of state-action immunity against federal antitrust laws.  Amici contend that the answer to that question must turn not only on legal principles, but also on the best available social-science evidence regarding the way that occupational-licensing boards like North Carolina’s operate in the real world.  As this brief will explain, in the real world, occupational-licensing boards routinely use government power to promote the private financial interests of their own members and licensees, rather than to promote any legitimate government interests.  The evidence for this conclusion is supplied by a branch of economics known as “public choice economics.”  Public choice economics is the application of economic theory to study the causes and effects of government actions.  Public choice economics has been widely and successfully used to explain and predict the forces that lead to the enactment of occupational-licensing laws and the behavior of occupational-licensing boards.  A central finding of this research is that when self-interested economic actors – such as licensed dentists – are given the power to influence or, as in this case, actually write the rules by which others will compete with them, they behave as self-interested private actors, rather than as stewards of the public interest.

For those who may wish to delve further into the arguments presented in these briefs, click HERE for the brief filed by the Institute of Justice, and HERE for the one filed by the Antitrust Scholars group.

And in a related bit, there is hair-braiding, which in NC and many other states, also requires occupational licensing.  Click HERE for an example from Mississippi.

Some Useful Information for College Frosh

For those who have one or more college freshpersons (frosh) in the family, Rose-Helen Graham has written an interesting piece about how a student can best organize their course work to facilitate their collegiate goals.  As one would expect, it helps to have a goal worked out before the college course work commences, or soon thereafter.  Here’s an excerpt, in which she describes her use of online sources that provide detailed information, not only about the courses, but about the competence of the various professors and their grade distribution patterns:

… Each provides feedback from previous students on individual professors and the classes they teach.  Each delivers the content in a slightly different manner, and some sites include additional tools designed to promote student “success.”  My go-to source for student-written evaluations is Rate My Professors; however, I do use UNC Blinkness and Koofers as comparative sources if I feel that I need further reviews.

Rate My Professors:  The [RTM] site is easy to navigate.  To get started one only needs to select the state and school of interest.  From there it becomes as simple as searching by the professor’s last name or department to access comments and ratings left by other users.  [The site] uses a numerical rating system (1-5, one being the lowest and 5 being the highest) to rate professors on overall quality, helpfulness, clarity, easiness, and even “hotness.”  These ratings are accompanied by reviewers’ comments about specific courses.  I enjoy this site because the content is displayed in an extremely user-friendly layout.  Because Rate My Professors is one of the more well-known professor review sites, has multiple ratings on most professors, making it easy to compare student experiences and discern serious reviews from those which are pointless.

UNC Blinkness:  This site is less easy to read.  It can be useful in the few instances when Rate My Professors does not provide enough (or good enough) reviews on a professor.  Other useful features provided by Blinkness include average class size and the “overall grading history” of each course.  The overall grading history is displayed by a grade distribution chart, which purports to give the percentage of each letter grade given by that professor.  Going a step further, Blinkness also provides students with a list entitled “Most A’s Classes at UNC.”  This list details the course name, percentage of As given in the past for that course, and the average class size.  The list currently contains 195 courses, with the percentage of As being at least 95 percent.

Koofers (UNC):  The reviews on Koofers are also a helpful supplement to those provided on Rate My Professor.  In addition to general comments on courses and professors, it provides details on grade distribution, the difficulty and number of exams, quizzes, projects, and homework assigned, as well as any textbooks used and whether or not the professor chooses to curve final grades.

The fourth site I use is MyEdu:  MyEdu is a wonderful tool when it comes to planning class schedules.  I can create a calendar that allows me to see if the classes I want fit into my schedule and make changes if they don’t.  It also provides the average GPA grade that previous students received from the course.  After a student creates a schedule on MyEdu, the website automatically generates an estimated average overall semester GPA based on the data collected from previous years.

Ms. Graham’s article contains other interesting material on how to balance college course work to gain the most from the time spent getting a college education.  The full article is HERE.

X-47B Carrier Test Flights Successfully Completed

Over the weekend, another phase of testing for aircraft carrier operations was completed for the Navy’s jet powered stealth drone, the X-47B.  The tests were conducted in the Atlantic Ocean off the entrance to Chesapeake Bay from the nuclear powered carrier Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71).  From the Navy’s official spokesman:

“Today we showed that the X-47B could take off, land and fly in the carrier pattern with manned aircraft while maintaining normal flight deck operations,” Capt. said Beau Duarte, program manager for the Navy’s unmanned carrier aviation office, in a statement.  “This is key for the future carrier air wing.”

The full article, HERE, also includes a great video of the X-47B being launched from the ship using it’s steam catapult.

Brainstorming Ways To Isolate the Gaza Strip

Back on July 25th, I posted about the efforts of the Israeli Defense Forces (HERE) to find and destroy the numerous cross-border HAMAS tunnel system.  In that post, I advocated for some sort of “no-mans land” perimeter around Gaza on which Israel could install tunneling detection equipment such as vibration detectors, ground imaging radar, or other technologies.

This morning, in THIS interview with the Jerusalem Post, Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni discusses similar options with reporters Gil Hoffman and Julie Steigerwald.  Some excerpts:

Israel is considering physically separating itself from the Gaza Strip, using some sort of underground barrier to ward off remaining threats from Hamas, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said Monday.  Speaking on Army Radio, Livni responded to criticism that Israel was taken by surprise by the vastness of the network of Hamas tunnels from Gaza into Israel.  She revealed that creative ideas were being considered to counteract the threat when Operation Protective Edge concludes.

“There are ways of doing it [separating Gaza from Israel],” she said.  “The [barrier] may not need to be visible from above ground.  There are of course also technological means that are being checked that could be effective.”

and

A source close to Livni said did not know which barrier Livni preferred.  She said she was not aware of whether Livni favored building a moat between Israel and Gaza.

A moat?  Hadn’t really considered that one, but now that I do, the idea sorta grabs me.  A moat.  Yeah, that’s the ticket, a moat, with acid instead of water, and acid-resistant dragons!  And snakes!

ObamaCare Auto-Renewals Becoming Problematic

Over the weekend, the Associated Press put up an article on the Newsday website, HERE, about the growing apprehension of “industry officials” and other health care administrative experts on the efficacy of the ObamaCare mechanism for correctly calculating the subsidies when automatically renewing health care policies.  If the calculations result in a premium amount that is too low, consumers will get a rude awakening when their actual premium bills start coming in from the health insurance companies.  Conversely, if the amount is too high, they may owe a refund to the IRS later.

From the article:

“It was our preference for [the Obama administration] to have the capacity to update people’s subsidy information, but they haven’t been able to get that built,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the industry trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans.

But, wonder of wonders, it appears that it will not work that smoothly:

First, financial aid is partly based on premiums for a current benchmark plan in the community where the consumer lives.  Because more plans are joining the market and insurers are submitting entirely new bids for 2015, the benchmark in many communities will be different.

Second, financial aid is also based on household income.  If your income goes down, you are entitled to a bigger health insurance tax credit.  If it goes up, you get less.  The 2014 amounts could well be out of date and incorrect for many people.  Financial assistance is also affected by age, family size and where people live.

And that doesn’t get into another motivation for consumers to shop around: Premiums and choices for 2015 are changing, so your current plan may no longer be a good deal.  “Just continuing in the same plan with the same credit is not going to be the optimal outcome for most people,” said Judy Solomon of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income people.  “Your 2014 credit is going to be lower in most cases, and in some cases it could be too high.”

About 8 in 10 of those who signed up for private coverage under the health care law are getting financial aid.  In the 36 states served by the federal insurance exchange, the tax credits average $264 a month, reducing the average monthly premium of $346 to just $82. … But the subsidy scheme created by Congress to keep premiums affordable has so many moving parts that it’s turning out to be difficult for the government to administer.

Open enrollment for 2015 begins on November 15th, about a week after the fall elections, and it will close about one month later.  During this brief period, health care consumers who already have a policy will need to renew or make changes to their policies in order to avoid a break in coverage on January 1st.