TOC Ready Room 2 May 2023: YU-UGE SCOTUS case; Another balloon (yes, we reacted); Tucker Carlson and Fox

Some brief drive-bys as we advance into May – if not slouching toward Jerusalem, at least schlumping toward East Bugsplat.

The first set of reflections is on a case that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear, involving the power of regulatory agencies to basically – in a vernacular rendering – interpret federal regulatory statutes any old way they want to.

The federal courts’ friendliness to this principle is called “Chevron deference.”  It’s named for a 1980s case in which Chevron was a party, but Chevron has nothing to do with the contemporary case the court has agreed to hear.  Chevron is also not the party being deferred to in the “Chevron deference” shorthand; that role belongs to whatever federal agency is imposing mandates in the case, based on its interpretation of law.

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TOC Ready Room 24 June 2022: Flawed court ruling overturned; Escalation in Russia-NATO confrontation; Gates ag-buy pushback

Until the Supreme Court ruled Friday morning on Dobbs v. Jackson, this edition of Ready Room was going to lead with the “Russia-NATO escalation” segment.  But such a momentous ruling, which basically overturned Roe v. Wade, obviously merits comment, however brief.

The Dobbs ruling is good law, unlike Roe (and some other landmark rulings including Obergefell, the same-sex marriage case).  It’s good law because it recognizes that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t confer a “right” to abortion on which states cannot impose limits.

It’s good law because it doesn’t overturn any state laws, like those of New York and California, that are as consistent with the Constitution as any state law that puts limits on the conditions in which abortion is permissible. 

The chain gang (an Alfa-gate tale): From Senator MBNA, to Aon, to Twitter and Musk

Checking in recently with some history of the Alfa-gate series of untoward Russia-hoax events, we unearthed some “degrees of separation” type dots through which the events linked, however innocently, to MBNA, the Delaware banking giant Joe Biden was at one time referred to as “the Senator from [i.e., “from MBNA”],” and other aspects of the Biden family enterprises.

The most pertinent TOC articles are here and here.  That’s where you’ll find background links for most of the assertions of fact below.

The reason for this opening exercise is to set the stage for broader links that reveal a big-picture pattern, one that goes beyond the links highlighted earlier.

This big-picture pattern goes beyond the known outlines of Alfa-gate and its parent -gates, Russiagate and Spygate.  In fact, it reaches all the way to Elon Musk’s bid to buy out Twitter, and for me illuminates the full meaning of “investor activism,” and how it appears to connect in at least some cases to the politics of interventionist government.

Starting with the MBNA thread, a brief summary:

Hunter Biden got a lucrative $100,000-a-year job at MBNA in 1996,

Migrant influx has Europeans arming up

The workshop of Austrian gunmaker Steyr-Mannlicher. (Image via gunsforsale.com)

The urge to self-preservation may not be entirely dead among native Europeans.  According to European news sources, cited in this article at WND, Europeans who have the realistic option of purchasing firearms have started doing so, at a dramatically increased rate.

Although the citizens of several key countries (e.g., Germany, the Netherlands) are basically prohibited from buying guns — by the very high obstacles their governments set for such purchases — those who can are flocking to gun vendors.  Women are reportedly the customer base showing the biggest increase.

Austria is one of the nations where guns are selling fast.

America facing the truth II: The dialogue

The watchmen wait for morning.

This post is a follow-on to the earlier post at Liberty Unyielding, “A time for facing the truth.”  The link is in the text below.

I realized after posting the lengthy comment copied below that I had basically written another blog post.  I’m not going to bother cleaning it up or adding points to make it more comprehensive.  Spurring the dialogue on this topic is the most important thing.  So this post will be a summary of the counterpoint created by much-appreciated reader comments from NaCly Dog, Stephanie O’Leary, and teejk, at my original post “A time for facing the truth.”

Disclaimer on my extended comment below:  there are of course other points to make about the vision we need for government and what has to happen to get there.  I haven’t tried to make all of those points, or even give a complete list of what the most important ones are.  Feel free to add your ideas; I’m not neglecting things that may be important, just keeping this going, because we’ve got to stay engaged.