Author: Bear

It’s HR 51. I wrote on this subject last year, when that moron Norton tried it with HR 5803. Same moron, same constitutional problem.

You know what? I’ll just paste my old explanation again. Just mentally replace HR 5803 with HR 51, because the text of both appear to be identical.

So the news is full of reports that H.R.5803 – Washington, D.C. Admission Act passed in the House. Didn’t think about it much until I saw that it passed on a 232-180 vote. Then I started scratching my head. Because that’s a fail vote.

The “District” which is the “Seat of Government of the United States” was established constitutionally; Article I, Section 8. It’s presidential electors were granted by the 23rd Amendment. To shrink the federal District down, and grant the remaining area of the District statehood requires a constitutional amendment.

By Article V, amendments have to be approved by “two thirds of both Houses. They needed 290 pro-statehood votes, not a simple majority. It failed.

Reading the resolution makes it clear: they aren’t amending the Constitution; they’re trying to do this purely by legislation. Constitution; what’s that? We don’t need no steenkin’ constitution.

But let’s say that they can constitutionally shrink the District. In fact, they’ve done that before. But the precedent established that the “retroceded” land goes back to the state that had ceded it to the federal government originally. That would be Maryland in this case.

But if they’re going to make that diamond-with-a-bite-out-of-it into a state, Article IV, Section 3 comes into play.

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

That gets a bit complicated. I figure already-blue Maryland would go along with it, to boost the Dems in DC, but the process does have to be followed.

Instead, these idjits are using the precedent of admitting federally administered territories that were never part of a state in the first place.

I almost wish Yertle McConnell would let this pass the Senate, just to watch the constitutional/precedential/judicial shit show that would ensue. I’d demand that every judge seated in the District recuse themselves as being a party to the dispute, including every sitting Supreme Court Justice.

…of terrorism.

“Authorities have yet to positively identify Indianapolis shooting suspect; FBI says premature to speculate on motive.”

Absolutely nothing about the shooter. No name, no description. And for some reason the FBI is involved. ATF, sure; to trace the firearm and maybe evaluate it. FBI? And no one wants to “speculate”?

Hell, in every other mass shooting, speculation (often masked as “reporting” is rampant. Oh, must be incel. Racism. White supremacy. Disgruntled ex-worker. You usually can’t shut the media and activisst — but I repeat myself — up.

So. 70% chance it was terrorism. 50:50 that it was another FBI sting gone wrong. There’s some reason no one is leaking details.

Added: Something else I noted in various reports — police responded to a shots fired call. The shooter killed himself as soon as he saw the police. But the entire incident lasted “one or two minutes.” I used to live in Indianapolis; I never saw a 1-2 minute response time. Not even the time I reported acrazy intruder actively trying to force her way into my apartment.

I suppose the responders could have already been very close by.

Added:

Mr. Miller said he could not understand what the gunman was yelling

“Allahu Akhbar”, maybe?

Yeah. Right. Sure. This is in reference to the overnight shooting at a Fedex facility in Indianapolis. I was checking various reports, because most are largely devoid of details. Oddly devoid, considering how the media usually treats mass shootings. I have a guess as to why, but I’ll keep it to myself for now.

But I did find this.

Indianapolis mass shooting: Eight dead at FedEx facility
[…]
Local media quoted FedEx worker Jeremiah Miller as saying he had seen the gunman firing.

“I saw a man with a sub-machine gun of some sort, an automatic rifle, and he was firing in the open. I immediately ducked down and got scared,” he said.

Not impossible, but awfully damned unlikely. We’ll see.

Apparently it’s a lot nicer than I realized.

“Unfortunately, we can’t have those nice things with the far-right super majority on the Supreme Court,” Jones remarked in response to a question about his Tuesday tweet in which [Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY)] said, “Supreme Court expansion is infrastructure.”

I’d love to see a conservative super-majority on SCOTUS.

Yeah, that’s the same idiot I mentioned yesterday.

I already had good reasons to pass on it. But Miguel reports a nasty side effect from the second shot.

I cannot risk that; I’m in a vulnerable group.

I wish the Dims had as much interest in maintaining the foundation of the republic: the US Constitution.

That’s crumbled, taking the nation down with it. Apparently all per their plan.

-sigh-

Supreme Court expansion is infrastructure.

infrastructure
1 : the system of public works of a country, state, or region also : the resources (such as personnel, buildings, or equipment) required for an activity
2 : the underlying foundation or basic framework (as of a system or organization)
3 : the permanent installations required for military purposes

Packing SCOTUS is certainly political infrastructure, in the #2 sense, for the Dims. Controlling that is the basis of their socialist/communist expansion.

But I’d prefer that they do something about getting the nation’s physical infrastructure — failing dams, bridges, century-old sewer systems, contaminated water systems, energy distributions, that sort of thing — repaired… while we still have people that know how.

It would probably be a good idea to expand the systems, too, and build them very robustly, so they’ll last through the coming generations that won’t be able to figure out how to repair anything that breaks.

Experts Are Super Smart And 100% Reliable, Experts Confirm
[…]
At publishing time, experts had further confirmed that you definitely shouldn’t stuff them into lockers and give them wedgies, because they are actually super cool and not nerds who got picked on in high school.

So Fauci is a nerd finally getting his revenge on the world that bullied him in school?

Over at The Zelman Partisans. A look at HR2426, and HR2427, raising the NFA tax stamp cost and making prohibited people prohibited people.

Tlaib wants to do away with cops completely. No policing, no incarceration.

Okey dokey, bitch. You go first.