constitution

Chris Knight's avatar

That’s pretty much the summary of it all.  I’m quite disappointed, but not surprised at all, at the Supreme Court’s ruling about birthright citizenship.

It’s the third rail of American law: that EVERYONE born on American soil must therefore be an American citizen.  The high court had the opportunity to rectify that assumption.  But that requires a boldness and adherence to the Constitution as written that is all too absent from the halls of government in our era.

As I’ve come to understand it the 14th Amendment applies to people born to those who are already under American jurisdiction, and at the time that was indeed former slaves and their children.  Those born to foreign citizens while in America are subjects of those foreign places.  The amendment is pretty clear on that.

Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito are correct in this case.  But the politics of the matter was too much ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Dear friends and family in the Greensboro, North Carolina area:

It has come to my attention that after an absence of several years, red light cameras are due to be installed again all over the city.  These first appeared circa 2001 and it was soon apparent that they were more a liability than they were an asset.  Well, not an asset to anyone but the city government and the company running the cameras (who got a healthy percentage of each ticket issued).

I could spend all day writing about why the cameras are wrong.  How they violate our rights articulated in the Constitution.  How it also seems that the intersections equipped with the camera have speeded-up the yellow caution lights so that there’s more a chance of running the red light and getting your car’s photo taken.  Volumes have already been published about how bad the cameras are and why....

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Chris Knight's avatar

This is a good day to be a sensible American.

This morning the Supreme Court handed down some rulings and I was looking forward to seeing how they would go.  I am not disappointed at all.

Mahmoud v. Taylor is the case out of Maryland involving parents who wanted to opt out of having their children exposed to homosexual material in public school.  The justices went 6 to 3 in favor of the parents.  It’s a magnificent win for parental rights regarding their children.

It should have been a unanimous ruling though.  I’m going to be looking for the minority opinion.  As many would guess the three dissenting justices were Kagan, Sotomayor, and “I don’t know what a woman is” Brown.

And then there is the situation involving the Trump Administration and all of those federal judges who have been hitting the president with nationwide injunctions, effectively keeping ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

“Trump wants to deprive Native Americans of their citizenship!”

That’s what I’ve heard from a number of people since yesterday, so I looked into it.

Yes, it’s true: per the strictest interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment at that time, indigenous Americas were not counted as citizens of the United States.  They were instead citizens of their respective tribal reservations.

So the attorneys et al on Trump’s side are literally correct.  Up to the time that the Fourteenth was adopted, at least.

But the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 clarified that Native Americans who were tribal citizens were also American citizens, to be counted and taxed as much as any other citizen.

I doubt that anyone in this administration has even a passive thought to deprive any legal citizen in the United States of their citizenship.  Congress has already stated through legislation that indigenous Americans are fully American citizens.

President Trump ...

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 I’m seeing a lot of outrage about the leaked draft of the majority opinion overturning Roe v Wade. Much anger about destroying a “right” to abortion. But for all their screaming these people are showing us that they have NO grasp whatsoever of what they are screaming about.

Justice Alito’s draft does NOT end the right to abortion. It does however articulate that the federal government has no standing in establishing such a right. The opinion is of the belief that Roe erred when it legislated into being a notion that the federal government had no constitutional basis in creating.
 
All that the majority opinion is arguing, if it is indeed the final say in the case at hand, is that the issue of abortion is one that per the Tenth Amendment is the sole province of the individual states. Which is exactly where it should have been
...
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Hmmm… let’s see…

This past week has seen the writing of my second-ever work of short story fiction (while stranded in a motel room along with Tammy the Pup during Hurricane Florence) after trying for decades to crack that art, work begun on a one-act play, finally started plotting a children’s book(?!?). And now, it’s article #5 written for American Thinker!

Has the Muse roared back from her exile, or what? For awhile I thought she had gone sailing off the cliff in a convertible accompanied by Dignity a’la Thelma and Louise, but anyhoo…

“There’s Poisoning the Well, and Then There’s Borking the Well” is my take on the Brett Kavanaugh nomination for the United States Supreme Court. However, that’s just the peripheral matter of a way bigger issue: that for sake of partisan power there are some – and I’m looking at you in particular, Senator Feinstein ...

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Some musings on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act now on the books in Indiana and that so many are in a tizzy about…

The act does not discriminate.

The act is not “anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-bisexual, anti-transexual” or anti-anything at all. Nowhere in the text of the legislation is there found a clause stipulating that any one or any group in particular is to be given any less protection under the law.

The act simply reasserts something that Amendment One of the Bill of Rights has codified for well over two hundred years: that there is a right to assembly and association. This also means that there is just as much a right to NON-association.

The act simply does as its title indicates: it allows for individuals and businesses to not provide a service if doing so violates the religious beliefs of that individual or business.

There are many people ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

I’m going to say something right now, and I don’t care if it offends
ANY body.  If it happens to offend you, good: maybe you NEED offending
to open your eyes…

There is NO difference at all between the
Democrat and Republican parties and anyone who puts the SLIGHTEST amount
of trust in one party or the other… and I’m going to single out those
who support the Republican party especially… are worse than fools and
idiots.

For the past few days I’ve watched the Republicans, AKA
the party that was just elected to “fix things” in the House and
Senate, PISS AWAY their alleged ideals and principles by caving-in to
Obama and everything he’s demanded, especially in the way of the
“amnesty” for the ILLEGAL aliens who have BROKEN THE LAW and are STILL
breaking the law in being here.


The elections last month mean NOTHING.  Think I’m
...
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Chris Knight's avatar
 Earlier this morning, following some comments on Facebook, I posted a status articulating some thoughts about politics, government, and my take on respecting law enforcement.  Subsequently I’ve been feeling led to post it here as well.  It could be because I really haven’t written anything here for quite a while about my beliefs on some things.

Anyway, here it is…


There
are some people on Facebook who the better angels of my nature are
struggling to keep me from referring to as “blithering idiots”.
Specifically, the ones demanding to know if I am “left or right”.

Those who know me best know that I’m neither, and that I have long been
above such… at least what I consider to be… an immature, inaccurate
and childish paradigm.

I may be fiscally conservative, but I’m
not a be-all, end-all “conservative”. Neither have I ever thought of
myself as “liberal”. “Libertarian” doesn’t fit

...
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Chris Knight's avatar

This has been news for a couple of days now, but the reason I held off posting about it is that I wanted to do some historical investigation first.  And you know what I found out?

To the very best of my understanding, there has not been a single instance before this week of the United States federal government setting up a hotline or e-mail address asking the public and organizations for information against an individual citizen.  Not one.  And if anybody reading this does know of one, feel free to write me at theknightshift@gmail.com and better my education on the matter.

George Zimmerman was acquitted this past

Eric Holder:
Roland Freisler would have been proud of him.

Saturday night of all charges against him in the death of Trayvon Martin.  Zimmerman had been charged with second-degree murder.

And now, not being content with a jury of his peers finding ...

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