… being sauce for the gander and all that.

You know what I’d like to see?

Red Flag laws for Congress.

Any Congresscritter says or does, something unConstitutional, anyone should be able to file a Red Flag violation and have that politician’s powers to write bills, attend sessions of Congress, vote, draw a taxpayer-funded paycheque, live in a mansion in Washington DC, or anything else tied to the job of being a Congresscritter immediately suspended.

There would be a hearing within fourteen days before a judge in their home district, where the Representative or Senator would be given the opportunity to show where in the Constitution what they said, or the law they proposed, or the action they did, was explicitly authorised, and if they can show that, their rights to all the goodies of being an elected representative of the People would be restored.

If they can’t, then they can sit at home for a year and twiddle their thumbs.  Not allowed into the Capitol, no drawing a paycheque, no voting, no proposing bills, nothing added to their pension funds, zip, zero, NADA to do with being an elected official.

And their party doesn’t get to fill that slot.  Their party doesn’t get to vote on their behalf. Their party doesn’t get to help them with re-election.

No, that Congresscritter, and the seat they occupy, goes into the penalty box for a year.

After a year, if their term in office hasn’t expired, they can take up their duties again.

Unless, and until, they mention violating the Constitution again, and someone files another Red Flag complaint.

Bastards.

LawDog

Over the years I have picked up some … fans?

These are folks what don’t like me for various reasons — because I’m a cop, or I’m conservative, or a gun-owner, or former military, or whatever — but who don’t have the common courtesy to sod off to someplace else that they’ll be more appreciated.

Most of these folks catch the ban-hammer and expire quietly in my spam-box and an IP block with no fanfare, but a couple of them have slipped through the cracks.

Mostly because I don’t hear from them until some deviant no-account little pismire decides to cash in his voucher for 15 minutes of fame, said voucher being backed and guaranteed by the US Mainstream Media.

Sure enough, some pathetic little scrote-scraping decided to be famous in El Paso, and sure as the gods made little green apples the Media oiled up their stiletto-heeled leather blood-dancing boots and squeezed into their Christian Dior hair-shirt corsets and Made Him Famous. Just like the contract promises.

And — again, gods and little green apples — my inbox comes up with emails starting with: “It’s time for …” or “Common sense …” or “You have to agree …”

Let me stop y’all right there.

The answer is “No.”

No, I’m not going to give up my guns.

I don’t care. I’m not giving up my guns.

I didn’t murder anyone. My guns didn’t murder anyone. My friends haven’t murdered anyone. My friends guns haven’t murdered anyone.

80 million American gun owners didn’t murder anyone.

I am not going to be punished for some pustulent little bridge-troll deciding to vomit his evil into a Wal-Mart in El Paso.

And, yes, taking my guns away is punishing me. I will not be punished for the evil of someone else; evil that I had NOTHING TO DO WITH.

This is not up for debate. We’ve tried debate at the national level and the only thing debate got us was incremental chunks of our gun rights taken away by you faithless dacoits.

I am no longer going to engage in a debate in which I lose every time. Sod that for a game of soldiers.

So, let me stop you right there, Scooter. The answer is “No.”

Done.

LawDog

The above meme is my picture, the quote is from someone else. 

Venezuela has the largest proven reserve of oil in the world. In 2014 there were just shy of 300 billion (that’s ‘b’ – billion) barrels — enough that at current rates the Venezuelan oil patch would be producing for the next two centuries.

On 01 JAN 1976 Venezuela founded Petroleos de Venezuela, SA and promptly nationalised their entire oil industry; a move that Hugo Chavez took advantage of in 2003 when he decreed that oil profits would be directly sent to “social spending”.

Let me break that down for the cheap seats: the entirety of the profits from the world’s largest reserve of oil, sold by the Venezuelan government through it’s nationalised oil company, would be used for stuff like free medical care; free housing; free education … you know, the normal stuff.

In addition, hydroelectricity powers — or did — 64% of the Venezuelan national grid. Coincidentally enough also run by a State-owned company.

This is pretty-much the ideal for a Socialist State. You can’t get much better than backing your socialist programmes with the profits from the largest reserve of oil in the world.

Of course, it’s cratered.

When we started hearing about food shortages out of the country with the largest oil reserve in the world, controlled by the government with all profits going to Socialist dreams, I looked at Herself and remarked, “Socialist massacres of the population in less than five years.”

On Independence Day, the United Nations Office of Making The UN Pretend It’s Competent issued a quiet report.

Buried in that summary (the full document is linked in the summary) is a bland notice of about seven thousand (7 000) “extrajudicial killings”.

If it’s just seven thousand, I’ll eat my Stetson. Add another zero to the end of that number and you’ll have a starting point.

This is yet another failing of Socialism, only the latest in an unbroken line of failures. And this failure should be particularly note-worthy because they started out with the perfect sodding recipe for a glorious Socialist utopia.

Of course, the Usual Useful Idiots are blathering about “corruption” being responsible for the whole cock-up.

Well, if you understand that “corruption” is short-hand for “people acting normally in this situation”, I’d have to agree with them.

Lord Acton, in a letter to Archbishop Creighton, famously stated:  “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Outside of totalitarian dictatorships there is no more absolute power than that wielded by a bureaucrat in a Socialist government. That has been truth in the past, it is truth now, and it will be truth well into the future.

The on-going pulsating ball of suck and fail that is the Venezuelan socialist experiment should be an obvious no-duh lesson to those pushing so hard for socialism in the United States.

Or, so I’d like to think.

Sigh.

LawDog