Welcome to my blog! I'm Victoria, and I love liberty, individual rights, and writing about politics, trials, and current events. Read more about me here.
The Herald annoys me sometimes, but I have to give them (and Howie Carr) kudos for this exposé of Judge Thomas Connolly, who rejected the MassGOP’s injunction to stop the appointment of “Senator” Kirk. I knew he was a Democrat!
Check it out: Verdict on judge: He’s a lefty hack.
This doesn’t happen every day. I think I just found the most preposterous statement I’ve ever heard or read.
According to Dr. Mark Einstein, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center in New York,
“Quite frankly, from a science standpoint and outreach, everyone does ultimately as an adult have sex.”
This blatantly false statement came to my attention in an article from ABC about British girl Simone Davis, who wants to become a US citizen but can’t because she is celibate and doesn’t want the HPV vaccine Gardasil. Apparently, the 1996 Immigration and Naturalization Act requires all immigrants to receive all vaccinations recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, and Gardasil was added to that list in 2008.
This raises several questions, including…
Obviously, requiring the HPV vaccine in order to become a U.S. permanent resident is outrageous. First of all, I don’t think the government has any right to require vaccines of anyone, for any reason. Second, they definitely don’t have a right to require a vaccine for a sexually-transmitted disease because, contrary to Dr. Einstein’s claim, not everyone has sex.
I am opposed to giving STD vaccines to children, let alone requiring them. No one should get such a vaccine against their will, and in the case of children it is usually the parents who make decisions about medical treatment, not the children themselves. People themselves, not their parents, should have to freely consent in order to receive an STD vaccine. Additionally, recommending Gardasil sexualizes girls and is extremely offensive to asexual and celibate people, because it sends the message that all girls will have sex, a message that is false.
Mark Einstein might just be my new least favorite person in the world. How could someone with an IQ above 10 possibly believe that all adults have sex? This is incredibly insulting to asexuals and other people who choose not to have sex. Just because Dr. Einstein has sex (and I assume he does or else he wouldn’t have said what he said) does not mean that everyone else does. I love flags, but do I assume that everyone else loves flags, too? No. I hate rainy weather, but do I assume everyone else does, too? No. I think you get the picture. Einstein is bigoted and intolerant to assume that everyone does what he does and to deny the existence of people who are different from him. Apparently Einstein thinks that Isaac Newton never existed, or Immanuel Kant, or Jesus, to give just a few examples. Also, no popes or priests or nuns or monks have ever existed either, I guess. To repeat a fact that should be obvious to everyone,
NOT EVERYONE HAS SEX.
I also want to criticize the mainstream media for not calling more attention to this story, both the requirement of Gardasil in 2008 and Simone’s experience. This is an atrocity, and all Americans should be outraged about it! Also, ABC erred, in my opinion, by writing that Einstein “debunks Simone’s claim that she doesn’t need the vaccine because she is not having sex.” This implies that Einstein is right and Simone is wrong, while the opposite is actually true. The article should read “incorrectly attempts to debunk,” or at least “attempts to debunk” or “argues against.”
Citizenship and Immigration Services needs to take Gardasil off the required vaccines list. Simone seems like a strong girl of good moral character, who thinks for herself instead of having sex and mindlessly agreeing with what everyone else says. We should be encouraging more people like her to come to America!
Justice is dead in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Judge Thomas Connolly just dismissed a bid by the MassGOP to stop the swearing-in of newly-appointed “senator” Paul Kirk. It kind of blows my mind how many evil things happened in the past couple of days. First, both houses of the state legislature passed the senator-appointment bill, and Deval Patrick signed it. Then he asked for an “emergency” to be declared and Secretary of State William Galvin agreed. Now, Paul Kirk has been appointed “senator” and he is set to be sworn in in Washington D.C. at 3:15.
The MassGOP filed an injunction against Patrick last night, and I attended the hearing on it this morning. I will share my observations, with my opinions in italics.
I arrived in courtroom 1006 in Suffolk Superior Court a little before 8, when the hearing was scheduled, but it did not start until about 9. Assistant Attorney General Peter Sacks represented Governor Patrick, while Attorney James P. O’Brien and Chairman Jennifer Nassour represented the GOP.
Both sides gave brief arguments for their points of view. O’Brien first listed the facts of the case. He pointed out that the legislature, although they passed the hypocrisy bill (my term, not his), did not have the two-thirds majority required for an emergency preamble making the bill take effect immediately instead of in 90 days. He also noted that according to the State Constitution, emergency bills must be subject to a referendum. This bill was not, since the deadline for referendums is August 5.
By declaring an emergency anyway, Patrick ”establishes a dangerous precedent” and causes “irreparable harm” to the people of Massachusetts, O’Brien argued. “The job of the governor is to protect the Constitution, not to circumvent it.”
Connolly was skeptical of O’Brien’s claim that Kirk’s appointment would cause “irreparable harm.” He incredulously asked if the harm was that we would have a senator sitting. That would be harmful to the few people in this state who actually believe in liberty, especially if Kirk’s appointment enables Obama’s health socialism bill to pass, but I digress. O’Brien responded, sensibly, that it would set a harmful precedent for the governor to “maneuver and utilize the Constitution in an inappropriate manner.”
Then Sacks argued his side. He said that the emergency succession bill is subject to a referendum, with a deadline of 30 days after the bill was filed. The deadline that the GOP used, according to Sacks, is the deadline for initiative petitions. He argued that the GOP had not shown that the public interest would be helped by granting their injunction and that the GOP’s motion was moot because Kirk has already been appointed. “I don’t feel that anyone is being deprived of any rights by this appointment,” he said. Really? Just to name one, if the health socialism bill passes because of “Senator” Kirk’s vote, that would deprive people of the right to choose whether or not they want health insurance.
Connolly repeated that the GOP must show that the appointment would cause irreparable harm. O’Brien replied that if the injunction is needed to preserve the law (which it is), proof of irreparable harm is not needed. Sacks insisted that the injunction would not serve the public interest (it sure would if liberty is in the public interest), and therefore shouldn’t be passed even if it is needed to protect the law.
Connolly took the motion under advisement and considered it for about four hours before making his (in my opinion wrong) decision.
I got the impression from this hearing that Connolly is probably a Democrat and never seriously considered the GOP injunction. The injunction should have been granted for a simple reason: there is no emergency. Because there is no emergency, Patrick should have no right to declare an emergency. No one is in danger if Massachusetts has only one Senator. No one will die because of it. It’s one thing for people to have different opinions, but how can the Democrats deny obvious facts? It simply isn’t an emergency, and I don’t see how a rational, thinking being could believe that it is.
This kind of tyranny is exactly what the Constitution of the United States was designed to prevent. The separation of powers is supposed to ensure that no one faction gains complete power and that the majority does not take away the rights of minorities. In Massachusetts, however, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches – all dominated by Democrats – demonstrated today that they are in cahoots, ganging up to take away the people’s liberty and oppress the minority who disagree with their views.
Call me immature, but whenever I refer to Kirk from now on, I will put the word “senator” in quotes. Paul Kirk is not my senator. He was appointed illegitimately and illegally.
There is good news and bad news out of the State Senate. Unfortunately but predictably, they passed the hypocritical bill which would give Governor Patrick the power to appoint a senator to replace Ted Kennedy, a power that they took away from Mitt Romney in 2004 because he is a Republican. Because Patrick has said he will sign the bill, it is set to become law.
However, the power-hungry Democrats did not get a two-thirds majority, which means that the bill has to wait 90 days before going into effect. That is, unless Patrick petitions Secretary of State William Galvin saying that it is an emergency, and Galvin grants the petition. I really hope he doesn’t do that.
A salute goes out to the 5 Republican state senators, as well as the 11 Democrats who were brave enough and had enough integrity to vote against this bill:
Source: Boston Herald
President Obama recently did several interviews, where he said that race is not the main reason why people dislike him and his policies. I agree with Obama on this. I really disagreed with Jimmy Carter’s comments that Rep. Joe Wilson’s “you lie” comment was “based on racism.” How do you figure that? Wilson was expressing his opinion that Obama was lying when he said that his health reform plan would not extend coverage to illegal immigrants, an opinion that is pretty reasonable. (See this blog post from the Humble Libertarian for a great argument that Obama was, indeed, lying).
If Wilson only yelled at Obama because he is black, how do you explain the behavior of the Democrats in Congress who booed President Bush at his 2005 State of the Union Address, as seen in this YouTube video? If one party heckles the president during a speech when they disagree with his opinion, the other party should be able to, too! To my knowledge, the Democrats who booed Bush did not apologize, nor were they officially censured. Yet Wilson quickly apologized and even then was censured by the House of Representatives.
I believe that the House resolution officially condemning Wilson was unnecessary, excessive, and mean-spirited. I also think it’s stupid to call Wilson’s comment racist. Wilson called Obama a liar because he disagreed with what he was saying, and I bet he would have done the same if the president happened to be white. Disagreeing with Obama is not racist (unless you disagree with him because of his race), and by claiming that it is, Carter seems to expect people never to criticize Obama. But people have been criticizing their leaders for all of history, as they should. Equality means that all races are treated the same. A world where people criticize white presidens but not black ones would certainly not be a world of equality, and to expect people to behave that way is racist.
The “hypocrisy bill” – which would allow Governor Deval Patrick to appoint an interim replacement for the deceased Senator Ted Kennedy – just passed the Mass. House of Representatives. I honestly cannot believe that so many people support this.
In case you’ve been living under a rock (or aren’t from Massachusetts), governors in this state used to have the power to appoint interim senators when an empty Senate seat arose. Five years ago, however, when Massachusetts had a Republican governor, the Democrat-dominated state legislature passed a bill taking this power away. Now, because we have a Democratic governor, the Democrats want the governor to be able to appoint an interim senator again. In other words, they want the bill that they changed, changed back.
Do I even need to tell you how hypocritical this is?
There have actually been rallies in favor of changing the law back, and the main argument of its supporters is that Massachusetts needs two voices in the Senate. I don’t know about you, but as a supporter of liberty, I don’t feel that either of Massachusetts’s two senators has really represented me.
Obviously, the sole purpose of changing the law back is to allow our Democratic governor to appoint a Democratic senator so that there are as many Democrats in the Senate as possible. This is especially important to the Democrats because they are currently trying to pass their ”health care reform” bill (which I put in quotes because it really doesn’t go far enough to reform much of anything). Contrary to what the pro-hypocrisy people argue, this is precisely the time we don’t need another Democratic Senator from Massachusetts. The health bill – which I will write more about later – threatens to take away our liberty, and we need to do whatever we can to take away votes from it.
Congratulations to State Senator Scott Brown, who officially announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. With Kerry Healey, Andrew Card, and probably Christy Mihos out of the Senate race, it seems like he’s going to be the GOP frontrunner.
Check out BrownForUSSenate.com!
Further reading: