Miscellaneous Outrages

1. The Export-Import Bank

     Ted Cruz is up in arms about it because according to him, Mitch McConnell said that there would be no “deal” to revive it. I can understand anger about being deceived that way, but deceit is as common in Washington as dandelions in my lawn. Besides, as a reason for high and public dudgeon, political mendacity pales in comparison to the larger issue. Why not be angry for a principled rather than a procedural reason: specifically, that the Ex-Im Bank constitutes a subsidy to certain kinds of businesses, paid for by private taxpaying citizens?

     The Democrats have made hay out of “corporate welfare” for decades. I was pleased when the GOP began to own the issue and move against it. I suppose I should have known that it wouldn’t last.

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2. The Planned Parenthood Videos.

     The judge who enjoined the Center for Medical Progress from releasing any more of its clandestine videos of Planned Parenthood personnel contriving the sale of fetal organs has blatantly violated First Amendment protections of freedom of expression. It doesn’t matter whether the videos are eventually found to be slanderous; prior restraint has been held to be unConstitutional for decades.

     The real issue here – the one that judge is so desperate to avert our eyes from – is that millions of Americans who approached the subject of abortion entirely in the abstract are being compelled to confront its logical implications. If an unborn baby is merely “tissue” whose fate is at the mother’s whim, then the sale of that “tissue” cannot be morally worse than its disposal. That the sale is being viewed as outrageous is “backfilling” the sense of horror about abortion itself, and therefore fueling anti-abortion sentiment in a fashion that’s proof against disguise by euphemism. The Left simply can’t have its sacrament defiled in this manner.

     Has anyone bothered to note that it’s illegal to sell adult human organs, whether for transplantation or any other purpose?

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3. “Cecil”

     I have a soft spot for animals. I make no bones about it. And while I’m anything but a PETAphile – animals cannot and do not possess a human being’s right to life, for reasons beyond the scope of this mini-rant – I dislike and deplore the killing of animals simply for sport. So I deplore the killing of Cecil, which has apparently been a subject of some controversy these past few days.

     But note! Various Left-aligned groups are trumpeting to the skies about the “murder” of Cecil, to the extreme of threatening death to the dentist who shot him. The prevailing thesis on the Right is that these groups are desperate to distract the electorate from the several real outrages we would otherwise be up in arms about. It could well be true...but it could equally well be the case that the Left is more concerned about the death of Cecil than, say, the ongoing Planned Parenthood obscenity simply because Leftists’ only interest in babies is whether they can be indoctrinated to be obedient little Democrats.

     Besides, Cecil was a Zimbabwean, and therefore ineligible to vote in U.S. elections.

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4. Peeping Toms And Property Rights

     Time was, it was an absolute principle of the law that the wedge of airspace over one’s legally owned land was a form of property. The owner could extend his structures into it without let or hindrance, and anyone who wanted to pass through that airspace simply had to cope. Alongside that, the use of a camera to invade the privacy of a neighbor – i.e., to photograph persons or items on his property against his will – was a criminal offense. Those were simpler days.

     Apparently, the “drone” phenomenon has changed all that:

     LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Hillview man has been arrested after he shot down a drone flying over his property -- but he's not making any apologies for it.

     It happened Sunday night at a home on Earlywood Way, just south of the intersection between Smith Lane and Mud Lane in Bullitt County, according to an arrest report.

     Hillview Police say they were called to the home of 47-year-old William H. Merideth after someone complained about a firearm.

     When they arrived, police say Merideth told them he had shot down a drone that was flying over his house. The drone was hit in mid-air and crashed in a field near Merideth's home.

     Police say the owner of the drone claimed he was flying it to get pictures of a friend's house -- and that the cost of the drone was over $1,800.

     Merideth was arrested and charged with first degree criminal mischief and first degree wanton endangerment. He was booked into the Bullitt County Detention Center, and released on Monday.

     What about the invasion of Merideth’s privacy by a camera-equipped spy device? Have the Kentucky gendarmes arrested the operators of that drone for their infraction, which is illegal as sin in every state of the Union?

     This is injustice plain and simple.

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5. No Exemption For Kinda-Sorta “Famous” Musicians

     And “Morrissey,” whoever the BLEEP! he is, should have known better:

     Morrissey claims a security agent at San Francisco International Airport “sexually groped” him before a flight this week.

     In a blog post at the all-things-Morrissey website True to You, the musician says he was flying from San Francisco to London on July 27 and made it through regular security protocols, including a metal detector, with “no bleeps and nothing unusual.”

     But then:

     Before I could gather my belongings from the usual array of trays I was approached by an “airport security officer” who stopped me, crouched before me and groped my penis and testicles. He quickly moved away as an older “airport security officer” approached.

     The officer who sexually assaulted me was identified as the General Manager On Duty. Luckily I was accompanied by two members of British Airways Special Services, who were horrified at the sexual attack and suggested that I lodge a complaint. I asked if there would be any point in lodging a complaint since, as with any complaint against a figure in “authority”, the complaints are simply collected in order to protect the guilty officer should the matter go further. The British Airways Special Services employees assured me that a complaint was worthwhile, and so I filed the appropriate information.

     Morrissey claims that when he tried to confront the offending security officer, he was repeatedly told, “That’s just your opinion.”

     “Apart from ‘that’s just your opinion,’ he would not comment, even though, since the penis and testicles were mine and no one else’s, then my opinion must surely have some meaning,” Morrissey protested.

     Oh, my! The gentleman is claiming ownership of his body parts! The right to exclude others from accessing them without his consent! What an innovation! What a daring excursion into property rights theory! What will he come up with next?

     Say, do you think Famous Person Morrissey has ever thought about such an invasion of privacy and outrage to decency when it happens to someone else? I know which side of that bet I’d take.

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6. A Question For My Readers

     I did something on impulse quite recently, and the reaction was unexpected, to say the least. Allow me to tell you about it.

     Last week I took a day trip out to continental New York – you know, the wilderness west of the Hudson River – to look at real estate that might be suitable for a retirement destination. I’d engaged the services of a realtor – let’s call her Jane – who graciously spent her entire day with and on me. We saw a number of properties, two of which struck me as eminently suitable. I took quite a lot of photos of them, thanked her, and returned to Long Island hoping that the C.S.O. might agree with me on one of the two.

     Sadly, ‘twas not to be. The C.S.O. has declared, sine die, that she will not relocate. She’s grown too attached to our current house and its environs, and refuses to consider any of the advantages attendant upon departing this Godforsaken lump of terminal moraine.

     That left me in a moral quandary. I’d inveighed Jane into devoting an entire day to me, on the representation that we were serious about buying a house. To discover that it had been a vain quest from the start, undertaken under a false pretense – by both of us, mind you, for I was as badly misled as she – left me feeling that I owed her something. So I sent her an Amazon gift card and a favorite CD of mine.

     Well! You can hardly imagine the emissions about that, from Jane or the C.S.O. The former was unbelievably effusive in gratitude; as the saying goes, she stopped just short of asking to have my baby. The latter wanted to know if I’d gone bonkers at long last: “They work on commission, Fran! It’s just the way things are!”

     If you were in my position – and God grant that you never are; I was middlin’ angry at the C.S.O. for days, a most unpleasant feeling – would you have felt as I did? Would you have done as I did? If not, what do you think would have been appropriate?

     Have a nice day.