The GOP gets a break in the New York redistricting fight

The New Neo Posted on by

Democrats in New York are outraged because their efforts to gerrymander themselves between three and four extra Democratic seats in the House of Representatives have backfired. But back in 2014, NY state had actually amended the NY state constitution and banned partisan gerrymandering:

New Yorkers recognized these harms and, in 2014, voted to enshrine in the New York Constitution an explicit prohibition against partisan gerrymandering, which banned maps drawn, “for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or other particular candidates or political parties.”…

When the U.S. Supreme Court recklessly declared that federal courts could not address cases about partisan gerrymandering, state-level efforts to outlaw partisan gerrymandering became more important than ever.

I’m not sure how that amendment came about, although I’ve researched it a bit. I would imagine there’s quite a story there, though, because the Democrats have controlled NY state for a long time and I don’t know why they would relinquish their ability to gerrymander. Here’s a little bit about the history:

In 2014, voters in New York State voted yes on Proposition 1, a constitutional amendment to implement historic changes with the intent to achieve a fair and readily transparent process by which to redraw the lines of state legislative and congressional districts. The redistricting process occurs every ten years, informed by data obtained by the Census. The goals of this proposal were to reform the redistricting process to introduce greater independence, and guarantee the application of substantive criteria that protect minority voting rights, communities of interest, and rational line-drawing…

One of these important reforms was the creation of the Independent Redistricting Commission. The purpose of creating the Commission is to make the process independent from the legislature in favor of an equally bipartisan body. For the first time, both the majority and minority parties in the legislature will have an equal role in the process of drawing lines.

At any rate, recent developments have led to the following

But all the braggadocio was for naught when a New York State trial judge, then Appellate Division panel, then the Court of Appeals (the highest court in the state) threw out the Democrat maps as an unconstitutional political gerrymander. The Court of Appeals confirmed the trial judge’s decision to appoint a Special Master to propose a map. The Special Master has circulated his preliminary map, and like a tiger caught by the toe, Democrats are hollering.

The new map – which hasn’t been finalized yet as the law of the land – has these possible consequences:

The proposed maps, drawn by Jonathan R. Cervas, the court-appointed special master, would unwind changes that Democrats had hoped to use to unseat Representative Nicole Malliotakis, a Staten Island Republican; flip other Republican-held swing districts; and secure their own tenuous seats in the Hudson Valley region.

The new lines even cast the future of several long-tenured, powerful Democratic incumbents in doubt, forcing several to potentially run against one another.

Did the Democrats think that the judiciary would side with them despite the 2014 amendment? Probably. But apparently they thought wrong.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) In yesterday’s primaries on the GOP side, we had the defeat of NC member of Congress Madison Cawthorn. I hadn’t been following his trajectory closely, but let’s just say he had major issues. The link provides further details. Because the district he is coming from is red, his ouster probably won’t affect the House balance of power.

(2) Speaking of yesterday’s primaries, the fight between GOP Senate candidates Mehmet Oz and David McCormick in Pennsylvania is too close to call. This was the contest in which celebrity Oz was backed by Trump, angering a lot of people on the right who don’t trust Oz and who prefer McCormick. The race is so close that a mandatory recount may be triggered. Whoever wins, I hope he’s strong enough to beat the very “progressive” Democrat John Fetterman, who’s got his own problems of the health variety.

(3) The new official “disinformation” board is no more. Pity. Boy, that must have polled poorly. Then again, media and social media have been serving the same twisted function for quite some time.

(4) The US is in the hypersonic weapons game.

(5) To ask this question is to answer it: “The alleged supermarket killer is self-described as authoritarian left — so why isn’t this being reported?”

Maybe Musk will now start reading NewNeo to guide him through the transition to voting Republican

The New Neo Posted on by

The title of this post is tongue-in-cheek; I don’t expect Musk to be interested in what I’ve written about political changers and left-to-right political change. But he’s a classic example of the phenomenon in this announcement:

Elon Musk, admitting he had voted “overwhelmingly” for Democrats in the past, has changed his mind.

Musk is registered as an independent voter; he announced the switch over video link at a tech summit in Miami, Florida, hosted by the All-In podcast.

“I have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, historically,” Musk acknowledged. “Like I’m not sure, I might never have voted for a Republican, just to be clear. Now this election I will,” Newsweek reported.

One of the classic changer elements Musk is demonstrating is the need to emphasize his past solidarity with Democrats in order to let the left know he’s not a bad person, not one of those terrible people on the right. And he’s also implying that maybe the switch is just for this election rather than being permanent (I suppose that could even be true). I know that, at the beginning of my change when I would discuss it with friends, I would emphasize that I’d never voted for a Republican before and was not a Republican now.

No one seemed to care. Actually, I think it only infuriated those whose politics were such that they were inclined to be infuriated. My past bona fides only made my “conversion” more threatening and more pernicious to that group. No one likes an apostate – or at least, many people on the left don’t. And I don’t think Musk parading his past liberal bona fides will impress those on the left, either, who now see him as the archenemy.

Judge Jackson won’t denounce the Dobbs leak or the protesters at justices’ homes

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of people are writing about this Andrew C. McCarthy article in which he reports the following:

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court after the current term ends in a few weeks, sat for an interview by the Washington Post…
Here’s the relevant excerpt from the interview:

Q: What was your response when you when you saw the draft leak [of a Supreme Court opinion that would strike down Roe v. Wade]?

A: Everybody who is familiar with the court and the way in which it works was shocked by that. Such a departure from normal order.

Q: Do you think it was a good thing or a bad thing?

A: I can’t answer that.

Q: What do you think about peaceful protests outside of Supreme Court justices’ homes?

A: I don’t have any comment.

This ranges from somewhere between cowardly and sinister, much like the failure of the justices to issue a joint statement that echoes the chief justice’s condemnation of the leak and statement of determination to identify the leaker, and that condemns the protests, which violate federal law.

Why would anyone be surprised by this? The Democratic Party and the current administration is leftist, and leftists almost never condemn anything the left does, and don’t feel they have to explain. Usually the MSM obliges them and doesn’t even try to make them explain.

What’s more, Justice Jackson is younger than the other liberal/left justices on the Court, and she came up in a law school environment (graduated Harvard Law in 1996) that was almost certainly more influenced by the theory that law is not objective, and cannot be objective, but is actually power politics by another name masquerading under the guise of objectivity (if you’re interested in an excellent book on the subject take a look at Beyond All Reason, written in 1997 and describing how the approach had taken over legal education.) I am fairly sure that Jackson has been heavily influenced by that sort of thinking, and that this will be the approach of Democrat-nominated justices in the future unless something occurs to make the Party steer away from the leftism it espouses and promotes today.

Looking at the quoted portion of the interview itself, I see some interesting things. McCarthy writes, “[Jackson] first expressed shock over the leak, so it was clearly a topic she was willing to weigh in on.” But did she? What she said was a very very careful, “Everybody who is familiar with the court and the way in which it works was shocked by that. Such a departure from normal order.” But there is no “I” statement there. The implication is that she is familiar with such things and that she also was shocked. But she doesn’t say that, and since she is a lawyer and judge I think it’s pretty clear she chose her words carefully in order to present the appearance of saying that without actually saying it. Then she follows up by refusing to express any judgment on it (does she need to consult a lawyer, in much the same way that she said she needed to consult a biologist to define “woman”?).

The interviewer than asks Jackson not about protests at justices’ homes but specifically about peaceful protests at justices’ homes. Interesting. Jackson would not weigh in on it, and I think we can safely conclude that it’s because she knows that these are her constituents. She may or may not have an opinion, but she certainly has no need to voice it and arouse ire within the base of the Democratic Party.

Jackson also probably suspects that the right isn’t going to do the same to her and picket her dwelling place. I’m not 100% certain that they wouldn’t, but it’s not their usual m.o. although the left loves that sort of thing when it’s the left doing it to the right. I also would guess that Jackson believes that if it did happen to her, the DOJ would be on it in a heartbeat, and the MSM minions would waste no time in falling all over themselves to condemn it.

It’s nice to have so many institutions on your side.

The spam filter is a bit underactive and a bit overactive these days

The New Neo Posted on by

Lately I’ve noticed that a few spam comments have been escaping the filter and getting posted. I get rid of them and I also have certain additional ways of blocking them before they even appear. Hopefully my methods will bear fruit soon.

In addition, I’ve noticed that a slightly-increased number of bona fide comments are getting filtered out by that very same span filter. Just now, I liberated three or four of them from the last week and they should be showing. That’s the rate I’m talking about; it’s not high. But if you notice that you’re having difficulties of that nature with a certain comment that has no obvious offensive content, just email me and I’ll try to find it and fix it. But there may be a time lag.

For the most part, the spam filter is still working quite smoothly.

Boring inside-baseball stuff, I know. But there’s always a certain amount of that sort of thing with a blog, usually kept behind the scenes.

Nice going, Putin old boy, say Finland and Sweden

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, well, well:

Finland will apply for membership in the NATO military alliance, the country’s president, Sauli Niinisto, confirmed on Sunday, in a historic policy shift prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow, which shares a 1,300 km (800 mile) border with Finland, has said it would be a mistake for Helsinki to join the 30-strong transatlantic alliance and that it would harm bilateral ties.

Sweden is also expected to follow suit as public support for membership has grown amid security concerns.

Sunday’s announcement comes after Niinisto and Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin, said on Thursday they both favoured membership in NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), giving a green light for the country to apply.

Interestingly: “Putin said he thought the move would be a mistake, but did not repeat earlier threats that any such move would trigger countermeasures from Moscow, the Finnish leader said in an interview with CNN on Sunday.”

And then there’s Poland:

A Russian lawmaker has issued a fiery warning that Warsaw is next in line for “de-nazification” after Poland’s Prime Minister penned an op-ed calling Russia’s imperialist “Russkiy Mir” ideology a “cancer” consuming Russian society and a “deadly threat” to other countries.

Poland is a NATO member, so I don’t think Russia is contemplating much fake “de-nazification” there, despite “lawmakers” issuing “fiery warnings.”

By the way, this video has been posted many times at YouTube, and recent comments tend to follow the sarcastic “This aged well, didn’t it?” One person wrote, “Not so funny now is it Mr. President?”:

Horrific shooting in Buffalo

The New Neo Posted on by

What is there to say anymore about a racist murder such as this most recent one, in a Buffalo supermarket – hasn’t it all been said before, so many times?

I’ll say this: that each such murder is an outrage and must be punished to the full extent of the law. That sometimes the perpetrator is a white person who hates black people and that sometimes it’s a black person who hates white people. That the MSM goes on and on and on about the first type of murder, trying to link it to the GOP, and that it is mostly silent about the second type and tries to pretend that a car did it, or insufficient gun control did it, or some other garbage.

I think this guy sums it up rather well:

RIP to the victims.

Abortion, angry women, and “choice”

The New Neo Posted on by

I was walking in a certain town in New England this past Saturday and I happened on a pro-abortion demonstration. I heard it long before I saw it. There was a lot of yelling and honking, and a crowd composed mostly but not entirely of women, many of them carrying signs.

One that especially caught my eye was this: “ANGRY WOMEN WILL CHANGE THE WORLD.” My immediate thought was they already have, for the worse. What are they so all-fired angry about? What they see as the potential loss of the right to abortion? In most states, that right will remain, although some of the demonstrators probably aren’t even aware of what Alito’s draft actually said or what it actually meant, and are therefore highly susceptible to leftist propaganda about it.

Another large sign I saw read, “Impeach Alito.” For what? My guess is that the bearer of that sign probably neither knew nor cared what impeachment is supposed to be about. To her it may simply be a synonym for “removing someone whose decisions and policies I don’t like.”

The idea that any state could ban or severely limit abortion – not just their own state, but any state – is unconscionable to these demonstrators, both men and women. A leftist-favored “right” once created, however poorly-reasoned the opinion that creates it, can never be allowed to be taken away. The ratchet only works in one direction for leftists, and any reversal is an anathema.

I also noticed two posts at Legal Insurrection (this and this) in which people who are asked about abortion or outright killing of viable infants, even full-term infants, respond by repeating as a sort of mantra that women have the “right to choose.”

Here’s an example from that last one. The man being interviewed is New York’s mayor Eric Adams:

Right after that, he adds, “Men shouldn’t have the right to choose how women should treat their bodies” (see this video, which can’t be embedded here).

Eric Adams’ statement is both nonsensical and horrifically amoral. But that’s where the Democratic Party has arrived, whether all its voters realize that or not. And that’s what the “right to choose” and “pro-Choice” are meant to hide. Who isn’t for liberty, for the right to choose? But the right to choose is not absolute – in other words, we can choose to steal or murder or to assault someone, but those acts are unlawful and if the legal system was working correctly we would pay the price. Someone like Adams and the women demonstrating for unlimited abortion are saying that there should be no such limits on abortion even if states decide democratically to limit it. And to label the killing of a viable child “abortion” and “choice” is an assertion way way down the slippery slope to evil. Calling it “choice” does not mitigate the evil, although to some it hides that evil rather effectively.

But that’s why people defending abortion and especially late-term abortions keep repeating the word “choice.” It is a smokescreen employed to hide what they are actually saying. And adding the idea that men have no right to “choose how women should treat their bodies” introduces two absurdities. The first is that a person can only opine on and vote for or against a question that can directly affect that person. What about post-menopausal women? Do they still get a vote on this, or does their right to vote on it end with the cessation of menstruation? What about trans men; are they allowed to vote on it?

The second absurdity is, of course, the idea that a full-term baby is a part of a woman’s body and that she gets to choose to murder it if she so desires. And “absurdity” is a word that’s way too kind – it’s actually an abomination.

[NOTE: The other day the name Peter Singer came up the comments, because he is a “bioethicist” who advocates infanticide in some circumstances. I have written extensively about Singer in 2015, in a three-part series. Part I is here, Part II is here, and Part III is here.]