Goodness gracious. There is commotion at The Farm this morning. A crew- all Hispanic, we think- but certainly with the working language being Española- is laboring at vast cost to clean up the debris of the savage January season that brought down trees and branches all over the sprawling property lines. The Chairman is apparently digging deep in his jeans to fund what is normally a fair reluctance to actually spend cash, but the inflation emergency and the spectre of a lack of skilled workmen seems to have an imperative all its own.

You can see the above slide has been subject to a quick review by our young Attorney to ensure there is no naked partisan mal-dis-mis information which could invoke retaliation. That is a problem for the group and we are working through it to help the Chairman pay for clearing debris, a direct result of weather. We have been told now that what used to pass with simple disagreement is now considered something we thought was a Big Deal. That would be collusion with foreign powers against the interests of the United States.

We heard about some of it yesterday, with a Senator accusing a Congressional Representative for being part of a conspiracy including a popular media commentator. The Senator’s recommendation was that both should be arrested and tried in a court of law.

We huddled quicky when the Attorney went to the lady’s room. Splash was mildly agog at the development. “Disagreement” is now “Treason,” and apparently based on the judgement of people in charge of some of the agencies we used to support. That is a fairly dramatic change, since being accused of the “T” word could lead one to confinement, trial, and execution. Naturally, we have accepted a new sort of law as it is being practiced these days. There is a mound of stuff laying about in plain view that in our time would have been sufficient for a non-partisan legal proceeding, but now is just casually dispensed with, along with the contents of at least three personal laptops filled with images that are still titillating and information that appears to be illegal conduct. And they have been in the custody of national law enforcement and intelligence authorities for years with no result whatsoever.

There naturally is the supposition that it is all perfectly fine, destruction of subpoenaed material notwithstanding. That is why we have an attorney assigned to our team to ensure compliance with all sorts of invisible enforcement we are not familiar with.

Not to beat a drum on that sort of thing, but as you know the Congress lurched into decisive action to pass a Continuing Resolution last week to fund a Fiscal Year already half past. It is not described as a “budget,” though it is serving that function. Partly, anyway. It was described as 3,400 pages of stuff that when signed by the President became “Public Law.”

Buck observed that it contained all sorts of things that were not mentioned in any public discussion. One of the provisions was a worthy-sounding thing intended to stop violence against women. We are universally in favor of that. But there were some interesting parts contained within that new law that do things we also consider sort of unconstitutional work-arounds to impose restrictions against things that don’t appear to have much to do with male violence against females, but rather some general restrictions on everyone.

In this particular case, it is sort of like the installation of kill-switches for our automobiles by 2026 controlled by all sorts of people who are not “us” (The RIDE Act). The one in the new imposing stack of paper is allegedly intended to reduce violence against females. We support that, but it also does a bunch of stuff that appears to violate some existing laws.

The Violence Against Women Act was slid into the Continuing Resolution without public discussion. It mandates that “Attorney General Merrick Garland issue a notice to State, local, or Tribal law enforcement and prosecutors if an individual has attempted to purchase a firearm and been denied pursuant to the national instant criminal background check system.” Like the RIDE Act, that is nothing we disagree with generally, except for one unfortunate thing. Over 95% of all NICS denials are false positives, thus denying rights to citizens without formal appeal.

It would have the effect of forcing local law enforcement to investigate law-abiding citizens when they’re wrongly denied the right to purchase a firearm. And of course, that includes law-abiding women who feel a need to arm themselves against violent former partners. That is a simple attempt to describe something really complicated and seemingly unconstitutional that is now Law. Without discussion. Because of that new practice, there was no ability to approach our elected representatives about the specific provisions contained, and now it is Law.

It didn’t use to work that way as we recall it. There was a vigorous process in which our proposed new laws were debated in subcommittees of Congress, floated upward to full Committee for endorsement, passed by the whole House and the whole Senate in a duplicate process. Then, after conference to address discrepancies, the law was sent to the President for signing. It was a process intended to be cumbersome. Now, acts are just slipped into gigantic omnibus appropriations no one has time to read and become the Law of the Land.

So that is a new development and not the way things have worked in the first couple hundred years of our Republic. This morning contained another one. The leader of the gallant Ukrainian people, fighting the onslaught of the Russian Army, had the opportunity to address the US Congress. We support that. We support courage and oppose Russia’s naked aggression. President Zelenskyy appeared on ZOOM and showed a horrifying video of the brutality to support his request for a no-fly zone to be established over his nation.

We are sort of unified in the concept that the Ukrainian people should be supported. We are also sort of opposed to the idea that we would take steps that could cause use of nuclear weapons. That could occur by actions of people who are under stress, terrified and unfamiliar with the old rules of conduct that prevented such use since against people since 1945. But this could become law (or something) after the leaders of Congress have a few minutes to talk about it.

But our Attorney is coming back from her pit-stop, and she is smiling. We don’t know what that means. It could be good news or the opposite. Our Attorney is sort of like our Republic these days. There are all sorts of laws, but we are not sure what they mean or who they are intended to control. She is going to sit down and tell us something that could affect the rest of our day. We will have to concentrate over the noise of the chainsaws and the chippers down by the fence line to hear it. They are going to get close through the course of the day, so bear with us. Maybe we will understand- or at least hear- the new rules once the noise dies down.

Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com