Constitution Archives - Bookworm Room

Pelosi: All Investigations Of Democrats Are Illicit & Grounds For Impeachment

October 23, 2019 by Wolf Howling Leave a Comment

Nancy Pelosi’s “Impeachment Fact Sheet” asserts that investigating the Russia hoax constitutes an impeachable attempt to interfere in the 2020 election.

In his July 25 phone call, President Trump asked the President of the Ukraine to assist in an ongoing investigation into Ukrainian assistance to the Democrats in the 2016 election, to locate the DNC server supposedly now being held in the Ukraine and, later in the conversation, “to look into” the situation surrounding Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Pelosi now collectively labels all of those investigations a “sham.”

Nancy Pelosi just turned the corner on the Democrats’ already very dangerous game. If the law is such that progressives can operate above it in this country — including attempting coups to overturn elections — while holding the rest of the nation below its protections, then however this ends, it will include the end of our near 250 year experiment in republican government based on our Constitution. This all started with whitewashing Hillary Clinton serial crimes: first, recklessly mishandling our nation’s secrets; second, trying to destroy the Trump campaign and install her in the Presidency. The only way this ends with this nation intact is for justice and the law to be applied equally across party lines, and for those who violated the law to be held accountable.

The propaganda Pelosi released Tuesday is many things, the most important of which is a preemptive strike to undermine what many expect Horowitz, Barr, and Dunham will find through their ongoing investigations; namely, that the Russia hoax was an attempted coup (it most certainly was) executed by unlawful means (and I will be amazed if it wasn’t). Those investigations are tied in part to the Ukraine. We know that, at the Democrats’ request, Ukraine did in fact play a role in the 2016 election hoax. As Politico reported in January, 2017:

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

Here is the “Fact Sheet” Pelosi released today, which I have reformatted for this blog, including removing the graphics. In it, in speaking of the investigations as to which which Trump asked for Ukrainian assistance, Pelosi refers to all collectively as “sham investigations” (red-text emphasis mine):

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Religious Liberty: AG Barr vs. Jeffery Toobin

October 20, 2019 by Wolf Howling Leave a Comment

AG Barr recently spoke eloquently on religious liberty. Progressive legal analyst Jeffery Toobin vomited canards and bald assertions in response.

In a speech at Notre Dame Law School on October 11, Attorney General William Barr asserted that government needs to prioritize protecting religious freedom. To summarize briefly, Barr observed that the Founders held that the new country needed to be built upon Judeo-Christians moral underpinnings, in large part because those values were inextricably intertwined with our being a “free” and functioning nation. For the past half century or more, though, progressives have been attacking these religions, seeking to drive them from the public square while offering no viable alternative. The cost of that to our society has been “grim.” Thus we must act to protect religious liberty in this country from the progressive onslaught.

Barr makes so many insightful and nuanced points of such great importance to the character and functioning of our nation, and he does so with such elegance, that I cannot possibly do his speech justice in any sort of summary. For instance, Barr points out that the Judeo-Christian religions provide a “shared set of moral values” flowing from a transcendent God that teach us both restraint and positive action in a way beneficial to society as a whole. Says Barr, “but, if you rely on the coercive power of government to impose restraints, this will inevitably lead to a government that is too controlling, and you will end up with no liberty, just tyranny.” It really is a speech that every American should read or watch. You can read the full text of his remarks here, and you can watch the video below:

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Can Pelosi & Schiff Get Away With Running a Star Chamber Impeachment?

October 11, 2019 by Wolf Howling Leave a Comment

What are the issues at the heart of the impeachment farce, and, as between the President and the progressives in the House, who has the superior legal argument?

Everything wrong with progressives today is playing out in the Star Chamber that Democrats are running as an “impeachment inquiry” in the House of Representatives. The Democrats’ have dispensed with due process, precedent, and Constitutional limitation to create a juggernaut designed not to reach a just conclusion, but to ensure a vote impeaching the sitting President and bringing this nation half way to overturning the 2016 election. Today’s progressives feel themselves above the law and believe the rest of us, including very much President Donald Trump, are unworthy of its protection. Nowhere is that more apparent at the moment then in this impeachment farce.

The issues are two-fold. First, may the House exercise the power to conduct an impeachment inquiry without formal authorization voted upon by the full House? Second, is Nancy Pelosi constitutionally able to manipulate the House rules of impeachment to deny any due process or procedural protection to President Trump and to the minority members of the House? In other words, is it true that Impeachment is nothing more than a particularly one-sided Grand Jury investigation?

A bit of background first. A formal decision to investigate for impeachment is not a meaningless decision or a mere label. At a minimum, once the House formally decides upon impeachment, the House accrues powers beyond that which it normally possesses. Thus, it is a substantive legal question whether a House impeachment inquiry requires a House vote or whether the Speaker of the House can unilaterally announce the beginning of an impeachment inquiry. I know of no precedent in American or British history supporting Nancy Pelosi’s contention that she can accrue these formal powers of impeachment by simple fiat. More on that below.

The House of Representatives normally only has “legislative” authority. Thus House members are limited to investigating and holding hearings on matters that relate directly to producing legislation. As with so much in our Constitution, this is not a thing of bright line clarity. But as is almost always the case, the fact that there’s no bright line does not mean that there is no line. Perhaps the clearest example of line drawing outside of the impeachment context comes from recent House efforts to use a subpoena to force the IRS to release Trump’s tax returns. When Trump refused to honor the subpoena, his attorneys pointed out that the House, while its members may have a political interest in reviewing Trump’s tax returns, have no legitimate legislative interest.

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Progressives See Themselves As Above The Law And The Rest Of Us As Below It

September 30, 2019 by Wolf Howling Leave a Comment

American Progressives want to be above the law and the Constitution, while treating Trump and his supporters as below the law and the Constitution. This can’t end well.

INTRODUCTION

We live in two Americas today, two parts that are in a cold civil war. The divide is between progressives who believe their moral superiority makes them above the law and the rest of us, whom progressives strongly believe should be subordinate to the law and the Constitution. To this end, progressives believe the Constitution, both its mandates and its limitations, are an obstacle that they can dispense with when any provisions do not redound to their benefit. If Trump does not return us to an America in which the law is applied equally to all people, ending the progressive’s raw will to power and reuniting the two Americas, the current situation will spell this nation’s end.

I. Trump and Charges of a Cover-up of the Ukraine Affair v. Hillary Clinton and her Private Server

Once the auditors to the Trump phone call with Ukraine’s president finalized and consolidated their notes from the call, the Trump Administration stored that document on a government top secret server for a few weeks — just as Trump’s predecessor, President Obama, did so with many of the memorializations of his phone calls with foreign leaders. However, when congressional Democrats said that they wanted to see the transcript from the call, the Trump Administration immediately produced it. Nevertheless, the Democrats in Congress and in the media are now claiming that merely placing the document on that server is one of the grounds for impeaching Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr for a “cover up.” It is ludicrous.

Hillary Clinton ran a private server out of a bathroom to hide her communications as Secretary of State for years, placed thousands of secret and top secret emails on the server, and then used “bleach bit” to wipe her server months after receiving a subpoena. The Obama DOJ and FBI then engaged in the single most obscene travesty of justice in this nation’s history to exonerate her and they did so with the whole-hearted support of every progressive in and out of Congress. The progressive left, repeatedly claiming her innocence, is only angry that she didn’t win the presidential election to which they — and she — felt she was entitled.

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On Constitution Day, Leftists assault the Constitution

September 19, 2019 by Wolf Howling Leave a Comment

For most of America, September 17 was “Constitution Day.” For progressives, it was a day to launch a multi-pronged assault on the Constitution.

On September, 17, 1787, the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention signed their finished product, the Constitution, and released it to the states to consider for ratification. It would be a year before eleven states ratified the Constitution, passing it into law, and three years before all thirteen states ratified the Constitution. It would be four years before the states ratified ten of the first twelve proposed Amendments to the Constitution, creating the Bill of Rights. Regardless, it is the 17th of September that we commemorate as “Constitution Day.”

But not the progressive left. To the extent they spent any time at all referencing the Constitution this past week, it was to attack the Constitution. Call it “Un-Constitutional Day,” if you will. The most direct attack was an attack on originalism — the truism that the Constitution must be interpreted as closely as possible to its commonly understood meaning on the day it was signed in 1787. Next, the Left, through its house organ, the New York Times, launched an attack on due process, with Democratic candidates for President calling for Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh’s head. And the last attack, without doubt the most dangerous in the near term, was a renewed call in the New York Times to pack the Supreme Court with progressive ideologues. [Read more…]

The New & . . . Well, NEW Progressive Constitution

September 11, 2019 by Wolf Howling Leave a Comment

With Rep. Clyburn admitting that the proggies don’t like our Constitution as is, it’s time to take a look at what they want in a constitution.

Let’s face it. Progressives have gone a long way to making our Constitution a dead letter already. But as Rep. Clyburn makes clear in the video below, they are not yet wholly satisfied with the result. Work remains to be done.

What progressives want is nothing more than permanent power. That would be impossible to accomplish were they starting from scratch, but clearly they aren’t. A lot of the most important groundwork has already been laid over the past century. So with that in mind, let’s take a look at the state of our Constitution today, how it has already been altered, and how it would look once the proggies are done rewriting it. [Read more…]

Is The Administrative State On Borrowed Time?

June 24, 2019 by Wolf Howling Leave a Comment

Is the Supreme Court about to curtail the administrative state (and perhaps circumscribe judicial activism) by holding that Art. 1, Sec. 1 of the Constitution actually means what it says?

For the past near century — since FDR’s infamous court packing scheme — the administrative state (or bureaucratic state, call it what you will) has ever increasingly come to rule this country, working extra-Constitutional and fundamental changes to the fabric of society by promulgating regulations with the force of law that could never pass through Congress. (For but three of countless possible examples, the HHS Obamacare birth-control mandate that was a direct attack on religion in America, the EPA’s regulation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant despite rejection by Congress, and the regulation of the internet under the rubric of net neutrality.) It is the single greatest threat to America as a constitutional republic.

In a decision issued 20 June 2019, Gundy v. U.S., Justices Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito explicitly stated that they are prepared to enforce the plain words of the Constitution and limit as unconstitutional Congress’s delegation of legislative authority to administrative bodies as currently practiced. Justice Kavanaugh, who did not take part in the Gundy decision but whose criticism of the administrative state is well documented, could well be the fifth vote. Such a decision would fundamentally remake this nation and take us back to our constitutional roots. It would be, in essence, a bloodless revolution.

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House Judiciary Committee calls as its first witness . . . John Dean

June 4, 2019 by Wolf Howling Leave a Comment

Jerry Nadler’s House Judiciary Committee opens its hearings with John Dean, disgraced former White House Counsel. Republicans should be thrilled.

John Dean is about to testify that Trump’s actions amount to an unlawful obstruction of justice. Jerry Nadler will invite Dean to explain how everything Trump did per the Mueller Report parallels something Richard Nixon did in connection with Watergate. Then Nadler will invite Dean to call for Trump to be impeached. I have no doubt John Dean will accept all of the invitations.

What is John Dean’s expertise? He knows no more about the inner workings of the Trump Administration than any other citizen who has read the Mueller Report. He does, however, know about political spying, criminality and covering up a criminal acts — unsuccessfully at least.

During the 1972 Presidential campaign, several private citizens who supported President Richard Nixon’s reelection bid were caught attempting to bug the DNC Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. Although President Nixon had nothing to do with the crime, he attempted to cover it up by using the agencies of government. For instance, he had the CIA hinder the FBI investigation, targeted reporters with wiretaps, he used the IRS to audit a political enemy, and he attempted to bribe people involved. John Dean, as White House Counsel, was the architect of the cover-up and was personally involved in destroying evidence. Dean jumped ship at some point, offering to testify against Nixon in return for a lenient jail sentence.

Since getting out of prison, John Dean has been a hero to progressives. He pretends now be a paragon of morals and ethics, attacking the GOP (but never Democrats) at every turn. According to Dean, George Bush and Dick Cheney were worse than Nixon and should have been impeached. And don’t get this worthless excuse for a lizard started on Donald Trump, whom he has attacked repeatedly since 2016. Eh, it’s sold books and gotten him some MSNBC gigs.

Why should Republicans be salivating at the chance to question Dean? Let me count the ways.

Nadler wants to pretend that Trump is a reincarnation of Dick Nixon in the White House. Fine. Here are some points to bring out in Dean’s testimony.

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Will “Unprecedented Obstruction of Congress” Become The New Democrat Meme?

April 27, 2019 by Wolf Howling Leave a Comment

The NYT tests out a new Trump attack . . . and after 8 years of Obama, the NYT discovers “unprecedented obstruction” of Congressional Oversight.

The NYT editorial board is in high dudgeon. Apparently, “Donald Trump Shows a New Level of Contempt for Congress.” Many presidents,” the NYT editors tell us, “have resisted congressional demands for testimony and documents. But not quite like Mr. Trump.” Really? Are they high? Or did the eight years of the Obama administration simply not count?

So what exactly has Trump done, . . . besides fully complying with a two-year fishing expedition for criminality that was the worst political dirty trick in our nation’s history. According to the NYT:

Mr. Trump’s top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, has declined an invitation to discuss immigration policy;

Stephen Miller is not an agency head who would normally be subject to a subpoena over public policy. So how is his declining an “invitation” that he is free to accept or decline without recourse in any way obstructing Congress?

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Thoughts about the Catholic School’s lawsuit against LGBT laws

April 3, 2019 by Bookworm Leave a Comment

A cursory review of 1st Amendment law hints that a Catholic school can win its challenge against South Euclid’s overly broad statute regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.

PJ Media reported yesterday that a small Catholic school in Ohio, one that revolves around traditional Catholic doctrine, including viewing marriage as a covenant between a biological man and a biological woman, is challenging its city’s newly passed “sexual orientation gender identity” (SOGI) ordinance on the basis that it is an unreasonable infringement against the school’s free exercise of its religion under the First Amendment:

Last year, the City of South Euclid passed a SOGI ordinance similar to the Equality Act in Congress and the Ohio Fairness Act currently in the state legislature. The Lyceum, a Catholic classical school in South Euclid, will sue the city on Wednesday, claiming the SOGI ordinance violates the First Amendment.

[snip]

“South Euclid passed one of the most offensive and egregious sexual orientation gender identity laws that I have ever seen, and Christian ministries across the country should take note of what these laws would mean to them,” Aaron Baer, president of Citizens for Community Values (CCV), told PJ Media. His organization opposed the ordinance during the legislative process and will host the press conference on the lawsuit with ADF and the Lyceum. “The Lyceum is standing up and saying enough is enough.”

Baer called the local ordinance an “incredibly broad law that is devastating to Christian ministries.” According to him, the law imposes criminal penalties on individuals, businesses, and ministries that operate according to the teachings that marriage is between one man and one woman and that biological sex overrides gender identity. Every school, business, and ministry must open women’s bathrooms to biological men who identify as women and celebrate same-sex marriage and transgender identity.

According to the CCV president, the ordinance has no exemption for religious freedom or freedom of conscience.

Here’s the ordinance (or at least I believe this is the ordinance at issue) so you can draw your own conclusions. After defining sexual orientation and gender identity among other protected classes, the ordinance prohibits all sorts of things, including hiring people on the LGBTQetc. spectrum. I don’t think it’s true, though, that there’s no religion or conscience exception (again, assuming I’m looking at the correct ordinance). Instead, there is one that places the burden of proof on the person asserting the right of conscience.:

552.06 GENERAL EXCEPTIONS.

[snip]

(f) If a party asserts that an otherwise unlawful practice is justified as a permissible bona fide religious or denominational preference, that party shall have the burden of proving that the discrimination is in fact a necessary result of such a bona fide condition.

As a preliminary matter, when a government is infringing upon free speech or association — which is effectively what is happening here because it is holding that religious institutions cannot promote their values either through hiring practices or teachings — it’s the government that bears the burden of proving that its regulation is not unduly burdensome: “When a State’s rule imposes severe burdens on speech or association, it must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest. . . .” Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, Inc., 525 U.S. 182, 206 (1999), Justice Thomas, concurring (and cited with approval in the decision itself). [Read more…]

Reparations: The Holy Grail Of Identity Politics (Part II)

February 26, 2019 by Wolf Howling 1 Comment

Reparations that economically penalize modern Americans for ancient acts to benefit other modern Americans are not justified by any fair reading of history.

2020 Democrat presidential candidates immersed in race-obsessed identity politics (as a substitute for the class-based politics of pure Marxism) are pushing the for the Holy Grail of victimhood: Reparations for slavery. They are undeterred by the fact that reparations are wholly impractical, utterly immoral, and counterproductive in that they do not address the problems plaguing the lower socio-economic half of the black community.

This will be the second of several posts dealing with the issue of reparations:

Part I – Constitutional Considerations: Bills of Attainder, Corruption of Blood, & Ex Post Facto Laws.

Part II – History of Slavery & Equities

Part III – Practical Impediments to Reparations

Part IV – Need for Reparations?

Part V – Marxism versus Melting Pots

Part II – History of Slavery & Equities

The end game for those pushing reparations for slavery (who now include the top Democratic presidential candidates among their number) is to paint people with black skin as separate, permanent victims in a modern day America that is itself a hotbed of racism. That hotbed, they claim, is responsible for all of the problems of blacks. This is all part and parcel of the effort to destroy Western Civilization, starting with America, then to remake it into a socialist paradise. A necessary step in this endeavor is to delegitimize the Founders of this country, the Constitution, and the Judaeo-Christian religions.

Significantly, those who push for reparations for slavery in America almost invariably paint slavery as a sin unique to white Americans. No one ever seriously mentions the world-wide history of slavery, the American Civil War, or the unique role that white Americans and Brits — Christians, Jews and capitalists — played in ending slavery as both an American and a world-wide institution. Sadly (and dangerously) very little, if any, of that history comes to the attention of students in America today:

For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture.

The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said.

“Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.” . . .

The world history of slavery and its equities.

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Reparations: The Holy Grail Of Identity Politics (Part I)

February 23, 2019 by Wolf Howling Leave a Comment

The Constitution prohibits reparations that would economically penalize modern Americans for centuries’ old sins for the benefit of other modern Americans.

This will be the first of several posts dealing with the issue of reparations:

Part I – Constitutional Considerations: Bills of Attainder, Corruption of Blood, & Ex Post Facto Laws.

Part II – History of Slavery & Equities

Part III – Practical Impediments to Reparations

Part IV – Need for Reparations?

Part IV – Marxism versus Melting Pots

Part I – Constitutional Considerations: Bills of Attainder, Corruption of Blood & Ex Post Facto Laws

According to the NYT, “2020 Democrats Embrace Race-Conscious Policies, Including Reparations:”

From the very first day of the 2020 presidential race, when Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts blamed “generations of discrimination” for black families earning far less than white households, Democratic hopefuls have broadly emphasized racial justice and closing the wealth gap in their policy platforms.

But in recent weeks, some candidates have started embracing specific goals and overtly race-conscious legislation that even the most left-wing elected officials stayed away from in recent years.

Last week, on the popular radio show “The Breakfast Club,” Senator Kamala Harris of California agreed with a host’s suggestion that government reparations for black Americans were necessary to address the legacies of slavery and discrimination. Ms. Harris later affirmed that support in a statement to The New York Times. . . .

[snip]

The morally driven policy goals of Ms. Harris and Ms. Warren reflect a broader shift in the importance of race and identity issues in the Democratic Party, according to several scholars and political leaders who focus on the intersection of race and politics. While Democrats have long cast themselves as more inclusive than the Republican Party, grass-roots organizers and many liberal voters of all races are now pushing elected officials to go further on policies of racial equality, regardless of any political calculations. . . .

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The Rule of Law In Danger

July 17, 2018 by Wolf Howling Leave a Comment

Justice is supposed to be blind. That is not the case in America today and President Trump is partly to blame.

[Update: This today from the Daily Caller:

President Donald Trump chose to have the indictments of 12 Russian hackers announced before his Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a Tuesday Bloomberg report.

Trump wanted the indictments announced ahead of the Monday summit to give him leverage over Putin, a source familiar with the matter told Bloomberg on Tuesday. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave Trump the option of having the indictments released before or after Helsinki, according to the report.

Rosenstein cited national security concerns to allow him to share details of grand jury proceedings with Trump.

A portion of this post was based on incomplete information and thus has been edited to reflect the above, that the timing of the indictments was at the behest of Pres. Trump. The thrust of the original argument remains.]

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Cakes show the Left’s and Right’s different understanding of “equality”

December 6, 2017 by Bookworm 4 Comments

Today’s must-read: Vincent Phillip Muñoz’s article about Progressives’ and Conservatives’ different ideological approaches to equality.

To the extent we conservatives look to the Constitution as the alpha and omega of our political ideology, we’ve thought a lot about equality in theory and in practice. Problems arise, though, when Progressives push their version of “equality,” a notion that marches under the same name as the constitutional concept, but that has a very different meaning.

This different meaning is not a distinction without a difference. Instead, it goes to the very heart of every citizens’ relationship with the state. The first encourages the state to leave citizens alone. The second demands that the state force citizens to pay homage to other citizens. The Left’s understanding of the First Amendment is the ideological equivalent of the Obamacare mandate, in that it relies on state power to enforce Progressive ideas.

As you all know, and as I’ve obsessively pounded away at my keyboard to explain, the conservative notion of equality is grounded in our understanding of the nature of the relationship between citizen and state. The Constitution generally and the Bill of Rights specifically (with assist from the Declaration of Independence) establish that government is the servant of the people.

As such, government does not exist to place value judgments on which people are of greater or lesser worth (i.e., judgments based upon race, creed, a legal citizen’s country of national origin, etc.). Instead, it exists to apply limited law impartially to all citizens, to protect us against threats to our national security, and otherwise to leave us alone to do what we believe necessary to pursue our notion of happiness.

With respect to that last item (leaving us alone), a limited government does have a limited role in ensuring that neither individuals nor the states act affirmatively to prevent people from pursuing their own happiness. In other words, we cannot bake discrimination into the cake (cake reference intentional). Laws cannot apply to one race and not another; places of public accommodation cannot explicitly exclude people based upon characteristics tied solely to race, religion, etc. We citizens have therefore given the government power to ensure that we play fairly under the Constitutional rules; we have not given it the power to come down on one side or another. [Read more…]

California travel ban: Blatant hypocrisy about LGBTQ (etc.) rights

June 24, 2017 by Bookworm 34 Comments

The California travel ban against US states for claimed anti-LGBTQ laws follows its attack on the travel stay for Islamic countries that routinely kill gays.

In January and then again in March 2017, President Trump issued a temporary travel ban aimed at six countries that the Obama administration identified as terror sponsors. These countries are Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

In each of these six countries members of the LGBTQ etc. (hereafter “LGBTQer”) community are officially and/or unofficially physically abused, imprisoned, and murdered. Specifically:

In Iran, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer conduct is punishable by death, with myriad lesser punishments (e.g., lashing and imprisonment) available.
In Libya, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer conduct is illegal and is subject to stringent punishments such as limb amputation and flogging.
In Somalia, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LBGTQer conduct is punishable by imprisonment or death.
In Sudan, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer conduct is illegal and, even if the government does not act, vigilante groups are known to attack or kill people accused of homosexuality.
In Syria, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer activity is illegal and, depending upon the territory in which the LGBTQ etc. individual finds himself or herself, can be subject to violence or death, whether administered by state agencies or vigilante groups.
In Yemen, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer activity is officially illegal, with punishments ranging from lashing, to imprisonment, to death.

The reason behind the universally violent, murderous hostility to LGBTQ identification or conduct in the above countries is sharia law, which is hardwired into Islam. After all, the Pulse nightclub terrorist attack did not happen in an ideological vacuum.

Also in January and, again, in March 2017, California officially and vociferously protested against the Trump administration’s temporary travel ban, a ban that affected terror-exporting Muslim countries that make LGBTQer conduct a capital crime, on the ground that the temporary ban was unconscionable, discriminatory, and ineffective: [Read more…]