Small hiatus

I have been battling quite a few health problems lately but have managed to keep up my usual blogging tempo throughout.  I am feeling a bit worn down however so will take a short break over the Easter period. May you prosper in the wisdom of your risen Lord.

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Congress succeeds in gutting Obama HUD racial and income zoning rule in omnibus

This is a lifesaver.  This thoroughly evil regulation was designed to destroy white flight by dropping minorities into the middle of white neighborhoods -- meaning there would be no escape from black crime.  Every household would have to become a fortress

One good thing that came out of the omnibus spending bill signed into law by President Donald Trump is that it defunds a key aspect of the Obama era Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulation, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.

This was the rule enacted in 2015 that allowed HUD to order more than 1,200 cities and counties that accepted any part of $3 billion of annual community development block grants to rezone neighborhoods along income and racial criteria.

This was always a vast overreach, where the federal government could come in and tell communities what must be built and where. Now, it’s over.

Under Division L, Title II of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018, Section 234, it states, “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to direct a grantee to undertake specific changes to existing zoning laws as part of carrying out the final rule entitled ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing’ … or the notice entitled ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Assessment Tool’ …”

This provision utterly guts the HUD regulation, which had already been delayed by HUD Secretary Ben Carson earlier this year until 2020.

Now, with the backing of Congress, Carson needs to go the extra mile and either rescind this regulation completely, or revise it to comply with the new law.

Congress has spoken on this issue under its Article I power of the purse, and is now saying that the Fair Housing Act, community development block grants and this regulation can no longer be used to direct communities to undertake any changes to zoning.

Believe it or not, this is a game changer.

Without Congress acting, simply rescinding this regulation would have been far riskier for Carson and Trump.

In 1983, the Supreme Court decided Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association v. State Farm Mutual that rescinding any regulation issued an agency is obligated to supply a reasoned analysis “for the change beyond that which may be required when an agency does not act in the first instance.”

The outcome was that it is much more difficult to rescind an existing regulation than it is to either modify it or never have issued it in the first place, leaving every single regulatory rescission subject to judicial review.

Ultimately, the rescinding agency has to argue not only that rescinding the regulation in question is rational based on the statutory scheme, but prove that enacting it was irrational to begin with.

Carson and Trump will now have no problems on that count if they choose to rescind or roll back most of the HUD zoning regulation. The regulation, which absolutely affects zoning, no longer rationally rests within the statutory scheme. It’s now illegal to spend money on implementing it as it was written.

Now nobody can argue that the Fair Housing Act implicitly requires such changes be made to zoning laws. Thanks to U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), the representative who first pushed to defund this regulation, Congress has changed the terms of the game.

Realistically, that will remain true so long as Congress keeps carrying forward the defund language in every single omnibus spending bill going forward. Republicans will have to fight to defund this provision every year so long as the regulation remains in place.

Should Democrats win the midterm elections in November, they might seek to strip this language out of next year’s HUD appropriations bill. To avert this possibility, Carson must begin the regulatory rescission process immediately. There is not a moment to lose.

While there were many problems with the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill, one thing the Republican-led Congress got absolutely right was defunding Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing from being used to force communities to make changes to local zoning law.

Congress has done its job. Now it is up to the Trump administration with Carson in the lead to rescind this regulation with the window of opportunity Congress has given, so that no administration ever again attempts to take over local governments across the country.

SOURCE

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Trump's Tariffs Having the Desired Effect

I prophesied that Trump would replace his tariffs with quotas.  It's started to happen

"Wow," Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) tweeted on Tuesday morning. "I guess the moves made by @realDonaldTrump on trade did not trigger the apocalypse after all.

Rubio referenced a Washington Post report that says South Korea has agreed to further open its auto market to U.S. manufacturers, and it has accepted an annual export quota on steel.

The limit on South Korean steel exports is set at 70 percent of average sales over the past three years, and that amount would be exempt from tariffs.

The New York Times reported that the Trump administration may announce the revised U.S.-South Korea (KORUS) trade deal on Tuesday:

According to the NYT:

The finalization of a trade agreement with South Korea would hand Mr. Trump a victory in his “America First” approach to trade, in which he has threatened to take tough trade action unless other countries agree to concessions, including a reduction in the gap between what they export to the United States and what America exports to their shores. The blanket steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the White House earlier this month are the most recent example of that blunt approach, with the White House using exemptions and revisions as a carrot to avoid the tariff stick.

The South Korean government announced the deal on Monday.

President Trump tweeted on Monday: "Trade talks going on with numerous countries that, for many years, have not treated the United States fairly. In the end, all will be happy!"

SOURCE

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Liberal Dershowitz on Special Counsel: 'I've Seen No Evidence' That Trump Committed Crimes

Commenting on President Donald Trump's tweets about alleged Russia-Trump campaign collusion, famed attorney and constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz said "the president is 100% right," a special counsel never should have been appointed, and added that he has "seen no evidence to suggest that crimes have been committed by the president."

“First of all, the president is 100% right," said the liberal Dershowitz on the March 20 edition of Fox & Friends.  "There never should have been the appointment of a special counsel here. There was no probable cause at that point to believe that crimes had been committed."

"I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that crimes have been committed by the president," he said.

Dershowitz, who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, continued, "As I said from day one, there should have been a simple investigative commission, non-partisan, appointed by Congress, with subpoena power to look into the role of Russia in trying to influence American elections and to try to do something about preventing it in the future – instead of starting out with finger-pointing and trying to criminalize political differences behind the closed doors of a grand jury."

"That’s gotten us nowhere," he said. "The president is absolutely right: this investigation never should have begun."

"And the question is now, how does he deal with it?" said the long-time criminal defense attorney.

"I think what he’s doing is playing good cop, bad cop," said Dershowitz. "He has some of his lawyers cooperating with Mueller, and some of his lawyers attacking Mueller because he wants to be ready to attack in the event there are any recommendations that are negative to the president."

Alan Dershowitz, a reular commentator on CNN and Fox News, is the former Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

As an appellate lawyer, he won 13 of the 15 murder cases he handled. Some of his more famous clients include Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst, Claus von Bulow and O.J. Simpson. Dershowitz is the author or co-author of 33 books.

SOURCE

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Trump, Adultery, Morality

Dennis Prager says some wise things below but what he omits to say is that complete sexual faithfulness is a rarity these days so people who have themselves "wandered" are unikely to condemn Trump for it
 
Some years ago, I wrote a column about adultery and politicians. In light of the Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal interviews concerning their alleged (and probable) affairs with President Donald Trump, it is time to revisit the subject.

I do not agree with those — right or left, religious or secular — who contend that adultery invalidates a political or social leader. It may invalidate a pastor, priest or rabbi — because a major part of their vocation is to be a moral/religious model, and because clergy do not make war, sign national budgets, appoint judges, run foreign policy or serve as commanders in chief. In other words, unlike your clergyman or clergywoman, almost everything a president does as president affects hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of non-Americans. If a president is also a moral model, that is a wonderful bonus. But that is not part of a president’s job description.

But even anti-Trump conservatives still assert character matters a great deal in a president and other political leaders. There are two problems with that argument.

The most obvious is that adultery is frequently an inaccurate measure of a person’s character. Indeed, many otherwise great men have been unfaithful to their spouse. And while it is always a sin — the Sixth Commandment doesn’t come with an asterisk — there are gradations of sin.

Let me give an example of when adultery would be a lower-grade sin: when it is committed by men or women who have taken care of their Alzheimer’s-afflicted spouse for many years and the afflicted spouse no longer even recognizes them. Of course, the healthy spouse could find love with someone else without committing adultery — by divorcing their demented spouse. But few people would be so heartless as to recommend that avenue. At the other end of the sin spectrum would be flaunting one’s adultery, thereby publicly humiliating one’s spouse.

The second problem with the adultery-matters-in-a-political-leader argument is that the policies of a political leader matter much more — morally — than that individual’s sexual sins, or even character. It is truly foolish to argue otherwise. Would we rather have as president a person with racist views who otherwise had an exemplary personal character or a believer in racial equality who committed adultery?

I have considerably more moral contempt for the media’s and the Left’s obsession with Stormy Daniels than I do for Donald Trump for his alleged night of sinful sex with her. That “60 Minutes” correspondent Anderson Cooper and many in our country found it acceptable to ask a woman, “Did he use a condom?” on national TV is a far graver reflection of America’s moral malaise than a man having a one-night affair 12 years ago.

It should be clear that this whole preoccupation with Trump’s past sex life has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with humiliating Trump — and, thereby, hopefully weakening the Trump presidency — the raison d'etre of the media since he was elected. Here’s one proof: The media rightly celebrate, as we all do, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as one of the moral greats of the 20th century despite reports of his having committed adultery on numerous occasions.

Likewise, the media and the Left idolized Sen. Ted Kennedy, regularly referring to him as the “Lion of the Senate.” Yet Kennedy was notorious for his lechery — far more so than Trump. Typical Ted Kennedy behavior, as described in New York magazine, was when he and then-fellow Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd “participated in the famous ‘waitress sandwich’ at La Brasserie in 1985, while their dates were in the bathroom.”

John F. Kennedy remains the most revered of Democratic presidents in the modern era. Yet we now know he routinely had affairs in the White House in his wife’s absence and had the Secret Service provide him advance notice of her return.

And, by the way, if sexual infidelity invalidates the character and, therefore, the worthiness of a politician, why doesn’t it invalidate the character and worthiness of an editor at The New York Times or The Washington Post? Why aren’t their sex lives investigated? They have, after all, more influence than almost any politician.

So, dear anti-Trump conservatives, please tone down the moral horror at Donald Trump’s character and the suggestions that it overshadows the good he has done and continues to do for America and the world.

The fact is it is none of my business and none of my concern whether a politician ever had an extramarital affair. To cite just one of many examples, a president’s attitude toward the genocide-advocating Islamic tyrants in Tehran is incomparably more morally significant. That is just one of many reasons — on moral grounds alone — I far prefer the current president to the faithful-to-his-wife previous president.

SOURCE

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Trump pushes and others move

The results he is getting exceed anybody's expectations.  This is the second time Kim has expressed a willingness to denuclearize

After two days of speculation, China announced on Wednesday that Kim had visited Beijing and met Xi during what the official Xinhua news agency called an unofficial visit from Sunday to Wednesday.

The trip was Kim's first known journey abroad since he assumed power in 2011 and is believed by analysts to serve as preparation for upcoming summits with South Korea and the United States.

Xinhua cited Kim as telling Xi that the situation on the Korean peninsula is starting to improve because North Korea has taken the initiative to ease tensions and put forward proposals for peace talks.

"It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearisation on the peninsula, in accordance with the will of late President Kim Il-sung and late General Secretary Kim Jong-il," Kim said, according to Xinhua.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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