Opening question: If anybody, from anywhere, can vote in the New Hamsphire primary, at what point does it cease to make any logical sense to refer to it as the "New Hampshire" primary?:
Wow. Looks like the Bernie Sanders campaign hadn't the slightest clue about what New Hampshire's voter ID law says. Or gave a damn, either. And I'm not even going to bother bringing up La Clinton Nostra's legal fidelity.
Here's the portion worth quoting in print:
“While we’d like to applaud some legislators for trying to strengthen New Hampshire’s voter ID laws, obviously the end result wasn’t good enough,” said Project Veritas Action President James O’Keefe. “Banks, airlines, and even corner grocery stores have long figured out how to quickly and easily confirm identity with photo IDs. Perhaps government is incredibly incompetent, alternately the intent is far more nefarious.” [emphasis added]
Go back and watch the vid again. Does "If you want to vote today, you might want to tell them that you’re staying with a friend. And you’re here indefinitely, because it sounds like it’s true", well, sound like "incredible incompetence" to you? It sounds to me like these Sandershiveks knew exactly what they were doing, and had absolutely zero, zip, nada, bupkis fear of any adverse consequences from their illegal actions.
And that's the problem. As I regularly preach, life is a function of incentives. Incentives can be positive or negative. And sinful human nature will always take the short cut to what it wants if it is practical and available. Every time.
New Hampshire strengthened its voter ID laws since the last presidential election campaign. Bully for them. But are they being enforced? Is the penalty for bleeping around with the integrity of the election process so prohibitive that the incentives persuade even the shadiest partisan poll workers to remain on "the straight and narrow path"? It sure doesn't look that way, does it?
Hence, another dismal example of what happens in a once-constitutional republic when the rule of law is breached, battered down, and destroyed: rampant criminality. Chaos. Mob rule. The incentivization of universal abandonment of restraint. Because, after all, if the other side doesn't have to play by the rules, what reason does our side have to do so? It becomes a free-for-all for power, and the side that loses will have that same law punishingly applied to them by the winners in vengeful and retributive fashion.
There's a word for that sort of thing: tyranny. And we're already living under it. Could it really be about to get worse?
Speaking of rampant criminality, guess to what class of people the Democrat-dominated Maryland legislature has extended the right to vote over Republican Governor Larry Hogan's impotent veto?:
More than forty thousand recently released Maryland felons will regain the right to vote in time for this year's election. [emphasis added]
Not that Maryland will ever be a "swing" State or anything, but if it was, that would certainly be enough to tip a close election in the Democrats' favor, don't you think?
Oh, am I making an unwarranted assumption about the Maryland legislative majority's motivations? Well, you know what they say about "birds of a feather flocking together".
The legislature on Tuesday narrowly overturned Governor Larry Hogan's veto of a bill to extend voting rights to felons before they complete probation and parole.
The reversal both dealt a political blow to the Republican governor, who lobbied to prevent the bill from becoming law, and set the stage for an estimated twenty thousand former inmates to cast ballots in Baltimore's primary election for mayor and City Council this spring....
Awfully convenient, don't you think? Maybe they should change Maryland's nickname to "Charm State".
When Hogan vetoed the law last spring, he said it improperly restored rights to people who had not yet paid their debt to society.
Which is both true and utterly fascinating, because you know what the defense of this veto override was by Democrat Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Miller? That "felons have paid their debt to society and just want to return to the fold along with the rest of their fellow citizens." Except that those newly minted Democrats to which voting rights have been restored have not, as Governor Hogan said, "paid their debt to society". They're still felons. They've only been paroled, or are on probation. Which means they're still under their criminal sentences, which have not yet been discharged.
The (previous) law, in other words, didn't give the Democrats what they wanted. So they changed it so that it did, in flagrant disregard for the expressed will and safety of Maryland voters. Why? I'll let Governor Hogan answer that question:
Since last month, he waged an aggressive social media campaign urging his supporters to lobby lawmakers to side with him and his "common sense" veto.
The governor responded to the vote on his Facebook page Tuesday afternoon, characterizing the override as a consequence of "partisan" politics and an exercise of Democrats' power.
"Only a tiny, radical minority supports this idea. But they did it anyway," Hogan wrote. "They don't seem to care what most Marylanders want. Why did they do it anyway? Because they can." [emphasis added]
Tyranny. Mob rule. "F**k you" government.
And this is what it incentivizes:
After the vote, while having lunch at Chick & Ruth's Delly in Annapolis with Lieutenant Governor Boyd Rutherford, Hogan said lawmakers who voted for the override had made a big mistake.
"Some people may have ended their careers," he said. "Basically, they just ignored the will of the people. That's not a good way to keep your job in the Senate. ... Most Marylanders are going to be pretty upset."
Indeed:
Maryland's Senate president called for civility Friday after Democrats received what he called "the most vicious hate mail you can possibly imagine" in the aftermath of overriding the Republican governor's veto. One caller expressed the hope a senator's wife would be raped and killed....
Democrat Senator John Astle said the hate mail and calls his office received are the nastiest in his thirty-four years as a Maryland lawmaker. One caller told a staff member he hoped Astle's wife and daughter would be raped and murdered, he said. Astle does not have a daughter.
"He didn't even know who I am," Astle said. "I have never experienced this kind of vitriol over an issue."
Is that condonable? No. Is the emotion behind it understandable? Yes. It's the same emotion that drives violent revolutions. When one side of a populace gets so egregiously screwed and trampled and oppressed by the other side of the populace through raw exercises of flagrantly unjust power in violation of all law and common sense and fair play, that one side will see nothing more to be gained by abiding by that same violated law. It's unilateral disarmament. To say nothing of becoming insanely pissed off. Passions cannot help but rage out of control in such circumstances. Calm, reasonableness, compromise - these things become impossible, because there's no longer any incentive for them. Unjustice triggers anger, anger blossoms into hatred, to where the only incentive left is some form of all-out war. I'm sure #BlackLivesMatter would be happy to point it out if, in this instance, they weren't the beneficiaries of it, and the "right" people weren't getting shafted.
You know what the most prominent example of this phenomenon was in American history? Slavery and the (first) Civil War. Jus' sayin'.
Which makes Mr. Miller's Rodney King-esque appeal for "civility" absolutely comical:
"This is not Washington, D.C.," the Senate president said. "You know, Republicans and Democrats here are friends. We are friends. The governor is my friend. I've known him since he was a young man, and we want to continue to be friends, and friends do not act like this."
Sorry, Mr. Miller, but a "friend" doesn't walk up to you and extend both middle fingers two inches from your face.
You know, like you did to your "friend" Governor Hogan:
Senate President Thomas V. "Mike" Miller asked Governor Larry Hogan to stop his supporters from singling out senators in messages on social media. Hogan's spokesman said it was "ridiculous" and "beyond outrageous" to imply the governor was responsible for encouraging people to make such calls and comments.
"If they don't want their constituents to be upset with them, then they shouldn't vote in favor of items that their constituents absolutely despise," Hogan's spokesman Doug Mayer said.
And all the people shouted, "AMEN!"
Incidentally, the Maryland Democrat legislature hasn't restored any other rights to convicted felons, like getting a job, owning a gun (not that that ever stops them) or (heh) serving on a jury. It probably entitles them to seats in the Maryland legislature, though.
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