Four Steps Forward
Yesterday was supposed to be the end of a long battle with hardware. I had used the tools at hand to modify the case to hold the motherboard correctly. All that remained was to plug it in.
Yeah, not so much.
Access to the lower basement is via bulkhead doors. In case you didn’t know, we had about a foot of snow with ice over the top. When I went to access the basement, it was obvious I would have to dig it out first. No big deal.
Except the snow shovels are plastic, and they don’t bite into the ice covered snow. Plus it was freezing.
On Thursday, I remembered I had an entrenching tool which would be perfect. Thursday, I also learned that I had a cheap knock-off of an entrenching tool. You are supposed to be able to use an entrenching tool as a pick or hoe. The metal of the pivot plates deformed under pressure.
I got everything open. I pulled cable, ran the cable to the primary router, hooked up everything. All good.
Having done that, it was just a question of configuring the router and turning on the new box.
Which failed to bring up the fiber connection.
After three hours of work, it finally came down to a bad network card. Today I’ll be putting in a new card, and we’ll see if everything “just works”.
Kash is King
That is one of the headlines I just read. I am extremely interested in what happens today.
Judges Over Stepping
There are now judges threatening the President of the United States with contempt if he doesn’t bend to their unelected will. It appears that they feel that, as a district judge, they have the authority to usurp the powers of the President.
But Congress!
So here’s the low down. Congress can pass whatever bills they want. The President can sign or veto those bills, creating laws.
Those laws are in effect until they are repealed or stopped by court order.
Consider Congress passing a bill making it illegal to misgender mentally ill people. The previous puppet signed that bill into law.
This makes it the law of the land that you cannot say what you wish to in regard to that class of mentally ill people.
Is this law constitutional? No, it is not. Yet, that law can be enforced until it is enjoined. There is another legal term which might be “vacator”.
The process to remove an unconstitutional law starts with finding somebody with standing to challenge the law. From there, the case works its way through the legal system until someone wins.
The law in question violates the First Amendment. It will be struck down. How long it takes, what the inferior courts decided, and what games the state plays are all delaying tactics. The law would be struck down.
Now consider a different bill. One that requires the President to get congressional approval to fire someone in the executive branch. The bill sounds good. It passes both houses and is signed into law by an idiot.
You and I look at each other and yell, “That’s unconstitutional! Article II! The investment clause!”
You rush over to the courthouse to file a suit challenging the new law. I don’t because I’m broke. You just committed to a multi-year lawyer bill.
Once the court takes up the case, the state will step in to defend the law. The very first thing that will happen is that they will point out that you have no standing. The only person who would have standing is the President of the United States.
This is what was done. Congress has passed several laws infringing on the authority of the President to fire people in the executive branch. Every one of those infringements is unconstitutional.
Until Trump 1.0, this wasn’t an issue. It wasn’t an issue because the courtesy of the appointed heads of the different departments within the Executive branch submit their resignations to the new president before he takes office.
In 2017, there were many people that should have been fired who were not. And some fought back against being fired. It made a considerable splash in the media.
This time, Trump’s team was ready. They are fighting back. These cases are going to the Supreme Court. The only question is when the Court will rule.
Question of the Week
Two, actually.
The first is what types of articles make you click off the site?
The second is what types of articles make you want to read more or want more of?