Exploding the Myth of "Three Co-Equal Branches of Government", with Stephen Miller

Please understand what Stephen Miller is saying in the linked video.

Well, the Constitution is clear. And, that [i.e. the Constitution] is. of course, the supreme law of the land. ... Look, a lot of it [i.e. suspending habeas corpus with respect to illegal aliens] depends on whether the courts do the right thing, or not. At the end of the day, Congress passed a body of law, known as the Immigration and Nationality Act, which stripped Article III courts -- that's the Judicial branch -- of jurisdiction over immigration cases.  So, Congress actually passed -- it's called 'jurisdiction stripping legislation'.  They passed a number of laws that say that the Article III courts aren't even allowed to be involved in immigration cases.  Many of you probably don't know this.  I'll give you a good example: Are you familiar with the term 'temporary protected status', or TPS, right?  So, by statute, the courts are stripped of jurisdiction from over-ruling a presidential determination, or a secretarial determination, on TPS when the Secretary of Homeland Security makes that determination. So, when Secretary Noem terminated TPS for the illegals that Biden flew into the country, when courts stepped in, they were violating explicit language that Congress had enacted saying they [i.e. Article III courts] have no jurisdiction. So, it's not just that the courts are at war with the Executive branch, the courts are at war -- these radical rogue judges -- with the Legislative branch as well, too. ...

Understand -- Article III courts are the normal courts of the federal Judiciary branch: the single superior court [i.e. so-called "THE Supreme Court" (*) ] and the various inferior courts that Congress has, from time to time, established pursuant to Article III.

Understand, what Stephen Miller is discussing here is Congress' power, under Article III, Section 2, to limit, or even strip, the jurisdiction of the federal courts (**) over all but a few specific sorts of cases as explicitly enumerated in Article III, Section 2.

Understand -- the "Three Co-Equal Branches of Government" dogma that we all were taught in high school civics class is not only a myth, but a lie, and a pernicious lie at that. The lie was invented by lawyers/judges (***) to disguise their imperialistic power-grab over the other branches, and indeed, over our very lives.

So, since the three branches of the federal government are not "co-equal", where does that leave us? It leaves us where we always were: the three branches each have explicitly enumerated powers -- and no powers not explicitly enumerated -- and the Congress is the "supreme" branch.  That the congresscritters do not want to do their jobs is another matter ... and, in the end, the fault lies with the electorate for allowing them to shirk their duty.

(*) As I have pointed out repeatedly, Article III of the US Constitution does not create "THE Supreme Court". Rather, it establishes "one supreme Court" -- one highest-level or superior court -- and as many inferior courts as Congress may decide to create.

This is the text of Article III, Section 1 (emphasis added ):

"The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office."

(**) This is the relevant text of Article III, Section 2"

"In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make."

(***) Understand -- No matter the legal system, the lawyers of that system *always* eventually seek to corrupt the law to make it serve their own interests. Also remember -- judges are just lawyers who dress funny.

Tim Pool: Stephen Miller Says Trump SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING Suspending Habeas Corpus

When is a "Refugee" not a Refugee?

Isn't this odd --

1) Illegal aliens from Central and South America (and from all across the world, actually) -- from countries which are poor, certainly, but in which people are not being murdered for political reasons -- who, were they actually "refugee", have traversed any number of "safe" countries, in which they were required by "International Law" (such as it is), flood into America ... and the leftists insist that they are "refugees" who *cannot* be sent home.

2) The Trump administration is attempting to allow Afrikaners -- white South Africans who *are* being murdered for racist political reasons, and with the connivance of the South African government -- to *legally* come to America as refugees ... and those same leftists mock their designation as "refugees".

Why, one might get the impression that leftists hate white people as much as they hate America. 

Concerning My Contention that *ALL* Atheists Are Intellectually Dishonest, With Reference to Alex O'Connor

The purpose of this post is to expand upon, or explain in more detail, something I had written on GAB. Basically, the purpose here is to reiterate my own approach to the 'Argument From Reason' and by it to defend my assertion that *all* 'atheists' and 'agnostics' can thereby be known to be intellectually dishonest.

Recently on GAB, I had said in passing that I consider Alex O'Connor -- a smarmy young Englishman to whom many 'village atheists with an ethernet cable (*)' currently look to be the salvation of their anti-rational belief-system, and whom many internet apologists for Christianity foolishly extol for his current (**) winsome approach to asserting that 'God is not' -- to be intellectually dishonest.

Someone later asked: 

I'm curious. I have watched Alex for sometime. What did you find particularly intellectually dishonest about him?

I responded in two parts, the first specifically about Alex O'Connor, and the second quickly outlining why I consider *all* 'atheists' and 'agnostics' to be intellectually dishonest.

Concerning Alex O'Connor, I said:

I'll admit that I *haven't* watched/listened to him all that much -- I have an almost physical reaction of repugnance to him. Even in his more recent/current iteration of winsomeness, as compared to his earlier stridency, he strikes me as aiming to be the next occupant of Dawkins' papal throne.

It's his more recent/current pose of "I'm just asking questions; I really want to see 'evidence' of God, but I just don't see it" that I mark as *doubly* intellectually dishonest (*) -- he's *not* just asking questions, and he's *not* looking for evidence of God: he's demanding answers which are category errors; he's refusing to acknowledge that you can't "find evidence of God" when you're insisting that God is like Zeus.

(*) His initial pugnacious iteration was also intellectually dishonest, but at least it was straight-forward attack-mode.

Concerning 'atheists' and 'agnostics' in general, I said:

My position, though I won't detail it here, is that *all* atheists, including the ones who try to hide behind the 'agnostic' label, are intellectually dishonest (*). The main difference between one atheist and another is how obnoxious or strident one is compared to another.

(*) In a nutshell -- IF God is not, that is, IF atheism/materialism is the truth about the nature of reality, THEN there can be no such things as rational beings, there can be no such activity as logical deduction from premise to conclusion, and there can be no such thing as true knowledge -- including the alleged knowledge that "atheism/materialism is the truth about the nature of reality". BUT, there *are* rational beings, and logical reasoning *is* possible, and true knowledge *does* exist and *can* be known.

Atheists and 'agnostics' -- *all of them* -- are intellectually dishonest precisely *because* they persist in their denial of the reality of God even as that denial logically entails the denial of their own natures as rational beings and free wills (**), able to reason logically and to know truth. AND, the cherry on the top is that most of them pose as paragons of reason and logic, and attempt to denigrate Christians as irrational.

(**) It's a misstatement to say that "we have free will", as though it [i.e. the reality of 'free will'] were analogous to having or not having two feet; rather, we *are* free wills.

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So, to expand on the above --

Notwithstanding the title of a post I'd made last February ("There Is a Fourth Metaphysic", which title was in response to an attempt to get around the "Problem of Minds" by splitting the single metaphysic of atheism into three distinct metaphysics), there are two, and only two, logically possible metaphysics: that is, the truth about the nature of reality is encompassed, without remainder, either by "theism" or by atheism ... but atheism is anti-rational and indeed self-refuting, as it logically entails the denial of all manner of things we know to be true of ourselves.

Understand, the fatal flaw in atheism isn't due to materialism -- materialism is simply the primary expression of any atheism which acknowledges the reality of a physical/material world. No, the fatal flaw of atheism is that it denies -- necessarily -- the primacy of mind, and thus of free-will, as a causal explanation for events and state-changes in the world, which leaves mechanistic necessity as the *only* causal explanation for events and state-changes in the world.

To make use of an illustration by the Oxford mathematician John Lennox, if you were to ask me, "Why is that kettle of water boiling?", I might explain the boiling of the water by listing a series of facts of mechanical necessity, starting with the the fire under the kettle.  Or, I might answer, "Because I want a cup of tea". Now, while the mechanical necessity explanation isn't false, so far as it goes, it is quite incomplete: it doesn't get to the *real* reason that the kettle of water is boiling; namely that I freely initiated the series of mechanistic events and state-changes which resulted in the water boiling.

C S Lewis distinguished these two different (though not contradictory) explanations for the cause of the water boiling as cause-and-effect (the fire under the kettle and subsequent physical state-changes) on the one hand, and ground-and-consequent (my effecting of an act of will to initiate the series of  physical state-changes which result in the water boiling) on the other hand.

But, see, the problem for atheism, it's fatal flaw, is that IF atheism is the truth about the nature of reality, THEN my "decision" to initiate that series of mechanistic events and state-changes which resulted in boiling water was itself merely the mechanically necessary result of some prior set of state-changes; that is, under atheism, there are no such things as decisions, as we all intend that term, much less any such thing as free-will.

The two, and only two, logically possible metaphysics -- 

On the one hand, IF "theism" is the truth about the nature of reality, THEN the primal fact about reality is 'Mind' (***). That is, logically prior to anything else, before there are any states or events or state-changes, there is a mind, there is a rational being, there is a Who who freely chooses to act or not to act, who freely creates all else that is, who intends 'this' but not 'that'.

On the other hand, IF atheism is the truth about the nature of reality, THEN the primal fact about reality is 'Not-Mind'. That is, definitionally: however it is that states, and state-changes, initially came to be, they came to be unintentionally, and thus any and all subsequent events and state changes are, and of necessity must be, the mechanistic result of prior events and state-changes. That is, under atheism, this initial unintentionality pervades all reality and for all time: for 'not-mind' cannot yield, cannot become, 'mind'. 

If 'mind' does not exist already at the initial state of the system, then 'mind' cannot be injected into the system at some later stage of events. For, whence comes this 'mind' to inject into the system? On the one hand, if 'mind' was always "just there, somewhere", waiting in the wings, so to speak, to be injected into the system when "needed" as an explanatory force, then one is just playing disingenuous word-games: one is denying the fundamental tenet of atheism while dishonestly asserting that one is not denying it. But on the other hand, if one asserts than 'mind' just "arises" within the system itself from 'not-mind', then one is *also* just playing disingenuous word-games: but in this case, one is asserting that 'mind' and 'not-mind' are the same thing.

Here is the issue: the existence of mechanistically necessary state-changes is compatible with "theism", but the free-and-intentional initiation of novel events and state-changes is utterly incompatible with atheism. 

Thus (as I said above), to assert that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality is simultaneously to assert the denial of all manner of things which one knows to be true of oneself, including, but not limited to: the freedom of one's will; one's ability to engage in logical reasoning; one's ability to discover truth and know that it is truth; the ability to discover that one has erred in one's reasoning and to correct the error and to know that one has indeed corrected the error.

To deny that God is is ultimately to deny that one's own self is. To put it in the form of a bumper-sticker: You are the proof that God is.

And this is why I contend that *all* 'atheists' and 'agnostics' are intellectually dishonest. And I include in that assessment even the likes of Patricia Churchland, who does with one side of her mouth deny the reality of free-will, while with the other side trying to convince people to believe the proposition that they are not free-wills.

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(*) 'village atheist with an ethernet cable' is a phrase I have long used to denote and deride the sort of 'atheist' one typically encounters on the internet.

(**) Until just a couple of years ago, Alex O'Connor was as deliberately obnoxious as Richard Darwkins or Stephen Fry, or Christopher Hitchens.

(***) Some 'atheists' try to evade this problem by appealing to some sort of woo-woo, such as 'Panpsychism'. But, as I explain time and again, there is no such thing a 'Mind' unless there is at least one actually existing mind.

A Working 1st-floor Bathroom

(now updated -- click on the photos to see a larger image)

2025/01/04:

My sister, Karen, came over from Indiana for a week to goad me into getting some work done on my house.  One of our projects was getting the downstairs bath operational again.  I still have some detail finish work to do, including re-surfacing the tub. This is what the room looked like as of New Year's Day -- 

This bathroom had been a "junk room" for many years, ever since one winter day when a cold draft coming through gaps in the old dry-stone foundation froze the supply line to the toilet and caused the shut-off valve to disconnect from the line. Fortunately, I was home when it thawed, and so I was able to shut off the water in the basement before too much flooding occurred.

Yes, I used a windowed door for this room -- I wanted more natural light to be able to reach the interior/central hall from which one accesses the foyer, the living room, this bath, the "front room", and the stairway.

You might notice the two rust-stains on the door-jamb to the left (fortunately, they will be hidden under the door-stop trim work).  That is from a massive water-damage event several years ago when the supply-line to one of the sinks in the second-floor master bath froze and burst due to raccoons getting into the lower attic and ripping out a lot of insulation.  I was out of town when it thawed (at the time, I worked a 2+ hour drive from home) -- every room in the house, but two, suffered water damage.

 

EDIT 2025/04/ 12:

The downstairs bath is fully functional and is nearly complete; just a few trim pieces to cut and install, and a bit of the woodwork to stain and finish.

This photo is of the bathtub, refinished both inside and out. The outer refinishing involved striping multiple payers of old, probably lead-based, paint, and then applying primer and enamel paint.  While the directions for the refinishing kit (for the inside) say that that it can be applied with a brush, we found that we got a much better result by using small rollers, and the work went much faster.

I may someday look into finding a more decorative faucet for the tub, but for now this functional one is fine.

As mentioned above, the door into this bathroom is a "french" windowed door.  On the inside is mounted a sheet of plexiglass with a decorative film applied to it. I wish the photo did it justice. I'm really satisfied with how it turned out, especially when the door is viewed from outside the room.

In the corner, behind the door, is a cheap kitchen wall cabinet mounted atop the baseboard, for linens and such.  We continued the wainscoting around the side of the cabinet (thus hiding the "raw" particleboard of which it is constructed ... as I said, it's a cheap cabinet).  I built the cabinet's countertop from strips of oak flooring glued together.

To the right of the above photo, you can just see the edge of one of the two in-the-wall shelving units we built. They're to the same design as the open-shelf spice cabinet I built for the kitchen (as seen below).

 

This photo is from the doorway, toward the outside wall. This bathroom is a roomy 8 feet by 8 feet. My mother, who was wheel-chair bound, was still alive when I first designed the room; I wanted to be sure it would be comfortably usable for a person with limited mobility.

The wainscoting is a PVC-based product which I got from Home Depot.  It's lightweight and waterproof, of course, and can be cut with a simple utility knife. But, the ease of cutting it is also its one drawback -- it can be easily dented/deformed by localized pressure.

This photo of of the door, taken from the hallway. It's a better view of the result, but still doesn't do it justice.

I miss beautiful buildings

The linked page has pictures of the old Richland County OH courthouse and one picture of the older courthouse. Both were beautiful buildings, and both are long since demolished.

The current county courthouse is an ugly modern monstrosity, built in 1968. Similarly, the current Mansfield city hall is also an ugly modernist thing.

Come to think of it, Anderson IN, where I lived/worked straight out of college (1980-1982), had also replaced both the beautiful old court house, which was of a similar style to this one, and the old city hall with hideous modern buildings. In the case of the courthouse, it was already falling apart -- there were barricades all around the building, with covered walkways to the major entrances, to protect passers-by from bricks falling from the facade.

My hometown of South Bend IN converted the two most recent "old" courthouses to other uses, rather than demolishing them.

THE OLD RICHLAND COUNTY COURT HOUSE

Even Infinite Buckeroos Will Not Feed Us

In the linked video, Dan Tubb of LotusEaters.com discusses "Modern Monetary Theory", the insane socialistic hyper-Keynesian "economic theory" by which our rulers are destroying us.

My comment/response --

The *point* of an economy is not to "add value", but rather to generate/create wealth. Certainly, "adding value" ... well, adds value. But, if there is not an underlying and robust generation of wealth to which to "add value", then everyone dies, no matter how much "value" is being added as we all die. In the "buckeroo" pseudo-economy, no wealth at all is being generated; that "economy" is nothing more than an accounting trick. Moreover, in its interface with the real economy, it almost certainly destroys wealth, rather than creating it. For, of a certainly, whatever tasks the students do at the hospital to earn the buckeroos will be either pointless waste-of-time make-work, or something that regular employees are already being paid to do. While the "work" the students perform to earn those buckeroos may potentially be "useful" (or not), that work's relationship to the real economy of wealth-creation is no different than if they were made to dig holes one day, and fill them in the next. Now, hospitals are certainly nice things to have, and a well-run hospital "adds value" to its community. BUT, hospitals do not generate wealth; rather, they consume wealth. In that regard, hospitals are luxuries: we cannot have hospitals unless and until we have an underlying economy producing enough excess wealth to support siphoning off enough wealth to fund the hospitals.

Dan Tubb, LotusEaters: The Nonsensical Economic Theory That Affects Your Life

It's an odd world

What an odd world we find yourselves in.

According to many judges (*), including those on the highest court, we mere US citizens do not "have standing" to petition the courts (i.e. said judges) to order that the laws be faithfully enforced by the persons whose sworn duty it is to faithfully enforce the laws. BUT, according to that some gaggle sort of judges, lawyers and NGOs (often, or even exclusively, funded by monies forcefully extracted from us citizens), DO "have standing" to petition the courts (i.e. other lawyers, the ones who dress funny) to FORBID the faithful enforcement of the law.

(*) And remember, judges are just lawyers (**) who dress funny.

(**) Further remember: No matter the legal system, the lawyers of that system will *always* attempt to corrupt it to serve their own interests.

More on "Big Organ Lost One"

I have written about this case before, back in October, 2024.

The news item linked below doesn't claim such, but an early statement in the piece *might* be understood as implying that the reason the man was declared to be "brain dead" in the first place was due to malpractice.

Understand this -- (the fact isn't examined as in depth as it deserves) some of the higher ups in the Donation-Industrial Complex were insistent upon chopping this man for parts, even after it was undeniable that he was not dead.

Understand this -- the *reason* that they now sedate the "corpses" from whom they harvest organs is because they *know* that there is a strong possibility that those people are not actually dead; there have been *many* cases, all across the world, in which "dead" people "woke up" as the surgeons were cutting into them. And thus, they now sedate the "dead" people before cutting into them.

Understand this -- once you know this truth about vital organ transplant (*), it is immoral -- it is damning of your immortal soul -- to take part, in any way, in this industry. It is better to die than to have the heart transplanted into your chest of a man who was murdered to make that heart available.

(*) The one exception I can think of would be to receive a "living donation" of a kidney.

Kentucky family demands answers after organs nearly taken from living man: 'Living nightmare'

On the "Divine Feminine"

I'm linking to the Matt Walsh video as I indend a comment sparked by the title (though, do listen to the video): "Katy Perry Claims Her Trip To Space Connected Her To The “Divine Feminine”?!"

My comment --

For all the stupid things one might honestly fault men for doing, and for all the horrible things that man-hating feminists falsely accuse men of doing, I have *never* heard a man refer to the "Divine Masculine".

Why, it's almost as though for all our alleged phallo-centrism, we men don't worship our dicks nearly to the degree that feminists worship their pussies. And do understand: that is precisely what the term "Divine Feminine" is all about.

Matt Walsh: Katy Perry Claims Her Trip To Space Connected Her To The “Divine Feminine”?!

Q: When Are Your Children Not Your Children?

A: When a passel of God-damned government bureaucrats decide that they have a greater vested interest in the welfare of your own children than you do.

It *appears* that the "neglect" of which government bureaucrats accuse these parents is the rational decision to forego the battery of so-called vaccinations that the "health professionals" -- remember them? the very people who lied to us in various ways, and are still lying to us to this day, about Covid-1984? -- insist infants be subjected to.

And so, since the *parents* of these children made the decision -- as is their right -- to remove their children from the potential clutches of the damned government bureaucrats, the bureaucrats are accusing the PARENTS OF KIDNAPPING THEIR OWN CHILDREN.

Massachusetts Couple Accused of Kidnapping Their Own Five Children from State Custody