I have a money saving idea regarding the Border Fence. I think we are pointing it in the wrong direction. Rather than running East-West, we ought to consider running it North-South along the Eastern border of California. Patterico provides a couple of examples as to why this change should be, and I’ve come up with a  third. Frankly-it-would-be-surprising-if-this-wasn’t-happening-in-California.

Two bills have passed the legislature in recent weeks. One would make a felony for failing to use a person’s preferred gender pronoun. This only applies to gender confused people in an institutional setting. Let’s see how many geriatric transgender people are currently populating nursing homes? If you said two, you probably wouldn’t be far wrong.

Here’s a law school hypothetical I’ll let California use for free. George is a senior dementia patient confined to a nursing home. On a good day, George doesn’t know if he is a man, woman, or wombat. George’s adult daughter, Moonbeam, is his guardian and decides that George should be Georgia. George is uncommunicative and expresses no opinion verbally or otherwise. Moonbeam informs the staff that, henceforth and always George should be referred to as Georgia with the appropriate pronoun CIS. The staff, believing that George is rational one in the family ignores her and continues to call George,  George, using he when appropriate. Is the staff in violation of the California statute?

The second piece of grand legislation is that it is no longer a felony to fail to disclose or infect another person with HIV. As a practical matter, I don’t know how many times this statute has been used.  Last I checked HIV/AIDS is still uncurable and still fatal. It may not be the death warrant it once was, in that people who respond to treatment can live relatively normal life.

I have tried to come up with an ending for two weeks, with no success. The best I can do is to point out that California has a wide variety of problems that require true leadership. Instead, the legislature comes up with statutes that affect a target population numbered in the dozens. Tomake matters worse, in all likelihood the solution is unconstitutional on its face and cannot withstand an appeal. It appears that it will no longer be a crime to fail to disclose one’s HIV status. Okay, but what happens when one knowing their HIV status, goes on to infect another person? That is a separate offense. What has been accomplished?

Build the wall, North/South, not East/West.