Daily Archives: 11 September 2017

Progressive-Democrat Bigotry

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Senator Diane Feinstein (D, CA) during her inquisition of Judge Amy Barrett, who was appearing before the Senate Judicial Committee pursuant to her nomination to the 7th Circuit:

Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that—you know, dogma and law are two different things. And I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different. And I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.

Feinstein is projecting.  What Barrett has said in those speeches is that where the Constitution or statute would require a judge to go against his religious beliefs, that judge must recuse himself.  There’s no conflict here.

Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL):

Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?

Or possibly, Congressman Dick Durbin in a bygone era: Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?

Senator Al Franken (D, MN) accused Barrett of belonging to a hate group.  The group in question was the Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization that supports [ahem] religious freedom and on which ground that paragon of Leftist virtue, the Southern Poverty Law Center, labeled it a hate group.  And Franken took the SPLC seriously.

With this hearing, not only have Progressive-Democrats exposed their religious bigotry, they’ve exposed their disdain for the Constitution.  Here’s Article VI on religion:

…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Which, of course, Progressive-Democrats in the Senate—every single one of them—know full well.

A Misconception

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The Wall Street Journal wrote an op-ed about Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ speech at George Mason University regarding her intent to withdraw the Obama administration’s infamous Dear Colleague Letter that threatened the due process rights of students accused of sexual assault.  In it, though, the WSJ included a misconception.

The Obama Education Department’s response was to circumvent Congress and neglect normal executive-branch rule-making procedures mandated in the Administrative Procedure Act, such as soliciting public comment. Instead, it simply jammed the policy through by sending out a “Dear Colleague” letter, including an explicit threat that noncomplying schools could lose federal funding.

It takes two to tango.

The op-ed implied that the university/college recipients of the Letter were somehow bound by it.  This is not true: the Letter was not, and could not be, binding in any way shape or form exactly because the procedure for promulgating it by-passed statutory requirements: the Letter was no more than that, and certainly not a regulation implementing a statute.

The folks sitting in the management chairs at those universities and colleges knew this full well at the time, and they know it today.  The Letter gained force only from the cowardice of those folks sitting in those chairs.  They had only to push back and to refuse to comply with the urgings of the Letter.

Even the threat to withhold funds could never have effect since it was, and is, an entirely unenforceable claim, coming as it does as part of a non-binding Letter that could only urge an action.  The threat, inconvenient as it might have been to resist, had and has only the effectivity of a bully’s threat given it by a coward’s surrender to that bully.

It takes two to tango.  But it only takes one to duck and cover.