Tag Archives: culture

One More Thought

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Or maybe two….

My first concerns Corner Post, Inc v Board Of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that newly created businesses really are allowed to argue against decades-old regulations, here the Fed’s long-standing cap on credit card fees that card issuers are allowed to charge.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent,

The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court’s holdings in this case and Loper Bright [which removed Chevron defense] have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government.

In an era of burgeoning regulatory, vice Congressional, governance of our economy, and in an era where Federal government officials routinely ignore Federal law (immigration) and Court rulings (student debt “forgiveness”) to go about doing whatever an official feels like doing whenever one of them feels like doing it, it’s hard to see the downside of limiting the functioning of the Federal Government, much less to see any “devastation.” The tsunami of lower court lawsuits is simply the dam holding back private citizens’ and our businesses’ objections to such overreach finally bursting. The flood has every chance of flushing away a large part of that overreach detritus before it abates. And abate it will, just as even tsunamis do.

My second thought concerns the worry of Kevin King, a partner with Covington & Burling, regarding the Federal government’s reduced legal ability to blow off the objections of us private citizens and our businesses to government behaviors and the resulting potential for significant differences in interpretation of statutes by courts to develop:

The risk is that you’re going to get variation over geography, a patchwork of decisions[.]

Again, I say, “Yeah, and?” King’s worry seems centered on the possibility that the federated republican democracy nature of our constitutional governance, where the several States are, in their aggregate and individually, the equal of the central government regarding domestic matters might be starting to reassert itself. Furthermore, those geographic disparities are simply the noisy nature of democracy and a reflection of the plain fact that the citizens of one State might not have the same imperatives as the citizens of other States.

There’s also that Commerce Clause in our Constitution, a clause too long dormant, that can be put to the use for which it was devised and included—to smooth over (not paper over) the larger differences among the States where those differences too much impact the separate doings of other States.

Both of these are outcomes to be welcomed, not feared. Especially are they not to be obstructed.

A MAGA Supreme Court?

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Who says the current Supreme Court is a MAGA court? Relatedly, who objects to Making America Great Again?  The Wall Street Journal‘s editors provided some insight to the Court’s rulings for last year and this.

First, an aggregate statistic: of all the cases decided in 2023, nearly 46% were decided unanimously, the second highest percentage of unanimity of the prior four years—second only to 2022’s unanimity rate. And both of those years had those evil Trump appointees Justices Neil Gorsuch, Bret Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. That court also had the Progressive-Democratic Party’s darlings, Justices Sonya Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Some 2024 cases decided unanimously:

  • Colorado can’t remove Donald Trump’s name from its ballot as an “insurrectionist” under the 14th Amendment
  • pro-life doctors lack standing to sue the Food and Drug Administration over the abortion pill mifepristone
  • the National Rifle Association can sue a New York regulator for coercing insurers to stop doing business with gun-rights groups

Among the 8-1 and 7-2 cases:

  • Justice Clarence Thomas writing for the Court to uphold Progressive-Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (MA) CFPB funding scheme
  • a refusal to close the constitutional door to a wealth tax
  • government can, indeed, disarm an alleged—not convicted at trial—domestic abuser via a civil restraining order

Of 22 cases decided by 6-3 votes, 11 had “mixed” majorities. Among these:

  • three conservative and three liberal Justices ruled that the federal government had unconstitutionally pressured social-media websites to delete user posts
  • six Justices, including Ketanji Brown Jackson, ruled that prosecutors had stretched the law too far in charging a number of January 6 rioters with obstructing Congress

Who says, and who objects? The Progressive-Democratic Party’s politicians dishonestly proclaim this Supreme Court, which adheres to the text of our Constitution and the statute(s) before it, an extremist and MAGA court, using the latter adjective as though it were a pejorative. The Progressive-Democratic Party’s politicians object to Making America Great Again—here demonstrated by their sneering at the concept of MAGA.

Lawlessness and Instability

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Much is being made of the situation that will obtain in the Gaza Strip when Hamas’ war is ended and (ideally) with Hamas utterly destroyed. Worries about Gazan civilian lawlessness and general instability throughout the Strip abound, should there be a lack of governance in that aftermath.

It’s certainly true that an effective governing body, or bodies should the Strip be subdivided as some are proposing, but there’s another factor that’s not addressed.

That’s the behaviors of the civilians involved. Desperation and privation are harsh task masters, but they needn’t be controlling slavers. There’s nothing preventing the Gazan civilians from supporting each other rather than spending their meager resources supporting surviving Hamas terrorists in the latter’s attacks on Israel. There’s nothing preventing Gaza’s civilians from supporting each other rather than lethally competing with each other for those meager resources.

It’s even likely that foreign aid would flow more freely were the Strip’s civilians to move to support that flow rather than ransacking and looting it, or allowing surviving Hamas terrorists to steal it.

But that would require those Gazan civilians to behave like a worthy and virtuous people—not by Western standards, even, but by their own Quran requirements.

Count me naïve for pointing that out, but there it is.

The Disingenuosity of the Left

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The Texas Supreme Court upheld a Texas law that bans gender-affirming care for transgender minors. The Court in its 8-1 decision wrote

We conclude the legislature made a permissible, rational policy choice to limit the types of available medical procedures for children, particularly in light of the relative nascency of both gender dysphoria and its various modes of treatment and the Legislature’s express constitutional authority to regulate the practice of medicine

Tellingly, the Court explicitly ruled only that the state law was constitutional, not what treatment a minor who suffers from “gender dysphoria” should have.

Just as tellingly, the Left is busily distorting the facts.

Lynly Egyes, Litigation Director at Transgender Law Center:

The court’s decision to reject safe and affirming care will have lasting impacts on all people in Texas[.]

There is nothing safe about the transgender treatments currently on offer, for minors or adults. They are, by their nature, highly and permanently destructive of the individual’s body, with follow-on effects on the individual’s mind.

Neither are the treatments “affirming” as they are done to minors. Minors don’t have the capacity to determine what’s best for themselves, including what gender they wish to manifest themselves as. That’s what parents do.

The Court’s opinion can be read here.

A Woke…or Something…State Judge

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A Montana State district judge, Shane Vannatta, is having trouble with reality. He has ruled a law, AN ACT GENERALLY REVISING THE LAWS TO PROVIDE A COMMON DEFINITION FOR THE WORD “SEX” WHEN REFERRING TO A HUMAN unconstitutional because

the bill’s title did not adequately explain whether the word “sex” referred to gender or sexual intercourse and that it did not indicate the words “male” and “female” would be defined in the body of the bill.

Never mind that bill titles typically do not themselves include glossaries or references to glossaries. His plaint that “sex” was unclear in its intended subject in the present title is simply disingenuous since the title explicitly states “when referring to a human”—and does not suggest, even by tenuous innuendo, “when referring to human sex practices.”

Never mind, either that the law’s first paragraph and that paragraph’s first two subparagraphs provide precisely the definitions of interest:

Section 1. Section 1-1-201, MCA, is amended to read:
“1-1-201. Terms of wide applicability. (1) Unless the context requires otherwise, the following definitions apply in the Montana Code Annotated:
(a) “Female” means a member of the human species who, under normal development, has XX chromosomes and produces or would produce relatively large, relatively immobile gametes, or eggs, during her life cycle and has a reproductive and endocrine system oriented around the production of those gametes. An individual who would otherwise fall within this definition, but for a biological or genetic condition, is female.
(b) “Male” means a member of the human species who, under normal development, has XY chromosomes and produces or would produce small, mobile gametes, or sperm, during his life cycle and has a reproductive and endocrine system oriented around the production of those gametes. An individual who would otherwise fall within this definition, but for a biological or genetic condition, is male.

Apparently, Vannatta’s law school training didn’t include a literacy test, nor did it train him in extending his attention span. For the good of the State, especially for the good of Montana’s citizens, he needs to be removed from the bench until he corrects those deficiencies.