Tag Archives: culture

“Activist Judicial Opinion”

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“Legal analysts” don’t like the preliminary injunction issued by a Federal district court judge that bars much of the Federal government and many of the individuals in it from telling, or even merely attempting to pressure, social media entities what those entities must permit and must bar from their Web sites.

Legal analysts on both CNN and MSNBC attacked a federal judge who found that the White House likely violated the First Amendment by claiming that his decision was an “activist judicial opinion” that “goes too far.”

CNN legal analyst Ellie Honig:

Yes, it’s a dramatic decision by this judge, if you read through it. He’s citing to literature and George Washington, and Ben Franklin. Here’s what really is astonishing to me. This is a conservative ideology that clearly comes through in this decision. … But the ruling itself is the opposite of judicial conservativism. This is one of the most aggressive, far-reaching rulings you’ll ever see.

Because upholding our individual free speech rights, adhering to the supreme Law of the Land, isn’t at all judicial conservatism.

And on MSNBC, Tulane University Professor Walter Isaacson:

I think Judge Doughty’s decision goes too far.
I think this is a little bit of a corrective but I clearly feel that in the end the decision will be refined somewhat, because government has to have the right to have its own free speech to push back when they see things on social media they think are dangerous[.]

It would have been good had Isaacson actually read the ruling. There is nothing at all in it that bars the government from push[ing] back when they see things on social media they think are dangerous. Quite the opposite:

The Court finds…that a preliminary injunction here would not prohibit government speech.

And [emphasis mine]

A government entity has the right to speak for itself and is entitled to say what it wishes and express the views it wishes to express. The Free Speech Clause restricts government regulation of private speech; it does not regulate government speech.

And the government—the men and women who populate and animate government—have a plethora of outlets of their own:

the White House, for instance, the Senate, and the House all have their own Web sites, as do each of the several Federal Departments and agencies, and every Congressman in the Congress. And many of those Congressmen hold aperiodic town halls to talk directly with their constituents—all of them should, and those meetings should occur more frequently—but that’s the Congressmen’s choice. Nothing bars any Congressman from doing any of those direct-to-constituents conversations as often as a Congressman might wish.

And that doesn’t approach the interviews and op-eds each of those men and women are free to give and to write, along with the posts on the social media they tried to, and are now barred from, controlling.

This is how far Left the press is gone, that journalists actually think judges, and Justices, come to that, who adhere to the text of our Constitution as that Constitution and their oaths of office require, are “activist” while Justices, and judges, who rule in accordance with their personal views (or the press’) of societal circumstance are somehow…normal…and acting properly.

Ben Franklin and the Republic of China

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The good citizens of the Republic of China are watching the barbarian invasion of Ukraine, the so far successful attempt by the Ukrainians to beat back the barbarian, and the destruction the barbarian is inflicting on Ukrainian cities and its atrocities perpetrated on Ukrainian women, children, civilian men, and prisoners, and some of those RoC citizens are drawing the wrong conclusion.

Others draw the opposite lesson from the images of smoldering Ukrainian cities. Anything is better than war, they say, and Taiwan should do all it can to avoid provoking Beijing’s wrath, even if that means painful compromises.

Those painful compromises would accumulate to nothing other than preemptive surrender. These…compromisers…choose to ignore the lesson of an old dead guy who was part of an earlier generation that, in another part of the world, successfully resisted a conqueror—and that conqueror began the struggle with its army already in place among the colonies. That old dead guy’s lesson:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

More than that, they will have neither, and the RoC compromisers, instead, would exist—not live—under PLA jackboots, and as the citizens of Hong Kong are learning, that existence would be an uncertain one.

The Peoples Republic of China’s goal is the complete erasure of the RoC as a nation, as a polity, even as a people, and the slavery that a successfully conquering PRC would inflict on the citizens of the RoC would be nothing more than a living death.

Of course, the RoC’s ability successfully to resist a PRC invasion would be enormously enhanced if President Joe Biden (D) would get out of the metaphorical White House basement and quickly transfer modern arms to the RoC—beginning, but not stopping, with the weapons systems the RoC already has bought and paid for but are not yet delivered.

“I Don’t Understand”

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Andy Kessler’s op-ed in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal centers on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, Kessler’s putzing around with a variety of firearms at a Nevada firing range, and his assessment of the effect of Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of an individual’s right to keep and bear any of a variety of Arms on the national firearm debate.

The importance of that debate is summarized in Kessler’s statement about having an AR-15, but which he implied was about a much broader matter:

…I still don’t understand why you would want to own one.

It doesn’t matter a whit that Kessler doesn’t understand. He’s only a journalist, though, and his level of understanding also is not all that important.

Far more importantly, is the fact that it’s the individual’s right to keep and bear; us American citizens, individually or as groups, do not require a government permission slip to do so, and that makes a government man’s level of understanding of the matter irrelevant, except to the extent that man attempts to act on his level and therewith move to restrict our individual right.

The 2nd Amendment of our Constitution, along with recent Supreme Court acknowledgments, make all of this crystalline, and they make the government man’s move to act on his level of understanding unconstitutional.

Reparations—Punishing the Children and their Mothers

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The California Reparations Task Force has hit a new low with its reparations…foolishness.

The California Reparations Task Force is asking the Democrat-controlled state legislature to eliminate interest on past-due child support, as well as any back child support debt for Black residents of the state.

And this:

[T]he group claimed “discriminatory” laws “have torn African American families apart,” and that one effect of that is the “harms” caused by “the disproportionate amount of African Americans who are burdened with child support debt.”

This is just wholly irrational. Discriminatory laws have not torn any families apart, African American or otherwise. Divorce tore the families apart—whether because of misbehaving husbands or wives or simply because of their incompatibility. Aside from that, when the mother gets custody, child support gets paid by the husband because the husband is—was—most often the major or sole source of the family’s income.

In addition to that, the burden from child support debt is due to that debt, and the burden of its not being paid is borne by the child(ren) and the single mother.

And this bit of foolishness so blatant that it has to be dishonesty:

[T]he 10% interest the state charges on back child support “hinders” their ability to finance further education, attend job training, find employment, and maintain housing because of the legal consequences of not paying such debt.

This gives no consideration whatsoever—deliberately so, apparently—to the barriers (not mere hindrance) not paying such debt inflicts on the child(ren)’s and single parent’s ability to finance any education, attend any job training or internship or apprenticeship, find any employment—summer or part-time for the child(ren) who’s old enough, or any level of employment including full-time for the single parent—or maintain, or even get, housing.

And this:

[T]hose who owed child support had lower incomes than “the typical California worker” and that such interest required a larger portion of their income to actually pay the debt.

What a tear-jerker. Never mind that the single mother who’s owed the child support has even lower income than the deadbeat dad who owes it.

This nonsense hurts black children and their single mothers far more than it helps black deadbeat dads. Never mind asking why the CRTF wants to help deadbeat dads in the first place. The CRTF doesn’t care: it’s all about reparations for the sake of reparations. And the money.

This is one way to monetize the bigotry.

“Not a Normal Court”

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With the Supreme Court having struck down affirmative action as unconstitutional, a reporter asked President Joe Biden (D), on his way out from his Friday press conference in which he objected to the ruling, a reporter asked him whether he thought the Court was now a “rogue court.”

Biden answered:

This is not a normal court[.]

It’s not normal for Justices of the Supreme Court to adhere to the text of our Constitution. It’s not normal for Justices to adhere to their oaths of office in which they swear to support and defend our Constitution rather than amend it from the bench.

This is the view of Progressive-Democratic Party politicians: our Constitution is merely suggestive, and should be ignored at convenience.