Category Archives: culture

Reactionary Ideologue

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump has nominated Brett Kavanaugh, of the DC Circuit, to the Supreme Court, and “within seconds” Democracy for America called him a reactionary ideologue.

DfA, without correction from the Progressive-Democrats of Congress, or anyone else on the left, also has foretold Kavanaugh’s confirmation would

directly lead to the deaths of countless women with the dismantling of abortion rights.

Even taking the manufactured hysteria seriously, it’s instructive here as an aside (of no small size) to consider that the Left worries about the risks to grown, adult women who make the conscious choice to run a risk, but they care not a red sou for the deaths of countless babies who cannot speak for themselves and for whom the Left insists no one should so speak.

That the Progressive-Democrats’ opposition to the Kavanaugh nomination has nothing to do with principled disagreement with how the man might adjudicate cases and everything to do with naked politics is further illustrated by a fund-raising email House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) sent Monday.  In it she wrote that [emphasis added]

she is “determined to avenge President Obama if it’s the last thing I do” by preemptively opposing President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee….

All of this is confirmation of the Progressive-Democrats’ view of the Constitution.  That core of our nationhood is just something to be modified at will by unelected judges—so long as they’re properly selected by Progressive-Democrats.  It’s Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s “living” constitution.

Or, as a journolist put it more bluntly,

[The constitution] has no binding power on anything.  …the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago….

Never mind that there’s nothing at all reactionary in a judge upholding the Constitution.  That’s what his oath of office enjoins him to do.  On the other hand, a judge modifying the Constitution to fit a personal view of social justice is rank judicial activism—and a violation of his oath of office.

Hysteria

Posted on by
Reply

Is the Left, in its hysteria, turning more violent?  And I don’t mean just Antifa or BLM.  Or last year’s attempt by a Leftist kook to murder Republican Congressmen.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was threatened by a group of “protestors” as he left a restaurant last Saturday.  One of them shouted

We know where you live, Mitch. We know where you live.

As McConnell left in his car, another of the “protestors” was self-congratulatory:

We did good, fellow citizens.

It’s not just kooks, anymore; these threats of violence and the potential for violence, is going mainstream, as Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D, CA) actively eggs them on, and “mainstream” Progressive-Democrats remain silent beyond a few vapid words on the Senate floor.

This is the level of freedom toward which we can look, if we’re not careful this fall.

Facebook Strikes Again

Posted on by
Reply

Facebook, for a while, decided that our Declaration of Independence was filled with hate speech.  In particular, Facebook decided that

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions[]

which closed the list of Facts our nascent nation submitted to a candid world

goes against our [Facebook’s] standards on hate speech.

Facebook then threatened The Washington Times, which had been posting to its Facebook account successive parts of our Declaration leading up to our Independence Day celebration—which was to have included that hateful passage—with the loss of its Facebook account.

Facebook’s algorithm did it.  That’s the company’s story, and apparently they’re sticking to it.

It’s true enough that Facebook later reposted the censored passage and…apologized…for the “error.”

That, though, does not alter the simple fact that Zuckerberg’s minions, hiding behind that algorithm—which Zuckerberg’s IT experts had carefully programmed—had committed this act of censorship of our Declaration of Independence.

Nor does it alter the simple fact that Zuckerberg and his minions waited to restore the censored passage until after they’d been publicly called on their misbehavior.  They did not proactively, on their own initiative, undo their misbehavior.

This is free speech, Left style.  Not even our founding documents can be posted without a struggle today.  Just like when they first were published.

The Case Against Brett Kavanaugh

Posted on by
Reply

The writer JD Vance, this time in The Wall Street Journal, has made a strong case for Brett Kavanaugh, a judge on the DC Circuit, being nominated for the Supreme Court.

He is a committed textualist and originalist, one whose time on the bench has revealed a unique ability to apply these principles to legal facts. He deeply believes in the constitutional separation of powers as a means for ensuring governmental accountability and protecting individual liberty.

And

…Judge Kavanaugh’s opinions have been adopted by the Justices 11 times—a record of influence and persuasion that suggests he would be effective on the still-divided high court.

I disagree, though.  Ex-President Barack Obama (D) stacked the DC Circuit with a number of “liberal,” activist judges.  Kavanaugh is more valuable, say I, staying on the DC Circuit, where he can apply those qualities in counterbalancing that liberally stacked court.  He still will have, from there, the influence on the Supreme Court and on our jurisprudence generally that he already has.

There are a number of other judges with the same talents, skills, and understanding of and appreciation for our Constitution, its text, and the text of our laws.  Any of those would make excellent choices for the Supreme Court.

It’s true enough that any of those also would make excellent choices for backfilling Kavanaugh should he depart for the Supremes.  However, that would require a second confirmation hearing and Progressive-Democratic Party time-wasting fight.

The Sanctity of Precedent

Posted on by
Reply

The Progressive-Democrats have their panties in large, tight twists over the possibility of President Donald Trump getting another pick for the Supreme Court.  So much so that now they’re making stuff up in their hysteria.

“Abortion will be illegal in twenty states in 18 months,” tweeted Jeffrey Toobin, the legal pundit, in a classic of cool, even-handed CNN analysis soon after the resignation news.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY):

Whomever the president picks, it is all too likely they’re going to overturn health-care protections and Roe v Wade[.]

And so on.

What these guys are carefully ignoring, though, are some basic fundamentals (excuse the redundancy).

Conservatives are very reluctant to overturn precedent, as the Editorial Board points out. However, the Progressive-Democrats’ insistence on the absolute sanctity precedent—and of Republican Senator Collins’ identical insistence—means that now these worthies have to defend the sanctity of the Dred Scott precedent, and they have to defend Plessy‘s separate-but-equal and explain the inequity of Brown fixing that.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for their explanations. Don’t hold your breath, either, waiting for the NLMSM—CNN, for instance—to ask them for those explanations.