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Category Archives: rights
A Couple of Litmus Tests
The two major party Presidential candidates have them. All Presidents and candidates who wish to nominate Supreme Court Justices have them; some are more or less legitimate than others.
Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s wants:
The kind of people that I would be looking to nominate to the court would be in the great tradition of standing up to the powerful, standing up on behalf of our rights as Americans[.]
Read that again. Clinton wants Justices who put social agendas ahead of the actual law before them, ahead of the text of the Constitution, ahead of the Justices’ own oaths of office, which swear them to uphold and defend the Constitution, not ignore it, or “reinterpret” it.
Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s wants:
[Justices who would] interpret the Constitution the way the founders wanted it interpreted.
Notice that. Justices who will do the opposite of what Clinton’s choices will do: rule on the basis of what the law and the Constitution actually say, rather than on what the Justices might wish had been said.
There’s just one more litmus test that I would add, one as general and carefully nonspecific as Trump’s: lose deference to the other branches of the Federal government. The founders also wrote the Judicial branch as the equal of the Legislative and Executive branches. No deference is owed, no deference is legitimate. Deference subordinates what is intended to be a coequal branch of the government to the other two. Besides, a law is Constitutional, or it is not; that does not depend in any way on who says it. Further, a matter before the Court comports with the law and the Constitution on its merits, or it does not; that does not depend on who is bringing or defending the matter.
One of these two will be nominating Justices in the next term—at least one, likely three, and maybe four or five. The next President will determine the tenor of the Court and the viability of our legal system for generations.
It’s clear which set of choices are better for the present and long term health of our nation.
A Protest for Free Speech
On Wednesday, the Young Conservatives of Texas club at the University of Texas at Austin held an “affirmative action bake sale” offering cookies at different prices based on the race and sex of the buyer.
A cookie cost $1.50 for Asian males, $1 for white males, and 50 cents for African-American and Hispanic males. Cookies for American Indians of both genders were free of charge.
[The affirmative action link is in the original of the above quote; I included it so readers can see Instagram’s complicity at the time of my writing (27 Oct) in censoring this bit of news.]
That pricing is a direct reflection of the nature of UT Austin’s affirmative action programs, which similarly varies accesses to the school based on ethnicity and not merit.
But never mind that. The school objected to having its racist policies so blatantly illustrated. Gregory Vincent, the school’s Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement, had this on the matter:
[F]ocusing our attention on the provocative nature of the YCT’s actions ignores a much more important issue: they create an environment of exclusion and disrespect among our students, faculty and staff[.]
Such dialectics are at the core of freely conducted debate, though. This university’s management plainly does not understand actual freedoms acknowledged in the First Amendment.
Embarrassingly, Vincent went on, and unable to form a coherent argument on the matter, stooped to attacking the protestors and not the protestors’ argument.
He…questioned the club’s motive behind the bake sale.
This is what our State’s tax dollars are buying, and it’s not education.
Guilty
Concerning Eric Garner’s chokehold death, Attorney General Loretta Lynch (D) has made up her mind. NYPD officers are guilty of murder, and she wants a prompt hanging, no more delays. Those impertinent New York City-based FBI agents, all of whom have recommended against Federal charges against the officers, have been relieved of their duties on the case and replaced en masse by FBI agents from…elsewhere. Lynch’s DC-located Civil Rights Division of her DoJ have taken the matter over.
Never mind that a State investigation has already been completed, and the State’s prosecutor failed to get a grand jury to indict—in an environment (not limited to New York) where a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich—any of NYPD’s finest in the case.
Lynch Knows Better.
Free Speech, Again
A New Jersey high school has come under fire after holding a ceremony honoring law enforcement, military and first responders before a football game Friday night.
And
It featured State Police Pipes and Drums of the Blue and Gold, state and local mounted units, personnel from all of the branches of the military and officers from several local offices. It also honored a Linden police officer who was wounded in a shootout with Ahmad Khan Rahimi, who is accused of planting IEDs in Seaside Park, Elizabeth and New York City[.]
So far, so good, you might think.
“It’s OK to stand up for social justice, inequality, and reform,” [Middletown Deputy Police Chief Stephen] Dollinger told the [Asbury Park Press]. “It’s another thing to not stand up for the national anthem.”
Uh oh. That’s not allowed. It’s OK to protest. It’s not OK to protest the protesters or the protest methods. No, the Left insists we just shut up about that. The ACLU, the Central Jersey Chapter of National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and the Greater Long Branch NAACP all objected to such impertinence in a letter to the high school.
According to press reports, however, the event is being used to intimidate and ostracize people who express their views about systemic racism and social just.
Law enforcement officers are sworn to protect the constitution, and it is a disservice to the students and players that an event that should focus on them, their families, and their communities is being used to send a message that people who express concerns about disparities in the criminal justice system are unwelcome, disloyal or unpatriotic.
And
One ACLU organizer, Jasmine Crenshaw, believes the event sent a “frightening message….”
Sure. It’s frightening—to the Left, anyway—that people not under the Left’s control would speak freely.