Category Archives: rights

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Free Speech

Posted on by
4

Not directly, because this Oregon law predates Kennedy’s Obergefell ruling, but this is the inevitable outcome of his ruling on free speech.

Aaron and Melissa Klein, bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, lost in an Oregon court and have been ordered to pay $135,000 in “emotional damages” to the couple for whom they refused the baking. Administrative Law Judge Alan McCullough, who found for the victimhood couple, ordered the fine, but nothing further.

However, Brad Avakian, Oregon’s Labor Commissioner and Политический Руководитель, and for whom this Administrative Judge works, overruled the omission. On hearing that the Kleins had assured Oregonians in an interview with the Family Research Council that they intended to pursue the matter, he ordered them to speak no further. He gagged them.

So much for freedom of speech in Oregon. So much for freedom of religion in Oregon. Look for this sort of thing to accelerate in the wake of Kennedy’s ruling.

A Thought on Iron Curtains

Posted on by
3

Shortly after World War II, Winston Churchill spoke of an Iron Curtain descended across Europe. The curtain was made concrete with the erection by the Soviets of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The purpose of that wall was more than simply to divide the USSR and its occupied territories from the rest of Europe; it was to keep the people inside that wall—inside the USSR or those occupied territories—from leaving for a better place, for a place where freedom and individual choice could be had.

Shortly after our Revolutionary War, our Founders wrote, and We the People ratified, our Constitution and its attendant Bill of Rights, which include the 10th Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

So was born a Federation and ultimately 50 laboratories of democracy, particularly as described by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in New State Ice Co v Liebmann when he wrote in his dissent how a:

state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

Now keep in mind the concern of John Jay who, while the Constitution was being drafted in those fateful summer days, considered that, in contrast to the failing Articles of Confederation, the States should be reduced to the same relationship to the proposed central government as counties then had relative to their States (although, in the event, he strongly advocated ratification of the Constitution itself):

merely as districts to facilitate the purposes of domestic order and good government.

Next, consider these activities of our Federal government:

  • it terminated the democratic discussion in progress among and within the several states concerning abortion and when it might be appropriate or inappropriate, nationalizing the thing in Roe.
  • it terminated the discussion in progress among and within the several states concerning the nature of marriage, nationalizing the thing in Obergefell.
  • it terminated the democratic discussion in progress among and within the several states concerning the provision of health care and of health insurance, nationalizing the thing with the Affordable Care Act.
  • it terminated the democratic discussion in progress among and within the several states concerning the market behavior of private enterprise, nationalizing the thing with Dodd-Frank.
  • it removed from all possibility of local discussion the relationship between private enterprise and private citizens with the creation of the wholly unaccountable Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The list goes on.

The USSR’s physical iron curtain was designed to keep people from leaving in an era when they had a place to go to. There is another kind of iron curtain, though.

Our government is no longer requiring—as the Constitution above it does in Article IV, Section 1—that every state honor the decisions of every other state. Rather, it’s demanding that every state behave the same as every other state.

With the reduction of our 50 laboratories of democracy to mere districts to facilitate the purposes of the Federal government, this government is erecting a legalist iron curtain by deprecating the 10th Amendment, and so denying Americans a place to go to, denying us any place more compatible with our individual views, needs, moral imperatives.

Microaggression

Posted on by
1

It’s all the latest rage in the PC fascism that’s running amok in our United States these days.

There are these, for instance, from a list of allegedly microaggressive statements put out by Janet Napolitano, late of DHS and now President of the University of California system:

  • I believe the most qualified person should get the job.
  • Of course he’ll get tenure, even though he hasn’t published much—he’s Black!
  • Men and women have equal opportunities for achievement.
  • Gender plays no part in who we hire.
  • America is the land of opportunity.
  • Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough.
  • Affirmative action is racist.

The whole list goes on in this vein, but these are the ones most directly and deliberately aimed at the fabric of Americanism.

Of course it could be argued that the second on the list is, indeed, racist, but it’s a direct fallout of the last item on the list. Affirmative action isn’t only racist, though, it’s sexist, too, and by design: deliberately, race and gender are additional selection criteria, and for the explicitly racist and sexist purpose of achieving “diversity”–because, so the Liberals believe, blacks, minorities generally, and women simply are incapable of competing on their own–while simultaneously downplaying qualification, much less merit, in the selection.

Another problem with foolishness like this is that while many remarks are certainly rude, and polite people shouldn’t use them, courtesy is a thing that can come only from within the person; it cannot be imposed from without, and certainly not by diktat. That only leads to rule-following, or rule-breaking; the courtesy of the thing will have been wholly removed.

Lists like these are themselves plainly microaggressions.

Keep in mind, too, that the Napolitano of this list is also the Napolitano of the DHS lists that called American military veterans “right-wing extremists” and that cynically, if not cowardly, substituted “man-caused disaster” for “act of terrorism,” and on and on.

Now that’s microaggression of a hugely macro nature.

Another Reason We Need Regime Change in DC

Posted on by
Reply

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Patrick Leahy sent their third letter since June calling on the DOJ to reveal its questionable cell phone surveillance policies, after yet another whistleblower allegation of abuse.

Keep doing this, absolutely. But don’t expect any answers for another several months.

We’ll need an administration from the other party before the Eric Holder/Loretta Lynch DoJ can be expected to deliver. And with that change, extended to DoJ, the present DoJ incumbents need to be haled into court and sanctioned for their willful obstruction of these investigations.

The SEC and Judges

Posted on by
Reply

The SEC doesn’t like it when the ones it charges with miscreancy object to the cases being heard solely by SEC administrative judges. One statement in particular in the WSJ article at the link, though, jumped out at me.

The SEC accused several defendants of “judge shopping” by trying to get a case heard in a particular court and in another instance asked one of its own judges to submit a formal statement about whether he has ever felt pressure to favor the agency.

Never mind that the SEC is demanding that defendants use the SEC’s own already shopped-for judges. Never mind, either, the SEC’s cynicism in trotting out one of its employees to speak favorably about that employee’s employer.