An Excellent Response

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Last Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, a case centered on Web Page designer Lorie Smith and her First Amendment right to not put messages on her designs that conflict with her religious beliefs.

In the course of those arguments, there occurred this exchange (audio is at the first link above) between newly confirmed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Kristen Kellie Waggoner, CEO, President, and General Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Smith in this case:

[Jackson] asked about a situation where a Christmas photo company was recreating old-time pictures and as a result they only allowed white children to participate because it accurately reflects the time period. As part of the hypothetical, the company served Black people for other types of photos and would refer them to other vendors if they desired. Jackson asked if this would be acceptable under Smith’s logic, because by forcing the photographer to take Black customers it would be changing their vision and forcing them to create something they do not want to create.
“…there are difficult lines to draw and that may be an edge case, but this is not. We have a creative—a creator of speech and a very clear message—”

It’s about time lawyers stopped being afraid to call out activist judges and Justices’ dumbass cynical quibbling over corner cases and kept them focused on the matter actually before them.

American Energy Production

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In a piece centered on Texas’ role in our nation’s electricity production and especially on Texas’ role in our nation’s oil and natural gas production, there sat this nugget of information:

Fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and coal—accounted for roughly 79% of total US energy production in 2021, according to the EIA.

This is the magnitude of destruction the Progressive-Democratic Party wants to wreak on our ability to heat our homes in winters, cool our homes in summers, travel to/from work or stores, or produce much of anything at all from food to manufactured products to communications facilities—all of which take energy as the first input. They don’t care about the destruction they intend to inflict on our economy in general.

No more drilling.
There is no more drilling. I haven’t formed any new drilling.

That’s President Joe Biden’s (D) solemn promise to do right now. All in the name of converting us to “renewable” energy sources…sometime. All without regard to those sources being entirely unreliable.

WaPo Racism

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And by extension, much of journalism’s racism through their own silence regarding their colleague’s and their colleague’s employer’s refusal to condemn this racism.

MSNBC fired anchor Tiffany Cross last month, and The Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah called that racism. After all, that MSNBC anchor is a black woman. I’m frankly surprised that Attiah, and that WaPo through its columnist, didn’t cry “sexism,” too. MSNBC fired that anchor who was a woman.

This is yet another example of journalism’s racism: there are very few more insidious examples than to manufacture racism out of whole cloth. WaPo, Attiah—journalism—all know full well Cross was fired over her poor ratings and her own poor performance and that racism had nothing to do with it.

In Which Rubio is Mistaken

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The Senate passed a bill mandating a labor agreement agreed by railroad companies, management teams of a dozen rail unions, and the rank-and-file of most of those unions be imposed on all of those unions and railroad companies. The bill also barred a rail union strike.

In a separate vote, the Senate failed to pass a bill imposing a number of paid sick leave days for union employees on the rail companies.

Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) is dismayed.

When workers are treated as little more than line items on a spreadsheet, they become indistinguishable from the freight cars they service….

And

…the measure only granted rail workers one day of paid sick leave all year—a stipulation that Rubio said “underwhelmed and alienated the men and women doing the hard work.”

And

Congress…told rail workers to suck it up and be grateful. We should have worked to meet the demands of the workers instead of appeasing labor leaders and companies.

Most, if not all, of that likely is true.

However.

It doesn’t matter how much any of that might seem like a good idea, or might even be a good idea, over the duration of a contract. It’s not government’s job to set the work compensation parameters for employers and their employees. Most especially, it is not government’s job to meet the demands of the workers. It’s government’s job to set the market conditions within which employers and employees can negotiate those parameters freely.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) wasn’t far off with his dig at Rubio: I always knew you were a socialist.

Government is a system of men and women, not an entity in itself. What those men and women might think is a good idea will vary over time for those men and women and certainly will vary as different men and women come into government from time to time. We need only see how government “good ideas” vary as Republicans or Progressive-Democrats are in ascendance from one Congress or administration to another.

At most—at most—where a national risk is in play (for instance, a steel worker industry-wide strike or lockout, or a nation-wide rail strike or lockout), government might require the two sides to settle through binding arbitration a disagreement they can’t settle through negotiation. With the arbiters chosen by the two disputants, not by government.

That Is Right-Wing Ideology

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Last Friday, The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board wrote about so many former-President Donald Trump (R) judicial appointees ruling against Trump on a number of cases.

What really jumped out to me, though, was this brief bit, almost tossed off as an aside to the main thrust of the piece.

The chief distinction of Trump appointees, [The Alliance for Justice] said, is “absolute adherence to right-wing ideology.”
How about adherence to the law and respect for the separation of powers?

Imagine that—”right-wing ideology” is centered on actual adherence to law and respect for separation of powers in our Federal government.

What does that claim by an organization on the Left in American politics say about the Left’s view of law and separation of powers?

Maybe it says something akin to ex-Progressive-Democratic Party President Barack Obama’s and current Progressive-Democratic Party President Joe Biden’s bragging that if Congress doesn’t do what they personally want, they’ll act freely and independently with their “pen and phone.” What is the Left’s ideology, anyway?