Tag Archives: culture

Roberts’ Court

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Aside from the misnomer of the title, which is implied by the thrust of a piece in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal centered on Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation and the hoo-raw surrounding that, Chief Justice John Roberts has a problem with the perception of the Supreme Court—according to Brent Kendall and Jess Bravin, the authors of the piece.

“We don’t work as Democrats or Republicans, and I think it’s a very unfortunate perception that the public might get from the confirmation process,” CJ Roberts…2016.

The Court can’t worry about perceptions, though.  It can—should—only rule on what the Constitution or law actually says.

“Every single one of us has an obligation to think about what it is that provides the court with its legitimacy, to think about how we can be not so politically divided as some of the other political institutions in the nation,” Justice Elena Kagan said[.]

No.  What provides the court with its legitimacy is its rulings based on the text of the Constitution or the law. A Justice’s empathy, or the particular wisdom of Latinas, or the concept that a judge should take account of…the climate of an era, have no place on the bench. Nor does an automatic reach for the middle.

The handling of any of those things—and they are important (as are the social climate generally; the wisdom of non-Latinas, also; empathy)—can only be done politically, not judicially.

Credibility

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This. Is. Facebook.  Sorry, I don’t have James Earl Jones’ impressive, deep voice.  But here is Facebook’s MFWIC on a most serious incident that occurred during the Ford/Kavanaugh sort of joint hearing a little bit ago.

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg told a packed room of employees Friday that the company should embrace diverse views, but he expressed frustration that a senior executive had attended Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s highly politicized hearing….

These are mutually exclusive claims, particularly since all Kaplan—that evilly miscreant employee about whom Zuckerberg speaking—did was sit in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s gallery with other of Kavanaugh’s friends and family.

Zuckerberg needs to understand that when he spouts nonsense like this—be diverse, but only with approved diversees—he has no credibility.

Although Kaplan has done his own credibility no good by cravenly apologizing for doing a moral thing, for supporting his friend.

Partisanship

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Chris Wallace interviewed Senator Ben Cardin (D, MD) on his Fox News Sunday program last Sunday.

Here are some of the claims Cardin made.

The change that Senator McConnell made to the rules on the Supreme Court really caused us to be much more partisan in this[.]

And

I don’t believe that Justice Kavanaugh’s in the mainstream of judicial thought.

And

Kavanaugh’s confirmation puts at risk “the progress we’ve made on health care issues, on women’s Constitutional rights, and on protecting the Mueller investigation.”

Not quite, although this is America, and Cardin is entitled [sic] to his spin.

However.

Filibustering confirmations is by design partisan. Absent overt filibustering—courtesy of Cardin’s erstwhile Leader Harry Reid; McConnell only completed Reid’s program—engaging in character assassination and smear as the preferred means of blocking a confirmation is especially, despicably partisan.

Not mainstream?  In Cardin’s fetid imagination and that of his fellow Progressive-Democrats, “mainstream” is judges with feelz and Latina wisdom. “Mainstream” also is the Constitution meaning whatever a judge thinks it should mean instead of what its text says.  No, Kavanaugh is in the heart of the envelope: the text of the Constitution and of a law is what should be adhered to.

Regarding what Cardin is pleased to call “progress,”—health care issues, women’s Constitutional rights, and protecting the Mueller investigation—these are political matters, not judicial ones.  Cardin and his fellow Progressive-Democrats need to make their case in the political branches and quit hiding behind judges’ robes.  If these politicians are unable to impose their political views on the rest of us, they need to accept that us unwashed masses disagree with them, and move on.

Civility

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Congressman Andy Harris (R, MD) had an op-ed in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal in which he decried the quality of current discourse and its lack of basic norms of decency. He closed his piece with a bit of naïve hope:

We must return to civility. We need to be able to agree to disagree, and express our disagreements through the democratic process.

That would be nice. However, notice that it was persons of the Left attacking Conservatives and people of the center right whom he described. The Progressive-Democratic Party has become the party of character assassination and destruction.  While they are not—yet—antifa dominated, the Party’s methods are those of the worst of the Left’s thugs.

It isn’t possible merely to agree to disagree with those who would destroy.

There’s a parable about a mouse and an owl. The mouse thinks the owl is mistaken. The owl thinks the mouse is lunch.

In Other Parts of the World….

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A man in Austria was shocked to be handed a bill from a debt collection agency for €10,365 ($12,000) after misplacing his hotel key….

After all,

the key was a skeleton key for the entire building, and now the owner is claiming all of the hotel’s intricate locks must be replaced.

So—a hotel is careless of its security setup, and that makes its customers responsible for any potential breach.

Hmm….