Tag Archives: culture

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.

The Supremes Get Another One Right

Posted on by
Reply

Sort of.  Mostly.

A deeply divided Supreme Court upheld President Donald Trump’s latest ban on travel to the US by people from several Muslim-majority countries, in a ruling Tuesday that hands the White House a victory on one of its most central—and controversial—initiatives.

Small point, and it’s on The Wall Street Journal, not the Supreme Court: it’s not a ban on travel, it’s a moratorium.  The moratorium will be lifted on each of those countries when it becomes possible to accurately vet travelers from those countries.  A ban is broad and permanent.

A failure of the Court came from the liberal wing.  Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote, for instance,

A reasonable observer would conclude that the [ban] was motivated by anti-Muslim animus….

And

The majority…turn[s] a blind eye to the pain and suffering the [ban] inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens.

This is rank, deliberate emotionalism at the expense of rational thought and objective analysis.  Sotomayor chose not to demonstrate where the animus exists in the Executive Order, choosing instead to bring in outside material not part of the case or of the EO in question.  Campaign rhetoric, which she chose to consider instead of the text in the present case, ceased to have relevance to anything once the election was completed.  Even more, bringing in outside material, evaluating a case on things other than the text of the EO, the law, the Constitution is a violation of the Justices’ oath of office: they’re sworn to uphold the law, the Constitution (and EOs executed in accordance with the Constitution), not to uphold other things convenient to them.

Sotomayor also chose to ignore the “pain and suffering” unvetted entry of terrorists and violent criminals “inflict upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens.”

The larger failure is that this should have been a unanimous decision.  The liberal wing of the Court, though, remained mired in their ideology that the text of an Executive Order (or of a law or of the Constitution) is not the only thing before them in any case: extraneous material convenient to their predetermined opinion also must be brought in for support.

“Freedom”

Posted on by
Reply

Here is the freedom the Progressive-Democratic Party and its Leftist supporters will allow.

The Association of Library Service to Children‘s (ALSC) board voted unanimously on Saturday to rename the “Laura Ingalls Wilder Award” as the “Children’s Literature Legacy Award.”

Why?  Because her books depicted the stereotypes of a bygone age, and so she must be purged.  This is on a par with “liberal” schools purging books by “old, dead, white guys” from their literature curriculum, as though those thoughts, ideas, philosophies had no impact on the evolution of Western Civilization.

We have the Southern Poverty Law Center labeling Conservatives variously as terrorists or Nazis.  We have Facebook and Twitter censoring conservative news reports and accounts, all in the name of blocking “fake” news.

 

Then there’s the Progressive-Democrat Congressmen.

Recall the intern who yelled “Mr. President, f— you!” across the Capitol Rotunda.  She works—still—for Senator Maggie Hassan (D, NH).  The intern was suspended, but Hassan has kept her on Hassan’s payroll.

There’s House’s Hispanic Caucus heckling President Donald Trump in the Capital Building, disrupting his activities.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D, CA) has called for anyone working in the Executive Branch to be harassed wherever they go—restaurants, gas stations, department stores, she named it.  And not just protest: harass and drive, physically, from the public square.

The Progressive-Democrats in Congress actively oppose any sort of immigration reform—especially including securing our borders—in large part because they oppose anything Republican, but in equally large part because they don’t want the US to have secure borders; they don’t believe we Americans should be able to determine for ourselves who we let in and under what circumstances.  Never mind that this includes violent criminals, drug purveyors, terrorists.  It’s true that these are a small minority of those who want to enter the US, but the damage these persons do to our communities can be catastrophic.  Those Congressmen don’t seem to care, though, so deeply imbedded are they in their open borders ideology.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) even has said in so many words

The only way we’re going to work with him [Trump] is if he moves completely in our direction and abandons his Republican colleagues[.]

 

Violence is well within the Progressive-Democrats’ and their Leftist supporters’ tool kit.

We have the Left driving a White House Press Secretary and her family from a restaurant, with the restaurant owner’s enthusiastic assistance.  We have Left thugs physically confronting the Florida Attorney General and her family at a movie theater.  We have Left thugs driving the DHS Secretary and her family from a restaurant.  These thugs also “gathered” at her home to continue the assault.

Keep in mind Waters’ call.

We have BLM assaulting speakers and preventing them from speaking.  We have Antifa thugs attacking conservative rallies.  We have Left thugs bringing flamethrowers to a far right rally.

And a Leftist murderer wannabe shot up a Republican baseball practice, wounding several and nearly killing House Republican Whip Steve Scalise.

 

We have the Left publishing the (stolen) personal contact information—including home addresses—of the men and women of ICE and their families with “encouragement” to go to those homes and harass the agents and their families.

Hollywood especially enjoys attacking the women of the Trump administration.

Chelsea Handler called Sarah [Sanders, WH Press Secretary] a “harlot” and “trollop” on her show.

And

Jimmy Kimmel mocked her [Melania Trump’s] accent

And Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a “feckless c___.”

And Peter Fonda called via his Twitter account to “rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles.”

 

The NLMSM is in on the act, too.

Jennifer Rubin wrote that it is “both natural and appropriate for decent human beings to shame and shun the practitioners” of Trump’s immigration policy.

And there’s Ali Watkins, late of The New York Times, who had affairs with two of her…sources…in order to get “leaks” of anti-Trump information.  It’s true enough that Watkins is no longer with the NYT, but only because she got caught.  The NYT turned blind eye to her escapades for as long as they could.

 

This is what we can look forward to if the Progressive-Democrats gain control of the House or Senate, much less if they gain control of both.  Not only will we be free to speak only what the Progressive-Democrats permit us to speak, to read only what the Progressive-Democrats will permit us to read, to worship only within the parameters permitted by the Progressive-Democrats, they will violently suppress any effort to do otherwise.

Make no mistake, either: this will come to pass if we sit on our hands come voting time this fall.

Ransomware and Government Entities

Posted on by
Reply

The Wall Street Journal, in an article about ransomware being used to hack city (and other) computer systems, asked the question Should Cities Pay?

Not only no, cities (and others) should not pay, but no2.

Aside from paying the ransom being an act of cowardice, it aids and abets the criminals—which is amoral, if not yet a felony.

Sure, it costs more in the moment to refuse and rebuild, but what costs are saved by not telling the hacker world that the city will gladly pay the ransom and so be hacked repeatedly?  What’s the cost to other, similarly situated, cities and towns (and public libraries) when one gladly aids and abets?

What’s the excuse, today, with ransomware so well known, for cities not hardening their systems against this hack (and other hacks) before the hack occurs?