Tag Archives: political parties

Today’s Attorney General

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The Progressive-Democrat appointee to Attorney General, Merrick Garland, is showing his overtly political bent as our nation’s chief prosecutor. One characterization of The Wall Street Journal‘s editors especially stands out, a characterization of Garland’s suit against Georgia and its new, more expansive voter law.

…a fair guess is that Mr Garland succumbed to White House and progressive pressure to make a political statement to support Democratic efforts in Congress to federalize state election laws in HR1.

Garland—especially with his willingness to surrender to White House political pressure—is demonstrating the wisdom of not confirming him to the Supreme Court. Imagine the destruction he’d have wreaked from the Court as the tool of a President that he’s demonstrating himself to be, given the damage he’s attempting to wreak as AG.

Another Progressive-Democrat Gives Another Part of the Game Away

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Laura Saunders, in her Friday Wall Street Journal column concerning the Roth IRAs, the rich and deplorable, and us average Americans, has a striking quote from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D, OR).

Saunders was writing about how efforts to lay punitive limits and punitive taxes on the Roth IRAs of the super wealthy can only have deleterious effects on the rest of us.

Here’s Wyden’s statement on the matter:

IRAs were designed to provide retirement security to middle-class families, not allow mega-millionaires and billionaires to avoid paying taxes[.]

Wyden has two beefs here. One is his progressive view that the wealthy don’t deserve to be under the same law as the rest of us Americans; the success of the wealthy must be called out and that success denied them—because the rich are the piñata of government disfavored groups of Americans.

The other is that business about avoiding paying taxes. Never mind that the rich and deplorable—and the merely rich—already pay the vast bulk of the taxes the Federal government collects, while the bottom half of income earners pay close to nothing in taxes, and the very bottom—including those who don’t have any job-related income—get tax payments from the rest of us. The amount the rich pay isn’t enough for Progressive-Democrats. More is better.

All of it is better, yet.

Compelling Interest and Racism

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors correctly decry President Joe Biden’s (D) race-based “equity” programs and diktats as taking our nation back to an ugly past.

By equity, Mr Biden means preferences for some racial groups over others to achieve equal outcomes.

And

Mr Biden sells his agenda as taking America into the future. But allocating government funds or privileges by race is a step back to an uglier past. … If applied on the scale Mr Biden hopes, America would become a nation of groups competing for racial spoils and defined outcomes rather than seeking equal opportunity for everyone.

The editors added this near the end of their piece, and here I demur from them.

Strict scrutiny requires that the government have a compelling interest for discriminating by race, and that it must use the least restrictive means to achieve that interest. If less restrictive ways can achieve the same purpose, the policy fails.

There shouldn’t be any strict scrutiny on such matters; the policies should fail on their face. There’s nothing in the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protections clause that permits Government-determined “compelling interest” to override our Constitution [emphasis added].

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

All of that plainly applies to our Federal government every bit as much as it does to each of the governments of the several States.

The Strict Scrutiny standard, as applied here, has been unconstitutional from the start and was an earlier Supreme Court attempt to duck its responsibility in applying our Constitution rather than seeking out excuses and methodologies for getting outside of it.

Government’s compelling interest is to defend and uphold our Constitution.

Full stop.

The Senate Filibuster

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FH Buckley, Foundation Professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School, claims Republicans should want to get rid of the Senate’s filibuster. After all, the filibuster, he claims in purple prose

makes it harder to get laws enacted, but it also makes them harder to repeal. With all the noxious laws on the books, Republicans should be the party of repeal.
Getting legislation passed or repealed in America is like waiting for three cherries to line up in a slot machine.

Then he blows up his own argument, and I appreciate his assist.

the filibuster, which since 1975 has permitted 41 senators to block a vote on most legislation.

Irony abounds. Buckley wants the filibuster removed because the thing makes it so hard to rescind noxious (or no longer useful, I add) laws.

In a nutshell: Buckley’s “most legislation” that was filibuster-blocked would have included a plethora of additional noxious laws.

Too, Conservatives, and most Republicans, favor smaller government over larger. How much larger would Government be today if that “most legislation” since 1975 had been enacted?

Like all tools, filibuster can be misused. Like all tools, the filibuster is a net good despite its occasional misuse.

Another Progressive-Democrat Gives the Game Away

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It’s Senator Mark Kelly (D, AZ), this time.

I’ll look at any proposal [filibuster reform proposal] and evaluate it, not based on what’s in the best interest of just Democrats, but what’s in the best interest of Democrats, Republicans, the country, and Arizona.

Notice that. His first “best interest” criterion is what’s best for Party—which he emphasized: not…just Democrats, but what’s in the best interest of Democrats…. His second criterion, cynically, is the other party.

What’s good for our nation and for his Arizona constituents are last in his list of who matters.