Tag Archives: responsibilities

A Partial Truism

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Willian Galston, in his Tuesday Wall Street Journal op-ed, has it mostly right in his discussion of the meaning of created equal as acknowledged in our Declaration of Independence.

There has always been a gap between America’s promise and its performance. This was true in the revolutionary era, and it remains so today. This doesn’t make the equality proclaimed in the Declaration false or hypocritical. It means that there is a difference between moral truth and empirical reality. Politics at its best works to narrow the gap between them….

That’s completely true, as far as it goes. But it’s necessary for us to take the next, long, critical step. Politics at its best works is far more than just politicians doing politics in the nooks and crannies and in the hallways and on the floor of our government buildings. The critical factor here is us. Us American citizens, We the People, we who are the sovereign of our nation are—or should be—the driving force, the primary political actors, of our government and of our nation.

As a great American philosopher once said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Misbehavior of a Federal District Judge

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A short while ago as such things are measured, a Federal district judge was given a private reprimand for having sex in her chambers with a local police department senior-level cop. Many folks, experts as well as my august self, consider that wholly inadequate.

The judge has since been identified as Northern District of Georgia judge Eleanor Louise Ross, and the (still individually unidentified) senior-level cop as a member of the Atlanta Police Department. Furthermore, her relationship with the cop has been identified as an extramarital one, lasting for two, or so, years, and the relationship included repeated sexual encounters in her judicial chambers, generally within earshot of her clerks and other staff.

That private reprimand, though, is all she got, because she’s sorry, and she apologized, so it’s all good.

Pfft.

The article outlined a number of more serious outcomes for her misbehaviors, leading off with impeachment. That, though, would take a majority of the House voting to impeach and a two-thirds majority of the Senate to convict in order to get her off the bench. The article acknowledged the unlikeliness of that outcome, but without suggesting why. I claim the reason is this: even were impeachment a serious possibility, there aren’t enough Progressive-Democrats in the Senate willing to convict one of their own, the Obama appointee who is Ross.

The article also outlined a number of alternative consequences, but while potentially financially expensive in terms of opportunity cost, they would leave her on the bench. The worst realized outcome of all these would be this:

Recusal motions are the sharpest instrument available. …
The Justice Department has already moved to disqualify Ross from a high-profile voter-roll case, citing both the misconduct findings and her attendance at Fani Willis’s 2024 primary victory party. If that pattern continues, she could find herself a judge in title only.

Judge in title only. That actually is nice work for anyone who can get it. Ross’ pay in 2025, just for being a Federal judge, was nearly a quarter of a million dollars. That puts her income higher than 96% of the rest of us working stiffs.  Nice work, indeed, especially for someone whose word—professional or personal—is worthless.

A Misapprehension

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Former Vice President Mike Pence (R) is the one misapprehending this time, and he laid it out early in his Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Where conservatives have historically viewed politics as the art of the possible, progressives see politics as a path to alter society beyond recognition in a quest for material equity, environmental nirvana, or other alleged perfections. Progressives invariably try to destroy whatever stands in their way.

That last sentence lays bare his misunderstanding. Perfecting our society has nothing to do with today’s progressives’ goals, goals hard-sought after by today’s Progressive-Democratic Party and epitomized by that sentence. Were Party interested in perfection, it would adopt a more patient approach and seek to bring along those presently disagreeing with them. Instead, Party politicians try to destroy whatever stands in their way.

For further proof, see Party’s plans, annunciated by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D, NY) remarks and his chief minion for this, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D, MD):

The Supreme Court is a disgrace. In the new Congress, we’re going to have to do something about this Supreme Court, and let me be very clear: everything is on the table—everything to deal with this corrupt MAGA majority.

And, as paraphrased by the WSJ‘s editors:

[Raskin] recently introduced a bill that would deny the Justices the power to choose which cases they hear. Under the SCCOTUS Act, petitions would be reviewed by a rotating committee of 13 random appellate judges. This is such a radical change that it’s hard to imagine all the implications.

Jeffries sees the Court, especially the conservative Justices, as corrupt because the majority seeks to adhere to what our Constitution and any statute before them actually say, rather than what the other Justices too often insist: that, in the manner of former Justice Thurgood Marshall, the Court should rule on what they want and expect the law to catch up, with the added fillip that if the law isn’t catching up quickly enough, these Justices will rewrite them from the bench.

Raskin would actually corrupt our Court by packing it to thirteen Justices because thirteen appellate circuits. He ignores in his revisionism the history that the number of appellate circuits had been growing beyond nine long before Congress set the number of Justices at nine. In fact, though, that’s just his covering excuse for adding four activist, progressive men and women to the Court, men and women who view our Constitution and statutes as suggestions to be ignored or modified as they see fit.

Pence’s piece loses its import with his lack of understanding of the underlying problem, even as he’s entirely correct in his conclusion: it’s time for Republicans, and especially the dismayingly meek Republicans, to get up off their backs and address these problems loudly and firmly. In particular, this includes Vice President JD Vance (R), who’s busily toadying up to Big Labor in his desperation to become our next President.

Else we lose our Republic.

British Abject Surrender

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The lede carries the surrender.

The British Museum postponed a public lecture scheduled for Wednesday on the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah less than 24 hours before it was due to start. The reason, the museum said, was security concerns. A “significant proportion” of the registered attendees were “individuals intending to deliberately disrupt the event.” The lecture, to be given by Paul Collins, who runs the museum’s Middle East department, was planned as a highlight of Britain’s first ever Jewish Culture Month.

“Security” concerns over “disruption.” Sure. Dominic Green’s subheadline understates the case:

Canceling events over “security concerns” gives bullies and frauds exactly what they want.

It’s far worse than that. These are people who should know better. They’re not only telling bigots they can have whatever they want, these…personages…are broadcasting to the world at large that what Brits have to say to those who threaten them is…”please don’t hurt us.”

Green had this near the end of his piece:

Rather than hunker down before the bigots and behind managerial waffle, Messrs Cullinan and Osborne [museum director and chairman, respectively] should seize the chance to redeem the museum from its self-inflicted disgrace and show the world what it stands for.

Sadly, they’ve already demonstrated plainly and for all to see exactly what the museum does not stand for.

Nor is the museum’s cowardice a one-off. Green listed some other examples of Brit surrender, also.

  • Bournemouth exhibition on the local Jewish community’s history canceled altogether
  • Edinburgh Festival canceled two Jewish comedians over “safety concerns.”

The inaugural Jewish Culture Month was created to counter this kind of criminal intimidation and institutional weakness. The museum’s lecture was intended to “highlight” the Month in its first major event. All the event highlighted, though, was timidity in the face of threats.

Beyond that, the British people continually and repeatedly elect governments infamous for looking the other way as their girls are groomed for the sex trade and then used in it; governments that insist that defending oneself against assault is itself a crime; governments that won’t even defend the nation’s own borders against illegal alien inflows, a particular infidelity to those few who were owed so much in times past.

These are not the people whose army stood tall against a vastly numerically superior Zulu army at Rorke’s Drift and won, nor are they the people whose army and air force stood tall against Germany’s Nazi armies and air forces, ultimately contributing critically to the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany.

Today’s Brits are utterly betraying their own Winston Churchill’s injunction to Never give in—never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Further betrayal of their own, Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons in 1940:

[W]we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. …we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. …we shall never surrender.

These are not the people of a special relationship.

Today’s Brit meekness is as disgusting as it is dismaying.

Birthright Political Seat

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In last Tuesday’s Texas Progressive-Democratic Party primary runoff election “for a recently redrawn House seat,” ex-Progressive-Democrat Congressman Colin Allred (from a pre-redraw district) defeated incumbent Progressive-Democrat Congresswoman (from a pre-redraw district) Julie Johnson by 54%-46%.

This is upsetting to senior Party members, even as the upset itself is surprising by its existence. The upset is centered on Johnson being Texas’ only openly LGBTQ Representative in Congress, as if that matters in some way.

For instance, here are Congressmen Mark Takano (D, CA) and Ritchie Torres (D, NY), Party’s Equality PAC co-chairs:

It’s no secret that, without Julie, Texas—and likely the entire South—will lose openly LGBTQ representation in Congress. Many in our community remain deeply hurt by Colin Allred’s decision to challenge one of our own.

The effrontery of Allred—that seat belonged to the LGBTQ community.

The dismay also is typical of Party’s attitude toward blacks. Johnson is white, and Allred is black. That man should have remembered his place, which is squarely in back of the LGBTQ community.

Never mind that, by solidly choosing Allred in the primary, Party voters themselves clearly demonstrated their overall preference for Allred, if not their overall dissatisfaction with Johnson.