Constitution Archives - Bookworm Room

Thoughts about the Catholic School’s lawsuit against LGBT laws

April 3, 2019 by Bookworm Leave a Comment

A cursory review of 1st Amendment law hints that a Catholic school can win its challenge against South Euclid’s overly broad statute regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.

PJ Media reported yesterday that a small Catholic school in Ohio, one that revolves around traditional Catholic doctrine, including viewing marriage as a covenant between a biological man and a biological woman, is challenging its city’s newly passed “sexual orientation gender identity” (SOGI) ordinance on the basis that it is an unreasonable infringement against the school’s free exercise of its religion under the First Amendment:

Last year, the City of South Euclid passed a SOGI ordinance similar to the Equality Act in Congress and the Ohio Fairness Act currently in the state legislature. The Lyceum, a Catholic classical school in South Euclid, will sue the city on Wednesday, claiming the SOGI ordinance violates the First Amendment.

[snip]

“South Euclid passed one of the most offensive and egregious sexual orientation gender identity laws that I have ever seen, and Christian ministries across the country should take note of what these laws would mean to them,” Aaron Baer, president of Citizens for Community Values (CCV), told PJ Media. His organization opposed the ordinance during the legislative process and will host the press conference on the lawsuit with ADF and the Lyceum. “The Lyceum is standing up and saying enough is enough.”

Baer called the local ordinance an “incredibly broad law that is devastating to Christian ministries.” According to him, the law imposes criminal penalties on individuals, businesses, and ministries that operate according to the teachings that marriage is between one man and one woman and that biological sex overrides gender identity. Every school, business, and ministry must open women’s bathrooms to biological men who identify as women and celebrate same-sex marriage and transgender identity.

According to the CCV president, the ordinance has no exemption for religious freedom or freedom of conscience.

Here’s the ordinance (or at least I believe this is the ordinance at issue) so you can draw your own conclusions. After defining sexual orientation and gender identity among other protected classes, the ordinance prohibits all sorts of things, including hiring people on the LGBTQetc. spectrum. I don’t think it’s true, though, that there’s no religion or conscience exception (again, assuming I’m looking at the correct ordinance). Instead, there is one that places the burden of proof on the person asserting the right of conscience.:

552.06 GENERAL EXCEPTIONS.

[snip]

(f) If a party asserts that an otherwise unlawful practice is justified as a permissible bona fide religious or denominational preference, that party shall have the burden of proving that the discrimination is in fact a necessary result of such a bona fide condition.

As a preliminary matter, when a government is infringing upon free speech or association — which is effectively what is happening here because it is holding that religious institutions cannot promote their values either through hiring practices or teachings — it’s the government that bears the burden of proving that its regulation is not unduly burdensome: “When a State’s rule imposes severe burdens on speech or association, it must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest. . . .” Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, Inc., 525 U.S. 182, 206 (1999), Justice Thomas, concurring (and cited with approval in the decision itself). [Read more…]

Reparations: The Holy Grail Of Identity Politics (Part II)

February 26, 2019 by Wolf Howling 1 Comment

Reparations that economically penalize modern Americans for ancient acts to benefit other modern Americans are not justified by any fair reading of history.

2020 Democrat presidential candidates immersed in race-obsessed identity politics (as a substitute for the class-based politics of pure Marxism) are pushing the for the Holy Grail of victimhood: Reparations for slavery. They are undeterred by the fact that reparations are wholly impractical, utterly immoral, and counterproductive in that they do not address the problems plaguing the lower socio-economic half of the black community.

This will be the second of several posts dealing with the issue of reparations:

Part I – Constitutional Considerations: Bills of Attainder, Corruption of Blood, & Ex Post Facto Laws.

Part II – History of Slavery & Equities

Part III – Practical Impediments to Reparations

Part IV – Need for Reparations?

Part V – Marxism versus Melting Pots

Part II – History of Slavery & Equities

The end game for those pushing reparations for slavery (who now include the top Democratic presidential candidates among their number) is to paint people with black skin as separate, permanent victims in a modern day America that is itself a hotbed of racism. That hotbed, they claim, is responsible for all of the problems of blacks. This is all part and parcel of the effort to destroy Western Civilization, starting with America, then to remake it into a socialist paradise. A necessary step in this endeavor is to delegitimize the Founders of this country, the Constitution, and the Judaeo-Christian religions.

Significantly, those who push for reparations for slavery in America almost invariably paint slavery as a sin unique to white Americans. No one ever seriously mentions the world-wide history of slavery, the American Civil War, or the unique role that white Americans and Brits — Christians, Jews and capitalists — played in ending slavery as both an American and a world-wide institution. Sadly (and dangerously) very little, if any, of that history comes to the attention of students in America today:

For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture.

The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said.

“Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.” . . .

The world history of slavery and its equities.

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Reparations: The Holy Grail Of Identity Politics (Part I)

February 23, 2019 by Wolf Howling Leave a Comment

The Constitution prohibits reparations that would economically penalize modern Americans for centuries’ old sins for the benefit of other modern Americans.

This will be the first of several posts dealing with the issue of reparations:

Part I – Constitutional Considerations: Bills of Attainder, Corruption of Blood, & Ex Post Facto Laws.

Part II – History of Slavery & Equities

Part III – Practical Impediments to Reparations

Part IV – Need for Reparations?

Part IV – Marxism versus Melting Pots

Part I – Constitutional Considerations: Bills of Attainder, Corruption of Blood & Ex Post Facto Laws

According to the NYT, “2020 Democrats Embrace Race-Conscious Policies, Including Reparations:”

From the very first day of the 2020 presidential race, when Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts blamed “generations of discrimination” for black families earning far less than white households, Democratic hopefuls have broadly emphasized racial justice and closing the wealth gap in their policy platforms.

But in recent weeks, some candidates have started embracing specific goals and overtly race-conscious legislation that even the most left-wing elected officials stayed away from in recent years.

Last week, on the popular radio show “The Breakfast Club,” Senator Kamala Harris of California agreed with a host’s suggestion that government reparations for black Americans were necessary to address the legacies of slavery and discrimination. Ms. Harris later affirmed that support in a statement to The New York Times. . . .

[snip]

The morally driven policy goals of Ms. Harris and Ms. Warren reflect a broader shift in the importance of race and identity issues in the Democratic Party, according to several scholars and political leaders who focus on the intersection of race and politics. While Democrats have long cast themselves as more inclusive than the Republican Party, grass-roots organizers and many liberal voters of all races are now pushing elected officials to go further on policies of racial equality, regardless of any political calculations. . . .

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The Rule of Law In Danger

July 17, 2018 by Wolf Howling Leave a Comment

Justice is supposed to be blind. That is not the case in America today and President Trump is partly to blame.

[Update: This today from the Daily Caller:

President Donald Trump chose to have the indictments of 12 Russian hackers announced before his Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a Tuesday Bloomberg report.

Trump wanted the indictments announced ahead of the Monday summit to give him leverage over Putin, a source familiar with the matter told Bloomberg on Tuesday. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave Trump the option of having the indictments released before or after Helsinki, according to the report.

Rosenstein cited national security concerns to allow him to share details of grand jury proceedings with Trump.

A portion of this post was based on incomplete information and thus has been edited to reflect the above, that the timing of the indictments was at the behest of Pres. Trump. The thrust of the original argument remains.]

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Cakes show the Left’s and Right’s different understanding of “equality”

December 6, 2017 by Bookworm 4 Comments

Today’s must-read: Vincent Phillip Muñoz’s article about Progressives’ and Conservatives’ different ideological approaches to equality.

To the extent we conservatives look to the Constitution as the alpha and omega of our political ideology, we’ve thought a lot about equality in theory and in practice. Problems arise, though, when Progressives push their version of “equality,” a notion that marches under the same name as the constitutional concept, but that has a very different meaning.

This different meaning is not a distinction without a difference. Instead, it goes to the very heart of every citizens’ relationship with the state. The first encourages the state to leave citizens alone. The second demands that the state force citizens to pay homage to other citizens. The Left’s understanding of the First Amendment is the ideological equivalent of the Obamacare mandate, in that it relies on state power to enforce Progressive ideas.

As you all know, and as I’ve obsessively pounded away at my keyboard to explain, the conservative notion of equality is grounded in our understanding of the nature of the relationship between citizen and state. The Constitution generally and the Bill of Rights specifically (with assist from the Declaration of Independence) establish that government is the servant of the people.

As such, government does not exist to place value judgments on which people are of greater or lesser worth (i.e., judgments based upon race, creed, a legal citizen’s country of national origin, etc.). Instead, it exists to apply limited law impartially to all citizens, to protect us against threats to our national security, and otherwise to leave us alone to do what we believe necessary to pursue our notion of happiness.

With respect to that last item (leaving us alone), a limited government does have a limited role in ensuring that neither individuals nor the states act affirmatively to prevent people from pursuing their own happiness. In other words, we cannot bake discrimination into the cake (cake reference intentional). Laws cannot apply to one race and not another; places of public accommodation cannot explicitly exclude people based upon characteristics tied solely to race, religion, etc. We citizens have therefore given the government power to ensure that we play fairly under the Constitutional rules; we have not given it the power to come down on one side or another. [Read more…]

California travel ban: Blatant hypocrisy about LGBTQ (etc.) rights

June 24, 2017 by Bookworm 34 Comments

The California travel ban against US states for claimed anti-LGBTQ laws follows its attack on the travel stay for Islamic countries that routinely kill gays.

In January and then again in March 2017, President Trump issued a temporary travel ban aimed at six countries that the Obama administration identified as terror sponsors. These countries are Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

In each of these six countries members of the LGBTQ etc. (hereafter “LGBTQer”) community are officially and/or unofficially physically abused, imprisoned, and murdered. Specifically:

In Iran, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer conduct is punishable by death, with myriad lesser punishments (e.g., lashing and imprisonment) available.
In Libya, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer conduct is illegal and is subject to stringent punishments such as limb amputation and flogging.
In Somalia, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LBGTQer conduct is punishable by imprisonment or death.
In Sudan, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer conduct is illegal and, even if the government does not act, vigilante groups are known to attack or kill people accused of homosexuality.
In Syria, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer activity is illegal and, depending upon the territory in which the LGBTQ etc. individual finds himself or herself, can be subject to violence or death, whether administered by state agencies or vigilante groups.
In Yemen, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer activity is officially illegal, with punishments ranging from lashing, to imprisonment, to death.

The reason behind the universally violent, murderous hostility to LGBTQ identification or conduct in the above countries is sharia law, which is hardwired into Islam. After all, the Pulse nightclub terrorist attack did not happen in an ideological vacuum.

Also in January and, again, in March 2017, California officially and vociferously protested against the Trump administration’s temporary travel ban, a ban that affected terror-exporting Muslim countries that make LGBTQer conduct a capital crime, on the ground that the temporary ban was unconscionable, discriminatory, and ineffective: [Read more…]

Democrats Without Honesty; Republicans Without Chests

June 18, 2017 by Wolf Howling 13 Comments

I always expect that the progressive left will act without intellectual honesty or conscience to achieve their ends. I did not expect the progs to be aided in their efforts by eunuchs in the Dept. of Justice. As Andy McCarthy opines, The Justice Dept. Is Killing Trump.

Everything in the public record to date suggests that the claim of “Russian hacking” had no quantifiable impact on the 2016 election, that President Trump was not involved in the Russian “hacking,” nor that the “hacking” was in any way coordinated on Trump’s behalf by someone in his campaign or administration. Yet since December of 2016, the progressive left (and Hildabeast) have made a cause celebre of “Russian hacking” in order to portray the election of Donald Trump as illegitimate. The Democrats were aided and abetted in that effort by the Director of the FBI, James Comey, who on one hand publicly announced in March that the FBI was investigating the Trump administration for ties to Russia and who, on the other hand, refused to relieve any of the pressure on the Trump administration by correcting the public record — including multiple requests that Comey make public that Trump himself was not and never had been a subject of the probe.

Let’s switch gears for a moment. As to special counsels, can you recall all of the special counsels appointed under Obama? No need to wrack your memory. There were zero.

Fast and Furious – none. Lois Lerner, the weaponization of the IRS on behalf of Democrats, and the IRS destruction of evidence – none. Hillary’s serial serial violation of our security laws and the laws governing destruction of government records – none. I could go on and on. The Obama years were an illegal enterprise. The Obama White House brazenly ignored the calls for a special counsel in each and every case, and certainly none of the Obama appointees in the Justice Department objected. They were, after all, on a mission to advance the progressive cause.

Fast and Furious demanded appointment of a special counsel. It involved potential illegal acts by senior members of the AG’s office. It is not possible for there to be a bigger conflict of interest than for the AG to investigate the AG. And then of course there was Hillary Clinton. On that one, it is now certain that the FBI and AG conducted a sham investigation, that AG Lynch coordinated her and the FBI’s use of language with the Clinton campaign, and that FBI Director Comey grossly overstepped his legal authority explicitly to prevent the appointment of a special counsel in that matter. In retrospect, it equally required the appointment of a special counsel.

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A Descent Into Progressive, Racial, Post-Modern Madness

June 4, 2017 by Wolf Howling 1 Comment

Below, Joe Rogan does a superb interview of Bret Weinstein, the Evergreen College professor at the center of more than one racially charged event playing out on his campus, where victim studies students and faculty are pushing radical agendas founded upon a rejection of the Enlightenment values and the concept of objective facts. They would make of their victimhood a kind of WMD, impervious to factual challenge and sufficient to destroy any who would stand in the way of their very dark agenda.

Prof. Weinstein describes himself as firmly “progressive.” He is sorely deluded. It becomes quickly apparent that he suffers no “white guilt,” he is not hobbled by buying into “white privilege,” and he aspires to the same goal Martin Luther King Jr. articulated in his 1964 “I have a dream” speech — to live in a nation where people are “not . . . judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” It is hard to imagine something more at odds with the victims’ movements in progressive ideology today, where skin color, gender and sexuality are used to wholly define people, irrespective of their character.

This interview is important. One, Prof. Weinstein’s situation is hardly unique. The same radical agenda we see impacting the Prof. at Evergreen is playing out across campuses throughout the U.S., including the Ivy League schools. Two, these movements are bleeding into the real world with very bad consequences for society. The Black Lives Matter movement, the war on men on college campuses, the war on Christianity, capitalism, our history . . . and I could go on and on. Three, Prof. Weinstein is very articulate in highlighting these issues as he discusses his problems on the Evergreen campus. This is a very long interview. It is worth every minute to watch.

Constitutional Originalism or the “living Constitution”: Gorsuch’s nomination and a tale of two law profs

April 4, 2017 by Wolf Howling 23 Comments

The Gorsuch nomination, pitting Originalism against a “living Constitution,” is a fight for America’s soul — so pay attention because this is important!

Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination has brought to the fore the seemingly dry argument about two competing theories of Constitutional interpretation, Originalism and the “living Constitution.” Gorsuch himself is an “originalist” while the Democrat party arrayed against him puts its faith in a “living Constitution.”

Two recent essays both discuss Originalism and “the living Constitution”: Prof. Glenn Reynolds’ “Who the People?” in USA Today, and Prof. Mary Bilder’s “The Constitution Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means” in the Boston Globe. Dry though the argument may seem to those not already steeped in the law, Progressives have turned this into the single most important issue facing our nation, so pay attention to this one.

Why is this so important? Because whichever of those two theories, Originalism or living Constitution, wins goes to the heart of how we will be governed in the future. It will determine whether we will be a Republic under a government with limited powers that the people control through the ballot box — as the people who drafted the Constitution envisioned — or whether we will be a nation pushed ever further left by non-democratic, extra-constitutional means, morphing to the point that the Constitution is meaningless and our Republic gutted in a brave, new, progressive, socialist nation.

The competing theories are easily explained. “Originalism” is a wholly apolitical theory holding that one interprets the Constitution as it was understood when passed. This is not inherently conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat. It is merely adherence to a framework that allows for the people of the nation — not judges — to amend it.

Automatic adherence to Originalism explains why, for more than a century, there were no politics attendant upon confirming Supreme Court justices or judges holding other positions in the federal system. Judges were not ideologues, using their position to create new laws or Constitutional rights; they were just judges, applying the Constitution and the law as written to the facts before them. Progressivism was not ascendant in American politics until Woodrow Wilson was elected President in 1913. Only by the 1980s, after several decades of decisions from Progressive activist judges, did legal scholars coin the word “Originalism” to apply to the traditional judicial approach to the Constitution.

In an act of pure projection, progressives have falsely labeled Originalism as “conservative.” As Prof. Reynolds says in USA Today:

[C]ourts have a duty to enforce the Constitution as written, whether those results further the aims of a political majority or of a minority. When courts do so, even if they strike down laws passed by the majority, they are not engaging in judicial activism. They are simply doing their jobs. . . .

Arrayed against Originalism is the “living Constitution.” The very term is polish on excrement, much akin to “Democratic People’s Republic of [stick in the name of your preferred police state / dictatorship here].” Just as there is nothing Democratic or Republican about a socialist dictatorship of any stripe, there is nothing constitutional to be found in the theory of a “living Constitution.” The term is used to give an air of legitimacy to the wholly illegitimate.

Under the progressive socialist’s theory of a “living Constitution,” un-elected judges are free to ignore the original intent of those who crafted and voted in a referendum to pass our Constitution and take unto themselves the power unilaterally to proclaim new law or otherwise amend the Constitution upon their whim. The Constitution itself spells out, in Article 5, the only two means by which the Constitution could be amended — and neither of those include amendment by judicial fiat. The incredible genius of the system our Founders crafted, limiting the power of any one branch of government by a series of “checks and balances,” is lost through this judicial usurpation of power at the expense America’s citizens.

So how does Prof. Mary Bilder attempt to justify this obscene “living Constitution” assault on our republican form of government in her essay, “The Constitution Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means“? To begin with, what a perfect title. At least there she’s not hiding the ball. The contents of her essay, though, are a different matter entirely. To be that honest would be to invite a second watering of the tree of liberty.

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Progressives’ dangerous plan to use the 25th Amendment against Trump

February 19, 2017 by Bookworm 9 Comments

The Progressives’ current dream — declaring Trump crazy and therefore unfit for office under the 25th Amendment — is a scary replay of a Soviet nightmare.

The latest Progressive idea for destroying Donald Trump is rely on the 25th Amendment. That’s the one that authorizing removing a president from office because he “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Because Progressives do not like the way in which Trump is governing (I beg to differ), they’re trying to conflate that dislike with his being constitutionally unfit to serve.

The problem for the Progressives is that the American people are not getting on that bandwagon. Indeed, while they’re not always thrilled with Trump’s habit of seemingly saying whatever he thinks, they’re on board with his policies and plans. An even greater problem, as I’ll explain below, is that the Progressives are lapsing into dangerous political behavior last ascendant in the former Soviet Bloc.

The American people do not believe that a president is manifestly unfit to serve when he declares that he’s going to use his executive authority to build a border wall that Congress mandated in 2006. Since that time, the American people have seen how well Israel’s fence worked, not to keep people trapped inside a prison nation a la the Berlin Wall, but to keep bad people outside of a democratic nation. They’ve also seen the bad effects that uncontrolled immigration has had in Europe. And of course, here at home, many Americans are not thrilled when people who have no permission to be here in the first place get welfare, take jobs, fill up academic slots, weigh down the healthcare system, commit crimes, and cause accidents. Building a wall does not prove you’re unfit.

The American people do not believe that freezing federal wages and slowing hiring is a sign that the president is unfit to lead. They’ve noticed that the burgeoning federal bureaucracy, rather than improving their lives, has come to the point at which it’s a serious drag on economic growth and a threat to individual liberty. They’ve also noticed that federal employees, who are theoretically the people’s servants, have wages and benefits far in excess of those the taxpayers — their employers — often receive. Americans aren’t mad at most individual government employees — only those waging war on a democratically elected government– but they understand that the madness needs to stop.

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Sanctuaries & Filibusters

November 17, 2016 by Wolf Howling 3 Comments

The mayors of twelve major cities have, since the election, announced that they will be “sanctuary cities” for illegal aliens and, in one form or another, refuse to cooperate in the enforcement of federal immigration law. This is a direct challenge to our Constitutional system, and one no progressive would tolerate if, say, it were conservatives refusing to comply with homosexual marriage. Actually, the twelve “sanctuary cities” are the tip of the iceberg, as Victor Davis Hanson explained when opining on the nihilism of this “sanctuary” movement some months ago:

There are an estimated 300 or so jurisdictions — entire states, counties, cities, and municipalities — that since the early 1980s have enacted “sanctuary city” laws, forbidding full enforcement of federal immigration law within their jurisdictions. Most of these entities are controlled by Democrats in general and liberals in particular. . . . .

If rule of law means anything, then this cannot be allowed to stand. Unfortunately, while there are some acts that Trump can take unilaterally, his hands are surprisingly tied. Democrats in the Senate, where Republicans do not hold a filibuster proof majority, have repeatedly refused to authorize the withholding of any funds from cities, etc., because of their failure to cooperate on matters of immigration law enforcement.

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National Review cruise — The First Amendment

November 16, 2016 by Bookworm 1 Comment

A fascinating view of George Town in the Grand Caymans

Today’s seminars were about the First and Second Amendment discussions. Both panels were interesting but I was absurdly gratified to discover that, with few exceptions, nothing was said that we at the Bookworm Room (both authors and commenters) haven’t already addressed, analyzed, concluded, or otherwise worked over factually and intellectually.

I wasn’t bored by the redundancy, though, because the panel members were unusually informed and witty. I did not take notes, but I will try to dredge up from the dim recesses of my memory some of the things that particularly struck me.

The first panel, which is the subject for this post, was on the First Amendment. James Lileks moderated a panel composed of David French, Charles Cooke, Jonah Goldberg, and Ramesh Ponnuru. They spent a quick hour looking at freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

The point that most struck me was one that Jonah Goldberg made about Citizens United. He explained that the Left is being disingenuous at best when it waffles on that corporations are not people, and therefore shouldn’t have speech rights. In fact, the Left loves corporations that have speech rights: the news media and Hollywood. When Saturday Night Live or Jon Stewart or the New York Times are speaking, that’s sacrosanct, because the speech is already inherent in the corporation — and it’s Leftist speech. What the Left actually opposes is competition. It’s that simple.

Jonah made another excellent point about the fragile flowers on college campuses (a point, I believe, that he attributes originally to Jonathan Haidt). The craziness we see now started after I finished my education in the mid-1980s. What the late 1980s and early 1990s saw were some horrible, high profile cases of child abductions and murders. Polly Klaas springs to my mind because, although I was not a parent then, it happened within 50 miles of my home.

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Progressives & The Supreme Court

November 15, 2016 by Wolf Howling 4 Comments

Dahlia Lithwick, Slate’s correspondent for the courts and law, is apoplectic that the right did not consider Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland (see Ms. BWR’s analysis here) for the Supreme Court, and now will never do so. She wrote about this recently in Republicans Stole the Supreme Court. Ms. Lithwick cites no legal or Constitutional authority to support her charge of nefarious action. Her crie de coeur is based solely on notions of fairness – something always important to progressives, but only when it can be argued favorably for them.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to schedule hearings on Garland, stating that such an appointment should be a decision for the next President. That was a political decision that the American people just recently had an opportunity pass judgment upon.

I believe it was no less a personage than President Obama who, days after his victory in 2009, told America “elections have consequences.” Indeed, he said it as justification for ramming a series of acts through Congress without even the slightest attempt to reach across the aisle. I recall exactly zero progs complaining about the unfairness of that in 2009, nor the trickery Harry Reid used to pass the Affordable Healthcare Act later in the year so that it would not have to undergo a final vote in the Senate — a vote the progs would surely have lost after a Republican was elected to fill Ted Kennedy’s vacant seat. Nor did I hear a peep from the left in 2013 when Harry Reid overturned the Senate’s filibuster rule – a rule whose history dated back to 1806 – in order to pack the DC Court of Appeals with progressive judges.

Ms. Lithwick’s histrionics aside, the fact that control of the Supreme Court was at issue was dominant in the election. A nationwide exit poll shows that 61% of voters stated that the Supreme Court nomination was important, or most important, in their decision to vote. The people have spoken.

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The Bookworm Beat 10/21/16 — the “politics as usual” edition and open thread

October 21, 2016 by Bookworm 5 Comments

The American media suddenly discovers antisemitism in America. You know it’s not a coincidence when several mainstream media outlets that every non-conservative Jew reads suddenly announce that Donald Trump’s supporters are crazed antisemites. These are, of course, the same media outlets that have been silent for years about the antisemitism at the heart of the Democrat base. My friend JoshuaPundit has written an excellent post highlighting the Left’s despicable and manipulative hypocrisy when it comes to Jew hatred. He left out only one point, which I’ll illustrate with a poster:

In sum, a small, disfavored fringe of Trump voters are loathsome antisemites. Hillary’s antisemitism problem, however, starts at the top with the lady herself, and drips on down to the campuses, the Black Lives Matter activists, and the Muslims who are central to her constituency.

Is this a race between a crook and a monster? Scott Adams says that the race has been framed as one between a crook (Hillary) and a monster (Trump). Dropping for a moment his mask of complete neutrality, though, he points out that, while there is convincing evidence that Hillary is a crook, there’s no evidence that Trump is a monster — a not-very-nice-businessman, perhaps, but not a monster.

Hillary reiterates the Left’s assault on Free Speech. Kevin Williamson points out something that every American should fear: Hillary Clinton’s straightforward assault on free speech. Except that it’s only straightforward if you’re informed about the issues, something the Democrats avoid at all cost. You can change that as to yourself and any open-minded friends you have by reading, and having them read, Williamson’s article.

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July 4, 1776: the Declaration of Independence — by Wolf Howling

July 4, 2016 by Bookworm 7 Comments

Happy Fourth of July.

On this day, in 1776, our Founders passed The Declaration of Independence, severing ties with Great Britain and announcing the birth of a new nation. The American colonists were then in the midst of a war that would see battles in all thirteen colonies, with the outcome of the war very much in doubt right up until victory came in the aftermath of British General Cornwallis’s Surrender at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781. From the British perspective, the American Revolution ignited aworld war with France, Spain and Holland that would not end until 1782.

The American Revolution began in 1761, when British officials began a corrupt, concerted and heavy handed effort to end smuggling and increase revenues in the colonies, with these efforts falling hardest in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The first overt act of war did not take place until 1774, when Britain, bent on punishing all of Boston for the Boston Tea Party, established a complete naval blockade of Boston’s harbor. The actual shooting war began in April, 1775, when the British tried to disarm the patriots at Concord, Massachusetts. A second battle had taken place in June, 1775 when the colonists pre-empted a British attack by occupying Breeds Hill overlooking Boston, in what would later be called, incorrectly, the Battle of Bunker Hill.

And yet, it was by no means clear, until July 2, 1776 that the colonists would declare themselves independent of Britain. When the Second Continental Congress convened in May, 1775, the colonists still saw themselves as loyal citizens of Britain and their individual colonies. They had no desire to permanently join together the thirteen colonies. The colonies united simply for defense; the clear goal otherwise was not independence, but a return to the pre-1761 relationship that the individual colonies enjoyed with Britain.

In the end, it was not the colonists who declared war on Britain and started a revolution in the lead-up to 4 July, 1776; it was the other way around. For over a decade, Britain had been passing ever more draconian laws and taxes which would have had the effect, if meekly accepted, of stripping from the colonists all of the rights enjoyed by British citizens living in Britain proper. Then, in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party, it was King George himself who decided that “blows should decide the issue.” It was the King of Britain who declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion, who sent the largest expeditionary force of the 18th century to the colonies to establish military rule, who authorized a naval war on the colonies, and who resolutely refused all formal entreaties from the colonists to engage in peaceful discussions. It was Britain’s forces in the colonies that, by July 1776, had started the shooting war by forcing the colonist’s hand at Lexington and Concord and had committed acts of pure terrorism in the attacks on civilian targets, including the burning of Falmouth. It was the British officials in the colonies who had allied with the Indians to attack the colonists from the west, and it was these same officials that sought to use slaves as a military force against the colonies.

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