Posted in Constitution

The Rule of Law In Danger

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”

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

Gay Marriage Equality Wedding Cake Same Sex MarriageTo 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. Continue reading →

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

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.

Execution Gays Iran Sharia California Travel BanIn 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: Continue reading →

Democrats Without Honesty; Republicans Without Chests

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

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.