A Short History Lesson

Remember Herman Cain? He ran for President, but dropped out of the race after sexual allegations. So what happened next?

A site called Yahoo Answers explains:

What ever happened to the women that accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment?

I know that Sharon Bialek has a history of lawsuits against her and I believe that she wanted to use Herman Cain to her own advantage by supposedly coming out about this so called sexual harassment. Then Karen Kraushaar the last time I have heard filed a complaint at her new job. According to the huffington post “two former supervisors say she initially demanded a settlement of thousands of dollars, a promotion on the federal pay scale, reinstated leave time and a one year fellowship to Harvard’s Kennedy School of government.” Why do women like them think they can do these things abuse the sexual harassment policy against male supervisors?

This is the “Biden Rule” as stated in Politifact:

“Mr. President, where the nation should be treated to a consideration of constitutional philosophy, all it will get in such circumstances is a partisan bickering and political posturing from both parties and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. As a result, it is my view that if a Supreme Court Justice resigns tomorrow, or within the next several weeks, or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not — and not — name a nominee until after the November election is completed.”

Biden said if Bush were to nominate someone anyway, “the Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over.”

Let’s fast-forward to the sudden death of Antonin Scalia in February 2016.

Politifact reported:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked the so-called “Biden Rule” to justify why the Senate should not consider the nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court in an election year.

Chuck Shumer was fine when the Biden Rule was used in the George Bush administration. He was not fine when it was used in the Obama administration.

That tweet illustrates part of the reason for the brutal attack on Judge Kavanuagh. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Hillary was supposed to win the election, and Loretta Lynch was going to be named to the Supreme Court.

Today ABC 7 News is reporting:

With the Senate voting to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, Christine Blasey Ford has no further plans to pursue her sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh, according to her lawyers.

Ford only wanted to speak with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, her attorneys told CNN on Friday. Ford does not want the situation to “drag on into the next Congress should Democrats end up winning control on Capitol Hill,” the network reported.

When asked about the possibility of impeachment proceedings, attorney Debra Katz told the network: “Professor Ford has not asked for anything of the sort. What she did was to come forward and testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee and agree to cooperate with any investigation by the FBI, and that’s what she sought to do here.”

Judge Kavanaugh has been confirmed. Professor Ford’s charges did not cause him to withdraw from the race. Unfortunately, her charges, though unproven, will have a negative impact on Judge Kavanaugh’s spotless record and on his family. Now, with a serious amount of money from her GoFundMe Account, Professor Ford will go on her way, leaving a trail of destruction behind her.

It’s funny how unsubstantiated charges of sexual misconduct seem to magically disappear when they are no longer useful.

Congratulations to Judge Kavanaugh for standing firm and beating back the mob.

The History Of The Judicial Filibuster

The following is taken from a transcript of the Rush Limbaugh Show:

All that is happening today is that the Senate is being returned to the rules that lasted for 100 years prior to 2003.

The judicial filibuster was invented by the Democrats in 2003. The point is there was no filibuster anywhere… It’s not even mentioned in the Constitution. It’s a Senate rule. The Senate can make whatever rules it wants. The Democrats… I just listened to Dick Durbin. (paraphrased) They’re talking about decades and centuries of Senate tradition being wiped aside by these evil Republicans! The Republicans didn’t do anything but stand aside while the Democrats changed the rules. So all that’s happening is that Democrat rules that created filibustering judicial nominees are now being removed.

That’s all that’s happening. The Senate is being returned to normal. That’s all that’s happening. There is no great earthquake happening here. The Senate is not being forever undermined and changed. But that’s the media’s story, and so the Democrats are going along with it. The media’s devising all this strategy, and they’re showing by virtue of controlling the news how the Democrats should act and what the Democrats should say.

…The Senate has just affirmed the nuclear option on the Gorsuch confirmation. To prove the point that prior to 2003 judicial filibusters didn’t exist, look at Clarence Thomas! Clarence Thomas — after all of that crap that was his confirmation hearings — was confirmed to the court with fewer than 60 votes. So was Samuel Alito, and there have been others.

But in the modern era, those are two prominent justices confirmed with fewer than 60 votes. The filibuster didn’t exist. The Democrats invented the judicial filibuster in 2003 to stop the nominees to lower courts of George W. Bush. Harry Reid pulled it again in 2013 to include all presidential judicial nominations except those nominated for the Supreme Court. What McConnell has done today is not alter the Constitution.

McConnell and the Republicans have not nuclearized the Constitution. They have not actually triggered a nuclear option. That’s just words. All that’s happened here is that Mitch McConnell has returned to the Senate its rules that existed prior to the Democrats changing them in 2003. And, by the way, the Senate can make whatever rules it wants. And if a majority votes on the rules change, then it’s changed. The Constitution does not say anything about filibusters, because the filibuster was not actually invented until long after the country was founded and began operating.

So what is this actually about? This whole exercise was nothing more than a political game of chicken. I am still not convinced that the Democrats thought the Republicans would use the nuclear option. There will be Senate and House seats up for grabs in 2018. The recent track record of the Democrats in Senate and House elections is abysmal. It is hoped that all this fuss about the nuclear option (and forcing the Republicans to use it) will energize the Democratic voter base. It has nothing to do with the qualifications of Judge Gorsuch (and it doesn’t even have anything to do with Judge Merrick Garland). Judge Garland is a good excuse for the Democrats to throw the temper tantrum they are currently throwing. It’s all about the next election. That shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Better Late Than Never

Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon reported on a Supreme Court ruling that happened on Tuesday.

The article reports:

The court ruled Tuesday that Obama appointee Lafe Solomon illegally served as acting general counsel to the National Labor Relations Board from 2010 to 2013. Solomon, who once violated the agency’s ethics rules, should have vacated the position in accordance with the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 (FVRA) after the Senate refused to take up his nomination to serve as permanent general counsel in 2011, the court found in a 6-2 opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts. The appointment was an “end-run around” the Constitution.

“We cannot cast aside the separation of powers and the Appointments Clause‘s important check on executive power for the sake of administrative convenience or efficiency,” the majority ruled.

The case came to the court after the NLRB filed unfair labor practice charges against an Arizona-based ambulance service, Southwest General, following union complaints.

David Phippen, a management-side labor attorney at the firm Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete, said the decision clarifies the meaning of the FVRA.

“The case is a reminder that the language of the FVRA statute means what it says and must be followed, not ignored by Presidents, as appeared to be the case here,” Phippen said in an email. “The decision … appears to make it somewhat more difficult for Presidents to put ‘her or his people’ into important agency positions unilaterally, i.e.,  without approval of the Senate.”

The article notes that Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg were the only Justices who dissented from the majority vote.

On another note, the media spin on this story is very interesting. While The Washington Free Beacon focused on the case and the fact that the actions of President Obama were unconstitutional, Yahoo News posted the following headline about the story:

Supreme Court restricts Donald Trump’s power to fill temporary government posts

This case had nothing to do with Donald Trump, although it will prevent him from ignoring the Constitution, as President Obama did.

If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough, It Becomes The Truth

The above quote is attributed to Vladimir Lenin. It has been used successfully by the political left for a very long time. The Wall Street Journal posted a story on Wednesday illustrating how the political left is repeating a lie in order to gain advantage in the efforts to confirm a Supreme Court Judge.

The article reports:

…But Democrats are still itching for a fight, and their first line of offense is the myth of the “stolen” seat.

“This is a seat that was stolen from the former President, Obama, that’s never been done in U.S. history before,” declared Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley in announcing that he will attempt to filibuster Judge Gorsuch. “To let this become normal just invites a complete partisan polarization of the Court from here to eternity.” The “stolen” line is echoing across Progressive Nation, but it’s a complete political invention.

The “theft” is supposedly the GOP Senate’s refusal last year to vote on President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat. But the standard of not confirming a Supreme Court nominee in the final year of a Presidency was set by . . . Democrats. And by no less a Beltway monument than the current Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer.

 

“We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances,” Mr. Schumer declared in a July 2007 speech to the American Constitution Society. Democrats then held the Senate and Mr. Schumer was putting down a marker if someone on the High Court retired. George W. Bush didn’t get another opening, but Mr. Schumer surely meant what he said.

Ah, but that was then and this is now. We had a Republican President then. Last year we had a Democratic President.

The article continues:

The Democratic theft standard goes back further to Joe Biden’s days as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In June 1992 in President George H.W. Bush’s final year, Robber Joe opined that the President “should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not name a nominee until after the November election is completed.”

Naming a new Justice, he said, would ensure that a confirmation “process that is already in doubt in the minds of many will become distrusted by all.” If Mr. Bush made an election-year nomination, Mr. Biden said his committee should consider “not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over.”

Does anyone outside the MSNBC audience think that had the roles been reversed in 2016, and a Democratic Senate faced a Republican Court nominee, Harry Reid would have held a confirmation vote? As John McEnroe liked to shout, “You can’t be serious!”

It must be frustrating to the Democrats (and at times to the Republicans) than anyone can google a subject and find out what politicians have said in the past. What we need now is an honest mainstream media that will report previous statements.

Didn’t The Democrats Complain About Obstruction During President Obama’s Term of OFfice?

Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about some recent statements by Senator Chuck Schumer.

The article reports:

The top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, is promising to block one of President-elect Donald Trump’s first big initiatives — naming a ninth member to the Supreme Court.

“It’s hard for me to imagine a nominee that Donald Trump would choose that would get Republican support that we could support,” Schumer said in an interview Tuesday night on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

Asked whether he’ll do his “best to hold the seat open” on the Supreme Court, Schumer responded, “Absolutely.”

For Schumer, it’s about retribution. The Republican-controlled Senate failed even to vote on President Obama’s last nomination to the highest court, Merrick Garland, who was put up for the job after the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

Republicans instead made the Supreme Court a campaign issue, saying whoever was elected president would get to nominate Scalia’s replacement.

The Democratic Senate leader told host Maddow that Republicans got away with not voting on Obama’s nominee, but that “the consequences will be down the road.”

But in June, Schumer sang a different tune, blasting Republicans for not doing their duty and for creating “chaos.”

Does anyone remember the following quote:

Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.” – President Obama to House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, January 23, 2009.

Donald Trump was elected. He won the popular vote almost everywhere except Los Angeles County and New York City. The American people are looking for people who will work for the interests of America. Do the Democrats really believe that opposing everything Donald Trump does is a winning strategy? Should someone remind Senator Schumer that the Democrats set the precedent of not approving a court nominee during the last year of a Presidential term?

Why Supreme Court Justices Matter

Theoretically the Supreme Court is the third part of the checks and balances in our Representative Republic. They are sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution and make decisions according to that Constitution. Unfortunately there are Americans who either do not understand the Constitution or choose to ignore it. Right now the Supreme Court is balanced four to four in terms of conservative and liberal interpretations of the law. The next President will have the responsibility of choosing the Justice that will decide cases involving gun rights, voting rights, medical care, religious freedom, and other important issues. A recent case illustrates how important the selection of the next Supreme Court Justice will be.

The Wall Street Journal posted an opinion piece on Tuesday about a recent Supreme Court decision. The case illustrates the problems police face when trying to keep us safe when dealing with the drug problem in America.

The piece reports:

The Supreme Court term is ending on a whimper of narrow decisions without Justice Antonin Scalia. But you wouldn’t know it from the overwrought progressive outrage after a 5-3 majority issued a common-sense ruling Monday concerning the so-called exclusionary rule for admitting evidence in criminal cases.

In Utah v. Strieff, police stopped Edward Strieff on his way out of a building after a tip that it was a drug-dealing location. After discovering an outstanding arrest warrant against Mr. Strieff, a police officer searched him and found methamphetamines and drug paraphernalia. Mr. Strieff claims the police lacked reasonable suspicion to stop him under the Fourth Amendment, so the evidence of his law-breaking should be dismissed.

The majority opinion was written by Justice Clarence Thomas and stated that the discovery of the outstanding arrest warrant required the police to arrest and thus search Mr. Strieff.

There was, however, a different opinion.

The article reports;

The outlier was Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who went off the deep end with an extended polemic about police misconduct, events in Ferguson, Mo., and race in America. “Although many Americans have been stopped for speeding or jaywalking, few may realize how degrading a stop can be when the officer is looking for more,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. And although Mr. Strieff is white, “it is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny.”

The Justice is getting huzzahs on the left, but her opinion is troubling for her insistence on dragging racial politics into a case that had nothing to do with race. This dissent continues her habit of wandering far from the law or precedent to decide cases based on her personal political and policy views. Her colleagues showed more judicial wisdom.

There are a few things to note here. Mr. Strieff was leaving a place where it was suspected drugs were being sold. Didn’t the police have a responsibility to investigate a tip about a location where drugs were being sold? Shouldn’t that investigation include stopping people leaving that location? If there was an outstanding arrest warrant for Mr. Strieff, didn’t the police have an obligation to arrest him? It is very possible that I am naive, but I believe that Mr. Strieff would have been treated the same way regardless of what color he is. Everything is not about race, and in the majority of cases, police are merely attempting to keep our communities safe and free from illegal drugs and the crime that goes with the drug trade. Bringing race into a situation where it is not relevant only divides Americans–it does not help us solve our problems.

When Tolerance Is A One-Way Street

Steven Hayward posted an article at Power Line today about George Mason University. The University has announced that the University’s law school will be renamed the Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University. Steven Hayward notes that this is surely going to cause a reaction among the students.

The update of the article includes the following reaction by a student:

Please Tell Me GMU Law School Is Playing a Really Sick April Fools Joke

It’s bad enough that GMU’s Mercatus Center is a Koch-sucking far-right-wing organization (e.g., see this New Yorker article, which discusses how “the Koch family foundations have contributed more than thirty million dollars to George Mason, much of which has gone to the Mercatus Center”).  But now….this??? Let me remind everyone that Antonin Scalia was a corruptbigoted extremist. Why would anyone in their (far) right mind want to name anything after that guy, let alone a law school? Has GMU gone completely off its rocker or what? Or, as ThinkProgress Justice Editor Ian Millhiser puts it, GMU can now “stop pretending to be anything other than a conservative policy shop with students.” Ugh. I mean, what’s GMU going to do next, the Trump School for Ethics and Tolerance?

I seem to remember that many of our university students were asking for ‘safe spaces’ where their ideas would not be questioned or challenged. How horrible that our students at higher learning institutes might be forced to think through or defend their ideas. At any rate, this reaction does not seem to be very tolerant. Does the student understand that the money donated by the Koch family is partially responsible for making his/her education possible? Has it occurred to the student who wrote the above to consider the political leanings of The New Yorker when reading their comments about the Koch family? How does this student feel about the money George Soros pours into American politics?

It is a shame that this particular student does not respect the role Antonin Scalia played in defending the U.S. Constitution at the Supreme Court. It seems that a major part of the student’s civic education is missing.

This Man Is Not A Moderate

On Friday, Life News posted some information on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. Obviously their issue is abortion, but the article sheds some light on the broader issue of religious freedom.

The article reports:

Garland joined in a unanimous decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in November 2014, which concluded last year that the HHS mandate doesn’t abrogate the religious freedoms of Priests for Life or 11 other religious groups that also challenged the mandate.

Priests for Life was one of the earliest organizations to file a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its HHS mandate. The mandate compels religious groups to pay for birth control drugs and drugs like ella that can cause very early abortions. But Garland’s court ruled against the pro-life groups.

The court case and  others like it are part of a move to keep the practice of religion inside the walls of the church and take away the influence of religion in everyday life. Although the Constitution makes clear that the state has no authority to set up a national religion, our Constitution assumes that we will be government by a God-fearing moral people and protects the right of Americans to practice their religion. John Adams stated, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Religion does belong in the public square–not as a denomination–but as the foundation of our values. Our legal system is based on a Judeo-Christian ethic, and is not designed to work for an amoral people. Unfortunately the political left in America is attempting to move us away from traditional morality to a place our government was not designed to go. Political correctness is one way the left is attempting to overcome America’s religious roots, and using a very loose definition of ‘hate speech’ is another way.

The article further reports:

Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Samuel Alito handed down the decision for the high court, saying, “The Supreme Court holds government can’t require closely held corporations with religious owners to provide contraception coverage.”

The court ruled that the contraception mandate violated the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act, a 1993 law and it held that the mandate “substantially burdens the exercise of religion” and that HHS didn’t use the “least restrictive means” to promote this government interest, tests required by RFRA.

Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy joined in the majority decision. Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

Garland’s decision would put him squarely against the then-majority of the Supreme Court and would have someone who oppose religious liberty for pro-life groups replace a champion of it in Justice Scalia.

…Garland has praised the author of Roe v. Wade and said his court paper are “the greatest gift to the country.” And information has surfaced showing that his former clerks have gone on to serve liberal judges by a 3-1 margin.

Unfortunately, if Hillary Clinton is elected President, chances are that her nominee for the Supreme Court will be even further to the left. Meanwhile, we all need to remember and follow the Biden Rule.

A Few Notes On The Nomination Of A Supreme Court Justice

This is the quote from Joe Biden on confirming Supreme Court Justices during a campaign season (taken from The New York Post):

“Once the political season is underway,” Biden said, “action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over. That is what is fair to the nominee . . . Otherwise . . . we will be in deep trouble as an institution,” stuck in “a bitter fight, no matter how good a person is nominated by the president.”

Yesterday Heritage Action released the following statement from chief executive officer Michael A. Needham:

“Nothing has changed. Senate Republicans deserve credit for using their ‘Advice and Consent’ authority to ensure the American people’s voices are not ignored as they are in the process of selecting their next president.  The next president —  Republican or Democrat — should be in the position to fill the Court’s vacancy with the advise and consent of the Senate.

“President Obama and Senate Democrats will no doubt call Judge Garland a ‘mainstream Federal judge’ and promise his ‘approach to deciding cases on the law and the Constitution, not politics or an ideological agenda.’ Of course, they said those exact words when liberal Justices Sotomayor and Kagan were nominated. We are one liberal Justice away from seeing gun rights restricted and partial birth abortion being considered a constitutional right. The Republican majority exists to block these type of nominees.”

Yesterday Townhall.com reported the following:

Back in 2007, Judge Garland voted to undo a D.C. Circuit court decision striking down one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. The liberal District of Columbia government had passed a ban on individual handgun possession, which even prohibited guns kept in one’s own house for self-defense. A three-judge panel struck down the ban, but Judge Garland wanted to reconsider that ruling. He voted with Judge David Tatel, one of the most liberal judges on that court. As Dave Kopel observed at the time, the “[t]he Tatel and Garland votes were no surprise, since they had earlier signaled their strong hostility to gun owner rights” in a previous case. Had Garland and Tatel won that vote, there’s a good chance that the Supreme Court wouldn’t have had a chance to protect the individual right to bear arms for several more years.

Moreover, in the case mentioned earlier, Garland voted with Tatel to uphold an illegal Clinton-era regulation that created an improvised gun registration requirement. Congress prohibited federal gun registration mandates back in 1968, but as Kopel explained, the Clinton Administration had been “retaining for six months the records of lawful gun buyers from the National Instant Check System.” By storing these records, the federal government was creating an informal gun registry that violated the 1968 law. Worse still, the Clinton program even violated the 1994 law that had created the NICS system in the first place. Congress directly forbade the government from retaining background check records for law-abiding citizens.

This is something to think about. I am not a gun person. I didn’t grow up in a hunting family, and until I moved to North Carolina I had never been around guns. That has changed since I have been here, and I will be taking a gun safety course in the near future. I believe it is necessary to have a population that has the freedom to bear arms. I believe that is the intent of the Second Amendment. I am also convinced that the Second Amendment will protect us from government takeovers from both internal and external sources. It is important to the preservation of our freedom and it protects the other Amendments.

I realize that if Hillary Clinton becomes President, a more liberal judge will be nominated, and we will probably lose our Second Amendment privileges. However, I still believe the nomination process should be put on hold until after the election.

Karma Is Always Interesting

Someone much wiser than I once said, “Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.” That man was Andy Rooney. Eating your words is something no one likes to do, but in this age of digital information, everything a public figure has said can be easily discovered.

On Monday, Truth Revolt posted the following statement made by then Senator Joe Biden in 1992:

JoeBidenSCOTUSIf you follow the link above, it includes the C-SPAN video of Vice President Biden making this statement.

He Didn’t Even ‘Phone It In’

It bothers me that President Obama chose not to attend Justice Scalia’s funeral. Evidently I am not the only person bothered. Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science and the founder and director of the Program on International Politicis, Economics and Security at the University of Chicago. On Thursday he posted an article at Real Clear Politics about President Obama’s absence from the funeral.

The article reminds us:

President Obama’s decision not to attend Justice Antonin Scalia‘s funeral is shameful. It mirrors his decision to skip the state funeral for Margaret Thatcher in 2013. On these somber, formal occasions, the president is called upon to represent our country as the head of state. He is not representing his party, his political agenda, or himself personally. He is representing our country—or at least he should be. On Saturday, it is his duty to mourn a man who sat on the Supreme Court for decades. He is shirking that duty.

President Obama missed the opportunity to bring the nation together. Unfortunately, during his term as President, he has generally missed opportunities to unite Americans.

The article concludes:

President Obama need not reach these rhetorical heights. But he ought to behave with quiet dignity and represent our nation at Scalia’s funeral. He does not have to pretend he agreed with Scalia’s decisions. He does not have to praise the justice’s judicial philosophy. But he ought to honor the life of a man who spent three decades on the Supreme Court and five years before that on the U.S. appellate bench.

Refusing to attend the funeral does more than insult the memory of a life-long public servant. It is a failure to perform a basic presidential duty. Obama has shirked his responsibility to all of us.

President Obama has not handled the office of President with class. He has exploited the office and divided Americans rather than uniting them. Hopefully, Americans will elect a President in November who will unite us and respect the office of President.

 

Sometimes The Age Of Google Is Very Inconvenient

Today’s Washington Examiner weighed in on the current discussion about replacing deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Obviously, the Republicans (hoping for a Republican President in 2017) want to name Justice Scalia’s replacement after the next President takes office. The Democrats, logically, want President Obama to pick Justice Scalia’s successor. When you think about it, that it is very interesting situation. The Democrats are not confident enough on a victory in the presidential election in November to be willing to allow the next president to name a Supreme Court Justice.

However, the idea of a lame-duck President appointing a Supreme Court Justice who will serve in the Supreme Court for life has not always been popular with the Democrats.

Below is a YouTube video from July 2007 of Senator Chuck Schumer speaking to the American Constitution Society. Senator Schumer explained that no Supreme Court nominees should be approved for the remainder of the term of President George W. Bush. This was almost a year and a half before the presidential election. Here is the video:

Another article in the Washington Examiner includes the video and the following:

Sen. Chuck Schumer said in July 2007 that no George W. Bush nominee to the Supreme Court should be approved, except in extraordinary circumstances, 19 months before a new president was set to be inaugurated.

“We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in prepared remarks to the American Constitution Society, a liberal legal organization.

Schumer cited ideological reasons for the delay.

“They must prove by actions, not words, that they are in the mainstream rather than we have to prove that they are not,” Schumer said at the time.

As the Democratic Party attempts to convince us that President Obama should choose another radical ideologue for the Supreme Court, we need to remember the words of Senator Schumer. We also need to remember that the rules don’t change because the party in power changes–the rules apply to both parties. It would be a matter or courtesy to allow the next President to choose Justice Scalia’s successor. Let’s see if there is any courtesy left in Washington.

This Is What Civility Looks Like

Yahoo News posted an article yesterday that included the following statement from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the death of Justice Scalia:

Toward the end of the opera Scalia/Ginsburg, tenor Scalia and soprano Ginsburg sing a duet: “We are different, we are one,” different in our interpretation of written texts, one in our reverence for the Constitution and the institution we serve. From our years together at the D.C. Circuit, we were best buddies. We disagreed now and then, but when I wrote for the Court and received a Scalia dissent, the opinion ultimately released was notably better than my initial circulation. Justice Scalia nailed all the weak spots—the “applesauce” and “argle bargle”—and gave me just what I needed to strengthen the majority opinion. He was a jurist of captivating brilliance and wit, with a rare talent to make even the most sober judge laugh. The press referred to his “energetic fervor,” “astringent intellect,” “peppery prose,” “acumen,” and “affability,” all apt descriptions. He was eminently quotable, his pungent opinions so clearly stated that his words never slipped from the reader’s grasp.

Justice Scalia once described as the peak of his days on the bench an evening at the Opera Ball when he joined two Washington National Opera tenors at the piano for a medley of songs. He called it the famous Three Tenors performance. He was, indeed, a magnificent performer. It was my great good fortune to have known him as working colleague and treasured friend.

Politically, you could not have found two people that were more ideologically opposed, yet they respected each other and were good friends.That is a wonderful example that I wish all of those in government (or aspiring to be in government) would follow.

The Supreme Court Stopped President Obama’s Agenda

The Washington Examiner posted an article today about a Supreme Court ruling announced today. The Supreme Court ruled against Environmental Protection Agency pollution rules for power plants. These new regulations would have resulted in drastic increases in the amount of money Americans pay for electricity.

The article reports:

The EPA rules in question regulate hazardous air pollutants and mercury from coal- and oil-fired power plants, known as the MATS regulations. The regulations went into effect April 16. The utility industry had argued that the rules cost them billions of dollars to comply and that EPA ignored the cost issue in putting the regulations into effect.

“EPA must consider cost — including cost of compliance — before deciding whether regulation is appropriate and necessary. It will be up to the agency to decide (as always, within the limits of reasonable interpretation) how to account for cost,” Scalia wrote in agreeing with the industry.

Because of this decision, the Obama Administration’s environmental agenda will also be looked at in terms of the cost of compliance. Unfortunately, the Court is not looking at the fact that laws are being put in place that have not been passed through Congress.

The article reports on the DC Circuit Court decision that brought the case before the Supreme Court:

The D.C. Circuit majority also agreed the EPA could focus solely on the utilities’ contribution to the pollutants of concern, rather than identifying any specific health hazards attributable only to utility emissions.

The EPA had argued that the rules are both appropriate and necessary regardless of the costs, and that it has the discretion under the law to act as it deems fit in regulating hazardous pollutants.

As I have previously stated, I don’t think anyone is in favor of pollution. There is a need for sensibility in making environmental rules. As previously stated, the EPA did not identify any specific health hazards attributable only to utility emissions.

The EPA has been the latest home for those people who want to control the cost and usage of electricity and other power sources by Americans. This has much more to do with government control than it does with the environment. Unfortunately, we can expect to see more attempted power grabs for government energy control in the waning days of the Obama Administration.

 

The Right Answer To The Wrong Decision

The Hill reported yesterday that Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) has introduced a bill into the House of Representatives that would require the Supreme Court Justices to participate in ObamaCare. I agree with that, but while we are at it, let’s include Congress and the President.

The article reports:

Babin’s potential legislation would only let the federal government provide healthcare to the Supreme Court and its staff via ObamaCare exchanges.

“By eliminating their exemption from ObamaCare, they will see firsthand what the American people are forced to live with,” he added.

His move follows the Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday morning that upheld the subsidies under ObamaCare that are provided by the government to offset the cost of buying insurance.

All government officials and employees should be required to live under the laws they pass and uphold. We have had enough of ‘one law for me and one law for thee.’

 

Bringing Back The Old Play Book

Why is it that when someone expresses concern about the 1.2 million babies killed in the womb in America or attempts to lower that number, they are accused of waging ‘war on women?’ It seems to me that women’s health is broader than the right to kill their offspring. Evidently this is an issue where you don’t cross the left–even if you are one of them.

U.S. News & World Report posted an op-ed piece last Tuesday by Jamie Stiehm about Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s stay order applying to an appeal by a Colorado nunnery, the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The piece states that:

Justice Sotomayor undermined the new Affordable Care Act‘s sensible policy on contraception. She blocked the most simple of rules – lenient rules – that required the Little Sisters to affirm their religious beliefs against making contraception available to its members. They objected to filling out a one-page form. What could be easier than nuns claiming they don’t believe in contraception?

…Catholics in high places of power have the most trouble, I’ve noticed, practicing the separation of church and state. The pugnacious Catholic Justice, Antonin Scalia, is the most aggressive offender on the Court, but not the only one. Of course, we can’t know for sure what Sotomayor was thinking, but it seems she has joined the ranks of the five Republican Catholic men on the John Roberts Court in showing a clear religious bias when it comes to women’s rights and liberties. We can no longer be silent about this. Thomas Jefferson, the principal champion of the separation between state and church, was thinking particularly of pernicious Rome in his writings. He deeply distrusted the narrowness of Vatican hegemony.

The article is snarky at best. The writer obviously does not understand the idea that some people apply what they learn in church to their daily lives. The Catholic Church is not the only religious group that opposes abortion–they are simply the largest and most vocal. Evidently, when you disagree with the liberal view that abortion should be underwritten by the government, you are accused of not understanding or applying the concept of separation of church and state. That concept was not in the Constitution. In fact, in the early days of America, there were churches that met in the Capitol building. Our founders understood that Biblical morality would be a good foundation for our representative republic. Unfortunately, most of our current politicians have forgotten this.

 

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He Was Right, But No One Believed Him

On June 26, 2003, the New York Times published a story with the headline, “Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Law Banning Sodomy.” The case was Lawrence v. Texas.

The article reports:

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the dissent and took the unusual step of reading it aloud from the bench this morning, saying “the court has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda,” while adding that he personally has “nothing against homosexuals.” Joining Justice Scalia’s dissent were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas.

Justice Scalia said he believed the ruling paved the way for homosexual marriages. “This reasoning leaves on shaky, pretty shaky, grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples,” he wrote.

He was right, and no one believed him.

I need to explain some of the reasons I oppose Gay Marriage. I don’t oppose Gay civil unions, and I don’t oppose gay people. I oppose Gay Marriage because it can easily infringe on the rights of people who believe what the Bible says about homosexuality. When Massachusetts legalized Gay Marriage, all the Catholic adoption agencies left the state because their right to run their agencies in accordance with their religious beliefs was taken away. What about their right to practice their religion? Would Bible-believing pastors be forced to perform gay weddings? Would their rights be violated? In my opinion, calling civil unions gay marriage opens up many more legal questions than it solves. I am willing to give gay partners the full rights of married people–I am just not willing to let them trample on the religious rights of others.

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Why Supreme Court Justices Are Important

Yesterday Hot Air posted an article about the latest episode of the battle between Hobby Lobby and the Obama Administration over the HHS regulations in ObamaCare. Justice Sonia Sotomayor rejected an emergency request for an injunction to prevent HHS from enforcing the contraception mandate on Hobby Lobby’s Catholic owners.

The article reports Justice Sotomayor‘s justification for her decision:

“While the applicants allege they will face irreparable harm if they are forced to choose between complying with the contraception-coverage requirement and paying significant fines, they cannot show that an injunction is necessary or appropriate to aid our jurisdiction,” Sotomayor wrote in a short opinion rejecting Hobby Lobby’s request.

Because Hobby Lobby will not comply with the mandate, they are facing fines of $1.3 million a day beginning on January 1st. HHS cannot collect the money immediately, but Hobby Lobby is required to set the money aside. I can’t imagine a company not being harmed by taking $1.3 a day away from their operating cash.

The article concludes:

Expect Hobby Lobby to keep pursuing the case, and keep an eye out for emergency requests from other appellate circuits.  If one lands on the desk of Antonin Scalia or Sam Alito, the outcome could be quite different — and we may get an expedited Supreme Court argument out of it, even if it would still be preliminary.

The HHS mandate requiring companies to provide free contraception is government overreach at its worst. Why is the HHS insisting on thisl when various forms of contraception are readily available and inexpensive?

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A Mixed Decision On The Arizona Immigration Law

The U.K. Daily Mail posted a story today on the the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold part of Arizona’s immigration law and to strike down other parts.

The article reports:

Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona  hailed the immigration verdict as a victory because it  cleared the way for the officials to start enforcing a provision that allows law enforcement officers,  when making lawful stops, to check the immigration status of people.
 
The Supreme Court struck down the part of the law that made it a state crime for illegal immigrants to apply for jobs or to not carry immigration papers. It also struck down a provision that gave the police authority to arrest immigrants for crimes that may lead to deportation.
 
I am not a lawyer, but I fail to see the logic in what the Court decided to strike down. It should be a state crime illegal immigrants to apply for jobs–they are illegal! Shouldn’t immigrants be arrested for crimes period? (Just like any American citizen would be.)
 
The article also reports:
 

In a blistering 22-page opposition to the ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote:  ‘to say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of the Immigration Act that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind,” Scalia wrote. “If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State’

He charged that the Obama administration ‘desperately wants to avoid upsetting foreign powers’ and accused federal officials of ‘willful blindness or deliberate inattention’ to the presence of illegal immigrants in Arizona.

I agree with Justice Scalia.

 
 
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The Next Battle In The Healthcare War

On Thursday, Matt Sheffield posted an article at CNS News about the next step in the war over Obamacare. Although it is not at all a sure thing, there are many people who feel that the Supreme Court will strike down the law as unconstitutional because it requires all Americans to purchase a product whether they want to or not. Mr. Sheffield points out that the left is already preparing for the next battle. He cites some recent statements by left-leaning pundits:

If the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate in Obamacare, the result will be higher insurance premiums and, “we’ll just blame Republicans for it,” says Democratic strategist Bob Beckel, appearing on the Wednesday edition of Fox News’ The Five.

…Andrew Koppelman, writing in Salon today, asserted that the arguments against the individual mandate amount to nothing more than “silliness,” and said the “silly” arguments “nonetheless seemed to sometimes move Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito.”
 
…Steven Rosenfeld, writing at AlterNet, says Republicans “don’t want to fix our broken healthcare system.” He writes: “The Republican Party again showed its petulant, “party-of-no” face on Tuesday as lawyers representing 26 red states and conservative think-tanks told the U.S. Supreme Court that nobody should be forced have health insurance—even if people carrying insurance end up subsidizing the defiantly uninsured who get ill.
 
The Supreme Court is expected to release its decision sometime in June or July. Prepare for healthcare to be a major issue during the 2012 election. Be ready to listen carefully as very little of what you hear may actually be true.
 
 
 
 
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The End Of A Nightmare For An American Family

Mike and Chantell Sackett bought a building lot near Priest Lake in 2005. They planned to build a house there. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had other ideas. As I reported in rightwinggranny on January 9, 2012, the lot is less than an acre and is just 500 feet from Priest Lake on its west side. It is separated from the lake by a house and a road and has no standing water or any hydrologic connection to Lake Priest or any other body of water. Nevertheless, the EPA declared their lot a wetland and threatened to fine them $30,000 every day that they did not return the lot to its original condition. Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled on the lawsuit that followed.

CNBC reported today:

In an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court rejected EPA’s argument that allowing property owners quick access to courts to contest orders like the one issued to the Sacketts would compromise the agency’s ability to deal with water pollution.

“Compliance orders will remain an effective means of securing prompt voluntary compliance in those many cases where there is no substantial basis to question their validity,” Scalia said.

In this case, the couple objected to the determination that their small lot contained wetlands that are regulated by the Clean Water Act, and they complained there was no reasonable way to challenge the order without risking fines that can mount quickly.

The value of this case is that it gives Americans a way to fight the EPA when it interferes with private property rights. Since the EPA is one of the ways some people in our government plan to institute Agenda 21(see rightwinggranny) and begin to end the concept of private property in the United States, this is a very important decision.

These are two quotes from United Nations leaders regarding private property:

“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class–involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work air conditioning, and suburban housing–are not sustainable.”  Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the UN’s 1992 Earth Summit

“Land, because of its unique nature and the crucial role it plays in human settlements, cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principle instrument of the accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes.”  This is a quote from the 1976 UN Conference on Human Settlement, held in Vancouver, Canada. Under “Section D. Land,” of the Report of Habitat, which came out of the conference. It is from the preamble and speaks of the private ownership of land.

These quotes are from rightwinggranny on December 14, 2011. I am sure the Supreme Court will be called upon to rule on private property rights in the future. The President we elect in November will have a major role in deciding who sits on the Supreme Court. If you value American’s property rights, you will vote for a Republican in November. Otherwise, you may find yourself with a Supreme Court that does not support private property rights in America.

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