“The dismissal of Immigration Judges on purely political grounds is unprecedented,” Matthew J. O’Brien told The Daily Caller. “It should cause concern for anyone who values border security and the rule of law. Moreover, it has dire implications for the judiciary as a whole.” Read the article here.
0 Comments
"Americans have clearly gotten used to not working and have chosen to live off the pandemic welfare that remains rather than return to the workforce." Read the article here.
"Throughout history, men have been ostracized, banished, exiled, or destroyed simply for not fitting in . . . America turned that rule on its head when the emphasis changed from the top down to the bottom up for the purpose of governance. Authorities and dictators no longer arbitrarily conferred and revoked privileges. We have rights that are now acknowledged as having been endowed by God. They can’t be taken away by men." Read more here.
At a time in American history when we are seemingly more divided than united, let’s hope that we as fellow Americans can at least make an effort to realize our common heritage . . . a heritage that unites us through steadfast and enduring principles.
Our principles of liberty and equality, limited government, unalienable rights and the rule of law are those such cornerstones we should hold dear as Americans. July 4, Independence Day, must be one of those days when we remember what makes us unique as a nation . . . a nation of laws, not of men. On July 2, 1776, representatives of the 13 original colonies voted to declare independence from Great Britain, however, it would ultimately be July 4, when the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration, with suggested edits by John Adams and Ben Franklin, was not signed until August, nonetheless, July 4 would be our official day of celebration . . . America’s birthday. John Adams wrote these words to his wife Abigail. “I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” And then, so it was. The following year, Americans began the tradition of celebrating with fanfare the birth of their nation. The Founders would be pleased that, for the most part, we have preserved the tradition of celebrating, but do most Americans still remember why and for what? Poetically enough, on July 4, 1826, what was the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the only two Presidents who signed it, passed away within hours of each other. Ironically, the two had been intense political opponents, yet had immense respect for each other through their profound love of country. You see, Jefferson and Adams were united by those common enduring principles that should unite us all, despite our complex differences. Walter Borneman, American historian and author, put it like this. “Yes, no matter where you are, it is the Fourth of July. It is a day that binds us together as Americans. Amid countless hot dogs, hamburgers and fireworks, let us remember our special Fourth of July memories as well as America’s legacy of [246 years]. Let us remember the blessings we enjoy as Americans. Our union has not been perfect, . . . but the American Dream of personal freedom and liberty under a government that champions those values remains the beacon that fires hope for millions around the world. Let this be an Independence Day where we focus less on what divides us and more on what unites us.” It took just 88 days in Philadelphia to create “a more perfect union” through heated debate, but what our Founders created was nothing short of a miracle, an enduring promise of liberty, our Constitutional Republic. The U. S. Constitution spells out the fundamental concepts of Constitutional government which are Federalism, Separation of Powers, and Checks and Balances.
Federalism is the foundational concept that defines the relationship between the federal government and the individual state governments. While both the federal government and state governments remain sovereign, or independent, their powers of governance and responsibilities to the citizens are balanced between the two. The federal government’s powers, as well as the individual states’ government powers, are further divided into separate branches – legislative, executive, and judicial – with the express purpose of protecting the freedoms and liberties guaranteed to individual citizens. This is called Separation of Powers. The National Archives puts it this way, “. . . the way to safeguard against tyranny is to separate the powers of government among three branches so that each branch checks the other two.” The powers of these separate branches are stated within the first three Articles of the Constitution. Each branch has the power to “check” on the other two to prevent abuses of power by any one of the others. This is called the “System of Checks and Balances.” You see, the main purpose of the Constitution is to protect its citizens’ natural-born rights by limiting government power and our Constitution does this brilliantly through these fundamental concepts. Our Founders intended for us to be individualists, not collectivists. That's why they designed a limited government to protect our individual rights! Read more here
On Friday, former President Trump asked a federal judge in Florida to restore his Twitter account. Trump was banned from Twitter after the January 6th incident at the U.S. Capitol. Trump is asking for a preliminary injunction allowing him back on the platform, arguing he is likely to succeed on the merits of the case when it is heard in full.
Trump is not the only one arguing in recent months the big social media platforms are not private companies but have become, at least in some instances, state actors. As extensions of the government, they are subject to free speech requirements under the First Amendment, the argument goes. [see The Daily Skirmish for 7/7/21]. Trump’s court filing cites previous cases establishing the state actor doctrine where private defendants act in concert or in agreement with government entities to deprive people of their constitutional rights. [pp. 12-13]. So it’s a valid theory. The question is whether or not Trump can make out a case on the facts that Twitter became a state actor by banning him from its platform. Trump argues the Biden administration and Democrat members of Congress encouraged and even coerced Twitter into banning him. We’ll see if Trump can prevail when his case is tried on the facts. [pp.8-9] Meanwhile, other allegations of social media platforms colluding with government officials to deny free speech have surfaced in recent weeks. Twitter blocked a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop after receiving information from U.S. intelligence officials, but the Federal Election Commission found Twitter blocked the story for commercial, not political, reasons. Senator Rand Paul said YouTube censored him because it was falling in line with Anthony Fauci’s approach to COVID, an approach Rand Paul has criticized repeatedly. A watchdog group found Facebook and the CDC closely coordinated to block information about COVID. Facebook is coordinating with the White House on this subject, too. The Surgeon General also wants Big Tech to block information about COVID he doesn’t want people to see. New York’s new Governor asked Facebook to censor information she didn’t like about the new abortion law in Texas. A consortium of tech companies is using lists produced by government intelligence agencies to police posts by white supremacists, militias, and other extremist groups. Maybe suppressing information about COVID and white supremacy sounds like a good idea to you, but we’re not getting the straight story from government officials about either one. We need other information not filtered through government about both so that we, the sovereign people, can decide for ourselves what is true and what is not. Besides, Big Tech censorship doesn’t stop with these two subjects. Investigators found that Hunter Biden asked Facebook executives to take down accounts that presented unflattering information about him. Moreover, they found collusion between the Biden family and Facebook going back for more than a decade. There is no reason unfavorable information about Hunter Biden should be suppressed, and no reason he should be in charge of what the public can and cannot see about him. I can’t think of anything worse than Hunter Biden being placed in charge of a Ministry of Truth about Hunter Biden. This is why social media companies that filter information for the government should be treated as state actors subject to the First Amendment, not purely private entities answerable to no one but themselves and insulated by law, unlike newspapers, from all legal liability for their editorial decisions. That’s too good a deal and the state actor theory might succeed in bringing it to an end. The Independence Day weekend brought a bizarre video from Mark Zuckerberg waving the American flag while riding a hydrofoil surfboard. The video has been widely reported and mocked, with no real suggestion it might be fake, begging the question, ‘What’s that flag for, Zuck?’ This country was founded on individual rights, including freedom of speech. Yes, I know Facebook is a private company and not subject to the First Amendment, but there is a distinct lack of fidelity at Facebook and other Big Tech companies to underlying values of free expression. Facebook bans people when Zuck doesn’t like what they say. Facebook has interfered with my accounts, warning people that my posting of official CDC numbers of COVID vaccine deaths is an affront to decency and good order. Twitter shut down two of my accounts completely - because the Tea Party is such a threat to national security, like we shut down interstate highways, or something. I won’t be back to Twitter. They suspend people for stating the obvious biological fact that men cannot give birth. Amazon removed a book taking a dim view of anti-science transgenderism. Pravda has spoken.
Free expression is under assault from several directions, not just woke tech companies playing footsie with their authoritarian pals in government who want to shut down the political Right. Joe Biden tore up a Trump presidential order that tried to combat online censorship. A Democrat-controlled House committee asked cable news providers to stop carrying news networks Democrats don’t like. They can call it ‘misinformation’ and ‘encouraging violence’ but that doesn’t cover up the fact the authoritarian Democrats in the House simply do not like free expression or hearing anything that contradicts their party line. Their authoritarian friends at CNN offer elaborate justifications for why their rivals should be silenced. The New York Times wants the federal government to get into the business of deciding what is true and what is false, what speech is worthy and what is not. A truth commission or ‘reality czar’ - more bad ideas from the Big Media wing of the authoritarian Left. A public school system in Massachusetts encourages kids to rat out other kids for supposed bias and microaggressions. Call your principal ‘crazy’ and you’ll get a visit from the goon squad, ahem, ‘bias response team’. The idea of turning kids into spies is spreading. IMF researchers have called for your Internet search history to be tied to your credit score. Banks would be given authority to track everyone’s search history and somebody somewhere would be given the authority to decide whether visiting your favorite websites disqualifies you from getting a car loan. What could possibly go wrong? Late last year, the UN General Assembly adopted a Pakistani resolution condemning blasphemy in the name of countering Islamophobia and promoting interfaith dialogue. Ah yes, nothing promotes dialogue like ‘shut the hell up or we’ll behead you.’ You might not think the UN matters, but Hillary Clinton and others on the authoritarian Left have already tried to bring Islamic speech codes to the U.S. through the UN. Canada has those rules and, presumably, they would stop you from expressing your opinion about Islamic militias that shut down highways because, to do so, would be a hate crime, you see. Connect the dots, and it’s a worrisome picture. There are reasons why America is supposed to protect free speech and underlying values of free expression. Here are just three: First, and foremost, in America, the people are sovereign and need free speech to discharge their sovereign duties. Second, President McKinley’s assassin came from a country that did not have free speech, narrowing his view of how to petition government for redress of grievances to firing a gun. Shut down free speech, and bad things are going to happen - it’s foreseeable. Finally, free speech protects your private life and all your personal relationships. Imagine not being able to express our ideas to each other. All human bonding would be destroyed and isolation would be all that would be left. Zuck really should bone up on why we have free expression, if we can get him off his surfboard and to stop mindlessly waving the flag around. Yesterday, the Supreme Court delayed the Harvard affirmative action case, asking the Biden administration for its views on the use of race in college admissions. The plaintiffs argue Harvard intentionally discriminated against Asian-American applicants in its admissions process. The problem is too many Asian-American students are excelling so, if only merit were considered, there wouldn’t be enough blacks and students of other races to make up a diverse student body, so Harvard says. All bow down to the god of diversity and to hell with merit and other supposedly white constructs - or is that Asian constructs? I’m getting mixed up.
Let’s go back to the beginning. There was a civil rights movement in the ’60s in this country to redress real grievances, achieve simple justice, and bring about true equal protection under the law. No more standing in the school house doorway. I’m a simple guy; I like simple justice. But then came the first departure from simple justice - affirmative action. It also used to be called ‘compensatory equal protection’ to make up for past grievances - reparations, if you will. How that can be squared with the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment equal protection clause, I don’t know, but the important fact to remember is that affirmative action was supposed to be temporary. And here it is over 50 years later and affirmative action is still around. It’s made things worse, not better. Then came systemic racism, which I was writing about 10 years ago when the professional Right was asleep at the switch. I warned that people with influence needed to stand up against the idea or it would take over popular thought and public policy in a few short years. And here we are, at each other’s throats. Systemic racism is all the rage, the chattering classes can’t stop talking about it. Meanwhile, people all whipped up into a frenzy with race hatred are out shooting people. Systemic racism has been followed by white privilege, microaggressions, antiracism, and critical race theory - each new departure from the simple justice of the civil rights movement more toxic, more divisive, and creating more resentment than the last. These things are not helping, except to provide livelihoods to race hustlers who are making a fine living and Building Large Mansions peddling this stuff. All bow down to racial centralism - the crazy notion that the only thing in the whole wide universe worth talking about is race. The Asian-Americans I know teach their kids to excel. They are a model to the rest of us. They don’t like being told to sit in the back of the bus. Some of them were mad enough to sue Harvard. In my local area, many are upset that admission to a magnet STEM high school with a supercomputer will no longer be on the basis of merit. Standardized tests are out and socioeconomic status, a sanitized proxy for race, is in. Litigation, again on behalf of Asian-Americans, is pending. All bow down to diversity, because that’s the important thing - right? - not academic excellence, the best qualifications for the job, being able to compete in the world economy, or any of those other pesky competing policy considerations that might upset the diversity-industrial complex. Unless, of course, you like the people flying your plane being chosen on the basis of their skin color, not merit. Safe journey. It’s time to end the tunnel vision of racial centralism and the exclusion of competing values. It’s time to stop having a one-track mind about diversity. And it’s time to end affirmative action which, I remind you again, was only supposed to be temporary. The Harvard case is an excellent opportunity for the Supreme Court to go back to the plain meaning of equal protection. The Justices can end affirmative action without being accused of being white supremacists - a better opportunity will not soon arise. And it’s time to stop believing black people can’t make it without the government handing them a crutch. I can’t think of anything more racist. Finally, it’s time to stop punishing people who excel. No more standing in the schoolhouse doorway, Harvard. Race relations are getting worse in this country and I blame the Left.
First, for trying to do away with the equal protection clause. The latest example is the Biden administration trying to prioritize COVID grants to restaurants based on race and gender. Earlier examples include Washington state denying COVID vaccines to white people to favor non-whites, Oakland denying low income grants to whites to favor blacks, the Biden Education Department approving racially segregated affinity groups in schools again and, of course, Harvard discriminating against Asians to favor blacks in college admissions. You can yak all you want how all this is compensation for past wrongs, but segregation is segregation - poisonous and ruinous to race relations. You can’t cure racism with more racism. It sets up an endless cycle of accusation and retribution. Tell me that’s a step forward. Second, the Left thinks minorities are too stupid to engage the world on equal terms and we need to lower the bar to accommodate their stupidity. Calling voter ID laws racist with no basis in fact is one example, but there are others. Oregon schools don’t want to require coming up with the right answer in math class because that would be racist. Boston shut down its advanced classes in public grade schools because there were too many whites and Asians in the program. What a tragic loss for the other kids in the program - not only did they lose advanced content but also the chance to rub shoulders and start making deeper connections with a set intelligent peers who are more likely than average to go places later in life. Anybody who has seen ‘Stand and Deliver’ - a movie based on the true story of minority students in L.A. excelling in math - knows the Left’s belief that minorities are stupid is just plain wrong. If believing minorities are stupid and can’t take care of themselves isn’t racist, I don’t know what is. Third, the Left keeps moving the goal posts, redefining racism, and spinning ever-more poisonous racial theories. A Nevada school teaches its students that "people of color CANNOT be racist," which is obviously crazy. Bitter Democrat demagogue Maxine Waters declared that police in America believe “their greatest challenge and their greatest chore is to keep black people in their place.” Not helpful, Maxine. Merriam-Webster has redefined ‘color-blind’ as racist for refusing to address inequities in society. Speaking of ‘equity’, it has replaced ‘equality’ as the Left’s guiding light, but what it really means is redistribution of everything by an increasingly authoritarian government that can only start by taking people’s stuff away by force. Economic egalitarianism isn’t equality before the law under the equal protection clause; it’s “legal plunder” in Frederic Bastiat’s elegant phrase. We’ve gone from equality under the law in the 14th Amendment and the civil rights era to an increasingly poisonous parade of theories that stand equality on its head - affirmative action, systemic racism, antiracism, and so forth until we arrive at critical race theory which is, undeniably, Marxist in origin. None of this helps race relations in this country. All these theories do is cause resentment and keep different groups at each other’s throats. Don’t believe me? Ask the Asian-Americans suing Harvard for discrimination and condemning critical race theory as hateful, divisive, and manipulative. Finally, I blame the left-wing professional race hustlers for pushing all this poison on the country. They’ve whipped people up into a frenzy, like the Black Lives Matter protester near Seattle who said, “I can’t wait until black people lynch white people!” BLM is a group of self-admitted trained Marxists, pushing race hatred for its own purposes and financial gain. And get a load of the youthful beliefs of Kristen Clarke, Joe Biden’s nominee to run the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department: the human brain is structured in such a way as to make black people superior to white people; and blacks have superior physical, mental, and spiritual abilities. Black supremacy - ye gads! Race hustlers also tell people, ‘You’re a victim and, no matter what you do, you can’t change your circumstances,’ a poisonous and false message if I’ve ever heard one. But here’s the kicker: They go on to say, ‘You need us professional race hustlers to intercede on your behalf; otherwise you’ll have nothing.’ Another manifestly untrue statement, spreading the poisonous dynamic of learned helplessness. And for what? So the professional race hustlers, critical race theory trainers, and all the others who make up the leftist Race-Industrial Complex can make a buck and advance their careers. Follow the money, folks, and you can’t help but be cynical about the increasingly poisonous messages they offer. Whatever sells. |
The Web Team
Our web team is dedicated to bringing you Constitutional news you can use. Archives
November 2023
Categories
All
|