Kagan Changes Tune Now That She Is In The Seat
Jun 30, 2010 Political
Elena Kagan will be confirmed barring any major gaffe (a Joe Biden type gaffe) on her part. There is no way (short of a filibuster) to stop her confirmation even though she has little experience for the position which should not be an issue, she is after all, in the mold of Barry and he was the least qualified person to hold his current job.
Kagan will end up being a Justice on the Supreme Court and despite what she says, her politics and personal views and NOT the Constitution will guide her. Chuck Schumer describes her as a moderate which she is definitely not. She seems intelligent and articulate but moderate she is not.
She banned military recruiters at Harvard (and yet insists she didn’t) because she disagreed with “don’t ask, don’t tell.” I have no problem with that action as long as she then refused federal funding in accordance with the law. Kagan has been describing what she did but her version is different from reality. She opposed DADT but did not initially ban recruiters because of the funding issue. As soon as a lower court ruled the Solomon Amendment unconstitutional she banned them. This is because she would not lose the money. When the Supreme Court overturned that ruling she allowed recruiters once again. She is not as principled as she claims because she put getting taxpayer money ahead of her so called principled views.
A principled person would have banned them regardless of the money.
But having principles is not necessarily her strong point. Case in point, she avoided many questions by claiming that the issue might come before the court which is not unusual for a nominee to do. However, in her case she is doing that which she railed against in the past:
Kagan in 1995:
In a 1995 book review, Ms. Kagan wrote that recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings had taken on “an air of vacuity and farce” because nominees would not engage in a meaningful discussion of legal issues, declining to answer any question that might “have some bearing on a case that might some day come before the Court.” She called on senators and future nominees to engage in a much more open and detailed discussion of legal issues.Kagan today:
Under questioning by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, Ms. Kagan said she thought it would be inappropriate for her to talk about how she might rule on pending cases or cases “that might come before the court in the future” — or to answer questions that were “veiled” efforts to get at such issues. The New York Times
The common feeling is that nominees evade things during confirmation and claim they will follow the Constitution and then do what they want once on the bench. Of course Kagan and her supporters say she would not do such a thing but she has demonstrated that she will change her stance based on politics. She said that nominees should be more open but now the politics of the issue requires her to do the exact opposite.
Kagan also refused to comment on past rulings of the Court because she felt she would be grading the Court. How is this even an issue? She should comment on the so called settled cases and let the Senate know how she would have ruled or how she feels about a ruling. You can bet she would not mind commenting on past cases that are popular. If someone asked her how she felt about Brown v. Board of Education or the Dred Scott Decision you can bet she would tell how wonderful it is that we now have fully desegregated schools and and how the Fourteenth* Amendment overturned Scott and made freemen citizens and not property.
So why not opine on other decisions? If stare decisis is so sacrosanct, why not comment?
It is also alleged that Kagan was instrumental in altering a document in order to present a view to the Supreme Court that was not intended by the experts who wrote the document. This is dishonest and should have resulted in her disbarment. The document altered changed an opinion of OB doctors from anti partial birth abortion to pro partial birth abortion. This should tell us all we need to know about her.
There is no doubt Kagan is a progressive and will rule based on progressive ideals. We expected that when Obama nominated her. Her lack of experience is troubling and we could end up with the same kind of disaster we call Obama. The difference is, the longest we can possibly be stuck with him is eight years. She is young and her appointment will be for a lifetime which could be 30 or 40 years.
Well, at least that is plenty of time for on the job training.
At least Al Franken had a good time. I have to say it is a pretty good drawing.
*changed from Thirteenth
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: al franken, inexperience, kagan, Obama, recruiters, solomon amendment, supreme court
Supreme Court Decides What We Already Knew
Jun 29, 2010 Political
The fact that the Second Amendment is an individual right is indisputable except to lefties who have trouble understanding what the words “The People” and “shall not be infringed” mean. These are the same folks who refuse to believe in individual rights even though the Founders clearly stated such in their writings.
The issue changed to one of applicability to the states once the left lost its battle against individual rights. Then the issue became, well sure it applied in DC but that is not a state. It does not apply to the states.
The SCOTUS cleared that all up today with a decision that overturned a lower court ruling and remanded the issue back. The SCOTUS, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that the Second Amendment applies to the states and that is because of the Fourteenth Amendment. For a long time the Fourteenth was not considered to apply to the states but that changed a half century or so ago and decisions have been reached that made the Bill of Rights (with exceptions to some portions) apply to the states. This idea is what allowed abortion to become legal and forced the states to comply. If the rights spelled out in the Constitution did not apply to the states then the Court could not have ruled that abortion was legal because it would be a federal, and only a federal, issue. This ignore the fact that abortion is not a right and is indicated only because it is “settled” law where the right was somehow found.
The Second was never considered though thinking people knew that it was included in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth; “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Which, as an aside, means the Arizona cannot violate Due Process since illegals are NOT citizens of the United States. But that is an issue for another time.
Interestingly but not surprising, gun grabbers are vowing to basically ignore the ruling issued today. Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago has vowed that his city will enact a new law soon that will prevent people from getting guns. This amounts to ignoring the law and is typical for Alinsky progressives. If the courts don’t rule your way then just ignore them. After all, this is what the Obama regime is doing with the drilling moratorium. They have vowed to ignore the court and issue a new moratorium.
How long will they do this before WE THE PEOPLE, decide to ignore the rules they come up with?
As for Daley, he is a first class slug and a hypocrite. While Daley does not believe that the people should be allowed to have guns, his aldermen are allowed to carry them. Richard Daley has about a dozen body guards on his detail and all of them are armed. Why is it that a person who works for the people of Chicago can have armed guards to protect him but will not allow the people to be armed to protect themselves.
No politician is any more important than the lowest in our society because even that person is the employer of the politician. I have little problem with presidents having armed security. Our enemies would love to attack a president and kill him. Other politicians are not that important and their demise would not cause turmoil in this country.
Think about it. If Richard Daley was killed by a would be criminal, would Chicago be in turmoil? No, they would replace him with another corrupt politician and keep on going. But Daley does not have to worry about that because he deems himself more important than the people who pay his salary. He is so against the people for whom he works that he will enact a law to keep people from getting guns because he knows better than our Founders, our Supreme Court and YOU.
Daley has no worries because his armed guards go with him even when he travels out of state. One of Daley’s armed guards caught an escaped criminal near the family vacation spot in Michigan while Hizzoner and the family were there. If you or I had been there we might well have been victims of the criminal.
I have a real problem with people like Daley, politicians who feel they are more important than the average folks and who deserve more protection. And the people are not even asking for taxpayer funded security. All we want is the ability to defend ourselves. This goes for people like Barack Obama who would love to ban guns and put more people in danger because average citizens are much more likely to be victims of crime than most politicians, particularly a president.
The Supreme Court put an end to the idea that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states today and it should be as sacrosanct to liberals as the issue of abortion. If it is settled law then let it be settled and let the people have their guns.
The opinion is a good read and in it Justice Scalia excoriates Justice Stevens as well he should. Stevens (and Breyer) ignore US history and the words of the Founders in their opinion and rely on the actions of other nations as well as their liberal views. Even though the facts are completely spelled out with historical references as to what keeping and bearing arms meant (and still means), these two ignored the facts and presented the progressive view. Justices should provide a legal view, not a political one.
How nice for the dress down of Stevens to be in the record for all time and to be issued on his last day on the Court. As Scalia put it (after destroying Stevens’ arguments):
In a vibrant democracy, usurpation should have to be accomplished in the dark. It is JUSTICE STEVENS’ approach, not the Court’s, that puts democracy in peril.
While today marks a victory for Americans and for freedom one thing is overshadowed. There are four Justices who voted against the Constitution and against the long history of this matter. They voted with the legacy of the Democrats in the south who made gun control laws that applied to blacks in order to control them.
These progressive liberals perpetuate that desire to enslave the citizenry in this nation. And this time they want to enslave all of us, regardless of color.
One last note. Any politician who is in favor of gun control and/or denies people the right to keep and bear arms should not be allowed to own or carry a gun and should NOT receive armed guards.
If you believe that there should be NO guns then there can be none for you. That goes for Obama, Daley and all the other hypocrites who think they are more important than we who employ them.
UPDATE: After the Heller decision Mayor Daley predicted all hell would break loose. That has not happened and gun crime in DC has dropped to pre gun ban levels.
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: blacks, gun control, Obama, scalia, Second Amendment, slavery, stevens, supreme court, thomas
The Ends Justify The Means
Mar 1, 2010 Political
A new idea has emerged from at least one liberal, er progressive. Barack Obama should add more justices to the Supreme Court so that he can get what he wants. OK, the idea is not new. As the article espousing such an idea points out, the Constitution does not say how many justices are to be on the SCOTUS and the size of it has changed over the years, often for political purposes.
The court is supposed to be apolitical. We know this is not the case because it has human beings on it. However, the public is not taking the power grab in DC very kindly and will not take a power grab of this magnitude kindly either, especially if it is for the purpose of achieving their agenda. The public did not take too kindly to this idea when FDR tried it. He, like all progressives, believed the ends justified the means. As it turns out, he never had to pack the court but he certainly wanted to just to get his way.
This idea is floated by Stan Isaacs at the Philadelphia Inquirer and I would not be surprised if this idea has already been considered by the calculating progressives in DC.
The thing they would have to worry about is the rebound or blowback of the issue. Suppose they were able to change the number on the court to pass what they wanted. Then suppose in three years Obama loses to a Republican and there is a majority Republican Congress. What would stop the Republicans from decreasing the size of the Court to three, the three most conservative, and then bringing everything they wanted changed before the court? They could end abortion, change gun laws to reflect the Constitution, and get just about anything they wanted passed. This would certainly bring a howl from the progressives but they will have set the precedent.
I am not sure how they could change this but if it requires a vote from Congress I doubt they would have enough to stop a Republican filibuster. I also doubt this would gain much traction even if they had the votes to change it because America would not be too happy. Moe Lane makes a good point:
Leaving aside the fact that author Stan Isaacs apparently felt the need to educate his readers about something which would be familiar to anybody with even a basic working knowledge of 20th century American history*, I’m wondering whether Isaacs can actually count. The President can declare as many Supreme Court justices as he likes; getting them confirmed requires Senate approval.
A lot of Democrats are seeing their political lives flash before their eyes and the images will get much clearer as we get closer to November so it is unlikely they will do anything that will further decrease their chances to be reelected.
And they would have to do it now. They cannot take the chance they will lose too many votes in November to pass it.
Interesting idea floated about by the followers of Alinsky but I doubt it will go anywhere.
As always though, we need to remain vigilant.
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Tags: fdr, justices, Obama, philadelphia inquirer, stan isaacs, supreme court
Democrats Wrestle With Court Decision
Jan 25, 2010 Political
This past week the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were allowed to spend as much as they want to support or oppose a political candidate or issue. Corporations are still limited in how much they can donate to a candidate but they are now allowed to spend what they want on things like political ads that favor or oppose a candidate. The issue revolves around free speech and the Court ruled that this was a free speech issue.
Democrats had expected this ruling and are now looking at ways to curb the process. Several ideas are floating around that would involve CEOs being required to get shareholder approval before funding political advertisements and not allowing the costs to be deducted as a business expense on taxes. There is also an idea that would require the CEO to be the voice on the ad approving the message.
Will any of these restrictions apply to the unions? SEIU spent millions of dollars in support of Obama and helped get him elected. The unions spent over half a million dollars trying to get Coakley elected in Massachusetts. The unions, and you can name them from SEIU to the teacher’s unions, spend huge sums of money on Democrats in order to get them elected. There has never been any concern among Democrats with regard to curbing the spending of their supporters. Since they view this ruling as something that will favor Republicans they now want restrictions placed on the process.
I don’t like the idea of any group spending a fortune to get a candidate elected or to push a particular agenda but they have the right to spend their money as they wish. My problem lies in the expected favors that follow. Groups spend money (in favor of or opposed to both political parties) and when all is said and done they expect payback. Democrats have their feathers ruffled now but they have been the recipients of huge sums of money from their supporters who seem to be able to spend as much as they want.
I wonder why the unions don’t have to get the permission of union members before they spend money on a candidate. Perhaps if the unions stopped spending millions and millions of dollars on candidates and issues they would have the money to fulfill the obligations they have to their members. Maybe then they would not have to come to the taxpayer with hat in hand looking for us to pay their way.
We scream about Wall Street paying huge salaries and bonuses and then taking taxpayer money to get right and yet we do not make a sound when the unions spend millions on candidates and then beg us for money to keep their members employed and plush with benefits.
I don’t like all the influence that is bought by any organization spending money on politics but it is their money and they can spend it however they wish. But if the Democrats are going to impose all kinds of rules then those rules need to apply to everyone, including their friends in the unions.
Source:
WSJ
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Tags: donations, free speech, influence, law, politics, supreme court
The Constitutionality of Mandatory Healthcare
Sep 19, 2009 Political
I had a call from a friend of mine yesterday- he knows I blog online, and he called me spittin’ mad because he had just heard that the Healthcare plan(s) all have a mandatory aspect to them- it was Hussein’s only way to get the Insurance companies onboard, to mandate millions more people to be required to carry health insurance. The insurance companies like the fact that more people would be required to sign up, because that increases their customer base- they are too stupid to realize when they are being jacked around by Hussein and Co.
And jacked around they will be- because there will be, if ANY of this passes, a single payer option, sooner or later- and because in the end, it will have to play out in the courts as to the Constitutionality of this issue. I have yet to find where it says ANYTHING in the Constitution about government- required healthcare. Did they have it way back then? Or did they have something called- Gasp!- Personal Responsibility?
Federal legislation requiring that every American have health insurance is part of all the major health-care reform plans now being considered in Washington. Such a mandate, however, would expand the federal government’s authority over individual Americans to an unprecedented degree. It is also profoundly unconstitutional.
An individual mandate has been a hardy perennial of health-care reform proposals since HillaryCare in the early 1990s. President Barack Obama defended its merits before Congress last week, claiming that uninsured people still use medical services and impose the costs on everyone else. But the reality is far different. Certainly some uninsured use emergency rooms in lieu of primary care physicians, but the majority are young people who forgo insurance precisely because they do not expect to need much medical care. When they do, these uninsured pay full freight, often at premium rates, thereby actually subsidizing insured Americans.
online.wsj.com
Even when people do not pay “full freight”, and get a discount, as I do, because I pay cash, I get that discount because the Doctor’s office does not have to go through the time- consuming paperwork necessary to insurance companies. Is anyone ignorant enough to believe that the paperwork would decrease under a government mandate? Of course not- you’d have to be an utter fool to believe that. Still, there are some people who think this “requirement” would be a good thing. Not so at all.
The mandate’s real justifications are far more cynical and political. Making healthy young adults pay billions of dollars in premiums into the national health-care market is the only way to fund universal coverage without raising substantial new taxes. In effect, this mandate would be one more giant, cross-generational subsidy—imposed on generations who are already stuck with the bill for the federal government’s prior spending sprees.
Politically, of course, the mandate is essential to winning insurance industry support for the legislation and acceptance of heavy federal regulations. Millions of new customers will be driven into insurance-company arms. Moreover, without the mandate, the entire thrust of the new regulatory scheme—requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and to accept standardized premiums—would produce dysfunctional consequences. It would make little sense for anyone, young or old, to buy insurance before he actually got sick. Such a socialization of costs also happens to be an essential step toward the single payer, national health system, still stridently supported by large parts of the president’s base.
online.wsj.com
Well said, and should be memorized by all the members of Congress who are going to vote on this (these? those?) bill, whenever it is put into coherent form- God knows that is not the case now. Now, they face the wall of the Constitution, and it is there for a reason such as this.
The elephant in the room is the Constitution. As every civics class once taught, the federal government is a government of limited, enumerated powers, with the states retaining broad regulatory authority. As James Madison explained in the Federalist Papers: “[I]n the first place it is to be remembered that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects.” Congress, in other words, cannot regulate simply because it sees a problem to be fixed. Federal law must be grounded in one of the specific grants of authority found in the Constitution.
These are mostly found in Article I, Section 8, which among other things gives Congress the power to tax, borrow and spend money, raise and support armies, declare war, establish post offices and regulate commerce. It is the authority to regulate foreign and interstate commerce that—in one way or another—supports most of the elaborate federal regulatory system. If the federal government has any right to reform, revise or remake the American health-care system, it must be found in this all-important provision. This is especially true of any mandate that every American obtain health-care insurance or face a penalty.
But there are important limits. In United States v. Lopez (1995), for example, the Court invalidated the Gun Free School Zones Act because that law made it a crime simply to possess a gun near a school. It did not “regulate any economic activity and did not contain any requirement that the possession of a gun have any connection to past interstate activity or a predictable impact on future commercial activity.” Of course, a health-care mandate would not regulate any “activity,” such as employment or growing pot in the bathroom, at all. Simply being an American would trigger it.
Health-care backers understand this and—like Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen insisting that some hills are valleys—have framed the mandate as a “tax” rather than a regulation. Under Sen. Max Baucus’s (D., Mont.) most recent plan, people who do not maintain health insurance for themselves and their families would be forced to pay an “excise tax” of up to $1,500 per year—roughly comparable to the cost of insurance coverage under the new plan.
online.wsj.com
This is how people like these socialists have been subverting the Constitution for years- by semantics. You can’t call it one thing and be legal, well OK then, we’ll just call it something else that skirts the legality. You just have to applaud how hard they work at being dishonest, don’t you?
But Congress cannot so simply avoid the constitutional limits on its power. Taxation can favor one industry or course of action over another, but a “tax” that falls exclusively on anyone who is uninsured is a penalty beyond Congress’s authority. If the rule were otherwise, Congress could evade all constitutional limits by “taxing” anyone who doesn’t follow an order of any kind—whether to obtain health-care insurance, or to join a health club, or exercise regularly, or even eat your vegetables. [emphasis mine]
This type of congressional trickery is bad for our democracy and has implications far beyond the health-care debate. The Constitution’s Framers divided power between the federal government and states—just as they did among the three federal branches of government—for a reason. They viewed these structural limitations on governmental power as the most reliable means of protecting individual liberty—more important even than the Bill of Rights.
online.wsj.com
One last thing- the Constitution has lasted longer than many documents because our founding fathers took their time and brainpower to get it right- and while I am sure the debate was heated at times, everyone there knew that this was too important to allow partisan, petty politics to rule the day. Now should be another occasion as important a that one- if we, as a people, truly want healthcare reform, we are ALL going to have to forego the power games we have been playing. This plan, whatever comes out of committee, should adhere to the rules and boundaries of the Constitution, because if not, we could see so many court cases that it literally clogs the system.
And that would be bad for everyone, but particularly for reformers, the progressives- for the Supreme Court has not been kind to cases such as this-
Yet if that imperative is insufficient to prompt reconsideration of the mandate (and the approach to reform it supports), then the inevitable judicial challenges should. Since the 1930s, the Supreme Court has been reluctant to invalidate “regulatory” taxes. However, a tax that is so clearly a penalty for failing to comply with requirements otherwise beyond Congress’s constitutional power will present the question whether there are any limits on Congress’s power to regulate individual Americans. The Supreme Court has never accepted such a proposition, and it is unlikely to accept it now, even in an area as important as health care.
online.wsj.com
We can just stop this debate altogether, or the progressives can try to cram what they will down the throats of America, or we can scrap what we know won’t work, and try for a true compromise- it is really up to the Resident and his band of cronies, because the rest of us are just waiting to see the final form, and if it isn’t what we can see is good for our country, we will reject it- you will not believe how decisively we can reject it, but go ahead-
Make My Day.
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Tags: checks and balances, constitution, personal responsibility, supreme court