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☑ ☆ ✇ FOX News

Trump's true crime and other lessons from his New York trial

— June 8th 2024 at 06:00
New York Democrats prosecuted Trump solely to create a political advantage for their unpopular candidate by convicting and threatening to imprison his Republican opponent.

☑ ☆ ✇ Politics – The Daily Signal

The Problem With ‘Our Democracy’

By: Steve McKee — June 5th 2024 at 12:28

Earlier this year, Joe Biden’s campaign manager said, “We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it.”

That’s a heady statement, but an intentional one. The president himself uses the term “our democracy” frequently, as do most progressive politicians and pundits as they wring their hands about the coming election.

Book titles such as “Reclaiming Our Democracy,” “The Future of Our Democracy,” and “Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy” are popping up increasingly as well.

A conspiracy? Doubtful. But neither is it merely coincidence.

According to Google’s Ngram Viewer, an online tool that searches historical sources to track word usage over time, only twice before has the term “our democracy” been in use more frequently than today: the late 1880s (around the time the Statue of Liberty was dedicated) and the late 1930s (during the height of the Great Depression and the onset of World War II).

Between 1950 and 1970, the term “our democracy” was rarely seen in print. But its usage has ratcheted up steadily since the Reagan Revolution began in 1981, and especially since 2000. It’s a development about which we all should be dubious.

I recall learning in 10th grade civics class (for readers born after 1980, that used to be a thing) that America is not a democracy, but a democratic republic. This is a distinction with a very clear difference, most notably the delegation by the people of various and vital public decisions to elected officials.

Although many will say that the term “our democracy” is an innocent shortcut, a catchall phrase for our nation specifically or rule by the people generally, the author of our Constitution would disagree. James Madison made clear in Federalist 14 that “under the confusion of names, it has been an easy task to transfer to a republic observations applicable to a democracy,” and that there are dangers in confounding the two.

Those dangers are manifest today. Progressives’ widespread and increasing use of this innocuous-sounding term is weakening our constitutional checks and balances and undermining the Bill of Rights, the only things standing in the way of what Madison called “the tyranny of the majority.”

Those who most traffic in the term wish to eliminate the Electoral College and reapportion the Senate by population rather than by state. They are working on multiple fronts to weaken First Amendment protections for speech and religion. They have long had the Second Amendment in their sights. And they consistently oppose individuals and organizations that push back against draconian federal restrictions such as public health lockdowns and climate change regulations.

If “our democracy” wants it, “our democracy” should get it, goes their reasoning, oblivious to Booker T. Washington’s admonition: “A lie doesn’t become truth, wrong doesn’t become right, and evil doesn’t become good, just because it’s accepted by a majority.”

During this election cycle, however, progressives are putting “our democracy” to work in an even more pointed way. Like a magician using sleight of hand to distract his audience, they’re using the phrase to present a false binary to American voters. In sports, this is called “hiding the ball.”

Donald Trump, according to the Left, is an authoritarian who not only will take away our rights but eliminate elections. The charge is, of course, ridiculous—Trump stepped down despite his objections to the 2020 election results, and last I checked it’s his opponents who are using authoritarian tactics to ensure he doesn’t win reelection. But the charge is useful, which to a Marxist mind is all the justification it needs.

Contrasting the potential “autocracy” of a second Trump administration with Biden’s ostensible defense of “our democracy” is meant to distract us from recognizing the real decision that confronts the voters and the actual threat to our republic: the creeping totalitarianism of the administrative state.

Totalitarianism is defined as “subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation, especially by coercive measures.” Ask anybody who lived through COVID-19 if that sounds familiar.

And if you visit Britannica.com—the modern iteration of the company whose encyclopedias we used in 10th grade civics class to learn about things like history and government—you’ll see a more expansive description:

Totalitarianism is a form of government that attempts to assert total control over the lives of its citizens. It is characterized by strong central rule that attempts to control and direct all aspects of individual life through coercion and repression. It does not permit individual freedom. Traditional social institutions and organizations are discouraged and suppressed, making people more willing to be merged into a single unified movement.

I could have sworn I heard something like that last line in a video at the 2012 Democratic National Convention: “Government is the only thing that we all belong to.”

Britannica goes on to say that it was Italian dictator Benito Mussolini who first used the term totalitario, meaning “all within the state, none outside the state, none against the state.” It cites as examples of totalitarian states not only Mussolini’s Italy but Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany, and Mao’s China.

Given the growth of the federal government over the past century, totalitarianism certainly represents a greater threat to the United States than authoritarianism.

We’re not there yet, and thanks to America’s exceptional institutions perhaps we won’t get there. But as the recent violent increase in antisemitism shows, something we thought could “never again” happen very well might—all it takes is one generation of historical ignorance.

Those same institutions that have protected us from anything approaching authoritarianism increasingly are becoming our totalitarian masters. As William F. Buckley once observed, it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom.”

Whenever you hear talking heads refer to “our democracy,” pay special attention to what comes next. Don’t assume they’re referring to the democratic republic handed down from our Founding Fathers or trying to preserve our Constitution and its safeguards.

More likely they’re taking advantage of our increasing historical ignorance resulting from the Left’s capture of our educational institutions (which was all part of the plan).

Let’s call our nation what it is: a republic. Whether out of ignorance or malevolence, saying “our democracy” is less likely to strengthen our heritage than seed our demise.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

The post The Problem With ‘Our Democracy’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

☑ ☆ ✇ FOX News

On this day in history, June 4, 1919, Congress passes 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote

By: Christine Rousselle — June 3rd 2024 at 23:02
The race to ratify the 19th Amendment began on this day in history, June 4, 1919, after Congress passed the text of the amendment. The amendment granted the right to vote to women.

☑ ☆ ✇ Breitbart News

Exclusive – Michael Savage Likens Trump Verdict to Internal 9/11: Biden ‘Gang’ Trying to Kill Trump with ‘1,000 Cuts’

By: Joshua Klein · Joshua Klein — June 2nd 2024 at 14:34

The “Biden gang” of “Fabian socialists” is trying to kill former President Donald Trump with “a thousand cuts,” according to conservative radio legend Michael Savage.

The post Exclusive – Michael Savage Likens Trump Verdict to Internal 9/11: Biden ‘Gang’ Trying to Kill Trump with ‘1,000 Cuts’ appeared first on Breitbart.

☑ ☆ ✇ FOX News

Brentwood blight: How a Supreme Court case allowed governments to seize property on behalf of developers

By: Hannah Ray Lambert · Megan Myers — June 1st 2024 at 04:30
Business owners and attorneys say local governments across the country are using vague and often subjective blight designations to justify seizing private property.

☑ ☆ ✇ Politics – The Daily Signal

Trump Vows to Fight On Despite Conviction

By: Philip Wegmann — June 1st 2024 at 02:05

Shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday, a New York jury brought the country to an unprecedented brink by finding Donald Trump guilty of financial fraud, making the former president a convicted felon for now (unless or until the conviction is overturned on appeal) and making the upcoming election a referendum, he now hopes, not just on his record against Joe Biden’s but the entire political system.

Republicans call it a miscarriage of justice; for Democrats, it’s proof that no one is above the law.

History will remember it as a new chapter: Donald J. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime.

“We didn’t do anything wrong. I am a very innocent man,” Trump told reporters after the verdict, dressed in his trademark blue suit and too-long tie at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York.

Then a familiar script as the former president embraced martyrdom, arguing that his conviction was part of a larger war for the soul of a nation.

“I’m fighting for our country. I’m fighting for our Constitution,” he said. “Our whole country is being rigged right now.”

Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a case stemming from “hush money” payments to porn star Stormy Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Each count carries a maximum prison term of four years.

Sentencing is scheduled for July 11, just four days before Trump is slated to accept the Republican presidential nomination for a third consecutive time.

Although questions abound about the fate of the former president and the nation, there is little to no chance Trump will end up behind bars before the end of the year. He is expected to remain free on bail pending appeal, a process that is not likely to be exhausted until well after Election Day.

The case now shifts to the appellate courts—as well as the proverbial court of public opinion.

Democrats have been desperate to cast the election as a rematch of Biden v. Trump with an emphasis on character, not a judgment on President Joe Biden’s first term in office. They may have gotten what they wanted.

“Donald Trump is a racist, a homophobe, a grifter, and a threat to this country,” said Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. “He can now add one more title to his list—a felon.”

Sources close to the former president prefer a different description.

A senior Trump campaign official predicted weeks before the decision that a conviction would “make him the Nelson Mandela of America,” comparing Biden to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his imprisonment of political rival and late dissident Alexei Navalny.

The framework suits Trump, who blasted out an email fundraiser shortly after his conviction calling himself “a political prisoner,” arguing both that “justice is dead in America” and “our country has fallen.”

This kind of rhetoric, complete with comparisons of the U.S. to the Third World, is likely to accelerate in the weeks and months ahead. Both major presidential campaigns now argue that the other could end democracy.

“These people would do anything and everything to hold onto political power. They don’t care if they destroy our country in the process,” said the former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

Martyrdom has been a central theme of Trump’s return to politics. After his indictment in New York last year, the GOP nomination was practically a fait accompli and his campaign nearly told RealClearPolitics as much at the time. It is unclear whether that phenomenon will translate to a general election.

Court has not crippled Trump so far, however, and Biden has not surpassed his rival a single time this year in the RealClearPolitics Average of polls. Well aware of those numbers, the Biden campaign attempted to tamp down jubilation on the left over the bad legal news consuming the right. They warned that Trump still could win.

“There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box,” said Biden-Harris communications director Michael Tyler.

Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House counsel’s office reacted to the news by saying only, “We respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment.” By remaining silent, however, he ceded the spotlight to Trump, allowing his rival to shape the first 24 hours of the narrative.

[Biden didn’t comment until early Friday afternoon, when he noted before turning to the Israel-Hamas war that, “just like everyone else,” Trump will have an opportunity to appeal the verdict. The president added: “That’s how the American system of justice works. And it’s reckless, it’s dangerous, and it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”]

Nothing bars Trump from running for president as a felon. It is unclear, however, if he will be able to cast a vote for himself while his case goes through the appeal process.

A more immediate consequence of the trial ending: Trump’s schedule just opened up, and Trump can return to the campaign trail in earnest.

Sources in regular contact with the former president report that the prospect of prison has not cast a shadow over Trump personally. One told RealClearPolitics that Trump “sincerely believes” that divine providence now guides his steps and “that he has been chosen for a time such as this.”

Trump has six months to convince the country to return him to the White House, and in the most extreme circumstance, to preserve his freedom. Republicans were as bullish over those odds as they were angry.

“Today’s verdict from this partisan, corrupt, and rigged trial just guaranteed Trump’s landslide victory on Nov. 5, 2024,” Mike Davis, founder and president of the pro-Trump Article III Project, told RealClearPolitics.

Former Rep. Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican who voted to impeach Trump, echoed that sentiment, warning that a conviction would backfire on Democrats. “The chain reaction will cause infinitely more damage than whatever they think they are preventing,” he told RCP.

The conviction created a tidal wave of donations as Trump began fundraising almost immediately after leaving court. The Trump campaign buckled briefly at the surge. The fundraising website, WinRed, temporarily crashed under the strain of heavy traffic.

“I’ll lose friends for this,” wrote Shaun Maguire in a lengthy post on X announcing his $300,000 donation to Trump. A partner at Sequoia Capital and a former Democratic donor, Maguire said that “lawfare” in part inspired his donation:

“Fairness is one of my guiding principles in life,” he said, “and simply, these cases haven’t been fair for Trump.”

Following the conviction, there was a discernable shift on the right among conservatives who normally argue that the judicial system ought to remain apolitical. Some Trump allies described the guilty verdict as “the Rubicon.”

Asked about the new Republican appetite to use the courts to go after political opponents, Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller told RCP that “the good guys must be as tough as the villains or freedom is doomed.”

The field of potential vice presidential candidates snapped to attention in their immediate condemnation of the conviction.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the verdict was “a complete travesty that makes a mockery of our system of justice.” Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, called it “election interference.” Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said it was an “absolute injustice” that “erodes our justice system.”

“From the start, the weaponized scales of justice were stacked against President Trump. Joe Biden, far left Democrats, and their stenographers in the mainstream media have made it clear they will stop at nothing to prevent President Trump from returning to the White House,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., in a lengthy statement to reporters.

“This lawfare should scare every American,” said a more succinct North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a Republican. “The American people will have their say in November.”

The safest thing for any Republican elected official anywhere Thursday night was to attack the judicial system. Defending that institution, meanwhile, was verboten.

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a frequent Trump critic now running for Senate, appeared to miss the memo when he shared a statement calling for GOP leaders to “reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”

Replied Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump adviser dispatched to oversee the Republican National Conventio: “You just ended your campaign.”

The most common sentiment among Trump’s close circle of advisers and friends was that something had changed permanently, not in the former president personally but in the country.

“Today marks a turning point,” said Brooke Rollins, who led Trump’s Domestic Policy Council before launching the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank often described as a Trump White House in waiting. “I see it as a fire that has been lit. I see the sleeping giant of the American people awakened.”

On the second day of jury deliberations, Trump had kept up appearances with a smile. A verdict was not expected Thursday, and by the afternoon, Judge Juan Merchan was preparing to dismiss the jury for the day.

The foreman replied instead that the jury had reached a verdict. He read each of the 34 charges and followed by a one-word pronouncement: “guilty.”

A smile turned to a grimace, and Trump, surrounded by his defense team, stared forward stone-faced as he listened to the verdict and American history. He vowed in brief remarks to reporters afterward that he would “fight till the end and we’ll win because our country’s gone to hell.”

It was like so many of the pronouncements he has made after so many of the other controversies that have defined his political life. It was also different. A loss, if the conviction stands, could mean prison.

Rollins predicted that Trump would persevere, as he has before.

“From my perspective,” she said, “it is almost biblical to see this sort of courage and leadership and unwillingness to back down even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.”

The post Trump Vows to Fight On Despite Conviction appeared first on The Daily Signal.

☑ ☆ ✇ Breitbart News

Supreme Court Rules 9-0 New York Violated NRA’s First Amendment Rights, Good News for Trump

By: Ken Klukowski · Ken Klukowski — May 30th 2024 at 12:29

The National Rifle Association (NRA) won at the Supreme Court against New York and the anti-gun movement Thursday, unanimously ruling that the NRA’s First Amendment rights were violated by politicians who oppose the Second Amendment, in a major victory with implications for former President Trump.

The post Supreme Court Rules 9-0 New York Violated NRA’s First Amendment Rights, Good News for Trump appeared first on Breitbart.

☑ ☆ ✇ Breitbart News

Supreme Court Rejects Democrat Attempt to Flip Congressional Seat in South Carolina

By: Ken Klukowski · Ken Klukowski — May 24th 2024 at 12:31

The Supreme Court rejected the NAACP's attempts to redraw South Carolina’s congressional districts to flip a Republican seat to Democrats.

The post Supreme Court Rejects Democrat Attempt to Flip Congressional Seat in South Carolina appeared first on Breitbart.

☑ ☆ ✇ Politics – The Daily Signal

Who Is Running Congress?

By: Armstrong Williams — May 23rd 2024 at 15:13

Reflect on the words of Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., in his Washington Post article titled “Why Is Congress So Dumb?” Thereby hangs a tale of congressional anemia and languor.

The veteran congressman laments, “our available resources and our policy staff, the brains of Congress, have been so depleted that we can’t do our jobs properly. … Congress is increasingly unable to comprehend a world growing more socially, economically and technologically multifaceted—and we did this to ourselves.”

While the size of the federal government was mushrooming, staff levels in House member offices ticked down from 6,556 in 1977 to 6,329 in 2021. Congress’ annual budget is $5.3 billion, a tiny fraction of the $1.5 trillion spent on the military-industrial-security complex. And only 10% of the $5.3 billion is spent on human capital as opposed to buildings, the Capitol Police, and maintenance.

“For every $3,000 the United States spends per American on government programs,” Pascrell writes, “[Congress] allocates only $6 to oversee them.”

The congressman’s diagnosis is spot-on. It deserves further amplification.

Congress is largely run by rookies paid miserly wages who then move on after a few years to lucrative lobbying on K Street as a financial necessity. Congress is starved of institutional memory and expertise. Members and staff are constitutionally clueless, political tyros. The executive branch runs circles around them, stiff-arms oversight, and typically originates major legislation for Congress to entertain.

Congressional staff commonly parachute into high-level, well-paid executive branch positions. The reverse—executive branch talent coming to work for Congress—is as rare as unicorns.

This is a disaster for Congress as a coequal branch of government and for the Constitution’s separation of powers. It is also a break in history, tracing back to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who in 1995 seized the lion’s share of legislative powers from committees and member offices by shrinking their budgets and prerogatives and enfeebling their intellectual infrastructures.

Gingrich also defunded the Office of Technology Assessment, tantamount to a congressional lobotomy. His objective was to handcuff any challenges by members or committees to his personal policy predilections and compromises with the White House. None of Gingrich’s Republican and Democratic successors—Dennis Hastert, Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and Mike Johnson—have undone his dumbing down of Congress.

The typical chief of staff or chief counsel in the House is a recent university or law school graduate in their mid-20s hired primarily because of their loyalty and campaign work. They are awed by the White House and ignorant of the vast powers the Constitution entrusts to the legislative branch: the war power, the power of the purse, the power to supersede treaties or executive orders, and the inherent power of contempt to sanction summarily any executive official for withholding documents or testimony from Congress.

The result, among other things, is secret government and a reliance on whistleblowers, who commonly have ulterior motives, to disclose executive branch crimes or wrongdoing in lieu of Congress.

In the pre-Gingrich era, the Watergate crimes were exposed by the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, and the Church Committee disclosed the crimes and wrongdoing of the intelligence community. In the post-Gingrich era, Congress goes on its hands and knees, like Henry IV at Canossa, pleading for the White House voluntarily to share information.

The House and Senate Armed Services committees need vastly greater manpower and experts to oversee the nearly trillion-dollar annual, unaudited Pentagon spending. On 9/11, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shared that $3 trillion in Pentagon funds accumulated over an unknown number of years could not be accounted for.

Congress retains the power to return to the pre-Gingrich era. Under the Constitution, the House and Senate decide their respective budgets with no outside interference. Congress can and should raise salaries and retain experts to attract talent and make serving as congressional staff a financially viable professional career. Congress should institutionalize the recruitment of staff and experts from universities and the private sector based more on competence in discharging constitutional responsibilities and less on personal loyalty or nepotism.

Overseeing and reforming a federal government that spends more than $6.5 trillion annually, regulates every nook and cranny of economic life, and groans under a national debt exceeding $34 trillion is too important to do anything less.

President John Quincy Adams left the presidency in 1829. He served in the House of Representatives from 1831 to 1848, acquiring fame in opposing the gag rule, which forbid discussion of slavery in the House, and the Mexican-American War, fueled by presidential lies.

Adams’ congressional service was not a demotion but a professional and constitutional step up. Today, it is inconceivable that a president would follow in his footsteps. That needs to change fast, or the executive branch will continue to run roughshod over the Constitution, Congress, and the American people.

COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

The post Who Is Running Congress? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

☑ ☆ ✇ Breitbart News

Poll: Florida Voters Favor Trump, Also Support Proposed Abortion Measure

By: Katherine Hamilton · Katherine Hamilton — May 22nd 2024 at 20:22

Florida voters are more likely to support former President Donald Trump in the November presidential election — but a strong majority also say they would pass a proposed ballot measure that would enshrine a right to kill unborn babies via abortion in the state constitution, a poll found.

The post Poll: Florida Voters Favor Trump, Also Support Proposed Abortion Measure appeared first on Breitbart.

☑ ☆ ✇ Breitbart News

Proposed Abortion Amendments Qualify for Ballots in Colorado, South Dakota

By: Katherine Hamilton · Katherine Hamilton — May 20th 2024 at 18:45

Officials in South Dakota and Colorado certified proposed amendments that would enshrine the right to abortion in their state constitutions.

The post Proposed Abortion Amendments Qualify for Ballots in Colorado, South Dakota appeared first on Breitbart.

☑ ☆ ✇ FOX News

I was thrown out of California public library for discussing if it’s fair for men to compete in women’s sports

By: Sophia Lorey — May 17th 2024 at 01:00
Library officials shut down the forum after only a few minutes, claiming that referring to male athletes in women’s sports as "men" violated library policy.

☑ ☆ ✇ FOX News

On this day in history, May 17, 1954, Supreme Court trounces segregation in landmark Brown v. Board case

By: Kerry Byrne — May 16th 2024 at 23:02
The U.S Supreme Court declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case on this day in history, May 17, 1954.

☑ ☆ ✇ FOX News

NRA and conservative legal group sue Democrat governor over 7-day waiting period to buy guns

By: Chris Pandolfo — May 16th 2024 at 06:54
The Mountain States Legal Foundation and the National Rifle Association have filed a lawsuit challenging New Mexico's seven-day waiting period to purchase a firearm.

☑ ☆ ✇ Breitbart News

Judge Tosses New York Abortion, Gender Identity Amendment from November Ballot

By: Katherine Hamilton · Katherine Hamilton — May 9th 2024 at 17:42

A federal judge in New York threw out a proposed abortion and gender identity amendment that was set to appear on the November ballot.

The post Judge Tosses New York Abortion, Gender Identity Amendment from November Ballot appeared first on Breitbart.

☑ ☆ ✇ Power LinePower Line

Ramirez speaks

By: Scott Johnson — March 22nd 2024 at 07:24
(Scott Johnson)

The Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez posts his daily cartoons on Substack at the Michael Ramirez Newsletter. He is a conservative whose genius cannot be denied. Thus the Pulitzer. Readers can subscribe here.

Michael has also been writing weekly essays for his newsletter that I have posted in our Picks as each one was made freely accessible. Today Michael has posted an 18-minute video essay that is keyed to his recent cartoons on the Academy Awards. I found his remarks entertaining, interesting, and inspiring. He tells some inside stories and he talks about joining the protest at Columbia when he received his Pulitzer. He wraps up with a statement of his his core beliefs.

His is the voice of a free mind and a free man. I thought some readers might want to listen up.

☑ ☆ ✇ Power LinePower Line

Supreme Court: Trump on ballot

By: Scott Johnson — March 4th 2024 at 09:49
(Scott Johnson)

The Supreme Court has held 9-0 that the Colorado Supreme Court erred in blessing the disqualification of Donald Trump from the state’s primary election ballot under section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court’s opinion is per curiam. Justice Barrett concurs in part and concurs in the judgment. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson concur in the judgment (i.e., the result). The Court’s opinions are posted online here.

The Court’s per curiam opinion commanded a majority and its reasoning represents the law. It rests substantially on the exclusive power of Congress to enforce section 3 against candidates for federal office, “especially the presidency.”

Does the opinion leave open the possibility that Congress might refuse to certify Trump as president if he were to be elected president on the ground that he is guilty of insurrection? If Congress has not prescribed any means other than conviction of the crime of insurrection to make the determination underlying application of section 3, I doubt it. See opinion at 10. However, I may be mistaken. Perhaps the opinion cannot be read that broadly.

The opinion concludes (emphasis in original, citations omitted):

All nine Members of the Court agree with that result. Our colleagues writing separately further agree with many of the reasons this opinion provides for reaching it. So far as we can tell, they object only to our taking into account the distinctive way Section 3 works and the fact that Section 5 vests in Congress the power to enforce it. These are not the only reasons the States lack power to enforce this particular constitutional provision with respect to federal offices. But they are important ones, and it is the combination of all the reasons set forth in this opinion—not, as some of our colleagues would have it, just one particular rationale—that resolves this case. In our view, each of these reasons is necessary to provide a complete explanation for the judgment the Court unanimously reaches.

Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: Although he characterizes it as a 5-4 decision, Andrew McCarthy supports my reading of the per curiam opinion: “What that means is that if Donald Trump were to win the presidential election, congressional Democrats would not be able — in the next January 6 joint session of Congress — to refuse to ratify his victory on the grounds that he is an insurrectionist. Under the Court’s holding, it is now a prerequisite to enforcement of the Section 3 disqualification that a person must have been convicted under the insurrection statute.”

☑ ☆ ✇ Power LinePower Line

Liberal Fragility

By: Steven Hayward — February 29th 2024 at 06:09
(Steven Hayward)

Liberals really are extremely fragile people. This helps explain why they need “safe spaces” with cuddly stuffed animals, grief counselors, and warning labels against “microaggressions.”

The latest evidence is a completely unironic and totally un-self-aware piece in the New York Times about the anguish of liberal law professors having to teach constitutional law at a time when the Supreme Court leans right. It’s so upsetting that some professors are moved to tears and can’t conceive of continuing. The New York Times thinks this is actually “a crisis.”

Seriously, you can’t make this up:

Rebecca Brown, at the University of Southern California, has been teaching constitutional law for 35 years. “While I was working on my syllabus for this course, I literally burst into tears,” she told me. “I couldn’t figure out how any of this makes sense. Why do we respect it? Why do we do any of it? I’m feeling very depleted by having to teach it.”

I’m skeptical that she “literally” burst into tears, though I expect she literally misused the word “literally” here. In any case, shouldn’t the phrase, “I couldn’t figure out how any of this makes sense?” have been applied to Wickard v. Filburn ever since it was put to paper in 1942? And yet somehow the few conservative law professors that existed behind enemy lines in law schools managed for 80 years now to explain Wickard (and dozens of other ridiculous liberal Court rulings) with a straight face and without bursting into tears, or having anxiety attacks.

The Times inadvertently gives away what’s really going on here (beyond general liberal fragility):

“The people who taught us were all Warren court people,” said Pam Karlan, a constitutional and voting-rights expert at Stanford law school, referring to Chief Justice Earl Warren, who through the 1950s and 1960s led a court of both Democratic and Republican appointees to expand civil rights, equalize political representation and liberalize the criminal justice system. “They’d clerked on that court. They valorized it. There was this notion that judges were these heroes who would save us all. Our students do not have that view.”

Ah yes, the glory days of the Warren Court, which invented new “rights” left and right (actually just “left”). There’s never been an era with more result-oriented jurisprudence that the Warren Court, but it delivered results liberals liked. But now that the Court is delivering rulings liberals don’t like, it’s the end of the world. Or at least their world.

It gets worse:

“We’re witnessing a transformation in the New Deal consensus,” said Mark Graber, a leading constitutional scholar and Regents professor at the University of Maryland.

Oh please, don’t get my hopes up like this!

There’s a serious irony here. Back in the late 1990s, after the Supreme Court had once again botched a significant case in Romer v. Evans, overruling a precedent on sodomy laws from just 1986, the conservative journal First Things published as symposium on “The End of Democracy” that called into question the legitimacy of the Supreme Court in the wake of its serially bad decisions in Casey v. Planned Parenthood and Romer v. Evans, among others. It caused a huge ruckus on the right, and several leading conservatives attacked First Things and resigned from its editorial board, including Gertrude Himmelfarb, Peter Berger, and Walter Berns. This “smash the Court” enthusiasm didn’t gain much acceptance, and quickly passed from the scene.

I see no such intramural argument on the left about the Supreme Court. Now it is the left that is bent on delegitimizing the Supreme Court. It is all toddler temper tantrums and hair-on-fire freakouts that some jurists, many with Ivy League law degrees, have a different opinion from theirs.

Prediction: I know that a lot of liberal law professors can’t stand it that Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and J.D. Vance all went to Harvard or Yale for law school. There is likely before long to be an effort to screen out conservative applicants to elite laws schools so that they don’t have an Ivy League credential.

☑ ☆ ✇ Jihad Watch

Germany’s top court demands easing of child marriage law amid mass migration from Muslim countries

By: Vijeta Uniyal — March 31st 2023 at 11:00
Germany’s top court demands easing of child marriage law amid mass migration from Muslim countries
With unchecked mass migration from Muslim-majority North Africa and Middle East, the German authorities are struggling to cope with the surge in child marriages across the country. Germany’s top constitutional court on Wednesday urged the government to ease the child marriage law which nullifies such marital unions, and requires the separation of child brides from […]
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