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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.
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The Orange County Register's editorial board mocked Gavin Newsom's failed push for a gun control amendment to the Constitution.
The post Orange County Register Mocks Failure of Gavin Newsom’s Gun Control Amendment for U.S. Constitution appeared first on Breitbart.
If those in federal office are willing to pay attention, the states are displaying the best—and the worst—of our republican form of government.
Every four years, American citizens get the opportunity to express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, endorse a policy agenda for the nation, and hold the occupant of the highest office in our federal government to account for his leadership or lack thereof.
But in the intervening years between what some treat as a national Rorschach test, lawmakers are the policymakers entrusted to express the will of the people.
Fifty laboratories of innovation provide Americans with the freedom to vote with their feet by living in states that reflect the priorities around which their pursuit of happiness seems most reliably cultivated. The states also provide an effective case study for varying policy initiatives upon which our federal government can rely for evidence-based decision-making for the nation.
As an example, the Tennessee General Assembly recently passed landmark legislation addressing the disturbing trend of debanking. Once signed by Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, this law will provide consumer protection by prohibiting big banks from canceling accounts based on the constitutionally protected freedoms of speech and religious exercise.
Applying to the largest financial institutions, those with at least $100 billion in assets, the law provides a road map for other states to follow. Since the federal government is where banks that are “too big to fail” look for taxpayer-funded bailouts, Congress should follow Tennessee’s lead as well.
Contrast this approach of protecting access to basic financial services regardless of ideology with the state of New York. The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard from the National Rifle Association, which is seeking to stop New York state officials from using political power to coerce banks, insurers, and other service providers to refuse service to the Second Amendment advocacy organization.
In Idaho, Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, signed HB 578, which will ensure that faith-based adoption and foster care providers are free to serve children in need and work with the state to find loving, forever homes for kids.
Meanwhile, next door in Oregon, Jessica Bates is prevented from adopting children because she won’t agree to the state’s demand that she promote gender ideology. Apparently, Bates doesn’t have a high enough “social credit score” to be deemed a worthy parent by the state.
Idaho simultaneously protects the right of conscience and promotes the best interests of children in need of loving homes, while Oregon prioritizes politics over people.
One might look at these polar-opposite expressions of policy preferences and despair of a nation plagued by irreconcilable differences. But to the federalists among us, these differences are not a bug but a feature of our system.
Our national political culture is divided, but no more so now than it was at our founding. Today we simply have divisions of 50 instead of the 13 that existed when our Constitution was adopted. Then, as now, life in the states can look drastically different across our internal borders.
From the beginning, these United States of America were a hodgepodge of varying ethnicities, religions, economies, and political beliefs. What united the states then can still unite them today—the recognition of our fundamental God-given rights and the implicit American compact to protect those rights for all, regardless of which direction the political winds may blow across a state or the nation.
If an executive or legislative branch of state or federal government, even with popular support, goes so far as to implement policy that conflicts with these fundamental rights, our judiciary is empowered to rein in the wayward whims of the democratic process. This ensures that our fundamental rights are recognized in all 50 states while allowing for policy differences on other matters.
American journalist H.L. Mencken once said: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Thankfully, our Founders were keenly aware of the fallen nature of man, the seductive trappings of power, and thus the perils of pure democracy for the God-given rights of the individual. They had the foresight to give us, as Benjamin Franklin reportedly quipped, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
When our federal government is focused on protecting fundamental rights guaranteed to all by the Constitution’s principles while respecting the role and differences of the states, we improve our chances of “keeping it.”
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 Differences Among States Are a Plus, Not a Bug, in Our System appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Left-wing activists in Montana have officially launched their signature collection effort to enshrine abortion into the state constitution.
The post Montana Activists Launch Effort to Enshrine Abortion in State Constitution appeared first on Breitbart.
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.
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.”
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.
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