Sunday Funnies

Well, if there ever was a week to generate memes, this was it, between Nike, pseudo-Spartacus,

Howe bad? This Bad.

Everything in this post is based on science! I’m reliably informed.

And of course

Mostly from PowerLine, and PA Pundits, and a few strays.

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SCOTUS is not the Super Legislature

And so the Congressional circus hearing on the Kavanaugh nomination is over. In due course, the committee will make its recommendation (to approve the nomination) and the Senate will vote (mostly om party lines) to consent to the nomination. And Brett Kavanaugh will become the newest Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

But what a circus it was. The Washington Examiner chimed in with some thoughts the other day. They’re worthwhile.

On Day Two of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, a number of Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee appeared to be sizing themselves up for black judicial robes.

If they weren’t doing that, they were lamenting the fact that someone of their own great wisdom couldn’t sit on the Supreme Court — the highest legislature in the land, they seem to think — and rule the country from their lifetime position.

Democrats placed themselves one after another into Kavanaugh’s seat on the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals to second-guess rulings, which is only natural for those who think the courts are there to make policy decisions. Ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., complained that Kavanaugh had, in an opinion on D.C. gun control laws, deemed that semi-automatic rifles are in “common use” and thus not, under Supreme Court definition, something the D.C. government could ban. Feinstein was weirdly outraged about this characterization, given that private citizens in the U.S. own something on the order of 50 or 60 million such rifles, and possibly more.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., complained that Kavanaugh had dissented from an emergency ruling that ended up rushing a minor migrant girl in the care of the U.S. government off to get an abortion without parental consent. Durbin also complained about Kavanaugh’s interpretation of a complicated Supreme Court case that had deemed illegal immigrant workers unable to vote in workplace unionization elections.

For Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., the problem was that Kavanaugh had written an opinion favoring two mergers in the grocery and health insurance industries.

All these opinions about Kavanaugh’s rulings have one thing in common: They come from politicians who seem to think judging is a lot like what they do for a living. But judges don’t make policy, and the Supreme Court is not a super-legislature. That’s why a good judge who decides cases based on law and precedent will not like all the outcomes of the cases he hears.

And there is the real problem laid bare. For the Democrats (and the Republicans to a lesser extent) the Supreme Court has long since ceased being a court in the American meaning of the term at all. It has become a super-legislature to which the left appeals when they know the electoral cost of their desired legislation is too high.

They do not want an objective reading of the Constitution because most of what they want to do is both unconstitutional and unpopular with most of America. But the Court is respected enough to be obeyed, so far. But that is waning, the number of jokes I’ve heard in the last few years with the punchline, “But, it’s a tax”, indicates that there is a line that marks the end of that respect, and it is not far away. If it is crossed, we enter territory that is terra that is best left incognito. There may well be monsters there.

A large part of this has occurred because of the cowardice of the Legislative branch to say what they mean, and mean what they say, and only slightly less to the executive. They too are sworn to uphold the constitution, and so President Bush’s comment that he thought part of a bill he was signing was unconstitutional was an act of cowardice. It was his duty to veto that bill and say why not pass the burden to the courts.

And so President Trump has shown an unsuspected bravery here in appointing not one, but two constitutionalist justices who are wont to read the words in the constitution as meaning what they say. It’s about time, maybe the last chance, and it comes from a source not many of us would have expected.

“A Republic”, Ben Franklin said, “If you can keep it.” This is part of keeping it.

Greg Jones noted yesterday in The Spectator that three hard truths have emerged from the Trump Presidency.

If the first couple of years are any indication, Trump’s presidency will almost certainly go down in history as one of America’s most divisive and dramatic.

Long-term friendships and family bonds have been shattered, and the unrest is such that pundits are actually discussing the possibility of a civil war. It’s sadly not out of the question; the increasing violence of the radical left and the laughable comparisons to Nazi Germany from the Watergate-obsessed media are sowing discord rarely seen in American society.

Well, yeah, but I’m not sure it is really all that much worse than it was in the Obama Presidency. It is easy to forget how divisive and abusive things like the Obamacare fight really were. No, it’s not better now, exactly, except that our side is winning, maybe.

Lowering taxes does increase revenue. This debate is as old as politics itself, but thanks to Trump’s tax cut, the largest in more than three decades, it can finally be put to rest. The fruits of the legislation have been ripe indeed as companies repatriated nearly one-third of a trillion dollars in a mere six months following the tax cut and invested heavily in employee training and infrastructure.

But perhaps its greatest worth is ending the supply side vs. Keynesian debate once and for all.

As proof, consider that the federal government collected a record $1.3 trillion in income taxes through the first nine months of FY18, beating the previous record by $71 billion, which was set during the same period last year. And as the economy shows few signs of slowing down, these numbers may well continue to increase.

It’s true, of course, and Kennedy’s tax cuts did the same thing, but sadly, greed in politicians is everlasting, and so while we know there is still another example, there are still politicians who think the proper model is Hugo Chevez. And that is sad.

Racism is the left’s problem, not the right’s. Despite never-ending accusations of racism aimed at Trump by delusional Democrats and their public relations representatives in the mainstream media, minorities aren’t buying it.

Approval of the President among African Americans hit 36 percent in mid-August, up 17 percent from the same period in 2017. And Trump’s approval among Hispanics climbed an astonishing ten percentage points in a single month over the summer, even as the administration faced unprecedented criticism over its family separation policy.

If you want proof of this, first look around, then watch any video by Dr. Thomas Sowell, Candace Owens, or many other blacks who have escaped the plantation. Mind, in many ways the left is not racists, per se, they want to enslave us all, not just minorities. But together we can stop this nonsense.

The deep state is real. Despite the media’s obsessive and positive coverage of Robert Mueller’s “collusion” investigation, and their willful shooing aside of its numerous shortcomings and inconsistencies, the truth is slowly but surely coming out. And it appears Trump was right all along.

There can be little doubt that, given what we know now, federal agencies were harnessed to both excuse Hillary Clinton’s transgressions and impede Donald Trump’s Presidency.

No doubt about it, in the last two years it has moved from possible, but probably a conspiracy theory to a proven fact.

In fact, if we hadn’t elected Trump, our days as a Constitutional Republic would have been over. Oh, we would still had the vote and the attendant circuses, but it would have no longer mattered because the bureaucrats in Washington would have had all the power.

We elected Trump just in time, as a last ditch effort, and we may pull it off.

The Circus Comes to Town

Mark Wilson | Getty Images

So, everybody is talking about the Kavanaugh confirmation circus hearing, so I might as well chime in as well.

William Murchison in The American Spectator is on point.

[W]hat’s the point, really? Beyond political theater, that is.

The Kavanaugh smearing — I mean, for political science purposes, hearing — has naught to do with Senate inquiry into the fitness of Judge Brett Kavanaugh for service on the nation’s highest court.

The death of Sen. John McCain, rest his valiant soul, provides Republicans the security blanket his absence for health reasons might have denied them, given the partisan line-up: 50 Republicans, 49 Democrats.

Assuming all the Republicans show up and vote to confirm, that’s the ball game, regardless of whether red-state Democrats such as Heidi Heitkamp play to the home folks by supporting Kavanaugh.

What’s the point, really — the point of the shouts and protests and bad behavior in the hearing room? And of abrasive Democratic demands to adjourn the hearings then and there? What’s the point of Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar’s positing of vague, nameless threats to “Foundational elements of our government, including the rule of law…”? And, yes — may we know the point of Democratic yearnings for a chance to find a government document somewhere (out of thousands hitherto turned over) that might hold the decisive clue to Kavanaugh’s character?

As near as I can tell, there is no point, none at all, other to than to appease the base, and perhaps for some, to position themselves to run for president in 2020, which unless the bottom drops out, is likely a fool’s errand itself. And as for those documents, does anybody really think these cretins, who announced their opposition before Kavanaugh was nominated, have even looked at them? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

Threats, what threats? A key to all the posturing — not all of it senatorial — over the Kavanaugh nomination is abortion. It’s conventional to depict Kavanaugh as the fifth, and essential, vote to reverse Roe v. Wade and thus crumple up the charter of the pro-choice movement. Where people get this stuff isn’t clear: not from anything Kavanaugh has ever said; not from any realistic appraisal of how the court would get such a thing done without touching off another civil war. […]

So what goes on here? Nearly all Democrats depend for political sustenance on the money and votes of the anti-right to life cause. That’s what goes on here. When Planned Parenthood, and related activists, especially of feminist vintage, say, “Jump!,” you say, “How high?” That is, if you’re a Democratic senator. You don’t care about Judge Kavanaugh’s credentials. You care about the assorted activists, and their encouragers in the media, who glower over your shoulder: with you likely agree anyway, or you wouldn’t be a Democratic senator.

And there you have, at least a goodly share of it: Follow the money. The Democratic Party is owned, nearly lock, stock, and barrel by the abortion industry. And even the merest whiff of a threat to that funding sets off the crazies.

To a point, it’s bipartisan, there are groups that own the GOPe as well, like the defense contractors, and the Chamber of Commerce, which is why Trump’s approach to foreign policy, and immigration, which could actually make things better, encounters such resistance. c.f. John McCain.

Neither group has any interest in the people of the United States, other than in their tax money to fund their fantasies.

Scott Johnson at PowerLine has another connecting thought.

What are they up to? What are the stakes? If you stuck around for their statements, you could probably puzzle it out.

They want to shut us down. They want to control our thought. They want to muzzle our speech. They demand that we treat abortion as a sacrament. They want to shove their upside down view of the world down our throats. They seek to force their hands into our pockets and keep them there. They foment hatred and stigmatize us as racists — because we believe in equal treatment without regard to race. When it comes to limited government, they’d rather not. They promise an Orwellian future.

Yup, as always the left wants the people to shut up and do what they are told. Get back to work you serfs, if we want you to have something we’ll give it to you. What effrontery thinking you have rights, and opinions, anything at all to say about anything.

For his unusual understatement, President Trump gets the last word.

The Brett Kavanaugh hearings for the future Justice of the Supreme Court are truly a display of how mean, angry, and despicable the other side is. They will say anything, and are only looking to inflict pain and embarrassment to one of the most highly renowned jurists to ever appear before Congress. So sad to see!

The Week

Well, we haven’t made the UK look all that good this week (from the US perspective) but that’s not completely fair. From Fox News.

Fox also says that this chant thundered through the crowd.

Oh Tommy Tommy, Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Robinson

As it should and should be cheered to the echo by Americans

I think a pint might be in order.

Even in England

John Hinderaker from PowerLine comments:

The New York Post says that protesters “by the tens of thousands” staged a “massive” demonstration against President Trump today. Perhaps so. But what you see in the photo is Parliament Square. If there were tens of thousands, they must have been somewhere else.

 

.@POTUS reviews the troops with Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor, one of the few if not the only times in over 70yrs, she has done so with a head of state. pic.twitter.com/i379a7RNVo

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) July 13, 2018

We don’t do kittehs here, but all rules have exceptions

From PowerLine and elsewhere

POTUS, SCOTUS, and the Rule of Law

So tonight we’ll know who Trump’s second pick for the Supreme Court is. There is a list of twenty-five names if you’ve been comatose, and four of those are considered front-runners. They are Raymond Kethledge, Brett Kavanaugh, Thomas Hardiman, and Amy Coney Barrett. I’ve read a certain amount about each of them, and while my sentimental pick is Amy Coney Barrett, I don’t really care. They are, each and every one, an outstanding choice. None are really conservative, or liberal, all are originalist and textualist, which is as it should be.

Paul Mirengoff over at PowerLine says that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that two of them have fewer obvious problems in confirmation, and therefore he suggests either Kethledge or Hardiman. That is a valid opinion, it’s going to be a very noisy confirmation, and it would be very good to get it done by election day, and optimally by the Court’s next term, so what he thinks would be easier for him to ramrod through the Senate matters. It’s not the only consideration, but it is an important one, and with a field so bursting with talent, it matters.

McConnell reportedly believes that Barrett might encounter resistance from Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski because she is an outspoken social conservative who some observers believe may be more amenable than others on the short list to overturning Roe v. Wade.

Kavanaugh might present different challenges. His role in the George W. Bush administration and in the Ken Starr investigation has generated millions of pages of documents. Senate Democrats would demand to see every one them. This could stall the nomination, making it impossible to confirm Kavanaugh before the Supreme Court begins its next term and maybe before the mid-term elections.

So we’ll find out who the President wants tonight. We can already see what the left will bring to the battle: emotion and prejudice. Neither are valid. What is at stake here is the Republic, and the rule of law and all four of these eminent jurists have their heads on pretty straight.

Steve Chapman in Reason spoke to this point back in 2008.

One of the axioms of American democracy is that we are a government of laws, not of men. We are supposed to follow the requirements of our Constitution and statutes even when they yield results we don’t like—say, freeing a person who appears guilty.

In this format, it actually goes back to John Adams in the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, but in reality, it is enshrined in Magna Charta, and in King Alfred the Great’s charter. It is one of the main reasons why the United States and (so far) the United Kingdom have remained free and built the modern world.

It’s a lovely feeling, isn’t it, to know that while careers are at stake, we can trust the president to make an excellent choice?

In a related thought, as I was listening to the anguish last night from Britain at the way HMG is attempting to sell out Brexit over the heads of the people (more perhaps later in the week on this) it struck me, as it often does, how lucky we are to have President Trump, untoward Tweets and all. We have a president who understands how to negotiate, how to take the people into his confidence, and other things. But above all, we have a President who puts country before party. Who is quite obviously an American patriot, who puts America first, and after the Obama regime, it is so very refreshing. I hope (and pray) the British can find someone to put Britain First.