Politics, not qualifications, will decide the Gorsuch nomination

Commentary by James Shott

Senate Democrats are doing the Stanky Legg Two-step in order to dance away from confirming a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court who is a federal judge provably as devoted to following the U.S. Constitution and the body of federal law as any nominee in many years.

Judge Neil Gorsuch, whose record on the bench of the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals is as nearly perfect as one can hope to achieve, is precisely the type of judge the Founders had in mind when they wrote the Constitution, a man in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia, whose vacancy he has been nominated to fill.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gorsuch said his law clerks had compiled information about his ten years on the bench of the 10^th Circuit, which covers about 20 percent of the U.S. He has participated in more than 2,700 appeals, 97 percent of those cases were decided unanimously, and he was in the majority 99 percent of the time. How much more mainstream can one be?

His record clearly identifies him as a mainstream appellate judge, as has the American Bar Association, not an ideologue, or someone who plays favorites. Nevertheless, an exercise designed for confirming a qualified person to sit on the nation’s highest court has devolved into a political war.

U.S. law is a system of rules that govern behavior. Rules and laws must be followed and not following laws has penalties. In the U.S. laws are not static; they can be amended or repealed, but they must be amended or repealed through a specific process. However, some people – primarily liberal Americans – believe that this process may be circumvented by the rulings of activist judges when laws get in the way of their inclinations.

Gorsuch’s adherence to the law is the primary objection to his nomination, although some say it is also because the Republican majority in the Senate refused to take up the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for the seat Gorsuch is now nominated for.

This, too, points to a Democrat anomaly. A principle relating to this situation arose in the U.S. Senate in 1992 when then-Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who was chair of the Judiciary Committee, said on the Senate floor that filling Supreme Court vacancies “that would occur in the full throes of an election year,” must be held to a different standard. Citing “a majority of his predecessors,” Biden said that the president, George H.W. Bush, should delay naming a replacement, which would de-politicize the nomination, at least for a while.

In March of last year, “in the full throes of an election year,” President Barack Obama ignored the advice that Biden, who was then his Vice President, had offered on the matter years before and nominated Judge Garland. The Republican Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., however, liked Biden’s theory, and would not schedule hearings for Garland.

Democrats want judges that decide legal issues on whether their decisions fit the passions of the moment or have their preferred impact on the people, and therefore disapprove of the necessity to appoint judges that follow the Constitution and the law.

Minority Leader Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is upset with Republicans over the Merrick Garland issue, and will therefore not vote to confirm the highly qualified and squeaky-clean Gorsuch.

He spent 20 minutes on the Senate floor urging his fellow Democrats to oppose Trump’s nominee. Gorsuch, he said, “was unable to convince me he would be a mainstream justice who could rule free from the biases of politics and ideology.” And he said that Gorsuch “is someone who almost instinctively favors the powerful over the weak, corporations over Americans,” Schumer said. “He declined to answer question after question with any substance,” he said, referring to Gorsuch’s refusal to express his political beliefs or to prejudge issues that may come before the Court.

Others have equally irrelevant objections:

** Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Cal.: "As U.S. senators, we have an obligation to also examine a nominee's legal approach and ask whether he or she considers the impact of those decisions on our society and the daily lives of our people."

** "I cannot trust that President Trump is acting in the best interest of our country or our democracy and that I cannot support moving forward with his choice for the court," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

** Virginia Democrat and former vice presidential candidate Sen. Tim Kaine explained that, “After meeting with Judge Gorsuch and reviewing his testimony and past decisions, I’ve observed that he has repeatedly taken an activist approach to cases involving a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her health.” Kaine clearly does not understand judicial activism.

Senate Democrats threaten a filibuster to prevent a confirmation vote and ending the filibuster requires 60 votes. With 52 Republican senators, that will require the support of eight Democrats, and will be difficult to achieve.

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Following the lead of former Nevada Democrat Harry Reid when he was Majority Leader, Republicans can use the “nuclear option” to allow a simple majority vote to confirm Gorsuch. Majority Leader McConnell has pledged that one way or another, Gorsuch will be confirmed.

COLD WAR REVISITED WITH THE RUSSIANS

Cold War revisited with the Russians

A great hysteria has emerged from the cauldron of Democrats still lingering in Washington. Most liberals had their egos deflated after the November 2016 election. Reviving their idiosyncratic methodology, which requires them to deride conservatives, Democrats have latched on to a nonissue, Russian contact. Claiming Trump and his subordinates had backroom discussions with Russians to enable the President’s election liberals of the lowest denominator are making groundless accusations. This includes Trump’s campaign team covertly met with high ranking Russian officials then hid the facts of these contacts. Jeff Sessions, the newest Attorney General, is now under fire for withholding data from the nominating committee. Sessions explained in detail his two meetings with Russian officials which occurred long before Trump took office and he became the highest ranking legal officer in the nation. Nothing short of Trump’s head will satisfy their thirst for conservative blood. Trump needs to concentrate on the people’s work not the nonsense continually thrown in his path. The Russians may be coming or going, but Trump is staying. Mark Davis, MD onandoffthehill.com  platomd@gmail.com  Manager of Best Copy Editing, Proofreading and Writing.

We need to learn to appreciate what America’s Founders gave us

Commentary by James Shott

Donald Trump was unofficially declared the winner of the 2016 presidential election early in the morning on November 9, and that victory survived the slow vote counting in some states, and challenges of voting irregularities. And last Monday that victory was finally verified when the electors of the 50 states and the District of Columbia that comprise the Electoral College gathered in their respective districts to officially cast their votes.

The integrity of the Electoral College survived both the illegal and legal efforts of Trump opponents to bribe, intimidate or otherwise persuade Trump electors to not vote for him, with unexpected results: While a few electors did not vote as they were instructed by the voters they represented, the vast majority did as they should have done. And Trump won this contest, too. Of the 538 electors only seven of them did not vote according to the voting in their districts. Five of the “faithless” electors withheld their vote from Hillary Clinton, while only two withheld their vote from Trump.

Democrats and liberals have been crazy since the election, and now want the Electoral College to go the way of those thousands of missing emails from Clinton’s private server, since she won the popular vote by 2.1 percent, but lost the electoral vote. However, the Electoral College did precisely what it was designed to do; it did not “misfire,” as the Clinton camp charges.

The opinions of scholars and other commentators uphold the value of the Electoral College. For example, The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky explains: “In creating the basic architecture of the American government, the Founders struggled to satisfy each state’s demand for greater representation while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule.”

In addition to those concerns, “as students of ancient history, the Founders feared the destructive passions of direct democracy, and as recent subjects of an overreaching monarch, they equally feared the rule of an elite unresponsive to the will of the people. The Electoral College was a compromise, neither fully democratic nor aristocratic,” writes Jarrett Stepman, an editor for The Daily Signal.

The University of Buffalo’s James Campbell explains that had the popular vote been the mechanism that chose the president, candidates would have focused their campaigns on the population centers, ignoring the rest of the country. And he further suggests that then voters probably would have behaved differently, too. Many in the less populated areas, for example, might have stayed home, feeling that their vote didn’t matter, effectively disenfranchising them.

California essentially provided Clinton the 2.8 million votes that comprised her popular vote victory. The Electoral College protected the interests of those millions of Americans who do not live in the population centers.

The other side of that argument is that under the Electoral College system, candidates would limit their campaigns to the swing states, producing a similar effect as the popular vote method does. However, swing states change from time to time, whereas population centers do not.

Looking at the final version of the electoral map, Clinton’s strength lay primarily in the coastal areas and a few spots in the middle, while Trump’s support covered a tall and wide swath across the area between the coasts. Clinton’s ballot power came primarily from New York, California and Chicago, the population centers, while the huge area of the country that went for Trump covers primarily small towns/cities and sparsely populated areas, the heartland of America.

And that is the value of the Electoral College system: it protects Americans in flyover country from the tyranny of big city dwellers, who generally have a much different set of values and desires. And remember that the president’s job is to act in the best interests of the entire country, not to satisfy the desires of a voting majority or of the big cities.

What if instead of the football team that scores the most points winning the game, the winner is the team that gained the most yards? That is a similar situation to electing a president: The number of votes – like the number of yards – is not necessarily the most important factor.

So don't do away with the Electoral College, as the spurned Clinton voters want. It provides the balance of national interests the Founders understood was necessary.

One change that makes sense is to stop having electors that must get together in a formal ceremony to vote. Since the results are known when the vote count is done, this step is unnecessary; it serves no useful purpose, costs money, delays the finalizing of the voter’s decision, and provides losing parties an opportunity for harmful mischief, as we witnessed.

And while the aggrieved are creating mischief, they are also building false hopes, which will cause even more grief when their mischief fails to change the results of the election, and generates bad feelings that will endure long after the election is over.

These days some group wants to change virtually everything about America that made it the unqualified success it has been since it was founded.

Stop trying to change it and instead enjoy its abundant benefits.

Cross-posted from Observations

The left turns to thuggish-ness and indoctrination to sell its poison

 Commentary by James Shott

College campuses, once a garden where divergent ideas flourished, are more and more becoming known for their ideological imbalance and even outright censorship of ideas, and a recent incident demonstrates just how weed infested that once diverse garden has become.

The Daily Caller online reported that conservative writer Ben Shapiro had been scheduled to speak on behalf of Young Americans for Freedom, a registered student organization at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA). Following complaints by some students, the institution’s president, William Covino, tried to cancel the appearance, favoring an event with a broader set of topics, but the Young Americans group persisted, and the president backed down. The event was funded by the CSULA student government organization.

As the audience tried to enter the auditorium for the program last Thursday, liberal protesters had linked arms in a human chain to block entry, and video of the protesters shows a lot of pushing and jostling at the entrance, including the pushing and shoving of police officers, and epithets such as “racists” and “white supremacists” were reportedly shouted at those wanting to attend the event.

People eventually did enter the auditorium, but only by being escorted to a back door by police, and eventually that entrance also was blocked by protesters. During the speech, someone pulled a fire alarm, although Shapiro and the audience ignored it.

What topic would produce such a radical reaction? Was he to talk about doing away with student loans, or education grants, or argue against free tuition? No, nothing so inflammatory as that. What got the mob all up in arms was the idea that an institution of higher education would allow a speech titled, “When Diversity Becomes a Problem.” Apparently, diversity is only a problem when it involves ideas that some students don’t like.

Unsurprisingly, getting out of the auditorium afterward was as hard as getting in, as the diversity protesters also blocked the doors after the event ended. Shapiro and his audience had to wait to leave until police could clear demonstrators, allowing them safe exit.

This episode is both a symptom of the poison that has spread throughout the country, and particularly on campuses, a growing idea that anyone offended by anything outside of their narrow set of beliefs is entitled to some make-good effort when their delicate feelings are injured, but it also is a measuring stick showing how far down the road to ruin America has traveled.

Looking at why we are so far down that road leads to the conclusion that it is largely through deliberate efforts to subvert two of our most basic and most important societal functions: educating the younger generation and providing information to the people. These critical areas are largely keys to the heart and soul of America, as they are vehicles through which its ideals and traditions are communicated to the populace, and give people the information they need to discharge the duties of citizenship responsibly.

In America today the traditional family, that once was where children learned the basics of life and how to function in a complex society, has been heavily damaged through social liberalism, so that many or most children now receive their basic education and cultural footing not in the home, but in public schools. And public K-12 education and higher education have changed dramatically over recent decades. Today, the federal government has a great degree of influence over public education, replacing control and oversight by states and localities, and leftist indoctrination has crept into textbooks, curricula and faculty, with far too little resistance.

Thus, when kids graduate from high school and enter college, if they weren’t already indoctrinated with liberal drivel, they are heavily at risk of falling victim to it on campus. The criminal behavior of leftist students at CSULA, suffering under the false belief that what they think is more important than what others think, supports that idea.

And news journalists and the organizations they work for, too frequently manage the news to serve an ideological purpose, providing not the pure information the people need and depend upon, but a slanted version designed to strengthen a set of liberal ideals.

Some good news on this front comes from recent opinion polls. A Gallup poll showed that six in ten Americans have little or no confidence that the national media report the news fully, accurately and fairly, and a survey by the Pew Research Center showed that 65 percent believe that the news media have a negative effect on the nation.

Such insecure behavior has at its foundation the knowledge that if Americans are provided with the pure information they deserve, they would reject the left’s narrow and destructive ideas, which is why they must employ dishonesty and indoctrination.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

America is increasingly a nation of delicate personalities, self-made victims and government dependents. These trends serve the needs of those who prefer socialism to freedom, our liberal fellow citizens. To see where this leads, look at Venezuela.

Cross-posted from Observations

 Commentary by James Shott

Colleges are infected with liberal foolishness to a higher degree than ever before. It seems the most popular activity in colleges today is being offended. Many students are offended by such dastardly threats as contrary opinions, and males standing up while talking to seated females. This is the nature of things at too many campuses these days.

“Trigger warnings” are required to warn students of potentially “troubling class material,” and “microaggressions,” which are words and phrases that offend someone, even when the speaker intended no offense, are a really big deal.

A Harvard Law School dean has compared microaggressions to sexual assault and violence, and the University of California lists things that are just too horrible to say, including threatening phrases, like "everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough" and "America is the land of opportunity." Rough stuff, that.

Such terrifying things slip by traditional, older Americans unnoticed, but cripple younger folk. These hallmarks of modern American liberalism have grown from the seeds that sprouted the belief that feelings are more important than anything, and that everyone deserves a trophy for merely showing up.

Americans who graduated from the school of hard knocks are amazed and bemused at the hypersensitive nature of our once-tough culture, and wonder how this could have occurred. Our education system, at all levels, played a big role.

As these changes occurred they were accompanied by, and perhaps abetted by, the liberalization of the college professoriate.

The Daily Signal published an article discussing a UCLA Higher Education Research Institute study that documents the increase in liberal professors. “During the past quarter-century, academia has seen a nearly 20-percent jump in the number of professors who identify as liberal,” writes Natalie Johnson. “That increase has created a lopsided ideological spread in higher education, with liberal professors now outpacing their conservative counterparts by a ratio of roughly 5 to 1.”

In 1990 only about 41 percent of professors identified themselves as “liberal” or “far-left,” but by 2014 the percentage had risen to 60. Over that same period those identifying as “conservative” or “far-right” fell from 18 to 13 percent.

In 2011 liberal profs reached their highest point at 63 percent, while conservatives reached a high of only 22 percent, in 1993. At the other end, liberals never fell below the 41 percent mark, while conservatives were as low as 12 percent in 2011.

In a perfect world this political imbalance should make little difference. After all, what difference does it make if your math professor is a Democrat, Republican, unaffiliated with a party, a Trotsky-ite or whatever? Math is math, right? Biology, music theory, graphic arts, English grammar and most other subjects are not political in nature. And in an atmosphere where professors merely guide students in learning their subject, it wouldn’t matter. But what if for some strange reason it became trendy for professors to inject a bit of political proselytization into their lectures and lessons?

But isn’t secretly and deliberately indoctrinating young people with ideological attitudes while they think they are only studying how to write a proper sentence, determine a standard deviation, or studying the War Between the States fundamentally dishonest, you may ask? Yes, it certainly is. But bias isn’t always deliberate, according to Matthew Woessner, an associate professor of political science and public policy at Penn State Harrisburg.

He said this ideological imbalance “raises critical questions of whether students are getting a balanced education—not because there’s some conspiracy to block out conservative ideas, but merely because the people who are teaching are either not familiar with or don’t embrace conservative ideas.” Even when faculty attempt to present an issue in a balanced and impartial manner, he said, personal biases naturally bleed into material.

The UCLA study reflects that this liberal tilt among professors has had an effect, with data from 2009 showing that the number of students who said their political views were “liberal” or “far left” grew by 9.2 percent from their freshman year to their senior year.

Daniel Klein, a professor of economics at George Mason University, cast more of a cloud on the collegiate atmosphere, opining that the reported 5-to-1 ratio is “not very meaningful” because the terms “liberal” and “conservative” have become “exceedingly troubled.” Instead, Klein suggested that the imbalance between faculty members who vote Democratic compared with those who vote Republican is closer to 9-to-1 or even 10-to-1.

Ideally, there would be relative equality of liberal and conservative ideology among faculty. Woessner, however, suggests that equal numbers of liberal and conservative professors really isn’t necessary for higher education to work well, so long as a sufficient number of faculty hold different views “to create a space for enough conservative ideas that students are exposed at least nominally to these other perspectives,” he said.

It is critical for colleges and universities to work much harder to even out the ideological divide if higher education is to regain credibility for delivering a balanced education. No group should want that more than the professors themselves, who should prefer a reputation of integrity as opposed to one of having a finger on the scale.

Cross-posted from Observations

Things confirmed and learned at the first Democrat candidate debate

Most people seem to think Hillary Clinton won the first Democrat debate, and she did put forth a good showing, even if the atmosphere and comments from her opponents were decidedly soft and friendly. The other debaters did not challenge the top-rated candidate.

However, fans of Bernie Sanders disagree, believing the Vermont senator was the best of the five. Sanders is the only candidate who admits to being a socialist, a “democratic socialist” to be precise, although he found little opposition to his socialist views from the rest of the group, illustrating that the entire Democrat field shares his affection for socialist dogma.

Reviewing the comments during the debate it was confirmed – if, indeed, there was ever any question – that the Democrat Party is the party of exchanging free stuff for votes, their largess made possible by those of us who pay taxes. There was so little disagreement among the debaters that some observers think that the other four candidates have realized that Clinton will be the nominee, and they seemed to be campaigning not for the nomination, but for a position in the Clinton2 administration.

The “party of diversity” is far less diverse than the Republicans, who have 1 woman, 1 black man, 2 candidates of Cuban descent, 1 of Asian descent, some older candidates and some young candidates. The Democrats, the party of people who are around 70 years old, have 1 older white woman and 2 older white men, and two middle-aged white guys.

Based on questions, comments and crowd response, Democrats do not object to Clinton putting national security at risk by shunning the government email communications system employees are expected to use in favor of her own private system for official government communications. In order to defend the former Secretary of State one must ignore that her decision to do so was “inconsistent with long-established policies and practices under the Federal Records Act and NARA regulations governing all federal agencies,” according to congressional testimony of Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives. To the Democrats, it is merely a distraction from the business of getting Clinton the nomination.

Reports say that “journalists” in the pressroom exploded in applause and laughter when Sanders said the American people are sick and tired of hearing about the “damned emails!”

It was confirmed that the Democrat candidates and audience members believe the deaths of four Americans in the Benghazi assault are not important. It’s old news; just another distraction. Apparently those of us who think Benghazi is important, or ISIS, or the economy, the national debt, or the millions of potential workers driven out of the workforce by the lousy job market created by the slowest recovery in 80 years are clearly on the wrong track. Climate change, gun control and giving away free stuff are clearly at the top of their agenda. They seem not to understand that nothing is free.

They all think pretty much alike, and believe that any diversion from the “party line” is wrong, whereas the Republican candidates have divergent views about important issues. Their diversity causes a great deal of consternation and disagreement among GOP supporters and conservatives, but reflects the sense of our Founding Fathers that robust debate of contrary ideas is a foundational principal of good government.

Sanders scored points with the statement that the United States “should not be the country that has … more wealth and income inequality than any other country.” Factcheck.org found, however, that the U.S. ranks 42nd in income inequality, according to the World Bank, and placed 16th out of 46 nations in the share of wealth held by the richest one percent of the nation’s citizens. Sanders’ vision of a socialist utopia cannot stand up against the glare of facts.

Clinton gave an interesting answer to the question, “Which enemy that you’ve made during your political career are you most proud of?” In addition to the NRA, the drug companies, the health insurance companies, and the Iranians, she said that the Republicans were her proudest enemy. Interesting that she compares insurance companies, drug companies, the NRA and Republicans to the Iranians.

Jim Webb, by contrast – the former Marine Corps First Lieutenant and Navy Secretary – said he was most proud of having dispatched “the enemy soldier that threw the grenade that wounded me” during the Viet Nam War. While killing that enemy soldier, Webb saved a fellow Marine, and won the Navy Cross. Clearly, his answer wasn’t as appropriate as Clinton’s.

She told viewers that what separates her from being a third term of the Obama presidency is that she is a woman, and mentioned being a woman as a good reason to elect her more than once during the debate. Remembering what happened after the manic drive to elect the first African-American president, we should be very wary of electing someone president because that person is a woman.

That is especially true of one who thinks she deserves to be elected, and cites her gender as the only reason she won’t be a continuation of the disastrous Obama presidency.

How defective Republican Congressional leadership threatens liberty

Wednesday morning on Bloomberg Business TV’s “The Pulse,” host Francine Lacqua brought up the situation in the House of Representatives following House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, announcing his retirement later this month. Program contributor Hans Nichols opined that a group of 40-50 Republicans that he characterized as saying no to everything, that doesn’t want to lead, and wants to shut things down, has plagued Mr. Boehner, whereas by contrast Mr. Boehner and the leadership were trying to “govern.” Although Mr. Nichols didn’t use a term to describe that group, “radical” is a term commonly used.

What Mr. Nichols misses is that the idea of “governing” employed by Speaker Boehner and his Senate counterpart, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is all too similar to that of the former Democrat leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Cal., and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who led with such foresight that the Democrats lost control of the Congress.

Too many Americans seem not to understand that political parties evolved from differences in philosophies, which introduce a diversity of ideas into the governing process. (They like diversity, except in politics, where it is truly needed.) Thus, there is a better chance of finding good solutions to problems, when solutions are needed. And when no proposal can gather enough support among the diverse membership of the two houses, they enact no legislation.

What the “radical” faction of the Republican majority did is exactly what the Founders envisioned the Legislative Branch doing: introducing and advocating the things they believe are needed, and opposing those that they believe are not needed, or may even be harmful. Making legislation was never intended to be a smooth and easy process. As Otto von Bismarck said, “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.”

The idea is that competing political philosophies propose ideas to address a problem and try to find areas of agreement on important and appropriate issues. Virtually every Republican or Democrat proposal contains elements that the opposing party will not agree with, but they may well – and should – contain elements that both sides can agree on. Those are what should become law, and the rest should be tabled or trashed.

This approach means that both sides get less than they want, but the country gets solutions that gather enough bi-partisan support to be approved, which likely means that a true bi-partisan solution has a fair chance of working.

It is not uncommon for Congressional Democrats to introduce legislation that they know Republicans will oppose, which then allows them to accuse the GOP of partisanship and obstructing progress for political purposes. The compliant media then engages its corruption squad to give the Democrat position nearly exclusive support.

It is a political process, after all. But which side is the more actively political: the one that opposes measures it believes are bad, or the one that designs measures to fail?

What if one party offers proposals that the other party, or a significant number of its members, can find no common ground in. What it Party A offers a measure for Party B to have his left hand amputated? Does Party B compromise on losing only a finger or two?

The “radicals” in the Republican Party oppose measures they see as antithetical to the founding principles. These are the kinds of proposals they say “No” to, and do not support.

When the Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress, their supporters rightly expected to see changes in the way Congress worked.  They wanted strong conservative actions from their elected representatives, in contrast to the liberal measures brought forth by the former Democrat majority.

Instead, Congressional Republican leaders have sat around while the president ignored the role and duties of the Congress to put his agenda in place. The “radical” Republicans strongly object to this failure of the legislative branch to protect its authority and do its duty. So should we all.

The Republican leadership cowers in a corner when there is pressure to bring a measure to a vote, knowing that even if the measure passes, the president will veto it. “If we know he will veto it, why waste the time it will take to pass it?” Here’s why: Because if Republicans don’t vote on and pass a measure, then they have taken no official position. The Congressional leadership will have decided the issue by inaction rather than forcing the president to take a public position by vetoing legislation passed by Congress. The majority party will have given the president an easy victory, and surrendered the right to complain about the results. This is not leadership.

The Republicans that Mr. Nichols seemingly holds in such disdain are working to uphold fundamental American political values, which is what the voters that delivered the Republicans the majority expect. If advocating fundamental principles has now become a radical activity, it demonstrates just how far the political left has moved from the principles that allowed America to grow into the most successful and free nation in history.

We must restore the founding values to the federal government: smaller, less expensive, non-wasteful, responsive, constitutional government, a government that truly serves the people who pay for it.

Trump seeks the nomination, and it was a “good week for Obama”

Commentary by James Shott

Perhaps everyone should have known that Donald Trump threatening to enter the GOP nomination race would have produced so much negativity. First reactions were that he really wouldn’t follow through, wouldn’t take the steps necessary to become a candidate. But as he completed them, one after another, the criticisms only increased.

Love him or hate him (as most seem to) Mr. Trump – “The Donald,” as he is affectionately known – is a force to be reckoned with.

A poll by the Morning Consult online asked people “what they think of when they hear Trump’s name, [and] a majority of registered voters came up with a negative word. ‘Arrogant,’ ‘ego’ or ‘egomaniac’ and ‘greed’ or ‘greedy’ were the most common negative responses.” “Few offered purely positive descriptors; ‘good’ or ‘great’ only came up 14 times among the 1,306 respondents,” less than 1 percent.

With his “no holds barred” approach to life, Donald Trump upsets lots of folks, including fellow Republican candidates. He comes from a different world than the politicians do. In his world, you say what needs to be said, and it may not be the kind and gentle talk that the media and those in politics expect.

In politics you must be careful to never alienate a potential voter, and these days you must not offend anyone. Ever. Therefore, the comments in his candidacy announcement about illegal aliens coming across the southern border really set off a firestorm of criticism.

The Trump style may be blunt and not politically correct, but his points are valid: Our border is a sieve leaking who knows who into the country, among which we know are some criminals, rapists, and drug cartel members, and probably a few terrorists. Although a little later in those comments he said plainly that the bad folks aren’t just from Mexico, they are also from Central America and South America, but they do enter the U.S. from Mexico.

Donald Trump has been wildly successful in business, and you don’t accomplish the things he has accomplished without knowing what needs to be done, and doing it. That no-nonsense approach and plain talk is missing in many or most of our current and potential elected leaders on all sides, although they do have political experience, which he does not have. Political inexperience and his blunt talk likely mean he will not win the Republican nomination.

But you can count on Donald Trump to talk about things many other candidates would rather not talk about, and do so in a manner does not comport with the accepted style. This will provide the media with a great opportunity to distract the public by trying to trap Republican candidates into either defending or attacking him personally, and making the campaign all about Trump, instead of the important issues facing the country.

We have already seen some Republicans fall into that trap, and more of them likely will. Republicans are known for their proclivity to kill each other and themselves off, making the Democrats’ job much easier.

While Donald Trump is being skewered for something he said and how he said it, President Barack Obama is being celebrated for things he had nothing to do with, and for things of questionable value to the United States. 

“Wow! Is President Obama on a roll or what!”  trumpeted columnist Ann McFeatters. The country is just “watching in amazement at what seems like a kaleidoscope of change.” 

She believes that Mr. Obama has reaped benefits for some things he had nothing to do with, like:
A. “In rapid succession, we have seen the Supreme Court rule in favor of samesex [sic] marriage equality, and uphold the legality [of the] Affordable Care Act.” Advocates are unconcerned with the constitutional gymnastics needed to arrive at those faulty decisions.
B. “One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, the Confederate battle flag, symbolic of racism and rebellion against the United States, is finally ceasing to be flown over public buildings.” She must not know that 57 percent of Americans in a recent poll see the battle flag as a symbol of history, not of racism.

And she gives credit for things of questionable value:
A. “And, now, relations with Cuba! ... For the first time since 1961 Cuba will have a U.S. embassy,” as if giving Cuba this gift really means anything without some substantive results for both the U.S. and Cuba. On the other hand, Americans may at last be able to legally buy Cuban cigars.
B. “Obama is trying hard to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons. It may not be possible, but naysayers to his plan simply do not understand realpolitik in today’s complicated world.” Realpolitik must mean giving up sanctions on Iran and at the same time not blocking that rogue nation from producing nuclear weapons, as well as speeding up the process for the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Obama’s legacy is apparently at the top of his priority list, as so many of his actions demonstrate. But just getting an agreement with Iran to burnish his image is a dangerous and foolish way to do that.

Cross-posted from Observations

Choking off suffocating activities like “Operation Choke Point”

The federal government’s efforts to restrict the freedoms Americans have enjoyed for more than 200 years have gotten so preposterous recently that the most of these efforts leave people incredulously saying, “Seriously?”

To wit: The Environmental Protection Agency recently went after people who burn wood to heat their homes. Trying to destroy the coal and oil industries isn’t enough, now the EPA thinks wood – an inexpensive, renewable energy source – which is the mainstay of rural homes and of some of the nation’s poorest residents, is harmful, and the agency has banned the sale of 80 percent of wood-burning stoves.

And now the nation’s most out-of-control agency has charcoal grills in its crosshairs, and has funded a project at the University of California with $15,000 of taxpayer money to study the emissions from grease drippings when people indulge in that dangerous activity, outdoor cooking.

First it was toilets, because they used too much water; then inexpensive, safe incandescent light bulbs, which have been replaced with CFLs that contain mercury and emit ultraviolet radiation; and now wood stoves and potentially outdoor grilling. There are too many people on the payroll at the EPA with too much time on their hands.

These efforts are necessary, we are told, to keep the world from grinding to a halt because of … well, some horrible disaster related to climate change, or global warming, or whatever the alarmists are now calling their imagined cataclysm. 

Each time some new target becomes public we ask, “Can it get any worse?” Unfortunately, the answer always is, “Yes.”

The EPA is not the only arm of the government harming the good citizens they exist to serve. The Department of Justice has jumped blindly onto that bandwagon with a program even more intolerable than the EPA’s misadventures called Operation Choke Point, which looks way too much like something you would find in other less-free countries, or perhaps used by mob bosses in Chicago.

Operation Choke Point is a method of preventing perfectly legal businesses from being able to operate satisfactorily, not by pointing to a law these businesses have broken or a shady practice they have indulged in, or by going through legislative channels to have what they do declared illegal, as our concept of the rule of law demands, but by underhandedly strong-arming financial institutions with whom these business have accounts, and “convincing” them to not do business with these merchants any longer.

Businesses such as ammunition sales, escort services, on-line gambling, so-called “racist materials,” third party payment processors, payday lenders, and online lenders, have been targeted simply because someone in the DOJ or higher up in the administration doesn’t like them. Some are perhaps undesirable, but all are legal.

What happens is that the DOJ and bank regulators pressure banks and other third-party payment processors to cease providing or deny banking services to industries the government alleges pose a “reputation risk” to the bank or service provider.

Last May, Todd Zywicki wrote in The Washington Post the “initiative has been shrouded in secrecy, but now it is starting to come to light  … and since then it has been difficult to discover details about it … Without an ability to process payments, the businesses – especially online vendors — cannot survive.”

The irony is that while the DOJ and bank regulators are choking off financial services to perfectly legal industries, they are also encouraging banks to provide banking services to illegal marijuana sales.

When you have people in high offices that are more interested in serving some ideological god than they are in serving the American people, and when that ideological god demands the improper use of government force against legal activities, something must be done to stop it.

And last week, the U.S. Senate started down that road. The Senate Budget Committee approved an amendment to end Operation Choke Point, and according to The Daily Signal, Committee member Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, will offer an amendment this week to the Senate’s budget proposal to defund the DOJ program. 

Sen. Crapo last year commented that Operation Choke Point “has morphed into an attempt to shut down entire industries of law-abiding and legitimate merchants.” And he sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder expressing “strong concerns” about the program. Unsurprisingly, the Justice Department, declared that it has “no interest in pursuing or discouraging lawful conduct.”

And the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will question FDIC officials about the agency’s involvement in Operation Choke Point, and hopes to find out who was involved, how high up it goes, and whether anyone has been held accountable. 

The answer to that last item will likely be “No.” It is virtually unheard of for federal employees to pay a price for their malfeasance. It is also likely we will not learn the any names associated with this outrageous offense.

Cutting funding for the EPA, the DOJ, and any/every other agency that over-reaches is an appropriate mechanism to redress the wrongs they commit against the American people. The government spends far too much money, and cutting spending where it is being used wrongly or unconstitutionally ought to be celebrated by every freedom loving American.

The left wants to shut down opposition, rather than debate issues

Commentary by James Shott

Not everyone on the left is intolerant of contrary ideas, or afraid of open debate of ideas, or so convinced of their own superiority that they deem civil and informed debate unnecessary, but many of them are.

Back in 2010, thirty liberal organizations, including the Center for Media Justice, the Rainbow Push Coalition, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Association of Latino Independent Producers, and Common Cause, among others, supported an effort to have the Federal Communications Commission clamp down on so-called “hate speech” on talk radio, the internet, and the cable television news networks. The imagined “hate speech” resulted from support by those media outlets for Arizona’s illegal immigration bill, which those trying to limit the debate characterized as “one of the harshest pieces of anti-Latino legislation in this country’s history.”

The law, SB 1070, passed in 2010 by the Arizona legislature and signed into law by the governor, created state penalties relating to immigration law enforcement, and included trespassing, harboring and transporting illegal immigrants, alien registration documents, employer sanctions, and human smuggling among the things Arizona declared to be state issues.

Given the negligence of the federal government to provide border security, and the harm to residents of border states like Arizona from drug dealers and other thugs and hoodlums who easily move back and forth across the border, passing laws to protect residents against the harm that often results from illegal immigration might be the right thing to do. 

Unless you are one of the intolerant liberals. They basically said that if you support that law, you are a hater and a racist, and being unwilling or unable to discuss the issue in a civil manner, they resorted to: “we say we are right, and that’s the end of the story.”

And then there is Robert Kennedy, Jr. who wants organizations that disagree with the idea that human activities are responsible for global warming or climate change to lose their business charter.

As Mr. Kennedy wrote for The Huffington Post last October, “corporations which deliberately, purposefully, maliciously and systematically sponsor climate lies should be given the death penalty. This can be accomplished through an existing legal proceeding known as ‘charter revocation.’ State Attorneys General can invoke this remedy whenever corporations put their profit-making before the ‘public welfare.’"

He wants to intimidate those organizations – which include both corporations and think tanks – to discourage them from acting in their own best interest or advocating policies they think are beneficial, and/or opposing those policies that would harm them or that they believe are harmful. But not all organizations; just the ones that support or oppose the “wrong things.” 

Coal mining companies would be punished for pointing out the fraud committed by global warming activists, like some of the International Panelon Climate Change scientists, and for challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s water quality standards that are so severe that Evian bottled water and apple juice would be ruled unsafe, but organizations that followed the politically correct line would be left alone. 

Mr. Kennedy is one of the many who is willing to punish Americans who disagree with his ideological mania, so long as it helps him further his narrow ideological goals, and nothing must stand in the way. 

He has forgotten, or perhaps never learned, that freedom of speech is guaranteed to enable Americans to say things that may be unpopular with some or many, and specifically to protect political dissent. But disagreement, debate and discussion of political issues, whether by individuals or by organizations like corporations and think tanks, form the path to informing the public, thus yielding a greater possibility for sensible policymaking and better government.

Mr. Kennedy, like many leftists, is more than happy to force his ideas on the rest of us, and it matters not whether the truth is on his side, or whether a majority agrees with him.

It isn’t difficult to picture him regaling himself in the court of some tin-pot dictator, like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, gleefully ordering “off with their heads” for those who have the temerity to indulge in independent thought.

Steven F. Hayward, inaugural scholar in conservative thought and philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, says of the left’s tendency to shut down dissent, “These inclinations to rule certain issues out of bounds by denouncing dissenters with moral calumny rather than argument is not a sign of health in liberalism.  It is a sign of ideological senescence.”

Perhaps liberalism is old and tired, which would explain why its adherents gave up that term in favor of “progressivism.” But whatever they call their ideology, the left cannot persuade others to their way of thinking through the power and logic of their ideas, and is why they have to resort to shutting down and shutting up their opponents. 

We see today in America a situation where groups that advocate some idea or action have employed exaggeration, deception and other nefarious means to gain far more influence than their causes warrant. This is wrong on several levels, but more than just wrong, it is a threat to our liberty.

Cross-posted from Observations

Honor and integrity take a back seat to politics in Austin, Texas

Commentary by James Shott

In April 2013 in Travis County, Texas, where the capital city of Austin is located, District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg was arrested for drunk driving. Her blood alcohol level was almost three times the legal limit (.08 is the threshold, and her level was .23), and there was an open bottle of vodka in her car, in violation of the state’s open container law.

Dash cam and police station videos, which are available for viewing on YouTube, show Ms. Lehmberg failing sobriety testing and taunting arresting officers and even threatening them at the police station. One of the officers described action that took place off camera in which she kicked doors and acted violently. Her bad behavior also included rudeness, being uncooperative, and pointing her finger like a gun. And eventually she had to be placed in a restraining device. Reports say her behavior could have earned her a felony charge for assaulting a police officer.

Ms. Lehmberg pleaded guilty to drunk driving and served about half of a 45-day sentence, but said she would not resign from her position of trust as DA.

Ms. Lehmberg has been battling alcoholism for some time, according to reports. Alcoholism does not automatically preclude a person from being a public servant, even a prosecutor. However, someone whose alcoholism leads to an arrest for driving drunk, a crime that too often ends in the death of innocent citizens, followed by the poor behavior demonstrated by Ms. Lehmberg, has proved himself or herself to be unsuitable for the role of prosecutor. Put in the best possible light, it both looks bad and smells bad: You simply cannot have a confessed drunk driver as a prosecutor.

Among those who think Ms. Lehmberg should have stepped down is Texas Governor Rick Perry, although he has no official authority over county DAs.

Following her refusal to step down, Gov. Perry said he would cut $7.5 million in state money from Ms. Lehmberg’s Public Integrity Unit unless she resigned, which he later did through a line item veto. By law, the governor has veto authority.

For acting in the best interest of the people of Travis County, a jury decided it was an abuse of his power, and indicted Gov. Perry on two felony counts.

An Austin attorney filed a lawsuit to remove Ms. Lehmberg from office, but last December a judge ruled that she could keep her job. That attorney has now filed an ethics complaint against her, citing alleged unreported campaign contributions Ms. Lehmberg used to defend herself in the removal lawsuit totaling $227,000.

As it turns out, the Public Integrity Unit has a history of politically motivated prosecutions that failed for lack of substance. Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson was indicted, but never tried, and Republican Congressman Tom Delay was indicted, tried, convicted and then had his conviction overturned on appeal for lack of him having actually committed a crime. It appears the Unit is more concerned with generating political results favoring the Democrat Party than it is with integrity. Sen. Hutchinson may run for governor, and Mr. Delay had earned the hatred of Democrats through his activities. It is not a stretch to use the term “corrupt” in describing at least some of the Unit’s actions.

It’s interesting that the source of the action against Republican Gov. Perry arises from the very office that he defunded because its head, the convicted and jailed drunk driver Rosemary Lehmberg, refused to do the right thing and resign. You see, Travis County, Texas, is heavily Democrat, and Ms. Lehmberg is a Democrat.

Liberal law professor Jonathan Turley had this to say about the indictment: “In this case, the special prosecutor [who answers to Ms. Lehmberg] seemed to pound hard to get these square facts into these round holes. A bit too hard for such a case.” And Democrat political advisor David Axelrod termed the indictment “sketchy.”

Mary Anne Wiley, General Counsel for Gov. Perry, said in a statement following the indictment: “The veto in question was made in accordance with the veto authority afforded to every governor under the Texas Constitution. We will continue to aggressively defend the governor’s lawful and constitutional action, and believe we will ultimately prevail.”

The grand jury process is secret and entirely controlled by the prosecution, and the accused has no opportunity to argue charges made by the prosecution, and in fact is not even present during the process. Which is the reason for the now-famous observation that through the grand jury process you “can indict a ham sandwich.” It is instructive that the staunchest defenders of the grand jury system are prosecutors. Gov. Perry would no doubt prefer to replace the sour grapes on his ham sandwich with Swiss cheese.

During the arrest procedure, Ms. Lehmberg repeatedly accused police of ruining her career by arresting her for being three-times-the-legal-limit drunk behind the wheel. Then, her Public Integrity Unit goes after a sitting governor in a way that results in the Governor having an indictment and a mug shot on his record. Whose career was really damaged by a third party? And who benefits from this episode of gutter politics by Democrats?

Cross-posted from Observations

More crazy stuff from the world of “You can’t make this stuff up!”

 Commentary by James Shott

Everyone says something dumb once in a while, some more than others, of course, but some people in prominent positions have a real knack for it, and others seem to think they can say whatever they want to, and people will believe them. Worse, though, is that for some of these people, like politicians, there are millions of folks who do believe what they say, no matter how weird it may be, how unlikely to happen it is, or how simply unbelievable it is.

In the most recent example, you may remember that IRS official Lois Lerner was called to testify by three Congressional committees looking into the abuse of IRS power in the intimidation of conservative applicants for 501(c)(3) status, and after making a lengthy statement declaring her innocence then availed herself of the 5th Amendment protections against self-incrimination, and then refused to answer any questions. She apparently forgot that as a hired government worker, she is accountable for her actions to the American people.

The committees had requested Ms. Lerner’s emails months ago, but, Shazam!, the IRS announced the other day that, darn the luck, those emails have just disappeared.

Adding considerable interest to this much-too-convenient occurrence is that Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen testified in March that Lois Lerner’s emails were archived.

Oh, well. Maybe the NSA or Edward Snowden has copies.

Just a couple of days earlier, Hillary Clinton, told the world that when hubby Bill finished his eight years as President of the United States they were broke and in debt.

That fails both the smell test and the laugh test. Is it possible? Yes, but doubtful.

The American taxpayers paid President Clinton $200,000 a year in wages, $1.6 million over his eight years in the White House. Presidents may have to pay for some of their normal expenses, like food, clothes, and such, but there are several expense accounts that enter into the picture, so it is difficult to imagine exhausting $1.6 million in only eight years with all the help presidents get through expense accounts.

On the other hand, given the liberal penchant for spending money they don’t have, it is entirely possible they really were broke and in debt, and if that is true, maybe we ought to remember that if Mrs. Clinton decides to seek the presidency.

Outlandish statements sometimes serve to cover up misdeeds of government employees and burnish the bona fides of politicos. Sometimes it’s difficult to make up things that are more ridiculous than what reality gives us, as we have just seen, while other times making stuff up is precisely what people do to mislead the public for some narrow political end, as the next example shows.

“Since the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, CT, there have been at least 74 school shootings in America.” So states the Website for “Everytown for Gun Safety,” which explains, “Everytown is a movement of Americans working together to end gun violence and build safer communities.”

If you are wondering why you haven’t heard about 74 more Sandy Hooks or Newtowns, it’s because there haven’t been 74 of them. In fact, CNN investigated these claims, and found that only 15 percent of them – 11 incidents – involved “a minor or adult actively shooting inside or near a school.”

Politifact “quotes a former member of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit as stating ‘[t]here is an ocean of difference’ between what average people consider a school shooting and various episodes in the Everytown accounting.”

Stipulated: Even one shooting in a school is one too many. But the dishonest use of data to try to scare people is intolerable.

Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) shows that the annual number of school-associated violent deaths, and the annual number of homicides and suicides of students ages 5-18 at school, were lower during the 2010-2011 school year than at any time in the last 20 years. And, in fact, they had been reduced by almost half.

Five of the 74 incidents involved accidental non-fatal shootings; and two other incidents were apparent acts of self-defense. Again, any shooting at a school, other than in self-defense or to stop someone from hurting or killing people, is unacceptable. But that is a very different matter than when someone intentionally shoots and kills or wounds kids.

It appears the anti-gun fanatics will stop at nothing, even creating fairy tales to try to persuade people to their point of view. In doing so, however, they prove that their point of view is unworthy of public attention.

“Everytown” is the brainchild of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and unfortunately contains the same absurdities as Mr. Bloomberg’s other manias, like his war on sodas.

If making things illegal actually worked, we’d have no drug problems, robberies, murders or rapes. If limiting the right of law-abiding citizens to own weapons as powerful as those criminals possess made any sense, people would support it.

Does anything say, “Come on in” to a criminal more succinctly than posting a “No Guns Allowed” sign on the door?

Gun violence is the result of the desire to commit violence, not the gun.

Cross-posted from Observations