June 2018 Archives

And now they're reaping the whirlwind. Remember this from 2013?

Weakening the filibuster weakened the institution of the Senate and strengthened the Presidency, regardless of which party holds the majority in the chamber. It was a short-sighted decision by Harry Reid and the Democrats, taken for partisan advantage, and the Republicans doubled-down in 2017. De-escalation would would require the parties to trust each other, but that's impossible in the present political climate.

I personally think America would be better off with a stronger, more active, less risk-adverse Congress. The omnibus spending bills, partisan oversight committees, and delegation of lawmaking powers to the executive bureaucracy are all dangerous, and can generally traced back to the 17th Amendment which established the popular election of Senators. There's no panacea, but repealing the 17th Amendment would be a good start at fixing the current mess in the Senate.

As much as leftists decry originalism, they should be careful what they wish for: they'd really hate a right-wing "living Constitutionalist".

But Barnett made another point that's worth thinking about here: What if right-leaning jurists listened to their critics on the left, and adopted a "living Constitution" approach instead of relying on what the Framers understood the text to mean? As Barnett asks: "Why would you possibly want a nonoriginalist 'living constitutionalist' conservative judge or justice who can bend the meaning of the text to make it evolve to conform to conservative political principles and ends? However much you disagree with it, wouldn't you rather a conservative justice consider himself constrained by the text of the Constitution like, say, the Emoluments Clause?"

Reynolds speculates about new individual rights and government limitations a right-wing "living Constitutionalist" might find/create, and it's a pretty persuasive argument for originalism.

This table from Open Secrets showing union contributions pretty much explains why liberals and Democrats are mad about Janus v. AFSCME.

As President F.D.R. warned us, public sector unions are "unthinkable and intolerable".

In another 5-4 decision, SCOTUS ruled this morning that members of public employee unions can't be forced to pay for political speech. These kinds of decisions are exactly why many people voted for Trump instead of Hillary.

In 1977, when public sector unions were getting established, the high court said teachers and other public employees may not be forced to pay full union dues if some of the money went for political contributions. But the justices upheld the lesser fair share fees on the theory that all of the employees benefited from a union contract and its grievance procedures.

But today's more conservative court disagreed and said employees have a right not to give any support to a union. These payments were described as a form of "compelled speech" which violates the 1st Amendment.

The anti-union National Right to Work Foundation, which funded the challenge, predicted the ruling would free more than 5 million public employees from supporting their unions.

For the unions, which traditionally support Democrats, the ruling will mean an immediate loss of some funding and a gradual erosion in their membership. Union officials fear that an unknown number of employees will quit paying dues if doing so is entirely optional.

An organization that takes your money by force as a condition of employment is inherently unjust. Voluntary associations of all kinds -- unions, governments, churches, corporations, clubs -- should be protected, but no one should be forced to join or fund something against their will. This is liberty 101.

How stupid do they think we are? Just like Jim Comey's "exoneration" of Hillary Clinton, the FBI Inspector General's report overflows with findings of criminality and then proclaims that there's nothing to see here. What's the deal? Why bother documenting over 500 pages of damning evidence just to withhold judgement?

"[W]e did not have confidence that Strzok's decision was free from bias." Delicately put. After reading some of the violently anti-Trump effusions the two exchanged, you might find your confidence that their behavior was "free from bias" shaken as well. Try this:

Page: "[Trump's] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!"

Strzok: "No. No he won't. We'll stop it."

This shocking exchange has rightly been front and center in the cataract of commentary that has been disgorged about the IG report over the last few days. It is just one of the scores of examples of what Andrew McCarthy crisply described as the "ceaseless stream of anti-Trump bile" adduced in the report--adduced, and then half swept under the rug in a forest of anodyne verbiage.

"We'll stop it."

Who is "we"? Not Peter Strzok and Lisa Page as individuals. It's the collective or institutional "we": "We, that is the FBI, will stop Donald Trump from becoming president of the United States."

Even more egregious, that damning exchange was redacted from earlier transcripts provided to Congress. Why? Because revealing it endangers national security? Um, no. It doesn't take a genius to connect the dots here.

Listen up government employees: the American people respect your service to our country, but you're not our masters. You work for us. You're free to vote for anyone you want, but you must not use your public offices to undermine democracy.

I'd love for Bill Clinton to elaborate on what you used to be able to "do to somebody against their will"!

Former President Bill Clinton suggested the "norms have changed" in society for what "you can do to somebody against their will" in response to a question about former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken's resignation from Congress following sexual harassment allegations.

"I think the norms have really changed in terms of, what you can do to somebody against their will, how much you can crowd their space, make them miserable at work," Clinton told PBS Newshour in an interview that aired Thursday.

I especially love Clinton's use of the non-gendered "their".

Sharyl Attkisson has a brilliant recasting of the "Russia investigation" as if it were an attempted bank robbery and the government decided to investigate the bank instead of the robbers, and then didn't even bother to prevent the robbery.

Once upon a time, the FBI said some thugs planned to rob a bank in town. Thugs are always looking to rob banks. They try all the time. But at this particular time, the FBI was hyper-focused on potential bank robberies in this particular town.

The best way to prevent the robbery -- which is the goal, after all -- would be for the FBI to alert all the banks in town. "Be on high alert for suspicious activity," the FBI could tell the banks. "Report anything suspicious to us. We don't want you to get robbed."

Instead, in this fractured fairytale, the FBI followed an oddly less effective, more time-consuming, costlier approach. It focused on just one bank. And, strangely, it picked the bank that was least likely to be robbed because nobody thought it would ever get elected president -- excuse me, I mean, because it had almost no cash on hand. (Why would robbers want to rob the bank with no cash?)

Just go read the whole thing.