Senator Elizabeth Warren supports court-packing. That’s really embarrassing for a Harvard law professor. Even a night-school wonder like me, knows better.
The problem with the Supreme Court is not that it’s too small. The court is too large now, to get things done expeditiously and correctly: too many egos to sooth, too many agendas to accommodate, too many compromises requiring hair-splitting decisions.
The problem is not that the court is full of justices eager to overturn precedent. If a case was wrongly decided, it should be overturned in the interest of justice.
The problem is not that the court veers away from widely held public opinion. Pandering to public opinion is Congress’ job. And it’s mostly on volatile social issues where the Court has caused the worst problems.
The problem is Marbury v. Madison, a case decided fewer than 20 years after the Constitution was adopted. That’s the case in which the Supreme Court gave itself the power to throw out legislation the Court felt was incompatible with the Constitution. The court’s power-grab flatly contradicts the entire premise of a “enumerated powers” Constitution. That decision set up the Court to make historically and horrifically bad law: Dred Scott (struck down the Missouri Compromise which allowed slavery to spread to more states), Plessy v. Fergussn (upheld racial segregation); Korematsu (upheld concentration camps for American citizens); Roe v. Wade (upheld abortion on demand); Obergefell v. Hodges (struck down gay marriage laws nationwide).
Adding more justices to a run-away court won’t rein it in from ruling on social issues. A constitutional amendment is required. And if that doesn’t curb their enthusiasm, perhaps removal from office? A Harvard law professor should understand that.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is paying his tab at a Korean restaurant. As his card is running, Avery LIBRELLE walks in. Waiting for his card, BERG desperately tries to make himself as small as possible. But it doesn’t work.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Oh, shiiiiiiiiitake mushrooms made the perfect kimchi for the Galbi, and how the hey, Avery…
LIBRELLE: You had Covid?
BERG: Not that it’s any of your business, but yeah, I did. The original version.
LIBRELLE: So you were a negligent person who allowed yourself to get sick, endangering everyone around you.
BERG: So you think people who catch Covid bear some culplability…
LIBRELLE: It shows they don’t care about the poeple around them, and have depraved indifference to the suffering of those around you.
BERG: And that’s after having all the vaccines and boosters, and apparently being able to go through hard-to-get tests like they are a bunch of gang-bangers burning through ammo.
LIBRELLE: …
BERG: So – what do you have to say?
LIBRELLE: The Governor is contributing to herd immunity, and is a hero.
It’s a glib little saying – and it’s governed so much of my life, it’s hard to even express it. So much of what I am, I am because I basically decided I wanted to *be* that thing, and acted like it until it worked. (See also: this blog, the NARN, my career).
And that’s a good thing.
And it’s never a bigger deal than this time of year.
I make no bones about the fact that I had a childhood Beaver Cleaver would have envied. I had a pretty intact family, no major dysfunctions – I have no complaints. The Christmas holiday was always a joyful memory; family, food, tradition…love. I wish everyone were as lucky.
Then came adult life.
Without going into a whole lot of details, when my kids were little, there were certain stressors in life that made the holidays…complex. Anxious, stressful, parlous, sometimes outright tests of emotional and physical endurance.
And I resolved to push the happiness, the *cheer*, almost to an absurd extent – because I was hanging on to that shred of joy, happiness and family by my fingernails. And in its own way, it – “Faking” ample joy for Christmas – worked.
I can’t speak for my kids – they’re adults, with their own lives and tradtions of their own, now – but the holidays as a general rule *aren’t* white-knuckle anxiety rides. They are good, not just because I *will them* to not be bad, but because the attitude seems to help give me the mental headspace to focus on the holiday rather than all the angst – and to actually enjoy this time of year.
This flies in the face of the modern obsession with “being authentic” to how one feels – a trait with some upsides, but a solipsistic overtone that boils down to “it’s better to be ‘real’ than to be happy”. Thing is, while one can not create one’s own reality, one can change one’s perception of and reaction to that reality; sometimes, the best way to do that is to just do it.
And modern society goes cynical about the holidays on the drop of a pin. I’ve related in the past my disgust for media (principally NPR) pounding a drumbeat of cynical, post-modern, anxious misery about the holidays – the stress, the anxiety, having to put up with all those *relatives* who act, and see the world, differently than you…
Modern society and its obsessions can get stuffed.
I hope you all have a joyful, meaningful holiday – whatever that means to you.
Minneapolis is, as of yesterday, at 93 homicides for 2021 so far.
MINNEAPOLIS: The city has had 93 homicides in 2021. The highest “recorded” number is 96 in 1995. The city of St. Paul broke its homicide record this year.
“But Mitch – why are you an Originalist? Don’t think mankind has evolved in the past 240-odd years?”
Sure – backward.
Case in point: an op-ed in the Boston Glob over the weekend, advocating a rewrite of the first two Amendments of the Constitution. The piece, by one Mary Anne Franks, identified by the Glob as “Distinguished Scholar Chair at the University of Miami School of Law and the author of “The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech“, opens as follows:
As legal texts go, neither of the two amendments is a model of clarity or precision. More important, both are deeply flawed in their respective conceptualizations of some of the most important rights of a democratic society: the freedom of expression and religion and the right of self-defense.
Well – she’s not wrong per se.
Sanford Levinson’s seminal Yale Law Review article, “The Embarassing Second Amendent” – an article that led, circuitously but certainly over the course of two decades to the Heller and McDonald decisions, makes the same point; the language of the Second Amendment is a wee bit anachronistic, although its legal, historical and textual roots are crystal clear to any point of view not addled by 60 years of activist, revisionist jurisprudence largely tied to risible overextension of the Millerdecision.
It’s about there that the good points end. I’ll give Franks points for honesty, at least; her op-ed encapsulates the modern Left’s notion that rights are bestowed by a benevolent government, not endowed us by our creator.
It’s a notion that is, in fact, worth going to war over; ideally, a war of words, if we can keep it that way.
Re the First Amendment:
Every person has the right to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and petition of the government for redress of grievances, consistent with the rights of others to the same and subject to responsibility for abuses. All conflicts of such rights shall be resolved in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons.
Both the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion shall be respected by the government. The government may not single out any religion for interference or endorsement, nor may it force any person to accept or adhere to any religious belief or practice.
Perhaps it’s a sign of social perspicacity that Franks feels the need to enshrine the concept that rights – which are, by definition, “consistent with the rights of others to the same and subject to responsibility of abuses” – apply to everyone, or that they shall “be respected by the government”.
But I don’t even want to think about how the Federal judiciary would torture the meaning of “the princinple of equality and dignity of all persons”, after a few decades of abuse by today’s “woke” blue legal academy.
And the Second?:
All people have the right to bodily autonomy consistent with the right of other people to the same, including the right to defend themselves against unlawful force and the right of self-determination in reproductive matters. The government shall take reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of the public as a whole.
The inalienable right to defend one’s self, family, property, community and freedom – to preserve the “bodily autonomy” not of people as individuals (subject to government’s “reasonable measures”, naturally) would become a carrier germ for abortion.
I’ll await Professor Franks’s attempt to get a majority of Congress and the legislatures and governors of 37 states to jam this down.
(My rewrite of the 2nd Amendment, by the way? It’s simple: drop the dependent clause, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the preservation of a free state”. Cut it down to “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. Simple, elegant, and exactly the opposite of Professor Franks’s intent, which is all I really care about).
In Medieval times, the monks in the monastery received offerings freely given by church-goers and the monks distributed that money to the poor, called alms. Naturally, the smell of free money brought hordes with their hands out. Monasteries invented a new job title – Almoner – for the guy who decided which poor got the money. With limited funds to distribute but unlimited demand for funds, the Almoner was charged with separating the Deserving Poor from the Undeserving Poor.
In modern times, we’ve lost that distinction. We’ve mostly replaced charity with welfare given regardless of worthiness, effort, or responsibility. “Make bad choices, get free money” provides no incentive to repent, to change, to grow in wisdom and maturity to become a self-sufficient and productive member of society.
The Salvation Army is a religion formed 150 years ago in the back streets of London to minister to the wretched poor. Its motto is “Blood and Fire,” recalling the Blood of Christ and the Fire of the Holy Spirit. They’re always one of the first on-scene after a natural disaster, bring comfort to those who have lost everything. I’m not a member of their church but for years, I’ve made a point of donating at the red kettles to the point that I won’t shop Target during the holy days because Target banned the Salvation Army whereas Wal-Mart welcomed them.
But this year, the Salvation Army is struggling. They’ve insulted their donor base. The big-shots forgot my donation was not payment on a debt I owed to them, my donation was a gift freely given. There aren’t as many people ringing bells outside stores and I’m not as eager to give money to an outfit that preaches woke liberalism instead of traditional Christianity. The leadership blames the misunderstanding on a statement by its Social Justice Committee which right-wing media have blown out of context. I ask: “Why does a Christian religion so fundamental its motto is “Blood and Fire” even HAVE a Social Justice Committee?” They’ve lost their way. They forgot their core mission, their reason for existing, the reason people give them money.
Disband the committee, renew your organizational focus on saving souls and alleviating suffering, and the donors will come back. Leave social justice to the politicians.
Joe Doakes
I interviewed a Salvation Army rep on my show a few weeks ago. He, like a lot of rank and file in the Army, pointed out that the Army is not partisan, and has to deal with social issues as they come to them; that being said, a lot of rank and file in the Salvation Army were un-thrilled by the way the natonal HQ handled things.
I still support the Salvation Army, and I hope. you do as well.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is trying out an ethiopian restaurant. Avery LIBRELLE, wearing two masks and a face shield, walks in, and notices BERG before he can hide his face behind a menu.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Oh, fuuuu…get about finding better Ethiopian food than…
LIBRELLE: All Republicans are at fault for supporting the overthrow of the Constitution! January 6 proves it!
And continuing to try to tar every Repubican with it is the lowest form of social gaslighting.
LIBRELLE: Hah. You’re the only gaslighter, whatever you actually say, because you don’t really know what you thjink, but I know what Republicans really think, deep down in their cold little hearts. You are a gaslighter, even if you don’t. know or believe it.
BERG: Probably not. Anyway – Trump’s not the president, and the GOP needs to figure out its way forward. Which is, of course, why Big Left is gaslighting Republicans – it’s what domestic abusers do.
But I can see why Democrats keep turning every possible conversation back to January 6. Then, you don’t have to talk about inflation, the national debt, the crime, homelessnes and blight waves sweeping Blue cities, the supply chain, the incoherence of the Administration’s Covid policy, the collapse of the immigration system, the Democrat debacle in Virginia, a mid-term that shows promise to be a wave election, the fact that the top of your ticket is a senile man and a woman who most Americans wouldn’t trust to fill out a bowling scorecard, Latino voters deserting the Democrats by the biggest numbers since 2000, and the most Afro-Americans since 1960, parents deserting and rebelling against “woke” school boards…
LIBRELLE: (Plugs ears, turns and runs) Januaryi 6! January 6! Rethuglicon white supremacist Nazis! January 6…! (Runs out door)
WAITER: Er, what was his…er, her…er, what was the problem?
BERG: Gas, I suspect.
WAITER: I hope…it gets help.
BERG: Don’t we all.
WAITER: Hey – isn’t this one of those “made up conversations“? What is it called in English?
BERG: Satire?
WAITER: What a wonderful invention. What a wonderful country.
2020: San Francisco mayor London Breed pushes policies softer on crime, vagrancy and social decay than even her predecessors. She literally raised not a finger – at best – against the decriminalization of shoplifting less than $900 worth of merchandise, leading to the gutting of much San Francisco retail and roaming gangs of smash and grab flash mobs of looters.
Mark my words: Law Enforcement in San Francisco, under pfogressive leadership, will be about as subtle and libertarian as Ted Nugent leading a band of saracens…
…although I suspect it’ll have little effect on crime.
If China moves on Taiwan and Russia moves on Ukraine, we should move on Cuba. Think of the money to be made selling beachfront property to condo developers like . . . Donald Trump.
Hey, as long as The Big Guy gets his 10%, what’s the problem?
Joe Doakes
hey, there’s an invasion that would make American leftists sit up and pay attention.
Let’s say you had a couple bumps at a bar – like, say, 8 to 12 of them. And then decided to drive home.
You were carrying a gun, and a car full of loose ammunition.
You drove down the freeway, until you didn’t – you swerved off the road, rolled your car, scattering ammunition all over the place. You had to be extricated, in no condition for a field sobriety test. When you finally took a whiz test at the hospital, you tested at a .13 BAC – 50% above the legal limit,and a level that indicates you were likely at a .17 during the accident itself.
I’m referring of course to Henco Sheriff Dave Hutchinson.
Or course. you wouldn’t. At the very least, the County Attorney would put you through a legal wringer, and make sure you settled with charges that involved serious time in jail.
So – is it just county employee mutual backscratching?
Maybe.
Now ask yourself – would Rich Stanek, the previous Sheriff and the last elected Republican of any kind in Henco, have gotten the same treatment?
Remember how the media covered his adult son’s behavior. before you answer that.
Oh, yeah – the media. The only media actually covering this story are the conservative alternative media here in MInnesota:
A friend of the blog, from (this is an important to the story) Saint Paul, emails:
A couple who currently rents on my block are looking to move. Not that unusual. Renting isn’t typically a long term goal of professionals. They want to move out of the neighborhood versus buying in the neighborhood. Again, not unusual. People move up, have their dream home preferences. They are like typical woke liberals with their various signs about being welcoming, #resist, etc. They proudly voted for rent control. They proudly give money, food to the homeless and believe the homeless belong on our lawns. We don’t agree on everything politics, but they are neighborly, so I shrug off the differences. Until I had an interesting conversation. They are looking for elsewhere because it is too chaotic here. There are too many renters and more are moving in. There is too much change. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better. OK. But, do they see how their votes made this happen? Of course not. I know I may be accused of being too optimistic here. But, maybe when people who voted for this move away, we’ll have more power to vote for things that will actually improve things again.
As we’ve seen on policy after policy after policy, the left seems to think:
There is no such thing as unintended consequences
They’ll affect other people if they happen.
Many of them moved to Edina, Roseville and Bloomington about the time they had the epiphany – utterly unrelated to the inevitable effects of their policies, naturally – described above.
Part of it is that most of the companies I want to boycott over recent transgressions, I shopped shopping at years ago over previous ones.
Example: I stopped patronizing Pepsi, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut back in the ’90s, when they were donating big bank to gun control groups. Dick’s Sporting Goods became traef to me when they pulled “modern sporting rifles” from their shelves.
There is no proof that Ivermectin does anything for Covid. None at all. And when I say ‘none,’ I mean there is some, more than we’re prepared to admit, so we simply deny any proof exists.
That’s not proof either. Everybody knows you can’t trust those dark-skinned savages to count correctly. It’s not as if they invented a new number or something.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is looking for a new heat gun at a hardware store when Kirk THUNT, used car salesman and chairman of The Arne Carlson Project, an anti-Trump organization based in Forest Lake, walks around the corner.
THUNT: Merg.
BERG: Er…hi ,Kirk…
THUNT: You routinely refuse to condemn Donald Trump for trying to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when he was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.
BERG: I condemn, and condemned, the riot, the “storming” of the Capitol, and anyone who thought they could overtake the Constitutional process by force. All the talk about killing the Vice President is just baked wind; the Secret Service would have leveled anyone who tried. The electoral commission was alarmed – justifiably – but they finished their job. Democracy was never in danger, and everyone involved is in a world of legal hurt. The federal criminal justice system is doing what it does.
THUNT: The January 6 Commission just learned that Chief of Staff Meadows has text messages proving Trump was involved.
BERG: Maybe they do.
THUNT: Maybe? So you support the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.
BERG: The commission is an investigation – of sorts. Findings are not a conclusion. I’m not going to pretend I know enough to draw a conclusion, even if my conclusion matters to anyone. Let the investigation run its course.
THUNT: Huh. Let it run its course? So you’re right there behind the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.
BERG: Again, no. I am saying I believe the left has glommed onto it as a way of deflecting, eternally, away from their many very deliberate attempts to undercut out democracy, and the riots that they supported from 2015 to 2021.
THUNT: Deflection? So – you are a big fan of the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.
BERG: I’m pretty sure I said exactly the opposite, several times. My “crime” with you seems to be the fact that I haven’t wet myself with outrage over Trump, with regard to this episode or any other during his administration. I was a Trump non-fan back when you were watching The Apprentice. I’m intellectually honest about the things he did right and wrong, but if you’re looking for…
…on cue from me, you’ve got the wrong guy .
THUNT: So you dismiss concerns about the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.
BERG: For the fourth time in 90 seconds – no. I do think Big Left uses January 6 the same way a certain European socialist leader used this episode. But we’ve got a whole new set of problems to deal with, as a nation and, frankly, as a Republican.
THUNT: So you don’t think the GOP is forever rendered toxic by its association with Trump, meaning you support the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when he was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.
BERG: Er, Kirk? I’ve just explained that every single point you make is bulls**t. And yet every time you take a breath, you tell me I support the…what is it you say?
THUNT: You are a hypocritical supporter of the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.
BERG: And again, I am not.
THUNT: Denial means you are an enabler of the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.
BERG: That’s false.
THUNT: Disagreement means you are a supporter the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.
BERG: Once you got on the green, you only had to use your putter twice, right?
THUNT: Nonsensical responses mean you support the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.
BERG: Look. The heat gun I’m looking for.
THUNT: Using heat guns means you support the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.
I remember the way my kids would be all giddy, giggly and happy, running down the stairs to check out the presents on Christmas morning.
It’s the closest thing I can think of to how “progressives” sound when a natural disaster hits a red state.
Also – remember “weather isn’t climate!” – but only until it happens in a state where the Senators don’t hitch themselves to Climate Change as a policy driver.
With that in mind – prayers for the people who wound up on the wrong end of a bunch of tornados in Kentucky over the weekend.
If only there were some way society could assume responsibility for protecting the public from violent criminals, some group of armed public servants sworn to uphold the law so that private citizens don’t have to.
Joe Doakes
Of course, the “good guy with a gun“ angle got buried so deeply, it’s a good thing the fact didn’t need oxygen.
You’ll never get our opinion class to admit it, but it was the good guy with the gun that saved the situation.
Carjacking comes to Lynden Hills – the leafy, upper-upper-middle class part of Minneapolis that adjoins Edina.
Via KARE11:
Catch the bit starting at 1:23?
…but we have to address whatever the greater problems are…that have brought about such system unrest. So my biggest hope is that enough of a light gets shined on this that we all start working toward some real substantive change.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and presume, given the language and the “white guilt”-addled neighborhood, that she’s not talking about ending “catch and release” and “bail reform” for habitual violent offenders?
Stockholm Syndrome is the psychological phemenon of people becoming attached to their hostage-takers.
Minneapolis Syndrome is one step beyond – where you blame yourself for the fact that they attacked you in the first place.
Is it because they’re listening to the science, accepting that Covid is a highly mutable virus that will be with us pretty much forever (in forms that are more contagious and less lethal over time)?
Or is it because mid-terms are looking that bad in this very purple state?
