That influence came with a certain price. Over the years, Kennedy has been denounced by every major faction in American politics. In conservative circles, for example, he has been keelhauled as a reckless judicial activist who “invented” a right to gay marriage. Liberals, meanwhile, have burned him in effigy as the unwitting mouthpiece for corporate oligarchs thanks to his majority opinion in the Citizens United case. And among libertarians, Kennedy has been damned as the fair-weather federalist who torpedoed the rights of local medical marijuana users in favor of a federal drug control scheme. Libertarians will also point out that Kennedy joined the majority opinion that unleashed the forces of eminent domain abuse in Kelo v. City of New London (2005).
To say the least, Kennedy’s jurisprudence defies easy categorization. Legal scholars will be arguing about it for a long time to come….In short, thanks to Kennedy’s retirement, all hell is about to break loose.
But when it comes to our spoiled, entitled left’s whining, whinging, childish mewling over the retirement of Anthony Kennedy – the worst I’ve heard since election night?
Well…
Literally in tears. Haven’t felt this hopeless in a long time. With Justice Kennedy leaving, we now have two options as Americans: get fitted for your Nazi uniform or report directly to your death camp. How do you fight the darkness without light? My spark is going out. #SCOTUS
And, added Rasmussen, 31 percent believe “it’s likely that the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years.”
The new polling evidence of fear in the country over political division follows the harassment of three top Trump aides, including spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, ordered out of a southern Virginia restaurant, and senior adviser Stephen Miller whose condo drew protests from liberals.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy will retire from the highest U.S. court, giving President Donald Trump another chance to fundamentally reshape the top of the judiciary.
Anthony Kennedy is retiring.
This is yuge.
The culture war is about to get a *lot* hotter.
While I’ve been a Trump non-fan for thirty years, I said before the 2016 election that if he nominated *one* good conservative SCOTUS justice, his time in office would be well spent. He’s got a shot at two, now. Little as I care for Trump, I might actually start getting just a little tired of winning after all. But I’ll get my second wind, fear not.
Barring a Democrat sweep of the Presidency and Senate in 2020, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is going to die sitting in her seat. And given the influence of Chicago democrats on capital hill, perhaps even beyond.
To: Represenative Tim Walz
From: Mitch Berg, Ornery Peasant
Re: Sell Sell Sell
Rep. Walz,
You’re running in a primary this fall against a dog’s breakfast of people who, notwithstanding your attempt to re-paint yourself as a “progressive”, are far, far to your left.
To your credit, you’ve taken that “re-painting” pretty seriously:
Rep. Walz, burning whatever cred he may have had with gun owners by french-kissing “Moms Want Action” in 2016.
But your fellow DFLers prefer their “Democratic Socialism” neat. No ice.
For years, I’ve heard my Democrat friends chanting “Ronald Reagan wouldn’t get endorsed by today’s GOP” – with the premise being Reagan was “too centrist” for today’s GOP . It’s a perfectly plausible claim, if you have no idea about the history of the GOP; go and google “A Time For Choosing”, the full hour-long speech, if you need proof; it’d fit in at any Tea Party meeting in the past decade. If anything, Reagan would still scare the DC establishment; George Will was deeply unhappy with Reagan’s performance, and we know what George has been up to lately.
So no – Reagan would *not* have trouble in today’s GOP, or at least the part of the party that swept the elections in 2010 and 2014.
But Paul Wellstone and Hubert Humphrey would get laughed out of today’s Democratic Party. Of that, there can be no doubt.
“I am deeply disappointed that this ruling gives legitimacy to discrimination and Islamophobia,” he said. “America holds a unique place in the world as a nation of immigrants. Unlike some other countries, we welcome refugees, asylum seekers, and dreamers fleeing war and instability in other parts of the world. America is and must remain the ‘land of the free’ where the family escaping persecution in North Korea or civil war in Syria can seek shelter and thrive.”
Just what Minnesota needs – an AG who believes the law means what he says it means.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is mowing his lawn. He stops to clear some crud from around the blades as Avery LIBRELLE slowly walks up behind him, picking up a flattened pop cup from the sidewalk. LIBRELLE gets behind BERG and throws it at him. It catches the air and planes away from BERG, who notices the sound of it flopping to the ground.
LIBRELLE: Merg! Get the hell out of public!
BERG: (Shakes head wearily) Hey, Avery. What, now?
BERG: I’m mowing my lawn. On my own property. Why so violent?
LIBRELLE: Oh, yeah? What about when the Tea Partiers yelled at us progressives during the Town Hall meetings in 2009?
BERG: Individuals expressed anger – but not violence – at events intended to be public dialogues. No GOP leadership called for violence against the opposition…
That means American civilians own nearly 100 times as many firearms as the U.S. military and nearly 400 times as many as law enforcement.
Let’s do the math: there are 8,000 homicides a year, divided among 400 million guns. That means roughly one gun out of 50,000 is used in a homicide per year (assuming each gun is used once, which is far from true.
Amerian guns are actually safer, crime-wise, than American citizens are.
State representative Ilhan Omar has yet to complete her first term in the Minnesota legislature, where she has accomplished approximately nothing of substance, though she has now secured the DFL endorsement to succeed Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison in Congress. In the brief Weekly Standard article “The anti-Israel seat,” I conclude with observations related to Omar’s frank hatred of Israel. She doesn’t sugarcoat it. She calls Israel an “apartheid regime.”
That is a defamatory falsehood with a shabby provenance. In Omar’s case, it is something more than an impulsive comment in a recent tweet. It represents her considered judgment. One can see it at work in her remarks on the floor of the Minnesota House in opposition to a bill (HF 400) opposing the boycott of Israel promoted by so-called BDS groups harking back to the “Zionism is racism” lie of the 1970’s.
And it’s fascinating how local media treats Omar’s anti-semitiem; exactly the same way as they treated her dubious family history.
It makes sense; their editors and producers know they’ll never get another invite to the Oceannarie if they do.
Minneapolis Gay Pride parade started late. Gays were blocked by Blacks, protesting a shooting. Their lives matter, you see, whereas gay lives . . . .
By adopting the tactic of hijacking other people’s events solely to generate publicity, BLM has turned into the Westboro Baptist Church. Their protests are no longer persuasive, they’re a nuisance and by blocking the gay parade, BLM is now a hate group.
Calling the Southern Poverty Law Center – update your list.
Joe Doakes
Watching intersectionals argue over public mindshare is a little like watching crabs fighting to get to the top of a bucket.
You’d think in a city the size of MInneapolis, there’d be plenty of bucket for everyone. But no..
Politicians who demand small businesses pay minimum wages far above the market rate pay their staff serf wages, without a peep in opposition, because they make the right noises about abortion.
A Jew turned Christian turned Evangelical says Christians “sold” their principles in supporting Trump. Time to move beyond social battles and forsake the politics of hate, fear and violence. Time to embrace gun control. Time to be like Episcopalians.
I don’t understand the New World Order. I’m stuck in the Old World, the world in which the purpose of religion was to save my immortal soul from eternal damnation, a risk posed by my personal moral failings. Hellfire and damnation were the punishment for sin, not the result of global warming caused by greenhouse gasses emitted by the engine in my car. I was admonished to live in the world, but not be of it, that I might someday be worthy of salvation and heaven.
Either everybody has been doing it wrong for the last 2,000 years or modern religion has completely lost its way. I’m beginning to think it’s time to write out a few theses and find myself a hammer.
Joe Doakes
When progs finally get around to rewriting the Bible, Christ will work for a non-profit that sought justice for carpenters.
The American Civil Liberties Union will weigh its interest in protecting the First Amendment against its other commitments to social justice, racial equality, and women’s rights, given the possibility that offensive speech might undermine ACLU goals.
“Our defense of speech may have a greater or lesser harmful impact on the equality and justice work to which we are also committed,” wrote ACLU staffers in a confidential memo obtained by former board member Wendy Kaminer.
Hearing it from the proverbial horse’s mouth is really just making it offiicial-ish; it’s been pretty obvious for decades, on some issues (most notably the Second Amendment).
“Resistance” implies one is fighting an all-powerful status quo.
LIberals in liberal cities are not the “resistance”; they are “the power”.
And teachers? People in the public education system? Going against the herd in the world of public education is truly resistance.
And teachers who have decided that their and their charges’ lives are worth more than the vague blandishments of security theater may be the bravest resistance of all:
On a recent morning in Newcomerstown, Ohio, a row of teachers stood in a line with guns drawn and moved slowly toward a row of steel plate targets.
As the teachers advanced, bullets pinged off the metal with each round they fired.
The teachers had come to take part in Faster Saves Lives, a voluntary training program run by an Ohio-based nonprofit that has taught more than 1,300 school staff members to carry and use firearms since 2013. (Faster stands for Faculty/Administrator Safety Training & Emergency Response.)
“My students are my kids, basically, and I want to be able to protect them just like I would protect my own son,” said a 34-year-old Ohio teacher of students with special needs who participated in the program and spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern that by going public, she or her school could be targeted by a shooter.
I suspect – and all the evidence that actually exists supports me on this – that the opposite is the case.
The sex problem in the Catholic Church was caused by gay priests preying on altar boys. That’s not pedophilia (dirty old man and young girl), that’s pederasty (gay man and young boy), which is a crime and also a sin. The behavior went on for years while the Church hierarchy actively covered it up, denied it happened, took the predators’ side against the victims. The congregation at large believed the people in authority and dismissed allegations as wicked gossip and ridiculous conspiracy theory.
There have been rumors floating around for a couple of years that sex with children is rampant in certain corners of politics. Bill Clinton rode the Lolita Express (a charter flight to a private island where underage sex is supposedly available). Anthony Weiner’s texts. A pizza parlor in New York that sold no pizza but sent a lot of children on deliveries. Child porn found on computers that also were used to leak classified data. Celebrity suicides for no apparent reason but who are linked to people accused of promoting child sex. At this point, the politicians deny it happened. The FBI seems to be covering for certain well-connected people. The media dismisses the allegations as wicked gossip and ridiculous conspiracy theory. And ordinary people still believe the people in authority.
I’m getting a sick feeling in my stomach.
Joe Doakes
My big worry is that we – all of us – are getting so desensitized that the level of what it takes to shock us is approaching meaninglessness.
Our new Division Director is a Black woman whose first act was to order an all-day, all-staff training on racism. The class starts with slavery, proceeds through Jim Crow, and ends with White Privilege.
I tried to weasel out of going to the class on the grounds that I’m too busy providing service to our actual customers to spent a day sitting in a conference room listening to the same spiel I’ve heard for the last decade, but no luck. I would have loved to ask a few questions. I didn’t, of course, because asking questions is asking for trouble; but if I could have done so safely, I’d have asked:
Americans historically were gung-ho on efficiency and innovation. Going all the way to Africa to capture and ship human cargo only to toss half of them overboard (thereby altering the migration habits of sharks) seems like a lot of work and wasteful besides. Why did Americans invent slavery?
If American’s didn’t invent slavery, who did? How long was it around before we adopted the practice? When was the last slave in the world freed?
If slavery was part of the universal human condition since time immemorial until we stopped it a century ago, and if slavery only occurs today in places where America has not exercised its power to stamp it out, then why are we spending all day talking about it?
Formal slavery ended in America 150 years ago. Jim Crow – when and where it existed – ended 50 years ago. Minnesota never had either one. Why are we, as Minnesotans, spending all day talking about it?
White Privilege occurs because of White families working and sacrificing so their children would live in a better society. Granted, the children didn’t do anything to deserve that society – they didn’t build that – but why is it wrong for parents to work and sacrifice for their children? What values should we – as employees of the local government – be encouraging local families to adopt instead?
If only I didn’t need my job . . . .
Joe Doakes
What’s the word for the thing that comes after education has turned into indoctrination, and then into browbeating, and then…
Look, I know Pratt’s speech wasn’t exactly the message a Baptist preacher would share, but it’s an antidote against a lie. He’s speaking to a generation of young people who know that something is very deeply wrong. It’s a generation wracked by depression and anxiety in spite — or perhaps because — of the fact that they’ve been told time and again how perfect they are….
We conservatives spend a lot of time sharing outrageous celebrity clips. We grit our teeth through awards shows. And we properly lament messages that have distorted our culture. But every now and then, there’s a ray of light, and it can come from unlikely sources, including from the lead singer of the fictional band “Mouse Rat.” Last night, Pratt used his platform to share some important truths. Yes, it’s a small drop of reality in an ocean of cultural lies, but we can still hope those truths find purchase. Or, to put our plea in the words of our Savior: He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
