Larry sets the record straight. Joy Reid effectively lied to her viewers. Let’s look at the actual history here.
PART ONE
Larry corrects Joy Reid’s ridiculous tirade where she inaccurately accuses Mitch McConnell and the Republicans of engaging in immoral, rotten behavior and blowing up the Filibuster Rule.
PART TWO
Larry Elder interviews Professor John Eastman in regards to the recent Supreme Court decisions and the nomination process for Justice Kennedy’s replacement. Discussion about the Courts purpose and how States should have more say, and audio of Kennedy attacking Bork is added (the start of this whole politicization of the nomination process BTW). Enjoy.
Larry Elder explains how we got Trump. The Left is confused… but its decades of abuse by them… but they are doubling down. And that is why Trump will rock in 2020. Here are some background to this “abuse”
✪ “As government regulations grow slowly, we become used to the harness. Habit is a powerful force, and we no longer feel as intensely as we once would have [the] constriction of our liberties that would have been utterly intolerable a mere half century ago.” ~ Judge Robert Bork
This is the first segment from an interview with Charles Murray on his new book, “By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission.”
This segment reminded me of a quote I have kept for years, and while I am not the biggest fan of the author of it… but this quote and topic is instructive:
▼ This is most evident in the fact that Americans today must obey thirty times as many laws as their great-grandfathers had to obey at the turn of the century. Federal agencies publish an average of over 200 pages of new rulings, regulations, and proposals in the Federal Register each business day. That growth of the federal statute book is one of the clearest measures of the increase of the government control of the citizenry…
James Bovard, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (St. Martins Griffen; 1994), p. 1.
I fear this will be, not following the many laws by choice, the only route Americans [who hold to the Founding principles of this country] will have to do. Acting by disobeying.
Greased Up Slide down Slope
…If Christianity and the Christian moral and societal framework is no longer viewed as normative in laws governing sexual practice, then the slippery slope to legalizing polygamy is here. We already know from the Lawrence ruling that the state may not regulate private consensual sexual conduct; if the principle that privileging Christian marital norms* is impermissible is accepted, by what standard do we prevent polygamy? I suppose you could say it harms society in some way, but this judge rejected that argument. Scalia’s Lawrence dissent was correct. We’re just seeing the logic of the majority opinion play out in the courts. That, and the collapse of Christianity as the basis for Western society. (The American Conservative)
* Actually, the argument for fidelity to one person of the opposite sex pre-dates Christianity as well [not just Judaism either]… see my “Point #3“
Incest!?
HotAir will catch us up on the “haps” in our court system, and then we will let GP comment on the situation as these guys [only] can:
Jonathan Turley set quite a few tongues to wagging yesterday when he published an article with the provocative title, “Federal Court Strikes Down Criminalization of Polygamy in Utah.” It involves the case of Brown v Buhman, where Turley himself is one of the lawyers involved. The introduction to his announcement certainly fanned the flames of those who follow this subject closely.
It is with a great pleasure this evening to announce that decision of United States District Court judge Clark Waddoups striking down key portions of the Utah polygamy law as unconstitutional. The Brown family and counsel have spent years in both the criminal phase of this case and then our challenge to the law itself in federal court. Despite the public statements of professors and experts that we could not prevail in this case, the court has shown that it is the rule of law that governs in this country.
If the name Brown when related to the subject of polygamy is ringing a bell for some of you, that’s because the family in question is one and the same as the stars of the TLC series Sister Wives. This differs significantly from HBO’s highly successful, but completely fictional series Big Love, in that Sister Wives is a reality TV show based on the lives of actual polygamists.
A I mentioned above, this announcement set some people off immediately, including Professor Bainbridge.
He followed that up with a tweet saying, “Robert Bork was right. We are Slouching Towards Gomorrah.”
Indeed! Part of Utah`s Admittance
One of the comments in the GP post that makes TOTAL sense in its conclusions:
Well we went from “Does the sex of the partner really matter?” to “Does the number of partners really matter?”, so my money is on “Do the ages of the partners really matter?”, followed by “Does the genetic proximity of the partners really matter?”, followed by “Does the species of the partners really matter?”, but I think we have a good 50 to 100 years on that last one.
How long do you think it will be before we’re hearing about a 30-something single dad and his teenaged identical twin sons having a three-way wedding?
Another commentator on FreeRepublic notes well that “…wasn’t outlawing polygamy a condition of Utah’s statehood?”
Here is Gay Patriot layin’ down the intelligent commentary on the progressive left in our country being at the center of this rot, not exclusively gays, but gay leftists and hetero leftists:
“Don’t be ridiculous,” they said. “No way does same sex marriage lead to legalized polygamy. The slippery slope argument is a complete fallacy, because enactment of one liberal social policy has never, ever led to the subsequent enactment of the logical extension of that liberal social policy. Ever!”
Well, they may have been wrong about the coefficient of friction on that particular incline. Commenter Richard Bell notes the following: Judge Cites Same-Sex Marriage in Declaring Polygamy Ban Unconstitutional.
Interestingly, the judge’s 91-page opinion cites a series of legal precedents that have gradually redefined marriage, and limited the ability of the state to define it. Almost as though there had been some kind of negative gradient, and the law had been gravitationally drawn to the lower end of the gradient as a result of the lack of adhesion on that gradient.
Since marriage is no longer about creating a stable environment for children, and has become (and this mainly the fault of heterosexual liberals) about personal fulfillment, validation, and access to social benefits, there literally is no constraint on how much more broadly it can be redefined.
(emphasis added)
Ouch! So on the money! Liberalism in political philosophy, scientific paradigms, theology, and the like, all have the same outcome from the affect. Dilution to the point of relativised thinking, to wit Tammy Bruce cogently says — and for those that do not know, she is a lesbian:
★ Even if one does not necessarily accept the institutional structure of “organized religion,” the “Judeo-Christian ethic and the personal standards it encourages do not impinge on the quality of life, but enhance it. They also give one a basic moral template that is not relative,” which is why the legal positivists of the Left are so threatened by the Natural Law aspect of the Judeo-Christian ethic. (Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values, 35.) [read more]
The same arguments in the case SCOTUS decided (Brown v. Buhman) will be used in an incest case here in the states (See the NY Times, as well as Time Magazine). With the fertilization choices, the fact that it takes multiple generations for “webbed feet,” and the idea that a sister-and-sister, or brother-and-brother cannot have children, leave the incest case open, as the Brown case has already been used to argue against polygamy.
Here is the last paragraph of the Time Magazine article that notes the players in the “incest” battle:
The ACLU has filed suit in several states to challenge the few remaining statutes that prohibit unmarried couples from living together. This is the sort of case that may have a better chance of expanding Lawrence’s reach, said Katine.
Here is Scalia, as quoted via U.S. News and World Report:
In his dissent of that ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia angrily warned that if the court was willing to strike down sodomy laws, other state laws on moral choices could soon be lifted, among them gay marriage. He wrote:
State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity … every single one of these laws is called into question by today’s decision.
He further argued:
If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is ‘no legitimate state interest’ for purposes of proscribing that conduct … what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising ‘[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution?’
I read (and loved) Judge Bork’s book, Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline. I highly recommend it to those that wish a heavy read on law, liberalism, and culture. I will be getting the recently released, A Time to Speak: Selected Writings and Arguments (American Ideals & Institutions), here is a quick description from Amazon:
Since at least 1971, when he published a seminal article on constitutional interpretation in the Indiana Law Journal, Robert Bork has been the legal and moral conscience of America, reminding us of our founding principles and their cultural foundation. The scourge of liberal ideologues both before and after Ronald Reagan nominated him for the Supreme Court in 1987, Bork has for fifty years unwaveringly exposed—and explained—the hypocrisy and dereliction of duty endemic among our nation’s elites, the politicization and adversary activism of our courts, and the consequent degradation of American society.
Now, for the first time, Judge Bork has gathered together his most important and prophetic writings in A Time to Speak, including a foreword and commentary by the author. The volume includes more than sixty vintage Bork contributions on topics ranging from President Nixon to St. Thomas More, from abortion to antitrust policy, and from civil liberties to natural law. It also includes several of his judicial opinions and transcribed oral arguments. A Time to Speak is an indispensable book for all who have harkened to the truths spoken so forthrightly, in season and out, by this great American original.
Judge Bork is a legend in conservative speak. Here is the Washington Time’s short blurb about him today:
Robert H. Bork, who stepped in to fire the Watergate prosecutor at Richard Nixon’s behest and whose failed 1980s nomination to the Supreme Court helped draw the modern boundaries of cultural fights over abortion, civil rights and other issues, has died. He was 85.
Son Robert H. Bork Jr. confirmed the death Wednesday. His father had a long career in politics and the law that took him from respected academic to a totem of conservative grievance.
Bork was accused of being a partisan hatchet man for Nixon when he fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973.
Bork’s drubbing during the 1987 Senate nomination hearings made him a hero to the right and a rallying cry for younger conservatives.
IBD has an article by Phyllis Schlafly, the woman who almost single handily stopped radical feminists from great strides decades ago. Here, she makes a great point about why Kagan shouldn’t be allowed into our judicial system at such a high level:
…Now that Obama is president, he has the power to nominate Supreme Court justices who will “break free” from the Constitution and join him in “fundamentally transforming” America. That’s the essence of his choice of Elena Kagan as his second Supreme Court nominee. She never was a judge, and her paper trail is short. But it’s long enough to prove that she is a clear and present danger to the Constitution.
When Kagan was dean of Harvard Law School, she presented a guest speaker who is known as the most activist judge in the world: Judge Aharon Barak, formerly president of the Israeli Supreme Court.
The polar opposite of the U.S. Constitution, which states that “all legislative powers” are vested in the elected legislative body, Barak has written that a judge should “make” and “create” law, assume “a role in the legislative process” and give statutes “new meaning that suits new social needs.”
Barak wrote that a judge “is subject to no authority” except himself, and he “must sometimes depart the confines of his legal system and channel into it fundamental values not yet found in it.” Channel? Does he mean he channels in a trance, as Hillary Clinton supposedly channeled discourse with the long-deceased Eleanor Roosevelt?
Despite Barak’s weirdo writings, or maybe because of them, Kagan called him her “judicial hero.” Judge Robert Bork, a man careful with his words, says Kagan’s praise of Barak is “disqualifying in and of itself.” Bork said that Barak “establishes a world record for judicial hubris.” He wrote that Barak embraces a judicial philosophy that “there is no area of Israeli life that the court may not govern.”
…(read more)…