The Patriot Post Brief 7-5-2010

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The Patriot Post Brief 7-5-2010
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous." --Thomas Jefferson

Political Futures
The Kagan Show Hearings

"[In her confirmation hearings last week, Elena] Kagan did her best to say nothing, and her best was sufficient unto the day. She reduced the vapid to the insipid, as in an exchange with Sen. Tom Coburn over the limits of the Constitution's Commerce Clause -- written by the Founders to limit the power of the federal government and distorted by liberals, both on the Supreme Court and off, to enable the feds to expand the nanny state without limit. When Mr. Coburn asked whether Congress could enact a law requiring Americans to eat three fruits and three vegetables a day, Mzz Kagan replied: 'That sounds like a dumb law.' Mr. Coburn was trying to get at her view of the Commerce Clause, and got a wisecrack. Mzz Kagan then added that the courts would be wrong to strike down a dumb law just because it was dumb. What's not at all dumb about the question is that President Obama is relying on the Commerce Clause to defend his own dumb idea, the health care 'reform.' But not to laugh. The left is always eager to defend its dumb ideas. ... Since Mzz Kagan has never been a judge, we don't have a judicial record to measure her by, and we must rely on her vague answers to vapid questions and can only surmise, suppose and speculate. She sounds like a reliable liberal, ready to stand up for the law of the nanny, enforced by the rod of the state. We won't know for sure until it's time to bend over." --Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden

For the Record

"As the great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, his job was 'to see that the game is played according to the rules whether I like them or not.' If the public doesn't like the rules, or the consequences to which the rules lead, then the public can change the rules via the ballot box. But that is very different from judges changing the rules by verbal sleight of hand, or by talking about 'weighing of the constitutional right to bear arms' against other considerations, as Justice Breyer puts it. That's not his job. Not if 'we the people' are to govern ourselves, as the Constitution says. As for the merits or demerits of gun control laws themselves, a vast amount of evidence, both from the United States and from other countries, shows that keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens does not keep guns out of the hands of criminals. It is not uncommon for a tightening of gun control laws to be followed by an increase -- not a decrease -- in gun crimes, including murder. Conversely, there have been places and times where an increase in gun ownership has been followed by a reduction in crimes in general and murder in particular. Unfortunately, the media intelligentsia tend to favor gun control laws, so a lot of hard facts about the futility, or the counterproductive consequences of such laws, never reach the public through the media. ... The media, like Justice Breyer, might do well to reflect on what is their job and what is the voting public's job." --economist Thomas Sowell

Culture

"[In] the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision ... in the case of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (UC Hastings) ... [the] court ruled that a public university is not required to subsidize campus groups it considers discriminatory. The Christian Legal Society excludes homosexuals and non-Christians. But isn't the court allowing the university to discriminate against the beliefs of the Christian group, especially if the group is now required to admit people who violate teachings central to its faith and mission statement? In writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the school's policy, which requires student organizations to be open to everyone to qualify for official status, 'ensures that no Hastings student is forced to fund a group that would reject her as a member.' I wonder if this would apply to a member of CLS if they applied for membership in the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender club, or anything else that may come down the pike. Will campus Jewish groups be required to admit Christians? Maybe the football team can bring a discrimination suit against the school for not allowing them to shower with the women's lacrosse team. The court's ruling in the CLS case is no less far-fetched. Student activity fees have long subsidized campus organizations whose beliefs and practices no doubt offend and are counter to the beliefs and practices of other students. The way the legal game is played, the beliefs of Christian groups can be regularly offended, but gay and other groups favored by the secular left enjoy special status from academic elites. This is what passes for pluralism, tolerance and academic freedom on college campuses." --columnist Cal Thomas

Liberty

"Obama is turning us into a poster nation for financial irresponsibility. While other nations at the [G-20 conference in Toronto] were focusing on deficit reduction, Obama was haplessly urging them to join us in Keynesian spending oblivion. He told the conference that global economic recovery remains 'fragile' and implored the nations' leaders to continue deficit spending to sustain the 'recovery.' The Washington Post reports that Obama's remarks 'tempered the Group of 20's headline achievement at the summit, a deficit-reduction target that had been pushed by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the host of the meeting and a fiscal conservative.' Obama is wholly impervious to the historical record documenting the failure of FDR's pump priming during the Depression, which exacerbated rather than ameliorated the economic problems. He is similarly detached from reality concerning the failure of his own policies to stimulate growth of any kind to save his beloved public sector and thus recommends more of the same. In speech after speech, he takes credit for having launched an economic recovery in the United States and for achieving job growth. Notwithstanding his economic models that stubbornly predict such results, he can point to no empirical evidence to verify his delusional boasts. It would be bad enough if his economic policies were simply retarding our economic recovery, but they are also accelerating our trip to national bankruptcy. Yet Obama continues to press forward with his foot smashed down on the gas pedal." --columnist David Limbaugh