Protecting the judiciary from illegal influences is critical

When someone at the United States Supreme Court leaked a draft of an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito regarding the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion supporters flew into a rage.

The Huffington Post reported, “Activists protesting against the Supreme Court’s expected ruling gutting Roe v. Wade gathered outside the homes of two conservative justices over the weekend and plan to do so again later this week. 

Close to 100 protesters chanted and waved signs Saturday evening outside the Maryland house of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, then marched to the nearby home of Chief Justice John Roberts.”

Some who support this disgraceful activity remind us that peaceful protests are a guaranteed right, and that is true, to a point. 

The obvious intent of these gatherings is to intimidate the justices into changing their position on the constitutional question before them, and allow Roe to stand.

According to an article on the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) website, “Protesters outside Brett M. Kavanaugh’s house warned the Supreme Court justice this weekend, ‘If you take away our choices, we will riot.’ They marched on Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s home chanting ‘Abort the court!’ and stood outside the home of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. (who apparently did not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade) yelling ‘The whole world is watching!’”

This outlandish behavior smacks of attempts at “vigilante justice,” or mob rule on what is a matter of constitutional law. And, more importantly, these “protests,” however peaceful they may or may not be, are against the law.

The AEI article continues: “This is not just noxious behavior; it is illegal. Federal law — Section 1507 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code — clearly states that it is unlawful to protest near a ‘residence occupied or used by [a] judge, juror, witness, or court officer’ with the intent of influencing ‘the discharge of his duty,’ adding that anyone who ‘uses any sound-truck or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.’”

If people want to protest on behalf of some cause on which the Court is going to rule, they may peacefully protest legally outside the Supreme Court building.

Protests in front of the homes of judges, justices, and others involved in legal decisions is expressly outlawed because of the need for these people to make their decisions absent intimidation. Further, this chaos is also a problem for neighbors, who are unfairly subjected to unwanted noise, and other negative aspects of these illegal gatherings.

So, while both federal law and some state laws forbid this behavior, why is it still going on? And more importantly, why has there been no law enforcement action to arrest these criminals? Why is the Department of Justice failing to respond to these illegal activities? 

After all, an attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh was recently discovered and stopped. And, a former judge was recently killed in his home by a person he sent to prison years earlier. These illegal gatherings are threats to the safety of the justices and their families.

Yet, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland sits complacently in his office more worried about the non-whipping of people illegally crossing the southern border, and the actions of parents concerned about the education of their children in tax-supported schools at boards of education meetings.

And President Joe Biden has been strangely quiet about this development. Biden has said publicly that we need to “stop treating our opponents as our enemy.” And in his inaugural address, he vowed to “end this uncivil war,” and bring America together. And yet, he has said and done nothing about this disgraceful development.

This failure on the part of the Attorney General, the Department of Justice, and others with authority to act against this illegal behavior seems to be part of the recent epidemic of so-called “progressive” thought on justice and the law.

There has been a rash of district attorneys and prosecutors across the country who were elected or appointed to enforce laws and who somehow believe they have the authority to ignore whichever laws they so choose. In doing this, they place the rights and concerns of criminals above the rights and concerns of their victims, and of innocent Americans.

Criminals are not prosecuted to the fullest, or sometimes hardly at all, and they often commit additional crimes. Two Los Angeles police officers were recently ambushed and killed by a career criminal who was given light treatment by District Attorney George Gascon. The killer should have been in jail, and would have been if he had been treated appropriately by Gascon.

People are plainly breaking the law in protesting at justices’ homes, trying to intimidate them to rule a certain way, and no one is doing anything about it. That is not acceptable.

Are gas prices too high for you? Just get an electric vehicle!

June 14, 2022

As the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded gas crosses the $5.00 mark, drivers across the country are finding it more and more difficult to keep gas in their cars. Those with diesel vehicles are in even worse shape.

In somewhat of a “let them eat cake” moment, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said recently that people struggling with rising gas prices should just get an electric car. 

Forget buying gas, the price of which has more than doubled in the past year or so. You can just stick your nose in the air as you drive by the gas stations in your new EV.

However, as with every idea, there is a reality that accompanies it, and reality is most often more difficult. 

For example, Kelley Blue Book tells us the average price of an EV was $56,437 in November 2021, and the average price jumped 6.2 percent from the same month a year earlier. The average price of a new compact car, however, was $25,240, less than half the price of an EV.

For an inside look at actually owning and traveling in an EV, we have stories from two people, Wall Street Journal reporter Rachel Wolfe, who described a trip from New Orleans to Chicago, and Emily Dreibelbis, a graduate student at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, who took a road trip from Princeton, New Jersey, to Arlington, Virginia and back.

Wolfe said at the beginning that she “thought it would be fun,” and plotted “a meticulous route” using an app that showed public chargers along the 2,000-mile round-trip route she selected.

Most of the chargers on her route, it turned out, were only Level 2. Those take eight hours for a full charge. Fast chargers give an 80 percent charge in about a half-hour, she noted. “Longer than stopping for gas — but good for a bite or bathroom break,” she reported.

 “Over four days, we spent $175 on charging. We estimated the equivalent cost for gas in a Kia Forte would have been $275, based on the AAA average national gas price for May 19. That $100 savings cost us many hours in waiting time,” she wrote.

She also noted that the Kia EV6 she drove had lower range than advertised, that the charging stations had slower speeds than advertised, that many charging stations had problematic cords, and that lots of the country had almost no fast-charging stations at all.

For the entire trip, Wolfe wrote, she spent 16 hours sleeping during the trip and 18 hours waiting to charge the vehicle, spread over 14 charges.

Dreibelbis, an avowed EV supporter, made a trip from Princeton, New Jersey, to Arlington, Virginia, and back. Traveling in her parents’ 2019 Chevrolet Volt, she experienced problems along the way, too.

During her 200-mile adventure, she experienced broken and slow vehicle charging stations, and also found not nearly enough of them. In Maryland, she found three chargers that didn’t work, and one that had an out-of-order sign on it that did work.

Of those that worked, the Level 3 “fast” charger takes about an hour for a charge that gives only 100 miles of range. Other chargers were slower. A Level 1 charger for home use can take up to 10 hours, and a Level 2 charger, like many found in public parking lots, may take up to four hours.

Dreibelbis Googled locations in Arlington and found one site was not accessible, as it was in a private complex, and the next one cost an $11 entry fee just to get to it. She wrote, “Frustrated, I surrendered the money. They only had Level Two chargers, so it took two and a half hours of reading a book in the cold until the car had enough power.”

In the manic drive to do away with fossil fuels, by 2030 the U.S. hopes for 50 percent of new cars sales to be EVs. Last year, EVs were only 4.5 percent of new car sales. 

To meet this goal, things will have to improve quickly. Charging times are long, and charging stations are far too few to service the number of EVs that is desired. Traveling long distances will take hours longer, given the charging times, and the potential waiting in line behind one, two or perhaps three  vehicles to get to the charger. And the price of EVs is often double that of conventionally fueled vehicles.

And then there is the reality of where the electricity comes from to recharge EVs: Much of it comes from fossil fuels: coal and natural gas. So, while driving an EV produces less pollution, generating the electricity to charge them will be producing lots more of it. And the more EVs there are, the more pollution will be required to keep them charged.

Further, the critical elements for EV batteries are being purchased largely from China.

When the time is right for EVs, we will transition naturally to them. That time is not yet, nor anytime soon. The biggest problem with the goals of the left is that they never want to wait until the time is right, but instead cause problems by rushing the issue.

The enigma of making schools safe, doing so sensibly and surely

June 7, 2022

More mass shootings at schools, and other events. Obviously, everyone wants a solution to this problem, particularly the shootings in schools, where young children are targeted by thugs and the mentally ill, who want to kill innocent and unprotected people.

There are lots of ideas being offered to solve this problem. Most of them are spawned by emotion, which is somewhat understandable under these circumstances. But emotional solutions are usually the wrong ones.

The first emotional response is against guns. Let’s ban guns, or certain guns, like “assault weapons” and “weapons of war,” and “large-capacity clips.” But are guns really the main problem?

When I was in high school a “few” years ago, it was not uncommon to see a rifle on a gun rack in a student’s or teacher’s or staff member’s vehicle in the parking lot. Yet, there was never a problem. None of these gun-owning people brought the gun into the school, shot at people, or even threatened anyone. This occurred across the United States. Some schools actually taught marksmanship and had rifle teams. 

That is perhaps the most obvious clue to what the problem with school shootings is. It’s not guns. It’s the mental state or mind-set of the perpetrator. And that is what must be addressed.

The first step is to secure school buildings. Schools must have just one entrance, with a security system that checks and clears everyone before they are allowed to enter the school. 

But making schools safe from maniacs with guns, knives, explosives or whatever, also requires armed personnel who will protect the school.

Having armed personnel in schools who are screened, trained and prepared to address a situation where someone manages to get through the school security system makes sense. That could include retired or no longer active military personnel, former law enforcement officers, and even teachers or staff members that volunteer for that duty.

It isn’t just about the guns, knives, pipe bombs or whatever some murderer incorporates to do his/her evil, it’s about the motivation to do it. It’s about the failure of our culture to teach young people about good and evil, and how to live a good, productive life, and also those with mental problems. In many or most cases, the killers have given signals on social media or elsewhere about their evil plans. These clues must be acted on.

Other factors are the defund the police movement, and the idiocy of prosecutors/DAs who refuse to adequately prosecute criminals and release the guilty to commit more crimes. These things encourage criminal behavior.

And the right of Americans to keep and bear arms for self-defense is also quite sensible. One example of this occurred last month in Charleston, West Virginia. A woman with a pistol and a concealed carry permit took down a crazed man spraying bullets at a graduation party there, as reported by WCHS-TV. The man drove up and started firing on the party with an AR15 when the woman, instead of running away, shot him dead. A good gal with a gun stopped a bad guy with a gun!

The “progressive” left thinks banning guns is the answer. If all guns are banned, criminals will have guns, but the law-abiding citizen will be undefended. That’s how it works: criminals don’t obey laws; but their targets mostly do.

The left sometimes backs off a bit and wants to ban only certain guns. But even that runs up against Second Amendment protections.

The most sensible idea is to make it illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to purchase guns or ammunition, with the exception of those who have served in the military and been properly trained in weapons handling. Background checks offer some level of safety, and red flag laws may also. But the red flag process often denies due process rights to the person targeted until after their weapons have been confiscated. That is unconstitutional. And they are open to fraudulent claims. 

“Who needs an AR-15, or a 30-round clip to hunt?” the left asks. Well, that is totally irrelevant. This is America. We are guaranteed certain rights, freedom of speech and the right to keep and bear arms, among them. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not say, “the right to keep and bear muskets.” It also doesn’t say “the right to bear arms for hunting.” And, by the way, AR does NOT stand for “Assault Rifle.”

Taking a different tack on that idea, who needs a Rolls Royce, or a Bentley? Nobody really needs one, but we can have one if we choose to and can afford one. That same privilege applies to guns, and is constitutionally protected. With the exception of fully automatic weapons, law-abiding citizens can have pretty much any gun they want and can afford. And that proved to be a good thing in Charleston last month.

Punishing law-abiding Americans with gun bans because some thugs or mentally ill people want to kill innocent people really makes no sense. And, more to the point, it won’t help solve the problem. But it will help to make it easier for the radical leftists to take over the country and turn it into Venezuela. 

Predictions from the past are coming true right before our eyes

In 1965, Paul Harvey delivered a commentary titled “If I Were the Devil” that predicted the future spiritual condition of the United States. In 2020, the Washington Examiner ran a commentary by Gary Bauer titled “How to destroy America from within” that also predicted the future of the country.

Both of them did a good job of describing the current disorder in the United States and its continued movement in that direction.

A recent TikTok video is going viral. In it an unidentified woman expresses her concerns about what is wrong with our country, and how it has changed from when she was younger.

Many may not agree with some things she says, or any of it. And it is certain to have been banned or earned a warning label on Twitter or Facebook for its “inappropriate” opinions. 

But the concept of free speech makes things like this important for distribution on social media platforms, despite its unpopularity with social media oligarchs. Having a broad array of ideas to consider is critical to our future.

“I never dreamed that I would have to face the prospect of not living in the United States of America,” she began. “At least not the one I’ve known all my life. I’ve never wished to live anywhere else. This is my home, and I was privileged to be born here. 

“But today I woke up and when I had my morning coffee I realized that everything is about to change. No matter how I vote, no matter what. Something evil has invaded our nation. Our lives are never going to be the same.”

She then began listing things that trouble her. The hostility of people, including family and friends, who now agree with opinions they never would have expressed as their own before.

The “insanity” of men pretending to be women and women pretending to be men, along with the requirement that everyone accept that.

Making 18 the legal voting age, but being 21 to buy alcohol. The idea that people who never went to college, or who managed to pay their acquired college loan debt, now having their tax dollars pay the huge debts of some college graduates who are not able, or don’t want to do it.

The crazy situation where people like doctors and engineers from other countries have to endure a long, arduous process to immigrate here. But literally anyone can walk or sneak across the southern border, and be welcomed with open arms, whether they be gang members, drug dealers, or infected with Covid, or other horrible diseases.

And yet, spending $5 billion dollars for border security is too expensive, but spending $1.5 trillion for free healthcare is good. And, as a few folks recently discovered, if you cheat to get your kid into college, you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country, you may go to college for free.

Suddenly, the rights of criminals are more important than those of law-abiding citizens. After being arrested for a crime, they must be released to commit more crimes. And if you complain about this, you are called a racist.

“People who say there is no such thing as gender are demanding a female president,” she said. “We see other countries going socialist and collapsing, but it seems like a great plan to us. Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, and other people are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.”

“Nothing makes sense anymore. No values, no morals, and no civility, “she said, as she began her conclusion. “We’re clearly living in an upside-down world where right is wrong, and wrong is right. Where moral is immoral, and immoral is moral. Where good is evil and evil is good. Where killing murderers is evil, but killing unborn babies is A-OK.

“Wake up, America. The great unsinkable ship, Titanic America, has hit an iceberg, is taking on water, and is sinking fast. Speak up.”

So much of what our Founders created and enabled America to do so well for so long, is crumbling beneath our feet. Those who don’t know that, don’t understand how good they have it, or just dislike what America is, are working so hard to transform the country into one more failed socialist state.

Harvey said that the Devil’s plan was to attack and destroy religion in the country as the first step in taking the nation down. While we still have several religions, the results of the anti-religion movement can be seen in the moral decay of our culture. 

Weakening the education system, changing how and what children are taught, is the way Bauer’s column begins. And today, many teachers, schools and school systems have been caught red-handed doing just that.

Defunding the police and the military were mentioned, as well as a news media that is largely ideologically driven, rather than honorably doing its vital job of presenting all the news without political or ideological bias.

Younger generations have not been taught why maintaining the “old ways” is important, and now the great country we grew up in is in peril.

Democrats can’t achieve their extremist goals with system our Founders created

May 24, 2022

A recent newspaper column did a wonderful job of illustrating the lengths to which the Left will go in trying to achieve its goals. The writer’s name is not important, because the writer is not the topic here. The topic is the dreadful thought process used by the writer in creating this misrepresentation of U.S. Senator Steve Daines’ comment. 

Such shenanigans are pretty common. The Left often does similar things to shift the focus away from actual issues.

The column began: “Sen. Steve Daines from Montana compared women to reptiles, pregnant sea turtles to be exact. No, seriously.”

Quoting Daines, the writer continued. “’Why do we have laws in place to protect the eggs of sea turtles, or the eggs of eagles?’ he thundered. ‘Because when you destroy an egg, you’re killing a pre-born baby sea turtle.’”

The writer then explains the process sea turtles follow to travel to the proper place to lay their eggs, where they will mature and hatch in 60 days. The writer then noted that women do not have to go through such a protracted process, as if that has anything to do with Daines’ point.

The writer exhibits several significant issues. First and foremost, he/she missed — or more likely, deliberately avoided — Daines’ point, then spent a lot of time writing about the wrong topic. 

Daines did not compare women to reptiles. He contrasted the degree to which turtle and other animal progeny are protected by law with the lack of that protection for not-yet-born human babies.

What Daines did do was pose the matter of why unborn sea turtles are protected by law from interference by people, but unborn children are not.

The writer most likely could not provide a sensible defense of the concern Daines’ brought up, so he/she spent time trying to focus readers’ attention away from that issue. The true purpose of this article was nothing more than to ridicule Daines’ defense of the unborn. Shameful.

                                                                   * * *

What we often find as tools of the Left are such things as outrage; claims of racism, white privilege, and/or white supremacy; defensiveness; and threats of protest or violence. These tactics are designed to affect the emotions of those on both sides of an issue, and they deliberately avoid using logic.

The white 18-year-old accused killer of 10 people at a mostly black retail outlet was termed a “racist.” That is totally appropriate in this case. He was also called a “white supremacist” by the President of the United States, and others.

What is a “white supremacist?”  “A person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races,” according to Merriam-Webster. And recent stories about the accused murderer show that he actually holds white supremacist views. 

No doubt he is not the only such person in the country. But is white supremacy really a threat? Or, is that just a Leftist effort to fire up their crowd by exaggerating a relatively small number of people into a real threat?

Calling someone a racist works. It often arouses negative emotions toward that person, as well as others who look like or hold similar beliefs as the targeted person. Throwing around the term “white supremacy” serves the same purpose.

Some of the far Left’s tactics are extremely radical, and some even un-American. That’s because they are unable to easily achieve their extremist goals using the system our Founders created. Because they can’t muster enough support to get their nation transforming goals accomplished through proper methods, they are forced to use other means.

They want to stack the Supreme Court with like-thinking justices so that the Court will support their agenda. The “stacking” process will put the current conservative — or non-activist — justices in the minority. They want to end the Senate filibuster so that the minority party — in this case, Republicans — will no longer have a way to protect the country from their radical ideas.

Speaking of the Supreme Court, when Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion regarding Roe v. Wade was improperly leaked, the Left immediately flew into a rage. They believed that if the Court voted to overturn this previous decision, it would mean the end of abortions in America. 

That’s wrong. It would not end abortion, it would merely move the decisions on abortion to the individual states, where it belongs, and away from the Supreme Court, where it does not belong.

Nevertheless, the Left then decided to try to “persuade” those justices who were expected to vote to overturn a faulty ruling to change their minds by having organized protests at their homes. 

It is highly improper to attempt to influence a Supreme Court justice or a judge in doing his/her job. But more importantly, it is against federal law. 

Yet, those with the authority and responsibility to enforce the laws against intimidating the justices, such as U. S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice, have failed to do the job.

There is a great deal of failure to enforce laws these days. And that, too, is a feature of Leftist/“progressive” politics.  

How is Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan working out for you?

May 17, 2022

The administration of President Joe Biden continues to rack up mistake after mistake, leaving him with approval ratings well below 50 percent.

Earlier missteps include the debacle in rushing out of Afghanistan, leaving 183 people dead, including 13 American military personnel, abandoning thousands of Afghani allies and Americans trapped there, and leaving behind a fortune in military equipment, which is now in the hands of the Taliban. 

Then there is the situation at the southern border allowing tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to enter the country, and the federal government going after parents who dare to speak up about their children’s education.

As Russia announced its intention to invade Ukraine without provocation, and then did it, the United States twiddled its thumbs and gave only weak support to Ukraine. Now we find Russia destroying parts of that nation and killing civilians with abandon, and many countries are still buying their oil and gas from Russia. 

This obviously helps Russian President Vladimir Putin at a time when hurting him is in order. And the U.S., as a net exporter of energy, could have helped in this effort by supplanting Russia as the preferred provider of energy sources to those countries.

But Biden, as one of the first acts he performed after taking the oath of office, undid the acts of Donald Trump that made the U.S. a net exporter of energy after years of being dependent upon other countries.

The economy is still struggling, and the struggle is getting more difficult.  The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated that real GDP declined at an annual rate of 1.4 percent for the first quarter of 2022. Columnist Cal Thomas wrote last week that “Today the inflation rate is 8.5 percent, up from 7.9 percent in February and the largest year-over-year rise since 1982.”

Thomas continued, “On Tuesday, President Biden was in Ohio to announce his plan to fight inflation. His remarks were like blaming your credit card for excessive spending.”

He also noted that Biden claimed that the deficit has been reduced by his administration, although the $30 trillion debt has not been reduced. This claim, Thomas said, “has been fact-checked by several news organizations and the Congressional Budget Office and found to be mostly untrue.”

“And just as with the current widespread inflation in prices of food, energy, and other essentials,” wrote Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., “lower-income households can be hit hardest by surging formula prices. The U.S. Surgeon General’s office estimates that families typically spend $1,200 to $1,500 on infant formula in the first year.”

Griffith noted that the acute formula shortage was not unexpected. “Out-of-stock rates have been climbing for months. Furthermore, the formula manufacturer Abbott Nutrition shut down its factory in Sturgis, Michigan, and recalled some of its products in February after reports of hospitalizations and deaths of infants. These actions reduced supply.”

Yet, “the Biden Administration appears to have been taken by surprise, just as it has with most of the other crises taking place under its watch,” he continued.

While mothers struggle to find formula available at their normal retail locations, pallets of baby formula are being sent to the Mexican border, according to a Facebook video posted by Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla.

“Empty shelves in America but full shelves at the border. Biden is sending pallets of baby formula to the border. This is what ‘America last’ looks like,” Cammack said. A photo she said was sent to her by a Border Patrol agent at the Ursula processing facility in Texas showed what the agent said was baby formula provided for illegal immigrants. The agent’s comment about this “disgusting” development was, “you will not believe this.”

And now that one social media platform is perhaps on its way to restoring uncensored speech, we have the federal government creating a department to focus on “disinformation” named the “Disinformation Governance Board” (DGB) within the Department of Homeland Security. Knowing whose administration created this and who will run the DGB makes one wonder if its name indicates it will be responsible for the creation and distribution of disinformation, or for finding and correcting disinformation.

Either way, this is not a proper function of a government agency in a country where speech — both favored speech and unfavored speech — is constitutionally protected.

What better way to overcome the freeing up of material posted on Twitter than to have a “respected” government agency labeling “unfavored speech” as “disinformation?”

Each of us is, and must be, responsible to collect ideas on matters of importance, consider all ideas, select those we believe and support them, without the “help” of the government, unless government actually helps by guaranteeing that all ideas are available to us.

As author and professor Jordan Peterson has said, “Free speech is not just another value. It’s the foundation of western civilization.”

And, how can the White House and the Department of Justice ignore the illegal mob rule attempts to intimidate Justices of the Supreme Court?

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., commented, "I don't mean to be uncharitable but sometimes I think President Biden just doesn't eat enough fiber" … “after 14 months, nothing is built, nothing is back, and nothing is better.”

Will the United States Supreme Court correct a previous error?

 

May 10, 2022

The United States Supreme Court is currently reviewing a case that may reverse Roe v. Wade, which the History website explains “was a landmark legal decision issued on January 22, 1973, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure across the United States. The court held that a woman’s right to an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.”

The History website also explains that “In May 2022, the nation's highest court agreed to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, regarding the constitutionality of a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The case presents a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.”

The news broke when a draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to and published by Politico. This draft opinion, secretly and wrongly provided by someone associated with the Court, has started two huge reactions. 

One reaction is outrage that the decision beloved by abortion supporters may be reversed. The other is disgust and anger that the leak has damaged the integrity of the Court as never before in its history, and that it was done by someone on the inside.

"We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives."

He also wrote that while defenders of Roe point to the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to justify the decision, they are mistaken, CNN reported.

“In the draft, Alito batted away arguments that other provisions of the Constitution dealing with privacy or liberty might be relied upon to uphold a right to an abortion,” the network’s story continued.

“That's because, according to Alito, while the Due Process Clause might guarantee some rights that aren't mentioned explicitly in [the] Constitution, such rights have to be ‘deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition. The right to abortion does not fall within this category,’ he said.”

Alito went on to say that Roe was "egregiously wrong" from the start and its reasoning is "exceptionally weak," CNN reported.

His conclusion was that the issue must be decided by the states, not the Supreme Court. "That is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand," he wrote. "Our Nation's historical understanding of ordered liberty does not prevent the people's elected representatives from deciding how abortion should be regulated," he added.

Paul Stark, writing for Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (mccl.org) on Jan 20, 2017, provided three reasons why Roe was an improper ruling.

“First, and most importantly, the outcome of Roe is harmful and unjust. Why? The facts of embryology show that the human embryo or fetus (the being whose life is ended in abortion) is a distinct and living human organism at the earliest stages of development. ‘Human development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, a zygote,’ explains a leading embryology textbook. ‘This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.’"

“The second problem with Roe is that it is an epic constitutional mistake. Justice Harry Blackmun's majority opinion claimed that the ‘right of privacy’ found in the ‘liberty’ protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is ‘broad enough to encompass’ a fundamental right to abortion. There is no reason to think that's true.”

“Third, Roe is undemocratic. Roe and Doe v. Bolton together struck down the democratically decided abortion laws of all 50 states and replaced them with a nationwide policy of abortion-for-any-reason, whether the people like it or not. Of course, the Court may properly invalidate statutes that are inconsistent with the Constitution (which is the highest law). But Roe lacked any such justification.”

A National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) factsheet estimates that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, "18 states would protect unborn children immediately." This is due to laws implemented prior to the Roe ruling, or “trigger” laws that would go into effect upon Roe’s reversal, or both.

The NRLC also estimates that action to “allow abortion either through legislatively-enacted statute or a court ruling interpreting the state constitution to convey the right to abortion” would occur in 23 states. 

The leaked document predictably has liberals and conservatives blaming each other. PBS online said, “Republican members of Congress are suggesting a sinister left-wing plot to derail the outcome of the final decision. Liberals are alleging machinations from the right to lock the justices into their preliminary vote.”

Regardless of who leaked the opinion and why, this is a serious problem for the Court, which has been immune to such scurrilous behavior, thus far.

Chief Justice John Roberts called the act “absolutely appalling.” Appearing at the 11th Circuit Judicial Conference in Atlanta, Roberts said he hoped “one bad apple” would not affect “people’s perception” of the Court, adding that “the person” or “people” who leaked the document are “foolish” if they think it will affect the courts work.

Put abortion in the hands of the states, and punish the leaker accordingly.

Elon Musk buys Twitter, pledging to provide free speech for all

May 3, 2022

Another comment labeled it “racist” for Musk to own Twitter. And 16 “stars” of various types have said they will leave Twitter. Many of these are among those who said they were moving to Canada when Donald Trump was elected President.

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” prior to Musk’s offer for Twitter being accepted, co-anchor Mika Brzezinski called his attempted takeover a "very dangerous precedent." On that same program, Business Insider columnist Linette Lopez’ column was mentioned, the title of which is, “Elon Musk's attempt to buy Twitter represents a chilling new threat: Billionaire trolls taking over social media."

Perhaps Lopez is unaware that the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, who is apparently not disliked or feared, is himself a billionaire, as is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. 

Interesting that the Twitterites are so afraid of Musk opening their former platform to actual free speech — which Musk has declared he will do — as opposed to the “free speech” as determined and restricted by the Twitter Lefties.

On the brighter side of this event, it was reported on Facebook Messenger by “Chicks on the Right” that “Donald Trump Jr. and many other conservatives noticed they gained a massive number of new followers on Twitter shortly after Musk’s takeover of the company.” Apparently, when Twitter employees knew their work of hassling and censoring conservatives was done, they removed restrictions on these accounts, and hundreds of thousands of people desiring connections were able to connect.

The “Chicks” reported that “Trump Jr. gained 87,296 new followers by Tuesday and another 119,022 by Wednesday morning.” “Conservative radio host Dana Loesch gained 22,163 followers. Tucker Carlson gained more than 141,000. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene saw her followers grow by more than 130,000. Podcast host Joe Rogan’s follower count exploded by nearly 135,000 and Texas Senator Ted Cruz gained more than 112,000.”

Let's keep in mind that Musk has said he will open Twitter up to comments from all political elements, and will not censor any particular perspective, unlike the previous Twitter operators, who claimed to remove misinformation and disinformation while actually providing it.

Twitter permanently suspended still-President Donald Trump in early January of 2021. And in October of 2020, Twitter censored the New York Post. The Post is one of the oldest newspapers in the nation, founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801. Twitter censored its exposés about Hunter Biden’s emails, baselessly charging that “hacked materials” were used. The Post story has been confirmed to have been accurate, not misinformation.

In a supportive comment about the Twitter sale that surprised many of us, former CEO Dorsey commented that "Twitter as a company has always been my sole issue and my biggest regret. It has been owned by Wall Street and the ad model. Taking it back from Wall Street is the correct first step."

In earlier comments, Musk has been outspoken about his desire to promote free speech on Twitter, saying that he is “against censorship that goes far beyond the law.”

He said, free speech is essential for a democracy. “Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square. So, it’s just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they’re able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.”

According to UK’s The Guardian, Musk commented, “For Twitter to deserve public trust it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.” 

And Musk has argued that his changes would affect all users. “Attacks are coming thick and fast, primarily from the left, which is no surprise,” he said. “However, I should be clear that the right will probably be a little unhappy, too. My goal is to maximize area under the curve of total human happiness, which means the [roughly] 80 percent of people in the middle.”

The First Amendment was first for a reason: because all of what follows depends upon what is in it. And, as African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman Frederick Douglass said, “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

This piece of common sense, and the founding principle of free speech, is poison to the success of the Left’s pursuit of socialist goals.

What the Left doesn’t know — or just doesn’t like — is that a free state depends upon the people having differing opinions about what is going on. But the goals of the Left are quite difficult to achieve when their arguments are forced to stand up against contrary opinions.

Only with a completely open dialogue can the American people be adequately informed to understand what is happening and make sound decisions about critical issues.

The Russian war with Ukraine has now entered its third month

April 26, 2022

On February 24th, the unprovoked invasion of a peaceful country began, after months of open preparations by the Russians, with little real action from the rest of the world to deter it. Yes, some sanctions were imposed, but they were fairly mild ones. Most other actions had more to do with preparing to defend NATO countries, in the event that they also came under attack.

Only after the invasion began did real assistance for Ukraine begin, and even now more could and should be done. Some of the most effective defensive weapons requested by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenski have yet to be provided.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that his goal in attacking Ukraine was to “demilitarize” and “denazify” that nation, as if Ukraine was threat to Russia. He also fears Ukraine being admitted to NATO, something NATO had never expressed interest in, prior to the invasion.

Vlad the Invader, a former KGB officer, has wanted to restore Russia’s position in the world since becoming the country’s leader in 1999, it is said. The former communist Soviet Union’s collapse was completed in 1991, and Putin has previously stated the desire to rebuild the former Russian empire. 

This has left many with the idea that if the effort to conquer Ukraine succeeds, other nations that were once part of the former communist state will be targets for future action.

In his evil resolve to conquer Ukraine, Putin’s forces have murdered and injured thousands of innocent civilians, including hundreds of children, and destroyed hundreds of buildings, including medical facilities, civilian housing and other non-military targets.

As reported by the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, a total of 2,435 civilians have been killed (844 males, 518 females, as well as 70 children and 1,036 adults whose sex is yet unknown). And, a total of 2,946 injured (407 males, 339 females, as well as 157 children and 2,041 adults whose sex is yet unknown).

The damage to the cities that have thus far been attacked is enormous and the innocent lives the Russians have wiped out is unforgiveable. Most have been unidentified and buried in mass graves, since the continued violence prevents having normal funerals for them. These actions truly constitute genocide. That Putin and his military personnel have committed war crimes and deserve the harshest punishment for them is inarguable. 

Most of the American people do not want the U.S. in another war, and almost none want to see another world war, so U.S. forces being involved is not going to happen. 

Even fewer people want a nuclear war. And Putin has made good use of rattling the nuclear weapons saber in a successful effort to use the fear of his resorting to nuclear weapons to control and reduce assistance to Ukraine’s defensive efforts.

Things the U.S. and other countries could have done prior to the invasion, or could do now, were and are being withheld or soft-pedaled so as to not further provoke Putin. But is the world so scared of Putin’s possible use of nuclear weapons that it will allow him do anything he pleases? Or, is there a line in the sand that will at some point spark a strong response?

At some point, some brave country or group of countries will have to step up and say, “Enough!” And through their might and determination put an end to the Russian terrorism. Whether Putin is willing to suffer the enormous damage Russia would experience in an enlarged war, even if he ultimately wins, is not known. So far, he has not been fazed by the broad disapproval for Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

There are two possible future prospects for Ukraine that are currently being discussed. One is continuing to help the brave and able Ukrainians defend themselves and ultimately defeat the Russians. The other is to work much harder to bring an end to the conflict through negotiations and a peace treaty.

By following the first of those choices, the war will continue, more people will be murdered, and more destruction will be delivered by the vicious Russian military. Success in this endeavor will take much broader and much stronger support from the U.S. and other countries than has been provided thus far. And some observers say that this struggle could last more than another year.

The second choice will save lives and property, but Putin will almost certainly demand that Ukraine cede some of its land to him, helping him in his plan to rebuild the former empire. Giving up Ukrainian land is something Zelenski has thus far refused to allow, or even discuss. And it is doubtful that giving in to Putin’s demands will discourage his dream of restoring the former Russian empire, and therefore we can expect more of the same murderous behavior by Russia, even if a treaty is reached.

And perhaps the greatest failure is that it will not deliver the harsh justice for the genocide that Putin and his Russian henchmen have caused that they so richly deserve.

Having a “living” Constitution is having no Constitution

One of the serious challenges to America’s future is the tendency to interpret the U.S. Constitution and our laws liberally. That is, to understand something written years, decades or centuries ago using the current fluid understanding of how things “ought to be.” 

This concept of a “living” Constitution completely discards the reasoning that occurred when the document was created, and substitutes today’s “preferences” for the principles as understood, intended and written.

Strict interpretation of the language of the Constitution, interpreted through knowledge of how things were during the creation of the document and how the Founders thought, is essential to the nation keeping the magnificent principles with which it was designed. This is known as “originalism,” or maintaining the original intent of the Constitution and laws.

A good example of why that is important is in the meaning of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

There are two elements under debate, the first being the meaning of the term “militia.” Today, the term often applies to formal military organizations similar to the National Guard. Thus, the anti-Second Amendment folks suggest that only such organizations are guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms. But when the Constitution was being written, the militia consisted of private citizens who could be called together to act in defense against an attack. It was not the army, nor even a formal organization. 

The other issue is that the anti-Second Amendment folks say it does not give anyone the right to own any weapon they want. People often say that the Founders had no way to imagine the existence of so-called “assault weapons.” And that is true. However, the Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. There are two different concepts: Keeping arms means to own and have arms, while bearing arms means they may be carried by the people.

It also does not distinguish between the types of arms people may keep and bear. There were knives and swords, etc., and there were hand-held muskets, long rifles, and cannons. The 2nd Amendment doesn’t say to keep and bear muskets and swords, it says to keep and bear arms, meaning whatever arms were available. People were not prohibited from owning a cannon if they chose, to drag it along behind them or tie it to their horse if they wanted. Muskets, long rifles and cannons were the “assault weapons” of their time, and they were precisely what the Amendment guaranteed the right to keep and to bear.

They also try to persuade us that the purpose was to guarantee the right to keep and bear arms for hunting and home defense, but the main threat generating this right was the potential for a threat from an armed enemy, foreign or domestic.

The idea of a “living Constitution” essentially renders the Constitution to mean what a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices says it means at any given time. Today, it may mean something, and next year it may mean something else. That, of course, means the Constitution means nothing, if what it means is subject to the aspirations of a few people at any given time.

The Founders were smart guys. They had seen various types of government be tried, and fall short. Sometimes falling very short. So, they devised a different idea. And the document designed to govern this nation was comprised of broad principles, one of which was great personal freedom, which would last in perpetuity.

Those principles may not be changed on a whim, or because one or more people in a position of power decides to change one or more of the principles.

Thus, if sufficient reasoning and support for changing some portion of the Constitution exists, there is a process for doing that, and that process involves much more than the personal opinions of jurists. The Constitution may be amended, but through a rigorous process.

The National Archives describes this process: “The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. None of the 27 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed by constitutional convention.”

This process was designed to be a difficult one, in order to prevent quirky, impulsive changes to suit some circumstance, which may be fleeting, and change after a time. It was designed to prevent what too many justices of the United States Supreme Court and judges like to do: make law and change the Constitution from the bench.

Under this process, the Constitution will remain what it was designed to be: a standard for the nation that does not change with the tide or the direction and speed of the wind, unless there is a good reason for it and a substantial amount of support for it.

Florida takes a stand for parent’s rights to protect their children

What is basic education? It is the process of helping youngsters in their early years to gain knowledge, skills and understanding of important, fundamental areas of living as a human being. These things are taught in the home and in schools, and for some, in religious activities.

And in schools, at first, the focus is on learning basic things like the ABCs, then how to read, speak and write; how to count, and then to add, subtract, multiply and divide. With each year of age comes more complex learning. 

Young minds are only capable of basic learning, which is why the early years focus on the basics. What children learn in the early years will stick with them. Which is why they need to be taught by parents and in school about fundamentals, like honesty, kindness, fairness, clear thinking, respect for others, and working to achieve. 

Young minds are evolving, and are malleable. In their early years, children have little ability to evaluate the good or bad of things with which they come in contact. That is why parents must be sure they are not exposed to harmful ideas, and why they must be watchful for efforts to “mold” the young in certain harmful ways.

Such things as gender identity, that there are more than two genders, whether they like being a boy or girl, or would rather transition to another gender, are not appropriate. Bringing up what the letters LGBT mean. Teaching that people of color are oppressed, and white people are oppressors. These concepts are unsuitable for K-3 children, and perhaps some older ones, as well.

While the denials are strong, the fact is that some schools and some teachers are taking advantage of the malleable nature of children in kindergarten and the early grades to put harmful ideas into the curricula that most parents do not support. These ideas are being secretly introduced into classrooms, as neither school boards nor the public have given them official and public approval.

This subversive behavior has raised the ire of parents in some states, as they resent the effort to remove from them the obvious authority they have over how their children are treated. And in Florida, the Legislature has acted on their behalf.

On March 28, the Governor’s website (flgov.com) said the following: “Today, Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill (HB) 1557, Parental Rights in Education, which reinforces parents’ fundamental rights to make decisions regarding the upbringing of their children. The bill prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through 3rd grade and prohibits instruction that is not age appropriate for students and requires school districts to adopt procedures for notifying parents if there is a change in services from the school regarding a child’s mental, emotional or physical health or well-being. The bill builds on the Parents’ Bill of Rights, which was signed into law in Florida last year, and is part of Governor DeSantis’ Year of the Parent focus on protecting parental rights in education.”

Gender activists and opponents of this bill call it the “The Don’t Say Gay” bill, even though the term “gay” does not appear in the text of the legislation. Reacting not to the bill itself and its purpose, but to the activists’ mischaracterization of it as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, opposition to Gov. DeSantis’ position and the legislation has gained a following.

And the once red-blooded American company, the Walt Disney Company, has taken exception to this child-protecting law. The company’s CEO, Bob Chapek, intends to work for the repeal of the law.

The company’s position has angered a group of its employees, which wrote an unsigned letter claiming Disney has embraced a “progressive orthodoxy” that has created an “environment of fear” in employees that are not progressives.

 “The Walt Disney Company has come to be an increasingly uncomfortable place to work for those of us whose political and religious views are not explicitly progressive,” the letter said, as reported by the New York Post. “We watch quietly as our beliefs come under attack from our own employer, and we frequently see those who share our opinions condemned as villains by our own leadership.” 

Responding to Disney’s opposition to the bill, DeSantis’ said this in a Twitter post: “The state of Florida is governed according to the interests of the people, not according to the political posturing of corporate executives in California. We will never allow corporate influence to repeal the substantive rights of parents in our state.”

Someone posted a meme on Facebook which read: “It’s not about homosexuality or heterosexuality. Stop promoting sexuality to our children, PERIOD. Let kids be kids.” So far, this common-sense post has not been taken down.

People who support DeSantis’ position are being accused of being “anti-gay” or “anti-trans.” But wanting to protect the youngest school children from potential indoctrination of a subject that could harm them for the rest of their lives is not “anti-gay” or “anti-trans.” It is pro-children.

Mature individuals will have plenty of time to decide how they spend their adult years after they have progressed sufficiently to make such decisions. 

Our traditional standard of free speech is under attack in America

More and more these days, people seem to be having fits over what other people think and believe. No longer do they just go on their way, shaking their heads in dismay and disagreement, but they plot how to punish those horrible excuses for humanity who dare to think for themselves.

Back in the fifties, a song in a Broadway musical was about “standing on the corner, watching all the girls go by.” After a couple of verses, the lyric says, “Brother, you can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking.” 

Today, you may not go to jail for what you think, but you can get attacked and “cancelled” by those who dislike your ideas, and therefore dislike you, and will see to it that you get your just desserts.

Examples of cancelling someone are not hard to find. You may have heard about speakers on college campuses being shouted down as they were speaking by students who disagreed with their ideas. A professor at the University of Southern California was put on leave because of the outrage that occurred when students mis-heard a Chinese word the professor used, and claimed he had used the N-word. He had not.

Such high-handed behavior is sharply at odds with the First Amendment’s protection of our ability to speak freely and the other freedoms the Founders of our country had in mind. That is un-American.

What someone thinks or does has become deserving of public rebuke in the minds of some who think differently. Given the radical thoughts of so many in positions of influence, perhaps in the not too distant future, it may become an area of criminality.

People see themselves as judge and jury, and convict someone on nothing more than a different point of view. Our traditional standard of free speech is being killed.

Another of our once strong standards is the sense of right and wrong. That is much weaker, given the large number of people who willingly commit crimes and other lesser wrongs. These impulses have been nourished by idiotic liberal concepts, such as defunding the police, the no-cash bail movement, and those whose job is to prosecute crime, but refuse to do it.

We haven’t forgotten the rash of incidents in cities across the country that were taken over by bands of ne’er do wells and criminals trashing public buildings and businesses, and robbing and killing people.

Newsmax magazine published a story about a crime spike in its April edition. It involved an ABC News analysis of data supplied by the state police in each of the states reported on, showing new homicide records in 12 cities in 2021. Two of the records broken last year were set in 1984 and 1987, and two others in 1990 and in 1991. The rest were in the 2000s, most on them in 2019.

The crime centers are: Columbus and Toledo, Ohio; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Austin, Texas; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Portland, Oregon; Tucson, Arizona; Rochester, New York; Louisville, Kentucky; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Indianapolis, Indiana; and St. Paul, Minnesota.

What do these cities have in common, besides crime? They are all run by Democrat administrations.

There used to be three strong elements in our society that helped children learn how to be good humans: the home, the schools, and the churches. Actually, there still are three, but one of them has seen a dramatic decrease in participation: the churches. 

According to a Gallup 2019 poll, “… Gallup finds the percentage of Americans who report belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque at an all-time low, averaging just 50 percent in 2018.

“U.S. church membership was 70 percent or higher from 1937 through 1976, falling modestly to an average of 68 percent in the 1970s through the 1990s. The past 20 years have seen an acceleration in the drop-off, with a 20-percentage-point decline since 1999 and more than half of that change occurring since the start of the current decade [2010s].”

And while the other two areas have seen changes, too, those changes are less about numbers than about what goes on, or no longer goes on, in homes and schools.

Families too often consist of only one parent, and too often child rearing is not an important focus, at least not in the traditional way.

Schools are more and more becoming ideological training centers, and less and less educational centers. 

The grading system that has existed for decades is being replaced with a feel-good mish-mash that replaces actual testing for subject knowledge with a broad subjective judgement by the teacher. It’s not whether students earn an A, B, C, D or F, it’s about whether students made a respectable effort. Even basic discipline is missing.

These weak standards are not everywhere; not in every school system or in every school, of course, but they should not be anywhere.

So many kids and young adults today do not know and exhibit the strong traditional standards that built this great nation. Many, perhaps most, were not taught and expected to mirror those ideals, and some have just subscribed to an “easier” way of life.

Whatever the reason, the nation is suffering and becoming weaker.

Politics control the nomination process for Supreme Court Justices

President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee brings to the fore several issues. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has served as a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2021. Prior to that, she was a district judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 2013 to 2021, and was vice chair of the United States Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2014.

She is expected to be confirmed by the Democrat majority in the Senate Judiciary Committee and in the full Senate, maintaining the current liberal and conservative numbers on the Court.

She has been criticized for her record of letting sex offenders off with sentences well below the recommendations of prosecutors and sentencing guidelines. She defended her actions in the confirmation hearing. That prompted Alabama Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall to comment that such actions raise concerns about her being soft on crime. 

She refused to answer the simple question from Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-TN, of what is the definition of the word “woman?” Jackson said that she could not define the term. “You can’t,” Blackburn asked? “Not in this context. I’m not a biologist,” Jackson said. 

The same Democrats who so enthusiastically defend this African American woman’s nomination opposed another African American woman nominee several years ago.

Jackson refused to condemn the radical idea of packing the Court to establish an ideological or political majority. Some Supreme Court Justices and other officials have condemned this as dangerous to the ideal of justice, because of the political influence it would inject into judicial matters.

She has embraced radical philosophies, like critical race theory. She was asked about it by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX: “Do you think that’s an accurate way of viewing society and the world we live in?”

“Senator, I don’t think so, but I’ve never studied critical race theory, and I’ve never used it,” Jackson responded.

Cruz then said, “you gave a speech in April of 2015 at the University of Chicago in which you described the job you do as a judge.” Cruz then quoted part of her speech: “Sentencing is just plain interesting … because it melds together myriad types of law, criminal law, of course … constitutional law, critical race theory.”

Among those issues is also the controversial one of judicial philosophy, which appears to be a factor in some of the issues noted previously. Jackson appears to be an activist judge, not an originalist. Judicial activism is a dangerous thing for the law and for America.

What is judicial activism? “Judicial activism occurs when judges abandon their responsibility to interpret the Constitution and instead decide cases to advance their preferred policies,” according to the Britannica website.

The other side of that is the conservative, or originalist, philosophy. Originalism holds that the Constitution means what it meant when it was written and passed. If there are good reasons to change some things, it must be done through amendments, not by the actions of judges.

The 11th Chief Justice of the United States, from 1930 to 1941, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, offered the idea that “the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”

This statement is absurd on its face. If words mean only what the reader thinks they mean, or what he or she wants them to mean, the world would turn upside-down.

The Framers of the Constitution carefully wrote that document to address important concepts. They are broad principles. They were not written based upon the minute details of that time, but intended to last into the future. 

If the originalist interpretation leads to unpopular or undesirable things, then the Constitution can be properly amended, but not subjected to the whims of a judge, or a majority of five or more of the nine unelected justices.

Justice Clarence Thomas addressed this question in a 1996 speech. “The Constitution means not what the Court says it does but what the delegates at Philadelphia and at the state ratification conventions understood it to mean ... We as a nation adopted a written Constitution precisely because it has a fixed meaning that does not change. Otherwise we would have adopted the British approach of an unwritten, evolving constitution.”

Despite the fact that Judge Jackson’s supporters condemn how she was questioned, the questions were perfectly acceptable, and many even necessary in a confirmation hearing for such an important post. 

Further, when compared to the horrid and disgraceful treatment by Democrat members of the Judiciary Committee during the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominees Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, Jackson is getting respectful treatment.

And Justice Thomas was also treated contemptibly during his confirmation hearing. Part of his response to his disgusting treatment was, “it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves…”

We need justices and judges on the federal bench who understand and respect the broad and sensible principles stated in the Constitution and will adhere to them, rather than supplant them with personal or political ideals. Judge Jackson falls short of this standard.

However, in today’s highly political atmosphere, such ideals will not carry the day.

Ending fossil fuel usage is only a dream, at this point in time

Green Energy Mania (GEM) desires that we do away with fossil fuels immediately, without regard to whether the preferred types of green energy sources are available in the necessary quantities to meet the present and future needs of Americans and the rest of humanity.

Few people believe that burning materials to make electricity is a good idea, if there are other ways of producing it. There are, however, lots of people who believe that the GEM goal is so important that it needs to be forced on Americas right away, without regard to the reality that we are nowhere close to being able to produce enough electricity by wind, solar, nuclear, et al, to handle the needs of Americans.

This attitude produces many problems, such as rules and restrictions that were created that affect the production of fossil fuels, reducing their availability and increasing their price.

Furthermore, while the US is at the top of the list of nations reducing CO2 emissions, there are other nations, like China and India, that couldn’t care less about that, and are increasing their use of fossil fuels. Why are we punishing ourselves with expensive and inconvenient restrictions when the reductions they produce are made irrelevant by the increasing excesses of other nations? 

Perhaps the only thing good about Putin’s Russian attack on Ukraine might be that it has highlighted some of the fallacies of the GEM mindset. Not so long ago — 2020, to be exact — the United States had gained the status of being a net energy exporter. And then, Joseph Biden became President of the United States, and willingly gave that up through executive orders that hurt our fossil fuel production and usage.

We must sensibly balance our wants against our needs. No matter how badly people want to end fossil fuel use, we have no choice but to depend upon them until cleaner methods are able to meet our needs. And even more sensibly, let’s use our own fossil fuels, not those of other countries.

Buying oil from places like Venezuela, whose oil is the dirtiest in the world, and America-hating Iran, the world’s top sponsor of terror, is just foolish.

And when we start smartly using our own fossil fuels as needed, let’s stop foolishly making that more difficult and expensive by getting rid of rules and restrictions. Let’s finish the Keystone XL pipeline that will make it safer and faster to get fuel from Canada for use here.

On that topic, Global Energy Institute President Marty Durbin said last year that her organization “opposes President Biden’s action to revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline — the most studied infrastructure project in American history — is already under construction and has cleared countless legal and environmental hurdles. This is a politically motivated decision that is not grounded in science. It will harm consumers and put thousands of Americans in the building trades out of work. Halting construction will also impede the safe and efficient transport of oil, and unfairly single out production from one of our closest and most important allies.”

“Several extensive regulatory studies conducted over the past decade as part of an unprecedented regulatory review concluded the pipeline would enhance the American economy while protecting the environment,” according to the Global Energy Institute.

Those that think not using a pipeline, and transporting fuels instead by trucks and trains — which burn fossil fuels while moving those fuels, putting lots of CO2 into the air, which a pipeline does not do — are not thinking clearly.

The Keystone XL pipeline would deliver over 800,000 barrels of oil a day. Its construction supports over 13,000 Canadian and American workers in the building trades.

And, while the U.S. and some other nations are working to phase out the use of coal for electricity production, others are increasing its use.

Citing data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Heartland Daily News, published by The Heartland Institute, reported that “Global coal demand fell by 4 percent in the pandemic year 2020, the biggest decline since World War II, but coal demand surged in 2021 as economies rebounded from the 2020 lockdowns. The IEA projects coal use will rise at an annual rate of 6 percent through 2024, surpassing its previous all-time high for use sometime in 2022.”

“According to the IEA,” the Heartland report continued, “the gap between the political commitments to meet net zero carbon dioxide emissions and the realities of the electric power demand and the increasing use of coal to satisfy it, is widening.”

We need fossil fuels, and will for some time to come. And, other nations are going to continue to use fossil fuels, regardless of what the U.S. and other nations decide to do, or what they may think is needed. 

Some nation or nations will benefit from producing those products. Why should that not be the U.S.? We will benefit from the jobs created, and the income produced, and we might as well enjoy the cost savings that using American fossil fuels will provide to us.