It is generally not considered a good career move to be indicted for drug trafficking, as Jonathan “Chico” and Robert DeBarge were today in 1988:
Birthdays begin with Jaimoe “Johnny” Johanson, drummer for the Allman Brothers:
Rick Esenberg expands on a point I made in this space yesterday:
Two days ago, the Joint Finance Committee inserted language into the proposed state budget that would have substantially — actually almost completely — immunized the legislature from the state’s open records law. It’s a very bad idea and it was greeted by spontaneous opposition from groups across the political spectrum, including my organization, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty who released a joint statement with the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy.
There is a reason we issued the statement in collaboration with our friends at MacIver. This time, it is Republicans who want to restrict government transparency. Four years ago, it was Democratic legislators who stonewalled MacIver’s request for information. We represented MacIver in a lawsuit against Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D–Middleton). In defending against our suit, Sen. Erpenbach, at great public expense, argued, in part, for a view of the open records law that was just as bad — just as protective of the legislature’s desire to keep things secret — as what the JFC attempted on July 2.
We won. Sen. Erpenbach’s attempt to largely immunize the legislature from the open records law failed. … If it ever did get passed, my guess is that the Governor would veto it.
I understand that people in government don’t much like the open records law. Compliance is time-consuming. The law was passed before the digital age — before things like e-mail exponentially increased the number of “documents” that individuals and organizations generate. In a world of simple-minded social media and hash tag philosophers, any effort to be candid in writing is likely to be turned into distorted attacks by partisans who either are incapable of understanding — or have no interest in — context.
Perhaps the law can be improved. But, as I said in our statement, transparency is the price you pay when you get to spend taxpayer dollars.
While Wisconsin Republicans were demonstrating, until they were forced to back down, their disagreement with the state Open Records Law because it applies to them, along comes a Democrat with her own unique interpretation of our constitutional rights.
That would be U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who said this, according to Media Trackers:
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) says the 1st Amendment’s religious liberty protections don’t apply to individuals. On MSNBC last week, Wisconsin’s junior Senator claimed that the Constitution’s protection of the free exercise of religion extends only to religious institutions, and that individual’s do not have a right to the free exercise of their own religion.
During the MSNBC appearance, which was covered by Breitbart and NewsBusters, Baldwin appeared clueless to the fact that the free exercise clause of the 1st Amendment has already been found to apply to individuals – not just churches, synagogues, mosques or other institutions of faith and worship.
The full text of the 1st Amendment reads:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
The relevant portion of Baldwin’s MSNBC appearance transcript reads:
“Certainly the First Amendment says that in institutions of faith that there is absolute power to, you know, to observe deeply held religious beliefs. But I don’t think it extends far beyond that. … [I]n this context, they’re talking about expanding this far beyond our churches and synagogues to businesses and individuals across this country. I think there are clear limits that have been set in other contexts and we ought to abide by those in this new context across America.”
The 1st Amendment’s free exercise clause says nothing about protecting religious institutions but not individuals. “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise of [religion].”
University of St. Thomas Law School professor [Thomas C. Berg] writes in The Heritage Foundation’s Guide to the Constitution that Supreme Court jurisprudence has long concluded that the clause protects religiously motivated conduct as well as belief.
“Because it is now accepted that the Free Exercise of Religion Clause protects religiously motivated conduct as well as belief, the most important modern issue has been whether the protection only runs against laws that target religion itself for restriction, or, more broadly, whether the clause sometimes requires an exemption from a generally applicable law.”
[Berg] goes on to explore instances of individuals – not just institutions – receiving protection for their free exercise of religion thanks to the 1st Amendment.
Fascinatingly, Baldwin is on the record claiming that another portion of the 1st Amendment shouldn’t apply to institutions and should exclusively apply to individuals; a contradiction with her present arguments.
In the landmark case Citizens United v. FEC (2010), the U.S. Supreme Court held that corporations, unions and other organizations could spend money advocating for or against political candidates and issues. The Court said such spending was free speech protected by the 1st Amendment.
Baldwin made opposition to Citizens United a consistent theme of her campaign for U.S. Senate and her time as a senator. “I think it is so important that we overturn Citizens United,” Baldwin declared in a 2012 video for the leftwing publication The Nation. Baldwin claimed that corporations – essentially institutions – should not be entitled to the same freedoms afforded individuals.
“It is far too often the case in Washington that powerful corporate interests, the wealthy, and the well-connected get to write the rules, and now the Supreme Court has given them more power to rule the ballot box by creating an uneven playing field,” Baldwin complained after another free speech-related decision by the Supreme Court. Already she has voted in favor of a Constitutional amendment that would specifically curtail the 1st Amendment’s free speech protections by denying them to institutions and organizations.
As free speech and the free exercise of religion remain contentious topics, there is no sign Baldwin intends to reach a consistent position on whether or not the Constitution applies to individuals, institutions, or both.
So Baldwin doesn’t favor the First Amendment’s application to organizations that make political contributions, but she also doesn’t favor the First Amendment’s application to individual religious freedom. Well, at least she’s consistent.
Today in 1967, the Beatles released “All You Need Is Love” …
… which proved insufficient for the Yardbirds, which disbanded one year later:
This past weekend — Independence Day weekend, ironically — I got a lesson that however cynical I am about politics and politicians, including those I vote for, I’m not cynical enough.
Tucked into the current version of the 2015–17 state budget passed by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee was a provision that would have gutted the state’s Open Records Law for the benefit of legislators.
The Wisconsin Newspaper Association describes the provision thusly:
“The Legislature is attempting to change for its purposes the very definition of “public record,’” said Wisconsin Newspaper Association Executive Director Beth Bennett. “The ‘legal privilege’ these lawmakers seek is tantamount to a blank check to close the government to scrutiny from citizens and the press.” Read the full WNA press release here.
Attorney General Brad Schimel calls the move “a step in the wrong direction.”
The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council calls the move “an assault on Wisconsin’s long and proud tradition of open government.“
That news broke late last week. The Wisconsin State Journal reported this Independence Day night:
In the face of withering criticism, Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican leaders of the Legislature announced Saturday that a provision added to the state budget to gut the open records law “will be removed from the budget in its entirety.”
Walker made the announcement Saturday afternoon in a joint statement with Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R–Juneau, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R–Rochester, and Joint Finance Committee co-Chairs, Sen. Alberta Darling, R–River Hills, and Rep. John Nygren, R–Marinette.
“We are steadfastly committed to open and accountable government,” the statement said. “The intended policy goal of these changes was to provide a reasonable solution to protect constituents’ privacy and to encourage a deliberative process between elected officials and their staff in developing policy. It was never intended to inhibit transparent government in any way.”
The statement said the Legislature will form a Legislative Council committee to study the matter outside of the budget process.
No one claimed responsibility for requesting the language be added to a sweeping omnibus amendment the Legislature’s budget committee passed late Thursday. And it’s unclear what role, if any, Walker played in the drama over the past few days.
But amid near-universal condemnation of the move and bipartisan demands that the language be withdrawn or that Walker use his partial veto power to strip it out of the budget if it passed, the governor and the leadership conceded defeat on the issue.
Republican leaders have refused to say who initially sought the changes or why.
Among other things, the revisions would have rendered secret virtually all records and communications by lawmakers and policymakers at the state and local levels.
Drafting files for legislation would have no longer been public, and legislators would have been granted a “legal privilege” or right to refuse to disclose any communication that occurred during the lawmaker’s term in office.
The measure, which Darling and Nygren allowed to be added to the omnibus motion, stunned advocates of open government and prompted many lawmakers, including some Republicans, to pledge not to vote for a budget that contained the items.
It is, first, unbelievable that Walker, who supposedly is running or president, allowed this to get as far as it did. Reporters who cover the White House have called it the most secretive and least media-helpful White House of all time. Hillary Clinton will never win anyone’s Freedom of Information award (one word: “Benghazi”). And yet the state GOP apparently was fine with being on the state level what the White House is on the federal level in terms of working away from public view and scrutiny.
There are at least three ironies about this. I believe this was prompted by the experience of state Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D–Middleton), who was communicating via state email with state employees about the Act 10 public employee collective bargaining reforms. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty sued Erpenbach to see the emails after he refused to release them, in violation of the state Open Records Law. Erpenbach lost. He deserved to lose.
It is also ironic that one apparent supporter of this hideous legislation, Fitzgerald, is the former owner of the Dodge County Independent News. One wonders what newspaper publisher Fitzgerald would have thought of politician Fitzgerald.
Then again, this flies in the face of what gubernatorial candidate Walker said to The Lakeland Times in Minocqua in 2010:
When he says he believes in government transparency, it’s not just a campaign slogan, Walker said.
“I don’t just say that, I’ve lived it,” he said. “(In Milwaukee County), we have put all government purchases online at no additional cost. Every purchase, everything we enter into our accounting software, automatically in real time goes on to a website that tells the public every purchase by department. Not only a journalist but a citizen journalist or anybody else can track it down.”
Walker said he does not favor proposed constraints on access to police 911 tapes or to the state’s online circuit court records, and he says he also believes the Legislature itself needs to be more transparent.
“In fact I’ve even proposed – in terms of the budget process, but it would apply to anything – other things that would help transparency,” he said. “I don’t think there should be any votes in closed caucus, on any issue. If a county board or school board can’t discuss a budget in private, then the state Legislature certainly should not. There should not be any closed caucuses on the budget.”
What’s more, he said, the budget should only entail budgetary items; there shouldn’t be any nonfiscal items in it.
“And I would make it, by statute, that the Legislature can’t vote on anything after 10 at night or before 9 in the morning,” Walker said. “They did things this last (budget) at 2 and 3 o’clock in the morning. As I tell my staff, nothing good happens after midnight. But they did it on purpose because not only do they not want average persons to know, they don’t want reporters with deadlines to know – after 10 you miss the nightly TV news and you’re not in print for the daily newspapers. They push it back on a Saturday, hoping people won’t read about things like that.”
This appears to have been prompted by the unidentified author’s, or authors’, desire to keep away from public view the various pre-introduction versions of legislation, including legislation written in some form by such groups as the American Legislative Exchange Council. Democrats and their apparatchiks have been complaining about ALEC’s supposed influence in legislation, as if only ideas created in Wisconsin have any merit. (The groups complaining the loudest, including Zero Wisconsin Now, are groups who have spent the 2010s losing elections and legislative votes.)
Well, so what? Being in power means you have to withstand the scrutiny of the opposition, whether you like it or not, whether the opposition has any valid points or not, and whether the opposition is fair or not. That also applies to dealing with the news media. It demonstrates a lack of intellectual courage to not be able to argue legislation on its merits when someone complains about the source of said legislation, as if, for instance, fiscal responsibility is a concept that should be foreign to Wisconsin. (The apparent idea of changing the wording of the Wisconsin Idea could have, for instance, been justified as (1) the need to make the UW System adhere to the educational, economic and vocational realities of the 21st century, or (2) with easy-to-obtain examples of how UW System professors teach only from the left-side pages of the textbook, making the term “sifting and winnowing” less correct than one assumes its author had in mind.)
Democrats are having a field day with this, which is unsurprising, yet hypocritical. They can vote against it now and take full advantage of it should it become law. The beneficiary of this is not specifically Republicans; it’s incumbents, who would be able to do their work away from the eyes of, among others, potential future challengers. (Which is why I now believe the state Open Meetings and Open Records laws need to be in the state Constitution, to make it nearly impossible to eviscerate the concept of open government.)
I am sure some readers of this blog hate the news media and could not care less if the Legislature makes it more difficult for the media to do their jobs. There are those in the Republican Party who think the media has it in for them and therefore are perfectly willing to stick it to the likes of Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Chris Rickert of the Wisconsin State Journal, every person getting a paycheck from The Capital Times, radio’s Sly, Wisconsin Public Radio, and so on. It could even be argued that the media has brought this on itself by being insufficiently critical toward Democrats, and being knee-jerk critical of Republicans, particularly on the opinion page, and well before Walker’s election in 2010.
Here is why those of you who see your views in the previous paragraph are mistaken. In the same way that the First Amendment applies to all Americans, not just the news media, the state Open Records and Open Meetings laws apply to all Wisconsinites, not just those who oppose what’s going on in a particular political body, and not just the news media. It is also rather arrogant to assume that the GOP will remain in control in Madison for perpetuity, or until you are past caring. Republicans would be screaming bloody murder if legislative Democrats had tried this the last time they controlled all of state government, in 2009 and 2010, and rightly so.
Remember Recallarama? The reason why Wisconsinites know who signed the recall forms, and now are able to question whether state and local government employees or news media who wanted Walker and other Republicans recalled are able to perform their jobs impartially is because of an Open Records Law request. The same Open Records Law allows Wisconsinites to find out how much every single employee of government is paid with their tax dollars. That is why such non-Democrats as Right Wisconsin and Jerry Bader and numerous conservative groups were appropriately swift to condemn the JFC vote and to urge Walker to veto it from the budget. That is also why there was no one I saw, in the Legislature, media or anywhere else, willing to defend this disaster.
Independent of whether policy items belong in the budget at all (they don’t, but both parties add them to state budgets with voter impunity), this proposal should not be in the budget, or anywhere else. Walker and Republican leaders had better be telling the truth that changes to the Open Records Law are dead. The people paying for government have an absolute right to know what government, including government employees and politicians, are doing with their tax dollars.
The New York Times’s Michael Schmidt has been doing some excellent reporting on the Hillary Clinton email scandal, but one has to wonder if his editors are holding him back. Buried on page A14 of today’s paper is a story that begins as follows:
Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters last month that the memos about Libya she received while secretary of state from Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime adviser whom the Obama administration had barred her from hiring, had been “unsolicited.”
But email records that Mrs. Clinton, according to officials briefed on the matter, apparently failed to turn over to the State Department last fall show that she repeatedly encouraged Mr. Blumenthal to “keep ’em coming,” as she said in an August 2012 reply to a memo from him, which she called “another keeper.”
All or part of 15 Libya-related emails she sent to Mr. Blumenthal were missing from the trove of 30,000 that Mrs. Clinton provided to the State Department last year, as well as from the 847 that the department in turn provided in February to the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The emails were reviewed by a reporter.
Much more interesting than the content of the emails, though, is the confirmation that Mrs. Clinton was not telling the truth when she said the following at her March 10 press conference:
After I left office, the State Department asked former secretaries of state for our assistance in providing copies of work-related emails from our personal accounts. I responded right away and provided all my emails that could possibly be work-related, which totalled roughly 55,000 printed pages, even though I knew that the State Department already had the vast majority of them. We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work-related emails and deliver them to the State Department.
Schmidt had already broken on Friday (albeit back on page A18) the story that “15 emails … were missing from records that she has turned over.” But the even more damning detail is mentioned only in passing in both stories — in the third paragraph of today’s, and the sixth paragraph of Friday’s, to wit:
Of the 15 Blumenthal emails in question, only nine were missing in their entirety. Printouts of the other six were turned over with parts missing, which would mean they were identified as official emails and then redacted by somebody in Mrs. Clinton’s employ. That points even more clearly to an active effort at withholding evidence than do entirely missing emails, which might be put down, however unconvincingly, to mere sloppiness.
The full set of 15 emails, Schmidt reports, was “discovered after Mr. Blumenthal turned over to the House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks his own batch of Libya-related email correspondence with Mrs. Clinton.” If Mrs. Clinton told the truth when she said she had destroyed the server that held the emails—a big if, though the assertion doesn’t strain credulity as far as some of her other claims—then there is no way of knowing the extent of the coverup.
And there never will be. More missing emails may turn up as the committee subpoenas other witnesses, but only if the committee knows whom to call and if Mrs. Clinton’s other correspondents didn’t follow her lead and shred the evidence.
What does Mrs. Clinton have to say about all this? She seldom deigns to talk to reporters, and Schmidt is no exception, but his Friday piece includes an official denial:
Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, who is running for president, said that she had given the State Department “over 55,000 pages of materials,” including “all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal.”
That’s obviously false, unless by “in her possession” Merrill means now, after the obliteration of the server. Yet today’s Schmidt story seems to accept the Merrill claim:
In sifting through and producing such a large number of emails, it stands to reason that some would be missed. But the fact that some of the missing correspondence contained expressions of gratitude and encouragement to Mr. Blumenthal is being seized on by Republicans, who plan to use the apparent contradiction, and the missing emails, to raise new questions about Mrs. Clinton’s credibility.
That paragraph more than any other is what makes us suspect Schmidt is the victim of agenda-driven editing on behalf of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. The first sentence is laughably credulous. The awkward second sentence attempts to frame Mrs. Clinton’s scandalous behavior as a mere partisan dispute — as if the new details about the coverup would not raise “questions about Mrs. Clinton’s credibility” without the mediation of Republicans.
Today’s Schmidt story contains another denial from Merrill:
A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Nick Merrill, said, “The idea that this runs counter to the assertion that the emails were unsolicited is a leap.”
“Mr. Blumenthal began emailing of his own accord,” Mr. Merrill said. “Polite acknowledgments are not tantamount to solicitation. And I think that any reasonable person who has ever had an email exchange would agree.”
Schmidt quotes two of the “polite acknowledgments”: “Greetings from Kabul! And thanks for keeping this stuff coming!” and “This strains credulity based on what I know. Any more info about it?”
Let us acknowledge that Merrill has a bit of a point here. “Polite” seems to understate Mrs. Clinton’s enthusiasm, but one could argue these aren’t quite “solicitations.” If Mrs. Clinton were on trial for perjury over the statement that Blumenthal’s emails were unsolicited, and we were on the jury, we’d vote to acquit if those two quotes were the extent of the evidence. There’s enough ambiguity to leave some reasonable doubt about her guilt.
Is that really the ethical standard to which the Democrats plan to hold their candidate for president? Just kidding, we know it is.
Missing from both of Schmidt’s pieces is any explanation from the Clinton camp of the six emails that were redacted before being turned over, which are very strong evidence of obstruction of justice. Didn’t it occur to Schmidt to ask Merrill about these? Maybe Merrill stonewalled, but that would itself be of interest to the reader. Or did the no-comment get lost somewhere in the editing process?
So Clinton turned over emails that had been edited before they were turned over. That is what the lawyers call “obstruction of justice.” And the Times is once again covering up for Hillary.
Can one wish a happy birthday to an entire band? If so, wish Jefferson Airplane a happy birthday:
Today is the anniversary of the Beatles’ first song to reach the U.S. charts, “From Me to You.” Except it wasn’t recorded by the Beatles, it was recorded by Del Shannon:
Five years later, John Lennon sold his Rolls–Royce:
Sharing my daughter’s birthday are Smiley Lewis, who first did …
This seems appropriate to begin Independence Day:
And Independence Day being a Saturday, this is therefore appropriate today:
This being Independence Day, you wouldn’t think there would be many music anniversaries today. There is a broadcasting anniversary, though: WOWO radio in Fort Wayne, Ind., celebrated the nation’s 153rd birthday by burning its transmitter to the ground.
Independence Day 1970 was not a holiday for Casey Kasem, who premiered “America’s Top 40,” though it likely was on tape instead of live:
On the eve of our 239th birthday, a Facebook Friend and a Friend of his debate what makes America great, if America really is now great.
First, Michael Smith:
I think the thing that sets America apart is that we, as individuals and as a nation, are never satisfied with ourselves. We are always trying to do better, to be…better. I’m not talking about the progressive desire to “improve mankind” or create a blissful “Utopia”, I’m talking about the way blue collar workers hit the job to try to break production records or try to win the weekend softball game. We compete against others – and ourselves – and we use that competition to get faster, smarter and better…and the remarkable thing is that this drive doesn’t flow from the top down, it flows from the individual up. …
There is no tradition of individualism in Germany, Switzerland or Singapore. Germany has rigid societal and union rules that favor technology and precision over individual creativity (sort of explains the Bauhaus movement). The Swiss share a similar fondness for the narrowness of precision and Singapore still exhibits the “a place for everything and everything in its place” mentality of a British colony – and these are enforced by very, very strict laws. None share the same drive and independent spirit America has.
I think that is what makes America different, we’ve never found a load we couldn’t lift, a job that was too big or a task too impossible – we’ve won wars because we don’t quit. Once we understand the objective, we don’t just try to achieve it, we try to do it faster. Everything is a challenge to improve and we have the drive to meet every one. The remarkable thing is that for all of our diversity, this is the one thing that has unified us for over 200 years. People want to come to America because of who we are – nobody wants to come to America to fail, everybody wants to succeed…and people who want to succeed have this drive.
There are forces that try to take that from us, many inside our own country. The downside to being the way we are is that we often set unrealistic and overly ambitious goals for ourselves – and because we do, the world also sets the same goals. We may surpass anything anyone else has ever done by a factor of 2 but because we wanted to do a factor of 3, we and the world assign failure to the effort – our own progressive movement does the same thing. Progressives take perverse joy in our failures while largely ignoring our successes. That’s taken a toll over the years and has caused us some self-doubt…and yet, we still persevere. Being too hard on ourselves is fine for us to do to ourselves, but we don’t cotton to someone judging us who never even tried. As the lone superpower, we are held to impossible standards…but what the world doesn’t get is that pissing us off or trying to embarrass us just makes us try harder. That fuels our drive.
The answer to your friend’s challenge is this – the fact is that there is no other country close to us. No other country has the across the board tenacity, persistence and unflinching confidence that we can achieve anything we set our minds to. When we see danger, our first response is to run toward it, not away from it. We don’t quit, we don’t give up. We take on the hard tasks. No other country can say that. No other country has the American drive.
That prompted Melanie Sturm to write:
Are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” — the national promise Americans celebrate on July Fourth — secure in this year of the Magna Carta’s 800th anniversary? That watershed moment in the annals of human liberty curbed a tyrannical monarch, like the American founding it helped inspire.
Initially an agrarian backwater in a socially stratified world, America unleashed boundless creativity and industriousness by asserting human equality, becoming history’s greatest economic wonder. While Great Britain’s well-being (real gross domestic product per capita) increased 14-fold between 1800 and 2007, America’s grew 32-fold.
Today, as Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Washington aristocracies prosper, Americans are suffering crisis levels of job insecurity, economic stagnation and poverty. Will immigrants who’ve left societies, where one’s start predetermined one’s end, discover that social mobility isn’t much better here?
With the Congressional Budget Office projecting Greek proportions of U.S. debt within 25 years, and a nuclearized Iranian terrorist state looming, are we bequeathing our children lower living standards and a weaker and vulnerable America?
The author of our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, captured the dilemma: “The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history. Whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”
Echoing Jefferson in his recent Time commentary, former presidential candidate and Colorado Sen. Gary Hart lamented the erosion of America’s founding purpose — the democratic self-governance of a free people.
“Our European ancestors came to these shores to escape social and political systems that were corrosive and corrupt. Two and a quarter centuries later, we are returning to those European practices,” Hart argued. He concluded, “We are in danger of becoming a different kind of nation, one our founders would not recognize and would deplore.”
Considering the unaccountability of Washington’s increasingly powerful and unelected ruling elite — from nine Supreme Court justices with lifetime appointments to the colossal administrative state — is government’s power still citizen-driven?
Are Americans as free to control how we live, what we believe and where we dedicate our labor and its fruits, or must we slavishly defer to elites wielding uninhibited power?
Given calls to abolish the tax-exempt status of religious institutions whose definition of marriage now diverges from the Supreme Court’s, will individual dissidents be similarly hounded, jeopardizing their careers and reputations?
If a female photographer can discriminate, choosing not to photo-shoot a bachelor party featuring a female stripper, can a Christian photographer decline to shoot a same-sex wedding?
Saved twice by the Supreme Court’s judicial rewriting, will Obamacare deliver the affordable, patient-centered health care its supporters promised, or will skyrocketing costs and narrowing provider networks impede access, disproportionately hurting sick Americans?
An Obamacare and same-sex-marriage supporter, Georgetown University law professor Jonathan Turley, argued, “There are valid concerns when the court steps into an issue with such great political, social and religious divisions.”
Moreover, in ignoring its constitutional duty to implement laws — writing them instead — the court circumvents the political process our Constitution’s separation of powers was designed to facilitate, undermining the people’s consent upon which government legitimacy depends.
Unlike the blindfolded Lady Justice on whose objectivity and impartiality our free society relies, the court jeopardizes its integrity and imperils civil society when it operates more like a political institution than a legal one, concerned less with the rule of law and constitutional adherence than winning agendas.
Thankfully, in South Carolina — the state that moved first to secede from the Union in 1860 because it denied “all men are created equal” — we’re witnessing the ordered liberty our founding ethic was expected to foster.
They’re showing the world how to “combat hate-filled actions with love-filled actions,” as Alana Simmons, the granddaughter of the murdered Rev. Daniel Lee Simmons Sr. put it. In Charleston’s diverse melting pot, prejudices are dissolving through exposure to disparate voices and moral suasion as freedom of expression is respected.
Inspired by the magnanimity of grieving Emanuel AME Church families, Gov. Nikki Haley proclaimed “a moment of unity in our state, without ill will.” Declaring no winner or loser in respecting those who wish to display the Confederate battle flag on private property, Haley announced, “It’s time to move the flag from the Capitol grounds.”
The people of South Carolina are winning as they prove a righteous and thoughtful citizenry dedicated to society’s safety and happiness can indeed self-govern.
Think Again — as Americans look beyond fireworks this July Fourth, may we see more than political horseraces, perceiving our nation’s enduring notion that free and virtuous citizens — not ruling elites — are our fate’s best masters.
A comment on Smith’s opinion noted, “Too much individualism leads to a break down in social bonds. Too great a reliance on society breaks down individuals. It’s a balancing act.” The comment quoted Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, which apparently says: “One of the most consistent lessons the ancient sages teach is to let go, stop striving, and choose a new path. Turn inwards, or toward God, but for God’s sake stop trying to make the world conform to your will.”
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 