themarketswork

a common sense approach to a liberal world

Free Speech, Acquiescence & Weaponized Compassion

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The other day, David French wrote an article for National Review, in response to twitter outrage over an earlier article he’d written on Chelsea Manning – the trans soldier pardoned by Obama.  French’s refusal to use the pronoun “her” when describing Chelsea Manning – previously Bradley Manning – sparked the outrage. And prompted a twitter response by another journalist, Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept:

“Does @DavidAFrench also bravely walk up to adoptive parents & tell them their kids aren’t *really* their “children”?”

Greenwald’s tweet led to my own, including:

“At the core – two fundamentally opposing views. @DavidAFrench is advocating for free speech. @ggreenwald wants to stifle free speech.”

It also led to my article, An Illustrative Twitter Chat with David & Glenn. The reaction was equally illustrative.Continue Reading

An Illustrative Twitter Chat with David & Glenn

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The social justice people are always on the side of compassion and ‘victim’s rights,’ so objecting to anything they do makes you instantly a perpetrator. The thing is if you replace compassion with resentment, then you understand the authoritarian left. There is resentment, fundamentally. – Dr. Jordan Peterson

I had planned on another topic for the day but a debate on twitter caught my attention. And my initially one-sided participation.

The two engaged participants were both journalists – David French of National Review and Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept.

David French had written what I found to be an articulate and thoughtful article in response to twitter outrage over an earlier article on Chelsea Manning – the trans soldier pardoned by Obama. French’s first piece, titled Chelsea Manning’s Release is Nothing to Celebrate, took issue with the release of Manning. I agree with French’s position. But that wasn’t what sparked the outraged responses. It was French’s refusal to use the pronoun “her” when describing Chelsea Manning – previously Bradley Manning – in his initial article.

And the backlash was fierce.Continue Reading

President Trump, Special Counsel & Some Relevant Facts

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The Democrats have managed to pressure Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein into appointing former FBI Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to handle the Russian Investigation.

My question is – other than being a pressured response to external political forces – why?

There is no evidence of collusion between President Trump and the Russian Government. None.

This has been repeatedly – although reluctantly – stated by senior Democrats like Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein is the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. She has access to the best levels of information. Here is her May 18th, 2017 exchange with Wolf Blitzer of CNN:Continue Reading

Leakers, MSM Hysteria & Trump’s Middle East Mission

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President Trump is headed to the Middle East for a historic trip – in its scope one never undertaken by any other national leader. President Trump will head first to Saudi Arabia where he will meet with King Salman who has reportedly assembled a greeting committee of more than 20 heads of state. Following Saudi Arabia, President Trump will continue on to Israel to meet with officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – and also a visit into Bethlehem where he will meet with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. From there he will continue on to Rome for a meeting with Pope Francis. The trip wraps up with a visit to Brussels for a meeting with NATO leaders and finally to Sicily for the G7 Summit.

This will not be the first series of meetings President Trump will have with Middle East leaders. Rather, they are a continuation in a series of strategic meetings. In early April, I wrote about President Trump’s ongoing meetings with Middle East leaders in Trump’s Strategic Syrian Strike:Continue Reading

The Injustices of Obama’s Department of Justice

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The Department of Justice (DOJ) is comprised of 60 Agencies. The organizational view is presented here. There are 93 U.S District Attorneys and 94 Districts (Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands share a District Attorney). The DOJ employs approximately 115,000 individuals with about 35,000 of these contained within the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). In 2015, the DOJ had an operating budget of $31 billion.

And the DOJ is a swamp.

Under Obama, the DOJ was fundamentally pushed to the left by Attorney General Eric Holder and then by his successor, Loretta Lynch. Sally Yates rounded out the Obama appointed DOJ leadership with her famously short stint before being fired by President Trump.

J. Christian Adams—who served in the Department of Justice under President George W. Bush – points to the DOJ’s notoriously left-leaning  Civil Rights Division, saying that “it touches more parts of American’s lives than any federal agency and impacts issues like police, voting, schools, transgender, hiring practices, education. It’s not just voting rights, it’s everything.”Continue Reading

Lies, Damn Lies & the Media (and Comey)

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The New York Times, in offering an explanation into why President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, ran an article stating that in the days prior to his firing, Director Comey had requested additional resources for the Russia Inquiry. According to the Times, the appeal was made to Assistant Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein is the man who sent the recommendation letter to fire Comey. The Times cited four anonymous congressional staffers.

The Washington Post later reported that Rosenstein threatened to resign over Comey’s firing – citing a “person close to the White House”.

Two breathless articles full of conspiratorial accusations providing true fodder for the “Russian Connection” and the “crimes” of President Trump…

Except they are both totally inaccurate. Fake News.Continue Reading

The Blue Slip Rule – A Senatorial Roadblock to Judicial Appointments

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Yesterday I wrote about President Trump’s many court vacancies – and the vast promise they hold for our courts.

Democrats previously invoked the Nuclear Option – a process that allows a simple majority vote in place of a three-fifths vote on presidential nominations for federal court judgeships. That rule has since been expanded by Republicans to include Supreme Court Justices. And Republicans hold a slight majority at 52 to 48 in the Senate.

All good, right?

Well, there is one hitch to the process – and it has to do with an archaic Senate process – really a tradition – and two small slips of blue paper. Allow me to explain.Continue Reading

Trump’s Judicial Vacancies – A Hope for Our Courts

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One of the most powerful and influential duties of any President is the appointment of Judges. Supreme Court appointments always take precedent – a little legal humor – but in their sheer number, appointments to the lower, lesser courts can be almost equally as important – and highly influential on our nation’s direction.

“There are 13 appellate courts that sit below the U.S. Supreme Court, and they are called the U.S. Courts of Appeals. The 94 federal judicial districts are organized into 12 regional circuits, each of which has a court of appeals. In addition, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has nationwide jurisdiction to hear appeals in specialized cases.”

A total of 13 Appeal Courts sitting just below the Supreme Court.

A primary reason for the legal – and social & cultural – influence of our lesser courts is that the Supreme Court hears so few cases – perhaps 80 per year are chosen to be argued before the court plus another 50 in which they hear no arguments. Judicial activism – and judicial errors – at the lower court levels are simply too numerous to be addressed at the highest legal level of the Supreme Court.Continue Reading

Judge Bork’s Olympians & the Danger of Judicial Activism

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“Liberals attempt through Judicial Activism what they cannot win at the ballot box” – Rush Limbaugh

“A Constitution is not meant to facilitate change. It is meant to impede change, to make it difficult to change.” – Justice Antonin Scalia

“The role assigned to judges in our system was to interpret the Constitution and lesser laws, not to make them. It was to protect the integrity of the Constitution, not to add to it or subtract from it – certainly not to rewrite it.” – Ronald Reagan

What is Judicial Activism?

Elizabeth Slattery of the Heritage Foundation offers the following from her article, How to Spot Judicial Activism:

“A simple working definition is that judicial activism occurs when judges fail to apply the Constitution or laws impartially according to their original public meaning, regardless of the outcome, or do not follow binding precedent of a higher court and instead decide the case based on personal preference.Continue Reading

Reversing the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

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“Unless judges are bound by the text of the Constitution, we will, in fact, no longer have a government of laws, but of men and women who are judges.” – President Ronald Reagan

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is not actually the most overturned court at present. That award currently goes to the 6th Circuit Court which serves Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee, with an 87% rate. The 9th Circuit Court comes in at third place with a 79% overturn rate. This is according to an examination of data from 2010-2015.

The Ninth Circuit’s overturn rate is somewhat overblown – but not by much. It’s true the Supreme Court actually reviews very few cases and the ones it selects are likely to be contentious. But that does not change the fact that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals consistently ranks near the top for overturn rates. During the period of 1999-2008, a study by the ABA found the 9th Circuit ranked 2nd at 80.0% – placing behind the Federal Circuit Court which came in at 83.3%. The long-run average rate of reversal was 68% by comparison.

And the 9th Circuit is often reversed by a unanimous Supreme Court vote.Continue Reading