It’s the left that has brought partisanship to our judiciary.
March 12, 2020
ITEM #1: We hear a lot of wailing from the left — especially in recent years — over conservatives’ alleged “politicization” of the courts.
Of course, what progressives really mean when they say the courts have been politicized is that we have judges and justices on the bench who actually interpret and apply the law as written, rather than in a way that produces the left’s preferred policy outcomes.
In other words, what conservative, originalist judges do is something akin to the opposite of playing politics.
Which is not to say that our judiciary — including the U.S. Supreme Court — hasn’t been politicized. It has. But not in the way progressives claim.
As Carrie Campbell Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, demonstrates in a piece for National Review, it is the High Court’s left-wing bloc — particularly Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor — who have most frequently succumbed to partisan, political bias in their approach to jurisprudence.
She writes:
“Less than a month after Trump’s inauguration, after the Ninth Circuit upheld a temporary restraining order against the first version of the travel ban, one of Trump’s liberal critics, University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner, acknowledged that the courts may be creating a ‘‘Trump exception’ to settled law on presidential powers’ — one that holds the current president to a different standard from that of his predecessors. Unfortunately, subsequent experience bore out this observation.
“Such a double standard is particularly dangerous when it is adopted by justices on the Supreme Court. By embracing judicial partisanship, Sotomayor has cast herself, along with Justice Ginsburg, as the most political justices in the Court’s recent history.”
The piece concludes with the observation that, “Trump has made headlines for saying that the two justices should recuse themselves from cases involving him. They won’t do that, but it would be disingenuous to plead ignorance as to why any astute observer would question their impartiality.”
The entire piece is well worth reading, which you can do here.
ITEM #2: We could write an entire book on Democrats’ hypocrisy over the issue of school choice, but for now, we’ll settle for sharing an insightful editorial from the Las Vegas Review-Journal on the subject.
The RJ’s editors recently called out Democrat New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, in line with the rest of her party, is a vigorous opponent of giving parents more freedom in how and where their children are educated.
But it wasn’t always so.
As the editors point out:
“Before Ms. Ocasio-Cortez got into politics, she had a different perspective. In 2017, she recorded a Facebook Live video while walking down Hunts Point Avenue in the Bronx.
“My goddaughter, I got her into a charter school like maybe a block or two down,” she said. …
“… Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is hardly alone in her hypocrisy. Sen. Elizabeth Warren opposes school choice but admitted last year that she sent her son to private schools.”
The editors conclude: “How can you tell school choice works? Look at the schools to which Democrat politicians send their own family members.”
The evidence that school choice works is rock-solid. Giving parents greater educational options increases accountability, and helps ensure that individual students have access to the particular educational approach best-suited for their unique needs and challenges.
Conservatives (and those who are generally apolitical) understand this. And those on the left, through their actions, make it clear that they do, too.
It’s just a shame they allow partisan politics to stop them from doing what they know to be right.
ITEM #3: China, and a number of U.S. liberals and members of the “fake news” media, are flipping out over people referring to the coronavirus — which originated in Wuhan, China — as the Wuhan Virus.
Last weekend, Rep. Paul Gosar announced he had self-quarantined “after sustained contact at CPAC with a person who has since been hospitalized with the Wuhan Virus.” MSDNC host Chris Hayes called the reference “astonishingly gross,” and his colleague David Gura called it “racist.”
If only they were as outraged that China covered up the Wuhan Virus, then lied about the Wuhan Virus, and ultimately enabled the spread of the Wuhan Virus globally.
As several people have already pointed out, it’s quite common for a virus to be named after the geographic place from which it originated. The Spanish flu, the West Nile virus, and the Zika virus are all well-known examples. What is extraordinary, though, is the fact that so many on the left are suddenly taking exception to this otherwise normal practice now that we’re dealing with a virus that came from China.
Perhaps one of them will offer an explanation as to why this particular case should be treated differently.
ITEM #4: After Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the presidential race last week, MSDNC’s Lawrence O’Donnell scolded Democrat voters on his show, declaring that Americans “have a right to be tired of men running for president. … You have a right to shed a tear today over where women are in American politics.”
Funny. We don’t see O’Donnell stepping down from his television perch and handing the job off to a woman. You’d almost think he was … a hypocrite.
By the way, as liberal columnist Susan Estrich recently pointed out:
“Voting is one of the few realms where women outnumber men… Women did not support (Elizabeth) Warren in her home state. She finished third, behind two old white men. You can’t just blame men for that.”
And let’s not forget — as we hear all these cries of sexism in the aftermath of Warren’s failure — that it was the Democrats’ voter base that rejected her candidacy. So the implication — again, coming from the left — is that Democrat primary voters (you know, the same group of people who nominated Hillary Clinton just four years ago) are all a bunch of sexists.
ITEM #5: Donald Trump, Jr., has challenged Hunter Biden to a debate and agreed to release his tax returns if Joe Biden’s boy releases his.
Don’t hold your breath.
ITEM #6: Breitbart News reports that, “A public high school in Kentucky covered up a Bible verse in its locker room after a ‘concerned area resident’ filed a complaint.”
The Bible verse read: “But the Lord is with me like a Mighty Warrior.”
It wasn’t really a “concerned area resident,” though. It was a letter from the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) claiming the message violated “the Constitution” by displaying “religious symbols or messages.”
Yet another example of the left’s outrageous interpretation of religious freedom.
NOTABLE QUOTES
“...We cannot get re-elect, we cannot win this re-election, excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump.” – Joe Biden
“Look, we may not want Tulsi (Gabbard) to be President, but it’s obvious the Dems are out to shaft her. God forbid someone have access to the debate stage if they aren’t 100% goose-stepping along with the party.” – Herman Cain
“The apprehension of migrant families illegally crossing the border in February fell by 92 percent from the peak of the 2019 humanitarian and border security crisis in May.” – Breitbart News