Artists’ Free Speech Rights at Stake in Washington Florist Case

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An African-American marketer should not be forced to create an advertising campaign for a white supremacist group. Nor should a Muslim graphic designer be required to develop a webpage promoting Jewish teachings, or a Democrat freelance writer be ordered to draft political speeches for Republicans.

Most agree with this, but Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson apparently does not.

Through his advocacy, he is trying to construct a real-life dystopia in which these and similar professionals will be forced to create expressive materials—like advertising campaigns and webpages—to promote, and even celebrate, ideas that violate their convictions.

The most recent evidence of this came when the Washington Supreme Court heard arguments in Ferguson’s case against Barronelle Stutzman.

Stutzman is a 72-year-old floral artist who serves everyone in her community, regardless of their race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation. But because of her deeply held religious beliefs about marriage, she cannot custom design floral arrangements to celebrate a same-sex wedding.

So while she has been glad to serve Rob Ingersoll—a gay man—for nearly a decade, she could not use her artistic expression to celebrate his nuptials.

To Ferguson, this sort of conscientious objection is, well, legally objectionable.

Some who oppose Stutzman’s desire to peacefully live out her convictions argue that designing floral arrangements is not art or constitutionally protected expression.

That argument—which ignores the many U.S. Supreme Court cases that so broadly define expression that even nude dancing is considered constitutionally protected—is not Ferguson’s. He admitted that Stutzman’s floral design work is “a form of expression,” and that “arranging these flowers is no less speech than writing a poem celebrating a particular message.”

So Ferguson’s position is that if an artist makes a living through her expression, she must accept all requests to create expression, regardless of whether she considers some messages deeply offensive. Or she must be punished.

We know this because one of the justices asked Ferguson whether constitutional principles of free expression ever protect a business owner who is accused of violating a so-called nondiscrimination law. And he said that they would not.

Further highlighting his extreme views, Ferguson went so far as to say that Stutzman could not “do the wedding flowers for heterosexual couples and have another employee handle it for same-sex folks.”

So it’s not enough for, say, an LGBT business owner who designs shirts for a gay pride festival to have her employee design shirts for the group protesting the festival. She must actually do it herself. Are we really to believe that American law, rightly understood, is such a conscience-crushing steamroller?

We’re not talking about business owners refusing to provide someone a mundane, unexpressive product—like a meal or a box of laundry detergent—because they dislike that person’s race, religious, or sexual orientation. We’re talking about compelling people to use their artistic talents to create messages or actively participate in expressive events that they cannot in good conscience support.

Imagine that you’re a black citizen living in America, that you worked hard to build a profitable marketing company, and that you’ve developed successful advertising campaigns for various black community groups. Now suppose that a white supremacist organization asks you to develop a similar campaign for their local chapter.

You, of course, are happy to do work for white customers, but understandably will not create advertisements that promote a group whose goals conflict with your identity as a black man or woman. You are obviously not rejecting a customer based on race. You are opting not to promote an idea you reject.

Yet Ferguson, it seems, would have you create that speech, your conscience be damned. You “voluntarily” entered into business, he would say; now you must accept the “consequences” of the law as he sees it.

Capitulate or close your business. Never mind that your family would lose its only means of financial support. You should’ve thought of that, so his argument goes, before pursuing your career aspirations.

Or put yourself in the shoes of a Muslim who immigrated to the United States to avoid religious persecution and who later earned a degree in graphic design and started a small business.

After seeing your best work online, a Jewish group asks you to create its website, which will include a page explaining why Jewish Old Testament teachings are correct and Islamic teachings are wrong. Unable to broadcast messages that conflict with the heart of what you believe, you refer the organization to another company.

If you do business in Washington, you better keep an eye on your mailbox because, assuming that we can take Ferguson at his word, you’ll be hearing from him soon.

It doesn’t matter how much you’ve overcome to get to where you are or how much this lawsuit will devastate your new business. Accommodation for your conscience has no place in Ferguson’s world.

But Ferguson is simply mistaken about the law. The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized that the First Amendment prohibits the government from forcing citizens to express (or help communicate) messages that they find objectionable.

The government cannot force an individual to be an “instrument for fostering public adherence to an ideological point of view he finds unacceptable.”

Our nation’s highest court clearly affirmed that principle when it unanimously found that the state of Massachusetts could not force an organization to include the message of an advocacy group in its parade. Neither, then, can the state of Washington compel expressive professionals to create speeches that they don’t want to support.

But unless the Washington Supreme Court sets Ferguson straight, all who create expression in the marketplace have ample cause for concern, whether you’re a floral artist with conservative Christian views about marriage or an LGBT promotional printer who doesn’t want to create materials that criticize same-sex marriage.

That’s why this issue—freedom for expressive professionals—should cross partisan and ideological lines. No one—Republican, Democrat, conservative, or liberal—should want to live in the world that Ferguson is trying to create. (For more from the author of “Artists’ Free Speech Rights at Stake in Washington Florist Case” please click HERE)

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Why Intellectuals Adore Tyrants Like Castro

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My best friend in high school was Will, a Cuban exile, who later went on to become a Catholic priest. When I complained that one of our teachers was a “tyrant,” Will laughed at me ruefully. “You have no idea what that word means.” He’d lived in a tyranny, and knew what it was like.

His father and grandfather had both supported Castro against the corrupt usurper Batista — then turned against the regime when it betrayed all its liberal promises, and turned a once-prosperous island into a rusting, starving outpost of the dismal Soviet bloc. Both those men were sent to prison camps, where they were tortured periodically during their multi-year sentences. “My father never wanted to take off his shirt in front of me, so I wouldn’t see all the scars,” Will told me.

Will recounted the heavy pressure his grade school teachers put on him not to go to church. “You should come to our parade, instead!” The Cuban Communist Party sponsored a festive march with bright red flags every Sunday morning, to draw the children from God and toward the Party. Will remembered the heavy emphasis that Cuban schools put on literacy: “They wanted everyone to be able to read their propaganda, and the orders sent by the Party. So there was no excuse for disobedience.”

Finally, after a harrowing escape from that prison island, Will and his parents made their way to New York City, to pursue the ordinary middle class lives that the poor worldwide still dream of — and that too many self-styled intellectuals hold in bemused contempt. That was one thing that Will always found puzzling. “Do these people have any idea what people in Cuba would give to live an American middle-class life? Or even a working-class life?” he would ask me, flabbergasted. In fact, many thousands gave their lives, sailing rickety boats through shark-infested waters, sometimes with the Cuban military shooting at them, as Castro had ordered.

Will would wonder aloud why so many intellectuals — and wannabes, like Hollywood actors — trooped off to Cuba over the decades? Why did they rally to the support of a vicious dictator who

drove one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America into poverty and stagnation;

oppressed and destroyed its middle class, nationalizing virtually all private property;

filled his jails with priests, nuns, businessmen, and ordinary citizens;

and tortured dissident authors and ordinary people whose only “crime” was that they’d been denounced as homosexual?

Why did anti-poverty icon Dorothy Day proclaim, “God bless Castro” in 1961, and poo-poo the obvious signs that he was imposing a totalitarian government that crushed Cuba’s churches? Why did the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, just offer an anodyne eulogy for Castro’s death that has set off a worldwide parody epidemic of comparably blind, bland praise for Pol Pot, Hitler, and Idi Amin?

Socialism: A Disease of the Spirit

There is something deeper going on than simple partisan blindness. What we are seeing grows from a disease of the spirit. We need to diagnose it.

The attraction that lures intellectuals to socialist tyrants like a dog to its master’s leg has its roots in three temptations, that build on one another.

Snobbery

To this day, “bourgeois” is an epithet that college students and teachers toss off with a satisfied smirk, in the same way that too many white Americans used to sling the “n-word.” But it’s still perfectly respectable, even clubbable, to scorn the middle class. In fact, it’s a method of social-climbing, a way to convey to listeners that you — of course — have always enjoyed the perks of good education, nutrition, economic opportunities, and personal freedom. No need for you to scramble after them. In fact, you are actually jaded by them, like an archduke bored with his family’s art collection.

You now have seen beyond the materialistic allure of abundance and social mobility — without, of course, sacrificing either one by embracing actual poverty or relocating to live in some socialist tyranny. (Not one leftist American threatened that if Donald Trump were elected, he would move to Cuba.) Piercing the bourgeois veil has freed you up for the next stage in socialist enlightenment.

Secret Knowledge

Unlike the sweaty, materialistic masses, you have enjoyed an education that would have put most aristocrats over the centuries to shame. You have read enough Marx or Zizek or Zinn in college to see through the empty rhetoric of a free society, to perceive the secret core of pulsating truth: that the status quo, which has cossetted you, is in fact profoundly evil. It is a mechanism by which the wealthy “one percent” hijack control of society’s money and power, while duping ordinary workers with the fleeting dream of a comfortable, peaceable life. That dream numbs these exploited masses to the damage being done to them, and dulls their appetite for struggle.

So it is your business to enlighten them — whether they want your enlightenment or not. In fact that is your duty, as one who has risen above their sad obsessions with cars and houses and tacky white picket fences, to the cold and austere vision offered by the socialist conspiracy theory. It is also deeply satisfying to know that you have a kind of political and economic X-ray vision, which sets you apart from the vast majority of dupes and victims. That superpower which you have gained introduces you to an elite, a class of supermen who make it their business to seize and redirect the course of human history.

God-Like Power

The great Catholic freedom advocate Frederic Bastiat observed that the socialists of his day (the mid-nineteenth century) imagined themselves to be philosopher-kings in exile. They awaited only the moment when they could impose their private designs for a perfect society by the force of the state on millions of hapless citizens — those who had been too blinkered and deluded by bourgeois slogans to know what they actually wanted.

As Bastiat put it, these socialist thinkers imagined their fellow men to be shrubs and trees, while they themselves were the gardeners. The men of Bastiat’s day had at least the excuse that they had not witnessed the Gulag, the famine in Ukraine, the tens of millions of needless deaths imposed by Mao in China, or Pol Pot in Cambodia. They didn’t dream that the shears they’d need to use to carve up human nature into the new shape of Socialist man would be drenched in innocent blood.

What possible excuse is there for favoring socialism today? (For more from the author of “Why Intellectuals Adore Tyrants Like Castro” please click HERE)

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Republican-Led Congress Oversees Large-Scale Importation of Somali Migrants

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The Somali refugee responsible for attacking young Americans at Ohio State University was deliberately imported into the country by the nation’s federal immigration policy–yet the scale and impact of immigration from undeveloped, foreign cultures is still a surprise to some politicians.

Since 2001, the United States has permanently resettled nearly 100,000 migrants from Somalia–a nation where the prevalence rate of Female Genital Mutilation for women and girls ages 15 to 49 is 98 percent, and where homosexuality can be punishable by death. In a single year, a Republican-led Congress funded visas for nearly 300,000 (temporary and permanent) Muslim migrants, which is a population that is nearly twice the size of the entire population of Dayton, Ohio.

The federal government invited Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, into the United States as a refugee, according to reports. Artan reportedly came to the U.S. in 2014, and his refugee status allowed him to fill a coveted slot at Ohio State University. It also allowed him to obtain federal benefits, and eventually would have given him quick access to citizenship, the voting booth, and the ability to bring over foreign relatives through chain migration.

Yet some Republican lawmakers seem unaware of the social and cultural impact that large-scale Muslim migration has had in their own backyards. (Read more from “Republican-Led Congress Oversees Large-Scale Importation of Somali Migrants” HERE)

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Trump Chooses Conservative Georgia Congressman, a Harsh Critic of Obamacare, to Be Health Secretary

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President-elect Donald Trump plans to select House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) to be his Health and Human Services secretary, two people familiar with the decision said late Monday.

In picking Price, Trump tapped an arch-conservative lawmaker and leading critic of the Affordable Care Act to lead his push to roll back President Obama’s signature health law.

Price, a six-term congressman from suburban Atlanta, has never held an executive position comparable to leading the federal Department of Health and Human Services, a behemoth that includes the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the agency overseeing Medicare and Medicaid.

Three of the four previous Health and Human Services secretaries were former governors. Price, an orthopedic surgeon, would be the first physician to serve as the department’s secretary since Dr. Louis Sullivan, who held the post from 1989 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush. (Read more from “Trump Chooses Conservative Georgia Congressman, a Harsh Critic of Obamacare, to Be Health Secretary” HERE)

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The Left Continues to Self-Destruct

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Rather than learn some valuable lessons from the resounding electoral victory of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, it appears that the left is lurching further leftward, thereby paving the way to its own demise.

Here are some recent examples.

The Washington Examiner claims, according to inside sources, that “CNN is taking an increasingly negative approach toward its coverage of President-elect Trump, causing at least some tension within the network.”

Another inside source told the Examiner that “CNN has always pledged to hold Trump accountable and that’s what we should be doing.” However, “Since the election, CNN has out MSNBCed MSNBC,” meaning, become even more liberal than the very liberal MSNBC. “In the long term,” the source said,“that’s a dangerous place to be.”

Does CNN not recognize that its reputation for being the Clinton News Network has greatly damaged its credibility? Does the network not understand that appearing to be even more blatantly biased against the president-elect will do far more harm than good?

Perhaps even worse is a major article in the Washington Post, claiming (in the words of the Post’s Executive Editor Marty Baron) that a “Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news during election,” according to “independent researchers.” (These “independent researchers” are behind the anonymous PropOrNot website, which was the primary source of the attempted exposé.)

According to Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald, writing on TheIntercept.com on November 26, “This Post report was one of the most widely circulated political news articles on social media over the last 48 hours, with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of U.S. journalists and pundits with large platforms hailing it as an earth-shattering exposé. It was the most-read piece on the entire Post website on Friday after it was published.”

And what, exactly, did this article claim? (Remember that we’re talking about the Washington Post, not the National Enquirer.) Norton and Greenwald explain, “The group’s list of Russian disinformation outlets includes WikiLeaks and the Drudge Report, as well as Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig, and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute.”

So, it is the evil and ubiquitous Russian Empire that is fueling the right-wing fires of Drudge Report (which, of course, is simply a news aggregator rather than a news manufacturer) along with the libertarian fires of the Ron Paul Institute. Who knew?

So much for the liberal media being careful not to discredit itself in the aftermath of its election misreporting, because of which one can only wonder how long the New York Times slightly introspective mea culpa will last and how deep it will go.

The Times did, though, make a strong appeal for the Democrats to put their emphasis back on the economy rather than on leftist agenda items. But have the Democrats learned their lesson? Their consideration of Rep. Keith Ellison for party chair indicates that they are not getting the message either.

As noted by Fred Lucas on The Stream, “The leading candidate to be the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., has said he wants the Democratic Party to come out against the Second Amendment, compared the 9/11 attacks to the Nazi Reichstag fire, and was affiliated with the controversial Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.”

Lucas also points out that Ellison “once said eventual nominee Hillary Clinton would have to prove she’s not a Republican to get his support.” Seriously?

Do the Democrats really think that identifying a radical-left Muslim as their party chairman will help them regain political power in America? Have they learned nothing from the Trump victory?

To give just one more example of the left’s failure to put its finger on the pulse of America, consider ESPN’s response to the death of Fidel Castro. But first, to put this in context, note that, in the month of October alone, ESPN lost 621,000 subscribers, which is a staggering number. And while it is impossible to state with certainty that some of this loss was due to ESPN’s liberal political views (baseball legend Curt Schilling accused ESPN of being “bigoted and intolerant” towards conservatives like himself), note that in January, 2016, an ESPN memo advised that “we should refrain from political editorializing, personal attacks or ‘drive-by’ comments regarding the candidates and their campaigns (including but not limited to on platforms such as Twitter or other social media).”

How, then, did ESPN report the death of the Cuban dictator? It praised him for his sporting accomplishments, with the headline of the 1,100 word article reading, “Fidel Castro, 90, fused sports into Cuba’s national identity.”

To be fair, the extended obituary did speak candidly (albeit non-condemningly) of Castro’s conflicts with America and did mention the negative effects of some of his economic policies. But rather than devote even one syllable to the many atrocities committed by Castro (see here and here and here for some examples), ESPN chose to celebrate Cuba’s athletic prowess, noting, “Soon after coming to power, Castro recognized the potential benefits of national excellence in athletics and Cuba eventually became one of the strongest sporting nations in the world — despite a population only slightly greater than New York City’s.”

Yes, ESPN reminds us, “At the Olympics, Castro’s athletes were at their best,” closing the article with a recent (and representative) quote from Castro, one meant to present his defiance of America in a positive light. What fight he had, to the end!

In light of this small but representative sampling, I have a word of free advice for the “progressive” left wing, including CNN, the Washington Post, the Democratic Party, and ESPN: Just as Communism rose and fell, you too will go into extended decline unless you learn from the error of your ways and make a course correction.

For the media, that means reporting the news rather than manufacturing the news and striving for unbiased, honest reporting. For the Democrats, that means stepping back from radical leftist causes. For ESPN, it means staying out of politics and being a network devoted entirely to sports.

Will the left learn? I do hope so, but I’m not holding my breath. (For more from the author of “The Left Continues to Self-Destruct” please click HERE)

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Report: Federal Government Blows $247 Billion on ‘Wasteful and Inefficient Spending’

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The federal government has wasted at least $247 billion in domestic and overseas spending, says a new report. In his second annual “Federal Fumbles” report, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) highlighted 100 examples of “wasteful and inefficient spending” and the threat of an almost $20 trillion national debt.

The federal government, which announced a deficit of over $500 billion in the 2016 fiscal year, spent $223 billion on interest payments alone in 2015. Even if the nation had a $50 billion budget surplus, “it would still take 460 years to pay off our national debt,” according to Lankford’s report.

In tracking down examples of federal wastefulness, “we are really dealing with four different main areas,” the senator explained in the press conference releasing the report. The areas are “grants that need oversight, regulations and regulators that need oversight, agency bureaucracy and inefficiency, and then a lack of coordination between agencies.”

Federal Misspending

Below are several examples of the report’s highlights of federal misspending:

$180,000 has been spent on an outside group’s effort to tag and count sea ducks.

Nearly $200,000 to hire a historian for three years for the Smithsonian to examine the history of American beer brewing

$18 million to help fund organic farms. Organic farms are part of a $39 billion industry as of 2014.

In 2014, the Federal Bureau of Prisons spent $143 million more providing health care to prisoners than it would have if it had followed the practices of other agencies, by paying contractors the reimbursement rates mandated by Medicare. As the report notes, while taking care of prisoners may be innately more expensive than health care provided by other agencies, the rates charged at some locations, as found by the Government Accountability Office, are much higher than necessary.

The State Department spent one million dollars to bring movie producers and others from Jordan, Turkey and other nations to study American filmmakers and then use their new skills to benefit other countries.

More than $500,000 went to digging up graves and religious sites to study the transition of churches in the late seventh through 12th centuries. In Iceland.

In Afghanistan, a $48.7 million contract from the U.S. Air Force was meant to build a new headquarters for the Afghan Ministry of Defense. Due for completion in 2010, the project ran five years late and $106 million over-budget.

The report also highlighted improvements since the first “Fumbles” report was issued. Among other successes, a tax credit is being phased out, and the Social Security Administration has modified processes that could save millions in the disability fund. (For more from the author of “Report: Federal Government Blows $247 Billion on ‘Wasteful and Inefficient Spending'” please click HERE)

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Liberal Media Hacks Say Challenging Election Results Undermines Democracy… Unless You’re Hillary Clinton

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Before the election, the media was in hysterics over the possibility that Donald Trump might not concede defeat if Hillary Clinton was declared the winner. Now that the election is over, and Trump won, the media’s reaction to Hillary Clinton actually challenging the results is … tepid? At best?

During the third and final presidential debate, amid concerns that voter fraud would become an issue, Donald Trump said that he would accept the results of the election after taking a look at it “at the time.”

As Trump told moderator Chris Wallace in October:

I will look at it at the time. I’m not looking at anything now. I’ll look at it at the time.

What I’ve seen — what I’ve seen is so bad. First of all, the media is so dishonest and so corrupt, and the pile-on is so amazing. The New York Times actually wrote an article about it, but they don’t even care. It’s so dishonest. And they’ve poisoned the mind of the voters.

But unfortunately for them, I think the voters are seeing through it. I think they’re going to see through it. We’ll find out on November 8th. But I think they’re going to see through it.

Trump was simply reserving his legal right to challenge the election if there was suspicion of voter fraud. Hillary Clinton referred to Trump’s comments as “horrifying.”

And, taking their cue from the Democratic nominee, the media reaction to Trump’s statements was apoplectic.

The New York Times: Donald Trump Won’t Say if He’ll Accept Result of Election

CNN: Donald Trump refuses to say whether he’ll accept election results

Huffington Post: Trump’s Shocking Answer On Respecting Election Results Is The Only Debate Moment That Matters

The Huffington Post was particularly startled. The very day before the election, Julia Craven wrote an article recounting the history of a contested presidential election in 1876, noting that “civil unrest” and “fears of a second Civil War” were among the concerns of the American people during that time.

Forecasting a situation where Trump lost and refused to concede to Hillary Clinton, Craven anticipated 1) The legitimacy of the president would be undermined; 2) violence from Trump supporters would break out; and 3) Trump’s refusing to concede would undermine the integrity of “democracy itself.”

Now, it is important to note two of those things have happened since Trump’s victory. First, the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency is being undermined by large groups of malcontents parading around, flipping off buildings and protesting and tweeting #NotMyPresident. Secondly, there have been incidents of violence after the election … from liberals and Hillary Clinton supporters.

As for the liberal media’s concern over an election challenge “threatening to upend a fundamental pillar of American democracy,” that was then, it seems.

Now that the Clinton campaign is jumping on the Green Party bandwagon to challenge the results after wacko-liberal Jill Stein raised millions of dollars for a recount in Wisconsin, the silence from the editorial pages of America’s major newspapers is deafening.

Check out this reporting, and compare it to the headlines above:

ABC: Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Joins Wisconsin Recount

Washington Post: Clinton campaign will participate in Wisconsin recount, with an eye on ‘outside interference,’ lawyer says

New York Times: Hillary Clinton’s Team to Join Wisconsin Recount Pushed by Jill Stein

CNN: Clinton to join recount that Trump calls ‘scam’

Politico: Trump rages as Clinton helps recount

And then there’s the Huffington Post, who ran this milquetoast headline:

“Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Says It Will Participate In Wisconsin Recount”

Now, let’s be very clear about something: The Clinton campaign is entitled to challenge the results of the election if they believe something is amiss; that is their legal right. (Just as the Trump campaign had the right to reserve concession if they believed incidents of fraud manipulated the results.)

The issue is not with calls for a recount — it is with a biased liberal media disproportionately applying their scorn and hysterics because they’re playing team sports for the Democrats. (For more from the author of “Liberal Media Hacks Say Challenging Election Results Undermines Democracy … Unless You’re Hillary Clinton” please click HERE)

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Jihad on the Quad? Ohio State Attacker Reported to Be Somali Refugee

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Multiple reports are now indicating that the Ohio State University attack could have a possible Islamic terror connection, as the suspect has been identified as a Somali refugee.

According to NBC, “The suspect’s name was not released, but law enforcement officials told NBC News he was an 18-year-old Ohio State student, a Somali refugee who was a legal permanent resident of the United States.”

CBS News corroborated that report.

Officials have identified the suspect as Abdul Razaq Ali Artan.

As Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz has previously noted, “Since 1993, we’ve admitted roughly 115,000 Somali immigrants nationwide — mostly through the refugee program — at an average clip of 10,000 a year. Almost 100 percent of them are Muslim. Minnesota is home to at least 30,000 Somalis.”

There are at least 38,000 Somali residents in Columbus, Ohio, alone. That number is second only to Minneapolis, which was the nearby scene of another stabbing rampage earlier this year, in which 10 people were wounded.

The story here is not, as some would make it, about guns and an “active shooter.” Rather, it is yet another example of an Islamic terrorist admitted to the United States without proper vetting. (For more from the author of “Jihad on the Quad? Ohio State Attacker Reported to Be Somali Refugee” please click HERE)

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People Voted for a Conservative Court: What Court Will Trump Give Them?

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As we react, and overreact, to every report regarding who might serve in the forthcoming Trump administration, let us make sure we keep our eye on the prize. For there is one decision to come soon after the inauguration that I believe could very well be the barometer for his presidency.

That decision will be who Trump nominates to succeed Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court.
This is the one decision the Trump presidency cannot get wrong — even slightly. This has to be a hundred percenter. A no doubter. This is no time for a John “Obamacare” Roberts or an Anthony “Rainbow Jihad” Kennedy redux.

This is the replacement for Scalia we’re talking about, so this needs to be someone whose judicial philosophy is embedded like the Rock of Gibraltar in his or her record. No guesswork, just someone with the sort of bedrock originalism Scalia was known for, and young enough to helm the spot for a couple of decades at least.

Nothing less than the ideological balance of the court is at stake in this decision. While I’ve spent much of my career fighting judicial oligarchy masquerading as stare decisis — and I remind everyone reading this that in no way, shape, or form did the Founding Fathers intend for the rule of law to hinge on one SCOTUS appointment — I also can’t live in the land of make-believe.

As the great prophet Bill Belicheck likes to say, “It is what it is.” While the courts shouldn’t (and don’t really) have this much power, we sadly behave as if they do.

Which explains why so many conservatives — who said after 2008 and 2012 they were done plugging their noses for Republican presidential nominees who didn’t seem to be with us — did it once more in droves in 2016. Exit polls showed more than one in five voters said Supreme Court appointments were the most important factor in how they voted for president. And among those voters, Trump bested Hillary by a whopping 17 points.

So now is a time to take a trip to the way-back machine. This is from Nov. 10, 2003:

A battle between two Christian conservative heroes is shaping up in Alabama. On Nov.10, attorney general Bill Pryor (R) asked the Alabama Court of the Judiciary to remove the state’s Chief Justice Roy Moore from office. Moore, long an outspoken advocate for displaying the Ten Commandments on government property, is facing a trial before the court. He was suspended earlier this year by the state’s judicial ethics board after he openly defied a federal court order to remove a massive monument to the Ten Commandments from a state building. At the time Pryor announced his intention to cooperate with federal authorities to remove the monument even though he had earlier defended Moore’ position that the display is Constitutional.

Why do I bring up this story? Because the same Bill Pryor mentioned here is also being prominently mentioned as a potential candidate to replace Scalia.

No, this is not the Scalia replacement you’re looking for.

Anyone willing to use his power as attorney general — under a Republican administration — to undermine the source of our rule of law cannot be trusted to defend the rule of law on the nation’s highest court. We already have enough justices on the court who believe the law evolves according to the whims and desires of mere mortals, thank you very much.

Again, we’re looking for originalists, not legal positivists. The former recognizes “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” as the original source for our laws. The latter thinks the law is changed and even originates from every stroke of a judge’s pen. If you wanted that, you would’ve voted for Hillary.

Pryor is not a Scalia for a Scalia. At best he’s a Roberts for a Scalia, and that’s a loss. We have to do better than that. We have to do better than the guy who stabbed Judge Roy Moore in the back for daring to stand up and defend the rule of law. Because what is the original rule of all law in our form of government?

The Ten Commandments.

We need someone who won’t bow to the political winds like Pryor did because President George W. Bush wanted no part of such a vitally important fight. Or like Roberts did concerning Obamacare not once but twice.

Lyndon Johnson was correct when he said, “Power is where power goes.” And those nine black-robed Supreme Court justices have real power. That power must be used accordingly. So repeat after me: there can be no calculated risks in the replacement of Scalia. We need to be as certain of this person’s convictions as we are of gravity.

And when Trump is only assuming the presidency because he won the four states that put him over the top by 1.4 points or less apiece, that means all of you who plugged your noses November 8 for decisions like this are owed bigly. He would not be moving from Trump Tower to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue without each and every one of you. And if he can settle a few Trump University lawsuits he considered to be frivolous to preserve his presidency, you better believe he must deliver for you here.

If Trump won’t give us a Scalia for a Scalia now, when he’s on a honeymoon with the American people and has ample political capital to spend, what makes you think he’ll fight to replace a Kennedy or Ruth Bader Ginsburg (both of whom are over 80 years-old) with a conservative later on when that fight promises to be much tougher?

This is why this is the most important early decision of the Trump presidency. It will set a tone in telling us whether Trump will keep his most important promises or not. (For more from the author of “People Voted for a Conservative Court: What Court Will Trump Give Them?” please click HERE)

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More Than 800,000 Noncitizens May Have Voted in 2016 Election, Expert Says

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An election expert projects more than 800,000 noncitizens voted in the 2016 election and overwhelmingly for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

While substantial, that number doesn’t overcome Clinton’s 2.2 million popular vote lead over Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who won a decisive Electoral College triumph of 306 to 232.

On Sunday, the president-elect tweeted he would have won the popular vote had it not been for illegal votes cast. The Trump transition team on Monday cited nonpartisan studies on noncitizens voting and of faulty voter registration across the country. Only citizens 18 or older can legally vote.

“Extrapolating on data from several years ago certainly doesn’t substantiate the claim that Trump is making now,” Jesse Richman, an associate professor of political science at Old Dominion University, told The Daily Signal. “That could change. If there is a recount in Michigan and Trump loses by a few votes, then it’s very plausible that noncitizen voting made a big difference. Hopefully, it doesn’t come to that.”

Richman was the co-author of a 2014 study that looked at noncitizen voting in the 2008 and 2010 elections. In the comparable presidential election year, the Old Dominion study determined 6.4 percent on noncitizens in the United States voted in the 2008 presidential election, and about 81 percent of those voters backed Democrat Barack Obama.

Richman applied those numbers to 2016:

The basic assumptions on which the extrapolation is based are that 6.4 percent of noncitizens voted, and that of the noncitizens who voted, 81.8 percent voted for Clinton and 17.5 percent voted for Trump. … 6.4 percent turnout among the roughly 20.3 million noncitizen adults in the U.S. would add only 834,318 votes to Clinton’s popular vote margin. This is little more than a third of the total margin. … Is it plausible that noncitizen votes added to Clinton’s margin? Yes. Is it plausible that noncitizen votes account for the entire nationwide popular vote margin held by Clinton? Not at all.

A December 2015 study led by Stephen Ansolabehere of Harvard University argued the 2014 Old Dominion study was flawed and that “the likely percent of noncitizen voters in recent U.S. elections is zero.” Richman responded to the criticism and said suggesting zero percent does not hold up.

Trump transition team spokesman Jason Miller cited the Old Dominion study reported on in The Washington Post in 2014, as well as a Pew Research Center study from 2012 about problems with voter registration across the country.

“An issues of concern is that so many have voted that are not legally supposed to,” Miller told reporters in a conference call Monday.

He said this warrants more attention than the “shiny object” Jill Stein and the Green Party are using to push recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that have no chance of overturning the election.

Beyond the noncitizens voting study from Old Dominion, Miller pointed to the Pew study from 2012 that found 24 million voter registration records in the United States, or about 1 in 8, were “significantly inaccurate or no longer valid.”

The Pew study further found “1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters,” that “12 million records contain an incorrect address,” and that “2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.”

It would take a very high percentage of noncitizens voting to overcome the Clinton popular vote lead, said Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors strong immigration enforcement.

“If 10 percent of noncitizens voted, it would likely make a popular vote difference,” Camarota told The Daily Signal. “It’s not the Electoral College he’s upset about. It’s the popular vote. I wish he wouldn’t focus on it. Bill Clinton got just 43 percent of the vote in 1992. How many states did he win more than 50 percent of the vote in?”

Trump could be correct about the number of illegal votes, but there is no way to know, said Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow with The Heritage Foundation who focuses on voter integrity issues.

“It’s possible he’s right, but we don’t know because there is no way to quantify, no system in place to identify noncitizens voting,” Spakovsky told The Daily Signal. “The Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security should obtain state voter registration lists and check against noncitizen database. And the DOJ should start prosecuting noncitizens who are voting.”

Prosecuting voter fraud will have to be a higher priority under the Trump administration than under the Obama administration, said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog.

“It has got to be a priority I would think based on Mr. Trump’s rhetoric,” Fitton told The Daily Signal. “At least, make sure that only citizens are registered to vote. We need basic reforms to reassure people that elections are free and fair.” (For more from the author of “More Than 800,000 Noncitizens May Have Voted in 2016 Election, Expert Says” please click HERE)

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