Congress is debating making women sign up for the draft, but women seem opposed to this push for equality.
A new poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov from June 18-20 found 41 percent of women believe they should not be required to register for the draft when they turn 18. In comparison, only 29 percent of men said women should be able to avoid the draft, Roll Call reports.
Sixty-one percent of men said women should be forced to sign up for the draft. Thirty-nine percent of women said they are in support of having to sign up for the draft.
Far more men than women would like to see females have to go through the exact same Selective Service process they do. Ever since 1980, men have had to sign up for the draft when they come of age.
The previous justification for keeping women out of the draft was that women were not allowed in combat roles, but that justification collapsed following Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s pronouncement in December that all combat roles would open to women — no exceptions.
Since that pronouncement, numerous military leaders have come out in support of requiring women to sign up for Selective Service, but the issue seems far more contentious in Congress.
After a bitter fight, the Senate recently approved an amendment to require women to register. This amendment will have to be reconciled in conference with the House version of the annual defense budget bill, which only mandates a study be conducted on the institution of the draft itself.
GOP Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, has supported the female draft, while GOP Sen. Ted Cruz is decidedly opposed.
“Despite the many laudable objectives in this bill, I could not in good conscience vote to draft our daughters into the military, sending them off to war and forcing them into combat,” Cruz said, according to Roll Call.
The margin of error for this Economist/YouGov poll is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. (For more from the author of “Women to the Draft: Thanks, but No Thanks” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/US_Navy_090707-N-5345W-103_Rear_Adm._Michelle_Howard_commander_Expeditionary_Strike_Group_ESG_2_visits_with_junior_enlisted.jpg19112520Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-06-30 00:43:032016-06-30 00:43:03Women to the Draft: Thanks, but No Thanks
Epidemiologists at the Vermont Department of Health are concealing the number of refugees with contagious active tuberculosis nearly a month after Watchdog reported that more than one-third of Vermont’s resettled refugees test positive for TB.
Earlier this month, Watchdog revealed that 35 percent of Vermont’s incoming refugees in the past four years tested positive for tuberculosis. How many of those cases are contagious and symptomatic, however, remains a secret, as state epidemiologists and top officials at the Health Department have spent weeks blocking efforts to obtain the data.
Refugees brought to the United States take TB tests as part of comprehensive health screening. For refugees resettled in Vermont, the Department of Health’s Refugee Health Program monitors test results and treats patients who have active TB disease. Unlike latent tuberculosis infection, active TB disease is contagious, symptomatic and even deadly.
According to documents obtained through a public records request, the evasions began May 27, when Watchdog contacted the Health Department to learn how many refugees tested positive for TB in recent years. The inquiry sparked private meetings among state epidemiologists, public health nurses and office staff, who proceeded to conceal the number of contagious active TB disease cases brought to Vermont through the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program.
Health department employees and lawyers included in the communication loop were Health Policy Coordinator Ben Truman, Refugee Health and Health Equity Coordinator Martha Friedman, public health specialist Sally Cook, Communications Director Nancy Erickson, and legal counselors Margaret Vincent and Bessie Weiss.
State epidemiologist Patsy Kelso sent Watchdog’s May 27 request for data to Laura Ann Nicolai, deputy state epidemiologist and head of the tuberculosis control program. Nicolai met with department staff and legal counsel that day and the following week to concoct a plan to hide the number of refugees with active TB disease.
“This doesn’t say that he wants to know how many cases were identified, so I wouldn’t offer it. If he asks it would be important to explain that latent infection is not reportable,” Nicolai wrote to the team on May 27.
As team members contemplated an official response, Nicolai drafted bulleted talking points to explain the difference between active TB disease and latent TB infection, and Truman suggested the possibility of making Watchdog file a public records request to obtain data.
After deliberation, the team agreed to reveal the number of refugees testing positive for TB but conceal the number of refugees with contagious active TB disease.
When the team conferred again on May 31, Nicolai discussed what to do if Watchdog wanted “additional information on TB disease specifically.”
“If the reporter wants additional information on TB disease specifically then either Sally or I would be happy to talk with him. We could discuss the difference between latent and active infection, etc. or any of the talking points I provided on Friday,” Nicolai wrote.
She added: “If at any point along the way he changes what he wants and decides he’d like additional data, such as the number of active cases among refugees, then we can cross that bridge when we come to it.”
The draft response, completed an hour and a half later, included four years of refugee TB blood test results and bulleted information explaining the difference between latent and active TB. Excluded from the response was the number of refugees with active TB disease.
When Truman delivered the Health Department’s June 1 response to Watchdog without the number of active TB disease cases, Watchdog asked for “actual numbers of refugee active TB cases per year, starting at FY2011 and ending in FY2016.”
Truman, according to plan, replied: “To address the scope of the additional information you want, please submit this as a formal public records request.”
With the limited information provided, Watchdog reported that 318 refugees out of about 900 admitted to Vermont since 2013 — or 35.4 percent — tested positive for tuberculosis. Regarding active TB cases, the article included the only statistic offered by the Health Department — a comfortingly low incidence statistic of 5.4 cases per year over five years. That statistic includes Vermonters only, not refugees with active TB disease.
When Nicolai conferred with the team on June 3, she tells Truman: “This is the average for active cases among all Vermonters. It does not specify that this is the average number of cases among refugees. Should this be clarified?”
Truman replied: “I suggest any further info be in the context of responses to any PRR [public records request] he may choose to make. To my knowledge, none has been made at this time.”
Watchdog filed a public records request on June 9, asking again for the statistical number of active TB disease cases among resettled refugees. The Health Department’s response, delivered June 23 “on behalf of the Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health,” did not provide the data.
The response did reveal the team’s evasion efforts, however, captured in this series of emails.
The responsive records also revealed that Truman sent the team’s original June 1 response to Watchdog to John Walters, a self-described liberal blogger writing at the Vermont Political Observer. Walters subsequently wrote a June 4 blog entry that advanced the Health Department’s talking points and accused Watchdog of “fearmongering.”
The development comes as Rutland Mayor Christopher Louras and the city’s Board of Aldermen are weighing whether or not to let residents vote on accepting 100 Syrian refugees in October. Louras says letting the people of Rutland vote on the issue is “offensive.”
Watchdog has additional requests pending at the Department of Health and plans to report the annual number of active TB disease cases among refugees resettled in Vermont over the past five years. (For more from the author of “THANKS, OBAMA! State Officials Concealing Number Of “Refugees” With Contagious TB” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/maxresdefault-166.jpg7201280Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-06-30 00:28:142016-06-30 00:33:38THANKS, OBAMA! State Officials Concealing Number Of “Refugees” With Contagious TB
An end-of-the-year party for third graders at William P. Tatem Elementary School in Collingswood, New Jersey was busted by police officers after a 9-year-old boy started talking about brownies being served to the class.
After another student called the comment “racist,” the school FREAKED OUT and called the local authorities.
The police officer spoke to the student, who is 9, said the boy’s mother, Stacy dos Santos.
Dos Santos said that the school overreacted and that her son made a comment about snacks, not skin color. “He said they were talking about brownies … Who exactly did he offend?” dos Santos said.
The boy’s father was contacted by Collingswood police later in the day. Police said the incident had been referred to the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency. The student stayed home for his last day of third grade.
Dos Santos said that her son was “traumatized,” and that she hopes to send him to a different Collingswood public school in the fall.
Dos Santos is also asking for an apology from the school, and she deserves one. “I’m not comfortable with the administration,” she said. “He was intimidated, obviously. There was a police officer with a gun in the holster talking to my son, saying, ‘Tell me what you said.’ He didn’t have anybody on his side.”
Shockingly, incidents such as this one have been more regular in Collingswood lately. Following a May 25th meeting, school administrators and police were told by the local prosecutor’s office to report any incidents to the police ranging from simple name-calling to real criminal activity – even at elementary schools.
(For more from the author of “School Calls Gun-Wielding Cops on Third Grader for Talking About… Brownies” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Several_brownies.jpg10631600Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-06-30 00:00:352016-07-03 03:43:45School Calls Gun-Wielding Cops on Third Grader for Talking About… Brownies
As elected officials speak in measured tones and file elaborate, in-depth reports to offer insight and analysis about the 2012 attack on the Benghazi compound in Libya that left four Americans dead, a former Navy SEAL cuts right to the heart of the issue as he sees it.
Former Navy SEAL Tej Gill spoke on Breitbart News Daily on Tuesday to unveil the new project of his group, Project War Path: It has started selling T-shirts that read “Hillary Clinton Killed My Friends.”
The slogan first took root on a bumper sticker that has “gone viral in the SEAL community,” said Gill. “So we started making T-shirts, and we want to get the word out there what Hillary Clinton did.”
Clinton was secretary of state and a major architect of U.S. policy toward Libya when insurgents attacked the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. Her role in the attack has been a major focus on the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which released its report Tuesday.
Gill said his conclusion fits the facts of the Benghazi tragedy.
“She literally killed my friends, Ty Woods and Glenn Doherty. I’ve known Ty since 1997 and Glen since 2003. They were both good friends.” he said.
Gill said Clinton let America down before the attack ever took place.
“Her actions led to their deaths. By denying multiple requests for the upgraded security at the outpost, it was attacked. Terrorists just literally pushed the gate open. They flooded that compound in 10 seconds, took it over, and then they got killed because of her. If that consulate would have been hardened like it should have been, none of that would’ve happened,” he said.
Gill was dismissive of the Benghazi panel’s report.
“They talked it up like they were going to ask her some real questions, and it seemed like they basically let her off the hook,” he said. (For more from the author of “Former Navy SEAL Has a Powerful Message About Hillary Clinton” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/13967756414084-1.jpg637958Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-06-29 23:17:562016-06-29 23:17:56Former Navy SEAL Has a Powerful Message About Hillary Clinton
The Department of Veterans Affairs’ crisis hot line didn’t answer up to 30 percent of texts from desperate veterans, according to a new government watchdog investigation.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report Monday, which found that “tests of text messages revealed a potential area of concern.”
The crisis hotline received 13,000 texts in 2014 and 16,000 in 2015. To test whether the VA was actually responding to veterans in serious need, GAO sent a series of test text messages to the hotline. Out of a total of 14 messages sent, four were ignored.
That’s an ignore rate of 28.6 percent.
Of the other 10 texts, eight were answered in two minutes. The other two received answers in just under five minutes.
The VA gave several reasons as to why some messages were ignored, one of which was that there was an incompatibility between the device used to send the message and the VA’s message receiving software. Another possible reason was that there were too many incoming texts at the same time.
Yet, it’s unclear exactly what went wrong and whether the text messages ignored were due to technical errors or a simple failure of staff to respond.
The text messaging service the VA has contracted does not routinely test the system.
“Without routinely testing its text messaging system, or ensuring that its provider tests the system, VA cannot ensure that it is identifying limitations with its text messaging service and resolving them to provide consistent, reliable service to veterans,” the GAO said.
The VA did not dispute this recommendation and wholeheartedly agreed.
The text message GAO report came after a similar report in February, which discovered that nearly two dozen people who called the VA crisis hotline were sent straight to voicemail.
Staff at the time didn’t even know the VA had a voicemail messaging system, and so they did not return the calls of these desperate vets. (For more from the author of “VA Ignored 30 Percent of Text Messages Sent to Suicide Crisis Hotline” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/17468693762_8b792bb277_b.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-06-28 23:59:532016-06-28 23:59:53VA Ignored 30 Percent of Text Messages Sent to Suicide Crisis Hotline
On Sunday evening, football player Tim Tebow, lead a group prayer on a Delta Airlines flight to Phoenix, Arizona. The story originally surfaced through a Facebook post by fellow passenger, Richard Gotti.
According to Gotti’s post, “An older gentleman began having what appeared to be heart problems, and he went unconscious.” Anyone and everyone tried to help this man, but according to Gotti, there was “shock after shock from the AED machine and still no pulse.”
People from all over were praying for the man struggling with heart problems. Gotti then states that he “observed a guy walking down the aisle. That guy was Tim Tebow.” Tebow met with the family and prayed with them as well as anyone in that section of the plane.
While Delta spokesman Brian Kruse was not at liberty to confirm or deny whether any specific passengers were on the plane he did release a statement saying, “We can’t say enough about the Delta professionals who care for our customers every day and we are grateful to our customers who are so often quick to extend kindness and care to one another.”
Erik Dellenbach of the Tim Tebow Foundation told The Florida Times-Union that Tebow was on the plane and did pray with the family and passengers. The Washington Times also reported that Dellenbach also said Tebow “used a car that had been waiting for him to carry the man’s family to the hospital.” (For more from the author of “Tim Tebow Leads Prayer on Delta Plane for Man Experiencing Heart Troubles” please click HERE)
In 1957, at the age of 10, Norma (Nelson) McCorvey robbed a gas station and started on a path that no one would want for their child. Norma’s mother was an alcoholic, and violent, and Norma would spend a lot of time abusing drugs, alcohol and wasting her life.
When Norma became pregnant for the third time after her first child was taken by her mother and her second child was raised by the father, Norma tried to get an illegal abortion. Her doctor explained that it was illegal, and referred her to an adoption lawyer who in turn introduced her to recent law school graduates Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington.
The two lawyers, who were plaintiff-shopping for the purposes of changing abortion law in the state of Texas, used Norma as she had been used and abused her entire life. She signed an affidavit without even knowing what it said, and the two lawyers, Coffee and Weddington, took the case to the Supreme Court, eventually overturning state laws that restricted abortion. During the legal battles, Norma’s baby was born and adopted, but the case partially centered around the fact that Jane Roe “wished to terminate her pregnancy by an abortion ‘performed by a competent, licensed physician, under safe, clinical conditions’…”
Fast forward to this past week’s Supreme Court decision which determined that the
State has a legitimate interest in seeing to it that abortion… is performed under circumstances that insure maximum safety for the patient… [But that] a statute which, while furthering [a] valid state interest, has the effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman’s choice cannot be considered a permissible means of serving its legitimate ends… and unnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion impose an undue burden on the right.
Note the lie that pro-abortionists have any interest whatsoever in women’s civil rights. This ruling means that abortion advocates have taken 43 years to fight for abortion not performed by a competent, licensed physician “under safe, clinical conditions,” because after all, the main objective is their “right”; the sanitary conditions of the facility places a “substantial obstacle.”
This decision has exposed the Abortion Pigs for who and what they are.
The states that have recently enacted the safe abortion facilities laws will now see their legislation overturned, and all abortion facilities can be truly described as slaughterhouses.
For the good people who are fighting against abortion, this Supreme Court decision only strengthens their argument because it exposes the abortion industry as primarily interested in keeping the industry going regardless of the danger of infection, shock or death of the mother. And pro-lifers ought to take heed: Though the ruling continues abortion mills which have a certain cost/volume/profit standard to stay open, it should be explained, especially to the young, that it means the clinic can perform more and more abortions, now with no recognizable sanitary guidelines and safety to the mother. Any young woman seeking an abortion ought to be informed of the lowest standards their so-called “abortion rights advocates” have fought for.
McCorvey, as she grew older, became a fierce pro-lifer, but after Roe v. Wade, she in fact lived as a kind of celebrity between 1973 and the 1990’s while being active in the pro-abort movement. But in 1992, Norma began working in abortion facilities and in a later affidavit, described a “typical” abortion facility where she worked in 1995, 21 years ago.
One clinic where I worked in 1995 was typical: Light fixtures and plaster falling from the ceiling; rat droppings over the sinks; backed up sinks; and blood splattered on the walls. But, the most distressing room in the facility was the ‘parts room.’ Aborted babies were stored here. There were dead babies and baby parts stacked like cordwood. Some of the babies made it into buckets and others did not, and because of its disgusting features, no one ever cleaned the room. The stench was horrible. Plastic bags full of baby parts that were swimming in blood were tied up, stored in the room and picked up once a week. At another clinic, the dead babies were kept in a big white freezer full of dozens of jars, all full of baby parts, little tiny hands, feet and faces visible through the jars, frozen in blood.
That’s what the Abortion Pigs have fought to continue.
In 2013, the Gosnell trial cast a light upon the standards at his abortion facility, described as, “filthy, wretched and macabre… The smells were just unbearable,” Philadelphia Police Crime Scene Investigator John Taggart said following the trial. “You could tell there was death somewhere.” NBC 10 Philadelphia reported further on the conditions inside Gosnell’s house of horrors.
Stained and tattered, the table still had sanitary paper and stirrups attached. Prosecutors said the table would regularly be used for abortion procedures and that former employees said dried blood would often be caked to the medical equipment.
A garbage disposal taken from the clinic’s break room was set on top of a storage drawer. Taggart said investigators learned the employees would dispose of fetal remains in the sink and use the disposal to move them down the drain. Human bones were found inside the appliance, prosecutors said.
‘They were shoving body parts down the garbage disposal,’ said Taggart. ‘To the point where they plunged it one day and an arm popped out on Lancaster Avenue.’
Filthy, corroded tubing — stained over time by blood and dirt — were left coiled on the floor. Some of the tubing that was used for suction during abortion procedures also doubled as a suction source for patient resuscitation, according to prosecutors.
Again, that is what the Abortion Pigs have fought to maintain, and they won.
With reports that Planned Parenthood clinics were steam-cooking and throwing dead children in landfills; that in Great Britain clinics were using babies as raw material for “waste to energy” programs; that Planned Parenthood is selling baby parts in a Goebbels-inspired industry to profit off the “products of conception”; and that facilities don’t have to be regulated like a health-care facility, pro-lifers must continue to remind fellow Americans of the disrespect, or rather, disgust, for human life on the part of the abortion advocates.
The Abortion Pigs, the advocates of this barbaric slaughter of innocents, seem clean and intelligent when they are actually abusing women and murdering children as much as profitability will allow, and now that they are heralding this Supreme Court decision, every pro-lifer has more ammunition to help change the hearts and minds of fellow Americans.
The greatest evil in this nation is the protected status of abortion, and it is important to note that the Abortion Pigs try very hard to “sanitize” the act of abortion, just as they had to Norma, just as they do now by claiming abortion is a woman’s right, which really means that women alone have the right to murder. And as they are giddy with delight that their clinics don’t need to be sanitary, let’s please go ahead and remind everyone that they fought for it to be that way.
The only way to stop the abortion industry’s dominance in America is to change minds and hearts about the horrors of abortion, and the lies told by the Abortion Pigs. Take away their industry and their income, educate young women, and their satanic crusade of slaughter will end. God help us. (For more from the author of “Pro-Lifers Aren’t the Ones Putting Women at Risk” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/University_of_Toronto_pro-life_protest_1-1.jpg7681024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-06-28 22:52:402016-07-03 15:06:31Pro-Lifers Aren’t the Ones Putting Women at Risk
The hypocrisy of Democrats in Congress when it comes to combatting the Zika virus is not only outrageous, it’s dangerous.
The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say there are now over 2,600 cases of the Zika virus confirmed in the United States and its territories. Most cases are occurring in Puerto Rico, but there are at least 162 cases in Florida and 198 in New York. And scariest of all is that over 450 of the reported cases are pregnant women. It is their unborn children for which the disease poses the greatest harm.
Despite the fact there is plenty of money scattered across the federal government that could be used without Congress adding another dime to the debt, Democrats have made the decision to hold hostage the health of the American people until they get more money and until some of those dollars are given to Planned Parenthood.
Proof of that is the decision by Senate Democrats this week to block funding of $1.1 billion to fight the Zika virus. These are the same Senate Democrats, by the way, who voted for $1.1 billion of funding just last month.
Back in May, House Republicans balked at such a high number but changed their minds saying they had found “savings” from other government programs to offset the spending. They passed a bill last week at the $1.1 billion level.
But what the GOP calls “savings,” Democrats call “cuts” and will not support the measure unless it’s all additional spending.
I asked my Heritage Foundation colleague and senior policy analyst in fiscal affairs, Justin Bogie, to explain whether these were savings or cuts. Turns out, they aren’t really either:
The Republicans proposed offsets of $750 million on the $1.1 billion emergency bill. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the reality is that only about $127 million of that is real savings and the other $623 million would have never been spent anyway. So by ‘saving’ $750 million they actually are spending an additional $623 million over what would have been spent from those accounts.
So, if you’re a Republican, spending money you weren’t going to spend is now considered “savings.” If you’re a Democrat, spending money you weren’t going to spend is now considered a “cut.”
Only in Washington.
The truth is no new money is needed and Republicans were wrong to cave on that front. But compromise they did and it still wasn’t enough to get the Democrats to go along. And therein lies the hypocrisy.
Democrats have proven by their behavior this week that their true cause celebs are not fighting the Zika virus and protecting women’s health, but big spending and special interests like the abortion lobby. (For more from the author of “Why Democrats Are Really Blocking Funding to Fight Zika Virus” please click HERE)
In the most consequential abortion decision since 1992, the Supreme Court struck down a Texas law regulating the public safety of abortion clinics. In a 5-3 decision with Justice Breyer writing for the majority in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the high court reversed the Fifth Circuit and invalidated Texas’s HB 2, which required abortion clinics to meet the health standards for ambulatory surgical centers and required doctors at the facilities to have admissions privileges at a hospital within 30 miles.
Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt
After concocting a Fourteenth Amendment right to an abortion at almost any stage out of whole cloth in Roe v.Wade and Casey, the court now holds that any basic, prudent and clearly constitutional state regulation addressing safety concerns at abortion facilities that in any way results in a decrease in the number of abortions performed is “unconstitutional.”
Justice Thomas begins his dissent by noting how the majority on the court tends to bend the rules when one of their favored “rights” is at stake:
To begin, the very existence of this suit is a jurisprudential oddity. Ordinarily, plaintiffs cannot file suits to vindicate the constitutional rights of others. But the Court employs a different approach to rights that it favors. So in this case and many others, the Court has erroneously allowed doctors and clinics to vicariously vindicate the putative constitutional right of women seeking abortions.
Yet, once a woman has been granted a constitutional right to an abortion, third parties can now sue on her behalf.
Connected to the issue of standing on behalf of others is the issue of access to abortions. The court has made it clear in this decision that the courts, not state legislatures, determine the scientific and medical analysis behind regulating abortion clinics in order to achieve the desired outcome: full access to abortions by any third party provider that desires to operate in the field. Remember, states have plenary power over regulating doctors and medical certifications within their respective states, yet the court made it clear they will step in to invalidate those laws if [even third party] plaintiffs can show that they will lead to a decrease in the number of abortions.
In a dissent that is full of quotes from the late Justice Scalia, Thomas concludes with a quote from his former senior colleague:
Today’s decision will prompt some to claim victory, just as it will stiffen opponents’ will to object. But the entire Nation has lost something essential. The majority’s embrace of a jurisprudence of rights-specific exceptions and balancing tests is “a regrettable concession of defeat—an acknowledgement that we have passed the point where ‘law,’ properly speaking, has any further application.
It is truly shocking how far we have fallen as a Republic. At the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, 36 states and territories had laws on the books banning abortions. Yet, we are told that the Constitution, and even the Fourteenth Amendment as originally conceived, is unconstitutional and preempted by the evolving interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which is rooted in nothing but the political imagination of the judges. Now that has transmogrified to a right to operate abortion clinics that have sub-standard health care.
Justice Alito, who authored the main dissent (which was joined by Thomas and Roberts) focused on several other aspects of the court’s tendentious treatment for abortion plaintiffs. The court violated a principle of “res judicata, namely, that a plaintiff who loses in a first case cannot later bring the same case simply because it has now gathered better evidence.” Given that this case was already heard by a trial court and the plaintiffs lost in the Fifth Circuit, opting at the time not to pursue an appeal to SCOTUS, were precluded from bringing the case again after they felt they had more evidence that the Texas law would limit the number of abortions in the state.
Additionally, Alito assailed the majority for not applying the principle of upholding the remaining parts of the Texas law, which were not challenged in the lawsuit, given that the law was written with a proper severability clause. The overarching message of the majority, as observed by Thomas and Alito, was that if the end goal is an abortion right, any and all rules governing judicial proceedings can be vitiated.
Furthermore, while opponents argue that admitting privileges and ASC requirements are just “scams” to limit access to abortion, they would do well to remember that sacrificing women’s health at the altar of “reproductive rights” is the exact same kind of thinking that allowed Kermit Gosnell to continue his horrific practices in Philadelphia for years without scrutiny. Gosnell, who is currently serving a life sentence for three counts of murder and other charges, spent years performing abortions on low-income women of Philadelphia in unsanitary conditions with little emergency access while conducting illegal experiments on women and unborn children.
The notion that such regulations are beyond the scope of state power – even if one were to accede to the phantom individual right to an abortion – is lunacy.
The intellectual dyslexia of the judiciary is breathtaking. States have now been granted a power to blatantly discriminate based solely on race. They have been allowed to violate the right to bear arms and own common fire arms, an inalienable right enshrined into the Constitution. Yet, they can’t regulate the public safety of abortion clinics nor define a marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
This is the perverse nature of entrusting the legal profession as the final arbiter of fundamental rights and all societal and political issues.
A Harbinger of the Future
Many conservatives will conclude from here that the coming election is all the more important in shaping the balance of the court. This case demonstrates the folly of that line of thinking for several reasons.
1. As is most often the case concerning the fabrication of new rights, Justice Kennedy was with the four impervious leftists. Thus, even if we successfully fill Scalia’s seat with an originalist, they will still have a 5-4 majority in most cases.
2. So many of these cases are decided in the lower courts, and even those that make it to the Supreme Court are often influenced by the momentum of the lower courts. As I’ve noted on many occasions, the lower courts are even worse than the Supreme Court and that is not going to change any time this generation. Texas is lucky that it is under the jurisdiction of the one remaining originalist-majority circuit – the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. That is why this case went so far. On the other hand, lower courts recently struck down North Dakota’s ban on abortions performed after six weeks of pregnancy and even Arizona’s law banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The Supreme Court refused to grant cert to those appeals, which means there were no more than three justices willing to overturn the lower courts even with Scalia alive.
3. Only Justice Thomas was willing to fully uphold the Texas laws. Justices Alito and Roberts would have remanded the case back to the lower courts to better analyze the effects of the law in limiting access to abortion. Now, it could be that they still fundamentally oppose the entire abortion jurisprudence and were just playing within the sand box created by Roe and Casey, albeit with a more milquetoast approach than Thomas. But it is quite likely, especially in the case of Roberts, that he would not overturn Roe v. Wade. This is the fundamental problem with those who believe we can win the “judicial game” by appointing better justices. There is enough existing “jurisprudence” to destroy every facet of the Constitution based on liberal precedent, and there are few judges like Thomas who are willing to go back to the original Constitution, even if it means countermanding decades of odious precedent.
The Path Forward
This is why I’m excited to announce the release of my new book, “Stolen Sovereignty: How to Stop Unelected Judges from Transforming America,” on July 19. The courts are irremediably broken and it’s time Congress exercise its power to regulate the jurisdiction of the court. Broad societal questions, such as abortion, gay marriage, and religious liberty should not be entrusted to the courts, especially given that they have insurmountable majorities that will likely expand the backwards post-constitutional jurisprudence and will certainly apply the existing precedent. In this case, for example, Congress could strip the courts of any jurisdiction to hear cases overturning state laws regulating abortion. State courts could still hear those cases and it would be up to state legislatures to reform their own state judiciaries. But there is a solution on the federal level and it’s high time we exercise it.
It’s also high time for some long-term solutions to restore our right to self-governance and restore state power. As Mark Levin laid out in “Liberty Amendments,” we need a convention of the states with a targeted agenda to reclaim that power for the people and the states. One of them is granting both Congress and the state legislatures the authority to overturn court decisions with the vote of three-fifths of both houses of Congress or state legislative bodies. Between the power to regulate jurisdiction, which is already in the Constitution, and the new initiative to overrule decisions, the court will be restored to its proper role of interpreting the application of statutes and its very limited original jurisdiction.
Or, we can just sit back and watch social transformation without representation and allow Anthony Kennedy to serve as king. (For more from the author of “Supreme Court Takes Abortion Zeal to New Level” please click HERE)
Gee, I don’t sense anything hypocritical about this factoid:
For years, Kilauea, Kauai resident Gy Hall has enjoyed the view of the ocean and the breeze along Koolau Road. Then, a few weeks ago, a crew started to build a wall which happens to belong to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
“The feeling of it is really oppressive. It’s immense,” Hall said. “It’s really sad that somebody would come in, and buy a huge piece of land and the first thing they do is cut off this view that’s been available and appreciative by the community here for years.”
Hall said the wall extends along Koolau Road, near mile marker 20, and is about six-feet tall. He said its projected length and completion are unclear.
Multiple attempts by TGI to contact Shawn Smith, former Falk Partners manager, who Hall says sold some of the $200 million, 700-plus-acre property to the billionaire, were unsuccessful Friday…
…Shosana Chantara, a Kilauea resident, voiced her concerns about the breeze that’s being obstructed.
“It’s hot behind that wall. Because it’s up on a berm, there’s not a breath of air on this side from the ocean,” Chantara said. “You take a solid wall that’s 10 or more feet above the road level; the breeze can’t go through.”
…Another Kilauea resident, Donna Mcmillen, calls the wall a “monstrosity.”
The island of Kauai is a masterpiece of natural beauty.
That Zuckerberg would both build a security wall and despoil one of the most spectacular islands in the world would shame a normal person, but not — of course — any Democrat. (For more from the author of “Open Borders Zealot Zuckerberg Angers Neighbors by Building Massive Security Wall Around His Hawaiian Home” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Mark_Zuckerberg_-_South_by_Southwest_2008_-_2.jpg23043456Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-06-28 01:48:562016-06-28 01:48:56Open Borders Zealot Zuckerberg Angers Neighbors by Building Massive Security Wall Around His Hawaiian Home