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Why Marriage Matters For America And Conservatism

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Photo Credit: Ken Weingart Some former officials in the Republican Party are urging the Supreme Court to redefine marriage for the nation. But support for marriage as the union of a man and a woman is essential to American—and conservative—principles. Indeed, nothing could be less conservative than urging an activist court to redefine an essential institution of civil society.

As my co-authors and I argue in our new book, What Is Marriage?, and in the amicus brief we filed with the Supreme Court, marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children their union produces. It is based on the anthropological truth that men and women are different and complementary, on the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and on the social reality that children need a mother and a father. Marriage has public purposes that transcend its private purposes.

Marriage predates government. It is the fundamental building block of all human civilization. All Americans, especially conservatives, should respect this crucial institution of civil society. This is why 41 states, with good reason, affirm that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Government recognizes marriage because it is an institution that benefits society in a way that no other relationship does. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means to ensure the well-being of children. State recognition of marriage protects children by encouraging men and women to commit to each other and take responsibility for their children. While respecting everyone’s liberty, government rightly recognizes, protects, and promotes marriage as the ideal institution for childbearing and childrearing.

Redefining marriage would further distance marriage from the needs of children. It would deny as a matter of policy the ideal that a child needs a mom and a dad. We know that children tend to do best when raised by a mother and a father. The confusion resulting from further delinking childbearing from marriage would force the state to intervene more often in family life and cause welfare programs to grow even more.

Read more from this story HERE.

Dread Scott Decision-Florida Governor Caves On Obamacare

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Photo Credit: Irish CentralLongtime foe of Obamacare, Florida Governor Rick Scott, did an about face and agreed to implement the first step of it yesterday. The Governors decision shocked many republican leaders around the country as many of them jostle with the unpopular health care program.

Many republicans and conservatives derided the governor for his decision. The conservative group, Americans For Prosperity released this statement:

“Governor Scott’s announcement today is extremely disappointing. Governor Scott had been a national leader in the fight against President Obama’s health care takeover. He was elected because of his principled conservative leadership against ObamaCare’s overreach, and led the charge, with Attorney General Pam Bondi, to take Obamacare to the Supreme Court. But today he came out in support of the Medicaid expansion he vowed to oppose.”

But Fox News contributor, Dr. Charles Krauthammer said that Governor Scott sees this as the best decision for his state. Dr. Krauthammer said it was “an honorable decision to make.”

Perhaps it was the promise of no cost to Florida for the first three years and then only a 10% payment for it in the 4th year.

Perhaps it was the realization he has lost every battle to overturn Obamacare since its unpopular inception and he might as well accept that it has been mandated the law of the land.

Losing the battle in the Supreme Court struck a huge blow against opponents of Obamacare, but Mitt Romney’s loss to Obama in the election basically guaranteed Obamacare was the law of the land.

Although Obamacare is the law of the land and is being heralded as such, there is much doubt the country can actually afford to pay for it.

The nation is already 16 trillion in debt and piling on billions more debt on a daily basis, without adding all of the upcoming expense of Obamacare.

Governor Scott is a pragmatist and no one thinks his motives are anything but for the best interests of his state. So perhaps his decision is based on a belief that Obamacare will eventually collapse upon itself and he might as well get as much of the free benefits that he can before they are gone.

Governor Scott is only the seventh republican governor to accept the Obamacare mandate, but this might edge the other Governors to follow his lead and add more burdens on the federal government to cover states Obamacare expenses. This will further strain the already out of control deficit and perhaps hasten a showdown with an economic reality the Obama administration has refused to face for the past four years.

Perhaps the Obama administration will dread the Scott decision. Time will tell.

Read more from this story HERE.

Supreme Court Wants Answers After Soldier Jailed for Killing Suspected Terrorist Who Attacked Him

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The U.S. Supreme Court has asked the federal government to explain its punishment for a U.S. soldier convicted of shooting and killing a suspected terrorist who was attacking him.

The word comes from the parents of Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna, Scott and Vicki Behenna, who have been raising awareness of their son’s case through the Defend Michael website.

Lower courts have concluded that since Michael Behenna was holding the terror suspect at gunpoint, he gave up the right to defend himself when the suspect allegedly lunged for his service weapon.

The suspect, Ali Mansur, was thought to be involved in a series of attacks on American troops. The judges determined Behenna was conducting an “unauthorized” interrogation when Mansur lunged for Behenna’s weapon and he fired.

Behenna, an Army Ranger, was given a 15-year sentence and now is in Fort Leavenworth.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sotomayor Memoir: Husband Brought Bag of Quaaludes to Wedding Night, Unknowingly Drove Cousin to Shoot Up Heroin

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says in her upcoming memoir that her lifelong battle against diabetes and the fear that she might die early played a big part in her decision not to have children.

The 58-year-old Sotomayor says in an unusually personal book for a Supreme Court justice that she feels an occasional tug of regret at not having borne or adopted children. The memoir, “My Beloved World,” is being published by Alfred A. Knopf in January. An early copy was sent by the publisher to The Associated Press.

Sotomayor also defends affirmative action — under which she was admitted to Princeton University and Yale Law School — as needed to get disadvantaged students to the starting line of a race to success. She grew up so poor in the South Bronx that her family never even had a bank account.

She acknowledges she entered through a special door reserved for minority students but writes that her accomplishments at Princeton, including receiving the highest prize given to seniors, earning a place in the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and graduating with highest honors, speak for themselves.

Sotomayor received an advance of nearly $1.2 million for the book, which Knopf will publish simultaneously in English and Spanish. The book does not deal with the more than three years Sotomayor has served as a justice or the previous 17 years she spent as a U.S. district and appeals court judge.

Read more from this story HERE.

Supreme Court Weighing Genetic Privacy

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Supreme Court justices are to [met] privately Friday to weigh whether they will hear a major genetic-privacy case testing whether authorities may take DNA samples from anybody arrested for a serious crime.

The case has wide-ranging implications, as at least 21 states and the federal government have regulations requiring suspects to give a DNA sample upon arrest. In all the states with such laws, DNA saliva samples are cataloged in state and federal crime-fighting databases.

The issue confronts the government’s interest in solving crime, balanced against the constitutional rights of those arrested to be free from government intrusion.

The case before the justices concerns a decision in April of Maryland’s top court, which said it was a breach of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure to take DNA samples from suspects who have not been convicted.

The Maryland Court of Appeals, that state’s highest court, said that arrestees have a “weighty and reasonable expectation of privacy against warrantless, suspicionless searches” and that expectation is not outweighed by the state’s “purported interest in assuring proper identification” of a suspect.

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Justice Kagan: I’m Probably a Supreme Court Justice Because I’m a Woman

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Justice Elena Kagan said she was “not sure” if President Barack Obama would have nominated her to the Supreme Court if she had not been a woman.

During a talk before law students on Friday at the University of Tennessee Law School, Kagan said, “And to tell you the truth, there were also things that I got because I was a woman. I mean I’m not sure I’d be sitting here.”

“I’m not sure that I would’ve been President Obama’s nominee if I weren’t a woman,” she said. “And if he wasn’t as committed as he was to ensuring that there was diversity on the Supreme Court.”

“So, mostly what I think when I think about this question is how far we’ve come and how much I owe — and all the women who have come after me owe– to people like Justice Ginsburg and Justice O’Connor,” she said.

Kagan was initially asked by Dean of Tennessee Law School Doug Blaze, “It’s been a remarkable career, and you’ve been quite a pioneer along the way. [The] first woman to be Dean of the Harvard Law School, first woman solicitor general of the United States. You’re now the fourth woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court and one of three presently serving.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Abandons the Border

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Along the Arizona/Mexican border, dozens of heavily armed spotters man look out points on mountain peaks commanding the shimmering, parched landscape below. They usually man these posts for two weeks at a time, taking provisions with them to last the entire 14 days. They are equipped with night vision technology, powerful binoculars and high tech communications able to keep them in touch with command centers miles away.

But these aren’t US military personnel or law enforcement, they are soldiers of powerful Mexican drug cartels, who own these crossing points where vast amounts of drugs and human traffickers stream into the United States. These spotters are on the look out for the US border patrol who is tasked with keeping these invaders out. Hamstrung by the vast areas of desolate country they have to patrol, as well as having to respect environmentally sensitive areas which the cartels could care less about, our forces are out manned and outgunned.

Like the Cohen Brothers movie, “No country for old men,” the undercurrent of this landscape is harsh, lawless and violent. It is ruled by brutal men, who do not hesitate to resort to violence in order to protect their investment in drugs and human trafficking. Headless bodies and rape trees tell the tale of how brutal this place can be.

Mule trains of human and drug traffickers on foot, some carrying burlap sacks filled with drugs, walk into the United States under the watchful eyes of the spotters high above them. Once they reach a staging area, they change clothes so they look more American and discard what they had been wearing. They also discard the burlap bags as they transfer the drugs to vehicles. These smuggling corridors are littered with abandoned vehicles,plastic bottles, cans, clothing, shoes, food, black plastic bags, and empty burlap sacks.

You would think, that at the very least, the EPA would be enthusiastically suing the cartels for despoiling the desert environment…as enthusiastically as they sue and harass our own US corporations and industries.

We are having a war waged against us on our southern border. This war is filling our country with dangerous illegal drugs and swamping us with undocumented illegal immigrants who are overloading our social services.

A border state trampled and drowned by illegal and criminal invaders, Arizona was dealt a severe blow a few months ago by the Obama administration. They were told not to call Dept of Homeland Security for help with their immigration enforcement problem because Homeland security wasn’t going to answer.

Evidently President Obama was in a snit when the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a controversial provision requiring police to check the immigration status of people they detain and suspect to be in the country illegally. So President Obama decided to circumvent the intent of the ruling by another executive order and withdrew federal immigration enforcement help and cooperation from Arizona.

Even Justice Scalia wrote a scathing indictment against the Obama administrations intimidation of Arizona’s efforts to protects its borders when he penned: ” Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of the Immigration Act that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind.”

President Obama’s decision to suspend laws on immigration and harass the State of Arizona for trying to protect its citizens from a criminal invasion, is indeed mind boggling.

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Supreme Court Justices: Skilled Charlatans, Undeserving of Public Trust & Respect?

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHotey

The ObamaCare decision exposed the Supreme Court as an emperor without clothes. Hoping for deliverance from ObamaCare, many usual critics defended the Court. But with a new term fast approaching, a month before a critical election, Chief Justice Roberts’ handiwork should be remembered as a final wake-up call to consider, once and for all, whether the Court and judicial review merit respect, acceptance and legitimacy.

Upon Paul Ryan’s vice presidential selection, supporters noted his objection that Chief Justice Roberts had “contort[ed] logic and reason to come up with [the ObamaCare] ruling.” Such contortion is nothing unusual except for one thing. The Supreme Court, which normally operates in obscurity, could not escape a glaring spotlight this time, affording a rare opportunity to inform the public about the dark side of what many justices do. This raises questions concerning the utility of elections, what remains of our actual Constitution, the rule of law, and public acceptance of judicial review.

The Roberts opinion as well as attempts to defend it provide easily understood textbook examples of how justices have turned “interpretation” into a scam by manipulating words to mean anything in order to impose their will by authorizing what is constitutionally prohibited and prohibiting what is authorized or required.

Bluntly acknowledging, in order to challenge, the charge that Roberts is “a liar [and] coward,” devoted Roberts apologist Matthew Franck candidly clarified high stakes questions rarely presented to the public. Are all high court justices always honest? Or are many of them, often a majority, just politicians undemocratically, crassly and lawlessly imposing their personal morality based on misplaced public faith in them — blind faith similar to that once placed in witch doctors and medicine men?

If many justices are merely skilled charlatans distinguished from the latter solely by using far more sophisticated and incomprehensible mumbo jumbo, then what they do is illegitimate, their whole enterprise and institution are illegitimate, and they are not entitled to public trust and respect.

Read more from this story HERE.

Scalia’s comments this weekend open the door to more gun control legislation

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Photo credit: US Mission Geneva

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Sunday the Second Amendment leaves open the possibility of gun-control legislation, adding to what has become a slow-boiling debate on the issue since the Colorado movie theater massacre earlier this month.

Scalia, one of the high court’s most conservative justices, said on “Fox News Sunday” that the majority opinion in the landmark 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller stated the extent of gun ownership “will have to be decided in future cases.”

“We’ll see,” he said.

Scalia’s comments follow the July 20 massacre at the Aurora, Colo., movie theater in which the alleged gunman, with the help of a semi-automatic weapon and an ammunition clip that could hold as many as 100 rounds, killed 12 and wounded 59 others.

His comments also follow those of lawmakers who have called for tougher gun-related laws in the wake of the shootings – most recently New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg and New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, Democrats who said Sunday they will introduce legislation this week to “make it harder for criminals to anonymously stockpile ammunition through the Internet, as was done before the recent tragic shooting in Aurora, Colorado.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Publisher’s Note:  Scalia also noted in his interview on Fox News Sunday that an original construction of the Constitution opens the door to gun limitations as well, noting that the Second Amendment allows us only to “keep and bear arms.”  The word “bear” means that the Founders intended some restrictions, at the minimum allowing prohibition of weapons that cannot be carried.

 

CBS: Justice Roberts switched views to uphold health care law

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Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court’s four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama’s health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations.

Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy – believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law – led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold.

“He was relentless,” one source said of Kennedy’s efforts. “He was very engaged in this.”

But this time, Roberts held firm. And so the conservatives handed him their own message which, as one justice put it, essentially translated into, “You’re on your own.”

The conservatives refused to join any aspect of his opinion, including sections with which they agreed, such as his analysis imposing limits on Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause, the sources said.

Instead, the four joined forces and crafted a highly unusual, unsigned joint dissent. They deliberately ignored Roberts’ decision, the sources said, as if they were no longer even willing to engage with him in debate.

The inner-workings of the Supreme Court are almost impossible to penetrate. The Court’s private conferences, when the justices discuss cases and cast their initial votes, include only the nine members – no law clerks or secretaries are permitted. The justices are notoriously close-lipped, and their law clerks must agree to keep matters completely confidential.

But in this closely-watched case, word of Roberts’ unusual shift has spread widely within the Court, and is known among law clerks, chambers’ aides and secretaries. It also has stirred the ire of the conservative justices, who believed Roberts was standing with them.

Continue reading on the CBS News website…

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images