Here We Go Again...

One would think Leftists would learn that one way to lose the next election is to disrespect voters in the last election.  Disrespect for the 2016 Brexit Referendum certainly hurt both Labour and the LibDems in last week’s UK General Election.  One would think that would be a learning experience.

One would think.

But no.  The day after the election, Leftists took to UK streets to protest . . . what? Voters? Free elections? Those sort of anti-democratic temper tantrums might have sold in the Weimar Republic, but last I looked, most British prefer democracy with their Queen, thank you.

Oh, and here’s where Leftist whining gets beyond satire. The founders of Fusion GPS, purveyors of lies used in the perpetual coup against Trump, these scumbags are blaming . . . Russia.  No I am not kidding:

The founders of Fusion GPS, the Democrat-backed consulting firm behind the famously discredited Christopher Steele dossier at the heart of the Russia hoax, are blaming Russia for the liberal Labour Party’s loss in the U.K. elections Thursday. Seriously….

“Britain needs its own Mueller report on Russian ‘interference,’” [Guardian] editors titled the article.

“The British political system has become thoroughly compromised by Russian influence,” Simpson and Fritsch declared. “In 2016, both the United Kingdom and the United States were the targets of Russian efforts to swing their votes.

But us in The Colonies had better not laugh too hard.  For Democrats and Leftists (But I repeat myself.) are already making it known ahead of time that they have no intention of respecting the 2020 elections should Trump get re-elected.  California Democrat Rep. Karen Bass, for one, says they just might impeach Trump yet again after 2020.  And Democrat House Judiciary Chairman Nadler is openly saying the 2020 election will be rigged if Trump is not impeached and removed.

Yes, Americans might collude by voting to re-elect Trump. How dare they!

All this may amuse, but it should also disturb as well.  For a major party again and again so to disrespect elections they don’t win is dangerous to a country.  And that is the situation in the US and UK today.

This Leftist impulse against democracy and against the rights of political opponents makes me fear what will happen if and when Democrats or Labour do win.  We must not let that happen at least until they transform themselves into parties that actually respect constitutional democracy, even when they don’t win.

Remember This Week

After DemocRATS and other Leftists once again and in numerous ways show their contempt for American Constitutional democracy by protesting against the inauguration of a freely and fairly elected President – let that sink in: they are protesting against the result of a free and fair election – after Democrats again really show what they think about Constitutional democracy, remember this week. 

I’ve said it before, but I will repeat it and will keep repeating it because it must be remembered: Leftists and the Democrat Party they now control only respect Constitutional democracy when they win.

And that is why our political disagreements are at a different level and of a greater importance than decades ago.  But I will let that subject pass for a later time.

“Judicial Putsch”

As quickly as possible, I want to join in condemning the tyrannical ruling of the Supreme Court this morning on same-sex marriage.  It is a judicial coup against constitutional democracy the likes of which we have not seen since Roe v Wade.

It cries out for resistance and nullification not because of the issue of same-sex marriage (If people of various states decide to recognize gay marriage through a democratic process, that is their political and constitutional right.), but because of the importance of constitutional democratic self-rule.  I have therefore already called on Governor Abbott to resist and defy this ruling.

Justice Scalia’s dissent says it better than I can and is one for the ages.  Justice Scalia on this morning’s “judicial putsch”:

I join THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s opinion in full. I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy.

The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me. The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes, and can accord them favorable civil consequences, from tax treatment to rights of inheritance….

So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about mar- riage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact— and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves….

Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best. Individuals on both sides of the issue passionately, but respectfully, attempted to persuade their fellow citizens to accept their views. Americans considered the arguments and put the question to a vote. The electorates of 11 States, either directly or through their representatives, chose to expand the traditional definition of mar- riage. Many more decided not to. Win or lose, advocates for both sides continued pressing their cases, secure in the knowledge that an electoral loss can be negated by a later electoral win. That is exactly how our system of government is supposed to work….

But the Court ends this debate, in an opinion lacking even a thin veneer of law. Buried beneath the mummeries and straining-to-be-memorable passages of the opinion is a candid and startling assertion: No matter what it was the People ratified, the Fourteenth Amendment protects those rights that the Judiciary, in its “reasoned judgment,” thinks the Fourteenth Amendment ought to protect. That is so because “[t]he generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions . . . . ” One would think that sentence would continue: “. . . and therefore they provided for a means by which the People could amend the Constitution,” or perhaps “. . . and therefore they left the creation of additional liberties, such as the freedom to marry someone of the same sex, to the People, through the never-ending process of legislation.” But no. What logically follows, in the majority’s judge-empowering estimation, is: “and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.”15 The “we,” needless to say, is the nine of us. “History and tradition guide and discipline [our] inquiry but do not set its outer boundaries.”16 Thus, rather than focusing on the People’s understanding of “liberty”—at the time of ratification or even today—the majority focuses on four “principles and traditions” that, in the majority’s view, prohibit States from defining marriage as an institution consisting of one man and one woman.

This is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government. Except as limited by a constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People, the States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, even those that offend the esteemed Justices’ “reasoned judgment.” A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy….

And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.

II

But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch. The five Justices who compose today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003. They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a “fundamental right” overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since. They see what lesser legal minds— minds like Thomas Cooley, John Marshall Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Learned Hand, Louis Brandeis, William Howard Taft, Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson, and Henry Friendly— could not. They are certain that the People ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to bestow on them the power to remove questions from the democratic process when that is called for by their “reasoned judgment.” These Justices know that limiting marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason; they know that an institution as old as government itself, and accepted by every nation in history until 15 years ago cannot possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance or bigotry. And they are willing to say that any citizen who does not agree with that, who adheres to what was, until 15 years ago, the unanimous judgment of all generations and all societies, stands against the Constitution.

The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic… The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.

Hubris is sometimes defined as o’erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before a fall. The Judiciary is the “least dangerous” of the federal branches because it has “neither Force nor Will, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm” and the States, “even for the efficacy of its judgments.” With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them—with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the “reasoned judgment” of a bare majority of this Court—we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence.

----

Indeed, the Supreme Court with this ruling is asking for a Constitutional crisis, and one it is not guaranteed to win.

But, more likely, we have lost that much more of our constitutional republic – and that to cheers.

An Encouraging Poll on Same-Sex Marriage

I was tempted to add “for a change” in the headline.  Polls in recent years have not been encouraging to those of us who support traditional marriage.

But YouGov has a poll out that indicates that Americans do not favor making gay marriage a Constitutional right.  Yes, almost 50% think same-sex marriage should be legal.  But the numbers shrink markedly when people are asked whether the Supreme Court should make it a Constitutional right.  A plurality of 43% say SCOTUS “should not rule same sex marriage is a constitutional right.”

I am heartened that there are thinking people out there who see there is a difference between legalizing gay marriage by democratic means and a Supreme Court ruling overturning democratic processes and legalizing gay marriage in all fifty states by judicial fiat, and that claiming the Constitution requires such a judicial coup. 

The likely SCOTUS ruling doing just that may not be as well received as anticipated. 

Houston: Pink Shirts in Power

I am among those who have warned of the totalitarian aims of the gay activist crowd (not to be confused with gays who just want to live peaceably and mind their own business) and their allies.  Now Houston is providing a big “I told you so” moment.

Under lesbian Mayor Annise Parker, the City of Houston passed a so-called equal rights non-discrimination ordinance which quickly became infamous as the “bathroom bill” allowing the mentally ill and perverts to use bathrooms assigned to the opposite gender.  But the bill contained other, less publicized, problematic provisions, including some seen as endangering freedom of speech and religion.

Citizens petitioned to get the ordinance overturned or at least put up to a referendum, and their petitions got over 50,000 signatures when only 17,269 valid signatures were needed.  But the lesbian mayor and her city attorney threw out the petition anyway.

Once again, pink shirts and Leftists only like democracy when they get their way.

Opponents of the ordinance rightly sued the city to overturn their anti-democratic coup.  And now the city has doubled down – and justified fears about freedom of religion and speech – by demanding to see the contents of sermons from numerous pastors.

I have to admit when I first saw the story about sermons being subpoenaed, it was from a sensationalistic source, and it sounded over the top - which it is in its own Constitution-trashing way. I did not give it much credence and moved on.  But this is coming from a number of responsible sources now.

So although the pace of pink shirt attacks on freedom is surprising even me, I can still say, “I told you so.” Pink shirts and their lib/left allies have a totalitarian streak a mile wide, and the more they get power, as in Houston, the more their streak will show.  

For then they will slide off the mask of "tolerance" and inform you that getting their way and putting you under their thumb is so much more important than your trivial Constitutional rights.

The Supreme Court Tells Voters to Get Lost

I’ve held my fire on the Prop 8 ruling yesterday.  After all, the Supreme Court did not rule directly on Prop 8, and Justice Scalia, whom I highly respect, concurred with the decision.  I respect him so much that I still wonder if I am missing something.

But let me try to get the ruling straight anyway.  Voters approve Prop 8 through a referendum process designed to enable the people to exhert some power when politicians refuse to listen.  The politicians predictably refuse to defend the new law when it is challenged in court.  So supporters step in and defend it.  (Who else will?)  A federal judge who cannot keep his gay activism in his pants rules against Prop 8.  The 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals whose method of jurisprudence is “If it’s Leftist, we like it” rules against Prop 8.  And then at the Supreme Court, a majority of justices says the voters did not have standing to defend their law once the gay federal judge ruled from on high?  Voters whose votes are being nullified by politicians and judge-politicians have no standing to say their votes cannot be nullified? 

Can you say kangaroo court?

This is yet another successful attack on Constitutional democracy from the Feds and their courts.  I am beginning to understand why certain friends who stay informed chose not to vote.

Bill Jurkovich, a voter in Citrus Heights, Calif., says: “Apparently, we the people do not have the right to create a law that the political elite disagree with. Is it any wonder that people are becoming radicalized, have lost faith with the political process, distrust government, and do not vote?”

And if you think just us knuckle dragging right-wingers are concerned with this attack on democracy, think again.

Justice Kennedy, in his dissent from the majority, warned that “the Court’s decision also has implications for the 26 other states that have an initiative or popular referendum system, and which, like California, may choose to have initiative proponents stand in for the State when public officials decline to defend an initiative in litigation.” Kevin Drum, a blogger for the liberal Mother Jones magazine, notes that he is in favor of gay marriage, but that the Supreme Court’s “gutting” of the people’s right to defend their own initiatives “has neither the flavor of justice nor of democratic governance.”

I am hesitant to say much more with the NSA watching and all.  But it is past time for the ruling class to think long and hard about what can happen to a society when the people sense that their voices and votes do not count.  And with election fraud, a tyrannical President, judges who nullify the results of elections, etc. more and more people are sensing just that.

The alternatives to the Consent of the Governed can be unpleasant.

Obama’s “Climate Change” Speech - More Contempt for Consent of the Governed

I could rake Obama’s “Climate Change” speech over the coals (No pun intended.) for its questionable science and destructive economics.  If Obama gets his way, he’ll be hurting our economy while China cheerfully keeps polluting at full tilt.  A lot of good that would do.

But what may be even worse about the speech is his utter disregard for the consent of the governed.  If Obama wants all these so-called green policies, which will be red for the economy, then let him campaign on them before an election and work with Congress to pass them.

Instead, he threatens to go close to full tyrant, using executive orders and his pet EPA to slow down and even shut down much of the economy (e. g. power plants and the coal industry) for the sake of somehow stopping climate change.  The Wall Street Journal puts it well:

Most striking about this Obama legacy project is its contempt for democratic consent. Congress has consistently rejected an Obama-style "comprehensive" anticarbon energy plan. That was true even when Democrats ran the Senate with a filibuster-proof majority in 2009-2010 and killed his cap-and-trade energy bill. The only legislative justification for Mr. Obama's new plan is an abusive interpretation of the Clean Air Act, which was last revised in 1990 and never mentions carbon as a pollutant.

So instead Mr. Obama will impose these inherently political policy choices via unaccountable bureaucracies, with little or no debate. Mr. Obama might have at least announced his war on carbon before the election and let voters have a say. Instead he posed as the John the Baptist of fossil fuels in locales such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia—taking credit for the shale fracking boom he had nothing to do with and running ads attacking Mitt Romney as anticoal.

Now safely re-elected, Mr. Obama figures he can do what he pleases. The Americans who will be harmed will have to console themselves with 99 weeks of jobless benefits, food stamps and ObamaCare.