FEC Commissioner Warns: Dems Moving Aggressively to Amend the First Amendment
Posted: September 8, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Donald Trump, Drudge Report, Federal Election Commission, First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Freedom of speech, hate speech, Hillary Clinton, John Roberts, Supreme Court of the United States, United States 1 CommentPaul Bedard writes: A key Federal Election Commission Republican warned Wednesday that liberals are moving aggressively to “amend the First Amendment” so that conservatives are silenced and businesses are chased “out of the democracy.”
“The general tenor of the Left in American politics today has certainly spoken out against First Amendment rights. It has been a reversal over the last 50 years.”
In some the toughest criticism leveled at Democrats, Commissioner Lee E. Goodman said that the attack started once the Tea Party changed American politics in the 2010 election and now dominates the politics of the Left.
[Read the full story here, at Washington Examiner]
“It has triggered a very aggressive movement by people to amend the First Amendment, left intellectuals have placed it on the table,” Goodman said on Boston’s Howie Carr show.
[Order Kirsten Powers book “The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech” from Amazon.com]
“The general tenor of the Left in American politics today has certainly spoken out against First Amendment rights. It has been a reversal over the last 50 years,” he added, citing FDR Democrats who defended socialists and communists.
“I have been concerned about bias both in how complaints are brought to the commission just like in the way, the lobbying campaign for Lois Lerner. It was all one sided. But generally I try to make my First Amendment case by pointing out that we have to impact liberal and conservative speech in the same way.”
[Order Kimberly Strassel’s book “The Intimidation Game: How the Left is Silencing Free Speech“ from Amazon.com]
From trying to reverse the Citizens United decision to using the IRS to kill Tea Party groups, Goodman said that the Democrats have moved to change free speech in the country.
“But I have been concerned from time to time about every time a conservative group comes up, somehow, some way, exceptions and distinctions are made and this is the problem giving government the power to regulate speech in the first instance because ultimately human beings have to make that decision.”
“I have been concerned about bias both in how complaints are brought to the commission just like in the way, the lobbying campaign for Lois Lerner. Read the rest of this entry »
David Harsanyi: GOP Has A Duty To Reject Obama’s SCOTUS Pick
Posted: February 16, 2016 Filed under: Law & Justice, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Antonin Scalia, Bernie Sanders, David Garrow, John Roberts, Larry David, New York, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel Alito, Saturday Night Live, Supreme Court of the United States Leave a commentRepublicans should follow Sen. Barack Obama’s advice and filibuster the president’s SCOTUS nominee.
David Harsanyi writes: Although nothing in his political history suggests magnanimity, Barack Obama may surprise us by nominating one of those moderate-consensus types who would provide some of that national healing he promised us eight years ago. But he’s certainly under no constitutional obligation to do so. He can nominate whomever he pleases in the wake of the vacancy left by Antonin Scalia. And Republicans have plenty of precedent for rejecting his choice.
I disagree with this view. I believe firmly that the Constitution calls for the Senate to advise and consent. I believe that it calls for meaningful advice and consent that includes an examination of a judge’s philosophy, ideology, and record. And when I examine the philosophy, ideology, and record of Samuel Alito, I’m deeply troubled.
You’ll notice, as well, that precedent only matters sporadically. Democrats were uninterested in historical guidance when they were shoehorning a massive generational reform through Congress without any consensus for the first time in history or filling imaginary recess appointments. When it works out for them they transform into strict traditionalists.
Whatever precedent says, if Republicans truly believe Obama has displayed a contempt for the Constitution, they have a moral obligation to reject his choice—whether it’s someone who argues in favor of book banning or enables abusive power. Because we’re not talking about good-faith disagreements over what the Constitution says anymore, we’re talking about a party that believes enumerated powers stand in their way.
Contemporary liberalism is fundamentally opposed to any precedential restrictions that curb “progress.” Wilsonian progressives were skeptical of the Constitution and separation of powers, and so are modern progressives. Only the former had the decency to be honest. So why do we pretend otherwise?
[Read the full story here, at thefederalist.com]
Just like Wilson, Democrats argue that the Supreme Court is holding back many morally advantageous policies. What they do not do, and haven’t done for years, is offer any limiting principles (other than for few incidental partisan policies they happen to support for reasons have nothing to do with individual liberty). For them, process exists solely to further ethical policy (which they don’t believe could possibly be subjective).
Even Donald Trump, who claims to believe America is limping towards extinction, felt the need during the last debate to claimed he would build consensus when applying trade and immigration policy rather than act unilaterally. There is no such inclination, not even rhetorically, on the Left. Just listen to the Democratic Party debates. Bernie Sanders’ litmus test for a Supreme Court nomination is pretty simple: the candidate must support restrictions on the First Amendment. Most Democrats agree.
[VIDEO] Uncommon Knowledge with Justice Antonin Scalia
Posted: February 14, 2016 Filed under: Education, History, Law & Justice, Mediasphere | Tags: Ann Althouse, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Bernie Sanders, Democratic Party (United States), Hillary Clinton, John Roberts, Republican Party (United States), Supreme Court of the United States Leave a comment
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia visits Uncommon Knowledge for a wide ranging interview including the living constitution, Roe v. Wade, Congress’ relationship to the court, and to discuss his new book Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts
George F. Will: On Obamacare, John Roberts helps Overthrow the Constitution
Posted: June 26, 2015 Filed under: Law & Justice | Tags: Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Chevron U.S.A., Chief Justice, Clarence Thomas, Earl Warren, Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Internal Revenue Service, John Roberts, Majority opinion, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Samuel Alito, Supreme Court of the United States 1 CommentGeorge F. Will writes: Conservatives are dismayed about the Supreme Court’s complicity in rewriting the Affordable Care Act — its ratification of the IRS’s disregard of the statute’s plain and purposeful language. But they have contributed to this outcome. Their decades of populist praise of judicial deference to the political branches has borne this sour fruit.
“Since the New Deal, courts have permitted almost any legislative infringement of economic liberty that can be said to have a rational basis. Applying this extremely permissive test, courts usually approve any purpose that a legislature asserts. Courts even concoct purposes that legislatures neglect to articulate.”
The court says the ACA’s stipulation that subsidies are to be administered by the IRS using exchanges “established by the State” should not be construed to mean what it says. Otherwise the law will not reach as far as it will if federal exchanges can administer subsidies in states that choose not to establish exchanges. The ACA’s legislative history, however, demonstrates that the subsidies were deliberately restricted to distribution through states’ exchanges in order to pressure the states into establishing their own exchanges.
“The Roberts Doctrine facilitates what has been for a century progressivism’s central objective, the overthrow of the Constitution’s architecture. The separation of powers impedes progressivism by preventing government from wielding uninhibited power. Such power would result if its branches behaved as partners in harness rather than as wary, balancing rivals maintaining constitutional equipoise.”
The most durable damage from Thursday’s decision is not the perpetuation of the ACA, which can be undone by what created it — legislative action. The paramount injury is the court’s embrace of a duty to ratify and even facilitate lawless discretion exercised by administrative agencies and the executive branch generally.
[Read the full text here, at The Washington Post]
The court’s decision flowed from many decisions by which the judiciary has written rules that favor the government in cases of statutory construction. The decision also resulted from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s embrace of the doctrine that courts, owing vast deference to the purposes of the political branches, are obligated to do whatever is required to make a law efficient, regardless of how the law is written. What Roberts does by way of, to be polite, creative construing (Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting, calls it “somersaults of statutory interpretation”) is legislating, not judging.
” The paramount injury is the court’s embrace of a duty to ratify and even facilitate lawless discretion exercised by administrative agencies and the executive branch generally.”
Roberts writes, almost laconically, that the ACA “contains more than a few examples of inartful drafting.” That is his artful way of treating “inartful” as a synonym for “inconvenient” or even “self-defeating.”
Rolling up the sleeves of his black robe and buckling down to the business of redrafting the ACA, Roberts invents a corollary to “Chevron deference.”
Named for a 1984 case, Chevron deference has become central to the way today’s regulatory state functions. It says that agencies charged with administering statutes are entitled to deference when they interpret ambiguous statutory language. Read the rest of this entry »
‘The First Amendment is Not Abridged for the Benefit of the Brotherhood of the Robe’
Posted: April 30, 2015 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Floyd Abrams, Harvard Law School, John Roberts, Judge, Minority religion, Political action committee, Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O'Connor, Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment, Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court of the United States 2 CommentsSymposium: When strict scrutiny ceased to be strict
At SCOTUSblog, Floyd Abrams writes: The result in the Williams-Yulee case was a difficult one to predict except that it was entirely predictable that the result would be by a deeply divided Court. It is no surprise that it was a five-to-four ruling, and no surprise at all that the jurists on both sides appear to have been irritated and frustrated by the views of those on the Court with whom they differed. The same had been true in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White (2002), the Supreme Court’s last trek into the muddy constitutional waters that required an assessment of First Amendment issues in the context of judicial elections. That case was not only decided by a five-to-four vote, but one of the five Justices — Justice Sandra Day O’Connor — repeatedly announced after her retirement that she regretted her vote.
“Critics of Citizens United can take no solace from yesterday’s decision, since it is rooted in all respects in the difference between judicial elections and all others. If anything, the more the Court focuses on the special and distinct role of judges as opposed to other elected officials, the more firmly it reinforces its earlier ruling as to the latter.”
The unavoidable problem in the case stems from the reality that if judges are to be elected, they must be allowed to campaign for election. Yet, what they say in their campaigns about what they will do as judges may lead people to doubt their open-mindedness as judges.
[Also see – Williams-Yulee v. The Florida Bar: A Disappointing End by Jonathan Keim]
And when they personally raise money, at least from lawyers and potential litigants before them, it may well lead to the perception of indebtedness on their part to their contributors.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia testifies before a House Judiciary Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee hearing. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
“One need not adopt wholesale Justice Scalia’s final thrust at the majority in the case to admire its beauty: ‘The First Amendment is not abridged for the benefit of the Brotherhood of the Robe.’”
The Florida Code of Judicial Conduct sought to strike a compromise, barring judicial candidates from personally soliciting campaign funds, while allowing their campaign committees to solicit funds for them and allowing the candidates to write thank-you notes to contributors. On its face, it was a perfectly reasonable, good faith effort to walk a difficult line. The First Amendment, however, is more demanding than that.
[Check out Floyd Abrams’s book “Friend of the Court: On the Front Lines with the First Amendment” at Amazon.com]
The problem with the ruling begins with an ostensible First Amendment victory. Seven of the nine members of the Court (all but Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer) concluded that strict scrutiny should apply, a usual predicate for striking one sort or another of government limitation on speech. Read the rest of this entry »
FTCA Act Update: Supreme Court Eases Rules To Sue Federal Government For Malpractice
Posted: April 22, 2015 Filed under: Law & Justice, White House | Tags: Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Elena Kagan, Federal government of the United States, Federal Highway Administration, Hong Kong, John Roberts, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Samuel Alito, Supreme Court of the United States, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit 1 CommentThe justices, voting 5-4, ruled in two cases the deadlines for filing such lawsuits can be extended if plaintiffs tried their best to comply or simply failed to learn about important information before a deadline.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday made it easier for people to sue the federal government for negligence, in a decision that could affect military veterans with claims of medical malpractice.
“One case stemmed from a fatal traffic accident on Interstate 10 in Phoenix in which a car passed through a safety barrier into oncoming traffic. The plaintiff, Marlene June, represents the child of one of two people killed in the crash.”
The justices, voting 5-4, ruled in two cases the deadlines for filing such lawsuits can be extended if plaintiffs tried their best to comply or simply failed to learn about important information before a deadline.
“June claimed that the Federal Highway Administration made her wait more than two years before she was allowed to depose officials and uncover evidence that the barrier had failed a crash test.”
Justice Elena Kagan wrote the majority opinion that combined the cases and upheld rulings by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said the deadlines were somewhat flexible under the federal law that deals with lawsuits against the government.
The Obama administration argued that Congress intended the deadlines to be firm and that the government should not leave itself open to old claims indefinitely.
“The other case involved a Hong Kong woman who sued the Immigration and Naturalization Service after she was detained in Oregon, strip-searched and deported.”
But Kagan said Congress did not clearly indicate it wanted those deadlines to be iron-clad when it passed the Federal Tort Claims Act. “The time limits in the FTCA are just time limits, nothing more,” Kagan wrote. Judges have discretion to extend the deadlines, she said. Read the rest of this entry »
You and What Army? Delusional Lt. Col. Robert Bateman’s Captain Queeg Moment: Insults Supreme Court for Heller Decision; Calls for Massive Gun Bans, Turn-Ins
Posted: December 9, 2013 Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Law & Justice, Self Defense, War Room | Tags: Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Bateman, Clarence Thomas, District of Columbia v. Heller, Esquire, John Roberts, Second Amendment, Supreme Court 1 Comment
Lt. Tom Keefer: “Captain Queeg has all syndroms of acute paranoia.”
“Ah, but the strawberries! That’s where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt…”
NRA-ILA reports: To say the least, some of the characters who have appeared on the national scene in recent years have demonstrated some enormous egos and used some pretty ill-tempered language in their efforts to turn this nation into something we wouldn’t recognize. But Army Lt. Col. Robert Bateman is challenging them for top dishonors in that regard, with an over-the-top rant in Esquire magazine this month.

[STRAWBERRIES – AUDIO CLIP]
Real warriors don’t brag, of course. They let their actions speak for themselves. And real warriors support the Second Amendment and oppose gun control, as indicated by a letter signed by over 1,100 current and former Army Special Forces soldiers in January.
Bateman’s self-adulation was just the beginning, however.
He next attacked Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for “his attempt to rewrite American history and the English language” in his majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller. Bateman also extended his attack to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas for concurring with Justice Scalia. “They flunked basic high school history,” Bateman said. Bateman added that Esquire readers could read the Heller decision for themselves, but that it really isn’t necessary, because “I can spell it out for you in ten seconds.”
At this point, we found ourselves asking to be spared additional arrogance and ignorance, but Bateman wasn’t inclined to oblige.
Bateman continued to explain his factually incorrect idea is that the Second Amendment’s reference to the well regulated militia means that no one has the fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms. “As of 1903, the ‘militia’ has been known as the National Guard,” Bateman insisted.
Rand Paul introduces constitutional amendment to make all laws equally applicable to citizens and Congress
Posted: October 22, 2013 Filed under: Law & Justice, U.S. News | Tags: Congress, David Vitter, John Roberts, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Rand Paul, Supreme Court, United States, United States Congress 6 Comments
Paul’s amendment would ban laws that don’t apply equally to citizens and government. | AP Photo
Forget the Vitter amendment. Rand Paul wants to make sure that Congress can’t ever again write laws with provisions specific to lawmakers.
The Kentucky freshman Republican has introduced a constitutional amendment that would preclude senators and representatives from passing laws that don’t apply equally to U.S. citizens and Congress, the executive branch and the Supreme Court. The amendment is aimed squarely at Obamacare provisions specific to members of Congress and their staffs that became a central point of contention during the government shutdown. Read the rest of this entry »