ROGER SIMON ON DEMOCRATS EXCUSING ILHAN OMAR’S ANTI-SEMITISM: Liberal Jews Better Wake Up Before It’s Too Late.
Archive for 2019
March 9, 2019
FREEDOM OF SPEECH FOR ME BUT NOT FOR THEE: Florida school bus aide yanks MAGA hat off student’s head. “Surveillance video catches official yelling at kid then removing the Trump hat.”
VENEZUELA: SOCIALISM DIES IN THE DARKNESS.
Democrats used to explain away murderous Communists by describing them as “liberals in a hurry.” Think of Venezuela’s miseries as a preview of AOC’s Green New Deal running in fast-forward mode.
Raban wrote that the anecdote went as follows:
“Professor Stone had asked a Mr. Green (‘who happened to be Black’) what he thought of the fighting words doctrine. Mr. Green had said that he felt the doctrine was no longer relevant. The professor then had asked a white student in an adjacent row what he thought of Green’s argument. The white student had said, ‘That’s the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard, you stupid [N-word].’ Green had then immediately lunged forward, attempting to choke the white student.”
“Upon finishing his story, the professor flashed a grin as he saw many of our shocked faces,” Raban continued. “ … But a professor doesn’t have to use the actual N-word to explain to students why that word could incite violence. We already get it. And any point he tried to make was completely obscured because both his story and act of retelling it were racist.”
The incident also personally impacted Raban’s academic performance, who found that he began to have “trouble focusing and participating in [the] class.”
When asked for a comment, Professor Stone stood firm.
Good for Professor Stone. And if Mr. Raban can’t listen to a story he doesn’t like without losing his ability to function, then he doesn’t belong in law school, since lawyers often have to hear things they don’t like or agree with as a basic part of doing their job. He should probably call his mother and tell her there’s serious doubt he’s going to have a successful legal career.
Related: This piece by Randall Kennedy.
ROOSEVELT’S COURT PACKING SCHEME (AND ERIC HOLDER’S): In early 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had recently been re-elected in a landslide. Believing that his popularity should not go unexploited, he set about to use it as a weapon against the Supreme Court, which had been a thorn in his side during his entire first term.
Roosevelt was upset that so many parts of his New Deal legislation had been ruled unconstitutional, often in split decisions. On March 9, therefore, in one of his weekly radio Fireside Chats, he argued that in order to help the Court handle its workload, he should be authorized to add an additional Supreme Court Justice for every current Justice over the age of 70.
The Chief Justice shot back that the Court was having no trouble keeping up with its workload. Roosevelt’s true motivations were obvious. Even the most gullible Americans understood that Roosevelt wasn’t concerned with helping the Court; he wanted to stack it with New Dealers. Indeed, he essentially admitted this.
Call it one of the most audacious power grabs in American history. If he could get Congress to go with him, he could effectively nullify the Supreme Court as the third branch of government. But, though audacious, it was not unconstitutional. Congress does have the authority to change the number of seats on the Court. And it had used it in the past, sometimes not with the purest of motives. The first Supreme Court had six seats. Nine had been the number between 1837 and 1863 and again since 1869.
The American people, however, decided that they were not amused by Roosevelt’s plan. Newspapers editorialized against it. Political cartoonists ridiculed it. Even Vice President and Senate Democrats weren’t crazy about it. It is likely that it would have gone nowhere.
But maybe nobody had told Owen Roberts that. Three weeks later, when the Court handed down its 5-4 decision in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), Justice Owen Roberts, who had usually sided with the more conservative wing of the Court, switched sides and voted to uphold a minimum wage law. Roberts’ move has been forever dubbed the “switch in time that saved nine.” Maybe that was his intent. Or maybe not.
Two months later Justice Willis Van Devanter retired, and Roosevelt appointed Hugo Black, a New Dealer and former KKK member, in his place. The Court Packing plan may have had no chance. But Roosevelt had won the battle by more conventional means.
But he paid a hefty political price for the scheme. As Michael Parrish wrote, “the protracted legislative battle over the Court-packing bill blunted the momentum for additional reforms, divided the New Deal coalition, squandered the political advantage Roosevelt had gained in the 1936 elections, and gave fresh ammunition to those who accused him of dictatorship, tyranny, and fascism. When the dust settled, FDR had suffered a humiliating political defeat ….”
Eric Holder should keep this in mind when he argues that the next Democratic President should “seriously” consider Court packing.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Gonzaga goes out of its way to fund illegal immigrant scholarships.
REASON TV: We Shut Down State Mental Hospitals. Some People Want to Bring Them Back. Is “mental illness” a fraudulent concept for locking up social deviants? Or does forced treatment free the ill “from the Bastille of their psychosis?”
TROLL LEVEL: GRANDMASTER. Putin Thanks Women For Taking Care Of The Home And Staying Beautiful On International Women’s Day.
TWO-FAITH NATION: When it comes to cultural issues, there is no center-left.
WHO COULD HAVE POSSIBLY FORESEEN THIS? Electric scooter injuries pile up, half coming from drunk or high riders.
IF THE APP TRACKED GAYS FOR THE PURPOSE OF HUNTING THEM DOWN, WOULD TIM COOK WOULD STILL BE DRAGGING HIS FEET?: “Saudi app criticized for feature to control women’s travel“
FINALLY, A FORM OF FASTING I MIGHT CONSIDER: No food, only beer: Fasting like a 17th-century monk.
CALIFORNIA HAS BECOME THE FAR LEFT COAST:
The Democrats’ crushing dominance allows them to use California as a progressive policy laboratory. As a result, the state has the highest welfare numbers (a third of all Americans on welfare live in California), the largest contingent of illegal immigrants, a burgeoning homeless population, onerous regulations on business and private property, mediocre public schools, high income taxes (the highest marginal rate is 13.3%) and sales taxes, a yawning gap between rich and poor, its own summer blend of expensive gasoline, bedraggled and crowded roads to punish people further for driving, and a widely mocked high-speed rail boondoggle.
To risk an analogy, California is to today’s Democrats roughly what South Carolina was to pre-Civil War Democrats: the showcase state, the vanguard of enlightened public policy offering itself for emulation. Yet it’s been a long time since the state produced political figures of obvious national importance such as Earl Warren, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.Pete Wilson, the senator and governor, seems to have been the end of that line. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governorship was a box-office flop. Jerry Brown, after 16 years in the gubernatorial chair, still wrestled with the mystery of Jerry Brown.
Pre-Civil War Democrats, you say?
MY DOC IS OKAY WITH METFORMIN, BUT I’M NOT SO SURE. ALSO HOLDING OFF ON RAPAMYCIN. Latest antiaging trend: Patients experimenting with prescription drugs. But I’m intrigued.
DEATH FLAT PANELS: Doctor tells patient he doesn’t have long to live through hospital robot’s video screen.
When Ernest Quintana went into Kaiser Permanente Medical Center’s emergency department in Fremont [California] on Sunday, his wife of 58 years, his son, daughter and granddaughter all worried about the 79-year-old man.
They say it was hard enough to learn that his lungs were failing, but they couldn’t believe it when a hospital robot entered his room and they got the news through a doctor on the robot’s video screen.
Quintana’s granddaughter was in the ICU by his side, and she said at first the nurse came in.
“The nurse came around and said the doctor was going to make rounds and I thought ‘OK, no big deal, I’m here,’ ” said Annalisia Wilharm.
A short time later, a robot arrived in the room. A doctor appeared on a video screen. Wilharm took cell phone video so she could show her mother and grandmother the test results.
“When I took the video, I didn’t realize all of this was going to unfold,” she said.
Read the whole thing.
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the collapse of the center-left.
PRETTY MUCH: SPOON-FED “ART” AS A SOCIAL JUSTICE SHAKEDOWN.
THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: Left abandons women. Inevitably.
TRIBAL CULTURES ARE NOT CIVILIZED IN THE SENSE THAT IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO MAINTAIN CIVILIZATION WHEN YOU SEPARATE PEOPLE INTO “PEOPLE” AND “ENEMIES.” I’M NOT SURE WHY MARXISTS ARE DETERMINED TO RECREATE SUCH CULTURES WITHIN THE WEST: Democrat infighting: the inevitable clash of the identity groups.