A few times a week, a fellow Liberty-loving American suggests that I follow their example and “just turn off the news.” They tell me how much better they feel without the din of daily events in their ears, distanced from matters that are beyond their direct control anyway.
I get it, believe me.
I can’t do that.
Having an insatiable appetite for information, I prefer to remain connected to “the public square.” I hate not knowing, and so I devote a good chunk of my life to absorbing that which interests me.
I consume news daily. If you were to ask Deb, she’d replace “daily” with “constantly.” And that may be true.
I’m also “that guy” who reads the transcripts of speeches and the text of legislation and court decisions. Accuracy is important to me, and if I’m to have an opinion about something — and especially if I comment on it here — I ought to base it on credible information.
Facts matter.
For example, I’ve read both of the SCOTUS decisions I’ve discussed here — all 348 pages of them. I don’t have a law degree, nor do I claim to understand all of the legal and rhetorical gymnastics within, but trust me, they’re not as impenetrable as you may think.
If you follow my lead, be advised that even opinions that go our way won’t be entirely to your liking — in our recent win on the Second Amendment, for example, “reasonable restrictions” rears its ugly head more than once. Still it’s useful to read the decisions deliberately and understand how application of jurisprudence affect our American Life.
I want to pull a few passages from New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, beginning with something I quoted yesterday, a paragraph from the majority opinion written by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas:
“We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense.”
From Associate Justice Samuel Alito’s concurring opinion:
“Much of the dissent seems designed to obscure the specific question that the Court has decided….”
And this from the concurring opinion penned by Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh:
“…New York’s outlier ‘may-issue’ licensing regime for carrying handguns for self-defense violates the Second Amendment.”
While leftists fill the air with irrelevant chaff, they ignore the constitutional reality that “arbitrary and capricious” regulatory schemes in the People’s Republic of California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey effectively have been struck down, right along with New York’s.
Moving on to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, Alito wrote a brilliant majority opinion. He exposed and systematically dismantled the judicial malpractice that produced Roe v. Wade in 1972.
“Roe found that the Constitution implicitly conferred a right to obtain an abortion, but it failed to ground its decision in text, history, or precedent. It relied on an erroneous historical narrative; it devoted great attention to and presumably relied on matters that have no bearing on the meaning of the Constitution; it disregarded the fundamental difference between the precedents on which it relied and the question before the Court; it concocted an elaborate set of rules, with different restrictions for each trimester of pregnancy, but it did not explain how this veritable code could be teased out of anything in the Constitution, the history of abortion laws, prior precedent, or any other cited source; and its most important rule (that States cannot protect fetal life prior to ‘viability’) was never raised by any Opinion of the Court party and has never been plausibly explained.”
The role of the Judicial Branch is to review cases and apply the Constitution — period. That’s what the Court did in these two landmark cases. Progressive justices, however, including the current Chief Justice, see the job differently, and their judicial activism continues to erode the foundation of our republic.
See, Democrats and other progressives hate the Constitution. It’s an impediment to amassing power and imposing control. As we heard the current occupant of the Oval Office say yesterday, standing on the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights is an act of extremism.
I guess that makes me an extremist. I’m good with that.
As much as our country benefits from the proper role of the Supreme Court — and we do need a Court that abides by the Constitution — ultimately the interpretation of law is up to the individual. It’s the very foundation of Liberty.
When you think about it, that’s pretty extreme, too.
We ended today spent, gassed, thoroughly exhausted. With help again from the auctioneer’s crew, Deb and I attacked the basement utility room, which over the years turned into our home’s junk drawer — and it was an absolute beast to work our way through.
What looks like a colossal mess in today’s header image actually is huge progress. When we started this morning I coudn’t’ve seen the far wall from that spot, probably not even halfway across the room. We segregated what we’ll sell from what we’ll keep, roughly a 90/10 ratio, and we filled about half of a 20-cubic-yard dumpster, our third.
Tomorrow we tackle the storage unit.
One year ago today we had absolutely no fun, battling a stiff wind all day long. We did, however, arrive in Oklahoma safe and sound for a two-night stay.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB