“This was the Madisonian insight,” he contends: “that you can make all sorts of promises on a piece of paper, and call it a ‘bill of rights,’ and it’s not worth the paper it’s written on unless you have some means to enforce it. Like any good contract, it’s only worth the enforcement mechanism it stands on.”
Read More“The U.S. criminal justice system, because of the corruption of the plea bargain system that facilitates the prosecutors’ extortion of perjured inculpatory evidence with impunity, is just an immense kangaroo court.”
Read More“Regulation by agencies is relatively simple to promulgate—it merely takes the time and patience necessary to announce a rule, take comments, and show that the comments were in some way taken into consideration. Navigating bureaucratic procedure and red tape is easy compared with cobbling together a majority (or supermajority) of both houses of Congress and winning the president’s support. “
Read MoreJames Madison stated in Federalist #47, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” In 1933 two laws were struck down on the non-delegation principle, the effective delegation of legislative authority to unelected regulatory agencies. The recent court has prepared to revisit that principle.
Read MoreIf there was ever a case to be made that politics has replaced religion as the preferred faith of the left it is the use of the word ‘believe’ in determining legal liability. They believe because they want to believe. They want to believe the opposition is so sinister and evil that no evidence is required.
Read MoreAs we have seen with the elimination of the filibuster by Harry Reid, sacrificing the means to the end is a short sighted strategy and creates tools that will be used against you. No matter how noble the ends the means still matter.
Read MoreAnother gem from Kevin Williamson, A National State of Non-Emergency in National Review: What people remember of that episode is Senator Edward Kennedy’s infamous speech describing “Robert Bork’s America,” “a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks…
Read MoreAnother gem from Kevin Williamson, A National State of Non-Emergency in National Review: But the rules of the game are not all there is to the game. What in another context might be called “sportsmanship” is in politics a question of prudence…
Read MoreAnother gem from Kevin Williamson, A National State of Non-Emergency in National Review: The recently proffered Republican health-care bill instantiates much of what is wrong with our politics: The bill was constructed through an extraordinary process in which there were no hearings,…
Read Morefrom Kenneth Stars in the WSJ, Gorsuch Gets Comfortable in Scalia’s Chair: When Scalia ascended to the high court in 1986, he saw the danger of a runaway judiciary, as embodied in the Warren Court and to a lesser extent…
Read MoreOne of the problems with the ‘ends justify the means’ mentality is determining whose ends you are pursuing. The idea of a living constitution sounds fine to the left as long as they are pursuing the goals the left values,…
Read MoreProbably the most objectionable statement from HRC (and this is quite a list) was in the second debate in how she would select justices for the Supreme Court. The transcript: QUESTION: Good evening. Perhaps the most important aspect of this…
Read MoreIn National Review Kevin Williamson writes The Book Burners. Citizens United, he reminds us, was about much more than big money in politics. It was about denying the government the right to ban books and media. It was about the…
Read MoreGeorge Will wrote an excellent piece in National Affairs, The Limits of Majority Rule. My very brief summary and a few comments: The Progressive pivot of about 1890- but reached in full bore under FDR is when democracy superseded liberty…
Read MoreFrom National Affairs George Will writes The Limits of Majority Rule. It is an excellent summary of the history of the court as it has moved from judicial review to activism. The success of Progressivism has hinged on the court shifting from…
Read MoreFrom National Affairs George Will writes The Limits of Majority Rule. : an excerpt: If the sole, or overriding, goal of the Constitution can be reduced to establishing democracy, and if the distilled essence of democracy is that majorities shall rule in…
Read MoreFrom National Affairs George Will writes The Limits of Majority Rule. I strongly recommend you read the entire essay. an excerpt: Another reason many conservatives favor judicial deference and restraint is what can be called the conservative populist temptation. Conservatives are hardly…
Read MoreWhen Cops Seize Property from Michael Haugen at The National Review If this situation sounds like an abuse of constitutional due process, it is — and it gets worse. Because the property itself “commits” a crime under civil forfeiture, the…
Read Morefrom Kevin Williamson at National Review, Merrick Garland’s ‘Moderation’ It should not matter — if the law were the law. If the law is whatever our black-robed secular clerics say it is, then it does matter what sort of political…
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