Are Liberty-Loving Virginians Really This Foolish?

Democrats seem to have come upon a very successful tactic for winning seemingly unwinnbale elections: Sit back and let the opposition defeat itself. The latest example of this could be the Virginia gubernatorial election, if the race turns out the way polls are indicating it will. The Democratic candidate, former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe, leads his Republican opponent, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, by nearly eight percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of recent public polls. Cuccinelli hasn't run a terrible campaign, nor has he made any Akin-esque gaffes to speak of. Rather, his biggest problem is actually another candidate named Robert Sarvis, a lawyer and businessman who's running as the Libertarian candidate for Governor.

 

The latest polls of the race show Sarvis, who ran unsuccessfully for the Virginia State Senate in 2011 but has never held public office, garnering anywhere from 3% to 13% support among "likely" Virginia voters. All those polls also show McAuliffe leading Cuccinelli, but in most of them, the Democrat registers less support than Cucinelli and Sarvis combined, and the poll results that break down voter preferences by party identification show Sarvis drawing more support from Republicans than Democrats. It is hard to believe that Sarvis's candidacy isn't benifitting McAuliffe and hurting Cuccinelli.

 

Virginia's official motto is, "Sic semper tyrannis" ("Thus always to tyrants."), and Virginians have a long history of preferring liberty to tyranny. The conclusive battle of the Revolutionary War was fought and won by the Americans at Yorktown. In the nineteenth century, Virginia resisted federal encroachment on its sovereignty and, along with ten other states, seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy (though fighting to keep slavery legal didn't exactly put them on the side of liberty, either).

History also is replete with examples of how Virginans (like so many others) have seen their liberty eroded when the wrong people have been put in charge. Even after the Civil War, Democrats enacted and implemented segregation and other Jim Crow laws that deprived Negroes of their rights and made it clear to all other Virginians that they weren't living in a free society but rather a society in which the government decided which rights people ought to have. (Sound familiar?)

In recent years, the voting patterns of Virginians have made it difficult to figure out where the voters' sympathies lie. Since the turn of the last century, changing demographics and the growth of the federal government have fueled a Democratic shift at the state, and then the federal, level, particularly in northern Virginia, where a lot of residents are either on the federal payroll or work in industries that depend on government largesse to stay alive. Virginians elected Democratic governors in 2001 and 2005 and traded Republican Sen. George Allen for Democrat Jim Webb in 2006; Democrats won control of the State Senate in 2007; and, in 2008, Barack Obama became the first Democrat to carry Virginia in a presidential election since 1964. (He won the state again, albeit by a narrower margin, in 2012.) Between Obama's election and re-election, however, Virginians appeared to be turning back toward the GOP. Republicans won all three statewide races--for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general--in 2009, ousted three Democratic incumbents in the U.S. House in 2010, and flipped two State Senate seats in 2011 to regain control of that chamber.

Since then, however, it's been mostly bad news for Virginians who favor liberty over big government. In 2012, 51% of voters in Old Dominion supported Obama's re-election, and 53% voted for Democrat Tim Kaine in the U.S. Senate race. Popular Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell is dragging his feet on entering the race for U.S. Senate next year, when Sen. Mark Warner (D), elected in the Democratic wave of 2008, will be up for re-election. As previously mentioned, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is trailing Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the race for governor.

Whatever the overall mood of the Virginia electorate is at the moment, the fact that the pro-freedom candidates are registering more support in the polls than the anti-freedom candidate suggests that a majority, or at least a plurality, of Virginia voters value liberty more than whatever redeeming qualities big-government hucksters like Terry McAuliffe have to offer, which only worsens the prospective travesty of McAuliffe being elected governor because of his opposition splitting the vote.

Surely Virginians who are smart enough to know better than to vote for Terry McAuliffe are cognizant of the reality that Sarvis is not going to win, but why then would they vote for him instead of Cuccinelli, thereby handing the election to McAuliffe? It doesn't make sense. Maybe it would if Cuccinelli and Sarvis were worlds apart on major issues, but Cuccinelli's record is more in line with the libertarian-leaning wing of the GOP than the hard-line "conservative" wing; he has worked hard fighting Obamacare in court and enjoyed at least one success when the Supreme Court ruled the Medicaid exapnsion mandated by the law unconstitutionally coercive; he has rolled out a fiscally responsible tax plan that slashes the Commonwealth's income tax rates and a sensible energy plan that calls for removing bureaucratic red tape and burdensome regulations to expand energy exploration and production; and he "wants to outmaneuver [school] voucher opponents by giving tax credits to those who donate money to provide private- and parochial-school tuition to poor, middle-class, and disabled students," thus allowing parents greater choice in education. He has also pledged to protect Virginians' 2nd Amendment rights and has criticized his own party for big-government boondoggles such as Medicare Part D, the No Child Left Behind Act and the Wall Street bailouts. His libertarian bona fides were sufficient to secure the endorsement of former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul (R) and a host of liberty-focused advocacy groups. Indeed, one wonders what makes Sarvis so much more appealing to voters who supposedly cherish their liberty than Cuccinelli. Whatever it is, it's enough to make them willing to aid and abet the election of a big-government Democrat while wasting their vote on a candidate sure to finish a distant third. Oh, well. Sic semper fatuis.

EUROUT

Should We "Appreciate" This, Mr. President?

(Composite Photo)

 

Shortly after taking office in 2009, President Obama emulated one of his (presumed) role models by addressing a throng of enthusiastic Germans. In his speech, he declared, "In America, there's afailure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world."

I wasn't--and I'm still not--sure what he was referring to, and he didn't cite any specific examples, but America's latest defeat this weekend at the hands of Europe called to mind the President's words in Strasbourg four summers ago.

 

In the most recent example of European dominance of the Obama-led United States, a team of European LPGA golfers beat their American counterparts at Colorado Golf Club to win the coveted Solheim Cup. It was the first time Europe had won the Cup on U.S. soil and the first time the European team had won back-to-back Solheim Cups in the tournament's 23-year history. The Europeans' 18-10 rout was also the most lopsided win by either side since America's 13-7 victory in 1994. Caroline Hedwall of Sweden became the first player in Solheim Cup history to win five out of five matches.

 

It's fitting that this crushing blow (or, more accurately, series of painful blows) to the U.S. was dealt in Colorado, a state that Obama twice carried in the Electoral College. Perhaps some good could come from this if enough Coloradans who voted for Obama witnessed this travesty, connected the dots, realized the error of their ways and learned from their (and Obama's) mistakes. (But don't count on it.)

Normally I leave it to sportsfan to cover sports news, but the embarrassment of this unprecedented fiasco made my blood boil. It's not just that the best of America lost to the best of Europe; the LPGA has become yet another area in which the U.S. has ceded leadership under President Obama. As the AP’s Doug Ferguson pointed out, "The Americans are without the Solheim Cup, the Ryder Cup, the Walker Cup and the Curtis Cup, the four biggest team events between both sides of the Atlantic."

This is also an uncharacteristic reaction to defeat for me. When the Cowboys, the Rangers, the Mavericks or my Baylor Bears lose, I get depressed. I got really depressed after last year's elections. But I reacted to this loss with anger. I'm not sure why, but I know who to be angry at.

Word to the Wise on Immigration Reform

(This post was updated at 12:18 a.m. CST on July 28, 2013.)

In the latest example of Congress proving the old adage that those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, the U.S. Senate has now passed a "comprehensive immigration reform" bill. The vote was 68-32, with 14 Republicans joining every Democrat and the two "independent" Senators who caucus with the Democrats in supporting a measure that really could only conceivably benefit Democrats. (More on that later.)

 

Those who want the House of Representatives to follow suit and pass this or a substantively similar bill have been trying to convince those of us on the right that this "comprehensive immigration reform" push is different from the last one that blew up in its proponents faces...or the one before that...or the one before that...or the '86 law that they'd like us to forget about or ignore. This bill, we're told, is a conservative plan for immigration reform, supported by conservatives (Look, Marco Rubio supports it!), with tough border security measures. These arguments beg the question, "Why did every Democratic Senator support such a conservative policy plan?" The obvious answer is that, whether you're a Blue Dog Democrat from a red state or a self-described Socialist from a state where most voters can't tell their anus from a hole in the ground, this bill will be good for you and your party if it becomes law. Most immigrants vote Democrat. Most of the immigrants who are in this country illegally will, if legalized and allowed to vote, then vote Democrat (or not vote). Their children who are born here and are therefore U.S. citizens will vote Democrat, if they vote at all. It wouldn't matter if this act was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by a Republican president; the political beneficiaries of it would be Democrats.

 

I'm not opposed to a pathway to legal status for those who are in this country illegally, and I want to see our immigration system reformed to make it easier to legally immigrate to the U.S. (provided you have something to offer and aren't going to be a public charge). I think building a fence along the entire U.S.-Mexico border is a dumb idea and a stupid endeavor; if you want to build a fence, then just build one across the chapparal from the Imperial Valley to El Paso. It won't keep illegal immigrants out; it'll just slow them down. In Texas, we have a large river to do that. But, if I were a member of Congress, then I'd be branded an opponent of this legislation, as well as a "nihilist" and an "obstructionist" etc., by the Democrats and their allies in the media because I won't support any bill that will allow even one illegal to start on that pathway to citizenship or legalization before the borders are secure (by objective standards). The proponents of this legislation have made it clear that they do not want such an "enforcement first" approach.

Under the bill that passed the Senate on Thursday, the government would grant legal status to immigrants living in the United States unlawfully at the same time additional border security was being put into place at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. The legalization could begin as soon as a security plan was drafted (not actually implemented). One problem with this is, of course, that illegal immigrants and undocumented workers could be legalized wtihout our borders being effectively secured, meaning that illegal border crossings would continue.

Pragmatic senators have tried to amend the bill to fix this problem, but to no avail. A bipartisan coalition of senators seems determined to repeat the mistakes of the past. For them, it's not enough to allow the millions of immigrants here illegally to apply for legal status without having to return home (what some have labeled "amnesty"); we have to start legalizing them and just trust that the federal government will secure the border. This despite the Obama Administration's repeated refusals to enforce existing immigration laws. Here's my question for the supporters of the Senate bill who assure us that it will secure the border: If the legalization of illegals isn't predicated on objectively verified border security, then what is this administration's incentive to secure the border?

Even if the House and Senate were to miraculously pass a bill that required the feds to secure the borders before any illegal alien could be legalized, it's doubtful that President Obama would sign such a bill into law, and even if he did, his administration still probably wouldn't be motivated to do what they're supposed to do. After all, he's been re-elected; he won't be running for president again; so what's in it for him to shore up the Democratic base? (Maybe his wife or daughters have political ambitions, but other than that, I cannot conceive of any realistic impetus for him to secure the borders.)

This enforcement problem raises another issue that has curiously played a much less prominent role in the current debate than it did in the last great national debate over immigration reform six years ago. Do we really have an illegal immigration "problem" that needs to be addressed by new legislation? One of the more dubious lines from those irksome commercials pitching this immigration reform bill is, "Doing nothing is how we got here: Millions here illegally." I don't disagree, but the cause of the problem--"doing nothing"--wasn't the failure of Congress and the president to amnesty millions of illegals and create further magnets for immigrants, both legal and illegal; it's the failure of this and past administrations to effectively secure our borders and stem the spate of illegal immigration that's been plaguing our country for decades. Here's an idea: Let's try enforcing current law and see if that doesn't address our illegal immigration problems, including: immigrants unlawfully entering this country; foreigners coming here legally (e.g., on student visas) and then remaining here unlawfully after their visas expire; millions of immigrants living here illegally; and Americans hiring illegals. We already have laws addressing these problems, though the last one I listed could use a federal E-verify system. However, enhanced border security--even if effectively implemented--would only tackle the first of these problems; the other three need to be addressed by what's called "interior enforcement."

In a statement to the House Judiciary Committee last month, Chris Crane, President of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council and one of the few union leaders who actually seems to represent the best interests of his members, rightly accused "the individuals and organizations involved in crafting the Gang of Eight legislation" of "purposely ignor[ing] interior enforcement with the intent of continuing the practices [that] have led to the nation’s current immigration problems." Crane pointed out that, while visa overstays account for an estimated 40% of the 11 million illegal aliens currently in the United States (4.5 million), the Gang of Eight’s immigration legislation "speaks only of significant increases to border enforcement, not interior enforcement." The visa overstays problem, Crane argues, "cannot be stopped by the United States Border Patrol" and will "never" be addressed by investments in border security. Opponents of the Senate's latest comprehensive immigration reform bill should present a united front and challenge the Obama administration to prove that they're serious about securing the border by enforcing existing laws.

Yes, I've seen and heard ad nauseum that, under Obama, illegal aliens have been deported at a record pace, but in fact, there has been a sharp decline in the number of illegal-immigrant removals since June 2011, when ICE Director John Morton issued the so-called "Morton Memorandum" (officially entitled "Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion Consistent with the Civil Immigration Enforcement Priorities of the Agency for the Apprehension, Detention, and Removal of Aliens"), the first in a series of significant changes to the agency’s enforcement policies. Crane and other ICE agents and officers have filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the validity of the Morton Memorandum and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano's June 2012 Directive not to enforce immigration laws "against certain young people who were brought to this country as children and know only this country as home." (This was part of the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals plan, or DACA.) At an evidentiary hearing in April, Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies testified that there "has been a significant decline in enforcement activity, as measured by the number of removals." As reported by Andrew Stiles of National Review:

Removals generated by ICE’s Enforcement and Removals division, which is responsible for interior immigration enforcement, have decreased nearly 50 percent since June 2011. Vaughan says the administration has been inflating its deportation statistics by including a greater number of U.S. Border Patrol cases — illegal immigrants picked up at the border and subsequently referred to ICE — as part of its annual statistics. Border Patrol cases accounted for 56 percent of removals reported in fiscal year 2013, up from 33 percent in 2008. Typically, an individual apprehended at the southern border is simply returned to Mexico without being processed as a deportation by ICE.

Later that month, Crane told reporters that “DHS and ICE are knowingly manipulating arrest and deportation data with the specific intent of misleading the American public with regard to the enforcement of illegal immigration in our country.” He actually claimed that “ICE arrest and deportation numbers have plummeted since 2008" (emphasis added), which he called "clear evidence that interior enforcement has in large part been shut down over the last four years.” Not surprisingly, Mrs. Vaughan considers it “foolhardy for Congress to trust that this administration is actually going to implement any new enforcement plans”

Then there's the talking point about how the status quo is “de facto amnesty.” (The solution: de jure amnesty!) Ann Coulter pretty well destroyed the potency of that sound bite with this:

I gather Marco Rubio considers this his big showstopper, since he says it in every interview as if he’s announcing the Kochen-Specker theorem. But if we already have de facto amnesty, [then] why is this bill even necessary? Oh, that’s right! The Democrats need 30 million new voters.

It’s curious that Democrats don’t hysterically demand amnesty for other lawbreakers, such as tax-cheats or polluters. Right now — hold on to your hat, Marco! — we have “de facto amnesty” for tax-cheats and polluters! (Also rapists and murderers and every other crime that doesn’t have 100 percent enforcement.)

And if we won’t grant amnesty to tax-cheats and polluters, [then] what about their children? Why punish the children? They did nothing wrong. Their parents told them they had lots of money for houses, clothes and college tuition. How can you put a tax lien on the homes of innocent children? Think of how BP executives’ children have suffered — the divorces, the deferred dreams, the broken families …

And by the way, polluters are also hard workers. They love their families and want the best for them, too. I bet illegal aliens who rape women and kill people in drunk-driving accidents love their families. Members of MS-13 work very hard at gang activities, such as, for example, when you cross them, they are very dogged about having you killed in a drive-by shooting. That shows a real stick-to-itiveness.

But weirdly, Democrats are obsessed with amnesty only for the lawbreakers that will get them 30 million new voters. (Violent felons come next.)

I'm aware that the deportation process is very expensive. Deporting an illegal alien, though, costs a hell of a lot less than supporting them with the cradle-to-grave system of entitlements on which the left is so keen.

The immigration reform we need won't legalize the millions of Americans living in this country illegally; it's a reform in the federal government's approach to enforcement, both border enforcement and interior enforcement. Instead of passing a bill that spends a horrendous amount of money without solving the problem (BTW, what exactly is "conservative" about that?), the Congress should pass a law providing for a national, mandatory E-verify system and nullifying the DHS directives that instruct law enforcement officials not to enforce federal law. Granted, the constitutionality of legislation limiting the executive's prosecutorial discretion would be questionable at best, so the Congress would have to be careful about the wording of such a bill, but they've got really smart people to work on that.

Finally, I'll briefly address this BS about how the Republican Party is doomed if they don't jump on the band wagon and embrace "comprehensive immigration reform". There are plenty of cogent rebuttals to this argument, available to anyone who wants to read/hear them, but let me end this passage where I began: Immigrants vote Democrat, not 100%, but a majority of them do. Considering that illegal immigrants aren't eligible to vote, exactly what is the harm for Republicans in making sure that they stay ineligible to vote?

I thought I had an answer to that question about a year ago. It dawned on me after a conversation with one of my friends (who happens to be the son of illegal immigrants): Illegal immigrants can't vote, but if their children are born here, then those children are U.S. citizens who can register to vote once they turn 18. Put yourself in the position of someone who was born here to parents who were in this country illegally. Regardless of your personal political ideology, are you likely to vote for any candidate affiliated with a party that has roundly castigated your parents and people like them and insisted that they be deported? 

Then it occurred to me: Why would Republicans suddenly changing their tact on illegal immigration have any affect on that voter's choice at the ballot box? Do Republicans like Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake think that the issue of illegal immigrants are going to forgive and forget just because a handful of Republicans supported legalizing their parents? 

And, if you're worried about the Hispanic vote, Republicans, then you should be. Hispanics don't support your policies. 75% of Hispanics say they would rather have a bigger government providing more services than a smaller government with fewer services.  62% support Obamacare, and 59% favor same-sex marriage. According to a December 2011 survey conducted by Princeton Data Source for the Pew Research Center, a majority of Hispanics have a negative view of capitalism, and 44% of Hispanics have a positive view of socialism. (By comparison, the survey found that only 40% of all American adults had a negative view of capitalism, compared to 50% who had a positive view, and only 31% had a positive view of socialism.) And, while the percentage of Americans who identify as "pro-choice" dropped to a record low last year, 2012 exit polls found that 2/3 of Latino voters are firmly pro-abortion.

 

So, Republican presidential hopefuls who are concerned about how to win over Hispanic voters are better served by taking advice from anti-amnesty candidates such as Susana Martinez and Ted Cruz--or should I say Gov. Susana Martinez (R-state that's 46% Latino) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-state that's 38% Latino)--than from faux-conservatives like David Brooks who live in an insulated bubble that shields them from life's cruel realities. Right-wing Genius out!

A Good Day for Equal Justice Under Law

Chief Justice John G. Roberts delivers the opinion of the Court in Shelby County v. Holder. (Art Lien)

 

Yesterday, the Supreme Court rendered an important, long-overdue and unfortunately necessary decision that galled a lot of Americans who want to continue living in the past. In Shelby County v. Holder, a five-justice majority held that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is unconstitutional. Here’s a brief background on the case:

            § 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires some States and localities to obtain federal permission before enacting any law related to voting. § 4 of the Act sets forth the formula for determining which jurisdictions are subject to that preclearance process. (Currently, that meant Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and Alaska and portions of New York, North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, South Dakota and California.) In 2010, Shelby County, Alabama sued the Attorney General, seeking a declaratory judg­ment that §§ 4(b) and 5 of the Voting Rights Act are facially unconstitutional, as well as a permanent injunc­tion against their enforcement. The District Court rejected the county’s argument and upheld the Act. The Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit affirmed the District Court’s judgment.

The Court’s ruling today means that Section 4’s formula can no longer be used as a basis for subjecting jurisdictions to pre­clearance under the Voting Rights Act. SCOTUSblog Editor Amy Howe broke down the Court's ruling and its immediate implications thusly:

The Chief Justice delivered the opinion of the Court, which was joined by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito. The Court began by acknowledging that when the Voting Rights Act was enacted, it “employed extraordinary measures” – in the form of restrictions on the independence of the covered states – to combat the “extraordinary problem” of widespread voter discrimination. In 1966, the Court explained, these restrictions, which were intended to be temporary, were justified, and the formula used to determine who should be covered “made sense” then.

But today, fifty years later? Not so much. In the Court’s eyes, “things have changed dramatically.” When judged by a variety of measures – such as voter registration, voter turnout, and the number of African Americans elected to office — conditions have improved significantly in the states that are covered by the preclearance requirements. The Court agrees that these changes “are in large part because of the Voting Rights Act”; despite those improvements, the Court complains, the formula that determines who must comply with the preclearance requirement is “based on decades-old data” and practices – such as literacy tests – that were long ago abandoned. Because it isn’t fair for Congress to “rely simply on the past” to single out a few state and local governments for unequal treatment “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day,” the coverage formula cannot stand.

The last section of the Court’s opinion is the judicial version of throwing the Voting Rights Act ball back across First Street N.E. to Congress. Emphasizing that invalidating a federal law is one of its most serious responsibilities, and that it “do[es] not do so lightly,” the Court makes clear that in its view, only Congress is to blame here. Four years ago, it warned Congress that the constitutionality of the law was in doubt; “Congress could have updated the coverage formula” then, but it failed to do so. “Its failure to act,” the Court explains, “leaves us today with no choice but to declare [the coverage formula] unconstitutional.”

What Howe is referring to in the last two sentences of that excerpt is the court's 2009 decision in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 (NAMUDNO) v. Holder, in which a Texas utility district challenged the constitutionality of the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act. In that case, the Court bypassed the constitutional question and ruled that the statute allowed the utility district to seek bailout from the Act’s coverage. But the Court did something else, too: in an opinion delivered by Chief Justice Roberts and joined by all the associate justices except Justice Thomas, the Court acknowledged that it had already upheld the Act’s constitutionality in prior decisions but noted, “Some of the conditions that we relied upon in upholding this statutory scheme ... have unquestionably improved.” And, while conceding that these “improvements are no doubt due in significant part to the Voting Rights Act itself,” the Court admonished that “[p]ast success alone, however, is not adequate justification to retain the preclearance requirements,” adding, “It may be that these improvements are insufficient and that conditions continue to warrant preclearance under the Act. But the Act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.”

Rather than heed the Court’s warnings and prod Congress to revise the formula in § 4 (as he’s so fond of doing when it comes to other policy issues), President Obama was content to leave the Act as is and let his Justice Department defend a constitutional challenge to a law the Supreme Court had as much as told us was unconstitutional. Unsurprisingly, the Respondent in Shelby County had a difficult time explaining how the Act’s ridiculously outdated formula and inequitable treatment of different states and localities was “justified by current needs,” and today, the Supreme Court officially recognized what Congress and the President should have recognized years ago: § 4 of the Voting Rights Act exceeds Congress’s constitutional authority.

 

Section 1 of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," and Section 2 grants Congress "the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." The central question underlying this and previous constitutional challenges to the Voting Rights Act was whether Sections 4 and 5 were still "appropriate" legislation, in light of their selective treatment of certain parts of the country based on data that no longer accurately reflects the current state of the union. To the extent that the members of Congress who voted to reauthorize the Act--and President Bush, who signed the reauthorization into law--back in 2006 considered the issue, their answer was "Yes, it is."

Thank God for judicial review. (Well, thank the Marshall Court, but their decision in Marbury v. Madison was probably guided by divine providence anyway.) As the Court ruled yesterday, “The Fifteenth Amendment . . . is not designed to punish for the past; its purpose is to ensure a better future.” The majority stopped short of drawing a bright line or laying out a clear standard for determining what constitutes "appropriate legislation" under Amendment XV, but they rejected the notion that Congress is entitled to absolute deference on that subject (and for good reason).

During oral arguments before the Court in February, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli insisted that the court shouldn't second-guess Congress's determination that certain areas require special oversight to prevent violations of the 15th Amendment's guarantee of voting rights. But why, if the basis of that determination is patently irrational? The formula for selecting jurisdictions covered by Section 5 was last updated based on the 1972 election results. Congress had more than forty years to revise this formula based on more current data. Its failure to do so meant that certain states were left stigmatized as backwards regions of the country that couldn't be trusted to regulate their own elections without federal oversight, that stigma written into federal law and used as a pretext for subjecting these jurisdictions to onerous burdens and an indignity that most of the country doesn't have to suffer. Furthermore, why shouldn't the state and local governments who enacted changes to their voting laws be afforded the same deference as Congress? No one defending Section 4 could provide a satisfactory answer to that question, either.

If you think like me, then you had two specific inquiries about the Court's decision in Shelby County: (1) How did Justices Ginsburg and Breyer, who dissented from the Court's decision yesterday, square their dissent with the Opinion of the Court in Northwest Austin that laid forth serious constitutional infirmities of the Voting Rights Act, in which they both joined? And, (2) What, if anything, did Justice Clarence Thomas, the only member of the Court to experience life as an African-American in the segregated South, have to say about all this?

 

I'll answer the second question first. As previously mentioned, Justice Thomas did not join the Opinion of the Court in Northwest Austin; he filed an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part. Basically, he wanted to decide the constitutional issue that the Court had avoided and strike down § 5 as unconstitutional. In explaining why § 5 exceeds Congress' power to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment, the Georgia native wrote, "The extensive pattern of discrimination that led the Court to previously uphold § 5 as enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment no longer exists."

Justice Thomas reiterated that statement in a  opinion yesterday, in which he explained how the Court's own opinion "compellingly demonstrates that Congress has failed to justify ‘current burdens’ with a record demonstrating ‘current needs.’"

 

As to my other query, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed an acrid dissent joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan, in which she said that

 "the Court’s opinion can hardly be described as an exemplar of restrained and moderate decisionmaking. Quite the opposite. Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition of the VRA."

 

Respectfully, Madame Justice, striking down a blatantly unconstitutional law is not "hubris." "Hubris" is exhibited by those who believe that certain parts of the country should be treated differently than their co-equal sovereigns because of transgressions perpetrated years ago by people who are long dead. "Hubris" is thinking that the attorney general of the United States, whoever that happens to be at the time, is so enlightened that he/she should be given an effective veto power over laws that were duly enacted by state and local governments, even if that AG happens to be a corrupt hack and perjurer with an obvious chip on his shoulder. Hubris is a fit word for the insolence of those who reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, outdated criteria and all, for another 25 years back in 2006 without amending it to reflect recent changes and trends. "Hubris" is dismissing the serious issues with the Act's constitutionality explicitly raised in an opinion you joined as mere "dictum", which you did in your dissenting opinion yesterday.

If I sound especially passionate about this, then it's because I am. It's not just because I live in Texas, one of the states required to get approval from the federal government to before making any changes to its voting laws or procedures, "even for something as seemingly innocuous as moving a polling place across the street." as Amy Howe put it. Anyone who believes in states' rights (or, for that matter, who respects the Tenth Amendment) should find a law that requires state and local governments to obtain federal approval before enacting policies to address local issues revolting. Chief Justice Roberts quite rightly called this requirement “a drastic depar­ture from basic principles of federalism” and the untenable application of it to only select jurisdictions “an equally dramatic departure from the principle that all States enjoy equal sovereignty.” 

I know that the term "states' rights" has a negative connotation in some pockets of the country (and some people's minds), but the principle that all U.S. states are equal sovereigns and that their governments should have as expansive a police power to regulate matters within their jurisdictions as the people of those states empower them to, unencumbered by an oppressive federal government that is not and cannot be as attuned to local concerns as the elected policymakers in those states are, was written into our Constitution--and recognized by the Supreme Court since the first time it addressed the issue--for a reason. If the framers of the Constitution had wanted the Department of Justice to have oversight over state and local voting regulations, then they could have included a provision stating as much, and if the drafters of the Fifteenth Amendment had intended for Congress to have unquestionable discretion to determine what legislation was an "appropriate" means of enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment, then they could have made that amendment more specific. But they didn't.

It seems discordant that self-styled "progressives" were upset with the Court's decision in Shelby County. President Barack Obama and his attorney general both said they were "deeply disappointed" by the ruling. (The president even took care to remind us that "voting discrimination has been historically prevalent" in the places affected by Section 4, which evidently means it's okay for the federal government to perpetually treat those states as bastions of racism and ignore both the progress they've made and any real, actual attempts at voter discrimination in other parts of the country in the last 41 years.) Rev. Jesse Jackson called it “the most devastating blow to civil rights since” Plessy v. Ferguson and complained that it “seeks to destroy the infrastructure of ... inclusion and expansion.” The New York Times Editorial Board wailed that the Court had "eviscerated enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, in which Congress kept the promise of a vote for every citizen."

 

These people should take a look at what is inscribed aboved the pillars on the front of the Supreme Court Building the next time they have occasion to visit it (or just look at a picture of it). As Jonathan Tobin wrote for Commentary: 

The reality of 2013 is that even the left is hard pressed to find anyplace in the country where anyone who is legally entitled to vote and wants to exercise their franchise is being prevented from doing so. Stating that is not to deny that racism still exists in some quarters of American society anymore than any other species of hatred. Nor does it imply that our electoral system is perfect or incapable of betterment. But to leave in place a legal formula that treated some states differently than others solely because of history is not only absurd, it is unconstitutional discrimination. In a country where, as it was argued before the court, Mississippi may have a more healthy voting rights environment in some respects than Massachusetts, preserving the battle lines of the fight against Jim Crow is not only meaningless, it actually hampers efforts to combat illegal practices.

But the main interest of those dedicated to preserving the status quo wasn’t in preventing states from denying a right to vote that is not in question. It was in holding onto their capacity to use federal law to prevent some states from passing voter ID laws that have been wrongly branded as a form of discrimination or voter suppression. The vast majority of Americans—including the members of those groups that civil rights advocates claim will be injured by voter ID laws—think these measures are merely a matter of common sense to ensure the integrity of the election system. But by disingenuously waving the bloody shirt of Jim Crow, the left has sought to brand race-neutral laws like voter ID a form of racism.

Instead of continuing to live in the past and basing their opinions on specters of a bygone era (kind of like the racists whose actions arguably necessitated the Voting Rights Act in the first place), those who claim to support the Voting Rights Act should celebrate its effects and acknowledge that the preclearance requirement of Section 5 is no longer necessary in many of the regions to which it has been applied. If the members of Congress who voted to reauthorize the Act in 2006 and are still serving believe the legislation is necessary and good policy, then they ought to craft a new formula based on current data and practices to determine which areas of the country, if any, need the federal oversight authorized by Section 5.

Should the Congress endeavor to take up such legislation, however, there must be a vigorous debate over whether any law that is selectively applied only to some states and localities, based on constantly changing statistics that will require frequent re-examination, is wise policy. The anachronistic character of these provisions in the Voting Rights Act and the problem of leaving the Act as is was summed up splendidly in the following paragraph of the Court's opinion yesterday:   

In 1965, the States could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those charac­teristics. Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the Nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were.

It is a disturbing display of dissonance that those who wanted the Court to let Section 4 stand express concern for making sure that all Americans are treated equally under the law, when Section 4 itself stood in affront to that concept. 

Paul Begala Makes the Case for Senator Gomez

If you were to rank all of God’s creatures from the least loathsome to the most, then the Paul Begalas of the World would belong somewhere between serpents and pedophiles. (That would also be a fitting place for the Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor to spend eternity.)

 

But, on Saturday, Mr. Begala actually made a positive contribution to society. He gave Massachusetts voters a concise list of reasons (the most compelling I’ve seen) to vote for Gabriel Gomez in the upcoming special election to the U.S. Senate seat formerly occupied by John Kerry (D). Get a load of this: 

In the Senate, Democrat Ed Markey will fight alongside Massachusetts' rising star, Elizabeth Warren; Gomez would cancel her vote. Markey will support President Obama; Gomez will oppose him. Markey will stand for progressive change: an increase in the minimum wage, universal prekindergarten, tax fairness, rebuilding our roads and bridges and more. Gomez will empower obstructionist Republicans like GOP leader Mitch McConnell and the tea party extremists.

Sounds good to me. Remember, in the left-wing, business-as-usual lingo of Beltway insiders that Begala speaks fluently, members of Congress who fight for liberty and against big government oppression are "tea party extremists," Republicans who zealously represent their constituents' interests and try to stop bad policies from being enacted are "obstructionist," and "tax fairness" means "giving huge tax breaks to the president's cronies and shifting the tax burden even further onto the people who actually work for a living so that the millions of Americans who pay little or nothing in federal taxes can continue to live off the labors of others."

 

When the appropriate translation is made, Begala's pitch is also an uncharacteristically honest bit of rhetoric from him, proving my point that, on the rare occasions when Democrats tell the truth, they end up making some very persuasive arguments for voters to vote Republican.

Once Again, Paul Ryan Speaks My Mind

(Photo: The Christian Post/Napp Nazworth)

 



This is one of the problems with blogging as a hobby, as opposed to a full-time gig. I don't publish my thoughts as soon as I have them.

 

Once again, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) demonstrates why his visage belongs on the banner atop this blog (and our parent web site). From the Christian Post:

With references to some of the recent government scandals, such as the Internal Revenue Service's harassment of pro-life groups, Ryan said at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority 2013" conference, "big government is bad enough in theory, look what we see in practice."

Ryan's words were an abbreviated version of the sentiment he expressed last month on Fox News Sunday, when he said of President Obama's agenda., "Now, we're seeing big government in practice. Now, we're seeing the arrogance. We're seeing the cronyism in practice in this second term, and that is even uglier than big government in theory."

He added that he and former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney "had a challenge in the campaign against empty rhetoric," but "now the country is seeing what this kind of big unlimited government does in practice," which "is not a pretty picture."

 

Before I had heard/seen Ryan's remarks, I told someone that one reason the left-wing media was so desperate to downplay/bury the IRS scandal was that it manifestly exposed a critical flaw in their ideology's policy agenda. The malfeasance at the IRS (and the incompetence in other parts of the government that allowed this malfeasance to continue, unabated, for two straight years) was not an anomaly. Rather, it was an example of something that is inevitable when government grows as big as the federal government has gotten. There's no such thing as big government without a trace of incompetence or corruption.

 

It's good when someone with Paul Ryan's stature says what needs to be said, and it's even better when people listen. Whenever I feel I have an important contribution to make on topic of public interest, I try to find the time to churn out a blog post or YouTube upload. If someone has a similar thought, then I would hope he/she expresses it, especially if that person happens to be articulate and easy on the eyes and has a large audience.

The GOP Won’t “Overplay its Hand” on the Obama IRS scandal...Because it Can't

It’s only been a couple weeks since news broke that the IRS unconstitutionally targeted conservative groups/organizations for additional scrutiny and harassment in the run-up to the 2012 election, and already, President Obama’s most ardent apologists are acknowledging the severity of this problem, calling the White House out on its arrogant mendacity and joining Republicans in their efforts to uncover the truth and bring all culpable parties to justice.

 

Yeah, right.

 

Actually, many on the Left have been trying to shift the focus from what is clearly a serious scandal involving unconstitutional acts by the government to...the GOP. But how? Republicans, whose role in this sordid affair (if any) is limited to that of victims, are rightly incensed by what in all likelihood was a calculated political efforts to boost the electoral prospects of the president and other Democrats by hamstringing conservative groups and individuals.

 

Well, as gifted as the Left is at creating alternate realities, even they can’t inculpate the GOP in this mess, it’s pushing a different narrative: Republicans are eagerly ginning up controversy and trying to capitalize on these so-called "scandals", but they're so blinded by their utter contempt and disdain for the president that they're already overreaching and blowing these things way out of proportion, oblivious to the pitfalls of ganging up on a president who's still a lot more popular than they are.

 

Charlie Cook, an idiot, has been pushing this narrative with the utmost vigor in National Journal. Last week, he wrote that “Republicans Should Go Easy on Obama.” (I tried to find where Cook had written the same or something similar about Democrats and President Bush, but I could find no such case.) On Tuesday, he claimed that Republicans are so blinded by their “hatred of Obama” that “they can’t see how little impact the 'scandals' have had on public opinion.” (Yes, he actually put "scandals" in quotation marks.) 

 

“The simple fact is that although the Republican sharks are circling,” Cook wrote, “there isn’t a trace of blood in the water.” He based this on an out-of-context quote from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the results of two polls (one of which was an outlier that pegged Obama’s job-approval rating at 53%, five percentage points higher than the current RCP average, and the other being Gallup, which as we know nailed President Romney’s margin of victory in the 2012 election).

 

Cook recites these polls in his latest article, in which he likens the bipartisan investigation into to the impeachment of Pres. Bill Clinton that proved to hurt Republicans more than the president: “The current situation is reminding many folks of the impeachment controversy in 1998” he says, raising the question of how many “folks” Cook talks to who don’t think exactly like him. “Blinded by their hatred for President Clinton, Republicans made irrational decisions then, and they are making the same mistakes today.”

 

Another National Journal contributor, Ron Fournier (who is not an idiot but is pretty obtuse) yesterday accused RNC Chairman Reince Priebus of “demonizing, politicizing and overreaching just enough to jeopardize his cause.” This is the same Ron Fournier who earlier this week expressly stated that the White House “has demonstrated an inability and/or unwillingness to tell the full truth about the IRS scandal and a spate of other controversies.” Either Fournier is suffering from some kind of bipolar disorder or he believes that the Obama White House’s serial dishonesty is just as consistent with innocence as culpability. 
 

Stuart Rothenberg, who is usually more astute, couldn’t resist the same faulty comparison Cook made. In a blog post entitled, “Will Republicans Screw Up Again? Some Are Already Overreaching,” Rothenberg mused:  

Republicans failed to capitalize on President Bill Clinton’s inappropriate conduct by over-playing their hand and pushing impeachment. Not only did they fail to drive him from office, the GOP ended up losing a handful of House seats in the 1998 midterms instead of adding seats as initially expected.

Republicans allowed themselves to look as if they were primarily interested in scoring political points and overturning the results of the 1996 election, even if it meant paralyzing the government.

That same danger exists once again for the GOP.

With fundraising playing such a huge part in our politics, some conservative groups will be tempted to use the trifecta of controversies to play to their bases to boost anger and fundraising.

This, in turn, will make the issues appear more and more partisan, giving the president the same opportunity that Clinton used when he sought to rise above “politics” and called for members of both parties to address public policy challenges.

He then undermined his own argument by describing some of the differences between 1998 and 2013 that make any comparisons of the two situations sound ridiculous.

 

I’ll spare you excerpts from the ramblings of ditsy hacks like Joan Walsh, Greg Sargent and Michael Tomasky; let it suffice to say that they've been even more defensive in their commentary on these affairs.

 

The logical rebuttal to these warnings of Republican “overreach” is simple. Republicans won’t overreach on—and won’t overblow—these scandals, esp. the IRS scandal, because they can’t. Yes, you could conceivably say something that exaggerates the magnitude of any one particular scandal (though I’ve yet to hear any such thing from a Republican to date), but the cumulation of these things—from the abject incompetence of the ill-conceived (and even more poorly executed) "Fast & Furious" operation to administration’s repeated prevarication about Benghazi to the possible unconstitutionality of the Justice Dept. preying on reporters and the definite unconstitutionality of the IRS’s treatment of conservatives—is far greater than any scandal or combination of scandals involving a U.S. president and his administration.

 

Sure, other presidents have done terrible and inexcusable things. Andrew Jackson forced thousands of Cherokee (including my great-great-great-great grandparents) to take leave of their homes in the southeastern U.S. and trudge miles westward in a journey that killed thousands of them and injured countless others. L.B.J. and his administration repeatedly misled Americans about the Vietnam war and continued to send American soldiers, many of whom were drafted, to die and/or suffer serious bodily harm in the jungles of southeast Asia after it became clear they were fighting a losing battle. Richard Nixon...well, we know what he did. And, don’t get me started on F.D.R.

 

Whether or not these or other nefarious deeds by part presidents fit the definition of “scandal” is a discussion for another time. I’m not saying the pain and suffering caused by the Obama Administration’s actions is worse than the Trail of Tears, but unlike Obama, Jackson had the legal authority to do what he did.

 

In addition to the unconstitutionality of the IRS’s actions, there’s another compelling reason why the gravity of that particular scandal can’t be overstated. As I explained in a YouTube video yesterday, the effects of the IRS’s misdeeds were, among other things, to unfairly hamstring conservative efforts in the 2012 campaign. Libertarian/Republican candidates and causes were deprived of much-needed capital during a critical election cycle. Who knows how many races would have turned out differently had the playing field been level?

 

I don’t mean to invite people to reconsider what has already come to pass, and I certainly don’t want to dwell on what might have been. This much is undeniable, however: as long as even one politician elected in a close race in 2012, the outcome of which might have been different had the IRS not engaged in these unconstitutional practices, is still in office, we are still living with the consequences of what the IRS did, and that means this scandal still has legs. In that sense, nobody is “overreaching” just by pulling out all the stops to make sure that the truth will come out and all complicit parties will be exposed and brought to justice.

The Obama-Nixon Comparison Is Indeed Appropriate

Steve Chapman, the Chicago Tribune columnist and editorial writer whose semiweekly musings range from the sentient to the delusional, has convinced me that the comparison of Obama to the late President Nixon is not only justified but apt. How? Well, take a look at this from his latest column:  

In recent days, those people have triumphantly likened Barack Obama to Richard Nixon, particularly on the misuse of the Internal Revenue Service for political advantage. In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon because, among other reasons, he tried to cause "income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."

This, of course, is exactly what the IRS now admits doing when it singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny. The Treasury Department's Inspector General found, "The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions."

The misconduct happened under the current president. Therefore, Obama = Nixon.

Makes sense to me, except for that "Obama = Nixon” part. The two presidents may be guilty of similar acts, but they’re not the same man. (I recently tweeted my displeasure at the profligate comparisons of Obama to Nixon; people shouldn’t speak so ill of the dead.)

 

Chapman then explains that he was just setting up a straw man. Equating the two “is like concluding that babies are like poisonous snakes because some of them have rattles." Nice one, Steve, and were that hackneyed quip the worst part of your column, I wouldn’t have been moved to write this post, but then you say, "Maybe information will someday emerge to confirm the conservative suspicion that Obama thuggishly subverted the IRS to win re-election, but so far, it falls in the realm of make-believe."

 

I’d say it falls in the category of “undiscovered evidence,” the kind that warrants a dedicated, persistent and earnest congressional investigation and the appointment of an independent counsel. Chapman did at least review the history of how Nixon used tax agents as political operatives, but then he went way out on a limb with his assertion that, in "the case of Obama, there is no evidence that he or his Treasury Secretary was aware of the mistreatment of conservative groups -- much less that either of them requested it."

 

Well, here's what we do know: According to The Associated Press: 

Many conservative groups complained during the 2012 election that they were being harassed by the IRS. They accused the agency of frustrating their attempts to become tax exempt by sending them lengthy, intrusive questionnaires.
 
The forms, which the groups have made available, sought information about group members' political activities, including details of their postings on social networking websites and about family members.
 
In some cases, the IRS acknowledged, agents inappropriately asked for lists of donors.
 
There has been a surge of politically active groups claiming tax-exempt status in recent elections -- conservative and liberal. Among the highest profile are Republican Karl Rove's group Crossroads GPS and the liberal Moveon.org.
 
These groups claim tax-exempt status under section 501 (c) (4) of the federal tax code, which is for social welfare groups. Unlike other charitable groups, these organizations are allowed to participate in political activities, but their primary activity must be social welfare.
 
That determination is up to the IRS.
 
The number of groups filing for this tax-exempt status more than doubled from 2010 to 2012, to more than 3,400. To handle the influx, the IRS centralized its review of these applications in an office in Cincinnati.

The IRS agents in Cincinnati reportedly came up with a list of things to look for in an application, including the words "tea party" and "patriot." Donors to conservative groups and Republican candidates were harassed, audited and elderly. (Their age is not the IRS's fault, but it is a common trait I've noticed among the conservative/Republican victims of the Obama Administration's witch hunt.) 

Lois Lerner, who runs the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, knew about the targeting of Tea Party groups as early as June 29, 2011, according to the Inspector General's draft report released last week. On Aug. 4, 2011, staffers in the IRS's Rulings & Agreements office "held a meeting with chief counsel so that everyone would have the latest information on the issue." This raises the question of whether then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman perjured himself at a hearing before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight on March 22, 2012, when he testified, "There's absolutely no targeting." (This was in response to Rep. Charles Boustany's question, "Can you give us assurances that the IRS is not targeting particular groups based on political leanings?") Yesterday, Shulman testified before the Senate Finance Committee that he learned “sometime in the spring of 2012″ that “there was a list that was being used” to identify political groups for further review and that the term “tea party” was on the list. That may have also been a lie, but assuming for the moment it was true, Shulman did not immediately (or even shortly thereafter) notify the subcommittee of this. Rather, he left a false impression with Congress and the public until this month, when he finally corrected the record. However, if "everyone" means "everyone," then it means that Shulman was clued into the targeting well before he testified to the contrary. Not surprisingly, Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself today in a hearing before the House Committee on Oversight. 

   

As for whether the president and his Treasury Secretary personally knew about this misconduct, here's some "evidence" for Steve Chapman. The White House coordinated with the Treasury Department over "how the IRS would disclose its targeting of conservative groups." And, the White House was caught in another lie on Monday, when Jay Carney acknowledged that, contrary to what he had previously told the press corps, Senior legal Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was told on April 24 about the IRS audit that showed tax officials unfairly targeted Tea Party groups and that she then told White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough "and other senior officials" about the investigation.

So, Steve is wrong about there being "no evidence" that the Secretary of the Treasury knew about the mistreatment of conservative groups, but the rest of that sentence is correct--if by "evidence" he actually means direct evidence that has come out. Circumstantial evidence of the president's culpability in this affair is mounting every day. Let's not forget that it took a considerable while after the Watergate burglary in June 1972 for evidence of Nixon's personal involvement in the cover-up to surface. The fallout from this particular scandal is still in its larval stage. If there's any talk on this subject that falls "in the realm of make-believe," then it's coming from those who are scoffing at and deriding the notion that President Obama's hands are clean in all this. Stay tuned.