Robert Kennedy, Jr. on guns, drugs and the constitution.

This speech shows that there are sane people in the Democrat Party.

Here are @RobertKennedyJr’s statements from last night’s New Hampshire town hall regard the 2nd Amendment.

Some highlights:

-Reiterates he’s “not going to take anyone’s guns away”

-“Anyone who tells you that we can end the violence to our children that’s going on now by… pic.twitter.com/Tie7VisoTd

— Will Fite (@WillFiteForYou) June 24, 2023

Mike Pence, Dick Cheney, and the Constitution

Glenn Reynolds argues that the Vice President is a legislative officer for the purpose of the constitution. 

Nowadays, we tend to think of Vice Presidents – wrongly – as a sort of junior or co-President, but that’s not actually how it works at all.  As I wrote in the Northwestern Law Review piece:

The Constitution gives the Vice President no executive powers; the Vice President's only duties are to preside over the Senate and to become President if the serving President dies or leaves office.  Traditionally, what staff, office, and perquisites the Vice President enjoyed came via the Senate; it was not until Spiro Agnew mounted a legislative push that the Vice President got his own budget line. The Vice President really is not an executive official. He or she executes no laws--and is not part of the President's administration the way that other officials are. The Vice President cannot be fired by the President; as an independently elected officeholder, he can be removed only by Congress via impeachment. 

While I think Glenn is doing God’s work with his blog and this Substack essay (to which I recently subscribed, and everyone should do the same), I will make a modest objection for the sake of the argument.  When Glenn states that “… presiding over the Senate is surely a legislative function par excellence.” he begs the question.  

A Vice president is unquestionably a “spare.”  But if the Constitution does not specify that the Speaker of the House is a member (Article 1, Section 2), it’s possible that the President of the Senate shall not be a Senator and therefore is not a legislator.  After all, he has no vote unless the Senate is equally divided.  In other words, the Vice Presidency is, for all practical purposes, a Constitutional spare, a baby in the womb waiting to be born.  Neither fish nor fowl nor good red meat.    

Tucker Carlson asks New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy where he got the authority to nullify the Bill of rights when he banned religious services in his state

Tucker Carlson asks New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy where he got the authority to nullify the Bill of rights when he banned religious services in his state:

"I wasn't thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this... The science says people have to stay away from each other." pic.twitter.com/DPQ5d2DFl2

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 16, 2020

Constitution Dies Of Coronavirus

Report by the Babylon Bee

WASHINGTON, D.C.—According to sources at the National Archives, doctors rushed the United States Constitution to the hospital and were forced to hook the document up to a ventilator after it began having trouble breathing Sunday afternoon.

The document reportedly slipped into a coma en route to the emergency room and was in critical condition for many hours. Doctors confirmed the worst: the founding document of our nation was infected with the novel coronavirus. Finally, surrounded by one or two mourners, as most people in Washington abandoned it a long time ago, it slipped away Sunday night.

"Between both political parties constantly trampling all over the Bill of Rights and stretching and distorting the Constitution for political gain whenever it's convenient, I just don't know how much more abuse it could have taken," said one doctor as he pronounced the Constitution's time of death: 20:20, ironically.

The 232-year-old Constitution has had its share of health scares, nearly being killed in the 1860s, the 1930s and 40s, and the early 2000s, but medical experts say this last crisis was just more than it could take.

"It had many underlying conditions, of course, already being incredibly sick with Obamacare, Obergefell, Roe v Wade, the Patriot Act, and many more diseases," said the doctor. "But it's still sad to see this old boy pass on."

Our thoughts and prayers are with its relatives.

Trump's Vindication May Lead to Restoration of the Constitution

Via Instapundit

We thought the Mueller Report might bridge our lamentable partisan divide, since it found no evidence of the president’s purported collusion with Russia, but, weirdly, that report was spun to suggest a lack of presidential cooperation with that probe that was somehow the criminal act of obstruction of justice. Oddly, that notion dissipated quickly, and, before we knew it, we were in the current impeachment frenzy with the president accused of using the power of his office to intimidate a foreign leader into venally serving the president’s personal political ends.

The impeachment and removal effort, nakedly political as it is, is doomed to failure. This is because the president’s exercise of diplomatic relations is protected by the Constitution itself, and as even the great liberal criminal law scholar Alan Dershowitz has made clear, it cannot possibly amount to a high crime or misdemeanor. Moreover, the signs are now evident (from the fact that 50 Republican Senators have condemned the secretive and one-sided proceedings now underway in the House), that a Republican-controlled Senate will never vote by a two-third’s majority to remove Mr. Trump.

And, here's the Hail Mary pass

If the revelations of wrongdoing are as dramatic as expected, they just might shock Americans into realizing that the 2020 elections ought to be about returning this country to more honest, and, perhaps, more modest federal government, and restoring the original Constitutional doctrines of federalism and separation of powers.

One can only hope.

Supreme Court Doesn't Care About the Law or the Constitution. It's a policy making body.

The inside story of how John Roberts negotiated to save Obamacare.

The discussion focused on the individual insurance mandate and Congress' power to regulate commerce. Roberts went first, as was the custom, laying out his views. He emphasized that he believed the Constitution's commerce clause never was intended to cover inactivity, such as the refusal to buy insurance.

After the chief, conservative Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas offered their views. Like Roberts, they thought Congress' commerce authority did not cover an individual's decision to forgo -- rather than obtain -- health insurance.

So far so good; what does the Constitution say?

The votes of the liberals were known, too. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, fifth in seniority, was the first to cast a vote to uphold the individual mandate. She believed Supreme Court precedent demanded the law be found constitutional. She was followed by Justice Stephen Breyer, who agreed with her.

What court precedent? Let's not kid each other, they like the policy and the constitution was not goint to get in the way..

Roberts did not want the entire law to fall. A pro-business conservative, he understood the importance of the insurance industry to US businesses, and he was genuinely concerned about invalidating an entire law that had been approved through the democratic process to solve the intractable health care problem.

There goes the constitution; the focus became the policy.

Breyer and Kagan had voted in the private March conference to uphold the new Medicaid requirement, and their votes had been unequivocal. But they were pragmatists. If there was a chance that Roberts would cast the critical vote to uphold the central plank of Obamacare -- and negotiations in May were such that they still considered that a shaky proposition -- they were willing to meet him partway. ..

Perhaps Roberts' move was born of a concern for the business of health care. Perhaps he had worries about his own legitimacy and legacy, intertwined with concerns about the legitimacy and legacy of the court. Perhaps his change of heart really arose from a sudden new understanding of congressional taxing power. However the chief would explain it -- and he has not explained it beyond his written opinion -- the case added a new dimension to a man who insisted that he always decided cases based on the law.

Viewed only through a judicial lens, his moves were not consistent, and his legal arguments were not entirely coherent. But he brought people and their different interests together. His moves may have been good for the country at a time of division and a real crisis in health care, even as they engendered, in the years since, anger, confusion and distrust.

We’re old enough to remember when RINOs and Dems asserted that Trump would wreck the US Constitution.

So far, Dems have proposed to eliminate the Electoral College, pack the SCOTUS, allow 16 year olds to vote, allow illegals to vote, grant reparations and institute a wealth tax.

Ann Coulter: "THE TRUE HISTORY OF MILLSTONE BABIES"

In which Ann explains why "anchor babies" are not in the constitution.

As the court has explained again and again and again:

"(N)o one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in (the 13th, 14th and 15th) amendments, lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him."

That's why the amendment refers to people who are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States "and of the state wherein they reside." For generations, African-Americans were domiciled in this country. The only reason they weren't citizens was because of slavery, which the country had just fought a civil war to end.

The 14th Amendment fixed that.

The amendment didn't even make Indians citizens. Why? Because it was about freed slaves. Sixteen years after the 14th Amendment was ratified, the Supreme Court held that an American Indian, John Elk, was not a citizen, despite having been born here.

Instead, Congress had to pass a separate law making Indians citizens, which it did, more than half a century after the adoption of the 14th Amendment. (It's easy to miss -- the law is titled: "THE INDIAN CITIZENSHIP ACT OF 1924.") Why would such a law be necessary if simply being born in the U.S. was enough to confer citizenship?

Even today, the children of diplomats and foreign ministers are not granted citizenship on the basis of being born here.

President Trump, unlike his critics, honors black history by recognizing that the whole purpose of the Civil War amendments was to guarantee the rights of freed slaves.

Read the whole thing.

Victor Davis Hanson: "Who and What Threaten the Constitution?"

From American Greatness:

In general, free societies more often become unfree with a whimper, not a bang—and usually due to self-righteous pious movements that always claim the higher moral ground, and justify their extreme means by their self-sacrificing struggle for supposedly noble ends of social justice, equality, and fairness.

Media darlings, not media ogres, receive a veritable free pass to ignore constitutional norms. Champions of bipartisan consensus, “the people,” and the power of big government to do the “right” thing and advance social justice are the more dangerous to watch, not those championing the rights of the individual, and small and less intrusive government. Hillary Clinton, with a $1 billion war chest, a court media, and an array of highly paid pros, not the fly-by-night, improvised Trump campaign, was the expression of big media, big politics, big government, and big money eager to have one of their compliant own in the White House.

Philip II and his idea of Greek ecumenicalism, followed by his son Alexander and his “brotherhood of man,” ended the free Greek polis. The “healer” and consensus builder Augustus did away with the Roman Republic. Hitler claimed he was the good kind of socialist and only wished total power to redress the injustices of Versailles, and, besides, he was an environmentalist, vegetarian, non-smoker, animal lover, and opera buff to boot. Lenin promised an end to czarist oppression and asked only enough force to bring fairness for the little guy. Mao Zedong claimed he only wished to have the clout to end foreign contamination, landed oppression, and Mandarism and selflessly would do it all for the proverbial people. All of these revolutionaries believed in violating past norms of accepted lawful custom and practice to “save” the country.

Today’s most destructive totalitarians in Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, and Venezuela are adored by a toady press and are said to do their all for “the people.” Such revolutionaries do not oppose the power of the permanent administrative state, but seek to weaponize and collude with it.

The point is not that Trump is a saint, or that Obama, for example, a sinner. Rather, when the media become unctuous and complicit with those whom they are supposed to audit and cross-examine, then politicians and political movements—especially those voicing utopian bromides—grow ever more emboldened, empowered and occasionally quite dangerous. No mainstream media talking head has yet declared Trump a “God” or praised his pant creases. For all Trump’s bluster and ego, he has not reacted in kind promising, as some sort of deity, to reduce the planet’s temperature and lower its seas.

Try a thought experiment. What if Donald Trump tomorrow was caught ordering Attorney General Jeff Sessions to monitor the electronic footprints of Associated Press reporters, or to surveille CNN’s Jim Acosta and his grandparents?

What if Trump had just jailed a videomaker on trumped up charges of violating parole for making a left-wing internet video that he found an obstacle to his fabricated government version of a disaster overseas?

What exactly would the New York Times do if it were found out that George Soros and the Steyer brothers were being hounded by a right-wing version of Lois Lerner and a politicized ring at the IRS?

What would our media—92 percent negative in its current coverage of Trump—say if the Trump FBI, Justice Department, and CIA, were collectively actively working with the Trump 2020 campaign to monitor (as in the notion of “insurance”) rumors that a Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, or Elizabeth Warren was allegedly colluding with the Iranians, Chinese, or other foreign nationals to alter the upcoming election—or so they would allege?

Read the whole thing.

Counterattack Hard Against Liberal Attacks on Our Gun Rights and Other Civil Liberties

Kurt Schlichter:

We’re now supposed to give up our guns because it's the 21st Century, people, and the cops will totally protect us and oh, you can’t dare criticize the FBI for failing to disarm yet another ticking time bomb and what kind of crazy nut would expect a police officer to actually confront a gunman?

I guess we both have blood on our hands for having this chat - the real heroes are Sheriff Israel and the Broward Cowards. Because of the children or something.

But at CPAC, the president was super clear - he is not wavering on the Second Amendment. Sure, gooey puff boys like Marco Rubio are eager to roll over and show belly, but a hard line on our rights is not going anywhere. Hey Little Marco, this is the Republican Party, not the Foam Party.

Rubio, displaying the political savvy that convinced him to don a studded leather collar and be led around on a leash by Chuck Schumer, talked Congressman Brian Mast into rolling too. Suckers. The New York Times was delighted that Mast agreed to commit career suicide by sticking his constituents in the back when he tried to leverage his being a vet into somehow qualifying him to tell everyone else what their rights are. Amazing, but those of us vets who don’t dance to the libs’ tune never seem to get a Golden Ticket to the NYT op-ed page....

We have our own political power, and we need to exercise it - ruthlessly. The first step is an executive order at the federal level directing that no federal contract can go to any company that discriminates against an organization based on its advocacy or exercise of an enumerated constitutional right. We wouldn't allow a company to do business with our federal government if it discriminated on other grounds, so why should we do it discriminate on political grounds? Why should taxpayers be subsidizing people who hate them? When those government employees start walking past the Hertz and National counters, the liberal jerks who run those companies are going to find that they're posing and posturing has a price.

Next, Congress needs to pass a comprehensive non-discrimination regime designed to protect us into law and allow individuals and entities the right to sue any business that discriminates on the basis of the advocacy for exercise of any constitutional right. We need to make sure there are huge penalties for non-compliance – how about $1 million a day? We also need attorneys’ fees provisions for the plaintiffs as well, because we want to turn lawyers into bounty hunters seeking out these posers who are doing so much damage to our society by collaborating in the suppression of speech that the elite does not approve of.

We could call it the “Civil Rights Anti-Discrimination Act” and dare the Democrats to vote against it. Now, of course, due to the filibuster, it might be tough to pass a law protecting our rights through Congress, but we own about 30 legislatures. That's 30 states that can each outlaw this kind of discrimination within their borders. So Hertz and National, welcome to a whole bunch of lawsuits in Texas and Wyoming and elsewhere. But hey, it's worth it because of the children, right?

The liberals are also pushing venues like Amazon and Roku to drop NRA News - to actively censor a news outlet because they don't like its agenda (I appear regularly on it). The difference between government censorship and corporate censorship is no difference at all. Again, the federal government and the states have the power to regulate. Once again, we must ban discrimination on the basis of advocacy for or exercise of constitutional rights, and empower individual plaintiffs to seek penalties and attorneys’ fees for violations. If these companies really believe what they're doing is right, they can hire lawyers in 30 states.

In fact, it’s clearly time to consider antitrust investigations and other legislation designed to bring to heel the massive, unaccountable, agenda-driven big Silicon Valley players.

Now, this all doesn't sound very conservative does it? Well, that's the response Democrats are counting on, that we will pretend the old rules still apply while they're jamming us with the new ones. These attacks are a fundamental assault on the liberty of normal Americans. We need to recognize them for what they are, and we need to exercise our own political power to defeat this attack on our ability to participate in our own governance. Bake us a cake, jerks. We warned you – you are going to hate the new rules.

SUPREME COURT: THERE’S NO “HATE SPEECH” EXCEPTION TO 1ST AMENDMENT

Major blow to academia.

The Supreme Court ruled this morning that the government cannot deny full trademark protection to allegedly racially offensive trademarks. The opinions are here.

The case involved an Asian-American band called “The Slants.” It sought federal registration of that mark. The Patent and Trademark Office denied the application under a Lanham Act provision prohibiting trademarks that may “disparage. . .or bring. . .into contemp[t] or disrepute” any “persons, living or dead.”

The Court ruled in favor of The Slants. The vote was unanimous, though the Court split 4-4 on some of the finer points.

In Fourth Circuit Hearing on Obama's Travel Restrictions, ACLU Lawyer Admits, Sure, This Executive Order Might Be Legal if Hillary Clinton Signed It

Via Ace of Spades

Well, this was all pretty much implied from the lower courts' reasoning -- which always centered not on the law itself, but on statements Trump made (or was alleged by Rudy Giulliani to have made).

Minus those statements, then the EO passes muster. It's facially constitutional. But they're saying a bad man wants to pass it, which makes it unconstitutional by prior statements.

There is no such category. Courts distinguish between a law, order, or rule being facially unconstitutional -- the law or order or rule's own words themselves contain unconstitutional directives -- and unconstitutional-as-applied, where a mandate may be written in a way that is perfectly constitutional, but as actually applied by officials, is discriminatory. A good example of this, which courts aren't bothered by at all, is that "hate crimes" legislation is mostly executed in an unconstitutional-as-applied way: It's mostly a crime that only white people can be guilty of.

But while those distinctions exist, there is no "facially constitutional but unconstitutional because Trump is a very bad man who uses very bad words" category.

And in fact you can't even fault this directive for being discriminatory -- Presidents are permitted to be discriminatory as regards non-US-citizens coming into the country.

The ACLU lawyer, quizzed by judges on this strange new doctrine they were arguing for, admitted that sure, Hillary Clinton signing the same EO would be perfectly constitutional, because she's not a Very Bad Man like Trump.

The Revolt of the Judges

Glenn Reynolds:

They are setting Trump up for a Jacksonian moment. And he knows it, too, as his wreath-laying signals. This will not end well.

Ace of Spades:

If judges aren't going to accept that Trump is actually the President and has all the powers they were more than willing to concede Obama had (way more than willing, actually), then why should Trump accept that the judges have the powers they believe they do?

Josh Blackmkan asks:

".. whether the judiciary has decided to treat Trump as if he's not really president. He says that judges who seem to be taking their cues as to how to read Trump's public statements (in the most uncharitable light possible, of course) are practicing a new judicial doctrine which might be called "MSNBC deference."

The Liberals in the judiciary appear to question Trump's legitimacy by questioning his motives rather than judging based on the law.  They view his as fundamentally different.  If they are right, they may not understand that Trump will not accept their legitimacy if they do not accept his.   trump is different; he's taken on the entire bipartisan Ruling Class and so far he's winning.  The judges may be creating their own nemesis.

After the Republic

A MUST READ essay by Angelo Codevilla ...

The overriding question of 2016 has been how eager the American people are to reject the bipartisan class that has ruled this country contrary to its majority’s convictions. Turned out, eager enough to throw out the baby with the dirty bathwater. The ruling class’s united front in response to the 2008 financial crisis had ignited the Tea Party’s call for adherence to the Constitution, and led to elections that gave control of both houses of Congress to the Republican Party. But as Republicans became full partners in the ruling class’s headlong rush in what most considered disastrous directions, Americans lost faith in the Constitution’s power to restrain the wrecking of their way of life.

From the primary season’s outset, the Democratic Party’s candidates promised even more radical “transformations.” When, rarely, they have been asked what gives them the right to do such things they have acted as if the only answer were Nancy Pelosi’s reply to whether the Constitution allows the government to force us into Obamacare: “Are you kidding? Are you kidding?”

On the Republican side, 17 hopefuls promised much, without dealing with the primordial fact that, in today’s America, those in power basically do what they please. Executive orders, phone calls, and the right judge mean a lot more than laws. They even trump state referenda. Over the past half-century, presidents have ruled not by enforcing laws but increasingly through agencies that write their own rules, interpret them, and punish unaccountably—the administrative state. As for the Supreme Court, the American people have seen it invent rights where there were none—e.g., abortion—while trammeling ones that had been the republic’s spine, such as the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech. The Court taught Americans that the word “public” can mean “private” (Kelo v. City of New London), that “penalty” can mean “tax” (King v. Burwell), and that holding an opinion contrary to its own can only be due to an “irrational animus” (Obergefell v. Hodges).

What goes by the name “constitutional law” has been eclipsing the U.S. Constitution for a long time. But when the 1964 Civil Rights Act substituted a wholly open-ended mandate to oppose “discrimination” for any and all fundamental rights, it became the little law that ate the Constitution. Now, because the Act pretended that the commerce clause trumps the freedom of persons to associate or not with whomever they wish, and is being taken to mean that it trumps the free exercise of religion as well, bakers and photographers are forced to take part in homosexual weddings. A commission in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts reported that even a church may be forced to operate its bathrooms according to gender self-identification because it “could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public.” California came very close to mandating that Catholic schools admit homosexual and transgender students or close down. The Justice Department is studying how to prosecute on-line transactions such as vacation home rental site Airbnb, Inc., that fall afoul of its evolving anti-discrimination standards.

This arbitrary power, whose rabid guard-dog growls and barks: “Racist! Sexist! Homophobic!” has transformed our lives by removing restraints on government. The American Bar Association’s new professional guidelines expose lawyers to penalties for insufficient political correctness. Performing abortions or at least training to perform them may be imposed as a requirement for licensing doctors, nurses, and hospitals that offer services to the general public.

....

We have stepped over the threshold of a revolution. It is difficult to imagine how we might step back, and futile to speculate where it will end. Our ruling class’s malfeasance, combined with insult, brought it about. Donald Trump did not cause it and is by no means its ultimate manifestation. Regardless of who wins in 2016, this revolution’s sentiments will grow in volume and intensity, and are sure to empower politicians likely to make Americans nostalgic for Donald Trump’s moderation.

Read the whole thing.

The FBI Illegally Refuses to Supply Congress With the Unredacted 302 Interview Notes from Hillary's Interview; Jason Chaffetz Has Something to Say About That

Sadness, shame and blame at Yale over First Amendment repeal video

Members of the Yale University community on Thursday responded with a mix of embarrassment, sadness and literal disbelief to a viral video showing students there freely signing a petition that calls for the repeal of the First Amendment.

“It numbs the mind that dozens of Yale students could sign a petition to revoke the First Amendment,” freshman Grant Richardson wrote FoxNews.com in an email. “Besides the fact that the First Amendment lists the most fundamentally important rights we hold as Americans, it is rather embarrassing to think Yalies could not see the irony that they were petitioning away – their right to petition.”

And here's the reaction from a Yale Professor, which explains why Yale students will enthusiastically destroy free speech, a free press, the free exercise of religion, the right to freely assemble and the right to petition.

A member of the Yale Law School faculty also responded to the video, and wasn’t happy with what he saw.

“It’s a sad commentary on the present state of public opinion,” said Professor Bruce Ackerman. “This is a moment at which fundamental principles are under assault from both the left and the right.”

“The collection of 50 Yalie signatures for a petition to repeal the First Amendment is a sad commentary on the present state of public opinion.”

But Ackerman said he also felt the First Amendment debate wasn’t as important as more pressing issues.

“It does not remotely pose the same danger as the support of all Republican candidates, with the exception of Rand Paul, for President Obama’s unilateral war against ISIS in plain violation of the Constitution,” Ackerman said.

That part of the professor’s response didn’t sit well with Horowitz.

“This is exactly part of the problem. Why would Yale students, or university students anywhere in this country, feel a fidelity to our fundamental beliefs, when their professors try to shoehorn in anti-American sentiment at every opportunity?” he told FoxNews.com.

And, of course, the same people who defend the abortionists selling baby parts at Planned Parenthood abortion clinics have come out from under their rocks and claim that the video is doctored.

Yale University’s spokesman had a very different reaction to the video, essentially saying he did not believe the accuracy of what he saw.

“There are a number of heavily edited prank videos like this one circulating lately in which someone surreptitiously records people while pretending to support a position that they actually oppose, and trying to get the individuals they speak with to agree with them,” Tom Conroy wrote in an email. “I have to acknowledge that I don’t take them seriously as an accurate representation of what every person interviewed or shown in the videos believes.”

In the video, in which he is shown clearly explaining to several students that the petition calls for repeal of the First Amendment, Horowitz said he was able to quickly collect nearly 60 signatures in less than an hour. Among those who signed were students who appeared to enthusiastically support the abolition of their First Amendment rights.

“I think it’s really awesome that you’re out here,” one man says in the video.

Yale fail: Ivy leaguers sign 'petition' to repeal First Amendment

Looking to understand just how controversial the debate over free speech on our college campuses really is, filmmaker and satirist Ami Horowitz recently traveled to Yale University, one of our nation’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, to speak directly to students.

“I decided to take this campus free speech debate to its logical conclusion,” said Horowitz, who asked students if they’d sign a petition calling for an outright repeal of the First Amendment. “The result was this unbelievable display of total stupidity.”

In fact, Horowitz discovered a solid majority of the students asked willingly signed the petition, with several expressing their enthusiastic approval for his anti-First Amendment efforts.

We are all about the Constitution

Until Saudi Arabia is forcefully and directly confronted over its international financing of extremism, events like Paris and San Bernardino will continue and multiply. That’s a fact, however, that the president has yet to face up to; it goes against every fiber of his painfully politically correct world view. That world view, however, is getting Americans killed. The oath of office is clear about what the president’s overriding duty is:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The United States is not a nation-state in the sense the European countries are; it is not a country of blood relations, but of fealty to a document of western, Enlightenment principles regarding the relationship of citizen and state. By defending the Constitution — something Obama is increasingly loath to do — the president is defending the country. Because the Constitution, not some vague leftist bromide about our “values” or “the arc of history,” is exactly who we are.

There's more:

Alas, Barack Obama -- who aside from a brief seat-warming stint in the U.S. Senate as the Chicago Machine's hand-picked tomato can has held no significant public office -- cannot win the war against ISIS because he refuses to call the enemy by name. He refuses to admit the motivational force of Islamic supremacist doctrine. He refuses to untie the hands of the military. Obsessed with such domestic ephemera as "climate change" and unconstitutional attempt to disarm the American people in the face of grave, individual danger, he cannot bring himself to see the truth, even as he becomes a national laughingstock.

Nor can he bring himself to uphold his oath of office. There are words for men like him, and none of them is pretty.

Is mainstream Islam compatible with the Constitution?

The media insists that only "radical" Muslims are a danger to US constitutional law. Are the devout residents of Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iraq, Brunei, Pakistan, Nigeria, and other Muslim countries all "radical?" Would you consider stoning homosexuals to death - a practice in Muslim countries - radical or mainstream? Do you have a problem with putting apostates to death if they leave their religion - a practice in Muslim countries? Should women only be able to go out of their homes if accompanied by male relatives - a practice in Muslim countries? How about women wearing head coverings that hide their hair, or wearing a hijab?  And what about alcoholic drinks, free speech, freedom to practice Christianity or Judaism?   Notice what's happened to Christians in the part of the world where their faith was born.  

The Roberts Court

One of the most common beliefs about the way that John Roberts has voted on ObamaCare is that he's doing so to preserve the Supreme Court from ferocious attacks by the Liberal elite.  Commentators beleive that Roberts caved to political pressure, fearing that opposing Obama and the left would "de-legitimize the Court."

There is no question that the major organs of public opinion would have been hysterical if ObamaCare had been gutted or gay marriage had not put on the same pedestal as abortion on demand.

So Roberts chose to protect the Supreme Court from the wrath of the New York Times and NPR. The Constitution was left to fend for itself.