A bill expected to pass the House today with overwhelming Democratic support would accomplish something peculiar for a liberal republic in the 21st century: It would partly disenfranchise a portion of one state’s residents, create a parallel government for those meeting a legislated criterion of ethnic purity, and would portend the transfer of public assets, land, and political power from those who fail to satisfy the standard of ethnic purity to those who do. For these reasons and many more, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act richly deserves opposition.

Apparently, this one doesn’t. Democrat Mass. Senatorial candidate Martha Coakley’s aide pushes Weekly Standard reporter down, then continues to assault him as he seeks to question Coakley. Story here.  Let’s see, assault and battery, civil rights violations . . . yes, yes, all kinds of fun things to consider here. Has Coakley fired this thug? No, she’s blaming the incident on “Republican stalkers.” Good grief.

The reporter thinks this might be the perp.  Hey, Chicago style politics is all the rage these days! And Coakley is the Mass. AG! Holy, Moley!

**UPDATE: BigGovernment.com is saying yes, Michael Meehan is the perp. And surprise, surprise, he’s an Obama appointee – for the Broadcasting Board of Governors which oversees federal news operations like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe no less!! He also worked with NARAL – hey, he’s used to violence. And, you gotta love this line by BIG G:

“His (Meehan’s) Senate confirmation hearing should be a hoot.”

I could not make up much better stuff than this. Thank you Mr. Meehan, you may have just handed the election to Scott Brown.

“Education, after all, is typically described as a core, and possibly the core, state responsibility . . . Homeschooling is now such an entrenched practice, recriminalization is not a viable option in any event.” ~ Robin L. West, Georgetown University Law Center

Not a “viable option?” Well at least I can rest peacefully tonight knowing that jack-booted thugs won’t be knocking my daughter’s door down any time soon to arrest her for teaching “the state’s children.” (My daughter would want to know where the state was when she was going through those labor pains to deliver “their” children. By the way Professor, the youngest one has something stinky in her diaper – could you lend a hand here?) Professor West thinks that more government regulation of homeschooling is a good idea:

As the political philosopher and homeschool critic Robert Reich has persuasively argued, curricular review would give the state a way to ensure that the academic content is such as to protect the children’s interest in both acquiring the necessary skills for active, autonomous, and responsible citizenship in adulthood, and in being exposed to diverse and more liberal ways.

Well, gee whiz, that approach certainly has worked wonders in the public schools, hasn’t it? Diverse and more liberal – that’s what this is really all about. Professor West doesn’t like the fact that “the state” is losing the opportunity to indoctrinate OUR children.  Maybe she’s bucking for Secretary of Education in the Obama administration. More here.

I’m curious to know other peoples’ opinions.  I have yet to make my own, for a number of different reasons.  Is the gay community doing the same thing feminism did, where “equal rights” really meant “the same as”?  In more urban/progressive places, are there really levels of discrimination that merit a march on the Mall (the ultimate form of protest)?  Someone once voiced the opinion that feminism was a way for ugly women to feel important about themselves and get laid.  Is all this gay activism a chance for, in a similar manner, legalized licentiousness? That same (gay) person opined that the only people who would benefit from gay marriage is divorce lawyers. Does the right to marriage (complete with white dress and cake topped with cheesy plastic figurines) constitute as a civil right?

Thoughts?

The truth is that corporate moguls push for tort reform because they have little use for a civil justice system that puts the little guy on the same plane as the rich and powerful. These so-called fiscal conservatives don’t like equal justice.  They want preferential treatment—something they are accustomed to getting from politicians because of their hefty campaign contributions.

Conservatives need to educate themselves about the importance of a civil justice system that protects everyone and treats all litigants—rich and poor alike—as equals before the law.  Furthermore, true conservatives ought to resist attempts to federalize tort law and impose one-size-fits-all solutions to “problems” that are, in large part, the fictional creations of special interest lobbyists seeking to enrich the coffers of their wealthy clients.  Any change in medical malpractice laws should occur at the state level and be tailored to meet conditions in the individual states.  The people in Topeka may approach the same problem differently from the folks in Tallahassee.  They may be experiencing different problems, or perhaps, none at all.  In any event, the residents of Attapulgus, Georgia don’t want Chuck Schumer and Olympia Snow dictating the remedy they can pursue when a doctor leaves a pair of scissors in the site of their incision or causes avoidable brain damage to their newborn.

Tort reform subsidizes wrongdoing by shielding wrongdoers from accountability for the consequences of their misconduct.  It is an affirmative action program for corporate miscreants.  Incorporating tort reform into health care reform will do nothing to cut medical costs.  It is, however, guaranteed to result in more, not fewer, cases of medical malpractice. Furthermore, federalizing tort laws will only result in the accretion of more power in the hands of the central government and the emasculation of the rights of states and individuals.

And the man once called the “first black president” remains deeply wounded by allegations that he made racially insensitive remarks during the campaign, like dismissing Obama’s South Carolina win by comparing it with Jesse Jackson’s victories there in the 1980s.

“None of them ever really took seriously the race rap,” he told me. “They knew it was politics. I had one minister in Texas in the general election come up and put his arm around me.” This was an Obama supporter. “And he came up, threw his arm around me and said, ‘You’ve got to forgive us for that race deal.’ He said, ‘That was out of line.’ But he said, ‘You know, we wanted to win real bad.’ And I said, ‘I got no problem with that.’ I said it’s fine; it’s O.K. And we laughed about it and we went on.”

Well, Bill laughed, I guess, but it was Hillary who took it in the pantsuit.

I was a little surprised the elites and mainstream media didn’t pick up on this, but the answer’s obvious now—they intended to use the same slimy tactic again, this time at the real enemy, the right. If they pulled it on Bill Clinton, what chance do the rest of us have?

No doubt some people are serious in calling Obama’s opponents racist, like that unfortunate puddinhead Jimmy Carter, but for the rest, it’s all just part of the game.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Orwell’s 1984 provides a vivid example of this principle. Religion in Oceania has been wholly abolished, the people live in government-induced squalor, and the state routinely comes between children and their parents, and is working on preventing marriage altogether.

But there are ample historical examples as well.

Consider China: Not much in the way of freedom there. But also for the bulk of the people, there is a lifestyle of crushing poverty, far greater than anything that would be tolerated anywhere in the U.S. Too, religious leaders and foreign missionaries are forced to carry out their work in secret, lest discovery by the state should lead to their incarceration. And the culture of death there has been carried to the extent that the government has imposed a “One Child Policy,” under which couples must be licensed to have more than one child. State-mandated abortions and sterilizations are alarmingly commonplace, and executed criminals, including political prisoners, routinely have their bodies broken up for transplant parts without their consent.

Try to imagine if any one of those factors were to change. If China allowed its religious leaders freedom to preach their various faiths, how long would the dictatorship last? Not long.

If free markets were allowed to flourish and bring prosperity to the masses, how long would the political oppression continue? Not long.

And if the people were allowed to raise their families as they saw fit, and if their culture acknowledged the inherent dignity and right to life of the human being, does anyone imagine that the state could maintain their grip in other areas?

In China, widespread poverty, religious oppression, and the culture of death are the mainstays of the communist system.

An even more extreme example: in the antebellum south, slaves were kept in miserable living conditions. In most states, it was illegal for them even to learn to read the bible; there was little or no organized religious ministry to them. And their marriages were not acknowledged by either the state or their owners. Couples could be — and often were — sold apart, and children could be taken from their parents. Economic depression, religious oppression, and disregard for the dignity of human life were all key to this system.

Now let’s consider a counterexample: Following the French and Indian War, the British government adopted a policy of increased taxation on their American colonies in an effort to make the colonies pay for the cost of the war Britain had fought to defend them.

But the American colonists had a thriving free-market economy. Many of the colonists had become rich, or at least very comfortable (by contemporary standards), and most of the rest had high hopes of doing likewise. The nation was founded on religious freedom, and religious observance was (and remains today) at a greater level than virtually anywhere in the civilized world. There was a rich variety of religious expression, and even religious minorities enjoyed freedom and tolerance unheard of anywhere else. And with only three million people to populate such a vast land area, large families were the rule, not the exception (Benjamin Franklin, for example, was the fifteenth of his father’s seventeen children).

There was never a possibility that such a people would tolerate anything that might approach oppression. Under the circumstances, the American Revolution was inevitable.

Now let us consider the situation in the United States today. Increasing public debt and public budget deficits, and increased taxes, together with the government’s proposals for increased services such as universal healthcare, are causing reasonable people great alarm as they contemplate the future of the American economy, and their prospects for economic liberty.

At the same time, with the current economic downturn, increasing numbers are looking to the government for assistance in difficult times, which tends to exacerbate the underlying problem.

Too, abortion is deemed a “right” in the U.S., unlike virtually anywhere else in the world, and the current administration seems determined to defend that “right” at home, and extend it abroad. Euthanasia is a quietly growing trend, and the government is now adopting a policy to fund research on cells derived from the destruction of human embryos. There is, effectively, no right to life for the unborn, the infirm, the elderly, or the disabled, beyond what their immediate families are prepared to defend.

And the drive towards gay “marriage” has already led to efforts to muzzle the church, such as the recent efforts in Connecticut to pass laws regulating the management of Catholic parishes, and requiring the Church to register as a lobbying organization, lawsuits against religious organizations and individuals who preferred not to provide support to gay “marriage” services, and the anti-Catholic resolutions passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors a fews years ago.

For conservatives today, it is not enough to stand for lower taxes and a strong national defense, laudable as these positions may be.

Wherever tyranny is found, it is accompanied by religious oppression, economic depression, and a culture of death. And wherever these elements are waxing, political freedom will be waning.

The Republican Party must be unwavering in its commitment not only to strong defense and free markets, but also to religious freedom, and to fostering a culture of life. America must have a culture of life, a culture of liberty, and a culture of prosperity. And none of these will survive without both of the others.

(Cross-posted from Thoughts of a Regular Guy)

[W]hen it comes to the race cases before the Supreme Court, too many conservatives abandon both originalism and judicial restraint.

The Voting Rights Act decision was a case in point. Eight justices avoided weighing in on the constitutionality of the law’s requirement that certain jurisdictions, mostly in the South, get Justice Department permission before making any changes to election procedures. Instead they ruled that a utility district in Texas that wanted to be freed from the provision should have an opportunity to try.

But Justice Clarence Thomas went further, declaring the provision unconstitutional. Congress, he argued, was justified in the 1960s in responding to the denial of the voting rights guaranteed by the 15th Amendment, but things have changed and the provision is no longer needed.

Justice Thomas is, in my view, right to consider the law outdated. But is that really for him to say? Congress is the proper body to make that judgment. In 2006, it decided to renew the law for 25 years. Its determination that the law was still necessary may have been mistaken, but it is not clear that the Constitution authorizes judges to second-guess it.

Well, if one believes in judicial review, the Court will always have the authority to “second guess” laws when it believes they potentially conflict with any provision of the Constitution. Treating a subset of states according to different, more onerous standards is at least dubious under basic principles of federalism. I’m not entirely familiar with the jurisprudence or the history with respect to the federal governmnent discriminating against certain states, but I’d wager it’s a great deal more complex and more enlightening to this discussion than Ponnuru lets on.

Moreover, I seriously doubt that the original understanding of the 15th Amendment was that Congress would have absolute free reign in elections, as Ponnuru seems to suggest. Even if that were the intent, however, there was no express language included in the 15th Amendment that would tend to eliminate concerns over federalism (as reflected in the 9th and 10th Amendments).

If Congress’s conclusions were questionable, and countervailing considerations of federalism are at stake, wouldn’t the Supreme Court be neglectful if it didn’t consider striking the Act?

Mr. Ricci probably deserved his promotion and had a right to his day in court. But contrary to what many conservatives insist, that does not mean he should win the case. The legal arguments for his position, as for the invalidation of the Voting Rights Act, are not absurd: they include reasonable readings of Supreme Court precedent. They just aren’t originalist arguments.

To conclude that New Haven acted unconstitutionally is to assume that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment mandated a policy of strict colorblindness by state and local governments. Maybe it should have. But the historical evidence that it did is weak. Certainly the conservatives on the Supreme Court have not tried to argue that it did: originalist analysis has been notably absent from their opinions in affirmative-action cases.

The 14th Amendment wasn’t supposed to guarantee colorblindness, but it was supposed to ensure equal protection under the law between the races.  I’m not sure how you square that with a government decision to deny somebody a promotion that they have earned based upon the color of their skin. Sure, the original understanding of the 14th Amendment allowed for Jim Crow, but it still presumed (albeit irrationally) that separate but equal would be exactly that — still equal. There isn’t even that pretext here.

That’s the obvious response. Perhaps Ponnuru would have a witty retort. I understand the limitations of op-eds; Ponnuru can’t be expected to preemptively ward off every argument.  However, if he can’t even provide a response to the most obvious arguments, he isn’t accomplishing anything but slamming his compatriots on the pages of the New York Times.

Furthermore, as Jonah Goldberg helpfully notes, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does guarantee colorblindness. Whether this is Constitutional or statutory is beside the point — legally, political subdivisions aren’t supposed to discriminate on the basis of race, and judges shouldn’t let them.