The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, our wonderful White House Press Secretary, sent liberals into a tizzy on Monday with her announcement that President Trump is considering revoking the security clearances of several Deep State leaders. John Brennan, a liberal mouthpiece who became Obama’s CIA director after having once voted for the Communist Party for president, would be among the first to lose his security clearance.
Oh my. The Left has not panicked so much since the Election Night returns put Donald Trump into the White House.
Another candidate for revocation is Susan Rice, who was Obama’s national security adviser thought to have improperly obtained the identity of General Michael Flynn on a wiretap. The since-replaced national security adviser H.R. McMaster allowed Rice to retain her security clearance, waiving the customary “need-to-know” requirement to allow Rice unlimited access to anything she ever reviewed or received when in office.
In addition to Brennan and Rice, revocation is being considered for the discredited FBI officials James Comey and Andrew McCabe, the former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden, and the former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. It was Clapper who famously lied under oath to Congress about his secret surveillance program of Americans.
“They’ve politicized, and in some cases, monetized their public service,” explained Sanders to the media on Monday. “Making baseless accusations of an improper relationship with Russia is inappropriate,” Sanders added.
Sanders is precisely right that “the fact that people with security clearances are making these baseless charges provides inappropriate legitimacy to accusations with zero evidence.” Those who repeatedly make false accusations against our Commander-in-Chief are unfit to be trusted with confidential information about our national security.
The Never-Trumpers will always enjoy their First Amendment rights, but they should not have access to our national secrets while they are writing books and profiting from their irresponsible, false claims about our president. Some of them respond by saying their ability to see classified information has already been terminated, but those security clearances could be easily reinstated unless Trump revokes them.
Americans voted for a new direction for our country under President Trump, in repudiation of the path that Obama was taking us, so why are the losers still around pretending to speak with authority? Many Americans are probably wondering why the security clearances of these acolytes of Obama were not fully revoked long ago.
Phyllis Schlafly often criticized past Republican presidents who failed to “clean house” and replace the supporters of their defeated opponents. She extracted a promise from President Ronald Reagan that he would never appoint a Deep Stater from the Nixon-Ford era, Henry Kissinger, to anything of significance, and Reagan kept his promise.
Tossing out the entrenched insiders who are so determined to defeat President Trump requires, at a minimum, taking away the special authority they unjustifiably continue to enjoy. John Brennan and James Clapper would still be able to pontificate all they like on television, but they should not be able to do so with the implied authority of an active security clearance.
Late last Friday, in a delayed release to avoid the news cycle, the Deep State finally partially complied with a court order to hand over its FISA application for wiretaps of a former adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016, Carter Page. The heavily redacted, secret application was for repeated wiretaps of Carter Page’s phone, in an unsuccessful attempt by the Deep State to catch Trump in a misstep on a secretly recorded line.
FISA stands for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which authorizes secret proceedings to order wiretaps that would not ordinarily be allowed. This shadow system enabling investigators to obtain wiretaps from a secret court has grown ever since, with no meaningful check or balance.
The FISA application to wiretap the Trump adviser is filled with innuendo and false allegations that came from the Hillary Clinton campaign. Wiretaps of someone connected with a presidential campaign, on such a flimsy basis, bring new meaning to the term “rubber stamp” in describing how the FISA court grants whatever the Deep State demands.
Allies of Brennan, Clapper, and the others, protest that President Trump may lack the authority to revoke their security clearances, but the power of the president to do so can hardly be doubted. They may run to court to enjoin the president on this, but hardly any Supreme Court Justice would rule against the presidential power to decide, in his own discretion, who should not have a security clearance.
“Mr. Strzok — as I understand — has lost his security clearance,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared last month about the disgraced FBI official Peter Strzok who stated he would “stop” Trump from becoming president. Trump should take similar action to ensure that others like him do not continue to have special access to our nation’s most confidential information.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
Monday, July 30, 2018
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Trump’s Remarkable Press Conference
by John and Andy Schlafly
President Trump’s press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin was remarkable in how Trump refused to pay homage to liberal fiction about hackers stealing the last election. Instead, Trump went on the offensive and laid blame for deteriorating relations with Russia where blame is due: at the doorstep of Mueller’s delusional investigation.
Many on the Left dislike Russia now because it is an increasingly Christian country that changed the name of Leningrad to Saint Petersburg and even enacts pro-life laws. Communism was overthrown in Russia more than a quarter-century ago, and its trend toward conservative values today angers Leftists immensely.
President Trump batted away the anti-Russian questions at the presser in Helsinki, and explained that there was “zero collusion” between hackers and his “clean” campaign that trounced Hillary Clinton in 2016. After more than a year of looking for collusion and not finding any, Mueller’s investigation should be winding down rather than winding up.
But last week, in a transparent attempt to disrupt the Trump-Putin summit, Mueller indicted the equivalent of 12 more ham sandwiches. Elusive hackers, a high-tech counterpart to witches of yesteryear, supposedly entered the Democratic National Committee’s computers when no one was looking and had no discernible impact on any election results.
Mueller was never given a blank check to investigate thousands of hackers, who may merely be teenage boys engaging in mischief on the internet from the basement of their parents’ homes. Mueller was authorized to investigate alleged collusion by the Trump campaign, of which there was no evidence, and tens of millions of wasted taxpayer dollars later, there is still no such evidence.
So far Mueller has indicted 25 Russian individuals and three Russian companies on charges that Mueller knows he will never have to prove in a court of law. At one hearing an attorney pointed out to the judge how one of the companies did not even exist at the time it was alleged to have done wrongdoing.
Senator Rand Paul stands with President Trump in repeatedly criticizing Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt,” pointing out that Trump’s alleged nefarious ties with Russia are a “hoax.” On Sunday, Senator Paul explained that it is a “waste of time” to attempt to penalize Putin for alleged interference by Russian hackers in American elections.
Meanwhile, Never-Trumpers came out of the woodwork once again to try to find fault with Trump. Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, an ally of the Koch brothers and other Never-Trumpers, declared from the Senate floor that “everyone in this body should be disgusted by what happened in Helsinki.”
Sen. Sasse himself has an abysmal approval rating in the strongly conservative state of Nebraska, as Never-Trumper Sen. Jeff Flake has in Arizona. Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, a Trump supporter, is being urged to run against Sasse in two years but so far Ricketts has declined in order to focus first on another term as governor.
Retiring congressman Trey Gowdy, a rising star until he opposed Trump, has apparently also fallen for Mueller’s indictment stunts. Gowdy absurdly suggested that Trump should ask Putin where the 25 Russian witches, that is, hackers, can be picked up.
Gowdy has given Mueller more job security than anyone else in D.C., by implicitly inviting him to spend years indicting more ham sandwiches. No problem, the American taxpayer will be stuck with the tab of tens of millions of dollars.
President Trump’s takedown of the media concerning Mueller is an encore to draining the swamp of the North American Treaty Organization (NATO). That entrenched bureaucracy has been bilking the American taxpayer for years while we get nothing in return.
NATO developed as a counterweight to the communist Soviet Union, but with Russia becoming more conservative than Europe it is unclear why we are still spending billions on NATO. Its largest country, Germany, is dependent on Russia for natural gas and no amount of American troops in Europe can force Russia to turn that pipeline on if she were one day to shut it off.
“Germany is totally controlled by Russia, because they will be getting between 60 and 70 percent of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline,” observed Trump at the opening of the recent NATO summit. “It’s a very bad thing for NATO, and I don’t think it should have happened,” he properly explained.
NATO member Poland, also a formerly communist country that is increasingly conservative, immediately praised Trump’s criticisms of Germany’s self-defeating globalism. Poland is buying natural gas from the United States and President Andrzej Duda astutely observed that “one of the most important goals for the European Union in the energy sector” should be to avoid dependency on any particular foreign country.
Globalists are not pleased by President Trump’s one-two punch abroad. But standing against globalism plays well with the American voter, as it should.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
Friday, July 13, 2018
Europe is losing its culture
News from Europe:
Mr Trump told The Sun: “I have great love for countries in Europe.
“Don’t forget, essentially I’m a product of the European Union, between Scotland and Germany.
“Right? My father Germany, my mother Scotland.
Trump says the wave of migrants from the Middle East and Africa is permanently changing the continent
But in a controversial outburst, he added: “I think what has happened to Europe is a shame.
“Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a shame.
“I think it changed the fabric of Europe and, unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was and I don’t mean that in a positive way.
“So I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad.
“I think you are losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist ten or 15 years ago.”
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Trump Cements Legacy with SCOTUS Pick
The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly
With his second conservative nomination to the Supreme Court, President Trump has already exceeded Ronald Reagan. Brett Kavanaugh is stellar on immigration and sovereignty, the life issue, and the Second Amendment.
Trump made this look easy, but liberals did everything they could to dissuade him from selecting Brett Kavanaugh to fill the vacancy left by Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court. A coordinated, sophisticated campaign to criticize Kavanaugh from the right was both insincere and deceptive.
The tiny Never-Trump wing of the Republican Party does not like how Kavanaugh has long agreed with Trump on core issues. Unlike Kavanaugh’s liberal rivals for nomination to the Supreme Court, he has participated in more than 3,800 cases and unflinchingly defended principles loathed by liberals.
How refreshing it is to actually have a Supreme Court nominee who supports American sovereignty, and does not defer to international law! Writing alone as he has often had to do on the liberal D.C. Circuit, Judge Kavanaugh has explained that the War Powers Clause is not restricted by international law.
That was in a 2016 decision which considered a challenge to a military commission by Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman Al Bahlul, who was convicted as the personal assistant to Osama bin Laden. Judge Kavanaugh stood strong against the lawsuit, as the entire Court of Appeals should have.
In another case that began in 2007, Judge Kavanaugh dissented from a decision that gave illegal aliens the same rights as American workers in forming unions for collective bargaining. Kavanaugh explained in dissent that “an illegal immigrant worker is not an ’employee’ under the NLRA for the simple reason that, ever since 1986, an illegal immigrant worker is not a lawful ’employee’ in the United States.”
On the Second Amendment, Judge Kavanaugh was on the panel that heard a challenge to DC's strict gun controls after the Supreme Court established an individual right under the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms. The majority of that panel then upheld the gun control as courts do across the country now.
Judge Kavanaugh strongly dissented from that pro-gun-control decision, and wrote in favor of a Second Amendment that should be defended as strongly by courts as the First Amendment is. Justice Clarence Thomas will have a strong ally on the Supreme Court for the Second Amendment once Kavanaugh is confirmed.
None of the other eight justices on the Supreme Court, including Neil Gorsuch, would join Justice Thomas’s dissent in February decrying how gun control laws are being upheld by Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court is refusing to accept those cases to review and reverse. The stark reality is that the Supreme Court has not taken a real Second Amendment case in years, and lower courts have gotten the message that they can uphold gun control laws without fear of being reversed.
Trump’s brilliant nomination of Kavanaugh to the High Court changes that. We can expect Kavanaugh to call out his colleagues if they continue to duck Second Amendment appeals, and his strong legal reasoning should help protect that fundamental right against further erosion.
On the life issue, liberals are of course sharpening their knives to try to block Kavanaugh from confirmation by insisting that he might overturn Roe v. Wade. But that is a very tough sell by the Left, as young people are increasingly pro-life and nearly a half-dozen Democratic Senators are running for reelection in pro-life states that Trump carried by a landslide.
The issue of Roe v. Wade has never sunk a nominee in the Senate, despite all the hoopla by pro-abortion feminists pretending that they can block a nominee on that issue. They failed in trying to block Justice Clarence Thomas on that issue, and were unable to block the confirmation of John Roberts or Samuel Alito, either.
We hope that Kavanaugh does not grovel to pro-abortion senators as they demand reassurances that the fallacy of Roe v. Wade be enshrined forever even though it has absolutely no basis in the Constitution. Kavanaugh need not answer questions about the issue, just as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg set the precedent herself for declining to answer specific questions about cases.
The isolated criticisms of Kavanaugh by the Never-Trump crowd have been unjustified. His ruling to uphold a narrow part of a campaign finance law relating to political parties is not a core issue to the conservative movement, and certainly not a basis for opposing his nomination.
Justice Anthony Kennedy turned to the right in his final year on the bench, both in his decisions and in allowing Trump to fill his vacancy. It is unlikely that Justice Kennedy would find anything to criticize in this nomination of Kavanaugh for the seat that Kennedy is leaving, and neither should any Republican or moderate Democrat.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
by John and Andy Schlafly
With his second conservative nomination to the Supreme Court, President Trump has already exceeded Ronald Reagan. Brett Kavanaugh is stellar on immigration and sovereignty, the life issue, and the Second Amendment.
Trump made this look easy, but liberals did everything they could to dissuade him from selecting Brett Kavanaugh to fill the vacancy left by Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court. A coordinated, sophisticated campaign to criticize Kavanaugh from the right was both insincere and deceptive.
The tiny Never-Trump wing of the Republican Party does not like how Kavanaugh has long agreed with Trump on core issues. Unlike Kavanaugh’s liberal rivals for nomination to the Supreme Court, he has participated in more than 3,800 cases and unflinchingly defended principles loathed by liberals.
How refreshing it is to actually have a Supreme Court nominee who supports American sovereignty, and does not defer to international law! Writing alone as he has often had to do on the liberal D.C. Circuit, Judge Kavanaugh has explained that the War Powers Clause is not restricted by international law.
That was in a 2016 decision which considered a challenge to a military commission by Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman Al Bahlul, who was convicted as the personal assistant to Osama bin Laden. Judge Kavanaugh stood strong against the lawsuit, as the entire Court of Appeals should have.
In another case that began in 2007, Judge Kavanaugh dissented from a decision that gave illegal aliens the same rights as American workers in forming unions for collective bargaining. Kavanaugh explained in dissent that “an illegal immigrant worker is not an ’employee’ under the NLRA for the simple reason that, ever since 1986, an illegal immigrant worker is not a lawful ’employee’ in the United States.”
On the Second Amendment, Judge Kavanaugh was on the panel that heard a challenge to DC's strict gun controls after the Supreme Court established an individual right under the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms. The majority of that panel then upheld the gun control as courts do across the country now.
Judge Kavanaugh strongly dissented from that pro-gun-control decision, and wrote in favor of a Second Amendment that should be defended as strongly by courts as the First Amendment is. Justice Clarence Thomas will have a strong ally on the Supreme Court for the Second Amendment once Kavanaugh is confirmed.
None of the other eight justices on the Supreme Court, including Neil Gorsuch, would join Justice Thomas’s dissent in February decrying how gun control laws are being upheld by Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court is refusing to accept those cases to review and reverse. The stark reality is that the Supreme Court has not taken a real Second Amendment case in years, and lower courts have gotten the message that they can uphold gun control laws without fear of being reversed.
Trump’s brilliant nomination of Kavanaugh to the High Court changes that. We can expect Kavanaugh to call out his colleagues if they continue to duck Second Amendment appeals, and his strong legal reasoning should help protect that fundamental right against further erosion.
On the life issue, liberals are of course sharpening their knives to try to block Kavanaugh from confirmation by insisting that he might overturn Roe v. Wade. But that is a very tough sell by the Left, as young people are increasingly pro-life and nearly a half-dozen Democratic Senators are running for reelection in pro-life states that Trump carried by a landslide.
The issue of Roe v. Wade has never sunk a nominee in the Senate, despite all the hoopla by pro-abortion feminists pretending that they can block a nominee on that issue. They failed in trying to block Justice Clarence Thomas on that issue, and were unable to block the confirmation of John Roberts or Samuel Alito, either.
We hope that Kavanaugh does not grovel to pro-abortion senators as they demand reassurances that the fallacy of Roe v. Wade be enshrined forever even though it has absolutely no basis in the Constitution. Kavanaugh need not answer questions about the issue, just as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg set the precedent herself for declining to answer specific questions about cases.
The isolated criticisms of Kavanaugh by the Never-Trump crowd have been unjustified. His ruling to uphold a narrow part of a campaign finance law relating to political parties is not a core issue to the conservative movement, and certainly not a basis for opposing his nomination.
Justice Anthony Kennedy turned to the right in his final year on the bench, both in his decisions and in allowing Trump to fill his vacancy. It is unlikely that Justice Kennedy would find anything to criticize in this nomination of Kavanaugh for the seat that Kennedy is leaving, and neither should any Republican or moderate Democrat.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
Sunday, July 8, 2018
An American city speaks Spanish
The Trump-hating Wash. Post
‘An all-American city that speaks Spanish’: Immigration isn’t a problem for this Texas town — it’s a way of life ...In case you get the impression that McAllen is a paradise, check out this:
But now this town built on immigration has become ground zero for the nation’s nastiest political battle in the angry summer of 2018. ...
The [ICE] policy is seen as unwanted and unfair in this border city of 142,000 whose population is 90 percent Hispanic and so fully bilingual that roadside anti-littering signs say “No dumping basura” (trash). ...
Darling said that although McAllen is often portrayed as a “dusty border town,” it is a vibrant industrial hub closely linked to factories across the border in the much larger industrial city of Reynosa. ...
“It’s really strange,” he said. “This is not who we are. We need people to wake up.”
Vibrantly multicultural McAllen, Texas is:And this:
- The least educated city in America
- The 3rd most obese city in America
- Worst city in America for residents feeling unsafe
As of 2012, just 50.6% of McAllen area adults under 25 years old had a job — the lowest rate in the country. Unlike many of these cities, the employment rate of young adults has been low for some time, barely falling from 2000 to 2012. One contributing factor may have been the low educational attainment among young adults. Just 4.2% of adults ages 20 to 24 had a college degree, the fourth lowest rate of any major metro area. Residents of the McAllen metro area were also among the nation’s poorest. As of 2012, 34.5% of McAllen area residents lived below the poverty line, the second highest percentage in the nation and more than double the national rate of 15.9%.This is the future of immigration. The open-borders abolish-ICE Democrats are bringing towns like McAllen all across the USA.
Saturday, July 7, 2018
Monday, July 2, 2018
Trump Can Surpass Reagan with His Pick
The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly
President Trump has a golden opportunity to surpass Reagan on the all-important issue of the Supreme Court. With a good pick to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, Trump can achieve what Reagan could not.
As good as Reagan was, two out of his three Supreme Court Justices were disappointments. Reagan’s first selection was his worst, and Trump’s advisors should take care not to allow history to repeat that mistake.
Reagan chose Sandra Day O’Connor after she was inadequately vetted as to her liberal positions on abortion, the Establishment Clause, and feminism. Reagan erred by picking her because she was the first he interviewed for the job, without Reagan bothering to interview the other candidates.
Immediately it was obvious that Reagan and his advisors had blundered. Although Reagan had promised to nominate the first woman to the Supreme Court, his more important promise was to appoint pro-life judges and yet he broke that pledge with his first nominee.
Let’s do as Reagan said when he urged a “trust but verify” approach. Whether by mistake or design, there are several candidates on Trump’s list who should not be nominated for Kennedy’s seat.
One candidate would fail to honor Trump’s pro-life pledge, and another would violate Trump’s Second Amendment pledge. The selection of either would be a devastating setback to the Trump agenda.
Ms. Joan Larsen was a volunteer for Joe Biden for president in 1987, where she helped with mailings and telephoning for Biden's campaign as she admitted on her Senate questionnaire. That political work for Biden is not something a pro-lifer would do.
Ms. Larsen has claimed there is sexism in the career of law, a common refrain by those who support abortion under the guise of equal rights for women. She has encountered Roe v. Wade often, without criticizing it.
Ms. Larsen, who kept her last name after marrying a law professor, is touted by her supporters as having been a law professor herself at the liberal University of Michigan law school. But in fact she never obtained a tenured chair, and her writings are not up to the level of real law professors.
The other candidate on the short list who should not be picked is Raymond Kethledge, whose selection would violate Trump’s pledge on the Second Amendment. Judge Kethledge notably failed to support the “strict scrutiny” standard for the Second Amendment that is essential to safeguarding the right to keep and bear arms.
Sixteen years of court-packing by Presidents Clinton and Obama have left most of our Nation’s population under pro-gun-control Courts of Appeals. The population-heavy 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 9th, 11th, and D.C. Circuits are all dominated by judges who refuse to treat the Second Amendment with the same respect they give to the First Amendment.
Justice Clarence Thomas laments how gun control laws are being upheld by the Courts of Appeals, and then petitions to the Supreme Court to review those decisions are being denied. Justice Thomas explained in February, in his dissent from one of those denials of cert, that the strict scrutiny standard of review used for the First Amendment is not being applied as it should be to the Second Amendment.
Yet there Judge Kethledge was in 2016, refusing to join an opinion by conservative judge Danny Boggs to adopt the strict scrutiny standard of review for the Second Amendment in the Sixth Circuit. Kethledge typifies the problem that Justice Thomas subsequently highlighted in explaining why gun control laws are not being overturned.
In Sherlock Holmes’ classic “Silver Blaze,” the compelling evidence overlooked by Scotland Yard was the failure of a dog to bark when a midnight visitor stole a prized racehorse away from his stall. That meant the dog knew the criminal, and the compelling evidence of silence should be a criterion in vetting the replacement for Justice Kennedy.
Many important decisions are made by the Supreme Court in refusing to grant a petition for cert, as it did earlier this year in denying David Daleiden’s petition concerning the infringement on his rights by the Ninth Circuit. By denying that petition and others like it, the Supreme Court allows anti-life, and anti-Second Amendment, rulings by liberal appellate courts to stand.
We do not need justices who are timid about speaking out or reviewing and reversing liberal decisions that come out of the Ninth and other Circuits. Similarly, we do not want a nominee who is unwilling to overturn prior mistakes of the Supreme Court itself.
Of all the pitiful clamor by Democrats and a few liberal Republicans, the most preposterous is their demand that the nominee refuse to overrule Court precedent. Every year the Supreme Court overturns its own mistakes, as it should, including its recent overruling of its own precedent of 41 years ago that wrongly imposed mandatory dues on government employees.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
by John and Andy Schlafly
President Trump has a golden opportunity to surpass Reagan on the all-important issue of the Supreme Court. With a good pick to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, Trump can achieve what Reagan could not.
As good as Reagan was, two out of his three Supreme Court Justices were disappointments. Reagan’s first selection was his worst, and Trump’s advisors should take care not to allow history to repeat that mistake.
Reagan chose Sandra Day O’Connor after she was inadequately vetted as to her liberal positions on abortion, the Establishment Clause, and feminism. Reagan erred by picking her because she was the first he interviewed for the job, without Reagan bothering to interview the other candidates.
Immediately it was obvious that Reagan and his advisors had blundered. Although Reagan had promised to nominate the first woman to the Supreme Court, his more important promise was to appoint pro-life judges and yet he broke that pledge with his first nominee.
Let’s do as Reagan said when he urged a “trust but verify” approach. Whether by mistake or design, there are several candidates on Trump’s list who should not be nominated for Kennedy’s seat.
One candidate would fail to honor Trump’s pro-life pledge, and another would violate Trump’s Second Amendment pledge. The selection of either would be a devastating setback to the Trump agenda.
Ms. Joan Larsen was a volunteer for Joe Biden for president in 1987, where she helped with mailings and telephoning for Biden's campaign as she admitted on her Senate questionnaire. That political work for Biden is not something a pro-lifer would do.
Ms. Larsen has claimed there is sexism in the career of law, a common refrain by those who support abortion under the guise of equal rights for women. She has encountered Roe v. Wade often, without criticizing it.
Ms. Larsen, who kept her last name after marrying a law professor, is touted by her supporters as having been a law professor herself at the liberal University of Michigan law school. But in fact she never obtained a tenured chair, and her writings are not up to the level of real law professors.
The other candidate on the short list who should not be picked is Raymond Kethledge, whose selection would violate Trump’s pledge on the Second Amendment. Judge Kethledge notably failed to support the “strict scrutiny” standard for the Second Amendment that is essential to safeguarding the right to keep and bear arms.
Sixteen years of court-packing by Presidents Clinton and Obama have left most of our Nation’s population under pro-gun-control Courts of Appeals. The population-heavy 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 9th, 11th, and D.C. Circuits are all dominated by judges who refuse to treat the Second Amendment with the same respect they give to the First Amendment.
Justice Clarence Thomas laments how gun control laws are being upheld by the Courts of Appeals, and then petitions to the Supreme Court to review those decisions are being denied. Justice Thomas explained in February, in his dissent from one of those denials of cert, that the strict scrutiny standard of review used for the First Amendment is not being applied as it should be to the Second Amendment.
Yet there Judge Kethledge was in 2016, refusing to join an opinion by conservative judge Danny Boggs to adopt the strict scrutiny standard of review for the Second Amendment in the Sixth Circuit. Kethledge typifies the problem that Justice Thomas subsequently highlighted in explaining why gun control laws are not being overturned.
In Sherlock Holmes’ classic “Silver Blaze,” the compelling evidence overlooked by Scotland Yard was the failure of a dog to bark when a midnight visitor stole a prized racehorse away from his stall. That meant the dog knew the criminal, and the compelling evidence of silence should be a criterion in vetting the replacement for Justice Kennedy.
Many important decisions are made by the Supreme Court in refusing to grant a petition for cert, as it did earlier this year in denying David Daleiden’s petition concerning the infringement on his rights by the Ninth Circuit. By denying that petition and others like it, the Supreme Court allows anti-life, and anti-Second Amendment, rulings by liberal appellate courts to stand.
We do not need justices who are timid about speaking out or reviewing and reversing liberal decisions that come out of the Ninth and other Circuits. Similarly, we do not want a nominee who is unwilling to overturn prior mistakes of the Supreme Court itself.
Of all the pitiful clamor by Democrats and a few liberal Republicans, the most preposterous is their demand that the nominee refuse to overrule Court precedent. Every year the Supreme Court overturns its own mistakes, as it should, including its recent overruling of its own precedent of 41 years ago that wrongly imposed mandatory dues on government employees.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
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