Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Trump Was Right To Rebuke Chief Justice Roberts

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump rightly rebuked Chief Justice Roberts for criticizing his factual statements about “Obama judges” consistently ruling against the Trump Administration. Liberals are gaming the court system by running to activist judges in San Francisco, Hawaii and Maryland to obstruct the will of the People who elected Trump.

John Roberts is not the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or even the Chief Justice of all the federal courts. His office is the Chief Justice of the United States, which means he should be acting on behalf of all three branches of government, and not provincially defending lower court judges against justified criticism by the President.

As pointed out by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who has been wonderful in confirming Trump’s nominees, Chief Justice Roberts was completely silent after the unjustified tongue-lashing given by then-President Obama against Supreme Court Justices during the 2010 State of the Union address. The double-standard in denouncing Trump now is striking.

President Trump was correct in saying that Obama-appointed judges have been unfair in issuing numerous sweeping rulings against the Trump agenda, which has necessitated quickly running those bad decisions up on appeal. Senseless delays and increased taxpayer expense have resulted from Roberts’ own failure to rein in the rampant judicial activism among certain lower courts, which he could curb.

"Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have 'Obama judges,' and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country," Trump tweeted after Roberts chided him. Indeed, nearly all of the high-profile injunctions against Trump have been by “Obama judges.”

San Francisco is nowhere near the southern border and there is no valid reason why liberal lawsuits against Trump’s immigration policies are repeatedly filed there. The apparent motivation is this: 11 out of the 14 active judges in that federal district were appointed by Obama, and Trump properly criticized how that one-sided venue has resulted in national injunctions against the President.

Chief Justice Roberts should check with his fellow Supreme Court Justices about how abusive these nationwide injunctions have been. Justice Clarence Thomas persuasively opposed these nationwide injunctions in an opinion that Roberts should have written or at least joined.

San Francisco is a favorite venue of the Resistance to Trump because appeals go from there to the Ninth Circuit, which Obama packed with seven lifetime appointments. The liberal California senators have failed to allow Trump to fill six vacancies on that circuit, which has long been notorious for being reversed, often unanimously, by the Supreme Court.

The Ninth Circuit even issued decisions by activist judge Stephen Reinhardt after he died on March 29th of this year, including a July 24th decision in which the other judges on the panel stated that Reinhardt had agreed with the court opinion even though he had died nearly four months earlier. Perhaps because a party complained, the Ninth Circuit later withdrew that decision.

Trump’s Solicitor General Noel Francisco is doing what he can to combat the judicial supremacy. He has taken the extraordinary step of asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear certain appeals without first awaiting decisions by the U.S. Circuit Courts that are packed with Obama nominees.

Unlike the President, the Supreme Court decides for itself how much work to do, which controversies to take up, and when to adjourn for its three-month summer vacation. The Court takes far fewer cases than it did a generation ago, and it is shocking how it increasingly fills its docket with easy, non-controversial cases.

A cursory glance at the cases the Court has decided to hear this Term reveals much that is insignificant, while Trump works overtime addressing crisis after crisis. Much of the Court’s time seems to be spent dodging abortion and other hot-button issues; the Court has deferred again and again cases concerning the simple authority of states to defund Planned Parenthood.

Chief Justice Roberts failed to join the dissent by two Justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, to the spectacle of putting the Trump Administration on trial in New York for including a question about citizenship in the census. One would think that the first and most important question in a census by any country, dating back to ancient Rome, would concern citizenship.

But Chief Justice Roberts and a majority of the Court have allowed an Obama-appointed judge – the brother of Obama’s chief economist – to put Trump officials on trial. No court would have put members of the Obama Administration on trial with respect to their policy decisions.

Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts is still smarting from criticisms of him by candidate Trump in 2016. But as the Chief Justice of the United States, Roberts should be defending the President rather than taking cheap shots at him.

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.

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Make Tijuana Great Again, and the White House Too

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The two-thousand-mile trek of migrants from Honduras arrived to an angry reception in Tijuana, just south of the California border. It was not President Donald Trump who shouted down the illegal aliens camped there, but Tijuana’s own mayor, along with many of his Mexican constituents.

“Make Tijuana Great Again” sported the Tijuana mayor, Juan Manuel Gastélum, on his bright red hat nearly identical to the one worn by President Trump. Hundreds of Tijuana residents turned out in agreement, chanting “Tijuana First” and similar slogans.

Well, how about that! The false narrative perpetrated by liberals that only extremists who voted for Donald Trump are against illegal immigration is disproven by Mexicans in Tijuana demanding that the migrants return home.

“I would dare say that not all of them are migrants,” Mayor Gastélum observed in Spanish during an interview on the Mexican Milenio television channel. He suggested that some of the migrants are criminals.

Many tough, angry-looking young men can be seen in images of the caravan. In one photo, a construction worker is seen defying the Mexican police with a vulgar gesture at them.

The migrants seem to have been coached, because one of them claimed that he was the victim of racism by the Mexican police. The culprit is not racism but globalism: the assault on national borders, which are essential to maintaining liberty and prosperity.

These migrants should be trying to make Honduras great again rather than crashing through borders to overrun places where they are not wanted. Anyone who can walk (or hitchhike) two thousand miles, like these migrants, can use their pent-up energy to improve their own country, instead of demanding handouts from Mexico or the United States.

Many migrants undoubtedly left behind women and children who depend on the support of the able-bodied young men who comprise the vast majority of the migrant caravan. The United States should not allow these migrants to abandon their responsibilities, but should send them back home to support their families.

But a federal judge in San Francisco just interfered with President Trump’s efforts to do exactly that. Despite how border control is an issue of national security under nearly exclusive presidential authority, Obama-appointed Judge Tigar took it upon himself to issue an injunction against the presidential proclamation that limited asylum applications by Central American migrants.

That leaves Trump with no good option: either appeal to the liberal Ninth Circuit, where the deck is stacked against him, or file an emergency petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rarely interferes in cases pending in lower courts.

Often the immigrants who cross the border illegally from Mexico are not even from Central or South America. Near Laredo, Texas, U.S. Border Patrol agents recently caught six young men trying to enter the United States illegally from far-away Bangladesh.

Official statistics show that 668 Bangladeshis were caught near our southern border during the twelve months ending on September 30, plus another 75 in October. There is big money in this, with the illegals or their sponsors paying up to $27,000 per person to be smuggled into the United States, as reported by Breitbart.com.

By now President Trump has appointed many judges to the federal bench, but the vetting of those nominees was cast in doubt by the ruling last week against the White House concerning CNN’s Jim Acosta. Despite how a man’s home is his castle under centuries of precedents, a Trump-appointed judge ruled that President Trump cannot promptly exclude a misbehaving reporter from the White House.

Only the most conservative judges should be appointed to federal courts for the District of Columbia, which has no U.S. Senators who might object. President Trump, acting on apparently bad advice, nominated former Senate Judiciary Committee counsel Timothy Kelly to that bench.

Kelly was confirmed almost unanimously, and into his courtroom landed the lawsuit by CNN against Trump to reinstate access to the White House by the abrasive Jim Acosta. CNN sued for Acosta to retain his access to the White House grounds even after he disrupted Trump’s post-election news conference with an argumentative non-question.

If a hostile reporter had combatively resisted relinquishing the microphone during a presser held by President Obama, the reporter would have been banned. But in a stark illustration of judicial activism, Judge Kelly ordered President Trump to return Acosta’s highly desirable “hard pass” for full access to the West Wing.

Judges require journalists to treat courthouses and court proceedings with extreme deference, but President Trump has been made powerless to regulate who can roam freely inside his own home. Let’s hope the President makes the White House Great Again by posting a burly security guard next to Jim Acosta with orders to remove him the next time he misbehaves.

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, November 18, 2018

ACLU no longer focused on civil liberties

David E. Bernstein writes:
This problem was exacerbated by the growth within the ACLU of autonomous, liberal, special interest cliques known as "projects." These projects have included an AIDS Project, a Capital Punishment Project, a Children's Rights Project, an Immigrants' Rights Project, a Lesbian and Gay Project, a National Prison Project, a Women's Rights Project, a Civil Liberties in the Workplace Project, a Privacy and Technology Project, and an Arts Censorship Project. This loss of focus led Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz to waggishly suggest that "perhaps the Civil Liberties Union needs a civil liberties project." ...

First, the ACLU ran an anti-Brett Kavanaugh video ad that relied entirely on something that no committed civil libertarian would countenance, guilt by association. And not just guilt by association, but guilt by association with individuals that Kavanaugh wasn't actually associated with in any way, except that they were all men who like Kavanaugh had been accused of serious sexual misconduct. The literal point of the ad is that Bill Clinton, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby were accused of sexual misconduct, they denied it but were actually guilty; therefore, Brett Kavanaugh, also having been accused of sexual misconduct, and also having denied it, is likely guilty too.

Can you imagine back in the 1950s the ACLU running an ad with the theme, "Earl Warren has been accused of being a Communist. He denies it. But Alger Hiss and and Julius Rosenberg were also accused of being Communists, they denied it, but they were lying. So Earl Warren is likely lying, too?"

Meanwhile, yesterday, the Department of Education released a proposed new Title IX regulation that provides for due process rights for accused students that had been prohibited by Obama-era guidance. Shockingly, even to those of us who have followed the ACLU's long, slow decline, the ACLU tweeted in reponse that the proposed regulation "promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused." Even longtime ACLU critics are choking on the ACLU, of all organizations, claiming that due proess protections "inappropriately favor the accused."

The ACLU had a clear choice between the identitarian politics of the feminist hard left, and retaining some semblance of its traditional commitment to fair process. It chose the former. And that along with the Kavanaugh ad signals the final end of the ACLU as we knew it. RIP.

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Trump Realigns the Political Map

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

After the Republican Party had been declining in strength in the executive and judicial branches, and in the U.S. Senate, Trump’s realignment has brought new life to all three. The Election Day results dismayed those who predicted a massive blue wave, and instead ushered in more evidence that Trump is the real future of the GOP.

Trump’s rallies in Missouri, Indiana, and North Dakota delivered resounding victories to Republican Senate candidates, in defiance of most polls. Trump also carried congressional candidates to victory in battleground regions of Southern Illinois and Minnesota.

Trump achieved what was thought to be impossible in ousting the entrenched liberal Claire McCaskill from her Senate seat in Missouri, by holding massive rallies that attracted tens of thousands to Trump. No one could have sent the Leftist-funded McCaskill to an early retirement other than Trump.

The Republicans who lost were mostly anti-Trumpers, as the president observed in reviewing the election results. “Mia Love gave me no love,” Trump quipped about the Republican who lost in the deep red state of Utah, and he listed other GOP candidates who drove their own defeat by opposing him.

By securing and even expanding on GOP control of the upper chamber, Trump paves the way for more conservative judges to join the federal bench. Democrats now admit that they lack a realistic chance of retaking the Senate until at least 2022, which means that Trump could have four more years of conservative judicial appointments.

Republican candidates won the governorships in Ohio and Iowa, in a further indication of how well Trump plays in the heartland. And it appears that the Republican senate and governor candidates in Florida also defied the polls and scored impressive wins.

A realignment of politics is taking place in America, greater than any since the 1960s when the South swung to the Republican Party and African Americans switched more heavily to Democrats. Prior to that southerners voted primarily for Democrats and a substantial fraction of blacks voted for the GOP.

Blue-collar America is turning more Republican, while big cities and the Left Coast continue to drift more to the Democrats. Working class men and their wives are shifting to the Republican Party for the first time, while single and divorced women tilt more heavily to the Democrats.

Voters like Republicans in charge in the White House, most governor’s mansions, and most senates, while Democrats made gains in the lower houses of legislatures. This bodes well for re-electing Trump in 2020 and restoring respect for the Constitution to the federal judiciary with senate confirmations of Trump nominees.

Iowa, in some ways a political cross-section of the entire country, displayed the cross-currents in this realignment. Democrats won seven new suburban seats in the House, but lost two blue-collar seats to Republicans.

In the Iowa Senate, the GOP actually had a net gain of two seats from the Democrats, again by racking up surprise victories in blue-collar districts. Trump’s persona and his America First policies resonate so well with working class Americans that Democrats suffered upset losses in those districts.

Conservative Congressman Steve King triumphed once again over vicious late hits and ambushes, which illustrates the tremendous resilience of those who are most principled. The Republican governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, also won reelection.

The Rust Belt state of Ohio elected a Republican governor, re-elected all its Republican congressmen, and re-elected a supermajority of Republican control over its state legislature. This is a state that President Trump has successfully turned from purple to deep red, after Obama had won it in 2008 and 2012.

With only about 15 months left for the Democrats to coalesce around a presidential contender to run against President Trump, they have no one who can compete with him in middle America. Polls said that Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly would win reelection easily in Indiana, but instead he lost to political newcomer Mike Braun by a wide margin of 6 points, which could have even been a 10-point loss in the absence of the Libertarian Party candidate.

Runaway early voting procedures ensured Republican losses in Arizona, California and Nevada, and there is nothing Trump could have done to avert that. But Trump brought victories where none were expected, such as all-important U.S. Senate seats representing middle America.

The campaign for the presidency starts after the midterm elections, and Democratic contenders are already jockeying for position. But Trump appears invincible in the South, most of the Midwest, much of the Rust Belt, and nearly all of flyover country, which doesn’t leave enough Electoral College Votes for the Democrats to regain the White House.

Trump worked harder in campaigning for his supporters than any president in history, Republican or Democrat. Republicans would have done better in the House if more candidates had stood with him, as the Senate candidates did.

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, November 9, 2018

Anti-Kavanaugh Democrats lost the Senate

Marc A. Thiessen writes in the Wash Post:
Brett M. Kavanaugh must have been smiling as the returns came in on Election Day, because it is now clear that the Democrats’ campaign to destroy him will go down as a massive blunder. It failed to keep Kavanaugh off the court. It cost Democrats their chance to regain control of the Senate. And it gave Republicans an expanded Senate majority that will allow them to confirm an even more conservative justice next time around.

Today, Kavanaugh sits on the Supreme Court hearing cases. Meanwhile, Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) are packing up their Senate offices — thrown out by voters furious over their party’s brutal campaign of character assassination against Kavanaugh. Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) was the only Democrat who voted for Kavanaugh, and he survived — but just barely. Two weeks before Election Day, Manchin was leading by double digits, but on Tuesday night he won by just over three points. Had he voted against Kavanaugh’s confirmation, he would likely have been toast as well.

The Democrats’ smear campaign also cost them the chance to pick up GOP seats. In Tennessee, Rep. Marsha Blackburn was trailing former Democratic governor Phil Bredesen by five points in a CNN poll before the Kavanaugh hearings. She ended up winning by just under 11 points, as the Democrats’ mistreatment of Kavanaugh united Tennessee Republicans behind her. The Kavanaugh smear no doubt also played a role in energizing GOP voters in Arizona, where Republican Rep. Martha McSally appears to have squeezed out a narrow victory, and in Texas, where Sen. Ted Cruz defeated Rep. Beto O’Rourke by just 2.6 points in one of the reddest states in the union.

None of that might have been possible had it not been for the Democrats’ horrific treatment of Kavanaugh.
Everyone should remember what the Democrats to try to destroy a white Christian man.

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

The Mistake of Early Voting

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

More than 38 million ballots were cast before Election Day arrived this year, shattering the midterm election record for early voting. That was nearly double the level of early voting in the last midterm election, in 2014, when 21 million voted early.

Yet few genuinely benefit from this early voting fad, except political machines and the better-funded candidates. That means early voting boosts the Democrats, who held an enormous fundraising advantage this year along with their political machine that has long dominated Chicago and other big cities.

In the traditionally red states of Texas and Florida, early voting causes many races there to be decided prior to Election Day. Both states now have extensive early voting, and as a result both were targeted by massive cash for Democrats this election cycle.

The influx of tens of millions of dollars by liberals to fund Beto O’Rourke in his campaign for U.S. Senate in Texas baffled some, but not those familiar with the circus of extended early voting that is allowed in the Lone Star State. By herding traditionally Democratic constituents to the polls during the two-week period of early voting, well-funded Democrats in Texas have the hope of winning elections they would otherwise lose in that conservative state.

In Texas, early voting increased everywhere, but particularly skyrocketed in heavily Democratic areas such as Austin and Dallas. Casualties could include down-ballot Republicans, including state legislators and local officials.

Similarly, in the other large red state of Florida, more than 5 million votes were cast early this fall. That was 38.4% of the entire Florida electorate, and more than the number that voted on Election Day.

Smart liberal money flowed in a big way against Republican candidates in both States, attracted by the opportunity to herd people to vote early and tip the outcome. The candidate who raises the most money is more likely to win in elections decided by expensive early voting efforts.

The voting this past Sunday morning in Miami-Dade, Florida’s largest county, tells the story. A record 40,000 ballots were cast, many bused from churches as part of the Democrats’ “souls to the polls” campaign.

That Sunday burst in voting gave the Democrats in Florida the lead in overall ballots cast early. Meanwhile independent voters, on whom Republicans often rely to get elected, are shut out of the early voting gamesmanship and thereby become less significant, particularly in non-presidential elections.

Last year Hans von Spakovsky released a report for the Heritage Foundation in which he concluded that early voting can increase the cost of campaigns, and actually decrease overall turnout. For example, early voting removes the social pressure to vote on Election Day.

Add to that how early voting has become the new form of machine-style politics that distorts the election process and changes results. The integrity and excitement of Election Day are undermined by the enormous spending to push people to vote early.

The average American in Florida, Texas, and other early voting states would be fine in getting their lives back, without the tiresome robocalls and other efforts to urge them to vote early. The vast majority of early voters would otherwise vote on Election Day, and having both sides spend millions to move those ballots a week or so early is wasteful.

There was no line to vote at many election polling precincts on Tuesday, which detracts from the experience and could result in fewer people voting next time. Early voting undermines the patriotic value of a unified Election Day.

The early voters had less information, including major economic data not released until last Friday. In some states, such as Montana, the libertarian candidate for Senate pulled out of the race and endorsed the Republican candidate after many votes had already been cast early.

In California, its mail-in balloting means that election outcomes can remain uncertain until long after Election Day, when ballots are finally received by election officials. It becomes impossible to check against voter fraud, and there is no place for precinct monitors.

Nevada is a state where elections are decided by early voting, and it has a tight Senate race for a seat held by a Republican. Yet ballots had already been cast by 40% of active voters there prior to Election Day, and Democrats defeated Republicans by a 41-38% margin in early ballots.

Republicans have controlled the Florida and Texas statehouse and governorship for years, so it is baffling why they allow pervasive early voting there, including Sunday voting in Florida which Democrats exploited. Other Republican states, such as Ohio and North Carolina, have sensibly tried to rein in rampant early voting.

There is a constitutional right to vote. But there is no constitutional right to vote early, and it is time to restore integrity and significance to Election Day by reining in early voting.

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.