I post things I do not necessarily agree with and I should have commented that the rationale that drove NIKE to do what they did, as espoused in the previous memo, is something I am not convinced is correct.
Often big successful corporation lose their MO JO and management become frustrated. They make decisions that are boners in the mistaken belief they have to shake things up and wind up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
NIKE is a Pacific based company and the people that run these companies are politically disconnected from mainstream deplorables. They may make acceptable products but when they delve into politics they go off into space.
I believe NIKE decided it was time to make a political statement that would appeal to our growing socialist minded youth, our emotionally fragile youth, our bleeding heart highly sensitive flaky youth the faculty and coddling/feckless administrators in our colleges and universities are helping to mold.
I believe NIKE thinks aligning themselves with a "kneeler" and being opposed to Trump will sell more NIKE products because their products are age driven. Perhaps some Madison Avenue genius got hold of them and came up with this solution to a tired product driven company. Time will tell.
What do you think?
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Now for the second phased review of Mona Charen's; "Sex Matters." (See 1 below.)
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Creating chaos in The White House is in keeping with a desire to destroy The Trump Presidency. If there truly is a mole in The White House who believes he/she is a modern day Paul Revere he/she should resign, come public and make his/her case in open court. Otherwise, this person is a despicable coward whose is violating his/her responsibility to serve the president not undercut him based on his/her own whims.
For the New York Times to sink to the level of printing this editorial is another sad event for this once respected paper. (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
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Recently I wrote that once Congress began hearings regarding the impact social media companies have on free speech and restraints against those whose views they disagree with the risk of reduced multiples and prices for these stocks could have a broader market impact. This has now begun as FANG stocks retreat.
I do not believe it will sink the market or cause the bull to reverse but it could result in a dash of cold water effect.(See 3 below.)
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After several days of questioning it appears to me Democrats have done their best to sully Judge Kavanaugh and have not been overly effective. I believe Kavanaugh will pass inspection and between 3 and 5 Democrats will also vote for him. They will do so mostly because it is a safe vote and they need to do so to try and win re-election. Kavanaugh probably will not need any of the Democrat's votes. That he is imminently qualified is evident. (See 4 below.)
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Some more quirky humor. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1) Mona Charen begins her "Severing Bonds" chapter by noting Bette Friedan eventually had second thoughts about where the Feminist Movement had gone as she aged She was almost alone in her discontent over the anti-male, anti-marriage tone the movement had embraced.
In her next chapter, entitled "Hookup Culture," Caren focuses on the price women have paid,sexually, in order to free themselves of becoming mothers so they could pursue careers.
By and large, college women specifically have substituted promiscuity for dating. n doing so, they engage in sexual activity but have divorced any particular feelings.associated with the experience. Try not to get attached is the hidden "hook up" message/code.
The male attitude Charen compares to Woody Allen's joke; "Pizza is a lot like sex. When it is good, it's really good. When it's bad, it's still pretty good." Not so for women because bad sex can be painful, unpleasant or disgusting. Charen cites a host of studies outlining different attitudes regarding sexual experiences among women and men.Some women consider the lack of commitment and freedom to engage in sex an empowering experience, Whereas, others express misgivings,and even sorrow. Some women even miss the joy of dating and intimacy/sweet thrill of being in love.
In the final analysis, college, sexual freedom and hooking-up seems to have caused more male female confusion and this state of affairs has also resulted in binge drinking which has led to increased health issues, even deaths and an increase in rape and/or claims of unwanted sexual behaviour.
Binge drinking perhaps is used as a method of denying sexual engagement because one can claim they are out of control and thus engaged in something they wish not to admit and/or could not therefore, prevent.
Charen discuses how many colleges advertise sexual promiscuity weekends, display banners advertising same and specifically wrote about Weslyan, Vanderbilt, Yale, Northwestern University and Harvard, among others, and the various ways they address sexual freedom on their campuses.. She blames college administrator's feckless attitudes as contributing to the hook-up culture which breeds insensitivity and boorish behaviour. She concludes the Sexual Revolution has obliterated many guardrails and encouraged "sex is no big deal" to become a fashionable view. In Charen's opinion,,,sex is a big deal because bodies have minds and souls attached.
I am far removed from the college scene but I was pained to read about her descriptions of what is taking place on campuses among young students engaged in what seems to be acceptable debauchery because what happens on campus, unlike the comment about Las Vegas, does not stay on campus. Eventually such behaviour shapes attitudes about marriage, about having and raising children, workplace relationships and societal attitudes in general.
One might disagree with what I am about to say but a person, who has lost all pride and is totally open to a multitude of sexual relationships, is perhaps, also more susceptible and "looser" when it comes to their personal freedoms and are less likely to care about reputations and other niceties. The Sexual Revolution has established new norms and I am damn sure they are not all positive.
For a woman to have gained freedom to pursue careers is wonderful but in far too many instances this freedom has come at a terrible price.
Charen also discussed the tragedy surrounding abortions and believes a woman is actually murdering a live being. Her description of what is entailed is chilling and she talks about nurses who, once they engage in assisting such, refuse to do so again because of the traumatic effect.
In her next chapter entitled "The Campus Rape Mess,"Charen ended by pointing out feminists linked with progressives and libertines in order to heap scorn on those who preached sexual restraint.
The Obama Administration embraced flawed statistics that stated 20% or more of college women are raped annually. They came up with this figure by redefining rape and linking sexual assault and sexual harassment, by lowering the standard of proof and by taking away constitutional rights from the accused who were no longer able to be represented by a lawyer and were even deprived of critical aspects of due process under Title 1X, conducted by college tribunals.
Charen does not explain why the Obama Administration took such actions but I submit it was to gain favor with and votes from those caught up in the Feminist Movement. After all, the entire Movement was premised on the fact that men were inherently abusers, physically dominant. Therefore, women should not be held to encouraging attacks on their person, by allowing themselves to get "smashed" and/or engaging in enticing behaviour.
The idea of sexual liberation has been carried to an extreme and Charen sites case after case of false accusations in order to protect women from "victim blaming" and/or "slut shaming."
Yes, sexual assault is no myth. It occurs, however, not to the degree statistics being bantered about suggest and rape is statutorily considered a very serious crime. Nevertheless, blaming women is seriously frowned upon and has been supplanted by the belief if something is wrong it must be because of men,
In my third sequence I will finish my review of this book which has opened my eyes and confirmed my belief that so many bad ideas dictate our beliefs.
In her next chapter entitled "The Campus Rape Mess,"Charen ended by pointing out feminists linked with progressives and libertines in order to heap scorn on those who preached sexual restraint.
The Obama Administration embraced flawed statistics that stated 20% or more of college women are raped annually. They came up with this figure by redefining rape and linking sexual assault and sexual harassment, by lowering the standard of proof and by taking away constitutional rights from the accused who were no longer able to be represented by a lawyer and were even deprived of critical aspects of due process under Title 1X, conducted by college tribunals.
Charen does not explain why the Obama Administration took such actions but I submit it was to gain favor with and votes from those caught up in the Feminist Movement. After all, the entire Movement was premised on the fact that men were inherently abusers, physically dominant. Therefore, women should not be held to encouraging attacks on their person, by allowing themselves to get "smashed" and/or engaging in enticing behaviour.
The idea of sexual liberation has been carried to an extreme and Charen sites case after case of false accusations in order to protect women from "victim blaming" and/or "slut shaming."
Yes, sexual assault is no myth. It occurs, however, not to the degree statistics being bantered about suggest and rape is statutorily considered a very serious crime. Nevertheless, blaming women is seriously frowned upon and has been supplanted by the belief if something is wrong it must be because of men,
In my third sequence I will finish my review of this book which has opened my eyes and confirmed my belief that so many bad ideas dictate our beliefs.
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2)
This Anonymous Anti-Trump Op-Ed From Inside The White House Is Designed To Create Chaos. It's Succeeding.
On Wednesday, The New York Times printed an anonymous op-ed by a senior member of the Trump administration supposedly revealing that members of the administration are hemming in Trump’s worst instincts. The piece, titled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” explained:
I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
The piece explains that Trump is ignorant and “amoral,” and that loyal Americans must do everything from within to curb his worst excesses:
We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic. … Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.
Here’s the question: what’s the point of this op-ed?
It’s clearly not to help the administration — it makes Trump look like a nincompoop, an out-of-control toddler handled by his more adult keepers. It’s also not designed to put the administration on better footing — by allegedly revealing the inner workings of the White House, this staffer has launched a mole hunt that will tear apart Trump’s inner staff. Any sign of disagreement with Trump will be seen now as a sign of disloyalty, which is why Trump is tweeting in full Captain Queeg mode, in search of the strawberries:
The Wall Street Journal is already reporting on the attempts to ferret out the op-ed’s author at the White House.
So, what was the real point? There are two going theories:
1. Self-Glorification Of The Author. We’ll certainly find out who wrote this sooner rather than later — and when the person is outed, he or she will be in a position of Strange New Respect™ from the Trump-despising media. A book contract will shower down on this person like manna from heaven. The Left will expunge the supposed stench of Trump-association from the author, and he or she will be held up as the model of the Republican all other Republicans should follow. Up until the point the person is outed as an actual conservative, at which point the media will label him or her a racist, sexist, bigot homophobe again.
2. Creation Of A Mole Hunt. What if the purpose of this op-ed was to lead to a mole hunt in the White House, in which all those who were not loyal enough were purged? Perhaps the author is well-embedded enough in the administration to know that others will be blamed.
2a) Search on for anonymous Trump ‘senior official’ who authored Times op-ed
WASHINGTON — At least a handful of lawmakers from both parties agree that whoever in the Trump administration penned the New York Times op-ed published Wednesday would better serve the nation if he resigned and went public.
“Anybody serving at (the president’s) pleasure should do so faithfully. When they feel they no longer can, they should resign and speak in their own name so the country can evaluate their insights with a full understanding of where they are coming from,” Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted Thursday.
“Proper guardrails on any President isn’t staff subterfuge, it’s elections and our constitutional checks,” the Florida Republican said.
That desire for a public discussion about the merits of the anonymous official’s concerns resonated with a number of Democrats.
“It’s in the best interest of the American people for the author and other like-minded individuals to declare themselves publicly, resign, and refuse to allow this President and his lies to continue,” Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington said in a statement.
Some Democratic House members, including Jayapal and New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman want any disaffected senior White House personnel to publicly air their concerns about Trump’s fitness for office at a congressional hearing.
“Whoever these people are, these senior-level members of the Trump team, have an obligation to come before Congress,” Watson Coleman said on Sirius XM radio Wednesday.
Other Republicans who called on the anonymous writer to resign were more critical of his intentions and echoed Trump’s call for The Times to “turn (the writer) over to the government at once.”
“This man is a coward,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California said of the anonymous op-ed writer to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. “The idea that this person has a taxpayer’s job … is supposed to be serving the president, who the taxpayers elected, but he thinks he is such an elitist that they think they know better than the voters?”
“I agree with the president — I think it is a real problem, that they should come forward and say who this person is,” McCarthy added.
At least one Democrat remained critical of the author, but for different reasons.
Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California retweeted the liberal-leaning Brookings Institute senior fellow Benjamin Wittes, who wrote that he had “no respect for someone who would say these things — of whose truth I have no doubt — in an anonymous oped, rather than in a public resignation letter copied to the House Judiciary Committee.”
The Times describes the op-ed writer as “a senior official in the Trump administration” who only granted the editorial board permission to publish the essay on the condition of anonymity.
The Times assented to that “rare” step, it said because “publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers.”
The anonymous scribe wrote that many of the senior officials in the president’s own administration “are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
“I would know,” he wrote. “I am one of them.”
The official was scathing in his review of the president’s character and said the issues of his presidency are rooted in his “amorality.”
“Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making,” the official wrote. Trump acts in a way that is “detrimental to the health of our republic.”
The official also attacked Trump’s leadership style, which he described as “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.” It has not had any positive effect on the administration or led to any of its successes. Instead, the administration has made strides domestically and abroad “despite” the president’s leadership.
In one of the most shocking claims, the official wrote that after staffers witnessed Trump’s instability in office, there were “early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment.”
But, he said, no one wanted to plunge the country into a “constitutional crisis.”
— Griffin Connolly
CQ-Roll Call
CQ-Roll Call
2b)Among the Trump Doubters
They like his policies but a persona giving off nonstop static may keep them home
Back when Donald Trump was defeating 12 or so Republicans for the 2016 presidential nomination, no matter what he said or what anyone wrote about him, his support among early primary voters usually hovered somewhere in the 30s. You could set your watch by a Trump critical mass of one-third voting for him.
This third, then and now, is the eternal Trump base. Look at presidential approval polls, and there they are. In the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, Mr. Trump’s “strong” approvers were 31%.
These are the Trump believers. But during two weeks away from politics, I kept finding myself among the Trump doubters. To be sure, most of them were in Europe, the fountainhead of doubt. They would demand of their visitor: “Explain Trump.”
The explanation went like this: There are two Trumps. There is Donald Trump the person, to whom one can attach 20 adjectives and nouns along a scale from obnoxious idiot to unappreciated genius. This is the Trump of Twitter .
The second Trump is the Trump presidency, which consists of hundreds of individuals appointed to execute his policies. In President Trump’s first year, those policies included the immigrant travel ban, news of which spread throughout the world. But with the help of a Republican Congress, his policies also included the reversal of the Obama era’s multitudinous economic regulations and in December a 40% reduction in the corporate-tax rate, to 21% from 35%.
In the six months between December and everyone’s summer vacation, the U.S. economy achieved full employment. We now have a labor shortage. Unemployment rates for blacks and Hispanics are at historic lows. After eight years of suppression, a still-powerful U.S. economy has been liberated.
With a couple of exceptions, this tale of two Trumps fell on deaf ears in Europe. They would reply: “But that doesn’t explain Trump.”
It is a familiar phenomenon—Donald Trump the person as a permanent political eclipse. Back in the spring, news stories appeared in which Democrats complained that Mr. Trump was “blotting out the sun.” The media wasn’t paying attention to them, not even the Trump-obsessed progs at MSNBC.
The Trumpian eclipse has been mesmerizing, but it’s probably going to end with November’s midterm elections. As always, the Trump third will punch in for candidates he endorsed in the primaries, but as in 2016, where will the GOP find enough voters to win in a general election? The answer, and the result, lies among the Trump doubters.
For about a month, I’ve been carrying in my head a conversation with a woman in New York. Actually, it wasn’t a conversation. She unloaded.
“You are looking,” she said, “at a one-woman focus group.” A financial analyst, she said she voted for Donald Trump and that she and her husband had benefited personally from President Trump’s policies. She saw how the country’s well-being was on the rise.
But doubts about the president had become hard to shake. All the negative static, the Twitter, the constant storm of controversy, the omnipresent Trump persona. It was wearing her down. Would she cast a second Trump vote? “Maybe. Probably.”
This woman wasn’t one of the case-hardened Trump 33%, but she was part of the margin that provided his victory. Every Republican running in a competitive November race has to wonder how many of them are in their districts and whether they will vote.
Midterm elections are traditionally tough on the president’s party, but for GOP candidates these should still be the best of times.
Here are three headlines from Tuesday’s online Journal: “U.S. Factory Sector Clocks Strongest Growth in 14 Years.” “Consumer Sentiment Boosted by Job Optimism: Future income, employment confidence cited by consumers for their positive spending views.” “U.S. Auto Sales Maintain Momentum for Now.”
Last week, Mitch McConnell’s Senate confirmed Mr. Trump’s 60th judicial nominee. Voters concerned about the courts were another reason for Mr. Trump’s victory.
This all qualifies as winning, which would be helping GOP candidates in tough races if not for one unchangeable reality: Mr. Trump is blotting out their sun, too.
Why should Mr. Trump’s “fake-news” media opposition waste time covering an economic boom when they’ve got the clickbait of a president repeatedly tweet-mocking his own attorney general, publicizing the Mueller “witch hunt,” fighting with fixer-lawyer Michael Cohen, and fiddling with the height of the White House flag after John McCain died?
Trump voters-turned-doubters probably will sink the GOP this fall. But if they need a reason to vote in November, try this: There may be 20 ways to describe Donald Trump, but just one will do for the outpourings during Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing from Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris, Richard Blumenthal, Sheldon Whitehouse, Mazie Hirono, Cory Booker and Dick Durbin. Unbearable.
If the blue wave breaks in November, we will spend the next two years engulfed in the Democrats’ moral condescension. Anything but that.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++3)Big Tech in the Dock
The companies are tempting government intervention.
The Editorial Board
Twitter and Facebook executives were grilled on Capitol Hill Wednesday, amid the growing debate over political bias in social media and search. The tech giants say they don’t intentionally suppress conservatives, and perhaps that’s true. But their nonchalance risks alienating users—and government intervention.
Complaints about anti-conservative bias by tech platforms have been growing for some time. While the evidence is mostly anecdotal, the seemingly synchronized and vaguely justified decisions by Apple , Facebook and Google to ban right-wing fabulist Alex Jones’s Infowars in August for “hate speech” raised more doubts about their purported neutrality.
President Trump belly-flopped in as usual on Twitter. “They have it RIGGED,” he tweeted last week. “Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!” Mr. Trump warned later at the White House that tech companies are “treading on very, very troubling territory” and had “better be careful.”
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow then said the Administration will investigate the tech giants, and on Wednesday The Journal reported the Justice Department will examine whether the social-media giants are “intentionally stifling” certain viewpoints.
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Consider conservative radio host Dennis Prager, whose “PragerU” educational videos on topics such as “Did Bush Lie About Iraq?” and “Is America Racist?” have been restricted by Google’s YouTube unit. None of the 50 or so censored videos included violent, sexually explicit or hateful content that violated Google’s Community Guidelines.
YouTube’s algorithms and “community” of users can flag videos as objectionable, but Google guidelines require an internal review team to remove them. So Google employees ostensibly had to have agreed. PragerU has sued Google and claims in its lawsuit that YouTube “declined to provide any explanation for why the videos were restricted or demonetized because they purportedly ‘can’t share more details about our review process, as doing so could benefit channels that do not play by the rules (those who game the system).’”
Conservative Doug Wead recently complained on The Federalist website that Google barred him from buying an ad to promote a Fox Business interview. He says a Google employee told him the crawler along the bottom of the video, which quoted Mr. Trump calling the Mueller investigation a “witch hunt,” was hate speech.
Google has a serious problem if its employees can’t distinguish news and opinion from hate speech. Infowars may have deserved to be banned, but the ill-defined justifications offered by the tech companies have unsettled even many conservatives who disdain Mr. Jones but worry that they could be next. This has allowed Mr. Jones to pose as a free-speech martyr, which he isn’t.
Some conservatives also say their content is being discriminated against in Google News and search. Google says its algorithms aren’t politically biased and incorporate dozens of variables, some of which are based on location and may change by the hour. Thus it would be difficult to prove its algorithms discriminate since each user’s experience is unique.
Most discrimination is also likely to be incidental—for instance, favoring sites with the most clicks and links, which may be liberal outlets that don’t charge for content. But this underscores the bigger problem, which is that social media and search platforms wield significant influence over public debate, yet their editorial judgments are opaque and often arbitrary.
Google controls 90% of all search. When accused of bias, it hides behind automated and non-transparent algorithms. Look, Ma, no hands! All the while its employees exercise significant control over what users see and don’t see. According to the PragerU lawsuit, human reviewers appear to enjoy carte blanche to block flagged content.
Facebook and Google also control 60% of digital ad revenues, and both have used their market dominance to undercut competitors. Facebook has blocked publishers from promoting their content on its news stream by tagging the ads as political.
***
In 2012 Federal Trade Commission staff issued a report recommending a lawsuit against Google for anti-competitive conduct. The commission led by Obama appointee Jon Leibowitz voted against a lawsuit, but Google’s competitors have continued to grouse about predatory practices.
Meantime, fury on the political left and right is converging and amplifying demands for government action. Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley last year launched an investigation into Google’s business practices, and other states may follow. Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia has proposed stripping platforms of some of their legal protection for user-generated content under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Senator Ted Cruz has said the predicate for Section 230 immunity is “you’re a neutral public forum.”
The Trump FTC has said it will reopen the agency’s probe of Big Tech. The commission could hamstring the monopolists with regulation—perhaps appointing government monitors to oversee content reviews—and watch out if Elizabeth Warren is elected President.
Then there’s the private litigation threat. PragerU’s charge that Google violated its free-speech rights is unlikely to prevail in court because Google isn’t the government and can choose to exclude certain content under the law. But claims that Google engaged in unfair business practices by violating its own terms and conditions are stronger.
Count us among the skeptics that government has an answer to this, and we don’t need an Internet version of the Fairness Doctrine (1949-1987). But history shows that Americans will eventually ask politicians to rein in businesses that appear to be unaccountable. The lords of Big Tech will pay a price if they create the perception that they are the censorship arm of the political left.
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4)Blame Congress for
Politicizing the Court
By Ben Sasse
When lawmakers hand power to bureaucrats, the people expect judges to act as superlegislators.
It’s predictable now that every Supreme Court confirmation hearing will be a politicized circus. This is because Americans have accepted a bad new theory about how the three branches of government should work—and in particular about how the judiciary operates.Brett Kavanaugh has been accused of hating women, hating children, hating clean air, wanting dirty water. He’s been declared an existential threat to the nation. Alumni of Yale Law School, incensed that faculty members at his alma mater praised his selection, wrote a public letter to the school saying: “People will die if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed.”
In the U.S. system, the legislative branch is supposed to be the center of politics. Why isn’t it? For the past century, more legislative authority has been delegated to the executive branch every year. Both parties do it. The legislature is weak, and most people here in Congress want their jobs more than they want to do legislative work. So they punt most of the work to the next branch.
The consequence of this transfer of power is that people yearn for a place where politics can actually be done. When we don’t do a lot of big political debating here in Congress, we transfer it to the Supreme Court. And that’s why the court is increasingly a substitute political battleground. We badly need to restore the proper duties and the balance of power to our constitutional system.
If there are lots of protests in front of the Supreme Court, that’s an indication that the republic isn’t healthy. People should be protesting in front of this body instead. The legislature is designed to be controversial, noisy, sometimes even rowdy—because making laws means we have to hash out matters about which we don’t all agree.
How did the legislature decide to give away its power? We’ve been doing it for a long time. Over the course of the past century, especially since the 1930s and ramping up since the 1960s, the legislative branch has kicked a lot of its responsibility to alphabet-soup bureaucracies. These are the places where most actual policy-making—in a way, lawmaking—happens now.
What we mostly do around this body is not pass laws but give permission to bureaucracy X, Y or Z to make lawlike regulations. We write giant pieces of legislation that people haven’t read, filled with terms that are undefined, and we say the secretary or administrator of such-and-such shall promulgate rules that do the rest of our jobs. That’s why there are so many fights about the executive branch and the judiciary—because Congress rarely finishes its work.
There are rational arguments one could make for this new system. Congress can’t manage all the nitty-gritty details of modern government, and this system tries to give power and control to experts in technical fields, about which most of us in Congress don’t know much of anything.
But the real reason this institution punts most of its power to executive-branch agencies is because it is a convenient way to avoid responsibility for controversial and unpopular decisions. If your biggest long-term priority is your own re-election, then giving away your power is a pretty good strategy.
But when Congress gives power to an unaccountable fourth branch of government, the people are cut out of the process. Nobody in Nebraska, Minnesota or Delaware elected the deputy assistant administrator of plant quarantine at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. If that person does something that makes Nebraskans’ lives difficult, where do they go to protest? How do they navigate the complexity of this town to do executive-agency lobbying? They can’t.
They don’t have any ability to speak out or to fire people through an election. When the administrative state grows—when there is this fourth branch of government—it becomes harder for the concerns of citizens to be represented and articulated by officials who answer to the people. The Supreme Court becomes a substitute political battleground. It’s only nine people. You can know them; you can demonize them; you can try to make them messiahs. Because people can’t navigate their way through the bureaucracy, they turn to the Supreme Court looking for politics. They look to nine justices to be superlegislators, to right the wrongs from other places in the process.
When people talk about wanting “empathy” from the justices, that’s what they’re talking about—trying to make the justices do something Congress refuses to do as it constantly abdicates its responsibility. The hyperventilating that we see in this process shows us a system that is wildly out of whack.
The solution is not to try to find judges who will be policy makers or to turn the Supreme Court into an election battle. The solution is to restore a proper constitutional order with the balance of powers. We need a Congress that writes laws, then stands before the people and faces the consequences. We need an executive branch that has a humble view of its job as enforcing the law, not trying to write laws in Congress’s absence. And we need a judiciary that applies written laws to facts in cases that are actually before it.
This is the elegant, fair process the Founders created. It’s a process in which the people who are elected can be fired, because the men and women who serve America by wearing black robes are insulated from politics. This is why we talk about an independent judiciary. This is why we shouldn’t talk about Republican and Democratic judges and justices. This is why we say justice is blind. This is why we give judges lifetime tenure.
And this is why this is the last job interview Judge Kavanaugh will ever have. Because he’s going to a job in which he’s not supposed to be a superlegislator.
Mr. Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is adapted from his opening statement at Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.
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FOR THOSE WHO LOVE THE PHILOSOPHY OF AMBIGUITY,
AS WELL AS THE IDIOSYNCRASIES OF ENGLISH:
1. DON'T SWEAT THE PETTY THINGS AND DON'T PET THE SWEATY THINGS.
2. ONE TEQUILA, TWO TEQUILA, THREE TEQUILA, FLOOR.
3. ATHEISM IS A NON-PROPHET ORGANIZATION.
4. IF MAN EVOLVED FROM MONKEYS AND APES, WHY DO WE STILL HAVE MONKEYS AND APES?
5. THE MAIN REASON SANTA IS SO JOLLY IS BECAUSE HE KNOWS WHERE ALL THE BAD GIRLS LIVE.
6. I WENT TO A BOOKSTORE AND ASKED THE SALESWOMAN, "WHERE'S THE SELF- HELP SECTION?" SHE SAID IF SHE TOLD ME, IT WOULD DEFEAT THE PURPOSE.
7. WHAT IF THERE WERE NO HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS?
8. IF A DEAF CHILD WRITES SWEAR WORDS, DOES HIS MOTHER WASH HIS HANDS WITH SOAP?
10.. IS THERE ANOTHER WORD FOR SYNONYM?
12. WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU SEE AN ENDANGERED ANIMAL EATING AN ENDANGERED PLANT?
13. IF A PARSLEY FARMER IS SUED, CAN THEY GARNISH HIS WAGES?
15. WHY DO THEY LOCK PETROL STATION BATHROOMS? ARE THEY AFRAID SOMEONE WILL CLEAN THEM?
16. IF A TURTLE DOESN'T HAVE A SHELL, IS HE HOMELESS OR NAKED?
17. CAN VEGETARIANS EAT ANIMAL CRACKERS?
18. IF THE POLICE ARREST A MIME, DO THEY TELL HIM HE HAS THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT?
19. WHY DO THEY PUT BRAILLE ON THE DRIVE-THROUGH BANK MACHINES?
20. HOW DO THEY GET DEER TO CROSS THE ROAD ONLY AT THOSE YELLOW ROAD SIGNS?
21. WHAT WAS THE BEST THING BEFORE SLICED BREAD?
22. ONE NICE THING ABOUT EGOTISTS: THEY DON'T TALK ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE.
23. DOES THE LITTLE MERMAID WEAR AN ALGEBRA?
24. DO INFANTS ENJOY INFANCY AS MUCH AS ADULTS ENJOY ADULTERY?
25. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A CIVIL WAR?
26. IF ONE SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMER DROWNS, DO THE REST DROWN TOO?
28. IF YOU TRY TO FAIL, AND SUCCEED, WHICH HAVE YOU DONE?
29. WHOSE CRUEL IDEA WAS IT FOR THE WORD 'LISP' TO HAVE 'S' IN IT?
30. WHY ARE HEMORRHOIDS CALLED "HEMORRHOIDS" INSTEAD OF "ASSTEROIDS"?
32.. WHY IS THERE AN EXPIRATION DATE ON SOUR CREAM?
33. IF YOU SPIN AN ORIENTAL PERSON IN A CIRCLE THREE TIMES, DO THEY BECOME DISORIENTED?
34. CAN AN ATHEIST GET INSURANCE AGAINST ACTS OF GOD
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