Daily Archives: August 4, 2021

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As the Supreme Courts latest term drew to an end earlier this summer, court watchers like myself were waiting for more than the last few rulings. We were also standing by for retirement news from Justice Stephen Breyer, who, at 82, is the oldest member of the court.

For months, liberals have been calling on Breyer to retire and, in so doing, clear the path for Democratic President Joe Biden and the Democrat-led Senate to confirm a liberal replacement. The thinking goes that if he waits too long to retire, then conservatives will control the search for his replacement.

Liberals can point to former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to justify these concerns. She ignored calls to retire while President Barack Obama was in office and then passed away while still on the bench, which enabled former President Donald Trump to pick her replacement.

Her decision will give the conservative wing of the court the advantage in battles over culture war issues for years to come, argued David Leonhardt in a recent New York Times newsletter.

Ginsburgs decision may cost millions of American women access to abortion as well as shape policy on voting rights, climate change, gun control, religion and other issues, he said.

In recent decades, liberal justices, in general, have not made strategic retirement decisions, Leonhardt argued, claiming that theyve prioritized their personal interests over the needs of their party. Conservative justices, on the other hand, seem to proactively retire in order to be certain they wont die on the bench.

Thats part of the reason that Democratic presidents have so rarely had the chance to flip a court seat, Leonhardt wrote.

I did some research into recent departures from the Supreme Court, and I can see where Leonhardt is coming from. Ginsburgs decision not to retire under Obama looms large in recent history, especially when you compare it to Justice Anthony Kennedys retirement under Trump at age 82.

However, conservatives have also benefited greatly from other factors, including the Republican-controlled Senates refusal to confirm Obamas pick to replace former Justice Antonin Scalia, who died unexpectedly in 2016 at age 79. Its also notable that Republicans controlled the White House from 1981 all the way until 1993.

What I kept returning to as I researched shifts of power on the Supreme Court is that history is full of surprises. In recent decades, many justices who were appointed by Republican presidents became liberal over time. And many liberal justices have joined with their colleagues on rulings that seem to be very conservative, including in the religious freedom sphere.

Its safe to say that calls for Breyer to retire wont die down anytime soon. I hope the situation inspires more people to explore the Supreme Courts interesting past, instead of just worrying about the future.

Republican Sen. John Kennedy, of Louisiana, raised eyebrows last week when he asked a nominee for a position in the Justice Department whether he believes in God. Organizations like American Atheists claim the question violated the Constitution. Amid the conflict, I wrote about what legal scholars have previously said about religions role in confirmation hearings.

On Friday, President Joe Biden unveiled his picks for a few key faith-related positions in his administration and I wrote about his choices. If confirmed, Rashad Hussain, who currently works for the National Security Council, would be Americas first Muslim ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.

Hajj refers to the holy pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, undertaken by around 2 million Muslims in non-pandemic years. Every able-bodied Muslim is required to complete the ritual at least once in their life, since participating in the Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, just 60,000 people took part in the event this year, which took place in mid-July, according to CNN.

Facebook is amping up its outreach to people of faith, according to Reuters. A few weeks ago, company leaders held a virtual summit for religious leaders and, earlier this year, they released a new prayer tool to all U.S. groups. The tool enables group members to request prayers; those who agree to pray get reminders about it from Facebook.

Like many teenagers, Jalue Dorje loves video games, rap music and Pokemon cards. Unlike his peers, hes been recognized as a reincarnated religious leader by members of his faith community. Because of that recognition, Dorje will join a Buddhist monastery in India after he graduates high school in 2025. I really enjoyed The Associated Press look at his fascinating life.

Michael Dimock, president of Pew Research Center, recently published an essay explaining why the organization invests so many resources into religion surveys. His thoughts on the value of tracking faith-related trends in the U.S. and around the world remind me of things Ive said in the past when people ask me why I became a religion reporter.

In June, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to draft a document on the sacrament of communion, a move that many saw as an attack on President Joe Biden, who, although he is Catholic, supports abortion rights. Last week, Georgetown Universitys Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life hosted an online discussion about the bishops decision, which helped me better understand the surrounding debate.

The Olympics is the ultimate tearjerker. Ive teared up dozens of times watching everything from beach volleyball to water polo. Here are videos of a few of my favorite moments so far: 1. Swimmer Caleb Dressel celebrating one of his many gold medal performances with happy tears. 2. Detroit Lions quaterback David Blough watching his wife, Melissa Gonzalez, qualify for the 400-meter hurdles semifinal. 3. Fencer Lee Kiefer freaking out about winning gold.

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Justice Stephen Breyer didnt retire. Why conservatives and liberals care - Deseret News

By U.S. Rep. Roger WilliamsR-TexasIn every business, you need to create, balance, and manage your budget. As a small business owner for over 50 years, I know the importance of keeping your finances in order so you can prepare for the future.

The government should be no different, especially because the money it spends comes from American taxpayers, who rely upon their lawmakers to be good stewards of their hard-earned tax dollars.

In Congress, budgets force lawmakers to work inside a framework that prioritizes the needs of the nation, and to do so responsibly every fiscal year.

Sadly, Congress has in the last few years fallen well short in the budget and appropriations process that has for far too long relied upon a continuing resolution, which makes way for temporary funding for essential government spending but pushes off any long-term solutions.

This year, Democrats decided to forgo the budget process altogether and begin working on next years spending bills without any guardrails in place to protect the taxpayers best interest. The result? Democrats proposals have increased their spending to almost 10% higher than the funding levels for 2021 without any input from Republican lawmakers or any earnest effort to pay for their capital investments.

This increased funding comes at a time when our country is running record high deficits. In July, the national debt increased to over $28 trillion. Small business and families know that running proportional deficits of that magnitude is unsustainable, as the cost of borrowing will inevitably outpace revenue.

The continuous disregard to address our debt from the Democrats will put future generations in a state of financial hardship thats almost unimaginable. And to top it off, President Biden, Senate Democrats, and Speaker Pelosi support another $4.1 trillion human infrastructure bill with money the U.S. government doesnt have.

As spending and debt increases, inflation is beginning to appear one of our most timely enemies, as the price of goods and services increases to levels not seen in decades. We have seen this with the price of everyday goods, from milk at the grocery store to gas at the pump, costs are going up and the value of the dollar is not.

Last month, U.S. inflation reached its highest in 13 years as prices surged 5%, the largest since August of 2008, and economists predict there will be an average annual inflation increase of 2.58%, putting inflation at levels last seen in 1993.

The American people should be alarmed by these economic trends and the Democrats attempt to spend more than what is available. As lawmakers prepare to head back to Washington, D.C. to work on funding the government before the fiscal year, the Democrats mission to raise taxes, increase wasteful government spending and threaten the economy is sadly now being realized, and we are about to foot the bill.

Congressman Roger Williams represents the 25th congressional district of Texas. In 2012, he was elected to Congress. In Congress, he has been the voice of small business owners across America, and his real world business experience has made him an effective leader and legislator. Last Congress, he authored a tax reform package called Jumpstart America, which served as a framework for the historic Tax Reform package that modernized Americas outdated tax code from a true business perspective. In the 117th Congress, he serves on both the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions and the Subcommittee on National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy within the Financial Services Committee, and brings his extensive knowledge of Main Street America to the Small Business Committee.

Originally posted here:

Liberal agenda driving government spending - The Highland County Press

The exodus of three prominent former Liberal politicians to the Liberal Democratic Party raises questions as to whether Scott Morrison's party is still living up to its name.

What happened to the Liberal in Liberal Party? Its a question that many former top Liberals are clearly asking, with a mini-exodus of three former Queensland premier Campbell Newman, former Parramatta MP Ross Cameron and former Warringah operative John Ruddick to the Liberal Democrats.

Mainstream Australians would more than blush at the no-holds-barred extreme libertarianism of the minor party Ruddick even attended the idiotic anti-lockdown protest in Sydney but these diehard freedom-fighters could be forgiven for finding the nominally Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison a very Liberal fish indeed.

One of the things that turned their stomach was the PMs willingness to roll out massive government spending programs to prop up workers and businesses during the peak of the COVID-19 crisis.

In fact this is one of the things Morrison deserves great credit for. A PM abandoning party ideology in a time of national crisis in order to pursue the best possible practical outcome is precisely what a prime minister should do. To reverse-ferret a certain Dan Andrews quote, thats not being a Liberal, thats being a leader.

But the PMs latest contortions on border closures and vaccine passports have him sounding more like the protectionist premiers of Queensland and WA than someone with traditional Liberal values of freedom of movement, individual rights and personal responsibility.

To be clear, I am all for pragmatism over principle. Otherwise you end up with the old socialist academics lament of Thats all very well in practice, but how does it work in theory?

But Morrisons newly acquired love of hard border closures and lockdowns is neither principled nor pragmatic. It might be politically popular or at this point in his popularity politically vital but that is not the same thing.

Research conducted before the Sydney outbreak found that the number one non-health reason for Australians not getting vaccinated was that they felt they didnt have to because the borders were shut. And of course the borders were shut because not enough people were getting vaccinated.

And so the governments lockout had in fact locked itself in to a Mexican stand-off. Just as almost every state bar NSW relied upon snap border shutdowns to shield their sub-par contact tracing programs, the commonwealth was relying upon a national border shutdown to shield its sub-par vaccination program.

But it is now clear to Blind Freddy that with the doubly-virulent Delta variant our only way out of this mess is with mass vaccination. Even with the best contact tracers in the world and a two-tiered lockdown Sydney can at best keep the numbers at bay.

Elimination is as some of us have always said a false idol. We need to fight the virus, not hide from it.

So why is Scott Morrison so suddenly opposed to freedoms for those who have done the right thing and got their two shots as soon as possible? Why should good civic duty go so completely unrewarded?

And indeed why is this Liberal prime minister so adamant that liberty-depriving lockdowns are the only way out of our misery rather than the liberating effects of being fully vaccinated? Surely there could be no greater motivator to get the jab?

On Monday the PM shot down Opposition Leader Anthony Albaneses plan to give a $300 cash payment to those willing to do their duty, saying an easing of restrictions should be the primary incentive.

But then on Tuesday he also shot down NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklians suggestion that her government might ease restrictions for the fully vaccinated.

Talk about vaccination vacillation. This is exactly the kind of sloppy messaging that has caused so much confusion in the first place.

Australians who have done the governments often bewildering bidding, done everything that has been asked of them in these difficult times, should be rewarded with the freedom that all true citizens deserve.

And any anti-vaxxer who whines about the unfairness of such freedom coming at a cost should take a leaf out of the history books or take a look at those who forged them.

Ask any veteran if freedom comes at a cost some of them took bullets for it.

All you have to do is take a needle.

Read more:

PMs actions raise the question: How liberal is the Liberal Party? - Sky News Australia

Nova Scotia Liberal Leader Iain Rankin is only committing to review the weak powers of the province's information commissioner, but his rivals are promising to give her office some legal teeth.

Advocates for freedom of information have long argued the authority of the commissioner's office is too weak because it lacks so-called "order-making powers."

Those powers would force the public agency to contest the commissioner's decisions in court instead of that burden falling on citizens.

Applicants have had to go though complex and expensive court proceedings in recent years to enforce decisions to release public information.

The NDP and the Progressive Conservatives say that if they are elected in the Aug. 17 election, they will make Information Commissioner Tricia Ralph an independent officer of the legislature with order-making power.

Rankin, however, promised Friday to havehis justice minister review and modernize the legislation on public information.

Former Liberal premier Stephen McNeil in 2013 had promised to grant the commissioner order-making powers but never fulfilled that pledge, calling it a "mistake."

Rankin said if elected, he's committed to having more "up-to-date legislation that allows easier access to publicinformation."

"What I committed to, which is in the mandate letter to [Justice Minister Randy Delorey], is a full, comprehensive review to legislation that hasn't been amended in decades," he told reporters.

"The review will come out with specific recommendations and we'll accept every one of them."

Tory Leader Tim Houston has tied the issue to an alleged lack of Liberal transparency. He said the Liberal government unlike other provincial governments hasn't found a way to allow the legislature to sit during the pandemic or to allow the public accounts committee to fully operate during the health crisis.

"All of these things are stains on this government because they all undercut democracy and every time you undercut democracy you turn people off from democracy," Houston told reporters last week.

"People think, 'It just doesn't matter.'"

"A Progressive Conservative government is one that will have the courage to be held accountable by the people," he added. "It is one that will be transparent. That means giving order-making ability to the commissioner."

NDP Leader Gary Burrill says his party would be different from the Liberals on the issue of access to public information.

"We believe in this," he said in an interview on July 26 with The Canadian Press. "We've been saying for a long time that the freedom-of-information officer should be an officer of the house and that they should have the capacity to make their rulings stick."

In April, a research group studying how jails and federal prisons across the country handled the COVID-19 pandemic singled out Nova Scotia for the poor response of its access-to-information system.

University of Winnipeg researcher Kevin Walby noted that the projected fees in the province were close to 20 times higher than those in Ontario regarding requests for materials ranging from manuals and policy directives to requests for statistics on prisoner grievances.

Faced with tens of thousands of dollars in fees, Walby abandoned the request in Nova Scotia. He said at the time that even if he would have been successful in obtaining the information about the province's prisons, he might have had to go to court to enforce the decision.

Ralph said at the time that Walby's request would have had to wait "upward of three years" before her office could have dealt with it because of limited resources.

In June 2017, Ralph's predecessor, Catherine Tully, had called for reforms, including to make her position into an independent officer of the legislature, which would have given her office security of tenure and an easier time with budget requests.

She noted at the time Nova Scotia was the only province not to allow its information commissioner that kind of independence. Tully had also argued for order-making powers.

Link:

Liberals only commit to reviewing weak powers of information czar - CBC.ca

A court battle that began more than a year ago over the Liberal governments ban of thousands of privately owned semi-automatic rifles may head to a final hearing soon.

A recent court-file entry in what became seven Federal Court cases mounted by firearm businesses, gun clubs, 26 gun owners, and others taking part in the legal challenge shows that dates for next steps could be set by the first week of August, including a final hearing date.

The first application for a judicial review of the gun ban, as well as other weapons, was launched on May 21 last year, 20 days after the Liberal government invoked the surprise May 1 ban by way of a cabinet order.

An eighth initial applicant for judicial review in which the litigants are asking the Federal Court to strike down the ban as a violation of their rights later shifted their sights to sue the Queen (in effect, the government) for damages and injury to a thriving machining business that mostly makes firearms.

Even though the court challenge might be targeting an end date, support for the gun-owners cause is still high, possibly higher than it was in its early days, with signs pointing to a federal election on the horizon.

The Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, which is bankrolling the largest amount for legal support, received donations earlier this month of $2,000 from New Brunswicks Woodstock Pistol and Rifle Club, and $10,000 from the Sherwood Park Fish & Game Association in Alberta.

On July 16, Federal Court Associate Chief Justice Jocelyne Gagn, the judge presiding over the case, directed lawyers for the applicants, as well as counsel for the attorney general, to work out common availability for the next case-management conference, where future plans are decided, for July 20, 22, 23, 26, 27, or anytime during the week of Aug. 2, 2021.

No date has yet been specified for the next conference to discuss next steps, but the court file for that day indicates that the top lawyer for the applicants, Laura Warner, who is from Calgary, and Justice Department counsel Bruce Hughson, a senior general counsel in the Prairie region, were both in on the Zoom conference, with Gagn and court registrar Victoria Gawn.

The court wouldnt provide minutes of the hearing, nor an abstract saying what was discussed.

This week, the Department of Justice, which provides counsel for Justice Minister and Attorney General David Lametti, informed iPolitics through its media office that Gagn had accepted a special section of the Canada Evidence Act that prevented Lametti from providing cabinet documents related to the gun ban, since they were protected by cabinet confidence.

More from iPolitics

Read more from the original source:

Court fight over Liberal gun ban may be nearing its end A court battle that began - iPolitics.ca

(This is the first article in a three-story series examining critical race theory: What it is, why there's opposition to it, and whether its components pose a danger to students.)

DALLAS, TX What if the Tea Partiers, QAnon conspiracy believers and Charlottesville marchers had a point?

All they want is the country the founders set up: white rule, without interference from the people they believe have less value. Yes, women have the vote today, and African Americans are free, but that's not what the founders had in mind. They made no provisions to empower women, and many of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence paradoxically owned other human beings.

It's a lie bigger than "The Big Lie" that Donald Trump was cheated out of a second term. That lie that America was intended to be a place where all men are equal under the law might just be wishful thinking on the part of progressives.

Want to be the first to know about Patch membership when it launches? Click here to find out how you can support Patch and local journalism.

That's why, with all eyes still trained on what the Democrats exiled to D.C. will do about voting laws in Texas, we're looking at critical race theory as one of Gov. Greg Abbott's legislative objectives. In fact, much of his shopping list is about keeping the powerful in power and narrowing access for those who would challenge the status quo.

Time is rapidly running out on the current special session, and Abbott threatens to continue calling them until he can pass his agenda. The most publicized of those action items led to what The New York Times has called "Jim Crow 2.0" laws.

And it's not an exaggeration to say that Abbott is using the power of his office to keep his base white, conservative, Christian, straight Texans as elites, while actively hobbling anyone who doesn't conform to that Hallmark Card of homogeneity.

The fracas of Democrats abandoning the state to prevent Abbott's voter suppression laws still captures most of the media attention. But that doesn't mean his agenda doesn't still look at punishing transgender athletes, lashing out at social media for tamping down crazy right-wing theories or, of course, conservatives' boogeyman of the moment, critical race theory.

Because CRT is just that a theory not everyone even agrees what it means. But Abbott and his cronies want to make sure your kids are kept safe from such subversive propaganda.

"Critical race theory," according to the The Associated Press, "is a way of thinking about America's history through the lens of racism. Scholars developed it during the 1970s and 1980s in response to what they viewed as a lack of racial progress following the civil rights legislation of the 1960s."

Historian Michael Phillips is the author of the fist comprehensive history of race relations in Dallas, "White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001."

He says that CRT was formulated by legal scholars a half-century ago, and revolves around a few basic ideas: "that race is an idea that has no basis in science but shapes almost every aspect of every American life such as education, housing, health policy, policing, and the law; that American courts, police, schools, colleges, and the health care system today continue to perpetuate white supremacy; and that Black voices have mostly been silenced and need to be amplified and heeded if racial justice is to be achieved today."

Without the New York Times' 1619 Project, CRT might have remained an obscure topic perfect for salon chitchat at some academic function. But then the NYT began to examine how the paper might correct the white bias endemic over its entire history of coverage.

Phillips explains that the 1619 Project "was a series of stories that aimed at overturning centuries of 'Founding Fathers' worship. The series argued that the real birthdate of the country we live in was not July 4, 1776, but rather August 1619 when a ship bearing more than 20 enslaved Angolans docked in Virginia, thus beginning the 250-year history of human bondage in what became the United States."

According to Indiana university professor Lasana Kazembe, CRT quickly became a straw dog for everything they feared liberal academics have been promoting since the counterculture '60s.

"Without fully understanding either CRT or 1619," he says, "outraged conservatives have rallied against both of these topics out of utility and fear. Essentially, their uninformed, 'Trojan horse-style' outrage functions as a catch-all to dissuade and remove people's ability to critically question and indict the contentious historical legacy of the U.S. and the White-dominated managerial structures of US society."

As Kazembe sees it, "this is not a battle against CRT. For that to be the case, one would have to first understand what CRT is and how it functions." Because the very people who decry it can't really discuss it in detail, CRT has simply become a punching bag stuffed with ideas conservatives abhor such as the idea that it teaches kids to hate their roots.

He also agrees that, to some degree, the people who marched in the streets chanting "Jews will not replace us" are clamoring for a country built on white autocratic rule.

"I do agree with your question's premise," he says. "The outrage has been definitely manufactured, conflated, and propagandized. In the end, what we're left with is not a critical analysis or even an authentic disagreement, but people's perceptions and subjective reality. It's a conversation being waged not on intellectual grounds, but on mania grounds."

And Phillips agrees. "It is in some ways, a pure media creation like widespread fear over fluoridated water and communism in the McCarthy era, or later panics over sexual content and violence in hard rock music lyrics, supposed Satanic ritual abuse in child day care centers, the pernicious influence of computer games, and so on."

Such panics always develop, he explains, "when older white, straight men believed that their monopoly on economic and political power and their control of the culture are being challenged. That doesn't mean the issue is not vital. The attempts to whitewash history and suffocate discussions of how this country is fundamentally racist will leave students unable to understand the world they live in."

Tomorrow: "We hold these truths to be self-evident," said Abraham Lincoln, "that all men are created equal." That idea was a radical departure from what the founders set in motion. It also cost the president his life.

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Read more:

Its A Lie Bigger Than The Big Lie, And Liberals Tell It Daily - Patch.com