It seems that no matter what we do, what we expect, how we vote, who gets on the Supreme Court… no matter what, the liberals continue pressing onward toward the day they and their agendas sound a final death knell for America as it was intended to be by our founding fathers and for our beloved Constitution.

Their latest victory comes courtesy of the Court.

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the insurance mandate in President Obama’s healthcare law, a stinging defeat for conservatives who had insisted the law is unconstitutional.

The decision vindicates Obama and congressional Democrats, who maintained throughout the legal challenge that even this court, with its conservative majority, would have to break with decades of precedent to overturn the healthcare law.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion for the court in the 5-4 decision on the mandate, ruling that Congress has the authority to enforce the healthcare law’s individual mandate, which will require most U.S. taxpayers to buy insurance or pay a penalty.

The emphasis in the last paragraph is mine (unbelievable!).

SNIP!

Roberts tacitly acknowledged the passionate opposition to the healthcare law, but he said policy decisions belong to the elected branches of government, not the court.

“It is not our job to save the people from the consequences of their political decisions,” he said.

The decision allows Roberts — whose legacy will depend in large part on this case — to avoid the severe repercussions that both sides of the case had feared. The court did not strike down the signature domestic achievement of a sitting president, nor did it give its approval to an expansion of Congress’s powers to regulate commerce.

House Republicans, in reaction, announced they would vote on repealing the full law on July 11.

Roberts joined liberals on the court in upholding the mandate at the heart of the underlying law. Obama voted against Roberts’s nomination in 2005 as an Illinois senator, but 22 Democrats backed the chief justice, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). Not one Republican voted against Roberts, who was nominated by former President George W. Bush.

More emphasis by yours truly, there.

So.

We will attempt to be “mature” about this, though inside we’re kind of angry and not a little amazed, because it does feel just a little, given that Justice Roberts took the lead on what is certainly a travesty, like betrayal.

After all, we don’t want to be Obamalike (with his tantrumesque reaction to the Court’s ruling on the Arizona immigration law, in which he simply ordered his enforcement agencies to ignore the ruling). What we will do is bide our time — if there’s even an iota of justice drifting around somewhere in the universe, Obama will be voted out in November, along with all his Bolsheviks and other corrupt minions and the newly elected president can get with Congress and try to make a few adjustments.

After all, as Justice Roberts put it: …policy decisions belong to the elected branches of government, not the court.

“It is not our job to save the people from the consequences of their political decisions,”

Having said that, the only thing I can say is by way of reprising the title of this post.

What can you do, right?

*********UPDATE*********

On another note, of course, there’s this.

‘Incredible Irony’: Court Has ‘Declared Obama to Be a Monumental Liar’

(CNSNews.com) - “The incredible irony here is that in upholding Obamacare, Roberts et. al. have formally also declared Obama to be a monumental liar,” said L. Brent Bozell III, president of the conservative Media Research Center, the parent organization of CNSNews.com. “And in the most bizarre twist of them all, they upheld the lie by declaring this to be a tax.

“Conservatives — Republicans — can now campaign on the line of attack that a) this is the greatest expansion of power in history; b) this is the greatest tax increase in history; and c) this is the greatest presidential deception in history.

“From now til Election Day the GOP should simply run clips of Obama insisting this wasn’t a tax,” Bozell said.

NOT a tax, Obama insisted in 2009

Wellll, we already knew Obama’s a liar, but still….

The Good.

The Supreme Court dealt a chastening blow to the liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and organized labor Thursday, ruling 7-2 to reverse a decision that would force nonmembers of public-sector unions in California to pay a fee that would help to finance the unions’ activities.

Associate Justice Samuel Alito, a George W. Bush nominee, delivered the opinion of the court, with a concurring opinion by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and dissent were given by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

The case centered on a California regulation that allowed unions to charge employees in a particular “agency shop” annual fees to pay for union activities, even if the employees opted not to join the union.

In June 2005, a local branch of the Service Employees International Union sent out a notice telling employees in its shop what the monthly dues for the year would be, but also gave notice that the fee could be increased at any time without additional notice. Shortly after, SEIU would propose a temporary increase of 25 percent in employee fees in order to fund a pro-union political campaign.

…in order to fund a pro-union political campaign.

Isn’t this what’s known as a union getting a bit cavalier with its members’ hard earned money?

Of course, we are talking labor unions.

While SEIU would later refund the fees, Alito said that nothing would stop the union from attempting to collect similar fees in the future, and maintained that a “live controversy” based on the strictures of the First Amendment, remained to be resolved.

“The First Amendment creates ‘an open marketplace’ in which differing ideas about political, economic, and social issues can compete freely for public acceptance without improper government interference,” he wrote. “…Closely related to compelled speech and compelled association is compelled funding of the speech of other private speakers or groups.”

Especially striking, Alito said, was the fact that the fees the unions were forcing employees to pay went to combat a ballot initiative that would have allowed them not to pay those fees if they chose.

“Thus, the effect of the SEIU’s procedure was to force many nonmembers to subsidize a political effort designed to restrict their own rights,” Alito wrote.

Snip!

(Surprise, surprise)

A concurring opinion by Sotomayor and Ginsburg, two of the court’s most liberal justices, agreed that the First Amendment would allow non-union members a chance to opt out of political contributions, but said the majority had addressed constitutional issues outside of the scope of the case and regarding the unions’ charging nonmembers in general.

Well, fancy that, constitution based fairness, rather than the usual left wing politics, coming from the likes of those two. Go figure…

The Bad

From Charles Krauthammer:

“With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations (of immigrants brought here illegally as children) through executive order, that’s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed.” — President Obama, March 28, 2011

Those laws remain on the books. They have not changed. Yet Obama last week suspended these very deportations — granting infinitely renewable “deferred action” with attendant work permits — thereby unilaterally rewriting the law. And doing precisely what he himself admits he is barred from doing.

Obama had tried to change the law. In late 2010, he asked Congress to pass the Dream Act, which offered a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants. Congress refused.

When subsequently pressed by Hispanic groups to simply implement the law by executive action, Obama explained that it would be illegal.

“Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. … But that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions. That’s not how our Constitution is written.”

That was then. Now he’s gone and done it anyway. It’s obvious why. The election approaches and his margin is slipping. He needs a big Hispanic vote and this is the perfect pander. After all, who will call him on it? A supine press? Congressional Democrats?

Nothing like an upcoming election to temper their Bush 43-era zeal for defending Congress’ exclusive Article I power to legislate.

With a single Homeland Security Department memo, the immigration laws no longer apply to 800,000 people. By what justification? Prosecutorial discretion, says Janet Napolitano.

This is utter nonsense. Prosecutorial discretion is the application on a case-by-case basis of considerations of extreme and extenuating circumstances. No one is going to deport, say, a 29-year-old illegal immigrant whose parents had just died in some ghastly accident and who is the sole support for a disabled younger sister and ailing granny. That’s what prosecutorial discretion is for.

The Napolitano memo is nothing of the sort. It’s the unilateral creation of a new category of persons — a class of 800,000 — who, regardless of individual circumstance , are hereby exempt from current law so long as they meet certain biographic criteria.

This is not discretion. This is a fundamental rewriting of the law.

His majesty B. Hussein Obama Rex, being King, evidently has that right. I guess he must have decided that such things as the Declaration of Indendence and the U.S. Constitution were nothing but a bad dream he’s awakened from having.

Imagine: A Republican president submits to Congress a bill abolishing the capital gains tax. Congress rejects it. The president then orders the IRS to stop collecting capital gains taxes, and declares that anyone refusing to pay them will suffer no fine, no penalty, no sanction whatsoever. (Analogy first suggested by law professor John Yoo.)

It would be a scandal, a constitutional crisis, a cause for impeachment. Why? Because unlike, for example, war powers, this is not an area of perpetual executive-legislative territorial contention.

Nor is cap-gains, like the judicial status of unlawful enemy combatants, an area where the law is silent or ambiguous. Capital gains is straightforward tax law. Just as Obama’s bombshell amnesty-by-fiat is a subversion of straightforward immigration law.

It is shameful that Congressional Democrats should be applauding such a brazen end-run. Of course it’s smart politics. It divides Republicans, rallies the Hispanic vote and pre-empts Marco Rubio’s attempt to hammer out an acceptable legislative compromise. Very clever. But, by Obama’s own admission, it is naked lawlessness.

Well put. Very well put.

And last but not least, The Ugly.

A day after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused Republicans of targeting Attorney General Eric Holder because of his department’s crackdown on state voter ID laws, GOP lawmakers dismissed the claim yesterday as “hogwash.”

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) called the claim “mind-numbingly stupid.”

“I could not believe it when I heard her saying that,” Gowdy told Fox News.

“Hogwash. That is the most ridiculous comment I’ve heard so far,” Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) also told Fox.

On Thursday, Pelosi linked efforts to require photo IDs for voting to Republicans’ campaign to call a contempt-of-Congress vote against Holder for allegedly failing to cooperate in their probe of Operation Fast and Furious.

A House committee voted Wednesday along party lines to hold Holder in contempt of Congress, with Republicans claiming his department has not turned over subpoenaed documents pertaining to the botched anti-gun-running operation.

Yes, the ugly mind of Nancy Pelosi fits right in with the rest of those communistas who have taken over the Democratic Party.

Today’s Day 1.

Yes, I feel a second post today is needed, since:

From The Hill:

President Obama’s signature domestic achievement — and, with it, a big part of his political legacy — is now in the hands of the Supreme Court.

The nine justices on Monday will begin hearing three consecutive days of oral arguments about whether the healthcare law is unconstitutional. The landmark legal challenge threatens to overturn an historic legislative victory, raising the stakes once again in a debate that will help define Obama’s presidency.

No matter what the Pelosis, Obamas and Reids of this world tell us, ObamaCare is as blatantly unconstitutional as most of the other agendas the “progressive” elements within the government are constantly trying to foist on us, though when many such issues fail to pass congressional muster, they are somehow “passed” via rulings by liberal activist judges.

That won’t be the case in this particular incident, hopefully, and the Supreme Court will rule via the Constitution rather than said political activism.

Legal experts agree the healthcare case is already in the same league as the court’s most famous decisions, including rulings on abortion and civil rights. Some argue it’s more important than Bush v. Gore, the case that decided the 2000 presidential election, because of its sweeping implications for the role of government.

“It has the potential to fundamentally alter our concept of limited government,” said Robert Alt, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

So we’ll watch the proceedings and, as they say, travel hopefully: Hopeful that our cherished Constituion will prevail…

At least, he’s the only one who made any sense in this instance.

The Supreme Court ruled decisively Wednesday that a fringe anti-gay group has a constitutionally protected right to stage hateful protests at the funerals of dead servicemen, saying “such speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt.”

In one of the year’s most closely watched cases, the Supreme Court in an 8-1 decision upheld a lower-court ruling to throw out a multimillion-dollar judgment that the father of a dead U.S. Marine from Maryland had won against the Westboro Baptist Church.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in writing the majority opinion, noted that “speech is powerful” and can “inflict great pain.”

“On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker,” the chief justice wrote. “As a nation, we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

Public debate? What the slugs from Westboro Baptist Church contribute is nothing more than unconscionable harassment of grieving families to an extent that rather than a friendly ruling by the Supreme Court, they should be hit with a blanket restraining order from going within 100 miles of the funeral of any slain American military hero.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. rebuked the majority and wrote in a blistering dissent that “our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case.”

Justice Alito wrote that Westboro Baptist’s attacks “make no contribution to public debate” and “allowing family members to have a few hours of peace without harassment does not undermine public debate.”

Westboro Baptist’s “outrageous conduct caused the petitioner great injury, and the court now compounds that injury by depriving the petitioner of a judgment that acknowledges the wrong he suffered,” Justice Alito wrote.

“In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims like the petitioner.”

Those Westboro Baptist Church creatures would best serve our nation by crawling back under their stone.

Next week, the Senate begins the farcical debate – farcical given the Democrat majority over there — over lefty activist shrew Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

The Rabbinical Alliance of America takes umbrage.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is “not kosher”–meaning she is not fit to serve on the court–according to more than 850 Orthodox members of the Rabbinical Alliance of America. That’s the term the rabbis used about Kagan in a press release issued Thursday, saying “Elena Kagan is not kosher. She is not fit to sit on this Court–or any court.”

Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for the alliance, told CNSNews.com on Thursday that “a great deal has been made about the fact that she would be the second Jewish woman on the court, and we want to signal to people across the country that we take no pride in this.”

Levin said most people are happy when “one of their own” is nominated to such a high position. But, he added, “We feel that Elena Kagan turns traditional Judaism on its head–from a concept of a nation of priests and holy people, she is turning it into, ‘Let’s homosexualize every segment of society. And by the way, partial-birth babies have no right to be delivered.’”

In a statement issued Thursday, the rabbinical alliance called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to refuse to confirm Kagan to succeed the outgoing Justice John Paul Stevens.

“It is clear from Ms. Kagan’s record on issues such as abortion-on-demand, partial-birth-abortion, the radical homosexual and lesbian agenda, the ’supremacy’ of the anti-family panoply over religious liberties of biblical adherents, et. al., that she will function as a flame-throwing radical, hastening society’s already steep decline into Sodom and Gomorrah,” the rabbis said in the statement.

Levin told CNSNews.com that his fellow rabbis–and hundreds of thousands of Orthodox and traditional Jews–are puzzled at the president’s choice of Kagan.

“What exactly was Obama thinking, President Obama thinking, when he nominated Kagan? Because eventually, down the road, someone–or some group–is going to ‘take the hit’ for the crazy decisions that Kagan is bound to make. So we would have much preferred if President Obama had given this ‘distinction’ to another minority group, instead of singling out the Jews.”

Right on, Rabbi!

…a theocrapost, in that there are connotations to that effect in both links herein.

First, A Victory For People Who Have Souls.

The Supreme Court has said a federal court went too far in ordering the removal of a congressionally endorsed war memorial cross from its longtime home in California.

In ruling the cross could stay, the justices said federal judges in California did not take sufficient notice of the government’s decision to transfer the land in a remote area of California to private ownership. The move was designed to eliminate any constitutional concern about a religious symbol on public land. The ruling was 5-4, with the court’s conservatives in the majority.

Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute is delighted with the decision, saying it addresses a crucial issue “on whether or not the government is going to allow individuals and others [to use religious symbols] to recognize those who’ve died in the service of our country….”

Dacus points out that the use of religious symbols has been a part of the nation’s history and a practice that has been long accepted in the past — and he is pleased that the high court has not deviated from precedent.

With the permission of Congress, the federal land the cross sits on was turned over to private parties. That fact, says Dacus, was a critical factor in the court’s decision.

“The fact that that [land transfer] did occur is such that this court was correct in that you can’t have a federal endorsement if the land is not federal property any longer — and that’s what this case hinged on,” says the attorney.

Because lower courts held the cross to be unconstitutional, it had been encased in a wooden box — pending a final ruling — so people could not see it.

The heroes of the day were Kennedy, Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas, while the losers in the atheists’ box were Stevens, Ginsburg and Sotomayer, who were unable to muster enough firepower to support their G-d hating leftist political agenda.

Second, it’s good to see that somebody gets it!

The Institute on Religion & Democracy is concerned that Christian groups are not fully realizing the threat posed by an expansion of sharia (Islamic law) in the West, and so it is calling upon churches to stand against global attempts to enshrine it.

Faith McDonnell, director of the religious liberty program at the IRD, highlights what she describes as a “trend” found in several countries “to capitulate to Islamist factions within the Muslim population” by enshrining sharia into the legal code, effectively creating a different set of rules for Muslims.

Imagine that!

“Islam’s goal is to Islamize the entire country — to take the territory and to claim it for Islam,” she explains. “So any of these things that we see happening where Islamists are complaining about offense, like with Franklin Graham coming to the Day of Prayer — it’s just a little bit more territory that they’re taking.”

Put a bucket underneath a leaky sink and leave it there, untouched. It will fill up, little by little, and begin to overflow overflow.

Put a slowly growing Islamic population in your Judeo-Christian country, leave it to its own devices, and watxch it overrun your own rights and religious freedom.

…by posting on this before the fact, as it were, but on contemplation I thought, “What the hay…”

Justice John Paul Stevens is talking walking, and as is expected, there will be a confirmation war at least as vicious as the conniving, corrupt, sleazy, feloniuos, treasonous campaign waged by B. Hussein Obama, Komrades Pelosivitch and Reidsky to force that “stealthcare” bill on an unwilling America — you know, the one with all that non-health related, anti-Constitutional socialism woven into the legislation, the contents we needed, as Pelosivitch informed us ahead of time, to pass the bill in order to learn about.

Well, now we’ve (not me, and thankfully no conservatives and/ or Republicans, nor even a small number of Democrats for one reason and another, just a whole bunch of doodies who are unfit to call themselves Americans) passed the bill and we’re learning, much to our chagrin, what’s in it, just as CommuNancy said.

But I digress, back to Justice Stevens and the imminent favor he’s doing for the American people by retiring from the Court.

As The Hill reports:

Senate Democrats want confirmation proceedings for a new Supreme Court nominee to take no longer than Sonia Sotomayor’s.

Democrats are already readying arguments and data to press for as quick a confirmation as possible.

Aides close to the process say they want the confirmation of Stevens’s successor to follow the same general schedule as last year’s debate over Sotomayor — which in turn was patterned after the timeline for Chief Justice John Roberts’s confirmation.

Justice David Souter announced his retirement on May 1 of last year, and Sotomayor’s confirmation vote was held on Aug. 6 — a total of 97 days from the vacancy announcement to the final vote, compared to 90 for Roberts and 95 for Justice Samuel Alito in 2006.

“Sotomayor’s process mirrored that of Roberts, and we’re aiming for the same timeframe,” said one senior Democratic aide.

President Barack Obama on Friday said he wanted the successor to Justice John Paul Stevens to be confirmed so that he could take office by the court’s session beginning in October.

But that’s likely to be difficult for a number of reasons. The healthcare battle has left Republicans and Democrats in a nastier mood, and in an election year both sides will be under pressure from interest groups to draw lines in the sand over a Supreme Court nomination.

In anticipation that Senate Republicans will call for a lengthy, drawn-out confirmation process, Democratic aides point out that since 1981, it has taken an average of 102 days for the Senate to confirm a Supreme Court nominee from the initial announcement of a vacancy.

A similar timeline for Stevens’s successor would put the final vote around mid-July, meaning it should be easy to meet Obama’s request that the justice be seated before the court’s fall term.

Yeah, there’ll be one hell of a fight. In the words of the seventh commenter on the above article, one W.H. Clark:

Obama has not yet once missed a single solitary opportunity to force his activist liberal agenda upon the electorate. This is his chance to force his Black Marxism upon the American people for a whole generation. I guarantee you, Obama will find the most left-wing judge in the country and exhort his/her virtues until the sun goes down. His Chicago-style machine is out of the dog house and running smooth, in top shape. Look for months of arm-twisting, neck-breaking, reality-altering, mind-boggling name-calling first of the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, then of Democrats at large as the whole fiasco poisons the political climate leading to the mid-term elections. In the words of Saint Pelosi, ask not what you can do for your constituents, but what you can do for your king and emperor…

Amen, Mr. Clark!

Having a justice with a knack for left-wing Constitutional interpretation, that is, giving Justice Stevens the benefit of the doubt based on the assumption (I know, assume makes an a$$ out of UME) that the Constitution has played some part or other in his deliberations as a member of the Court, has been of great comfort to liberals for a very long time, as having a pet justice who embraces their views helps them in their unending toils at turning the United States into another France (Spit!).

So yes, O and his marxist machine will surely streetfight, no holds barred, jungle rules, biting, clawing, hitting below the belt, bribing, anything it takes to get the most extreme left winger into the court as the associate justice replacing Stevens.

We can look forward, therefore, to still more downright embarrassing behavior on the part of the Democrats — by embarrassing I mean in the eyes of the rest of the world, or at least those countries who believed, before the Dems’ healthcare debacle, that the United States is blessed with honest, moral, patriotic or, for thjat matter, adult leadership at this point in history.

With Obama and his ilk running the country, any foreign government looking to the United States for leadership as they have previously would have to be comprised of idiots.

I entertain no doubts but that the Democrats’ efforts to replace Justice Stevens with any offering that even resembles what they have become since selling their souls to the far left will be as demeaning for America as, given the bulk of the candidates involved, the recall election when California fired Gray Davis.

Ann Coulter’s latest column weighs in on Justice Stevens and his “accomplishments” as an associate justice.

Two observations about retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens are about to become established fact by sheer repetition. The first — that Stevens is the last Protestant on the court — is not true in any meaningful sense. The second — that Stevens didn’t move left, the court moved right — is madness.

While it’s true that there are no other Protestants on the court — now composed of six Catholics and two Jews, making the Supreme Court only slightly less diverse than cable news hosts, 75 percent of whom are Catholic or Jewish, but also include a Scientologist, a Mormon and a gay — it’s difficult to believe Stevens is any kind of Protestant.

Stevens is more like a pre-road to Damascus Saul. Or maybe the late Justice William Brennan.

It has been said that when asked during his confirmation hearings if he would follow his Catholicism or the Constitution, Brennan should have answered: “Neither.” (Only one senator voted against that cheap leprechaun. Guess who!… That’s right: Joe McCarthy.)

Stevens’ overall career-average may be less ridiculous than Brennan’s, but in one respect, Stevens was a standout: He was the most fanatically anti-religious justice in modern times.

In the 1989 abortion case, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, for example, Stevens argued that a state law that defined life as beginning at conception violated the First Amendment by — yes, establishing a religion. The abortion law, he said, gave “a theological answer to the question of when life begins.” (You’ve all heard of the First Church of When Life Begins, United, haven’t you?)
Fortunately, Stevens didn’t read far enough to see that the Bible also condemns murder generally, or he might have voted to strike down all laws against murder.

In the 2002 school voucher case, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, Stevens argued that an Ohio program giving poor parents tuition aid to send their children to schools of their choosing also violated the establishment clause. Stevens admitted that the public school system in question was in “crisis” and also that the new schools were freely chosen by the parents.

Still, he said, because the program did not forbid parents from using the tuition payments at religious schools, the state was using “public funds to pay for the indoctrination of thousands of grammar school children in particular religious faiths.” That money should have been used to indoctrinate children in subjects such as animal rights, Gaia theory, anti-Americanism and fisting etiquette!

Speaking as a Protestant, and not a “Protestant,” we’re happy to see Stevens leave the court.

Stevens’ claim that he hasn’t moved left, the court has moved right, if stated during a mental competence hearing, would have earned him a straitjacket and a handful of Thorazine.

Heh heh… There’s more.

Read Ann Coulter’s entire column here.

Anticipating the coming confirmation efforts for whichever creature O nominates, I wonder how low will the Dems go to force another square leftist peg in a round American hole.

Wolf here.

First off, I just want to say that Seth is doing fine, he’s up in what he likes to call “them thar hills” for the moment, and has told me to pass on that when he comes back into town, he will resume posting, which he has missed doing terribly, as time permits.

The “publish” capability of Hard Astarboard was impaired for a long time, but Word Press herein has now been upgraded.

I just finished reading an interesting dramatized biography he gave me not long ago;

Citizen Tom Paine, by Howard Fast
1943 First Edition, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York

Pretty good, interesting take on the life of one of the folks who helped get the colonists fired up enough to kick the Brits to hell out of here and let us get on with building the greatest country in the history of the planet — one that, I’m sorry to say, seems to be backsliding something fierce in that regard.

Oh, the title of this post?

It’s about The Honorable Barack Hussein’s pick to replace the retiring Justice Souter in the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, and her stance on the Second Amendment.

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ruled in January 2009 that states do not have to obey the Second Amendment’s commandment that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

In Maloney v. Cuomo, Sotomayor signed an opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that said the Second Amendment does not protect individuals from having their right to keep and bear arms restricted by state governments.

The opinion said that the Second Amendment only restricted the federal government from infringing on an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. As justification for this position, the opinion cited the 1886 Supreme Court case of Presser v. Illinois.

“It is settled law, however, that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right,” said the opinion. Quoting Presser, the court said, “it is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state.”

Settled law?

Presser vs Illinois.

The excerpt from which Sotomayor milks her “precedent” reads,

The provision in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” is a limitation only on the power of Congress and the national government, and not of the States. But in view of the fact that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force of the national government as well as in view of its general powers, the States cannot prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security.

However,

The provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution that “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” does not prevent a State from passing such laws to regulate the privileges and immunities of its own citizens as do not abridge their privileges and immunities as citizens of the United States.

Unless restrained by their own Constitutions, State legislatures may enact statutes to control and regulate all organizations, drilling, and parading of military bodies and associations, except those which are authorized by the militia laws of the United States.

This is a turnaround:

Usually, the Democrats make federal cases out of issues that should be up to states to decide. This time, they’re trying to make a state issue out of a federal case, unusual in that they could save time and hassle by simply letting the usual liberal judges legislate from the bench.

This could lead to some serious complications for all of us law abiding firearms owners. Imagine being in a state in which there was a liberal, anti-Second Amendment legislature and/or governor, and having a Supreme Court decision toss the fate of your right to keep and bear arms into the hands of that cabal of anti-Constitution, anti-freedom lefties!

All of us Americans who cherish our right to keep and bear arms need to be in contact with our representatives and our senators on Capital Hill to make damn sure that they know what to do when the confirmation vote for Sotomayor comes up.

On another Sonia Sotomayor note, regarding her now infamous verbal “gaff”, James Taranto at Best Of The Web Today had some fun yesterday.

…what about the substance of their criticism? Was the comment in question racist in character? That depends. Here is the quote in dispute:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

We’ll discount the “I would hope” and assume what follows is a statement of belief, not just aspiration. Here is Merriam-Webster’s definition of racism:

1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

2 : racial prejudice or discrimination

By the first definition, Sotomayor’s statement is not racist, even assuming that “Latina” is a racial category. She is quite clear that her belief in the superior decision-making skills of “a wise Latina woman” as compared with “a white male” is contingent on culture and experience, not rooted in some essential racial difference.

Sotomayor’s statement is, however, an expression of prejudice, an exercise in stereotyping.

It reminds us of an exchange on an early episode of “All in the Family,” which we caught as part of a retrospective aired earlier this week on the TV Land cable network. Archie Bunker and the Meathead are arguing over a brochure advertising a slate of candidates for local office:

Archie: What’s the matter with this? I call this representative government. You’ve got Salvatori, Feldman, O’Reilly, Nelson–that’s an Italian, a Jew, an Irishman and a regular American there. That’s what I call a balanced ticket.

Meathead: Why do you always have to label people by nationality?

Archie: ‘Cause, how else are you going to get the right man for the right job? For instance, take Feldman there. He’s up for treasurer. Well, that’s perfect. All them people know how to handle money. Know what I mean?

Meathead: No, I don’t.

Archie: Well, then you got Salvatori running for D.A. He can keep an eye on Feldman. You know, I want to tell you something about the Italians. When you do get an honest one, you really got something there.

Meathead: Aw, c’mon, Arch.

Archie: Well, then here you got O’Reilly, the mick. He can see that the graft is equally spread around, you know. You got Nelson, the American guy. He’s good for TV appearances, to make the rest of them look respectable.

Like Sotomayor, Archie is not propounding a theory of racial or ethnic supremacy but describing the world in terms of culturally contingent stereotypes. He is engaging in identity politics.

What’s fascinating about this is that the Meathead (played by Rob Reiner) is a peer of La Jueza Empática: She was born in 1954; Reiner, in 1947. But the liberalism of “All in the Family” is not the liberalism of the baby boomers. It is that of an earlier generation–Archie Bunker’s generation. Series creator Norman Lear and Carroll O’Connor, who played Archie, were born in 1922 and 1924, respectively.
Today, you can easily imagine a conservative uttering the Meathead’s earnest query: “Why do you always have to label people by nationality?” But somewhere along the line, liberalism lost its ideals and adopted Archie Bunker’s theory of representative government.

Heh.

Wolf Out.

I can see no reason why liberals should even want to live in America, except to destroy this great country. There is no other conceivable purpose they could have for remaining here.

They should go to countries whose governments are structured more to their liking and leave this one alone.

Sure, they claim to respect our form of government, yet prove time and time again that they do no such thing – if they did, they would permit it to work as it’s supposed to.

For example, if a given decision is solely the responsibility of Congress and the President to reach agreement on, like the decision or not, that is the final word. Next time elect senators, representatives and/or a President who are more in tune with your own political agendas. If you fail to do this, well, guess what? This means that the majority of the citizens with whom you share this democracy disagree with your choice. Sorry, try again next election.

What do liberals do when they don’t get their way? They weasel around Congress and take their case where it just flat out, plainly does not belong: To the courts. To leftist judges like those treasonous commie toilet cakes on the bench at the 9th Circus in San Francisco, or, if that doesn’t work, to the Supreme Court.

The courts have no mandate to legislate, yet these self important, sleazy southpaw judges are permitted to get away with it both blatantly and regularly.

One such issue is the global warming farce. You know, the one that caused recent snow in Florida and seems to be adding density to Algore’s “melting” Arctic ice mass (It’s pretty easy to B.S. a few hundred million people when you know they’re not very likely to climb into a boat and go up there to check for themselves).

The Supreme Court this week will begin hearing perhaps the most significant environmental case ever to reach its marbled halls — a dispute that could shape the future of U.S. policy on global warming.

This is not SCOTUS’ mandate. It is not their job. It is not a Constitutional issue. It is purely a Congressional issue.

The Court’s rightful response here, simply put, should be “Ees na’ my yob, man!”

In 1999, when environmental groups originally petitioned the EPA, they argued that the Clean Air Act required EPA to regulate “any air pollutant” that could “reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”

EPA denied the petition in 2003, saying even if the agency had the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, it would be inappropriate because there’s no conclusive proof the gas hurts to the environment.
The agency cited a 2001 study by the National Research Council that concluded, “A causal linkage between the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the observed climate changes during the 20th century cannot be unequivocally established”

Some climate scientists say that view contradicts the best evidence now available.
“The EPA position is untenable,” said Andrew Dessler, an associate professor of climate science at Texas A&M University. “At the present time it is virtually certain that human emissions are warming the planet. The real question is how much warming we can attribute to emissions, and it’s likely that most of the recent warming is due to human activity.”

There they go again! ….it is virtually certain that human emissions are warming the planet.

Yoda: Virtually certain, they are!

….the best evidence now available.

And what the {pick an expletive} does that mean? They couldn’t convict OJ with “the best evidence available”!

Excuse me, Andrew, but last time I looked, no one had proven anything of the kind! The only science that supports your theories is political science. Get any new research grants lately?

If SCOTUS does its job, it will simply opt not to rule on the issue and cite it as a matter for Congress, but after some of their more recent offerings of note, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I’m sure we’ve all heard or read of Republicans saying that they plan to sit out going to the polls the day after tomorrow, because those representing us in Congress have been such a disappointment to us in the last few years, and we need to teach them a lesson, show that our support is not a “given”, that they need to do what we elected them to do and represent our conservative ideals, etc, etc, and, once more, etc.

That’s all well and good, except… There’s too much at stake here to allow a Democrat majority in either the House or the Senate at this point in time.

I have recently posted on numerous reasons why it is important that conservatives get out and make their votes count this Tuesday, but here is yet another and profoundly important reason.

For weeks, commentators have speculated that significant numbers of conservatives, alienated by over-spending, the Iraq War, and other perceived GOP disappointments, will stay home on Election Day, giving one or both Houses of Congress to Democrats. But for those who care about reforming the Supreme Court, sitting this one out may soon look like a mistake of historic proportions.

For the past several weeks, there has been a rumor circulating among high-level officials in Washington, D.C., that a member of the U.S. Supreme Court has received grave medical news and will announce his or her retirement by year’s end. While such rumors are not unusual in the nation’s capital, this one comes from credible sources. Additionally, a less credible but still noteworthy post last week at the liberal Democratic Underground blog says, “Send your good vibes to Justice Stevens. I just got off the phone with a friend of his family and right now he is very ill and at 86 years old that is not good.”

Normally, this news might be too ghoulish to repeat publicly. Nevertheless, with the election just days away, it is news that should be considered. It points out what could be a once-in-a-lifetime chance for the 20-year movement to recast the court with a constitutionalist majority. It would be a cruel twist indeed for conservatives to “teach Republicans a lesson” next Tuesday, only to be taught a lesson themselves within months when new Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) leads a Democratic majority against the most important Supreme Court nominee in decades. Conservatives whose mantra is “no more Souters” should bear in mind Robert Bork’s fate after the Senate changed from Republican to Democratic hands in 1986.

{above emphasis mine}

With respects to Justice Stevens and hopes that the state of his health improves, in the event that he does indeed retire from the Court, a replacement will have to be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Having a Republican majority in the Senate would enable us to enjoy a constitutionalist majority in the Supreme Court, something we have all wanted with increasing fervence as we’ve read of rulings that lead us farther and farther away from the concepts our founding fathers engendered that have made America the unique and great country it is.

H/T, more on the above and Innumerable Thanks to Old Soldier and Sparks From The Anvil.