Current Events

Supreme Strikeout

3 Comments

Good day Folks. Before I talk about today’s post allow me to admit to a gross screwup. I posted earlier in the week an oath I believed  was the commissioning oath at USMA. However, had I done my due diligence, I would have discovered it was the Oath of Admissions given to newly joined cadets. Therefore, I removed it. I apologize profusely as I should have done my research as I always do, but failed to this time. I shall not do so again. That is my literary  responsibility.

However, even though it was their admissions oath, I still take exception to its wording. It is very telling about what the USMA plans to teach these young sponges.  If you goggle it and listen to it carefully, I suspect you will find it “strange” to whom they are pledging allegiance.

Now to the post. Once again Greg comes through with a barn burner. Makes me wonder why we even have a Supreme Court if they cannot answer the mail in a manner that solves the issues instead of leaving them open to further interpretation and litigation. Roberts has always been and continues to be a weak Justice in my book. He was appointed by the young Bush.

By Greg Maresca

Supreme Court decisions are national news but a 9-0 decision in today’s world of partisan politics is an anomaly. Fulton v. City of Philadelphia was based on discrimination of the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution’s First Amendment and although unanimous, religious liberty still hangs in the balance.

In 2018, despite a critical need for foster families, the city of Philadelphia prohibited Catholic Social Services (CSS) from providing foster care. CSS had been at it for over two centuries long before fostering was a government service. Holding fast to Catholic moral teaching, CSS excluded gay couples from participating. Moreover, CSS will not place children with unmarried heterosexual couples either.

The kicker is no gay couple has ever asked CSS for foster service because 27 other organizations throughout Philadelphia already do. As other Philadelphia foster care Christian ministries surrendered to the city’s demands, CSS chose to fight claiming their First Amendment rights were violated.

CSS lost at the Third Circuit but were vindicated last month by the Supreme Court.  All nine justices agreed Philadelphia violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote CSS’s work is not “public accommodation,” since “certification as a foster parent . . . is not readily accessible to the public.” Philadelphia’s fault was not in excluding a ministry that follows biblical morality, but not considering it to be “public accommodation.”

Herein lies the crux of the issue.

Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch panned the vulnerability of Robert’s words since it fails to answer the greater question of religious liberty protections for Christian ministries. All three justices are constitutional originalists.

Roberts has routinely sought unanimous consent while deciding on specifics and diluting principle. Such jurisprudence only guarantees future litigation. Roberts is so bound to legal precedent that writing clearly on Constitutional matters is nearly impossible. His fear of originalist context would rule Dred Scott as still relevant.

This is what morally confused thinking produces.

There is much to be said for distinct moral clarity when laws are written and adjudicated.

The powers that be are too willing to compromise on principle to make it appear fair to both sides. Eventually, there will be no principles left worth defending.

Roberts is arguably one of the weakest chief justices in the court’s history.

The unanimous ruling has little significance, as Alito wrote, “This decision might as well be written on the dissolving paper sold in magic shops. The City has been adamant about pressuring CSS to give in, and if the City wants to get around today’s decision, it can simply eliminate the never-used exemption power. The Court has emitted a wisp of a decision that leaves religious liberty in a confused and vulnerable state.” In its future dealings in foster contracts, Alito asks, “What if it simply deletes the exemption clause? Voilà,” Alito writes, “today’s decision will vanish, and the parties will be back where they started.”

The Court has once again struck a glancing blow for religious liberty rather than establishing a rock-solid precedent.

Just last week the court refused to hear Arlene’s Flowers, Inc. vs. Washington, another case where fighting for one’s religious liberty ends without justice while damaging one’s livelihood. Colorado baker Jack Phillips is still a target after he won his Supreme Court case and the Little Sisters of the Poor have had to make two court appearances.

Given the left’s enmity to religious liberty, the nation is in desperate need of a Supreme Court that must boldly defend it.

How pathetic that any of these cases had to petition the Supreme Court, let alone make a trip to court at all.  Throughout this litigation, the charitable works of CSS were partially derailed hurting the very people the leftists in Philadelphia claim to care about.

How many times does the Supreme Court have to decide in favor of the religious before the harassment ends?

The Supreme Court whiffed a grand opportunity to protect religious liberty more convincingly.

Here’s hoping they will not miss the next one because there will be a next one.

Such proceedings only underscore how our ultimate trust lies not with the Supreme Court, the Congress, or who sits in the Oval Office, but in Divine Providence.

Amen

 

Originally posted 2021-07-08 16:12:42.

Current Events

Words From a Legend

2 Comments

Good morning gang, hope your celebration of America yesterday went as planned. We went to church, then literally took the day off. Edgar and I sat in a recliner and watch golf all afternoon — something I have never done before as I am not a golfer, only played five times in my life. However, it was a relaxing, enjoyable day for both of us.

I guess everyone has off today, but of course the swamp creatures never take a day off. They remain alert to attack anyone who disagrees with their agendas. But I care not to publish any of their diatribe or goings on today, but to post comments from a legend and forever hero of mine. The infamous Lou Holtz of Notre Dame. In his own words. Enjoy.

When I coached football, I’d tell my players that “life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you respond to it.” It was a way to get them to focus on themselves and on the things they could control – and to get them to understand that they were ultimately the authors of their own destinies.

It didn’t mean they weren’t on a team: football isn’t a game for committed individualists. It did mean, though, that when events unfolded – when they found themselves far downfield and wide open, or when they found themselves knocked flat by linemen twice their size – the measure of themselves was revealed in the very next moment.

You don’t know a player by what’s done to him. You know him by what he does.

It’s a lesson America could use now. My teams looked a lot like America – and they worked a lot like how America is supposed to work.

Every race, every ethnicity, and every point of origin was represented among our players across my career. They all had two things in common. The first was that they were passionately committed to making Notre Dame Football the country’s best – and a few times, they succeeded. The second was that each of them earned their spot. Yes, they were diverse, but the diversity wasn’t the reason for their presence. Every single player who wore the Notre Dame uniform deserved to do it.

That’s meritocracy. But why use the five-dollar word? I was born in West Virginia and raised in Ohio: out there, we just call it the American way.

There are a lot of enemies of the American way these days – right here in America. They’re men and women, mostly elites from academia and media, who would, if they could, walk into a football locker room and tell the players the exact opposite of my counsel: “life is 90% what happens to you, and 10% how you respond to it.” Then, having said that, they would probably demand to know why the team was gender imbalanced. Then, having said that, the team – now dispirited and infused with a victim mentality – would head out to the field to lose.

What’s true of a football team is true of a country. America’s promise has always been the opportunity for self-definition, self-advancement, self-creation. Where we’ve fallen short of that ideal – and we have – we’ve labored to correct ourselves. On the whole, we’ve done a pretty good job.

It’s fashionable now to lament failures in our history, but that myopic focus ignores the triumph of the present. In my lifetime alone, this country has defeated three malevolent empires, ended de jure racial segregation, and crafted a society so rich in opportunity that people from all over the world risk everything to get in.

Set against that record, unmatched anywhere, anytime, by anyone, we have the proponents of national decline and national lamentation – whether going by the name of critical-race theorists or the 1619 Project – arguing that America was flawed from the start and requires a wholesale purge of its own society before it is worth saving, or admiration.

We should be charitable to this crowd. Some of them genuinely believe the country requires a reckoning. Some of them are simply hucksters, selling books and clawing forth column inches in the timeless American tradition of media by any means. All of them, though, see themselves as on top and enriched when the reckoning comes. These aren’t radicals sacrificing for a better world: they’re power-seekers making their bid to rule with the acquiescence of a compliant elite.

That’s why we have to fight them. That’s why we have to win. When a football team believes that “life is 90% what happens to you, and 10% how you respond to it,” it loses. When a nation believes it, it ends. The stakes are that existential.

The creed set forth by the other side transforms our national life from a glorious constellation of mutual cooperation and community flourishing into a grim and zero-sum exercise of group versus group, with no winner – and many losers.

Football, I used to tell my players, is a rehearsal for life. That’s true for nearly any endeavor in which we strive and contend for the betterment of ourselves, our families and our communities. Our duty is to see that it’s a rehearsal for a triumph – not a decline. To make it happen, we must be willing to tell simple truths: among them, that no impersonal “structure” is the author of our fate, that each of us possesses the dignity and opportunity to make our own best lives, and that America is the greatest republic in the history of man.

Those used to be truisms. Today they’re radical dissents. But then, America was born in radical dissent. I couldn’t be happier to stand in that tradition. 

Lou Holtz is a legendary college football coach and chairman of the Center for 1776 at the America First Policy Institute

The comments from the FOX news page where I retrieved this might be worth reading. Simply reinforces there are many of us out here who refuse to give up.  Press ON!

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/july-fourth-america-truths-fight-lou-holtz

Originally posted 2021-07-05 12:15:03.

Current Events

Let’s Hear it for Hockey Fans

Video 6 Comments

It’s Fourth of July weekend – – time to celebrate our once great nation’s birthday. It is so heartwarming and exciting to see such out pouring of national pride. I guess hockey teams and  fans aren’t like all the other woke sports like MLB, NFL, et al. No kneeling here, if someone did disrespect the anthem he would probably have gotten his ass whipped! At least this video sure doesn’t show any wokeness. God bless those Islander fans. I wonder if all hockey fans are like that? If so, I may have to become one.  God bless this once great nation, and give us the wherewithal to come back from our current third world status. Enjoy and sing along.

 

Islanders Fans Sing the National Anthem Before Game 6

Originally posted 2021-07-03 10:37:28.

Current Events

The Woke of July

1 Comment

Well here we are the first day of a new month, a summer month, when folks should be planning vacations to the beaches, the lakes, the mountains, or many of the places this once great nation has  to offer. And what’s even more significant about this month is it includes our nation’s birthday. Personally, I am concerned about the future of its birthday. In fact, this just might be the last time any of us get to celebrate the Republic of the “United” States of America. How sad is that, but then I will have celebrated the founding of our nation 80 times this July 4th. How many my children, grandchildren and  great grandchildren  will be able to celebrate I haven’t a clue. Why? The answer is simple, but if you do not know why, you are reason.

By Greg Maresca

As the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia concluded on September 17, 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government do we have? “A Republic,” he replied, “if you can keep it.”

Stripped to its essence as the nation attempts to celebrate its 245th birthday, Franklin’s challenge needs examination and any newspaper will do.

The nation’s president says: “America is back”— back to the 1970s with increased inflationary spending, high gas and food prices and compounded global threats. Not to be outdone, he also claims the Constitution does not protect our right to own “assault weapons” because “if you wanted, or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

Sen. Dick Durbin’s remarks on the Equality Act was equally as telling. “Catholic” Durbin ran counter to the church’s disapproval to the legislation as it discriminates against Christians and the unborn. Durbin quantified, “I do believe that people who want to blatantly discriminate and use religion as their weapon have gone too far. We have to have limits on what they can do. I might remind us in history that the Ku Klux Klan was not burning question marks.”

Equating those who adhere to biblical morality with the KKK, does not bode well for any reasoned debate about religious freedoms in the future and those arguments are forthcoming.

Welcome to July 4, 2021, where courage is a boy declaring himself a girl and athletically competing against them. It is a place where the Internal Revenue Service denied a Christian nonprofit tax-exempt status because the Bible’s “teachings are typically affiliated with the Republican Party.” This disqualifies them from exemption under Section 501(c)(3), according to the Washington Examiner.

Don’t dare joke about Newark, New Jersey that erected a 700-pound bronze statue of George Floyd or utter “all lives matter.” Do not expect to keep your job at Space Force if you criticize the evils of Marxism, or post on Facebook how the COVID vaccine made you sick.

Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib’s pronouncement that he is gay made national headlines. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell spoke directly to the wokeism cult saying, “The NFL family is proud of Carl for courageously sharing his truth today.” Evidently, the highest leftist virtue is discovering one’s personal truth, and expecting approval for doing so.

A transgender BMX bike rider who qualified as an alternate for the U.S. at the Tokyo summer Olympics said her goal was to win an Olympic medal “so I can burn a U.S. flag on the podium.” In a spirited nation, she would be immediately nixed from the team. Yet, certain folks will lionize her.

Some police departments have stood by as looting and burning goes unabated and where statues of Columbus and Lincoln are toppled, while the law is applied asymmetrically on the basis of ideology and race.

Technology tycoons exploit the cult of woke to attack those who have dissenting views including a former president. In Biden’s America, the Federal Reserve is now telling employees to avoid “biased terms like Founding Fathers.”

Governors and mayors have used a virus to deny constitutional freedoms of assembly, religion and speech. Society can be juxtaposed to the condition of that Miami condominium before its collapse. Cracks in our moral and spiritual foundations threaten our future.

Undoubtedly, you can add to this list – daily.

We have abandoned the concepts of a republic for a democracy.

The Constitution’s framers were adamantly against tyranny of the majority. The Founders framed a representative republic that Franklin’s famous quote underscored with designated checks-and-balances.

Over two centuries ago, English historian Alexander Tytler believed, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.” The Wall Street Journal reports nearly half the nation is now on the federal dole.

If you believe America is humanity’s noblest construct of nation and spirit, the moment to stand up and be counted is upon us.

Doing nothing will only accelerate the deep-seated conversion from a constitutional republic into a one-party socialist government.

What better time to step-up than the nation’s birthday?

I will attend church on Sunday with my bride, come home, and revel in the fact we are still a Republic that is 245 years old. It may be the last time I will be able to do that, and not because I will have passed, but my Republic did. Sad!

Originally posted 2021-07-01 09:35:13.

Current Events

Booked and Cooked – Not So Fast

5 Comments

Go Morning Folks, here we are on a Monday; took the weekend off to relax and take in some TV. Meanwhile the swamp creatures were hard at work doing what they do best e.g.,  create anger, divisiveness, hate, tell lies,  and BS gullible Americans.  And of course puppet Joey continues to react to his string puller –  Obummer.  Anyway, here is another good one from my friend Greg. If you looked at the “Shopping – California Style” post and then read this one, it becomes obvious that sooner rather than later that style of shopping will be prevalent throughout our Third World shit hole, once referred to as United States of America.  Just walk into a store pick out what you need (or just want) and walkout.  I mean isn’t that the ultimate goal of defunding the police?

In the mid-1980s, it was perhaps the nation’s most anticipated civil service exam. After a series of layoffs, retirements (my Dad being one of them) and a hiring freeze courtesy of the late ‘70s malaise, the NYPD was looking to replenish their diminished ranks.

Despite a sweeping crack cocaine epidemic and a record number of homicides, there were many more applicants than openings. Aspiring candidates hailed from not only the city’s five boroughs, but throughout the country. Having taken the test on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, it was quickly evident that the test site, Seward Park High School, was for those from outside the city. And we were there in droves, classroom upon classroom.

Today, the NYPD is shedding officers like a Siberian Huskey in late June.

Last year, over 5,300 either retired or quit, a 75% increase from the year before – 15% of the total department. Nearly 1,000 officers have left in the first half of 2021.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, “The Philadelphia Police Department has 268 vacancies, and are expecting plenty more.” The New Jersey State Policemen’s Benevolent Association said their state is also facing a recruiting crisis as they usually receive up to 20,000 applications – this year only 2,023 qualified applicants applied.

As the summer policing season heats up nationally, the stories of how police departments are dwindling are legion. Recently, a Portland, Oregon volunteer rapid response police unit resigned en masse. Many city halls are seemingly defunding their police through attrition.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund said police officers suffered 295 on-duty deaths in 2020 – the most ever since they started keeping records in 1786. When a city is not supporting their police, the working conditions become nearly impossible. When police stand-down, criminals step-up proving that criminality abhors a vacuum.

When you vilify every police officer for another’s poor decision, who wants the job? The “defunding the police” crusade and the endless negative media coverage of law enforcement has made anti-police sentiment mainstream. Such overt posturing has only fueled a police shortage nationwide. Provided a cop killed Hitler, the national media would mourn the loss of a promising Austrian artist and vegetarian.

This anti-cop virus has become a pandemic in high-crime neighborhoods that are in most need of policing. It remains a deterrent for police to act and most of all, it is a disincentive to remain on the job.

Black Lives Matter (BLM) prefers community watches, preferably Omega, Tag Heuer and Rolexes. Atlanta City Councilman Antonio Brown, a defund the police disciple, had his Mercedes stolen and it took police over an hour to respond. The BLM communities that support defunding deserve a year of no policing.

This universal defund movement is a logical incoherence with French Revolution overtones that underscores how critical the Second Amendment is as a constitutional right.

How far left will the anti-cop pendulum swing and disincentivize good people from pursuing a career in law enforcement and what will be the long-term damage to our communities?

Once upon a time in America, the police were to be respected. You cannot expect law and order when you malign its enforcement, while at the same time failing to hold certain groups responsible for their criminality. We demoralize police by treating criminals like victims and cops like criminals.

Apparently, nothing justifies deadly force. That’s what future victims hear, and it will only encourage more recklessness. The left beatifies as paragons of humanity those who resist arrest. For those who disagree with this woke ideology: fear and intimidation and perhaps loss of their job.

Feckless leadership that ended quality of life “broken-windows” policing, imposed no-bail laws, disbanded street-crime units, while adopting policies to empty prisons. Catch and release may work while fishing, but it is a lousy way to police a community.

The protagonists of the defund movement reside in communities where crime is not much of an issue. To people living in crime-ridden neighborhoods, having an effective police department is a crucial part of daily life.

Make no mistake our freedoms are in jeopardy as the facts are difficult to ignore. We must respect the law and those who work to enforce it because any war on policing puts everyone at risk.

No exceptions!

Okay, what’s say we go shopping this week, California Style? LOL. Of course I jest, but you just watch, so many companies have made rules about non interference, under the guise of protecting their employees. When they do that, the invitation is out, “Come and get what you want or need.  Hell  hire us old farts, arm us, and we will lower your shoplifting stats immediately! What say you guys?

Originally posted 2021-06-28 11:19:16.

Conservatism

Verified by MonsterInsights