Five justices endorsed the "most favored nation" theory of free exercise—that the presence of ANY secular exemption to a law triggers strict scrutiny when that law is applied to religious exercise. This is basically the end of Employment Division v. Smith.https://t.co/IEQd9IWM4a

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC

Jason Willick
@jawillick
A fundamental divide: conservative judges are more likely to defer to legislators; liberal judges to experts. //

Yes, conservative judges do defer to the protective confines of the constitution and not the arbitrary and unaccountable edicts of the “experts.” Every atrocity in human history has had an “expert” standing beside leadership endorsing the action about to be taken. The idea that we should hand over our governance to “experts,” making them preeminent to the actual Constitution is an idea so insane that it makes me think a national break-up might actually be a good idea. How does a country even survive with so many of its citizens holding such a position?

But really, what does the fact that all the liberal judges on the court agreed with the ban say? I think it says that we are a few Supreme Court appointments by a Democrat away from having absolutely no liberty at all. If a state can simply decide you can’t go to church, then what is left, exactly? Because they can dang sure declare an “emergency” and arbitrarily decide you don’t get to have guns either. They can certainly suppress speech under that standard for the greater good as well. //

For every Never Trumper out there who didn't think Trump's term was worth it, had he not been elected, SCOTUS would have decided last night that a state can just stop people from going to church while allowing celebrity book signings. Your decorum wasn't gonna save you. https://t.co/YSStLCWMnS

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate)

Our Second Amendment, the one that actually secures all the others and arguably written with Captain Parker at Lexington Commons in mind, is still the only one we need “permission” to exercise and is still under constant attack by the left. As A.R. Hawkins puts it, “No other rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights are interpreted so as to allow the government to stand between the people and that right.” I would add to that our Supreme Court seems to foster this aberrant viewpoint by its willingness to “incorporate” almost every other Amendment in the Bill of Rights except, of course, the Second. //

Here is a very small extract from the latest proposed theft of American rights, H.R.127 – Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licensing and Registration Act

§ 932. Licensing of firearm and ammunition possession; registration of firearms
“(a) In General.—The Attorney General, through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, shall establish a system for licensing the possession of firearms or ammunition in the United States, and for the registration with the Bureau of each firearm present in the United States.

“(b) Firearm Registration System.—
“(1) REQUIRED INFORMATION.—Under the firearm registration system, the owner of a firearm shall transmit to the Bureau—
“(A) the make, model, and serial number of the firearm, the identity of the owner of the firearm, the date the firearm was acquired by the owner, and where the firearm is or will be stored; and
“(B) a notice specifying the identity of any person to whom, and any period of time during which, the firearm will be loaned to the person. //

There are further prohibitions on ammunition and standard magazines (30 round capacity, is standard ). There are also grossly expanded firearm prohibitions, including the AR-15 type. Then there is the federal database that has as its primary objective, listing every firearm owned by every American. What could possibly go wrong?

As of Friday night, Biden had signed 42 executive orders. His herculean effort dwarfs that of the previous three presidents combined. At the end of their respective first weeks in office, Donald Trump had signed four, Barack Obama, five, and George W. Bush, 0.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday said hearing that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts would not preside over former President Trump's upcoming impeachment trial "crystalized" the GOP argument that the proceedings are unconstitutional.

Paul emerged as a hero for Trump supporters this week after he used a little-known procedural tactic, a privileged constitutional point of order, to strike a severe blow to Democrats' hopes of convicting the former president on a House-passed article of impeachment.

Forty-five Republican senators voted this week to support Paul's motion that said Trump's impeachment trial is unconstitutional since he's no longer in office. //

Paul said the news that Senate President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) would preside over the second impeachment trial struck many Republicans as deeply unfair. Leahy voted to convict Trump on two articles of impeachment last year.

"The optics of the chief justice not coming and then also the optics of a person who had favored the last impeachment now presiding over the trial - who's also going to vote in the trial - it just didn't look right or sound right to any of us," he added.

our Constitution is the foundation of this country and who we are,” she continued. “It is what guarantees us our civil liberties, our freedoms that are endowed to us, not by any man or person in government, but are endowed to us by our Creator, and so this is something that we must all unite around.”

“This is something that we recognize that those who stormed the Capitol on January 6 trying to stop Congress from fulfilling their constitutional responsibilities, they were acting as domestic terrorists undermining our Constitution,” Gabbard told Carlson. “As you pointed out in my video, those like John Brennan, Adam Schiff, and others are also acting as domestic terrorists because they are also undermining our Constitution by trying to take away our civil liberties and rights that are guaranteed to us.”

When it was his turn to speak, Paul gave a blistering speech, denouncing Democrats for dragging the nation through yet another unfounded and politically-motivated impeachment drama. He started by delivering a brutal verbal clothesline, “Democrats claim to want to unify the country, but impeaching a former president, a private citizen, is the antithesis of unity. This impeachment is nothing more than a partisan exercise designed to divide the country further.”

“This sham of an impeachment will ostensibly ask whether Trump incited the reprehensible violence of Jan. 6., when he said, ‘I know everyone here will soon march to the Capitol to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.’ Peacefully and patriotically. Those are hardly words of violence,” Paul said. //

But what of Democrat words? What of Democrat incitement to violence? No Democrat will honestly ask whether Bernie Sanders incited the shooter that nearly killed Steve Scalise and volunteer coach. The shooter nearly pulled off a massacre. I was there because he fervently believed the false and inflammatory rhetoric spewed by Bernie and other Democrats, such as “the Republican health care plan for the uninsured is that you die.”

As this avowed Bernie supporter shot Steve Scalise, nearly killing him and shot one of our coaches and two or three of our staff, he screamed: “This is for health care.” //

“Republicans, to our credit, have never once thought it legitimate to formally censor or impeach these Democrats. No Republican has sought to use the government to hold these Democrats responsible for Antifa and Black Lives Matter of violence that has consumed our cities all summer, resulting in over a billion dollars of destruction, looting and property damage,” he added. //

Senator Rand Paul
@RandPaul
The Senate just voted on my constitutional point of order.

45 Senators agreed that this sham of a “trial” is unconstitutional.

That is more than will be needed to acquit and to eventually end this partisan impeachment process.

This “trial” is dead on arrival in the Senate.
2:26 PM · Jan 26, 2021

This is really mis-guided. "Objecting" is a political act. It's provided for by statute. It leads to debate over the bases for the objection. It's not a courtroom -- it's on the floor of a legislative body performing Constitutional duty. //

To rule that procedure out of bounds in advance is itself undemocratic.

The bill A416, obviously meant to deal with the Wuhan virus, allows for the detention of any carrier of a disease (or contacts that person has had) to be detained in a medical facility or “other apporpriate facility or premises designated by the governor.” The governor or his designee can simply have anyone locked up under this if he puts out the order. Talk about troubling and dangerous.

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/a416

Democrats are condemning Republican Sen. Josh Hawley for objecting to certifying the 2020 election results, even though they are guilty of doing the same thing for purely political reasons. //

In 2016, multiple House Democrats attempted to object to the electoral votes from multiples states in Donald Trump’s election to the presidency. Many cited concerns over the now-disproved Russia hoax and potentially “hacked” voting machines.

“The electors were not lawfully certified, especially given the confirmed and illegal activities engaged by the government of Russia,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said. //

Even before that in 2005, Democrats in Congress objected to the certification of Ohio’s 20 electoral votes for George W. Bush on the grounds that “they wanted to draw attention to the need for aggressive election reform in the wake of what they said were widespread voter problems.” The objection was overturned but continued to be highlighted by some on the left.

“The 2020 presidential election was, in several targeted battleground states, an unconstitutional electoral exercise. Even putting aside evidence of significant fraud, virtually none of which received a hearing by our courts, events leading up to and including the November national election constituted a radical and grave departure from the federal electoral system adopted by the framers of the Constitution and the state ratification conventions.” //

During the Constitutional Convention, Levin noted, the Founders discussed several proposals for selecting a president.

“Should the president be directly elected by the people? That proposal was rejected out of concern that such a purely democratic process could be hijacked by a temporary majority.

“Should the president be chosen in the first instance from within the national legislature? That proposal was also rejected on grounds of separation of powers.

“Should the judiciary play a role in the selection of the president? That idea was dispensed with as being the most objectionable, as judges were to be the least political of all public officials.”

The importance of the Electoral College.

“The framers deliberatively and with much thought created the Electoral College process,” Levin explained, “in which the people and their elected legislatures — both state and national — would play important roles.”

“But the electoral process rested first and foremost on the state legislatures directing how the electors would be chosen. The reason: While rejecting the direct election of a president, the framers concluded that the state legislatures were closest to the people in their respective states and would be the best representatives of their interests.” //

“After the 2016 election, the Democrat Party, its various surrogate groups, and eventually the Biden campaign unleashed hundreds of lawsuits and an unrelenting lobbying campaign in key states that had previously been won by President Trump, taking unconstitutional measures intended to stop President Trump from winning these states in the 2020 election, thereby literally undoing this critical constitutional provision.”

The Electoral College remains an integral key to preserving the decentralization and federalism that underlie the U.S. Constitution.

The issue of “standing” has well established legal “principles” that courts rely on at the outset of a case to determine whether the matter that is the subject of the complaint is properly brought in the court in which it is filed.

These principles arise out of the “case and controversy” requirements of Article III of the Constitution which are at the foundation of the federal civil justice system. In layman’s terms, it means that a federal court must sometimes make a decision as to whether the complaint concerns a real “claim” for which a judicial resolution and remedy is the only appropriate avenue for relief open to the plaintiff, and whether the plaintiff who has brought the claim is the correct party to do so. Does the plaintiff have a real and concrete interest in the outcome that is different from the interest of the public at large?

The decision on “standing” is a “judgment” based on the nature of the claim raised by the complaint, the nature of the plaintiff who has raised the claim, and the relationship of the plaintiff to the claim raised.

Also, and important to the Supreme Court, “standing” reflects respect for “separation of powers” by giving the judicial branch a basis to reject efforts to resolve disputes through the courts that are, in actuality, political disputes that should be left to the political branches to resolve. //

The language used by the Court yesterday was as follows:

“The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”

Monday essentially will be the real presidential Election Day, or is scheduled to be, as electors gather in their respective state capitols to cast votes.

When voters pick their candidate for president on Election Day every four years, as well as in early and mail-in voting this year, they actually choose a slate of electors associated with a candidate.

Each of those electors later casts his or her vote for president on behalf of the state and according to its election results.

In past presidential election years, the day the Electoral College convenes to vote goes largely ignored, as most of the public stops paying attention after Election Day.

“Appellees concede that laches may not bar a constitutional challenge to the substance of a statute.“ //

the Governor and State of Pennsylvania just argued to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the Kelly case, and the Supreme Court agreed, that laches should bar a constitutional challenge to the substance of a statute. That is the exact opposite of what the Governor and State “conceded” 22 years ago. So much for legal and political ethics. //

The voters of Pennsylvania are given a meaningful and necessary role in amending their State’s constitution. A vote of a majority of the electors in a general election is the required final step to adoption of such amendments. The Defendants in the Kelly complaint deprived the Electors of their right to validate the proposed amendment passed by the General Assembly, and they put the amendment in place without their approval.

That was “disenfranchisement” of the Pennsylvania electorate. Who is to say that Pennsylvania voters might have rejected “no excuse” mail-in balloting if not for being disenfranchised.

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Justice Gorsuch comes roaring out by taking a flamethrower to the Chief Justice — not on just one issue but on two. To me, his language borders on intemperate and likely to leave a mark on the relationship between the two. I agree with Gorsuch on the merits of his points, but I’m still a bit taken aback by the force with which he advances them here on a petition for emergency relief. //

Why have some mistaken this Court’s modest decision in Jacobson for a towering authority that overshadows the Constitution during a pandemic? In the end, I can only surmise that much of the answer lies in a particular judicial impulse to stay out of the way in times of crisis. But if that impulse may be understandable or even admirable in other circumstances, we may not shelter in place when the Constitution is under attack. Things never go well when we do.

As someone who has read a lot of Supreme Court cases over more than three decades, this is close to “blow torch and pliers” territory between two Justices ostensibly aligned from a jurisprudential point of view. This five-vote majority — not coming from a case before the Court but rather in response to an emergency petition — changes everything now pending in lower courts regarding coming challenges to lock-down orders that may be imposed by governors in the days and weeks ahead.

Do not overlook Gorsuch’s view that “shelter-in-place” orders are an “attack” on the Constitution. This is a religious liberty case, but the overt hostility of Justice Gorsuch is revealing, and I suspect it is going to extend to other burdens imposed on individual liberties by the orders.

Confronted with evidence (which they – and the rest of the world – would be welcome to examine), reminded of their duty to their constituents, and empowered by Article II Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States, the legislators – particularly Republican legislators in the majority – will now have to make a decision.

1. Do nothing, and acquiesce to the blatant and open disenfranchisement of their constituents,
2. Order new elections with strong voter verification and ballot integrity measures,
3. Allocate the state’s slate of electors per Congressional District in the state (as done in ME and NE), or,
4. Discount the erring county’s tallies entirely and send a Republican slate of electors.

A Republic, if you can keep it, said Benjamin Franklin. That leaves no room for election theft.

This isn’t about Amy Coney Barrett or Justice Neil Gorsuch or Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The truth is that this has been in the works since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States four years ago.

The good news is that Senate Republicans saw this coming and began laying the groundwork to push back against the Democrats’ efforts to destroy our institutions. In March 2019, my colleagues and I introduced a constitutional amendment that would limit the Supreme Court of the United States to nine justices.

It is telling that no Democratic senator has cosponsored my constitutional amendment, which would merely keep the Supreme Court at the same number of seats it has had since 1869. Now, every Republican who cares about preserving our institutions should join us. //

Protecting our legal institutions is critical. Over the past two centuries, they have defended and upheld Americans’ natural rights and made the United States the most exceptional nation in all of human history.

But this is about more than our institutions -- it is about what happens to our country, our communities, and our way of life if the radical left and the Democratic Party destroy them. It is clear they don’t want to pack the Supreme Court just to cancel out the votes of Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and soon Amy Coney Barrett. They want to pack the Court to cancel out your ability to resist their radical agenda. //

Our Founders believed in a radical idea: that all men are created equal and that their rights came from God, from our Creator. That idea -- the very premise of our nation’s founding -- is increasingly under assault from the left. They would have you believe that America and its founding is irredeemably racist, and that nothing short of a revolution is acceptable.

This cultural revolution will come at a great cost to our personal freedoms and natural rights, but our nation’s institutions stand as a bulwark against the effort to remake America.

Rubio argued that while protecting the integrity of the Supreme Court is important, the fight against the Democrat Party is about more than protecting our institutions — another part of the “dirty little secret”:

“[T]his is about more than our institutions — it is about what happens to our country, our communities, and our way of life if the radical left and the Democratic Party destroy them. It is clear they don’t want to pack the Supreme Court just to cancel out the votes of Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and soon Amy Coney Barrett. They want to pack the Court to cancel out your ability to resist their radical agenda.”

The Constitution, the highest legal document in the land, has always been a guiding light for the nation, keeping its people protected from power-hungry people and schemes that would upset their liberties.

For Democrats, the Constitution is a thorn in their side. Their der wille zur macht is consistently thwarted by the stopping power of the document laid down by men far smarter and wiser than they are.

For the left, they found that the Constitution is something they can’t defeat. Even after decades of eroding the American people’s will to support it, Americans are still reluctant to toss it into the scrap heap. //

They attempt to find gaps in the Constitution’s reasoning, argue over comma placements, attempt to translate what the founders would have meant in today’s day and age, etc.

In order to do that, they must appoint Justices who will do this very thing when possible. The Justices have a constructionalist philosophy. Their method is to be presented with legislation and proceed to find a way to make it legal. //

For Democrats, Barrett is far from the kind of person they want on the Supreme Court. She’s a textualist, meaning she won’t be interpreting legislation and attempting to make laws fit. If they’re presented to her and they don’t fit within the boundaries of the Constitution, she’ll rule against it. //

Deep behind it all, however, is the fact that Democrats are lying about Barrett and dragging her through the mud because they don’t like her. She’s not one of them. She’s going to make it harder to subvert the American people and have their way. Their ability to increase in power has been staunched and they hate her for it.

And that’s fine. If it upsets the people who would rule over you and I and have their way with the country, then their anger is as revealing as it is pleasurable to see.