The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1462367
C-4 Wednesday, March 23, 2022 The Press-Dispatch OPINION Submit Letters to the Editor: Letters must be signed and received by noon on Mondays. Email: editor@pressdispatch.net or bring in a hard copy: 820 E. Poplar Street, Petersburg Florida law is pro-freedom The distorted rhetoric — should I say lies? — labeling Florida's legis- lation about parental rights in public schools as, "Don't say gay" demon- strates the hypocrisy of LGBTQ ac- tivism. I say hypocrisy because this move- ment has always showcased itself as being about freedom, rights and so- cial justice. But the reality is that LGBTQ ac- tivism is not at all about freedom and rights. It is about advancing their particular agenda at the ex- pense of alternative ways of viewing the world. The Florida legislation, which de- fines itself at the outset as about pa- rental rights, has 163 lines, out of which a total of five address sex ed- ucation. Those few lines simply say that "instruction" in "sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for stu- dents in accordance with state stan- dards." That's it. Anyone who wants to publicize this as, "Don't say gay" should also publicize it as saying, "Don't say straight." Because that's what it's about. Removing discussion about sexual orientation from classrooms of tod- dlers. But for LGBTQ activists, anything not actively promoting their agenda is taken as opposition. Therefore, for them, freedom, and the tolerance and neutrality that it requires, is by definition anti-LGBTQ. As a Christian, my view is that de- nial of the reality of man and wom- an, sexual activity outside the frame- work of traditional marriage, is sin- ful and destructive behavior. But I recognize, as do most Chris- tian parents with children in pub- lic schools, that our biblical point of view is not going to show up in pub- lic schools. America is a diverse country with many points of view. I recognize that keeping public schools neutral regarding sex edu- cation is the only possible approach in a heterogeneous diverse country. When the state of Florida enacts legislation to keep discussion about sexual orientation out of toddlers' classrooms, I don't see this as an- ti-LGBTQ or anti-Christian, but pro-freedom. The headline of an opinion piece in USA Today reads "Young people in Florida are being told their sexu- ality or gender identity is so wrong it can't even be mentioned." No. Young people in Florida are being told that they live in a free, di- verse country. So, matters of sexu- ality should be handled by parents at home, and public schools should teach kids how to read and do math. It helps these young people to be- come responsible adults, respectful of others with different opinions. A number of years ago, I men- tioned in a T V interview that I had stayed in hotel that, along with oth- er flags, was flying an LGBTQ rain- bow flag. I said that the rainbow flag offended me as a Christian woman as the Confederate flag offends me as a Black woman. My office in Washington was shut down by the tsunami of threaten- ing calls that this comment evoked. And I had to move out of my home because of threats. I didn't say these folks should not be allowed to live as they choose. I said, essentially, that just as ho- tels have removed the Bibles that we used to find in hotel rooms, this shouldn't be replaced by flying the rainbow flag. I think this is a big factor on why school choice is only promoted on the right. Those on the left are opposed be- cause they know that school choice takes away their platform for pro- moting their social agenda in pub- lic schools. Look at the websites of the two big teachers unions — the National Edu- cation Association and the American Federation of Teachers. Both pro- mote actively the LGBTQ agenda. The new Florida law was passed to deal with this problem. Public schools should provide a platform to educate children with knowledge and skills to succeed in a free coun- try. Other agendas should be left to parents at home. A principled politician I dislike politicians. I don't trust people who are so desperately ea- ger to run others' lives. But Rep. Ron Paul is different. He wants government to leave us alone. He promoted the benefits of lim- ited government and free markets long before I'd even thought about them. I first interviewed Paul in 2007. ABC News wouldn't broadcast it. They only played it online. Now ev- erything's online. I like it better that way. This week I released a new, longer video with Paul. Paul ran for president three times, losing first as a Libertarian — and then twice as a Republican. The sec- ond time, he won 10 % of the prima- ry vote. I then thought Americans were fi- nally coming to appreciate libertari- anism. The New York Times Maga- zine even asked, "Has the 'Libertar- ian Moment' Finally Arrived? " That was the kiss of death. Libertarian candidates now get fewer votes than Paul got in 2012. "Did you make progress? " I ask him. Paul says his goal was to get peo- ple to think about freedom. He's suc- ceeded there, at least somewhat. Paul first got politically active in 1971, when President Richard Nix- on took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard. "The money issue touches ev- ery aspect of liberty," says Paul. "If you're inclined to think that we're in too many wars, well, there wouldn't be — if they couldn't just print mon- ey for it." Now the Federal Reserve does just print more money. When Paul first went to Congress, he says, "nobody cared about the Federal Reserve." His presidential campaigns brought attention to the Fed, and the liberty movement, especially from young people. In fact, Paul came in first place among young people in al- most every Republican primary. But now Sen. Bernie Sanders is most popular among the young. I re- mind Paul, "young people today say they prefer socialism to capitalism." Paul responds, "There's more so- cialist professors." Although Paul was always an- ti-war, after 9/11, he joined the con- gressional majority and voted to send soldiers to A fghanistan. He wanted to find and punish the people respon- sible for the attack and get right out. "That did not mean (America) had the authority to occupy and try to transform A fghanistan," says Paul. Yet that's what American politicians tried to do. In a 2007 Republican presiden- tial debate, the audience booed Paul when he suggested that the U.S. was attacked because "we've been bomb- ing Iraq for 10 years ... what would happen if somebody did it to us? " Candidate Rudy Giuliani won ap- plause responding, "That's really an extraordinary statement ... I don't think I've ever heard that before. And I've heard some pretty absurd expla- nations for Sept. 11." Really? Giuliani hadn't heard that explanation before? Then he wasn't paying attention. Osama bin Laden long complained about Westerners occupying the Middle East. "Expel them in defeat and humiliation from the holy plac- es of Islam," he wrote. Posting American soldiers in oth- er people's countries is certainly a se- rious provocation. I'd be mad if Chi- nese soldiers patrolled my street. Giuliani won the debate applause, but 15 months later, no delegates. Paul won 21 delegates. But today American politicians still want to police the world. The United States has 750 bases in 80 countries. Paul calls the military in- dustrial complex "the most deadly PAC." Last month, President Joe Biden sent 3,000 soldiers to Eastern Eu- rope saying, "As long as (Putin's) acting aggressively, we are going to make sure we can reassure our NA- TO allies and Eastern Europe that we're there." "That's garbage," Paul responds. "By what right do we go over there? There's no national security. We had troops in Saudi Arabia for national se- curity and look at what that brought ... it has nothing to do with helping Americans, except those who might With $ 30 trillion of debt — which has grown by $5 trillion in just the last two years, with another $2 tril- lion of red ink expected to get spilled this year — you might have expect- ed Congress at least to pretend it will temper its reckless spending procliv- ities. But you would be sadly mistaken. Congress has just finalized a $1.5 trillion spending bill that required 2,741 pages of legislative text. The Heritage Foundation calculates it would take the average congress- man more than 300 hours to read this bill with all its legal gobbledy- gook. So, it's a reasonable certainty that members of Congress have no idea what they voted for. Republicans wanted more defense spending on top of the near $ 800 bil- lion we already give each year to the Pentagon. The United States spends more on defense than China, Russia, India, Great Britain, Germany and Japan combined. But that isn't evi- denced enough to protect our coun- try, partly because the Biden admin- istration is spending tens of billions of dollars at the Pentagon on climate change and other green programs, which won't protect us from any in- coming missiles from our enemies. Meanwhile, the Democrats want- ed tens of billions more for domes- tic programs, including another $15 billion for COVID re- lief. That is on top of the $4 trillion already authorized since April 2020, with at least $100 billion still unspent. So, the deal that Republi- can and Democratic leadership struck was that both sides pretty much would get what they wanted. Taxpayers will be collectively stuck with anoth- er increase in their credit card bill that already has 13 zeros. The House Republicans scored a rare victory (at least temporarily) when they blocked the $15 billion of funding House Speaker Nancy Pelo- si was demanding for COVID, even though tens of billions of COVID money from previous bills haven't been spent. Pelosi threatened to hold the $13 billion of emergency money for Ukraine hostage until she got the COVID money. When House Minori- ty Leader Kevin McCarthy insisted that the COVID money be offset with savings elsewhere in our $ 6 trillion annual spending, the Democrats re- fused because they couldn't find any- where to cut. Pelosi called that out- come "heartbreaking." For whom is not clear. The bottom line: There are no spending cuts. None. But there are big, beefy increases in spending. In the Senate, Appropria- tions Committee Chair- man Pat Leahy and the ranking Republican Rich- ard Shelby, who have both served in Congress for it seems like a combined 100 years and are longtime Senate buddies (Politico reports their wives even hang out together), agreed to a bill that they boast contains a 7 per- cent raise, the "largest increase in four years." You'd think that the government was running a $2 trillion surplus, not a deficit that big. The rumor on Capitol Hill is that many Senate Republicans went along with the deal because Shelby is retir- ing this year. If only the senators had passed a collection basket in the Sen- ate cloakroom to give the retiring Al- abama senator a gold watch; think of how much money would have been saved. Instead, taxpayers get bilked for tens of billions of addition- On March 21, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirma- tion hearing will begin. Senators will be scrutinizing her past judicial opin- ions on critical issues from labor law to illegal immigration to presidential claims of executive privilege. This brief overview of several of those key opinions provides some insight into her general approach to resolving le- gal issues. Jackson has been through this confirmation process three times before—when she was nominated to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, to the district court, and to the D.C. Circuit—but it is safe to say that a lot more people are going to be paying attention this time. The first day will be taken up with speeches by all the senators of the Senate Judiciary Committee and will conclude with an opening statement by the nominee herself. The real fireworks, though, will take place over the next two days when senators ask a battery of ques- tions of the nominee herself, many of which she will avoid answering, citing the longstanding rule that a nominee should not answer ques- tions about legal issues that might come before the Supreme Court if she is confirmed. In fairness, this tactic, which has come to be known as the "Ginsburg rule," has been used by Supreme Court nominees under both Dem- ocratic and Republican presidents and by nominees that long predated the nomination of Justice Ruth Bad- er Ginsburg. During her confirmation hear- ing, for example, Justice Amy Coney Barrett invoked the woman she re- placed when she said, "Justice Gins- burg with her characteristic pithi- ness used to describe how a nominee should comport herself at a hearing. No hints, no previews, no forecasts. That had been the practice of nomi- nees before her. But everybody calls it the Ginsburg rule because she stat- ed it so concisely." JACKSON'S JUDICIAL PHILOSOPHY One area that she will be asked to address is her judicial philosophy. During her confirmation hearing to the D.C. Circuit last year, Jackson in- dicated that she does not have a "judi- cial philosophy per se," a surprising answer for someone who clerked for three judges, including a Supreme Court justice and who had been a fed- eral judge for eight years. In response to writ- ten questions from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who pressed her on the is- sue, Jackson wrote that as a lower court judge, she was not at liberty "to in- terpret the text of the Con- stitution in any manner other than as the Supreme Court has directed." She added that, as a sitting judge, she has an ethical obligation "to avoid commenting on, or providing personal views of, disputed legal matters such as the most appropri- ate method of interpreting the Con- stitution." This bob-and-weave answer should not cut it. As I have written elsewhere: It is individual justices, not the high court as a whole, who adopt the 'methodology' that they think is most appropriate when it comes to inter- preting the Constitution. Moreover, she will be free from any constraints she might otherwise have felt as a lower court judge if she is elevated to the Supreme Court. Furthermore, it is one thing not to comment on a legal issue that may come before the court for resolution in the future, but the "most appropri- ate method of interpreting the Con- stitution" is not one of them. Judges and justices have writ- ten books and given speeches pro- viding their views on that very sub- ject many, many times, and Jackson should provide a direct and noneva- sive answer to that question. We'll see whether she sticks with her pre- vious answer and how it will fly if she does. JACKSON'S PAST CASES Another area that will clearly not be off limits, though, and where it will be harder for Jackson to duck and weave, is answering questions about past opinions that she has writ- ten as a judge. And since she has written close to 600 of them over the course of her eight years as a district court judge and roughly six months as an appellate judge, there will be much to talk about. TRUMP CASES Jackson was involved in two cases that im- pacted former Pres- ident Donald Trump directly, and which buoyed her supporters. In Committee on the Judiciary v. McGahn, the House Judiciary Committee filed a law- suit seeking to compel testimony by former White House counsel Don McGahn in connection with the committee's investigation into potential foreign interference during the 2016 election. In granting the committee's mo- tion for summary judgment, Jack- son held that the committee had standing to file the suit and that the case was justiciable, or appropriate for a court to decide, even though it involved a dispute between two branches of government. In so holding, she wrote: "Simply put, the primary takeaway from 250 years of recorded American histo- ry is that Presidents are not kings. … This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control." She added: "Today, this Court adds that this conclusion is inescap- able precisely because compulsory appearance by dint of a subpoena is a legal construct, not a political one, and per the Constitution, no one is above the law. That is to say, however busy or essential a presidential aide might be, and whatever their prox- imity to sensitive domestic and na- tional-security projects, the Presi- dent does not have the power to ex- cuse him or her from taking an ac- tion that the law requires." The Department of Justice had not argued that Trump was a king or above the law. These phrases, though, were frequently invoked by liberal politicians and pundits at the time to caricature the president and it is troubling that Jackson chose to parrot this unnecessarily inflamma- tory rhetoric. A three-judge D.C. Circuit panel reversed Jackson on the issues of standing and justiciability, but the Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore And that's why they call It 'the Swamp' Heritage Viewpoint By John Malcolm A look at Ketanji Brown Jackson's most noteworthy judicial decisions See POLITICIAN on page 5 See SWAMP on page 5 See JUSTICE on page 5 POLITICIAN SWAMP Court Karan Owner 704 E. Haub Street Haubstadt, IN 47639 THACKER TAX 906 Fort 812-615-0071 812-789-3852 kthacker01@gmail.com