RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/barrett-obamacare-and-severability-again/

Democrats don’t have much chance of derailing Barrett’s nomination, so they might as well use the high-profile hearings to campaign.
C learly, a big issue in Day Two of the Barrett confirmation hearings is the Obamacare case before the Supreme Court. Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) began the day by drawing out the nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, on the Court’s doctrine of severability.

Here’s why it’s important.

Democrats are claiming that President Trump and Republicans are trying to rush Judge Barrett onto the Court in time for her to rule on Texas v. California, a challenge to the Affordable Care Act that the justices will hear on November 10 — a week after Election Day. As I’ve repeatedly observed, it is a weak challenge, not remotely as strong as the original challenges to the ACA that the Court nevertheless rejected. Yet President Trump directed his Justice Department to join Texas and the other states who are arguing that the ACA must be invalidated.

They theorize that because the individual mandate has been “zeroed out,” it no longer qualifies as a tax and must be invalidated, since its being a tax was the basis on which the Court upheld it in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012). Extravagantly, and far more dubiously, the states joined by the Trump administration contend that, because the mandate was so central to the ACA, the invalidation of the mandate necessitates the invalidation of the entire, extensive ACA statutory scheme (which includes some popular provisions, particularly coverage of people with preexisting conditions).

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/13/covid-crimes-against-humanity/

If Chris Hayes and the Democrats want some sort of coronavirus tribunal for crimes against humanity, bring it on.

For once, I agree with MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes.

In an October 5 tweet, Hayes suggested the need for “some kind of truth and reconciliation commission” to hold accountable the politicians and experts who mishandled the coronavirus pandemic. 

Hayes, no doubt, had in mind the president and Republican governors such as Florida’s Ron DeSantis and South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, who have bucked the credentialed class’ ever-changing diktats on the never-ending crisis.

Hayes is right—just not for the reasons he imagines. 

As the dust settles on one of the most destructive man-made events in history—it’s hard to think of an appropriate comparison aside from war—the grim reality of what a handful of people inflicted on the world is coming into clear view. And there is no question that the perpetrators of this catastrophe should bear responsibility.

While cable news fixates on the numbers of deaths and reported cases, other heartbreaking statistics go largely unnoticed by pundits and journalists who now think mask-shaming amounts to hard core reporting on the crisis. It’s been 216 days since Americans were asked to make extreme and unprecedented sacrifices to “flatten the curve” of the expected COVID-19 caseload. This two-week suspension of daily activities, which included going to school and operating businesses, was intended to protect frontline health care workers. “We’re all in this together,” we were assured. Horrifying scenes from China and Italy acted as powerful warnings of what could happen if we did not submit.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/why-left-hates-religion-don-feder/

Americans remain the most religious people in the industrialized world: 87% believe in God, two-thirds say they’re Christians, and 45% attend religious services at least once a month (23% weekly).

One political party supports their worldview, the other disdains it. One views religion as an ally, the other as an adversary.

That wasn’t always the case.

Traditionally, the Democrat Party – the party of Al Smith, FDR and JFK – was at least respectful of religion. Roosevelt regularly used religious imagery to bolster morale during World War II, as he did in his famous D-Day Prayer.

The modern Democrat party – the party of Biden, Bernie and Kamala – is increasingly hostile to religion, depicting it as a force for repression and a danger to democracy.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/libertarian-betrayal-bruce-bawer/

Don’t laugh, but once upon a time I was so naïve that I thought libertarians were really about liberty.

I even thought that they had an important raison d’être. Back in the day when some of us were uneasy both with GOP preaching on social issues and with Democrat statism, the libertarians seemed to offer a sensible place in between. I also remember having the impression that, even if you disagreed with them on some issues, at least they were ideologically consistent, which meant that they were principled.

But then I met some libertarians. I liked and respected a few. But others proved to be world-class oddballs, misfits, potheads, and crackpots. If they weren’t hatching plans for independent countries built on abandoned oil rigs, they were writing mad, elaborate political manifestos that seemed to have zero to do with liberty. And some were well-nigh indistinguishable from your standard-issue leftist, like the self-described “bleeding-heart anarchist” and “libertarian socialist” (!) whose savage review of The Victims’ Revolution, my 2012 critique of identity studies, in Reason, the libertarians’ flagship rag, could have been written by any multicultural academic.  

People used to write pieces asserting that most Americans were really libertarians but didn’t realize it. Some even said we were approaching a “libertarian moment” when this silent majority would finally take over. But I eventually came to see that while libertarians were thick on the ground in Washington, D.C., they had few constituents outside the Beltway – aside, that is, from the corporations that paid their think tanks to spew out principled-sounding arguments for policies that would line their pockets.