RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-trump-supreme-court-coming-democrats-weigh-strategy-1530209462?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=1&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

Republicans and Democrats readied for the battle to choose Justice Anthony Kennedy’s successor, with the White House dusting off the plan it used to win last year’s Supreme Court fight and Democrats searching for a way to derail President Donald Trump’s nominee amid a heated midterm election campaign.

The White House again has enlisted Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers network, to assist in a selection process that already is focusing on fewer than a half-dozen candidates. Within hours of Justice Kennedy’s retirement announcement Wednesday, Mr. Leo took a leave of absence from the Federalist Society to serve as Mr. Trump’s outside adviser on the nomination.

People close to the White House selection process anticipate that a nominee will be announced before Mr. Trump departs for the coming NATO summit, which begins in Brussels on July 11, with Republicans hoping for confirmation hearings in mid-August and a full Senate vote ahead of the November midterm elections.

The pick presents the Republican president with the opportunity—and challenge—of seeking to replicate an early success of his presidency, the nomination and swift confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Marc Short, Mr. Trump’s legislative affairs chief, said in an interview that he “would like to believe that Republican senators recognize” the opportunity to fulfill a longstanding GOP campaign pledge to remake the court.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mosquemetoo-movement-1530226224

Ms. Kahn’s hubby is imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who wanted to build a mosque near Ground Zero. They were implicated in a $20 million lawsuit alleging her husband, imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, pilfered $3 million from two nonprofits — including her own……rsk

Ms. Khan, founder of the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality, is author of “Born with Wings: The Spiritual Journey of a Modern Muslim Woman” (Spiegel & Grau, 2018).

The #MeToo movement seemingly has touched all corners of American society—business, religion, journalism, sports, politics, academia, culture and more. Yet there remains a deep, global pool of alleged perpetrators. Perhaps unsurprisingly, reports of abuse and exploitation have surfaced from within the Muslim community, in the U.S. and abroad.

In February an anonymous Pakistani woman posted on Facebook about being sexually harassed while on the hajj to Mecca. Egyptian-American feminist Mona Eltahawy then shared her own story of abuse as a teenager. This likely marked the birth of the #MosqueMeToo movement. Today Muslim women across the world continue to report stories of inappropriate sexual experiences within their communities and sacred spaces—environments meant to foster spiritual growth.

This has provoked responses ranging from supportive sisterhood to rage and even disbelief. Even Muslim women are deeply divided. Many find themselves torn between centuries of tradition, modern social pressures, and their own beliefs. Like many Muslim women living in the West, I have struggled to find the balance among my religion, my culture and American social mores.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/28/progressives-are-all-talk-on-immigrat
There are lots of short-term solutions to address the wave of immigrants who have swarmed the border in an effort to enter the United States illegally.

Why not use the thousands of currently half-empty residence halls at American colleges and universities to help house families from Central America and Mexico who await adjudication of their asylum claims?

The federal government could contract out to universities such as UCLA, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and large public universities in Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico to offer migrants temporary summertime shelter and sustenance. Law schools could offer pro bono legal counseling, and medical schools could offer health services.

Such multifaceted help from institutes of higher education would be particularly apt—and far better than using military bases. The vast housing, recreational and meal-service infrastructures of colleges are often underutilized in summer. Campuses are also bastions of liberal activism, proud both of their diversity and their expertise in dealing with sensitive matters of acculturation.

What better first glimpse of America could be offered to immigrants than the energy, pastoral beauty and hospitality of a quiet college quad or well-maintained residence hall?

It also makes no sense for college students to venture far and wide for internships when they could be enlisted on campus over the summer to tutor children from Central America and to monitor their safety and treatment.

If progressives believe that sovereignty and border enforcement are passe notions, then they should at least match their rhetoric with concrete solutions. In California, there are ongoing existential crises with homelessness, unaffordable housing, and dismal public schools that rate near the bottom of national surveys.

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/

The liberals and leftists whose malice for Trump and his supporters knows no bounds, haven’t yet reached the rock bottom essence of their souls, and confine themselves to harassing and yelling at their victims in their homes, at restaurants and movie theaters, and screaming at them and menacing them, but the time is coming when they will take physical action. They will not adopt the Antifa route, and wear masks and hoods – not now.

But I think the most relevant thing here is a quotation from p. 1145 of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, when the statists are torturing the hero, John Galt, to compel him to become the country’s economic dictator and save their power.

“Jim, hasn’t he had enough? Don’t forget, we have to be careful.”

“No! He hasn’t had enough! He hasn’t even screamed yet!”

“Jim!” cried Mouch suddenly, terrified by something in Taggart’s face. “We can’t afford to kill him! You know it!”

“I don’t care! I want to break him! I want to hear him scream! I want – “

And then it was Taggart who screamed….he was seeing his face as the face of a killer whom all men should rightfully loathe, who destroyed values for being values, who killed in order not to discover his own irredeemable evil….

James Taggart was seeing something about himself he had never wanted to see, and had spent a lifetime closing his mind to, but which he could not now evade seeing. His hatred for Galt had forced it to the top of his consciousness. It was all he could know now.

At the moment, the Trump protesters want their victims to bow, grovel, or to run, or to express “shame,” to apologize, in this case, for an immigrant policy established by George Bush and Barack Obama, and for the success of President Trump’s successes since his election. The perfect symbol of their irredeemable hate, for the time being, is the burnt, decapitated carcass of an animal left on the doorstep of the Virginia home of Home Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270583/left-loses-judiciary-daniel-greenfield

Fisher v. University of Texas protected racial discrimination in college admissions.

Justice Kennedy wrote the decision joined by Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Breyer. The court’s only African-American justice dissented. As did Roberts and Alito. Scalia had been the most vigorous of the Supreme Court members in challenging racial preferences in college admissions. But he had passed away.

The 4-3 decision that continued the shameful tradition of progressive racist jurisprudence will become an impossible relic once President Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee joins Gorsuch on the bench.

As we wrap up a season of Supreme Court decisions successfully reaffirming constitutional law, if at times only narrowly, it’s time to look forward to the coming restoration of our founding document.

And the restoration of our freedoms, our dignity and our honor.

The early years of the Trump administration have seen both the worst and the best of the judiciary. Federal judges joined the leftist resistance by seizing the power to decide everything from immigration policy down to whom the President of the United States can block on Twitter. These decisions weren’t just power grabs, they ignored basic law and precedent, and not to mention checks and balances.

The President spent months having his legitimate authority of office crippled while waiting for the Supreme Court to intervene. And sometimes these interventions, as in Trump v. Hawaii, were shockingly narrow. Without Gorsuch, the 5-4 decision, in which the court’s four leftists insisted on denying Trump the authority of his office, would have been the verdict of the Supreme Court and the law of the land.

During the election, Never Trumpers told us that a Republican Senate could check Hillary Clinton. Now, George Will and other GOP defectors insist that the Senate needs to be turned over to the Democrats.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/janus-case-free-speech-wins-supreme-court-again/

In Janus v. AFSCME, the court struck a strong blow against government-compelled speech for the third time this term.

Perhaps the worst government affront to the rights of conscience, far worse than mere censorship, is compelled speech, the practice of forcing Americans to fund or express ideas they find abhorrent. It’s one thing to tell a man or woman that they can’t speak. It’s another thing entirely to compel them to use their voice, their artistic talents, or their pocketbook in support of a cultural, political, or religious enterprise with which they disagree.

Yet that’s exactly what the state of Colorado tried to do in punishing Christian baker Jack Phillips for refusing to use his artistic talents in the service of a gay-marriage ceremony. That’s exactly what the state of California tried to do in legally mandating that pro-life pregnancy centers advertise for free abortions. And that’s exactly what the state of Illinois tried to do in requiring non-union public employees to fund union activities.

Today, the Supreme Court released its decision in the last of these cases, Janus v. State, County, and Municipal Employees. At issue was an Illinois law that forced state employees to subsidize public-employee unions, “even if they choose not to join and strongly object to the positions the union takes in collective bargaining and related activities.” Illinois required these employees to pay a so-called agency fee that funded (among other things) collective bargaining, lobbying, social activities, membership meetings, and litigation.

Many of those items directly impact key and contentious elements of public policy, matters of public concern. And public employees themselves have widely divergent opinions. Yet they were all forced to fund the same point of view. Justice Alito, writing for the majority, spoke clearly:

When speech is compelled, however, additional damage is done. In that situation, individuals are coerced into betraying their convictions. Forcing free and independent individuals to endorse ideas they find objectionable is always demeaning, and for this reason, one of our landmark free speech cases said that a law commanding “involuntary affirmation” of objected-to beliefs would require “even more immediate and urgent grounds” than a law demanding silence.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-court-after-kennedy-1530142949

Anthony Kennedy acted in the best interests of the Supreme Court and his own legacy Wednesday by deciding to step down after 30 years as an Associate Justice. The fight to replace him was always going to be titanic, and by retiring on July 31 he gives a Republican President and Senate an opening to nominate and confirm a replacement with the best chance of keeping the Court tethered to the Constitution.

The raw political reality is that Democrats will refuse to confirm any nominee likely to be chosen by Donald Trump if they win Senate control in November. They are still furious that Senate Republicans refused to confirm Merrick Garland in 2016 after the death of Antonin Scalia, and the political left would insist that they return the favor through 2020, and 2024 if they have to.

That could leave the Court with eight Justices for as long as three years or more, with a 4-4 ideological split on many contentious issues. The Court now has a chance for a full complement again by the start of its October term. The 81-year-old Justice Kennedy has done right by the country and the Court.

A Republican nominee also offers the best chance to sustain Justice Kennedy’s legacy, despite the fear and loathing you hear on the left. Democrats are already predicting the demise of abortion rights, the end of gay marriage, and no doubt we’ll be hearing about the revival of Dred Scott before the confirmation hearings on Justice Kennedy’s replacement are over. But that overlooks the entirety of Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence, which is far richer than the cultural cases like Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Obergefell v. Hodges for which he is celebrated on the left.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rule-of-law-prevails-in-the-travel-ban-case-1530139894

The judicial “resistance” to President Trump suffered a well-deserved defeat in the Supreme Court’s “travel ban” ruling, Trump v. Hawaii. At issue was Mr. Trump’s order limiting entry to the U.S. of nationals from eight (now seven) countries that are unwilling or unable to cooperate sufficiently in U.S. antiterrorist screening efforts. The plaintiffs challenged the order on several grounds, arguing that it exceeded the president’s authority and was animated by anti-Muslim bias, violating the First Amendment. (Six of the eight covered countries are mostly Muslim.) The court upheld Mr. Trump’s order 5-4.

Whatever one thinks of the travel ban as policy, the ruling is an important victory for the rule of law. Federal trial and appellate courts have persistently enjoined Mr. Trump’s orders, defying clear Supreme Court precedent supporting his power to limit the entry of aliens. The decision has removed all doubt that the president’s orders are lawful under both the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Constitution.

The justices made short work of the plaintiffs’ statutory claims, affirming that the Immigration and Nationality Act’s plain language gives the president the power to deny “any aliens or any class of aliens” entry to the U.S. whenever he finds that letting them in “would be detrimental” to U.S. interests. This provision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “exudes deference to the President in every clause.” Mr. Trump’s proclamation, the justices concluded, was “well within this comprehensive delegation.” The court also concluded that a “searching inquiry” into the president’s justifications for the order, such as the lower courts in this case conducted, is inconsistent with both the statute and “the deference traditionally accorded the President in this sphere”—namely “international affairs and national security.”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/27/it-is-dangerous-to-be-

This weekend, Sarah Sanders Huckabee and her family were thrown out of a Virginia restaurant after a vote by the staff.

Do not trivialize this as a failure of civility, or a small incident in the soap opera of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Victor Davis Hanson says it will pass. It is not passing. It is growing. This is more than an assault on the Trump Administration; it is an assault on all of us.

Everywhere, in city, town, and country, Republicans keep their mouths shut among their neighbors, at dinner parties, at community gatherings, at their workplaces. To be openly Republican is to lose old friends, to alienate neighbors, to risk losing your job or career. Everyone on the Right has experienced this.

President Trump is adept at protecting himself. His policy successes speak louder than the hysteria. What about the rest of us? Ordinary people are vulnerable.

If a highly qualified job candidate votes Republican, his or her chance of employment shrinks to 7 percent in journalism, 3 percent in Ivy League colleges, 7 percent in Hollywood, and 10 percent in Silicon Valley.

Fields that create our educational, cultural, and technological world are deprived of the talent pool of roughly half the country. It also means the country is subjected to political thought control in precisely the fields that determine people’s cultural norms and values and shape their politics.