RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/news/opinion

We live in intolerant times, and if you don’t believe it, consider that the CEO of Twitter this weekend was assailed, and than apologized, for eating at one of America’s most popular fast-food restaurant chains.

Jack Dorsey probably didn’t think twice when he tweeted Saturday that he had used his new Cash app to pay for a meal at Chick-fil-A. Perhaps he thought a chicken sandwich is merely a meal, but now he knows it’s also a political statement.

Chick-fil-A is run by CEO Dan Cathy, who has offended America’s progressive political guardians by publicly supporting the traditional religious definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.

Mr. Cathy, a Christian, was expressing his personal beliefs. His restaurants serve everyone, except on Sunday when they’re closed. But it is nonetheless now a sin against political orthodoxy to eat at Chick-fil-A, and Mr. Dorsey was immediately roasted on a Twitter spit for saying he had done so. Soledad O’Brien, the cable TV personality, tweeted that “This is an interesting company to boost during [LGBT] Pride month, @jack.” Others were nastier.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-victory-for-voting-law-1528759554

A 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court on Monday upheld Ohio’s policy of clearing from registration rolls voters who don’t show up for several years. This is a victory for federalism and the plain reading of the law, notwithstanding howls that this is somehow about purging minority voters.

In Husted v. Randolph Institute, left-leaning groups challenged Ohio’s procedure for removing people from its voter rolls under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which was intended to increase voter registration and protect the integrity of the ballot. More than 10% of Americans move every year, and 2.75 million are estimated to be registered in more than one state.

The federal law requires states to “conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the names” of voters who are ineligible “by reason of” death or change in residence. But it also prohibits states from removing registrants unless they fail to return a prepaid postage card ascertaining that they still live in the district. States also cannot remove people “solely” for failing to vote.

Within these limits states have wide latitude to cull their rolls to prevent fraud. Ohio sends postage cards to registered voters who haven’t voted for two years to verify that they still live at the same address. Those who don’t return cards or vote for four more years are removed from the rolls.

Liberals argued that the National Voter Registration Act says states can’t remove people “by reason of the person’s failure to vote.” But the law says that “nothing in [this prohibition] may be construed to prohibit a State from using” other procedures identified in the law including the failure to return a card.

Congress added in 2002 that “registrants who have not responded to a notice” and “have not voted in two consecutive general elections for Federal office shall be removed.” It’s hard to be clearer than that. As Justice Samuel Alito explained in his majority opinion, “no sensible person would read the Failure-to-Vote Clause as prohibiting what [other sections of the law] expressly allow.”

The four liberal Justices disagreed, though their real gripe is with Congress. Justice Stephen Breyer opined that Ohio’s process violates the law’s requirement that states make a “reasonable effort” to remove ineligible voters because failing to return a postage card doesn’t provide enough information to make such a judgment. But the federal law expressly endorses the postcard test.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor claimed the majority upholds a scheme that promotes the “disenfranchisement of minority and low-income voters,” but there’s no evidence that the law has been applied in a biased fashion.

Voter registration has become an emotive political issue on the left, and the four liberals are riding that political wave in wanting judges to define what is reasonable under the federal statute. Too bad they don’t have the law on their side.

http://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/391566-the-fbis-fractured-fairytale

Once upon a time, the FBI said some thugs planned to rob a bank in town. Thugs are always looking to rob banks. They try all the time. But at this particular time, the FBI was hyper-focused on potential bank robberies in this particular town.

The best way to prevent the robbery — which is the goal, after all — would be for the FBI to alert all the banks in town. “Be on high alert for suspicious activity,” the FBI could tell the banks. “Report anything suspicious to us. We don’t want you to get robbed.”
Instead, in this fractured fairytale, the FBI followed an oddly less effective, more time-consuming, costlier approach. It focused on just one bank. And, strangely, it picked the bank that was least likely to be robbed because nobody thought it would ever get elected president — excuse me, I mean, because it had almost no cash on hand. (Why would robbers want to rob the bank with no cash?)