Tag Archives: #FreedomOfReligion

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Tulsi Gabbard Williams is very much a leftist, but the left hate her anyway Why? It's because she believes in our constitutional rights!

JVW, one of the regular posters on Patterico’s Pontifications, and the one who was least infected with #TrumpDerangementSyndrome, calls her his Little Aloha Sweetie, and former Representative Tulsi Gabbard Williams (D-HI 2nd) was the most sensible — not that that’s saying a whole lot — of the Cavalcade of Clowns running for the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination. She is a true left liberal. From her Wikipedia biography:

Tulsi Gabbard (/ˈtʌlsi ˈɡæbərd/; born April 12, 1981) is an American politician and United States Army Reserve officer who served as the U.S. Representative for Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021. Elected in 2012, she was the first Hindu member of Congress and also the first Samoan-American voting member of Congress. In early February 2019 she announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 United States presidential election.[1][2]

In 2002, Gabbard was elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives at the age of 21.[3] Gabbard served in a field medical unit of the Hawaii Army National Guard in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and was deployed to Kuwait from 2008 to 2009 as an Army Military Police platoon leader.[4][5][6] She was a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2013 to 2016, when she resigned to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

Gabbard supports a two-tier universal health care plan that she calls “Single Payer Plus”[7][8][9] and strengthening Roe v. Wade by codifying it into federal law. Her position has evolved on the issue and she now believes that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare”, although it is not a choice she would personally make.[10][11] She co-sponsored the Family Act for paid family and medical leave and endorsed universal basic income.[12][13][14] She opposes military interventionism,[15][16] although she has called herself a “hawk” on terrorism.[17] Her decision to meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and her skeptical approach to two claims that he had used chemical weapons[18][19] were controversial.[20]

On March 19, 2020, Gabbard dropped out of the 2020 presidential race and endorsed Joe Biden. She had already withdrawn from her U.S. House re-election race during her presidential campaign and was succeeded by Kai Kahele on January 3, 2021.[21]

Mrs Williams greatest claim to fame in that primary was how she eviscerated Senator Kamala Harris Emhoff (D-CA) in the debates. That helped to torpedo Mrs Emhoff’s campaign, but, sadly, the eventual nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, selected her to be his vice presidential running mate. Mrs Emhoff is now Vice President of the United States, while Mrs Williams is out of public office. 🙁

But if she’s a leftist, Mrs Williams is one other thing: she’s a libertarian (not Libertarian), in that she believes in really radical things like freedom of speech. and privacy rights. The 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, disliked Mrs Williams enough that she ‘hinted’ that JVW’s Little Aloha Sweetie was actually a Russian stalking horse, and that the evil Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin would use her as a third party candidate to try to split the liberal vote and hand the election to President Donald Trump.

Of course, Mrs Clinton has always found someone else to blame for her loss:

Clinton also said she thought Jill Stein, the Green Party’s 2016 presidential nominee, was a Russian asset: “Yeah, she’s a Russian asset – I mean, totally. They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate. So I don’t know who it’s going to be, but I will guarantee you they will have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states that they most needed.”

Bitter much? https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_yahoo.gif

From National Review:

Tulsi Gabbard: Domestic-Terrorism Bill Is ‘a Targeting of Almost Half of the Country’

By Brittany Bernstein | January 23, 2021 | 10:05 AM

Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic representative from Hawaii, on Friday expressed concern that a proposed measure to combat domestic terrorism could be used to undermine civil liberties.

Gabbard’s comments came during an appearance on Fox News Primetime when host Brian Kilmeade asked her if she was “surprised they’re pushing forward with this extra surveillance on would-be domestic terror.”

“It’s so dangerous as you guys have been talking about, this is an issue that all Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don’t have to guess about where this goes or how this ends,” Gabbard said.

No, we don’t have to guess about how things like this end; the results have been seen around the world.

She continued: “When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he’s spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to the insurgencies they’ve seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this unholy alliance of religious extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even libertarians.”

She said her concern lies in how officials will define the characteristics they are searching for in potential threats.

“What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? Where do you take this?” Gabbard said.

As noted above, Mrs Williams supports abortion, but, how about that, she was concerned for the rights of those of us who are pro-life. We saw Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) try to impose her own religious test on then nominee to the Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and now Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, because Mrs Barrett is pro-life, yet Mrs Williams, who is pro-abortion, could support the rights of, shockingly, Catholics!

I’m old enough to remember how the left were the ones who insisted that Freedom of Speech was absolute, and how The New York Times fought for Freedom of the Press. Today, it seems, that the left are all for restricting freedom for those with whom they disagree, using the January 6th kerfuffle — and yes, that’s what it was, a kerfuffle, blown wholly out of proportion by liberals — as an excuse, but, as we’ve noted before, the attempts to restrict freedom of speech were already happening.

The Washington Post, which has the tagline “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on its masthead, has, on its website, several articles all bemoaning the Freedom of Speech and of the Press.

The hypocrisy is astounding! The Post certainly defended its freedom of the press, in its own piece of the Pentagon Papers case, but now the editors and the newspapers’ columnists seem to want darkness to fall on people and opinions they dislike. No wonder the left hate Tulsi Gabbard Williams.

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Selling our birthrights for a mess of pottage

Don’t think that the American left don’t believe this! From Breitbart:

UK Police Chief: ‘Now Is Really Not the Time’ for Freedom of Speech, Right to Assembly

by Jack Montgomery | January 15, 2021

The chief constable of Dorset Police has urged lockdown protesters to accept that “now is really not the time” for freedom of speech and the right to assembly.

Chief Constable James Vaughan was speaking after the controversial arrest of two women for, seemingly, being recorded leaving home more than once and “sitting on a bench”, in an incident the police now allege was “stage-managed” by lockdown protesters, as one of the women is a Covid sceptic — although she denies any pre-planning.

“We appealed to them [the protesters] last weekend to say: ‘Look guys, we respect your right to freedom of speech and right to assembly but now is really not the time, it is too dangerous. Please don’t come, we have got other things we need to do,’” said the chief constable in comments to The Telegraph.

“Instead of giving us a break this weekend they decided to change their tactics and it just smacks of civil disobedience, really,” he complained, saying that he was “a bit angry and frustrated with these protesters on Saturday” and claiming that his officers “were acting with utter courtesy and restraint”.

Chief Constable Vaughan’s zero-tolerance attitude towards protesters differs markedly from that shown by British police leaders towards Black Lives Matter activists, who have been allowed to break lockdown rules largely unmolested throughout the pandemic — in part, London Police Commissioner Cressida Dick admitted in June, because officers are afraid to enforce the law against them.

There’s more at the original. The Breitbart article is not behind a paywall, but their internal references to the UK Telegraph are.

The sad thing is that I’m seeing the same arguments from good American citizens, some of whom at least used to be conservatives. Several state Governors, including Andy Beshear (D-KY), Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Tom Wolf (D-PA) suspended our First Amendment right to peaceable assembly — except when it came to the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations last spring, summer and fall, with Governor Wolf actually joining one such demonstration, despite it breaking his own gathering rules — and our right to the free exercise of religion.

When Chief Constable Vaughan said, “we respect your right to freedom of speech and right to assembly but now is really not the time, it is too dangerous,” he was telling people that he did not respect their “right to freedom of speech and right to assembly,” not as much as he respected his own police power.

Her Majesty’s subjects do not, of course, have as strongly guaranteed rights as we have in the United States, but many, many Americans seem to have forgotten that we are free of the British Crown specifically because our ancestors came to these shores because their own rights, their own freedom of religion, was being stifled by the British Crown and the official Church of England, because our ancestors risked their lives and fortunes and sacred honor to fight for our freedom.

Esau Sells His Birthright for Pottage of Lentils, a 1728 engraving by Gerard Hoet.

Genesis 25:29 When Jacob had cooked a stew one day, Esau came in from the field and he was exhausted; 30 and Esau said to Jacob, “Please let me have a mouthful of that red stuff there, for I am exhausted.” Therefore he was called Edom by name. 31 But Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.” 32 Esau said, “Look, I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?” 33 And Jacob said, “First swear to me”; so he swore an oath to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew; and he ate and drank, and got up and went on his way. So Esau despised his birthright.

So many of our citizens are willing to sell their birthrights, as Americans, for their mess of pottage.

The Germans, free Germans, in free elections, sold their birthrights to Adolf Hitler, because times were tough. Free Venezuelans, even when times were not too tough, sold their freedoms to Hugo Chavez for the false promises of socialism, and now look where they are.

Freedom surrendered, rights given away, can be lost easily, but one must fight to get them back. It is better to bear the risks that come with retaining your rights than the death which can fall upon you in the struggle to regain them once lost.

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If you want to see more conservative political victories, go to church!

Just a few of weeks ago, I commented, to a Facebook friend, in 2016, we had an election where half the people thought they got screwed.

Who knows, maybe there was sufficient fraud that President Trump was cheated out of a victory, but if there was, he hasn’t been able to prove it.

This country will be greatly damaged by a Biden presidency, but that’s what we are going to have. The proper response now is to support conservatives and libertarians for every office, to take back the House of Representatives in 2022, and defeat Joe Biden in 2024. Do whatever you can to resist the Democrats’ policy initiatives. Be sure to support conservatives and libertarians for state and local offices, and do everything you can to replace school boards with conservatives who will not allow the teachers unions to indoctrinate children with leftist babble.

But, most important of all: go to church! The real solidarity of conservatives comes from faith and a clear understanding of God’s laws and morality. Part of the reason that so many Democratic Governors have been able to trample on our freedom of religion is that not that many Americans, even those who claim to be Christian, actually go to church!

Then I came across this, from the Catholic News Agency:

Only frequent church attendees avoided downward mental health trend in 2020

CNA Staff | December 11, 2020 | 12:09 AM MST

Americans who attend religious services weekly are the only demographic group appearing to show improved mental health in 2020, despite the stresses of the coronavirus pandemic and other events, says a new survey.

The survey otherwise shows significant self-reported mental health declines among those previously in excellent health.

In 2019, about 42% of those who reported attending religious services weekly told Gallup that their mental health was excellent. In 2020, 46% said the same, an increase of 4 percentage points. Only 35% of those who attend services nearly weekly or monthly reported excellent mental health, down 12 percentage points from last year. Among those who attend seldom or never, 29% reported excellent mental health, down 13 percentage points.

While coronavirus restrictions have often limited peoples’ ability to attend religious services, the Gallup survey did not ask respondents whether they faced such limits.

There’s more at the original.

I have previously said that Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) executive orders suspending our constitutional rights and closing churches has made going to Mass a political act of defiance as well as a religious one. The evidence has long shown that the stronger one’s Christian faith is, the more probable that someone will be politically conservative and vote Republican. Quite simply, the more strongly Christian someone is, the more likely he is to hold conservative political positions.

And now we see that going to church leads to stronger mental health as well.

It doesn’t work in every case, obviously. Joe Biden is a Mass-every-Sunday (purported) Catholic, yet his fealty to Democratic political positions is stronger than his belief in the Church’s positions on abortion, homosexuality and ‘transgenderism.’ Of course, his mispronunciation of “psalmist,” when there is a reading from the Book of Psalms in every Catholic Mass does make one wonder if he sleeps through Mass most days, but still . . . .

It’s simple: Mr Biden is both a Catholic, nominally anyway, and a Democrat, but, of the two, being a Democrat is far more important to him than being Catholic. However, he is the outlier, not the norm: the more frequently a Christian attends church, Protestant or Catholic, the more likely he is to hold political views in line with his religious ones.

For conservatives, religion not only reinforces our political views, but actually going to church strengthens our commitment to our religious and political positions.

There is, however, something that the left do not realize and political commentators never seem to mention: the more a person attends church, the more he is accepting of other people of different races:

Religious Trump Voters: How Faith Moderates Attitudes about Immigration, Race, and Identity

By Emily Ekins | February 5, 2019

Increasing political polarization and rising conflict over identity, race relations, immigration, and LGBT rights have left two increasingly divided extremes with a seemingly elusive moderate middle. Many have come to view religious institutions, largely because of their opposition to same‐​sex marriage, as a major contributor to this ever‐​increasing divide — a catalyst for increased intergroup societal conflict rather than a possible cure. However, research from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group’s VOTER Surveys (Views of the Electorate Research Survey) finds that religious participation may serve as a moderating function in our politics, particularly among conservatives. These national surveys find that Donald Trump voters who attend church regularly are more likely than nonreligious Trump voters to have warmer feelings toward racial and religious minorities, to be more supportive of immigration and trade, and to be more concerned about poverty. These data are important because they demonstrate that private institutions in civil society can have a positive effect on social conflict and can reduce polarization.

Left-right culture wars over the rights of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual) people — particularly government sanction of same-sex marriages — have likely soured many Democrats’ views of Christians. Indeed, a majority (56 percent) of Democrats report unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians. This, in large part, may be a response to the 64 percent of churchgoing Christians who oppose legalized same-sex marriage and the half who have cool feelings toward LGBT people, and to the finding that the more frequently people attend church, the more negative their attitudes are likely to be toward gay men, lesbians, and also feminists. Thus, antagonism toward religious institutions is often grounded in the idea that religion is a source of exclusion and oppression rather than of inclusivity and tolerance. Such views are succinctly articulated by a bumper sticker from the Richard Dawkins Foundation: “There is no war on religion: Only opposition of intolerance, oppression, hatred, and stupidity.”

Conservatives’ views of black people, Hispanics, and Asians improve the more frequently conservatives attend religious services

.It may surprise some readers, however, to learn that religious participation may moderate conservatives’ attitudes on other important culture war issues, particularly matters of race, immigration, and identity. Given that the rise of Donald Trump has increased the salience of these issues, this brief uses the 2016, 2017, and 2018 VOTER Surveys to examine how religious and nonreligious people who voted for Donald Trump think about these important issues.

Conservatives’ views of black people, Hispanics, and Asians improve the more frequently conservatives attend religious services. Specifically, favorable feelings toward black people increase from 48 percent among Trump voters who never attend church to 73 percent among those who attend more than once a week — a 25-point increase. Similarly, favorable feelings toward Hispanics and Asians increase from 63 percent and 60 percent, respectively, among secular Trump voters to 72 percent and 80 percent, respectively, among churchgoing Trump voters.

There is much more at the original; internal references from original omitted in the quote.

This is the part the left do not understand: religious conservatives, such as myself, may oppose the idea of same-sex ‘marriage,’ and classifying the ‘transgendered’ as the sex they claim to be rather than the sex they are biologically, but that does not mean we somehow want them all killed. Rather, it means that we wish them to return to mental health and conservative beliefs and values. The conservative and libertarian part of me informs me that what they wish to do in their private lives is between themselves and God, and none of my business; it also informs me that we can not care about their private lives as long as they do not bring those private lives into the public square. Once they do that, they have opened their private choices to public discussion. [1]I put the term the way that I do because I do not believe that any homosexual relationship, regardless of how the laws of the state view such, as legitimately a marriage.

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” — Chief Justice John Roberts, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1

Conservatives and libertarians, like me, may well oppose Affirmative Action and government preferences for any group based on race, religion, sex or ethnicity, but that does not mean that we see racial or ethnic or religious minorities as somehow not truly the children of God or as people against whom we should discriminate.

Christianity discourages discrimination, as every non-biased study has shown. Christianity encourages inclusion, but it encourages an inclusion pushing toward Christian values. Christian values encourage work, and thus encourages non-discrimination in hiring and employment; that does not mean, as Chief Justice John Roberts said, that Christians ought to support the reverse discrimination of Affirmative Action, selecting recipients of collegiate admissions and employment opportunities based on race.

Religion requires respect for God, and respect for God pushes respect for other people. Religion inspires respect for the law, and reduces crime and bad behavior. Christianity, the faith on which this country was founded, requires recognizing sin, but it also requires the forgiveness of sin. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.”

Getting out of bed on Sunday morning, getting dressed and going to church brings us more friends, as we meet other Christians, helps to solidify our faith, and strengthens our commitment to conservative values and conservative politics. Everything about it is a benefit for conservatives.

It doesn’t require that much effort. If you do not already have a parish of which you are a member, find one; you don’t need to leave your computer to do that. Once you have found one, it’s just the effort that very first Sunday, to get up, get dressed, and go. Every subsequent Sunday will be a little bit easier.

Conservatism is not something which we need only to support in politicians; politicians, in the end, depend on the support of the people, and the support of the people is strengthened when we practice what we preach.

References

References
↑1 I put the term the way that I do because I do not believe that any homosexual relationship, regardless of how the laws of the state view such, as legitimately a marriage.
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Government ‘remote education’ orders driving people to the private schools Or at least that's happening for those who can afford it

The private religious schools have been fighting Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) orders to close; the public school teachers’ unions are fighting to keep the schools closed . . . at least as long as they are still getting paid. The only surprise to me is that the enrollment decreases are so small.

Think about this: these aren’t parents just looking for daycare. Enrolling your kids in private school costs serious money. Home schooling takes time out of your day that could be spent earning money, and once you start home schooling, it’s not that easy to say, well, the public schools just reopened, so I can send my kids back there.

From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

COVID-19 cutting school enrollment? Hundreds of kids leaving Fayette schools.

By Valarie Honeycutt Spears | December 29, 2020 | 10:51 AM EST

Morgan Dezarn is moving her first grade daughter in January from Fayette County Public Schools to private school. She is among hundreds of Lexington parents leaving the district during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our daughter missed several months of kindergarten when schools closed in March and I just do not have faith in FCPS at this point to put a plan in place that gets kids back to school five days per week,” Dezarn said. School district officials have said they won’t return to widespread in-person learning, which shut down in March, before Jan. 11. Gov. Andy Beshear has recommended that no Kentucky school in a critical “red zone” county resume in-person classes before Jan. 11.

As we have previously noted, the Supreme Court denied the private religious schools the injunction they requested, stating that the Governor’s executive order was set to expire on January 4th anyway, and there was “no indication that it will be renewed.”

Uhhh, yes, there is, and was at the time, such an indication, as the Governor ‘recommended,’ but did not actually order, schools to remain closed for another week, until January 11th. The Governor may be vindictive and venal, but he isn’t stupid: he knows that he can make it an order on Saturday, January 2nd, and it would once again force the private schools closed. The Supreme Court said that, if the Governor renewed his order, they could appeal once again, saying:

Under all of the circumstances, especially the timing and the impending expiration of the Order, we deny the application without prejudice to the applicants or other parties seeking a new preliminary injunction if the Governor issues a school-closing order that applies in the new year.

That, of course, just costs more time and money, and allows the Governor to keep denying the people’s constitutional rights. Back to the Herald-Leader original:

Numbers obtained under the Kentucky Open Records Act show that after growing in all but one of the last six years, Fayette County Public Schools has seen a decrease in enrollment in the fall semester of 2020 that officials are attributing to COVID-19.

Enrollment dropped from Dec. 1, 2019, to December 1, 2020, by 730 students, from 41, 251 to to 40,521.

With the exception of the 2017-18 school year, when Kentucky’s kindergarten entry date changed from Oct. 1 to Aug. 1, enrollment in Fayette County grew every school year since at least 2014-15. . . .

What is happening in Lexington is similar to a national trend. The Denver Post reported recently that public schools enrollment in that state is down for the first time in 30 years.

Enrollment in Missouri and North Carolina for example, are down 3 percent to 5 percent. “At New York City Public Schools, the country’s largest district, 31,000 fewer students — a 3.4 percent drop — are on rosters this year, according to Chalkbeat.” And in a survey of more than 60 districts, NPR found the average kindergarten enrollment dropped by 16 percent, the Post reported.

Remember: taking your children out of the public schools does not mean you get to stop paying property or other taxes to support the public schools. Mrs Dezarn, from the original story, will still be paying taxes to support the public schools, while, according to Private School Review, the average private elementary school tuition in Lexington is $9,216.

That’s not cheap. With a median household income of $54,896, the median tuition rate works out to be 16.8% of that, which makes the private school option out of reach for most Lexington families.

‘Remote education’ has been going on since the middle of last March. With Governor Beshear’s orders, as they currently stand — and I would be more surprised if he didn’t extend them than if he did — that’s eight solid months out of a ten month school year, months that have basically been lost, as student failures in schools have doubled and even tripled. And with Anthony Fauxi Fauci, the grossly overhyped director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, having claimed that even with the vaccines, if the coming vaccination campaign goes well, we could approach herd immunity by summer’s end and “normality that is close to where we were before” by the end of 2021, there’s no guarantee that the public schools will open for in-person classes for the rest of the current school year.

COVID-19 is serious, and it can be fatal, but it is not the only serious thing out there. Losing an entire year of education is also serious, and that is what our oh-so-very-concerned governors have cost us.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Rights delayed are rights denied — again!

As I noted in Rights delayed are rights denied, Governor Andy Beshear’s executive order closing all public and private Kindergarten through 12th grade schools had been expeditiously appealed, but the Supreme Court sat on the case. Now, in Danville Christian Academy v Beshear, the Court did just as I guessed it would: it let the case go moot.

On November 18, the Governor of Kentucky issued a temporary school-closing Order that effectively closes K–12 schools for in-person instruction until and through the upcoming holiday break, which starts Friday, December 18, for many Kentucky schools. All schools in Kentucky may reopen after the holiday break, on January 4. . . . .

The Governor’s school-closing Order effectively expires this week or shortly thereafter, and there is no indication that it will be renewed.

Uhhh, yes, there is! Governor Beshear has already ‘recommended’ that schools delay opening another week, until January 11th, and while he did not make that an order, quite possibly because he knew it would impact the case and it contradicted his own Court filing, he is now free to make it an order.

Under all of the circumstances, especially the timing and the impending expiration of the Order, we deny the application without prejudice to the applicants or other parties seeking a new preliminary injunction if the Governor issues a school-closing order that applies in the new year.

In other words, the Court would entertain a new case, should the Governor issue another executive order, but all of that takes time, and money. With Christmas break about to start, the Governor could easily wait until Saturday, January 2nd, to issue another executive order. Since the Sixth Circuit’s order is the current precedent, a trial judge would have to deny another request for a stay, then it be appealed to the Sixth Circuit, which would almost certainly rule the same way, followed by an application to the Supreme Court, and how many weeks more would the free exercise of religion and freedom of assembly be denied to the people of the Bluegrass State?

In his dissent, Justice Samuel Alito noted that the delay was not the fault of the appellants:

(I)n my judgment, it is unfair to deny relief on this ground since this timing is in no way the applicants’ fault. They filed this action on November 20, 2020, just two days after the issuance of the Governor’s executive order. And when, on November 29, the Sixth Circuit granted a stay of the order that would have allowed classes to resume, the applicants sought relief in this Court just two days later, on December 1. It is hard to see how they could have proceeded more expeditiously.

Justice Neil Gorsuch also dissented:

Nor should a Governor be able to evade judicial review by issuing short-term edicts and then urging us to overlook their problems only because one edict is about to expire while the next has yet to arrive. Come January 4, a new school semester will be about to start, and the Governor has expressly told us that he reserves the right to issue more decrees like these if and when religious schools try to resume holding classes. Rather than telling the parties to renew their fight in a month, asking the Sixth Circuit to resolve the case now, under accurate legal rules, would be better for everyone—from the parents who might have to miss work and stay home should decrees like these be upheld, to the state public health officials who might have to plan for school if they are not.

Courts have a broader equity at stake here too. In their struggle to respond to the current pandemic, executive officials have sometimes treated constitutional rights with suspicion. In Kentucky, state troopers seeking to enforce gubernatorial orders even reprimanded and recorded the license plate numbers of worshippers who attended an Easter church service, some of whom were merely sitting in their cars listening to the service over a loudspeaker.

Recently, this Court made clear it would no longer tolerate such departures from the Constitution. We did so in a case where the challenged edict had arguably expired, explaining that our action remained appropriate given the Governor’s claim that he could revive his unconstitutional decree anytime. That was the proper course there, as I believe it is here. I would not leave in place yet another potentially unconstitutional decree, even for the next few weeks.

For these reasons, I respectfully dissent. I would grant the application, vacate the Sixth Circuit’s stay, and remand the matter for further consideration under the proper legal standards.

As Justice Gorsuch noted, the Court could have vacated the Sixth Circuit’s stay, and then the expiration of the Governor’s order would have been forced to stay expired. If the Governor wanted to close religious schools again, he’d have to go at it differently.

I will admit it: I had higher hopes for Justices Thomas, Kavanaugh and Barrett on this case.

Of course, the vast majority of students in the Commonwealth attend the public schools, over which the Governor indisputably has authority. If the Governor wanted to close down the public schools, he could do so. Since it was only the religious private schools seeking relief, the Governor’s order would also apply to secular private schools.

As I wrote previously, I do not trust Governor Beshear: with the Supreme Court having dismissed Danville Christian Academy’s case as moot, I have very little doubt that Mr Beshear will once again enact executive orders restricting religious private schools. He has already indicated, as noted above, that he believes the schools should stay closed yet another week, and he could issue an order to that effect without any fear that the Supreme Court would invalidate it, because of the time factor.

I am hoping that the General Assembly, which will begin the next session in January with Republicans holding veto-proof majorities in both chambers, will amend KRS 39A to greatly limit the Governor’s ’emergency powers’ in a way which will both protect all of our constitutional rights from such orders and limit what executive authority he has to issue such orders to a brief time, requiring consent from the legislature for any extensions.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Some good news from the Supreme Court on Freedom of Religion But we still need more

I have frequently harped on written about Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) attack on religious freedom by closing down private religiously affiliated schools, and noted that the Supreme Court has still not acted upon Danville Christian Academy’s appeal of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the Governor’s orders.

Danville Christian Academy’s case is facially different, because the Governor’s orders close down all schools, public and private, and are thus not treating the private or religious schools differently from the public ones, and that may be why the Supreme Court has not issued an injunction based on Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo.

However, there is some good news from the Court today, as documented by Amy Howe in SCOTUSblog:

Justices revive religious groups’ attempts to block COVID-related restrictions in Colorado, New Jersey

by Amy Howe | Tuesday, December 15, 2020 | 3:21 PM EST

The Supreme Court on Tuesday tossed out a pair of lower-court rulings that had permitted states to enforce COVID-related restrictions at worship services. The two brief orders from the justices instruct the lower courts to take another look at religious groups’ challenges to restrictions in Colorado and New Jersey – and this time, the justices indicated, the lower courts should decide the challenges in light of the Supreme Court’s Nov. 25 ruling that lifted New York’s COVID-related limits on attendance at worship services.

Tuesday’s orders are further evidence of the broader impact of the New York ruling, which the justices have now invoked three times in three weeks to tell lower courts around the country that they should be more solicitous of religious groups seeking to worship without restrictions during the pandemic.

In the Colorado case, the justices threw out an Aug. 10 order by a federal district court that denied a request by High Plains Harvest Church, a small church in northern Colorado, to bar the state from enforcing capacity limits. Justice Elena Kagan dissented from Tuesday’s order, penning a brief opinion – joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor – in which she argued that the case was moot because Colorado has already lifted the limits at issue.

There’s much more detail at the original, but one thing is becoming increasingly clear: thanks to the replacement of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Amy Coney Barrett, there is now a Supreme Court majority which strongly believes in freedom of religion, at least as far as activity in church is concerned. There may be less of that strong belief when it comes to religious schools.

Thanks to Amy Coney Barrett replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we now have a Supreme Court majority that actually believe in the Freedom of Religion.

As an update to my article noting that the Court’s inaction on the Danville Christian Academy case, while Governor Beshaer’s response included the claim that his order was “a time-limited executive order that is set to expire in just four weeks,” January 4th, he has now “recommended” that in-person classes not be resumed until January 11th. With the case about to go moot — the Christmas holidays will be beginning in less than a week, and regularly scheduled classes wouldn’t resume until January 4th anyway — the Governor has not yet made it an executive order, so, presumably, it would not change his filing in the case.

But I do not trust Governor Beshear: if the Supreme Court dismissed Danville Christian Academy’s case as moot, I have very little doubt that Mr Beshear would once again enact executive orders restricting religious private schools. I am hoping that the General Assembly, which will begin the next session in January with Republicans holding veto-proof majorities in both chambers, will amend KRS 39A to greatly limit the Governor’s ’emergency powers’ in a way which will both protect all of our constitutional rights from such orders and limit what executive authority he has to issue such orders to a brief time, requiring consent from the legislature for any extensions.

That is what the Republican leadership have promised. However, a Supreme Court decision that religious schools are also protected under the First Amendment would provide relief for religious schools across the nation, where action by the General Assembly would protect only Kentuckians.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Using the Freedom of Speech and of the Press to condemn other people’s Freedom of Speech

My good friend William Tech’s website, The Pirate’s Cove, has as it’s blog tagline, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” That’s the important part of the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” What part of “no law” is so difficult to understand?

Well, some very good people in Minnesota are very upset that the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech and religion of people they despise. From The Washington Post:

Facing a First Amendment fight, a small Minnesota town allows a White supremacist church

By Kim Bellware | December 14, 2020 | 6:00 AM EST

The nation’s ascendant White supremacy movement and small-town bureaucracy collided in rural Minnesota last week when a city council vote over a zoning permit made the 273-person city of Murdock the latest First Amendment battleground.

The Murdock City Council voted 3-1 during a virtual meeting Wednesday to allow the Asatru Folk Assembly to turn the run-down church it purchased in July into its first “hof,” or gathering place, in the Midwest. The looming presence of the obscure Nordic folk religion, widely classified as a White supremacist hate group by extremism and religious experts, promoted months of pushback from concerned residents.

The group purchased a building, and were planning to use it for a legal purpose. The Mayor and City Council didn’t like it, but them not liking it did not mean the city government had any right to block a legal assembly.

Some, naturally, argue that the First Amendment should not cover such a group:

Murdock’s issue underscores the deficiencies with the First Amendment and exposes a lack of neutrality in who it really protects, argued Laura Beth Nielsen, who chairs the Sociology Department at Northwestern University and wrote the 2004 book “License to Harass: Law, Hierarchy and Offensive Public Speech.”

“Right now, every local government is broke trying to deal with coronavirus. The idea that you would arguably subject yourself to a costly lawsuit — what town would want to do that?” Nielsen said. “But letting these organizations flourish and take root is scary, especially if you’re the Black or the Jewish family in town.”

She said Murdock’s individual battle is taking place in a broader legal and social environment where, “in the universe of the First Amendment, White people tend to win.”

White people tend to win? Surely there was little more offensive speech than that of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who called Judaism a “gutter religion.” He was condemned for that, but not fined or imprisoned, because his speech, no matter how vile, is protected by the First Amendment. The Reverend Al Sharpton has uttered plenty of anti-white and anti-Semitic bovine feces, but his statements, too, have, and deserve to have, the protection of the First Amendment. I do not have to like Messrs Farrakhan and Sharpton to believe that they have freedom of speech just as much as I do.

There’s a bit of irony in all of this, because Professor Neilsen is exercising her freedom of speech and freedom of the press to complain that other people’s freedom of speech and of peaceable assembly is “scary.”

The city council in Murdock, Minn., voted December 9 to grant a permit that allows the Asatru Folk Assembly, which has been identified as a white supremacist group, to gather at an abandoned church it bought. (Renee Jones Schneider/AP)

There’s much more at the Post original, with statements by other people, but I want to point out the final two paragraphs:

Nielsen, the Northwestern sociologist, noted that cities routinely restrict the First Amendment over issues it prioritizes, such as anti-pandhandling ordinances or obscenity laws.

“Even though the First Amendment is supposed to operate in this neutral way, when you dig in, hate speech against racial minorities is protected; harassment of women is protected,” Nielsen said. “In the big picture, the First Amendment is reinforcing who already has power.”

span style=”font-family: Georgia;”>To be fair, there is no quotation from the good professor that she believes the First Amendment should somehow be restricted; whether she says anything like that in any of her books, I do not know. But I do know that restrictions on speech, were they allowed, could condemn my website, given that our published Stylebook is not supportive of homosexuality and does not accept ‘transgenderism.’ With the incoming Administration of Joe Biden, RedState, where I frequently cross-post, could be shut down by the government for the many articles there which claim that the Democrats engaged in massive fraud and stole a presidential election they did not legitimately win.[1]I would note here that none of my articles make that claim.

When freedom of speech or the press is limited, the ox which gets gored depends on just who has the power to gore it.

The First Amendment has been used to protect many things I do not like: the American Nazi Party’s march in heavily Jewish Skokie, Illinois, the Westboro Baptist Church’s protests at the funerals of American soldiers, in Snyder v Phelps (2011), or the flag burning case, Texas v Johnson (1989), but it was right to protect those offensive actions. The First Amendment protects The Washington Post’s right to print Professor Neilsen’s objections. There are many things I’d rather not see voiced or printed, but it would be far, far worse for the government to have the power to ban them.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 I would note here that none of my articles make that claim.
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Rights delayed are rights denied

We have thrice previously noted Governor Andy Beshear’s executive order closing all public and private Kindergarten through 12th grade schools, and Danville Christian Academy’s legal actions to enjoin enforcement of that order against private religious schools. While the private religious initially won, the Governor appealed to the Sixth Circuit, and the appellate court agreed with him, leaving the religious schools closed.

That was two weeks ago. An application for a stay was filed with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday, December 1st, and several subsequent motions have been filed, but today is Monday, December 14th, and the private religious schools’ constitutional rights have been held in abeyance for two full weeks now.

Two weeks, during Advent, a highly important time of the year for Christians. Being December 14th, there’s only a week of school left this year before closure for the Christmas holidays. If the Supreme Court does not act, immediately, there will be no operative decision from the Court on whether the Governor’s orders have violated our First Amendment rights to freedom of peaceable assembly and free exercise of religion, because the Governor’s order expires before school would normally resume in January. However, there is nothing currently preventing Mr Beshear from extending his executive order past January 4th.

The Governor claimed that his order was “a time-limited executive order that is set to expire in just four weeks,” as though it is somehow permissible to suspend our constitutional rights for a limited period, though he continues just two sentences later to say that he could, “if necessary,” extend the order beyond the current January 4, 2021, expiration of the executive order. The appellants responded that, even now, Mr Beshear is attempting “to lift the injunction prohibiting him from closing Kentucky’s houses of worship,” so that he can order churches closed as well. We have previously noted that the Governor wants all churches to be closed down, but the four Catholic bishops in Kentucky have decided to continue public worship.

Our authoritarian Governor just hates to be defied, and he’s trying to get the injunction in Maryville Baptist Church, Inc. v Beshear lifted so that he can order churches closed, as he did last spring.

COVID-19 is serious, and has been fatal in a small percentage of cases, but the threat to our Constitution and our rights is far, far greater, and the Supreme Court needs to slap down such attempts.

As we have previously noted, Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly, and GOP leaders have stated that they intend to rein in the Governor’s emergency powers under KRS 39A, but, while that would be welcome, and should happen to prevent future abuse, the Supreme Court needs to say, and set the precedent, that our explicitly stated constitutional rights cannot be simply set aside because the government, any government claims to have a good reason to do so.

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“You’re not smart enough to tell me how to live.” — Kathy Shaidle

Robert Stacey Stacy McCain said that he once “dubbed Kathy Shaidle the Only Good Canadian.”

My general hatred of Canada is so well-known I’m surprised the SPLC hasn’t taken notice, but that’s the thing about hating Canadians — it’s so commonplace that even liberals don’t object to it. Anyway, some of my readers objected that Kathy was not the only good Canadian, and I’m willing to stipulate that there may be a few others like her, but none of them could possibly be as good as she is. Her blog Five Feet of Fury was a regular read back in the day, and she’s been a columnist at various outlets — including a stint at PJMedia, another at Taki’s, and most recently doing film reviews at Mark Steyn’s place. Her most famous aphorism is, “You’re not smart enough to tell me how to live.”

Well, Kathy developed ovarian cancer, which is now in a very advanced stage, and her husband who blogs at Blazing Cat Fur has got an online fundraiser to which everyone should contribute.

Unlike the esteemed Mr McCain, I have no animosity toward Canucks. They’re mostly good people, and, other than British Columbia, eastern Ontario and Quebec, mostly conservative. President Trump was wrong: it wasn’t Greenland we should have taken, but the English speaking parts of Canada. We could have a 62-star flag, and still leave Puerto Rico out!

They play very good hockey, and I’d much rather see a Canadian team win the Stanley Cup than an American team from someplace like Tampa or Las Vegas or Anaheim. Should anyplace where kids can’t play hockey outdoors on a frozen pond ever be considered for an NHL franchise?

But, I digress. With so many good conservative voices, I completely missed 5 Feet of Fury, which is, to be honest, a still active but mostly abandoned site, and thus I missed what Mr McCain called her most famous aphorism, “You’re not smart enough to tell me how to live.”

I tend to use the lines from Jonathan Edwards’ Sunshine, “He can’t even run his own life, I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine!”

The left are so stupid that they think this is a chick. More, they think they can somehow compel me to go along with their idiocy.

That’s the problem with today’s left: they think that they are smarter than the common people, and that they should be able to tell other people how to live. They’re so stupid that they can’t even tell the differences between males and females anymore, but they still think they are smarter than you. Democratic, and, sadly, a couple of Republican, Governors across the nation think that they can tell you who and how many people you can have visit you in your own home, because it’s for your own good. Democratic, and, sadly, a couple of Republican, Governors across this nation think that they can tell you when and how and even if you can exercise your constitutional right to assemble, peaceably or how and when and even if you can freely exercise your religious faith.

And before Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg went to her eternal reward, and was replaced by Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court even went along with that, in Calvary Chapel, Dayton Valley v Sisolak and South Bay Pentecostal Church v Newsom.

I will concede, albeit grudgingly, that there are some people smarter than me. But I will not concede that just because someone else might be smarter than me, that he would have some right, some authority, to not only tell me how to live my life, but compel me to follow his orders. After all, if that were the case, then I would have the right to compel everyone not as intelligent as me to live their lives according to my dictates.

There is, of course, our constitutional right to the freedom of speech. I do have the right to tell other people how I think they should run their lives. And I concede that even government leaders have their own free speech rights to tell other people how they think they should run their lives. But I absolutely deny that any state Governor, any President, any Mayor, anyone at all, has the authority to compel me to live my life according to their dictates rather than my own agency.

Those lines from Jonathan Edwards would have, not so long ago, gotten a high five from the left. Today, the left appear to believe in the freedom of choice on exactly one thing; everything else should be according to their dictates.

Well, not just no, but Hell no!