Viewers now get a steady diet of figures like MSNBC commentator Elie Mystal who called the U.S. Constitution “trash” and argued that we should simply just dump it.

In a New York Times column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the Constitution to be “radically altered” to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”

Georgetown University Law School Professor Rosa Brooks went on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” to lash out at Americans becoming “slaves” to the U.S. Constitution and that the Constitution itself is now the problem for the country.

I was recently called for a response to Robinson’s call. Yet, it is not clear if Robinson is speaking about the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution as that “little piece of paper.” However, she insists that “[i]n this moment, we’ve got to reimagine it with people that look and love like us at the center.”

Shiva Ayyadurai is fighting to get on ballots, but the naturalized U.S. citizen from India fails to meet a key constitutional requirement. //

In the complaint, Ayyadurai argued that the First Amendment guarantees his right to run for president regardless of the Constitution’s pesky qualifications. And he asserted that such a qualification has been “abrogated and implicitly repealed” by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. //

allowing a foreign-born, naturalized citizen access to the presidential ballot changes the Constitution without the benefit of amendment.

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“You guys have no idea how painful it is to … be forced to watch it all unravel”
Captured my feelings: “You guys have no idea how painful it is to have been young during the absolute peak era of the greatest empire in human history and now be forced to watch it all unravel. The saddest part is that we are doing it to ourselves.” (Peachy Keenan on X)

Posted by William A. Jacobson
Saturday, August 17, 2024 at 08:30pm
99 Comments
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https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1289512762733785088
On June 25, 2024, I wrote about tweets I saw from Gad Saad, “The West has committed the greatest self-immolation in human history”:

“When the leaders hate their civilization more than their enemies do, the civilization is doomed. Never before has history witnessed such a gargantuan self-inflicted death of a civilization that was an existential light in an otherwise world of historical darkness.”

Remember: War is coming to every corner in the West. It might take 5 days, 5 years, or 50 years but it’s coming. The West has committed the greatest self-immolation in human history. Save this post.

I just saw another series of tweets from an account Peachy Keenan along the same lines, but to me more personal:

You guys have no idea how painful it is to have been young during the absolute peak era of the greatest empire in human history and now be forced to watch it all unravel.

The saddest part is that we are doing it to ourselves.

Absolutely agonizing experience. Like watching the most beautiful person you know slowly mutilate themselves.

The reason everyone on Earth wants to move here is because if you squint your eyes, this country still basically “looks” the same, is still powerful, etc.

But we are running on the fumes of the past.

Paradise is no longer paradise after the barbarians rape, burn, and pillage everything not nailed down. And I’m talking about the barbarians in DC, not the ones galloping over the border.

I feel that sadness frequently.

To have grown up in the late 60s and 70s in hindsight was the best fortune I ever had. I wrote about it when I attended my high school reunion a few years ago, My ’70s Show Revisited – 40th High School Reunion [warning, image of me in a leisure suit, NSFW]:

No high school experience is perfect, but Roslyn and Roslyn High School in the 1970s were great places to grow up….

The Vietnam war wound down just as I was entering high school, and the draft would be abolished just before I would have to enter. Selective service registration was not yet in place, so we were in that gap.

What I most remember was the freedom of movement. “Be home for dinner” was about all the parental monitoring we had. We hitchhiked, hung out at Jones Beach and the Roslyn Duck Pond, and once we got wheels, pretty much roamed around unencumbered.

We didn’t have personal computers (those were just a few years away) though some of my classmates were early tinkerers who went on to great success in computer science. We also didn’t have cell phones — those were more than a few years away, so we weren’t constantly monitored. Thankfully, we also didn’t have social media. Whatever normal cliquish and catty behavior took place wasn’t amplified as it is now.

That’s not to say we didn’t have the usual growing pains, including in high school. But all in all it was a great time and place.

I wish I had the answer to stop the unraveling.

Some replies to the Peachy Keenan tweet, a lot of them seem to be from Gen X-ers, not late stage Boomers like me:

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99 Comments Education, Gad Saad, Higher Education, Immigration
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6 0rhhardin | August 17, 2024 at 8:38 pm
I take it as more opportunities for irony, satire and the like. Unfortunately 1/3 of the population has no sense of humor and they vote.

Avoid sarcasm though. The humor form of adolescents. And women (“something is wrong and you have to figure out what it is because I can’t be bothered”).

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0 0rhhardin in reply to rhhardin. | August 17, 2024 at 8:41 pm
Need a book like “US Politics and the Rise of Cosmic Irony.”

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0 0Thane_Eichenauer in reply to rhhardin. | August 17, 2024 at 10:12 pm
Read The Wall Speaks by Jerr.
http://TheWallSpeaks.com

@jerr_rrej
·
Jan 12
Here is a list of things that men think are masculine but are feminine:

1. Anger
2. Machismo
3. Lack of sexual restraint
4. “Bravery” in showing emotion
5. Sarcasm

https://x.com/jerr_rrej/status/1745881175443275975

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0 24rabid wombat | August 17, 2024 at 8:39 pm
Someone recently went through a life defining moment rose and said:

‘Fight, fight, fight’

Your choice, fight or roll over and die.

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0 14LukeHandCool | August 17, 2024 at 8:43 pm
I’m the same age as you, Bill, and I saw that tweet earlier today and it hit me the same way, too. It was a great time to grow up (except for 1970s fashion).

Our second grandchild was born on Tuesday, and I worry about the world our grandchildren will live in.

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0 6William A. Jacobson in reply to LukeHandCool. | August 17, 2024 at 8:54 pm
Congratulations! You are catching up to me.

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0 1LukeHandCool in reply to William A. Jacobson. | August 18, 2024 at 12:56 am
I don’t think we’ll ever catch up to you. You had a real baby boom going on in your family!

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0 8Paddy M in reply to LukeHandCool. | August 17, 2024 at 9:07 pm
Maybe conservatives should’ve worked to actually conserve something in the last 30 years.

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0 10ChrisPeters in reply to Paddy M. | August 18, 2024 at 12:22 am
Conservatives did. The problem was that they were under attack from both the Democrats AND the RINO’s.

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0 3rhhardin | August 17, 2024 at 8:53 pm
Western culture is actually being preserved by East Asians (Korea, Japan, China), if you follow classical music on YouTube. They abandon their traditional music and take up excellence in Western classical music owing to its intellectual content. Here four Koreans, e.g., that came up the other day, set to the cool second movement of Debussy’s quartet in g minor.

https://youtu.be/5VMQuHMq8QQ?t=382

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0 0JRaeL in reply to rhhardin. | August 18, 2024 at 12:15 am
Thanks for the link. There are some dang fine Japanese shred guitarists as well. If you also like Western music in a different direction.

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0 1JRaeL in reply to rhhardin. | August 18, 2024 at 12:20 am
Christian imagery and themes are also quiet prevalent in Anime. Which I suppose could be another example of Western culture being preserved by East Asians.

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0 0Dimsdale in reply to rhhardin. | August 18, 2024 at 12:05 pm
My child is in the local high school band, showing enough aptitude to advance to first trumpet after a year of playing.

Then we saw some videos of Japanese high school bands. Simply. Amazing.

And why? They practice, they study. The high school “band” members at her high school are simply trying to get out of gym. Honestly, there are about five members that are good, the rest are a joke. They could be good, but have no desire to do so.

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0 8JohnSmith100 | August 17, 2024 at 9:05 pm
For me growing up was 50s and 60s, I launched my first business in 69. I remember a time when gas was 25 cents a gallon, by 72 I was making and wasting $50 K a year, and lost all of it by 73. Yet I was able to bounce back in a few years.

Those opportunities do not exist today. It is far more difficult to rise above wage slavery.

I am thinking about Soro’s MO, and that he and others are profiting from undermining economies.

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0 3alaskabob in reply to JohnSmith100. | August 17, 2024 at 10:30 pm
50’s and 60’s for me also. Even though times turned tough in the mid=60’s for my Dad and me…. still great times to be alive. There was purpose to and for living. Simpson-Masoli was a major hit. Congress promised only one time… right.

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0 12SRF | August 17, 2024 at 9:06 pm
Yes, it’s unraveling. Our government and societal relationships look like a mash up of late Imperial Rome and a middle school student council. I am a bit older than most of the commenters here. Born in 51 in Ohio, when Detroit was the richest city in the country, and the Great Lakes region was not yet the Rust Belt. Draft lottery #31 in ’69 upon HS graduation, so I was going regardless. Was fortunate enough to get into the Military Academy and spent until 2000 in the Army, probably at the pinnacle of American economic and military and societal power, despite our internal problems. Watched and participated as the Army rebuilt itself after VN — found mission, people, equipment, doctrine, training necessary to establish the best Army in the world. Other services rebuilt and looked ahead as well. Military and other institutions could get things done. Despite the rot beginning in education, US education was the envy of the world and provided innovation, perspective, and the ability to set priorities and also say, “no.” Periodic outbursts across society were largely contained and addressed — sometimes not in the most effective or efficient way. Much less vitriol and parties weren’t completely captured by their respective radical fringes. We had the luxury of being the world’s super/hyper power, but we took it for granted and figured that there was nothing constant that we could not change. Big mistake in perspective on the world. Now and in the future we are going to pay for it. We better learn to recite “Ozymandias.”

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0 2Close The Fed in reply to SRF. | August 17, 2024 at 9:54 pm
The fringes are agitated enough to save us. The moderates are useless.

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0 3Paddy M in reply to Close The Fed. | August 17, 2024 at 10:09 pm
Moderates are definitely useless and have ushered in the current insanity.

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0 2Fuzzy Slippers in reply to Paddy M. | August 17, 2024 at 10:28 pm
I get your point, but if the moderates weren’t moderate, they’d land on one side or the other. Then what?

0 11Paddy M in reply to Fuzzy Slippers. | August 17, 2024 at 10:43 pm
Got me, Fuzzy. If moderates continually vote for communists, then they aren’t really moderate. Harris just proposed price controls and “””moderates””” are still up in the air.

2 4gonzotx in reply to Fuzzy Slippers. | August 18, 2024 at 4:43 am
If you consider yourself a “moderate “ in todays world,

Your just ignorant

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0 12JRaeL in reply to SRF. | August 18, 2024 at 12:31 am
I was telling my daughter today that it used to be that when you were graduated from high-school you were ready to start the adult part of your life. The choices being find full time work, join the military, or college, get married or a combination of those. Now it appears to me that many younger people are in a state of perpetual adolescence. The current state of the economy only makes it harder to leave that. Ask yourself what happens when there are no more grown ups. Political charlatans like Harris find pickings easy enough while there are still some adults to expose them. In a world of teen angst, petulance, and demand for instant gratification they get to become gods.

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0 3Dimsdale in reply to JRaeL. | August 18, 2024 at 12:11 pm
And even more sadly, the faculties of the universities are staffed by people that have no or very little practical experience in the real world. They have been, and remain, perpetual adolescents, asking the government (their parents) for handouts so they can continue their “research” and propagandizing the skulls full of mush that come before them in mandatory “core” classes.

I was stunned when I was in the belly of the beast, a local state college. And this was when “political correctness” was the worst problem we had.

On a more happy note, many of the students I engage are most definitely conservatives.

Maybe there is still hope.

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0 0AF_Chief_Master_Sgt in reply to SRF. | August 18, 2024 at 8:11 am
🫡

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0 9Andy | August 17, 2024 at 9:09 pm
I do. I do exactly.

All fleeing the west coast know exactly what it is like.

Saying goodbye to family and friends who either inwardly or outwardly know say they would like to flee too….

The saddest part is seeing it destroyed by lickspittles who are confused on which bathroom to use. Morons whose weaponized stupidity has emptied the jails and turned vibrant cities into open air drug markets.

In high school- they would bus us to the Seattle Science Center and then Pike Place Market and let us run around unsupervised for 4 hours about twice a year 10th, 11th, 12th grade. I wouldn’t set foot w/in 60 miles of that space now.

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0 7AF_Chief_Master_Sgt in reply to Andy. | August 18, 2024 at 8:14 am
“Morons whose weaponized stupidity has emptied the jails”

Those morons are just making space for those of us who will not comply.

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0 11jimincalif | August 17, 2024 at 9:12 pm
Born in ‘58 here and I feel the same way. I weep for my four children, but especially my four grandchildren. Even if by some miracle Trump wins and the deep state does not succeed in assassinating him, it’s just a bump in the road on our path of self destruction. I am looking at my copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging on my wall. Every day I see it and marvel at what the signers of that document did. I wonder what I should do to honor their legacy. I just don’t know. That was a unique inflection point in human history. Can it happen again? Can we make it happen again? If so, how?

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0 5Close The Fed in reply to jimincalif. | August 17, 2024 at 9:55 pm
Get involved. And start creating social groups with the like-minded. And I don’t mean online.

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0 5AF_Chief_Master_Sgt in reply to jimincalif. | August 18, 2024 at 8:23 am
Please remember. Only about 3% of the population participated in the successful fight for our independence.

About 10% of the population fought during the civil war to maintain the republic and free slaves (among other things).

An equally small percentage of Russians participated in their October Revolution.

We have a choice. We can fight to maintain independence, or we can let others fight for our subjugation.

I prefer to fight to maintain what our forefathers bequeathed us.

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0 5Hodge | August 17, 2024 at 9:19 pm
Who is John Galt?

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0 4Paddy M in reply to Hodge. | August 17, 2024 at 9:42 pm
Good question. Conservative, Inc. would deem John Galt as untoward. We know that much.

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0 3henrybowman in reply to Hodge. | August 17, 2024 at 9:52 pm
The real question is: where?

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1 5CommoChief in reply to henrybowman. | August 18, 2024 at 5:59 am
The spirit of Galt; independence, self reliance and individual responsibility is probably within the many small hobby farms with their own well, stocked ponds, gardens, orchards and so on. Lots of folks trending in this direction all over the place. One thing is for sure, if your neighbors are voting in a monolithic d/prog gov’t every election cycle then you ain’t anywhere near the ‘Gulch’ and should probably begin figuring out an alternative.

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0 9RetLEODoc | August 17, 2024 at 9:47 pm
I also share your thoughts and emotions about the decline of our country and our culture. I remember and tell my children and grandchildren that my high school economics teacher told us that our generation was lucky to live at the peak of American power and influence as it was inevitable that after our generation the decline would come. He seemed overly pessimistic to the young students seeing the world of the late 60s but if anything, he may not have been pessimistic enough.

He likened it to family businesses where the first generation started and built the business, the second grew it and strengthened it, the third generation consolidated it and the next generations lived off the business and let it collapse and die.

Watching a culture and country that was built by the sweat and at times blood of our ancestors get reduced by the greed for power and wealth of the current ruling class is painful. I will soon be leaving the stage of this drama but I too fear for the future that my children and grandchildren will inherit.

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0 1Dimsdale in reply to RetLEODoc. | August 18, 2024 at 12:17 pm
From “the dismal science” to the “pragmatic science.”

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0 4healthguyfsu | August 17, 2024 at 9:47 pm
I’m not sure if Barbarians have the capacity to be corrupt and collude in such devastatingly treasonous methods.

I think Peachy is discrediting the nobility of Barbarians by comparing them to DC vermin.

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0 10PrincetonAl | August 17, 2024 at 10:12 pm
GenX growing up under Reagan yeah this does capture what we feel.

Pissing away the greatest country and gift in the world for stupidity.

We best Communism only to be losing to a mutated form of it that the dying Soviet Union infected us with.

It’s going to be a long road back and that’s if we are lucky and work hard.

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0 0Dimsdale in reply to PrincetonAl. | August 18, 2024 at 12:18 pm
“Marching Morons” here we come…

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0 12jb4 | August 17, 2024 at 10:27 pm
I am old as s**t and grew up in the 1950’s. IMO the period after Korea and before the JFK assassination and the Vietnam War was the best.
– No hot wars.
– A public school education in NY City was excellent. Young children walked to and from school by themselves.
– No crime to speak of. No big deal for a kid to walk alone to a neighborhood candy store.
– Most families could afford a home and a mother did not have to work.
– Moral values were strong, families routinely practiced their religion and ate dinner together.
– The TV was an exciting, miraculous invention, in a society not consumed by electronic and social media. People still read books.
– In the winter nothing beat walking to the neighborhood pond with your friends and going iceskating.
– The music of the era was fabulous.
Ah, nostalgia. However, on substance, I think no later period had all of these items. In particular, I think the 3 assassinations in the 1960’s – JFK, RFK, MLK – the Vietnam War and the terrible inflation of the 1970’s changed the country permanently. For example, I purchased my home in 1984, when mortgage rates were 13%. Gone were the days when a home could be bought on one income and most mothers did not have to work.

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0 6AF_Chief_Master_Sgt in reply to jb4. | August 18, 2024 at 8:29 am
True.

But even today, young people bemoan the fact that rising prices and inflation place buying a house out of their reach.

Yet, they want to vote for the very people who caused inflation, who forced two income families, and who now want to have price controls.

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0 3Patriot Dan | August 17, 2024 at 10:30 pm
Professor,

I know we are in seemingly, unprecedented, times but I have great hope and expectation because of the Lord Jesus Christ in my life:
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:19, KJV).

It appears as though the next eleven months will have their difficulties, but I expect we and the nations will weather them for the better.

On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name
On Christ the solid rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand
All other ground is sinking sand

When darkness veils His lovely face
I’ll rest on His unchanging grace
In every high and stormy day
My anchor holds within the veil
On Christ the solid rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand
All other ground is sinking sand
, , ,
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Traditional / Terry Butler
On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand lyrics © Mercy/vineyard Publishing

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0 2The Gentle Grizzly in reply to Patriot Dan. | August 18, 2024 at 8:40 am
Some will be in church, praying.

Others will be fighting the battles that need fighting.

We all will make our choices.

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0 5TrickyRicky in reply to The Gentle Grizzly. | August 18, 2024 at 8:54 am
Sorry, not a binary choice. I expect many in the battles will be praying as well.

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0 1The Gentle Grizzly in reply to TrickyRicky. | August 18, 2024 at 11:17 am
True.

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0 0Dimsdale in reply to TrickyRicky. | August 18, 2024 at 12:19 pm
Many because we are in the foxholes right now…

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4 5rhhardin | August 17, 2024 at 10:34 pm
The cause is news as a profit center instead of a loss leader to contribute to the prestige of the network. As a profit center they found their 24/7 audience with Jessica in the Well, namely soap opera women. Instead of reading daily about Liz and Richard in the tabloid, they follow the news.

It’s an entertainment choice, and it’s calling itself news, which makes the audience feel even better.

Women prioritize feelings (hence soap opera’s attraction), and men prioritize structure (avoidance of perverse consequences). The Founding Fathers were structure guys, not feelings guys. The female end of the Supreme Court is feelings. (So guys are better at running big systems and women are better at small systems like neighborhoods and households. Stereotype is the too-strict father.)

Hence the collapse of everything through feminization. Amy Wax has a milder diagnosis – the rules of the nursery and kindergarten brought to the academy – but it goes deeper. Feelings attracts eyeballs of women and you can sell those eyeballs to advertisers. Democrats just supply soap opera in return for votes, in a sort of business arrangement with the media.

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0 5jb4 in reply to rhhardin. | August 18, 2024 at 10:20 am
Interesting perspective. I fault the MSM far more directly and have considered them the primary danger for years. By aligning themselves with the Democratic Party and its values, they have abandoned what I regard as a major value of journalism and the media, to bring accountability to Society. IMO if the light of day had been shined on Biden and Harris, Biden’s incipient dementia in 2020 would have kept him from running and Harris’ obvious incompetence would have disqualified her. What this Society lacks is accountability, from the shoplifter in CA, to the Trans in women’s locker rooms and sports, to the politicians at the top. What is not “right”, really isn’t right. Period. No excuses.

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0 0Dimsdale in reply to jb4. | August 18, 2024 at 12:20 pm
Conservative = independence; leftiam = dependence.

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0 0Dimsdale in reply to Dimsdale. | August 18, 2024 at 12:20 pm
Leftism.

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0 12Ghostrider | August 17, 2024 at 11:17 pm
How did America get here?

The other evening, a friend told me that he realized that nothing works in America these days. He is right.

This same guy has a severe medical issue but not an emergency. His specialist can’t see him until December.

When you call to get a prescription refilled, you have to listen to a message offering you the opportunity to go online or speak Spanish, then another telling you to call 911 if it is an emergency.

Our president is nowhere to be found, and the vice president is too dumb to sit for even a softball interview.

The FBI can only solve crimes committed by conservatives. The Secret Service is incompetent.

It recently took the post office two weeks to mail a card to a nephew who lives 4 hours away.

My bank did away with its drive-thru, and inside, there is one teller and long lines.

Doctors’ receptionists are often surly and unhelpful.

Every business has a phone tree, and if you finally reach someone, you can’t understand their heavily accented English.

And on and on and on.

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0 10steves59 in reply to Ghostrider. | August 17, 2024 at 11:35 pm
^^^^ I came here to say exactly this. I’ve taken to saying whenever I have the misfortune of conversing with a “Liberal” that “nothing is built, nothing is back, nothing is better.”
Everywhere we turn in society and business there is incompetence, and when the government is involved it is often malicious incompetence. Rule of law has been dumped in favor of rule by men (remember, we fought a revolution for rule of law). If you are a conservative, you are deplatformed, demonetized, depersoned, and eventually defenestrated.
And sadly this is all being done from within.
I’m waiting for that John Conner figure that will rise up and lead us in the fight against the DemocratLefty machine. I hope it’s soon, I don’t have a lot of time to wait.

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1 7AF_Chief_Master_Sgt in reply to steves59. | August 18, 2024 at 8:34 am
“I’m waiting for that John Conner figure that will rise up and lead us in the fight against the DemocratLefty machine.”

He’s here, but most don’t recognize him. The left just tried to assassinate him.

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0 2steves59 in reply to AF_Chief_Master_Sgt. | August 18, 2024 at 9:18 am
I’d like to think you’re right, but unlike Conner, Trump still thinks he can defeat the Left from within the system. I no longer think that’s possible.

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0 14JRaeL in reply to Ghostrider. | August 18, 2024 at 12:07 am
Nothing brings out my longing for a rotary phone like hearing the words “Please listen carefully as our menu options may have changed.”

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0 1The Gentle Grizzly in reply to JRaeL. | August 18, 2024 at 8:36 am
And… I know of ONE instance where the menu options DID change. My primary care doctor office.

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0 4MDP in reply to Ghostrider. | August 18, 2024 at 12:46 am
We have something that is called a modern high efficiency washing machine that seems to not be able to get all of the load wet, let alone actually wash things clean with
Confidence. Someone in a office removed from the process thinks they know better than those who have been doing it for decades, whatever the “it” is.
The irony, thinking they were wise they became fools.

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0 0jb4 in reply to MDP. | August 18, 2024 at 10:26 am
Just wait ’til they bring that washing machine to prices of the items you buy.

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0 1Dimsdale in reply to MDP. | August 18, 2024 at 12:27 pm
The AI in the new machines will tell you the clothes aren’t dirty enough, and to wear them again.

I have a 30 year old washing machine, a basic Kenmore (remember them?). When my new LG had an electrical issue, I just swapped it in and it worked perfectly. Maybe I should sell the LG….

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0 2LibraryGryffon in reply to Ghostrider. | August 18, 2024 at 8:00 am
At least your nephew got the card. A customer at one of my jobs lost her son in 2022. He lived out of state. His ashes were being shipped to her and the post office lost them. Legally, they are the only people allowed to ship cremated remains.

I opted to pick up our cat’s remains at the vet hospital. If the USPS can lose a person, I don’t trust them with my pet either.

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0 1The Gentle Grizzly in reply to Ghostrider. | August 18, 2024 at 8:38 am
“When you call to get a prescription refilled, you have to listen to a message offering you the opportunity to go online or speak Spanish, then another telling you to call 911 if it is an emergency.”

When you go to the pharmacy to buy an “over the counter” decongestant you have to show a government ID and sign the mommy-may-I book before you can get the medicine. Even though the m3th cooks have gone on to other ingredients Uncle still thinks ephedrine ingredients need record keeping.

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0 1Dimsdale in reply to The Gentle Grizzly. | August 18, 2024 at 12:28 pm
The same ID nobody can seem to scrounge up when it is time to vote?

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0 0rhhardin in reply to The Gentle Grizzly. | August 18, 2024 at 3:07 pm
There are directions online somewhere for the chemical procedure to turn meth back into Sudafed.

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0 1rhhardin in reply to rhhardin. | August 18, 2024 at 3:15 pm
I used to buy 1000 phenylpropanolamine pills for $10.00 on a veterinary prescription (the drug store just handed over the whole unopened bottle). Used in treating urinary incontinence in female dogs along with DES. Both pills now banned apparently. I think the former went into Sudafed as an ingredient. Not only cold sufferers suffering.

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0 0Edward in reply to Ghostrider. | August 18, 2024 at 11:03 am
Amen. I find one area where government actually does something right (amazing, right?). When I need a script refilled from the VA I can go to the on-line My Health Vet website, select refill prescriptions, click on the med(s) box(es) and click “submit”. No phone tree, no speaking with a surly receptionist, just quick and easy refills mailed out.

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0 0henrybowman in reply to Edward. | August 18, 2024 at 7:37 pm
Now compare this with paying your Medicare premium.

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0 5JRaeL | August 18, 2024 at 12:05 am
Reading the comments I have to remind myself that the Fall happened in Paradise not outside of it.

No generation is spared the consequence of living in a fallen world. I doubt there has been a single time when some group of believers did not take the news of the day as proof the Apocalypse was at hand.

Are current events and societal changes accelerating the loss of paradise? Yep. Can it be slowed down? In patches, maybe. Overall, not a chance. Too many people yearn for that bone strewn path to Utopia. I know many will disagree but I believe we have left the battlefield and are now under siege. That means creating smaller worlds for yourself and your loved ones. It involves taking on a fortress mentality. While trying not to abandon charity, hope, and faith. That’s tricky.

I too grew up with more freedom. Some good, some bad. But at least I had the chance to learn the difference.

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0 3MDP in reply to JRaeL. | August 18, 2024 at 12:41 am
I find it interesting that Daniel is told that at the time of the end there will be vast amounts of information and that people will travel all over with abandon… those things are true of our time as never before.
If we seek to save our lives we will lose them, if we lose our lives for His sake we will find them. The original Israel was told to be careful when they grew rich not to forget the Lord their God… the culture largely has jettisoned Him wholesale and thinking we were wise we became fools.
I saw an ad today about how Harris has a history of being a tough prosecutor and will take on the border and the fentanyl problem….as if she hasn’t been part of the enabling of the same crisis, and they expect enough people will be so stupid as to believe it.

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0 4Herve Montague | August 18, 2024 at 2:13 am
Our colleges have been funded for decades by the same people who funded October7th.

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1 1Skip | August 18, 2024 at 6:03 am
Wish I remember where I saw this first and continue to thinking describes our situation the easiest way.

We are ithe looting the Empire stage

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0 1Rupert Smedley Hepplewhite | August 18, 2024 at 7:31 am
It ain’t over until WE say it’s over!

Found this in my mailbox this morning: https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/when-the-saxons-begin-to-fight?publication_id=30495&post_id=147720773&isFreemail=true&r=1tuj8g&triedRedirect=true

A little long but so inspiring.

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0 0Edward in reply to Rupert Smedley Hepplewhite. | August 18, 2024 at 12:27 pm
Thanks. I enjoyed seeing the Brits getting to the end of patience, though some of it was pretty dated with a reference to Tony Blair, who left 10 Downing in 2007. And it might well be a case of too little too late, as it will also be here if we don’t take back control of the political system. I can’t say I’m very optimistic of that happening any time soon.

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0 10CincyJan | August 18, 2024 at 7:55 am
I was born in 1949. It has taken the last awful decade of American politics to make me realize what a unique period of time post WWII was. Shared military service overseas united US males into a band of brothers that survived throughout civilian life. It took the misadventures in Vietnam to shake the inherent respect given military veterans. The underlying truth then was that American parents were not eager to have their sons die overseas. And so cracks appeared in the trust of government institutions. Today, after the disgrace of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the clear politicization of the DOJ, and the bald faced lies told the American people by their own government, there is little broad respect left for American institutions. That shining city on the hill has slid off its foundations..

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4 1E Howard Hunt | August 18, 2024 at 8:17 am
Never heard of Peachy Keenan. Sometimes I’m lucky that way. For chick reading I stick with Ann Barnhardt, especially on Sundays.

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0 0Arthur Chester in reply to E Howard Hunt. | August 18, 2024 at 12:56 pm
She’s bright. She’s thoughtful. She writes well. She seems to be mid-40s. I have no financial or personal connection to her. Check out her substack. Doesn’t cost you nothin, may slow the onset of what we all inevitably face: age-related crotchetiness.

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1 8The Gentle Grizzly | August 18, 2024 at 8:30 am
I was born in 1949. From my viewpoint, my country died November 22, 1963. Kennedy was, in fact, a so-so president but the man shown by the press was athletic, had this wonderful family, sailed, biked, and did all sorts of family type things. I sincerely believed then, and still believe now, that he gave this nation the attitude that there was not as single solitary thing we could not accomplish when we out our minds to it. That was already proven during Ike’s time (the transistor, polio vaccine, and more).

That all died with him/. In place of this dynamic man we got Lyndon Johnson, just another cynical crook soaking the American people for every penny he could for the benefit of himself and his gang.

I have other opinions about our downfall that I would share with you all, but won’t. First of all, it won’t change anything. Second, I will likely offend every single one of you with my views.

I have no real solutions. I just know that – as a (lapsed) Jew – when the trucks arrive I plan on taking out as many police as I can before I am gunned down or thrown in one of those trucks. And yes, it will be the police doing this, not the military. Just like last time.

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2 4AF_Chief_Master_Sgt in reply to The Gentle Grizzly. | August 18, 2024 at 8:39 am
With Kennedy, at least we have “Camelot.”

With Harris, we’ll have “Cumalot.”

Proof of the decline and the debauchery from the Democrat party.

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3 0E Howard Hunt in reply to The Gentle Grizzly. | August 18, 2024 at 8:43 am
Relax, Grizz.

Adolph allowed for honorary aryans, so your religious negligence and conservative views should easily earn you this exemption.

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0 2CincyJan in reply to The Gentle Grizzly. | August 18, 2024 at 9:58 am
As a fellow 1949er, I can remind you that we were in the 8th grade when Kennedy died. It certainly did not occur to me that America had died with JFK in Dallas. For one thing, my Dad was still there, as fiercely Republican as ever, as determined as ever to safeguard the Republic. I knew it was a significant event, even as the news spread at school, but I certainly did not yet understand the horror of a political assassination. I have been a true believer for most of my life, as I suspect many MAGA supporters were. That we, the true believers, have lost faith in our government, signifies a real disaster for the United States. The most reliable underpinings of our society are disintegrating before our eyes,

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0 4jb4 in reply to CincyJan. | August 18, 2024 at 10:45 am
I was a young adult when Kennedy was killed. No one forgets where they were when they heard. Riding the NY City subway that evening was like being at a funeral. My wife, who is younger, could not understand why her parents were crying. It changed everything and the political hack, LBJ, and the Vietnam War made things worse. Men who fought in WW II were losing their sons in a war that had no justification.

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0 0Br2336 in reply to jb4. | August 18, 2024 at 1:15 pm
The military rationale for American involvement , as I understand it, was:

(1) The threat of communism was real.

(2) JFK had basically allowed Cuba to stay communist, 90 miles from the US. A complete abrogation of 140 years of the Monroe doctrine .

(3) The defense establishment had grown up since WWII with the one basic tenet that communism cannot be permitted to spread.

(4) The defense establishment knew that JFK was a slacker, and a not-serious person. Who probably come to power via voter fraud primarily in Chicago and South Texas.

And so — while the military might well have been willing to walk away from South Vietnam — maybe — once Cuba was permitted to stay USSR-aligned, the feeling was Well , we gotta draw the line SOMEwhere. Also, at the time, it was unimaginable that we could lose militarily in Vietnam.

JFK was viewed as a really young, really kinda incompetent inexperienced rich fratboy— and imho he was killed , from the pov of those who killed him, for the good of the country, and for the good of the world.

That was the logic.
That was the justification.

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0 2The Gentle Grizzly in reply to CincyJan. | August 18, 2024 at 11:47 am
I was brought up in a staunchly Democrat home, but outgrew all that crap because of Vietnam, and other things that brought about an awakening that went all the way through my 20s. It took a while, but, here I am.

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0 3Victor Immature | August 18, 2024 at 10:26 am
I’ve been thinking and saying this for a while. For me, I’m closer to the end than to the beginning, on the back 9. But for someone who is 35-40 and lived through America at it’s best but still has a way to go, they must be pissed and/or depressed.
There’s only one way out of this.

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0 5CincyJan | August 18, 2024 at 11:23 am
In my first post above, I ignored the thrust of Prof. Jacobson’s article – the pain of seeing the America we loved destroyed. Yes, it is almost unbearably painful. Certainly, it was excruciating when the realization first hit. It’s gotten better, I suppose. Perhaps I’ve grown used to it. Acceptance of the unacceptable. Where do we go from here? I wish I could see a clear path forward. I fear for DJT, whether he will survive to win the election, and, if he does, whether any one man can save the Republic in four years. The rot is pretty deep. There don’t seem to be any patriots left in DC.

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0 4The Gentle Grizzly in reply to CincyJan. | August 18, 2024 at 12:17 pm
It is not up to one man to save the republic. But, having DJT in place will provide the catalyst many will need to get the snowball rolling on taking things back.

It can start with telling a cop no, you can’t see my ID for the “crime” of eating my lunch at a picnic table in a public park.

It can be the people who are already fighting their school districts over library books and “gender affirming”.

It can be people pressuring the colleges to get rid of their DIE departments. Same with employers.

It can be many things, but, if people expect one man to do it all, then all is lost.

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0 0CommoChief in reply to The Gentle Grizzly. | August 18, 2024 at 6:24 pm
Correct. Each of has to be willing to our share. Those of us in the more sane States with sensible policies at local, County and State level have been doing so for a while now, which is why those Cray Cray policies have been held at bay. Those in other places have a higher hill yet to climb. What ain’t gonna work is waiting on someone else to save you. Expecting the voters in Red States to rescue folks from the State and local policies of the blue State politicians they keep electing is not gonna be fruitful. No one with any sense in a sane State wants to hand Congress the power to override existing State/local authority for fear the next time those blue State/blue enclave voters get a Congressional majority of their own.

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0 0Stuytown | August 18, 2024 at 11:26 am
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I’ve seen the future, brother
It is murder

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul

Leonard Cohen, The Future

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0 0Edward in reply to Stuytown. | August 18, 2024 at 12:45 pm
I looked up Mr. Cohen’s work. It’s a song and I looked up the lyrics (reading lyrics is easier and more accurate for my artillery ears). I find a good word for the work is “Dystopian”. I didn’t seek lyrics on the rest of his work in that album.

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0 7xleatherneck | August 18, 2024 at 12:14 pm
Born in ‘57

All societies are entropic.
All societies, eventually, tend toward disorder. Some, quicker than others.

The one, defining principle, that keeps a society cohesive, is a single dominant culture. Without that, we are doomed.

We have been moving away from that concept, for a long time. So long as we are on this path, our better days will be behind us….

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0 3The Gentle Grizzly in reply to xleatherneck. | August 18, 2024 at 12:18 pm
Much of that started with “Press 1 for English”.

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0 4Edward | August 18, 2024 at 12:31 pm
I grew in the ’40s and ’50s. Carried a weapon of war in a war (really, not Bravo Sierra) mid ’60s. I have been instructing the grand and great-grandchildren, to a greater or lesser degree depending on age, about what life was like in the US in the golden era post war to the riots of the late ’60s-70s. Have been doing the same with a 50 year old neighbor at the lake. Different world today, more’s the pity.

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0 1destroycommunism | August 18, 2024 at 12:48 pm
many children are ungrateful

so they take the riches of the parents/grandparents

and go through it like they were “owed” it and it will never run out

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0 2destroycommunism | August 18, 2024 at 12:51 pm
there are sooooo many laws in place

that it will take “lawbreakers” of a certain character to say

we are not hiring dei we re not pro affirm action

we judge people on their merits

the road to communism is now smooth

the road back to freedom is bumpy ..to say the least

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0 1jb4 | August 18, 2024 at 1:40 pm
I want to personaly thank Prof. Jacobson for posting this piece. IMO it is an important issue to think about, talk about and act upon, to the extent able. Having lived a long life, I shared my thoughts about what I thought was the best period, post Korea to the killing of JFK, which most here have not experienced; and the biggest danger I see, the MSM. It is hard to have any optimism over the obvious trend, so perhaps I should be grateful for not having many years left, albeit sad for my grandchildren.

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1 0AlecRawls | August 18, 2024 at 2:46 pm
The fall to this point would all have been prevented If the Supreme Court had ever started enforcing the Article 4 section 4 guarantee of a Republican form of government.

It is not necessarily too late even now, but this sword Excalibur, the most powerfully written provision in the entire constitution, the only guarantee in the entire constitution, must immediately be pulled from the stone and used to save us.

It was justice Brennan who sank the sword into the stone. Considering the possibility of a guarantee clause argument in Baker v. Carr (1962), Brennan wrote for the majority that he did not know what Republicanism is, and doubted that anyone would ever be able to figure it out: that they would be able to locate “discoverable and manageable standards” for adjudicating it.

But there already was such a standard. That was Alexander Hamilton’s definition of republicanism, which he articulated during in the constitutional debates in New York: “that the people shall choose who shall govern them.”

He even included a manageable standard of adjudication: that “representation is imperfect to the extent that the current of popular favor is checked.”

Thus any law, or any government procedure or action, that either intentionally or unnecessarily checks the current popular favor should be ruled unconstitutional.

There are two most obvious ways that the current popular favor can be checked. First, elections can be stolen by vote fraud or some other kind of election fraud.

One obvious example is the Democrats’ use in 2020 of 2000 mules to stuff ballot drop boxes in five key counties with far more than enough illegal votes to flip five key swing states to Biden.

Another is Arizona in 2022, disabling most of its election day voting machines, when Democrat election officials knew that conservatives mostly vote on election day while Democrats mostly vote early my mail.

The second obvious way to check the current of popular favor is to weaponize the powers of government to suppress political opposition, for instance by using unequal application of the laws to attack and disable leading political opponents, as with the Democrats’ numerous lawfare attacks on President Trump.

The sword has actually already been pulled from the stone, our lawyers just haven’t realized it. Hamilton’s definition of Republicanism was embraced (found to be “discoverable”) by the Supreme Court 11 years later in the 1973 case Powell v. McCormack.

Powell was a ballot access case that did not invoke any Republican guarantee clause arguments, and somehow the link to the guarantee clause was never made. The same thing happened in 1995 where the Supreme Court embraced Hamilton’s definition of Republicanism in US Term Limits versus Thornton, another ballot access case.

As already noted, the manageable standard of adjudication is stated right in Hamilton’s definition. A system of government is unrepublican to the extent that it’s laws and procedures block the current popular favor. No system can be perfectly republican, but the obvious standard of adjudication would be that shortfalls in the attainment of Republican government cannot be either intentional or unnecessary.

Of course it is also illegal under the First Amendment to steal elections (as that undermines rates of association for purposes of effective political participation) but this concern is given very low priority. Just look at how the disabling of the majority of election day voting machines in Maricopa County allowed to stand.

All indications are that it was intentional, but even if it wasn’t, only counting the votes of one political side is grossly incompatible with the Article IV section 4 guarantee that elections systems will do their best to accurately assess the current of popular favor.

If the republican guarantee was being enforce by the Supreme Court, it would have to be given higher priority than every other provision in the constitution. If it ever gives way to any other constitutional provision, the guarantee fails to be a guarantee.

By the meaning of words, it is the Constitution’s sword Excalibur that no other constitutional provision can stand against.

This seird Excalibur is already free. It has already been discovered by the court, and the manageable standards for using it are obvious to anyone who looks at it. It should be invoked in every suit from here on out against the Democrats’ attacks on our electoral system.

Every Democrat attempt to enable vote fraud, from mass mail-in voting the ongoing voter-registration of tens of millions of illegal aliens, it’s all blatantly unconstitutional under the republican guarantee, and everyone needs to start using it.

Another way to check the current popular favor is by the censorship regimes that Democrats have been trying to implement. Gateway Pundit’s suit against systematic government-orchestrated censorship was recently declined by the Supreme Court for lack of standing, of all things, just as the Texas suit against the use of unconstitutional voting systems by Pennsylvania and other states during the 2020 election was rejected for lack of standing.

“Are we not part of the United States,” cried Texas Attorney General Paxton. Yes you are, but for that to matter you would have had to sue under the one provision of the constitution that empowers all parts of “the United States” to act against unrepublican government actions.

The republican guarantee names the “United States” as its guarantor. Of course that means first of all, all three branches of the federal government, but it must also include every state, and even every citizen. We are all part of “The United States,” and therefore all have standing to sue on behalf of The United States.

Ours is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We the People can never be excluded from it, as our now fully communist Democratic Party is currently trying finalize.

They succeeded in stealing one election from us, thanks to our Supreme Court’s long abominable lack of due diligence in upholding the Republican guarantee. They must not be allowed to steal another, or the loss of our republican form of government will almost certainly be total.

The founders gave us a sword Excalibur to defend our republican system of government. We must use it.

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2 0Milhouse in reply to AlecRawls. | August 18, 2024 at 4:50 pm
OMG, where to start?

First of all, no, it was not justice Brennan who “sank the sword into the stone”. That happened in 1849, in Luther v Borden. The Supreme Court ruled that the Republican Guarantee clause is not justiciable. It’s up to the president and Congress to enforce it and the courts can’t interfere.

Each house of Congress can enforce it by not seating members it believes not to have been properly elected, and if a house makes such a decision no court can order it to seat that member. (However if the house accepts that a member was properly elected and is qualified, but doesn’t want to seat him anyway, then the courts can and will order it to seat him. Powell v McCormick.)

The president can enforce it by sending troops into a state to overthrow a government he deems not republican. E.g. a stolen state election, or election rules he considers unfair. The only check on him is impeachment.

By the way, the Republican Guarantee clause only applies to the states, not to the United States. It would obviously be silly to charge the United States with guaranteeing that its own government would have a republican form. The constitution itself is that guarantee, and no better is possible.

Also, whatever else stolen elections may violate, they do not violate the first amendment.

Gotta go now. More later, probably.

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0 0AlecRawls in reply to Milhouse. | August 18, 2024 at 6:44 pm
Milhouse is wrong as always. Brennan got a lot right in Baker v. Carr. In particular, he wrote a very clear explication of why Luther v. Borden and other earlier cases were wrong.

That is, he pulled the sword from the stone. But then he sank it straight back in.

He explained how guarantee clause cases do not automatically raise the kind of “political question” conflicts with the other branches of government that had vitiated earlier cases. In particular, Baker v. Carr itself did not raise any such conflicts.

Earlier attempts to apply guarantee clause arguments to election law had all sought to overturn the results of a particular election on that basis, after the will of the people had already been polled and the results certified by the other co-equal branches of government.

That is where the “political question” conflicts were coming from in election law cases. But Baker was not trying to overturn any election result. It was an apportionment case where the plaintiff did not want voters in the adjacent congressional district (with a much smaller number of voters in it than his) to continue to have their votes count for much more than his did. He wanted his vote to receive equal weight in the NEXT election.

Brennan actually did a great job laying out that, if discoverable and manageable standards for adjudicating the republican guarantee could be found, then it could possibly be used to decide Baker’s case.

But equal apportionment was ruled out as a republican requirement, given that it is violated by the U.S. Senate.

At that, Brennan surmised that it was very unlikely that any discoverable and manageable standard of adjudication would ever be found, and the majority signed on to this.

It was absurd. There was no attempt at any kind of historical survey of the meaning of republicanism. No, “hey, does anybody know what the definition of republicanism is?” So they missed Hamilton’s definition. If they had seen it they would have realized immediately that it has broad application, requiring at the very least honest elections and no weaponization of the powers of government against political opponents.

Instead, since Brennan himself didn’t know what republicanism was, he just surmised that no one did and that no one ever would. Crazy.

Luther v. Borden was crazy too. As I said, a long history of Supreme Court failure to conduct basic due diligence regarding the most powerfully written provision in the entire Constitution.

As for the republican guarantee applying “only” to the states. Note that the Constitution gives it to the states to conduct all elections, federal and state. Thus any unrepublican election process, like mass mail-in voting, designed in a way that leaves wide open opportunity for mass vote fraud and election fraud, clearly undermines and hence violates the guarantee of honest elections (one of the requirements of republicanism).

Ditto for any weaponization of the powers of government against political opponents that occurs at the state level, as seen with the trumped-up prosecutions of Trump in NY and Georgia.

Finally, it is obvious that in order to fulfill the guarantee to the states that they shall not be subject to unrepublican government, the federal government can also not be allowed to engage in unrepublican actions.

Every state has the federal government over it. Thus if the federal government adopts an unrepublican form, such as by weaponizing the powers of the federal government against political opponents (as Biden-Harris are doing), then every state is subject to that unrepublican government, violating the guarantee.

Milhouse in reply to AlecRawls. | August 18, 2024 at 8:28 pm
Alex, that is a load of nonsense. The Rhode Island case wasn’t just trying to overturn an election. The rebels claimed (with justification) that RI did not have a republican form of government, so they held their own election and went to court demanding that their elected governor and legislature be recognized, as well as the congressmen they elected, and the senators their legislature elected. And the Supreme Court said that’s not justiciable. It’s up to Congress whether to recognize your congressmen and the president whether to install your governor in power. The judiciary has no role to play.

Also, the term “the United States” means the federal government. Nothing more and nothing less. It does not mean the individual states; only the entity that consists of their union. And it’s that entity that is to guarantee that the states have republican forms of government. It is not to guarantee that it itself has one, nor is it for them to guarantee that. The constitution itself is the only guarantor of that. The form of government that the USA has is the one the constitution mandates, and it makes no difference whether you call that “republican” or some other word. The constitution itself does not use that word for the government it establishes.

Leitmotif
4 hours ago
Civil asset forfeiture is an egregious scam, a violation of basic human rights, and should be completely abolished at the federal, state, and local levels.

Period.

Full stop.

Adam Selene / Simon Jester Leitmotif
3 hours ago
We, as a society have somehow rationalized that 'civil' charges from government are not a big deal - just another lawsuit, so the constitutional protections afforded from 'criminal' charges don't apply. They just take your savings, your property and the labors of years of work. So in the end, you worked (retroactively and involuntary without the option to leave and against your will) without compensation. So basically ex post facto slavery.

The U.S. Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to issue letters of marque and reprisal (Article I, Section 8, Clause 11), providing a legal foundation for privateering. This concept remains an option under U.S. law. //

Engaging privateers to target the Russian ghost fleet could also have the secondary effect of incentivizing international shippers to register under the U.S. flag. The prospect of U.S. Navy protection against potential retaliation by Russia or other adversarial powers would be a significant draw for these companies. Currently, U.S.-flagged vessels are entitled to the protection of the U.S. Navy, providing a security assurance that can be crucial in unstable maritime environments.

This shift could bolster the U.S. merchant marine fleet, enhance national security, and ensure better compliance with international laws and sanctions. Moreover, a larger U.S.-flagged fleet would create a more robust logistical network — absolutely vital in deterring the PRC across the vast expanse of the Pacific.

when it comes to Roe v. Wade, for example, what did the court decide? Decided that we the people should answer that question, not nine people sitting in Washington, D.C. //

GARRETT: How about affirmative action?

GORSUCH: Much the same thing. What did we decide? We decided that all people are created equal, that it’s not acceptable in this country to discriminate on the basis of race. //

GARRETT: And, for those who would say but I feel something’s been ripped away from me, you would say?

GORSUCH: I would say that we’re taking it back to you. In a democracy, you’re in the driver’s seat. You’re the sovereign. Those famous three first words of the Constitution empower you. Do you really want me deciding everything for you?

GARRETT: And for a woman in a state where she no longer has the rights she once relied on, is that cold comfort?

GORSUCH: Major, all I can say is I don’t know better than you do on these questions. And that most major western democracies have decided these questions through the ballot box. //

part of me just wants to call Vladimir Duthiers an imbecile and leave it at that. His reasoning is so ridiculous as to be worthy of nothing but mockery. Would he say the same about the precedent that once allowed segregation of schools? What about the precedent that once restricted personhood for black Americans? The idea that a precedent is untouchable simply because it exists is moronic. What matters is proper legal interpretation of the law. Nothing more, nothing less.

In the end, what this Gorsuch interview shows is that Democrats have no actual argument. They are simply emoting at any given point, wrapping themselves in contradictions to garner the political outcome they want in the moment. The Supreme Court stands in the way of that, and that's why they are trying to destroy it.

A video of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) was unearthed on Monday that appeared to show him threatening civil war if Donald Trump won the election.

Raskin was speaking at a discussion on voter rights hosted by a left-wing professor when he made the controversial comments, which included a pledge to disqualify Trump on January 6th, 2025 based on the Fourteenth Amendment. //

He seems completely convinced that he would be the good guy in a scenario where he and other Democrats overturned an election based on their own political whims. He calls Trump supporters "rampaging mobs" despite them representing the side that won the election in his hypothetical.

. How does the court feel about potential changes — term limits, ethics codes that are enforced by someone in ways that it isn't now?

GORSUCH: Shannon, you're not going to be surprised that I'm not going to get into what is now a political issue during a presidential election year. I don't think that would be helpful.

I have one thought to add: It is that the independent judiciary means — what does it mean to you as an American? It means that when you're unpopular, you can get a fair hearing under the law and under the Constitution. If you're in the majority, you don't need judges and juries to hear you and protect your rights — you're popular.

It's there for the moments when the spotlight's on you, when the government's coming after you. And don't you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions? Isn't that your right as an American? And so, I just say, "Be careful."

The plan has three components:

1) The No One Is Above the Law constitutional amendment (lol) prohibiting criminal immunity for ex-presidents.

2) Supreme Court term limits that permit each president to appoint a justice every two years for an 18-year term.

3) Supreme Court Code of Conduct.

The first item is just a sop thrown to Biden's supporters to act as a soothing balm for their raging case of butthurt over being unable to put Trump in prison. //

As with the rest of this "reform," it is a monumentally unserious proposal. There is no national outcry to make this happen, and there aren't the votes in the House and Senate to pass it even if Chuck Schumer and Mike Johnson decide to take it seriously. //

NightTwister
29 minutes ago
I always say the same thing when anyone proposes a constitutional amendment: "Name the 38 states." //

Watch-tower
an hour ago edited
Net worth of the top 10 richest people in Congress (meaning 525 people are not listed): 2,059,900,000.
That's right, just 10 people; over 2 BILLION Dollars.

Net worth of all 9 Supreme Court Justices: 64,000,000.
Yep 64 million dollars divided by 9 people. Chief Justice Roberts accounts for 40% of that total.

We are more in need of reform in Congress than the Supreme Court. //

mopani Corn Pop 2 minutes ago

This does not come from Joe Biden, this comes from the Democrat Deep-State, gaslighting popular opinion on the structure of the Federal Government by treating SCOTUS as an inferior court, as if SCOTUS is subject to Congress.

It may be an unserious proposal, but it is another chip at the foundations of our Constitutional Republic, and as such deserves to be dealt with seriously.

I want to see it debated and destroyed on the House floor. A serious debate on the Senate floor would help too. It needs sunlight and to be dealt a death-blow.

Congress must defend SCOTUS as a co-equal branch so that SCOTUS can continue to do likewise. Failure to do so will ultimately result in an Imperial Executive.

These type of attacks should not be dismissed as unserious. They need to be curb-stomped as the destructive attacks that they are. Failure to deal with them in a serious way will allow them to be used as attack fodder against Republican or conservative candidates who want to preserve our Constitutional Republic.

Cannon ruled Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause and granted the motion to dismiss the indictment against Trump. //

Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday threw out the lawfare prosecution against former President Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents after finding the Biden administration unconstitutionally appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith. //

“None of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment … gives the Attorney General broad inferior-officer appointing power or bestows upon him the right to appoint a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith,” the ruling states.

Cannon ruled Congress is granted via the Constitution a “role in determining the propriety of vesting appointment power for inferior officers.”

“The Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a Head of Department, and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers,” Cannon ruled. “If the political branches wish to grant the Attorney General power to appoint Special Counsel Smith to investigate and prosecute this action with the full powers of a United States Attorney, there is a valid means by which to do so.” //

“If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former President,” Thomas opined.

"The Superseding Indictment is DISMISSED because Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution," her order states. "Special Counsel Smith’s use of a permanent indefinite appropriation also violates the Appropriations Clause [...] but the Court need not address proper remedy for that funding violation given the dismissal on Appointments Clause grounds. The effect of this Order is confined to this proceeding." //

"The bottom line is this," she wrote. "The Appointments Clause is a critical constitutional restriction stemming from the separation of powers, and it gives to Congress a considered role in determining the propriety of vesting appointment power for inferior officers. The Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a Head of Department, in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers. If the political branches wish to grant the Attorney General power to appoint Special Counsel Smith to investigateand prosecute this action with the full powers of a United States Attorney, there is a valid means by which to do so. He can be appointed and confirmed through the default method prescribed in the Appointments Clause, as Congress has directed for United States Attorneys throughout American history, see 28 U.S.C. § 541, or Congress can authorize his appointment through enactment of positive statutory law consistent with the Appointments Clause."

It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration.

This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. The project will build on four pillars that will, collectively, pave the way for an effective conservative Administration.

This Fourth of July, Americans should take the opportunity to reeducate themselves on the fundamental principles of our Constitution. //

Our government was formed by an alliance of some of the most brilliant political thinkers in history, who, for some providential reason, all happened to live in the same generation and the same nation. It’s our failure to remember and understand their wisdom — rather than some defect in the timeless truths they espoused — that explains much of the struggles of our contemporary age. Familiarizing ourselves with our Constitution and its most illustrious interpreters in The Federalist Papers will do much to restore our political sanity. This Independence Day, you have your homework.

‘If this unprecedented prosecution is to proceed, it must be conducted by someone duly authorized to do so by the American people,’ Thomas wrote.

The problem is out of control. No one knows how many separate crimes there are, including the Department of Justice. Researchers have tried counting, with one 2019 effort identifying at least 5,199 statutory crimes. Regulatory crimes are orders of magnitude greater, with estimates of the number of regulatory crimes ranging from 100,000 to 300,000 separate offenses.

This is inconsistent with basic ideas of self-government and the intentions of those who framed the Constitution. Laws with criminal consequences should be carefully considered by the legislative branch, not pushed through by unelected bureaucrats who are not accountable to the people. //

Congress can seize the opportunity and pass some simple and commonsense reforms that would further reduce the power of the administrative state and its appetite for passing criminal laws.

Congress should begin by requiring the executive agencies to simply catalog their regulations that have criminal consequences. After all, if a federal agency does not know if something is a criminal offense, how can the people be expected to? If a “mens rea” requirement is not already in the law, Congress should make all criminal regulations have a “willful” requirement to prevent citizens from being prosecuted for actions they did not even know they took. For new laws, agencies should be required to state the applicable mental state.

The court decided what it did expressly because there's no way to make this system work if we don't elect people to do what's right. //

On Tuesday’s edition of the Times’ “Daily” podcast, Barbaro and Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak mulled over the ruling, and at the very end of the episode, Barbaro had his epiphany. “Another way to think about this ruling if you step way back,” he said, “is that it’s kind of the Supreme Court saying that when you elect a president, you have to accept, dear American people, that the Constitution gives them a tremendous amount of power and legal latitude to kind of do what they want …” //

He continued his revelation. “And we, the Supreme Court, are going to make it pretty hard to hold that president criminally responsible for their actions,” he said, “so, voters need to think really carefully about who they want to possess this level of immunity.” //

Immediately after the ruling, holding that a president carrying out his constitutional responsibilities can’t be held criminally liable for it once out of office (duh), Democrats and leftist triflers scurried to the Internet where they obnoxiously claimed the court had just given American presidents the authority to murder babies and rape nuns.

Hmm … Not seeing anything in Article II about that. Maybe I’m missing something. //

In short, anyone wanting to press charges against a former president for things he did while in office is going to have to prove with great certainty that it’s for a good reason and not because, say, they’re mad.

This was more or less implied and accepted for the last 230 years. Then 2016 happened and because Democrats refused to accept the results of an election, they decided it was time to see how far this country can bend before it snaps. You know, just like the true vanguards of decency and democracy that they are.

The court decided what it did expressly because there’s no other way to make this system work if we don’t elect people we trust to do the right thing to keep it going. To even flirt with the belief that it would be the right thing to criminally prosecute a former elected official — let alone a U.S. president — for challenging the results of an election, tells you a lot about who’s in power right now. And that their response to the ruling wasn’t, “Yeah, maybe we took it too far,” but, “So we can legally assassinate Trump, right?” says the rest.

They either don’t understand it, or they’re ready to end it.

Monday, the Supreme Court handed down a mixed bag of a ruling on presidential immunity. In my view, they took what could've been a straightforward and elegant decision — the president is immune from prosecution for acts committed in office unless he has been impeached for those acts — and turned it into a dog's breakfast of angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin litigation about what constitutes official and unofficial acts. //

What has passed with remarkably little notice is Justice Clarence Thomas's concurrence. Justice Thomas says the Court is putting the cart before the horse. The first question that needs to be answered is not whether acts were official or unofficial. The critical first question is whether this prosecution is legal at all. Thomas's comments begin on the 44th page of the linked document.

I write separately to highlight another way in which this prosecution may violate our constitutional structure. In this case, the Attorney General purported to appoint a private citizen as Special Counsel to prosecute a former President on behalf of the United States. But, I am not sure that any office for the Special Counsel has been “established by Law,” as the Constitution requires. Art. II, §2, cl. 2. By requiring that Congress create federal offices “by Law,” the Constitution imposes an important check against the President—he cannot create offices at his pleasure. If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former President.

No former President has faced criminal prosecution for his acts while in office in the more than 200 years since the founding of our country. And, that is so despite numerous past Presidents taking actions that many would argue constitute crimes. If this unprecedented prosecution is to proceed, it must be conducted by someone duly authorized to do so by the American people. The lower courts should thus answer these essential questions concerning the Special Counsel’s appointment before proceeding.

...

Even if the Special Counsel has a valid office, questions remain as to whether the Attorney General filled that office in compliance with the Appointments Clause. For example, it must be determined whether the Special Counsel is a principal or inferior officer. If the former, his appointment is invalid because the Special Counsel was not nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, as principal officers must be. Art. II, §2, cl. 2. Even if he is an inferior officer, the Attorney General could appoint him without Presidential nomination and senatorial confirmation only if “Congress . . . by law vest[ed] the Appointment” in the Attorney General as a “Hea[d] of Department.” Ibid. So, the Special Counsel’s appointment is invalid unless a statute created the Special Counsel’s office and gave the Attorney General the power to fill it “by Law.”

Whether the Special Counsel’s office was “established by Law” is not a trifling technicality. If Congress has not reached a consensus that a particular office should exist, the Executive lacks the power to unilaterally create and then fill that office. Given that the Special Counsel purports to wield the Executive Branch’s power to prosecute, the consequences are weighty. Our Constitution’s separation of powers, including its separation of the powers to create and filled offices, is “the absolutely central guarantee of a just Government” and the liberty that it secures for us all. Morrison, 487 U. S., at 697 (Scalia, J., dissenting). There is no prosecution that can justify imperiling it.

Minister of War
2 hours ago
"the president is immune from prosecution for acts committed in office unless he has been impeached for those acts"

Bingo!

Period.

End of story.

Close the book.

John Roberts is an idiot once again & the conservative justices are required to roll their eyes & go along with his stupidity just because that was the only way to get even a partial victory.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Donald Trump’s favor in the presidential immunity case, complicating at least two prosecutions against the 45th president.

“Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the high court’s majority opinion. “And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.” //

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent.

“Today’s decision to grant former presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the presidency,” Sotomayor argued. “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law.” //

Among the most well-known post-2020 election controversies involved Trump attempting to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to stall or reverse a joint session of Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. The high court remanded the question of Trump’s immunity on this back to the district court to further clarify.

“Whenever the president and vice president discuss their official responsibilities, they engage in official conduct,” the majority says. “Presiding over the January 6 certification proceeding at which members of Congress count the electoral votes is a constitutional and statutory duty of the vice president.”

Montana radio host Aaron Flint pointed out that replacing Biden with another Democrat will still leave in power the people currently using him like a presidential skin suit. That’s also true, to a large extent, of replacing Biden with Trump. //

However, because we’ve already had the benefit of a Trump presidency, we can see that even a president as vigorous and defiant as he struggled to truly exercise authority over the people and institutions that, constitutionally speaking, the president commands.

Some of the most egregious examples of this occurred among cabinet-level national security types. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman under Trump Gen. Mark Milley was one of the worst offenders. Washington Post and New York Times reporters say, according to excerpts from Haley McLean, that Milley deliberately stayed in his position to sabotage voters’ elected commander-in-chief, saying to staffers of Trump, “I’ll just fight him” and “I will fight from the inside. //

Milley also disobeyed Trump’s order to pull U.S. troops from Afghanistan, setting the stage for the disastrous Afghanistan pullout Milley oversaw under Biden that seriously damaged U.S. foreign policy goals, killed 13 U.S. soldiers, and left stranded thousands of American citizens. //

In my new book, I point out that scholars such as Christopher Caldwell have shown that for more than a century the United States has been living under “two Constitutions.” One is the original Constitution that secures consent of the governed, rule of law, and government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The second Constitution, or regime, is that of the “living Constitution,” which I explain is essentially totalitarian because it recognizes no limits on its powers.

That second regime now has the upper hand, and it is run by this cabal of unelected bureaucrats who believe they have the right to saddle, ride, and spur Americans and bend us to their will. They don’t care what we vote for. We’re getting what they want regardless of how we vote. That goes for Congress, too, whom the deep state also treats like window dressing and who usually lives up to that cynical expectation.

So yes, the deep state is shamefully using Biden as their puppet president. But they believe they have the right to ignore the Constitution and voters even when the president isn’t a walking cadaver. For people who know that when the Democrat press starts shouting something it’s proof the opposite is true, this puts a pretty dark cast on all the Democrat shrieks about “democracy.”

On the Importance of Process and the Republican Nature of the New Government

In Federalist 38 Madison discusses the process by which the new proposed constitution was written and how that process was superior to anything that had been attempted before in history. If you recall, Plato believed that an enlightened philosopher king should rule, and that only this kind of man would be capable of creating, and leading, the city state. His reasoning was that man was too fraught with faults to avoid pursuing his own self-interest.

Madison lists the examples of Minos in Crete, Zaleucus of the Locrians, Theseus in Athens, Lycurgus of Spart, Romulus of Rome, and others to illustrate how these city states all were established, and their laws created, by a single person even as they went on to have legislative bodies. And all these states went through periods where single emperors ruled regardless of the original intent of their founding. Even democracy loving Athenians, “a people who would not suffer an army to be commanded by fewer than ten generals, …should consider one illustrious citizen as a more eligible depositary of the fortunes of themselves and their posterity, than a select body of citizens”.[1]

Up until this point, this is how governments were formed. “(T)hese lessons teach us, … to admire the improvement made by America on the ancient mode of preparing and establishing regular plans of government”. The process by which the new constitution was written matters greatly. The representative way in which all states, and through their delegates the citizens thein, are represented is absolutely novel. It has never happened in the course of history to that time. This process alone helps ensure the liberty of the citizens of the new country.

Madison asks of those who object to the constitution, what they would propose as an alternative? //

In Federalist 39 Madison seeks to answer whether the new constitution creates a truly republican form of government and whether that government is federal or national in construction.

On the first question, Madison starts by declaring that only a representative republic, “would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution”. He points out that no such thing exists anywhere else in the world, and lists the various places that claim the title incorrectly. “It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it”. There is no nobility in the new country, in fact the constitution includes an, “absolute prohibition of titles of nobility”.

In each of the states’ constitutions, legislatures are chosen by the people for, “a definite period, and in many instances, both within the legislative and executive departments, to a period of years.” Here again we see the criticality of turnover within these branches of government for ensuring liberty. //

But to those who worry about too much power being in the hands of the federal government, Madison reiterates the point that Hamilton made earlier that, “the proposed government cannot be deemed a NATIONAL one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.”

https://afnn.us/author/johnparillo/