Sunday Quick Links

It's one of those days when I can't pick just one thing to write about, but don't have time to write about everything: 


If you were wondering how Michelle Obama's "secret" trip to Target (did she ever go to Target pre-2008? Does Chicago even have a Target within the city limits?) was memorialized on film, well it's because the White House tipped off the AP. Pretty pathetic. 


Chris Christie is the man of the hour. Some say that he is the only (GOP) man for the times: a tough talker who can appeal to Reagan Democrats, and face down the public employee unions. Could be, but unions are only a sliver of the left coalition, and Christie has a lot of political sympathy for virtually every other element of the Democrat base. Among other things, he is as dumb on the environment as Joe Biden (or any other green). We can do better. 


Paul Ryan reviews Jeffrey Sachs's new book, describing it as having "veneer of economic analysis cannot conceal what is essentially a crusade against the free enterprise ethic of our republic." Nice to see at least one GOP politician try to take on the intellectual heavies on the left. 


This guy wants to believe that the present Wall Street protests are "like Egypt." The protesters are more than just the usual hippies, communists, and nose-ringed college students, says he. There are unions and "grannies" there! Very middle class! (pictures at the link). Right, well any union presence is going to be bused-in astro-turf. As for the "grannies," I think we're all hip to the truth, which is that old leftists like to grasp the mantle of respectable seniors, knowing the media will treat them as cuddly old folks, rather than as socialists who hate their country. Anyway, these protests not "like" Egypt; they are like Greece. 


On the other hand, the apparently unprovoked pepper spraying of a couple protesters by a normally desk-bound "cop" is just the sort of thing the blame-America-first crowd loves. You'd think every police officer in NYC would be hip the way leftists use this sort of thing for their own propaganda. San Francisco cops sure do. But, as JFK used to say, there's always one dumb son of a bitch who never gets the word. 


The al-Awlaki drone strike was a just result. He may have been "American-born," in the words of media style-books, but he left the US as a small child and was not acting in America's best interests. Obama's been getting this 100% right, but his ambivalence has been undermining his strategy. 


An inside view of the intimidation of the health insurance industry during the passage of Obamacare. For all the talk of the "right wing noise machine," if a GOP president and his allies had tried something this heavy-handed, there would have been all sorts of "brave" dissidents rushing to the microphones. But, let Democrats do it, and everyone's all STFU. Has to be because they were worried about unflattering stories published by the White House's media allies - meaning the media - right?


Herman Cain's rise is due entirely to his being the only optimistic candidate. People clearly want to hear his message, yet Cain is held to be "unelectable." OK, assuming he's unelectable, that doesn't mean the "electable" candidates can't learn something from him and his methods.


Btw, I thought Cain (or Santorum) would "shock the world" by running strong in Iowa, but it seems Cain's moment is now, and not four months from now. That means the media will be "vetting" him. In other words, they'll be seeking damning quotes from every disgruntled employee, disappointed corporate rival, and bitter stripper ex-girlfriend (I kid, I kid) that they can find. These are never our republic's finest hours. In fact, they are some of our worst as the elites among us broadcast rumors and innuendos as if they were dispatches from the Somme. Hope Cain is ready for it. I also hope he is ready to fight back in the manner of Clarence Thomas, rather than flinch away in the manner of virtually every other GOP politico unfortunate to have gone through this process. 


Michael Wilbon asks a damn good question about a new Walter Payton biography:  "what is the exact purpose of writing a book, 12 years after Payton's depressing death at 45, that goes to agonizing lengths to tell us essentially that Payton was flawed?" Supposedly, it's because Payton's public persona was that of a solid citizen when in private he cheated on his wife and used, get this, pain killers. It's that darn hypocrisy, again! Really, a professional athlete who sleeps with women not his wife? That's news? What about a look at Mrs. Payton. Maybe she was a pain in the a**? And since when was pain killer use a scandal? What's really galling is knowing that journalists who love to flog this sort of information probably couldn't stand up to a similar level of scrutiny. 

PC Re-runs: Clarence Thomas, Redux

Batten down the hatches, boys. The Washington Post "Style" section is reporting that Lillian McEwen is "breaking her silence" and is finally prepared to tell her story...

Whatddaya mean, who's Lillian McEwen?? Now I know who I don't want on my team for Anita Hill Trivia Night at the Old Ebbit Grill:

For nearly two decades, Lillian McEwen has been silent -- a part of history, yet absent from it.

When Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his explosive 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Thomas vehemently denied the allegations and his handlers cited his steady relationship with another woman in an effort to deflect Hill's allegations.

Lillian McEwen was that woman.

At the time, she was on good terms with Thomas. The former assistant U.S. attorney and Senate Judiciary Committee counsel had dated him for years, even attending a March 1985 White House state dinner as his guest. She had worked on the Hill and was wary of entering the political cauldron of the hearings. She was never asked to testify, as then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), who headed the committee, limited witnesses to women who had a "professional relationship" with Thomas.

Now, she says that Thomas often said inappropriate things about women he met at work -- and that she could have added her voice to the others, but didn't.

Spare me the crap about McEwen being a "part of history." She slept with a guy who was later appointed to the Supreme Court. But for that, no one would give two sh*ts about her, even if she went to law school, worked for Joe Biden, and did all sorts of other fabulous things.

Nobody, least of all Clarence Thomas, has ever claimed that he was a paragon of virtue. But all anyone seems to want to talk about is a controversy that is nearly 20(!) years old, yet seems like yesterday because the "tolerant" Left just can't seem to let go. But you know what?

Clarence Thomas never got blowjobs from an intern young enough to be his daughter.

He never made a waitress sandwich with one of his debauched drinking buddies.

He never managed to get himself photographed on a yacht with a young woman not his wife.

He didn't treat his office as a means of having as much sex as possible, whether with movie stars or with the secretarial pool.

He didn't crash his car in a river and then abandon a young woman to her fate.

He didn't patronize a $10,000/night prostitute.

He never had a stripper girlfriend who jumped into the Tidal Basin.

He wasn't videotaped smoking crack with his skanky mistress.

He didn't father an illegitimate child with his mistress, who also worked for him.

He didn't have an affair with an intern and then, when the young woman disappeared, refused to assist the police in finding her.

I know this because if Clarence Thomas had done any of these things, we would have heard about it. Instead, all we get are prissy former employees who were his ideological opposites and couldn't countenance some crude talk that was nothing compared to the crude behavior of their preferred "leaders."

Gun Club: Clarence Thomas & Our Privileges and Immunities

Speaking of guns, there's been a lot of commentary about Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion in the McDonald v Chicago (that's the "gun rights" case) decision. Thomas wrote a 56-page opinion on why he would have relied on the 14th Amendment's Privileges & Immunities Clause, rather than its Due Process Clause, to reach the decision that the Constitution guarantees an individual right to bear arms that is applicable to the states. This has,of course, sent waves of rapture through the "originalist" community: Is His Gun Control Concurrence Clarence Thomas' Finest Hour?

Commentators on the right and left urged the Supreme Court to reverse the 1873 cases and safeguard the right to bear arms through the Privileges or Immunities Clause. Such a move could have opened an avenue for individuals to claim new rights, some which might have pleased liberals, others which might have pleased conservatives.

Those arguing for resuscitation of the Privilege or Immunities Clause pinned their hopes on Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas, both known for their “originalist” approach to constitutional interpretation.

But Justice Scalia on Monday opted, along with Justices Alito and Kennedy and Chief Justice Roberts, to use the Due Process Clause. As Liptak noted, Justice Scalia, in a concurrence, “acknowledged misgivings about using the due process clause to apply Bill of Rights protections to the states” but went along with it “’since straightforward application of settled doctrine suffices to decide it.’”

But in a separate concurrence, Justice Thomas boldly went where no justice has gone before: to the arms of the Privileges or Immunities Clause. He wrote:

[T]he text of the Privileges or Immunities Clause . . . command[s] that “[n]o State shall . . . abridge” the rights of United States citizens . . . the Clause establishes a minimum baseline of federal rights, and the constitutional right to keep and bear arms plainly was among them.

The rationale didn’t carry the day, but many legal commentators were thrilled by Justice Thomas’s concurrence. “He’s sticking with the text of the Constitution,” said Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett, to the Law Blog. “At the same time, nobody voices disagreement with Justice Thomas. And that’s because they can’t.”

Writing at Scotusblog, George Mason’s Nelson Lund cheered Thomas’s opinion:

His opinion is scholarly and judicious, and it cements his standing as the only Justice who is more than a half-hearted originalist.

Barnett and others hope that Thomas’s lone dissent has planted the seeds for a constitutional reawakening rooted in the Privileges and Immunities Clause.

Now, I know that when non-attorneys see phrases like "Privileges & Immunities" and "Clarence Thomas' Concurring Opinion," they start to head towards the exits. Too bad, because Thomas is trying to correct one of the great travesties in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence.

The 14th Amendment famously provides that states cannot deny any person "due process" or "equal protection." The point of this - both at the time of its ratification and afterward - was to prevent the southern states from continuing to treat former slaves as chattel. But, if you actually read the 14th, you will see that it also says that states cannot deny any person the "privileges or immunities" of being a US citizen. What the heck is that all about? Well, the drafters of the 14th Amendment intended that the P&I Clause would extend the protections of national citizenship to the states, but the clause was interpreted into nothingness by a Southern Democrat dominated Supreme Court almost immediately, much to the consternation of people like US Grant (who saw his Anthony Kennedy-esque third choice nominee write the Cruishak opinion that Thomas castigates).

The result did not just set back race relations for a century. It did not simply gut the post-Civil War civil rights acts (passed by the GOP, which continued trying to pass similar legislation for decades afterward). It set blacks back, period. Not only that, the Court was left without a straightforward way to interpret fundamental constitutional rights as applied to the states, leading to the phenomenon of substantive due process, a form of tortured legal reasoning that led to Roe v Wade, and which forms the hysterical backdrop to Supreme Court nomination hearings. But, hey, at least the southern states didn't have to treat blacks as equal citizens, if you're into that sort of thing.

(On a personal note, when I was in law school, we had to spend weeks learning the ins and outs of the Court's substantive due process case law. After a few days of torture, I looked at the 14th Amendment, saw the Privileges & Immunities Clause, and thought "Heck, why not use this?" But, when I raised my hand in class, the professor simply growled something about it being a dead letter. In other words, "we've always done it this way.")

The crazy thing is: there is a lot of agreement on the left and the right that the Slaughterhouse Cases were wrongly decided. There is also plenty of agreement, up to and included some of the liberal justices, that Roe v Wade - the ultimate substantive due process case - was built on the legal equivalent of sand. We thus have a situation where the straight-forward means of analyzing fundamental rights is largely unavailable while the method used since the 1940's increasingly lacks credibility. Yes, I blame overly legalistic Democrats who would play word games, rather than interpret the Constitution in a straightforward manner.

"Stupid" Thomas at least has his finger on a more realistic and intellectually consistent interpretation of the Constitution, which is more than I can say for the legal eagles who went to better law schools than I did. I suspect the average person would also find his jurisprudence to be much more appealing for being cognizable and rooted in the actual language of the Constitution. There is a reason why Thomas is probably the most famous of the current justices, which is also why he is the most despised by the legal left.