Trump’s List

Intellectualism, Intelligence, Justice, Law, The Courts

Amy Coney Barrett: How can one fail to be impressed by this 46-year-old mother of seven, former Notre Dame law professor and clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia?

Speaking on Fox News (7/5), constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, certainly an intellect, intimated to Jason Chaffetz that none of the justices on Trump’s list quite matches Neil Gorsuch for intellect. Turley sagely advised that the president “choose intellect, not optics.”

As Micky Kaus grumbles, the Federalist Society vets for Roe v. Wade. But do they vet for Flores? Making sure Trump doesn’t pick a Bushesque act-of-love justice seems like Job #1 for border controllers right now.

Ted Cruz and Rand Paul support Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), for reasons they don’t specify. They say he has fine principles. Well, what are Lee’s principles?

Principle is important. So is intellect.

This Washington Post item is crammed with grammatical mistakes. Mismatched subject and verbs, for example. Disgraceful. But here is, “Trump narrows list for Supreme Court pick, with focus on Kavanaugh and Kethledge.”

UPDATE (8/13): The State Of Cuckservatism: Still Fawning Over Never-Trumper Ben Shapiro

Communism, Conservatism, Donald Trump, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Political Philosophy, Republicans, Socialism

The other day Ben Shapiro was asked (for some reason) to give comment on Fox News regarding the election of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the female Barack Obama, as Rush Limbaugh calls her. Cortez, a hard-core socialist, “won the Democratic primary in New York’s 14th congressional district.”

As is typical of his ideological ilk, all Ben could muster against socialism was that it “doesn’t work.” Not a word about the rights-violating underpinnings of socialism, which make it both wicked AND an economic wrecking ball.

For E-Letter Conservatives (establishmentarians), it all boils down to pragmatism, never principle. Put it this way, if socialism worked—brutal rights-violations and all—cons like Ben would have a tough time arguing against it.

It’s not enough that he’s wrong all the time; the fact that Shapiro might vote for Trump in 2020 has made news. It’s hard not to despair. Sighs Gateway Pundit: “Some Things Never Change… #NeverTrumper Ben Shapiro Argues the Future of Republican Party is Anti-Trump.”

This, as the Europeans move in Trump’s direction.

Says Prof. Paul Gottfried (in an e-mail chat among Old Rightists):

Why the Hell should people on the Right be rejoicing that Ben [Shapiro] and Bill [Maher] love each other? And look how reasonable Ben Shapiro of Fox-news fame is! He favors impeaching Trump if he removes Rosenstein.
What is shocking is not that Shapiro loathes and fears the Right. It’s that he’s the poster boy for the conservative movement. And it’s not his fault. At least partly because the conservative movement doesn’t provide much in the way of conservative discourse. In Austria, Hungary, Italy, etc. there is a serious intellectual Right that enjoys political influence.

Remarks Dr. Clyde Wilson, “This is because ‘the conservative movement’ is based in the Republican party, which eschews (and always has) all ideas not involved in money—or as Mel Bradford put it—they are liberal about everything except money. Or as Rev. Mr. Dabney observed a century and a half ago, Northern conservatives have never conserved anything.”

UPDATE (8/13):

Yucky Cuck:

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UPDATED (8/13/018): Liberals View Wild Life As Worthy Only As Part Of A ‘Species,’ A Herd

Conservatism, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Fascism, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Paleoconservatism, The West

In trying to console a friend on the passing of his long-time canine companion, the following occurred to me:

Sentimentality about animals is one of the things that separates us from the barbaric civilizations. I include The Left’s world view as part of the “barbaric civilizations.” These sees animals, certainly wild life, as comprising species to sustain, not as individual creatures of God, for which we humans must care.

As related in “Texas Vs. The Pacific Coast: Explaining The Yankee Mindset”:

A helmeted cyclist once chased me down along a suburban running trail. My sin? I had fed the poor juncos in the dead of winter. (Still do. Bite me, you bully.)

Having caught up with me, SS Cyclist got on his soap box and in my face about my unforgivable, rule-bending. Wasn’t I familiar with the laws governing his pristine environmental utopia?

Didn’t I know that only the fittest deserved to survive? That’s the natural world, according to these ruthless, radical progressive puritans.

Yes, mea culpa for having an exceedingly soft spot for God’s plucky little creatures.

To the extent conservatives behave this way, culling and killing for no reason other than that the individual animal doesn’t conform to a so-called scientific theory—they are behaving like liberals.

Professor Clyde Wilson, a paleoconservative, says about my bird-feeding encounter: “Telling other people not to feed God’s creatures according to some supposed scientific official plan is simply fascism.”

UPDATE (8/13/018):

Liberals equivocate about feeding a distressed, grieving whale, from a dying population.

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Leftists Are Convulsing Over A Conservative Court. It Doesn’t Get Better. OK, Maybe It Will.

Conservatism, Constitution, Law, Republicans, The Courts

Quite correct: Republicans have had the chance to consolidate a conservative majority on the Supreme Court and … FAILED, REFUSED, or chose to break bread with the opposition, rather than keep the faith with the base and the original Constitution. As the author of this New York Times Review of Books essay suggests, the “mishaps” of previous republican presidents in appointing justices to the SCOTUS suggest “something less than full-throated judicial conservatism on their part.”

… In retrospect, it is remarkable that a strong conservative majority on the Court has not emerged before now. Since 1980, Republicans have held the presidency for twenty-two years and Democrats for sixteen. Ronald Reagan, who campaigned on the platform of choosing conservative judges, appointed three justices—Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Kennedy—and elevated William Rehnquist to the chief justiceship. That should have established conservative control. Yet O’Connor turned out to be a centrist, controlling the Court for a quarter-century by casting the decisive fifth vote in controversial cases. When she retired in 2006, Kennedy assumed her position as the swing justice and unexpectedly emerged as a liberal hero, voting, for example, to extend constitutional rights to detainees in Guantánamo Bay and marriage rights to same-sex couples.

George H.W. Bush also had the chance to consolidate a conservative majority. He appointed Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall but also replaced William Brennan with David Souter, who underwent a subtle yet significant evolution from Burkean conservative to Burkean liberal. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama each got two justices confirmed, which maintained the Court’s balance. That conservative control has been so long in coming reflects either miscalculation by Reagan and George H.W. Bush or (more likely) something less than full-throated judicial conservatism on their part. …

… THE REST IN “Tipping the Scales by Noah Feldman.”

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