The Imperial Judiciary Of The United States

 "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s…"

When Jesus was alive, the religious leader of Rome was, in fact, both Caesar and the voice of God, for Emperor Augustus had taken the position of Pontifex Maximus, the chief high priest, for himself.

A separation between church and state would occur in the late 4th century when Saint Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, would cleave the two.

In 390 AD, in Thessalonica, a Macedonian city in the Roman Empire, the citizens murdered a Roman garrison commander for arresting the most popular Macedonian charioteer just before a major race. A seething Emperor Theodosius ordered his soldiers to slaughter the entire population. When the smoke cleared, 7,000 men, women, and children died in the Massacre of Thessalonica.

Ambrose, the most powerful man in Christianity at the time, banned the emperor from Mass. Theodosius I, an extremely devout man, would spend the next six months seeking Ambrose’s forgiveness and doing penance. Eventually, Ambrose decided the Emperor had shown sufficient contrition and allowed him back into the Church, but not before forcing him to make Christianity the official religion of the Empire and outlawing every other faith.

That was one of the first and most powerful checks on a monarch’s power in the history of Western civilization. Another would come in 1215 when English King John was forced by a group of rebellious barons to sign the Magna Carta, which provided protections for the church and guaranteed the barons a variety of liberties and rights.

Fast forward 562 years and another step towards a truly limited government would occur in Philadelphia in 1787. In an unprecedented advance for Western civilization and, frankly, humanity, the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution of the United States. With a keen understanding of man’s nature, this document was sufficiently robust and prescient that it would last for centuries.

In a direct reaction to the English system, they wrote a constitution in which, while the primary power lay in the legislature, the power of all three branches was checked by the other two and ultimately by the citizens and the Bill of Rights.

To give some perspective on where the locus of power lay in the new constitution, compare the articles that define the powers of the three branches: Article I, the Legislature, has 2,268 words. Article II, the Executive, has 1,025 words, while Article III, the Judiciary, has a mere 377.

The Founding Fathers went to great lengths to divide the powers and put in place checks and balances so that mob rule and demagogues would not take hold of the government and bring about tyranny.

One of those checks was the Judicial Branch:

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

Alexander Hamilton assured all and sundry that the judiciary would be the weakest branch, writing in Federalist 81:

It may in the last place be observed that the supposed danger of judiciary encroachments on the legislative authority, which has been upon many occasions reiterated, is in reality a phantom.

He stated that a judicial usurpation of the legislature could not happen:

This may be inferred with certainty, from the general nature of the judicial power, from the objects to which it relates, from the manner in which it is exercised, from its comparative weakness, and from its total incapacity to support its usurpations by force.

This, combined with Congress’s ability to impeach judges for judiciary encroachments, said Hamilton, would be sufficient to keep judicial usurpation from occurring. Hamilton was responding to the writings of Judge Robert Yates, who warned of a rapacious judiciary in Anti-Federalist No. 78.

Hamilton was wrong, and Yates was right. 

Within a very short time, Hamilton’s error and Yates’ prescience became clear. Marbury v. Madison established Judicial Review in 1803, taking for the Court the ability to invalidate a law it deemed in conflict with the Constitution. Although the court would use that power only twice over America’s first 70 years, it would do so 50 times over the subsequent 75 years and over 125 times in the last 90 years. That trajectory not only reflects the extraordinary growth in the areas of American life into which the leviathan of government has inserted itself, but it also reflects a far more activist judiciary.

And how can we tell? Look at nationwide injunctions. Judges issued six nationwide injunctions against George Bush over eight years—one per every sixteen months he was in office. Barack Obama was the subject of 12 or one every eight months. In Trump’s first term, judges issued 64 nationwide injunctions, or one every 22 days. After he left office, the courts retreated, with Joe Biden getting 14 or one every three months. Now, in his second term, Trump has received 12 in only six weeks; that is, one every four days. Meanwhile, in the single four-year period of his first term, he faced more of these injunctions than every president in the previous 60 years combined!

But the thing is, injunctions are found nowhere in the Constitution. Nonetheless, with almost 700 federal judges, activists can easily find fellow travelers who are more than willing to do their bidding. It’s no coincidence that the judges who have issued many of the injunctions against Trump’s executive actions have ties to hardcore leftists:

• The son of the judge who blocked deporting Khalil Mahmoud interned for Chuck Schumer.
• The daughter of the judge who blocked deporting Tren de Aragua gang members works for an NGO that provides legal advice to criminal illegal aliens.
• The wife of the Judge blocking the USAID shutdown worked for Joe Biden.
• The judge who blocked DOGE from cutting NGO funding was the Solicitor General of the District of Columbia, the office that filed a civil lawsuit against the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

Using injunctions, a radical leftist cabal is attempting to thwart President Trump from doing the job he was elected to do, which is to enforce and execute the laws of the United States. He should not allow them to do so. Unfortunately, impeachment is not the answer because there is zero chance of getting a conviction, with half the Senate applauding the judge’s actions.

The first thing Trump should do is ignore the order. This will force SCOTUS and/or Congress to act.

The second thing he should do is strongly encourage Congress to act, regardless of what SCOTUS does. (Or doesn’t do given the Manchurians Roberts and ACB.) Congress has the ultimate constitutional power to define the courts’ jurisdiction, whether granting or restricting it. They should eliminate or restrict federal judges’ ability to issue injunctions in general or, at a minimum, prohibit nationwide injunctions.

The Founders created a system of checks and balances that has served America well for most of her history. But that system only works when the three branches remain true to their nature.

You can argue that Congress has given too much of its power to the regulatory state, but that’s a case of one branch willingly, if foolishly, ceding power to another. In the case of the Judicial Branch, we’re seeing something different. Activist judges across the country are asserting that they basically have the power to micromanage how the Executive Branch carries out its constitutional duties. They don’t, but that doesn’t matter if the Executive Branch allows it to become reality. And the reality is, they’re using Chief Justice Roberts’ treacherous “normal appellate review process” framework to run out the clock on President Trump’s term.  And Trump knows it.

In 1832, in reaction to Worcester v. Georgia, President Jackson is said to have announced: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” Donald Trump should state unequivocally that he will not allow activists masquerading as jurists to hijack the proper functions of the Executive Branch. Americans, like Jesus, Ambrose, and Jackson did, understand there are separate realms of governing, and for good or bad elected presidents execute the laws, not judges.

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Arguing with Leftists is an Exercise in Futility...

Last week Dan Bongino talked about the pointlessness of arguing with the left. He said something like “We think the left are simply people with bad ideas while the left thinks we are simply bad people…” He went on to say that while pointless in terms of trying to convince the person with whom you’re “arguing”, it’s worthwhile because others, who may be open minded and paying attention, might be persuaded.

This was driven home to me via a Facebook discussion that started out with a friend’s cartoon suggesting CRT is an innocuous addition to the teaching of American history that shows some of the darker chapters.

My response was: “No one opposes teaching history, warts and all. I studied slavery, Jim Crow, the Trail of Tears, Chinese workers basically in servitude to build the RR and more. You keep mischaracterizing CRT as just teaching the negative side of American history. It’s not. The heart of CRT is that the US is systematically racist and minorities can’t succeed. That’s fiction and you know it.”

Which started a firestorm from a friend of my friend, from which I’ve excerpted:

It’s apparent that you gained little insight from your studies. If they didn’t touch on the racist systems that led to those events occurring, you obviously got the sanitized, white washed version where the savagery and downright inhumanity to any non-white man BY white men was totally excluded. Just like your fellow GOP white Supremacists, there is NO reality that y’all can’t bend to save your false sense of identity that you’re superior to all non- whites and European genius and goodness is the only reality there is.

American Slavery was different and worse than any other slavery in the History of the World. It’s the only slavery where the slaves were dehumanized. No other slavery treated the slaves like a horse or a chicken.

To which I responded:

It’s true slaves were treated as property, but in fact, slaves in the American south were largely treated better than slaves in South America and the Caribbean. One major reason for that was the Constitution’s ban on the importation of slaves after 1808. Slaves therefore became far more valuable than they were in the rest of the Americas and it was to nobody’s benefit to work them to death. That is, very unlike Brazil, the Caribbean and elsewhere where slaves were cheaply imported and therefore expendable. The truth of this can be seen in the fact that 94% of the slaves brought to the New World went somewhere other than the United States, but by 1860 2/3 of the slaves in the New World were in the American south.

He continued: The effects are still being felt today when George Floyd’s murderer gets 22.5 years for killing a black human being but a black man killing a Police DOG recently was sentenced to 45 years. That just shows that the dehumanization of black folks specifically males is baked in to American society. The ONLY ones who are treated like human beings are the exceptional negroes who make it through systemic racism baked into every institution in America or those who entertain white folks in music, TV or sports. And even they can’t say anything bad about America or their lives could get turned upside down.

Wouldn’t it be nice if American Europeans tried to dismantle this system and rectify the damage? The boost to our economy through reparations alone and the good will gained worldwide as America denounces its past and pledges to make amends would truly place this nation at the top as it stones for its sins. But, white America collectively isn’t interested in any of that. It’s only interested in the maintenance of white supremacy for various reasons, not the least of which is white genetic survival, power and greed.

After more futile back and forth, I decided to take a different tact:

Let’s try a thought experiment... Imagine everything you said is true about programs being stacked against minorities. What do you do to fix them? Reverse discrimination? How about reparations? Who pays? Who gets what? Who decides? Does Obama pay or does he get money? Do recent African or Caribbean immigrants get money too or only people who can trace their lineage back to slavery or even Jim Crow? What about black families who owned slaves? Do the million or so black millionaires get money too? When are things as they should be? What's the measure? Will every company or classroom or board have to reflect the pigment hue of the country as a whole? Will it apply to everything from police to janitors to ditch diggers to the NBA and the NFL? Will all of this change the unwed birth rate in black America? Is murder still to be considered a crime as half of the offenders in the US are black males despite the fact that they make up only 6% of the population? Since reparations will make everything even do we do away with welfare programs that disproportionately benefit minorities?

Or, maybe all of us could be grateful for the fact that today virtually every one of us is extraordinarily lucky to live in a country that allows so much freedom and opportunity that millions of people literally risk their lives to come here every year and probably half or more of the rest of the world would happily change places with almost any American.

He responded: In other words, you’re just another psychotic white Supremacist and it makes NO sense trying to REASON with a psychotic.

To seek to evade all responsibility or accountability for the greatest crimes against Black humanity in history is the mindset of a Savage…PRETENDING to be civilized. Someone who cares nothing about Honor, truth, civility, fair-play OR in obeying their OWN laws, let alone those of God.

White Supremacy has made most white folks, LIKE YOU, spiritual MONSTERS to be able to say stuff like that with a straight face and sleep like a baby at night. There lies the entire problem of Racism in America which is a power dynamic that only WHITE AMERICANS have. Blacks can’t be racist towards you because we haven’t set up systems of power that can destroy the lives of you or your family. White folks do that to blacks ALL the time.

It was clear he was not really interested in ideas focused on making life better for black Americans,  but rather extracting revenge in the form of reparations from the whites who by definition are racists and guilty.

This is why Biden is in the White House, other than the fraud, obviously. Democrats have become the party of grievance, the party of victimization. If they can convince a group they’re victims, they never have to actually accomplish anything. The focus is always on past failures or some other strawman that rational policies simply cannot be allowed to address. It’s the ultimate in maintaining a grip on power. Why ever address policy failures or “unintended” consequences, when it’s so much easier to simply craft a grievance that can simply never be addressed. For Democrats that’s a recipe for success. For America it’s a recipe for disaster.

Never Tell A Leftist They Hate America...

Never tell a leftist they hate America.  They will correct you every time.  They don’t hate America they’ll tell you, they just want to improve it.  They just want to help make it better.  They just want America to live up to her ideals.

No, it’s not America per se that they hate, but rather the things that made America so spectacular in the first place.  Free enterprise.  Limited government. Federalism. Separation of Powers.   Individual freedom.

But, while they don’t hate America, it is, according to them, racist, sexist, homophobic, ethnocentric, intolerant and more. In addition, the Constitution is an outdated document written by old racist white guys and needs to be reimagined.

So, OK, sure, I’ll buy that leftists don’t technically hate America. And apparently they don’t, because even when they have Hollywood or Silicon Valley or Wall Street type money and could live anywhere in the world… big surprise, they never actually leave!

When I tell leftists that America is the greatest nation that’s ever existed it seems to send them over some sort of cliff. They often get angry and look at me as if I just told them I the earth is flat.  But the funny thing is, when I ask what nation is better or empire was better… crickets.  They immediately launch into a polemic about how America is racist, sexist, homophobic, ethnocentric etc. It’s ripe with inequality, inequity and is run by rich white men.  And not to be forgotten, its Constitution is an outdated document written by old white racist guys and as such, shouldn’t control our lives today. 

Then I suggest that even if it were the case that America was the hellscape they suggest, where should we go to escape it?  Again, crickets. 

Despite the fact that the leftist snowflakes can’t point to a single place on earth or in history that is or was superior to the United States, that had a more successful combination of prosperity and freedom than the US, they most certainly have an endless supply of ways to improve it:

• Bans on hate speech, which they define as anything that hurts anyone’s feelings.
• Defund the police.
• Pack the Supreme Court.
• Disband the INS.
• $15 minimum wage.
• Demonize the Founding Fathers.
• Eliminate the Electoral College.
• Cancel anyone who ever uttered an opinion that doesn’t comport with the currently favored position on any given subject.
• Eliminate bail requirements & sentencing minimums.
• Participation trophies.
• Eliminate academic requirements and standardized testing for entrance into college.
• Universal healthcare
• Free college tuition
• Green energy mandates and subsidies
• Eliminate fossil fuels
• Repeal the Second Amendment
• Eliminate capitalism.
• Eliminate the binary gender construct
• Make the Pentagon the bleeding edge for social experiments
• Tax the rich
• Forgive student debt
• Mandate vaccinations

And the list goes on, and on, and on. It literally never stops.  Griswold v. Connecticut begat Roe vs. Wade which begat partial birth abortion.  Gay rights turned into civil unions turned into gay marriage.  Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act turned into coerced lax lending standards which turned into the housing crash.  And the Americans with Disabilities Act started out as compassion for the handicapped and mutated into a vehicle for extortion of small businesses by a cabal of pernicious lawyers. Removing the Confederate Battle Flag from state flags led to pulling down statues of Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglas to cancelling Dr. Seuss & Aunt Jemima. 

At exactly what point will America cease to be the racist sexist hellhole that the left tells us it is?   Must the military perfectly reflect the hue and sex of America itself?  Must corporate executives be promoted based on their socioeconomic heritage?  What else needs to be reflective of the demographics of the American populace?  How about the NBA & the NFL? Black men make up 74% of the NBA and 70% of the NFL.  Do we fire 90% of them to hire more white men and women of every race?  Would that make the games more competitive, more exciting?  Probably not.  Or how about nurses? 93% of nurses are women.  Should 40% of them be fired in order to hire men to make the industry reflective of the rest of the country? Would that make healthcare better or patients happier and safer? Unlikely.  And this could go on endlessly for every area of the economy: Ditch diggers.  Sanitation workers.  Teachers.  Barbers.  Rap artists. Surgeons. Lawyers.   

The bottom line is the left knows how to do one thing well, and that is destroy what someone else built.  We’ve seen that play out across America time and again.  From the burnt husks of Detroit and Washington that rotted for decades following the riots of the 1960’s to turning once great American cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles into giant homeless camps strewn with needles and feces to the economic devastation wrought in cities like Minneapolis and Portland and Seattle from a year of “mostly peaceful protests”.  When the left comes to power in successful cities the march to a real hellscape begins.  And it’s not just cities.  The left broke the Boy Scouts, they destroyed the NFL as a truly national form of entertainment, they’ve ruined Disney and Marvel and they are in the process of destroying women’s sports. Dennis Prager often says “The Left destroys everything it touches” and he’s right.  The left has never built a nation millions of people risk their lives to enter.  The left has never built a society where freedom of thought, speech and the press have thrived.  The left has never built an economic juggernaut founded on free markets or anything else. 

The left can do nothing more than take advantage of the freedom and prosperity that others have created and throw stones at it for its imperfections.  Voltaire was prescient when he observed “Perfect is the enemy of the good”.  America is no doubt imperfect.  It is flawed and sometimes unfair and often inequitable… but mankind is all of his creations are.  The reality is, the United States is by far the greatest nation God has seen fit to grace man with and while it will continue to be imperfect until the end of days, it is nothing like the racist, fascist hellscape the left makes it out to be.  But of course none of that matters because for the left, building something great is never a necessity, in fact, it’s never even a consideration.  Why bother trying to build anything when it’s so much easier to throw stones at those who are too busy actually building things to notice they’re being targeted for their imperfections by those who don’t have the courage to try.  

I’m not sure what the textbook definition of hate of county might be, but everything the left does and says most certainly looks like it.  There’s an old saying: “If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck and acts like a duck, it’s probably a duck.” Replace duck with hate and you have America’s left:  too cowardly risk doing anything but more than willing to demonize those who aren’t.