Government by unelected experts isn’t all that different from the ‘royal prerogative’ of 17th-century England, argues constitutional scholar Philip Hamburger.
By
John Tierney
New York
What’s the greatest threat to liberty in America? Liberals rail at Donald Trump’s executive orders on immigration and his hostility toward the press, while conservatives vow to reverse Barack Obama’s regulatory assault on religion, education and business. Philip Hamburger says both sides are thinking too small.
Like the blind men in the fable who try to describe an elephant by feeling different parts of its body, they’re not perceiving the whole problem:the enormous rogue beast known as the administrative state.
Sometimes called the regulatory state or the deep state, it is a government within the government, run by the president and the dozens of federal agencies that assume powers once claimed only by kings. In place of royal decrees, they issue rules and send out “guidance” letters like the one from an Education Department official in 2011 that stripped college students of due process when accused of sexual misconduct.
Unelected bureaucrats not only write their own laws, they also interpret these laws and enforce them in their own courts with their own judges. All this is in blatant violation of the Constitution, says Mr. Hamburger, 60, a constitutional scholar and winner of the Manhattan Institute’s Hayek Prize last year for his scholarly 2014 book, “Is Administrative Law Unlawful?” (Spoiler alert: Yes.)
“Essentially, much of the Bill of Rights has been gutted,” he says, sitting in his office at Columbia Law School. “The government can choose to proceed against you in a trial in court with constitutional processes, or it can use an administrative proceeding where you don’t have the right to be heard by a real judge or a jury and you don’t have the full due process of law. Our fundamental procedural freedoms, which once were guarantees, have become mere options.”
In volume and complexity, the edicts from federal agencies exceed the laws passed by Congress by orders of magnitude. “The administrative state has become the government’s predominant mode of contact with citizens,” Mr. Hamburger says. “Ultimately this is not about the politics of left or right. Unlawful government power should worry everybody.”
I first became aware of Donald Trump in the late seventies. I was not impressed. In fact, I didn’t like him. I thought he was a braggart and a man who went out of his way to disrespect women. I wouldn’t have said so at the time, but he was clearly a narcissist.
Growing up in an Italian neighborhood in the Bronx, I have been around men like him all my life. They’re going to do this; they’re going to do that. They have this; they have that. I took him to be a person so full of himself that his company would be unbearable.
I didn’t give him much hope of winning the presidency, either, but as election day neared, friends would ask what I thought a Trump presidency would look like. Forced at that point to think about it, I would say that as a businessman, at least he would make quality appointments to the power positions in his administration – you can’t run a successful business without being able to delegate authority to a strong team of employees.
As far as Trump’s narcissism, I’m not sure that hurts him as a president. Sure, he could show better discretion with what he says – he does seem to have an almostPlaxico Burress-type dedication to shooting himself in the foot (see L’Affaire Comey). Yet I think you need to have a certain amount of narcissism to be a successful president, although it doesn’t guarantee success.
Just look at our second-most recent president, a solipsist so narcissistic he actually thought his mere presence would slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. Barry took narcissism to a new level, seemingly believing himself some kind of god, a belief fed by the nearly total hagiographic coverage he received from the Fourth Estate, our once nationally treasured free press, reduced to sycophantic (more like “sycofanatic”) exaltation of the “light bearer,” the man with the “crease.”
The difference between Barry’s narcissism and Trump’s is this: Trump is the guy who looks at the most beautiful girl at the party and says, “I can get her number.” Barry would look at the same girl and say, “She wants me.” Trump would then pursue the girl, and Barry would walk away, because obviously, she is not good enough for him, and besides, someone told him there’s a mirror in the next room.
Jesus would hold women’s hands to support them during abortion: abortionist
Amy Hagstrom Miller says she is ‘mission-driven’ by her commitment ‘to human rights and justice.’Rachel Madow Show screensho
FORT WORTH, Texas, March 4, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — The abortionist who appealed to the Supreme Court in oral arguments this week says Jesus would supportively hold the hands of women as they abort their children.
Amy Hagstrom Miller, whose Texas abortion business conglomerate Whole Women’s Health owns and runs seven abortion facilities, says she is “mission-driven” by her commitment “to human rights and justice.”
She is fighting state legislation requiring her abortionists to have a local hospital admitting agreement, and requiring her abortion mills to have cleanliness and facility standards up to the required standards of other surgical clinics.
Legislators say the laws protect the health and safety of women. Miller says the laws were only passed to create fear and discourage women from choosing abortion.
In an interview with the pro-abortion websitealternet.org, Miller explains that she reassures hesitating Christian mothers and encourages them to abort by telling them, “The majority of our patients are Christian. The majority are mothers already.”
“I was raised in a liberal Christian tradition, and I come to the work (at one of her seven abortion businesses) because of that background,” she shared. “The Jesus that I was taught about would be holding the hands of women inside the clinic.”
One of the pro-life laws passed in Texas is an informed consent law, which gives women the choice to look at an ultrasound of her growing baby, which must be done anyway to determine the baby’s gestational age. Proponents of the pro-life law say seeing an ultrasound has encouraged many women to keep their baby and choose life.
Democrats set the standard for the GOP on judicial confirmations.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks to reporters in the Ohio Clock in Washington, D.C., Jan. 31.PHOTO:CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY/NEWSCOM/ZUMA PRESS
February 2, 2017
The confirmation battle over Supreme Court nomineeNeil Gorsuchis off and running, and opponents already know he’s superbly qualified with a fine judicial temperament. But Democrats are still itching for a fight, and their first line of offense is the myth of the “stolen” seat.
“This is a seat that was stolen from the former President,Obama,that’s never been done in U.S. history before,” declared Oregon SenatorJeff Merkleyin announcing that he will attempt to filibuster Judge Gorsuch. “To let this become normal just invites a complete partisan polarization of the Court from here to eternity.” The “stolen” line is echoing across Progressive Nation, but it’s a complete political invention.
The “theft” is supposedly the GOP Senate’s refusal last year to vote on President Obama’s nomination ofMerrick Garlandto fillAntonin Scalia’s seat. But the standard of not confirming a Supreme Court nominee in the final year of a Presidency was set by . . . Democrats. And by no less a Beltway monument than the current Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer.
“We should not confirm anyBushnominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances,”Mr. Schumerdeclared in a July 2007 speech to the American Constitution Society. Democrats then held the Senate and Mr. Schumer was putting down a marker if someone on the High Court retired. George W. Bush didn’t get another opening, but Mr. Schumer surely meant what he said.
The Democratic theft standard goes back further toJoe Biden’s days as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In June 1992 in PresidentGeorge H.W. Bush’s final year, Robber Joe opined that the President “should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not name a nominee until after the November election is completed.”
Naming a new Justice, he said, would ensure that a confirmation “process that is already in doubt in the minds of many will become distrusted by all.” If Mr. Bush made an election-year nomination, Mr. Biden said his committee should consider “not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over.”
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: The problem is worldwide and growing by the day. The thinking that defeating ISIS will resolve the issue is naive. ISIS Is merely the “flavor of the day.” Yesterday (and perhaps again tomorrow) it was al Qaeda. Before that, it was Islamic Jihad. The Muslim Brotherhood and its ally Hamas dates to the thirties and is stronger now than ever. Boko Haram in Africa and Abu Sayef in the Philipines remind us the problem is not restricted to any particular region.Fundamentalist Islam is a world power and it has declared war on the world.
There were many losers in the election. Hillary would seem to be the biggest but in the great scheme of things she is not. She may turn out to be a bit player, after all.
The Democrats and liberals, in general, were set back exponentially and now control less of the government than at any time since the 1920s or perhaps even in the history of their party founded in 1828. They lost not only the Presidency, The House, and the Senate but will soon see the Supreme Court transformed into a bastion of Constitutionalism for at least a generation to come. The GOP will hold governorships in 33 states, the most innearly a century. Some are predicting the end of a liberalism that threatened the very nature of the Republic. It may take decades to realize the full impact of what has happened, but America has been put back on the “right” path after decades sliding into a moral and economic abyss.
The Media lost “bigly”, especially CNN and the New York Times as did many others who did all within their power to ensure Trump never entered the White House. They are now hopingtheywill see the inside of the White House in days to come.
Clinton explains how she’ll gut the First and Second Amendments.
October 21, 2016
Donald Trumpis no legal scholar, but at Wednesday’s presidential debate he showed a superior grasp of the U.S. Constitution than didHillary Clinton.Amid the overwrought liberal fainting about Mr. Trump’s bluster over accepting the election result (seebelow), Mrs. Clinton revealed a view of the Supreme Court that is far more threatening to American liberty.
Start with her answer to moderatorChris Wallace’s question about the role of the courts. “The Supreme Court should represent all of us. That’s how I see the Court,” she said. “And the kind of people that I would be looking to nominate to the court would be in the great tradition of standing up to the powerful, standing up on our behalf of our rights as Americans.”
Where to begin with that one? The Supreme Court doesn’t—or shouldn’t—“represent” anyone. In the U.S. system that’s the job of the elected branches. The courts are appointed, not elected, so they can be nonpartisan adjudicators of competing legal claims.
Mrs. Clinton is suggesting that the Court should be a super-legislature that vindicates the will of what she calls “the American people,” which apparently excludes “the powerful.” But last we checked, the Constitution protects everyone, even the powerful. The law is supposed to protect individual rights, not an abstraction called “the people.”
The Democrat went downhill from there, promising to appoint judges who would essentially rewrite the First and Second Amendments. Asked about the 2008 Heller decisionthat upheld an individual right to bear arms, Mrs. Clinton claimed to support “reasonable regulation.” She said she criticized Hellerbecause it overturned a District of Columbia law intended merely “to protect toddlers from guns and so they wanted people with guns to safely store them.”
Toddlers had nothing to do with it. What Mrs. Clinton calls “reasonable” was an outright ban on handguns. The D.C. law allowed the city’s police chief to award some temporary licenses—but not even the police officer plaintiff in the case could persuade the District to let him register a handgun to be kept at his home.
Anyone who did lawfully possess a gun had to keep it unloaded and either disassembled or bound by a trigger lock at all times, ensuring it would be inoperable and perhaps useless for self-defense. AsAntonin Scaliawrote for theHellermajority, “Few laws in the history of our Nation have come close to the severe restriction of the District’s handgun ban.”
This election is unlike any other in our nation’s history. Like many other voters, I have struggled to determine the right course of action in this general election.
In Cleveland, I urged voters, “please, don’t stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket whom you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”
After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
I’ve made this decision for two reasons. First, last year, I promised to support the Republican nominee. And I intend to keep my word.
Second, even though I have had areas of significant disagreement with our nominee, by any measure Hillary Clinton is wholly unacceptable — that’s why I have always been #NeverHillary.
Six key policy differences inform my decision. First, and most important, the Supreme Court. For anyone concerned about the Bill of Rights — free speech, religious liberty, the Second Amendment — the Court hangs in the balance. I have spent my professional career fighting before the Court to defend the Constitution. We are only one justice away from losing our most basic rights, and the next president will appoint as many as four new justices. We know, without a doubt, that every Clinton appointee would be a left-wing ideologue. Trump, in contrast, has promised to appoint justices “in the mold of Scalia.”
For some time, I have been seeking greater specificity on this issue, and today the Trump campaign provided that, releasing a very strong list of potential Supreme Court nominees — including Sen. Mike Lee, who would make an extraordinary justice — and making an explicit commitment to nominate only from that list. This commitment matters, and it provides a serious reason for voters to choose to support Trump.
Second, Obamacare. The failed healthcare law is hurting millions of Americans. If Republicans hold Congress, leadership has committed to passing legislation repealing Obamacare. Clinton, we know beyond a shadow of doubt, would veto that legislation. Trump has said he would sign it.
Billionaire George Soros opens his wallet to transform America
ByKelly Riddell– The Washington Times – Thursday, August 11, 2016
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE : Mr. Soros‘ IRS Form 990 gives us some clues. He’s funded a Streetwise and Safe organization in New York, with the purpose of supporting a “national project focused on increasing safety for LGBTQ youth during interactions with law enforcement and developing advocacy skills to engage debates around discriminatory policing practices,” according to his 2014 tax return.
Mr. Sorosalso gave $525,000 to Justice at Stake, a group that’s looking to promote diversity in the courts for people within theLGBTcommunity.
“This lack of diversity on the bench can lead to the appearance of bias, and even actual bias,” the group’s website warns. “A more diverse bench improves the quality of justice for all citizens.”
You see, winning court rulings is not enough, you need to control the courts in order for them to be fair.
Three years ago, a Supreme Court ruling paved the way for gay marriage.
After it, the mainstream media had one question: What was next for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement? They had, after all, won the big fight. In addition, many corporations had adopted policies barring discrimination based on sexual orientation, and two of America’s most watched shows at the time “Modern Family” and “Glee” featured openly gay characters.
“I really do believe [the Supreme Court ruling] is the domino that is going to tip over the rest of the dominoes,” Wilson Cruz, anLGBTactivist, told CNN at the time. “Do not get in the way of this train, because it will run you over.”
The Justice dances on the conservative Court’s political grave.
ENLARGE
Ruth Bader Ginsberg in Washington in 2014.PHOTO:ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 12, 2016
Liberals fond of griping that the Supreme Court’s conservative Justices are too political should check in withRuth Bader Ginsburg.The Supreme Court’s oldest Justice sat down with theNew York Timeson Friday to deplore Republicans and predict a coming liberal ascendancy. “I can’t imagine what the country would be—withDonald Trumpas our President,” the Justice averred, adding that the possibility brought to mind her late husband’s advice: “Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand.”
Justice Ginsburg also ran a victory lap at the results of the Court’s recent term after the death of JusticeAntonin Scalia.Among the highlights, she noted, last month the Court upheld racial preferences inFisher v. University of Texasin a 4-3 vote with JusticeElena Kaganrecused. JusticeAnthony Kennedywrote the opinion, which gutted an earlier opinion he wrote in the same case.
“I don’t expect that we’re going to see another affirmative action case,” Justice Ginsburg said. “I think [Justice Kennedy] comes out as the great hero of this term.” We wonder if Justice Kennedy appreciates the political shout-out.
Asked which precedents she’d overturn, Justice Ginsburg pointed to 2008’sHellerruling that upheld the right to bear arms, calling it “a very bad decision” that could be overruled. Justice Ginsburg has previously said that without the need for a militia, the Second Amendment is “outdated” because “its function has become obsolete.”
Her other goal is overturningCitizens United v. FEC, which in 2010 restored First Amendment rights for businesses and unions. “It would be an impossible dream. But I’d love to seeCitizens Unitedoverruled,” she said, thus signaling she’ll do everything she can to see that happen. She also boasted that she expected to be back in the five-vote majority soon.
We don’t recall another Supreme Court Justice so publicly telegraphing, outside a written opinion, a vote in a future case. No wonder so many Americans think the Supreme Court has become merely another political branch. Justice Ginsburg has confirmed it.
He is a friend of big labor and regulators, not small businesses.
By
Juanita Duggan
Ms. Duggan is president and CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business.
March 17, 2016
President Obama on Wednesday formally nominated Merrick Garland, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to the U.S. Supreme Court. After studying his extensive record, the National Federation of Independent Businessbelieves that Judge Garland would be a strong ally of the regulatory bureaucracy, big labor and trial lawyers. On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of members we represent, the NFIB opposes Judge Garland’s confirmation.
In NAHB v. EPA, Judge Garland in 2011 refused to consider a Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) claim by the National Association of Home Builders against the Environmental Protection Agency despite the law’s clear language. The RFA is one of the few federal statutes that explicitly require certain agencies to take into account the effect of their actions on small employers. Consider that the federal government itself estimates that the typical small business must spend $12,000 per worker annually just to be compliant with federal regulations. With Judge Garland on the Supreme Court, the EPA and other regulators would have a freer hand to impose even more costs on small businesses.
In another case,Rancho Viejo, LLC v. Norton, in 2003, Judge Garland argued that the Commerce Clause, which regulates economic activity between the states, applies to an animal species found in only one state and which has no economic value. In doing so he foreshadowed the creative reasoning that the Obama administration used to defend the Affordable Care Act in NFIB v. Sebelius. We fear that as a pivotal justice on the Supreme Court, Judge Garland could apply his elastic view of the Commerce Clause to almost anything else.
In two other cases involving the National Labor Relations Board, Judge Garland didn’t just side with the government—he argued that business owners should be personally liable for labor violations. In other words, their personal assets, including their homes and their savings, would be exposed to government penalties. What worries us is that Judge Garland has been consistently wrong on labor law. In fact, in 16 major labor decisions of Judge Garland’s that we examined, he ruled 16-0 in favor of the NLRB.
With more than 320,000 members, our organization is the country’s largest advocate for small-business owners. When we asked members on Wednesday whether they wanted to fight the Garland confirmation, the response was overwhelming. More than 90% urged us to take action.
It is especially important that we get involved now because this year and in future sessions, the Supreme Court will hear cases in which NFIB is a plaintiff. We are challenging the Waters of the United States rule, an unprecedented expansion of the EPA’s power to regulate water. The Clean Power Plan, another massive expansion of federal power that we are challenging, threatens to drive up energy costs for consumers—and for small businesses.
Given Judge Garland’s record on the D.C. Circuit Court, is there any question about which side he would take in these cases? When it comes to big government versus small business, we know where he would stand.
This is the first time in the NFIB’s 73-year history that we will weigh in on a Supreme Court nominee. As the plaintiff in NFIB v. Sebelius, which upheld the Affordable Care Act, our members know the power that a single Supreme Court justice can wield. We cannot support his elevation to the Supreme Court.
Ms. Duggan is president and CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business.
