THE FOUNDATION

“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.” –James Madison

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

MLK’s ‘Dream’ at 50

Tens of thousands of people descended on the National Mall Saturday for the coming 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. In King’s 1963 speech, he eloquently declared, “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Unfortunately, that day has not yet come.

The biggest reason for that is the professional race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who arose from MLK’s socialist ranks to keep the embers of racial animosity burning. Martin Luther King III, MLK’s grandson, shamefully pointed to Trayvon Martin’s death as evidence that “the task is not done.” King also decried the Supreme Court’s June ruling striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which the Court did because the law’s formula for federal intervention in state election law hasn’t been revised in 40 years. In many ways, that’s the essence of the movement today – it’s still living in 1963.

Further evidence of that arrested development comes from Attorney General Eric Holder, whose Justice Department filed suit against Texas last week for allegedly violating the Constitution and the VRA through recently passed voter ID and redistricting laws. Holder justifies the suit under Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits any voting qualification that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizens of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” Pursuant to Holder’s hostility toward voter ID laws, the Justice Department claims Section 5 authority to reimpose preclearance on Texas for the next decade.

Fortunately for Texas, the Supreme Court in 2008 upheld Indiana’s similar voter ID law, and a lower court likewise upheld Georgia’s. Neither law suppressed minority turnout, which certainly makes Holder’s discrimination claim on that count difficult to prove. Voter fraud favors Democrats, which is why they oppose voter ID. It’s also clear that Holder and the miscreants marching on the mall have turned King’s dream on its head.

NATIONAL SECURITY

No Accountability for Benghazi

Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry ordered the four State Department employees who had been suspended for their role in the mishandling of the Benghazi attack to return to work. These four officials were the only State employees to receive any disciplinary action as the result of a complete security breakdown that led to the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans during a terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012. Kerry’s predecessor, Hillary Clinton, placed them on leave after an internal review, but Kerry determined no further disciplinary action was necessary, and according to a State Department spokeswoman, we can’t punish them “just to make us all feel better.” How about punishing them because they screwed up and Americans died as a result?

If it wasn’t already, it’s now abundantly clear there will be no accountability for State’s gross negligence. And Clinton’s status as presumptive front-runner in the 2016 presidential race remains undiminished despite her politically desperate lies about the cause of the attack and her appalling “what difference does it make?” attitude.

Meanwhile, the man whose YouTube video Clinton and others blamed for “inciting” the “riots” that supposedly led to the attack has been released from jail. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula served nearly a year in jail for an unrelated parole violation that became known when the video surfaced, but few doubt he was jailed as punishment for the video itself. The Obama campaign narrative blaming the video never held water, despite the media’s complete lack of interest in learning the real reasons behind the attack or holding anyone accountable for mishandling it.

ECONOMY

Around the Nation: High-Speed California

Rules? Who needs those? That was the unwavering response from Democrat California Gov. Jerry Brown after a ruling last week on the Golden State’s high-speed rail boondoggle. Superior Court Judge Michael Kenney determined that the project had exceeded the boundaries set through Proposition 1A – the 2008 ballot initiative in which voters allocated $10 billion in funding through bonds.

“To wit, the authority didn’t identify funding sources for the $31 billion required to build the 290-mile ‘initial usable segment’ from Madera to the San Fernando Valley,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “Nor did the authority obtain necessary environmental clearances.” In his ruling, Judge Kenney opined, “This discussion makes it clear that funding from these sources cannot reasonably be expected to be available without significant further work and legislative advocacy,” further adding, “in reality, there were no anticipated or expected commitments, authorizations, agreements, allocations, or other means of receiving such funds at the time the Authority approved the funding plan.” Say what? Government officials failed to secure funding before going ahead with a massive project destined for failure? Shocking.

Gov. Brown is vowing to press on with the project, anyway. “It’s not a setback,” declared the governor. “As we speak we’re spending money, we’re moving ahead.” While it’s true, as the Journal contends, “The Judge didn’t go so far as to issue a writ of mandamus stopping the appropriation of state funds,” the decision does mean that officials will need to be a little more specific about how they plan on paying for the project. We expect that to be a rather difficult feat for California officials.

CULTURE

New Mexico Photographer Loses First Amendment Case

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Christian photographer did not have the right, First Amendment or otherwise, to decline to take pictures at a same-sex commitment ceremony. Elaine Huguenin, who owns Elane Photography, declined the request in 2006. New Mexico does not allow same-sex marriage or civil unions, and there were other Albuquerque photographers willing to handle the ceremony, but the couple sued anyway.

In 2008, the New Mexico Human Rights Commission ruled that Huguenin had illegally discriminated against the couple based on sexual orientation. But Huguenin has argued all along – and rightly so in our estimation – that her business constitutes speech, and is therefore protected on that as well as religious grounds under the First Amendment.

The state Supreme Court didn’t see it that way, however. Justice Richard C. Bosson wrote in concurrence that the case “provokes reflection on what this nation is all about, its promise of fairness, liberty, equality of opportunity, and justice.” Furthermore, “at some point in our lives all of us must compromise, if only a little, to accommodate the contrasting values of others. A multicultural, pluralistic society, one of our nation’s strengths, demands no less.” That “compromise” is increasingly being demanded of only one side in this debate.

BRIEF OPINION

Faith and Family

Columnist Maggie Gallagher: “[New Jersey] Governor Chris Christie has just put his name to a bill that uses the power of government to strip both parents and teenagers of the right to seek competent, professional help to live their life in accordance with their own values. The bill does not ban a specific kind of destructive therapy; it is a blanket ban on any licensed counseling professional helping any teenager who does not wish to act on gay (or transgender) desire. Not only efforts to change orientation but efforts to change behavior are forbidden, under penalty of law. Governor Christie just endorsed a law that thus excludes many gay teens who wish to live in accordance with Bible-based values from the circle of care; he has outright banned chastity as a goal of counseling. His bill is not only anti-religious, anti-liberty, and anti-family, it is anti-science because it does not permit scientific knowledge to evolve in the hands of competent professionals. The great question now unfolding in our times is: Will we permit government power to be used to strip traditional religious believers of our freedom to live as we choose? Governor Chris Christie’s answer was yes.”

For the Record

Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden: “The inconvenient truth Al [Gore] and the junk scientists have to deal with is that temperatures aren’t rising, but falling. … It got so embarrassing Al and the junk scientists started calling it ‘climate change.’ … [W]hat frustrates Al and the snake-oil industry is that the skeptics can no longer be shut out of the conversation. ‘We can expect the climate crisis industry to grow increasingly shrill, and increasingly hostile toward anyone who questions their authority,’ Kenneth P. Green, a former member of the U.N. panel, predicted three years ago. Another former panelist, Dr. Kimimori Itoh, a Japanese physical chemist, calls the phenomenon ‘the worst scientific scandal in history. When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.’ That’s too bad, because when science and scientists one day discover a genuine crisis, nobody will listen. We’re up to our ears already in snake oil.”

Political Futures

Professor John McWhorter: “[W]ho’s to say what would happen if black America exerted even half of the emotional fervor and brainpower it does over cases like Martin’s to thinking about how to keep black boys from going wrong? … What kind of self-image do we have to assume we can only change others, but not ourselves? For the time being, though, it’s time for the media to stop proudly emblazoning the race of white cops who kill black boys while cagily describing black teens as, say, ‘from the grittier part of town,’ as has been the case regarding [Chris] Lane’s killers. The media needs to be as honest with black people as we need to be with ourselves. No group gets ahead by turning away from its real problems.”

For more, visit The Right Opinion.

CHRONICLE QUOTES

Editorial Exegesis

The Wall Street Journal: “As maddening as it can be to see how liberal academics spend the wealth created by hard-working citizens, Americans should think long and hard before allowing the federal government to dominate a system of higher education that is still by all accounts the envy of the world. If the feds are deciding what a quality education is in order to dole out billions in annual aid – in an era when most students can’t afford to matriculate without some form of aid – Washington will certainly dominate. Tying aid to whatever the bureaucrats decide is the right tuition is a back-door form of price controls. Even more disturbing is the idea that a federal political authority will decide which curricula at which institutions represent a good educational value.”

Upright

Columnist Peggy Noonan: “There are too many built-in dynamics that make the national-security state want to grow, from legitimate fears of terrorism, to bureaucratic pride, to the flaws in human nature. And there are too many dynamics that will allow it to grow. The aftermath of 9/11 happened to coincide with a new burst in American technological innovation and discovery: The government has the ways and means to do pretty much anything now, and if they can do it they will do it. If the citizens of the United States don’t put up a halting hand, the government can’t be expected to.”

The BIG Lie

Barack Obama: “[W]e don’t have an urgent deficit crisis. The only crisis we have is one that’s manufactured in Washington, and it’s ideological.”

From the ‘Non Compos Mentis’ File

Al Gore: “Would there be hurricanes and floods and droughts without man-made global warming? Of course. But they’re stronger now. The extreme events are more extreme. The hurricane scale used to be 1-5 and now they’re adding a 6.”

NOAA and the National Hurricane Center clarified there is no need or plan to add a sixth category, and there has been no discussion to that end.

Dezinformatsia

Politico’s Ben Wizner: “Many Americans have been perplexed about how to view the prosecution of Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced [last] week under the name Bradley Manning.”

Village Idiots

From the website of a DHS employee: “The 21st century will either mark the return of Black resistance to white domination or global white-on-Black genocide leading to our complete extinction. Warfare is eminent, and in order for Black people to survive the 21st century, we are going to have to kill a lot of whites – more than our christian hearts can possibly count.”

Short Cuts

Humorist Frank J. Fleming: “Judging by our bloated, overreaching, incompetent government, the average politician right now is about as awful in his professional life as can be imagined. But we’re fine with that. Our standard seems to be that a politician can be a corrupt, bungling idiot who seethes with loathing for each and every one of us … as long as he’s not a creep in his personal life. That’s absurd. … We especially shouldn’t be surprised by behavior like Filner’s and Weiner’s from Democrats; when you have creepy old guys so excited to make sure young women have cheap access to contraception and abortion, you kinda get the impression they have other intentions for these women than just ‘respecting’ them.”

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team