Left Rushes to Judge Kavanaugh
If the last 36 hours are any indication, there may not be enough handcuffs to last the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.
If the last 36 hours are any indication, there may not be enough handcuffs to last the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Seventy arrests into Tuesday, Capitol Police weren’t the only ones in D.C. dreading the next three days. After screaming themselves hoarse on Day 1, Democrats trucked in a new crop of protestors yesterday morning with orders to keep up the embarrassing tantrums of Tuesday — doing Republicans, and certainly Kavanaugh, what should be a huge favor.
From Hill veterans to jaded reporters, everyone watched wide-eyed as the galley of the Senate Judiciary Committee dissolved into a political madhouse. Grown men and women bellowed like toddlers in the back, while sitting senators shouted over their colleagues in the front. At one point, even liberal Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) couldn’t take it. To Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), one of the only adults in the room, he finally said, exasperated, “I do not intend at any point to continue what I have to say with such interruptions… I don’t care whose side they are on.”
Turns out, they were on his side. NBC outed the party in a tweet by reporter Kasie Hunt, who revealed that “Democrats plotted coordinated protest strategy over the holiday weekend and all agreed to disrupt and protest the hearing. Dem leader [Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)] led a phone call and committee members are executing now.” To anyone watching, the strategy was a poor one. Judge Kavanaugh’s young daughters sat quietly in the room, the picture of respect and poise, while adult liberals threw a fit that they were out of power. Not exactly the contrast you want playing in key battleground states. Unfortunately, this all is a snapshot of the Left’s desperation. It’s a picture of what the president’s opponents will do to get power — and, more alarming — how they’ll use it if they do.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who’s watching this committee drama unfold firsthand, joined me Tuesday on “Washington Watch” to talk about the volatility of these Senate hearings. “[Democrats] can’t win at the ballot box, and they’re losing the narrative, so they’re shouting. The louder you shout, probably the less you have to say.” As we both agreed, none of the Democrats’ objections have anything to do with Kavanaugh’s qualifications. “Absolutely not,” Senator Graham agreed. “Those days are over. Scalia got 96 votes; Ginsberg got 97 votes. We’re in a land of partisanship. ‘Advise and consent’ in the Democratic world means a Republican president can’t choose a qualified conservative. That’s what they’re telling the country.”
But in the end, he pointed out, “We’ve got a country to run here… Isn’t it right to listen? I mean, at the end of the day, this probably hurt the [Democrats’] cause — it didn’t help it. If you’re looking for anarchy, they’re representing anarchy.” That may appeal to some voters, who’d like nothing better than to turn democracy into a street fight. But the majority of Americans on both sides are tired of political savagery and want to elect leaders who are at least capable of the pretense of civility. “Reasonable American voters are keeping score,” David Bossie wrote on Fox News. “They will not forget this disgraceful sideshow any time soon, but career Democratic Party politicians and the purveyors of their far-Left ideology are too far gone to care what anyone thinks.”
Yesterday, the long slog continued — punctuated by the now-familiar shrieks from the back of the room. In round two, each of the committee’s senators have 30 minutes to question Kavanaugh, an exercise expected to last well into the night. As expected, Democrats took the opportunity to try to pin the judge down on abortion. “Do you agree with Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor that a woman’s right to control her reproductive rights affects her ability to ‘participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation?’” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked. “I understand your point of view on that,” he replied, “and I understand how passionate and how deeply people feel about this issue,” he said. “As a general proposition,” he went on, “I understand the importance of the precedent set forth in Roe v. Wade.”
It was virtually the same answer he gave in his 2006 confirmation hearing — but yesterday, it was of little comfort to either side. On the Left, activists panicked that it was just a ruse for his ultimate goal of overturning legalized abortion. “A lot of terms like ‘settled law’ or ‘respecting precedent’ are troubling,” the Vice President for Reproductive Rights and Health at the National Women’s Law Center told Vox. “They don’t actually tell you his views, and they’re code words for people who want to see that precedent be overruled.” For pro-lifers, it dredged up some anxiety that Kavanaugh would rely too heavily on bad precedent or worse, may not have the stomach to undo the 1973 ruling at all.
The bottom line is this: if we have a Supreme Court that’s in line with the Constitution, the right to life will be protected. The Left knows that as well as anyone. That’s why the president’s opponents are making abortion such a big issue in Kavanaugh’s confirmation fight. At the end of the day, conservatives have to put their trust in the president, who vowed to appoint “pro-life justices.” And more than a year and a half into this administration, if there’s one thing Americans can count on, it’s this president keeping his promises!
Originally published here.
Americans on Nike Deal: Just Boo It
It was supposed to be a triumphant week for the NFL. After a year-and-a-half long headache over the national anthem, a new season — and a new league-wide policy — was about to kick off. Hopes were high that teams had finally put the Colin Kaepernick controversy in the rearview mirror and could start winning back the fans it lost in the high-stakes standoff. Now, thanks to Nike, the league is right back where it started.
For Kaepernick, the third-string quarterback who lit the match on one of the fiercest cultural debates of the decade, becoming the face of Nike is an impressive accomplishment for someone who doesn’t even have a professional sports contract. But then again, that isn’t why the company signed him. For both, it was a marriage in opportunism. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, like a lot of people, thinks this has a lot more to do with money than Kaepernick. “Too much focus has been on Kaepernick the guy…” he points out. “Here you have a board room full of corporate executives deciding that they’re going to profit on attacks on the country that made their company possible. That is a really ominous thing. We should be really worried about that when the best educated, smartest, richest people in our society decide that destroying the society is the goal and the way to get rich.”
To most people, the problem isn’t even with the issue Kaepernick is raising. It’s how he’s raising it. As Bishop Harry Jackson and I talked about in my first book, Personal Faith, Public Policy, America is in need of some significant healing on the issue of race. My point — and the point of a lot of patriotic Americans — is not that we shouldn’t fight racial injustice. It’s that our flag and national anthem aren’t the way to go about it. Violence divides us. Injustice divides us. But our pride in America should be what unites us.
“Believe in something,” the Nike ads say with a close-up of Kaepernick’s face, “even if it means sacrificing everything.” Well to a lot of patriotic Americans, that’s exactly the point. Millions of men and women have sacrificed everything — marching under the same flag Nike’s athletes won’t stand for. If you’re wondering why people are burning their shoes, that’s why. “It’d be different,” Tucker said, “if [Kaepernick] said, ‘I’m protesting this politician or this policy or this specific person for doing this specific thing.’ But no. Sitting during the national anthem is a way of making a broad-based, generalized — and thereby impossible to rebut — attack against the country that made him and Nike rich.”
Meanwhile, at NFL headquarters, the frustration with Nike, whose apparel deal runs through 2028, is through the roof. Strategist Chris Barron called the entire thing is “baffling,” especially when pro football is “desperately trying to move on” after losing billions of dollars, fans, and image capital over the last several months. Already, Nike is paying a literal price, watching stocks nose-dive three percent at Tuesday’s opening bell. Its market cap took a $3.75-billion hit from investors who are sick of companies trying to stoke the culture wars. They’ve watched too many brand names lose in the fight against consumers to take a gamble on another.
“Just like the NFL, whose ratings have gone WAY DOWN, Nike is getting absolutely killed with anger and boycotts. I wonder if they had any idea that it would be this way?” President Trump tweeted. “As far as the NFL is concerned, I just find it hard to watch, and always will, until they stand for the FLAG!” Others like Nine Line Apparel CEO Tyler Merritt said what a lot of parents are thinking. “I don’t want to think about politics when I buy shoes or jerseys for my kids. I don’t want every purchasing decision in my household to be a referendum on whether I agree or disagree with a company’s politics. But that’s what Nike is forcing me to do.”
Ironically, the new campaign does have one fan — former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. If that isn’t a ringing endorsement — a man who chants “death to America” — I don’t know what is.
For now, both sides would do well to stop and heed Alveda King’s advice. “My Uncle [Martin Luther King, Jr.] and father A.D. King were men of God who often "took the knee” in prayer to God for repentance and reconciliation during their Christian ministry. Prayer,“ she urges, "is stronger even than protest.”
Originally published here.
A Banner Day for Texas Cheerleaders!
At Friday’s football game, the people of Kountze, Texas will really have something to cheer about. Late last week, after a six-year struggle, the Texas Supreme Court finally put an end to the debate over Bible verses on high school rally banners. It had been a long haul for the families of Kountze, but the seven cheerleaders of 2012 who fought the suit were right: they can do all things through Christ who strengthens them.
When the superintendent caved to the bullying tactics of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the cheerleaders and their parents took a stand. Soon, this little town was at the center of a big debate over religious liberty. So big, it turns out, that even former Governor Rick Perry and then-Attorney General Greg Abbott weighed in. In an odd twist, the district fought to keep the challenge alive — even after local courts gave the cheerleaders the green light. That was probably the most infuriating part of the case, at least for local families — that the district is consciously funneling money away from education to fuel this gratuitous attack on faith.
First Liberty Institute represented the seven cheerleaders who made the signs, and the group’s Hiram Sasser celebrated that the journey had finally come to a successful end. “As the football season kicks off across Texas,” he told Fox News’s Todd Starnes, “it’s good to be reminded that these cheerleaders have a right to religious speech on their run-through banners — banners on which the cheerleaders painted messages they chose, with paint they paid for, on paper they purchased.”
The cheerleaders who fought back, including Rebekah Richardson who I profiled in my book No Fear, have long since left Kountze High. But the legacy of courage they left behind is something the whole town can be proud of. Because of them, generations of cheerleaders and students will be able to exercise their faith. Sometimes standing up for what you believe in takes time before it pays off. But the lesson here is as clear as it was when I talked to Rebekah in the beginning. If your conviction is rooted in your love for Jesus and obedience to His Word, then you’ve already won — no matter what the earthly outcome.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
