COMMENTARY AND OP-EDS
Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski: Sotomayor, Civil Rights, and Guns
Over the next two weeks, one of the critical issues will be your civil rights on guns. Senators could benefit from context to understand the importance of this civil right to protect families, especially racial minorities. Given Judge Sotomayor's long record, her confirmation must be more than "transparent," it must be penetrating and the Senators must dig deep.
Jan LaRue: Democrats Double Down on the Sotomayor Race Card
Democrats are playing the race card with Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in more ways than one. The White House and Senate Democrats want a vote on Sotomayor's nomination before the August congressional recess. If Senate Republicans surrender to the Democrats' race pace card, it means a fast, uninformed vote on a lifetime appointment to the nation's highest court.
Ken Klukowski: Praying for Change
People are praying in a city hall in Michigan, and atheists are up in arms. People of faith should hope the secularists push this into court, because this time the believers should win. There's something happening in Warren, Michigan. This town has been hit hard by layoffs, like the rest of the state. (Michigan's unemployment rate is over 14%--the worst in the nation, thanks in no small part to Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm imposing big-government taxes, entitlements and union labor policies on the people there.)
NRA v. City of Chicago and Village of Oak Park
Last year's watershed Second Amendment case of District of Columbia v. Heller was just the beginning of the fight over the meaning of the right to keep and bear arms. The most significant question now is whether the Second Amendment only applies to the federal government (because D.C. is directly [...]
Ken Klowkowski: Justices Move Political Censorship Case
Next year, the Supreme Court can throw open the doors for voters to learn the truth about those seeking power in America. Or not. In an unusual move, the Court declined to decide a case on Americans' right to speak out on candidates during presidential elections that was argued this year. Instead, they will rehear it this fall, focusing on a new legal issue in a case that will pit two legal heavyweights against each other.
Hans Zeiger: The Death of Dialogue?
Cultural relativists like to talk about dialogue. They tell us that we need to engage in dialogue with people who are different from ourselves so that we can understand their perspective and become more tolerant. They tell us that we must listen to the voices of the marginalized and the excluded so that we can rethink our assumptions about the world.
Ken Klukowski and Ken Blackwell: Supreme Court Signals Major Change in Voting Rights
The Supreme Court's decision today in the racial preferences case Ricci v. DeStefano will be a major story. Less noticed but equally important, the Supreme Court's decision on voting rights last week heralds a sea change in racial politics in this country. Taken with the Ricci decision, it's clear that a new era is dawning on race in America.
Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski: A Religous Test
In Dearborn, Michigan, where the local mosque's call to prayer is broadcast over the town by loudspeakers, a group of Christian evangelists were told that they could not pass out Bibles on the sidewalk during a festival. This is part of a growing national trend to disfavor Christian expression and traditional speech, and reflects a disturbing direction in public policy in America today.
Jan LaRue: Sotomayor's 'Fundamental' Flaws
Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor claim that her Second Amendment rulings are examples of "judicial restraint." The problem is that she's restraining the Second Amendment.
Peter Ferrara: Go clueless on terrorist plans?: Tying up our defenses with bonds of litigation
Raging members of Congress, agitated TV commentators and hyperventilating bloggers have called for prosecuting George W. Bush administration officials they claim broke the law and committed war crimes by participating in what they say was illegal "torture" of captured high-level accused terrorists.
Ken Klukowski: Senior Democrat Says Obama's Czars Unconstitutional
Last week President Obama appointed yet another "czar" with massive government power, answering only to him. Even before this latest appointment, the top-ranking Democrat in the Senate wrote President Obama a letter saying that these czars are unconstitutional. President Obama's "czar strategy" is an unprecedented power grab centralizing authority in the White House, outside congressional oversight and in violation of the Constitution.
Jan LaRue: Double-Barrel DC Duplicity
Anti-Second Amendment politicians have a high-caliber hypocrisy second to none. Washington, DC Mayor Adrian Fenty and his anti-gun supporters at The Washington Post are heralding the shooting skills of the Special Police Officers at the Holocaust Museum: "Fast Action By Guards Saved Lives, Officials Say":
Ken Klukowski: It's a WAR, Stupid
The first terrorist detained in Guantanamo Bay is on U.S. soil and is now in the civilian court system. Democratic officials and operatives are lauding President Obama's commitment to close Gitmo. They say that we can simply lock up all these convicted terrorists in U.S. federal prisons. But one question exposes the fatal flaw with this plan: What convicted terrorists?
Jan LaRue: Obama's Moral Slide Rule
In President Barack Obama's moral and constitutional universe, unfettering abortion and coddling terrorists trump innocent life. But most Americans reject his anti-life calculations.
ACLU Loses Effort to Keep Non-Americans on Voter Rolls
The Supreme Court has rejected the ACLU appeal of a Circuit Court decision upholding the Georgia Voter ID law. This law requires new voters to present documentation to show they are both citizens and residents. The ACLU attacked this law, and similar laws in other states, claiming that such laws [...]
Robert Knight: Call It What It Is: Rationed Health Care
Fresh from grabbing much of the U.S. auto and banking industries, the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats are moving briskly toward nationalized health care.
Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski: Equating Conservatives with Terrorists
Recent events reveal how far to the left President Obama really is. When the president's Cairo speech, taken with his reactions to the deaths of an abortion doctor and a U.S. soldier, are weighed against his Department of Homeland Security report and his Supreme Court decisions, a pattern emerges. The president is indicating that conservatives can in many ways be equated with terrorists. Such a comparison is outrageous, and the possibility that this mindset could end up on the U.S. Supreme Court makes it all the more dangerous.
Ken Blackwell: Arm Our Military Recruiters
The contrast between President Obama's reaction to the murder of a late-term abortionist and the murder of a U.S. Army Recruiter could not be more stark. Obama raced to send U.S. Marshals into abortion facilities. He denounced the murder in the strongest terms in a statement which is posted on the White House website:
Ken Klukowski: Gun Issue Heats Up for Sotomayor as NRA Appeals to Supreme Court
This week a federal appeals court held that the Second Amendment does not apply to state or city gun laws. Supporters of Judge Sonia Sotomayor incorrectly argue that this affirms her recent gun-control case. Now the NRA is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case, and in doing so heats up the gun-rights issue to potentially become the dominant topic in Sotomayor's confirmation hearings.
Peter Ferrara: Sonia the Player Umpire
The 2005 nomination hearings for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts provided a moment of unifying clarity for our politically and ideologically riven nation. Roberts explained the role of a judge as like an umpire in a baseball game. The umpire is supposed to call balls and strikes and fairly and objectively apply the rules of the game. The umpire is not supposed to get in the game and play for one team or another, whatever his personal "empathies" might be. This immediately calmed the nomination atmosphere, as the entire nation, including liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, seemed to join in saying "Amen," that is exactly what a judge is supposed to do.