Today the New Nixon Blog, a project of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation, ran an op-ed from me regarding President Nixon’s approach to health care. Liberals have claimed Nixon’s imprimatur for ObamaCare, and I point out that in 1994 he was staunchly opposed to Clinton Care.
Thanks to the New Nixonites for posting it and National Review’s The Corner for linking to it.
Late last week, Prof. Rob Vischer from the Univ. of St. Thomas School of Law posted his forthcoming essay on the application of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2004 statement “Catholics in Political Life” to honors conferred by Catholic law schools. The Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy will print later this spring my article dealing with the same topic.
The next day, Georgetown University Law Center inaugurated its new endowed Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., Professorship, initially held by Prof. William Lazurus. Several years ago, GULC launched the Robert F. Drinan, S.J., Chair in Human Rights.
If “Catholics in Political Life” were required reading in a class on Catholic legal thought, the Brennan Professorship could make for an interesting final exam question: does the Conference’s guidance in CPL apply to dead people?
A good essay response would walk through the text of the USCCB’s statement: “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”
Georgetown University is a Catholic institution. Naming a professorship for a well-known public figure is an honor, whether or not conferred posthumously. Legislating abortion rights from the bench or supporting them in Congress violates fundamental Catholic and natural law moral principles. And although most honors are given to living people, the concepts of “honors” or “awards” and “those who violate” have no requirement based on the presence of a pulse
(President Obama has recently awarded both the Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom to deceased recipients).
Moreover, named professorships are just as susceptible to the “scandal” that this provision of CPL seeks to prevent. CPL’s goal is to stop Catholic institutions from placing the imprimatur of the Church on public figures in a way that legitimizes or excuses their wrong public conduct in the minds of the participants in the institution (in this case, especially students) and the community at large. Naming a chair for Justice Brennan or Fr. Drinan communicates
to students, faculty, alumni, and current public officials that morally wrong public decision-making on life issues is really no big deal – it’s just something we disagree on, but not something so significant that it affects our overall evaluation of a public career. To steal a line from another area of this debate, such an award says, “We’re personally opposed, but we don’t want to impose our morality on you by denying you this award you otherwise deserve.” But, for reasons
ably explained many times before on this blog, abortion IS a really big deal, a huge deal, and one that significantly shapes our evaluation of a person’s public service.
Thus, looking at both the words of and intent behind CPL, it should apply to a university chair named for a public figure when that person’s public work violates our fundamental moral principles.
Today’s WisOpinion column by the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin prompted me to go back on Wisconsin Eye (an excellent resource for lawyers) to the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s hearing on the League’s recusal rule petition. Read the rest of this entry »
When given the option (in this case the “public option” of socialized healthcare) people will ultimately pursue the best care. In the case of the Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams, that means getting away from Canada’s socialized system to be cared for in the US, where we have a private system that provides the highest quality of care in the world.
Academics and liberals can argue all they want, the experience and preference of the American people has been conveyed through the polls, the election of Senator Scott Brown and the President’s approval rating. It seems that now even an elected Canadian is weighing in on the matter, and it’s a strong show of support for the private sector.
Here is a quick excerpt on the matter from Wisconsin Senate Candidate, Terrance Wall (Original National Post Story, Big Government covered it as well):
“There is only one place in the world where it’s safe to be sick and that’s right here in America,” Wall said, “It’s clear that if they had a choice, Canadians would rather have the health care we enjoy here and not the government controlled system Russ Feingold supports.”
Don’t forget Sen.Russ Feingold’s ultimate goal:
Tags: healthcare, Russ Feingold, Terrance Wall
Just a month ago, I critiqued the Capital Times’ flawed reporting on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The Cap Times does it again with today’s column by editor emeritus Dave Zweifel on former Justice Louis Butler’s nomination to the U.S. District Court.
In his column, Zweifel decries the “savagery” and “attacks” directed at Justice Butler, the “confirmation hell” that he has been forced to endure, the “misinformation and slimy attacks” he’s been subjected to during the confirmation process.
This argument has two flaws. First, it is wrong on the facts. This confirmation process has not been hellish, slimy, or savage, and the information has been accurate and on target. Objections raised by conservatives inside and outside the US Senate have focused entirely on Justice Butler’s public record, especially from his tenure on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. They have not been nasty or savage – they have been a specific critique of his public record and decisions.
Second, throughout the column decrying these allegedly nasty attacks he levels various epithets at conservatives: “far out,” “right-wing,” “made a fortune publishing the books of right-wingers,” “small-minded.”
Zweifel ends his column by saying, “It’s time the Senate Democrats call these people out.” Incidentally, this is the second time I’ve had to call Zweifel out for failing to practice the same civility he advocates.
Jobs Created/Saved
All too often now, we await breathlessly the next month’s job creation/job loss number on the new or in the paper. Heck, our President claims to save or create jobs (with our tax dollars mind you) but, when it comes down to those numbers are meaningless. They used to mean something, when the government wasn’t such a trillion-dollar player in the economy thanks to the Democrat’s stimulus bill but, now jobs are created by the government at the cost of $134k a pop for “green energy” jobs or even more for some of the new Healthcare bureaucracies!
When the government creates jobs, most of them don’t add value, they manage paper, decide how to spend money, service taxpayers and generally are administrative dead weight that would be unnecessary if our government was much smaller and limited in the way our founding fathers meant it to be.
So here is what I would like to see from the Department of Labor:
Public Jobs Created/Lost - The number of jobs lost, created or saved in the government or with taxpayer funds
Private Jobs Created/Lost – The number of jobs lost, created or saved in the private sector as a result of better business, more innovative products and American ingenuity.
GDP
I am going to hand this first part of this assessment off to the economist Capitian Capitalism:
“Understand the goal of economics is NOT to increase GDP, but rather to increase standards of living. We simply USE GDP as a measure of all the goods and services produced within an economy, ASSUMING those goods and services when consumed help increase our standard of living. That by eating the grapes we produce and watching the movies we produce, we get utility from that, enjoyment from it, and therefore we enjoy our lives more, thus increased standards of living.
This is a logical assumption in that typically, TYPICALLY, we produce what we want to consume. We produce things that are only going to benefit us. Nobody produces ebola for consumption on account that why would we? Nobody produces styrafoam dogs. Nor do we make our roads out of cake. It not only would not benefit us, it just plain doesn’t make sense.
However, this assumes an INCREDIBLY important assumption about how we go and produce things. We ASSUME that the free market is going to be in charge of what is produced. We assume that a free people, in control of their own money, is going to decide how many Big Macs we should make, how many I-Pods we should produce and how much sushi we should make. But what if this assumption is faulty?
The reason why it is faulty is the progressively less and less money is being spent by the people. A higher and higher percentage of our economy is being spent by the government. Going from essentially 3% of GDP in 1900 to 46% today.
…
GDP = Private Consumption + Government SPending + Investment +/-Trade Balance
it is a mathematical fact that these government spending plans will increase GDP, however they won’t increase standards of living simply because NO UTILITY IS BEING DERIVED FROM IT.”
So again, I would like to see a real metric with Government Spending removed from the equation above to truly understand our economic trend.
I doubt I will see these distinctions drawn on the nightly news anytime soon however.
The recusal motions filed against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, and the public discussion surrounding them, consistently make two significant stretches in the argument. A recent Wisconsin Law Journal commentary by TJ Perlick-Molinari, a Milwaukee attorney and State Bar governor, commits both.
The first big assumption is that every word said by an attorney automatically and verbatim represents the exact personal thoughts of the client. The Rules of Professional Conduct state that an attorney’s representation of a client does not constitute an endorsement of the client’s “views or activities” (SCR 20:1.2(b)). In a similar way, an attorney’s unscripted response to a reporter’s question should not be treated as though it came from the mouth of the attorney’s client as an exact representation of his personal thoughts on the matter. Justice Gableman has an extensive record of published opinions and statements made as a trial judge, statewide candidate, and justice that presents a far better reflection of his thinking than an unscripted answer to a reporter from his attorney.
Atty. Perlick-Molinari baldly asserts that the Justice has “an obvious and disgusting disdain for an entire group of litigants,” and assumes a negative answer to the question whether the Justice can be “fair” with such an attitude. Atty. Perlick-Molinari’s factual basis for this claim is a single word in quote marks five paragraphs earlier, taken from an unscripted response made by the Justice’s attorney to a question from a reporter. Although Atty. Perlick-Molinari says he is “not trying to take a political potshot [or] make a personal attack on the Justice,” he is making a very personal, judgmental, and aggressive claim based on very flimsy justification in the record.
The second pervasive assumption is that conservatives’ criticism targets the criminal defense bar for exploiting so-called loopholes. Admittedly, the television ad at issue in the WJC complaint focuses on then-Attorney Butler’s representation of a criminal defendant. However, the ad played into a much larger campaign theme focused on Justice Butler’s criminal justice decisions on the bench. The problem, in my book, lies with judges who create loopholes by twisting text, precedent, legislative history, social science, etc. Justice Butler, in decisions like Knapp, Dubose, Trujillo, McGrew, Shomberg, Johnson, and In re Jerrell CJ, reached beyond the relevant law (or dissented saying he would have) and created more expansive rights for criminal defendants. These decisions are a legitimate source of concern and complaint, and they are the primary target of criticism from conservatives.
The Madison Capital Times posted a piece this morning going after the four conservatives on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Readers of GOP3.com may be interested in my post, “Accurate & Balanced Reporting on the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” critiquing the story, now available on the Marquette University Law School faculty blog.
This Weeks Post Was Suggested & Written By Greta
This week’s Wednesday Hero is both an individual, and a group. The group we honor are the milblogs: the military blogs, spouse blogs, and support blogs who bring you the news and information you can get nowhere else. The information and news that matter to you. The individual we honor today is C. J. Grisham.
Army Master Sgt. C. J. Grisham has always led from the front, from combat that Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Military
The citizens of Wisconsin are already getting the small government message across to their legislators for 2010. The Wisconsin Grandsons for Liberty will be promoting smaller government in Madison Monday, the 23rd. Here is the run down if you would like to join them:
“On this single day, citizens from Ohio to Texas will take a unified stand against big government. Here in Wisconsin, we’ll respectfully take the battle for our families and businesses inside the Capitol in Madison.
Come join us in Madison at the Capitol to send a message to our legislators.
In 2010, the People of Wisconsin will vote for principle over party. We will seek to elect those ready to help us turn back the tide of big government, unaffordable entitlement programs, out-of-control spending, and over-taxation. We will work to unseat any incumbents who do not share this vision. We will take this state back.”
For more information, check out their site.
Tags: free markets, liberty, smaller goverment
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