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~ Featuring ~  
SCOTUS and Fouled-Up Free Speech
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John J. Bastiat  
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What “Yes” With Iran Looks Like
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fdd.org } ~ Even amidst a flurry of press reporting about U.S. military deployments to the Persian Gulf, President Donald Trump appears to remain committed to negotiations for a new deal with Iran... But what should the contours of such an agreement be, and how should the U.S. conduct diplomacy with the Islamic Republic? This memorandum aims to provide a crash course in such diplomacy, focusing on how to address Iranian intentions, strategies, and capabilities.   Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Tehran has attacked the United States directly and indirectly, created and generously funded radical Islamic groups, developed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) into an expeditionary military force, and, in a multitude of other ways, undercut U.S. interests and allied security in the Middle East. The clerical regime has persevered in its ambitions even when Washington has marshaled considerable political, economic, and military resources against it. The impact of sanctions must be massive to force the regime into a comprehensive agreement that rolls back Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs, as well their foreign interventions. Such an agreement would have to release pressure slowly or risk Iranian recidivism. Washington should avoid at all costs any immediate sanctions relief early in negotiations – the scumbag/liar-nObama administration released $7 billion with the interim nuclear deal in November 2013 – since the White House must retain maximum leverage against the Islamic Republic throughout the talks. Furthermore, any negotiations that split the nuclear question from the regime’s regional ambitions would repeat an even larger mistake made by the previous administration. As it did under scumbag/liar-nObama, a nuclear-only agreement would give a green light to the Islamic Republic’s hegemonic aspirations, encourage the clerical regime to continue its mission to radicalize and dominate Arab Shiites, and suggest to Sunni Arab states that the United States has no real intention to counter Tehran. The more ardent supporters of the nuclear deal have understandably tried to recast the Islamic Republic as a tolerable, not particularly threatening “bad actor” in the Middle East – one certainly less troublesome than Saudi Arabia. The Islamic Republic’s revolutionary ideology and intentions – including its extraordinary success in organizing foreign Shiite militias under its command – are inevitably downplayed. Revisionist powers, let alone those motivated by a revolutionary religious ideology, do not pull back the limes of empire and influence unless troubles at home or a countervailing force abroad oblige them to do so. Any American administration attempting to negotiate with Iran would therefore have to push the clerical regime to the edge of collapse before the ruling clergy and the IRGC, who have overseen the nuclear advance, would contemplate abandoning a program backed consistently and ardently by all the factions of the ruling elite. A historical parallel: Only when Iran’s military forces were cracking and fleeing, and when the revolutionary clergy realized that a collapse on the front lines might topple the Islamic Republic, did the first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, seek to end the Iran-Iraq War. The importance of the nuclear program to the Islamic Republic is probably similar to the importance that the ruling clergy attached to the campaign against Saddam Hussein...
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SCOTUS Loses Its Census over Citizenship
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americanthinker.com } ~ Supreme Court Justice John Roberts may go down in judicial history as the worst Republican SCOTUS pick ever... The man who found scumbag/liar-nObamaCare constitutional by inventing the fiction that it was a tax has joined the court’s four liberals to block a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, not because it is unconstitutional, but rather because he didn’t like the Trump administration’s reasons for asking for it. The man who supervises the FISA Court, which blindly accepted every lie and fake document the scumbag/liar-nObama FBI and DoJ put before it to justify the deep state coup against the Trump presidency, says the reasons Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross presented for requesting its inclusion, well, didn’t smell right. As the New York Times reported: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said the explanation offered by the Trump administration for adding the question “appears to have been contrived.”… “The secretary,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “was determined to reinstate a citizenship question from the time he entered office; instructed his staff to make it happen; waited while commerce officials explored whether another agency would request census-based citizenship data; subsequently contacted the attorney general himself to ask if D.O.J. would make the request; and adopted the Voting Rights Act rationale late in the process.”  “Altogether,” the chief justice wrote, “the evidence tells a story that does not match the explanation the secretary gave for his decision.” So bleepin’ what? The question before the Court is whether adding the question to the Census form was constitutional or not and certainly whatever reason Ross gave made more sense than your reason, Justice Roberts, for calling scumbag/liar-nObamaCare a tax. How about the reason that the federal government has asked its, dare we use the word, citizens the question before. The Supreme Court is a great admirer of precedent, is it not, As Breitbart News notes...  https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/06/scotus_loses_its_census_over_citizenship.html  
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Every Dem Says Illegal Immigrants 
Should Get Health Insurance
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By Amber Athey
dailycaller.com } ~ Every single Democratic presidential candidate on stage Thursday night during the second round of debates said... that illegal immigrants should get government health insurance. The collective group of ten candidates was asked if “undocumented immigrants” deserve health coverage paid for by the American taxpayer. “A lot of you have been talking about government health care plans you proposed in one form or another. This is a show of hands question and hold them up so people can see. Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants,” moderator Savannah Guthrie asked. All ten candidates raised their hands in support of the proposal. Vermont Sen. commie-Bernie Sanders previously said that his “Medicare for All” plan would cover the approximately 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States.  commie-Sanders’s health care plan would reportedly cost trillions of dollars over the course of a decade.  The first three Democratic candidates who spoke at the second night of the Democratic debates on Thursday night admitted that they would raise taxes on Americans to pay for their government proposals.  President Donald Trump reacted to the moment on Twitter, writing, “All Democrats just raised their hands for giving millions of illegal aliens unlimited healthcare. How about taking care of American Citizens first!? That’s the end of that race!”  They are all idiots and  fools to think we all agree on this issue.
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scumbag liar-Jerry Nadler Represents A District Gerrymandered To Capture White Voters
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{thefederalist.com} ~ In a strong blow for freedom, yesterday the Supreme Court ruled that the judicial branch of government does not have authority to curtail partisan districting, otherwise known as gerrymandering... From the progressive position, or so they claim, this decision is a conservative affront to democracy itself. But what if one of the most prominent liberal Democrats in House of Representatives is the beneficiary of a serpentine, racially motivated case of gerrymandering First, let’s have a word about gerrymandering in general. How political districts are formed is clearly a political decision. We should have far more trust in the person who admits this than in the person who claims to have some nonpartisan “fair” way to create districts. These well-intentioned souls never seem to notice that they too are political creatures. They too, are advocating a kind of ideology. In a strong blow for freedom, yesterday the Supreme Court ruled that the judicial branch of government does not have authority to curtail partisan districting, otherwise known as gerrymandering. From the progressive position, or so they claim, this decision is a conservative affront to democracy itself. But what if one of the most prominent liberal Democrats in House of Representatives is the beneficiary of a serpentine, racially motivated case of gerrymandering? First, let’s have a word about gerrymandering in general. How political districts are formed is clearly a political decision. We should have far more trust in the person who admits this than in the person who claims to have some nonpartisan “fair” way to create districts. These well-intentioned souls never seem to notice that they too are political creatures. They too, are advocating a kind of ideology. It starts in Southern Brooklyn, in a mostly white Democratic neighborhood called Bensonhurst, then  dances a slender line through more conservative Bay Ridge, then up the mostly white Democrat Brooklyn coast of the East River, skips Chinatown to capture the Financial District, Chelsea, and the Upper West Side — all enclaves of, you guessed it, mostly white Democrats. To pretend that something other than “Let’s give scumbag liar-Nadler a district full of white Democrats” is going on strains credulity. Even scumbag liar-Nadler  would be hard pressed to explain how this coincidence happened. So let’s stop playing games. Politics is politics; it’s hard-nosed and scruffy. Both sides have always used this tool, and there’s only been one civil war. In cases where it can be proven that bias played a part in districting, we need to take a long, hard look at it. But again, no reasonable person can conclude that scumbag liar-Nadler’s district is composed of anything but a racial preference, assuming whites have a bias towards a white candidate. And what other groups might be harmed by giving scumbag liar-Nadler such a white district — if the white vote were more diffuse, would it help non-white candidates, even if it harmed scumbag liar-Nadler?...  https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/28/jerry-nadler-represents-a-district-gerrymandered-to-capture-white-voters/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=90116c23cc-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-90116c23cc-83771801  
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Amash splits with Republicans, votes to
authorize subpoena for Kellyanne Conway
By Olivia Beavers
thehill.com } ~ GOP Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.) broke with House Republicans on Wednesday by voting to authorize a subpoena for Kellyanne Conway... saying lawmakers should hear from the White House counselor about her response to allegations that she repeatedly violated the Hatch Act. The House Oversight and Reform Committee voted 25-16 to compel Conway's testimony after she did not appear voluntarily at a hearing focused on her repeated alleged violations of the law, which bars federal officials from using their position to influence elections. Amash was the only Republican to join Democrats in voting to approve the subpoena. The Michigan Republican, a vocal critic of President Trump, had drawn the ire of the White House last month after calling for the president's impeachment. "With respect to the vote, the point is not whether she is violating the Hatch Act or not, it is whether she should comply with the subpoena," Amash told reporters leaving the committee room. "But we should have brought her in and had an  opportunity to ask her about the Hatch Act and to make her case for why she thinks she is complying with it," he added. Earlier this month, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) sent a report to President Trump that said Conway repeatedly violated the Hatch Act by discussing Democratic presidential candidates while appearing as a White House official for television interviews. And when Democrats sought to hear from the top staffer, the White House intervened, blocking Conway from appearing for public testimony on Wednesday and citing a "long-standing precedent" in which presidential administrations decline requests to have presidential advisers give congressional testimony...  https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/450440-amash-splits-with-republicans-votes-to-authorize-subpoena-for  
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SCOTUS and Fouled-Up Free Speech
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John J. Bastiat:  This week the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) rendered yet another smackdown to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), ruling it cannot censor trademarks it views as “immoral or scandalous” — whatever that is. Joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, Justice Elena Kagan delivered the Court’s opinion, stating, “The First Amendment does not allow the government to penalize views just because many people, whether rightly or wrongly, see them as offensive.” This, after rendering a related opinion two years ago striking down a similar USPTO ban on “disparaging” trademarks — whatever those are. And therein lies the problem.

“Free speech”, by definition is, well, free. Our Constitution has been gerrymandered no small amount by carve-outs to “free” speech, each of which permit a license to the government to censor certain speech by calling it, effectively, “not ‘free speech.’” In legal jargon, such utterances and expressions are said to be “unprotected” — unprotected, that is, by the U.S. Constitution. Of course, the Constitution itself is utterly silent on the issue of “unprotected” speech, simply stating, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech…” But the courts have certainly not been so silent.

Thus, “obscenity,” “fighting words,” “fraudulent misrepresentation,” “advocacy of imminent lawless behavior,” and “defamation” over the years have been judicially morphed into “unprotected” speech. Perhaps there’s a place for such “aardvark” speech categories. Perhaps. The real problem manifests itself, though, when government agencies hold the hammer on what-is-and-what-is-not “free speech.” That’s when human-in-the-loop problems — biases, errors in judgment, and outright maliciousness — arise. Fortunately, the Court is now attempting to put the genie at least partially back in the bottle, holding that it is not the role of the USTPO to “deem” which images or words are “immoral” or “scandalous.” In the instant case the USPTO had refused registration of the acronym formed from the words, “Friends U Can’t Trust.” Yes, we know what it spells and sounds like — puhleaze: Tack on “Up” after it and you’re left with our opinion of the acronym itself. That said, as to the right to such a trademark, that’s a different story.

Though all nine justices agreed on striking down the USPTO’s ban on “immoral” trademarks, three — Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor — disagreed with the decision as to “scandalous” trademarks, believing such a designation could serve a “legitimate purpose” in barring “vulgarity and profanity.” Again: “Maybe.” But is it really the USPTO’s job to parse through the muck of what is and isn’t “scandalous”? Isn’t this the same kind of reasoning that attempted to ban the Washington Redskins’ trademark as well as the Asian-American band called the “Slants”? Where does such reasoning stop?

Attempts to define any of those terms — “scandalous,” “vulgarity,” and “profanity” — are a lot easier said than done, by the way: Over half a century of all-over-the-map jurisprudence in the gooey mess that is “free speech” amply bears this fact out, and can be found through a simple Internet search on the topic.

Notwithstanding our own opinion of the asinine trademark sought in this landmark case, we wholeheartedly agree with the Court’s nine-zip opinion, which effectively evicts the USPTO from its increasingly censorious “Morality Police” throne. In a free society, being occasionally offended is the price we all pay for being able to say what we want — through words, expressions, or even trademarks — without fear of “groupthink” censoring on the part of the anointed-few holding positions of government power. With this week’s decision, SCOTUS echoes that sentiment and gets the USPTO out of the censor business.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/63889?mailing_id=4361&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4361&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

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