Comment on Facebook,Wretchard T. Cat: Jennifer Rubin on Twitter

https://twitter.com/JRubinBlogger/status/1104891988799819776?fbclid=IwAR0Q9WbYzuhH-Fen6-CXaFQM1jNVxOwXCmZVE7Hl8I_AE-TGSZAmPBC5FTA

On the face of it Cheney is as the Old Left put it in the days of Lillian Hellman "Objectively correct." Jennifer Rubin is very sad and I think very sick. Her disgrace is worse I think than that of Max Boot, who was just a clever young man on the make carving out a niche as a policy publicist and as such of not more import than someone who found himself working for JJ Hunsecker. While I may be wrong in thinking there is a distinction Rubin was a successful lawyer and then chose to become a conservative opinion writer and activist. Her turn since 2016, along with that of Podhoretz and the rest of the Commentary crew, is more extreme and shocking I think than that of the National Review group. Does she self medicate? How can she look at what she has stood for and then see the people she is aligned with now?

Jennifer Rubin's argument against Liz Cheney speaking up for the Jews is particularly inapt because the problem is, as I noted on an earlier post of my own, that Pelosi and her Whip are purporting to sit in judgment on what may be considered offensive to Jews. So we have a White Gentile Pelosi and a Black Gentile Clyburn telling Jews that they have no agency to criticize Omar's antisemitism because Omar's personal experience is more important than the historical experience of Jews. Cheney, a White Gentile, objects, since Jews are no less entitled to have bigotry directed at them responded to than are members of any other identity group, such as Blacks or Gays, who when attacked have received personal and direct support including the punishment by name of Congressman King. Rubin, a Jew, then attacks Cheney for defending Jews as being entitled to the same protection as everyone else.

As additional icing on this cake, Omar after her initial antisemitic statement, which resulted in the watered down House resolution in favor of Mom and Apple pie, doubled down and accused Jews of identifying more with a foreign community than America. Omar herself had no interaction to speak of or cause for grievance against Jews before coming to America that could be found in the personal experience that Congressman Clyburn, who has supported Israel in the past, referred to as more important than the Jewish experience of antisemitism. Her personal experience in Somalia was of being forced to become a refugee when Islamist extremists destroyed her homeland. What she has is a grievance based on her shared sense of identity with a foreign community that claims a grievance against a Jewish community.

Let me say this again slowly. Omar identifies with a foreign community based on a common religion and because of that she attacks native born American Jews and in a case of Projection accuses the Jews of being more loyal to a foreign community than they are to America. Pelosi and Clyburn say that Omar does not have to be held personally accountable for that, even though in far less clear cases other people have been. Cheney objects to Pelosi and Clyburn covering for Omar. Rubin then attacks Cheney.

Boot Self-Boots

Some years ago when I met him Boot seemed reasonably bright as a Policy Populist. Not someone likely to find himself on tenure track at a good school but more likely to be a success in journalism or as a Deputy Assistant Under Secretary in a GOP administration, with some possibility of moving up. Then he hitched himself to Jeb!! He wasn't alone in being part of that trainwreck, and he could have even made himself look good coming out of it. Instead he alternately lashed out at Trump, insulted the voters, begged Trump for a job in the most condescending way possible (which crossed the line for me), and then doubled down on increasingly incoherent insanity. If anyone knows him and cares, I do think that he needs help. He did did block me on Facebook but I still get his spam-mail. Perhaps over the year that costs him the price of 10 kilowatt seconds. Max Boot's descent and rejection of his former supporters reminds me of when Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs turned into a wererabbit and dived down a hole.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/08/max-boot-bye-bye/?fbclid=IwAR0G-4XGjD7ifYKaZtTrMrQgRaR16hoOUJxg8jGsR9NjX5QajAqJ7f7KbJE

Comment on "Powerline Blog""The Supreme Court as House of Lords"

Before Gorsuch was nominated I suggested at least discussing using the GOP majority to not increase but to reduce the size of the Supreme Court. The Justices of the SCOTUS and every other judicial or executive office only exist by Act of Congress. What Congress creates the Congress can abolish. The only exception is the office of the Chief Justice, which is created by the Constitution. If Congress had reduced the court to 7 members that would have fired Kagan and Sotomayor. The next day the Congress could have passed a new Act expanding the court and creating new offices for the POTUS to fill.

The way to depoliticize the courts is to transfer the power of Judicial Review, which is a political power, to a political body. The Electoral College as a body appointed by the state legislatures could serve that function, after the Judiciary suspends a law for a set period to afford time for such review. Also there is no way to check or override a court ruling rejecting an Act of Congress, because that power of a judicial veto was never in the Constitution to begin with. It is in the Constitution that Congress can override a veto by the POTUS. Congress needs the ability with a supermajority to override a court ruling.