The Coelacanth has a story to tell ...

A dead fish tells no tales -- unless it's extant after 100 million years.

The comments are gone, but the truth remains. Just like the Coelacanth. In reply to Marovus:

If intentionally breeding for diversity results in animals of the same species, then how can random genetic mutations create innumerable species from a first "miraculous" cell? The truth is that a quadrillion years isn't enough time for the impossible to happen. And if you disagree, then show us your evidence that those mutations which usually harm or kill an organism can create newer and more complex genetic program, structure, and function. You can't.

Consider the coelacanth, a fish of which we have fossilized remains dating back 100 million years (allegedly); it's still caught today. If a fish is basically unchanged after 100 million years, then how can Man have evolved from some ape-type creature only a million years ago? All of human experience shows that Life arises from only the same kind of Life (and its programs). You have literally no evidence for your creation myth.

 And that's why Darwinism isn't Science; it's science fiction.

The convergence of global totalitarianism -- a murderers' row of hateful ideologies

The Apostles believed that Christ's return was imminent, and every day we get one day closer to it. The convergence of global totalitarianism -- Islam, Marxism/Communism/Socialism, and Nazism -- certainly fits the Biblical description of those ungodly forces at war against the Son of God and His Bride, the Church.

It's nothing new. And we know Who wins.

From here.

The genocidal pedophile Muhammad brought total war to the non-Muslim world 1400 years ago, and his followers have been doing the best they can to emulate his example as their knowledge, resources, opportunities, and zeal have allowed.

(There may be decent, honorable people who identify as Muslim, but Islam as Muhammad preached and practiced it can never be either.)

Following Muhammad's example, Iran's government -- not the people, who for the most part are just like us -- has been at war with us for 50 years. Over that time, Iran's trained for, funded, and carried out attacks against thousands of Americans, regularly chant "Death to America!" and were closer than ever to possessing nuclear weapons (which we know for a fact because Iran's Sunni neighbors have been so desperate to keep Shiite Iran from having those cataclysmic devices that they've been willing to cooperate -- at least superficially -- with the "Great Satan," as Iran affectionately refers to us).

As for Trump? He opposed Epstein long before it was fashionable and helped law enforcement against him. And even though Epstein hated him, he never implicated Trump in his crimes.

How can your perception be so far from reality? Are you a Nazi, Muslim, true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool Marxist, or just a God-hating Useful Idiot brainwashed by his teachers? Your hatred isn't a family tradition, is it?

Whatever the case may be, I encourage you to ignore the demons whispering in your ear. Find the truth, and bring your perception in line with it.

There can be no reconciliation between Christianity and "Evolution," because there can be no peace between fact and fiction.

"fear and trembling [...] emotional and religious tensions [...] understand the science of evolution while retaining - even bolstering their faith."

This viewpoint assumes that there is a contradiction between the Christian faith and Science. There is not. Christianity is founded on historical fact (including eyewitness testimony); Science is founded on empiricism, direct observation. The Creator of the universe is coherent and honest and knows how He made everything that exists, so what we observe in Nature will accord with what He has revealed in Scripture.

What do we observe in Nature? Life arises from only the same kind of Life (or its programs) and never from non-life. Random, natural mutations act within the limits set by an organism's genetic code and never result in newer and more complex genetic program, structure, and function. Cells, the basic units of Life, arise from only other cells. And program comes only from programmers (or their programs).

Whom do these facts better support, Moses or Darwin?

Ask Stanley Miller and Harold Urey; for all their efforts to show that Darwin's creation theory was even possible, nothing. And Richard Lenski? After decades and thousands of generations, his bacteria were still just bacteria.

"Evolution" is nothing more than atheistic naturalism, a "religious" opinion (in the most anti-empirical sense of the word). It's Gaia in a lab coat. Not Science but science fiction.

From here.

The Theft of the American Birthright: Notes on 2000 Mules

2000 Mules

Chief Justice Roberts in a 2018 opinion: “When the Government tracks the location of a cell phone, it achieves near perfect surveillance as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone’s user.”

Businesses buy geotracking data. Military, intelligence, law enforcement use it. J6ers were tracked preemptively.

What criteria was used to identify mules? The person’s geolocation data had to show them traveling between 10 or more drop boxes and 5 or more Democrat non-profits.

The researchers refer to "unique visits inside of a space." Nowhere does the film say within “100 feet” of a dropbox. Geotracking is precise.

Latitude, longitude, elevation, and time. Examined data from October 1st through the November 2020 election (and to January 6th in Georgia).

In Atlanta were 309 drop boxes. They were geofenced. Researchers ensured avoiding false positives by looking for aberrant patterns.

In Atlanta, 242 people went to an average of 24 drop boxes and 8 left-wing organizations during the two-week period. Of those 242 Atlanta mules, 67 were in the riots. Probably not Trump supporters.

29:30: “How do you know that … big family … this person didn’t just work …?” etc. Answer? The additive elements: Going to the non-profit, identifying a pattern of approach to the drop box, going not past but directly to a drop box, then to other drop boxes, 2 AM visits.

30:09 A pattern of life rather than a spreadsheet of numbers. One in Georgia: 28 drop boxes and 5 organizations in one day.

32:48 Philadelphia: 1100+ mules, close to 50 drop boxes each. “We’re saying someone should investigate.”

Validated data with Secoriea Turner’s murder.

35:02 “Do you have video evidence?” “Four million minutes of surveillance video around the country.” “Official surveillance video of these mail-in drop boxes?” “Yes.”

From Georgia’s presidential and runoff elections, including “I do not have an explanation I can provide other than they do not exist” from Fulton County. Video turned off for particular drop boxes in Arizona. No video available from Wisconsin.

36:28 Same mule in different locations at different times. Official surveillance video. One box, middle of night. Another box, 1962 ballots, 271 people approached that box in 25-hour period.

Gloves appeared from December 23rd to the runoff. December 22nd, Arizona: Indictments for stuffing ballots based on fingerprints. January 5th, 1:00 AM, out-of-state mule at “dozens” of locations.

55:40 “You’ve got video of the same guy going different places?” “Yes.” One mule across six counties, 27 different drop boxes, 5 organizations, in one night.

Clips shared were examples, not exhaustive. Only official video. Criteria so high that it’s likely many have not been identified.

58:34  Whistleblower hired by National Republican Senatorial Committee to monitor drop boxes in Georgia’s runoff. Backpacks of ballots, plates from out of state, two women with large numbers of ballots confronted whistleblower. NSRC did nothing. Law enforcement did nothing.

1:01:50 San Luis, Arizona. Informant says people paid for ballots. Personally dropped off hundreds. Told to go in the dark to drop box with no cameras. Elections “fixed.” “Mafia.” “You’re gonna end up in the trash can in pieces.”

Trump the racist?

I was sitting in a hotel dining area in Texas eating breakfast when I heard Donald Trump announce on the television behind me his intention to run for the Republican presidential nomination. I knew that when he mentioned illegal immigration, his political opponents -- who knew that they’d be actual enemies? -- would twist his statement into hatred of Mexicans and people of Mexican descent.

He denounced David Duke in the '90s;

He’s repeatedly denounced racial hatred in general and anti-Semitism in particular;

He’s been the best friend Israel’s had in the White House in at least a generation;

It turns out that Mexico also opposes illegal immigration -- when they’re the victims of it; and

Cohen's "racist" has been refuted by Candace Owens and Lynne Patton.

Darwin's Crime Scene Investigators

This is in response to @JaTapps, who dances around Darwin's difficulties like Fred Astaire on Red Bull:

I overestimated you. Considering the limitations of Twitter, I thought that you would be able to address the salient points of your creation myth directly, not run like a coward:

a) You absurdly try to dismiss a perfectly useful English word ("kind") while dancing around your misuse and abuse of "species." (If you must have it translated into your own dialect, then genus or species seem the best fit. Family may or may not be too broad, depending on the family.)

b) When you define all fossils as transitions (including the latest, since everything is always "evolving," right?), then you're not only reading your faith into the facts, but you're sidestepping the issue. Why did Darwin need them? Because you can't get from A to Z without all the letters in-between. He needed proof of Evolution's "failures."

c) The only aspect of macroevolution that really matters in the controversy is simpler forms' "evolving" into newer, more complex forms. All you've got are bacteria to bacteria, mollusks to mollusks, fish to fish, and finches to finches. No one's seen otherwise, ever.

There. That's a tidy summary of your prevarications. Now, back to the original question and its follow-up:

1) Who has seen Life arise apart from the same kind of Life (or its programs)?

2) We've seen Life arise from only the same kind of Life (or its programs). Whom does that support, Moses or Darwin?

And this to a serious offering from @4_site_paradigm, who asks, "can you not investigate a crime scene despite no witnesses? Should we discard the plethora of evidence[?]":

That's a perfectly good question. The problem is not the evidence, but the interpretation. If you approach the scene having determined a priori that it was an accident, then that's what you'll see.

That's fine if it was an accident, but if it was a crime, then you're dead wrong.

You're saying that Life arises apart from the same kind of Life (or its programs). Who's seen that? Ever?

I'm saying that we've only ever seen Life arise from the same kind of Life, etc., which is absolutely true. Dogs from dogs, cats from cats, bacteria from bacteria, coelacanth from coelacanth, finches from finches. Man from Man.

Besides that, the basic unit of Life, the cell, is an incredibly complex Von Neumann-type metabolic machine. Who's ever heard of a machine arising from the muck by accident? And Life's programs, genetic code. In your experience, from where do machines and programs come?

You're discarding the evidence that doesn't suit your creation story.

And this in reply to methos1975, from here:

Comments were closed, so I'll just point out (for now) that you offered nothing that supports your claim that Life arises apart from the same kind of Life (or its programs).

Minor variations within species/genus -- as the organism's pre-existing genetic code allows -- examples of human manipulation of that code and its elements, and assumed descent when all you have are similarities are not evidence of your fundamental truth claim.

In other words, you still haven't answered the questions.

As for the second part of your reply, utter Biblical and historical illiteracy doesn't offer much to work with.

It is telling that you advocate for what no one has ever seen, but reject utterly the eyewitness testimonies of generations.

So much for reason and empiricism.

Notes on Trump

From here:

Unity. It does not mean what you think it means. Also ... he offered Ted a home? The Republican party was the home for conservatives long before it was home for preening autocratic, oligarchic, egomaniacal, orange-skinned, small-handed, big-government reality show celebrities, pal.

The Darwinist's blind faith

The foundation of Science is observable fact. That Darwinists must fabricate causal links is an admission that they've got no actual empirical evidence on which to base their religion.

Darwinists condemn what they insinuate is a religious zealot's making things up to fit his worldview, but when they themselves do it, it's called "Science." For anyone else, it's to the Inquisitor!

From here:

Interestingly, some defenders of dinosaur-to-bird evolution discount this evidence against their theory by saying, ‘The proponents of this argument offer no animal whose lungs could have given rise to those in birds, which are extremely complex and are unlike the lungs of any living animal." Of course, only evolutionary faith requires that bird lungs arose from lungs of another animal.

A fraction of a man

"God created man in His own image,

in the image of God He created him;

male and female He created them."

-Genesis 1:27

Offered in response to someone (likely Muslim) defending another tyrant's suggestion that women should surrender their God-given liberties in order to serve the men who dominate them:

Half a man views women as chattel.

A quarter of a man defends that half a man.

A standard response (and more) to the vulgar and idiotic racists emboldened by Donald Trump

The Vile Orange Bigot has coaxed out of the shadows a lot of his fellow racist swine. Rather than waste time refuting every attack individually, it seemed prudent to cobble together several responses to their nescience.

Here is a synthesis of several replies to one of these witless worms and his Trump-inspired, profanity-laden cowardice:

Name-calling, character assassination, and bigotry from another racist Democrat.

This isn't elementary school; you're defaming someone you know nothing about, and you're doing it on racial grounds. Are you always such a lying, vulgar idiot? You see my nom de guerre and assume that you know something about me.

If you weren't such an historically-illiterate coward, then you would know that Santiago Matamoros is a first-century Jew, an Apostle. Saint James the Moor-slayer, the patron saint of Spain during its eight-hundred-year Reconquista to free itself from Islamic tyranny.

But you don't care about facts. It's not up to a Trump supporter to know anything about the things on which he comments. Just like your candidate -- who has already promised touch-back amnesty and negotiations on deportation, credulous loser -- you attack first and think after, if at all.

How does it feel to make Obama supporters look informed, patriotic, and noble?

Crawl back under the liberal rock from which you slithered, vulgar wretch.

Here's a recent head-shot that found its mark:

What's in a name, illiterate racist?

Trump says that he loves the ignorant.

You must be his favorite.

And another:

Wonderful! Another vile, racist Democrat.

Facts are "stupid" only to tyrants and slaves, and your red-faced, orange-haired buffoon has certainly clowned you.

As for your idiotic and bigoted smear, if you had any integrity, any historical literacy, any dignity at all, then you would know that my nom de guerre belongs to a first-century Jew, one of Christ's Apostles, the patron saint of Spain's eight-hundred-year war to free itself from Islamic tyranny.

You're such an ignorant coward. You deserve Trump.

And another:

How can a first-century saint be "illegal," nescient?

You're a credit to your candidate, illiterate racist.

And another:

Inapt, clumsy, and nescient.

Try again, racist Democrat.

And another:

So, you're just another historically-illiterate and racist Democrat. You know literally nothing about either Santiago Matamoros or me.

Can you be any more nescient?

And another:

The ignorant racists are oozing out of the woodwork, aren't they?

You know, if you had any intellectual integrity, historical literacy, or basic human decency, then you'd have saved yourself the embarrassment of exposing your bigotry over a nom de guerre honoring the patron saint of Spain's eight-hundred-year Reconquista to free itself from Islamic oppression.

But not you. Attack however stupidly whomever points out that you're being played for a fool by the other pathologically-lying liberal from New York.

Donald Trump is a Trojan horse and the embodiment of every absurd lie that liberals tell about Conservatives

Donald Trump is a RINO who will say anything, no matter how shameful, in order to win. He's the other lying liberal from New York, he's broken every promise made to his constituents, and he is a fraud completely unfit to serve as president.

If Trump were only a petty, bitter, pathetic, vile, little man who fears and loathes women, then there might be something to work with there. (His wife's public criticism of his craven personal attacks offers some hope for him). But Donald Trump is much more than just a red-faced, orange-haired blowhard.

Donald Trump is a fundamentally dishonest liberal whose "conversion" is not only conveniently recent but obviously feigned; Trump has already promised his support for nearly every item on a liberal's Festivus list, including: touch-back amnesty, declaring that "hopefully they all come back"; negotiations on deportation and not the enforcement of existing law; socialized medicine more absolute than Barack Obama's; more funding for Planned Parenthood, despite their mass slaughtering of innocents -- the literal poisoning, burning, crushing, and tearing apart of babies -- and then selling their remains; presidential edicts; one-bathroom-for-all; modifications of the Republican position against abortion; and punitive taxation and regulation for businesses that refuse to obey his orders.

Add to that his longtime funding of and praise for liberals (when Ted Cruz was opposing statists on both sides of the aisle in defense of the Constitution and the American people, Donald Trump was still buying politicians, including candidates opposed to the Tea Party), his use of Eminent Domain for personal gain (and not the public good), his making his products overseas, his support for increases in H1B visas, and his hiring of foreign workers (legal and illegal) instead of Americans, and Donald Trump is the establishment and everything that he claims to oppose.

The only thing that Trump's said that he seems to really believe is that Islam hates us; tragically, he doesn't know why, and he doesn't care to find out. And not only had he modified his "ban" (it was just a "suggestion"; Orlando's attack reinstated it, apparently), but his "concern" about Islam doesn't prevent him from condemning free people's defying Islamic totalitarianism, as he did with Pamela Geller's "Draw Muhammad" contest.

And after numerous blunders, insults, and flip-flops, Trump's offered something new: where his initial proposal of a wall to secure our borders contained no racist elements, Trump has now attacked a judge on racial grounds.

Besides the lying, bluster, and inconstancy, Trump speaks as if "2 Corinthians" is the opening to a bad joke, and he's being sued for child sex slavery, has lusted after his own daughter (publicly, on at least two occasions), defends rapists, and will engage in any character assassination -- no matter how bizarre, absurd, or crass -- in order to destroy an opponent.

But you can trust Donald Trump. Every version of him. Just ask John Miller ... over a Trump steak ... in the dining hall of Trump University.

Abraham Lincoln. Frederick Douglass. Harriet Tubman. Ronald Reagan. Ted Cruz. Donald Trump is a Trojan horse and the embodiment of every absurd lie that liberals tell about Conservatives (a term that Trump can't even define). He is merely the other side of Hillary's two-headed coin, and he will destroy the Republican Party.

America could have had a Reagan, but because of open primaries, the cult of personality, and Fox News's around-the-clock, slavish promotion of every ridiculous lie that Trump utters, we're stuck with Il Duce versus Kim Jong-Hillary.

Patrick Buchanan misunderstands Islam

Pat Buchanan asks the question,

"Will Europe remain Europe if she is repopulated by Arabs, Muslims, Asians and Africans?"

It looks like Pat instinctively understands that the problem is Islam, but it appears also that he's settled for the common misrepresentation of Islam as a "race."

What color is Islam, again?

Islam is a belief system, one that demands the rape, enslavement, and slaughter of all who refuse the "invitation" to convert. It has devoured civilizations throughout its nearly one and one-half millennia of bloodlust and terror. And Islam's been trying to conquer Europe since its armies first invaded Spain in the west and the Holy Land in the east, only to be stopped and driven back at Tours, Granada, and Vienna.

Jerusalem, Constantinople, and the rest of eastern Christendom were not so fortunate.
Christians from any land can assimilate, since they share the Common Thread that binds all of Western Civilization, but Islam comes only to destroy.

The New York Times tries a new way to tackle the Bill of Rights

In response to another attempt by the depraved and subversive New York Times to usurp our Constitution:

The problems with (il)liberal efforts to curtail or eliminate the ability of American citizens to defend themselves are several:

First, the right to self-defense is a God-given and unalienable right, period. Only tyrants and criminals want the innocent defenseless.  If you're a criminal seeking to harm someone, and you have a choice between two homes -- one in which the residents are armed and one which is defenseless -- which would you choose?

Second, we already have multiple laws forbidding homicide; if mass murderers and other criminals refuse to follow a law as basic as that, what makes you think that they'll obey gun laws? They won't; only the naive and the nescient think otherwise.

Third, you'll never eliminate firearms; if you make them illegal, only the law-abiding will be weaponless; government and criminals will still be fully-armed.

Germany tried that. Communist and Islamic states, too. How does that work out?

Fourth, the president and other elected tyrants who want to take away our ability to defend ourselves would never, ever, under any circumstances give up their armed security (for which we pay). What makes their lives and the lives of their families more valuable than ours?

If Barack Obama wants the nation disarmed, then him first.

Finally, why would you voluntarily give up your right to defend yourself, those whom you love, and your neighbors? And even if you would, why would you use the coercive power of the state to steal away from the rest of us our ability to do so?

How perverse.

There will never be peace in the Middle East nor anywhere that men consider Muhammad a prophet of anything but hell

From The Blaze, by way of Patriot Update, here:

"The religion of peace has morphed into the religion of pieces. Actions speak louder than words. The only reason all of Islam is being blamed is that the overwhelming majority of terrorists on the planet are Muslim and the silence from the Ummah is deafening and damning."

Those who blame Islam on the basis of Muslim atrocities alone are wrong; how many people who claim to be Christian steal, rape, or murder?

The reason Islam can, should, and must be blamed for Islamic terrorism is because it's directly responsible for it -- the genocidal pedophile Muhammad preached and practiced the rape, enslavement, and slaughter of all who refuse the "invitation" to convert.

Islam has never, ever, under any circumstances been a "religion of peace." No major school of Islamic jurisprudence rejects offensive warfare against non-Muslims; the Ahmadiyya, who do oppose such violence, are persecuted by their more orthodox coreligionists even in modern and moderate Islamic states like Indonesia.

Muslims who rape, enslave, and butcher non-Muslims are not "taking passages out of context"; they're doing exactly what Muhammad preached and practiced:

"the Messenger of Allah [...] would say: 'Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war. [...] When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. [...] Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them. [...] If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them [...]'" (Muslim Book 19, Number 4294).

Consider another example of Muhammad's genocidal intolerance, evidence that Islam has never been peaceful and that those who abduct, brutalize, barter, burn, behead, and butcher in Allah's name are doing just what their "religion" commands:

"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter [...]" (Qur'an 5:33).

Islam's great exegete Ibn Kathir explains this verse:

"'Wage war' mentioned here means, oppose and contradict, and it includes disbelief, blocking roads and spreading fear in the fairways. Mischief in the land refers to various types of evil."

So, Muhammad requires execution, crucifixion, or cutting off hands and feet from opposite sides for "disbelief."

(This passage immediately follows one cited often as proof of Islam's tolerance. In fact, Ahmed mentions it: "It says in the Koran killing one person is like killing the whole of humanity.” Tragically, ironically, fiendishly, Qur'an 5:32 is a warning against Jews, whom Muhammad especially hated.)

This is why there will never be peace in the Middle East nor anywhere that men consider Muhammad a prophet of anything but hell.

The "lone wolf" is not alone; he's obeying the "sacred texts" of more than one billion people and a tradition one and one-half millennia old

How many more Americans have to die, how many Yazidi girls have to be gang-raped and sold into slavery, how many more Christians have to have their homes and churches razed and their heads severed before people wake up? Before the nation demands action?

The Muslim "lone wolf" is not alone; he's obeying the "sacred texts" of more than one billion people and a tradition one and one-half millennia old.

Islam kills. It is not a "religion of peace." Except for the Ahmadiyya, who reject offensive warfare against non-Muslims (and are persecuted as heretics by their more orthodox brethren, even in modern and moderate Islamic states like Indonesia), every major school of Islamic jurisprudence endorses the rape, enslavement, and slaughter of all who refuse the "invitation" to convert.

What are our "leaders" doing in our defense? Don't look to media; serious news people scold not the president for giving Iran's nuclear genocide program a greenlight while they still hold Americans hostage, but the sole reporter who dared to ask him about his perfidy. The professional pretenders are no better; the world burns, and Hollywood rises to the defense of ... chickens. And academia is now an indoctrination center for the jihad against Israel.

Our politicians are swelling Muslim ranks in the United States; rather than telling the truth about Islam's war against the West (and humanity, in general), and acting accordingly, they're importing the enemy.

As these "lone wolf" examples show -- how many "lone wolves" does it take before they become a pack? -- the problem is neither ISIS/ISIL/IS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, nor the imam down the street "radicalizing" the impressionable -- they're merely foot soldiers working from the genocidal pedophile Muhammad's playbook.

The problem is Islam.

We need a mass movement, a public revolt, a popular uprising against this treason; our politicians are not just ignoring the problem, they're making it worse. Bush 43 was bad enough: in the most teachable moment in modern history, he called Islam a "great world religion of peace. And Barack Hussein Obama, the (allegedly) former Muslim, has done everything in his power to facilitate the rise of Islamic states throughout the Middle East and Africa, including a nuclear Iran.

There is no negotiation, no "live and let live" with "kill the pagans wherever you find them" (Qur'an 9:5).

Pervasive (il)liberal bias hides the tilt, or When the world's crooked, the straight look biased

I recall speaking with a friend (quite a few years ago) about media bias. He thought that Fox News was slanted to the Right. I shared that Fox News is pretty center of the road; it just looks biased in view of the rest of Media's overwhelming (il)liberal tilt.

Since when is patriotism a partisan issue? How can opposing the burning, crushing, and tearing to pieces of the innocent in the womb by their own mothers be "extreme"? Liberals lock their doors; shouldn't our borders be secure? They arm their security; what makes them and their children more deserving of protection than our own? And how is the self-evident truth that the human body was created for male-female unions suddenly "hate"?

The Left thinks that jihadists merit understanding, inclusion, negotiations, and access to nuclear weapons, but when a member the leftist media asks about American citizens' essential, God-given, unalienable rights?

You should know better.

And the Republicans are useless (or worse), giving the Tyrant-in-Chief everything he wants.

Some good observations on the Left's divine right of kings, from here:

The most maddening aspect of the polarization debate is the hidden presumption of liberalism’s right to rule. Authors such as Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann attribute most of the polarization in Washington to the Republican Party, which they and other observers argue has become too extreme. This will come as news to grassroots conservatives, who overwhelmingly believe that Republicans in the capital haven’t been nearly extreme enough in opposing President Obama’s governmental gigantism. It’s an implausible case, as there is little in conservative ideology today that you can’t find in Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative or in Ronald Reagan’s famous “Time for Choosing” speech of 50 years ago. The difference today is that Republicans have won some landslide elections and lately a majority in Congress, and this galls liberals, whose real answer to polarization is conservatism’s unconditional surrender.

A defense of Liberty in Wisconsin

Democrats will do anything to take, maintain, and increase power. Just ask Barack Obama.

A defense of Americans' rights, from here:

“It is utterly clear that the special prosecutor has employed theories of law that do not exist in order to investigate citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing. In other words, the special prosecutor was the instigator of a ‘perfect storm’ of wrongs that was visited upon the innocent Unnamed Movants and those who dared to associate with them. It is fortunate, indeed, for every other citizen of this great State who is interested in the protection of fundamental liberties that the special prosecutor chose as his targets innocent citizens who had both the will and the means to fight the unlimited resources of an unjust prosecution. Further, these brave individuals played a crucial role in presenting this court with an opportunity to re-endorse its commitment to upholding the fundamental right of each and every citizen to engage in lawful political activity and to do so free from the fear of the tyrannical retribution of arbitrary or capricious governmental prosecution. Let one point be clear: our conclusion today ends this unconstitutional John Doe investigation.”

Parallel cases: Abraham Lincoln and Ted Cruz on judicial supremacy

Another reason to like Ted Cruz: No other presidential candidate has articulated the same basic truth about the Supreme Court's recent dictum in favor of the paraphilia du jour.

When the Supreme Court decides a case, the parties of that case are bound to that decision, as are those in parallel circumstances. But the Court cannot establish law by extending beyond that strict limit whatever "principle" they've suddenly created.

The current struggle between the friends of the Constitution and those who despise it and them will end in one of two places: either the reasonable and the decent will assert themselves and reestablish the rule of law, common sense, and basic decency, or there will be no barriers to any deviant impulse's being enshrined as "law."

From here:

Clearly anyone seeking a same-sex marriage license in a state who was not party to the Obergefell suit falls under what Lincoln would call a “parallel case.” But what about someone who runs to federal court or a state marriage license bureau, and holds up Obergefell’s doctrine of “dignity” on behalf of, say, polygamy? Must the court or marriage license bureau shrug their shoulders and say, “Well—I guess so”?

When Lincoln arrived in the White House in 1861, he found two executive branch decisions to which he objected. A free black man in Boston had applied to the State Department for a passport to travel to France, which the State Department had denied on the ground that the Supreme Court, in Dred Scott, had declared that blacks could not be citizens because blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” And in Philadelphia, a free black man had applied to the Patent Office for an invention, and been denied on the same ground. Lincoln ordered both decisions reversed.

I often tell this story to my students in classes on the Constitution, with the question appended: “Was Lincoln defying the Supreme Court? Did he act unconstitutionally?” It is amazing—and depressing—that the overwhelming majority of my students get the answer wrong. Such is an example of how deep the idea of judicial supremacy—“the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is,” as the Court self-congratulated in Cooper v. Aaron—has crept into the public mind today.

Look again at Lincoln’s careful language in that passage above. He is saying that the reasoning of Dred Scott must be respected as to the parties of that particular case and in parallel cases (i.e., a slave owner who brings his slave into a free state, as Dred Scott’s owner had done). But in his decision to reverse the executive branch decisions supposedly based on Dred Scott in circumstances that were not parallel—both were free blacks in free states, with no one asserting ownership claims to them—Lincoln was asserting that the executive branch was not obligated to extend the principle of the Dred Scott case more broadly. The Constitution belongs to all three branches of government, each of which may assert its constitutional prerogatives in its own sphere—pending a legal challenge in the courts that concludes otherwise.

Antonin Scalia obliterates the perverse Left's black-robed tyranny

The obliteration of Marriage, the death of the Constitution, and the Abolition of Man.

You can sit in a garage and call yourself a car, but that doesn't mean that you're a car.

Marriage is and can be only one man and one woman; one man's urge to insert himself into another man's digestive system is not "love," and it can never be marriage.

Sodomy-as-marriage is a delusion, a fantasy, a violation of Nature, and a (temporarily) successful attempt to use the force of law to coerce the endorsement of perversion. (Or at least, intimidate its critics.)

This is the abolition of Marriage, for there is no legally, logically, practically, nor morally consistent way to endorse homosexual unions and still deny "the right to love," "due process," and "equality" to practitioners of the other paraphilias.

And just wait; Islam is licking its lips in anticipation of its chance to argue in favor of Muhammad-endorsed and Allah-ordained polygyny and child sex slavery.

Justice Antonin Scalia obliterates the perverse Left's judicial tyranny, from Power Line:

The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me. The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes, and can accord them favorable civil consequences, from tax treatment to rights of inheritance.

Those civil consequences—and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences—can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws. So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact— and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.

[...]

[W]hat really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch. The five Justices who compose today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003. They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a “fundamental right” overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since. They see what lesser legal minds—minds like Thomas Cooley, John Marshall Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Learned Hand, Louis Brandeis, William Howard Taft, Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson, and Henry Friendly—could not.

They are certain that the People ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to bestow on them the power to remove questions from the democratic process when that is called for by their “reasoned judgment.” These Justices know that limiting marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason; they know that an institution as old as government itself, and accepted by every nation in history until 15 years ago, cannot possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance or bigotry. And they are willing to say that any citizen who does not agree with that, who adheres to what was, until 15 years ago, the unanimous judgment of all generations and all societies, stands against the Constitution.

The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic. It is one thing for separate concurring or dissenting opinions to contain extravagances, even silly extravagances, of thought and expression; it is something else for the official opinion of the Court to do so.

Of course the opinion’s showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent. “The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality.” (Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie. Expression, sure enough, is a freedom, but anyone in a long-lasting marriage will attest that that happy state constricts, rather than expands, what one can prudently say.)

Rights, we are told, can “rise . . . from a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives define a liberty that remains urgent in our own era.” (Huh? How can a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives [whatever that means] define [whatever that means] an urgent liberty [never mind], give birth to a right?) And we are told that, “[i]n any particular case,” either the Equal Protection or Due Process Clause “may be thought to capture the essence of [a] right in a more accurate and comprehensive way,” than the other, “even as the two Clauses may converge in the identification and definition of the right.” (What say? What possible “essence” does substantive due process “capture” in an “accurate and comprehensive way”? It stands for nothing whatever, except those freedoms and entitlements that this Court really likes. And the Equal Protection Clause, as employed today, identifies nothing except a difference in treatment that this Court really dislikes. Hardly a distillation of essence. If the opinion is correct that the two clauses “converge in the identification and definition of [a] right,” that is only because the majority’s likes and dislikes are predictably compatible.)

I could go on. The world does not expect logic and precision in poetry or inspirational pop-philosophy; it demands them in the law. The stuff contained in today’s opinion has to diminish this Court’s reputation for clear thinking and sober analysis.

Scott Johnson notes Justice Scalia’s footnote 22:

If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,” I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.

The Republic is dead.

Turning fiends into friends: The bad medicine of Barack Obama

One might assume it took quite a presidential beer summit to turn those demoniacal health insurance companies into allies of the Demagogue-in-Chief. But make no mistake, it was greenbacks, not six packs, that turned fiends into friends.

And it's not unusual. Donor helps politician get elected. Politician makes law favorable to donor. Donor helps politician get reelected, and so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. It's a never-ending cycle of corruption, like Poe's tragedy:

That motley drama—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

It's a perverse thing, studying something in order to learn how to undo it. Like the serial killer who studies anatomy, or the pyromaniacal fire-fighter, or the liberal educator. Many of our elected officials are experts in the law (not the least of whom is the "smartest president ever," the Constitutional professor in the White House). All of them swear to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Yet they use their knowledge of law, government, politics, and human nature to serve not We the People, but themselves.

Barack Obama is to the Constitution as Jack the Ripper was to the ladies of Whitechapel. Which makes the president Barack ... the Ripper.

And the electorate wonders what happened.

Posted here:

"The administration waived conflict-of-interest laws ...."

Of course they do.

Despite his best efforts to disarm and bankrupt the Republic, the president has provided one valuable service to the nation: He has dispelled forever (except to the most deluded) the notion that liberals are noble public servants who care only about helping the "common man." They are as corrupt and cruel and greedy for wealth, power, and status as the most demonic Conservative of leftist fantasy.

Democrats today (and a lot of Republicans) are nothing more than professional campaigners who care only about maintaining their power and position no matter the cost to the rest of us. They live like kings off our backs while promising to the dull and greedy crumbs for which we all have to pay.

And so will our children.

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." -Thomas Jefferson