“Ruling on Final Day of Court’s Term Solidifies a Lurch to the Right,” says a New York Times front-page headline assuming editorializing is equivalent to news reporting. The truth is that the court has been solidifying a return to a democratic republic. We’re talking about the Supreme Court, of course, and how it recently halted bureaucratic autocracy, disrupted judicial oligarchy, returned power to state legislatures and recognized a true constitutional right.
One of the latest moves terrorizing the Times was the court telling the Environmental Protection Agency to quit mutilating private industries on the basis of nonexistent laws. Even the Times concurs that the agency has been acting on vague generalities in the law without getting it that, when you play that game, rule of law becomes rule of anything goes. If new laws are needed for the stifling of CO2 emissions, EPA’s chief concern, persuade Congress to pass them. What we don’t need is Justice Elena Kagan imperiously telling us that the EPA has expertise that members of Congress lack and that they should grin and bear it.
Maybe her greater vision is that there are all kinds of experts out there on all kinds of subjects that Congress flunks and that we should just maybe replace Congress with something called the administrative state that’s already with us and spreading its wings. But understand, please, that there are processes supposed to fix legislative ignorance and that experts can fumble. Kagan clearly objects to the voice of the people, fails to understand the need for checks and balances, and incredibly assumes bureaucratic wisdom. President Joe Biden, by the way, says he will ignore the court, bringing us to the question of what experts will say about impeachment.
On the second subject, abortion, the Times said the current court got rid of a constitutional right of women to have abortions when, in fact, the squashed 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling itself told states they could deny abortions in the last trimester when fetuses were viable. Forty-three states did as much. It’s still true that Roe v. Wade otherwise permitted just about all abortions on the basis of this supposed right that is no more in the Constitution than the word “abortion.” Biden as a senator sought a constitutional amendment to strike down the rule he may now adore as much as higher approval ratings if he gets there.
Most abortions are cases of unintentionally pregnant women not wanting children who are therefore killed before birth, a total of 62 million over 50 years, but the current court did not say they were forbidden. It said the laws are up to state legislatures that will go in two very different directions, although the red states should definitely not prosecute the mother, disallow crossing state lines or deny abortions in such circumstances as the mother’s poor health.
The last issue of the day is the court saying the Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms and that this means those who are qualified should be able have concealed carry permits even if they cannot cite a specific danger. As much was required in New York and a number of other states. People often say the Second Amendment came about just to enable militias without knowing that the presumed right to bear arms had been around in America for a long time and that the militia business was simply a reason for putting it in the Constitution.
Despite everything you may be hearing, a Rand Corporation study found little to no evidence that concealed carry increases homicides or other violent crime. The court itself absolutely did not tell states to hand out the permits to people without reasonable requirements, and the ruling was not nearly as scary as President Barack Obama. His gun control speeches sold record numbers of guns because of fears they’d soon be unavailable. The New York Times covered this but never had a headline saying, “Obama Speeches Solidify His Lurch to Guns, Guns Everywhere.”
