When it Comes to an Extremely Tight National Budget, War Always Finds a Way

The $54B being shoveled over to Ukraine as part our proxy war against Russia is the equivalent of the entire annual U.S. budget for roads and bridges. It's double the annual budget of NASA. Every Democrat in Congress voted for this give-away, mostly to the U.S. military-industrial complex. Those voting for this include all six members of the Squad, allegedly the most progressive wing of the Democrat party. Not a single no vote from Democrats. Most Republicans joined in, with no meaningful discussion of U.S. priorities, no acknowledgment that the U.S. was not being threatened by Russia. No acknowledgment that the country NATO was designed to defend no longer exists and no accountability as to how these weapons will be used in coming years and by whom. This $ is pouring out of our deficit-rampaged national budget in a country where schools are failing, where cities are decaying, where crime has skyrocketed since 2020 and where it is difficult to buy infant formula. This is America at its shining best, in the eyes of our defense industry.

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Woke Racism, Where Ideology Defeats Science

John McWhorter of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) warns us that four of the mainstays of Woke Anti-racism are long on ideology and short on scientific validity:

- Microaggressions - Diversity Equity & Inclusion Departments - Implicit Bias Testing - Systemic Racism

Ideology twisting scholarship with dangerous consequences is a phenomenon hardly limited to the Soviet Union. It's happening here, right now, in America, in an effort to spread an intolerant orthodoxy masquerading as 'Anti-racism.'

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Ideology Carves out the ACLU

Are there any modern institutions that are so strongly bolstered with hallowed traditions and fortified with well-crafted first principles that they are immune from attack by trendy ideologies? Sincerely. I'm asking.

Nazis marching at Skokie now seems like an ancient happening that is so old that it has faded into irrelevance at the new cash-flushed ACLU.

What follows is an excerpt of from a new article written by Lara Bazelon, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where she directs the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Law and Racial Justice Clinics. The title: "The ACLU Has Lost Its Way: The organization now seems largely unable or unwilling to uphold its core values."

Progressive causes are near and dear to my heart. I am a feminist and staunch Democrat. As a federal public defender turned law professor, I have spent my career trying to make change in a criminal legal system that is riven with racism and fundamentally unfair to those without status and financial resources. Yet, as someone who understands firsthand that the fundamental rights to free speech and due process exist only as long as competent lawyers are willing to vigorously defend extreme positions and people, I view the ACLU’s hard-left turn with alarm. It smacks of intolerance and choosing sides, precisely what a civil-liberties organization designed to defend the Bill of Rights is meant to oppose.

I used to be a proud card-carrying member of the ACLU. Today, when its fundraising mailers and pleas to reenroll arrive in my mailbox, I toss them in the recycling.

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Rethinking Citizens United

This is the latest installment of a fascinating exchange of ideas at FIRE's First Amendment News. This installment was written by Ira Glasser, former Executive Director of the ACLU. This conversation was provoked by Florida's repeal of Disney's special tax status in response to Disney's criticism of Florida's Parental Rights in Education bill, misnamed the “Don’t Say Gay” law by many on the left.

I'm repeatedly struck by the ill-thought tactics of many people who try to mess with the First Amendment.  These tactics usually amount to "Free speech for me, but not for thee."  The First Amendment is a boomerang, however.  It is an equal-opportunity provision that doesn't (and shouldn't) care about who is speaking or the content of particular speech.  Your well-intended tweaks and restrictions of the First Amendment (here, in the form of Citizens United) can come back and hit you upside your head. What follows is an excerpt of Glasser's latest comment:

But two liberal law professors who had spent 12 years vigorously opposing the Citizens United decision — my longtime colleagues Burt Neuborne and Erwin Chemerinsky — leaped into the fray supporting the First Amendment right of the Disney corporation to express its views on that legislation and opposed the state’s attempt to retaliate. When I chided them for it in light of their long opposition to Citizens United, they responded with a blizzard of legal distinctions that, however interesting and important, were disconnected from the political realities that resulted in the broad law that Citizens United struck down, and unresponsive to my question.

Buried in that blizzard, however, was the answer to my question, almost as an aside: “Citizens United,” they now declare, “was rightly decided on its facts.”

Floyd Abrams then replied, saying he was startled to discover that they now said they believed that “Citizens United was rightly decided on its facts” because for 12 years, or ever since Citizens United was decided, they had vigorously and consistently criticized that decision as having been wrongly decided.

I, too, was startled. What had changed? Certainly, the facts of that case hadn’t changed since the case was decided. Moreover, if Burt and Erwin had ever before proclaimed that Citizens United had been rightly decided in the many public fora where they discussed that decision, I missed it, and apparently, Floyd Abrams did, too.

So if the facts of the case haven’t changed, what has?

We can only speculate.

But in any case, we now have two accomplished liberal law professors saying: 1) that Citizens United was rightly decided; and 2) that a business corporation like Disney has a First Amendment right to express its views on a contentious law.

I need to fall on the sword here too. I got caught up in the anti-Citizens United wave years ago and posted several regrettable posts (at this site) indicating positions I no longer hold.  The turning point for me was a very slow and careful read of the Citizens United opinion combined with sober consideration of impossible real world challenges we would have faced had Citizens United had been decided the opposite way.

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