Year: 2016

Laurence Tribe, Trump’s Eligibility Expert, Is a Liar

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,

For many of us, the highlight of the latest Republican debate was Ted Cruz demolishing Donald Trump’s attack on his status as a natural-born citizen eligible for the presidency. For added insult to injury, Cruz pointed out the following about the constitutional “expert” Trump has repeatedly cited on the matter:

Let me tell you who Larry Tribe is. He’s a left-wing judicial activist, Harvard Law professor who was Al Gore’s lawyer in Bush versus Gore. He’s a major Hillary Clinton supporter. And there’s a reason why Hillary’s supporters are echoing Donald’s attacks on me, because Hillary wants to face Donald Trump in the general election.

This was devastating not merely for discrediting the legal question, which was never going to be a serious problem, but for demonstrating that Trump is getting his information from liberals and has no idea what an actual conservative would consider a credible authority. Indeed, Tribe prefaces his analysis of the case with an ode to “living Constitution” judges who “believ[e] that the Constitution’s meaning evolves with the perceived needs of the time and longstanding practice”—which anyone who came to conservatism naturally would instantly recognize as code for twisting the Constitution to justify whatever liberals want.

But it turns out there’s another reason why The Donald choose poorly: his expert is not just mistaken, but lying. Continue reading →

Republicans Can’t Do Anything Right: Sean Duffy Edition

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Donald Trump’s authenticity on issues such as ending abortion may be highly questionable, but there’s still a stylistic lesson more conventional Republicans desperately need to learn from him: people are sick of timidity in response to outrageous policies and malicious smears.

Case in point: on Friday, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) said the following:

I hear a lot in this institution from minority leaders about how their communities are targeted, but what I don’t hear them talk about is how their communities are targeted in abortion […] My liberal friends, Congressional Black Caucus members, talk about fighting for the defenseless, the hopeless, and the downtrodden […] There is no one more hopeless and voiceless than an unborn baby, but their silence is deafening. I can’t hear them. Where are they standing up for their communities, advocating and fighting for their right to life?

So far, so good. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) reacted with the usual hysteria:

After nearly 30 years in public office, not much surprises me anymore. So you can imagine my lack of astonishment when my dear friend and colleague from Wisconsin, Sean Duffy, rolled out abortion statistics among African-American women to lecture black legislators like me about defending the welfare of our constituents […] I don’t expect Rep. Duffy to understand why his comments are offensive […] What he and so many of his Republican colleagues fail to acknowledge is the underlying context behind high abortion rates in African-American communities. High rates of abortion are related to poverty and lack of access to quality care […] Rep. Duffy’s hypocrisy on this issue is as predictable as it is offensive. If he truly, truly wants to fight for the hopeless and voiceless, he should join us.

At which point Duffy falls apart. Moore’s attack is equal parts dishonest and malicious, purely an attempt to distract from his critique by changing the subject. This should have been met with doubling down on the original charge against her and her colleagues, with a healthy dose of shame added in.

Instead, he felt the need to appease his attacker. Continue reading →

New at Live Action: Christie Lied About Backing Sotomayor at GOP Debate

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , ,

There was no significant discussion of abortion at Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate, except for a brief mention by Ted Cruz of New York being a relatively pro-abortion place (a crazy idea he must have gotten from Americans United for Life’s ranking of New York among the ten most pro-abortion states, or NY Governor Andrew Cuomo outright saying pro-lifers “have no place in the state of New York”), and Marco Rubio criticizing funding of Planned Parenthood.

In a brief segment, Rubio criticized Obama for making Planned Parenthood funding a priority instead of the military. In another, he accusing Chris Christie of having donated to Planned Parenthood and of having supported pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The ensuing argument between Cruz and Donald Trump on New York didn’t touch on abortion again, but sparks flew on the latter incident…

RUBIO: Unfortunately, Governor Christie has endorsed many of the ideas that Barack Obama supports, whether it is Common Core or gun control or the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor or the donation he made to Planned Parenthood. Our next president, and our Republican nominee can not be someone who supports those positions.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

Nikki Haley’s SOTU Response Was Even Worse Than You’ve Heard

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Haley’s leadership-approved Republican response to Barack Obama’s State of the Union address has rightly been eviscerated for devoting so much time to attacking a leading Republican candidate rather than the Democrat president she was there to refute, and for condescending to the party’s base that they need to lighten up about their entirely-valid, perpetually-neglected immigration concerns.

Mark Steyn’s takedown of those offenses (as well as her general vagueness on the good positions she did espouse) says it all:

Unfortunately for her, this sentimentalist twaddle is not where the Republican base is. She’s looking at immigration policy from the point of view of the seven billion hard-working soon-to-be-vetted Americans-in-waiting around the planet. But one of the changes this election season is that the party base is considering immigration policy from the point of view of the 300 million Americans who are already here […]

Trump is a monster of the GOP elite’s creation. And their solution to it is to use what’s meant to be a rebuttal to the President as a rebuttal to their own leading candidates and the two-thirds of their voters who support them. Truly this is the dumbest political party on the planet.

So here I’ll focus on a few more than have gone relatively unnoticed amid the uproar, but are also highly indicative of the leadership rot within the GOP. Continue reading →

New at Live Action: The Petty Ridiculousness of NARAL’s Spat with Pelosi

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , ,

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is the second major Democrat to upset her pro-abortion constituents with unexpected comments lately. In a new interview with Roll Call, she said this (emphasis added):

I don’t believe in abortion on demand, I don’t believe in abortion on demand. I’m talking about the health of the mother and the child and this is not a decision that a politician should be making. This is about a woman’s judgment. This is about respect — respect — for women. I sometimes wonder if the Republican men who are here even know what’s going on in their own families, because the fact is that contraception and birth control is something that is used — I don’t believe that abortion is a form of birth control or contraception — and if you want to diminish the number of abortions in our country, you should love contraception, but they don’t.

This from Nancy Pelosi, who has dutifully voted for everything the abortion lobby wants, who called late-term abortion “sacred ground,” who gladly accepts awards named after the founder of the abortion-as-birth-control industry, who bitterly snaps at anyone who tries getting her to discuss the science behind what she claims not to believe in?

This isn’t the first time the former Speaker’s tried this whopper—last fall, she claimed to “abhor” abortion. However, Pelosi’s actual record being everything the abortion lobby could want didn’t stop NARAL from criticizing her remarks.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Planned Parenthood Loses It, Calls SOTU Nun Invite “Disrespect”

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,

Pro-lifers should celebrate one of the latest public statements from Planned Parenthood. Not because it’s any good, mind you; it’s completely horrid. No, this is a positive development because it shows they have lost all semblance of self-restraint or awareness of how they sound to anyone not on their mailing list, which can only help quicken their descent to the fringes.

In response to House Speaker Paul Ryan inviting two of the Little Sisters of the Poor to attend the State of the Union Address, Planned Parenthood tweeted the following:

Folks, we are officially so far through the looking glass that it’s not in the rearview mirror anymore.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Media Matters’ Sham Briefs Don’t Disprove Abortion Regret

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , ,

“Never let facts get in the way of a good narrative” is the opposite of how things should work at a real media watchdog organization, but that’s exactly how they see it at Media Matters, where Sharon Kann declares the specter of abortion regret “debunked” by amicus briefs filed in the Supreme Court’s consideration of Texas’s abortion regulations:

In a January 5 article, MSNBC noted that the personal stories in many of the amicus briefs were meant to combat the generalization that women systemically regret their choice of abortion and suffer “severe depression.” Beyond influencing Kennedy, the article also said that the briefs challenged the stigma and backlash surrounding abortion that “persist in society and in state legislatures.

She goes on to quote MSNBC as reporting that “a task force by the American Psychological Association reviewing the actual research found that adult women who have abortions are at no greater risk of mental health problems than if they chose to give birth,” and argues that the “sheer volume of women” relaying positive abortion stories in the briefs proves that “post-abortion syndrome” is a sham.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

Attacking Cruz’s Eligibility Is a Blunder Ann Coulter Can’t Afford to Make Right Now (UPDATED)

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

Ann Coulter’s latest column finally put her argument against Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be President into an extended form we can intelligently judge.

First, it turns out she actually isn’t pulling this entirely from thin air. There are Supreme Court precedents and some basis in the English common law suggesting that “natural born” does not apply to those born abroad to citizen parents, as Cruz was to an American mother in Canada.

But it all amounts to less than what Ann’s made of it. For one thing, “the Supreme Court says so” has never been conservatives’ standard for settling legal questions. Yes, SCOTUS can be useful for articulating the relevant concepts, but they’re certainly capable of being wrong. And there’s ample reason to think they’re wrong here.

For instance, Blackstone — who Ann weirdly suggests Cruz’s defenders haven’t cited — explicitly recognizes such children as natural-born citizens:

To encourage also foreign commerce, it was enacted by statute 25 Edw. III. st. 2. that all children born abroad, provided both their parents were at the time of the birth in allegiance to the king, and the mother had passed the seas by her husband’s consent, might inherit as if born in England: and accordingly it hath been so adjudged in behalf of merchants. But by several more modern statutes these restrictions are still farther taken off: so that all children, born out of the king’s ligeance, whose fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception; unless their said fathers were attainted, or banished beyond sea, for high treason; or were then in the service of a prince at enmity with Great Britain.

Continue reading →