Tag: news

When Whining Becomes A Weapon: The Latest YouTube Ad-pocalypse

Authored by Tom Luongo,

Google and YouTube’s war on free speech has just escalated again. And it won’t stop, folks. The latest incident involving hard-left Vox writer Carlos Maza whining to YouTube about Steven Crowder making fun of him is not only chilling but pathetic.

Carlos Maza is an activist who makes a living in the public forum. He is openly gay. Uses the twitter handle @gaywonk and regularly spews nothing but thinly-veiled violent rhetoric at anyone slightly to the right of Berthold Brecht.

Crowder’s crime is describing Maza in terms that Maza uses himself but does so derisively. And for that Maza believes Crowder shouldn’t have a platform on which to make a living.

This is now considered harrassment by emotionally-stunted man-babies.

And I’m not talking about Maza, here.

I’m talking about YouTube.

Because after YouTube refused to punish Crowder on behalf of Maza, YouTube then changed its Terms of Service to allow them to… guess what? Punish Crowder.

And it was done in the most under-handed and sniveling way possible. No phone calls. No official letters or emails. Just a text to Crowder’s Merchandise phone number and a public tweet to Crowder’s Half-Asian Lawyer informing him of what was coming.

And not only Crowder.

This latest bit of manufactured outrage was used as an excuse to go on an algorithmic orgy of demonetizations and deletions of independent voices on YouTube of all shapes and sizes.

None of this is about what Crowder said. This is about Maza being the useful idiot for NBC, David Brock — Maza’s former employer at Media Matters — and George Soros who are in league with all the big tech companies to silence the opposition to ensure a Democratic victory in next year’s elections.

I remind you that Soros and Brock have spent millions in pursuit of taking down voices in the U.S. critical of their plans to control not only what we watch but what we think. They want back the control over information that the oligarchy had in the era of the Big Three TV networks and print newspapers.

They want to maintain control of The Wire.

The Wire is the main conduit through which we communicate with each other.  Money?  Really?  Yes, really.  What are prices if not information about what we are willing to part with our money in exchange for?

… But identifying The Wire isn’t the important thing.  What’s important is knowing who controls The Wire and what they are willing to do to maintain that control.

If you look at all of the things listed above {The Internet, Media, Money, Roads, Electricity} you will see massive government intervention into these markets.  They need control of them to maintain the illusion they have control over you.

This is far beyond the stopping the re-election of Trump at this point. This is a systemic and on-going digital “Night of the Long Knives” intended to stifle and rein in speech to limits acceptable to them. The goal is rolling a greater percentage of Google’s vast ad revenue back into the coffers of the dying Main Stream Media outlets.

Google, YouTube and the rest of the Media are making their case very clearly. They are in control of information. You are the product and they sell you to the highest bidder.

Vox is owned by NBC. All of the major media companies are feeling the loss of market share to people who provide real commentary on world events and counter the lies and narratives created by these Informational Oligarchs.

These are the most evil people you will ever have the displeasure of interacting with. And they won’t stop trying to marginalize all of us until those who disagree with them are pariah, outcast and un-personed.

Google’s delusions of grandeur at this point also reveal its greatest weakness. Without ad revenue they are a shell. They don’t want to share it with you. So don’t whine like @gaywonk. Change your habits and go on the offensive.

It’s one thing to shore up one’s business like Crowder has with his Mug Club. That’s smart.

It’s quite another for him, Alex Jones, Gab and all the others who have been harmed to band together and form a class-action lawsuit against these companies for breach of contract on the grounds of ‘reasonable expectation of service.’

Pushing for government regulation is exactly what Brock and Soros want. It will then ensure that Google, Facebook and the rest are even more bound down under the rubric of government controls.

It furthers Marxian conceit that the free market can’t solve these problems. That this is what happens when capitalism is allowed to go unchecked. Google and Facebook go hog wild and are then able to use their ‘monopolies’ to abuse their customers.

And what better way to control The Wire again than to have all the social media and Internet on-ramp companies subject to even more government regulation.

But that cannot be further from the truth. These people wrote Terms of Service which are fundamentally unenforceable and provide no ‘reasonable expectation of service.’ And their policy of wiping out some user’s busines over night by the click of a mouse on an ad hoc basis has to raise that to a level of material harm high enough to start the legal challenge.

You start a business on YouTube with a reasonable expectation of being able to attract an audience. No audience no business. Then once you attract said audience under one set of conditions, YouTube changing the rules to define your content as unacceptable and unilaterally taking away your revenue is fraud.

Moreover, they are protected by exemptions from said prosecution because they are supposedly acting without editorial bias, which is patently untrue and provable with just a cursory glance at the content they still host.

That said, it’s clear they are coming for our livelihoods here in their quest to maintain control. And so it is well past time to look at other ways for producers to connect with their audience. Donations and crowd-funding are fine but there has to be a better model, a sustainable one.

One where they can’t take your revenue by leaning on a single point of failure.

This is where Brave comes in.

Brave is a browser designed to support an ad network that doesn’t require Google or anyone else. Just users willing to opt-in. Keep your demonetized YouTube channel, get a website hosted by a trusted service.

Get signed up with Brave, link your account (it takes 30 minutes) and let their ad network pay your fans in BAT for viewing only the ads they wish to. They can then only spend those BAT tipping you and other producers directly.

Now the audience has an incentive to defray their costs of support by earning BAT paid for by advertisers and the producers get paid in an Ethereum-based token so they can pay their bills and make their livings.

And the best part is Brave was built to block the trackers, cookies, super-cookies and the rest. Google gets nothing from you for it. Facebook can get stuffed.

They stop vacuuming up your data for free.

You get your time and a modicum of your privacy back. You stop paying for bandwidth they use to track and categorize you on and off their platforms.

You’re their product, stop acting like you’re their slave.

It means both producers and consumers need to alter their habits and stick a finger in Google’s eye. If they want YouTube ad revenue to go only to the big boys, fine. We’ll keep using it as a bandwidth mule for our businesses until they kick us off and Brave integrates more services into its offering pool.

The only way to beat these people is to stop playing their game and see them for what they are: tools for our betterment, not theirs.

*  *  *

Support for Gold Goats ‘n Guns can happen in a variety of ways if you are so inclined. From Patreon to Paypal or soon SubscribeStar or by your browsing habits through the Brave browser where you can tip your favorite websites (like this one) for the work they provide.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2EXybDH Tyler Durden

FedEx Dumps Amazon, Will No Longer Provide ‘Quick Shipping’ Service

FedEx has elected not to renew one of its contracts with Amazon for their Express overnight and two-day service. 

“FedEx has made the strategic decision to not renew the FedEx Express US domestic contract with Amazon.com, Inc. as we focus on serving the broader e-commerce market,” the company said in a Friday statement. 

Of note, the decision “does not impact any existing contracts between Amazon.com and other FedEx business units or relating to international services,” according to the release. 

Amazon constituted less than 1.3% of FedEx’s revenue for the 12-month period ended December 31, 2018. 

In February, shares of UPS and FedEx took a hit after Amazon announced the launch of a “Shipping with Amazon” service that will entail picking up packages from businesses and shipping them to consumers, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed sources familiar with the matter (ie AMZN’s comms department).

In the last two years, Amazon has expanded into ocean freight while building a network of its own drivers who can now deliver inside homes and leased up to 40 aircraft while establishing an air cargo hub. Meanwhile, the company has been delivering orders from its own warehouses in 37 US cities. 

Amazon also announced this week that they will begin delivering packages to customers using drones within months, according to the Financial Times.  

Unveiled at a presentation during the robotics and space conference in Las Vegas (Re:Mars), Amazon’s electric delivery drone has a range of 15 miles and can deliver packages weighing up to five pounds to customers in under 30 minutes – which accounts for 75-90% of Amazon’s consumer deliveries, according to Jeff Wilke, head of Amazon’s consumer business.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WurKD2 Tyler Durden

Wanna Protect Your Money From A Deepening Trade War? There’s An ETF For That!

MCAM International of Charlottesville has devised a new exchange-traded fund that allows investors to protect their monies from an escalating trade war, reported Financial Times.

MCAM launched the new exchange-traded fund on Wednesday under the symbol “TWAR.” The new product tracks an index of 120 large and mid-cap companies that are expected to outpreform during a full-blown trade war due to their government contracts.

“There is reason to think that [these companies] will benefit from . . . government protection of some sort,” said David Martin, founder and chief executive of MCAM. “It would be a gross misrepresentation to say they will be insulated, but the expectation is that they will suffer less.”

TWAR also tracks companies that have strong intellectual property portfolios like contracts and licenses.

Martin says companies that have government support are the best defensive plays amid deepening trade tensions.

Top holdings of the fund include General Electric, Cisco, IBM, Edwards Lifesciences, Xerox, AMD, Micron, Dover, Mastercard, and Amazon.

The Times notes that there are 7,774 ETFs and other exchange-traded products in the world. So it might be difficult for TWAR to gain a footing in the exchange-traded products space.

Martin said, in the event of a full-blown trade war, TWAR’s performance should do well.

Not everyone is convinced. One ETF industry expert told the times that he is “a little skeptical given everything that is going on,” adding, “I don’t know how a company that has patents or business with the government will necessarily benefit. It is very difficult to know what president Trump will actually do in the end.”

“It’s extremely difficult to break through the clutter in the ETF space and I do not think this is the way to do it,” said Dave Nadig, managing director at ETF.com.

“I am skeptical.”

And the best way to protect investments during a trade war, as we found out from billionaire Stan Druckenmiller earlier this week, is to sell stocks and pile into treasuries.

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2wJameA Tyler Durden

Local Government Seizes Countless Kids Based On Falsified Drug Test Results

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Rejoice, it’s Friday. Here is our weekly roll-up of bizarre and disturbing stories from around the world.

1. Local government seized countless children based on falsified drug test results

For years, the county of Ozark, Alabama hired a private laboratory to analyze paternity and drug tests.

These were pretty critical tests… because the county would rely on those test results to determine whether or not to take someone’s children away from them.

It turns out that lab’s owner, Brandy Murrah, was FALSIFYING those results.

Instead of running a legitimate operation, Murrah pocketed the money, and faked the test results.

Then she forged a doctor’s signature to certify the results.

The only reason Murrah was ever caught is because an innocent woman who failed a drug test tracked down the doctor to ask him about the results.

The doctor was bewildered and said that he never saw any such test results… and the trail of fraud led right back to Brandy Murrah.

That woman says her custody battle for her children was negatively affected because of this fraudulent drug test. And she’s likely not alone.

The Department of Human Services says they believe there may have been a “tidal wave” of cases where children were taken away from their parents based on falsified test results.  

Pretty extraordinary… especially given that Murrah had a criminal history of fraud. And yet she was still put in this important role that has such an enormous impact on people’s lives.

Click here for the full story.

2. Australian federal police retaliate against journalists

Last week the Australian Federal Police raided the home of a journalist for unauthorized disclosure of national security information.

In April 2018, the journalist published an article in the Daily Telegraph about Australia’s surveillance state.

She described the plans of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD)– basically the Aussie version of the NSA– to begin spying on Australian citizens, without warrants.

The intelligence agency currently only deals with international threats. But the plan was to allow the ASD to access citizens’ communications, and grant them the power to force private organizations to turn over data on customers.

The article included photographs of top secret documents outlining the plans.

Just a few days later, the Federal Police raided ABC’s Sydney headquarters over 2017 stories alleging murder and misconduct by Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan.

No arrests have been made. But both news organizations have said openly that these government actions threaten freedom of the press. They vowed to protect their sources.

Click here, and here for the full stories.

3. US federal Court tells the DEA to reassess marijuana harmfulness

Parents of children with severe diseases have had enough of the government’s health advice.

They teamed up to challenge federal government’s placement of Marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug. Schedule 1 means the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) considers marijuana to have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

But the parents disagree. They see the marijuana extracts help their children with severe epilepsy and neurological disorders. And they say the DEA’s scheduling of marijuana is a risk to the health of their children, and everyone else who uses medicinal marijuana products.

At first the lawsuit was dismissed. But now a federal court revived the challenge. The court ordered the DEA to act on the plaintiff’s descheduling petition “with all deliberate speed.”

This is the farthest a challenge to the DEA scheduling of a drug has ever gone.

Click here for the full story.

4. US State Department to require social media accounts for visa approval

Uncle Sam wants to see what you’ve been Tweeting.

The US government will begin to require foreigners who want to visit the country to disclose their social media accounts on the visa application form.

You can indicate that you don’t have any accounts, but they warn that lying will be severely punished.

Click here for the full story.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2EZK4sO Tyler Durden

California Considering a Ban on Realtime Police Body Camera Facial Recognition

San Francisco became in May the first jurisdiction to ban law enforcement use of facial recognition technology. Civil libertarians persuaded the city’s Board of Supervisors to pass the measure on the grounds that the government could abuse the technology and make the country more of an oppressive surveillance state.

That same month, the California State Assembly passed a less comprehensive bill that would simply ban law enforcement use of realtime body camera facial recognition technology. Here are the bill’s chief justifications for the ban:

The use of facial recognition and other biometric surveillance is the functional equivalent of requiring every person to show a personal photo identification card at all times in violation of recognized constitutional rights. This technology also allows people to be tracked without consent. It would also generate massive databases about law-abiding Californians, and may chill the exercise of free speech in public places.

Facial recognition and other biometric surveillance technology has been repeatedly demonstrated to misidentify women, young people, and people of color and to create an elevated risk of harmful “false positive” identifications.

Facial and other biometric surveillance would corrupt the core purpose of officer-worn body-worn cameras by transforming those devices from transparency and accountability tools into roving surveillance systems.

The California Senate’s Public Safety Committee has scheduled a hearing on the bill for next week.

At the federal level, the House Oversight Committee has held two hearings so far on police use of facial recognition surveillance. Among other things, our representatives learned that the FBI already has a database consisting of more than 640 million photographs, including driver’s license photos from 21 states.

“People believe that it’s inevitable that there’s going to be more and more surveillance, more and more police state power, and technology is going to keep creeping into our lives,” Brian Hofer, chairman of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission, tells the Los Angeles Times. “But we still have the freedom and ability to say no.”

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2Zj0RPv
via IFTTT

California Considering a Ban on Realtime Police Body Camera Facial Recognition

San Francisco became in May the first jurisdiction to ban law enforcement use of facial recognition technology. Civil libertarians persuaded the city’s Board of Supervisors to pass the measure on the grounds that the government could abuse the technology and make the country more of an oppressive surveillance state.

That same month, the California State Assembly passed a less comprehensive bill that would simply ban law enforcement use of realtime body camera facial recognition technology. Here are the bill’s chief justifications for the ban:

The use of facial recognition and other biometric surveillance is the functional equivalent of requiring every person to show a personal photo identification card at all times in violation of recognized constitutional rights. This technology also allows people to be tracked without consent. It would also generate massive databases about law-abiding Californians, and may chill the exercise of free speech in public places.

Facial recognition and other biometric surveillance technology has been repeatedly demonstrated to misidentify women, young people, and people of color and to create an elevated risk of harmful “false positive” identifications.

Facial and other biometric surveillance would corrupt the core purpose of officer-worn body-worn cameras by transforming those devices from transparency and accountability tools into roving surveillance systems.

The California Senate’s Public Safety Committee has scheduled a hearing on the bill for next week.

At the federal level, the House Oversight Committee has held two hearings so far on police use of facial recognition surveillance. Among other things, our representatives learned that the FBI already has a database consisting of more than 640 million photographs, including driver’s license photos from 21 states.

“People believe that it’s inevitable that there’s going to be more and more surveillance, more and more police state power, and technology is going to keep creeping into our lives,” Brian Hofer, chairman of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission, tells the Los Angeles Times. “But we still have the freedom and ability to say no.”

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2Zj0RPv
via IFTTT

‘A Disgrace’: Trump Slams ‘Nervous Nancy’ Pelosi Over Prison Comment

Nancy Pelosi may have gone a step too far trying to appease her Democratic colleagues frothing at the mouth for a Trump impeachment, after the House Speaker told senior Democrats that she’d like to see Trump “in prison.” 

Pelosi made the statements while clashing with House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) over whether to launch impeachment proceedings, according to Politico. 

In response, Trump hammered Pelosi – tweeting on Thursday “Nervous Nancy Pelosi is a disgrace to herself and her family for having made such a disgusting statement, especially since I was with foreign leaders overseas,” adding “There is no evidence for such a thing to have been said. Nervous Nancy & Dems are getting Zero work done in Congress and have no intention of doing anything other than going on a fishing expedition to see if they can find anything on me – both illegal & unprecedented in U.S. history.” 

Pelosi’s comment comes two weeks after she claimed without evidence that Trump was engaged in a ‘cover-up’ in regards to the administration’s efforts to prevent former White House Counsel Don McGahn from testifying before the House Judiciary Committee. 

Democrats have been sharply divided over whether to launch impeachment proceedings against Trump over allegations that he obstructed the Mueller probe. 

At least 55 House Democrats are on record endorsing an impeachment inquiry, according to The Hill, however Pelosi has been joined by several prominent Democrats in opposing the move because the Senate would never follow suit, which would ‘exonerate’ Trump just in time for the 2020 election. 

Last week, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff – who swore up and down that he had evidence of Trump-Russia collusion that was “more than circumstantial” – effectively threw cold water on impeachment, telling The Hill last week “Where it ends I don’t know,” adding “I presume it ends with Donald Trump being voted out of office.” 

Meanwhile, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle penned an Op-Ed in the Washington Post titled: “Listen to Pelosi, Democrats. Now’s not the time to impeach Trump.“

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2I3ydfr Tyler Durden

To Defeat Trump, New York Times Columnist Argues, We Must Abolish Judicial Review

New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie faults Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg for his insufficiently ambitious plan to remake the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that progressives need to challenge the idea that the Court has the final say on what the Constitution means. The problem, Bouie says, is not that the Court is too partisan or political but that it has the power to override the will of the people—or at least the will of politicians who claim to speak for them. Bouie thinks that ditching the principle of judicial review enunciated in Marbury v. Madison will help progressives pursue their policy agenda. He does not pause to consider that it might also have consequences he would not like.

“Progressives have a crucial task ahead of them—not merely to defeat Trump and Trumpism, but to reclaim the Constitution and advance a more expansive vision of democratic freedom, in which Americans have inalienable economic rights as well as inalienable political and civil ones,” Bouie writes. “It’s a problem of power, which means it’s impossible to fight this conflict with Buttigieg-style technocratic reforms. Progressives must look, instead, to presidents and other leaders who resisted the Supreme Court’s claim to ultimate interpretive authority.”

Bouie is right that the central issue is “a problem of power.” The Constitution addresses that problem by imposing limits on what politicians can do, even when backed by a majority of voters. If politicians themselves get to decide what the Constitution means, those limits, including the ones that Bouie thinks are important, mean nothing.

We need not engage in wild hypotheticals to imagine the downside of this approach. Our current president thinks that flag burners should be jailed or stripped of their citizenship; that TV stations should lose their broadcast licenses when they air content that offends him; that he has the authority to wage wars Congress never declared and spend money Congress has repeatedly refused to appropriate; that due process is something people should get only after they’ve been stripped of their constitutional rights; and that birthright citizenship, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, can be abolished by an act of Congress. That’s just for starters. In the name of “defeat[ing] Trump and Trumpism,” Bouie is recommending a principle that would let Trump and every reckless demagogue who follows him do their worst.

“After decades of railing against ‘activist judges,'” Bouie complains, “Republicans are poised to reverse the hard-won gains of activists and ordinary people through judicial fiat.” He does not specify which “hard-won gains” he has in mind. But let’s take Roe v. Wade as an example, since fears of its impending doom have been much in the news lately. It is possible to believe both that Roe was wrongly decided and that women should be free to obtain abortions. In fact, that’s the position staked out by pro-choice luminaries such as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. But in Bouie’s view, the result is all that matters; how you get there is so much legalistic mumbo-jumbo aimed at concealing a process that is inescapably political.

“There’s no depoliticizing an institution that deals with political questions and operates in the context of political struggles and conflicts,” Bouie writes. “The Supreme Court has always been political, and no reform short of ending the power of judicial review will disentangle it from ordinary, partisan politics.”

Yet ending the power of judicial review would leave legislators free to do whatever they want, restrained only by their own consciences and their fear of political repercussions. Depending on who happens to be in power, legislators might enact Bouie’s policy agenda, or they might endorse torture, approve warrantless searches, abolish the presumption of innocence, close down newspapers that criticize them, or exclude immigrants based on their race. They might even ban abortion.

The whole point of a constitution is to put some decisions outside the realm of politics. The course Bouie recommends would make literally everything subject to the whims of elected officials, including the current occupant of the White House.

The main benefit of the Trump administration, aside from its entertainment value and some surprisingly good judicial appointments, is that it encourages people who might otherwise be inclined to expand the power and scope of government to think seriously about what that means in practice. But some of those people are so focused on getting rid of Trump that they ignore the civics lesson he embodies.

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2IEfgiD
via IFTTT

Gartman: “We Are Closing Our Short”

Exactly three weeks ago, as stocks were sliding, “world-renowned commodity guru” Dennis Gartman provided a glimmer of hope to bulls when he made an “official recommendation to sell stocks short this morning.” Why was this important? Well, Ramp Capital (with whom we need to have a trademark conversation one of these days) put it best:

Fast forward to today when, following today’s massive rate cut-hope driven rally on the back of an absolutely abysmal job report, it is the bulls’ turn to cower. Why? Because Gartman’s “official recommendation” to short is no more. From his latest Gartman report.

… as we wrote here yesterday, we have had a most unusual series of technical trading circumstances take place recently as late last week we had a rare “unanimous” day lower for stock prices globally, followed two trading sessions later by an equally rare unanimous day higher! Truly we cannot remember when we’ve seen this unanimity to the downside followed by unanimity to the upside in such inordinately short order. We have been left to wonder if that unanimous “up” day marked the end of a short bull run or did it add to the unanimous nature of the end to the bear run of much larger proportion? All we know is that we’ve not seen this sort of violence down and then up ever before and one or two wise readers of TGL suggested that the violence of the recent past two weeks warns of continued such violent random noise and argues then for us to take to the sidelines.

* * *

We’ve continued to maintain a net short position in the equity market in the US put into place five weeks ago… although we’ve cut the size down a bit these past two days… Yesterday was a much better day for us than was the day previous but we face today’s trading environment with a sense of trepidation and confusion…

Finally this:

Friday, May 17th, having already sold equities vs. commodities and as the markets had risen into “The Box” marking the 50-62% retracement of the break that began on the 1st of this month, we sold a single unit of the US stock market short of the July S&P futures trading then 2870. We sold a 2nd unit Thursday, May 23rd to add to the position as the July futures traded 2840, which then gave us an average of 2855. We wished to risk no more than break even on a closing basis but we are breaking even as we write and we want out… immediately.

The bounce is finally over.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Wqgu5z Tyler Durden

To Defeat Trump, New York Times Columnist Argues, We Must Abolish Judicial Review

New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie faults Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg for his insufficiently ambitious plan to remake the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that progressives need to challenge the idea that the Court has the final say on what the Constitution means. The problem, Bouie says, is not that the Court is too partisan or political but that it has the power to override the will of the people—or at least the will of politicians who claim to speak for them. Bouie thinks that ditching the principle of judicial review enunciated in Marbury v. Madison will help progressives pursue their policy agenda. He does not pause to consider that it might also have consequences he would not like.

“Progressives have a crucial task ahead of them—not merely to defeat Trump and Trumpism, but to reclaim the Constitution and advance a more expansive vision of democratic freedom, in which Americans have inalienable economic rights as well as inalienable political and civil ones,” Bouie writes. “It’s a problem of power, which means it’s impossible to fight this conflict with Buttigieg-style technocratic reforms. Progressives must look, instead, to presidents and other leaders who resisted the Supreme Court’s claim to ultimate interpretive authority.”

Bouie is right that the central issue is “a problem of power.” The Constitution addresses that problem by imposing limits on what politicians can do, even when backed by a majority of voters. If politicians themselves get to decide what the Constitution means, those limits, including the ones that Bouie thinks are important, mean nothing.

We need not engage in wild hypotheticals to imagine the downside of this approach. Our current president thinks that flag burners should be jailed or stripped of their citizenship; that TV stations should lose their broadcast licenses when they air content that offends him; that he has the authority to wage wars Congress never declared and spend money Congress has repeatedly refused to appropriate; that due process is something people should get only after they’ve been stripped of their constitutional rights; and that birthright citizenship, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, can be abolished by an act of Congress. That’s just for starters. In the name of “defeat[ing] Trump and Trumpism,” Bouie is recommending a principle that would let Trump and every reckless demagogue who follows him do their worst.

“After decades of railing against ‘activist judges,'” Bouie complains, “Republicans are poised to reverse the hard-won gains of activists and ordinary people through judicial fiat.” He does not specify which “hard-won gains” he has in mind. But let’s take Roe v. Wade as an example, since fears of its impending doom have been much in the news lately. It is possible to believe both that Roe was wrongly decided and that women should be free to obtain abortions. In fact, that’s the position staked out by pro-choice luminaries such as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. But in Bouie’s view, the result is all that matters; how you get there is so much legalistic mumbo-jumbo aimed at concealing a process that is inescapably political.

“There’s no depoliticizing an institution that deals with political questions and operates in the context of political struggles and conflicts,” Bouie writes. “The Supreme Court has always been political, and no reform short of ending the power of judicial review will disentangle it from ordinary, partisan politics.”

Yet ending the power of judicial review would leave legislators free to do whatever they want, restrained only by their own consciences and their fear of political repercussions. Depending on who happens to be in power, legislators might enact Bouie’s policy agenda, or they might endorse torture, approve warrantless searches, abolish the presumption of innocence, close down newspapers that criticize them, or exclude immigrants based on their race. They might even ban abortion.

The whole point of a constitution is to put some decisions outside the realm of politics. The course Bouie recommends would make literally everything subject to the whims of elected officials, including the current occupant of the White House.

The main benefit of the Trump administration, aside from its entertainment value and some surprisingly good judicial appointments, is that it encourages people who might otherwise be inclined to expand the power and scope of government to think seriously about what that means in practice. But some of those people are so focused on getting rid of Trump that they ignore the civics lesson he embodies.

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2IEfgiD
via IFTTT