As I contemplate another deep dive into a legal case, I realize how thankful I am to Justice Thomas.
Our Second Amendment protected rights had been eviscerated. Most of the country was under the suffocating opinions of gun hating inferior courts.
If a stated wanted a gun control law, they passed it. Challenges were always dismissed. To listen to the gun grabbers, everything that was done was constitutional because everybody knew that the Second only protected the rights of the militia.
In 2008, the Supreme Court issued the Heller opinion. In a five to four decision, the court found that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to keep and bear arms. Even Justice Stevens’ dissent says it is an individual right.
—District of Columbia v. Heller, 467 U.S. 837, 636 (2008) Stevens, J., dissenting
Of course, this didn’t stop Justice Stevens from joining Justice Breyer’s dissent
—id. at 681 Breyer, J., dissenting
This case was much closer than we hoped for.
There is a good reason the court did not take up another Second Amendment case (outside McDonald, which was an easy, “Yes, the Bill of Rights applies to the states, morons”) for 14 years. We would have lost. And if we had not lost outright, the opinion would not be strong enough to protect our rights.
In 2022, we had a strong majority on the Supreme Court. Not a majority of Republicans, but a majority of Constitutionalist.
The Court issued a powerful opinion in Bruen. It slapped down the inferior courts. It set clear guidance for how to adjudicate Second Amendment challenges.
The inferior courts had a meltdown. We have judges who have sworn to uphold the Constitution, claiming they are too stupid to understand the Constitution. Judges who have decades of training and practice in reading old laws and interpreting them, correctly, claim that the plain text is unclear.
This is not the fault of the Supreme Court. This is the fault of those rogue inferior courts.
I worked for an incompetent lead analyst for a couple of years. One evening, I found him still at his desk, programming. He was trying to do something in FORTRAN. I explained that what he wanted to do wasn’t possible to do in FORTRAN. He insisted it could.
I wrote a short C function that did the task that FORTRAN could not. Gave it to him to use. This would have allowed him to complete his program without any architectural changes.
When I checked in with him the next day, I asked how the function worked for him. He reported that it had worked, but he had done a redesign, so he didn’t need that function.
To this day, I believe he made that change to exclude me from having participated in the project. He was a rogue, inferior programmer/analyst.
Rogue inferior courts will twist and squirm to avoid the clear guidance of the Supreme Court, when they don’t like the outcome.
The remarkable strength of Justice Ginsburg, was her ability to find law to support her positions.
From President Obama, we got Sotomayor. She has grown into her position, but she has never been a strong justice.
We also got Elena Kagan, a Justice so corrupt that she felt that there was no conflict of interest in sitting on a case that she had worked on as a member of the Obama staff.
Those two “powerhouses” don’t come close to the idiocy of Ketanji Brown Jackson. This is a person that can’t find case law, regulation, or original meaning in anything that goes against her agenda. She writes as if the Supreme Court should be writing law, not following the law.
The Three!
Neil Gorsuch was our first win. He has done a good job for the Second.
Kavanaugh was our second win. He is doing an ok job for the Second. I’m not sure of him, but so far, so good.
Amy Coney Barrett is our third win. I believe she could become the next Clarence Thomas.
Conclusion
Next Tuesday is the day our Constitution set as the date to vote for our President. A week from today, we should know who our next president will be.
Please, PLEASE, vote.
The most lasting wins from the first Trump presidency were the amount of reform that was done to the courts. We do not want to have Kamala replace Thomas. Imagine another Ketaji Brown Jackson replacing Thomas. It would be years before we could recover.
VOTE!
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