SCOTUS Affirms Ban on "Gender Affirming Care" for Trans Youth

You know, if someone comes out as transgender and wants to live as such, I have no problem with it (including everything that goes with it, including "gender-affirming care') so long as they're over the age of 18 - you know, an adult?

But under 18? That's a hard pass and thankfully SCOTUS agreed.... The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a ruling upholding Tennessee’s ban on “gender-affirming care” for minors suffering from gender dysphoria. The ruling solidifies laws that shield children from being subjected to questionable medical treatments such as puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgery.

It was, as expected, a 6-3 decision with Chief Justice Roberts authoring the decision, affirming the state of Tennessee's (and by extension, about 20 other states') ban on "gender-affirming care" for trans youth, ruling the ban didn't violate the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and that it was enforced based on age and medical purpose, not gender or sex.

This is a good decision; now, I put the words "gender-affirming care" in quotation marks because, as country after country in Europe is now confirming, there is nothing affirming about what is essentially gender mutilation. 

Plus, how can a child consent to anything? I mean, an adult can consent to it as a medical necessity but unless the child has asked for their independence from their parents isn't it the parents responsibility to consent in their stead?

Founders Quotes, 3-4 June 2025

Congress and the Constitution may seem at odds with one another but really shouldn't be...

(1) If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected. - Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821

(2) I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 85, 1788

There's truths to both of their quotes - Jefferson's in that whenever a bunch of lawyers get together nothing much good ever comes out of it and Hamilton's in that so long as we depend on human works to achieves peace and stability, we will never have it often or well enough to please everyone.

DoJ Sues Texas Over In-State Tuition for Illegal Aliens....

...and wins. Per Patriot Post, On Wednesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department finally did what every prior administration (including Trump 1.0) for the past three decades refused to do — enforced the federal immigration law that bans states from providing in-state tuition to illegal aliens unless they provide the same benefit to citizen-students from any state. 

That same day, Texas cried uncle, agreed with the government, settled the case, and entered into a consent decree.

TL/DR: In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Alien Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act which prohibited states like Texas from giving in-state tuition benefits to those here in the country illegally. Until this week, seventeen states and D.C. had laws (in DC's case, a DC City Counsel ordinance that was later approved by Congress) allowing this. This not allows gave an unlawful benefit to illegals already here, it encouraged more illegal immigration and whenever parents of citizen/legal resident alien students tried to sue, the courts rebuffed them stating there was no private right of action in the statute (thus putting it on DoJ's shoulders to you know, actually enforce the law as written).

In the consent decree, Texas acknowledged that the law-in-question violated the Federal Supremacy Clause and were unconstitutional.....now, let us hope that either (a) DoJ goes after the other states and D.C. on this and.or (b) Congress gets off their schnides' and passes an amendments law putting this prohibition into statutory law.

Founders' Quotes, 27-28 May 2025

A pair of quotes from Thomas Jefferson on the subject of arms...

(1) One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them. - letter to George Washington, 1796

(2) No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands]. - Draft Constitution for the State of Virginia — 1776

One of the things that makes America such a unique place is the freedom of individual to possess firearms (within certain historical limits) without the government's meddling or forbiddance. Heck, the first shots of the American Revolution were precisely because the British government wanted to seize the weapons and ammunition of the colonists in Lexington and Concord.

Charlton Heston had it right after all...."I'll give you my gun when you pry (or take) it from my cold, dead hands."

Founders' Quote, 4 May 2025

If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify. - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 33, 1788

Federalist #33 is one of the more interesting Federalist Papers in that it discusses and balances out the concerns of the people in giving government the power of taxation ("no taxation without representation") with the government's powers in collecting taxes (and the passing of laws in order to do so). Hamilton posits that if Congress is given the power of taxation, it must also be allowed to craft laws in order for the Executive Branch to carry out the powers given to it.

Hamilton's response to the people's concerns is that while the branches of government have a responsibility in checking & balancing each other, it is ultimately the American people who exercise the final checks & balances on the government.

Founders Quote, 28-29 April 2025

A pair of quotes on we, the People, by Alexander Hamilton...

(1) The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority. - Federalist No. 22, 1787

(2) It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend they always reason right about the means of promoting it. - Federalist No. 71, 1788

On the first quote, I agree; all power in government (and the rights of the people) must arise from the consent of the governed. On the second, I also agree; Hamilton reminds us that even the worst ideas can come from good intentions.

Founders' Quotes, 24-25 April 2025

A pair of quotes to consider concerning the infernal sin of chattel slavery....

-Ellsworth: All good men wish the entire abolition of slavery, as soon as it can take place with safety to the public, and for the lasting good of the present wretched race of slaves. The only possible step that could be taken towards it by the convention was to fix a period after which they should not be imported. - The Landholder, 1787

-Madison: It is due to justice; due to humanity; due to truth; to the sympathies of our nature; in fine, to our character as a people, both abroad and at home, that they should be considered, as much as possible, in the light of human beings, and not as mere property. As such, they are acted upon by our laws, and have an interest in our laws. - speech to the Virginia Ratifying Committee, 1829

To be fair, no history of America can be complete unless we discuss the horrid institution of slavery and in this respect, Nikole Hannah-Jones' 1617 works have to be included, for all its errors. But contrary to popular liberal convention/opinion, slavery was a dying institution across the Western world; but for Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin, slavery might've died out prior to the Civil War.

Contrary to popular opinion, slavery was already on ita' way in the Americas; Mexico abolished it around 1824, most of the former Spanish colonies in Latin & South America abolished it in the first decades of the 1800's as the various Wars of Independence raged on while Upper Canada (Ontario) abolished it in 1819. (Lower Canada, a/k/a Quebec, had never allowed it either before or after British capture of New France following the Seven Years' War).

Even slaveholding Founders' such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson recognized that at some point the infernal institution would end; Jefferson led the fight to pass the Slave Trade Act, which codified into statutory law Article 5, Section 2 the prohibition on importation of slaves into the United States (which ironically was enforced mostly by, of all countries, the United Kingdom via' the Royal Navy's Africa Squadron. Even the provisions considered "pro-slavery" - in particular, the three-fifths clause - eventually became logic bombs in the South as more and more slaves arrived because it stilted population numbers in the South vs. their Northern counterparts.

Eventually, though, it took a Civil Wart to end it across the United States, a war fought by the Republican North against the Democratic South (remember, it was the Democrats' who defended slavery, Democrats who defended Jim Crow, Democrats who defended racial segregation following Reconstruction, etc.

The Case Against Birthright Citizenship

There's a very thought-provoking feature over at the Claremont Institute on the issue of birthright citizenship and its' well worth perusing, irrespective of which side of the issue you fall on.

The Case Against Birthright Citizenship (Claremont Institute, 2018)

Founders Quotes, 11-12 March 2025

(1) Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution. - James Madison, Federalist No. 39, 1788

(2) The true test is, whether the object be of a local character, and local use; or, whether it be of general benefit to the states. If it be purely local, congress cannot constitutionally appropriate money for the object. But, if the benefit be general, it matters not, whether in point of locality it be in one state, or several; whether it be of large, or of small extent. - Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Madison makes a salient point in #1 above; each state, while subordinate to the federal government (the Little G to the Big G) is still a sovereign body with its own powers and duties under the Constitution.

If John Marshall shaped the Supreme Court during the earliest years of America, then Joseph Story shaped its through the 1840's. As a constitutional scholar and legal jurist, Story ironically is a tie between the early years and the immediate pre-Civil War era in that he was on SCOTUS with both John Marshall - one of the great Chief Justices in American jurisprudence...and Roger Taney, one of the worst in American jurisprudence.

Founders' Quote, 1 March 2025

The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen. - John Adams, quoted in a letter from Rufus King to Theophilus Parsons — 1788

Say whatever you will about those who framed the Constitution but one thing you cannot say is that these men didn't give us one of the most sterling governmental documents in the history of mankind.

Founder's Quote, 28 Feb. 2025

If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws - the first growing out of the last. . . . A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government. - Alexander Hamilton, Essay in the American Daily Advertiser — 1794

237-some-odd-years, America held its' first elections under the new Constitution, which replaced the Articles of Confederation and America's never looked back. Despite the events which have rocked the U.S., the Constitution has remained stalwart and strong and for that, we and the world should be grateful.

For Once, AOC is Right...

Hey, even broke clocks are right twice a day...

If you listen to some right-wing pundits, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is running a smuggling ring across the southern border.

Far be it from me to defend La Cortez, but I find the misrepresentations from those who think there is a Constitution-free zone in this country to be annoying. It evinces ignorance at best, and at its worst, a desire to simply pretend that due process is discretionary. It’s not.

It’s the backbone of our legal system and if you decide that it’s OK to deprive immigrants of those established rights, it’s a shortstep to denying other groups.

Tom Homan, the new director of ICE director, recently called AOC one of the “dumbest congresswomen in DC” and slyly suggested that counseling immigrants on how to avoid arrest was illegal. Homan knows this is a crock of frijoles and arroz. What AOC and other immigration advocates are doing is trying to explain what immigrants can demand, and what they cannot, under the current laws of this country.

Everyone who lives in the United States has the right to due process. The Supreme Court has made clear that your immigration status does not deprive you of those rights.

In Reno vs. Flores, in a majority opinion written by the great Antonin Scalia, the court held “it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.” (Patriot Post)

Antonin Scalia was one of the great legal minds of the late 20th century but odds are he wouldn't want to get into this debate. However, he did make it clear in his SCOTUS opinions that the Constitution and the rights therein apply to all on U.S. soil, irrespective of citizens. Someone needs to remind Tom Homan, as much as I support his efforts to enforce immigration law, that the Constitution makes no respecter of citizenship.

Founders Quote, 21 Feb. 2025

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. - James Madison, Federalist #46, 1788

The 2nd Amendment has long been a cornerstone of Americans' rights under the Constitution and was one of the principal reasons for the American Revolution (Lexington & Concord, anyone?) and a hallmark of any free society.

By contrast, when countries restrict the right of the people to own firearms (looking at the three of you Canada, UK and Australia) they usually end up restricting other rights down the line.