Constitution
February 5, 2023 — John Hinderaker
In August of last year, the Biden administration announced, by executive order, that some $400 billion in outstanding student debt would be forgiven. There was no statutory basis for this order, and many assumed that it was an election-year Hail Mary that ultimately would lose in the courts, but would garner Democrat votes in the midterms. That appears to be what happened. The legality of Biden’s purported debt forgiveness has
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January 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Minneapolis attorney Marshall Tanick has taken a look at the issues raised in the Minnesota Court of Appeals hearing on the murder conviction of Derek Chauvin. Marshall discusses the hearing in the Star Tribune op-ed column “Did Chauvin get a fair trial?” I wrote about the hearing here last week. Marshall more or less provides a second opinion that aligns with mine, if somewhat faintly: [T]he core of the argument
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December 27, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Following up on our dry run at Power Line University last week (not too late to go back and take it in if you missed it), tomorrow (Wednesday) at 4 pm Pacific/7 pm Eastern, we’ll be doing our first class session on The Federalist in webinar format, which means you’ll be able to watch live and send in questions and comments. We’ll be covering Federalist numbers 1 – 10, with
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December 22, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I get a steady stream of emails from readers and listeners who want to know if any of my or Lucretia’s college courses are webcast or otherwise available online, and unfortunately the answer is No, partly for legal reasons but also for some technical reasons (streaming live classes is not as easy as it might seem, and the recording quality is often poor). But we have for the longest time
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November 15, 2022 — John Hinderaker
This could be huge news: Texas Governor Greg Abbott has summoned the National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety to repel the invasion of Texas from its southern border. Abbott invokes the Invasion Clauses of the U.S. and Texas Constitutions: I invoked the Invasion Clauses of the U.S. & Texas Constitutions to fully authorize Texas to take unprecedented measures to defend our state against an invasion. I'm using
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October 31, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Today the Supreme Court heard historic arguments on legal challenges to anti-Asian race discrimination by Harvard and the University of North Carolina. I will have more to say about that shortly, but first I want to note a missive that Harvard’s President, Lawrence Bacow, sent to the university’s alumni this morning via email. The communication (signed “Larry”) is also viewable here. Bacow rehearses the tired excuses for race discrimination: Whatever
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October 29, 2022 — John Hinderaker
I was on Sky News television in Australia a few minutes ago, and one of the things we talked about was Hillary Clinton’s latest outburst: “Right-wing extremists” have a plan already in place to “literally steal the next presidential election, and they’re not making a secret of it,” Hillary Clinton says in a video recently posted to Twitter. In the video, posted by the progressive group Indivisible, the former first
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October 25, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The great Michael Ramirez has taken the thousand words we have devoted to President Biden’s utterly lawless student loan giveaway and condensed them into the proverbial picture. He titles this editorial cartoon Purloined Purse Strings and aptly comments: “President Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness plan to buy votes is financially reckless, and an unconstitutional power grab of Congress’s spending authority.” I am proud to note that at his Substack site the
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October 24, 2022 — Scott Johnson
President Biden premised his cancelation or forgiveness of student loans of up to $20,000 per person on “the financial harms of the pandemic.” However, a Wall Street Journal editorial duly noted that “the government had halted student loan payments since 2020, holding borrowers harmless. A month before he declared the pandemic ‘over,’ Biden extended that student loan pause through Dec. 31.” Biden’s “plan,” as he calls it, is blatantly unconstitutional.
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October 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Derek Chauvin could not afford an attorney to appeal his convictions in the case of George Floyd. Chauvin’s insurance did not extend to appeals and the Minnesota Supreme Court denied him a public defender. Although I thought Chauvin could not have received a fair trial in Hennepin County, it looked like he wouldn’t be able to raise the issue on appeal either. I put out the call on Power Line
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September 18, 2022 — Scott Johnson
In Modern Liberty and Its Discontents, the French political philosopher Pierre Manent praises the comprehensive understanding advanced by Aristotle in his Politics: Aristotle’s Politics gives a description and analysis of political life that in a certain way is exhaustive—in any case more complete and subtle than any subsequent description or analysis. The bringing to light of the elements of the city, the critical and impartial analysis of the claims of
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September 5, 2022 — Steven Hayward
There’s an old joke that French libraries file their nation’s constitutions under “Periodicals.” I also recall Walter Berns once telling me the story of a visit he took to South America—it was either Argentina or Chile, I don’t recall which country he specified—where one of his academic hosts dismissed the American Constitution with the comment, “You’ve only had one constitution, while we’ve had lots of them.” This all came back
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August 20, 2022 — John Hinderaker
In recent years, many liberals have become openly hostile to the Constitution. The present moment in history, with the Democrats controlling the House by the barest of majorities, a 50/50 Senate with a Democratic vice president, and a Democratic president, has heightened liberal frustration with the Constitution. With their hands, for a brief moment at least, on all of the levers of power, why can’t the Democratic Party effect a
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July 16, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Cast your mind back to 2016 for a moment, when it seemed a lock that Hillary Clinton would win the election, and nominate a leftist to succeed Justice Scalia. (Remember that Hillary refused to commit to re-sending the nomination of Merrick Garland—a clear signal to progressives that she’s pick someone younger and more progressive.) Mark Tushnet, one of the leading leftists at Harvard Law School, let loose with his id
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July 13, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Given how things are going, you may be relieved to know that, according to today’s Rasmussen Reports, most Americans still revere our Constitution: A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports and the Heartland Institute finds that 82% of Likely U.S. voters have a favorable opinion of the Constitution, including 58% who have a Very Favorable view of the document, which was ratified in 1789. Just 14% view
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July 4, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The Biden administration has taken strong exception to Florida’s anti-grooming law, which requires that public school teachers wait until kids are in the fourth grade before inculcating them with LGBTQTrans ideology. Biden intends to fight for grooming to the last man nonbinary person: [T]he White House claims there will be federal intervention in opposition to the anti-grooming law. Moves for federal mediation include “monitoring” by the Department of Education and
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June 26, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Howie Carr is one of America’s top radio personalities. He has the big talk show in New England, on which I appear occasionally as a guest. On Friday I was on the show to talk about the Dobbs ruling, and we also touched on the New York firearms decision. It made for an interesting conversation, I think. Here it is; my appearance begins the hour:
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