David French

According to this narrative, the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973 was the seminal domestic event that inspired Christian conservatism. It represented a deadly corruption of our Constitution in service of a culture of sexual convenience in which human life was subordinate to sexual pleasure.

The response of the Christian right was both political and personal. That approach could be boiled down to a single sentence: Elect people of good personal character who will defend human life and religious liberty.

We went on that trip, and all we got was this lousy Trump.

"They Come Up to Me and Say, ‘Sir, Everyone Respects You, Sir.’"

I’m sorry; what?

Tariff Talk

To the extent they can reasonably figure it out*, I’d like to see sellers include a separate line item on invoices that shows the portion of the price attributable to tariffs. Knowledge is powerful.

*They can acknowledge it’s an estimate.

These Days, “Conservatives” Aren’t.
Jonah Goldberg:

The market system is man-made, just as gardens are. But it is not the product of any individual will. It is a crowdsourced network of institutions, constructed over generations of trial and error, learned best practices, and the accumulation of common law and legislation alike. …

It is only when someone tears down or batters these Chestertonian fences all around us that we discover those fences are there for a reason. … That’s where we are now. One man is singlehandedly taking a plow to the garden because he is confident that he knows better than, almost literally, everyone. And his defenders have few, if any, serious arguments in his defense beyond “trust him.”

Ya Think So, Dave?

Fascism and the Rule of Law Can Run on Parallel Tracks

As Fraenkel explained it, a lawless dictatorship does not arise simply by snuffing out the ordinary legal system of rules, procedures, and precedents. To the contrary, that system—which he called the “normative state”—remains in place while dictatorial power spreads across society. What happens, Fraenkel explained, is insidious. Rather than completely eliminating the normative state, the Nazi regime slowly created a parallel zone in which “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees” reigned freely.
. . .

The trick was to find a way to keep the law going for Christian Germans who supported or at least tolerated the Nazis, while ruthlessly executing the führer’s directives against the state’s enemies, real and perceived. Capitalism could jog nicely alongside the brutal suppression of democracy, and even genocide.

America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State

Anti-Trump Rally, Dallas - #HandsOff

I made a sign that said, “Uphold the Rule of Law.”

Hang On, There

WTF? Although non-citizens don’t enjoy full free-speech protections, they are entitled to due process.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed Khalil’s arrest in a statement Sunday, describing it as being “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.”

Khalil’s arrest is the first publicly known deportation effort under Trump’s promised crackdown on students who joined protests against the war in Gaza that swept college campuses last spring. The administration has claimed participants forfeited their rights to remain in the country by supporting Hamas. Time.com

Not letting his wife (an American) or lawyer know where he is being held is especially chilling.

The United States Senate is starting to annoy me. Seriously.

Nick Catoggio:

By tapping a guy accused of having sex at a party with a 17-year-old girl to be America’s top law enforcement officer, Donald Trump discovered that even life forms as supine as congressional Republicans have a limit to how much sleaze they can rationalize. But I wonder if, in hindsight, the president regrets letting Gaetz withdraw from consideration instead of daring the Senate GOP to vote him down.

… everything we’ve seen from them since then proves that they do not, in fact, take their jobs very seriously.