Trump and conservatives are causing real change. They are causing real positive results. They are the real progressives.
How Trump Changed the Courts in 2017
Even before he was president, Donald Trump was clear about how he would prioritize putting constitutionalists on the courts.
And now, at the end of 2017, we can see how his presidency is already having an effect on the courts.
On May 17, 2016, then-candidate Trump did something unprecedented. He released a list of 11 judges as potential replacements for Justice Antonin Scalia, who had died earlier in the year.
On that occasion, Trump stated:
Justice Scalia was a remarkable person and a brilliant Supreme Court justice. His career was defined by his reverence for the Constitution and his legacy of protecting Americans’ most cherished freedoms. He was a Justice who did not believe in legislating from the bench and he is a person whom I held in the highest regard and will always greatly respect his intelligence and conviction to uphold the Constitution of our country.The following list of potential Supreme Court justices is representative of the kind of constitutional principles I value and, as president, I plan to use this list as a guide to nominate our next United States Supreme Court justices.
Trump graciously credited The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society with providing names that informed his thinking on the matter.
The list was instrumental to Trump winning the election. It helped assuage the concerns of many conservatives and independents who were skeptical about Trump, but who cared a lot about the direction of the Supreme Court and the law and who did not want Hillary Clinton nominating the next Supreme Court justice.
The well-crafted list persuaded a lot of wavering voters that, at least with respect to the courts, they could trust Trump to nominate judges in the mold of Scalia and Clarence Thomas, that is to say originalists and textualists. Moreover, the Trump administration made clear that it would prioritize nominating highly-qualified men and women to fill life-tenured positions on the federal bench.
So how has the president done in his first year in office in terms of making good on that promise? Quite well indeed.
While the crowning achievement of the year was clearly the confirmation of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, it is worth celebrating the fact that the Senate confirmed 12 circuit court judges this year—the largest number of appellate judges confirmed during the first year of any president in history (beating out John Kennedy and Richard Nixon by one).
While the Supreme Court only hears about 70 cases per year, the federal appellate courts consider roughly 50,000 cases per year. In a very real way, therefore, the buck often stops at the lower appellate courts when it comes to deciding important legal issues.
Having lost the ability to filibuster judicial nominees—when then-Majority Leader Harry Reid exercised the “nuclear option” in November 2013 in order to pack the influential D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals with three Obama nominees—the Democrats attempted to use the blue slip process as a one-senator veto of judicial nominees, until Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, effectively put an end to that abusive practice, at least with appellate nominees.
Nonetheless, it is worth taking a moment to offer congratulations and kudos to Trump, White House counsel Don McGahn, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley for a job spectacularly well done.
From: ROBERT M HOOVER
Sent: Thu, Dec 28, 2017 9:02 pm
Subject: Why Not?????
Sent: Thu, Dec 28, 2017 9:02 pm
Subject: Why Not?????
His description of the UN pretty much fits my impressions.
New Year's Resolution for Trump: Withdraw US From The UN
Earlier this week, the Clarion Project’s Elliot Friedland offered a poignant commentary addressing how President Donald Trump’s policies are significantly helping to provide an atmosphere wherein the threat of Islamism to the West can be more readily discussed amongst those threatened.
The Clarion Project is a nonpartisan forum whose stated mission is “to educate the public about the dangers of radical Islam and promote people and policies which are effective in working against it.”
In order to contextualize Trump’s policies, Friedland cites the “Overton Window,” a philosophy developed in the 1990s by Joe Overton of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
This paradigm “maintains that there is an ‘acceptable’ range of politically viable ideas on any given issue,” says Friedland, “framed by the range of ideas held by the public.”
Historically, American presidents operate outside this “window” at their peril, because they risk the often capricious judgment of the American people and the rest of the world.
In the main, Friedland’s piece is what I typically refer to as “dead-on,” although the unconventional aspects of our current president’s policies, I believe, tend to transcend any sort of political paradigm at all, traditional or otherwise.
Ronald Reagan was a transformational president and, of course, a conservative.
But while he was far more the patriot than a political animal, he operated very much within the existing political framework.
While this did not hinder him too much with regard to the things he set out to accomplish, unfortunately, it facilitated the rapid dismantling of much of what he did accomplish by the chief executives who came after him.
As I’ve stated many times, the “Reagan Revolution” died the day he left office and uber-globalist George H.W. Bush took over.
While President Trump’s contentious travel ban on individuals from hostile Muslim nations (for example) is anathema to dedicated liberals and global elites, it is an eminently wise policy from a standpoint of national security.
A cessation of all Muslim immigration, on the other hand, or a deportation of all Muslim foreign nationals would likely be quite unwise on Trump’s part, from an “Overton Window” standpoint.
This does not invalidate the arguable prudence of such action; it merely means that it would fall well outside the range of acceptable action held by the public.
Although much of the following has been characteristically downplayed by the establishment press and Beltway politicos, over the last year we have seen significant indicators that President Trump’s accomplishments are likely to rival or even surpass those of Ronald Reagan, particularly in the areas of economics, national security and America’s overall stature in the international community. Quite a few of his newly enacted and proposed policies are at the farther edges of political convention, but they fall within the parameters of the bold and aggressive action for which the American electorate clamored.
Another move that may fall within the range of public acceptability would be the withdrawal of the United States of America from the United Nations with all due speed.
Many are celebrating the recently announced $285-million cut in U.S. funding for the U.N., but this measure is simply not enough considering what the U.N. has come to represent.
Inasmuch as America’s political class has become a gaggle of socialist elites with a marked disdain for individual liberty, the democratic process and notions of morality, the U.N. has become an international cabal of these socialist elites and their Third World acolytes whose primary agenda appears to be the dismantling of their greatest benefactor – America.
I need not enumerate the dozens of policies and programs enacted and proposed by the U.N. in recent years that have either compromised our sovereignty or were calculated to do so, its proclivity for lionizing tyrannical and genocidal regimes in the area of human rights, and the plain, good-old wasting of billions of dollars to ostensibly justify its existence.
When I see video footage of U.N. General Assembly meetings, I am reminded of the mafiosi who so frequently came under fire by law enforcement and the press when I was growing up in New York.
These culturally bankrupt, avaricious, amoral parasites took on airs of respectability simply because they had managed to amass great wealth.
Many of the power players in the U.N. and member nations themselves amassed what power they have by similar means.
Thievery on a grand scale, slavery, genocide and the moral ambivalence of those who might have stood in their way led to the utter corruption of this once-relevant organization, and its transformation into a festering sociopolitical boil right on our shores (if not technically within our territory).
It is for all of the above reasons that I believe it is an ideal time for the Trump administration to test the waters as regards America’s withdrawal from the United Nations.
If not for the genuine environmental calamity to which it would give rise, I would dearly love to see the iconic United Nations headquarters imploded and bulldozed into New York’s East River (which is within eyeshot of the complex).
Strategically, the only reason for America remaining a U.N. member state lies in the adage having to do with keeping one’s friends close and their enemies closer.
Barring the bulldozer solution, I’m certain that one of the U.N.’s wealthier members could pick up the tab for the financial shortfall attendant to America’s withdrawal, and bankroll the headquarters’ relocation to some Third-World cultural Mecca – like London or Abu Dhabi.
Article posted with permission from Erik Rush
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About the AuthorErik Rush
Erik Rush is a New York-born columnist, author and speaker who writes sociopolitical commentary, and host of the FULL-CONTACT With Erik Rush LIVE! streaming radio show. He is also the Founder and Chief Editor of the Instigator News Network. In February of 2007, Erik was the first to break the story of Barack Obama’s ties to militant Chicago preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright on a national level. His book, "Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal ~ America's Racial Obsession," has been called "the definitive book on race politics in America."
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