(1) Just to give you an idea of what happens when you allow your curiosity about American politics to run wild, here's the tangential path my mind took today.
Saw a tweet about gun grabbing at Wounded Knee. Had vaguely heard of it, so did a search for more info.
(2) Read that Wounded Knee was a 1890 South Dakota massacre that killed 150-300 native American ?combatants/suspects and civilians & some of the troops. Not good. One tangent took me down the path of wondering why the US military did that.
(3) Because it seems to me that if the native Americans at the time were protected by the US Constitution, they had the same 2A rights as any other citizens. I know many of the settlers hated the native Americans, but that doesn't give government the right to disarm them.
(4) The other path I went down was learning about the history of native Americans in that area, which took me to a Wikipedia entry about Standing Rock, which was overloaded with Leftist talking points about the Dakota Access Pipeline project.
(5) Which reminded me how useless Wikipedia is when it comes to any potentially political topic. I'm constantly looking for other information sources that are effective and work harder to reduce bias.
(6) When I had searched for "Wounded Knee" I came across an entry about the 1973 incident, which appears to be an internal dispute among native Americans over corruption, which tragically led to ~60 deaths. A lot of similarities with the DAPL protests, but a lower body count.
(7) Thinking back to the 2A issue, I remembered my ongoing effort to learn more about all the Constitutional amendments, since I'm most familiar with the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 14th and my knowledge feels very incomplete.
(8) The 3rd seemed obscure and obsolete, until I looked up what is thought to be the only higher court case about it,en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engblom_v…, 1982.
Fascinating case from a legal perspective, about troops brought in to break a prison officers' strike.
(9) Striking employees were evicted from employee housing to accommodate the National Guard. Two affected employees petitioned the court, relying on the due process clause of 14A, and 3A. That got me thinking about 14A, and Roe v Wade.
(10) I used to be an SJW, Democrat-supporting Leftist. I made a 180 degree turn in 2016 and am now more conservative than some of the conservative friends who helped to Redpill me. LOL. Particularly on my pro-life views, which unusually, happen to not be faith-based.
(11) I hate judicial overreach almost as much as I hate the murder of unborn children.
Judicial overreach is the reason abortion is legal in the USA. And it can be remedied by Congress and the states amending the Constitution. Which I think will eventually happen.
(12) So I wanted to find out how the USA ended up with insufficient originalist, Constitution-respecting SCOTUS justices in 1973. I'm still working on that, but I came across these excellent quotes from the two dissenting justices, White and Rehnquist.
(14) This reminds me of the Scalia dissent to the 2015 same sex marriage decision. Justice White's Roe v Wade dissent is an excellent description of the judicial overreach problem, that has seen an unelected panel of 9 increasingly override the elected Congress & "We the people."
(15) Of course, neither liberals or conservatives like the fact that Presidential elections are what now decides the partisan make-up of the SCOTUS, potentially for a generation or more.
However, it is what it is.
(16) In this context, many who voted for Trump were voting to have as many originalist judicial appointments as possible, esp to the SCOTUS during a 4 year period likely to produce several vacancies. We won, and so far the plan is ticking along nicely.
(17) IMO most Democrat voters don't understand the US Constitution, originalism, the separation of powers, or even how a bill becomes law. Their lack of curiosity is their responsibility and no one else's. If they did understand, they might have fought harder to win in 2016.
(18) Their ignorance was our gain, as it turns out. No matter how many teenagers become overnight gun control celebrities with help from CNN & other Democrat SuperPACs, their street protests will not be able to overturn #2A. Thank God (& the founding fathers).
(19) I look forward to the day when the collective humanity and ethical consistency of conservative voters abolishes legal baby killing, as it did for slavery.
And that, folks, is how I got from Wounded Knee to saving the lives of unborn kids. #MAGA#ProLifeGen#MicahsLaw
END
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
(2) Brett M. Kavanaugh will soon be the 102nd Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the USA. He has earned this highest honor throughout his life, inspired by his trailblazing mother, Judge Martha Kavanaugh.
His title for these few hours is Associate Justice Designate.
(3) This statement from the Supreme Court explains the two ceremonies:
(2) This WaPo reporter is incorrect about the vote being "scheduled for" Saturday. The earliest time a vote COULD be held is Saturday pm. There's no reason not to hold it on Sun/Mon IF we need Daines. I think we won't. Read my 5 tweets about him here:
(1) A directory of my Kavanaugh threads since July 9, 2018.
I never planned more than a couple of threads about him this year but, I shoulda known the Dems would try to destroy whoever was the nominee this time.
(2) Like Democrats, I'd already decided how I felt about him before his nomination was announced. I live-tweeted the announcement, which was a great event in itself.
(3) I followed Kavanaugh's progress over the summer and on September 22nd, I finally wrote a thread about the preparations for the all-important hearing on September 27th. It covers the hearing before the next thread started the day after.
(2) Mitch laughing to himself about how absurd it is that he has to push his way through the crowd of reporters on 9/25/18.
(3) Sen Grassley is 85 years old. (Democrats have senators around that age, too.)
Today he had to hold onto a Capitol Police officer to reduce the risk of a reporter knocking him over. This has to stop. Senators must return to being able to walk around freely at work.
(2) First Lady Melania Trump is a natural in this important role.
She's one of those women whose face lights up whenever she is around children. God Bless our great First Lady.
👠🇺🇸
(3) FLOTUS left Joint Base Andrews in her trademark high heels and arrived in Ghana wearing practical flats. She still looks sensational, whatever she happens to wear!
(2) Cloture in the Senate is a procedural step that you can learn more about at the link below. The senate.gov website is the best resource for learning about Senate procedure and a lot more. Same for house.gov.
(3) Watching live Senate floor proceedings is boring as hell, as they pass bills for naming Post Offices, & so on. But every now & then, they confirm a SCOTUS judge. And this time, they will affirm our great #BillOfRights#DueProcess & the hard-won #RuleOfLaw. Seriously. 🇺🇸🦅