Krauthammer: SCOTUS gay marriage decision “huge loss for democracy”
Abortion ruling revisited.
Charles Krauthammer appeared on the O’Reilly Factor last night and was asked by Bill O’Reilly to name three reasons for the recent rapid changes in America, with a focus on recent U.S. Supreme Court cases.
Krauthammer cited culture as one of the reasons and he’s absolutely right. Andrew Breitbart frequently voiced his belief that politics is downstream from culture.
Watch the entire exchange below:
Krauthammer recently called the SCOTUS ruling on gay marriage a loss for democracy.
Transcript and video via Real Clear Politics:
Krauthammer on Gay Marriage Decision: “Whatever You Think About The Policy, It Is A Huge Loss For A Democracy”
SHANNON BREAM, FOX NEWS: Justice Kennedy said this was, writing for the majority, a constitutional, fundamental right that same-sex couples be allowed to marry.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Yes, well, that’s what he declared because that was the preference of the five justices. But I think as was convincingly argued by the dissents, and there were many of them, this is an invention — like the invention of the right to abortion. Whatever you believe about the policy for abortion or here for gay rights, the idea that the court should decree that it’s a constitutional right, something that had been hidden in the constitution for over 100 years and that nobody had ever discerned is simply a way of saying that it has been removed from the democratic arena. It can no longer be debated. All the laws are canceled and we are now in a new place.
Ironically, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who’s on the court today, once said before she ascended to the court that the abortion decision had prevented a stable social settlement of the abortion issue that was headed in the reform direction because it took it out of the political arena. That’s exactly what happened today on gay marriage. Whatever you think about the policy, it is a huge loss for a democracy.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
“I realize that hardly anyone on the Left acknowledges any obligation to be consistent. But logically, the issue of same sex marriage either is governed by the Constitution, or it isn’t. The truth is that the Constitution is silent with regard to marriage, which has always been a matter of state law. To assert that the Constitution mandates gay marriage is as outrageous as to assert that it prohibits gay marriage. It does neither.”
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/06/a-question-for-those-who-celebrate-the-gay-marriage-decision.php
No Collectivist can deal with those questions.
“To assert that the Constitution mandates
gaymarriage is as outrageous as to assert that it prohibitsgaymarriage.”I don’t think the ruling said any such thing. It simply asserted that the state cannot sanction marriage and then restrict it to a favored grouping, per the 14th.
Then you can’t read.
Marriage is a state issue. The Constitution is silent on it.
The Court created a new “right” out of whole cloth.
“Marriage is a state issue. The Constitution is silent on it.
The Court created a new “right” out of whole cloth.”
Like they did when they struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriage?
No, stupid. An interracial marriage is just a marriage.
The permissive rite of marriage was restricted along lines that were invidious under the anti-miscegenation laws.
Interracial marriages were conducted forever, essentially. See “Othello”.
And no new “right” was created.
You really should be ashamed.
“The permissive rite of marriage was restricted along lines that were invidious under the anti-miscegenation laws.”
Why would anti-gay discrimination be any less “invidious”? Because the Sky Fairy says to do it?
“No, stupid. An interracial marriage is just a marriage.”
“Interracial marriages were conducted forever, essentially.”
Your use of the word stupid in this case only reflects on your intelligence.
While I would not use the word “marriage” as I believe it to define the typical male/female relationship, word definitions change over time.
Human history spans more than a few thousand years. Homosexuality has been with us a long time. You have decided what you want marriage to be and any ruling to the contrary, no matter how founded in the constitution, be damned. Calling anyone stupid rather than arguing the issue of the 14th in this case tells me you have no argument, just your feelings.
But, STUPID, you won’t find any reference to marriage in the Constitution.
So you are attempting to LIE about the text and CONTEXT of the Constitution.
There IS NO Constitutional basis for this ruling, VERY like Roe.
Indeed, the CONSTITUTION leaves these matters to the STATES.
If you could read.
You STUPID, lying phuc.
“…word definitions change over time.”
So you put yourself squarely in the “post-modern” camp. Words DON’T mean things. No wonder you think the Constitution supports this ruling!!!
According you your doctrine, we can turn the term “freedom” completely on its head.
Likewise “vote”. Or “nationhood”. Or “rights”.
“Marriage” as a concept is WAY OLDER than any concept of “state”, and a LOT more universal in its application and utility as a foundational human norm.
You STUPID, lying phuc.
“… word definitions change over time.”
There’s a huge qualitative difference between words taking on a slang connotation, such as “gay” and “straight,” and the redefinition of a word which denotes an institution, such as “marriage.”
Rags: “The permissive rite of marriage was restricted along lines that were invidious under the anti-miscegenation laws.”
anoNY: “Why would anti-gay discrimination be any less ‘invidious’? Because the Sky Fairy says to do it?”
I hope your Sky Fairy is smarter than the Wizard of Oz brainless straw man you pal around with.
Anti-miscegenation laws precluded just any adult man from marrying just any adult woman from if they were of different races. One man and one woman was still the equation.
“… There’s a huge qualitative difference between words taking on a slang connotation, such as “gay” and “straight,” and the redefinition of a word which denotes an institution, such as “marriage.” …”
True enough, but those who claim to support the traditional institution of ‘marriage’ almost universally ignore the reality that until very recently ‘marriage’ involved the wife being subsumed by the marriage and her individual rights and liberties being passed to the husband.
Wives weren’t allowed to own property, enter into contracts, file lawsuits, etc. Those rights were specifically reserved for the husband.
There were specific gender roles in traditional marriage… but those roles have largely been eliminated in the modern institution of marriage.
And therein lies the reason why the Supreme Court decided the way it did, the way it had to… heterosexuals changed the traditional concept of marriage to such a degree that the old and once valid arguments against allowing same-sex marriages no long applied.
What consummate bullshit…!!!
You’re an idiot. Nothing you wrote makes the least sense, much less has any historical veracity.
You also used the term “traditional marriage”. I think you are a troll here.
There is ONLY marriage.
nivico,
nivico: “There were specific gender roles in traditional marriage… but those roles have largely been eliminated in the modern institution of marriage.”
There’s a huge difference between changing gender roles and changing genders 🙂
Yes, there are many more working mothers now compared to decades ago. You could consider that a changing role.
But the phenomenon of “working moms” never meant a kid’s two moms.
LukeHandCool (whose wife has taken up a part-time job recently and who still wears the pants in the family … when she lets him)
“Yes, there are many more working mothers now compared to decades ago.”
Who said anything about mothers… or fathers for that matter?
But since you brought the subject up, yes, even the function of marriage being to produce ‘legitimate’ children is one of the precepts of marriage that has long fallen by the wayside…
Under the concept of a traditional marriage, the presumption that marriages should produce children was so strong that a man could have his marriage annulled if his bride proved to be infertile and could not bear him any children.
Under the modern concept of marriage, infertility is not a disqualification to marriage and couples don’t even need to plan on having children to be married… my stepdad got his tubes tied specifically so that he and my mother wouldn’t have any children together.
Again, because the concept of ‘marriage’ has been so completely revised from what it once was there is no longer any legitimate government interest in restricting the practice to only opposite sex couples.
…the concept of ‘marriage’ has been so completely revised from what it once was there is no longer any legitimate government interest in restricting the practice to only opposite sex couples.
——————————–
More pure idiocy. And more historic bullshit (true on several levels).
Note the complete inversion of the rational and temporal relationship of marriage to government.
Note also that this “revolution” nonsense happened in the last decade.
Also, men don’t have their “tubes tied”. Whadda moron.
There have always been a small percentage of married couples unable to conceive.
Many adopt children to raise.
Yes, some choose not to have children. But does that call for, or in anyway validate redefining the age-old definition of marriage from that of one man and one woman to two same-sex members and, soon, multiple members?
When your grandfather got his tubes tied (did you mean your grandmother?), did s/he then become less married?
Are people with five children more married than a couple with only one?
No.
We’re talking about definitions. I’ll bet just about everyone here favors civil unions for gays and lesbians with all the legal and financial protections they afford.
But that is not marriage. And I’m all for gay people being in loving, monogamous relationships if that’s what makes them happy.
Hey Rags, remember the 14th Amendment and its command that states must apply their own laws equally? You admit that marriage is a matter of state law, which under the Constitution must be applied equally. Discrimination against a group of people for no good reason was ruled by the court to have been an unequal application of that law.
The problem in your argument is that you first have to a priori shrink the definition of marriage to comprise only items that are independent of the sexes of the participants. This ongoing debate over the definition of marriage involved people presenting their stories and reasoning to each other in efforts to win hearts and minds to their positions – and ultimately to reaching a societal consensus.
This democratic process was what the Supreme Court eliminated by imposing its own definition of marriage on all the states. That in my mind was an exercise of raw power, given the incoherence of the court’s justifications for finding a definition of marriage in the Constitution.
Now once you impose the new definition of marriage that no longer requires complementary sexes, then I’d agree that this newly defined marriage would have to be made available to all citizens equally.
What is going to be the concern going forward is to the extent that the winning side is going to impose state coercion and vituperation to compel credal affirmation of and active participation in same-sex marriage (or further refinements to marriage that may occur) going forward.
Hey assoNY, “gay” marriage isn’t marriage, you stupid, lying, POS.
Most of the country begs to differ with you, Rags.
First, I think that’s a lie.
Second, so the fluck what? Concepts don’t change because you and all the world say they have.
You keep fighting that prescriptivist fight, Rags!
“You keep fighting that prescriptivist fight, Rags!”
anoNY is the founder and president of Progressive Descriptivists for Polygamy and Linguistic Relativism. His works have appeared in numerous publications including the comments section of countless conservative blogs and his personal Daily Kos diary, and he is also the author of tens of thousands of tweets. He is a graduate of the School of Hard Headlocks from Jocks and currently resides in his mothers’ basement in NY. He can be reached at [email protected]
Thanks. I will.
On the same lines, I don’t believe that Cuba is now NOT a terrorist state, though all the Obami swear it on a stack of Communist Manifestos.
Someone using foul and offensive language to defend his or her views against same-sex marriage clearly isn’t speaking from the position of a Christian expressing a deeply held religious belief…
…and it is because of people like Rags that the those who truly object for religious reasons will have to prove that they aren’t just giving lip-service to Christ and trying to attribute their own personal beliefs to Him.
Well, IF you could read, you’d have noted that I do not pretend any religious foundation for my views.
So, yeah. I’m a really bad exemplar of a religious advocate. I just defend SOME religious views against those who gratuitously attack them.
Sit on it.
1. I dislike profanity, but I dislike dishonesty even more. The activist secular left will cheerfully lie in the service of their cause. BAMN
2. The activist secular left doesn’t care whether our reasons for opposing them come are true to Christianity or not. They don’t believe in it in the first place. They also don’t know or care what it is.
State for me an acknowledged, accepted constitutional principle (or even a half-assed one) by which any State (which all have constitutions that limit their authority) can lawfully prevent two people from accessing a state-sponsored institution (and its attendant benefits) for couples (access to which is readily granted to other couples) on the basis of sex or sexual orientation.
See Amendments, 9 and 10.
See also “plenary police power of state”
See further “state constitutions”, various.
Duh.
Ninth and Tenth Amenments
The Ninth Amendment reserves rights to the people and the Tenth Amendment reserves powers to the States and to the people. (It’s very curious that you cite the Ninth Amendment in support of a claim that someone else’s claim to a right is invalid. You’re either denying their claim because the right isn’t enumerated – an argument strictly forbidden by the Ninth Amendment itself – or you’re presuming a right of your own to discriminate against someone and to delegate the authority to the state, something I respond to below. If you mean something else by it, please enlighten me.) Neither of those amendments authorizes any State to do that which is currently unlawful – discriminate on the basis of sex and sexual orientation. If they did, and if such discrimination was lawful, then there’s no reason why discrimination based on race or religion wouldn’t likewise be authorized. (Except that such discrimination is currently out of fashion and courts have abolished these “traditional” practices that had, at least in some States, popular support. Again, “tradition” and “popular support” don’t mean a thing to the courts, at least not in a republic.)
States’ Plenary Police Powers
“ple•na•ry/ˈplenərē/adjective
unqualified; absolute”
No State’s authority is truly “plenary,” each State’s authority is circumscribed by its constitution. States’ powers are “plenary” only within the scope of the authority delegated to them by their people through their respective constitutions. State powers have limits. Again, no authority to do that which is unlawful can be found here. (If any State’s authority were actually plenary there would be no need for a State constitution, because that State would have all the power it needs to do anything it deems necessary, and no court would ever review its actions because none could possibly be beyond its authority. Its authority would be “unqualified; absolute,” and very obviously that’s not true of any State. Rags, I expect better from you – an argument that invokes an assertion of essentially limitless power in government? Do you have any other opinions in support of which you’d resort to this argument? Almost certainly not.)
Police power in particular refers to the state’s authority to enforce the law for the purposes of public safety, public health, and good order. First, I don’t see how same-sex marriage falls into any of these categories. Second (and yet once again), any authority exercised for the maintenance of public safety and health, and of good order, must be found in the States’ constitutions.
State Constitutions
Which State constitution authorizes discrimination based on sex or sexual orientation (or upon any other qualifier that would distinguish any citizen from another before the law)? None. Any that did would fall afoul of Article VI and the 14th Amendment, which together enforce the principle of “equal protection under the law.” (An excellent principle that would be applicable even without the 14th Amendment. Or do you think it a bad principle?) Again, for your argument to succeed here, it would also have to be applicable to interracial marriage – permitting the States to define marriage with racial qualifiers instead of the qualifiers of sex and sexual orientation. Thirty or forty years from now, your position will be looked upon as miscegenation laws are looked upon today – as an exercise of authority under color of law, unconstitutional, and patently unlawful and anti-freedom.
I don’t care if same-sex marriage isn’t a right.
I don’t care if freedom of religion isn’t a right.
I don’t care if privacy isn’t a right.
I don’t care if owning and carrying guns isn’t a right.
The only thing I care about is “Does the government have the authority to prevent me from: marrying someone of the same sex; believing what I will; concealing my personal correspondence from it; owning and carrying firearms?” And the answer is, “No, no, no, and no.” I don’t see any enumerated authority for government to do any of these things, and we do have governments of enumerated powers. Why is that so difficult to acknowledge? People, mostly stupid, have argued that two of the above are not actually rights, when most people reading this would certainly agree that they are. But I really don’t care – I don’t need to assert my rights, I need to bind my government so that is leaves me the f**k alone.
You’d agree with the principle if it were any other subject. The preamble to the Bill of Rights says that the BOR exists to provide evidence (sufficient to constitute proof) that the government is barred from infringing upon any of our rights (except by due judicial process – not legislative process), and is otherwise limited to its enumerated powers. State governments are likewise limited. None have the authority to discriminate based on sex or sexual orientation. If the people have reserved the right to discriminate, let them exercise their discrimination in their private lives and not use the state to make their private prejudices official policies with the force of law. Nobody is required to have gay friends or attend gay weddings. You can hate black people and Chinese. Anyone can distrust Roman Catholics. I don’t care what other people do in their private lives or thoughts, and I certainly don’t care if two women or two men get married. It’s none of my GD business, and I can’t delegate any authority to the state to make it the state’s business because I don’t have any such authority to delegate!
BTW, it has been said (Jefferson?) that any state powerful enough to give you everything is powerful enough to take everything from you. If one State can decide to not recognize a same-sex marriage created in another State, by what principle may it do that? IF such a principle exists, what would keep a State from refusing recognition to heterosexual marriages created in other States? Why can’t a State pick and choose which States’ marriages (of any kind) it will, and which it won’t, recognize? (As they do with concealed carry licenses.) Could a State refuse to recognize driver licenses from other States? Allowing the States such authority would obviously cause mayhem, and this is why the “full faith and credit” clause exists, although it is very selectively enforced. Arguably, our patchwork of concealed carry laws does create such mayhem. And it is exactly this mayhem caused by the refusal of some States to recognize certain marriages created in other States addressed by the court in Obergefell.
True that having the Court decide this is a blow to “Democracy,” but the larger point is the culture. The Left has taken over the education system so all these depredations of Western Culture are considered not just acceptable but laudatory.
There were reasons we had standards that evolved over centuries and millennia, not years and decades like this PC nonsense.
– –
I believe it was Chesterton who told the parable of the gate.
A young man proposed to his elder that he should take down a gate which blocked a road into the estate. The Elder asked him if he knew why the gate was there, and the youth admitted he did not.
“Then, I shall not allow you to remove it,” commanded the Elder, “But if you can tell me the reason it was put up, I may allow you to take it down.”
– –
All our standards and values and rules of conduct were there for reasons, but the leftist barbarians never bother to learn why, they just tear them all down.
Can’t this parable be cited in support of miscegenation laws? Weren’t there many arguments in support of them and were they also not considered valid at the time? Were they not some of the same arguments (Bible, natural law, “the children,” tradition, popular support)?
Yes, Breitbart had it right. Politics is downstream from culture.
This is especially true with young voters.
Young voters are vastly more influenced by the implicit and explicit political ramblings of “hip” actors, musicians, comedians, etc., than any op-eds or the like.
This is why someone like Breitbart’s close friend, Greg Gutfeld, is so important.
Gutfeld is funny, hip, and articulate, and his scathing skewering of the left and its nuttiness is softened by his self-effacing, normal average nice guy demeanor. He is totally relatable.
I’m really glad to see he has his own show in prime time, finally. I hope it succeeds.
I’d love to see more short video clips of Gutfeld hammering the left shared around the right-of-center blogosphere.
One short, two-minute tell-it-like-it-is funny video monologue by Gutfeld is worth 1,000 op-eds aimed at influencing young voters.
He can speak to and influence young voters. For undergrads up against brainwashing leftist professors and the peer pressure of Daily Show/Colbert/Bill Mahr “educated” classmates and friends, Gutfeld can provide the open- and traditionally-minded among them with cover and reassurance that the left can be easily mocked, too.
I’m glad he’s getting more exposure. But I’d still like to see him get much, much more.
Oh look! I just discovered a Constitutional right for citizens to exile the Supreme Court!
snark
Actually, the states, through their representation in the Senate, may impeach and remove justices of the Supreme Court. Further, I believe that the Founders intended the impeachment power to be used more extensively than it has.
One of the worst things about this SSM ruling is that it will throw open a lot of doors to the Frank Lombards out there when they “discover” a “right” of same-sex couples to adopt. I also foresee how this “right”, discovered in the “penumbras” of the Constitution, will be allowed to nullify rights of Free Exercise and Free Speech, which are spelled out in black and white.
Technically, the House “impeaches” (a finding of wrong-doing) and the Senate “has the sole Power to try all Impeachments”(the Senate determines punishment, if any, which is limited “to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States”).
But it is not possible for the States to try an impeachment “through their representation in the Senate.” The States no longer have any representation in the Senate, thanks to the 17th Amendment.
O’Reilly is still a total ass, but Krauthammer was excellent.
I’m a big Krauthammer fan, but his first explanation for the secularization of our culture is desperately wrong. The apostle Paul had it right a long time ago, and nothing has changed.
“… that which is known about God is evident [m]within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.”
Secularism and it’s materialistic idolatry are not caused by science, they are caused by willful rebellion against God. Darwin is merely a useful hammer.
Kids are no longer raised by their parents, but by the media/ Parents tolerate this. The left controls the media. We tolerate this. We also tolerate there stooges named Boehner, McConnell and Presbus.
We deserve all the misery we get.
It’s not so much tolerating it as being overwhelmed by the technology. It used to be you watched what they watched on TV.
Now they are wired and connected wherever they go and teachers love to politicize their classes.
There is a silver lining; you talk to them and teach them why all this leftist garbage is just that. Compared to the lefty kids who become unquestioning true believers, your kids can develop much sharper cognitive skills.
Like it or not, the decision was a consequence of the democratic process. Breyer and Ginsburg were appointed by Clinton. Kagan and Sotomajor were appointed by Obama. Clinton and Obama were democratically elected. All the credit belongs to “the people”. Thanks, Democrat voters!
Ragspierre:
“An interracial marriage is just a marriage.”
We recognize that now, but historically that was not the case in many jurisdictions in this country – in those jurisdictions interracial were illegal, and were therefore not “marriages” at all. The right to marry out of one’s race had been denied for many decades. So whether it’s permitted now, or was traditionally not permitted in the past, is no standard by which it can be judged a “right” or not. A same-sex marriage is “just a marriage” too; it’s still just two people who have determined to order their personal lives in a manner available to many other “two person” sets by applying for access to an institution sponsored by the state. States aren’t being ordered to allow or recognize same-sex marriage, they’re being told that under the law they have no lawful authority to prevent access to the institution based on sex or sexual orientation. Arguments that the state may discriminate on the basis of sex or sexual orientation are no different from arguments used to supported miscegenation laws.
Frankly, as someone who was in an interracial marriage, I read the arguments about gay marriage, and they are not substantively different from those used to prevent interracial marriage – the Bible, tradition, natural law, state authority to define/limit/prevent, it will damage the institution, what about “the children,” etc. Had I been of a slightly earlier time, these same arguments would have prevented me from marrying the spouse of my choice. And the outrage, the gnashing of teeth, and the predictions of dire consequences (which, in particular, remind me of the Chicken Little brigade of the AGW/climate change bunch) sounds just like that which followed the elimination of the miscegenation laws (and the elimination of segregation laws), none of which came to pass.
Read an argument against gay marriage and substitute “interracial marriage” for “gay marriage.” Tell me it doesn’t sound like racist twaddle. Maybe my ears are more sensitive because of my personal experiences and life, but I can hear “dog whistles” when I read anti-gay marriage arguments. I have not heard or read a single anti-gay marriage argument that was actually based on the Constitution or sound constitutional principles, nor any argument that wouldn’t be just as valid as an analogous anti-interracial marriage argument. Meaning that most arguments against gay marriage, if they are correct, are equally correct when used against interracial marriage. And these are arguments I’m sure most here would agree are invalid arguments when used to support miscegenation laws.
The reason a “right” to gay marriage is being “found” now is because until recently, being gay was practically literally a crime. Most “deviant” sex practices were illegal, even for heterosexual married couples. It was not possible for a “right” to gay marriage to be “found” under those circumstance because it was, for practical and legal purposes, impossible for anyone to step forward to assert it. (As it was not possible to “find” a right to interracial marriage in many jurisdictions while slavery was legal – and for some time afterwards in many places.)
“A long history of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”
Thomas Paine
Correction: first sentence should read, “…in those jurisdictions interracial marriages were illegal, and were therefore not “marriages” at all.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the interracial marriage laws that criminalized marriages between different races recognized the validity of those marriages as being marriages, otherwise they wouldn’t have made them subject to criminal sanction. Just like a law making bank robbery illegal requires that the bank robbery has taken place.
That’s different than the SSM dispute. With SSM, it is not that states have criminalized SSMs and prescribed penalties for the act; rather that the states did not recognize the existence of SSM as a form of marriage, and on that basis refused to extent the attendant benefits and obligations of marriage to SSM couples.
That is, the couples in interracial marriages were subject to criminal penalties for being married; the couples in SSM “marriages” did not have their marriages recognized as valid – and were not subject to criminal penalties.
Miscegenation laws weren’t about States criminalizing interracial marriages created in other States, they prevented applicants who were not of the same race from becoming married in the States with the laws. When filling out the form to apply for a marriage license, States with miscegenation laws asked for the applicants’ race. If they filled out the form to indicate they were not of the same race, the application was denied. I’m not sure if an interracial marriage created in another State could be, or was, ignored when the couple entered a State with miscegenation laws, but I’ve never read that it was. I imagine no State at the time never thought it could ignore a legal marriage created in another State.
Thanks for clarifying this particular aspect about miscegenation laws; it seems you have looked into this history more closely than I. I still do think the analogy is inexact, but it’s really a moot point at this time. My principal objection to the court ruling was its reliance on creating a new fundamental right under due process jurisprudence.
http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2015/07/01/no-gop-candidates-did-not-embarrass-themselves-in-rebuking-the-supreme-courts-same-sex-marriage-ruling/
That is a very good, broad treatment of several of the specious arguments that have been made here.
Andy McCarthy is a MUCH superior Constitutional lawyer to our resident SSM protagonists. Or me.