Like a dog returning to its own vomit, Republican congressional leaders just can’t stay away from illegal alien amnesty. Evidently because they love creating new Democratic voters, ignoring the rule of law and depressing their base.
A leaked draft of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) amnesty deal could lead to the “biggest” amnesty for illegal aliens in United States history, experts tell Breitbart News.
Ryan’s immigration deal would go beyond giving amnesty to only the nearly 800,000 illegal aliens who are enrolled in the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
According to a leaked draft of the amnesty deal, obtained by Breitbart News, Ryan’s plan would allow the entire “DACA population” to be eligible for amnesty so long as they meet low educational, work and criminal requirements, prompting the amnesty to explode in size.
A draft of the leaked GOP amnesty deal
That DACA population could include the nearly 3.5 million DACA-enrolled and DACA-eligible illegal aliens, and even more illegal aliens who arrive in the U.S. to fraudulently obtain the amnesty.
NumbersUSA Governmental Affairs Director Rosemary Jenks told Breitbart News that Ryan’s amnesty will — at the least — allow 1.8 million illegal aliens to stay in the U.S.
“This has the potential to turn into the biggest amnesty we’ve ever had,” Jenks said.
The leaked amnesty deal reveals that Ryan and the Republican establishment may even be considering going beyond giving amnesty to DACA illegal aliens.
A second amnesty is included in the leaked draft, one that would allow the children of temporary foreign guest workers and “anyone who has a ‘contingent nonimmigrant status’” to apply for the amnesty.
How about “No”? Does “No” work for you? How about “Hell No!”?
What needs to be done is:
Increased border enforcement
Implement E-Verify
Build the wall
All that needs to be done before any sort of amnesty is even considered.
Why is this message so hard for congressional Republicans to understand?
President Donald Trump met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un in Singapore, and they signed a broad joint agreement to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. Which is all well and good, if not terribly meaningful if Kim doesn’t follow-through and allow U.S. inspectors access to verify denuclearization. North Korea has broken several agreements in the past, and there’s no guarantee they won’t break this one, but President Trump has been a lot better about keeping economic pressure on North Korea to comply than Clinton or Obama was. But even if nothing ever comes of it, we’ve already come out ahead:
I do not fault Trump for throwing out the status quo playbook, which has led to many years of bipartisan failures vis-a-vis North Korea. Shaking things up, grabbing Kim’s attention, and alternatively using sticks (“fire and fury”) and carrots (charm offensive) to land the Hermit Kingdom’s dictator at the negotiating table, in person, involved a series of bold strokes. Ramping up biting sanctions while ratcheting up bellicose rhetoric seems to have spooked the regime, at least to some degree. Kim released three hostages (let’s not forget the one his goons murdered), allegedly destroyed a nuclear test site, and agreed to leave the safety of his country for a face-to-face meeting. For all of this, Trump deserves some real credit.
(Some Facebook friends were apoplectic when I pointed out that President Trump got hostages released in North Korea, which they furiously insisted happened a month ago and thus had absolutely nothing to do with this summit. Sure, sport, if that’s the hill you want to die on, whatever you say. Trump Derangement Syndrome is a hell of a drug.)
And even if it is a meaningless agreement, at least it didn’t cost us $150 billion to produce the failure, unlike Obama’s Iran deal. All it cost us was a cancelled wargame with South Korea (a pretty nominal cost) and President Trump serving up some oleaginous flattery to his negotiating counterpart. None of that should obscure that Kim is, in fact, still a communist scumbag. Can he stop being a communist scumbag? Five years ago I would have said no. But no one expected Saudi Arabia to give up Wahabbism, but that seems to be happening, and President Trump had some role in that as well. Old approaches haven’t worked, and maybe Kim is smart enough to grasp what every non-leftist outside his country already has: communism is a miserable failure and capitalism is the only path forward to prosperity.
At least one person was overjoyed at the summit: Ex-basketball player Dennis Rodman.
Does that sound like the ravings of a naive fool?
Yes. Yes it does. (Though I can understand him being upset at receiving hundreds of death threats.) But that naive fool may have provided the crack through which President Trump could channel his persuasion techniques. And his much-derided basketball trip may turn out to be the equivalent of Nixon’s “ping-pong diplomacy” with China.
Also supporting President Trump’s North Korean initiative were…15 House Democrats? (Well, 14 if you discount the non-voting representative from Guam.)
The House Democrat letter is signed by Reps. Raul Grijalva (AZ), Barbara Lee (CA), Mark Pocan (WI), Pramila Jayapal (WA), Tulsi Gabbard (HI), Bobby Rush (IL), Zoe Lofgren (CA), Madeleine Bordallo (GUAM), Colleen Hanabusa (HI), Mark DeSaulnier (CA), Richard Nolan (MN), Karen Bass (CA), Jared Huffman (CA), and Jamie Raskin (MD)
Most interesting from that list: Both of Hawaii’s representatives support President Trump’s negotiations. Funny how being threatened with direct nuclear annihilation can clarify the mind.
The media rebuked Ronald Reagan for calling the Soviet Union an evil empire. These days the media is demanding that Donald Trump isolate North Korea as one. Suddenly the peaceniks of the press corps deplore dialogue and demand to know why “Trump is legitimizing” Kim Jong Un.
On Monday night, MSNBC assembled a panel of spiteful Trump critics to throw a wet blanket over the summit. The doves turned into hawks and spent much of the evening trying to peck at Trump. Most of the people on the panel are apologists for this or that communist thug—just go back and look at MSNBC’s fawning coverage of Fidel Castro’s death—but on Monday night they played hardliners. Rachel Maddow, furrowing her brow as usual, objected to Trump even holding a summit. She has finally found a communist leader she thinks America should ostracize. When Obama met with the Castro brothers, she burbled with enthusiasm. But she covered this moment of historic diplomacy like a funeral, shuddering at the thought of North Korea joining the “community” of nations.
MSNBC saw the summit as just one more occasion for obsessive anti-Trump fault-finding. The disgraced Brian Williams is still hanging around for some reason and looked like he wanted to give the summit the kind of newsy, anchormanish treatment of old, but he couldn’t pull it off in the company of jabbering Trump haters, for whom wild opining is all that counts. Plus, Williams is too reduced a figure for the cocksure Maddow to give any equal time. But Williams’s ego still asserts itself from time to time. On Monday night he fed it by asking one of the sham historians on the panel an arcane, look-at-what-I-know style question about the USS Pueblo, a ship the North Koreans captured in 1968.
The utterly contemptible Nicole Wallace, whose smugness and nastiness are beyond caricature, drove much of the shrill coverage. She was at her whiny, know-it-all worst, droning on about Trump’s lack of “preparation” and so forth. But Trump seemed perfectly at ease, getting a stiff Kim Jong Un to crack a smile. Trump had said it would only take “a minute” for him to sense if the relationship between the two countries could improve. By that measure, the summit appeared to start promisingly. Normally such friendly gestures between an American leader and an adversary would warm the hearts of liberals. Not this time. The MSNBC panel looked on coldly and muttered suspiciously about Trump’s body language.
Taxpayers have grown accustomed to the deceptive tactics that government entities employ when issuing debt or increasing taxes. School districts, for instance, are known to move polling locations to increase favorable outcomes and even to mislead voters about what’s on the ballot. The latest trend is holding tax ratification elections (TRE) with little advanced notice, when voters aren’t paying attention.
Klein ISD, a Houston-area school district of 50,000, decided to call a tax ratification election when voters least suspected it: the end of the school year. In June, KISD hopes voters will approve a nine cent increase to help boost its reserves for the next few years.
After receiving certified appraisal rolls, school districts calculate two tax rates – the effective tax rate and the rollback rate. The rollback rate is the maximum amount an entity can raise taxes without seeking voter approval. If the entity wants to adopt a rate above the rollback rate, it must hold a tax ratification election to adopt that rate.
KISD said that if the TRE is defeated by voters, they’ll have to find the money to maintain their fund balance and pursue security projects through cuts. Taxpayers have to make cuts when their expenses exceed their income; there’s no reason the school district shouldn’t have to do the same.
If approved, KISD’s new overall tax rate would increase to $1.52 per $100. According to the district’s estimates, taxpayers with a home valued at $100,000—far below the cost of the average residential property in KISD—would see an annual increase of almost $70 per year. However, this is just the direct increase and doesn’t account for rising property values, which drive up the tax bill even higher. Harris County property owners have seen their home values increase by an average of 36 percent over the last three years.
To add insult to injury, the district is asking taxpayers for more money when they haven’t demonstrated any effort to address their mounting debt.
KISD has about $1.4 billion in outstanding tax-supported debt, which is almost $30,000 per student. According to the state Comptroller, KISD’s tax-supported debt per student increased 196 percent from the 2007-08 school year to the 2015-16 school year, giving Klein one of the highest per student debts in all of Texas among districts of similar size.
The district is required to maintain a fund balance, or reserves, of 25 percent. Their current balance is $117 million, or 26 percent, but the district claims the balance will drop to nine percent within three years, leaving little reserve money for operating expenses if they don’t generate over $30 million in revenue or savings. Yet instead of trying to save and cut spending, they choose to pocket more from taxpayers.
KISD selected June 16 for the election date and gave little advanced notice to the public: the board just brought up the issue for consideration in mid-May.
If this sort of thing sound familiar to regular BattleSwarm readers, it’s because Round Rock ISD tried to pull the same tax hike shenanigans last year. Klein voters should take heart from the fact that tax hike went down in defeat, though I’m not sure anything like the same organized opposition has happened for Klein.
Early voting for the election ends today, with regular voting from 7 AM to 7 PM on Saturday, June 16.
I wasn’t going to write any more on Bourdain’s suicide because I haven’t actually read any of his books (just excerpts) or watched his shows (just clips).
But this is a pretty interesting essay from one of Bourdain’s fellow ex-heroin users.
Lets look at who Bourdain was – at least to me. To me, he was “one of us.” By that I mean those of us who were misfits who succeeded in spite of ourselves. Bourdain was very open about his prior drug use – not shy at all about it, in fact. He regularly dropped references to his prior heroin habit. I loved that about him. “Yeah, I used to shoot smack, and look at me now.” He was not a “say no to drugs” guy. He was a keep-on-raging guy, even if he did gain a high degree of responsibility in his older age. He let that flag fly, and in doing so, he sent signals to some of us who understood him on that level.
Bourdain was not the kind of guy to get an honorary degree and then give a speech extolling the virtues of studying hard and working hard. Bourdain was a pirate. I can think of no higher praise than to call him that.
After he died, a wise man (Julian Sanchez) wrote: “Very successful people often become successful because they are unhappy.” And that makes sense when you look at Bourdain. Nobody shoots heroin because they are happy. A demon chases you into that place. That demon talks to you. He lies to you. He tells you to go ahead and jam that needle into your arm, because you are different. It won’t hurt you because you’re different – and that difference makes you alone, and that heroin makes you forget about being alone. Not the “alone” like being in the house all by yourself. The “alone” someone feels while they are the center of attention in a huge crowd. That alone. That cold-alone that is more alone and cold than you’d be if you were strapped to Voyager One like a dark frosty vacuum-dried interplanetary hood ornament of freezer-burned meat. That alone that isn’t even black – because at least you can lose yourself in blackness. Blackness and darkness at least has quiet and tranquility. The real evil aloneness is grainy. T.V.-static-alone. That alone of “did I just hear something?” And you didn’t hear anything. You wanted to. You wanted to hear something so badly that your ears start creating sounds that make sense out of the static.
Austria has finally had enough of catering to jihad and giving lip-service to the idea that there are no problems integrating Muslims into their culture:
Austria’s right-wing government plans to shut seven mosques and could expel dozens of imams in what it said was “just the beginning” of a push against radical Islam and foreign funding of religious groups that Turkey condemned as racist.
The coalition government, an alliance of conservatives and the far right, came to power soon after Europe’s migration crisis on promises to prevent another influx and restrict benefits for new immigrants and refugees.
The moves follow a “law on Islam”, passed in 2015, which banned foreign funding of religious groups and created a duty for Muslim organizations to have “a positive fundamental view towards (Austria’s) state and society”.
“Political Islam’s parallel societies and radicalizing tendencies have no place in our country,” said Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who, in a previous job as minister in charge of integration, steered the Islam bill into law.
Standing next to him and two other cabinet members on Friday, far-right Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache told a news conference: “This is just the beginning.”
Austria, a country of 8.8 million people, has roughly 600,000 Muslim inhabitants, most of whom are Turkish or have families of Turkish origin.
Snip.
The ministers at the news conference said up to 60 imams belonging to the Turkish-Islamic Union for Cultural and Social Cooperation in Austria (ATIB), a Muslim group close to the Turkish government, could be expelled from the country or have visas denied on the grounds of receiving foreign funding.
A government handout put the number at 40, of whom 11 were under review and two had already received a negative ruling.
ATIB spokesman Yasar Ersoy acknowledged that its imams were paid by Diyanet, the Turkish state religious authority, but it was trying to change that.
Expect howls of outrage from the European elite, as well as numerous comparisons to You-Know-Who from the media thanks to the Austrian angle. How dare those silly Austrians think they’re a sovereign nation and defy the will of their EU betters by questioning the unquestionable?
Vienna, of course, was the site of the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in 1683, which ended Muslim attempts to conquer Europe (at least until the recent unpleasantness).
Despite Obama’s recent projection that his eight-year tenure was “scandal-free,” along with the reality that the media’s biased compliance sought to make such a startling fantasy true, the Obama administration was in many respects lawless. It will eventually rank as the most scandal-ridden administration since Warren G. Harding’s.
The Fast and Furious scandal was, among other things, about deliberate government gun-running of weapons to Mexico, perhaps in a warped effort to discredit current U.S. firearms laws. The Benghazi debacle involved a cover-up of a preplanned terrorist hit on our consulate, an attack that was possible only because it was well known that the consulate’s security was lax. The Benghazi cover-up involved U.N. ambassador Susan Rice lying five times on national television in a single day, when she claimed that the terrorist operation was the result of a spontaneous riot over a video. And to justify that reelection-cycle concoction, the video maker, a foreign resident on U.S. soil, was summarily jailed on a trumped-up probation charge.
An IRS regional high official, and Obama partisan, Lois Lerner, weaponized and discredited the IRS, by hounding conservative groups that were seeking tax-exempt status. Lerner staged a self-serving public stunt to leak her misbehavior to friendly ears — she had a reporter ask her a planted question about targeting conservatives. At her later congressional testimony, Lerner invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination. She was never charged by the Obama State Department. Indeed, Obama himself, after expressing initial pseudo contriteness in the face of public furor, waited the public out before finally announcing that there was not a “smidgeon” of corruption in the IRS. Lerner, in effect, was rewarded for successfully neutralizing many conservative activist groups just months before the 2012 election. In October 2017, facing a lawsuit by conservative groups, the IRS admitted in court that it had unfairly targeted them during the Obama administration. It agreed to a multi-million-dollar settlement, and the current attorney general, Jeff Sessions, apologized to the more than 450 conservative organizations in question.
Nadine Strossen, a liberal and the former president of the American Civil Liberty Union, conceded — but only in hindsight when both Obama and she were out of their respective offices — that Obama was one of the most hostile presidents to civil liberties in history. Perhaps she was referring to the fact that Eric Holder’s and Loretta Lynch’s Justice Department had spied on Associated Press reporters, monitored the communications of Fox reporter James Rosen, and subpoenaed New York Times reporter James Risen to force him to reveal his confidential sources. Holder was also the first Attorney General in U.S. history to be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over subpoenaed documents.
But it was during the 2016 election cycle that the Obama administration descended to a level of corruption not seen in a century. Right in the middle of the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server, Obama, as judge and jury, announced that candidate Clinton had violated no criminal law while secretary of state. Obama also lied when he stated that he’d known nothing about such an unlawful server, although emails prove that he himself had communicated over it on several occasions. His FBI director, James Comey, deliberately scrambled the law and exonerated Hillary Clinton from wrongdoing, not because she had not broken the law, but, according to Comey’s own invented interpretations of the statute, because she had not intended to violate the law. Comey also admitted to tailoring his circus-like investigation of Clinton around the assumption that she would soon be president.
We are slowly appreciating over the last year that lying under oath was an Obama-administration requisite for a high position in the intelligence community.
The most frustrating aspect of all is the lack of communication. If the goal is to create a better overall experience on the site, then it would make sense to tell people who have had their accounts restricted exactly why it happened so the problem could be avoided in the future.
The fact that they don’t do so really heightens the perception that it isn’t about anything other than punitively targeting accounts that don’t fit in with the hive mind. The appearance of deliberate censorship could be gotten rid of with a bare amount of transparency and communication from Twitter. That, sadly, does not seem to be a priority.
Sharp-eyed readers will note that I referred to Robinson as an “activist” while Peter refers to him as “Alt-Right”. I used this journalistic technique intentionally, partly because it highlights what the left-wing media does all the time when referring to Left Wing terrorists like Earth First! and the like. But it also cuts to the heart of this question. If we don’t look at who the messenger is and whether we like him, and instead look at who is speaking the truth, things start to look grim for the UK establishment. The Government certainly did not speak the truth, and in fact covered up these crimes for decades. The media did at least publish the stories when they came out, but there is a strange soft peddling of the story.
The alleged perpetrators are described as “asian males”, as if some of them were from China or Korea. This leads to more questions, as we try to peel the onion to get to, you know, the truth.
Are the “asian males” actually Pakistani immigrants? Are they all muslim? Is their muslim identity a key factor in why they chose English girls as victims? To simply ask these questions is to answer them.
The Government officials damn themselves by their silence here. It’s actually worse – one single person in a position of power (a Shadow Cabinet Secretary – the Cabinet of the out of power party) actually did speak the truth here, and was promptly sacked.
It seems very unhealthy that the only people who appear to be speaking the truth here are what we’re told is an “Alt-Right” fringe.
Question 3: Is the root cause of all these crimes the fact that Europe is really bad at assimilating different cultures?
This is the Question That Must Not Be Asked, whether in Leeds Crown Court, in Cologne or Berlin, or in Paris. If Europe does a particularly poor job at assimilating immigrants from other cultures into a collective Body Politick, then the Europe-wide governmental policy of massive immigration from the 3rd World assumes a very different perspective.
You might get, you know, mass instances of gang rape.
This is a particularly ugly question, and it the question that all European governments (and their lap dog media) are trying desperately to suppress.
Because if the State will not protect the public, then the whole deal is off. Blood feud may be the only option.
On May 16, agents discovered 2,119 pounds of marijuana concealed in a commercial shipment of charcoal into the U.S. On May 20, agents discovered 56 pounds of cocaine, approximately $432,500 in street value, on a Mexican commercial bus on the McAllen-Reynosa International Bridge and another $1.4 million worth of cocaine at the Kingsville checkpoint. In the first week of May, $247,000 worth of methamphetamine was apprehended at the Falfurrias checkpoint. Over Memorial Day weekend, $2.2 million in marijuana was seized in Harlingen, another 300 pounds was confiscated in Roma, and another 90 pounds of marijuana along with 35 illegal immigrants were apprehended at the checkpoints.
Bonus: Seized baby tiger.
Charles Krauthammer is is dying of cancer, and is only expected to have weeks to live. There was probably no columnist or pundit more vital to holding Obama to account during the first year of his first term.
Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lupe Valdez has yet to run a single Facebook ad since she won the primary. It would be some kind of anti-miracle for Valdez to run a worse campaign than Wendy Davis ran in 2014, but thus far she’s been all but invisible. Also this: “The Valdez campaign was also recently ensnared in a bit of controversy after the Houston Chronicle unearthed public records showing Valdez, ‘owes more than $12,000 in overdue taxes on seven properties in two counties.’ Valdez had been ‘campaign[ing] to close loopholes in the state’s broken property-tax system,’ according to the report.” (Hat tip: Matt Mackowiak.)
The Global Elites are feeling threatened all over, just like the Roman Emperors did in 250 AD. The elections of Donald Trump, Brexit, and populist revolts across western Europe show that the “glue” holding together the current Western Progressive Empire is breaking down. The diverse populations that once accepted the rule of the Global Elite are now restive, and questioning the legitimacy of that elite.
And so the people must sacrifice to the Emperor or pay the consequences.
That means publicly mouthing the required platitudes about globalism, progressivism, diversity, and the rest of the pantheon of Imperial propaganda – this is to demonstrate the citizen’s allegiance to the anointed rulers.
And those who don’t – who, say, have a popular TV show that showcases conservative or libertarian or populist ideas running counter to that propaganda? They have to go. The elites must make an example of them, to influence weaker minds that might be wavering from full public support of the official Imperial propaganda.
It won’t work, of course, any more than it worked for Decian or his successors. What it did then was to harden the resolve of the persecuted Christians and build support for them among their non-Christian neighbors who were revolted at the senseless cruelty of the persecutions. It is doing this today, as the legitimacy of the global elite and its imperial propaganda is rejected by a growing number of Deplorables, world wide. We know this because we see the persecutions, which are a result, not a cause.
“A soldier stole an armored personnel carrier from a National Guard base in Virginia on Tuesday and took the vehicle on a two-hour drive that ended in a police chase through downtown Richmond, the state capital, state police said.”
Some video:
That’s an M577, manufactured by BAE Systems, which is a variant of the M113 APC. The M577 is the command variant and generally unarmed. (News reports referring to this as a “tank” are from lazy, shiftless journalists who don’t care and should be shunned by polite society.)
As for the SUPERgenius who decided it was a swell idea to take it for a joy ride:
Update:
“Police have identified the soldier accused of stealing an armored vehicle from a military base and leading police on a wild chase through Central Virginia Tuesday night.
In a release, the Virginia National Guard said Yabut is a first lieutenant assigned as the commander of the Petersburg-based Headquarters Company, 276th Engineer Battalion, with more than 11 years of service. He deployed to Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009 with the Illinois National Guard.
Snip.
“State police say Yabut has been charged with Driving Under the Influence of Drugs, one felony count of eluding police and one felony count of unauthorized use of a vehicle.”
And there’s your motive. Drugs are bad, mmmkay? I think Mr. Yabut’s military career just came to an end.
In a broadly-shared 7-2 opinion on narrow technical grounds, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the christian baker in the Masterpiece Cakeshop “gay wedding cake” case.
That consideration was compromised, however, by the Commission’s treatment of Phillips’ case, which showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs motivating his objection. As the record shows, some of the commissioners at the Commission’s formal, public hearings endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust. No commissioners objected to the comments. Nor were they mentioned in the later state-court ruling or disavowed in the briefs filed here. The comments thus cast doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the Commission’s adjudication of Phillips’ case.
Snip.
For these reasons, the Commission’s treatment of Phillips’ case violated the State’s duty under the First Amendment not to base laws or regulations on hostility to a religion or religious viewpoint. The government, consistent with the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise, cannot impose regulations that are hostile to the religious beliefs of affected citizens and cannot act in a manner that passes judgment upon or presupposes the illegitimacy of religious beliefs and practices. Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520. Factors relevant to the assessment of governmental neutrality include “the historical background of the decision under challenge, the specific series of events leading to the enactment or official policy in question, and the legislative or administrative history, including contemporaneous statements made by members of the decisionmaking body.” Id., at 540. In view of these factors, the record here demonstrates that the Commission’s consideration of Phillips’ case was neither tolerant nor respectful of his religious beliefs. The Commission gave “every appearance,” id., at 545, of adjudicating his religious objection based on a negative normative “evaluation of the particular justification” for his objection and the religious grounds for it, id., at 537, but government has no role in expressing or even suggesting whether the religious ground for Phillips’ conscience-based objection is legitimate or illegitimate. The inference here is thus that Phillips’ religious objection was not considered with the neutrality required by the Free Exercise Clause. The State’s interest could have been weighed against Phillips’ sincere religious objections in a way consistent with the requisite religious neutrality that must be strictly observed. But the official expressions of hostility to religion in some of the commissioners’ comments were inconsistent with that requirement, and the Commission’s disparate consideration of Phillips’ case compared to the cases of the other bakers suggests the same.
In short, liberals might have eked out a win in this case if only they hadn’t displayed their usual naked contempt for Christian believers.
It’s also gratifying to see that constitutionally enumerated rights can still, at this late date, trump those “unenumerated rights” (read Obergefell) plucked from the thin air of penumbras and emanations that are so near and dear to left-wing legal theorist’s hearts.
The Colorado Court of Appeals was wrong to conclude that Phillips’ conduct was not expressive because a reasonable observer would think he is merely complying with Colorado’s public-accommodations law. This argument would justify any law that compelled protected speech. And, this Court has never accepted it. From the beginning, this Court’s compelled-speech precedents have rejected arguments that “would resolve every issue of power in favor of those in authority.” Barnette, 319 U. S., at 636…
States cannot punish protected speech because some group finds it offensive, hurtful, stigmatic, unreasonable, or undignified. “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
And that, of course, is the entire point of the law. Tolerance is not enough. Liberals demand sanction and wish to criminalize dissent to their demands. You will be forced to approve of our lifestyle. You will be made to care. The law exists entirely to force Christians to bow to will of anti-Christian liberals.
