The Patriots

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled that Democratic California Gavin Newsom's ban on in-person church services during the Coronavirus pandemic can stand.

The lawsuit, filed by South Bay United Pentecostal Church in San Diego, prevents that church from reopening, according to the Los Angeles Times

The "constitutional standards that would normally govern our review of a Free Exercise claim should not be applied," wrote the two judges in the majority opinion.

by Shane Ormond

In the last few months, the Dems have been successfully leveraging the power of the courts to impede Trump, further investigations into his finances, and avoid ever having to speak to their Republican counterparts.

However, they hit their first major stumbling block yesterday, as a Trump appointed judge ruled they could not sue the president over a plan to divert $6.1 billion from the military to build his border wall.

The Dems argued that the lawsuit should be allowed on the grounds that 1) they had exhausted every other option. And 2) the emergency order violated the Constitution Appropriations Clause, which grants Congress authority over the allocation of federal funds.

Judge Trevor McFadden disagreed, writing that “while the Constitution bestows upon members of the House many powers, it does not grant them standing to (drag) the executive branch into court claiming a dilution of Congress’s legislative authority.”

He went on to say that a “lawsuit is not a last resort for the House,” pointing to “several political arrows in its quiver to counter perceived threats to its sphere of power.”

McFadden puts his finger on the key problem with modern American ultra-partisan politics here. There is no actual “politics” anymore.  No discussion. No deals. No compromises. None of the wheeling and dealing essential to making a two-party system work.

Instead, we have a bunch of idiots smashing their heads off each other and trying to circumvent the process with loopholes and legislative back alleys.

And all that gets us is a bunch of bumped noggins and a lot of very angry, frustrated, and exhausted people.

Even this decision doesn’t get actually get anyone anywhere. The funds for the wall have already been blocked by an Obama-appointed judge in California in a completely separate lawsuit.

by Allen Williams

Once again the Kansas Supreme court ‘Wizards of OZ’ defy logic with the latest ruling that personal autonomy guarantees the right to abortion.  It equally infers that I needn’t pay tribute to the Kansas Dept of Revenue.

The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled from  the “Declaration of Independence that recognized that certain rights predated the country.  The Declaration's "natural, inalienable rights," the Court said, included "personal autonomy" and therefore abortion.  Those 'unalienable  rights' come from God, they are not grandfathered in from some ancient culture predating America.

The so-called logic the court is trying to pawn off is: “Ancestors of Native Americans hunted elephants in Kansas 13,000 years ago. That’s thousands of years before Columbus arrived in 1492, thousands before the Vikings landed in Newfoundland.  And so it’s thousands of years before the Declaration of Independence to which my resounding ‘So What?’ is exclaimed.

This hare brained ruling is an effrontery to anyone who possesses the slightest semblance of intelligence except for the Kansas legislature who collectively lacks the sense to pour a well known liquid out of a boot.  It is the folly of this useless assembly that has allowed a band of robed oligarchs to enslave the citizens of this state with their pedagogical nonsense.

The court’s opinion that certain’ rights ‘predate the country’ means what?  It means that child sacrifice was practiced well before the nation was formed and that this exercise predates the constitution. But interestingly enough the court made no reference to the Declaration’s unalienable ‘right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The principle justification for this malfeasant decision seems to be that ‘life’ is not the desire of the court but rather thinning of the North American population is of far greater importance than the antiquated notion of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

This clown court doesn’t even bother to construct a viable legal rationale to support the decision but resorts to the alchemy of political obeisance to the eugenics coalition.  It is the greatest stretch of reason that has masqueraded as a legal decision since Dred Scott claimed Negroes were a separate class of persons and couldn’t be citizens.

It’s clear that Kansas is ruled by a junta of robed thugs whose gavel is for hire. It is an enemy of the people and precisely the kind of autocratic system you might expect from a cabal of lawyers who select the state’s judges as they earn their livelihood off the misfortunes of others.

By Kara Pendleton

An effort to stop Texans from legally carrying handguns on university campuses has failed. What some would call a twisted interpretation of the Constitution by three University of Texas at Austin professors was soundly shut down Thursday by a panel of three federal judges.

The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges determined the professors’ claim that the campus carry law infringes upon their First, Second and 14th Amendment rights was invalid.

The claims made by the professors in their lawsuit filed two years ago may leave some people scratching their heads. The reason may be found in a review of the facts. The full ruling of the judges may be viewed online. Here is the basic breakdown, one amendment at a time:

How does campus carry infringe upon the First Amendment? According to professors Mia Carter, Jennifer Glass and Lisa Moore, students and professors might be too afraid to discuss controversial topics in the classroom when someone in the room might be armed without their knowledge.

“Compelling professors at a public university to allow, without any limitation or restriction, students to carry concealed guns in their classrooms chills their First Amendment rights to academic freedom,” the lawsuit said, according to The Texas Tribune.

The appeals court panel affirmed the dismissal of all claims by a district court judge. In the matter of the First Amendment, the district court judge had ruled that the plaintiffs “cannot manufacture standing by self-censoring her speech based on what she alleges to be a reasonable probability that concealed-carry license holders will intimidate professors and students in the classroom.”

So how on earth does a student opting to carry a means of self-defense on campus infringe upon someone else’s citizenship or rights under the 14th Amendment? Hand on tight. It’s a doozy of an explanation.

The professors claimed in their lawsuit that campus carry violated the amendment because “the university lacks a rational basis for determining where students can or cannot concealed-carry handguns on campus.”

The federal judges shot that down as well, saying that Glass “ultimately fails to address Texas’s arguments concerning rational basis. Instead she simply argues that the prohibited concealed-carry zones are an ‘inexplicable hodge-podge.'”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton applauded the decision in a statement Thursday.

The case might not be over, yet. The professors can fight this ruling by asking for a “full appeals court” hearing or, within 90 days, opt to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Their attorney, Renea Hicks, told The Dallas Morning News he doesn’t expect they’ll ask the appeals court to rehear their case.

“I’m doubtful that there’ll be a request for en banc review,” Hicks said. “As to asking for [Supreme Court] review, that’s something we’ll just have to discuss amongst ourselves when we all can coordinate schedules and sit down and meet.”