The Supreme Court is likely to uphold immunity for Trump

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Immunity for actions in the executive branch of government is a long-standing tradition in democratic government.

Police officers have typically enjoyed immunity so long as their action is a colorable exercise of their authority. Likewise, officials in administrative agencies cannot be sued for their official actions – you can’t bring criminal charges against an FDA official on the grounds your daughter was denied a life-saving drug that the official refused to approve.

You can’t charge a governor with manslaughter on the grounds that there was a traffic accident because he neglected to close a highway during a snowstorm or that an ambulance was unable to reach a hospital because he neglected to re-open one.

The general rule, with limited exceptions, is that government officials acting in an official capacity are immune from criminal prosecution – even if their actions were mistaken or negligent.

This rule extends to the presidency. President Biden cannot be criminally prosecuted for his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of dozens of Americans and hundreds of Afghans. He cannot be prosecuted for refusing to enforce the immigration laws, thereby encouraging an invasion of illegal immigrants including drug dealers and murderers.

He cannot even be prosecuted for twisting or ignoring the law in support of his political allies.

The system is not powerless in these circumstances. We have the remedy of impeachment. That extreme remedy is seldom invoked, and that’s the way it should be. We also have the remedy of voting the bastards out.

The immunity rule is necessary. Without it, each time power shifts between parties – Democrat to Republican or the other way around – there would be a bloodbath. The newly empowered party would exact revenge on the newly out-of-power party. That’s what they used to do in the banana republics and in the Reign of Terror. Losing your seat could mean losing your head.

In America, we’ve lately seen hints of this natural tendency toward retribution against political enemies.

Trump won election in 2016 against all odds and against all the political establishment. In response, they began an unprecedented campaign of retribution even before they finally ousted him from office in the next election: Two bogus exercises of the extreme remedy of impeachment, a collusion of media and establishment lies about Russian collusion, a multiyear investigation that turned up nothing.

When the establishment finally regained power by beating Trump in 2020, they began criminally prosecuting him for his acts in office, timed to come to a head just before the next election where he hopes to reclaim that office.

One of those prosecutions is a joke, namely the Manhattan Project where a stupid political hack of a District Attorney hopes to gloriously nuke Trump’s campaign with a criminal charge that is as bogus as it is convoluted (which may well produce a jury conviction in ultra-Blue Manhattan, but will surely be overturned on appeal).

The more serious case is the one charging Trump with various vague infractions for what he did and failed to do on and around Jan. 6 before his term expired.

Although I voted for Trump twice, and probably will a third time, Trump’s actions then were deplorable. He should have asked the hooligans to stand down immediately.

Instead, he watched on TV as the protest morphed into, briefly, a riot and take-over of the storied place where the people’s representatives meet, debate and vote on legislation. And instead, he asked his Vice President to block the election outcome by refusing to perform a perfunctory act in connection with the Electoral College. 

Was Trump wrong? Was he foolish? Was he dangerous?

Yes, yes, and yes.

But was he outside his official capacity as President?

No. What he did and didn’t do was a colorable, if mistaken, foolish and dangerous, exercise of official discretion.

“No man is above the law,” preach the prosecutors/persecutors when they demand their pound of flesh.

That’s a catchy phrase. It’s often invoked in hypotheticals. For example, what if a president were to order the CIA to assassinate a political rival? What if the president were to shoplift an ice cream cone?

Those examples are easy. There’s no immunity because the act has nothing to do with official duties.

A more interesting example is, what if a president orders the assassination of a foreign leader – as Barack Obama ordered the assassination of Osama bin Laden?

Recall that bin Laden was unarmed. It was the middle of the night. It was in his home. He was shot in the head. His body was dumped at sea.

I personally think bin Laden deserved all that and more, but I can see his family’s objections that ordering the assassination of an unarmed non-combatant at his home in the middle of the night was outside the official duties of President Obama. An argument could be made (not a very good one, in my opinion) that the assassination was a war crime or even murder.

I contend that even if that act was indeed a war crime or even murder, it was not outside the official duties of President Obama.

The Supreme Court heard arguments on the immunity issue in the Trump case last week. A majority of the Court seemed to recognize that some presidential immunity is necessary in order for American government to function.

That much is easy. It’s easy to recognize that some presidential immunity is necessary. The hard task is to draw the line. The Court cannot be expected to draw thousands of lines to address thousands of different circumstances. A general rule is required.

I expect the general rule to be along the lines of “there’s immunity if the act is arguably within the scope of the office.” In Trump’s case, it was – at least arguably.

Glenn Beaton practiced law in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

How long before they chant “Gas the Jews”?

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First, let me apologize to my Jewish readers. I realize that hearing those three words must be painful. Many of you have parents or grandparents whose friends or family were gruesomely murdered in that very manner.

The reason I use those words is that today in the year 2024 we are closer to such horror than we’ve been for 80 years, and we must not pretend otherwise. The Jewish nation that promised “never again” is being explicitly threatened with “again.”

This moment comes in the wake of the atrocious murdering, raping, beheading, burning alive and hostage-taking committed by Palestinians against civilian men, women and children playing peacefully on a pretty fall day in Israel last Oct. 7. The Palestinians since then have rejected numerous proposals for a cease fire in exchange for the hostages they took, apparently because they’ve already tortured, raped, beheaded, burned and, finally, murdered those hostages.

Alive, the hostages would have been more useful to Hamas. Dead, the hostages are no longer hostages, but just bodies. But, alas, the Palestinians’ temptation to torture, rape, behead, burn and murder was apparently irresistible to them.

Such depravity is consistent with the Palestinians’ broader conundrum. Israel has repeatedly offered them land for a Palestinian state if only they would agree to peace. But they don’t want peace; what they want is the eradication of the Jewish state and the Jews. Their ambitions for a nation are hostage to their hatred of Jews.

If these so-called people had been around at the time of Solomon (they weren’t) they would have wanted the baby cut in half.

These bloody terrorists have found recruits in naïve young American students. These kids don’t know what Hamas is, don’t know the history of the Jews, have scarcely heard of the Holocaust, and when they chant “From the River to the Sea” they don’t know what river they’re chanting about nor what sea.

As for their sloganeering that the Jews are committing genocide in seeking to prevent yet another pogrom by an outfit that just committed one and promises another, well, excuse me but there’s something obscene about accusing the Jews – the Jews! – of genocide.

These protesting students are foolish, ignorant, useful idiots looking to be cool.

They’re too young to falsely claim they were at Woodstock, as their grandparents falsely claim. But it’s not too late to support people with darkish skin and to persecute people with lightish skin.

Their notion of data-gathering is to notice that most Israelis have lighter skin than most Palestinians, and so the Israelis must be wrong and the Palestinians must be right.

With that, it’s . . . to the barricades! (Their own grandchildren will be so proud of them – this is their Woodstock!) At our once-great universities and elsewhere, they skip classes (it’s spring, after all) to chant:

“Burn Tel Aviv to the ground”

“Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets too!”

“Death to Israel”

“Death to America”

“We are Hamas”

“Hitler was Right”

To answer my own question in the headline, the chant “Gas the Jews” has already been used by a mob in Sydney, Australia – not exactly a sister city of Auschwitz. This same hatred is increasingly evident in places that in the past have made easy boasts about their tolerance and anti-bigotry, such as Boston, New York, Berkeley and Ann Arbor.   

It will soon be in Peoria. Let’s be ready this time.

MTG belongs on MTV

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There are some things to admire about firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene, sometimes dubbed “MTG.” After earning a Business degree from the University of Georgia, she and her then-husband took over her father’s contracting business. She quit in a few years and began serious CrossFit training and co-founded a CrossFit gym. After becoming interested in politics, she won a seat in the House of Representatives.

It goes downhill from there. She ran for Congress as a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, and won, but he didn’t return the favor; he did not endorse her.

Along the way, she has falsely claimed that AOC is not a legitimate Representative because she was sworn in on the Quran; she took a couple hundred thousand dollars in COVID money for her little contractor company; she says the Jan. 6 rioters were actually Antifa agents in disguise – even as she expressed support for them.

She has questioned whether school shootings were staged; she refers to her critics as “Pharisees”; she said “I don’t believe in evolution, I believe in God” as if people who believe in one cannot believe in the other.

She suggested that the California wildfires may have been caused by “what looked like lasers or beams of blue light” that were delivered by “solar space generators” involving a conspiracy of Jewish companies. She thinks mass immigration to Europe from Muslim countries is being orchestrated by “Zionists” to undermine Western culture.

In amusing malapropisms, she has referred to Capitol policemen as the “Gazpacho”, and referred to a petri dish as a “peach tree dish.”

She was censured by her own party for calling fellow conservative Representative Lauren Boebert “a little bitch.” (Her evolution-denying “God” could not be reached for comment on that tidbit.)

It’s not just her assault on decorum and language.

It’s that her histrionics get in the way of her job. That job is to govern. She’s the antithesis of governance. She is unable to govern even herself or her mouth.

She was instrumental is forcing out House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for daring to get real legislation accomplished by – shudder! – making political compromises with the other side. This is in the House where Republicans hold a majority of only a few seats. Then she was a ring leader in the ensuing circus to replace him.

Now she has made a motion to oust McCarthy’s replacement for the same sin of compromising with the Democrats to get things done that need to get done. She does these things not quietly behind closed doors where she might find common ground with those she disagrees with, but in front of cameras and bright lights.

The latest is her loud opposition to foreign aid bills for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. She insists that any aid be tied to money to secure the southern border.

To be sure, aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan are debatable policies. I personally favor all three, but I tend to come from the peace-through-strength camp and not the isolationist camp. But the isolationist camp has a legitimate case. That’s why we debate such things.

And I certainly favor securing the border. Illegal immigration is inhuman to the immigrants and destructive to America.

But tying money for securing the border, to foreign aid, is wrong for at least two reasons.

First, they have very little to do with one another. The people who seek to tie them together say “we should secure our own border before helping other countries secure theirs.” That’s catchy but they might just as well say, “We should secure the border before we send out Social Security checks” or “We should secure the border before we spend another dime on soldier salaries.

We can do all those things. It’s not one or the other. Holding one hostage to another is not constructive. It simply thwarts both – we wind up with an unsecure border and betraying our allies.

It’s like saying “I’ll hold my breath and shut down government unless I get my way 100%. It’s government by temper tantrum.

The second reason that tying foreign aid to securing the border is foolish is that the unsecure border has little to do with Congressional funding and everything to do with Joe Biden and the Democrat-controlled immigration apparatus. Congress could appropriate a trillion dollars to secure the border, but nothing will change until we have a president who will take the necessary actions – most of which would not cost money, but save money.   

OK, let’s stipulate that today’s Congress is not known for its eloquence or erudition. For example, there’s the guy (who, like MTV, is from Georgia) who expressed concern in testimony by a Navy admiral that American buildups at a military base on Guam might tip the island over.

(The Admiral refrained from laughing out loud. He instead paused and replied dryly “We don’t anticipate that.” Such self-control is why he’s an Admiral and his questioner was just a Congressman.)

Then there’s the Senator who challenged a person testifying at hearing to “stand your butt up” for the purpose of, apparently, a fistfight (or maybe to dance The Bump).

MTG falls closer to the Guam-tipper and the stand-your-butt-up Bump guy than to that Admiral. In fact, I’ll bet she dances a mean Bump.

Since this story has now taken us to the dance floor, I suggest that it’s time for yet another career change. MTG should go to MTV. She could call herself MTG/V and make music videos. Her career change might get her the attention she craves, and might get us a replacement representative to work on the governing we need.

The Manhattan case against Trump is a travesty

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“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”

– Lavrentiy Beria, Joseph Stalin’s secret police chief

The facts of the case starting this week are simple. It’s the legal theories that are convoluted.

Donald Trump paid a porn star named Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about their affair. (Leave aside for a moment whether it’s possible to have an “affair” with a porn star, and leave aside whether Stormy blackmailed him into making the payment.)

Despite the opprobrious term “hush money,” this type of payoff is perfectly legal and happens all the time. In fact, it’s the most frequent outcome of a sexual harassment case, where it’s politely termed a “confidential settlement agreement.”

You might think the objection is that Trump used campaign money from donors to make the payment. But it’s undisputed that he didn’t. Trump instead used his own money through his lawyer to whom he paid monthly retainers. (Imagine the outcry if he had used campaign money.)

As businesses often do in these circumstances, Trump characterized the payments as an expense in his business records. The prosecution says that characterization was incorrect.  

Maybe, and maybe not. But even if so, such a mischaracterization is only a misdemeanor, at most, for which the penalty would be a simple and small fine.

The Democrats want more than that. They want Trump in jail.

Enter the new District Attorney for Manhattan, a place that went 85-15 against Trump in the 2020 election. The DA explicitly campaigned on a promise to put Trump in jail, without ever telling the voters what crime he had committed. He must have concluded, apparently correctly, that the voters didn’t care what crime Trump committed so long as he was punished with a jail term.

But even in deep blue Manhattan they don’t send people to serve jail time without charging and convicting them of crimes. So, the DA ginned up a crime.

It goes like this. The DA says Trump’s campaign benefited from his personal payment to Stormy. Because Trump made the payment personally for this benefit to his campaign, he should have reported it as a campaign contribution under the federal campaign finance laws.

Consider the irony. The DA says Trump violated federal campaign finance laws because he didn’t use campaign money from donors for this payment, but instead did use his personal money.

The lesson is, if you’re running for office and pay someone to keep quiet about your affair, be sure to use campaign money from donors to make the payment.

As to whether this payment by Trump benefitted the campaign, I suppose it did in a sense. Whatever expenditures a candidate makes with his own money to make himself more palatable as a candidate, benefits his campaign.

A campaign is benefited when a candidate uses his own money to get a nice haircut or make a publicity-generating charitable donation. (The DA has taken no position yet on nice haircuts or publicity-generating charitable donations, because Trump didn’t commit those “violations.”)

But such expenditures have never been considered reportable campaign contributions. Nancy Pelosi’s face lifts to make her more palatable (maybe) as a candidate were never reported as campaign contributions.

Ah, but Trump is a special case. Sui generis. Orange Man Bad. Trump Derangement Syndrome. He’s such a threat to democracy that there is no alternative but to jail him for . . . whatever.  

Ah but there’s another problem with the creative DA’s case, for which he has yet another solution. The problem is that the DA is a state prosecutor with no jurisdiction over federal campaign finance laws. Several of the Feds, who do have jurisdiction over the campaign finance laws, unanimously declined to bring charges.

The DA’s novel solution to that problem is as follows. Although he has no jurisdiction to bring a charge for violation of the federal campaign finance laws, he says that the trivial state law misreporting violation was a scheme to violate those federal laws.

That, he says, serves to elevate the state law violation from a misdemeanor to a felony that . . . [drum roll] . . . puts Trump in jail!

To succeed with these theories, the prosecutor must prove the federal campaign violation. That’s a violation he has not charged Trump with since he has no jurisdiction over it, and a violation that prosecutors who do have jurisdiction have declined to charge Trump with.

Unsurprisingly, the DA’s own predecessor expressly declined to pursue the current DA’s theories.  

Speaking of putting Trump in jail, the judge’s daughter is a Democrat activist who once published a photoshopped picture of Trump behind bars. Her father has slapped a gag order on Trump for the duration of the trial.

In summary: An arguable small-time misdemeanor is inflated into a jail-time felony on the prosecutor’s theory – rejected by the prosecutor’s predecessor – that the alleged misdemeanor was for the purpose of committing a federal offense over which the prosecutor has no jurisdiction and which the feds explicitly declined to prosecute. The trial will be to a jury in deep blue Manhattan presided over by a judge who has gagged-ordered Trump and whose daughter is a Democrat activist who has published a fake picture of Trump in jail.

Whether you love or hate Trump, the politicization of our legal system is a travesty.

Glenn Beaton practiced law in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

Iran humiliates itself

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After months of saber-rattling, the “death-to-Israel” crowd in Tehran (an affiliate of the “death-to-America” crowd in Dearborn) finally made good on their threat to attack Israel.

The Mullah Maniacs launched something over 300 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles toward Tel Avi. (Notably, none of these aircraft were piloted – even the Iranians are not that stupid.)

The Israelis along with Americans, Brits and other allies shot down 99% of them. The other 1% caused hardly any damage. No deaths or even injuries were reported.

It turns out the Iranian war machine is at about the level of . . .  those sabers they were rattling. Which are notoriously ineffective from a thousand miles away.

Like the dismembered knight in the Monty Python skit, the Iranians tried to spin the failure into a great success. It was “beyond expectations,” they crowed.

They may not be able to wage war, but they sure can manage their expectations.

As a strategic and public opinion matter, the Iranian air farce was indeed beyond expectations. They could not have expected their attack to be wholly thwarted by the Israelis. They could not have expected their attack to be such a moral booster to the Israeli military and citizenry.

They could not have expected their attack to consolidate public opinion in favor of Israel in civilized societies around the world. They could not have expected their attack to prompt some of those societies – and not just America – to join Israel in defeating the attacks.

They could not have expected their attack to reveal to the rest of the Middle East the pathetic inferiority of the Iranian war machine. If you’re Saudi Arabia or Egypt, which side do you want to be on?

The barbarians of the Middle East are tough in a surprise massacre of unarmed children and elderly women. Against the Israeli Defense Forces, not so much.

Who the heck does the Commie Pope think they is?

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Now when the radical priest come to get me released
We was all on the cover of Newsweek

Paul Simon, Me and Julia

Let’s start with a different Pope. Let’s start with the Pope who came of age in Poland while it was enslaved for decades under the Soviet Union after WWII. He’s the Pope who went home after the Sistine Chapel routine to accept the adoration of literally millions of his countrymen.

He’s the Pope who helped bring down the tyranny of the Soviets who knew all about military power but nothing about the spiritual kind. He’s the Pope who nearly died in an assassination attempt apparently masterminded by those same Soviets and carried out by a Turkish thug with aid from another enslaved country, Bulgaria.

He’s the Pope who publicly forgave his Muslim attacker, downplayed the attacker’s Soviet and Bulgarian connections in order to keep the peace, and asked that the attacker be pardoned. The would-be assassin was duly pardoned, went back to Turkey, and converted to Catholicism.

He’s St. John Paul II.

I join tens of millions of Poles – and hundreds of millions of Catholics, fellow Protestants and other people of faith around the world – in loving that man. (I once saw him at the conclusion of a pilgrimage but that’s a different column.)

The current Pope was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, and took the name Francis when he moved to Rome. The Cardinals thought they were showing real strategerie in picking a guy from Latin America. There’s lots of alleged Catholics there, and their numbers grow every day. In contrast, in Italy there aren’t even many putative Catholics, even fewer real ones, and their numbers are dwindling every day as Italians make a religion out of defying the Church’s birth control prohibitions.

Pope Francis is known for what he doesn’t like. He doesn’t like Israel. He doesn’t like Ukraine. He doesn’t like America. He doesn’t like Europe. He doesn’t like the best tool in history for alleviating material suffering – capitalism. 

However, he does like food. He likes to lecture people about their morals. Like all Argentinians, he likes inflation. He likes Karl Marx. But (or is it “therefore”?) he likes the most lavish palace in all of Christendom, the Vatican.

But let’s give the radical priest his due. He just came out against the gender-bender stuff. You can’t just change your gender, he says. That constitutes playing God. Only God gets to play God.

To be sure, however, it’s still Francis who gets to tell us what He says when He does.

But hey, this is a start! We have a world leader who thinks or at least says that having virtue is more important than signaling it, and that Christianity is a greater religion than wokeness.

The congregations of the woke are crying “blasphemy!” They had trusted Francis to toe the line, drink the Kool-Aid, and carry their tin cross. And he had, so far.

The problem for the woke is, the radical priests of Latin America may well be Commies and may even be gay, but they’re not transexuals. Buenos Aires is not Bangkok.  Intersectionality doesn’t go as far as intersexuality.

Francis likes to wear a dress and wears a lampshade for a hat, but don’t be fooled. There are no trannies in Argentina. John Paul II is probably glad.

Is Caitlin better than Michael?

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Michael Jordan was arguably the best one-on-one player in history. He was cat-like in his quickness and leaping ability.

Mortals can touch the rim. Michael could jump so high his eyes were even with the rim. I suspect he could snatch a dime off the top of the backboard and leave two nickels behind.

All that made him nearly unstoppable. And, though often overshadowed by his offensive prowess, those same abilities – along with unrelenting hustle – also made him one of the great defensive players of the game.

When your guy is scoring 35 and holding the opponent he’s guarding to 12, you have an unfair advantage. The Chicago Bulls led by Michael won the NBA Championship six times.  

Caitlin has a different game. She shoots the ball like no woman ever has. The three-point line in college basketball is closer than the NBA line but she routinely launches from well beyond the line. She does it off screens, when she’s open on a break, and by making her own daylight with a quick release off the dribble. Against rival LSU this week, she made a record nine three-pointers on the way to 41 points in shooting her Iowa Hawkeyes into the Final Four.

Michael and Caitlin have something in common, along with other successful people in life. They compete like hell. They like to win, and they work extremely hard to do so. Because their enthusiasm is contagious, they bring out the best in their teammates – not by instruction or scolding, but by example. Their leadership is almost inadvertent.

Is Caitlin better than Michael?

Ah, here’s the rub. Caitlin could not begin to defend Michael. Too fast, too quick, too strong, too tall (Michael’s 6’6” vs Caitlin’s 6’0”). And she surely does not have the inside moves or acceleration to the basket that Michael had. With a full head of steam, Michael could literally dunk from the foul line 15’ from the basket.

Caitlin is no slouch but she can’t dunk the ball. That’s a tall order for a six-foot man, and it’s just not possible for a six-foot woman. It never will be. Dunking the ball is overrated – the best player in the world today, Nikola Jokic, seldom dunks the ball – but it’s a measure of jumping ability, and that is indeed important.

But Caitlin at age 22 is a better outside shooter than Michael ever was, even in his early 30s at the height of his career. Caitlin’s long-shot is at the NBA level. Luca Doncic, a terrific outside shooter and contender for the league MVP (though he’s likely to lose to fellow Balkan Jokic – who knew they played basketball in former Yugoslavia?) said of Caitlin “She reminds me of Steph Curry, man . . . She shoots it better than me, that’s for sure.”  

Curry is widely considered the GOAT outside shooter (It’s hard to compare him to guys who played before the three-point line was adopted such as Pistol Pete Maravich; but, still, my money is on Curry.)

Shooting is important. Last I looked, the winner is the team with the most points at the end.

The competitive fires of Michael and Caitlin are comparable. In both players, it translates into contagious enthusiasm and on-court leadership. In that, Michael has nothing on Caitlin. Michael always had an endearing shyness, especially when he was Caitlin’s age. Caitlin, on the other hand, is not shy.

Conventional wisdom is that one of the anatomical differences between men and women is that women’s bellies lack the testosterone-driven fire found in men’s bellies. Maybe that’s so, but count Caitlin as an exception. An exceptional exception.

Here’s the acid test, I suppose. Would Caitlin beat Michael in a one-on-one contest?

No. No way.

But she’s in good company. Wilt Chamberlain would not beat Michael in a one-on-one game. Neither would Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Neither would Steph Curry. (Michael’s defense would shut down Curry’s outside shot, and Curry could never keep up with Air Jordan in the paint.)

Could Caitlin play in the NBA?

No, for the same reasons she couldn’t beat Michael one-on-one. The men are too fast, too tall, and too jumpy. White women – and Black ones too – can’t jump and, compared to men, are not fast or quick.

But . . .

That shooting ability. That fire. That command of the floor. That sense of the game. That classy leadership. This woman is a joy to watch. And she’s a better shooter than my favorite player ever, Michael Jordan. Women’s basketball has come a long way, baby.

Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission gets schooled on the First Amendment in the wedding website case

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Remember the wedding website case that came out of Colorado and went all the way to the Supreme Court? It’s finally over, and it ended beautifully. Bigly beautifully.

I’ll let the district court describe the facts:

“Plaintiff Lorie Smith . . . offers a variety of creative services, including website design, to the public. Ms. Smith intends to expand the scope of [her] services to include the design, creation, and publication of wedding websites. However, [Smith] will decline any request to design, create, or promote content that promotes any conception of marriage other than marriage between one man and one woman. [Smith has] designed an addition to [her] website that includes a statement that [she] will not create websites “celebrating same sex marriages or any other marriage that contradicts God’s design for marriage.”

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission decided that Smith’s exercise of her First Amendment right to decline to perform services in violation of her religious beliefs, and that her words so stating, were, ironically, in violation of the First Amendment. The Commission said (1) Smith was required to design websites celebrating marriages other than between a man and a woman, and (2) she was prohibited from stating that she wouldn’t.

Smith sued the Commission in Federal Court. It was a smart move to go to Federal Court because state court would have ensnarled her for years in the swamp of the Democrat-controlled Colorado state judiciary – the one where the state supreme court tossed Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot only to be unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court last winter.

The district court dismissed her case on procedural grounds. She appealed to the federal appellate court. They overturned the dismissal on procedural grounds, but, worse, dismissed her case on substantive grounds.

She appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court held 6-3 last year that both dismissals were wrong. They held that the Commission’s insistence that she perform services in violation of her religious beliefs, and insistence that she refrain from stating that she wouldn’t, were in violation of her First Amendment rights.

In short, she won.

The case was then remanded back to the lower courts to work out the details. It came back to a different district court judge. (The first judge, a former bankruptcy judge, had taken “Senior” status while the case was on appeal. That’s a gravy train for federal judges where they get full pay, the same plush courtrooms and chambers, a full complement of law clerks to kiss the back of their robes, and invitations to the right (er, left) cocktail parties. But they work just part-time by taking on only the particular cases they want. No, this “job” is not available for you.)

The details remaining to be worked out on remand to the district court were the exact language of the court’s order, and the payment of attorney fees. The Commission wanted a cramped order with little precedential significance and minimal further embarrassment to them. Smith of course wanted a broader order protecting her against infringements on her First Amendment right to exercise and state her religious beliefs.

This week, the new judge sided with Smith. The court’s order states:

“ORDERED that the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause prohibits Colorado from [compelling Smith] to create custom websites celebrating or depicting same-sex weddings or otherwise create or depict original, expressive, graphic or website designs inconsistent with her beliefs regarding same sex marriage.”

Then there was the attorney fees issue. The civil rights laws provide for an award of attorney fees and costs to a prevailing plaintiff. Smith was the prevailing plaintiff, though she had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to become one.

The Commission argued that she was actually only a partially prevailing plaintiff because she didn’t win on every single claim she made. Accordingly, the Commission contended, attorney fees should be prorated.

The district court rejected the Commission’s argument, and instead correctly held that “prevailing” in this context simply means the side that basically won, even if they didn’t win on every single claim. Attorney’s typically throw in lots of claims of dubious merit in a lawsuit. The fact that some get thrown out along the way doesn’t mean their client isn’t the prevailing party at the end of the day when they are awarded the remedy they seek.

The judge concluded with an invitation to Smith’s attorneys to file a motion for their costs and attorney fees.

Those costs and fees are likely to be into seven figures, since they include the original district court proceedings, the appeal to the appellate court, the appeal to the Supreme Court, and the current remand to the district court.

That is all good news. Smith is now playing with the house’s money. The bad news is that the “house” is, at the end of the day, the taxpayers of the State of Colorado.

Mind you, my objection here is not to gays getting married. I’m OK with that, though it took me a few years to get there. My objection is to the government telling everyone that they’re required to think it’s OK. Many people have sincere religious or other beliefs objecting to gay marriage. It’s wrong — and a violation of the First Amendment — to force them to abandon their beliefs.

As a matter of strategy, I also think it’s a grave mistake for gays to force this issue. People tend to get entrenched when their religion is attacked. But very often, when the left can choose between effective persuasion and ineffective coercion, they choose the latter. Because, at heart, they want to boss people around. They’re totalitarians.

I wish there were a way to hold these totalitarian bureaucrats personally liable in cases like this. A million-dollar judgment against them personally, and a seizure or their residences, might make them think twice next time. How about an $83 million judgment and $92 million bond? Better yet, how about a $464 million judgment secured with a $175 million bond?

Glenn Beaton practiced law in the Federal Courts, including the Supreme Court.

Paul Krugman is angry at farmers

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Former Enron advisor and current New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is angry at farmers. What’s earned his wrath is that they vote for Donald Trump. He says they vote for Trump because they’re afflicted with “white rural rage.”

Let’s examine the components of Krugman’s catchy phrase “white rural rage.”

As for rural, it is certainly true that Trump does better in rural areas than in, say, downtown Chicago or Baltimore. Then again, everybody does better – wherever they are – than they would in the toilets of downtown Chicago or Baltimore.

It’s not obvious that the politics of these rural folk are dictated by their Green Acres. Plenty of suburbanites vote for Trump too. After all, farmers comprise fewer than six million people in the U.S., while Trump won over 74 million votes last time. If every single farmer voted for Trump, that would still leave him more than 68 million short of the votes he actually received.

So, are the suburbanites and urbanites angry too? Maybe.

As for white, it’s true that Trump does better with white people than with BLack people. But there’s a couple hundred million white people in America, and Trump got only those aforementioned 74 million votes.

OK, maybe more, but let’s not go there today. In any event, Trump clearly isn’t getting all the white vote.

Compared to most Republicans, Trump is doing quite well with racial minorities. Millions of the people who voted for him are Black or Hispanic or Asian. His supporters are – dare I say it? – diverse. Is this entire multicolored constituency full of rage?

Maybe.

Which brings us to the last of Krugman’s angry accusations about Trump voters – that they’re full of rage. That, he says, is because they’re losers in a changing economy and changing world. They’re deplorable. They’re bitterly clinging.

Indeed, many Trump voters are angry, but not for the reasons that Krugman suggests. They’re angry that their country’s borders are left undefended; they’re angry that the military is well woke but can’t even lose a war gracefully, much less win one; they’re angry that Biden runs up trillion dollar deficits and double-digit inflation to pay for “free” stuff for his favored constituencies; they’re angry that the whole Biden family sells political influence to foreign governments for millions; they’re angry that Biden wants to throw the Israelis into the oven in order to bribe a few terrorist sympathizers in Michigan to vote for him; they’re angry that Joe himself is obviously non compos mentis while his caretakers gaslight us with preposterous stories that he’s sharp as a tack as soon as the cameras are turned off.

Yes, it’s fair to say that many Trump voters are angry.

But note this, Mr. Krugman. You’ve probably never met a farmer, but they deal with their anger straight up. If they’re angry, they’ll express that anger by voting against Biden and for Trump.

What they won’t do is invent pop psychology to demonize those who disagree with them. None of these voters you diagnose as afflicted with “white rural rage” will diagnose you as being afflicted with “Jewish urban anger.”

They’re smart and decent enough to know that your religion, your place of residence, and your emotional state are not particularly relevant to their political disagreement with you. To them this is not a cafeteria food fight and not a jihad.

You could learn something about manners, Mr. Krugman, from these farmers you look down upon. Keep Manhattan, just give us this countryside.

Biden’s pandering to a few terrorist sympathizers drives away millions of other voters

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In 2020, about five and a half million people voted in Michigan. Biden won by about 155,000 votes.

Of those five and a half million who voted in Michigan, about 145,000 were Muslim. About 100,000 of them voted for Biden.

Those 100,000 Michigan Muslims are now making a stink. They’re unhappy that Biden is permitting Israel to finish the war that Palestinian terrorists started on October 7. They demand that Biden pressure Israel into a cease fire that would leave the terrorists free to murder, rape, behead, burn alive, and terrorize another day – and another year and another decade.

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