By CHRISTOPHER MANION
Two recent Federal Court decisions reflect the valuable contributions of President Trump to the defense of the Constitution.
On Friday, April 9, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Tandon v. Newsom that California’s radical China Virus regulations violated the religious liberties granted by God and reaffirmed by the Bill of Rights. In guaranteeing the right of Californians to host Bible Studies in their homes, the court made clear that when “any secular activity [is treated] more favorably than religious exercise,” the case “trigger[s] strict scrutiny under the Free Exercise clause.”
Tuesday, April 13 in Preterm-Cleveland v. McCloud, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled against an injunction previously placed against Ohio’s Down Syndrome Non-Discrimination Act. The Act prohibits singling out unborn children with Downs Syndrome for abortion. Ever since it was signed four years ago, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU have joined other plaintiffs to successfully block its enforcement. When the case came before the Circuit Court en banc, the Trump administration joined the advocates of the law, and this week they prevailed.
Both of the above cases are likely to be among those involving vital state laws that the Supreme Court will eventually choose to hear. It is thus interesting to note that Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the court’s three Democrat appointees in the Tandon case.
Roberts has increasingly emerged on the liberal side of critical cases in recent years, but if he’s trying to reassure restive Democrats, it won’t work. This week they revealed their plans to pack the Federal Courts in their savage war to destroy the Constitution. Their Prime Mandate is abortion, and they want to impose it on every state and every unborn child regardless of the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God which the Declaration of Independence acknowledges as the foundation of all of our rights.
Big Bucks Matter
We have noted how terrorist Susan Rosenberg tried to kill this writer and dozens of others when she bombed the U.S. Capitol in 1983. Rosenberg, a radical Marxist, was finally apprehended and jailed until Bill Clinton pardoned her on his last day in office. She is now a fundraiser for Black Lives Matter (BLM), which has raised untold millions in the name of opposing “racism” as cover for its anti-family, anti-life, and anti-American agenda.
Washington’s Capital Research Center, headed by Scott Walker, is noted for its reliable, well-documented research. Last month First Things published Walker’s extensive study of the Marxist origins of all three BLM founders — Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi. Walker’s exhaustive research reveals the deep roots that these women share with Marxism and Liberation Theology, all in the thrall of radical activism.
And they’ve sure raked in the big bucks. On Saturday, April 10, The New York Post reported that “Hawk Newsome, the head of Black Lives Matter (BLM) Greater New York City…called for ‘an independent investigation’ into how the global network spends its money.”
His question was prompted by the discovery that Khan-Cullors has recently spent $3.2 million on three homes in predominantly white neighborhoods. Cullors has apparently chosen to avoid moving to the black neighborhoods where BLM rioters, terrorists, and looters wreaked billions of dollars of damage last year.
Where did this diehard Marxist ever get all that money, Newsome asked?
And he’s not the only one. The news must be devastating to Americans who donated untold millions to Cullors’ cause, and they are a diverse group. Some are well-meaning folks suffering from “white guilt,” some are diehard Marxists, and some are con-men high and low attempting to cash in on the massive virtue-signaling campaign.
One moral supporter is El Paso’s Catholic Bishop Mark Seitz, who famously knelt before a Black Lives Matter sign last summer for a cameraman, prompting a congratulatory call from Pope Francis.
Is Bishop Seitz now embarrassed by the Cullors revelations? We don’t know. He refuses to speak any longer to The Wanderer.
After a painstaking study of BLM founders’ formation, Warner concludes: “They envision change far more radical than what their many liberal supporters mean by ‘racial justice.’ Having more African Americans in the professional ranks doesn’t satisfy them, nor does sensitivity training for police officers. They want a transformation of society, including liberal institutions.” Oddly enough, Bishop Seitz shares many of those proclivities, and we’ll be looking at them more closely in the future.
Detritus
Last month, Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, addressed a UN meeting commemorating International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Invoking “Black Lives Matter,” she told the delegates that “we need to dismantle white supremacy at every turn.”
On Wednesday, April 14, the career State Department employee upped the ante, praising Al Sharpton and his “trailblazing” National Action Network. “We have to acknowledge that we are an imperfect union,” she told Sharpton’s group, and blamed “white supremacy” for causing the riots that destroyed black communities nationwide last summer.
Meanwhile, the White House and the media have desperately tried to keep Biden’s Border Crisis under wraps — by doing — and saying — nothing about it. But the border is exploding, and Kamala’s Border Coordinator Roberta Jacobson just quit after a hundred days on the job.
Not that she was doing anything, of course. U.S. Border Control officers are overwhelmed, while the Joe-and-Kamala show does nothing but gaily destroy the Constitution. Meanwhile, thousands of illegals are receiving millions in money, hotel rooms, and plane flights, all at taxpayer expense. The government is dispersing them throughout the country without any pretense of screening them for the virus, for criminal records, or for terrorist connections.
Coyote child-and-sex trafficking gangs are making millions from the illegal clients they bring to the border, while stateside Catholic NGOs, the Coyotes’ silent partners, receive millions to “process” the illegals. Naturally, Biden is distributing hundreds of millions of that difficult-to-trace cash through outfits run by his political cronies.
In other Catholic news, the dependable Fr. Thomas Reese, SJ, insisted this week that children be barred from the Traditional Latin Mass. Attendance should be strictly limited to us backward old-timers until we — and the TLM — die out:
“The church needs to be clear that it wants the unreformed liturgy to disappear and will only allow it out of pastoral kindness to older people who do not understand the need for change. Children and young people should not be allowed to attend such Masses,” he writes.
Meanwhile, Knoxville’s Bishop Rick Stika tweeted Thursday morning that we should have a cup of coffee to start the day. Then, out of the blue, he added this:
“I can easily compare the Wanderer and the National Catholic Reporter. What words….biased, predictable and each leans to the extreme.”
Well, coffee in hand, we were inspired to respond:
“Not so easy, Your Excellency. The Wanderer is faithfully orthodox — an admittedly ‘extreme’ position these days, in the eyes of ‘moderate’ bishops who wink at contraception, ‘Catholic Joe’ Biden, LGBT blessings, ordination of women, abuse cover-ups, and more.
“Care to reconsider?”
His Excellency hasn’t responded yet, but we’ll stay tuned.
Perhaps it’s time that grown men terminate the tiresome habit of placing everyone on a unidimensional line, with each of us occupying a tiny dot somewhere between “extreme left” and “extreme right.” The practice should be reserved for lazy journalists and chancery mice.
I am reminded of Bill Miller (ND ’37), speaking at Notre Dame in October 1964 (he was Barry Goldwater’s running mate). Fr. Ted Hesburgh introduced him.
After Miller’s brief remarks, a reporter asked him, “Aren’t you an extremist?”
Miller asked the reporter: “Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“Would your wife rather you be only moderately faithful to her, or extremely faithful?”
End of press conference.
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