Live from Music Row, Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
You know, Michael, obviously the big news is the Supreme Court decision on Friday that overturned Roe v. Wade. And I think equally newsworthy is the reaction to that ruling by the Democrat Party, which – would be redundant for me to call the Democrat Party the hard left because that’s what it has … it’s synonymous with that term.
What’s interesting about the ruling is that there are two important parts to the ruling. One is widely discussed. The other, frankly, I haven’t seen discussed very much. And one, obviously, is where the Supreme Court ruled that Roe v. Wade and [Planned Parenthood v.] Casey were both bad rulings and that they had been overturned.
But the other part of the ruling that I think is even more important because it’s much more expansive, and that is, when the Supreme Court said that the decision over the regulation of abortion will be at the state level, because that’s where the Constitution says that issues that are not specifically identified in the Constitution as powers of the federal government, that all other powers reside with the states.
Now, that’s a paraphrase, but it’s a pretty close paraphrase. And so the Democrats’ immediate reaction was, well, we’ll pass a nationwide statute out of Congress. Well, that means they didn’t read the second part of the ruling, because what the ruling said was that the federal government’s powers are limited by the enumerated powers in the Constitution and that the right to an abortion is not one of those enumerated – it’s not a right, and it’s not an enumerated power.
So what’s interesting is, this particular aspect of the ruling will carry over to many more cases. Now, let me go back to another case, Michael … I believe it’s called the McGirt case.
And I may be wrong on the name, but I’m right on what it was about. There was an individual in Oklahoma who committed a crime and was arrested by the civil authorities in Oklahoma. That individual was also an Indian, a Native American.
And the area where this person was arrested was also tribal land in the sense that it was part of a reservation under a law that had been a treaty that had been agreed to by the national government and that particular tribe many, many, many decades ago.
And this particular individual said that the civil authorities did not have the right to arrest him, that only the Indian authorities or the Native American authorities had the right to arrest him because of the treaty, which had not been amended and not been abrogated.
And so the Supreme Court ruled 5-to-4 with Neil Gorsuch siding with what you would describe as the liberals at the time, saying that since the treaty was still in effect, the plaintiff in the case was correct.
Now, at the time, The Wall Street Journal, for example, went absolutely nuts. Really, what it did was it argued about how impractical this decision was.
It didn’t argue whether or not the treaty existed, whether or not the treaty should not apply from anything other than a practical standpoint, and about how terrible this would be from a practical standpoint.
And what Gorsuch is really, in that decision, was siding with the liberals, saying that the Constitution is not a living document, that it is a written document, and we must adhere to the Constitution.
And so this decision and the ruling on Roe v. Wade, the logic behind it is very similar in that the Constitution says what it says, the amendments say what they say, and that we as a society, as a country, must abide by the rules.
And I think that this will have a far-reaching effect. Now, the way the Left responded to it is almost humorous. In fact, it is humorous the way some of them responded. Tim Ryan, who’s running for the Senate and trying to act like he’s a Republican, couldn’t help himself.
And Tim Ryan comes out with it and says, “This disastrous decision is the largest case of government overreach in my lifetime.” When in fact, it’s exactly the opposite. I mean, it’s fascinating. It is absolutely fascinating how the Left has looked at this.
This is diminishing the power of the federal government. That is not government overreach. That’s exactly the opposite. But we’ll get to see what happens as time goes along.
Listen to the Crommentary:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
