Supreme Court Rules Boston Violated First Amendment over Rejection of Christian Flag

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the city of Boston was in violation of the First Amendment over its attempt to ban the Christian flag.

Axios reports that the opinion was written by outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer. In the opinion, Breyer states that the city government of Boston “violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment” by forbidding a Christian organization from flying the Christian flag in front of city hall, which Breyer said constituted discrimination “based on religious viewpoints.”

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Commentary: King Joe Can’t Transfer Student Loan Debt

Transferring hundreds of billions of dollars of student-loan debt—as Joe Biden is reportedly considering—would be unjust, indiscriminate, and remarkably irresponsible. It would force everyday Americans who didn’t take out those loans to shoulder their burden in the form of higher taxes or increased national debt (which, inevitably, leads to higher taxes). But none of this matters as much as the worst thing about such a potential action: It would be a naked violation of our constitutional forms, a move more monarchical than republican.

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Commentary: The ‘American Enlightenment’ Succeeded, But It Might Also Fail

Who hasn’t noticed that current trends have been leading us away from human happiness? We will be better prepared to make the desperately needed corrections if we recapture the forgotten power of the American idea offered in Robert Curry’s Common Sense Nation. Curry introduces us to the English, French, Scottish, and American Enlightenment. That will equip us to distinguish between the path that leads to ordered liberty and the other path that is now leading us toward chaos.

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Commentary: Another January 6 Narrative Goes Boom

Large group of people storming Washington D.C. in protest on January 6.

How does a mob “illegally storm” the Capitol building when police let them in? That is the latest narrative-shifting question the media wants desperately to avoid after a federal judge on Wednesday found a January 6 defendant not guilty for his conduct during the protest at the Capitol that day. 

Matthew Martin was arrested in Santa Fe, New Mexico on April 22, 2021; he later was charged with the four most common misdemeanors related to the Justice Department’s prosecution of Capitol protesters: entering a restricted building, disorderly conduct, violent entry, and parading in the Capitol building.

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GOP Sen. Collins Says She’ll Vote to Confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court

Republican Sen. Susan Collins says she’ll will vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, guaranteeing President Biden’s judicial nominee at least a slim path toward confirmation.

Jackson will need 51 votes in final Senate vote – with the chamber evenly split among 50 Democrats and 50 Republican. With no GOP support, Vice President Kamala Harris would cast the decisive, tiebreaker vote.

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Wisconsin Governor Evers Reverses Race-Based Grants Following Constitutional Concerns

Tony Evers

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers opted to remove the consideration of race from a mortgage-assistance program after the Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty (WILL) highlighted several constitutional concerns.

The group pointed out that Evers intended to expand eligibility for “socially disadvantaged” groups, defining those as “any racial or ethnic group besides non-Hispanic/Latinx White.”

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Justice Reporter Who Called Constitution ‘Trash’ Heads Up Dark Money Group Spending Millions to Support Jackson SCOTUS Nomination

A pundit who called the Constitution garbage is a leader of a dark money group funding a million dollar campaign to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court, according to tax documents provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation by Americans for Public Trust.

Demand Justice seeks to nominate left-wing judges to American courts. Most recently, the group is pushing for the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

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Renowned Constitutional Scholar: Ongoing Border Crisis Fits Constitution’s Definition of an Invasion

A renowned constitutional scholar said what is happening now at the southern border does constitute an “invasion” under the U.S. Constitution.

“The kind of organized entry that we are seeing now where you got some of the gangs down in Mexico facilitating it and getting paid to put people across the border, that does qualify as an invasion even when no arms are involved,” Rob Natelson, the Independence Institute’s senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence, said.

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Arizona Supreme Court Explains Voids of State Vaccination, Mask Ban Laws

exterior of Arizona's Supreme Court building

Arizona’s high court has elaborated on their decision to void additions to the most-recent state budget, saying lawmakers ran afoul of provisions in the state constitution meant to simplify legislation.

Justices released their unanimous opinion Thursday in Arizona School Boards Association et al. v. State of Arizona. The ruling, initially announced in September, affirmed a lower court ruling that said the Legislature went against two parts of the Arizona Constitution.

The opinion nullifies the state’s ban on mask mandates in schools, laws shoring up local election security and other laws justices concluded had little to do with the state budget.

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Commentary: Sotomayor Is the 21st Century Roger Taney

Justice Sonia Sotomayor

The U.S. Supreme Court on December 10 handed down its much-awaited opinion in Whole Women’s Health v. Jackson. I’ll bottom-line the result as simply as possible.

The court concluded that Texas abortion providers may maintain a pre-enforcement challenge to the law at issue, S.B. 8, but only as against state licensing board officials, not other state officials such as the attorney general, judges, or court clerks. The decision to allow suit against the licensing officials was 8-1 (Justice Clarence Thomas alone would have directed the district court to dismiss the suit as against all defendants). The decision to preclude suit against the attorney general and court clerks was 5-4 (Chief Justice John G. Roberts and the three Democratic appointees were in the minority and would have allowed pre-enforcement challenges to proceed against the attorney general and court clerks).

I say all that just for context; the technical dimension of the opinion has been picked over thoroughly by legal academics and commentators since it was released. On that front, I don’t have much, if anything, to add.

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Commentary: ‘Unprecedented’ Capitol Protest Sets New Precedents

Capitol protest

Unprecedented: It is the word most often applied to the events at the Capitol on January 6.

In his remarks that afternoon, as the chaos was still ongoing, Joe Biden warned that “our democracy is under unprecedented attack.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Attorney General Merrick Garland, and leaders of both political parties also describe the four-hour mostly nonviolent disturbance at the Capitol complex as something without precedent. 

“On January 6, 2021, the world witnessed a violent and unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Vice President, Members of Congress, and the democratic process,” wrote Republican and Democratic senators in a joint committee report released earlier this year.

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Commentary: The Navy’s New Emphasis on ‘Diversity’ Puts the Nation at Risk

group of Navy members sitting on bleachers

After the 2020 summer of riots, the U.S. Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations stood up Task Force One Navy (TF1N) on July 1, 2020. After a six-month effort, the final 142-page report was submitted on January 28, 2021 Its two operating assumptions are, first, that the Navy, as an institution, is systemically racist, and, second, that “Mission readiness is stronger when diverse strengths are used and differing perspectives are applied.” Notwithstanding several key military principles—such as unit cohesion, strict discipline across the chain of command, and, well, uniforms—the Navy is now ideologically committed to the mantra that “diversity is strength.”

Not surprisingly, considering the key entering assumptions, the task force report identified problems with Navy systems, climate, and culture; and submitted almost 60 recommendations aligned with four lines of inquiry: Recruiting, Talent Management/Retention, Professional Development, and Innovation and STEM (as well as a fifth line for miscellaneous recommendations).

One should be skeptical, however, about the entire exercise and the recommendations that flow from it. It inaccurately depicts the proud institution of the United States Navy as systemically racist—a slander that has more potential to undermine morale, good order, discipline, and military effectiveness than any geostrategic adversary. 

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Michigan Redistricting Committee Ignores Lawyer’s Advice, Votes to ‘Interpret’ Map Rules

Citizens gather for a meeting to draw out Congressional maps

The Michigan Independent Redistricting Commission (MICRC) ignored advice from its lawyer when it voted Thursday to limit when commissioners can submit individual maps.

It’s unclear if the vote conflicts with its Constitutional amendment.

Commissioners argued for more than an hour about Constitutional requirements before approving several motions as they pushed proposed collaborative maps.

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Commentary: Schiff, Democrats Pivot Hard on Justice Department Election Interference

U.S. Department of Justice headquarters

For five years, U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) insisted, without evidence, that the Russians helped Donald Trump win the White House in 2016. Schiff, along with Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), first seeded the collusion narrative in July 2016—the same month James Comey’s FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane—by falsely claiming Kremlin hackers confiscated thousands of emails off the Democratic National Committee’s server, correspondence damaging to Hillary Clinton.

From that point forward, Schiff leveraged his political power and newfound cable news stardom to perpetuate the lie that the 2016 presidential election was illegitimate.

So it’s beyond ironic that Schiff now sits on the January 6 select committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s latest weapon to annihilate TrumpWorld. After spending every waking minute during Trump’s presidency to conduct what author Lee Smith called The Permanent Coup, Schiff is flipping his coup-plotting script on anyone who questions the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s presidency.

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Commentary: Ground Zero of Woke

Many of our once revered and most hallowed institutions are failing us. To mention only the most significant ones: our top-ranking military echelon, the leadership of our federal investigatory and intelligence agencies, the government medical establishment—and of course the universities.

For too long American higher education’s reputation of global academic superiority has rested mostly on the sciences, mathematics, physics, technology, medicine, and engineering—in other words, not because of the humanities and social sciences, but despite them. The humanities have become too often anti-humanistic. And the social sciences are deductively anti-scientific. Both quasi-religious woke disciplines have eroded confidence in colleges and universities, infected even the STEM disciplines and professional schools, and torn apart the civic unity of the United States. Indeed, much of the current Jacobin revolution was birthed and fueled by American universities, despite their manifest hypocrisies and derelictions.

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Brnovich Requests Restraining Order Against Biden Vaccine Mandate

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich asked the U.S. District Court in Arizona for a temporary restraining order and nationwide preliminary injunction against the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates. 

“The COVID-19 vaccine mandate is one of the greatest infringements upon individual liberty, federalism, and the separation of powers by any administration in our country’s history,” Brnovich said in a news release Friday. 

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Commentary: Targeting Citizens for Expressing Traditional Values is a Hallmark of Tyranny

All my life I’ve felt a bond with places and with people.

Growing up in Boonville, North Carolina, population then about 600, I went to elementary school and the Methodist church, knew many of the merchants in town—Harvey Smith, grocer and mayor for many years, Donald the barber, Mr. Weatherwax who owned the pharmacy and was kind enough to let me read comic books on the premises, and a dozen more adults—and relished my friends and their families. Boonville’s red clay and rolling hills are as much a part of me as any genetic code.

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Commentary: Biden’s Unlawful Plan to Federalize Elections

Person voting in poll booth

The White House recently issued a statement regarding new actions dozens of federal agencies are taking related to voter registration. These actions come in response to an order President Joe Biden issued back in March.

The order commanded the heads of every federal agency to submit a plan outlining their strategy to engage in voter registration and mobilization efforts to the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, Susan Rice. This is an unlawful effort by the Biden administration to federalize elections and keep the president and his political party in power.

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American Civil Liberties Union Sues Oklahoma over Statewide Ban on Critical Race Theory in Schools

The far-left American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit against the state of Oklahoma over a recently-signed law that forbids the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools, according to CNN.

The lawsuit represents a group of teachers and students who support CRT, and is supported by the ACLU, the Oklahoma NAACP, the American Indian Movement (AIM), and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The suit claims that the law infringes on the rights of freedom of speech guaranteed under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

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Commentary: America and the Dying Citizen

by Victor Davis Hanson   Only a little more than half of the current world’s 7 billion people are citizens of fully consensual governments. That lucky 50 percent alone enjoys constitutionally protected freedoms. Most are also Western. Or at least they reside in nations that have become “Westernized.” Migrants, regardless of their race, religion, or gender, almost always head for a Western nation. And most often their destination remains the United States. The more it is now fashionable for Americans to take for granted or even to ridicule the idea of their own country, the more the non-American global poor risk their lives to crash America’s borders. Constitutional systems easily perish because they ask a lot of their citizens—to vote, to be informed about civic and political issues, and to hold elected officials accountable. That responsibility is perhaps why, of the world’s true republics and democracies, only about 22 have been in existence for a half-century or more. We are seldom told, then, that America is a rare, precious, and perhaps even fragile idea, both in the past and in the present. American citizens are clearly also not the custom of the past. Unlike history’s more common peasants, citizens are…

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Biden, Congress Seek to Chip Away at Gun Rights with United Nations Arms Treaty, Military Red Flag Law

handgun with ammo

Congressional Democrats and the Biden administration are attempting to nibble away at the Second Amendment from both within and without the U.S., gun rights advocates warn, as Congress seeks to pass a red flag law for military members and the president eyes signing on to a United Nations arms treaty.

Red flag laws that would apply to military members were slipped into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed by the House of Representatives last week with the help of 135 Republicans.

Red flag laws are “essentially bypassing due process,” Gun Owners of America’s Director of Outreach Antonia Okafor told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Wednesday. “It is going from one person who says they accuse you of being a danger to yourself, or to somebody else, and then going to a judge that then gets reasonable suspicion, right, that you are a danger to yourself or somebody else.”

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Claudia Henneberry Named Executive Director of The National Constitution Bee

Claudia Henneberry, the Executive Director of The National Constitution Bee of the Star News Education Foundation discussed how our education institutions have fallen to anti-American forces, and why the current landscape needs to change. Henneberry, a former history, political science and English teacher, spoke with The Tennessee Star about her role and what inspired her to take on this project. 

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Arizona Attorney General Condemns Biden Administration’s Warning Label on Constitution, Declaration

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich condemned the National Archives Records Association’s (NARA) decision to label documents with a “harmful language” alert.

Brnovich demanded that NARA immediately remove the warning labels from documents including the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, in a Sept. 10 letter to the agency first obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The warning labels only serve to further divide Americans, the attorney general said.

“This is shameful action from the National Archives, and the misguided ‘alerts’ should be taken down immediately,” Brnovich wrote to U.S. Archivist David Ferriero. “There is nothing ‘harmful’ about our founding documents. These inspired writings governed the formation of our new country in the late 18th Century and provided the roadmap for it to grow into the greatest nation in history.”

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Arizona Senators Kelly and Sinema Refuse to Address National Archives Labeling Founding Documents ‘Harmful Language’

  The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) placed warning labels on the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and other historical documents, warning viewers that “some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions.” The Arizona Sun Times requested comment from Arizona’s Democratic Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema, asking if they approved of the decision, and only received auto replies. The warning about “harmful language” can be clearly seen at the top of the National Archives site. The new FAQ about the warning says harmful or difficult content includes “racist, sexist, ableist, misogynistic/misogynoir, and xenophobic opinions and attitudes” and material that is “discriminatory towards or exclude diverse views on sexuality, gender, religion, and more.” It says it includes “language that was accepted at the time.” The FAQ reassures viewers that archivists are not only “informing users about the presence and origin of harmful content,” but “evaluating existing processes for exclusionary practices or institutional bias that prioritize one culture and/or group over another” and “making an institutional commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.” The FAQ explains, “In the past, the National Archives has not had standards or policies to help archivists avoid…

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Pennsylvania Congressman Lamb Silent on National Archives Labeling Constitution for ‘Harmful Language’

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has slapped “Harmful Language” warnings on online displays of American founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—and U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA-17) is keeping quiet about it.

The Star News Network emailed Lamb’s press office Friday to ascertain his view of the matter. Neither the congressman—who recently announced a bid for U.S. Senate—nor his staff have replied.

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National Archives Flags America’s Founding Documents for ‘Harmful Language’

Magnification of the U.S. Constitution

The National Archives has placed warning labels on its digital display of America’s founding documents, including the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, warning they may contain “harmful language” that could offend viewers’ senses.

The labels come amidst a larger battle over political correctness inside the government’s main historical preservation agency, where new documents surfaced this week showing that about 800 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) employees from across the country attended a town hall meeting of the Archives’ Task Force on Racism on May 11 and discussed deleting the “charters of freedom” descriptors for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration.

The argument made was that the documents did not “not result in freedoms for everyone” initially, the new memos show.

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Jury Trial Delayed in Loudoun County Trans Pronouns Lawsuit

A trial over whether teachers will be required to use their students’ preferred gender pronouns will have to wait for now. 

“A Virginia judge postponed Tuesday a trial in a lawsuit brought by three teachers challenging Loudoun County Public Schools’ policy requiring staff to use transgender students’ chosen pronouns,” The Washington Times reported. “Loudoun County Circuit Judge James E. Plowman Jr. decided to delay the trial after he granted a motion last week to let two of the teachers join the lawsuit and allow their amended complaint. He has not yet set a new date for the trial.”

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Tennessee Firearms Association Had Its Most Successful Fundraiser to Provide Financial Support for Candidates Who Advocate for the Second Amendment

The Tennessee Firearms Association Legislative Action Committee (TFALAC) held its most successful annual fundraiser in the organization’s 25-year history on Saturday at the Farm Bureau Expo Center at the James E. Ward Agricultural Center on the Wilson County Fairgrounds in Lebanon.

The proceeds from the midday event, attended by several hundred, will be used to provide financial support to state legislative candidates who advocate for the Second Amendment.

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Commentary: The Clear Case for Joe Biden’s Impeachment

Alan Dershowitz says calls for the impeachment of Joe Biden are “wrong.” He claims in his most recent op-ed at the D.C. establishment’s favorite Republican rag, The Hill: “Whatever one may think of what Biden did or failed to do, it does not constitute an impeachable offense under the text of the Constitution.” With all due respect, Dershowitz is full of crap.

“The Framers,” Dershowitz writes, “insisted that a president could not be impeached unless he committed criminal-type conduct akin to treason and bribery.” If this is true, then why did President Thomas Jefferson call for the impeachment of a federal district judge on the grounds that he was “a man of loose morals and intemperate habits?” Jefferson was a prominent founder, who greatly influenced the framers of the Constitution.

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Conservative Student Group Threatened with Blacklisting for Refusing to Sign ‘Black Lives Matter’ Letter

A group of students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign signed a letter of demands to the Federalist Society chapter at the university after the chapter stated it would remain neutral on the Black Lives Matter movement.

“I am incredibly proud to be part of an institution among leaders who, when faced with the recent cries from the black community who has for their entire existence in this country been oppressed, amplified these cries loud enough so that those in power will finally hear,” began the letter authored by University of Illinois College of Law student Celestina Radogno, a copy of which Campus Reform has obtained.

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Commentary: Biden’s Eviction Moratorium Reveals Tragic Disdain for the Constitution

One night while we were sleeping, America lost its Constitution.

That’s not such an unrealistic scenario, and it can happen without gunfire or marches in the streets. In fact, with very little drama, it may be occurring at this moment. By itself, the U.S. Constitution is merely a collection of words. Only citizens who cherish liberty give the document real meaning, and if they remain silent when it’s under threat – as it surely is at this hour – our rights and freedoms become imperiled.

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‘Only White People Could Be Racist’: Staff Sue School District over Mandatory ‘Equity’ Training

Two employees of Missouri’s largest school district filed a complaint Wednesday against their government employer, alleging they were forced to affirm and promote an ideology with which they disagree.

Springfield Public Schools (SPS) employees Brooke Henderson and Jennifer Lumley claim that while the First Amendment protects public school employees from viewpoint discrimination, the school district “forces teachers and staff to affirm views they do not support, to disclose personal details that they wish to keep private, and to self-censor on matters of public interest,” according to the complaint.

SPS warns staff to “be professional” and “stay engaged” during equity training or they would be asked to leave and receive no credit, according to the complaint. This district-wide staff training program “demands that its staff ‘commit’ to equity and become ‘anti-racist educators.’”

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Obama-Appointed Judge Says It Is Unconstitutional and ‘Racist’ to Prosecute Previously-Deported Illegal Aliens

On Wednesday, a judge appointed by Barack Obama argued that it is “racist” to prosecute illegal aliens who return to the country after being deported and commit crimes on American soil, as reported by Breitbart.

Judge Miranda Du, appointed by Obama to the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada in 2012, made the statements in a ruling in favor of a previously-deported illegal named Gustavo Carrillo-Lopez. Lopez had filed a motion to dismiss an indictment against him for the crime of illegally re-entering the country, baselessly claiming that such a charge was “discriminatory.” He claimed, without evidence, that federal law allowing for the deportation of illegals is in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

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Commentary: How Progressives Rewrote American History

America’s Founders understood that political change is inevitable. They thought it must come about through constitutional mechanisms, with the consent of the governed, and must never infringe on the natural rights of citizens. Progressives – rejecting the idea that any rights, including the right of consent to government, are natural – accept no such limits. Progressivism insists that the principled American constitutionalism of fixed natural rights and limited and dispersed powers must be overturned and replaced by an organic, evolutionary model of the Constitution. Historical progress should be facilitated by experts dedicated to the expansion of the public sphere and political control – especially at the national level. As progressivism has grown into modern liberalism, the commitment to extra-constitutional “progress” is broadly shared across elite political, academic, legal, and religious circles. Politics is thus increasingly identified with a mix of activism, expertise, and the desire for “change.”

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Commentary: American Armageddon

Americans are growing angrier by the day in a way different from prior sagebrush revolts such as the 1960s Silent Majority or Tea Party furor of over a decade ago.

The rage at the current status quo this time is not just fueled by conservatives. For the first time in their lives, all Americans of all classes and races are starting to fear a self-created apocalypse that threatens their families’ safety and the American way of life.

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Legal Issues May Arise as Tucson Ignores Arizona’s ‘Second Amendment Sanctuary’ Law

The city of Tucson passed a resolution recently declaring that it will defy Arizona’s “Second Amendment Sanctuary” law, which says the state will not comply with federal laws and regulations that violate the Second Amendment. Arizona’s law prohibits the police and sheriffs from enforcing those laws. The state passed the 2nd Amendment Firearm Freedom Act into law in April. 

Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik introduced the resolution last month. Democratic Mayor Regina Romero and the City Council unanimously passed the resolution on June 22, which they labeled an emergency.

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Gov. Walz to Extend Emergency Powers for 15th Time Monday

Gov. Tim Walz

Gov. Tim Walz plans to extend his emergency powers for another 30 days on Monday, making it the 15th month in a row that the peacetime emergency has been extended.

A Minnesota statute says that a governor who declares a peacetime emergency may have emergency powers for only five days, after which he must ask his Executive Council to extend his powers for an additional 30 days.

Walz has requested that his powers be extended 15 times since first declaring the peacetime emergency in March of 2020, and thus has had emergency powers for over 450 days.

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Proposed Tennessee Constitutional Amendment on Slavery Wording to Go Before Voters

Tennessee Senate Chamber

The Tennessee House has approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would change the state constitution’s wording to allow for prisoners to work without it being considered slavery.

The proposed amendment passed, 81-2, on Tuesday and will be on the statewide ballot in November 2022.

Rep. Joe Towns, D-Memphis, said the bill language came directly from the Tennessee Department of Corrections and was intended to eliminate any confusion about whether work from prisoners, who are paid, could fall under the slavery ban.

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