How Far We Have Come: Sen. Tim Scott

 

Senator Tim Scott (R, South Carolina) sums up how far we have come.  As a Black man, Senator Scott would probably have had trouble even registering to vote in South Carolina before 1964.  Senator Scott has won two general elections for Senator against white opponents in South Carolina, the Cradle of the Confederacy, where the electorate is over 60% white.  Senator Scott was one of the main authors of the Republican tax bill that President Trump signed into law at the beginning of his presidential term.  Senator Scott was also the author of the Republican police reform bill, which Democrats filibustered in order to prevent a Republican victory on police reform.

It's ridiculous to pretend that Republicans in the South are all, or even largely, racists.  The places Democrats are complaining about are all big cities with Democrats in charge.  Many of these cities have had Democrats in charge for at least 50 years.  It's time to stop the divide and conquer strategies of identity politics.

Consent of the Governed and Original Intent

 

 The original intent of a law, and the original intent of the Constitution or an Amendment, is what the people consented to through their representatives in the legislature when the law was passed or the Constitution and Amendments were ratified.  Subsequently changing the meaning of what was agreed to by a court decision is, in reality, governing without the consent of the governed.  In commerce, it's called bait and switch.  The "Living Constitution," basically says the Constitution says whatever 5 Supreme Court Justices say it says on any given day.

If the interpretation of laws that is no longer predictable, it means that there really is no rule of law.  We instead have a rule of unchecked judges with lifetime tenure.  This is a serious problem that has become obvious in the last 20 years.  Before we pass lots of interesting new laws, we need to acknowledge that we have no idea how any of them will be interpreted.  Judges will make the interpretation up as they go along.

DACA Ruling: Orange Man Bad

Trump figured out that DACA, which Obama said was based on prosecutorial discretion, was illegal.  Three years later, the Supreme court ruled that even though Obama didn't use the Administrative Procedures Act to establish DACA, Trump must use the APA to abolish it, even though the Supreme Court acknowledges that DACA is illegal.  Trump doesn't seem to have the same prosecutorial discretion that Obama had.  It seems that some presidents are more equal than others.

So simply determining that you want to change environmental rules doesn't mean it's easy to design a change in regulations that will survive judicial review.  The Supreme Court has determined there is a penumbra is the Constitution, which only they can see.  It can be summarized for the layman as "Orange man bad."