RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/28/will-we-ever-eradicate-the-cancer-of-identity-politics/

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court finally granted a writ of certiorari in two now-consolidated affirmative action cases, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. The cases will be argued jointly during the next Supreme Court term, and they place directly in their crosshairs the court’s noxious precedents in the thorny area of race-conscious university admission policies. As presented to the court, the leading question the justices will consider is “whether the Supreme Court should . . . hold that institutions of higher education cannot use race as a factor in admissions.”

The court should of course do so posthaste. The propagandist assertion that America in the year 2022 is bedeviled by a sprawling “systemic racism” is a destructive lie, but the ubiquity of affirmative action means that university admissions offices do, in fact, propagate systemic racism. Fortunately, there is reason for optimism that the justices will do their job. It was the mercurial Chief Justice John Roberts himself who, in the 2007 case of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle, penned perhaps his most iconic line: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

But by Wednesday afternoon, Monday’s propitious step forward toward an America no longer obsessed with race and identity politics was abruptly undermined by a severe step backward toward a race-centric polity.

Justice Stephen Breyer, an octogenarian Jewish male and the senior statesman of the court’s liberal bloc, announced his retirement, effective at the end of this court term and contingent upon the successful confirmation of his successor. The announcement was hardly surprising; given Breyer’s long-standing Democratic ties, his liberal jurisprudence, and the fact that Republicans are poised to retake control of the U.S. Senate this fall, it would have been more surprising if Breyer had not retired this year.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/the_elites_morally_obscene_response_to_the_canadian_trucker_convoy.html

Something big is happening in Canada and it’s happening in a typically Canadian way. After two years of draconian lockdowns and mandates, truckers are pushing back with a 70 km long convoy that pulled into Ottawa yesterday. It’s exciting and inspiring. It’s also drawing the elites out from cover, as they abandon any pretense of supporting the people they applauded so vigorously almost two years ago when they hid in their offices while “the little people” kept the world working.

The Canadians have been renowned for being an obedient, peaceable people. But perhaps we’ve forgotten that there’s a warrior strain in them. During both WWI and WWII, some of the British Empire’s most ferocious fighters came from Canada. That blend of warrior and peaceful soul seems to have come together with the massive Freedom Convoy that Canadian (and some American) truckers have driven from Vancouver to Ottawa, Canada’s capital.

I wrote about the convoy on Friday, along with lots of videos. It’s incredibly inspiring to see these cheerful truckers driving along Canada’s frozen lands, cheered on by hundreds and thousands of people wherever they go. Tucker interviewed another trucker on Friday night and it’s moving to see his good spirits and optimism as he and his fellow truckers push back against the effort to make them bow down to the technocracy for which COVID has provided a glide path.

https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2022/01/27/mazie-hirono-i-want-a-justice-who-wont-base-her-decisions-solely-on-law-n444546

“Quiet part out loud,” Dan McLaughlin tweeted about this word salad that she croaked out yesterday.

As is true with most Americans, Supreme Court nominations bring out the worst in Hirono. But her worst tends to be worse than the worst of most of her colleagues.

Not so in this case, though. This is standard liberal palaver about how judges should approach jurisprudence, encouraging them to begin with a progressive outcome and then work backwards to find some legal justification for it. “Living Constitution” fever — catch it:

Hirono stated, “What I’m looking for is a justice who can be fair and impartial and who does not have an ideological axe to grind, which is what we saw — as far as I’m concerned — in President Trump’s nominees, including to the Supreme Court. So, yes, I am expecting a fight, but there you have it. And I’m looking for someone who’s going to be, not only highly qualified, as all of the people that you already talked about are, but who really brings to the judiciary the kind of diversity that I’d like, that — someone who will consider the impact, the effects of whatever decision-making is on people in our country so that they are not making decisions just based on — which I would like them to base it on law, which would be nice and precedent and who are not eagerly trying to get rid of decades of precedent that would protect a woman’s right to choose, for example, and voting rights, etc. But I’d like a justice who also will take into consideration the real-life impact of the decisions he or she will be making.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-has-a-green-bridge-to-sell-energy-infrastructure-pittsburgh-11643410837?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

President Biden couldn’t have picked more grimly ironic timing to visit Pittsburgh to promote the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill he signed last November. Hours after a snowy bridge in the city collapsed, injuring 10 people, the President promised to fix all of the nation’s 43,000 faltering bridges. “We’re sending the money,” he assured.

Sorry, he isn’t. The bill he signed doesn’t have nearly enough money unless his Administration plans to borrow from the Energy Department’s green energy venture-capital fund. The bill includes $40 billion in new funding for bridges, a pittance compared to the $156 billion for mass transit and rail that are bleeding cash due to generous labor agreements and low ridership. Mass transit had already received $70 billion in pandemic relief.

The infrastructure bill’s other big winner is green energy. The Department of Energy is getting $21 billion for “demonstration projects” for clean hydrogen, advanced nuclear, carbon capture and other green largesse. There’s also $11 billion for states and utilities for grid “resilience” (i.e., backing up renewables) and $6 billion to rescue nuclear plants that renewable subsidies are driving out of business.

This is on top of its expanded loan guarantee program. “Our Loan Programs Office (LPO) is back in business, with $40 billion in loan authority to finance large-scale clean energy deployment projects,” the department boasts on its website. It notes that loan guarantee applications have increased 23-fold. Expect many more taxpayer-backed startups like Solyndra to go bust.