We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Does the white Appalachian coal miner in West Virginia really have an innate leg up on the Punjabi immigrant exec in Silicon Valley on the basis of his appearance? Yet somewhere along the line in a supposed racist America, being a white male in Fayette County, W. Va., did not innately trump being a techie immigrant from Mumbai in Menlo Park. Does multibillionaire Oprah Winfrey have less privilege and opportunity than a white cook in Provo, Utah?
Does the recently arrived undocumented immigrant who has lived his entire life in the Mexican state of Oaxaca become eligible for career and job enhancement because he does not superficially look like the out-of-work lathe worker in southern Ohio? Is the theory that the minute the immigrant crosses the border to the U.S. from his formerly racist society, his children will become eligible for federally mandated advantages on the reasoning that from now on, they will face racism as a non-white in the country to which he fled in order to avoid racism in the country of his birth?
Paul Manafort is rotting away in solitary confinement on the flimsiest of specious nothingness while murderers, rapists, pedophiles and other scum of the earth post bail and are out in a heartbeat before the ink on their fingerprints are dry. That is also an abject travesty. It's political terrorism just as bad in its own way as that suffered by Steve Scalise at the hands of a Dick Durbin-linked would-be assassin. The President can put a stop to all of this right now by firing Mueller, ending the kangaroo court and just flat out pardoning Paul Manafort, but the politics of that is dangerous to play with.
The elites believe they should run my life, and the dependents want my stuff. As it is, governments take 42% of what money I make. I guess in a way I am a serf, or a tenant farmer. I don't mind paying taxes, but it never seems to be enough for them.
“We’re looking at the destruction of the Constitution of the United States” – 2020 front runner for Democrat nomination to the Presidency, Sen Kamala Harris
If so much hangs on the appointment of a single person to the Supreme Court that it matters more than almost anything else in our politics, then maybe the Supreme Court matters too much. In a healthier republic, it would matter less.
If America Is So Bad, Why Do They Keep Coming Here? To listen to open-borders advocates, left-wing journalists and Democrats in Congress, the U.S. is a hellhole of misery and bigotry
Why is it that when anybody (including returning Americans) coming to the US through a port of entry requires papers, passports, etc or they are sent back immediately to whence they came?
But if you wade through the Rio Grande, they put you up and feed you.
It will overrule Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortions and to criminally prosecute any physicians and nurses who perform them. It will allow shopkeepers, restaurateurs, and hotel owners to refuse service to gay customers on religious grounds. It will guarantee that fewer African-American and Latino students attend élite universities. It will approve laws designed to hinder voting rights. It will sanction execution by grotesque means. It will invoke the Second Amendment to prohibit states from engaging in gun control, including the regulation of machine guns and bump stocks.
and he concludes with this ignorant statement:
... the Constitution grants only those rights that the Supreme Court says it grants, and a new majority can and will bestow those rights, and take them away, in chilling new ways.
If the US government bestows rights, it's news to me. That turns the Constitution upside-down. The American idea is that individual freedom is a gift of God, and limited powers are given to government only to protect that freedom from threats to it. Rebels wrote the thing, rebels who believed government was a necessary evil. I do not think the youth are taught that.
The Greeks understood these things, and VDH knows the Greeks.
Bill's wife's judgement has been poor most of her life. Arrogance has been a problem too. Blind ambition. Who is she, in her own imagination? Remarkable she got as far as she did, but she did manage to leave a trail of messes and corruption behind her while becoming a mega-millionaire in selfless "public service".
Much as I detest the idea of abortion (it is killing, of course), I also detest the notion that the Constitution confers limited rights on individuals. It was not meant to do so. It was designed to confer limited powers to government.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, accused the majority of weaponizing the First Amendment — an unconscionable position for a person tasked with “faithfully and impartially” discharging the duty to protect the inherent rights of all Americans. The dissenters have perverted the intent of the Founders. It’s none of Sotomayor’s business how we use free expression. It’s her business to protect it.
The Gowdy clip is stunning. The arrogance of the bureaucrats is amazing to me. Who do they think they are? Rosenstein's smugness bugs me because he is my employee.
If Trump’s supporters are truly “a basket of deplorables ... racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” and “irredeemable,” as Hillary Clinton described them to an LGBT crowd, is not shunning and shaming the proper way to deal with them.
Clan MacGregor: 
Photo stolen from 
Vacation time. 