Original Intent vs. Everything Else

President Donald Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court because the president believes Kavanaugh will construe our Constitution consistently with the “original intent” of the men who wrote it.


I came to Rock Island County in September 1966 to work as an assistant state’s attorney. Shortly after I came, one of my fellow assistants told me of his uncle, a former justice of the peace, who had proclaimed, “I don’t care who makes the laws, so long as I can say what they mean.”


I was appalled. His uncle was saying that under the guise of interpreting the law, he would rewrite the law to say what he wanted it to say, rather than what the people’s representatives who wrote it, meant it to say.


The United States is a democratic republic.


We are a democracy because we elect the people we want to represent us and make our laws.


We are a republic because the people we have chosen make our laws on our behalf. That is the first principle of our U.S. Constitution. Article I provides, “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.”


Note, it says “all.” It does not say “some” or “most.” If all legislative power is vested in Congress, then none is vested in the president or in any judge.


Article II provides, “The executive power shall be vested in [the] president.” He takes an oath to “faithfully execute” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”


Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are judges; not members of Congress. They are not elected to make our laws. Under our Constitution, no power has been vested in judges to make or rewrite our laws.


Under Article III of the Constitution, they are vested with judicial power.


Article V provides two alternative methods to amend our Constitution. Neither the president nor any judge has any role in the amendment process.


This tripartite process — Congress making our laws, the president executing those laws, and the Supreme Court judging what our Constitution and those laws mean — is known as the “separation of powers.”


Our Constitution is a product of experience, not logic.


The experience of the American people living in the 13 English colonies was the force behind Article I. The colonists had grown used to electing their own colonial representative assemblies. Those assemblies made their laws, and taxed them.


When the English King and Parliament asserted a parliamentary right to impose taxes on the colonies in an end run around their colonial assemblies, we fought and won a Revolutionary War, largely over the principle of “no taxation without representation.”


During the constitutional cConvention, it quickly became obvious that the American people would accept no king. The men who drafted our Constitution were well aware of the kingly claims of royal prerogative.


To insure that the American president could have no basis to claim a divine right to make laws or rule by decree, the founders vested ALL legislative power in the House of Representatives elected by the people, and a Senate by state legislatures.


The executive, the president, was vested only with power to execute those laws, not make, amend or repeal them.


The notion that judges can make laws or amend the Constitution by their decrees is even more undemocratic and unconstitutional than a president ruling by decree.


The president, at least, is elected by the people through their electors. We did not boot out a king who wanted to rule by decree to replace him with nine guys in black robes who would do the same.


The canard that a judge, who construes the Constitution consistently with the intent of the men that wrote it, is somehow a far right-winger or out of the mainstream is either a lie, stupidity, or the ranting of a lunatic with a superiority complex who wants our Constitution replaced with one that embodies his more enlightened notions of what a better constitution should say.


Once Supreme Court judges abandon construction of our Constitution in accordance with the founder’s original intent, then every judge's notion of what the Constitution should mean is equally valid. There is no anchor.


Every judge's new rule of construction becomes, “I don’t care who makes the laws, so long as I can say what the laws mean.”


My liberty is secure under James Madison’s construction of our Constitution. I don’t want to risk it with the more enlightened 21st century constructions.

Posted: QCOline.com July 26, 2018

Copyright 2018, John Donald O'Shea

Is it Evil to Disagree with the Pope?

Two disparate groups of people who are convinced that man-made climate change is a scientific fact have a new champion: the pope!


The first group has a genuine respect for the pope. When he indicates he is speaking infallibly on a matter of faith or morals, they take what he teaches to be religious truth.


Where he does not indicate that he is speaking infallibly, as is the case when he is speaking of man-made climate change, they generally regard his teaching as, at least, highly persuasive.



For a second group, the pope will remain their hero only as long as his pronouncements can be used to demonize the president and other “climate-change deniers.”


Saul Alinsky taught, “Marginalize and demonize your opponent, so that others will disregard his opinions.” The marginalizing process proceeds like this:


The president is deaf to the pope’s teachings on climate change. He cannot be persuaded and is therefore invincibly ignorant. He’s self-centered. He’s an evil billionaire. He has spent his entire life in pursuit of worldly success. By way of contrast, the pope has spent his life caring for the poor. The pope is good. The president is evil.


For the second group, as long as the pope’s religious teachings on climate change coincide with their beliefs, they will treat his climate-change pronouncements as infallible.


They use the papal pronouncements to demonstrate the moral bankruptcy of the president and anyone else who dares to doubt, or deny that climate change is man-made.


Their syllogism is straightforward. The pope and his position on man-made climate change is good. The opposite of good is evil. Therefore, President Donald Trump, who holds the opposite view, is necessarily evil. But even if the president is wrong, does it necessarily follow that he is evil?


When the pope speaks on man-made climate change is he speaking infallibly? Obviously, no.


Canon 749 spells out when the pope speaks infallibly: “By virtue of his office, the Supreme Pontiff possesses infallibility in teaching when as the supreme pastor and teacher of all the Christian faithful ... he proclaims by definitive act that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held.”


So, assume, for argument’s sake, that when the pope speaks of man-made climate change he indeed is speaking on a matter of faith or morals. Does that mean that he is speaking infallibly?


No. In fact, almost everything the pope says or writes touches upon faith or morals. But that does not mean he is speaking infallibly.


Before a pope speaks infallibly, he must indicate that he intends to do so, by proclaiming unequivocally that he is speaking infallibly and that the doctrine of faith or morals which he is teaching must be held to be true.


What is disingenuous about all this is that many in the second group who treat the pope’s pronouncements on climate change as if they were infallible, utterly reject other papal teachings they find objectionable.


How many of those who approve the pope’s teachings on global warming, utterly reject the pope’s views and his church’s official position on abortion?


The pope believes his church is the”one true church.” To suggest the pope speaks infallibly on climate change while denying that the pope speaks infallibly when he says the Catholic Church is the “one true church,” seems somewhat inconsistent.


Doesn’t that touch on faith? Morals? If the pope is infallible on any issue, shouldn’t his expertise be greatest here? The selective adulation suggests that many of those who are lauding the pope for his position on climate change are covering themselves with the papal robes to demonstrate the moral superiority of their position and the moral bankruptcy and depravity of any one who disagrees.


So is the pope your moral beacon? Or is he merely your tool of choice when you need a cudgel to silence those with whom you politically disagree?


Today the pope teaches that man is causing climate change.


Not very long ago, the church was certain the earth was the center of the universe. So, was Galileo evil?

Posted: QCOline.com July 19, 2018

Copyright 2018, John Donald O'Shea

Stop Demonizing - Pass Rational Immigration Policy

It is currently fashionable for those on the left to compare President Donald Trump with Adolf Hitler.

I can understand young people with little knowledge of WWII and German history from 1930 through 1944 engaging in that hyperbole on the immigration issue.

I cannot understand any adult who lived through those years equating our president to Hitler.


On June 30, 1934, Hitler ordered the summary execution of the leaders of his own SA (Sturmabteilung, translated literally, Storm Detachment).

He personally arrested Ernst Roehm, the head of the SA, conveyed him to prison in Munich, and executed Roehm in his cell without trial. Roehm had been Hitler’s best friend.

Gregor Strasser, the No. 2 man in the Nazi Party who had crossed Hitler, was arrested in Berlin and murdered in his cell. Former Chancellor Von Schliecher and his wife were shot dead in their home by Hitler’s men. Von Schliecher was Chancellor Hitler’s predecessor. Hitler crushed his own storm troopers to win the support of the German army.

Then there was the “final solution.” Over six million Jews were murdered by Hitler’s Nazis. Jews died of starvation, disease, and poor living conditions. They were shot down in the streets, and sent to gas chambers in extermination camps. Children were reunited with their parents only in death.

Hitler raped Austria, devoured democratic Czechoslovakia in two bites, made war on small peaceful Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and Greece.

He savagely unleashed his military on Poland, France, England and the USSR. Some 26 million Russians, and 5.8 million Poles died. German military casualties are estimated at 5.3 million, including Austrian conscripts.


Anybody opposing Trump’s immigration policies who compares Trump with Hitler is nuts. Mr. Trump has not arrested and murdered without trial a single political opponent, or his critics in the media.

Hitler invaded his neighbors. Our president hasn’t invaded anybody. And to compare placing children who cross our border illegally into detention facilities for 20 days with children sent to Auschwitz or Treblinka for extermination is absurd.


On Feb. 24, 2017, before the present furor, the Chicago Tribune wrote that “Nearly 60,000 children came across the border without their parents during the fiscal year ending in September.”

Were they to be allowed to roam free? Unless detained, how would they ever be placed? Reunited? Calling the president’s immigration policies racist or him Hitler is, at best, a puerile diversion from the real immigration issues that Republicans and Democrats should be discussing.


Isn’t it about time these issues, and others, are calmly, conscientiously and publicly discussed?

1. How many immigrant laborers does our country’s workforce need each year?

2. What level of skills should the immigrants have?

3. How many immigrants should we accept for humanitarian reasons?

4. What is the true cost of providing immigrant children with an elementary and secondary education (including salaries and pensions of teachers, administrators, etc., as well as school supplies and busing)?

5. What is the true cost of providing housing assistance for illegal immigrants? Foster care? Medical care? Meals?

6. What do illegal immigrants pay in federal and state income taxes? FICA?

7. How many illegal immigrants commit felonies? Serious misdemeanors? What is the cost of incarcerating these individuals? Probationary services? Parole services?

8. How many illegal aliens are driving without financial responsibility? What are the costs to others from accidents caused by uninsured illegals?

9. How many total dollars will we spend providing services for illegal immigrants? Would these dollars be better spent on the elderly, veterans, the disabled, inner-city schools, our infrastructure, etc.?

10. Out of every 1,000 illegal aliens who enter our country, how many have felony records in their own country? How many are drug dealers, mules, cartel enforcers, gang members, Islamist terrorists, medical doctors, engineers, teachers, scientists?


How do we keep bad people out? Calling Trump names will solve nothing.

It is, however, a lot easier, and perhaps more politically expedient, for Democrats and anti-Trumpists to engage in name-calling than it is to fix the mess.

There are many good reasons to admit aliens into our country, but admitting them to gain votes is not one of them.

Posted: QCOline.com July 5, 2018

Copyright 2018, John Donald O'Shea