Tomi Lahren's Comments Spark Backlash and Debate: Is the Constitution Static or Dynamic?

Tomi Lahren visited The View on Friday, March 17, and commented on what, she believed, was the hypocrisy of being for limited government but believing that the government should be telling women what they can do with their bodies. And the conservative establishment lost their minds, backlashing to the point that her TV show "Tomi" has been suspended from the air for at least one week. Glenn Beck then went on his radio show to address Lahren's constitutional stance, while refusing to comment on her long term future at the network.

Beck's stance, of course, is derived from the preamble of the Constitution, in the phrase

"secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

His interpretation of the phrase is understandable, but it sidesteps the context in which it's written. He states it as if future generations are prioritized over the current generation's right to privacy, and not have the government inside their bedrooms and doctors' examination rooms. It's a strong implication which, if extrapolated out, could justify our government creating a law forcing people to procreate as a condition of acquiring a marriage license - you know, to ensure posterity. Sounds crazy, right? But broad, generalized and context-free arguments are where crazy enters the realm of plausibility. And we currently have just the Congressional makeup for crazy to become law - remember, this is the same Republican party that decided Betsy DeVos was wholly qualified to run the Department of Education, and that Rick Perry - who didn't even know what the Department of Engery does - was a wholly qualified candidate for Secretary. This Republican party is why people were so worried about a guy like Trump winning the White House to begin with - not that forced procreation would ever become a likely reality. Just that a platform for such things would no longer be out of the realm of possibility with people who think their religious beliefs should be the law, yet decry Muslims because terrorists are bringing their Sharia law to our shores to take over our government.

Beck implies that his issue is with Lahren not being able to intellectually back up her statement, but that is a bit specious. Lahren has been a walking microphone of obtuse commentary all along, but THIS was the catalyst that sent The Blaze over the edge and suspended her? The cognitive dissonance never bothered Beck before. Is that because it fell in line with how he saw things? He says no. But the one time she tries to make a point that departs from the line, she's a pariah. It's understandable if Beck's argument is met with doubt.

Back on The View, the hosts reacted to the backlash of Lahren by revisiting her Friday statements on Monday's show, and discussing women's rights briefly. Sunny Hosten, the woman sitting next to Whoopi Goldberg, makes a misapplication here, and no one notices it. She thinks that the "life" part of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (she says "property") in the Constitution applies easily to protecting zygotes from abortion. First of all, the "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" statement isn't in the Constitution, it's in the Declaration of Independence. That alone changes the context of the statement. Second, even if it was in the Constitution, the intention of such a statement would never have applied the way she was applying it, unless you are trying to really interpret the heck out of it, in which case we start heading back to Glenn Beck's broad interpretation of the preamble. The founders were rarely vague in their intentions. And people who claim to be "originalists" take the Constitution at face value - misguided to the intention of it's structure and form as that may be - and so could never "interpret" a statement to mean anything more than it does. So this type of interpretation flies in the face of how they themselves claim to see the Constitution - as a static document, unyielding in the literal topography to which they are dedicated. Of course, the phrase is not in the Constitution, so Hostin's argument is lost to misapplied context.

Conservatives have never reconciled how/why the limited government tack doesn't apply when it comes to the bedroom:
• Who you have sex with
• What kind of sex you have
• Sex for recreation vs. procreation

Or when it comes to women:
• Their right to prevent pregnancy with contraception
• Their right to prevent a pregnancy with emergency Plan B
• Their right to terminate a pregnancy
• Their right to NOT have the government try to pull manipulative maneuvers to circumvent laws to push their beliefs onto them

And that's why it's difficult to take these pols and pundits seriously. Any commentary that strays from their line - even if it's correct - is unacceptable to them. Liberals do the same thing sometimes, this one just happens to be the conservatives. But the foolishness in general is comical. And it requires so little of people to simply fall in line, that politicians count on it to push their agendas. In that sense, Trump has made it harder for politicians to push their agendas the way they want to, because Trump himself draws so much attention from the populous in it's ire, that legislators are having a difficult time staying under the radar. Just ask Paul Ryan how he's actually feeling these days...

Trump's Journey Into Adulthood Short-Lived

President Donald Trump's speech to Congress was cheered by supporters and mildly applauded by the media as having turned the corner into being "presidential." That he did not exhibit his typical puerile behavior breached a bar so low that people couldn't help themselves in viewing the accomplishment of reading from a teleprompter for an hour as impressive. One might have wondered when the other shoe would drop, since Tuesday night was a stepping outside of Trump's reality for a moment. The other shoe dropped over the weekend, sooner than one would hope, but longer than might have been expected.

While anyone could be forgiven for expecting a Wednesday tweet from Trump, sporting a knowing grin that says, "Nailed it...," that never had the chance to happen, because on that very day, the news comes out that Jeff Sessions did indeed meet with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak - twice - leading up to the November election. Of course, the problem isn't so much that Sessions met with him, as much as having said, under oath and unprompted, that he never met with any Russians during the campaign. Sessions, being a lawyer, thought he could get away with some linguistic technicalities that would make Bill Clinton smile with knowing approval. Unfortunately, the rest of the country, as well as the Senate committee, see it as a violation of the spirit of the confirmation hearing questions. Sessions could have said he met with the ambassador in a Senate-related capacity, and left the committee with little else to run with. Instead, he omitted the meetings completely in his answer, in hopes that no one noticed and, if they did, he could fall back on technicality. All very lawyerly.

Trump publicly supports Sessions and says that he should not recuse himself from any investigations, after which Jeff Sessions holds a press conference and does exactly that. And he does it on the same day that Trump campaign advisers J.D. Gordon, Carter Page, and Jared Kushner are outed as to having met Kislyak also. So by the early hours of Saturday morning, Trump is ready to start kicking puppies down the street. And so we get this:


Notice that the first tweet is not about Obama's alleged wiretapping, but about Jeff Sessions meeting the Russian ambassador under circumstances set up by the Obama administration. So right off the bat, there is an attempt to bring Obama into something that had nothing to do with him. If ever there was an indicator of where Trump's head was at ten minutes before he started in on Obama, that's it. But clearly, that tweet wasn't going to accomplish what Trump actually wanted, which is to drag Obama into scandal along with him. So 9 minutes later, we get the "Terrible!" tweet. 7 minutes later, he makes a poor attempt to draw an equivalency of Sessions meeting in the campaign season leading up to the election to all the times the White House met the ambassador over the entirety of Obama's second term. Then he muses legal questions in the next two tweets 7, and again 3, minutes later. The last tweet was 10 minutes later, in which he calls Obama a sick person and equates him to Nixon and Watergate.

The legal tweets are the most amusing, because there's a real argument that could be made against Trump for libel. The Nixon v. Fitgerald opinion states that the president is only protected from civil liability if his actions are done in an official capacity, and he doesn't have protections if his actions, even if official, are criminal. Trump might try to claim that his tweets were in an official capacity, but the argument that tweeting is an official presidential action would have to be made to a judge. He might also try to frame "official actions" around the request that Congress investigate the claims. But even that is questionable, since it wasn't Trump that voiced that request - it was Sean Spicer from his Twitter account the next day:


So Trump has himself a bit of a dilemma. He has accused President Obama of having committed a major felony. He provided no evidence that his building was wiretapped; provided no evidence as to which agency was responsible for physically wiretapping his building; provided no source of the information to which the claim is (not) attributed; provided no evidence that the order, if one was given, came from Obama himself. And that last part is highly unlikely. A judge would have had to issue a warrant, and that judge would most likely have to be in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). We can all be assured Trump would not have known that little fact, or he would have probably picked something else to manufacture out of thin air to drag Obama into his misery. Instead, the Senate Intelligence Committee now has to request evidence, because they can't ignore that the claim was made. And all of this is made worse, in that Trump never fact-checked his claim with his own people. As NBC reported:

In addition, it seems that Trump did not try to ask his own administration whether the scenario was true. A senior U.S. official in a position to know told NBC News that Trump "did not consult with the people inside the U.S. government who might know before making this claim.

Meanwhile, former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, went on Meet the Press to tell Chuck Todd that there was no wiretapping of Trump in any way, FBI Director James Comey has requested the Department of Justice make a statement rejecting Trump's claim, and Kevin Lewis, Spokesperson to President Barack Obama issued a statement, that "A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false."

All of this speaks to a complete lack of discipline on Trump's part, something that goes back years, and was prevalent throughout the entirety of his presidential campaign. Ironically, Trump has been regularly frustrated with the lack of discipline among several agencies since he took office. Clearly, the example is set at the top.

Response to Trump's Speech to Congress

President Donald Trump's speech to Congress Tuesday night was mostly the expected tropes he's been pushing since he started campaigning. He attempted to highlight accomplishments, while criticizing the state of the country leading up to his inauguration. Most observers seemed to grade him based on his delivery, rather than his policy intentions. As if his ability alone to deliver a speech that didn't reek of a petulant middle schooler anointed the night a success. And fear not, because America is about to be great again:

Dying industries will come roaring back to life; heroic veterans will get the care they so desperately need; our military will be given the resources our brave warriors so richly deserve; crumbling infrastructure will be replaced with new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and railways, gleaming across our very very beautiful land; our terrible drug epidemic will slow down and, ultimately, stop; and our neglected inner cities will see a rebirth of hope, safety and opportunity; above all else, we will keep our promises to the American people.

ECONOMY/ENVIRONMENT
Trump touted a list of companies who have promised to invest billions of dollars in America, creating "tens of thousands of new American jobs." He gave no specifics, but that was a running theme throughout the speech. After touting a three trillion dollar market gain since his election victory, Trump said:

We saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by bringing down the price of fantastic, and it is a fantastic, new F-35 jet fighter, and we will be saving billions more on contracts all across our government.

Trump has tried taking credit for the F-35 savings before, but the reality is that the Pentagon and F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin have been trying to bring down the cost of the F-35 since it's inception. The F-35's three variants- A, B, and C - have come down in cost since each of their inceptions in 2007, 2008, and 2010, respectively. The Pentagon and Lockheed both have been under fire for years for the cost overruns and delays on delivery. They have been actively reducing costs with each lot, and Lot 10 - the next 90 planes to be delivered - will be cheaper still. Trump had nothing to do with the cost reductions, he simply had meetings with Lockheed, where he approved of their cost reduction estimates for the next lot. And then took credit for it.

Trump also remarked that his administration has instituted a hiring freeze on all non-military and non-essential federal workers. Except, of course:

We have undertaken a historic effort to massively reduce job crushing regulations, creating a deregulation task force inside of every government agency.

Trump then reiterated his rule for eliminating two regulations for every new one created. It's one of those statements that sounds good, until one realizes that he mentions no barometer for elimination. Just the 2-for-1 mandate. Whether those regulations were actually needed seems to not matter much. Regulation is bad, and so they must go, because jobs. Never mind that most regulations have little to do with jobs. Any costs for regulation are simply passed down to the consumers, so deregulation for deregulation's sake has never been fiscally justified, except that now companies won't have to care as much about their pollution, which is what most regulations in industry address. It's a bit apropos, then, that Trump signed an executive order earlier in the day to dismantle the Clean Water Rule - and a great piece of irony, when he later said he supported clean air and water.

We have undertaken a historic effort to massively reduce job crushing regulations, creating a deregulation task force inside of every government agency... we're going to stop the regulations that threaten the future and livelihood of our great coal miners.

Nice sentiment, and it got a nice standing ovation from the reds, but it ignores that coal miners' jobs have never been in jeopardy because their companies were not going to be allowed to dump waste into streams. That regulation would only raise energy costs for consumers, if anything. No, coal jobs are suffering because of an inconvenient piece of minutiae that Trump and Republicans always leave out when talking about coal, that being the increasing market share of shale gas. Coal jobs are not coming back. Everyone seems to know that except the president, and an industry that's hanging on by a thread for years. Even when Peabody Coal, Arch Coal, Patriot Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources all went bankrupt, Obama's Clean Power Plan had not yet been implemented. Coal is failing because shale gas is more abundant and cheaper to extract and process, while coal production costs have steadily increased. And they are hit even harder by a depletion in coal reserves, especially in the east. Over a century of mining has depleted the easy-to-get-to reserves. The deeper reserves make it more expensive to get at. And because those reserves are deeper in the earth, coal companies have two issues to deal with: implementing newer technology, at great expense, to get at the deeper reserves, and adhering to regulations that protect worker safety at those depths. Coal doesn't have a great worker safety record, either in mine explosion deaths, or long-term respiratory effects. But as long as the coal companies are able to dump waste into streams...

Trump then highlighted clearing the way to continue the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, despite concerns over possible water contamination if the Dakota pipeline, in particular, leaks or breaks deep underground, where it would be almost impossible to get to quickly. If you sense a trend that water isn't too important to these companies, the administration, or Republicans who've pushed for them, you're not having a stroke. These are the same people who think water is a commodity, designed for profit. So naturally, if these pipelines contaminate the water in any way, the biggest beneficiary is Nestle, who owns most of the world's water bottling companies. Their profits will rise as their water access rights become more valuable, and from the increase in demand for bottled water by communities who can't drink their own water.

Trump then discussed pulling from the "job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership." Not much of a job killer, really, since the TPP had yet to be ratified and implemented - a process that has now been delayed by the U.S. pulling out of it. And what it really did, was eliminate the only obstacle to China expanding it's trade dominion in Asia-Pacific, the main reason we were involved in the first place. But the president does a lot of business in China, whether or not that plays a part... who knows? The more relevant question is this: If China increases their market share of global trade, which would in turn increase their power and influence, how is Trump going to accomplish anything he wants to to with trade? There was a reason we were in the TPP.

Trump said he will reduce the corporate tax rate to prevent corporations from leaving the U.S. He also claimed he will provide massive tax relief for the middle class. He also criticized the tariffs and taxes U.S. exports are levied with, although he ignored that the tariffs aren't paid by the companies, they are passed on to the consumers. So when Harley Davidson, who Trump mentioned specifically, has their motorcycles taxed at 100%, a $22,000 Harley Davidson Fat Boy costs the foreign consumer $44,000. But the buyer pays it, not Harley Davidson.

IMMIGRATION
Standard Trump fare. He's ordered the Department of Justice to form a task force to reduce violent crime, and the Departments of Homeland Security, State, and National Intelligence to form an "aggressive strategy to dismantle the criminal cartels that have spread all across our nation." They are going to "stop the drugs from pouring into our country, poisoning our youth."

COOL. Although, we as a nation have seen how that plays out. The War on Drugs has been an abject failure. Drug imports have increased since it's inception. The only real effect has been on the private prison industry, who are only too happy to take in more inmates. The mandatory minimums are inherently racist, something Trump made no mention of. The biggest epidemics in drug consumption these days are pills, heroin, and meth-amphetamine, all of which are Made in America. A cynical person could see an ad campaign for American manufacturing in there somewhere... or maybe that's just me.

Trump then mentions that enforcing our immigration laws will "raise wages, help the unemployed, and save billions and billions of dollars." He neglects, of course, that raising wages kills jobs, according to the GOP, who have fought to keep wages from rising for anyone, making the immigration argument on that point somewhat moot. Then Trump lays down the boom with his "great great Wall along our southern border." Except immigration from Mexico is the lowest it's been in decades. Maybe that's due to all the manufacturing plants that have been built in major cities in Mexico, providing much needed jobs, and diminishes the need to cross our borders to look for work. Trump's economic plan, naturally, seeks to prevent American companies from opening plants in Mexico, demanding that they open plants in the U.S. instead. As is typical, Trump easily misses the forest for the tree. And all of this ignores that the radical Islamic terrorists he wants to keep out aren't going to come through Mexico, they're more likely to come through Canada - but there's no talk of a wall to the north.

It is not compassion, but reckless, to allow uncontrolled entry from places where proper vetting can not occur... we can not allow a beachhead of terrorism to form inside America, we can not allow our nation to become a sanctuary for extremists.

So the United States will be on par with the Middle Eastern countries he hates, as countries who give sanctuary to terrorists, sounds great. Except the vetting process for Syrian refugees, for example, is already pretty stringent and lengthy. Bill Whitaker, correspondent for 60 Minutes, along with producer Katy Textor, went to the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan to illuminate the vetting process for refugees in the segment "Finding Refuge." In the segment, Whitaker spoke with Gina Kassem, the regional refugee coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Amman, who insisted that we see these refugees are "fleeing the terrorists who killed their family members, who destroyed their houses. These are the victims that we are helping through our program."

• Mostly, the focus and priority is directed to victims of torture, survivors of violence, women-headed households, a lot of severe medical cases.
• First things first, they have to register with the United Nations. They are interviewed multiple times by the U.N. to get their vital statistics - in this case, where they came from, and who they know.
• Their irises are scanned to establish their identity.
• Then they wait for the chance the U.N. might refer them to the United States. Less than one percent have had that chance.
• For that one percent, the next step is the State Department resettlement center in Amman for a background check led by specially trained Department of Homeland Security interrogators. They are interviewed multiple times, with interviewers looking for gaps in their stories.
• All that information is then run though U.S. security databases for any red flags, a process that takes an average of 18-24 months. Those who pass are then told to pack up for their new life in the United States.

There has been a "surge operation" in effect, to try to perform all of the vetting in about three months, instead of 18-24. But the process is the same regardless of the time length, and only the smallest percentage of applicants make it all the way through the process to get the chance to come here. It's not just potential terrorists that are denied entry, harmless, innocent people are as well. Nonetheless, Trump suspended the vetting of Syrian refugees in his first Muslim ban attempt.

DRAINING THE SWAMP
This has been the catch phrase of Trump's campaign since the very beginning.

We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption, by imposing a five year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials, and a life time ban on becoming lobbyists for a foreign government.

Which is fine. But every time he says that, all I see is the lobbyists he hired to run the different divisions of his transition team, and the unqualified/interest-conflicted cronies that he appointed to run his Cabinet departments. I've said it before, the swamp is not draining, so much as bubbling vigorously.

OBAMACARE
Trump again promised to repeal the ACA, with no real plan to replace it. He did demand that they expand choice, increase access, lower cost, and at the same time, provide better health care. He called for preexisting conditions to have access to coverage, and a provision for the currently enrolled to have a stable transition from the exchanges. He urged the use of tax credits and expanded Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) to purchase the insurance plans people want, not the plan the government forces them to buy. Reasonable enough request, but he once again left out little details, like how poor people are supposed to save money in HSAs, when they exist paycheck to paycheck. Poor people do not save money. And tax credits are after the fact. Poor people would still have to have the money to buy coverage first. Again, poor people lack the resources, something a rich person like Trump, and most of Congress, seem cognitively dissonant to.

Trump also encouraged the provision of resources and flexibility with Medicaid for state governors to ensure no one is left out. State governors already have that, and a whole host of them rejected exchanges in their state, and refused to expand Medicaid. My hometown state of Florida is a prime example, with governor Rick Scott refusing to do anything to help Floridians get covered.

He then stated that legal reforms should be implemented to protect patients and doctors from unnecessary costs that drive up the price of insurance; and work to bring down the artificially high price of drugs immediately, to which he smiled and pointed to Bernie Sanders, who was sitting in the third row from the front, behind the Joint Chiefs. I imagine Sanders at least smirked back, because that has been one of his loudest complaints about our health care system, one that has fallen on deaf ears in the red light district of Congress. And one would presume that it's a sticking point where the president departs from the position of his party, which tends to protect the profits of Big Pharma. Trump then finished that section by endorsing insurance policy sales across state lines. This is a popular trope of the reds, who think free national markets everywhere will drop prices. But this, again, ignores the larger issue: Letting insurers shop for the state regulator of their choice can cause a lot of problems. Some industries already do it. Think credit card companies all being in South Dakota, Delaware being the state-side Bermuda of incorporation, New Jersey being the capital of debt collectors, etc. Insurers all end up in whatever state offers the weakest regulations. So a patient who gets sick could be screwed because comprehensive policies are few and far between, and consumer protections might be just as weak if something goes awry. Moreover, the local/regional network setups and price negotiations are costly to try to do locally for nationwide access. That is more of an impediment to interstate insurance sales than regulations. And Trump was either ignorant or coy when he mentioned his own company. Almost all big employers - and Trump, with his "thousands of employees" would be one - don't buy health insurance. They self-insure. Basically, once a company gets big enough, it's cheaper for them to cover the costs of health care, rather than pay premiums to someone else to cover their employees. And almost every major corporation does that, because it saves them tens of millions of dollars per year. So when they talk about employer health care benefits, ignore any statement on the subject from corporate bigwigs. They are in a different world. This is about small business and the self-employed.

EDUCATION
Trump highlighted Denisha Merriweather, who struggled in elementary school, until she was able to enroll in a private learning center with the help of tax credits and a scholarship program. She is now about to get her Masters degree from the University of South Florida. And she is an example of success with accessibility to other educational options. Merriweather stands as the light in the darkness of public education, or so Trump and new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos would have us think. But in the real world, private charter schools have experienced higher rates of failing grades. In 2011, Florida had around 3,000 public schools and 350 charter schools. 31 schools received failing grades. Of those 31, 15 were charter schools. They accounted for 10% of the schools, but 48% of the failures.

It gets worse for vouchers. In the past 18 months, 3 major studies of voucher programs were conducted, one each in Indiana, Lousiana, and Ohio. In a New York Times :The Upshot article, New America's Kevin Carey reported on the results. In all three studies, voucher students fared worse in math and reading than students who remained in public schools. In the Louisiana study, the results were stark. In math, students weren't just worse, they were worse by half. Students in the 50th percentile in public school dropped to the 26th percentile in private school. The Times article came at the right time, as DeVos is a big proponent of school choice through voucher programs. The article did mention that there was a modest improvement in achievement in public schools that were voucher-eligible, hinting that competition from voucher schools might spur improvements in public schools. But for students to fare so badly across the board in the three states with the largest programs doesn't bode well for the viability of a national voucher system, to which Trump and DeVos have planned to dedicate $20 billion.

LAW ENFORCEMENT/MILITARY
The chamber went purple for Trump's avowed support for law enforcement and calls for unity between communities and their police officers. But moments later, groans were heard from the blue light district when Trump announced his Victims Against Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) program, essentially targeting immigrants who commit crimes for deportation. He highlighted Jameel Shaw, who lost his 17-year old son to a gang attack; Susan Oliver, with her daughter Jenna, and Jessica Davis, whose police officer husbands were gunned down by an immigrant who had two deportation notices against him.

Trump urged for the elimination of the defense spending sequester, enacted through the Budget Control Act of 2011, to increase defense spending, and increase funding for Veterans support services, which most Americans agree has been underwhelming for decades, and one of the few moments of purple support across the chamber. He pointed to Corrine Owens, whose Navy SEAL husband Ryan was killed in the Yemen raid. He also again touted the raid as an overwhelming success, yielding vast amounts of intelligence. Owens received the longest applause of the night.

Trump reasserted his intention to assure other countries are contributing to foreign efforts, both in forces and finances. He postured himself as only the representative of the United States, not the world. He ended the night with hope and confidence in the American spirit, where dreams can come true, and the re-establishment of American greatness begins.