Friday Night Notebook
Just when you think things can't get any more crazy, guess what?
• There’s been a lot of hopeful talk that with every California Democrat running for governor this year, with the top two finishers in the “jungle primary” (shouldn’t it be “rain forest” primary? “Jungle primary” is outdated imperialist language, no?) advancing to November, it is possible that Democrats might fracture the primary vote so badly that two Republicans might advance to November. If that happened, people might actually start moving back to California! And Democrats would slit their wrists.
Don’t look now, but look who’s the leading Democrat in the polls right now:
And Polymarket has him surging ahead bigly:
If Swalwell is California’s next governor, we might actually miss Gavin Newsom. And then everyone will slit their wrists. In what twisted parallel universe is this even possible? (Chaser: Maybe Swalwell is ineligible?)
• My second New York Post feature article on the Declaration of Independence, this time looking at the meaning of “the pursuit of happiness.”
Lot’s more to be said about this aspect of the Declaration that I couldn’t fit into even the Post’s 1,500-word length (which is rare for them), but here’s a complementary passage from James Madison that is useful, from a letter Madison sent to James Monroe:
“There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong. Taking the word ‘interest’ as synonymous with ‘ultimate happiness,’ in the sense it is qualified with every necessary moral ingredient, the proposition is no doubt true. But taking it in the popular sense, as referring to the immediate augmentation of property and wealth, nothing can be more false. In the latter sense, it would be the interest of the majority in every community to despoil and enslave the minority of individuals . . . In fact, it is only re-establishing, under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right.”
• Okay, settle in for this item. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied an appeal out of a women’s spa in Washington state that, although advertised for biological women only, was ordered by a district court to allow entry to transgender women—in other words, self-identifying “women” with penises. This particular women’s spa is known for allowing women to luxuriate in the nude, so even Lia Thomas’s Speedo would be no disguise.
Judge Lawrence Van Dyke posted a dissent that is raising hackles. Here’s how it opens, and see what you think:
There is a lot of division raging on social media about whether Judge Van Dyke (whom I have met and like quite a bit) has been indecorous with his blunt language. But how can people complain he is being crude about such an offensive ruling? The outrage makes his point, and his language has assured that vastly more people will hear about this case, and its horrible ruling.
Footnote: Back in 1971, when the Supreme Court heard Cohen v. California—the case about the person who wore a sweatshit to court that read “F—- the draft,” the offensive word itself was not uttered in the oral argument before the Court. And yet the Court ruled that it was protected free speech under the First Amendment. In light of Cohen, shouldn’t we extend the same treatment to Judge Van Dyke?
Chaser—Judge Van Dyke also gave us this wonderful video concurrence to a previous gun control case he was part of:
The other judges and their left-wing colleagues complain about the language because 1) it draws attention to their feckless stupidity; and 2) it is accurate.
In a sane world the Korean spa case would be decided on the issue of property rights. They own the spa and so can decide who get to be members. This is another example of the fact that without property rights there are no rights. The basic premise of the courts seems to be the communistic idea that we can have personal property but not private property.