After the announcement today that Justice Kennedy will retire, President Trump confirmed that his replacement would come from this list. The list includes both Thomas and Mike Lee, both prominent Utah Mormons.

As most readers know, Mike Lee is a senator from Utah. In my opinion, he is one of the best senators in the Senate, second only to Rand Paul. Based on his public statements, Mike Lee would make an excellent Supreme Court justice. From a strategic standpoint, Utah is very likely to choose another Republican for the Senate, so Trump’s naming Lee does not endanger the Republican Senate majority.

I didn’t know that much about Thomas Lee, but according to Wikipedia he is probably just as good as his brother.

In a 2016 article, Professor John McGinnis of the Northwestern University School of Law argued that Lee was similar to Scalia in being “capable of pressing the intellectual case for following the Constitution as written” because of Lee “has pioneered the application of corpus linguistics to law,” and further wrote that if elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court, “Lee would create a transmission belt from the best work of originalists in the academy to the Supreme Court.”

Hannah Clayson Smith, writing in the National Review, praised Lee as a possible successor to Scalia because of Lee’s similar jurisprudential style to the late Justice, but noted that with respect to Lee’s views on judicial precedent, “Justice Lee is more like Justice Thomas than like Justice Scalia.” Smith noted that Lee (like Thomas) has repeatedly advocated for overruling precedent that he views as “contrary to the original meaning of the Utah constitution,” even if precedent takes a different approach.

These are very good times for conservative/libertarians with regard to the federal courts. Much to the surprise of many, Trump has appointed some of the most conservative/originalist/textualist judges in recent history. Will he name a Mormon Supreme Court justice? We shall soon find out.

Secret Mormon apologists — posing as ex-Mormons to make their cause look bad — have shown us how you can recognize a cult. In this case, the cult clearly is Mormon Stories and its Dear Leader John Dehlin. Read this post for more.

The Church is embarking on a global hymnal, in which all the songs will be published in each language. A similar effort will apparently take place for the Children’s songbook.

You can participate in the survey seeking information on what hymns should stay and which should gracefully exit, and which hymns not currently in the hymnal should be added.

And each individual can submit up to five new songs by July 1, 2019.

The effort to select the final collection and prepare the hymnal in dozens of languages will take years, so no one need mourn the imminent loss of our familiar green hymnal.

Now go to – make your voice heard!

Henry David Thoreau once said, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” This is also true of immigration, a long time problem that Washington DC has grappled with for more than a century.

The issue never goes away, because government never really deals with it, but only uses it as political fodder. George W. Bush attempted a compassionate method to deal with immigration, but the Republican Congress voted it down, fearing the next election. Barack Obama promised his constituents that immigration would be the first issue he tacked as president, only to side step it completely until after his second election, when he decided to side step the Constitution in proclaiming DACA as an executive order. It was just too easy for the next opposition president to tear up the paper it was written on.

Neither major party is truly interested in a solution. They claim they do, but it isn’t in their interests to do so. Too many Republican voters fear immigrants, convinced they all belong to the MS13 gang. Meanwhile, most Democrats refuse to do any compromising with Donald Trump, who is willing to give immigration reform if he can get a wall.

Yes, taking kids away from their parents because they committed a misdemeanor crime by entering the country is wrong and tragic. No, it isn’t anything like Hitler’s concentration camps. Both sides are so full of hyperbole and BS that we could fertilize all the cornfields in America (if their BS wasn’t so toxic!). Such stupid speech from both sides paralyzes the conversation. The kids still aren’t reunited with their parents, and won’t be until some tough compromises are made. Remember how Ronald  Reagan and Tip O’Neill used to arm wrestle through tough legislation on Social Security, Welfare, Star Wars, etc.? It wasn’t easy, perfect or pretty, but it created a strong America with a long lasting growing economy. Remember when Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress got serious and passed Workfare and a balanced budget? Again, not a pretty process, but it worked.

Insincerity drives Congress and presidents to make promises that they do not keep. It isn’t just an immigration issue. Remember Obama promising immigration, but instead delivered a massive, expensive health program that almost no one wanted, but guaranteed Neo-socialist control of 1/6 of the economy?

Republicans promised us a quick war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but then messed up the systems, so that they collapsed even further into chaos. Now, we are in eternal warfare on several fronts, where we sometimes are fighting against Iran, and sometimes with them! The prison system is filled with victims from another war, the war on drugs. While some states and many doctors now recognize the importance of cannabis in pain relief for cancer, PTSD, and other illnesses, Jeff Sessions continues to act like marijuana is worse than the opioid crisis that the FDA created.

Democrats have made many promises too, as long as we keep pumping tons of money into the system for them to gleefully spend. Trillions into the Dept of Education has not lifted test scores and has left us ranked about 25th in the world in science and math. The War on Poverty is no better than before LBJ  began federal spending over $22 trillion.

Social Security, which was patched by Reagan and Tip O’Neill, needs a major overhaul. It is now losing money, which is bad, given LBJ and following presidents often borrowed from our big SS bank account to pay for their huge reelection projects.

Oh, and Medicare/Medicaid are in critical condition, too. It isn’t a secret. Neither is the $21 trillion deficit. But Congress doesn’t seem to care, as long as they can kick the can down the road.

The problem isn’t Immigration, Medicare, SS, endless Wars, or Donald Trump. Those are the leaves we have long been hacking at. The root problem is government is too big. It is so unwieldy that they can no longer fix the problems they create with their own legislation! Too many in Congress have been in office for decades, holding onto power as oligarchs, and using our tax money to buy power from lobbyists and others.

The solution is an easy one: We need to fix the Fed, as it is unwilling to fix itself. Fortunately, the Constitution has given voters in the fifty states a method to do this. Article V of the Constitution allows the states to call for a Convention of States. Several states have already voted for a convention.

The convention has a short list of things it wishes to accomplish:

1. Term Limits for Congress
2. Balanced budget
3. Impose limits on the Federal government’s power

It requires 34 states to convene the convention. 38 states must approve of each amendment, for it to move forward on the ballot.

With more power returned to the States and the people, the economy will thrive, and government oversight and regulation will decrease.

Imagine states having more individual power over immigration. California could bring in all the immigrants they wish, while other states can prohibit them, according to their needs. We don’t need the federal government to do it for us. Texas can build its own wall, thank you. Colorado can legalize marijuana without Jeff Sessions’ wraith darkening the skies.

I hope you will join me in joining the Convention of States, and contacting your state legislatures, demanding them to pass the Convention of States in your state.

https://conventionofstates.com/