OPINION: Expect some less than glowing reports on our Supreme Court justices…
By Konni Burton, Founder & CEO of The Texan
Special to LavacaCountyToday.com
The 2022-23 term for the U.S. Supreme Court concluded last week with landmark rulings delivered on affirmative action, student loan forgiveness and the freedom of speech and association. Predictably, the legacy media is losing its mind over them.
“The Supreme Court is falling off the pedestal it built for itself, down into the muck of normal politics,” reads an Axios article (which is owned by Cox Media, which owns the daily in Waco, Nacogdoches, Lufkin, Marshal and of course, Austin, whose reporters just days ago spent about a day on strike to protest their earnings at the American Statesmen before returning the desks to clock back in and get to work).
What an utter crock!
To review, the court’s conservative majority ruled that race-based admissions policies violates the 14th Amendment’s “Equal Protection” clause; that the president cannot just unilaterally erase $400 billion in student loans with zero action by Congress; and that a website creator cannot be forced by the state into making wedding websites for gay couples.
The first is the clear application of the Constitution’s prohibition against discrimination. The second is an attempt to prod the branch who is tasked with making laws to actually do so. The third is an obvious adherence to the freedom of association, or from association, with ideas or statements with which this vendor disagrees.
Every one of those is an example of the court acting in concert with the original intent of the laws when they were written — something the liberal junket of the court hates!
The Axios article then opines, “The justices tried very hard, for a very long time, to cultivate a perception that they existed on an elevated, erudite plane far above the petty concerns that occupy elected politicians.”
“They said the court's work was wholly separate from considerations like public opinion. Even when they had to take up a case with political implications, they approached it only as a question of legal scholarship, not sullied by ideology or policy preferences.”
What’s that old saying about leading a horse to water?
To people who view every legal debate as might-makes-right or a function of run-of-the-mill politics, rulings they don’t like are nothing but political and everything is a nail to a hammer.
The legacy media is a true believer in the “living constitution,” the idea that rather than changing laws or the constitution, we should read into them new, more desirable meanings that differ from what those who actually wrote the laws meant.
That’s not the rule of law, that’s the rule by present feelings.
They feel like student loans should be canceled, therefore a law written 20 years ago that wasn’t crafted for that purpose can be twisted into doing what “we” like at the moment.
They feel like a baker or a website designer should be forced to support something they don’t want to support, therefore 230 years’ understanding of the First Amendment should be thrown out the window.
They feel like discriminating against Asian-American students is okay because of slavery and Jim Crow, therefore decades after the civil rights movement concluded, discrimination must be employed to right past historical wrongs against people who weren’t even born yet.
It’d be one thing for a liberal activist to take these positions — and God knows they have, throwing tantrums all over the internet over this — but for a “news” publication that is supposed to be reporting the facts to cannonball into punditry is gross negligence.
There’s already an over-saturation of crap, half-baked political takes without Axios contributing to it. But that’s where we are with the legacy media right now.
More about Burton and The Texan…
By BOBBY HORECKA, Managing Editor
What you just read, barring a lone parenthetical we added for clarity to the second paragraph, was written by Konni Burton, founder and CEO of The Texan, a subscription-funded, Texas-centric web-based news service out of Austin that tends to walk a more conservative line while touting itself a stand apart news agency from what she dubs the “legacy media,” which is basically any news organization which depends on ad revenues or public donations for its support.
Those taint your product, she says.
We couldn’t speak to the quality of her news reports as they remain hidden behind paywalls that cost $700 a month just to access.
That’s a mite rich for our blood. For $700 a month, it better come with steak at least once a week, fixed to my liking—still mooing with a loaded baked potato on the side—and not just some old ball cap like they actually do offer (because Lord knows I need another one of those).
What we do know, however, is that reading the columns she sends out with offers to subscribe, she has a rather matter-of-fact approach we tend to like and thus far, we’ve found that what she says aligns with the mindsets of most Texans, whenever she talks issues.
We share it here because we tend to think it’s worthy of a repeat, even if you’re not apt to find it in many other places.
Unless, that is, you fork over $700 a month for your news product, it’s not anyway. And if that’s the case, we need to talk, because have I ever got a bargain for you…