Alan Keyes
Trump's Supreme Court picks: Where's Roy Moore?
Alan Keyes notes man who prosecuted Alabama justice did make list
By Alan Keyes
"... [Y]ou are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. He will render to each one according to his works: ...to them that are contentious and who obey not the truth, but give credit to iniquity, there will be wrath and fury." (Romans 2:5-6, 8)
"Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord have not we prophesied in your name, and cast out devils in your name, and done many miracles in your name? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity." (Matthew 7:21)
"But you, brethren, be not weary in well-doing. And if any man does not obey ... note that man, that ye have no company with him. To the end that he may be ashamed." (2 Thessalonians 3:13-14)
Donald Trump's supporters seem impervious to evidence. And now that their delusion is being aided and abetted by the elitist faction's knee-jerk partisan propagandists in the media, I'm sure facts will seem even more irrelevant to their judgment about what he contrives to say and do. But we must heed the Apostle's admonition not to grow weary in the effort to do right. The truth will out, and when it does, have we any choice but to bear witness?
Much ado is being made about Trump's latest effort to prove, contrary to palpable fact, that he cares for and will respect the Constitution. He released a list naming 11 people he would consider nominating to the Supreme Court. I have received emails proclaiming that every one of them is a tried and true conservative who will follow Justice Antonin Scalia's example of scrupulous, well-reasoned respect for the provisions of the Constitution.
When I perused the list, my personal knowledge caused one name to leap from the page – William Pryor. Pryor now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, having been nominated for that position by George W. Bush in 2003. It was also in 2003 that he came to prominence as the Alabama attorney general who first called for the removal of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore from his position, and then personally prosecuted the case to secure Moore's removal by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary.
Judge Pryor is exactly the sort of judge I would expect to be appointed by one or another of the GOP quislings who have competed for the GOP's presidential nomination. In their eyes, he qualifies as a conservative precisely because he proved himself a loyal tool of the view of the Constitution that consistently ignores the existence of the Ninth and 10th Amendments. The Ninth prohibits any construction of the enumeration of rights in the Constitution that denies or disparages rights retained by the people (which include, before all others, their God-endowed unalienable rights). The 10th makes it plain that the powers not explicitly delegated to the U.S. government are "reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people."
For a long time, most members of America's legal profession simply accepted the notion that both these Amendments had been effectively superseded by their studious and habitual disrespect. In recent years, efforts – mostly stimulated by grassroots conservatives – have challenged this practice of nullification by malignant neglect. I am glad to have been part of those efforts for the past 20 years and more. Such efforts are especially critical these days in the battle against Judicial and Executive tyranny being waged to force acceptance of homosexuality and other sexual whims upon the nation, against the conscientious resistance of many of its people. Then-Attorney General Pryor's prosecution of Alabama Chief Justice Moore was part of the effort to scour every semblance of the God-acknowledging premises of our constitutional self-government from American public life, in order to pave the way for the criminalization and/or banishment of views and practices rooted in religious conscience.
Attorney General Pryor "made his bones" (as the gangsters say) with the elitist faction's powers-that-be by his zealous prosecution of Roy Moore. But Donald Trump is supposed to stand in opposition to those powers and the GOP quislings who are their agents in the Republican Party. He is, by his own proclamation, supposed to be committed to reinstating respect for what he calls "States Rights," which is to say, the prerogatives of the powers the 10th Amendment reserves to "the States, respectively, or to the people." So, what is a judge who eagerly served as an instrument for enforcing the nullification of the 10th Amendment doing on Trump's list of possible U.S. Supreme Court nominees?
Like Mr. Trump's instinctive opposition to North Carolina's so-called "bathroom bill"; his desire to alter the GOP's principled platform position on respect for the unalienable right to life; his disregard for the plain meaning of the Fifth Amendment's reference to persons, without regard to citizenship; and his eager disregard for the implications of the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against compulsory self-incrimination and the Eighth Amendment's intolerance for cruel and unusual punishment (which, taken together, more than eliminate torture from the list of actions the government can constitutionally perpetrate against persons not even accused of a crime), Trump's willingness to consider William Pryor for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court contradicts the principled, conservative course he now promises to take with respect to judicial appointments.
There I go again, daring to suggest, from the facts in evidence, that Donald Trump is a prevaricating con artist, gulling conservatives with promises he obviously lacks the conviction to keep. Well, blame me for such small-minded consistency. I guess I can't appreciate the flexible "greatness" evident in Mr. Trump's magnanimous capacity to avoid anything so petty. That's why it looks to me just like the vote-for-what-I-say-not-what-I'll-obviously-do politics of the people his glass-eyed supporters claim to be fed up with.
But at least a Trump victory won't require a change in their diet of disappointment. That's why he considerately left Roy Moore off his list. As I hope you know, Chief Justice Moore is the sort of justice a petty, consistent, principled conservative would appoint. He consistently stands, at great public and personal sacrifice, for the things Donald Trump boisterously pretends to believe – unlike William Pryor, who seeks to destroy those who truly do believe in them.
May 23, 2016
"... [Y]ou are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. He will render to each one according to his works: ...to them that are contentious and who obey not the truth, but give credit to iniquity, there will be wrath and fury." (Romans 2:5-6, 8)
"Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord have not we prophesied in your name, and cast out devils in your name, and done many miracles in your name? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity." (Matthew 7:21)
"But you, brethren, be not weary in well-doing. And if any man does not obey ... note that man, that ye have no company with him. To the end that he may be ashamed." (2 Thessalonians 3:13-14)
Donald Trump's supporters seem impervious to evidence. And now that their delusion is being aided and abetted by the elitist faction's knee-jerk partisan propagandists in the media, I'm sure facts will seem even more irrelevant to their judgment about what he contrives to say and do. But we must heed the Apostle's admonition not to grow weary in the effort to do right. The truth will out, and when it does, have we any choice but to bear witness?
Much ado is being made about Trump's latest effort to prove, contrary to palpable fact, that he cares for and will respect the Constitution. He released a list naming 11 people he would consider nominating to the Supreme Court. I have received emails proclaiming that every one of them is a tried and true conservative who will follow Justice Antonin Scalia's example of scrupulous, well-reasoned respect for the provisions of the Constitution.
When I perused the list, my personal knowledge caused one name to leap from the page – William Pryor. Pryor now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, having been nominated for that position by George W. Bush in 2003. It was also in 2003 that he came to prominence as the Alabama attorney general who first called for the removal of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore from his position, and then personally prosecuted the case to secure Moore's removal by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary.
Judge Pryor is exactly the sort of judge I would expect to be appointed by one or another of the GOP quislings who have competed for the GOP's presidential nomination. In their eyes, he qualifies as a conservative precisely because he proved himself a loyal tool of the view of the Constitution that consistently ignores the existence of the Ninth and 10th Amendments. The Ninth prohibits any construction of the enumeration of rights in the Constitution that denies or disparages rights retained by the people (which include, before all others, their God-endowed unalienable rights). The 10th makes it plain that the powers not explicitly delegated to the U.S. government are "reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people."
For a long time, most members of America's legal profession simply accepted the notion that both these Amendments had been effectively superseded by their studious and habitual disrespect. In recent years, efforts – mostly stimulated by grassroots conservatives – have challenged this practice of nullification by malignant neglect. I am glad to have been part of those efforts for the past 20 years and more. Such efforts are especially critical these days in the battle against Judicial and Executive tyranny being waged to force acceptance of homosexuality and other sexual whims upon the nation, against the conscientious resistance of many of its people. Then-Attorney General Pryor's prosecution of Alabama Chief Justice Moore was part of the effort to scour every semblance of the God-acknowledging premises of our constitutional self-government from American public life, in order to pave the way for the criminalization and/or banishment of views and practices rooted in religious conscience.
Attorney General Pryor "made his bones" (as the gangsters say) with the elitist faction's powers-that-be by his zealous prosecution of Roy Moore. But Donald Trump is supposed to stand in opposition to those powers and the GOP quislings who are their agents in the Republican Party. He is, by his own proclamation, supposed to be committed to reinstating respect for what he calls "States Rights," which is to say, the prerogatives of the powers the 10th Amendment reserves to "the States, respectively, or to the people." So, what is a judge who eagerly served as an instrument for enforcing the nullification of the 10th Amendment doing on Trump's list of possible U.S. Supreme Court nominees?
Like Mr. Trump's instinctive opposition to North Carolina's so-called "bathroom bill"; his desire to alter the GOP's principled platform position on respect for the unalienable right to life; his disregard for the plain meaning of the Fifth Amendment's reference to persons, without regard to citizenship; and his eager disregard for the implications of the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against compulsory self-incrimination and the Eighth Amendment's intolerance for cruel and unusual punishment (which, taken together, more than eliminate torture from the list of actions the government can constitutionally perpetrate against persons not even accused of a crime), Trump's willingness to consider William Pryor for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court contradicts the principled, conservative course he now promises to take with respect to judicial appointments.
There I go again, daring to suggest, from the facts in evidence, that Donald Trump is a prevaricating con artist, gulling conservatives with promises he obviously lacks the conviction to keep. Well, blame me for such small-minded consistency. I guess I can't appreciate the flexible "greatness" evident in Mr. Trump's magnanimous capacity to avoid anything so petty. That's why it looks to me just like the vote-for-what-I-say-not-what-I'll-obviously-do politics of the people his glass-eyed supporters claim to be fed up with.
But at least a Trump victory won't require a change in their diet of disappointment. That's why he considerately left Roy Moore off his list. As I hope you know, Chief Justice Moore is the sort of justice a petty, consistent, principled conservative would appoint. He consistently stands, at great public and personal sacrifice, for the things Donald Trump boisterously pretends to believe – unlike William Pryor, who seeks to destroy those who truly do believe in them.
To see more articles by Dr. Keyes, visit his blog at LoyalToLiberty.com and his commentary at WND.com and BarbWire.com.
© Alan KeyesThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
