CAN’T I CHANGE YOUR MIND?
NOT THE STORY I TRIED TO RIG
A saying among trial lawyers is to never ask a question in court to which you don’t know the answer. That didn’t work with CNN reporter Martin Savidge last week.
Savidge, sure the Minnesota suburban women he would interview would hate President Donald Trump, approached two in a state the president barely lost in 2016 and would like to turn in 2020.
“Who would you vote for again in 2020?” he asked Kelly Meyers. “Still Donald Trump,” she said. “No misgiving, no doubts?” Savidge asked incredulously. “None,” Meyers said. “No change of mind,” Savidge tried again. “No,” Meyers said.
Another, Amber Griffin, said she “still supports Trump” despite some things he says and maintains “he’s a product of his environment.”
Savidge said neither woman blamed Trump for the recent mass shootings or for not ramming through Congress a quick gun control measure.
But, he said, many he spoke to were tired of Trump, but none of them wanted to be interviewed.
PLAY BY MY RULES
Democrats are not, as expected, in the White House and able to appoint Supreme Court justices, so several of them decided to threaten the high court last week in a brief filed in a Second Amendment case.
The five Democrats, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, are afraid the court may not rule the way they prefer on a case involving the transportation of guns.
Their threat is little different than that heard on the playground: Do it our way, or we’ll change the rules.
“The Supreme Court is not well,” Whitehouse wrote in the brief, “and the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics’.”
The idea, of course, is one held by a number of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates — expand the court until it has more left-leaning justices than right-leaning ones. Of course, the secret to that is electing a Democratic president, which is what they couldn’t accomplish in 2016.
NOT IN MY BACK YARD
Democratic hypocrisy was on display in two hard-left bastions last week as both Marin County, California, and Washington, D.C., wanted to keep their old ways instead of adhering to rules expected elsewhere.
In 2013, the Sausalito Marin County School District established Bayside MLK Jr., which promised a high standard of education for its largely black and Latino attendees from Marin City. But the district quickly cut its programs, classes and counselors. Meanwhile, the majority white Willow Creek Academy, with many of its students from multimillion dollar homes on Sausalito’s waterfront, flourished nearby.
In the nation’s capitol, Democratic Mayor Muriel Bower wants no part of a temporary shelter where immigrant children can be housed. The mayor has said she is opposed to the mistreatment of unaccompanied alien children in federal custody, but she said she had “no intention” of supporting the facility that would offer classroom education, mental and medical health services, case management and recreation.
Though the shelter is federally planned, the local Washington, D.C., Child and Family Services Agency must issue a license for it.
Back in Marin County, California Attorney General Xavier Becarra said Bayside had been deprived in favor of Willow Creek and issued a plan he called the “first comprehensive effort to desegregate a California school in five decades.”
Coming headline: Marin County private schools make plans to expand.
BUT SHE DESERVES A PLACE
A 9-year-old Berlin, Germany, girl is suing a 554-year-old boys’ choir because it did not admit her.
Up to now, it has never admitted girls, but the girl, whose identity was not revealed, auditioned with the choir in March and was rejected. She had previously applied to be a member in 2016 and 2018 but was not given an audition.
Choir officials said it was “not predominantly about her gender” and that she would have been issued an invitation had she displayed extraordinary talent and motivation and “if her voice matched the desired sound characteristics of a boys’ choir.” The choir also expressed doubt it could work with her parents.
German music experts said the voices of the singers should be considered instruments “with specific sound characteristics,” that different sexes have different timbres, and that the judging “should be left to the musician and the musicologists.”
The child’s mother, in the suit, claims the rejection is discriminatory “in an impermissible way” and violates her right to equal opportunities from an institution receiving state funds.