Judicial reasoning: and then there’s Janus v. AFSCME

The New Neo Posted on by

The Supreme Court finished up the liberty trifecta with Janus:

…[H]as there been a bigger win for small-government, real-life conservatives over the past few decades than the Janus v. AFSCME ruling? The decision not only fortifies the First Amendment by explicitly finding compelled speech unconstitutional, but also calls out the Left’s authoritarian political machinery, which has been holding many American communities, school systems, and workers hostage for decades.

“It is hard to estimate how many billions of dollars have been taken from nonmembers and transferred to public-sector unions in violation of the First Amendment,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority. “Those unconstitutional exactions cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely.”…

The Janus ruling also stipulates that employees must now affirmatively opt-in — rather than having to opt out — of unions before having to pay fees.

But in a dissent,

“The First Amendment,” writes Justice Elena Kagan, “was meant for better things. It was meant not to undermine but to protect democratic governance — including over the role of public-sector unions.” The idea that the court should decide who deserves First Amendment protections, or that those protections should be contingent on the vagaries of “democratic governance,” whatever that means, is as corrupt as any of the dumb things Trump has ever said about free expression. The Supreme Court is built to withstand the whims of democracy, of majoritarianism, not to surrender to them.

The strange thing about the cases decided recently is that they don’t deal with difficult, complex, or esoteric legal principles, as so many SCOTUS cases do. These particular ones are relatively simple and easy for the layperson to understand.

A bit of personal reflection here. I’m not a practicing lawyer and never was, but I graduated from a well-known law school (long ago) and have more than a passing familiarity with law, legal reasoning, and appellate opinions. When I was in law school and read those opinions and dissents, I often leaned one way or the other in terms of the way I thought the case ought to have turned out. But I usually found the reasoning on both sides to be fairly convincing and fairly tight, especially in SCOTUS cases. Sometimes an opinion would be a bit of a stretch, but it was still recognizably smart. Only a few were what I’d call bad in the quality of their reasoning, even if I disagreed with the outcome.

But that quote from Kagan seems to me to be a travesty. The protections in the Bill of Rights were meant to act as a check on the tyranny of unbridled democracy. That’s a basic, basic principle of our system of constitutional law and our history.

Does Kagan not understand that? Of course she does. But when people desire a certain outcome they can convince themselves of almost anything. Perhaps lawyers are especially good at that.

[NOTE: Likewise, the travel order case Trump v. Hawaii features dissenting opinions that are simply awful in terms of their legal reasoning. I don’t usually say that, even about opinions with which I disagree, but that case should have been a 9-0 decision in Trump’s favor. The dissenting justices stretched the law to the breaking point:

The dissenters, led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, try to get around this by claiming that the law has no rational basis. But they do so, as Roberts notes, “by refusing to apply anything resembling rational basis review.” What they are really doing, as Roberts writes, is expressing their disapproval of the order and their opinion of the man issuing it. They “challenge the entry suspension based on their perception of its effectiveness and wisdom. They suggest that the policy is overbroad and does little to serve national security interests. But we cannot substitute our own assessment for the Executive’s predictive judgments on such matters,” the chief justice concludes.

There is a difference between thinking something is a bad idea (and you could easily argue that the travel ban is a bad idea) and claiming it has no rational basis and is therefore void. The plaintiffs, the district court, the Ninth Circuit, and Sotomayor are committing a cardinal sin of jurisprudence: coming up with the answer they wish was true and working backward to invent a legal justification for it.

But even if they are correct that the travel ban order is terrible, that does not mean it is illegal or unconstitutional. We in this country are governed by laws, not by a judge’s personal morals.]

The left is in deep mourning about Kennedy’s resignation

The New Neo Posted on by

It occurs to me, on reading many many reactions from the left to Justice Kennedy’s resignation, that the left had gotten to thinking that the Court was theirs, and that any change towards conservatism was illegitimate. Against the march of history.

And that would have been true even if a more conventional Republican politician than Trump had won in 2016.

At least for the most part, the Court has moved to the left pretty much ever since the administration of FDR. So SCOTUS decisions that were made on very iffy legal grounds (such as Roe v. Wade, where it found a new right that had never existed before) have now become part of the “rights” that the left feels it is owed by law.

So there is a great deal of moaning and gnashing of teeth on the left, as well as statements of fear that we’ll now be going back to some horribly dark and oppressive ages. Some of this fear is actually sincere, I think, and some is a strategic stirring up of fear in Democratic voters in order to motivate them to go to the polls in November.

This NY Times editorial is very typical, and actually on the restrained side compared to some. The editors think that conservative justices threaten Americans’ “most cherished rights and protections”—but the Times sees those rights as abortion rights and the like, rather than the protection of basic liberties such as freedom of religion and of speech. It’s those latter rights, embedded in the Constitution, that conservative justices are bent on preserving—and that liberal judges (and the Times editors) are bent on undermining if it suits the cause of the left.

The editors also add the following deeply misleading passage:

The Supreme Court is designed as a countermajoritarian institution, and operates as a crucial check in a democracy based on majority rule. Still it is hard to swallow that this court is about to solidify a deeply conservative majority, despite the fact that in six of the last seven presidential elections, more Americans have voted for a Democrat than for a Republican.

That last sentence ignores the fact that in the last seven presidential elections, Republicans won three of them because of the electoral college, which determines the winner because it also “operates as a crucial check in a democracy based on majority rule.” And of course the Times chose to start its count with the election of Bill Clinton, which followed three elections won by Republicans.

Well, keep dreaming, NY Times. The left may find a way to stop a conservative-majority SCOTUS from happening, of course. Or the GOP’s very own RINOs may do the same. But at the moment, conservatives can savor the very strong possibility that for the first time in a very long time the Court will act to preserve the Constitution.

Well that didn’t take long: is socialism the future of the Democratic Party?

The New Neo Posted on by

According to Ocasio-Cortez’s mom, her daughter would like to be president. That’s not really surprising or noteworthy coming from a mother. The 28-year-old clearly is interested in politics and ambitious, so why not dream big?

But this article isn’t from a relative of Ocasio-Cortez. It’s an op-ed in the Guardian entitled “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represents the future of the Democratic party”:

Voters have had enough of Democrats who sell out the working class in the name of moderation that only serves those with money and power.

(Actually, isn’t that why Trump got elected—voters were tired of politicians from both parties who fit that description, and he was perceived, despite his own wealth and power, as a champion of the working class and a populist?)

But I digress. More from the Guardian:

Many voters, particularly young people, understand the time for incrementalism and moderation is long over, and ended for good when a race-baiter who empowers white supremacists and oligarchs stormed into the White House.

It ended with the kids in cages, the attacks on immigrants and all people of color…

In retrospect, Crowley as a future speaker was a laughable proposition. Ocasio-Cortez represents the future of the Democratic party.

The author of the piece is someone named Ross Barkan, who is “a journalist and candidate for the New York state senate.” I think he’s a bit premature, but perhaps only a bit. A victory in New York City, against a lackluster incumbent opponent, with a voter turnout of something like 10% in an off-year in a district so heavily Democratic that the winner of the Democratic primary is virtually assured of victory in the general, does not a national trend make. Not yet, anyway.

However, I agree that Ocasio-Cortez represents a very real phenomenon in the Democratic Party, and “trend” is not a bad word for that phenomenon. It’s a cliche for moderate Democrat political-changers to say that they didn’t leave the party, the party left them by veering more and more to the left over time. With the rejection of Joe Lieberman more than a decade ago, and its emphasis on anger and identity politics, the Democratic Party made its enormously leftward drift obvious even before Ocasio-Cortez was old enough to vote. The recent rise of Bernie Sanders, as well as the hysteria of the anti-Trump wing, has only made it more clear.

Does the future of the Democrats belong to the telegenic, young, leftist firebrands? Perhaps. Youthful voters seem more and more amendable to their message. Potential problem for the Democrats, however, is that youthful voters go out into the world, get jobs, have families, and tend to turn more to the right as time goes on, although they are replaced by a new crop of youthful voters. But reality checks do not favor socialism.

Yesterday was the ninth anniversary of commenter FredHJr’s death

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The following is a slightly revised version of a post that has appeared previously on this blog.]

Unbelievable that it’s been nine years since commenter FredHJr died suddenly and tragically. As time passes, the number of readers here who don’t remember Fred must necessarily increase, so for those of you who don’t know who FredHJr was, please see this and this, as well as these.

Fred’s death was extremely tragic for his family. But it was tragic for this blog, too, because he was an invaluable and irreplaceable member of our community, a “changer” who knew a lot about the Left, and a keen observer of politics, history, religion, culture—of life itself. I still think about him often, wondering what he’d have to say about everything that’s happened in these last nine years.

Every year on the anniversary, I offer some excerpts from his many comments here. Continue reading →

A young socialist topples powerful incumbent Crowley in NY’s 14th Congressional District

The New Neo Posted on by

In a sign of where the Democrats have been headed lately, 28-year-old socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has defeated 10-term Congressman Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th District.

Ocasio-Cortez is not only a young Hispanic woman, she’s remarkably telegenic (in other words, beautiful). I have no idea whether that latter fact made a difference, but my guess is that it didn’t hurt:

Joe Crowley, her opponent, wasn’t just a member of the House. He was one of the members of the House who was a contender for Pelosi’s job. Both Crowley and Ocasio-Cortez are progressives, but she is of the Bernie Sanders socialist wing and he is more mainstream progressive (if there is such a thing).

New York’s 14th District was redrawn in 2012:

The district includes the eastern Bronx and part of north-central Queens. The Queens portion includes the neighborhoods of Astoria, College Point, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Woodside. The Bronx portion of the district includes the neighborhoods of Morris Park, Parkchester, Pelham Bay, and Throgs Neck as well as City Island. Before redistricting for the 2012 election, much of this area was in New York’s 7th congressional district.

The district’s ethnicity now is strongly Hispanic:

18.41% White
11.39% Black
16.24% Asian
49.80% Hispanic
0.45% Native American
3.71% other

Ocasio-Cortez is not just young, socialist, and beautiful, she is also Hispanic, which would probably give her an advantage over Crowley. Crowley also made a big boo-boo by not appearing for a debate with her in the Bronx. I certainly don’t have my finger on the pulse of the 14th, but I can’t imagine that it enhanced his clout with the voters.

Crowley had a lot of money, but his opponent used social media to her advantage as well. What’s more—in a reliably Democratic district where to get the Democratic nomination is tantamount to winning the general election—Crowley had never before faced an opponent in the Democratic primaries. So I think he got rusty, accustomed to sailing to sure victory after sure victory.

It is a curious fact—curious to me, anyway—that the voter turnout in this primary was awful:

On Tuesday, fewer than 28,000 votes were cast in the 14th district, which has more than 710,000 residents and 292,000 active voters.

That’s abysmal. It may be that Crowley supporters thought he was safe and stayed home. But they have no one to blame but themselves. Low turnout ensures that only activists get to decide the outcome of an important election.

Justice Kennedy: those retirement rumors turn out to have been correct

The New Neo Posted on by

Justice Kennedy has announced that he will be ending his Supreme Court tenure in July.

It seems pretty obvious that Kennedy has timed his retirement in a way that will maximize the GOP hand in choosing his successor. There’s a Republican president, of course, who has pledged to nominate conservative justices from a list he submitted while still a candidate, and the Senate is in GOP hands. Whether the latter situation will remain true after November of 2018, it will be true until then, and the GOP will be in charge. Their majority is slim, however, and they need to unite on this.

In his last few votes on the SCOTUS bench, Kennedy was consistently conservative, although he’s spent much of his time on the Court as a highly influential and somewhat unpredictable swing vote. However, the timing of his retirement makes me wonder whether, at the end, he felt the need to ensure a conservative successor.

Many on the right (I include myself in that group) felt that the 2016 presidential election was especially important because it would probably have a large effect on the composition of the federal court system in general, and the Supreme Court in particular. This turns out to have been correct. And McConnell’s delay of the Garland nomination and facilitation of the Gorsuch appointment looms large, as well, as does his ending of the filibuster for SCOTUS nominations.

The Court has been instrumental in determining the course of the nation, and can either support liberty or undermine it. I believe the Kennedy retirement will support it. I certainly hope it does.

Democrats are seething, but they also see this as an opportunity to spin the news in a way that they think will ultimately benefit them. Naturally, they say it’s a catastrophe that all decent people must fight, because it imperils the very foundation of of the country and all its values, as well as the progressive agenda:

And then there’s the classy De Niro-style approach:

Their anger is understandable. One of the many reasons they counted on and looked forward to a supposedly-inevitable Hillary Clinton win was the opportunity to shape the Supreme Court for decades to come. It is a bitter pill to swallow that that opportunity was lost for now, and lost to the likes of Donald Trump.

NIFLA v. Becerra: free speech or pro-life

The New Neo Posted on by

A whole lotta law news today, isn’t there?

In another SCOTUS decision, the Court ruled in NIFLA v. Becerra that a California law requiring crisis pregnancy centers (pregnancy counseling clinics usually run by pro-life Christians) to post notices that “California has public programs that provide immediate free or low-cost access to comprehensive family planning services (including all FDA-approved methods of contraception), prenatal care, and abortion for eligible women” was an unconstitutional violation of free speech. The vote was the familiar 5-4 and once again came down to the swing vote of Kennedy siding with the conservative wing, and all the liberal justices dissenting.

Headlines in the MSM dealing with the decision tend to emphasize that this is a win for pro-life clinics (see this, for example), whereas conservative media seems to have more of a focus on the free speech aspects (an example is this). The former is a political emphasis, whereas the latter is a constitutional and legal one.

Here’s the legal reasoning of the majority:

Though the law related specifically to abortion, free speech was the fundamental issue at stake. This being so, the vote should not have been a narrow one. Alas, four of the Court’s justices were so hell-bent on promoting the manufactured right to abortion that they were prepared to jettison a real, preeminent, foundational liberty.

Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion cast the case more clearly, noting that there exists no such category in America as “professional speech” and concluding that to invent one would “give the States unfettered power to reduce a group’s First Amendment rights by simply imposing a licensing requirement.” In a short concurrence, Justice Kennedy dispensed with the idea that the First Amendment is outmoded. The viewpoint discrimination inherent in the FACT Act was “a matter of serious constitutional concern,” Kennedy concluded, and the law served as “a paradigmatic example of the serious threat presented when government seeks to impose its own message in the place of individual speech, thought, and expression.”…

As Justice Thomas noted, the state government could very easily have accomplished its supposed purpose — ensuring that California women are aware of the low-cost abortion program — without needlessly conscripting pro-life centers into its effort. “[California] could inform the women itself with a public-information campaign,” Thomas observed. “California could even post the information on public property near crisis pregnancy centers. . . . Either way, California cannot co-opt the licensed facilities to deliver its message for it.”

Instead, the state intentionally targeted pro-life health centers and insisted that they violate their beliefs by facilitating a procedure they believe to be immoral. No other health centers were subject to the law’s requirements — which, we rather suspect, was the point.

The is the correct decision, and it protected free speech far more than it affected abortion rights one way or the other. It’s also another decision that almost certainly would have gone the opposite way had Garland been appointed to the Court instead of Gorsuch. On such a narrow thread our liberties depend.

Will Justice Kennedy retire?

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s a question that’s been asked quite a bit lately.

People claim to see signs of withdrawal in Kennedy that they interpret as the prodrome of retirement (for example see this). I have to say that these days I tend to discount all speculation in the MSM—not just speculation about Kennedy—because so much of it is hot air that doesn’t come true.

I tend to put this in the same category, but I don’t pretend to know.

After all, Kennedy is almost 82, and he’s been on the Court for 30 years. He was appointed by Reagan, but he’s long been a disappointment to conservatives because he constitutes a vitally important swing vote that can go either way and is difficult to predict. The quip about forecasting SCOTUS decisions—why don’t you just ask Kennedy what he thinks?—is often valid.

The left is afraid that Kennedy will retire under Trump’s watch and give the president the chance to eliminate the “swing” element and change the Court’s balance to more reliably conservative. Will it happen? You be the judge (pun intended). Your guess is probably as good as anyone’s.

SCOTUS upholds Trump’s revised travel order

The New Neo Posted on by

In the end, the vote went as so many SCOTUS decisions do, 5-4 with Kennedy being the swing vote.

I am almost certain that had Garland been confirmed at the end of Obama’s administration, instead of waiting for Trump and Gorsuch, this decision would have gone the other way.

However, it also seems completely obvious to me that the majority here was correct: the order as presently worded is completely in line with the powers granted the executive by statute and by the Constitution. That four SCOTUS justices saw it differently is a demonstration of the fact that a person—and particularly a lawyer—can find arguments that seem logical and correct to that person, in order to reach a desired endpoint. But the minority’s analogies to Korematsu (the case involving the detention of ethnic Japanese citizens during WWII), are inappropriate, because, as the majority has pointed out:

Whatever rhetorical advantage the dissent may see in doing so, Korematsu has nothing to do with this case. The forcible relocation of U. S. citizens to concentration camps, solely and explicitly on the basis of race, is objectively unlawful and outside the scope of Presidential authority. But it is wholly inapt to liken that morally repugnant order to a facially neutral policy denying certain foreign nationals the privilege of admission…The entry suspension is an act that is well within executive authority and could have been taken by any other President—the only question is evaluating the actions of this particular President in promulgating an otherwise valid Proclamation.

IMHO, the present case would have been decided unanimously for Trump had the law been properly applied. If presidents are not allowed to make immigration decisions like Trump’s, the power of the executive to regulate immigration becomes meaningless.

I truly believe that, years ago, even liberal justices would have acknowledged that power and would have upheld this travel order—especially, of course, if a Democratic president had issued it. But times have changed.

That change reflects a trend on the left that is easy to see, which is the attempt to blend the categories of legal and illegal immigrants, of immigrants and visitors, and of all those categories and citizens, and to equate their relative rights to enter the US no matter what the executive might say—particularly if that executive is trying to restrict immigration of any kind rather than to expand it.

That ideological blending is purposeful, and although it is partly rhetorical it is not meant to stop at rhetoric such as “undocumented” (a change in terminology that began some time ago and was meant to soften the public for later and more radical arguments). The open-borders crowd, the more extreme of who push the idea that there should be no difference in the rights afforded citizens, legal immigrants, illegal aliens, and temporary visitors, are determined to convince people of the rightness of their cause.

[ADDENDUM: Predictably, the left is unhappy with the ruling.]

Uncivil war: plenty of people must think the Red Guards were a really nifty idea…

The New Neo Posted on by

…because they’re advocating going down a road that would have an excellent chance of leading there.

For those unfamiliar with the Red Guards, please see this.

And for those who think I’m engaging in hyperbole, please read an essay appearing today entitled “This is just the beginning.” One of the many interesting things about that sort of call for action is that if the right was anywhere near as power-mad and oppressive as the author seems to think it is, he and his fellow-travelers would already be in prison or worse. But they’re not.

As Orwell said, “So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.”

That quote is often offered without its context, but if you go here you’ll see the Orwell essay from which it came. Orwell was a politically complex man himself (I wrote about his socialism here), but he was certainly more aware of the dangers than most people.

Here is an except from his essay that shows you the context of the quote, which is about why British writers of the ’30s gravitated towards Communism. I think it’s instructive to take a look:

…[W]hat do you achieve, after all, by getting rid of such primal things as patriotism and religion? You have not necessarily got rid of the need for something to believe in.…

I do not think one need look farther than this for the reason why the young writers of the thirties flocked into or towards the Communist Party. If was simply something to believe in. Here was a Church, an army, an orthodoxy, a discipline. Here was a Fatherland and — at any rate since 1935 or thereabouts — a Füehrer. All the loyalties and superstitions that the intellect had seemingly banished could come rushing back under the thinnest of disguises….

But there is one other thing that undoubtedly contributed to the cult of Russia among the English intelligentsia during these years, and that is the softness and security of life in England itself. With all its injustices, England is still the land of habeas corpus, and the over-whelming majority of English people have no experience of violence or illegality. If you have grown up in that sort of atmosphere it is not at all easy to imagine what a despotic régime is like. Nearly all the dominant writers of the thirties belonged to the soft-boiled emancipated middle class and were too young to have effective memories of the Great War. To people of that kind such things as purges, secret police, summary executions, imprisonment without trial etc., etc., are too remote to be terrifying. They can swallow totalitarianism because they have no experience of anything except liberalism.

Orwell goes on to quote a poem by W. H. Auden, who during the 30s was a Communist supporter. It contains the phrase “necessary murder” (of the type that is necessary under Communism), and of this Orwell writes [emphasis mine]:

Mr Auden’s brand of amoralism is only possible, if you are the kind of person who is always somewhere else when the trigger is pulled. So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot. The warmongering to which the English intelligentsia [on the left] gave themselves up in the period 1935-9 was largely based on a sense of personal immunity.

The left in America today thinks it’s already the target of enormous persecution. On the contrary; it enjoys freedoms and liberties only dreamed of in most societies. Fomenting a civil war is a kind of playing with fire by people who may know that fire is hot, but who don’t think it ever will burn them.

Men and women, attraction and humor

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an article purporting to tell us what makes men more appealing to women. The list (apparently in no particular order) is supposedly based on research and contains seemingly contradictory things like “wear a scented deodorant” and “eat garlic.” Who knew?

But what I was looking for was “have a fabulous sense of humor.” For me, the bottom line for any man I might want to date was that he had to be funny. Very funny. And not banana peel humor; true wit.

It wasn’t and isn’t something about which I was and am especially proud, because somehow it seems superficial. And it’s led me to some difficult relationships with some rather complex people. But it’s not really a trivial thing because a sense of humor and shared laughter is bonding, and humor tells you a great deal about a person’s way of looking at life. When things are rough, it can also take you out of the gloom.

So I’m not at all surprised to see “make your partner laugh” on the list:

Multiple studies indicate that women are more attracted to men who can make them laugh. Interestingly though, men generally aren’t more attracted to women who can make them laugh…

…women valued both their partner’s sense of humor and their own ability to make their partner laugh; men valued only their own ability to make their partner laugh.

Preach it, brothers and sisters, preach it. Don’t I know it!

Now, I’m hardly a laugh a minute, but I’ve been known to come up with some off-the-cuff humorous remarks, probably more than most women do (although I’m a terrible teller of set jokes). But alas, one of the observations I’ve made over the years is that men always say they want a woman with a sense of humor, but what they actually mean is that they want the woman to appreciate their sense of humor and laugh at their jokes. The vast majority don’t want a woman to be funnier than they are.

I’m sure there are exceptions, but that seems to be a general rule of life. But as I said, the men I’ve been involved with (and the one I married) have been exceedingly witty, considerably more so than I. And that doesn’t seem to be an accident.

The writer Calvin Trillin was a witty man in print, and he wrote a very touching tribute to his wife after her death. In it, he described their meeting and initial courtship this way:

She was…so very pretty, but that wasn’t the first thing that struck me about her; it might have come as much as two or three seconds later. My first impression was that she looked more alive than anyone I’d ever seen. She seemed to glow. For one reason or another, I hardly got to speak to her that evening. Two weeks later, though,…I dashed back from a remote suburb to a party that I figured she’d be attending. So I couldn’t claim that I just wandered into that second party; in romantic matters, even those who need to depend mainly on dumb luck are usually up to one or two deliberate moves. At the second party, I did get to talk to her quite a lot. In fact, I must have hardly shut up. I was like a lounge comic who had been informed that a booker for the “Tonight Show” was in the audience. Recalling that party in later years, Alice would sometimes say, “You have never again been as funny as you were that night.”

“You mean I peaked in December of 1963?” I’d say, twenty or even thirty years later.

“I’m afraid so.”

But I never stopped trying to match that evening—not just trying to entertain her but trying to impress her. Decades later—after we had been married for more than thirty-five years, after our girls were grown—I still wanted to impress her. I still knew that if I ever disappointed her in some fundamental way—if I ever caused her to conclude that, after all was said and done, she should have said no when, at the end of that desperate comedy routine, I asked her if we could have dinner sometime—I would have been devastated.

They had an exceptionally happy marriage.

Romney: not a NeverTrumper

The New Neo Posted on by

Mitt Romney—‘member him?—is running for Senate from the state of Utah. Here’s his stance on supporting Trump:

One of the questions I am asked frequently on the campaign trail is whether as Senator I will support the Trump agenda…

I will support the president’s policies when I believe they are in the best interest of Utah and the nation. I have noted, the first year of his administration has exceeded my expectations; he made our corporate tax code globally competitive, worked to reduce unnecessary regulations and restored multiple use on Utah public land. In addition, I am pleased that he backed away from imposing a 35 percent tariff on all foreign goods…

But I have openly expressed my disagreement with certain of the administration decisions such as the withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP); I want more markets open for Utah and American goods. I also oppose broad-based tariffs, such as those proposed on steel and aluminum, particularly when they are imposed on our allies. I agree, however, with narrower penalties levied on companies or nations that employ unfair trade practices, such as China.

I have and will continue to speak out when the president says or does something which is divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions. I do not make this a daily commentary; I express contrary views only when I believe it is a matter of substantial significance.

Sounds rather reasonable to me.