B-Man

The People’s Justice The leading intellectual on the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas, is also the people’s justice. Is that paradoxical? Not to me, it isn’t. We live under the rule of law, which means that we live under the rule of words. Words can, of course, be ambiguous, and applying them to a particular situation can be tricky. But any good-faith effort to apply the laws or the Constitution to a particular case must always begin with a common-sense understanding of the words in question: what they mean to a normal reader. When proponents of the Constitution argued for its adoption, as in the Federalist Papers, they did not say that delegates to state conventions should take it on faith; that it is too hard for a normal person to understand; that only a small priesthood of initiates could tell you what it really means. No: everyone assumed that the language of the Constitution was normal English, and it could be understood by ordinary persons of good intelligence. Again, that doesn’t mean that there could be no disagreement or room for debate, but rather that Americans of good intelligence could engage in those debates on an equal footing. Certainly no one at the time suggested that the words of the Constitution had some arcane meaning that would be “discovered,” and would take our government in a new direction, 100 or 200 years hence. I don’t suppose anyone would have voted to adopt the Constitution if it had been sold on that basis. This is why I have long thought that it would be a good idea to have one or two Supreme Court justices who are not lawyers. These days, most Supreme Court justices are members of a caste who likely have been aiming for a position on the Court since high school. Nothing wrong with that, perhaps, but it would be good to have one or two members of the Court whose experience is different–someone who spent his career in the business world, preferably. All of this is a preface to the following brief clip of Justice Thomas explaining his judicial philosophy as a “textualist.” My comment would be, as a judge, if you are not a textualist, what in the world are you? Thomas has of course expounded on his views many times in various forums, and this brief clip is only a glimpse into his thinking. But, in part because it is brief, I thought it was worth sharing with our readers: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/07/the-peoples-justice.php

and in a Fourth of July thread 😀 Go out sir, it’s a big beautiful world.

Happy Fourth of July Joe ! 🎆🎇

What an America First Foreign Policy Looks Like Marco Rubio is doing a brilliant job as Secretary of State. A prime example of his implementation of an America First foreign policy is the abolition of USAID and relocation of aid programs inside the State Department. On the State Department’s Substack, Rubio lays out the rationale for this change, putting to shame the Democrats’ absurd “millions will die” mantra: Every public servant has an obligation to American citizens to ensure any programs they fund advance our nation’s interests. During the Trump Administration’s thorough review of thousands of programs, and over $715 billion in inflation-adjusted spending over the decades, it became apparent the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) fell well below this standard. USAID had decades and a near-infinite taxpayer budget to advance American influence, promote economic development worldwide, and allow billions to stand on their own two feet. Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War. Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown. On the global stage, the countries that benefit the most from our generosity usually fail to reciprocate. For example, in 2023, sub-Saharan African nations voted with the United States only 29 percent of the time on essential resolutions at the UN despite receiving $165 billion in outlays since 1991. That’s the lowest rate in the world. Over the same period, more than $89 billion invested in the Middle East and North Africa left the U.S. with lower favorability ratings than China in every nation but Morocco. The agency’s expenditure of $9.3 billion in Gaza and the West Bank since 1991, whose beneficiaries included allies of Hamas, has produced grievances rather than gratitude towards the United States. The only ones living well were the executives of the countless NGOs, who often enjoyed five-star lifestyles funded by American taxpayers, while those they purported to help fell further behind. This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end. Under the Trump Administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests. As of July 1st, USAID will officially cease to implement foreign assistance. Foreign assistance programs that align with administration policies—and which advance American interests—will be administered by the State Department, where they will be delivered with more accountability, strategy, and efficiency. We will not apologize for recognizing America’s longstanding commitment to life-saving humanitarian aid and promotion of economic development abroad must be in furtherance of an America First foreign policy. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/07/what-an-america-first-foreign-policy-looks-like.php

Most Americans Like America A Lot, And The Left Should Stop Ignoring This Fact Jesse Singal Almost every cohesive human group has beliefs, practices, or claims that other groups find strange. In most cases, at least in the modern, developed world, this doesn’t matter. We’re pretty good at live-and-let-live. I find Catholic and Muslim and Orthodox Jewish rituals weird, but as long as no one is dragging me to church or mosque or synagogue, that’s all fine with me: Do your thing. I’m sure you guys find my beliefs weird. In some cases, though, groups that are hoping to change the world can be stymied by the fact that they have adopted beliefs others are very skeptical of. One example, in many progressive and lefty circles, is the idea that the United States is extremely evil or unfair or just otherwise bad. This takes a lot of different forms. On foreign policy, we are an evil, imperialist “empire” extracting resources from vulnerable countries at the cost of distant, dark-skinned people’s lives. Domestically, we’re little better: Everything is so stacked against the poor, and inequality has run so rampant, that if there was ever anything like “the American dream” — itself a propagandist phrase, of course — it has long since been strangled to death by the oligarchs. {snip} The question shouldn’t be what the United States has done wrong — or not just what it has done wrong — but how it has behaved relative to other nations with similar levels of power. And it’s here where the progressive and lefty views of an especially or uniquely evil U.S. collapse entirely, I think. But I just don’t think that the U.S. has acted in a particularly horrific manner, either at home or abroad, given its power. The U.S. does not suddenly decide it wants to annex some foreign territories and launch a ground invasion and/or a bunch of cruise missiles. The U.S. does not, for the most part, repress its own citizens in anything like the way actually repressive regimes do. If law enforcement mistreats someone, and it’s captured on video, it becomes a national story. There are all sorts of responses to these claims: Yes, police departments close ranks and sometimes enjoy state laws that shield violent or otherwise negligent officers from responsibility. Yes, “Well, we’re not as bad as other empires” is thin comfort for dead Iraqis. But I’m sorry: We are a gentle superpower, at home and abroad, by any reasonable standard. Or gentle enough that it’s silly to pretend we’re especially or uniquely bad. https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/most-americans-like-america-a-lot?

Trump 2.0 is a Wrecking Ball. And he’s wrecking the right stuff. Glenn Harlan Reynolds Less than six months ago, I wrote: The Left Gave Us Trump 2.0. And they’re not going to like it. https://instapundit.substack.com/p/the-left-gave-us-trump-20? Right after the election, I wrote that Trump was going to come in like a wrecking ball. https://instapundit.substack.com/p/like-a-wrecking-ball Boy, did I nail it, or what? With the passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” Trump has crushed a lot of Democratic dreams and plans, and — as I predicted right after the election — he’s also starting to lay an institutional foundation for Republicans. The Big, Beautiful Bill is more big than it is beautiful, but the only way to get the changes that were needed through without a filibuster was through reconciliation. And the changes got through, and that is beautiful. It’s just the reality of our system that to get things done you have to buy votes. Elon Musk, Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, et al. don’t like that, and they’re not exactly wrong not to like it, they’re just wrong to think that we could have gotten what was needed any other way. {snip} My suggestion for the GOP is that they now start hitting the Democrats with single-subject bills that will have to be voted up or down, and that will be very politically expensive for Democrats to oppose, when they’re clearly presented without a lot of extraneous legislative cover. Will some of them be filibustered? Maybe, but if they are, the Democrats look bad. (And if they’re really important bills, the GOP can drop the filibuster with a majority, as the Democrats did already.) At any rate, as we go into the Fourth of July weekend, remember that it’s not just a calendar date, but that it’s really Independence Day. And especially this year. https://instapundit.substack.com/p/trump-20-is-a-wrecking-ball?r=9bg2k&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

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Hahahahahahahaha. This whole situation is hilarious,

lmfao ? Here you go.

He's just flaunting his democrat credits. .