The judiciary is supposed to have one guide when forming fresh perspectives: the Constitution. As they examine the constitutionality of laws and other government actions, they often refer to previous rulings as precedent while looking for similar rulings as justification for leaning one way or another, but at the end of the day it’s the Constitution alone that is supposed to guide their judgments. That’s why we should look for judges who have originalist perspectives, not necessarily conservative ones (though, let’s be honest, the vast majority of originalist perspectives will align with a conservative perspective).

Part of conservatism is conserving the original intent of a law, or in the case in question, a treaty. The Yakama Tribe signed a treaty with the United States government that gave them control of a huge amount of tribal land in Washington state. Part of the exchange included the ability for Yakama traders to use U.S. highways for free.

Washington charges per gallon for fuel trucked in from out of state. One Yakama company claimed the 1855 treaty meant they were not to be charged this tax. The decision in the Supreme Court went mostly along expected political leanings with the “conservative” Justices wanting to charge the tax and the “leftist” Justices siding with the Takama Tribe. The tiebreaker turned out to be Neil Gorsuch, who went to the “leftist” side but with the only conservative reasoning to drive a vote.

The dissent claimed the treaty allowed for free passage on highways just as any American citizen can travel, but that the taxes set by Washington must still be paid. Only Gorsuch recognized that the original intent of the treaty was to grant the tribe free passage, as in free of charge regardless of what the U.S., state, or local governments wanted to charge. This is the right perspective. It’s the conservative perspective.

Sad that the "conservatives" in the Supreme Court other than Neil Gorsuch were willing to abandon the original intent of a treaty to play party politics. This should have been a unanimous decision. Disappointed in Thomas most of all. https://t.co/iBIcZB2FnG

— JD Rucker (@JDRucker) March 20, 2019

Should the other Justices who voted like Gorsuch get kudos as well? Probably not. I haven’t read their statements, but it’s safe to assume they ruled based on the party politics of supporting Native American rights whether they’re justifiable or not. Gorsuch ruled based on a proper interpretation of the treaty.

Conservatism and originalism go hand-in-hand when judges take the politics out of what they do. It’s hard. I’m not a judge so I shouldn’t… judge. But this seems to be a case where party politics played too much of a role. Gorsuch was right.

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Fact checkers are all the rage in the age of fake news. Unfortunately, all of the major fact checkers are left leaning at best, downright progressive at worst. That’s why I make it part of my daily routine to check the checkers to see what they spun today. This latest installment is minor in the whole scheme of things, but it highlights the intense need to protect Democrats whenever possible.

Snopes took on the task of fact checking the following statement:

Beto O’Rourke was in a band called the El Paso Pussycats and was arrested at least twice in the 1990s.

This is true. Beto was arrested twice, which makes him an ideal candidate for the party of lawlessness and disorder. But Snopes, in their certified fact checking wisdom, decided to pick the statement about the arrests that included the name of his band. The statement they chose had the wrong name for the band, using their album name instead. This was enough for them to downgrade the statement from “True” to “Mostly True.”

Not a big deal, right? Actually, it’s bigger than one might think. When people search for Beto and look only for things that are true about him, they will not be shown information about his arrests. The site could have picked literally any other claim about the arrests to fact-check, but had to dig deep to find an internet meme from his failed Senatorial bid last year in order to find one with a statement that included something incorrect in it.

You’ll notice they made sure to mention that both charges were dismissed. The circumstances behind the dismissals seemed to do nothing to negate the crimes he actually committed.

This is just another example of the “fact-checker” running cover for a Democrat they like. The meat of the fact, Beto’s arrests, won’t be found on this site as “True” because they were selective in how they wanted to frame this narrative.

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An under-reported story last year revealed multiple “academic” journals, where only the highest levels of academic thought leadership is allowed to publish, put nonsense hoax articles in their publications simply because they perpetuated radical progressive thought. These peer-reviewed journals were willing to publish utter garbage as long as the garbage smelled like the hyper-leftist garbage they normally publish anyway.

Libertarian pundit John Stossel tried to interview the editors of these prestigious journals which were hoaxed, and was only able to find one willing to go on camera. Roberto Refinetti from the academic journal Sexuality and Culture came on air to discuss the hoax and the problems with academic journals. But even he was unable to come up with a valid response about why these journals were so easy to fool.

Stossel read some of the reviews from “experts” in the field that were used to determine whether or not the papers should be published. When Stossel noted that one of the reviewers was an idiot, Refinetti rushed to the defense by blaming the hoaxers and said, “They made up data that he or she [the reviewer] wished he had but he didn’t, so when he sees, ‘Wow, these people did this study that I wanted to do and they got the results that I thought should be there, this is great!'”

In other words, Refinetti came to the same conclusion as the hoaxers and Stossel: Some if not most of those who review these papers make their decision based on whether or not the conclusions fit their worldview, not whether or not the papers were actually correct.

This is just one of many examples of why leftist academia, which is the vast majority of all academia, operates with the sole goal of reinforcing their biases rather than informing students or giving the education system proper facts about the world.

Will you help revive the American Conservative Movement?