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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (April 7, 2017)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 2017 Founded in 1873 DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager OUR VIEW E ach week we recognize those people and organizations in the community deserving of public praise for the good things they do to make the North Coast a better place to live, and also those who should be called out for their actions. SHOUTOUTS Karma, precedent and the nuclear option SOLVE Debris collected off the beach at Seaside. • Volunteers, organizers and sponsors of the annual SOLVE Spring Oregon Beach Cleanup, which resulted in the removal of 56,000 pounds — 28 tons — of litter and marine debris along the North Coast last weekend. Nearly 5,000 volunteers helped clean the coastline at 45 locations from Fort Stevens State Park south to Brookings. SOLVE CEO Maureen Fisher said the nonprofit has been organizing biannual cleanups along the coast since 1984, and in that time more than 260,000 volunteers have removed an esti- mated 3.5 million pounds of debris. • The late Michael Foster’s family, who established a memo- rial fund to honor his memory as a founding board member of the Astoria Music Festival and as a longtime arts advocate. Foster died in December and his family established the memorial fund through a $20,000 leadership gift, which has already been matched by pledges. Deac Guidi, the music festival’s new board president, said the fund will provide continued support for the music festival as a memorial to Foster’s deep commitment to art and music. The Astoria Music Festival will commemorate its 15th season with the Michael Foster Memorial Concert on June 17 at the Liberty Theater. • The Astoria Warming Center, which served more than 200 people during the cold nights of the past 3 1/2 months. According to the nonprofit’s operational report, the center took in 148 men and 64 women from Nov. 15 to Feb. 28, and on average 30 peo- ple slept there a night, equaling 3,126 overnight stays. The center, which is run in the basement of the First United Methodist Church on Franklin Avenue, was founded in 2014 and is one of several local shelters that serve the county’s growing homeless popula- tion. In addition to a small paid staff, dozens of volunteers put in a total of 2,620 volunteer hours, which does not include the work they did outside of the hours of the center’s operation. • Rocky Smith, organizer of last weekend’s sixth annual Ghost Conference, which was conducted at the Seaside Civic and Convention Center. The three-day event attracted about 800 peo- ple from around the country who came to listen to paranormal lec- tures, share ghost stories and even do a ghost investigation in the Bridge Tender on Broadway. CALLOUTS • Purveyors of “fake news,” designed to intentionally mis- lead others with cultivated falsehoods under the pretense of com- ing from a trusted news source. David Chavern, president and CEO of the national News Media Alliance, says fake news is not a new thing. “For more than 150 years, newspapers have been in the ‘anti-fake news’ business,” he said. “There have always been lies and ridiculous conspiracy theories, but they used to be deliv- ered to you across the dinner table and not in your news source.” Today, about half of Americans get news of some form from social media, which has given a new rise to fake news, even here in Astoria and the North Coast. Consumers need to be aware of who is creating that news, what motivation they have for it and whether there are real reporters and editors standing behind the stories. In real journalism those doing the reporting and editing stand behind their brand, and while the stories may be colorful, the news is black and white. Suggestions? Do you have a Shoutout or Callout you think we should know about? Let us know at news@dailyastorian.com and we’ll make sure to take a look. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky signals a thumbs-up as he leaves the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill Thursday after he led the GOP majority to change Senate rules and lower the vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees from 60 votes to a simple majority in order to advance Neil Gorsuch to a confirmation vote. By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER Washington Post Writers Group W ASHINGTON — For euphemism, dissim- ulation and outright hypocrisy, there is nothing quite as entertaining as the periodic Senate dust-ups over Supreme Court appointments and the filibuster. The arguments for and against the filibuster are so well-known to both parties as to be practically memorized. Both none- theless argue their case with great shows of passion and conviction. Then shamelessly switch sides — and scripts — depending on the ideology of the nominee. Everyone appeals to high principle, when everyone knows these fights are about raw power. When Democrat Harry Reid had the majority in the Senate and Barack Obama in the White House, he abolished the filibuster in 2013 for sub-Supreme Court judicial appointments in order to pack three liberal judges onto the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Bad karma, bad precedent, he was warned. Republicans would one day be in charge. That day is here and Republicans have just stopped a Democratic filibuster of Neil Gorsuch by extending the Reid Rule to the Supreme Court. To be sure, there are reasoned arguments to be offered on both sides of the filibuster question. It is true that the need for a supermajor- ity does encourage compromise and coalition building. But given the contemporary state of hyperpolar- ization — the liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats of 40 years ago are long gone — the supermajority requirement today merely guarantees inaction, which, in turn, amplifies the current popular disgust with politics in general and Congress in particular. In my view, that makes paring back the vastly overused filibuster, on balance, a good thing. Moreover, killing the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations (the so-called nuclear option) yields two gratifications: It allows a superb young conservative jurist to ascend to the seat once held by Antonin Scalia. And it constitutes condign punishment for the reckless arrogance of Reid and his erstwhile Democratic majority. A major reason these fights over Supreme Court nominations have become so bitter and unseemly is the stakes — the political stakes. The Supreme Court has become more than ever a superlegislature. From abortion to gay marriage, it has appropriated to itself the final word. It rules — and the normal democratic impulses, expressed through the elected branches, are henceforth stifled. Wait for the next nomination. Having gratuitously forfeited the filibuster, Democrats will be facing the loss of the court for a generation. Why have we had almost half a century of massive street demon- strations over abortion? Because the ballot box is not available. The court has spoken, and the question is supposedly settled for all time. This transfer of legislative authority has suited American liberalism rather well. When you command the allegiance of 20 to 25 percent of the population (as mea- sured by Gallup), you know that whatever control you will have of the elected branches will be fleeting (2009-2010, for example). So how do you turn the political order in your direction? Capture the courts. They are what banks were to Willie Sutton. They are where you go for the right political outcomes. Note how practically every argu- ment at the Gorsuch hearings was about political outcomes. Where would he come out on abortion? Gay marriage? The Democrats pretended this was about principle, e.g. the sanctity of precedent. But everyone knows which prec- edents they selectively cherish: Roe v. Wade and, more recently, Obergefell v. Hodges. Liberalism does not want to admit that the court has become its last reliable instrument for achieving its political objectives. So liberals have created a great philosophical superstructure to justify their freewheeling, freestyle constitutional interpretation. They present themselves as defenders of a “living Constitution” under which the role of the court is to reflect the evolving norms of society. With its finger on the pulse of the people, the court turns contemporary cul- ture into constitutional law. But this is nonsense. In a democracy, what better embodi- ment of evolving norms can there be than elected representatives? By what logic are the norms of a vast and variegated people better reflected in nine appointed lawyers produced by exactly three law schools? If anything, the purpose of a constitutional court such as ours is to enforce old norms that have preserved both our vitality and our liberty for 230 years. How? By providing a rugged reliable frame within which the political churnings of each generation take place. The Gorsuch nomination is a bitter setback to the liberal project of using the courts to ratchet left- ward the law and society. However, Gorsuch’s appointment simply preserves the court’s ideological balance of power. Wait for the next nomination. Having gratuitously forfeited the filibuster, Democrats will be facing the loss of the court for a generation. Condign punishment indeed.
