This is Lanhee Chen of the Hoover Institution for Townhall.com. 

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina gave a powerful speech this week responding to President Biden’s address to Congress. Scott’s message was simple: Republicans want to work together with Biden to solve some of our country’s most significant challenges. But, so far, the reaction by Democrats has been to go-it-alone.  

The substance was good, but what made Scott’s message so compelling was that it included his personal story—how he came to the policy views he as, the political perspective he holds, and why he chose a career in public service. 

Scott doesn’t fit the narrative of what some think a “typical” Republican looks and sounds like. That’s good, because the conservative movement has a lot more texture and diversity than the mainstream media—or the progressive left—would like you to believe. What Scott was able to do was to earnestly convey his story and views in a way that people could relate to.  

We could use a lot more of that in our politics, to be sure. 

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To re-enter the United States as an American citizen, you must prove you’re Covid-free. But when it comes to illegal immigrants, the rules are different. House Democrats blocked a proposed law that would require them likewise to test negative before they’re released into our country by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Now take California. There’s a mask mandate in place and businesses can’t operate at full capacity. But on Oscar night, there the movie stars were, laughing it up—maskless—on television for all to see.

Illegal immigrants and movie stars may operate at opposite ends of the social spectrum, but there’s one thing they have in common. They enjoy the ruling party’s favor, so they get to disregard the rules that govern the rest of us. 

This is the way the system operates in socialist countries. The elected/selected/connected and protected operate with special dispensation from the government; the rest of us are bullied and oppressed by government.

It isn’t supposed to be this way in America. 

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Why would a high-ranking American diplomat alert an Iranian government official about Israeli covert actions? In a leaked recording between Mohammad Javad Zarif and a political ally, the foreign minister revealed that John Kerry personally informed him that Israel was behind over 200 attacks on its military forces and proxies in Syria.

Zarif professed “astonishment” at Kerry’s tipoff. No doubt the Israelis are astonished at this as well, and all Americans should feel the same way. After years of unfounded accusations about Republican collusion with Russia, we now hear of a prominent member of two Democratic administrations sharing intelligence about our ally’s covert operations with a regime that regularly holds “Death to America” rallies in its capital.

Not only does this torpedo a close ally in an existential fight against Iran, it also looks like a tacit approval of Iran’s infiltration in Syria. The Biden administration needs to explain Kerry’s actions immediately, especially while pursuing pointless negotiations with a puppet government in Tehran.

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The editorial board of the Los Angeles Times has put forward a horrifyingly honest argument about abortion. 

The headline it ran was this: “The right to an abortion means the right to have it for any reason.” 

They intend for abortion to be available for any reason, at any time or for no reason. 

Their focus was a law passed in 2017 by the legislature in Ohio—a law that seeks to prevent abortion on the grounds that the unborn baby has been diagnosed with Down Syndrome.

The editorial board of the Los Angeles Times is saying that it is wrong to try to protect unborn babies that are diagnosed with Down syndrome by such a law. 

Why is it wrong? 

Because, says the editorial board, it interferes with what is a greater good than human dignity in the womb, and that means a woman's absolute autonomy and what the paper claims is her constitutional right to destroy the life within her.

Like I said: this editorial is honest. It’s also horrifying. 

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Last week we saw Derek Chauvin—the former Minneapolis Police Office—convicted of three serious felony charges that were brought against him.

There are some very important lessons here for Americans if we are truly committed to the rule of law. We must recognize that what took place was the result of a legitimate court process and verdicts handed down by a jury of the defendant’s fellow citizens. 

No doubt there will be further developments.

But right now we need to pray for the city of Minneapolis and we need to pray for the United States of America. What we are engaged in right now is a great test as to whether we really believe in the American project, in the American constitutional order and in the rule of law. The rule of law—let us remind ourselves—applies not only in the courtroom, but it applies in our neighborhoods and it applies on the streets.

If the rule of law operates anywhere, it has to operate everywhere.

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As the country progresses in the fight against COVID-19, each state has to balance its pandemic response with economic, social, and liberty issues. In most states, elected officials make those calls, and voters can hold them accountable. In Oregon, however, an unelected bureaucrat now wants to impose a permanent mask mandate, one that would survive past even the emergency order from the governor.

Oregon’s mask mandate is already more expansive than most states. For example: It makes no distinctions between indoor and outdoor activity. And—as if to illustrate their intrusiveness—Oregon’s kind leaders have made explicit exceptions for showering and sleeping.

Even if mask-wearing is beneficial, this policy should be enacted by legislators, not a bureaucrat. As one petition opposing the “permanent” rule states, no unelected public agency should be allowed “indefinite” authority over any facet of public life. Oregonians should be able to breathe free or to have their elected representatives explain why they shouldn’t.

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Three months after Democrats and Republicans condemned the rhetoric that preceded the January 6th riot on Capitol Hill, House Democrat Maxine Waters has come to the Twin Cities to vent her own dangerous rhetoric. Speaking to protesters at the Derek Chauvin trial, Waters demanded that the jury deliver a guilty verdict—“or else.”

Waters not only demanded that the jury convict Chauvin, but added that she wanted a guilty verdict for “first-degree murder,” which isn’t even among the charges Chauvin faces. Waters then exhorted protesters to “stay in the streets” and “fight for justice”—loaded language in a city that exploded into rioting last year, and where unrest following a police shooting is ongoing in a nearby suburb.

House Minority Leaders Kevin McCarthy has demanded Nancy Pelosi take action against Waters for inciting violence in Minneapolis. If Congress wants us to take inciting rhetoric seriously, then they need to stop exporting it to our communities.

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President Biden has formally established a commission to consider adding seats to the Supreme Court.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer – both appointed by a Democratic president – have opposed it. But the left is angry. They don’t like the Supreme Court’s rulings, so they want to change its composition.

It’s called “court packing,” from when—in 1937—Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt tried and failed to do it.

President Biden must have forgotten he once called the idea of expanding the Supreme Court “a terrible, terrible mistake” and “boneheaded.”

And make no mistake: It is a terrible idea. Any politically driven effort to change the Court’s structure will only reinforce the perception that our judicial branch is guided by politics, rather than by legal principle. Over time, a packed court would surely erode confidence in the rule of law—which is indispensable to governing a free people.

America’s Supreme Court has had 9 justices since 1869. It should stay that way.

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The GOP should stop accepting financing from its Fortune 500 adversaries.

If former California State Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh was correct—that "money is the mother's milk of politics”—then it's time for the national Republican Party to wean itself from the milk that comes from nation's largest corporations.
Whether over North Carolina's bathroom law, Georgia's election law, or D.C.'s general profligacy, Big Business has time and again identified itself as an opponent of equal justice before the law, financial sanity and even biological reality.

The GOP should respond in kind by explicitly and publicly declaring it will neither seek nor accept campaign contributions from Fortune 500 companies' C-suite executives or corporate PACs.

Morally and politically, how does the GOP solidify its brand as the party of working people who play by the rules while seeking underwriting from those for whom every rule is subject to a rewrite?

The Main Street counterrevolution America needs comes only when the GOP stops giving and taking Wall Street and K Street handouts.

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The good guys won one at the Supreme Court last Friday—in a big victory for religious liberty rights.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court held that California must lift its pandemic restrictions on in-home religious gatherings. The Court said the state was violating its citizen’s religious liberty by forbidding religious meetings with people from more than three families.

But there are two points worth remembering here. First, think about how far we’ve allowed our most basic freedoms to erode. In a state with only a 1.6% covid positivity rate, people had to go to the Supreme Court of the United States—just to reassert the right to hold private prayer meetings in their own homes . . . something that has always been understood to be a foundational freedom here.

Second, consider that this liberty was secured by only a single justice’s vote.

We have work ahead to keep the flame of freedom burning in America.

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