Weinstein misstates the Constitutional restriction on the establishment of religion, such that his initial salvo: "unconstitutional proselytizing," is incorrect as a matter of law.  It is not unconstitutional under the First Amendment for any citizen to state his opinion on religious matters or proselytize about his religious beliefs.

Perino presupposes that most Americans follow politics as carefully as she does.  They don't.  If Dr. Carson is on Hannity one day and Levin the next and Fox News Channel that night, we're lucky if he's heard by the regular working person even once.  Most people won't have seen him at all.  So having him out on the stump, making his points persuasively and coherently, doesn't subject him to overexposure.  If he went on Letterman, the View, and Leno on consecutive days, then yeah, maybe he'd need to dial it back.  Until then, let him fight the good fight and pray more people eventually hear him and heed his words.

I like Ms. Perino, but she needs to get out of the Northeast and spend more time in her native Wyoming.

I named my son William F. Preston.

That is sad.  It is not only inspirational; it is beautifully done and obviously well-narrated.  You're right.  The combination of God and a bunch of men, women, and children from Red States... no wonder the mainstream media types didn't like it.

After 25 years of practicing law in a city, I now live on a ranch and have learned to operate a backhoe, a bulldozer, and various tractors, chainsaws and other tools. It beats the heck out of practicing law, I can tell you that.  So I appreciate this ad immensely and, because I didn't watch the Super Bowl, I appreciate your posting it here on Ricochet.

I'm curious whether it was named in the various lists of "Best Super Bowl Ads" or whether it was panned by the liberal media types...

The answer to your question Michael is that merely because individuals choose to incorporate a business as a for-profit entity to avail themselves of limited liability protection (to encourage investment in the business) should not disqualify those individuals from the Constitutional right to freedom of religion.  When you consider a company such as Hobby Lobby, which is wholly-owned by a devoutly Christian family which has built and makes decisions for the corporate entity, the question should be how can the federal government impose a requirement on the Green family's business when the government knows the requirement will offend their, and many others', religious conscience.  Of course the answer is that the federal government is using this requirement to diminish the "freedom of religion" by limiting its applicability to, essentially, houses of worship.  Lest they would have found one of the many other, easier ways to assure that all women have universal access to abortifacients at no cost. 

Willow Spring:  Thank you.  I will endeavor to do so.

I'm a conservative.  Romney wasn't my first choice.  But he's convinced me he is correct on the issues that matter, he's impressed me as a principled leader, and I've been steadily and solidly supporting him. 

But for me, here's what matters--the GOP needs to do well in this election so that the reform Republican party will quickly become a force to be reckoned with.  Romney is not necessarily in that group, but it's important that we win this election so the reformers get traction.  Ryan and his ideas need to be on a national stage.  The GOP's comers--Rubio, Ted Cruz,  Bob McDonnell, Scott Walker, Nikki Haley, Kelly Ayotte, Christie, Jindal, etc.--need to have influence in an administration.  To me, this diverse group of men and women are not "right wing."  They're bright and principled reformers who care more about the state of the country than the status of their reelection.  A Romney administration would give them a better chance to introduce their ideas into the national discussion.  

Dionne probably considers them "right wing."  If that's the case, he couldn't be more wrong.

I love your point about getting out of your bubble.  I'm a city guy, but I have the good fortune of spending weeks each year in remote country hunting all types of birds.  I'm reasonably handy when trucks break down or we have the inevitable flat tire, gun malfunction, or bird dog issue (porcupine retaliation, skunk retaliation, or barbed wire laceration).  But when we have a serious problem like a broken axle 25 miles from the nearest one stop-sign town, I am worthless.  But the guys we're hunting with--ranchers or guys who made their career working with their hands--never fail to amaze and impress me.  They weld, they take x parts and make them fit y purpose.  They work hard and won't quit until they get it right.  We could all learn a lot from guys like these.  Watching them work, I realize I'm out out of my bubble.  Thank God.

My law firm in the 1980s was a somewhat WASP-ish Midwestern corporate firm and  it was apparently an embarrassment to some in the firm that we had only one or two minorities in a 60-person firm.  It looked bad, we were told, on National Association of Law Placement forms that were filed with law schools from which we would recruit.  

Well, heck, I was from Oklahoma so I must have some Native American blood in me, right?  Well, maybe.  My paternal grandmother looked somewhat like a Native American and might have had some Delaware Indians in her background.  So they put me down as a minority, notwithstanding that I belonged to the old-line country club in town and my mother's family derived from those pesky Indian oppressors who landed in Plymouth in 1607.

Ethnic fraud indeed, but it makes for a good cocktail party story.  And I'll bet I was as Native American as Elizabeth Warren.

The thing about your idea, C.J., is that it's pretty much the way it was supposed to be when the Founders envisioned and started the joint.  

This is a huge issue as we try to fight back against the tyranny of the state and re-establish some measure of respect for the right of private property.  Kelo was one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever, as it expanded the state's right against property owners exponentially.  Now it is not just the state that can take property for public use; the state can now take property for the benefit of private third party that promises economic development.  If we lose the River Center case, then we've lost both key elements of the Takings Clause.  It needn't necessarily be a state's taking for the benefit of the public and the state needn't pay just compensation--what the property is worth on the market.  It is a huge issue indeed and one worth fighting for, irrespective of what Fake John Galt thinks.  Good luck to the unlikely trio of Epstein, Meese, and Tribe.

How about Secretary of Health and Human Services in a Romney administration?  You think that would give the leftists heartburn?  I can't think of a better antidote to the unscrupulous Ms. Sebelius.  

It's astounding that Ms. Dowd is given such wide circulation and a seat on any editorial staff of any newspaper anywhere.  In this one piece, she refers to Alito as "insufferable," to Thomas as a liar, to Roberts as a "crimson partisan" and to Scalia as "venomous."   She takes gratuitous cheap shots at prior Court decisions without any background or context and then bootstraps those cheap shots into additional character attacks (the Court anointed Bush in Bush v. Gore and Bush then invaded and occupied Iraq).  It's despicable.  

The real partisanship on the Court is found among the liberals.  It became clear that despite the strength of the plaintiffs' oral argument and the inability of the Solicitor to state a compelling argument for the law either under the Commerce Clause or the taxing power (is it a tax or a penalty or some hybrid?), the liberal justices were "playing Twister" (in Dowd's words) to minimize the law's failures and "salvage" it.  They will vote to uphold the law as a political matter without considering its impact on individual liberty or its dangerous precedent.

This case has also given us a new term: "White-Hispanic," which was the MSM's fallback position when it was disclosed that Mr. Zimmerman was actually (at least half) Hispanic.  The term White-Hispanic had apparently never been used in the media before, but when there's  a great narrative ("Great White Defendant") to which the facts don't fit, the MSM will merely improvise and do the best it can do.  Thus, a new term is born.

I like Rubio and his ability to answer questions directly and concisely without resorting to lame talking points.  And we may need a decent percentage of Latino votes in Florida, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada to win those swing states.  Ryan has great policy ideas and is reasonably likable, but his highest and best use might be in a Cabinet position or remaining in Congress.  I also like Portman, who understands budget and entitlement spending issues better than most.  

But I have a question:  there must have been some reason that Tim Pawlenty dropped out of the race after the Iowa straw poll (!?) and threw his support behind Romney early on.  Does anyone think he a possibility?