Commanders?

 

Well, I guess they couldn't be the Washington Football Team forever.

Spotify don't need him around anyhow*

I don't think Joe Rogan should be posting crap about COVID 19 on Spotify, but I have to be somewhat amused by Neil Young's actions and what has followed, including Joni Mitchell following in his wake.  I suspect it's largely:

Boomers:  What's Spotify?

Generation Jones:  Oh, thank goodness, at last we don't have to hear Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. .  . any chance James Taylor will pull his music too?

Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Y:  Neil who?

Footnotes:

*Apologies to Lynryd Skynyrd whose anthem Sweet Home Alabama contained these lyrics, regarding Neil Young:

Well I heard Mister Young sing about her

Well I heard ol' Neil put her down

Well I hope Neil Young will remember

A southern man don't need him around anyhow.

FWIW, I like the ballad Sweet Home Alabama, and Neil Young actually acknowledged that he himself thought he'd gone too far with his song Southern Man, but Neil was on the right side of history on that one for sure, and he probably is here too.  I can't actually imagine Sweet Home Alabama being released today, and like most songs, probably nobody really pays very much attention to its lyrics.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgiest Part XXVIII. The juvenile or nearly so femme fatale edition. Plus, the example of monarchy, Robbing trains, Expats and politics, M&M's, Tucker Carson and Carson Tucker.

Prince Andrew stripped of military titles and duties

I don't really know what his duties actually were, but whatever they were, he no longer has them.  Nor does he have his military titles any longer.

This, of course, because he's been sued by Virginia Giuffre who alleges that he sexually abused her, when she was a minor, age 17, and part of the creepy sexual net that Jeffrey Epstein had going.

By all accounts, Giuffre lead a horrific early life, having been a sexual abuse victim before that period even.  Following prior horrors at age 14, she was reunited with her father, who worked at Mar-A-Lago. . . yes that Mar-A-Lago. She was found there by Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein's procurer.  She claims she was supplied by Epstein to Prince Andrew.

We should be careful not to assume that Giuffre is telling the truth.  Her story has changed over time, and she also claims that Epstein supplied her to Alan Dershowitz, which I find unlikely for some reason.  Anyhow, she does show up in a photo with the Prince, and the fact that he wasn't able to get the lawsuit she's filed in New York dismissed was apparently the last straw for the Royal Family.

Anyhow, this story is interesting for a couple of reasons.

One thing is, I think, that it shows the Royal Family, indeed all Royal Families, just need to go. They're beyond being an anachronism. What purpose do they really serve?  Wrapping the whole thing up with the UK, which itself is becoming a bit frayed at the margins, upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II seems like a fitting and dignified ending to an institution that, frankly, has frequently been undignified.

On that, followers of certain lines of thought on Reddit will frequently find really radical traditionalist arguing for the return of monarchy pretty much everywhere, often stating that it establishes as set of (Christian) values for a nation.  Apparently, such people are wholly ignorant of real monarchies.

If Prince Andrew did bed Virginia Giuffre, and I don't know that he did, it would have been wrong on every level, but it would have been pretty much par for the course for the male members of royal families throughout history.  Finding a King, for example, that didn't have courtesans in addition to a wife is, well, difficult.  The upper classes always knew this.  The peasantry didn't, all the time, except when they did, and then they tended not to care too much, as monarchy was relatively irrelevant to their real lives.

What would Alfred the Great think?  Well, while Alfred married once and had all legitimate children, he probably would have found Andrew's conduct rather the norm for princes.

Other creepy groomers

I've never heard of Sondra Theodore, but apparently she was one of Hugh Hefner's various concubines, oops, um, prostitutes, . . . um, oh, uh "girlfriends". That's right, girlfriends.

Oh heck, concubines.

It's sort of the Epstein story, and sort of not.  Basically, he started . . . well. . .when she was 19.  He was 50.

That's creepy, but she was an adult.  She can't really complain that much, as basically, well, she was prostituting herself to Hefner, like many others. She was an adult, albeit a young one, which Giuffre was not.

It does get creepier, however, as apparently Hefner, one of the architects of the destruction of the moral society, used her as a procurer for additional concubines. . um, prostitutes, or whatever, um bedmates, for her perversions.

Should we feel sorry for her?

As a human, certainly.  Indeed, we should pray for her redemption, which hopefully has arrived.  And, in the Catholic tradition and moral thought, even for Hefner's, which in no way reduces the path of destroyed lives, and indeed destroyed souls, he left in his disgusting wake.  We may be in a period of reckoning, but we have a long ways to go before Hefner's damaging legacy is in the historical dustbin, as opposed to Hefner himself, who is, and his instrument of destruction, the print edition of Playboy.

Speaking of self-promotion through photographic concubinage. . . 

Not Theodore, or Jenner.

Kylie Jenner reaches 300,000,000 viewers on Instagram

That's a lot of  views.

They aren't viewing her for her vast intellect, although I don't doubt that she has one.

More particularly, that's a lot of cheesecake views.  Jenner is, really, a modern pinup and a famous one.

At least she isn't 17.

Or 19.

But the image she portrays isn't exactly of a mature women either, now is it.

This cast of characters

May we say it?

Ooo, ick.

Hefner, Trump, Cosby, Prince Andrew.  

Blech.

All men with reprehensible relationships with women to some degree, although in fairness Prince Andrew, at least so far, has the least icky, assuming the latest accusations do not prove to be true.

And all celebrated and powerful, and to some degree, save for Andrew, still celebrated.

The Train Robbers

Thieves are robbing Union Pacific trains in Los Angeles to such an extent that . . .

 the railroad is considering ceasing to serve the city.

News footage shows the rail line littered with the packages of thousands of stolen items.

Let's admit it, Los Angeles is simply beyond repair.

California darned near is.  The Golden State, after decades of financial problems and after decades of unrestrained population growth, ended up just where you'd think a locality featuring those things would.

Los Angeles, as we recognize it, dates back to a Catholic mission founded there in 1771, which was founded by St. Junipero Serra.  Like all things moral, he's under attack in California today, which is part of the reason that California in general is the titanic mess it is.  In 1841 it was made the capital of Alta California.  It was one of California's premier cities for decades.

World War Two victory parade featuring Californian George S. Patton.

Hollywood is one of its suburbs.

It's all a mess now, as is California in general. And because California is an overgrown bloated festering sinkhole, its population with means, which is much of it, is leaving the state.  In the last census, California lost population.  This is a problem for the rest of the country, as its fleeing residents tend to bring California with them, wherever they go.

Expats and politics

In  the state's politics, I frankly wonder to what extent that we're hearing the voice of expats.  More specifically, a lot of the current political tone doesn't resemble the sort of tone Wyoming used to have.

Wyoming's politics have traditionally been unique.  They've been conservative in a quasi libertarian way but not populist.  The state had a strong, if minority, Democratic Party up until the 1990s.  The ethos of the state tended to be "I don't care what you are doing as long as you don't ask me to approve of it".

Things have really changed.

The state's politics always tend to show some influence of recent migrants when they swing in, in numbers.  Usually they swing back out, in numbers as well.  It'll be interesting to see what happens as oil starts to wind down here, which it will, but at any rate, you would think we'd be seeing some result of that exodus now. 

Of course, we're really not for a variety of reasons, one of which was COVID.  While I hate to admit it, the pandemic brought in a population that sort of followed in the wake of and added to the strong southern influences that oil booms have tended to.  This has brought in the new populist politics and it's taken over the local GOP.

Or maybe it's just the times.

The state has always featured a lot of near state immigration.  You don't have to go too far to find people who are from the neighboring states.  But it is the case that in recent years things have been different.  You'll run into people who will proudly proclaim, "I'm from California and . . . " emphasizing how they left the state where they made their money and lives, and fled it to come here.  

Economic boosters often fail to realize what this sort of thing can mean.  People like to complain about what Colorado has become, for instances, but Colorado campaigned to become that.

One interesting undercurrent to this is that the state has experienced its third wave of Hispanic immigration, or fourth really.  The first Hispanic immigrants came into the state from New Mexico in the 1840s to work for the Army as builders near Ft. Laramie.  They stayed and farmed, but for some reason their farms on the Mexican Hills near there didn't establish a permanent population.  

The second wave did, however, with that brining in a group of New Mexican Hispanics who worked in the rail industry and shepherding in from the 30s through the 50s.  Their descendants are still here.  The next group came in during the 70s during the first big wave of illegal immigration, although not all of them were illegal by any means.  Many of them left, but some stayed.  And then there's the current wave that has been going on for the past fifteen years or so.

This population is demographically significant, and there's no reason to believe that its Republican.  It'd be a natural Democratic demographic, but the Wyoming Democratic Party has become so small that it tends to be populated only by WASP leftists anymore, who can't really seem to actually see Hispanic voters.  They instead tend to imagine the entire world as if it's Greenwich Village for some reason.  This will become obvious, again, when the Democrats finally start to nominate some candidates for the 2022 election, as they'll all be white, probably, and at least one of them will surely check all the current WASP Left boxes.

A smart Democratic Party would pick up where Lynette Grey Bull left off and try to test the field a bit with a candidate who reflects a broader base.  Fremont County, due to the Reservation, retains a real Democratic Party.  If that party reached out to the now statistically significant Hispanic community, which probably is a little scared with all the rhetoric it may be hearing from the more hard right elements of the  GOP, it might be able to capture a surprising number of voters.  The candidate would have to cross over to capture moderate Republicans as well, but the GOP might aid it in doing that. A party that claims Liz Cheney is a "RINO" is doing a good job of that already.

Cement structures at Ft. Laramie, built by migrants from New Mexico.

M&M's

The Mars candy of fame, which was battle born, has caused a flap by changing the footgear of its cute cartoon version of itself.  Or at least the footgear of one of the cartoon figures.

Forrest Mars Sr. got the idea for M&M's from Smarties, a British candy that was popular in the Spanish Civil War for the same reason that M&M's are, their shell keeps them from being a gooey mess.  The first big customer for the 1940 introduced candy was the U.S. Army.

At some point in the last few decades, the company introduced advertising that featured talking cartoon M&M's.  A female M&M was among them, wearing go-go boots.  Now she's going to wear tennis shoes, in an effort to update the character and be more inclusive.

Of course, in an era when everything is deemed to have a massive sexual and political meaning, this has caused a flap.  It's been commented on by, who else, Tucker Carson.

American soldier giving candy to French girls, July 4, 1944, when candy had no overt gender or political message.

Journalism?

I had to look up Tucker Carson to try to figure out why he's such a big deal.  I still don't know, although his bio read is a little wild.

Journalism, and by that I mean journalism everywhere, has always had its personalities and wild characters, so much of the "decline in journalism" commentary is actually wrong.  It's a return to its status quo ante.  After all, it isn't as if the drawing that Frederic Remington submitted of a Spanish officer detaining a stripped Cuban woman was drawn from life.

In this, however, I think the Press has followed the same track as the law.  By the early 20th Century the institution was disgusted with its own conduct, as the law was with it, and worked to reform itself. By the teens, it was already doing better than it had in the late 19th Century. By World War Two it very much was, and when television came on, and we had only three networks, the news was presented in a very dignified manner.

Well, cable television and then the internet ended that, and we returned to the days when you bought your journalism from somebody who you know is reliably likely to have a more extreme version of your own opinion.  The Carson's and Maddow's are good examples of that.  And it dovetails the decline in legal professionalism perfectly.

Pitty poor Carson Tucker, an individual with the same names, but in reverse order.  He's a baseball layer with the Arizona Complex League Guardians.

Carson's father was, for a time, a gonzo journalist, of which this is the symbol.

Oops

Reporting that Justice Sotomayor asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a mask surprised us.  It is false.  While we may sometimes disagree about the law, we are warm colleagues and friends.

Justice Sotomayor's and Justice Gorsuch's joint statement on NPR reporting Gorsuch was refusing to wear a mask in spite of Sotomayor's request.

I like, I'll not, NPR's reporting, but I'm not keen on its Supreme Court reporting.

The Press and the Court

 Almost all of the commentary on Whole Women's Health et al v. Jackson, is wrong.

That' the case which dealt with the new Texas law restricting abortion in Texas.

The case, because of its legal posture, finds the Court in the position of an appellate court, rather than the court of last resort.  

The case doesn't rule on the legality of abortion under Roe v. Wade. 

The case isn't on whether the law passes constitutional muster.

It's on standing to sue.

In that sense, it's actually a victory for abortion proponents, although you wouldn't know that from the commentary. The case holds that sovereign immunity precludes organizations and entities from suing government officials to preclude enforcement, but private individuals, who do not share immunity, can be sued.

So, contrary to all the jaw flapping, it's not about anyone having "legalized" an end run around the law in any fashion. The law can in fact still be challenged.

@#$@#$! The United States Supreme Court comes to the predictable, and correct, decision in Mahanoy Area School District, v. B. L., a Minor

I'm a bit surprised by the amount of attention that this decision has engendered, but the times seem like that.

Mahanoy Area School District, v. B. L., a Minor

I've mentioned this here before, but B. L. a vocal minor, posted a "vulgar" Snapchat when she was miffed over her school's cheerleading team, in spite of her status as a cheerleader.  She didn't make the varsity squad, and replied with some vulgarities about that. She made it the following year.  

In response to such rude behavior, she was suspended from her less august cheerleading position for a year.  

Her overprotective parents sued.

This was an out of school declaration and she suffered a government sanction for it, no matter how minor.  Pretty clear this was a violation of her right to free speech and pretty clear the school was doing what it had to do, in the context of its duties.

So, the result?  M'eh.

The surprising thing, to my view, is that there was a dissent.  Relying on a more traditional reading of the law, and perhaps on more traditional times, Justice Thomas thought the doctrine of in loco parentis applies and she got a constitutionally sanctioned dope slap.

So what can we take from this.

Well, your out of school free speech rights are pretty broad, which we already knew.

They really should be broad.

And modern technology has allowed the spontaneous rude behaviors of juveniles, both the juvenile in age and in mental outlook, to spread far more than it used to, or should.

And some parents are willing to sue over nothing. Cheerleading?  Seriously?

Oh well.  

I'm sure, of course, that this will receive a lot of press of a varied nature. Some will hail this example of parental protective largess as a great civil rights victory, which it really isn't. On MSNBC it's probably being wildly celebrated as if BL is Malcolm X and a new dawn of libertine progressive culture had taken root in America.  In contrast, Newsmax is probably using it as proof that Blues Clues makes people homosexual. 

Again, m'eh.

Well, I hope she does well in the future, doesn't take her parents excess to much to heart, and that she isn't inspired by all of this to become a lawyer.

Blog Mirror: #FREEBRITNEY AND THE TILNEY TRAP

 #FREEBRITNEY AND THE TILNEY TRAP

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part 15. Rising posts, Billie Eilish Interests, "Romeo and Juliet", Bill and Melinda, Kardashian statutes, Rest Stops, Not taking a bath, and big cats.

I wonder what it was?

This trailing post series sometimes makes it up to the top post for the past week, but the last one did in less than six hours.  Here it is:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgist Part 14. The Industrial Revolution and Child Care and other musings.

I wonder what shot it up so fast?  The title issue was the Biden economic infrastructure proposal and its items on child care, but way down in the text Billie Eilish being on the cover of British Vogue was discussed.

It had to be one or the other, the two being oddly related in a way.

Eilish commentary

One thing I didn't note in depth is that Eilish apparently made the following comments:

One message she is sending is that there's a lot of "sexual misconduct" in the entertainment industry. This isn't news, but at least she's saying something.  Her comment to British Vogue basically read as an entitlement of sexual immorality, which would actually be a species of real progress coming from that quarter.  Perhaps its not entirely surprising, however, given that her generation has pretty much had it with things Boomer, of which the Sexual Revolution is part.

She noted it that this problem include the abuse of boys.  Something rarely noted.

"Romeo and Juliet"

A post that predictably shot right up was the recent one on the 2022 Wyoming Congressional election.  In that series I track what's going on, but a post regarding what occurred in Florida in 1983 is what shot it to the top, where it remains.

People who are interested in the story can read it there, but what it entails is far right, pro Trump, anti Cheney, very loud Laramie County state Senator Anthony Bouchard having been in a sexual relationship with a 14 year old when he was an 18 year old.  As the story involves sex, and a scandal, and  sex scandal, and tragedy, it predicable went right to the top.

There are a lot of peculiar angles to this, to say the least.  Anyhow, I got around to finally watching the video that Bouchard released on this and I have to say that I'm singularly unimpressed.  Indeed, the opposite is true.  

For starters, Bouchard captions the video as "taking on" the "fake news media". There's nothing fake about this story, however.  He did exactly what he's accused of.  He doesn't really even come out acknowledging that there's something wrong about an 18 year old screwing a 14 year old, at least not in the four minutes of it I watched.  I didn't watch the rest.  He does give himself, and his late wife, credit for not aborting the baby, and I'd give them credit for that too, however.

Anyhow, somehow we've gone from a situation in which people generally acknowledge their faults fairly seriously, even if only when caught, to sort of bypassing them and blaming them on the media. The media isn't prefect and I think its biased, but Bouchard, in getting ahead of this story, didn't really get ahead of it.

Quite a few people are making comparison to the news stories about Matt Gaetz who came out with the absurd line that he always treated his trysts well.  I don't know if the allegations about him and minors are true, but it used to be the case that, as the conservative party, the Republicans stood for morality.  Clearly that's a mixed bag now, which I suppose is proof we've sunk so low in the Sexual Revolution that there isn't any.

Or maybe it tells us something about current populist politics.

Screen Free Week

This just happened recently.

I had to learn about it from a cartoon, which I had to learn on line, as my local newspaper doesn't publish a Monday print edition, only an electronic one.

Of course, I didn't observe it, but then I really couldn't.  So much of what I do is on line anymore, even though I really wish it wasn't.

Bill and Melinda Gates

They announced their divorce on Twitter.

I don't know anything about them, but it's a real surprise.  She's a Catholic.  He's not, I believe, but had supported her and participated in their parish.

No details were provided at first, and of course we aren't entitled to any.  It's disappointing no matter what you view on them is really.  Indeed, given their vast wealth and respective ages, I thought at first that it really doesn't make any sense at all. If they weren't getting along, was my thought, they probably should just have separated.

Well it turns out that Gates too has a bit of a roving eye.  Sheesh.

Statuesque

The statuesque Kim Kardashian, the most famous member of the most famous Armenian American family, famous for being famous, is in a bit of hot water for importing a Roman statute.

It may be just me, but I think there's something deep inside the half Armenian members of this family that's harkening them back to the old country and old ways of life.

False Positive

Demographers are noting that the US birth rate is below replacement level, a good thing, but the US is hardly at the point where its population is falling, which would also be a good thing, due to a massive unsustainable immigration rate.

Reporting on this topic is always bizarre.  There's only so much room before a population negatively impacts the environment and itself.  And the concept of a "demographic winter" in which there aren't enough youngsters to support a benighted retired population is completely false, being based on a completely static technological situation which in reality has never existed.  Indeed, it's pretty clear that our technology has advanced to the point its putting people out of work.

Riding the elephant to death

Donald Trump has launched a website entitled From the Desk of Donald J. Trump.

Nobody seems to be paying that much attention to it, however.  Frankly, the fact that it doesn't burst out onto Twitter, where he's banned, means you have to take the effort to subscribe to it, which only the really convinced are going to to.

Belgium Advances

A Belgian farmer found a border marker between his country and France annoying so he moved it.

He's been asked to move it back.

Bathing less often

The New York Times reports that people bathed less during the Coronavirus lockdowns and quite a few of them do not plan to return to more frequent bathing.

Folks actually probably don't need to bathe as often as they do, which has been known for a long time.  But we've already crossed the bar on slovenliness in the US so this probably isn't a good thing.

The Eyes Of Texas

At some point, people are getting upset as its fun to have righteous anger over something, as long as it isn't something that doesn't really matter. The Eyes of Texas flap is just one such example.

Tensions boil at UT-Austin over "The Eyes of Texas", where students are refusing to work and a man with a gun crashed a virtual event

A student group was hosting an event with a UT-Austin professor about the song when a man entered the online Zoom call with his face covered, holding what appeared to be a large gun.

Meanwhile, real problems go unaddressed. . . 

Temporary Relief

Reopening of the Rest Stops

 

Governor Gordon Authorizes Funding to Temporarily Reopen 9 Rest Areas for the Summer Travel Season

 

CHEYENNE, Wyo. –  Governor Mark Gordon has directed the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) and Wyoming Office of Tourism (WOT) to partner to temporarily reopen and operate nine previously closed rest areas for at least the duration of the 2021 tourist season.

“With the summer season just around the corner, I’m glad we will be able to reopen these facilities to travelers,” Governor Gordon said. “We are glad to have this chance to find a temporary solution.”

WYDOT and WOT along with the Governor's office will work together to secure a temporary federal funding source to allow the nine rest areas throughout the state to reopen. 

"WYDOT is extremely grateful to Governor Gordon and Director Shober for identifying new federal funds to temporarily reopen our rest areas for the tourist season," said WYDOT Director K. Luke Reiner. 

Officials closed the rest areas in June 2020 as a cost-savings measure due to budgetary shortfalls. 

 The nine rest areas include:

• Lusk on US 18
• Guernsey on US 26
• Greybull on US 16
• Moorcroft on I-90
• Star Valley on US 89
• Sundance on I-25
• Upton on US 16
• Orin Jct on I-25
• Chugwater on I-25

“Each of these nine rest areas are a valuable tourism tool, said Diane Shober, executive director of the Wyoming Office of Tourism. “Certainly, a clean facility is important to the visitor experience, but it is also a powerful marketing platform to distribute travel guides and other trip-planning resources. As travelers are stretching their legs, they are also gathering information on local events, attractions, restaurants, campgrounds and lodging, which all can lead to extended stays and increase visitor spending.”

The rest areas should reopen ahead of Memorial Day weekend.

-END-

Oh think goodness.

"It takes a big cat to eat a ton of tuna"

So went an old answer to the question "what do you know".  It doesn't seem to be around any more, but there was news about a really big cat.

Newly Identified Species of Saber-Toothed Cat Was So Big It Hunted Rhinos in America

On big cats, a tiger being kept by a felon escaped its house in Houston.  The large cat was captured and is safe, but this is the second tiger in Houston story in recent years.

What the heck?  Is Petco just out of cats in Texas?

Virtue Signaling 

NBC has cancelled broadcasting of the Golden Globes for lack of diversity.

Nobody really pays any attention to these awards anymore, but this entire flap is really virtue signaling in the extreme. An industry which closed a blind eye to sexual misconduct for years is now missed at the Hollywood foreign press, which gives the Golden Globes.  M'eh.

What might be noted, in terms of diversity, is that India has the largest film industry in the world, not the US.  And our neighbor to the south, Mexico, has had an excellent and vibrant film industry for decades.

I'm sure the Screen Actors Guild will be pointing all this out really soon, of course, even if that diminishes its perceived importance.

Bouncing

Ocasio-Cortez on Taylor Greene: 'These are the kinds of people that I threw out of bars all the time'

Greene ought to be bounced from Congress, but that's not going to happen.

I'll be clear that she's not the only detestable Congressman by any means, and neither party has a lock hold on detestable political figures.  But its pretty clear at this point that Greene is a type of live action troll.  Like Internet trolls, she runs around saying stupid stuff and doing stupid things as it gets her attention.

Don't feed the trolls.

Speaking of stupidity, here's another Greene headline:

Marjorie Taylor Green compares mask mandate to the holocaust.

Congress has the ability to refuse to seat somebody, or to boot them out if they're really over the top. Greene should be sent packing.

Yikes

Freshly Made Plutonium From Outer Space Found On Ocean Floor

The 2022 Election, Part I

What on earth?  President Biden was inaugurated just yesterday.  You can't be serious?

Yes, unfortunately we are.

Wyoming House of Representatives member Anthony Bouchard, one of  a handful of consistently hard right Republicans in the Legislature (but in a party now controlled by the hard right) announced he is running in the 2022 primary against Liz Cheney.  And amazingly he wasn't alone.

Bouchard is upset by what he feels is Cheney's failure to support former President Trump, citing her record in general.  Having said that, Bouchard was one of two Wyoming legislators calling for Cheney to be hauled in front of the legislature to account for herself prior to the insurrection.

Bouchard is from Goshen County, which is a region of the state which has produced some consistently far right Wyoming Republicans for decades.

Bouchard is joined by Bryon Eugene Keller of Cheyenne, about whom not much is known, and Pavilion Mayor Melissa Selvig, who was also critical of Cheney's vote to impeach the President.

These filings are all excessively early and it might be noted that early filings are usually marked by later failures.  For example, the Montana Governor who first announced his campaign for the 2020 election for the Presidency failed really early.  

Beyond that, the Republican Party is splitting in two.  Huge rifts already exist in the state's party and now the Trump wing of the party has been declared an anathema at the Senate level by Mitch McConnell.  Americans tend to have really short political memories and even as dramatic as recent events have been Cheney's opposition to Trump is highly unlikely to be remembered by the fall of 2022.  Indeed, Cynthia Lummis view that Trump was a poor candidate in 2016 was easily forgotten by the electorate to such an extent that she was able to embrace him in 2020.

All of which assumes that there will actually be a Republican Party in 2022.  Right now Mitch McConnell is in an open effort to expel the Trumpites from the party, which would result in the hard right of Wyoming's legislature and the leadership of the GOP with no real place to go nationally, assuming that there is only one conservative party left.  It's known that Donald Trump is considering forming a new party, with a working name of the Patriot Party, and bolting the GOP. That would be a doomed effort, but Trump's action in the last few months of his Presidency have demonstrated an astonishing degree of hubris which make his chances of starting such an effort at least 50/50.  If he does, the leadership of the state's GOP and individuals like Bouchard will really have no home in the national party at all and the split in the state party, as well as the national party, will become de facto, leading ultimately to the demise of the populist Trump camp entirely, but also leading to a greatly weakened GOP everywhere.

January 29, 2021

A rally against Liz Cheney featuring Florida freshman Congressman Matt Gaetz  and a call from Donald Trump Jr. occurred yesterday in Cheyenne.  It drew reportedly between 700 to 1,000 people which is not particularly large in context.

Attendees remain upset by Cheney's vote to impeach Donald Trump following the insurrection of several weeks ago.  According to a Trump supporting pollster Anthony Bouchard, one of several hard to alt right Wyoming figures who has registered to run against Cheney in the 2022 primary is now ahead of her in support, but such polls at this time are nearly meaningless.

Also perhaps meaningless, published comments in journals such as the Tribune overwhelmingly support Cheney.

While it is difficult to tell at this stage, there's some reason to suspect that what this event really was is a Trump mission to explore the formation of a third party.  If that's the case, the thesis would be that Wyoming is Trump's strongest base of support and if a party could be formed here it would be part of a springboard to the creation of a party to replace the GOP.  The theory suffers in a variety ways, including that Trump support is really that strong in the Wyoming base, as opposed to the transient base, the two not being the same.  It likewise would suffer from the assumption that Wyoming, which has fewer voters than Dayton Ohio, really could amount to a strong base of support for such an effort.

Gaetz insulted not only Liz Cheney, but Dick Cheney, an odd approach to things by an outsider such as Gaetz in a state where such speakers will draw criticism for that reason alone, and for the fact that Dick Cheney has long been one of the local GOP's political icons.

In other news, Ronna McDaniel, chairman of the GOP, stated this week when asked about supporting Trump for a 2024 run, the following:

The party has to stay neutral. I'm not telling anybody to run or not to run in 2024. That's going to be up to those candidates going forward. What I really do want to see him do, though, is help us win back majorities in 2022.

Given McDaniel's diehard support for Trump up until literally that moment, that's not only interesting, but a pretty clear signal that a departure from the Trump wing of the party in the party's leadership is well underway.

February 2, 2021

In advance of a House conference on assignments coming up this week for the GOP, Senate Minority Whip Mitch McConnell gave loud praise to Liz Cheney.   By doing so, he waded even deeper into the developing rift in the GOP and praised Cheney for her bravery.

Ten of Wyoming's 23 counties have seen their country GOP organization issue censures of Cheney for her vote to impeach.  A few more counties are set to consider them.  Natrona County rejected one, however, and letters to media, to the extent we've seen them, have been much more on Cheney's side than against her.

February 4, 2021

Liz Cheney survived a vote regarding her leadership position in the House of Representatives, retaining her position as the number 3 in the Republican hierarchy.  She survived it pretty handily, 145 to 61.

Still, its disturbing that a vote of conscience would lead over 1/3d of the Republicans in Congress to oppose her, and its emblematic of a rift in the GOP which its leadership has not gotten under control and which threatens to split it into two parties. The interesting thing here is that this likely shows us what that split would mean, party wise, if it were to soon occur.  The GOP would go from nearly controlling the House to two much smaller minority parties, but the traditional GOP would still be the larger of the two.

On this story, Mitch McConnell of the Senate spoke earlier in the week in Cheney's favor.  John Barrasso came to her support as well. But Cynthia Lummis did not, instead noting that the House was going to do whatever it was going to do.

That was as much as an attack on Cheney by Lummis, and its noteworthy that it seems that some bad blood between the two goes back to this past election.  It seems Cheney was seriously contemplating, and perhaps had decided upon, a Senate race.  Lummis did contact her before announcing, and then announced before Cheney had made up her mind.  It took some time for Cheney to come around to announcing that she was running to retain her House seat.  Reading between the lines, it appears as if Cheney had more or less decided to run for the Senate and Lummis jumped the gun on her.  

Doing so would have been fair.  Running for office is running for office.  But some lasting animosity seems to exist.

February 5, 2021

Because I have no other thread to put it in, and because I don't want to start another one, I'll note here that the state central Republican organization voted to censure Elizabeth Cheney yesterday for her vote to impeach Donald Trump. The resolution apparently references Antifa and BLM as instigators at the insurrection that gave rise to this, which is completely false.

Cheney is the third Republican figure censured by the committee in a year.

The GOP here is now firmly set to split.  My guess is that by the fall of November 22 it will be firmly two parties in practice, although perhaps not de jure, which it nearly is now.

February 18, 2021

Perennial extreme Republican candidate, Rex Rammell, a veterinarian originally from Idaho who is on the extreme right, is running for Governor again.

Rammell is fixated on trying to take the Federal lands in Wyoming away from the Federal government, a darling position of the extreme right in Wyoming which is detested by the vast majority of Wyomingites.  He lost last time, and lost in his prior runs for office, and he'll lose again.

February 19, 2021

Anthony Bouchard is in the news but not for his campaign against Cheney, but rather because the Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce has fired a salvo at him related to the 2020 election.

Bouchard is a central figure in something called the Wyoming Gun Owners Association, a firearms rights organization to the right of the NRA.  The Chamber of Commerce is accusing the organization of suing "dark money" in the 2020 campaign.  The head of the chamber stated to the Press in Cheyenne that:

During Anthony’s election in Laramie County last year, he was saying some things about his opponent that were outright lies. . . That’s illegal in Wyoming law. We saw a number of issues, so we called a bunch of attorneys that were involved with the chamber and asked them them to look into it.

What the chamber is accusing the association of is acting as a lobbying group without disclosing donors.  It's sent the issue over to the AG's office.  

The association is reacting in spectacular fashion.  I won't try to quote them here, but you can look it on up on their page.  Bouchard himself accused the Chamber of trying to get the organization to disclose "gun owners" names, when of course it wants campaign donors names disclosed.  The head of the Chamber replied that Bouchard's statement was "100% false" and a "lie" on his Facebook page.

This plays out in the context of the 2020 and 2022 elections in that Laramie County, where Cheyenne is located had a traditionally run county GOP organization whereas Bouchard is from the hard right Trump wing.  Where that presently stands is unclear as Laramie County voted to censure Cheney.  In any event, Bouchard's supporters and the organization will see this as a politically motivated attack and are accordingly reacting in that fashion.  It's interesting to note that they point out that the Attorney General is "appointed", which is true, as there is a bill in the legislature right now to change that position to being an elective office. Bouchard is one of the sponsors of that bill .While that is no doubt unrelated to this matter, it's probably that hard right members of the legislature have been upset by Governor Gordon's declination to join in with Texas on that state's doomed post election suit.

March 5, 2021

Hard right Casper legislator Chuck Gray announced he is also running against Liz Cheney.

Gray's move is interesting in that he and Bouchard tend to be fellow travelers in the legislature and GOP and they're now effectively running against each other for the same section of the GOP's votes, which means that there's a strong chance that the GOP hard right will split its vote among the two leaving Cheney in the poll position no matter how many votes the hard right candidates draw. This may particularly be the case as with Gray entering the race there's a strong chance that other hard righters are pondering doing the same thing.

This may explain why the GOP is now proposing to change its candidate selection process to require a runoff between the top two vote getters if neither gets 50% of the vote.  That would suggest that the GOP, whose leadership has gone over to the hard right in Wyoming, understands the risks but is unable to restrain its candidates from running when that situation is created.  Seemingly missed in that suggestion is that the primary races, which are effectively party elections, are paid for by the State, so the GOP is suggesting that the taxpayers pick up the tab for an extra election when that occurs.

We'll likely see more hard right candidates announce prior to the primary cutoff date next year.  Chances are high that hard right politicians, aware that they really don't reflect the majority views in the state or party, are aware that right now seems to be their moment in the sun.  By 2024 the moment may have permanently passed.

Indeed, this is likely the start of their passing.  Chuck Gray ran against incumbent Thomas Lockhart in his house district for the first time in 2014 and was fairly trounced in the primary by Lockhart.  He ran again, however, in 2016 when Lockhart retired and the GOP  competitor to the district was widely perceived to be left of center.  He drew competition again in 2018 but retained his seat and he had no Republican competition in 2020.  By running for Congress he's opening his seat in the legislature, which will almost certainly be filled by a candidate who is much more of a centrist.  Indeed, his large Casper district includes a lot of economic diversity and its not a natural fit for a hard right candidate.

Bouchard provides another example.  Bouchard first ran for office in 2012 and was defeated in the primary by incumbent Senator Wayne Johnson, although only narrowly.  In 2014 he ran for the House and was handily defeated in the primary by the incumbent.  In 2016 he very narrowly won the primary for his Senate seat when Johnson retired, and then won the general election with 52% of the vote which was remarkable as a write in independent took 48% of the vote.

All of this goes to suggest that in spite of the insurgency of the alt right in the GOP right now, it's grasp on the party is thin.  With Gray running for Congress he will not be able to run for the House and by 2022 chances are high that much of the current political tempest will have passed.  Cheney is unlikely to lose her seat, but the hard right candidates that leave their seats to challenge her are unlikely to be able to regain theirs once they give them up.  And because the GOP leadership is likely to be an opponent of Cheney's next fall its likely to get a bruising as a result following the election.

March 7, 2021

Directly asked by Chuck Todd on Meet the Press this morning, Wyoming Senator John Barrasso declared his support in the 2022 election for Liz Cheney, something that must be at least a little deflating for those now lining up to oppose her.

He also declared his support for Lisa Murkowski, putting him directly contrary to former President Trump.

April 1, 2021

Perennial candidate Rex Rammell, who is running for Governor in 2022, but who will lose, is facing a trial for failure to have four horses that were branded go across state lines.  He's challenging the brand inspection laws in a separate suit, which he'll lose, on the basis that they're unconstitutional.

April 15, 2021

A spokesman for former President Donald Trump announced that he is will be endorsing an opponent to Liz Cheney for the 2022 Wyoming House race.  Trump, or whomever works for him, or both, are weighing the current contenders.

While its too early to really predict the outcome of this, and 2022 is a long ways from now politically, Liz Cheney will retain her seat.

May 4, 2021

Former President Trump and Liz Cheney exchanged barbs yesterday by Twitter.  In them, Trump claimed that Cheney was extremely far behind in the polls.  I haven't seen any polls, but I very much doubt that and I'd give Cheney's contenders next to no chance of success.

Trump showed some political savvy in the exchange, however, in hoping that Cheney didn't draw multiple opponents and split the vote against her.  In fact, she already has, although my overall feeling is that her seat is safe.

Along similar lines, Mitt Romney was booed at the Utah GOP convention, showing that Trump does retain a lot of support in the region.  On This Week a Democratic commentator openly noted that riding the Trump train probably means an overall GOP defeat in the 2022 midterms, which Chris Christie tried to deflect with other topics.\

May 6 , 2021

The Club For Growth was recently in Wyoming shopping for a candidate to run against Liz Cheney.

The move is thick with irony as the CFG is a well established conservative PAC with a focus on economic issues, and Cheney is a well established conservative.  In normal times, the Club would fully back Cheney, and in fact has come out against the New York politician endorsed by President Trump who is making a run at Cheney's no 3 spot in the GOP in the House, whom they've termed a "liberal".  

That latter matter came about as Cheney isn't backing down on her views on the insurrection while its increasingly becoming clearer that endorsing the fantasy of election fraud is the price of remaining in the GOP's good graces and maybe even simply remaining in the GOP.  Former President Trump doesn't seem to have lost his grip on the party at all.  

Given this, its position going into the 2022 races may be pretty shaky, in spite of expectations to the contrary.  And this presents a real opportunity for the left in the Democratic Party, which is increasingly characterized by its left, to push forward.  Normally there's be fears of a strong mid term insurgence from the GOP, but the GOP is moving away from the center and losing its center right members.

May 7, 2021

Cheyenne businessman and attorney Darin Smith, who has run for Congress unsuccessfully in the past, has announced he's considering running against the embattled Cheney in 2022. In the Tribune article on Smith, he indicated he hadn't officially decided if he's running, but he already has a website dedicated to the effort.

Smith notes he's a "Deplorable" on his site, and would be running as a highly conservative candidate.  A Wyoming native, he's criticized Cheney for her low connections with Wyoming.

May 7, 2021

Smith officially announced today, stating: 

You see, there are some lines you just can’t cross, and Liz Cheney did just that when she voted against Wyoming and with the leftists when she voted to impeach Donald Trump

This is an unfortunate example of the rhetoric and logic that is common now, and which is likely to be common throughout the election season.  Cheney's vote on impeachment was principled and even if a person disagreed with it, it is not a vote "against Wyoming".  Indeed, the tribal concept of Congressional voting that is so prevalent now in the GOP in particular is shocking and stand long term, if not short term, to really damage the party and the conservative cause.

May 8, 2021

The Smith announcement continues to make some news as does Liz Cheney's troubles due to the vacated President Trump.

On the former, Smith's campaign manager is Foster Freiss, meaning the super wealthy Wisconsin import to Teton County who ran for Governor and lost in 2018 is backing Smith. That brings money to the race in a way that Gray and Bouchard lack.  Smith was apparently the Freiss manager in that campaign.

Smith is also taking an approach that Freiss backers will recognize, noting he's "pro God", "pro life" and "pro guns".  That same statement could be made by Gray and Bouchard, with Bouchard having built his early political career on being radically pro gun.  Cheney has a different style and talks about religion little, but she certainly has a pro gun and pro life record.  Freiss, in his 2018 campaign, had a style and a set of backers that made long time politcos recall the South in the 70s, and it didn't sell well with the voters. Smith is a Wyomingite so perhaps he'll avoid that, but the tone, and now a financial aspect of the race, is being set even this early on.

Smith, it turns out, was at the January 6 rally that turned into the January 6 insurrection, although he claims that he didn't participate in storming the capital.

Cheney is in trouble, if she is (and I have my doubts), because the GOP in DC is running into the embrace of Donald Trump. This has caused Michael Reagan, the son of Ronald Reagan and a political commentator, to lament the party's rearward gaze and recall his sister's phrase that the Republican Party was "the stupid party", a pretty blunt characterization of his lifelong party.  What Reagan finds stupid is the party's insistence on the lost race of 2020, in which it otherwise did well.  He's clearly afraid that by embracing Trump its dooming its prospects in 2022, which it likely is.

May 10, 2021

And now we have Denton Knapp, a retired Colonel in the Army, and a current Brigadier General in the California National Guard, running against Cheney.

Apparently Knapp is originally from Gillette.  He's a West Point graduate.

May 11, 2021

Adding a little to this drama, Knapp was appointed to West Point by Dick Cheney, and therefore owes his career to the Cheney's in some ways.

May 11, 2021 cont:

Knapp, it turns out, is presently ineligible to run as he's a Californian by residency.  The Orange County resident plans on returning to Gillette today to reestablish his residency.

What's that voting bill actually say?

I confess, I haven't read the entire bill, and there are some distressing bills out there, but the Georgia bill is getting a lot of heat, without much light shed on it.  Here it actually is:

Georgia Voting Bill.

Much of this bill really isn't as horrific as portrayed.  It pretty much just regularizes practices just informally put into practice last election in Georgia.  It does have a couple of bad provisions, including that its 95 pages in length.  The no water aid in line, which may or may not still be in there (this thing is way to long to fully read) is horrific, but apparently was in it in order to try to stop electioneering at the polls.

By the same token, while I want to be suspicious of the new Wyoming bill because of the times, I can't really find anything objectionable to having to present a photo ID when you vote and I'm really sort of surprised that this isn't the law already.  I do find the provision that a Medicaid Card will work to be laughably Boomer patronizing. . . that's not a photo ID.  But overall, asking for a photo ID at the polls, while probably not really necessary, isn't really burdensome either.

Indeed, by and large the Wyoming legislature did a good job of defeating the really bad bills this session.  The really absurd bill that sought to give the legislature veto power over interpretation of the Constitution, which was flagrantly unconstitutional, didn't make it out of committee, even though it had the backing of most of the county GOP committees.  The horrific bill to limit juries to six, rather than twelve, which was snuck in and supported by the plaintiff's bar made it past the House and died in the Senate.  The WICHE bill did pass, but the Governor caught the foul ball on that one.

Things aren't over yet and there are still some bills out there that I have no idea as to their status, and no doubt some I've never heard of.  Most of the gun rights bills this session were wholly unnecessary or unconstitutional, but I don't know where they are at.  The bill allowing out of states to carry concealed without a permit did pass and I'm not for that and don't think it a good idea as I think Wyomingites deserve some level of control, such a reciprocal permit, on people we don't know traveling through here.  I'm probably in the minority on that one.  The one hunting bill I was tracking failed, which was too bad.

Anyhow, there's all sorts of yelling on various bills around the country, and in Congress, but do people read them?  Probably not.  Probably most people don't have the time.  But the reporting on them lacks nuance and can create misimpressions.

Not grasping the Constitution.

George Washington with the Constitution, which soon proved in need of fixing.

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was called to fix the Articles of Confederation.

I note this as there was a bill in the legislature to hold a Constitutional Convention to amend the Constitution to address some hard right concerns, those mostly amounting to the concept that courts and lawyers trample on the original meaning of the text and that legislatures can throw the penalty flag on that and, they believe, fix it.

At the same time a bill just was defeated in the legislature whose backers repeatedly used the words "the original Constitution". This is very obviously part of a current right wing campaign, as not only was the Wyoming legislature considering it, but right at nearly the same time Lauren Boebert, Colorado's hard right Congressman, was commenting on the Original Constitution.  As already noted here, that bill has a weird concept of the "original Constitution" and asserts that its a "contract".  That's wrong, but its dangerously wrong philosophically.  The reason for the bogus assertion its a "contract", which it isn't, and which is an unconstitutional interpretation of the Constitution, becomes clear, however, if you consider the bills goals.

All of this comes about due to a lot of ignorance about the Constitution and the age old desire to bend how its viewed to your own viewpoint on how it ought to read.

First off, let's deal with this.  The "original Constitution" of the United States isn't the document that came about due to the 1787 convention.  Arguably, the "original Constitution" of the country was the hopelessly vague English Constitution which is a concept rather than a document, but it what we derive much of our understanding of the relationship between the government and the people to be.  To the extent its written, it includes but isn't limited to the Magna Carta, which principally serves to establish the point that the sovereign is subject to the people at some point, although in its original form it served to point out the not novel concept that English kings served subject to the implied will of the nobles.

While Americans rebelled, at first, partially due to protect the "rights of Englishmen", they obviously needed an organic document for their new republic and that document was the Articles of Confederation.  Like it or not, that's the original constitution, if the English Constitution wasn't.  When people run around talking about the "original constitution", they should be aware of that.

A constitution is simply an organic documents.  It's the founding central law, not a contract, of an entity.  In terms of sovereigns, it's the Really Big Law. The "supreme law of the land". Its no more contractual than a traffic ordinance is.

Conceptually, of course, the thesis behind the U.S. Constitution is that the "several states" were the supreme sovereigns, sort of, more or less, or maybe not, at the time they came together.  In actuality, of course, they'd already come together for the Articles of Confederation, so at that time they already had agreed to transfer a level of sovereignty to the Federal government.  So, even if you are big on state sovereignty, and the backers of these concepts are, you have to concede that at least with the nation's second constitution, the one we call "The Constitution", the states transferred large elements of sovereignty over to the Federal government.  Once you do that, you don't get it back.  That would be antithetical to the concept.  And its been tested in the courts following the Civil War, so that question is more than decided.

Of course, the nation would just as soon forget the Articles as they didn't work very well, so we have, along with the fact that George Washington was not, as so often claimed, the first President.  But oh well.  

It's important, however, to note that the next part of this story is that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was convened to fix the Articles of Confederation, not to draft a constitution.

But once you convene a Constitutional Convention, there's absolutely no earthly way to limit what it does.  None.  People who insist that state legislative enabling acts can do that are in a fantasy world. No, no, no, they can't.  Yes, I know that there are some legal scholars that hold the opposite, but they're completely out to lunch on this issue.  If they were right, the Constitution would be invalid and we'd be right back to the Articles of Confederation.  Nobody believes that.

So, at a  Constitutional Convention, everything is on the table.

If you don't believe that, just ask the Articles of Confederation.

Of course, it'd still have to be ratified by the states.  Which brings us to this.  Anything anyone feels strongly enough about such that the proposed amendment can't get through Congress isn't going to be ratified by the states.  So, in all likelihood, a convention would be a huge noisy waste of time.  

And if it wasn't, based on the Wyoming bill up the other day, it'd be a disaster, full of proposals to keep those nasty lawyers from arguing the law and the Supreme Court from doing its job, and instead allowing all 50 state legislatures to decide what the Constitution meant.

This gets back to the "contract" theory, which the bill in front of the legislature the other day would have required members of the proposed committee to adhere to by way of an oath, a charming view of oaths in light of the fact that legislators in every state and at every level have a pretty loose interpretation of their duties under oaths anyhow.  The gist of the concept is, it's not a law, its just a big contract, and we get to decide what it means just like the other contracting party.

It's not a contract, and that's not how contracts actually work. What would actually occur is that the first time a legislature actually stated some law it didn't like was unconstitutional it'd end up in court and the court would decide the matter, likely deciding whatever it was, was.

If you thought the US was darned near ungovernable now. . . 

And, it should be noted, those who take the view that this will solve all their problems ought to be aware that liberal states would do the same thing.  Wyoming might decide some gun control law was unconstitutional but Colorado might decide that "arms" meant muskets only.  We soon wouldn't like the results much.

By the way, of the 55 framers of the Constitution, 32 were lawyers.  

And, also, while the backers of the bill feel that the language of the Constitution is so clear that anyone can read it and know just what it meant, the framers themselves were arguing about that during the ratification process. They didn't all agree what it meant.  The much cited Federalist Papers, for example, were an argument, not an explanation.

Added to this, it should be noted, the mythical "original Constitution" is meant, by those supporting it, to apparently include the Bill of Rights.  Lauren Boebert took some heat on this the other day for this Twitter comment.

Lauren Boebert

@laurenboebert

·

Feb 19

Protecting and defending the Constitution doesn’t mean trying to rewrite the parts you don’t like.

People blasted her noting that the "original Constitution" didn't include the Bill of Rights. That's correct, it didn't.  I don't think she meant that the only part of the Constitution that counts is the part before the Bill of Rights and what she actually is arguing is the same thing the bill backers in the legislature were arguing the other day, which is that lawyers and courts, in their view, have messed around and applied all sorts of interpretations which are outside of the text.  And that is in fact fairly substantially true.  Her way of stating it however, does bring up the irony here that, if you don't like something about the Constitution, there's something that can be done about it, amend it.

A problem there, however, is that the backers of the bill argued that people should look at what the framers meant, and the first Chief Justice, and be informed by Common Law and Natural Law.  I don't disagree with any of that, as I'm an originalist in terms of Constitutional interpretation, but that argues for appointing judges who are originalist.

But that means appointing people, really, who were largely of the same background as the framers. . . lawyers.  It's easy to state that you'll know just what they meant, and in some cases you really were, but if you have to resort to Common Law and Natural Law, well you have to be schooled in them.  Indeed, part of the modern problem is that hardly anyone is schooled in Natural Law..  And if a person is being given arguments that cite to something like Natural Law, and haven't studied it, they're prey to significant error.

Instead of courts, the bill propose that legislatures just nullify acts that legislators feel are unconstitutional, after pondering the text, and consulting Natural Law, etc., which isn't how the Constitution itself works. The Supremacy Clause would make any such attempt completely invalid, and from the earliest days of the Supreme Court's existence, the Court has held that it gets the last say on what is, or isn't, Constitutional.  So right from the onset there's a problem with what they're proposing, as its unconstitutional and not at all what the framers had in mind.  If a legislature attempted to act in this fashion, it'd be acting unconstitutionally under, as they say, "the original Constitution".

Added to that, a lot of the people who hold this mindset have interpretations of the Constitution which themselves are far outside of the text.  On the hard right of the political spectrum, which is where this movement comes from, the Supremacy Clause doesn't even seem to exist, nor does the Commerce Clause, and many seem to have a quasi religious concept of the Constitution and what it means.  People all the time complain about their "rights" being violated as if they're protected by the Constitution when what they're complaining about doesn't  Both the right and the left do this, but recently the right has been loud about it (but the left has often been very loud about it in the past itself). Originalism does mean not interpreting the document to read the way you don't like, as Boebert meant to suggest, but it also means not doing that yourself.

Finally, there's the tricky matter of the "incorporation" clause of the Constitution, which relies in large part on that very "judge made law" that the backers of these things  hold in contempt.  As originally written, these restricted Congress, not the states.  So, for instance, Congress couldn't restrict free speech, or establish a national religion, but states could do just that.

Or again, take the Second Amendment.  Congress couldn't restrict the right to keep and bear arms. . .but could states?  Hard to say, but probably.  And if Wyoming argued that "the original Constitution" kept the Federal government from, let's say, doing something environmental, New York could argue that the Federal government couldn't ban guns but New York sure could.