In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court has declared that a state may not withhold an available public benefit on account of religious status.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of a Missouri church that sued the state after being denied taxpayer funds for a playground project because of a provision that prohibits state funding for religious entities. 

This ruling suggests to me the possibility that public education tax dollars for public school tuition (Croydon Bill) may not be withheld from a student just because they choose to attend a religious school. The bill as written, if I recall, includes that limitation.

Additionally, the existing restriction prohibiting business tax scholarship money from going to a religious school would also be unconstitutional.

Maybe it’s not that far-reaching but here’s to hoping it is. (Time to dig into the full decision, available on the jump.)

H/T Fox News

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God, I love being right especially after watching progressive narrative monkey’s puke their Union/Democrat party minimum-wage-talking-points all over my comments section. Being right is the best. And when it comes to Seattle, right comes easy.

This week’s Poster Child for Stupid Liberal ideas we told you would not work, is last weeks. Seattle.

Seattle’s minimum-wage law is boosting wages for a range of low-paid workers, but the law is causing those workers as a group to lose hours, and it’s also costing jobs, according to the latest study on the measure passed by the City Council in 2014.

To keep rising payrolls from eating their businesses alive employers are operating with fewer workers and working them fewer hours. The result is that low-wage workers are suffering from higher unemployment (check), and lower total earnings (check).

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Before his nomination, there wasn’t much to go on when it came to Judge Gorsuch and guns, but that has changed. Eugene Volokh hints at the point here,

We now have more evidence, from his vote joining Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent from denial of certiorari in Peruta v. California — he, like Thomas (and, before his death, Justice Antonin Scalia), seems to be a strong gun-rights supporter, indeed likely more so than some of the other conservative justices.

Professor Volokh was referring to this.

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The city of Franklin, New Hampshire got a gift in the new Republican state Budget. A grant for $125K to address its distinction of having the third highest dropout rate in the state.

FRANKLIN — Franklin will receive $125,000 for dropout prevention through a grant that was included in the state budget passed yesterday.

“I was surprised,” said School Administrative Unit 18 Superintendent Daniel LeGallo. “I did not expect to get it.”

The grant will allow the school district to expand high school offerings that keep students interested in hopes of reducing the district’s dropout rate, which is one of the highest in the state.

Governor John Lynch never did get the state to “zero dropouts” as he hoped but the mechanics behind “improving” those numbers are still the same.

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There’s a great article from the New York Post linked here, that paints the evolving Democrat dilemma.

For Republicans, luck can’t get much better. While Clinton and Pelosi were hardly innocent bystanders in the historic rout of Democrats at every level of government, the main culprit was Obama.

It was Obamaism, more than Clintonism or Pelosism, that elected Donald Trump and gave the GOP both houses of Congress. The former president’s coercive liberalism at home and appeasement abroad led to the greatest upset in American politics.

Obama is trying to get back into the spotlight, and as the NYP points out, Obama is why we have Trump.

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The Case went the other way with a 7-2 decision but Justice Gorsuch’ dissent is a thing of beauty, a gift we hope keeps on giving.

Anthony Perry asks us to tweak a congressional statute—just a little—so that it might (he says) work a bit more efficiently. No doubt his invitation is well meaning. But it’s one we should decline all the same. Not only is the business of enacting statutory fixes one that belongs to Congress and not this Court, but taking up Mr. Perry’s invitation also seems sure to spell trouble. …

Mr. Perry’s is an invitation I would run from fast. If a statute needs repair, there’s a constitutionally prescribed way to do it. It’s called legislation. To be sure, the demands of bicameralism and presentment are real, and the process can be protracted. But the difficulty of making new laws isn’t some bug in the constitutional design: it’s the point of the design, the better to preserve liberty.

It makes for a decent start, wouldn’t you say?

H/T BizPac

Complete SCOTUS Decision on the Jump.

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Minuteman Health hasn’t even been available for two years in New Hampshire, and they are already bailing. Why? The ACA makes it too expensive to stay in business.

The company, which insures about 27,000 individual members and three dozen small group members in New Hampshire, began offering coverage in the state in 2015 on the online exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

The company cited significant declines in its capital and surplus and will need to use its resources to pay claims incurred under existing policies.

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Not everyone in New Hampshire suffered from a “drought” last year.

(Patch) In 2016, the highest number case ever — 104 — were reported. The outbreak in New Hampshire is consistent with national trends and is being seen mainly in men under age 40 and in men who have sex with men (MSM). Approximately 60 percent of cases have been in Hillsborough and Rockingham Counties.

Does anyone else find it funny that men having sex with men is abbreviated MSM? Talk about a cruel irony.

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The pundits are flabbergasted by the Republican turnout for Karen Handel in Georgia. They don’t know what to make of it.

I do.

They made it about Trump, and the Trump voters showed up. They don’t always, like in small town New Hampshire for a relatively meaningless state House race, but they do turn out for elections where Trump is directly challenged, even when he’s not running.

They also, more often than not, are keeping that support to themselves for all the obvious reasons. Democrat domestic terrorists and their ideological inquisitors make them reluctant to speak out publicly, privately, or at all.

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This is too good to not print!

O. Henry couldn’t have written a story with a more fitting surprise ending. The “hero” of this tale is 71-year-old Lawrence John Ripple, of Kansas City, Kan., who up until last September suffered under the weight of a bad marriage. It was then that he hatched a plan to escape from his wife. He entered a local bank and handed the teller a note that read, “I have a gun, give me money.” She complied, giving him all the cash in her till — $2,924 in total.

But instead of fleeing, Ripple did something unprecedented. He sat down in the bank lobby and waited for the police to arrive. When they did, he calmly announced,  “I’m the guy you’re looking for.”

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Republican Karen Handel is the winner of the special congressional election in GA-6. She beat Democrat Jon Ossoff (who doesn’t even live in the district in which he ran), despite having 23.6 million in campaign donations, mostly from California and Martha’s Vinyard Democrats.

The Democrats pinned their hopes on the Georgia race as their chance prove that all the media narratives they’ve been fostering are true: that America is turning against President Donald Trump. That didn’t happen. Not once but twice. They lost another congressional race in South Carolina as well making them ( I believe) 0-6 for congressional seats since the Presidential election.

So?

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Some Democrats could care less about when an abortion happens. They’re convinced that it is not “alive” nor is it “a life” until it registers and votes Democrat.

Then there are the Americans who avoid the subject, approach it unwillingly, or concede some level of support for the practice (meaningfully or just to avoid conflict) who will tell you that they are not sure about when life begins. It’s at some arbitrary point during the pregnancy, a value subject to change based on the hostility of the company they find themselves in, but they won’t be nailed down on when.

OK. Let’s say, hypothetically, that there is some point during pregnancy at which this thing called life begins. Put down your flash card; it does not matter when. We don’t need any social or political posturing about the week be it 20, 30, 40, or 400 (for you child hating nutty bioethicists). All that matters is that you, whoever you are, answer this question honestly.

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