Wednesday roundup

This one turned out well, but that Equality Commission still needs to be dismantled:

Asher's Bakery is a Christian-owned establishment in Northern Ireland, UK. In 2014, Gareth Lee, a gay rights activist, ordered a cake from the bakery with the slogan "Support Gay Marriage." The bakery declined the order. Mr. Lee immediately sued the bakery claiming discrimination against him based on his sexual orientation and political beliefs. 

For the last four years, the case has made its way through the British courts system. Twice, lower courts ruled in favor of the gay activist, and ordered Asher's Bakery to bake the cake. 

Twice, the bakers appealed, arguing that they were not discriminating against anyone, that they would never bake a cake which violated their religious beliefs for anyone, regardless of sexual orientation or political belief.

Today, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled unanimously in favor of the bakers, noting that no one can be forced to express political opinions that they do not wish to express. 

While this ruling is a victory for liberty and freedom of religion, it serves as a a particularly ugly omen for Christian business owners. You see, while Christians and conservatives have become accustomed to well-organized and executed legal assaults brought by radical gay activists, the scariest element of this case is that of the funding behind Gareth Lee's lawsuit.

While the owners of Asher's Bakery was forced to pay £ 200,000 in legal fees over the past four years, Mr. Lee had his legal fees completely covered by the British Taxpayer. Throughout the entire suit, Mr. Lee's case was funded by the Equality Commission of Northern Ireland, a publicly operated organization. Therefore, in this case, the government itself was paying for an assault on the basic right of Freedom of Conscience. 

Great Kevin Williamson piece at NRO entitled "Why the Left Won't take Up Originalism." 

Confirming your detection of the odor of hard leftism wafting off Google, one exec said this:

"Abolish the Senate," tweeted Ken Norton, a former project manager at Google and currently a partner at GV — formerly Google Ventures — the company that directs the venture capital investments for Alphabet, Google's parent company. Norton has been at Google for 12 years.

Worse, Norton tweeted a call to action, announcing that he had donated money to a bribery scheme attempting to force Collins to vote "no" on Kavanaugh. "Match my pledge to Either Sen. Collins VOTES NO on Kavanaugh OR we fund her future opponent on [Crowdpac]!" he tweeted.

Another said this:

. . . design lead Dave Hogue infamously tweeted, "You are finished, [GOP]. You polished the final nail for your own coffins. F**K. YOU. ALL. TO. HELL."

The tweet, now deleted, concluded with yet more vitriol. "I hope the last images burned into your slimy, evil, treasonous retinas are millions of women laughing and clapping and celebrating as your souls descend into the flames," he wrote. 

He later said he should have expressed himself in a "less condemning" way. Ain't that civil of him?

The new IPCC report on the climate hangs its hat on erroneous data.

And humankind still overwhelmingly prefers normal-people energy sources to all that wind-and-solar hooey.

A most edifying IBD editorial:

For several years, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University has ranked statesbased on five measures of their financial condition: cash solvency, budget solvency, the ability to meet long-term spending commitments, state spending and taxes as a share of personal income, and unfunded pension liabilities and debt.

And lest anything think that Mercatus — a free-market-oriented group — is fudging the numbers, note that the data used to compile these rankings all come from official state annual financial reports and from state actuarial reports.

For 2016, the latest year for which data are available, the top five most fiscally sound states were, in order: Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee, Florida and Oklahoma.

The five worst states, starting at the bottom: Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Kentucky.

Notice anything similar in these groupings? We did. All but one of the top five are solidly Republican states. All but one of the bottom five are solidly Democratic.

And this tidbit is noteworthy:

There's another commonality between the best-run and worst-run states. Taxes.

As it turns out, states in the worst fiscal shape also tend to impose the highest tax rates in the nation. In fact, six of the 10 states that consistently show up as the least fiscally solvent rank in the Top 10 for highest taxes as a share of income, according to the Tax Foundation.

Of the 10 most fiscally sound states, all but one impose below-average tax burdens on their residents. 

Great Ben Shapiro piece at Daily Wire entitled "What Do We Have In Common?"