Leslie Loftis
2 min readSep 24, 2017

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So someone, me, finally mentions an issue few have and you get upset because I didn’t give the complicated matter full treatment in a weekly newsletter that usually gives a paragraph to any one topic?

  1. You have been reading me long enough to know that I often mention a topic a few times to tee up a full article treatment.
  2. The issues of how federal regulation encroaches on the IX and X Amendments has been the topic of an entire body of case law, books, and law school seminars. I’m not going to whip up a summary of that in an afternoon. See point 1.
  3. As for the accusation that I will not write publically about the Tenth Amendment for fear of my personal brand, here is a piece discussing the issue in the context of Texas law suits against the US with reference to the inversion of state and federal power, and here’s a Convention of States explainer I wrote for a British audience. (I have others but these are the first two that came to mind.) If the lenghtly piece you are referring to that doesn’t mention the issue is the Campus Censorship one, that is because Title IX is a side topic to campus censorship; it was the vehicle by which progressives created censored campuses. That piece was not an in depth treatment of Title IX. You are correct that taking a strong-Ninth and Tenth position in public writing is fraught with peril. One of the opinions that marked me as ‘not their type’ and eventually got me ignored at and then ousted from The Federalist was my support for a Convention of States. It would never happen, they said, mentally sticking a quack label on me. No way for you to know that part, obviously, and I can’t recall how long you’ve been reading me, but as open and friendly as our discouse has been to date, even when we disagree, this accusation that I will not state my opinion on controversial matters that could limit my reach or rise is not true but insulting.

I recognize that it is disappointing to have a writer not cover topics at the pace you would prefer, but I avoid writing off the cuff on complicated matters, certainly on legal explainers. It is more difficult to distill legal issues for laymen while remaining accurate than it is to summarize for a legal audience. Those are not articles I undertake lightly.

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Leslie Loftis

Teacher of life admin and curator of commentary. Occasional writer.