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March 2023

Keep Nine and Ban Court-Packing By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/keep_nine_and_ban_courtpacking.html

The independence of the Judiciary — enshrined in the Constitution and essential to both the rule of law and democracy itself — has not been immune to attack.  Acting through Congress, the federal government has on seven occasions changed the number of justices on the Supreme Court, chiefly for political gain.  Such court-packing reflects badly on the American judicial system as a whole, since the perception of judicial independence or its absence permeates all levels of the courts.

To end the pernicious practice, a group of 15 former state attorneys general — eight Democrats and seven Republicans — got together in 2019 to found the Coalition to Preserve the Independence of the United States Supreme Court.  They proposed a constitutional amendment to permanently ban court-packing — the one-sentence Keep Nine Amendment — which says: “The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine Justices.”

It now has the support of over 200 members of Congress, 19 state legislatures, attorneys general, governors, and other government officials.  Voters support the amendment, 62% for versus 18% against.  Many justices, including Stephen Breyer and the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, agreed that nine is “a very good number,” large enough to represent some diversity of views, small enough to allow the Court to be sufficiently deliberative.  Nine is also the number of justices the Court has had since 1869. 

In September 2020, U.S. rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) introduced the amendment in the House of Representatives as House Joint Resolution 53; he reintroduced it in 2021 (H.J.Res. 11) and again in January 2023 (H.J.Res. 8).  In October 2020, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced it in the Senate as Joint Resolution 76.  Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), too, proposed an amendment in 2021 that the Supreme Court bench shall constitute “not more than nine judges.”

According to Article V, there are two ways to amend the Constitution: by a two-thirds vote on a proposed congressional resolution or by a convention called by Congress in response to applications from two thirds of the state legislatures.  According to Paul Summers, former attorney general of Tennessee and current chair of the Keep Nine coalition, this is an opportunity for American leaders to come together despite their deep differences to protect the independence of one of the key institutions that protects our republic.

Ron DeSantis finally speaks up about the probable Trump indictment By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/03/ron_desantis_finally_speaks_up_about_the_probable_trump_indictment.html

Ron DeSantis finally had his say about the news, and he hit it out of the park.

In three minutes, DeSantis addressed the malevolence of Soros prosecutors, the legal principles at issue, and his own admirable record. He also threw in an attack against Trump that succeeded in triggering one of Trump’s famously self-harming counterattacks.

If you don’t want to watch the video, here are the key points DeSantis made:

He was limiting his comments because there are no concrete facts available.
Alvin Bragg is a “Soros-funded prosecutor” and, therefore, is “like other Soros-funded prosecutors—they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety.”
Even as Bragg is weaponizing his office, he’s making it impossible to put real criminals in jail, causing crime in Manhattan to go up, while “citizens become less safe.”
He reminded his audience that he is the only governor to date to have rid his state of a Soros-funded prosecutor.
He has no interest in getting involved in a Soros-prosecutor’s “circus,” which is to “virtue signal” to his base because he has to take care of his own state, which has real and immediate needs that are his responsibility.
And in a small, but vicious attack against Trump, DeSantis slipped in that “I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I just I can’t speak to that.”

Trump, the counterpuncher, did what he always did: He went on the attack against DeSantis. It was a foolish attack because it showed that DeSantis is living in his head, just as Trump has lived in leftist heads. It shows fear.

He began with a post implying that DeSantis has a secret gay love life:

Donald Trump, Regime Foe We don’t acknowledge that we promulgate bills of attainder in this country, but that is essentially the judgment that has been pronounced against the former president. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/20/donald-trump-regime-foe/

The funniest thing I have read in, well, at least the last several hours, comes from Manhattan’s George Soros-funded affirmative-action district attorney, Alvin Bragg. Responding to the uproar that greeted Donald Trump’s all-caps Truth Social warning that he would be “arrested” on Tuesday, Bragg sent ’round a memo to his staff informing them, and the world, that “This office is full of the finest public servants in the country.” 

The comedy didn’t end there, however. 

“I am committed to maintaining a safe work environment where everyone is able to continue to serve the public with the same diligence and professionalism [!] that make this institution so renowned. In the meantime, as with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly . . .” 

What a card! And, yes, that’s my emphasis but his credulity-breaking bluster. 

“Evenly and fairly,” forsooth. Everyone knows that Alvin Bragg does not apply the law at all evenly or fairly. Favoring and disfavoring certain groups is what he is famous for doing. It’s his standard operating procedure. When it comes to your common or garden variety violent thug, especially those of a swarthy disposition, Bragg is the Angel of Mercy. 

Last year, Bragg reduced the majority of felony charges that were brought before him to misdemeanors while at the same time targeting people like the bodega employee who fought back to protect himself after being assaulted by one of those common or garden variety thugs. 

Will Donald Trump be “arrested” this week? I wouldn’t be surprised. Minions of the state at every level have been working overtime to neutralize Trump for years. 

The protest movement can’t unravel the thread of Israel’s unique tapestry By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-protest-movement-cant-unravel-the-thread-of-israels-unique-tapestry/

Anybody who lives in and loves Israel is aware of its miraculously beautiful mosaic of inherent paradoxes. It’s Middle Eastern, yet Western; war-torn, yet peace-obsessed; provincial, yet cosmopolitan; frenetic, yet relaxed.

It’s religious, yet secular; conservative, yet woke; judgmental, yet empathic; marriage-oriented, yet a singles’ magnet. And it’s a bureaucratic hell, while also an entrepreneurship heaven.

Aside from all of the above, the tiny state—still young at its soon-to-be 75th birthday—is a major player on the world stage. This is both good and bad news for the Jews.

On the one hand, it means that we managed to return to our ancient homeland and make the literal and figurative desert bloom. On the other, such a miraculous success story, against all odds and surrounding enemies, comes with a price.

Indeed, as is the case with many blessings, this one often feels like a curse. The weight of responsibility—the burden of serving as a “light unto the nations”—is only part of it.

Perhaps a greater difficulty for a once-scattered nation demonized and slaughtered in the Diaspora is the realization that the “ingathering of exiles” didn’t put an end to envy-sparked antisemitism. On the contrary, what the late historian Robert Wistrich called the “longest hatred” was simply transferred to the Jewish nation-state under the cloak of “legitimate criticism.”

The Death of Dissent If anyone thinks conditions will improve soon, just wait until this same Justice Department indicts Trump for “inciting” the events of January 6. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/20/the-death-of-dissent/

The lead prosecutor in charge of the January 6 investigation, the largest probe in Justice Department history, just confirmed what American Greatness has reported for months: the number of criminal cases related to the Capitol protest is expected to at least double before it’s all over.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, an advisor to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign who took over the powerful office in late 2021, sent a letter to the chief judge of the D.C. District court warning up to 1,200 more individuals could face charges. 

“We expect the pace of bringing new cases will increase, in an orderly fashion, over the course of the next few months,” Graves told Beryl Howell, who ended her term as chief judge last week. Graves’ office just surpassed 1,000 total defendants in what he renamed the “Capitol Siege” investigation—which means the final caseload might well exceed 2,000.

Graves also indicated his team would ramp up the number of felony indictments; the overwhelming majority of charges so far are low-level offenses, including the laughable “parading in the Capitol” misdemeanor. The Biden regime clearly wants to juice the numbers before the 2024 election season.

And Graves isn’t wasting any time. Eight people have been charged since March 1, including a married couple from Indiana arrested on a civil disorder felony and four misdemeanors. The D.C. federal courthouse is monopolized by January 6 hearings and trials on a daily basis; one judge announced he would retire rather than deal with January 6 cases for the next several years.

In addition to ruining the lives of thousands of Americans for mostly nonviolent participation in the events of January 6, the Justice Department is accomplishing a more sinister goal: criminalizing and silencing political dissent in America. I warned two years ago, as Attorney General Merrick Garland’s prosecutors bastardized a post-Enron law in an attempt to turn political protesters into lifelong felons, that January 6 would be used in this manner.

The “Trans Child” Is the New Totem of the American Left Christopher Rufo

https://rufo.substack.com/p/the-trans-child-is-the-new-totem?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Joe Biden recently proposed in an interview that he would support federal legislation to force states such as Florida, Texas, and Tennessee to allow doctors to perform hormone therapies and sex change operations on children. This is all under the rubric of a deeply misleading term, “trans-affirming care,” that has become a deep conviction on the political Left. I’d like to analyze the clip in which Biden is talking about this and show that, for the Left, the so-called “trans child” serves almost as a religious totem. Let’s take a listen.

[President Biden:] Transgender kids is a really harder thing. What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, “close to sinful.” It’s just terrible what they’re doing. It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, “You know, I decided I want to become a man” or “I want to become a woman” or “I want to change.” I mean, what are they thinking about here? They’re human beings. They love, they have feelings, they have inclinations that are, I mean, just to me is, I don’t know. It’s cruel. And the way we do it is we make sure we pass legislation like we passed on same-sex marriage. You mess with that, you’re breaking the law and you’re going to be held accountable.

Let’s break that down. In a certain sense, Biden’s comment sounds reasonable, it sounds humane, it sounds fairly rational. But this is all based on manipulative language and a hidden ideology that operates under the surface.

First, the category “transgender kids”: that’s the first thing he says and he lays down the marker that that’s the category we’re talking about. But as my friend and colleague Colin Wright has pointed out, there’s no such thing as a “transgender kid.” And what Wright means by that is that a child is not innately transgender, but becomes transgender once the child enters the process of medicalization—hormones, surgeries, and other medical interventions. It’s not that they cannot have feelings of discomfort or dysphoria—that’s certainly true—but they only become transgender when adults intervene. These are parents, doctors, and psychotherapists, and then that child is put on Lupron, put on testosterone or estrogen, has the double mastectomy, or gets the penile inversion surgery.

The Southern Border is a Hybrid War Zone And the targets are U.S. citizens and U.S. sovereignty. by Austin Bay

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-southern-border-is-a-hybrid-war-zone/

The March 12 Incident on the Paso Del Norte Bridge confirms the U.S.-Mexico border is once again a war zone.

The March 12 Incident is an outrage that demonstrates the U.S. is currently under continuous hybrid war assault.

The hybrid war’s current weapons: deadly drugs (fentanyl), human trafficking (to include child sex and work slavery), migrants sapping social welfare dollars budgeted for deprived American citizens and noncitizens voting illegally.

Illegal votes equal hijacked U.S. elections.

Don’t exclude these horrors: enemies evading border controls to spread infectious diseases and terrorists masked as illegal aliens who use porous and undefended borders to enter the U.S. and embed as “sleeper agents” for future enemy action.

Video cameras on the Mexican side captured the human wave assault’s initial surge. A swarming thousand — overwhelmingly male — funnels into the bridge and below a sign reading “Feliz Viaje” (bon voyage) attempt to physically overrun security personnel and break into the U.S.

The personnel to mob would crush and stomp: Border Patrol agents, local and state police — blue-collar American citizens with badges suddenly outnumbered 10 to one and defending the U.S. from invasion.

A justified question: If the American security personnel under human wave assault had fired a shot, would President Joe Biden have called them bigoted “racistracistracists”?

Florida Protects Minors from Gender Reassignment Medical Procedures And the Left descends into TOTAL MELTDOWN. by Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/florida-protects-minors-from-gender-reassignment-medical-procedures/

The Florida Board of Medicine has put into effect a new rule prohibiting the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapies, or gender reassignment surgeries for minors under the age of 18 who say they want to change their gender identities. Trans activists and their supporters inside and outside of the medical field describe such transgender medical procedures as part of “gender-affirming care.”

Florida lawmakers are considering legislation that would codify these bans into law and make it a felony to provide any such so-called “gender-affirming” medical care to minors before their eighteenth birthday.

Left-wing progressives are in an uproar. Florida’s equivalent of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic State Rep. Anna Eskamani, accused Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis of “erasing our trans babies” at a boisterous rally in Florida’s Capitol protesting the bans. “We are facing a governor who wants to commit genocide on trans people,” she said.

These are the words of an uncompromising pro-abortionist.

The transgender ideologues’ hysteria extends to the Biden administration.

“This is the first time I have seen a medical board weaponized against medical providers that are providing evidence-based, standard of care treatment,” said President Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services’ Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine, who is transgender.

Rachel Levine appeared recently at Connecticut Children’s Hospital, praising medical procedures for changing children’s gender and declaring that such medical procedures have the “highest support” of the Biden administration. “President Biden supports you. I as the Assistant Secretary for Health will support you and I talk about this topic, everywhere I go, to get the word out,” Levine said.

Another Golan Expedition for Convicted US Member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad Hatem Fariz and friends travel around Israel with impunity – while Israel is under threat from PIJ. March 21, 2023 by Joe Kaufman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/another-golan-expedition-for-convicted-us-member-of-palestinian-islamic-jihad/

Over the last few years, Hatem Fariz has been spending time in Israel – a lot of time. He did not always have that opportunity. Following his 2003 arrest and, later, his conviction for material support of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Fariz spent several years in jail, unable to travel, let alone overseas to Israel, the nation he and his co-conspirators allegedly sought to destroy. But Israel, it seems, has a serious gap in her security, and because of this, Fariz and his associates have been permitted to roam the countryside, including at times when Israel faces serious threats from PIJ. Last month was one of those times, as Fariz toured Israel’s Golan Heights.

Fariz had been part of a PIJ network run out of the Tampa Bay area of Florida, in the city of Temple Terrace. The ringleader of the network, fellow terror convict Sami al-Arian, was involved in PIJ’s establishment overseas and looked to install a PIJ hub within America. He did so by founding a mosque, a children’s school, a think tank, and a charity, all linked to PIJ. That mosque, Masjid Al-Qassam, a.k.a. the Islamic Community of Tampa (ICT), would be led by Fariz, following Fariz’s release from prison, and he continues to direct it.

Via Al-Qassam, Fariz manages a travel company, the Adam Travel Tampa Hajj Group, which he uses to bring others to the Middle East. While Adam Travel advertises that its trips are for visiting religious-oriented sites in Saudi Arabia, Fariz’s time is overwhelmingly spent trekking through various locations within Israel.

Many of the people Fariz takes with him on these trips have like feelings towards Israel and Jews in general. They post videos on social media of Israelis being blown up during ambushes and videos of successful rocket attacks on Israeli civilian structures. They post memorials for their favorite dead leaders from Hamas and PIJ. They call on “Allah” to “take revenge on the Jews.”

Biden Administration Pushing Arabs Towards Iran by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19492/biden-pushing-arabs-towards-iran

Today, China is victorious by sponsoring the historic agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, while the US has a new president who comes to destroy agreements reached by his predecessor, and even brags about it during his election campaign and his presidency.” — Saeed Al-Mryti, Saudi political activist, Twitter, March 14, 2023.

“[N]o matter how hard analysts try to beautify the situation for US policy, what Saudi Arabia has done today is a direct and successful blow to the Biden administration and its policy in the Middle East.” — Jubran Al-Khoury, Lebanese political analyst, annahar.com, March 12, 2023.

It is thus no surprise that Iran and its terror proxies – Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah – are expressing profound satisfaction over the Saudi-Iranian agreement. In their eyes, the agreement is an indication of the growing weakness of the US and the failed policy of the Biden administration in the Middle East. Thanks to the US administration’s fragility, the Iranian-led axis of evil has been significantly emboldened as America’s erstwhile Arab allies are rushing towards the open arms of the mullahs in Tehran.

Many Arabs and Muslims are celebrating the Saudi-Iranian agreement to restore diplomatic relations as a devastating blow to the Biden Administration, a victory for Iran and China, and a sign of Washington’s failed policies in the Middle East.

According to these Arabs and Muslims, the Saudi-Iranian pact is the direct result of the Biden Administration’s antagonism towards America’s traditional Arab allies, especially Saudi Arabia, and the American policy of appeasement towards the mullahs in Iran.

Lebanese-born American scholar Walid Phares wrote that in the past two years he has been issuing warnings that the Biden administration’s dealings with the Arab allies “were neither at the required level nor with the necessary depth.”