RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/01/soros-group-boasts-bullying-justice-breyer-daniel-greenfield/

You may recall Demand Justice, backed by the Sixteen Thirty Fund’s dark money machine, trying to harass Justice Stephen Breyer into quitting last year.

Demand Justice, an advocacy group led by a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), is pressing longtime liberal stalwart Justice Stephen Breyer to retire from the Supreme Court.

“We are now firmly in the window when past justices have announced their retirement, so it’s officially worrisome that Justice Breyer has not said yet that he will step down. The only responsible choice for Justice Breyer is to immediately announce his retirement so President Biden can quickly nominate the first-ever Black woman Supreme Court justice,” said Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice and a former top aide to Schumer.

Demand Justice has hired a billboard truck to drive around the Supreme Court with the message: “Breyer, retire. It’s time for a Black woman Supreme Court justice. There’s no time to waste.”

The group also launched an online petition asking signatories to “Tell Justice Breyer: Put the country first. Don’t risk your legacy to an uncertain political future. Retire now.’”

If conservatives had been doing this kind of thing, there would have been an FBI investigation and congressional hearings about an urgent threat to democracy. Since it was not just lefties, but radicals backed by the big lefty money machine, there was just awkwardness. Justice Breyer released a statement dismissing such efforts at pressuring him to resign.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18178/can-the-president-constitutionally-restrict-his

Supporters of President Biden’s announcement will argue that there is a big difference between prohibiting a person from serving based on religion, race or gender, and affirmatively giving preference based on these criteria. That is sophistry. By limiting his choice to a Black woman, President Biden has disqualified every non-Black woman and man in America. There are a considerable number of highly qualified Black women, and I would applaud the nomination of any one of them. But that is not the issue. The issue is exclusion.

The Supreme Court has a long history of exclusion…. The Supreme Court was [for many years] an institution reserved primarily for white Protestant males. That was wrong and unconstitutional. But two wrongs, even if one of them is a “good” wrong, do not make a constitutional right.

The Black woman who is eventually nominated for the job will suffer reputationally from the president’s announcement. She will not be regarded as the most qualified person to be nominated, but only as the most qualified Black woman. That is insulting, even if not intended to be.

President Biden should direct Attorney General Garland to prepare a list of the 25 most qualified nominees. No one should be excluded on the basis of race or gender. Such a list, if fairly compiled would include several Black women. (It should not include Kamala Harris, because she might have to cast a tie-breaking vote on herself!)

Imagine a president announcing that since no Muslim has ever been appointed to the Supreme Court, he pledges to nominate the first Muslim justice. That would undoubtedly be unconstitutional since Article VI of the Constitution specifies that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-dishonest-cancellation-campaign-against-ilya-shapiro/

Ilya Shapiro has been writing and speaking on the Supreme Court for the Cato Institute (where he ran the Cato Supreme Court Review), the Federalist Society, various conservative publications, and mainstream outlets such as guest blogging at SCOTUSBlog for years. His recent book, Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court, is an excellent overview of the issue. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, he has, over time, developed an essentially universal reputation for scholarly rigor and good humor, even when he lost his recent campaign for the school board in Falls Church, Va. It seems almost protesting too much to observe that neither I nor anybody else who knows Ilya has ever seen or heard him be anything but fair and decent towards people of all races and genders.

He has, however, done two things the Left will not easily forgive. One, consistent with his distaste for the anti-Jewish quotas his parents faced in the Soviet Union, he was an early supporter of the lawsuit against Harvard’s race discrimination against Asian Americans, a suit that has now reached the Supreme Court and has defenders of race discrimination scrambling for any weapon to hand to defend their practices. Two, just a week ago, Georgetown Law announced that it was hiring him to be executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. Academic perches of that nature are seen by left-wingers as their exclusive province, and whenever a conservative or even a right-leaning libertarian gets hired into one, they immediately set out to get them fired by any means necessary.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/27/meet-the-capitol-polices-new-spy-chief/

When most Americans hear the term “Capitol Police,” they likely conjure visions of uniformed officers manning metal detectors at the numerous congressional buildings or helping tourists navigate the sprawling Capitol grounds: a D.C. version of a mall cop.

That imagery, however, is in stark contrast to reality as Democrats have weaponized yet another federal agency to target their political enemies on the Right. 

After January 6, 2021, Capitol Police officials announced plans to expand beyond the legislatively authorized purview of the agency and open offices in Florida and California, as well as in other states. Congress overwhelmingly supported a bill last year to fork over $2.1 billion in new funding to the Capitol Police. Now flush with cash and immune from any serious public oversight, the agency is returning the favor by spying on dissidents of the Biden regime.

According to Politico, Capitol Police investigators are preparing secret dossiers on lawmakers, congressional staff, donors, and even constituents who visit their representatives in public or in private. 

“After the Jan. 6 insurrection (sic), the Capitol Police’s intelligence unit quietly started scrutinizing the backgrounds of people who meet with lawmakers,” reporters Betsy Woodruff Swan and Daniel Lippman wrote. “Several Capitol Police intelligence analysts have already raised concerns about the practice to the department’s inspector general,” one source told Politico.

Investigators are asked to scour social media accounts and even examine “tax and real estate records to find out who owned the properties that lawmakers visited.” In one example, Capitol Police analyzed a fundraiser held in a private home for Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.). Donors to House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was shot by a Bernie Sanders supporter in 2017, also are under Capitol police scrutiny.

Far from ensuring the safety of legislators and their staffs, the underlying political motive is obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention the past several years: the Capitol Police, acting as the Stasi of the Democratic Party, will collect dirt on Republicans under the pretense of national security then leak gossipy details to an always-compliant news media.

Journalists will then source the leaks to anonymous “intelligence officials” to legitimize any incriminating disclosures, which in turn will prompt Democrats to call for immediate investigations and criminal referrals—see the January 6 select committee for how this successful formula works.

In fact, an official from the Obama Administration, the birthplace of Russiagate and other political espionage efforts, is heading up the new endeavor.