RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/blame-congress-for-politicizing-the-court-1536189015
Mr. Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is adapted from his opening statement at Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.

Brett Kavanaugh has been accused of hating women, hating children, hating clean air, wanting dirty water. He’s been declared an existential threat to the nation. Alumni of Yale Law School, incensed that faculty members at his alma mater praised his selection, wrote a public letter to the school saying: “People will die if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed.”

It’s predictable now that every Supreme Court confirmation hearing will be a politicized circus. This is because Americans have accepted a bad new theory about how the three branches of government should work—and in particular about how the judiciary operates.

In the U.S. system, the legislative branch is supposed to be the center of politics. Why isn’t it? For the past century, more legislative authority has been delegated to the executive branch every year. Both parties do it. The legislature is weak, and most people here in Congress want their jobs more than they want to do legislative work. So they punt most of the work to the next branch.

The consequence of this transfer of power is that people yearn for a place where politics can actually be done. When we don’t do a lot of big political debating here in Congress, we transfer it to the Supreme Court. And that’s why the court is increasingly a substitute political battleground. We badly need to restore the proper duties and the balance of power to our constitutional system.

If there are lots of protests in front of the Supreme Court, that’s an indication that the republic isn’t healthy. People should be protesting in front of this body instead. The legislature is designed to be controversial, noisy, sometimes even rowdy—because making laws means we have to hash out matters about which we don’t all agree.

How did the legislature decide to give away its power? We’ve been doing it for a long time. Over the course of the past century, especially since the 1930s and ramping up since the 1960s, the legislative branch has kicked a lot of its responsibility to alphabet-soup bureaucracies. These are the places where most actual policy-making—in a way, lawmaking—happens now.

What we mostly do around this body is not pass laws but give permission to bureaucracy X, Y or Z to make lawlike regulations. We write giant pieces of legislation that people haven’t read, filled with terms that are undefined, and we say the secretary or administrator of such-and-such shall promulgate rules that do the rest of our jobs. That’s why there are so many fights about the executive branch and the judiciary—because Congress rarely finishes its work. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/trending/ben-sasses-tell-it-like-it-is-moment/

The Nebraska senator’s statement may wind up being the most blistering moment of the hearings.

As the hearings to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court generated a partisan circus — complete with protesters in Handmaid’s Tale garb — one man stood above the fray to deliver a splash of cold water to the face of Congress. That man was Ben Sasse.

Senator Sasse (R-Neb.) made one of the most impassioned statements of his career on Tuesday. In ten minutes, he held forth on what is wrong with the politicization of the Supreme Court nomination process.

The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips broke Sasse’s speech down into four bullet points:

1. Congress is set up to be the most po­lit­i­cal branch. “This is sup­posed to be the in­sti­tu­tion dedi­cat­ed to po­lit­i­cal fights,” Sasse said.

2.But in the name of politics, lawmakers have de­cid­ed to keep their jobs rath­er than take tough votes. “Most people here want their jobs more than they re­al­ly want to do legis­la­tive work, and so they punt their legis­la­tive work to the next branch,” Sasse said.

3. Be­cause Congress of­ten lets the ex­ec­u­tive branch write rules, and Americans aren’t sure who in the gov­ern­ment bureauc­ra­cy to talk to, that leaves Americans with no oth­er place than the courts to turn to ex­press their frus­tra­tion with poli­cies. And the Su­preme Court, with its nine vis­i­ble mem­bers, is a con­veni­ent out­let. Sasse: “This trans­fer of pow­er means people yearn for a place where politics can be done, and when we don’t do a lot of big po­lit­i­cal debate here, people trans­fer it to the Su­preme Court. And that’s why the Su­preme Court is in­creas­ing­ly a sub­sti­tute po­lit­i­cal battle­ground for America.”

4. Sasse’s final point is one you can prob­a­bly guess is com­ing by now: That this proc­ess needs to change. If Congress did more legis­lat­ing, these Su­preme Court nom­i­na­tion bat­tles would get less po­lit­i­cal, he ar­gues: “If we see lots and lots of pro­tests in front of the Su­preme Court, that’s a pret­ty good ba­rom­e­ter of the fact that our re­pub­lic isn’t heal­thy. They shouldn’t be pro­test­ing in front of the Su­preme Court, they should be pro­test­ing in front of this body.”

Clearly, in the senator’s eyes, Congress isn’t doing what the public has elected them to do, and this failure of the body to do its job has led directly to the divided, heated hearings we see every time a potential Supreme Court justice is up for confirmation these days. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/trending/capitol-police-arrested-143-protesters-in-the-first-two-days-of-the-kavanaugh-hearings/

From the very first moments of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats and protesters interrupted and shouted down the proceedings. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) likened the situation to “mob rule,” and the Capitol Police reported that in the first two days, they have arrested 143 protesters.

“The United States Capitol Police responded to numerous incidents of unlawful demonstration activities within the Senate Office Buildings that were associated with today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing,” the police said in a statement on Wednesday evening.

“Sixty-six individuals were removed from the Committee room in the Hart Senate Office Building, and were charged with D.C. Code §22–1321 – Disorderly conduct,” the statement reported. “In addition, six individuals were removed from the fourth floor of the Russell Senate Office Building for unlawful demonstration activities and were charged with D.C. Code §22-1307 – Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding.”

Finally, one person “was arrested in the Hart Atrium and was charged with D.C. Code §22-1307 – Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding, and D.C. Code §22-405.01 – Resisting Arrest.”

These 73 protesters joined the 70 arrested on Tuesday. The Capitol Police reported removing 61 people on the first day of the hearings, and charging them with disorderly conduct. They also removed nine more protesters from the second floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building for unlawful demonstration.

The hearings are ongoing, with no sign that the protests will stop.

As Law & Crime’s Ron Blitzer reported, three medical doctors have claimed that the protesters are being paid to stand up in the middle of the hearings and start shouting, only to be escorted out and charged by police.

Adam Schindler, president of Schindler Digital, tweeted two photos: one showing a woman getting paid while in line to enter the hearing, and another showing the same woman escorted out of the hearing.

Schindler presented the photos as “proof the protesters were paid off in line.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/05/the

The New York Times hit a new journalistic low on Wednesday with the publication of an anonymous op-ed, purportedly by a senior member of the Trump Administration, that reveals the existence of a sapper within the president’s circle. No doubt commissioned to coincide with the release of Bob Woodward’s latest exercise in Washington fiction, Fear, as well the orgy of crocodile tears occasioned by the passing of John McCain, it portrays an erratic, amoral president entirely unmoored from previous notions of ideological or party fidelity, whose impulsive behavior his aides are trying, with only some success, to contain and correct.

“This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state,” writes the author. “It’s the work of the steady state.”

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful. It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

Not for the first time, what’s going on in Washington brings to mind not the late Roman Empire, but the early one—the Julian line that began with Caesar, passed through Augustus and Tiberius, and then degenerated into the reigns of Caligula, Claudius, and ended with Nero. As the Republic morphed into the Empire, the Senate receded in importance, as did the twin consuls, annually elected. Powerful women—the mothers, wives, and mistresses of the emperors—wielded great power. And yet, in the end, nearly all died unnatural deaths, assassinated (all but Augustus, in fact), murdered, executed, or forced to suicide. To spare you reading Gibbon in his magnificent entirety: the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was written in the stars, right from the start, just as Shakespeare said.