RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Barack Obama nominated Merrick B. Garland, who currently serves as Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. The White House’s strategy was to pick someone whom they believe will be politically difficult for Republican senators to simply ignore – a stealth leftist recast as a “centrist.” The White House even created a new Twitter handle, @SCOTUSnom, to rev up activists seeking to pressure Senate Republicans into giving President Obama’s nominee, in Obama’s words, “a fair hearing and an up-or-down vote.”

The Democratic Party has lost no time making Obama’s nomination a highly charged partisan issue. All the Republicans want to do is to let the voters have their say this fall in choosing the next president before a lifetime position on the Supreme Court is filled. But Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chair of the Democratic National Committee, insists that lame duck Obama must have his way and change the entire ideological balance of the Supreme Court for possibly decades to come. “Frankly, I’ve grown a little sick of Republicans in Congress and their antics that have ranged from simply unproductive to downright offensive,” she complained in a letter to Democrats. Somehow, in Wasserman Schultz’s fevered imagination, it is “offensive” and “obstructionism” to defer to the will of the voters in a presidential election year before making such a consequential decision.

The left’s propaganda machine will argue that Judge Garland is a centrist whom all fair-minded senators should support. The New York Times is already quoting Utah Senator Orin Hatch, who said back in 2010, when Judge Garland was being considered to fill another Supreme Court vacancy, “I know Merrick Garland very well. He would be very well supported by all sides.”

However, Senator Hatch made that statement when President Obama was looking to replace Justice John Paul Stevens’ seat. President Obama refused to take Senator Hatch’s “advice” and rejected Judge Garland. He nominated the more left-wing Justice Elena Kagan instead, whom the Senate confirmed. The ideological balance of the Supreme Court was not in jeopardy with Elena Kagan’s confirmation because she was replacing one of the more left-wing justices at that time. Judge Garland today, by contrast, would be replacing the intellectual leader of the Supreme Court’s more conservative members.

President Obama has nominated Merrick Garland, chief judge on the federal DC circuit court of appeals, as a U.S. Supreme Court justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia.

Few would describe Garland a flaming liberal, in the mold of current Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsberg, or former Justice John Paul Stevens. More likely a less flamboyant liberal, but liberal just the same, as his mentor Justice William Brennan, for whom Garland clerked in 1978-79.

Brennan was a champion of the First Amendment, perhaps Garland will follow suit.

Yet Brennan was both the ghostwriter for Justice Blackmun’s majority opinion in Roe v Wade, and as at least one commentator asserts, the author of the three worst liberal SCOTUS opinions ever.

The most notorious was Plyler v Doe in 1982, ruling that children of illegal immigrants have a right to free public education. It is hard not to see Garland’s alignment here to Brennan.

On his own, Garland has gold-plated his liberal credentials by denying the 2nd Amendment, most egregiously voting to rehear a case in which a DC ban on handguns for personal protection was overturned.

President Obama on Wednesday formally nominated Merrick Garland, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to the U.S. Supreme Court. After studying his extensive record, the National Federation of Independent Business believes that Judge Garland would be a strong ally of the regulatory bureaucracy, big labor and trial lawyers. On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of members we represent, the NFIB opposes Judge Garland’s confirmation.

In NAHB v. EPA, Judge Garland in 2011 refused to consider a Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) claim by the National Association of Home Builders against the Environmental Protection Agency despite the law’s clear language. The RFA is one of the few federal statutes that explicitly require certain agencies to take into account the effect of their actions on small employers. Consider that the federal government itself estimates that the typical small business must spend $12,000 per worker annually just to be compliant with federal regulations. With Judge Garland on the Supreme Court, the EPA and other regulators would have a freer hand to impose even more costs on small businesses.

In another case, Rancho Viejo, LLC v. Norton, in 2003, Judge Garland argued that the Commerce Clause, which regulates economic activity between the states, applies to an animal species found in only one state and which has no economic value. In doing so he foreshadowed the creative reasoning that the Obama administration used to defend the Affordable Care Act in NFIB v. Sebelius. We fear that as a pivotal justice on the Supreme Court, Judge Garland could apply his elastic view of the Commerce Clause to almost anything else.

In two other cases involving the National Labor Relations Board, Judge Garland didn’t just side with the government—he argued that business owners should be personally liable for labor violations. In other words, their personal assets, including their homes and their savings, would be exposed to government penalties. What worries us is that Judge Garland has been consistently wrong on labor law. In fact, in 16 major labor decisions of Judge Garland’s that we examined, he ruled 16-0 in favor of the NLRB.

With more than 320,000 members, our organization is the country’s largest advocate for small-business owners. When we asked members on Wednesday whether they wanted to fight the Garland confirmation, the response was overwhelming. More than 90% urged us to take action. CONTINUE AT SITE

President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court is meant to put Senate Republicans on the spot by elevating a well-qualified 63-year-old judge not known as a progressive firebrand. Republicans aren’t likely to fall into this trap, and Judge Garland’s jurisprudence suggests they’re right—with a caveat we’ll get to later.

The common wisdom is that Judge Garland’s nomination presents Republicans with the most moderate option they’ll get from a Democratic President. Maybe, maybe not. But we can’t think of a single issue that has divided the Court on which Mr. Garland would reliably vote differently from the four liberal Justices already on the bench.
Judge Garland’s 19-year tenure on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals demonstrates a reliable vote for progressive causes, with the arguable exception of criminal law. Two issues in particular make the point: the Second Amendment and deference to the growing power of the administrative state.

In 2007 Judge Garland voted for a rehearing en banc after a three-judge panel invalidated Washington D.C’s handgun ban. In 2000 Judge Garland was part of a three-judge panel that allowed the FBI to temporarily keep files with information from gun purchase background checks. In his dissent, Judge David Sentelle wrote that the Attorney General was not only making “an unauthorized power grab, but is taking action expressly forbidden by Congress.”

Judge Garland has also shown a pattern of over-deference to administrative agencies including the EPA. Scotusblog’s Tom Goldstein points out that Mr. Garland has strong views on agency deference and “in a dozen close cases in which the court divided, he sided with the agency every time.”

In an especially notable case, Judge Garland dissented when the D.C. Circuit struck down the EPA’s egregious regional haze rules (American Corn Growers v. EPA, 2002). Excessive judicial deference to regulators is especially dangerous now given the Obama Administration’s unrestrained use of executive power to rewrite statutes and dare Congress to stop it. CONTINUE AT SITE

Having supported Jeb Bush, a Trump apologist I am not. However, to blame him for a mob of leftist thugs wreaking havoc at his rally in Chicago is just plain wrong. It is anti-free speech; it’s un-American. The attempt by MoveOn.Org to use paid protesters to silence Trump supporters through intimidation is consistent with the radical left’s attempt to silence those with differing opinions and views. This tactic is reprehensible, but has been used frequently. Remember the protests at Rutgers University preventing Condi Rice from speaking or the protests, at a Yale forum on free speech?

The left is not interested in having a discussion or even a heated debate with Trump or with anyone else who cannot pass the liberal litmus test. They are only interested in silencing views with which they disagree. To disagree with them is to be branded a racist or a bigot. In today’s world, this is an example of the not-so-subtle intimidation of political correctness. Indeed, the left-leaning media is complicit as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow went so far as to blame Trump for the behavior of the mob. Stifle debate, blame the victim. This is the way the left deals with dissent.

Alternatively, a civics lesson on how to deal with dissent or differing views is exemplified by the late Justice Antonin Scalia in the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Texas v Johnson. There, Justice Scalia joined the majority ruling upholding Gregory Lee Johnson’s constitutional right to light an American flag on fire during the Republican National Convention in Dallas. The next day Justice Scalia commented, “I would send that guy to jail so fast if I were king.” While he found Johnson’s act personally and morally reprehensible, Scalia emphasized that burning the flag is a form of free speech and, therefore, a right granted to the citizens by the First Amendment.

Following Justice Scalia’s line of reasoning, we cannot allow personal judgment or bias to preclude us from allowing others to speak. Free speech is the most basic right granted to U.S. citizens; it’s what makes us Americans. We do not have to agree with conflicting opinions and, in fact, we have the First Amendment right to argue at will. But we do have an obligation to protect every person’s right to express his or her views — no matter how unpalatable we find them. While I find it remarkable that more people are not outraged by Senator Sanders’ blatant socialism or Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi cover-up, no one has the right to shut Sanders or Clinton down entirely. Despite what I think of the two candidates personally, I would defend their right to voice opinions that fundamentally conflict with my own. Intimidation of any kind has no place on the right or the left.

I think very highly of Merrick Garland, whom President Obama has nominated to fill the Supreme Court seat of the late, legendary Justice Antonin Scalia. Merrick was a voice of reason and sound judgment as a top official in the Clinton Justice Department during the Nineties when I was prosecuting terrorists. It seems hard to believe now, but our decision to charge the Blind Sheikh and other jihadists with seditious conspiracy (i.e., conspiracy to levy war against the United States) was controversial at the time. It was a real asset to have, in the front office at Main Justice, an attorney of Merrick’s skill: a trial prosecutor’s grasp of strategy and an appellate lawyer’s understanding of potential legal perils. And, besides all that, he was a very nice guy.

Moreover, while my case was a success, it amply demonstrated that federal criminal law was ill-equipped to deal with international terrorism. Judge Garland is one of the lawyers who deserves credit for the mid-Nineties overhaul of counterterrorism law. Once these new statutes were finally enacted in 1996, you could still have a vigorous policy debate over whether international terrorism was principally a law-enforcement or a national-security challenge, but you could never again complain that the legal arsenal for prosecutions was lacking.

In terms of judicial philosophy, I would have deep disagreements with Judge Garland. He clerked for and was obviously deeply influenced by Justice William Brennan, who was about as much of a polar opposite to Justice Scalia as one could be. But there is no doubting Garland’s intellect and integrity. He is not someone a conservative or constitutional-originalist president would appoint; he is, however, as good as we could get from a president of the Left. I was pleased when President Clinton nominated him for the D.C. Circuit, and pleased when he was finally confirmed in 1997.

Of course, the situation today is much different.

What has a three-quarter billion-dollar unfunded liability, is manually calculated on paper inside a Pennsylvania mountain, and costs taxpayers more money annually than the entire state budget of Florida? Answer: Federal employee pensions.

It’s national Sunshine Week across America. During this week, good-government groups advocate for open government and transparency in public spending. One area that remains hidden is federal pensions.

Imagine if you could see how much your former congressman makes in federal retirement pension? Just how many years were ‘worked?’ How much money was paid-in? How much did taxpayers finance? And, once retired, just how quickly did the congressman ‘break-even’ on their own contributions?

Even Illinois – where the state’s #1 manufactured product is corruption – has the courtesy to show taxpayers all of the gory details about pensions. The books are open on all 700,000 public retirees at every level of government.

In Illinois, this transparency has been instrumental in identifying pension abuses. For example, our organization OpenTheBooks.com found that a pair of Illinois union lobbyists who substitute taught for just one day in the public school system actually received their $1 million lifetime ‘teacher’ pensions. This happened despite a state law expressly designed to stop them. In another case, a former chief aide to previous Gov. Pat Quinn (D) was receiving an annual pension of $137,000 per year rather than the proper $20,000. A good-government pension hawk exposed the mistake and stopped the over-payments.

Many other states have public pension transparency. Citizen outrage in California drove lawmakers to pass a state law curbing a $545,000 pension to a city manager in Vernon (population 102). Now, that manager is retired on $115,000 per year – an 80 percent reduction.

Inside the cavernous, windowless, Cold War era federal complex in Pennsylvania, what mistakes has the U.S. government made while hand-calculating retirement pensions? Nobody has a clue, because the Obama administration has cited a ‘privacy’ exemption to the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) and refused to shine a light on federal pensions.

Two years ago, we filed a FOIA request for individual federal pension data. The Office of Personnel and Management rejected our request saying it was, “… a clear unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” But, our request for the active salaries of 2.5 million federal employees was fulfilled, with seven-year histories. We post these salaries and bonuses (with names) at OpenTheBooks.com.

If active salaries/bonuses are subject to transparency, why would posting federal retiree pension amounts, service credits and contributions be an invasion of privacy? The same privacy law underlies both records. The Obama administration’s legal argument against revealing pension data is arbitrary.

President Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton state that climate change is more dangerous to future generations than terrorism. They advocate destroying industries that have greatly improved our quality and length of life. I believe that the American people are entitled to some actual scientific facts instead of talking points. Here are some questions for the global warming bandwagon.

In the 1920s, scientists were warning that because of warming and the melting ice, coastal cities would soon disappear. Why were they wrong then, and why are the same warnings correct today? How did the Earth cool so much from 1945 to 1976 that the experts were warning about a disastrous ice age if rising CO2, rapidly increasing populations, industrialization, and fossil fuels cause warming?

According to UCAR (the Universal Corporation for Atmospheric Research) the temperature today is around 1.53 degrees warmer than 1880. Wouldn’t that be within the margin of error, especially since the Little Ice Age ended around 1800?

According to scientific studies, CO2 was much higher during the ice age – 2,000-8,000 parts per million vs. 400 today. If CO2 causes warming, why wasn’t the Earth warmer then than it is today?

Recently, the U.S. attorney general said the Justice Department is considering bringing legal action against people who will not go along on climate change caused by humans. Is it any wonder that scientists who are skeptics won’t speak out when their livelihood is threatened?

Shouldn’t the media do some simple research instead of just repeating the talking points that humans cause climate change?

Sheldon Whitehouse took to the Senate floor last fall to assail our coverage of his climate agenda. We had criticized his plan to use the RICO law, created to prosecute mobsters, against people who disagree with him about global warming. We also criticized George Mason University’s Jagadish Shukla, who wrote to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other federal officials urging them to follow the Senator’s advice. New developments aren’t helping the credibility of Messrs. Shukla and Whitehouse.

In October Mr. Whitehouse denied that the RICO litigation threat—with its potential for treble damages—was intended to shut down scientific debate. The Rhode Island Democrat claimed he wants civil rather than criminal prosecutions of climate dissenters. As if bringing financial ruin on defendants accused of independent thought isn’t bad enough.

But now it looks like the campaign to silence climate dissidents could move beyond a potential civil case—and we’re not hearing a peep from Mr. Whitehouse. Attorney General Lynch told the Senate last week that her department had referred a request to prosecute climate dissent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Specifically, it was referred to the FBI’s criminal investigative division. A Justice official says on background that this is “not an indication or recommendation of whether a matter merits investigation, but is simply a referral to an appropriate investigative authority at the Department.”

Even as Sen. Whitehouse questioned Ms. Lynch on this very matter at the hearing, he uttered no criticism. His spokesman says the Senator still doesn’t favor criminal investigations and that Mr. Whitehouse thought the FBI referral “appeared unusual for the pursuit of a civil investigation.” But if Justice does throw people in jail for scientific skepticism, the message seems to be: Don’t count on Mr. Whitehouse to defend your liberty.

While the FBI ponders whether to slap the cuffs on people who don’t believe in U.N. climate models, scientists who agree with Mr. Whitehouse are thriving beyond the dreams of most academic researchers. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement’s welcoming embrace of the slogan “From Palestine To Ferguson” makes it abundantly clear that left-wing racists in America have found their ideological soul mates in the Palestinian anti-Semites of the Middle East.

BLM, you may recall, was born in response to the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, the “white Hispanic” who had infamously shot and killed Trayvon Martin the previous year. The phrase quickly became a rallying cry for radicals and rioters demanding an end to what BLM termed the “virulent anti-Black racism” that “permeates our society.” Then, when a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri shot and killed the young black criminal Michael Brown in August 2014, BLM ramped up its allegations of police brutality against “people of color” in America’s “white supremacist system.” The fact that police are significantly more likely to shoot white criminal suspects rather than black suspects has never meant anything to BLM. The movement’s purpose is to promote racial hatred and street riots, not to uncover any truths.

Just a few days after Brown’s death, a worldwide alliance of Palestinian activists—who detested Israel and its Jewish citizens every bit as fiercely as BLM loathed America and white people—decided to draw public attention to their own particular grievances by piggybacking on the turmoil in Ferguson. The timing was favorable for these anti-Semites, given that the Israeli military was then engaged in an effort to dismantle Hamas’s massive terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. The activists adopted the meme “From Palestine To Ferguson” (FPTF)—a pithy catchphrase that, like “Black Lives Matter,” quickly evolved into shorthand for trumped-up charges of victimization, calls to revolution in the name of “social justice,” and vindictive hatred disguised as a plea for respect.

Voicing empathy for the sense of “hurt,” “anger,” and “moral outrage” which BLM feels as a result of “the oppression that continues to target our Black brothers and sisters in nearly every aspect of their lives,” FPTF mouthpieces proudly affirm their own “solidarity with the family of Michael Brown, a young unarmed Black man gunned down by police”; their support for the “struggle” of black Ferguson residents against “a militarized police occupation”; and their contempt for the “racist capitalist system” that “systematically pushes” American blacks “to the margins of humanity.”

In a like manner, adherents of the FPTF mindset routinely portray Israel as a “capitalist settler-state” that pursues “economic expansion” by subjecting the Palestinians to “collective punishment,” “subjugation,” and “war crimes.” In short, says one FPTF spokesman, “the rejection of peace” is structurally “built into [Israel’s] current existence”—a remarkable allegation, in light of the fact that Arab states have flatly rejected favorable opportunities for peace with Israel more than 30 times since 1937.