RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/ruth-bader-ginsburg/91263/

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, coming at the beginning of what her co-religionists call the Days of Awe, is a moment to lay aside the politics. The time for that will arrive soon enough. President Trump is signaling he’ll make a prompt nomination to replace the Supreme Court’s most liberal justice. Yet tonight we find ourselves thinking of what Ginsburg meant to millions of Americans, particularly young women.

To them, and not only them, she was an enormously inspiring role model — a fighter who, like, say, Justice Thurgood Marshall, pursued a great cause through the practice of law. Her cause was the rights of women themselves. And by sticking to it, she built historic career in the law that was capped with a seat on the highest bench in the land. No wonder America’s daughters, and sons, admire her and thrill to her triumphs.

We began covering her story in 1993, when, in a gathering in the Rose Garden, she was introduced by President Clinton as his nominee to replace Justice “Whizzer” White. He noted that she had argued before the Supreme Court six cases on behalf of women and won five of them. He pointedly likened her to Marshall. He predicted that she would be a unifying figure on the high bench. When she spoke, the President teared up.

At Ginsburg’s confirmation hearing, there was a remarkable moment. It came when Senator Carol Mosley Braun erupted angrily over something said by Senator Orrin Hatch in reference to the Dred Scott case. Ms. Braun demanded to speak on a point of personal privilege in her capacity as “the only descendent of a slave” in the hearing. Judge Ginsburg sat still, declining to correct the senator. We clapped our head in disbelief.

For Senators Metzenbaum, Feinstein, Cohen, and Specter were, among others present, either Jewish or descended from Jews, and the future justice herself was Jewish. So we thought she could have pointed out that every year, for three millennia, Jews have made a point of beginning the Passover Seder by remembering precisely that they were slaves in Egypt. It was not that we wanted to mark that Ms. Braun was wrong.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/19/confirm-a-justice-now/

The instant Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing was announced, the battle lines were drawn. Or, more accurately, one side girded for battle, while Republicans clucked with confusion about what to do next.

Which should be no surprise. If Republicans are good at anything, it’s finding “principled” reasons to betray their constituents and contradict their much vaunted philosophy. President Trump, naturally, has sounded strong, as, to his credit, has Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). But the majority leader has to manage a fractious caucus and a thin margin. Many of his members either will be looking for excuses not to vote, or for a reason to vote no, or (worse) will be persuadable by sophistical arguments as to why stabbing their president, their voters, and their country in the back is “the right thing to do.”

Herewith, if any of them are listening, are some reasons not to take those paths.

The Alleged 2016 Precedent

All Democrats and a few Republicans are already saying that McConnell’s refusal to advance the nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016 set an inviolable precedent that the GOP would be hypocrites to overturn. But there are differences between 2016 and 2020.

First, Barack Obama was at the end of his constitutionally limited two terms. The 2016 contest, therefore, was an “open-seat” election. Voters are much more likely to hand the presidency to the other party in an open-seat election; they have done so in the last three straight, whereas no incumbent has lost since 1992. A president at the end of his second term is a lame duck; it makes some sense in that circumstance to give a new president, with a new mandate, the chance to shape the court rather than let the outgoing has-been, who’s already had eight years to do as he will, one last shot at a legacy.

President Trump was almost a shoo-in for reelection before the lockdowns crushed the economy, and he remains a strong bet. He’s still immensely popular with his base and his approval ratings are the highest of his presidency—and higher than many of his predecessors’ at the same point in his term. He is anything but a lame duck. He deserves a chance to exercise his constitutionally enumerated powers and deliver for his voters.

Now go back to the basement.

Commenting on the death of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Joe Biden said: 

“There is no doubt, let me be clear, that the voters should pick the president and the president should pick the justice for the Senate to consider.”

Well Mr. Biden, in case you don’t remember, the voters did pick a president in 2016, and the voters picked Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump was inaugurated at noon on Jan. 20, 2017, making him the 45th President of the United States.  

Again, in case you can’t recall Mr. Biden, Section 1 of the 20th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution states that Donald J. Trump’s term as president of the United States does not end until noon on Jan. 20, 2021.

And until that time, President Trump holds all the rights and powers as determined by that same U. S. Constitution.

I’m sure Mr. Biden, since you were a member of the U.S. Senate for many years, and presided over the Senate Judiciary Committee when Judge Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Clinton, and was also vice president for eight years, that you know that “The Appointments Clause” is part of Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, which empowers the president of the United States to nominate and, with the advice and consent (confirmation) of the United States Senate, appoint someone to a vacated seat of the SCOTUS.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/09/18/the_totalitarian_tendencies_of_the_woke.html

One of the best-selling books in America right now, Ibram Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist,” calls for some astonishingly autocratic policies. It would establish a federal Department of Anti-racism with veto power over any local, state, or federal policies considered racially inequitable by its bureaucrats. (No one in the agency would be appointed by or accountable to the president or Congress.) It would also “investigate private racist policies” and “monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas … empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.” 

This proposal to tear up both the checks and balances on executive fiat in Washington and the protections for individual rights embedded in our Constitution is one indicator among many that woke activists have fallen headlong for authoritarianism.

Their very language of group conflict and oppression is of course taken directly from Marxism. And there is a harsh intemperance and lack of proportionality in the behavior of today’s social-justice warriors. They say white supremacism is universal in America, not an aberration. Their favored graffiti spray tag is “ACAB” (All Cops Are Bastards). They want to defund and shut down police departments, not fix them. They call for lawmakers to “abolish ICE” and fling our southern border wide open. There is a growing fanaticism in which gray arguments and toleration for opposing points of view disappear.

If politics is the methodical organization of resentments, identity politics runs on the methodical organization of rage. Rage is an awful fuel for the gradual give-and-take needed to produce social progress in a non-authoritarian democracy. Alas, the Americans under age 30 who are manning the barricades of identity socialism loathe messy give-and-take. They prefer, as columnist Bari Weiss has noted, to squash resisters. Revolution rather than reform is increasingly the goal.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-puts-the-i-in-the-high-holy-days-11600383609?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Lord Sacks was chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, 1991-2013.

This year the Jewish High Holy Days will be like no other. Usually the synagogue is packed on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, with a buzz of noise that is not all prayer. The haunting call of the shofar, or ram’s horn, summons Jews to judgment. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we are on trial—giving an account of our lives, confessing our sins endlessly, going through every letter of the alphabet, including not a few offenses many of us wouldn’t have had the time, energy or inclination to commit. It is powerful, purgative, and ultimately purifying. We need this annual reset of our lives.

The sense of closeness and intimacy that comes with the crowd makes these days what they are: “The glory of the king is in the multitude of people.” Yet that won’t be present this year. Almost everywhere, prayers won’t be like that at all. Some synagogues’ doors will remain closed. Others will have social distancing, face masks, restrictions on communal singing, and other necessary precautions that restrict the number of people present and their proximity to one another. For a community-minded faith like Judaism, this almost feels like an amputation. The services are bound to feel hollow and lacking in atmosphere. This isn’t how the Days of Awe are supposed to be.

In this respect, Judaism has much in common with other faiths. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and others have had to cancel or restrict public prayer when believers needed it most. All religious leaders have struggled to provide the comfort of faith, the uplift of prayer and the solace of sacred space. Yet Judaism, like other faiths, has proved creative in finding alternative ways to create moments of inspiration.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/lefts-moral-compass-isnt-broken-dennis-prager/

All of my life, I have said that the left’s moral compass is broken.

And all of my life, I was wrong.

Why I was wrong explains both the left and the moral crisis we are in better than almost any other explanation.

I was wrong because in order to have a broken moral compass, you need to have a moral compass to begin with. But the left doesn’t have one.

This is not meant as an attack. It is a description of reality. The left regularly acknowledges that it doesn’t think in terms of good and evil. Most of us are so used to thinking in those terms — what we call “Judeo-Christian” — that it is very difficult for us to divide the world in any other way.

But since Karl Marx, the left (not liberalism; the two are different) has always divided the world, and, therefore, human actions, in ways other than good and evil. The left, in Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous words, has always operated “beyond good and evil.”

It all began with Marx, who divided the world by economic class — worker and owner or exploited and exploiter. To Marx and to Marxism, there is no such thing as a good or an evil that transcends class. Good is defined as what is good for the working class; evil is what is bad for the working class.

https://www.wnd.com/2020/09/oppressed-minority-police-officers/

Exclusive: Gamaliel Isaac notes most cops’ actions are ‘driven by crime and not by race’

Since the Black Lives Matter riots, corporate and academic indoctrination of staff into believing that they are unconsciously racist, that blacks can’t be racist and that police and the system is racist, has been increasing. Employers such as my own list alleged black victims of police racism to justify their indoctrination training. A typical list might consist of the following names: Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Dion Johnson, Michael Brown, Rayshard Brooks, Atatiana Jefferson, Tamir Rice and George Floyd. These institutions don’t explain why a racist act by a policeman implies anything about whether or not their employees are racist. In addition, if we examine the tragic stories of the people in these lists we discover that they are generally cases of self defense and not racism.

In the tragic case of Breonna Taylor, her boyfriend shot a policeman before he and his fellow officers shot back. Tony McDade pointed his gun at a policeman before the policeman shot back. Dion Johnson tried to grab a policeman’s weapon, and in the struggle that followed he was shot. Rayshard Brooks fired a taser at a policeman before he was shot. Atatiana Jefferson pointed a gun at a policeman before he shot her. Tamir Rice pointed a toy gun, whose orange barrel had been removed so that it looked like a real gun, at officer Loehmann who then shot Tamir. Officer Loehmann explained his actions with: “I knew it was a gun, and I knew it was coming out.” Michael Brown ran toward Officer Darren Wilson and wouldn’t stop despite repeated commands to get down on the ground.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/2020-election-democrats-promise-to-be-sore-violent-losers/

Attorney General Bill Barr’s critics rehash failed 1990s arguments.

In a conference call last week, Attorney General Bill Barr urged federal prosecutors to be aggressive in filing charges against violent anti-American radicals who are rioting in various cities, attacking government buildings, and targeting law-enforcement officers. The AG reportedly recommended a range of offenses, including seditious conspiracy.

Instantly, according to the Wall Street Journal, “legal experts” warned that the “rarely used statute could be difficult to prove in court and potentially run up against First Amendment protections.”

These are the same arguments that legal experts posited when I charged terrorists with seditious conspiracy for bombing the World Trade Center and plotting to bomb other New York City landmarks in 1993. The experts were wrong then, and they are wrong now.

The seditious-conspiracy statute, which is codified by Section 2384 of the modern federal penal code, was actually enacted by Congress during the Civil War — mainly to deal with Confederate sympathizers in free states who were violently sabotaging the Union war effort. As the Journal’s experts observe, it is rarely used. That is not because the crime is especially difficult to prove; it is much more straightforward than many federal crimes. Rather, it is because the conduct at issue — dangerous conspiracies to levy war against the United States, to violently overthrow our government, or to violently oppose the government’s legitimate authority — is historically unusual.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/how-understand-enduring-trump-hatred-bruce-bawer/

I know you. You’re somebody I know well or slightly or only as a public figure, and you hate Trump.

No, you’re not out rioting and destroying and burning, but you’re doing your part. You ruin your TV shows or podcasts, which are purportedly about non-political topics and which I otherwise enjoy, by interjecting Democratic rah-rah rhetoric. One of you, for example, in the middle of a podcast about old movies and TV, broke without warning into a pro-Democratic rant, expressing the urgent hope that Texas will “turn blue” in November. Two others, on a podcast about the arts, actually asserted that the Democratic convention was splendidly produced and deeply moving.

Consistently, you talk about politics as if it were still, I don’t know, 1990, or earlier, when there were Republicans like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond on the Hill, when there were no socialists or sharia advocates in the House Democratic caucus, and when nobody had ever heard of gender non-binaries.

Some of you don’t have TV shows or podcasts. You’re just ordinary citizens, friends or acquaintances of mine who sit at home and reflexively share anti-Trump memes on your social-media accounts. Most of those memes misrepresent facts that I damn well know you haven’t got a clue about, one way or the other. You don’t seem interested in learning the facts. You just want to hammer Trump. Facts or lies, it doesn’t matter. For some reason, it makes you feel good.

This is nothing new. You opposed him, virulently, in 2016. On election night, as one state after another went his way, you were in a panic. And with good reason – or so, at least, it seemed to you at the time.

You had bought into the argument that he was dangerously unstable and that with him in the White House the world would go spinning out of control. The possibilities of misadventure were endless. First off, he would pull us out of NATO and the UN. Then, who knew? The sky was the limit. He could set off Armageddon by saying something crazy on the phone to Putin or Xi or Kim Jong Un. He could order sudden, unwarranted troop build-ups and fleet movements that would ratchet up tensions. Or he might even – in fact he almost certainly would – order an unprovoked, unilateral invasion of some foreign country or other. Iran, say, or North Korea. Or Venezuela. Or someplace in Africa. Who knew? With this madman, anything could happen.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/scott-atlas-attacked-for-joining-white-house-covid-19-task-force/

Dr. Scott Atlas is under attack from former Stanford colleagues for joining the Trump administration’s COVID task force.

Cancel culture has come to medicine. Dr. Scott Atlas, who was chairman of neuroradiology at Stanford’s medical school until 2012 and more recently a senior fellow at the university’s Hoover Institution, has been singled out for professional erasure by 98 of his former Stanford medical, epidemiological, and health-policy colleagues because he had the temerity to join President Trump’s coronavirus task force and advocate rational measures for safely reopening the economy. Their criticisms are unfair, yet typical of today’s political and academic climate.

Atlas’s one-time colleagues published an open letter to other medical-school faculty accusing him of “falsehoods and misrepresentations of science” that “run counter to established science.” The letter — written on Stanford Medicine letterhead that falsely suggests the imprimatur of the medical school — does not cite any publications or specific statements by Dr. Atlas and does not specify exactly what “falsehoods and misrepresentations of science” he allegedly made. But it insinuates that his “failure to follow the science — or deliberately misrepresenting the science — will lead to immense avoidable harm.”

The letter lists five statements supported by “the preponderance of data” and implies that Atlas disagrees with them. The first says that face masks, social distancing, and handwashing reduce the spread of Covid-19. The authors do not cite anywhere where Atlas made claims to the contrary. A recent New York Times article claiming Atlas doubts the efficacy of mask wearing miscites an interview with Fox’s Tucker Carlson in which Atlas actually said people need not wear masks when they are alone but should wear masks when around others and unable to socially distance.