ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Support Trump’s Court Nominee As If Your Freedom Depends On It — Because It Does

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/09/21/support-trumps-move-to-fill-empty-court-seat-as-if-your-freedom-depends-on-it-because-it-does/

President Donald Trump has vowed to move quickly to name a replacement for late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and urged the Senate to vote before the election. Not only is he constitutionally justified in doing so, but the future political stability of our nation depends on it.

The pick, which Trump said will “likely” be a woman, is expected next week. There are a number of highly eligible, Constitution-friendly women suitable for the highest court in the land. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already pledged to move forward with the confirmation hearings, perhaps the most important since Roger B. Taney was named chief justice in 1836 and set the nation on course for Civil War.

It would be nice if the Democrats played a constructive role. After all, they threatened to shut down government in 2016 when faced with a similar situation.

Instead, realizing that the White House will name someone before the election and the Senate will hold a vote, they’re crying foul and issuing threats.

To begin with, they’ve uniformly acted as if Trump is doing something wrong or out of the ordinary in naming a replacement late in his term.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

NeverTrumpers Unhinged Over Their Growing Irrelevance By Brian C. Joondeph

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/nevertrumpers_unhinged_over_their_growing_irrelevance.html

Washington D.C. has always been a club, with decorum and strict membership rules. Most of us are not in this club and would have no desire to join if offered membership based on our morals, ethics, and a desire to look at ourselves in the mirror every day without being disgusted.

George Carlin said it best, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.” The club goes by many names – deep state, swamp, uniparty – and the club charter is quite clear, outlined ironically by someone not in the club, blackballed by the membership committee. President Trump, before the 2016 election described the club as follows and offered an alternative for the deplorables not in the “big club”,

Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American People. There is nothing the political establishment will not do, and no lie they will not tell, to hold on to their prestige and power at your expense. The Washington establishment, and the financial and media corporations that fund it, exists for only one reason: to protect and enrich itself.

NeverTrumpers represent the Republican side of the uniparty. They opposed Trump’s candidacy, presidency, and upcoming reelection. As the 2020 election approaches, their derangement is ratcheting up. Any pretense of conservatism being tossed out the window to disparage Trump and prevent his reelection. The passing of Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg will increase their caterwauling by an order of magnitude.

So-called NeverTrumpers are anything but Republican. Trump is implementing everything Republicans have advocated in their columns, books, newsletters, think tanks, and blogs. He cut taxes and took a machete to onerous regulations. He has been staunchly pro-life and nominated two constitutional conservatives to the high court, with an unexpected chance for a hat trick before the November election.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Trying to Purge Skidmore Faculty in Student-Run, Anti-Racism Hysteria The inevitable and grotesque endpoint of “cancel culture.” Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/trying-purge-skidmore-faculty-student-run-anti-richard-l-cravatts/

“The power to be found in victimization, like any power,” wrote Shelby Steele in The Content of Our Character, “is intoxicating and can lend itself to the creation of a new class of super-victims who can feel the pea of victimization under twenty mattresses.” Evidently, the new campus victims in the culture of aggrievement since George Floyd’s death have been irritated by the ‘hard pea’ of racism and want everyone else on campus to know and feel their pain, as well, since coddled, narcissistic college students have weaponized their professed victimology and have turned it on administrators and the professoriate as a way of extorting concessions, influence, and power on their respective campuses.

On the first day of classes at Skidmore College, for instance, a rally was held, sponsored by the student organization Pass the Mic, at which the protestors called for the end of racism at the school and conveniently presented the administration with 19 specific demands aimed at facilitating “. . . transformative healing work for Black and Indigenous people of color, and trying to cultivate a sense of community that isn’t here on campus,” as one of the organizers put it.

In order to create this brave new anti-racist world at Skidmore, the 19 demands included the predictable ones, such as “a zero-tolerance policy toward racism among faculty, staff, students and administrators” and “mandatory and reoccurring anti-racist training for all professors and students,” but also more radical and delusional requests such as: “full access to all Campus Safety officers’ background records;” a “ban [of] all police presence from campus including as responses to disputes and for large-scale public events;” and, frighteningly, a policy that “all bias reports filed against professors/faculty [be made] public and accessible while concealing the identity of the person who filed.” But perhaps most troubling on this list was the one very specific demand that called for “The immediate firing of Mark Vinci, David Peterson, and Andrea Peterson,” three Skidmore faculty members. And what were the offenses that would justify these professors’ termination?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Don’t Go Wobbly, Senate Republicans Why progressives are so eager to dismantle the Constitution. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/dont-go-wobbly-senate-republicans-bruce-thornton/

The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has occasioned the usual displays of progressive hypocrisy and flexible standards of decorum, not to mention the Dems’ scorched-earth tactics of vilification.

But the Senate Republicans can’t go wobbly at this critical moment. Donald Trump must nominate a replacement, and the Senate must confirm him or her, thus ensuring that even if Joe Biden somehow gets elected, the Supreme Court will have a 6-3 majority of youngish originalists on the court as a bulwark against the progressive project to dismantle the Constitution and “fundamentally transform” America into a technocratic “soft despotism.”

Once Donald Trump defied all predictions and defeated Hillary Clinton, the Supreme Court became the Democrats’ primary object of concern. Two vacancies filled by originalists have increased their angst. Ever since FDR threatened the Court with increasing its numbers, it has been the go-to option for progressives who stand little chance of their socialist policies and big state assaults on the Bill of Rights to pass muster with voters. Donald Trump’s improbable victory and judicial appointments have slowed that decades-long process, even though some presumably originalist justices like Chief Justice John Roberts have joined the progressives in legislating from the bench.

RBG, as she is known to progressives, became a particular worry once Trump became president. She was, as The Atlantic puts it, a “bulwark protecting abortion rights and a wide range of other progressive ideals on a conservative Supreme Court,” including issues like same-sex marriage and transgender rights that, like abortion, have no basis in the Constitution. More treacly was the Independent’s Holly Baxter, who keened, “Sometimes it felt like she was America’s last hope.” Such extravagance recalls Oscar Wilde’s quip, “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

The Russia Farce Continues America is in trouble if a former top FBI counterspy believes the silliness in his book. By Holman Jenkins

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-russia-farce-continues-11600466740?mod=opinion_featst_pos3

“For the truly disgraceful aspect here is the efforts of people like Mr. Strzok, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (who calls the president Mr. Putin’s “useful idiot”) and others to label Mr. Trump a traitor because he insists on pursuing the policies he explicitly sold the American people. You don’t have to agree with Trump priorities but Mr. Strzok et al.’s method of disagreeing is slimy.”

Contrary to a media chorus, the Justice Department inspector general did not find the FBI handling of the Clinton and Trump cases free of “political bias.”

He found no “documentary or testimonial evidence” of such bias to explain actions for which “no satisfactory explanations” were offered. Obama appointee Michael Horowitz detailed at great length a series of chaotic, insubordinate and unprincipled acts by FBI bureaucrats navigating 2016’s treacherous waters.

One of these officials was Peter Strzok, as you know too well. All of us, even in modestly sensitive positions, are constantly reminded about compromising personal behavior on company networks. And yet, using an FBI messaging system, he not only conducted an extramarital affair with a colleague, not only engaged in prejudicial political banter, but did so while leading supremely sensitive FBI investigations into both major-party candidates in the middle of a presidential election.

His comeuppance was unsurprising and now he’s contributing, on behalf of Democrats, to a campaign to delegitimize the next election if their guy doesn’t win. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Breaking Judicial Norms: A History A Democratic Senate pattern, from Bork to the filibuster rule.

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/breaking-judicial-norms-a-history-11600639835?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is widely reported to have told his Democratic colleagues on Saturday that “nothing is off the table for next year” if Republicans confirm a Supreme Court nominee in this Congress. He means this as a threat that Democrats will break the filibuster and pack the Court with more Justices in 2021 if they take control of the Senate in November’s election.

So what else is new? Democrats have a long history of breaking procedural norms on judges. While packing the Court would be their most radical decision to date, it would fit their escalating pattern. Let’s review the modern historical lowlights to see which party has really been the political norm-breaker:

• The Bork assault. When Ronald Reagan selected Robert Bork in 1987, the judge was among the most qualified ever nominated. No less than Joe Biden had previously said he might have to vote to confirm him. Then Ted Kennedy issued his demagogic assault from the Senate floor, complete with lies about women “forced into back-alley abortions” and blacks who would have to “sit at segregated lunch counters.” Democrats and the press then unleashed an unprecedented political assault.

Previous nominees who had failed in the Senate were suspected of corruption (Abe Fortas) or thought unqualified (Harrold Carswell). Bork was defeated because of distortions about his jurisprudence. This began the modern era of hyper-politicized judicial nominations, though for the Supreme Court it has largely been a one-way partisan street.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Ginsburg’s Death and the Dangerous Politics Ahead .By Charles Lipson

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/09/20/replacing_ginsburg_could_force_a_constitutional_crisis_144252.html

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life in the law cast a long shadow. In death, she casts a long shadow, too.

Since Justice Ginsburg was both historic figure and reliable liberal vote on the United States Supreme Court, replacing her was always going to be contentious. After all, the court’s direction for years to come is at stake. Candidate Donald Trump made the “activist federal courts” a major campaign issue in 2016. As president, he and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have delivered on that issue. They have confirmed over 200 new judges, almost all of them strenuously opposed by Democrats. Now, he has been given his third opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court justice. His first appointment replaced the late conservative icon, Antonio Scalia, with another conservative, Neil Gorsuch. His second replaced Anthony Kennedy, a moderate conservative and occasional swing vote, with Brett Kavanaugh, a more consistent conservative vote.

Replacing any Supreme Court justice is important, but substituting a conservative for a liberal giant like Ginsburg or the 82-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer, when he retires, would be far more consequential. That’s why the fight over the Ginsburg’s vacant seat will be so fierce, worse even than the brawl over Kavanaugh, who was smeared by multiple, last-minute allegations of sexual assault, none of which were substantiated. That fight was so toxic that several senior Democrats openly rejected the idea that Kavanaugh should be presumed “innocent until proven guilty,” a bedrock assumption of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence for over a thousand years.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Pelosi: House will use ‘every arrow in our quiver’ to stop Trump Supreme Court nominee

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Sunday the House had its “options” when asked about the possibility of impeaching President Trump and Attorney General William Barr should the White House and Senate Republicans jam a Supreme Court nominee through the process during a lame duck session after Election Day.

“We have our options, we have arrows in our quiver that I’m not about to discuss right now,” Pelosi told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” “But the fact is, we have a big challenge in our country. This president has threatened to not even accept the results of the election with statements that he and his henchmen have made. So right now, our main goal… would be to protect the integrity of the election as we protect the American people from the coronavirus.”

When Stephanopoulos pressed again about whether the House wouldn’t “rule anything out,” Pelosi pivoted toward the responsibilities of elected lawmakers.

“We have a responsibility, we take an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States. We have a responsibility to meet the needs of the American people. When we weigh the equities of protecting our democracy, requires us to use every arrow in our quiver,” Pelosi responded without going into detail of what option are on the table.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

What Attorney General Barr really said about justice By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/517266-what-attorney-general-barr-really-said-about-justice

It would be far better to read for ourselves Attorney General (AG) William Barr’s Constitution Day speech at Hillsdale College than to rely on the media-Democrat complex to relate what he said faithfully. The speech is posted on the Justice Department’s website. It is a scintillating explanation of the role of federal prosecutors in a free society, operating under a Constitution that guarantees liberty by dividing government power and making its exercise politically accountable.

What has gotten the most attention is the AG’s supposed belittling of career prosecutors. Ripped from its context, as if he were flipping off bumper sticker bromides rather than developing an argument, critics have feigned outrage that Barr equated the notion of trusting assistant United States attorneys (AUSAs) to make weighty decisions with letting the class syllabus be set by the tots at a Montessori preschool.

You will no doubt be shocked to learn that this is a complete distortion of what he said.

What Barr was driving at involves a significant philosophical dispute about prosecutorial power. Progressives regard it as a mere formality that the Framers vested the duty to execute the laws in the president. In their construct, federal prosecutors are not so much executive branch officials who serve the president as they are government lawyers who serve an abstraction known as “the rule of law,” which is vaguely understood to be laws enacted by Congress and rulings rendered by the judiciary — unless a Democratic president doesn’t approve of the laws or the jurisprudence. Also in their view, assistant U.S. attorneys are supposed to go about their weighty business completely insulated from politics — and, in Republican administrations, insulated from oversight by Main Justice, too. As for the attorney general, he is not the president’s lawyer but the public’s legal agent for purposes of reining in the president — except in the Obama administration, in which it was evidently fine for the attorney general to be the president’s self-described “wingman.”

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

Heiresses on the Barricades Bruce Bawer

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/heiresses-rebellions

Whatever Clara Kraebbe may do with the rest of her life, the 20-year-old Rice University student won’t outdo the publicity she’s received since her recent arrest by the NYPD for felony vandalism. Reading in the New York Post about young Clara, who lives with her father, a child psychiatrist, and her mother, an architect, in a $1.8 million Upper East Side luxury condo and a pre-Revolutionary War Connecticut mansion, I asked myself: Whom does this girl remind me of?

And then it came to me. Of course: she’s a modern-day Jane Fonda.

While Clara is a Manhattan princess, Jane was Hollywood royalty, daughter of one of the great actors of the movies’ golden age. While Jane was a poster girl for the hordes of well-off kids who protested the Vietnam War and looked down their noses at “hardhats,” Clara is the face of BLM/Antifa rioters who sneer at cops and other inferiors.

Raised in privilege, the beneficiaries of capitalist success, both these young women turned against the system that had given them so much. Clara trashed downtown Manhattan businesses and, according to reports, wanted to commandeer upper-class New York apartments of the sort she lives in and hand them over to the poor. It’s not quite up there with climbing on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, as Jane did back in 1972, but it’ll do for these days of diminished expectations.