RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/20/the-loathsomeness-of-reza-aslan/

No one who was familiar with Aslan’s writings should have been terribly surprised by his Friday night tweet, which some would justifiably describe as an explicit threat of physical violence.

The tweet, sent out on the evening of September 18, only minutes after the announcement of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, was succinct and straightforward: “If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire f—ing thing down.” Within hours, these words had been widely retweeted and commented upon. 

Apparently, it was the author’s most attention-getting tweet since January 19, 2019, when—in the wake of the instantly famous encounter at the Lincoln Memorial involving a group of polite MAGA cap-wearing boys from Covington High School in Kentucky, a drum-banging Native American provocateur named Nathan Phillips, and a trash-talking gang of Black Hebrew Israelites—the selfsame author posted the now-iconic picture of one of the boys, Nick Sandmann, standing calmly in the face of Phillips’ provocation, and wrote: “Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?”

The author in question was Reza Aslan, who, when he himself was a kid, fled the Iranian Revolution with his parents for the United States, where he grew up in the Bay Area. He went on to collect a B.A. in religious studies from Santa Clara University, an M.A. in theological studies from Harvard, an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in sociology from UC Santa Barbara. His first book, No god but God (2005), whitewashed Islam and blamed Islamic terror on Western imperialism; the predictable plaudits in such left-wing organs as the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, and Financial Times made it a “worldwide success” (The Guardian) and launched his career as a “multimedia force” (L.A. Review of Books). 

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.”

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.

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.