Category Archives: Courts

Rule of Law

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The matter of leaking the Supreme Court’s draft opinion on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization has drawn into the open the Progressive-Democratic Party’s and its politicians’ utter contempt for law, along with these persons’ preference for our nation being ruled by men—so long as those men are members of Party.

Here are a couple of canonical examples. First up, President Joe Biden (D) through his Press Secretary, Jen Psaki:

Q    Why not criticize this leak?
MS. PSAKI:  Again, because I think what is happening here, and what we think is happening here, is there’s an effort to distract from what the actual issue here—
…
MS. PSAKI:  And we are not—we are working not—to not allow that to be the distraction.

Next up is Congressman Adam Schiff (D, CA):

I don’t care how the draft leaked. That’s a sideshow[.]

Laws are just distractions, sideshows, to be set aside, to be ignored, whenever they become inconvenient.

This disregard for the protection that laws give all of us against the vagaries, whims, egos of others of us and the preference for those vagaries, whims, egos—so long as it’s the right men who have them—need to be kept firmly in mind this fall.

Former President Donald Trump Has a Plan

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Former President Donald Trump (R) has a plan for recovering our nation from the ravages of Progressive-Democratic Party control over the last year and more, and that will continue to be inflicted over the next several months to three years. In the main, he’s on the right track; although I disagree with his constant harping on personalities, like his disparagement of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R). McConnell’s tactics, to take the particular case as illustrative, are not Trump’s but without McConnell’s skillful politics, there would be no Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch; we would have Merrick Garland inflicted on us. Without McConnell’s acumen, Trump would not have all those hundreds of conservative—which is to say, textualist—district and appellate court judges confirmed.

On policy, there’s also this Trump shortfall:

[T]he nation’s 45th president said his plan begins with recapturing GOP control of at least one chamber of Congress in November and creating a bulwark to stop the Biden agenda.

This is insufficiently specified. If Republicans succeed in gaining a majority in only one chamber of Congress, it must be the Senate. It’s in the Senate that the safety of the Supreme Court lies.

It’s in the Senate that treaties lie.

It’s in the Senate that Executive Branch nominations get confirmed or denied.

Even though the House of Representatives must originate revenue (i.e., taxing) bills and by tradition spending bills, it’s in the Senate where these live or die. It’s in the Senate (as well as the House) where budgets, allocations, and spending bills generally live or die.

It’s in the Senate that the safety of our republican democracy lies.

Ketanji Brown Jackson and the Second Amendment

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Short and sweet. And wrong. At Tuesday’s morning session of the hearing to confirm/reject Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson:

Senator Chuck Grassley (R, IA): Do you believe the individual right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right?
Brown Jackson: Senator, the supreme court has established that the individual right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right.

Notice that. A court says so. Not our Constitution—the second of our Bill of Rights—says so.

This should be disqualifying.

The Judge’s Ruling is Correct

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Michael Sussmann, the Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer (among other roles) moved in court to strike portions of Special Council John Durham’s indictment of him, including in particular, the indictment’s “Factual Background” section. Sussman claimed that the section had “prejudicial” information and “false allegations” and so would taint the jury pool from which his jurors would be drawn. DC District Judge Christopher Cooper waved the BS flag at Sussman’s move.

I’m not going to strike anything from the record. Whatever effect the filing has had has already passed.

That’s correct. More important, though, are these factors. One is that, of course the indictment contains “prejudicial” information: grand juries are, by design, one-sided affairs intended solely to determine whether there’s enough material to warrant a formal charge and a trial. That’s why the evidence presented to a grand jury is sealed until trial; only the fact of the indictment and the nature of the government’s case can be made public before that trial—and never made public at all if, with or without indictment, the government decides not to proceed to trial.

The other factor, regarding the “false allegations” claim, is a so what one. The accuracy of the allegations, along with the accuracy and believability of any facts or other evidence underlying the allegations, are for juries to determine at trial, not for judges to deny jury access to via prosecutorial presentation.

Another Judge Gets One Right

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Recall that the Fairfax County School Board, last year, changed the admissions policy for its elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology from one of straight merit to one of discrimination to favor some racially preferred children and to disfavor some racially…not preferred…children. This racist policy was objected to in court by a broad coalition of average American residents of the county. In US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Claude Hilton waved the racism flag and struck the racial preferences scheme.

Hilton ruled in part [citations omitted, emphasis added],

The Board’s main problem is its focus on the goal to have TJ [Thomas Jefferson] reflect the demographics of the surrounding area, described primarily in racial terms. Far from a compelling interest, racial balancing for its own sake is “patently unconstitutional.” The Board cannot transform racial balancing into a compelling interest “simply by relabeling it ‘racial diversity.'” The school districts in Parents Involved tried various verbal formulations to deflect from their intent to racially balance schools through race-based transfers. The Board here did not even bother with such “verbal formulations.” Board members and high-level FCPS [Fairfax County Public Schools] actors did not disguise their desire for TJ to represent the racial demographics…. Whether accomplished overtly or via proxies, racial balancing is not a compelling interest.

And

…steps…could have been implemented before the Board defaulted to a system that treats applicants unequally in hopes of engineering a particular racial outcome.

And

The proper remedy for a legal provision enacted with discriminatory intent is invalidation.

We may be making progress toward correcting the blatantly racist policies of the Left.

The ruling can be read here.