Bringing Back the Blue Slip?

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The blue slip process is the procedure wherein one or both Senators of a State from which a judicial nominee hails could block the Senate Judiciary Committee from considering that nominee. The process had been a long-standing courtesy—not a Senate rule—that Committee Chairmen had for decades honored. Then-Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R, IA) began ignoring the blue slips in 2017 when the Progressive-Democrat Senators began abusing the process, using their blue slips to knee-jerk block then-President Donald Trump’s (R) nominees.

Now the current Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D, IL) is talking about reviving the courtesy (possibly even using the current Progressive-Democratic Party majority in the Senate to make the courtesy a Senate Rule).

Some in the Senate are suggesting that Durbin’s words are his tacit expectation that Republicans will regain the majority in the Senate and regain the White House with a newly reelected President Donald Trump.

My view is that Durbin’s words constitute a tempest in a sidewalk puddle. Say the Progressive-Democrats retain the Senate, the White House, or both. The courtesy/rule won’t matter. Reelected Biden’s nominees won’t get consideration in a Republican Senate, reelected Trump’s nominees won’t get consideration in a Progressive-Democrat Senate, and with Progressive-Democratic Party rule in the Senate and the White House, the courtesy/rule would never be considered.

On the other hand, a Republican majority in the Senate—regardless of who sits in the White House—easily can revoke the Senate Rule or simply disregard the courtesy, as Grassley did those years ago. And with Republicans running both the Senate and the White House, the blue slip process would be just as irrelevant as it would be with a Progressive-Democrat Senate and White House.

So, what’s Durbin up to? Maybe he is expecting a Republican Senate majority and/or a Republican White House—and he’s using this venue as one more effort to scare Party supporters around the nation into reelecting Party to the Senate and to the White House.

Orbiting Nuclear Weapons

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Russia is working on antisatellite weapon systems that would use nuclear explosions in orbit to destroy satellites in large numbers rather than conventional weapons that would attack satellites individually. A Wall Street Journal article centered on a Russian two-year-old launch of a satellite intended to conduct research into such a weapon had this, which is concerning for other reasons, also.

The eventual weapon, if and when deployed in orbit, could wipe out satellites in a part of space dominated by American government and commercial assets, they said, including SpaceX’s Starlink constellation….

An at least as large concern is that such a detonation or detonations would create EMP pulses that would be extremely damaging to our electric grid and the computer networks controlling that grid; to our oil, natural gas, and water distribution grids; and to the data centers handling our communications and financial systems.

A 21st Century Mugwump

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Monica Tranel is a Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Congress, looking to replace Montana’s Republican Congressman Ryan Zinke. Tranel has bragged about being in the middle on political matters:

…being in the middle is in my DNA. I have no interest in playing party politics. I want to come to the center….

She claims on her Web site,

I’m running for Congress to represent the missing middle—the people who feel invisible, whose voices are not heard, who are not represented in the current political divide.

And she’s proud of her fence-sitting.

She’s also nakedly duplicitous. She’s proud, instead, of her anti-women position regarding biological men in women’s sports. This is the Progressive-Democrat candidate consigning women to invisibility, ignoring their voices, refusing to represent them—contributing, in fine, to the current political divide for her own political profit.

Joe Biden’s Dishonesty and Joe Biden’s Decline

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Just the News calls all of these “whoppers;” I have a slightly different view.

  • Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden claims that inflation was at 9% when he took office when it actually was 1.4% then and didn’t reach 9% until the second year of his term.
  • Biden claims to have reduced the Federal government’s deficit by some $1.7 trillion, when what reduction that did occur was the result of Wuhan Virus Situation stimulus spending expiring.
  • There was no reduction from anything Biden did.
  • Biden claimed gasoline was at $5, on average, when he took office and was then-currently $3.39. Actual average pricing was $2.334 when he took office, and at the time he made his…claim…gasoline cost $3.76.

These are straight up lies, easily checked, and he—at least his advisors—knew better and know better.

Then there are these claims:

  • Biden says his uncle was eaten by cannibals. There is no evidence to support that claim beyond the unadorned fact that the airplane carrying his uncle crashed in the Pacific Ocean near New Guinea.
  • Biden says he was at Ground Zero the day after the 9/11 terrorist attack. In his 2007 book—published just 6 years after the attack—he wrote that he was in DC on that day after.
  • Biden claims his son Beau, who died in Walter Reed from brain cancer, died in Iraq.
  • Biden attacked Special Counsel Hur for asking him about Beau’s death. The interview transcript makes it clear that Hur did not; Biden himself brought up the matter of his son’s death.

These aren’t lies; these are nothing more than the confused ramblings of an old man in mental decline.

“Resist the Prosecution but Obey the Court”

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Former Texas District Judge Robert Barton wrote that former President Donald Trump (R) is wrong to ignore the gag orders that the judge in his Manhattan trial had levied against him: there are legal processes by which Trump could seek redress.

Barton is correct as far as he goes.

However, it’s…foolish…to blindly obey—which he is not advocating—and there are other avenues along which to Resist the Prosecution, as the headline has it.

One of those avenues is to challenge the requirement with the immediate action of disobedience, whether statute or judicial order, and force the prosecutor or the judge promptly to defend and enforce the requirement. The challenge thus emphasizes the illegitimacy of the requirement, if such is the case, and gets it modified or tossed. Or the disobeyer sanctioned if he cannot prove that case.

This is the stuff of civil disobedience, and it often proceeds at a faster pace than the stately glacial pace of legal process. Often, too, time is of the essence.