Tag Archives: courts

Naïve Foolishness

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors did it this time. In their editorial regarding FISA, they had this:

The law lets the intelligence community gather information from foreigners overseas and store it in a database. That database can then be searched for communications on matters of national security. If Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon start texting a New Jersey phone number, the New Jersey number is worth a follow-up.
All information in the database is legally gathered, and in 2024 Congress added safeguards against abuse. All queries for American information need prior bureaucratic approval and receive regular audits.

Safeguards. Queries for Americans’ information need bureaucratic approval? How is this any sort of safeguard? Any administration’s bureaucrats can easily approve searches for bureaucrat/administration disapproved Americans. Those bureaucrats are primarily senior FBI officials. To see how well this will work, it’s only necessary to recall AG Eric Holder’s promise to be then-President Barack Obama’s (D) wingman, rather than keeping DoJ independent. Recall further, those FBI senior officials. The FBI works for the AG. The Holders of the world will be back, and folks already are disdaining acting AG Todd Blanche of being no more than President Donald Trump’s (R) man.

Then there’s the FISA court, a by-design secret Star Chamber court where only administration-approved persons get to know the proceedings. That’s bad enough, but even when the Star Chamber was confronted with falsified search warrant requests, it chose not to take any serious corrective, much less punitive, action.

The Star Chamber needs to be abolished. Article III courts are fully capable of issuing sealed warrants that become public only on their being served. That also would apply enforceable safeguards on warrant issuance—they would be issued only by those Article III courts; there would be no recourse to a secret court.

Irrelevant

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In the ongoing struggle between Progressive-Democrat-run States and the Federal government, the Attorneys General of New York, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont have filed suit in the DC District Court in an attempt to undo an administration deal with TotalEnergies that has the latter ceasing its US-centered offshore wind projects and instead starting work on developing US oil and natural gas projects.

The Progressive-Democrat AGs’ argument centered on this:

We are fighting back to stop this illegal agreement that threatens to erase over a thousand union jobs and cheat millions of New Yorkers out of clean, affordable energy[.]

The “illegal agreement” bit is nakedly conclusory and has no merit in any guise. Stipulate the other factors are accurately presented. They are, though, purely business decisions made within a political and economic framework that is solely within the purview of the political branches—i.e., those two which are elected by We the People—and regarding which, the courts have nothing legitimate to say.

The AGs’ argument is wholly irrelevant and without merit in court. It is worthy of debate in the Congress and the White House only.

The role of judges. and of Justices who are a subset of that group and sit at the group’s top, under our form of government is to check the political branches from excess. Their means of doing so are at once powerful and limited. Judges must apply our Constitution as it is written, and must assess the constitutionality of any statute before them in a particular case. If the judges determine the statute to be constitutional, they must apply it as it is written. If they find the statute unconstitutional, they must strike it.

In particular, judges may not alter or disregard any part of our Constitution in favor of their own view of what it ought to be in order to achieve their own view of societal needs or of justice. Nor are they permitted to alter in any way the statute before them to suit those personal views of societal needs or of justice; they must strike it or apply it.

The deal between the administration and TotalEnergies is entirely legitimate from a legal standpoint, and it should be upheld in the district court, the DC Circuit, and at the Supreme Court.

How Dare They?

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The Supreme Court overruled a district court three judge panel and allowed Alabama to proceed with a prior Congressional district map that’s skewed 6-1 toward Republican House representatives instead of that lower court’s mandated newly created map that skewed 5-2 for Republicans. This ruling came in the aftermath of the Court’s prior Callais ruling that held that racial gerrymandering was no longer allowed.

Progressive-Democrats are in their usual uproar.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.

“Before the Court are two paths. Down one lies an orderly election. … Down the other lies a chaotic election, held under a never-before-used congressional map that intentionally discriminates against Black Alabamians.”
The President Barack Obama-appointed justice also wrote that the high-court’s conservative majority “chooses the second path and disregards both democratic values and the rule of law.”

And

In a public statement, [Progressive-Democrat Congresswoman Terri Sewell (AL)] called it a decision allowing Alabama to use its “racist congressional map” for the midterms, expressing frustration over the reversal of prior efforts to create additional majority-minority districts.

My irony meter is pegged, and my hypocrisy warning light is flashing. There’s nothing more racist than demanding some Americans be segregated into a separate voting district, explicitly as Sotomayor, et al., and Sewell are demanding for the protection of those singled-out Americans. How hypocritical that the politician is objecting to the possibility of losing a Congressional seat that belongs to her.

How dare those impudent Justices insist on acting on what our Constitution and the Voting Rights Act actually say instead of what those Progressive-Democrats and their subordinate activist Justices want them to say?

Misbehavior of a Federal District Judge

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A short while ago as such things are measured, a Federal district judge was given a private reprimand for having sex in her chambers with a local police department senior-level cop. Many folks, experts as well as my august self, consider that wholly inadequate.

The judge has since been identified as Northern District of Georgia judge Eleanor Louise Ross, and the (still individually unidentified) senior-level cop as a member of the Atlanta Police Department. Furthermore, her relationship with the cop has been identified as an extramarital one, lasting for two, or so, years, and the relationship included repeated sexual encounters in her judicial chambers, generally within earshot of her clerks and other staff.

That private reprimand, though, is all she got, because she’s sorry, and she apologized, so it’s all good.

Pfft.

The article outlined a number of more serious outcomes for her misbehaviors, leading off with impeachment. That, though, would take a majority of the House voting to impeach and a two-thirds majority of the Senate to convict in order to get her off the bench. The article acknowledged the unlikeliness of that outcome, but without suggesting why. I claim the reason is this: even were impeachment a serious possibility, there aren’t enough Progressive-Democrats in the Senate willing to convict one of their own, the Obama appointee who is Ross.

The article also outlined a number of alternative consequences, but while potentially financially expensive in terms of opportunity cost, they would leave her on the bench. The worst realized outcome of all these would be this:

Recusal motions are the sharpest instrument available. …
The Justice Department has already moved to disqualify Ross from a high-profile voter-roll case, citing both the misconduct findings and her attendance at Fani Willis’s 2024 primary victory party. If that pattern continues, she could find herself a judge in title only.

Judge in title only. That actually is nice work for anyone who can get it. Ross’ pay in 2025, just for being a Federal judge, was nearly a quarter of a million dollars. That puts her income higher than 96% of the rest of us working stiffs.  Nice work, indeed, especially for someone whose word—professional or personal—is worthless.

A Misapprehension

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Former Vice President Mike Pence (R) is the one misapprehending this time, and he laid it out early in his Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Where conservatives have historically viewed politics as the art of the possible, progressives see politics as a path to alter society beyond recognition in a quest for material equity, environmental nirvana, or other alleged perfections. Progressives invariably try to destroy whatever stands in their way.

That last sentence lays bare his misunderstanding. Perfecting our society has nothing to do with today’s progressives’ goals, goals hard-sought after by today’s Progressive-Democratic Party and epitomized by that sentence. Were Party interested in perfection, it would adopt a more patient approach and seek to bring along those presently disagreeing with them. Instead, Party politicians try to destroy whatever stands in their way.

For further proof, see Party’s plans, annunciated by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D, NY) remarks and his chief minion for this, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D, MD):

The Supreme Court is a disgrace. In the new Congress, we’re going to have to do something about this Supreme Court, and let me be very clear: everything is on the table—everything to deal with this corrupt MAGA majority.

And, as paraphrased by the WSJ‘s editors:

[Raskin] recently introduced a bill that would deny the Justices the power to choose which cases they hear. Under the SCCOTUS Act, petitions would be reviewed by a rotating committee of 13 random appellate judges. This is such a radical change that it’s hard to imagine all the implications.

Jeffries sees the Court, especially the conservative Justices, as corrupt because the majority seeks to adhere to what our Constitution and any statute before them actually say, rather than what the other Justices too often insist: that, in the manner of former Justice Thurgood Marshall, the Court should rule on what they want and expect the law to catch up, with the added fillip that if the law isn’t catching up quickly enough, these Justices will rewrite them from the bench.

Raskin would actually corrupt our Court by packing it to thirteen Justices because thirteen appellate circuits. He ignores in his revisionism the history that the number of appellate circuits had been growing beyond nine long before Congress set the number of Justices at nine. In fact, though, that’s just his covering excuse for adding four activist, progressive men and women to the Court, men and women who view our Constitution and statutes as suggestions to be ignored or modified as they see fit.

Pence’s piece loses its import with his lack of understanding of the underlying problem, even as he’s entirely correct in his conclusion: it’s time for Republicans, and especially the dismayingly meek Republicans, to get up off their backs and address these problems loudly and firmly. In particular, this includes Vice President JD Vance (R), who’s busily toadying up to Big Labor in his desperation to become our next President.

Else we lose our Republic.