The Sword Drops: Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade; Clarence Thomas Says Contraceptives, Gay Rights, and Homosexual Marriage on the Chopping Block (VIDEO)

The day has come. The Sword of Damocles has crashed down on the constitutional right to an abortion. The Court's decision is the most consequential in generations, and will make the abortion issue even more contentious and controversial than it's been already.

But contra the Democrats, especially President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it's doubtful that "abortion will be on the ballot" this fall. Bread and butter issues, kitchen table issues, will be on the ballot, and what better way for the radical Democrat Party to try to change the subject, try to turn the page on the misery the great majority of Americans are feeling amid the worst economy since the 1980s. 

It's a big day. 

At the Los Angeles Times, "In historic reversal, Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade, frees states to outlaw abortion: The ruling marks the most significant curtailing of an established constitutional right in the Supreme Court’s history":

WASHINGTON — In a historic reversal, the Supreme Court on Friday overturned the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision and ruled states may again outlaw abortion.

The court’s conservative majority said the Constitution does not protect the rights of women to choose abortion and instead leaves these decisions in the hands of state lawmakers.

The 5-4 ruling marks the most significant curtailing of an established constitutional right in the court’s history.

The opinion written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. closely tracks a draft that was leaked by Politico in May.

“We hold that Roe and [the 1992 Planned Parenthood vs.] Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote. “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.”

The opinion was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. concurred but did not join the majority opinion in overturning Roe, saying he would have upheld only a Mississippi 15-week ban on abortion. That made the decision to uphold Mississippi’s law a 6-3 opinion.

“The court’s decision to overrule Roe and Casey is a serious jolt to the legal system,” Roberts wrote.

The court’s three liberal justices — Justice Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — dissented.

“Today, the court ... says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of,” their dissent read. “A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs.”

The dissenting justices concluded, “Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens.”

The ruling figures to set off a fierce political fight nationwide and state by state as politicians and voters weigh in on whether abortion should be restricted or prohibited entirely.

Opinion polls show most Americans support access to abortion, at least in the early months of a pregnancy. Nevertheless, half the states are expected to seek to quickly enforce laws that make most abortions illegal.

The decision is the high court’s most far-reaching reversal on a matter of constitutional rights since 1954, when the justices reversed six decades of precedent and struck down laws authorizing racial segregation.

But that unanimous decision in Brown vs. Board of Education expanded the rights of individuals and rejected conservative state laws, while today’s does the opposite. It empowers states and reverses what had been the most significant women’s rights ruling in the court’s history.

For the U.S. Catholic bishops as well as evangelical Christians who believe abortion ends a human life and is immoral, the ruling is a triumph decades in the making. They had refused to accept the idea the Constitution protected abortion as a fundamental right...

Keep reading.

 

Second Amendment: Supreme Court Blocks New York Law Limiting Guns in Public

This is the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, a case in my mind whose outcome was never in doubt. The Court's 6-3 conservative majority is shifting the direction of constitutional law back to the "original intent" doctrine favored earlier by big names such as former Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justice Anton Scalia. It's very exciting. Leftists are losing their minds on Twitter. 

The decision strikes down New York's requirement that those seeking a permit to carry a gun in public must show "proper cause," meaning an individual must show a special need to carry a firearm, distinct from that of the general public's. That requirement is now swept away in what's being said is a dramatic expansion of Second Amendment rights in constitutional law. 

Here's SCOTUS Blog on the decision, "In 6-3 ruling, court strikes down New York’s concealed-carry law":

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a New York handgun-licensing law that required New Yorkers who want to carry a handgun in public to show a special need to defend themselves.

The 6-3 ruling, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, is the court’s first significant decision on gun rights in over a decade. In a far-reaching ruling, the court made clear that the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right “to keep and bear arms” protects a broad right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. Going forward, Thomas explained, courts should uphold gun restrictions only if there is a tradition of such regulation in U.S. history.

Thursday’s landmark decision came less than six weeks after a gunman killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket, and less than a month after 21 people – 19 children and two teachers – were shot to death at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. In response to those shootings, the Senate this week reached an agreement on bipartisan gun-safety legislation that, if passed, would be the first federal gun-control legislation in nearly 30 years. The 80-page bill would (among other things) require tougher background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21 and provide more funding for mental-health resources.

The state law at the heart of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen required anyone who wants to carry a concealed handgun outside the home to show “proper cause” for the license. New York courts interpreted that phrase to require applicants to show more than a general desire to protect themselves or their property. Instead, applicants must demonstrate a special need for self-defense – for example, a pattern of physical threats. Several other states, including California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, impose similar restrictions, as do many cities.

The lower courts upheld the New York law against a challenge from two men whose applications for concealed-carry licenses were denied. But on Thursday, the Supreme Court tossed out the law in an ideologically divided 63-page opinion.

The court rejected a two-part test that many lower courts have used to review challenges to gun-control measures. That test looked first at whether a restriction regulates conduct protected by the original scope of the Second Amendment and then, if so, whether the restriction is fine-tuned to advance a significant public interest. Instead, Thomas wrote, if “the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct,” the government has the burden to show that the regulation is consistent with the historical understanding of the Second Amendment.

Applying that new and more stringent standard to the New York proper-cause requirement, Thomas found that the challengers’ desire to carry a handgun in public for self-defense fell squarely within the conduct protected by the Second Amendment. The amendment’s text does not distinguish between gun rights in the home and gun rights in public places, Thomas observed. Indeed, he suggested, the Second Amendment’s reference to the right to “bear” arms most naturally refers to the right to carry a gun outside the home.

After reviewing nearly seven centuries’ worth of historical sources, beginning in the 1200s and going through the early 1900s, Thomas concluded that although U.S. history has at times placed some “well-defined restrictions” on the right to carry firearms in public, there was no tradition of a broad prohibition on carrying commonly used guns in public for self-defense. And with rare exceptions, Thomas added, there was no historical requirement that law-abiding citizens show the kind of special need for self-defense required by the New York law to carry a gun in public. Indeed, Thomas concluded, there is “no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.”

Thomas rebuffed New York’s effort to justify its proper-cause requirement as an effort to regulate guns in “sensitive places” – specifically, crowded urban areas, like Manhattan, where people are likely to gather. Thomas agreed that, as a historical matter, there have long been laws restricting guns in places like courthouses and polling places. Moreover, he continued, restrictions that apply to the modern versions of “sensitive places” may also pass constitutional muster. Although Thomas left open exactly what might qualify as a “sensitive place,” he made clear that urban areas do not meet that definition. The state’s “argument would in effect exempt cities from the Second Amendment and would eviscerate the general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense,” Thomas concluded...

Still more.

 

Ending Roe Threatens Abortion Rights

Remember, if you're libertarian (and I'm not), you're for abortion rights. 

Elizabeth Nolan Brown, at Reason, is hear to remind you, "Ending Roe Threatens More Than Abortion Rights":

In discourse about Roe v. Wade being overturned and states severely restricting or limiting abortions, much of the discussion is (rightly) focused on the potential fallout for those with unwanted or unsustainable pregnancies. It's girls and women of childbearing age on whom such prohibitions would fall the hardest, or at least the most directly. But banning abortion would bring many second-order effects that merit consideration, too. Some children, families, and medical professionals may suffer grave consequences. We're also likely to see a drastically expanded state. Today I want to devote a little attention to some of these often-overlooked consequences...

Keep reading.

 

Majority Says Supreme Court Should Uphold Roe v. Wade ABC News Poll Finds

At ABC News, "With Supreme Court poised to reverse Roe, most Americans support abortion rights: POLL":

Majorities also reject six- and 15- week abortion bans.

Amid reports of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, an ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that majorities of Americans support upholding Roe, say abortion should be legal in all or most cases and -- by a wide margin -- see abortion as a decision to be made by a woman and her doctor, not by lawmakers.

The national survey was completed last week, in advance of a report by Politico Monday night that a proposed first draft of an opinion, apparently by Justice Samuel Alito, called for reversing Roe in a case challenging Mississippi's ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

In this poll, by contrast, 57% of Americans oppose a ban after 15 weeks; 58% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases; and 54% say the court should uphold Roe, compared with 28% who say the ruling should be overturned.

Support for upholding Roe is 6 percentage points lower than it was in an ABC/Post poll last November. Preference for reversing it is essentially unchanged; instead, more in this survey express no opinion, 18%.

Moving the question outside a legal framework, 7 in 10 say the decision whether or not a woman can have an abortion should be left to the woman and her doctor; this also is down from November, by 5 points. Twenty-four percent instead say abortion should be regulated by law. Even among those who say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, a substantial share, 41%, also say it should be left to the woman and her doctor. Trends are not consistent. 

While support for abortion rights is down slightly in the two items noted above, it's higher than previously (up 12 points from 2011) "when the woman cannot afford to have a child," and unchanged in other measures. 

Legal or illegal?

Basic views on whether or not abortion should be legal have been more or less stable in polling going back 27 years. The 58% who say it should be legal in all or most cases is very near the average, 56%, in nearly three dozen ABC/Post polls since mid-1995, ranging from 49% to 60%. This includes 26% who now say it should be legal in all cases, exceeding the average, 21%; and 33% who say it should be legal in most cases.

Thirty-seven percent in this poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, instead say abortion should be illegal in most cases (21%) or all cases (16%). That's less than the long-term average, 42%, with a range from 36% to 48%. (Five percent have no opinion on this question.)

Circumstances

Considering specific circumstances, substantial majorities say abortion should be legal when the woman's physical health is endangered (82%), when the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest (79%) and when there's evidence of serious birth defects (67%).

The public divides on another circumstance: When the woman cannot afford to have a child, 48% say abortion should be legal, 45% illegal. Support for legal abortion in this case is its highest in six polls dating back to 1996.

On another front, the poll finds most Americans are unaware of new abortion restrictions in their states. In the 22 states that have passed abortion restrictions since 2020, just 30% of residents are aware that this has occurred; more, 44%, think not, with 26% unsure. An open question is how people who favor legal abortion may react if and when they learn their state has taken a different tack...

Still more.

 

Abortion Fight Takes Center Stage on Capitol Hill, Campaign Trail

Following-up, "BREAKING! Supreme Court to Overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey."

It's going to be an intense day, a busy and intense day.

Reap the whirlwind, people. 

At the Wall Street Journal, "Roe v. Wade Abortion Case Takes Center Stage on Capitol Hill, Campaign Trail":

After Supreme Court draft opinion leaks, Democrats see ‘five-alarm fire,’ seek federal legislation, while Republicans embrace news.

WASHINGTON—The publication of a draft opinion that suggested the Supreme Court may be preparing to throw out Roe v. Wade put the question of abortion rights at the center of the nation’s political debate, with Democrats calling for new legislation to enshrine existing protections and Republicans welcoming the news while criticizing the leak.

The draft opinion was published Monday evening by Politico, which said it was written by Justice Samuel Alito and was the opinion of the court, implying a majority supported it. The draft, dated from February, couldn’t be independently confirmed, but legal observers said it appeared authentic. The Supreme Court’s spokeswoman declined to comment.

The court is expected to issue its opinion by the end of June or early July, and if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned it would leave the question of access to abortions to individual states.

Democratic senators as well as Democratic candidates in closely watched races this year called for Congress to try again to pass a federal law codifying Roe v. Wade, after a previous effort failed and drew no Republican support. Democrats are aiming to use federal legislation to try to override GOP-backed laws in states, including Texas, that place limits on women’s ability to terminate their pregnancies.

“If this is true, this kind of outcome is exactly what I’ve been ringing alarm bells about—and this is a five-alarm fire,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.).

“We cannot sit back and allow the Supreme Court to gut Ohioans’ most fundamental rights,” said Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who is running for Senate in the Buckeye State.

In a statement, President Biden said that “basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that [Roe] not be overturned.” He said that the leaked draft underscored the need to elect more pro-abortion-rights senators and keep the House majority in order to pass legislation codifying Roe, which he said he would sign into law.

The Supreme Court is considering whether to allow a 15-week ban passed in Mississippi. The court has previously established the right to an abortion until a fetus is able to sustain meaningful life outside of the womb, which generally occurs at weeks 22 to 24 of pregnancy.

Many Republicans said they welcomed the prospect of Roe being overturned, as the draft opinion suggested, while also decrying the leak, which they blamed on liberals trying to pressure the court. Politico said it received a copy of the draft from a person familiar with the proceedings in the Mississippi case.

“If this report is true, this is nothing short of a massive victory for life and will save the lives of millions of innocent babies,” tweeted Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), while adding he was “appalled by the shocking breach of trust posed by this leak,” characterizing it as a “blatant attempt to intimidate the Court.”

“The next time you hear the far left preaching about how they are fighting to preserve our Republic’s institutions & norms remember how they leaked a Supreme Court opinion in an attempt to intimidate the justices on abortion,” tweeted Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.).

Access to abortion has been a central concern of both the political right and left for decades and has been the subject of partisan battles over high-court nominees. The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in late 2020 allowed then-President Donald Trump to nominate a sixth conservative to the bench, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and prompted states to pass laws challenging the Roe precedent.

Now, abortion access is likely to figure prominently in November’s midterm elections, where Democrats are defending slender control of the Senate and House and face weak poll numbers both for President Biden and the party. Some political analysts have said a ruling striking down or restricting abortion rights could motivate Democratic turnout.

On Monday morning, ahead of the Politico report, abortion-rights backers Planned Parenthood Action Fund, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and Emily’s List said they planned to spend $150 million on the midterms.

After the Politico article published, some Democrats again called for ending the filibuster—the Senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation—to enable them to pass a federal abortion bill with just a simple majority. But even obtaining a majority may be difficult, as Senate Democrats failed to garner 50 votes for an abortion bill earlier this year and failed to get a majority to back ending the filibuster after their agenda of voting reforms stalled.

“Congress must pass legislation that codifies Roe v. Wade as the law of the land in this country NOW. If there aren’t 60 votes in the Senate to do it, and there are not, we must end the filibuster to pass it with 50 votes,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats.

Among the Democratic Senate candidates who called for ending the filibuster Monday night were Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is running to be the Democratic nominee for Senate and challenge GOP Sen. Ron Johnson, and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democratic candidate for an open Senate seat.

In a joint statement Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said any ruling overturning Roe “defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court’s reputation.” But they didn’t immediately suggest a legislative plan...

 

BREAKING! Supreme Court to Overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey

As President Barack Obama once said, "elections have consequences," and boy was he right. Democrats and leftists everywhere are ruing the day Hillary Clinton was nominated as the party's 2016 standard bearer --- or at least they should be.

This is seriously explosive news, and if folks think the culture wars have been bad so far this year, well, buckle your seat belts. Elon Musk might as well have blasted the entire hardcore Democrat extremist-left abortion rights ayatollahs into upper orbit. 

At Politico, "Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows: 'We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,' Justice Alito writes in an initial majority draft circulated inside the court."

Needless to say, the forthcoming ruling will make President Trump one of the most consequential presidents in the last half-century, if he wasn't already, damn!

Leftist heads will be exploding for weeks and months, frankly right into the November midterm elections. Just wow.

*****

Even the New York Times has the story now. This is happening. See, "Leaked Supreme Court Draft Would Overturn Roe v. Wade."

Ilya Shapiro, Supreme Disorder

At Amazon, Ilya Shapiro, Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America's Highest Court.

Red States Drop Rape Exceptions Ahead of Supreme Court Ruling Threatening Roe v. Wade

June is coming.

The Court's got some big decisions coming down the pipeline.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Rape exceptions to abortion bans were once widely accepted. No more":

WASHINGTON — As conservative states enacted stringent abortion bans in recent decades, there was one threshold they were loath to cross: Abortion was nearly always allowed in cases of rape or incest.

It was a veneer of acceptance embraced by every GOP president from Reagan to Trump, and even the strongest abortion foes, that a woman should not be required to carry a rapist’s child.

Not anymore.

Just as states may be on the verge of regaining expansive authority to outlaw abortion, eliminating rape and incest exceptions has moved from the fringe to the center of the antiabortion movement.

In 2019, Alabama gained national attention by passing a state law banning all abortions with exceptions only for lethal abnormalities and serious health risks to the patient.

There was a brief backlash to Alabama’s law, but over the last four years, 10 states have enacted abortion bans in early pregnancy without rape or incest exceptions: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas. All were blocked by the court, except Texas’ law, which is in effect.

In recent weeks, several other legislatures have been racing to put abortion bans on the books. Arizona’s governor recently signed a 15-week abortion ban without rape or incest exceptions, although it is not yet in effect.

Similar 15-week bans without these exceptions are awaiting the governor’s signature in Florida and Kentucky. Oklahoma’s Legislature this week approved an almost total ban on abortion except for medical emergencies. It has not yet been signed by the governor.

The Supreme Court this summer will consider the constitutionality of one of those laws — Mississippi’s 15-week ban that excludes exceptions for rape and incest. In doing so, the court will decide whether to undo its 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

If Mississippi’s law is upheld and the court rewrites Roe, the lack of rape and incest exceptions could be replicated in many other conservative states.

That carries grave physical and psychological implications for sexual abuse survivors who become pregnant, according to Michele Goodwin, a UC Irvine professor who studies law and health and is the founding director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy.

“When there are no exceptions for a person who survived rape or incest, it means the state is coercing that person into a pregnancy they don’t want,” she said. Women and girls who have survived rape or incest have already been through one harm, “but here’s the state rubber-stamping a second harm.”

Her concern is deeply personal. Goodwin says she became pregnant by her father when she was 12 years old after two years of abuse. Her father took her to a healthcare provider in New York, lied about her age, and got her an abortion. She didn’t need an exception. But as she watches states enact early abortion bans without exceptions, including Texas’ six-week abortion ban, she worries about girls who would have to somehow find abortion access in another state or carry a pregnancy if impregnated by an abuser.

“I tried to put myself in the deepest corners of closets as a child,” she said, recounting one of the ways she tried to escape her abuse as a child. Now she says she is grateful she had the opportunity to get an abortion and pursue an education and career, rather than being forced to carry a child when she was still one herself.

“One of the key steps of being a survivor is to be able to get your freedom back, to be able to get your autonomy back, to be able to get your decision-making back” Goodwin said.

Abortion opponents describe eliminating long-standing rape and incest exceptions as driven by their faith-based belief that life begins at the moment an egg is fertilized by sperm. They say they oppose all abortion, regardless of the circumstances...

Still more.

 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bring Back Scholastic Aptitude Test

I saw this first at NYT, "M.I.T. Will Again Require SAT and ACT Scores."

Now from Kathryn Paige Harden, at the Atlantic, "The SAT Isn’t What’s Unfair: MIT brings back a test that, despite its reputation, helps low-income students in an inequitable society."

The Lynching of Justice Clarence Thomas

 At FrontPage Magazine, "A hospitalized justice, a racist campaign, and the media heckler’s veto":

Even as Justice Clarence Thomas was hospitalized, a leftist lynch mob rallied on social media calling for his impeachment or death. They weren’t especially picky about which one it would be.

The same radical faction championing Biden’s selection of a black woman for the Supreme Court as a groundbreaking step forward and berating Republicans for refusing to support her were simultaneously demanding that the only sitting black justice on the court step down.

The calls for Thomas’ death are based on pure unadulterated hatred. And so are the calls for his impeachment. None of them have even the faintest basis in anything resembling the law.

The Women's March called for the impeachment of Justice Thomas because his wife, Ginni, had advocated against election fraud. Or as the racist leftist hate group put it, "The revelations that Ginni Thomas advocated for the overthrow of our democracy are disqualifying — not just for her as a human being of any decency, but for her husband.”

A “human being of any decency” wouldn’t be going after a judge by targeting his wife.

The only possible reason for disqualifying Thomas would be the presumption that men are obligated to control their wives. And prevent them from expressing political views in public.

Is this the exciting new feminist position that the Women’s March would like to debut?

Would any of the great minds at the Women’s March like to contemplate the legal implications of creating a male guardianship for women of the kind that might have existed in the 18th century?

Justice Breyer’s wife is a member of the English nobility, it doesn’t mean he answers to the Queen.

Judges whose spouses have an “interest” in a case are obligated to recuse themselves from it. But having political views about a national issue is not the same thing as having an “interest” in it. I doubt there’s a single judicial spouse who didn’t have an opinion on the 2020 election. And many of them may have signed petitions, posted comments, or otherwise urged an outcome.

Or participated in the Women’s March attacking the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election.

That’s political activism, it’s not an “interest”.

The New York Times and the New Yorker cited a federal law stating that judges must rescue themselves if their spouses have “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.” A point of view is not an interest. If it were, there could be no married judges.

Nevertheless law professor Lawrence Tribe tweeted, “That clearly applied here.” How?

“By writing to Meadows, who was chief of staff and active in the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, she joined the team resisting the results of the election,” Stephen Gillers, an NYU prof quoted by the New York Times, convolutedly argued. “She made herself part of the team and so she has an interest in the decisions of the court that could affect Trump’s goal of reversing the results.”

Millions of Americans have phoned, sent letters and emails to members of Congress advocating particular policies. Did they all join the “team” of every single public official whom they contacted? Should any judges they’re married to have to recuse themselves from those cases?

Had Ginni Thomas been formally employed by the Trump team, it would be another story. Instead she was an activist urging members of the team to do everything they possibly could.

It doesn’t make her a member of the team.

If that weren’t absurd enough, both media outlets have cited a law stating that “any justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Is there any federal judge, appointed as part of a partisan process, whose impartiality can’t be reasonably questioned in partisan cases?

As usual the Left has invented a standard that it doesn’t intend to apply in any other cases. Certainly not in any cases where it would inhibit its stable of unconstitutional judicial activists.

“What did Justice Clarence Thomas know, and when did he know it?” a New York Times op-ed demanded. The author, Jesse Wegman, a Times editor, presumably knows the political views of his wife, Kyra, and also, presumably, he writes his own views in his columns. Not hers.

This isn’t a complicated concept for any functional adult.

Supreme Court justices are aware of the storm of controversy over the cases in front of them. They’re expected to follow the law and rule accordingly without taking into account the views of family members, friends, and New York Times editors. That’s what they do for a living.

Thomas married Ginni in 1987. By then he was nearly 40 years old and had worked as a lawyer, a prosecutor, and as a civil rights official in the Reagan administration. He had developed his own point of view on the world. A unique one as testified by his rulings over the years.

Leftists and their media would like us to believe that the only reason Justice Thomas believes anything or rules on anything is because his white wife tells him to do it. That’s stupidly racist.

Even those who violently hate Thomas ought to be able to admit that he has a developed judicial philosophy and that his rulings reflect that unique worldview. The idea that a man who has defied expectations throughout his life, who has persevered despite being repeatedly hit with every racial slur in the book, is just following his wife’s lead is dumb beyond belief.

And yet this is the argument that the lynch mob targeting Justice Thomas is going with.

After all the fury over his wife’s activism, what does this amount to in Justice Thomas’ rulings? Where is the evidence of any conflict of interest or any violation of the law? It doesn’t exist.

The New York Times noted that "Justices Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr." responded to the Supreme Court rejecting an election lawsuit by Texas by "issuing a brief statement suggesting the majority had acted too soon in shutting the case down." Actually Alito wrote the dissent, with Thomas joining him, on procedural grounds. At the time the dissent was issued, the media and its legal experts argued that it was not a ruling on the election, but on jurisdictional standing.

The paper also misleadingly notes that, "Justice Thomas addressed election fraud in a dissent from the Supreme Court’s decision to turn away a challenge to Pennsylvania’s voting procedures." The Supreme Court had previously deadlocked several times over the issue with previous dissents by Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas, and the Thomas dissent highlighted by the paper had focused on the importance of providing "clear rules for future elections."

The media and its legal experts, shoddy as they may be, know all this perfectly well. They know that the paper is deliberately misrepresenting these cases in order to single out Thomas.

And that there’s no basis for doing so.

Thomas wrote as one of the court’s two leading conservatives, along with Alito, and there was nothing unique in his dissents that deviated from his judicial philosophy. Using his wife to attack him is the despicable tactic of a ruthless totalitarian movement with no shred of decency.

Having run out of any credible legal arguments, the lynch mob once again borrows the familiar logic of Russiagate to argue that their smear campaign proves that Thomas must recuse.

“Judging by the nature of the text messages and the uproar over them, that provision alone is enough to require Justice Thomas’s recusal, legal experts said,” the New York Times argued.

Since the New York Times and its media partners are the source of the “uproar”, conservative judges would have to recuse every time lefties launch a vocal smear campaign against them.

That’s using the media as a heckler’s veto to bar conservative judges from cases.

And that’s what this is really about.

Tucker Carlson: What is a Woman? (VIDEO)

This was the $64,000 question yesterday during Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson tesitimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I covered this a bit yesterday, here: "Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn's Tenacious Interrogation of Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson (VIDEO)."

Background at the New York Times, "Ketanji Brown Jackson Asked to Define 'Woman' at Hearing."

And here's Tucker:

Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn's Tenacious Interrogation of Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson (VIDEO)

Jill Filipovic, who I interact with occasionally on Twitter, is out with a new Substack, "'Parental Rights' is Code for Child Abuse." She makes a lot of unverified claims. She omits quotes or citations to the data she claims to assert. She writes, for example:

The conservative demand for “parental rights” has left millions of Americans kids under-educated; it has consigned them to physical abuse; it has denied them medical care. They have the audacity to impose laws that do such broad harm to kids and then claim the mantle of protecting them.

Millions? How many millions? By what measurement? Whose data? She tells us not. 

Ms. Jill takes aim at Tennessee Senator Martha Blackburn, who hammered Biden's pick for the high court, Ketanji Brown Jackson. Senate testimony is live right now, but click on the PBS YouTube page to go back to Day 1 to start at the beginning. 

And here's video of today's testimony, "Senator Marsha Blackburn Questions Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson."

Also, at Fox, "Outrage after Ketanji Brown Jackson says she 'can't' define the word woman: 'Legit bizarre': 'The new leftist orthodoxy is that woman can’t be defined scientifically or logically'."

And Senator Blackburn on Maria Bartiromo's earlier:

On Stephen Breyer's Retirement

Lots of hysteria over this, thought it's technically unimportant, as there'll still be a 6-3 conservative majority on the court (5-4 if you place the chief justice on the leftist side, which is the likely scenario, "to preserve the legitimacy and integrity of the court"). 

But politics is everything and some left-wing geniuses think quick confirming Breyer's replacement --- an affirmative action pick in a qualified black woman, which would be racist if a Republican presidents he's ONLY appoint a qualified white woman --- is the thing to get juice Democratic turnout this fall, an Biden accomplishment that is real and tangible. 

News Flash: Unless you're an insane partisan activist, No one cares about the Supreme Court until there's a case that directly, and I mean personally, harms their interests. Just ask anyone, any average person, a classmate, neighbor, or the checkout woman at Ralph's, to name the chief justice, or the only black member of the court, or the first Latina. Bupkes. Nada. Zilch. People don't know these things because they've got more important things to do in life, like making the rent and feeding their children.

But the elite media class is making this out to be a matter of grave existential import. I'm just bored by it, personally. 

In any case, see David Leonhardt, at the New York Times, "After Breyer: The latest on the coming Supreme Court nomination":

The is the play… Democrats are trying to do the absolute best they can to lessen the blow they are about to take in November. They are going to try to appoint a black woman in that SCOTUS seat as ANOTHER moral victory to their most loyal voter base to get their vote.

— Barrington Martin II (@_BarringtonII) January 26, 2022

Stephen Breyer has just done something that liberal Supreme Court justices in the modern era don’t always do: He has timed his retirement so that an ideologically similar justice is likely to replace him.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not do so, choosing to stay on the court even when her health was fragile, Barack Obama was president and Democrats controlled the Senate. William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall did not do so either, retiring during George H.W. Bush’s presidency instead of trying to wait for the 1992 election. And Earl Warren, the liberal chief justice of the 1950s and ’60s, announced his retirement so late in Lyndon Johnson’s presidency that Richard Nixon was able to fill the slot after Johnson fumbled the nomination process.

These forfeited liberal court seats are a central reason that conservatives now dominate the court. Democrats and Republicans have held the White House for a similar number of years in recent decades, yet Republican appointees hold six of the Supreme Court’s nine seats.

Circumstance has definitely played a role, too — and the sample size of Supreme Court justices is so small that it’s hard to be confident about retirement patterns. (Another factor: Republicans’ refusal to let Obama replace Antonin Scalia in 2016.) Yet a few liberal justices really do seem to have had a more blasé attitude toward retirement than their conservative colleagues.

Conservative judges seem to view themselves as members of a legal movement, especially since the rise of the Federalist Society in the 1980s. Not since John F. Kennedy’s presidency has a justice from the right half of the ideological spectrum been replaced by one from the left half.

Liberal justices, on the other hand, have sometimes placed more emphasis on their personal preferences — whether they enjoy being on the court or would rather retire — than the larger consequences for the country.

In 2013 and 2014, Ginsburg — who, like many justices, loved the job — rejected pleas to step down, despite being in her 80s and having cancer. After her death in 2020, Donald Trump replaced her with Amy Coney Barrett, who may provide the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, affirmative action and more...

More at Memeorandum.

 

Molly Hemingway, Justice on Trial

Molly Hemingway, Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court.

'Well, that’s just because they’re horrible people. And Democratic Party operatives with bylines...'

At Instapundit, "#JOURNALISM: The media protected Jeffrey Epstein and crucified Brett Kavanaugh."

The Smearing of Brett Kavanaugh

By now no doubt you've seen the latest cluster, starting with the New York Times' stupid piece on Judge Kavanaugh, which attempted to relitigate last year's ugly nomination battle.

Mollie Hemingway is the one to follow on this, bar none.

See her at the Federalist, "New Book: Christine Blasey Ford’s Friend Leland Keyser Doesn’t Believe Her."

The Smearing Of Brett Kavanaugh Is An Attack On The Supreme Court https://t.co/akkWtmNwVt

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 16, 2019

Shameless. New York Times continues its war on Brett Kavanaugh even after the entire premise of this story was shown to be false. They will not stop. They will not weary. https://t.co/tMYyzsPS2b

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 17, 2019

Those making and propagating these charges against Kavanaugh aren’t interested in the truth. They ought to be called out as the smear merchants they are, writes @wjmcgurn https://t.co/a8HAbIqPYY via @WSJ

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 17, 2019

Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino, Justice on Trial

At Amazon, Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino, Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court.

Republicans Keep Majority Control of the Senate, With Lasting Implications for the Courts

This makes me happy. I was pretty sure the Dems would take the House, mostly because the president's party always loses seats in the midterms ---- 2018 was no exception.

But the map was favorable for the GOP in the Senate, and it's not a far stretch to expect another Supreme Court opening in 2019 (Ruth Bader Ginsberg comes to mind, as she is recovering from a fall this last week at the Court, which left her with three broken ribs; and it may also be that her cancer is coming back; no one should wish her ill will, but it does mean that an opening may be imminent).

At NYT, "Lasting Implications for the Courts as Republicans Gain in the Senate":

Republicans’ expansion of their Senate majority means it's easier for the White House and Mitch McConnell to confirm conservative judges https://t.co/YBF6djjntr

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 8, 2018

The Nightmare of Democrats' Leftist Agenda

From VDH, at American Greatness, "Wolves in Wolves’ Clothing":

Wolves in Wolves’ Clothing https://t.co/xaeT0qah87 pic.twitter.com/MFOmBoTeFp

— American Greatness (@theamgreatness) October 22, 2018

If the New Democratic Party was smart, it would do what the old Democratic Party did long ago: always sound centrist if not conservative in the last weeks of a campaign, get elected, then revert to form and pursue a left-wing agenda for a year or two—and then repeat the chameleon cycle every two to four years.

But although many Democrats in Trump states still dance the old bipartisan two-step, lots of blinkered progressive wolves don’t even bother to put on the sheep’s clothing.

Evidently, the new progressive and radical Democratic Party is far more honest—or perhaps far more hubristic—than in the past. So what now looks and sounds like a wolf is a wolf. Democrats have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from 2016. Or rather, they still believe it is 2008 all over again, with a host of wannabe Obamas on the 2020 horizon, all appealing to identity politics, Maenad feminism, and neo-socialism. The hipster theory is that 30 percent of the present electorate will always vote en masse for unapologetic progressives, and that bloc number, due to changing demography and persuasive street theatrics, soon will grow to 50 percent of all voters.

More to the point, the strategy of hating Trump 24/7 and fueling the 90 percent negative media coverage of the president had seemed to be a winning hand—given that Trump has usually below 45 percent approval in most polls, and pundits promised a huge blue wave neutering what certainly would be Trump’s last two years in the White House.

Yet the result of a progressive wolf baying proudly like a left-wing wolf is that as we head to the 2018 midterm, progressives may soon blow what should be, by history’s analytics, a big win for the out party in any president’s first term.

Man-Made Disasters
As the economy kept booming and things overseas calmed down, the Democrats found it harder to run a campaign strictly against either the ogre or the incompetent Trump. So they stayed on the offensive and did not bother to hide their agendas of open borders, “Medicare for All,” abolishing ICE, identity politics quotas, radical feminism, abortion on demand, and climate change hysterias. And they were quite lupine in their sincerity even as the public insidiously began to tune them out.

The first disaster was disrupting senate confirmation hearings, on the part of both senators and paid operatives in the gallery. Hysterics by Senators Cory “Spartacus,” Kamala Harris, and Richard Blumenthal soon gave the impression that Democratic stalwarts were unhinged.

After all, somehow the Democrats had managed all at once to 1) lose the vote on Kavanaugh; 2) to ensure that the Bushite Kavanaugh likely would become so radicalized by the horrific treatment meted out that he would not follow the usual David Souter liberalizing trajectory, 3) unite Republicans and more or less end the Never Trump factionalism, 4) go on record of opposing due process of law and rejecting the entire political and cultural tradition of American jurisprudence, and 5) so discredit their opposition to a court nominee, that next time around everything they do and say about a nominee will be seen as mere go-through-the-motions leftist boilerplate.

The second disaster was condoning and indeed empowering street thuggery. Cory Booker, Hillary Clinton, and Eric Holder went full Maxine Waters in parroting the new incivility and seemed to think most Americans enjoy pampered protestors getting in the faces of their opponents to scream, yell, and in general go berserk. It is never a wise thing to be in alliance with young Bacchants shrieking as they scratch the closed doors of the Supreme Court or rude young activists swarming someone at a restaurant and screaming obscenities in a nasal voice.

Most Americans wondered, what in the world would the frenzied anti-Kavanaugh protestors have done if they had broken down the court doors and plunged into the swearing-in ceremony: scratch Mrs. Kavanaugh and the two Kavanaugh girls, or rip apart Brett Kavanaugh as if he were a young King Pentheus? Progressives seem to think it is cool that the street mobs are now the paramilitary wing of their own party.

Immolated by Identity Politics
A third mishap was senator Elizabeth Warren’s amazingly stupid ploy of releasing her DNA ancestry test before the midterms. The Massachusetts Democrat somehow adduced that a person with about a 1 percent likelihood of being an indigenous person (more likely from Central and South America than from the American plains) somehow was proof of her long-feigned minority status. That Warren worked in cahoots with newspapers to massage the gambit, as refutation of Donald Trump’s “Pocahontas” ribbing, backfired when it took the media two retractions to get down the basic math of Warren’s infinitesimally tiny Indian bloodlines.

The reaction was obvious: if someone can cajole a minority billet for careerist purposes based on a 1-percent ancestry, then every American can be anything he wishes. And when everyone is everything, then no one is anything—and the racial basis for diversity set-asides is dead.

In Warren’s logic, how can the average African-American be authentically black with an average white pedigree 25 times greater than her own Indian heritage that she used to authenticate her status as a “person of color” academic? And how weird it is that Warren identifies with the 1 percent of her ancestry, rather than the 99 percent of other various tribes and races—and then claims that she does so not necessarily for any careerist advantages when such advantages are well established.

The timing was even worse, as Boston was also the contemporaneous scene of a landmark lawsuit lodged by Asian groups against Harvard University’s disingenuous racial restrictionist admission policies. Harvard, every bit as intellectually dishonest as Warren, conjured up all sort of personality and character issues to stereotype and demonize Asian applicants for admission, as a way of nullifying their academic records of achievement and thereby reducing their percentages of racial spoils in order to help more “diverse” Hispanics and blacks.

So what will Harvard now do, subpoena its own esteemed law professor Elizabeth Warren to lecture jurors about how minorities like herself would lose out when there are too many Asians? At some point on the horizon, voters are going to conclude that the diversity monster is devouring itself and making a mockery of common sense...

Still more.

Democrats Have Shifted to the Extreme Left

Following-up from yesterday, "The Democrats' Left Turn."

At IBD, "It's Official: Democrats Are the Extremists Today":

It's Official: Democrats Are The Extremists Today https://t.co/dAzwBCGpju #tcot #tlot

— IBDeditorials (@IBDeditorials) October 12, 2017

Everyone knows that the country is more politically polarized than ever, but most don't know why. Data from the highly respected Pew Research Center provides a definitive answer. It's because Democrats have moved sharply to the extreme left.

The Pew report — titled "The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider" — is the latest in a decades-long series of surveys it has conducted to gauge people's views on various key issues, including the size of government, immigration, corporate profits, race relations. The authors of the report note the "divisions between Republicans and Democrats on fundamental political values ... reached record levels during Barack Obama's presidency. In Donald Trump's first year as president, these gaps have grown even larger."

Given the way politics gets reported these days, it's easy to conclude that the widening gap is the result of Republicans become more extreme in their views. That is, after all, a mantra among Democrats and the press. The GOP is the party of racist, sexist, xenophobic, right-wing extremists, we hear over and over again, while Democrats are but humble centrists.

The Pew data, however, make it clear that the shift toward the extreme has happened among Democrats, not Republicans.

This can be seen in dramatic fashion when you look at where the center of each party was in 1994, and where it is today. Pew used a 10-item scale of political values to determine ideological purity among those who claim affiliation with the two parties. The results show that while the Republican center moved only slightly to the right over the past 23 years, the center of Democratic part shifted far to the left. (See the nearby chart.)

Take a look at specific value questions Pew asks and you can see why.

Pew asks, for example, whether poor people have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return. In 1994, 63% of Republicans agreed with this sentiment, as did 44% of Democrats.

This year, 65% of Republicans agreed — a 2-point increase — while just 18% of Democrats did — a 26-point drop.

Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Democrats used to believe that most people who want to get ahead can do so if they work hard. Today, just 45% of Democrats believe this. Among Republicans, the change was negligible — it went from 73% in 1994 to 77% today.

How about the question of whether racial discrimination is the "main reason many black people can't get ahead these days"?

In 1994, just 39% of Democrats and 26% of Republicans felt this way. That was 14 years before the U.S. elected a black president.

Now, after eight years of Obama in the White House, 64% of Democrats say racism is the main reason blacks can't get ahead, while 14% of Republicans do.