The Left’s Plan to Commandeer the Supreme Court

And control all three branches of the federal government.

Frontpage mag

Joseph Klein

The fate of America’s constitutional republic hangs in the balance as the leftwing progressive base of the Democratic Party tries to parlay Democrat control of the White House and Congress to obliterate the independence of the Supreme Court.

President Joe Biden has kicked things off by naming a 36-member commission to examine possible changes to the size and jurisdiction of the Supreme Court as well as proposals to set term limits for Supreme Court justices. The commission has 180 days to report back on its study of the issues, although it has not been given a mandate to make any formal recommendations.

While advertised as being bipartisan, the commission’s co-chairs, Bob Bauer and Cristina Rodriguez, both worked for the Obama administration. Even so, establishing a commission to analyze a hot button issue is often regarded as a convenient way to bury the issue. Not this time, however. The left won’t allow Biden or the Democrat-controlled Congress off the hook so easily. Even on the rare occasions when Biden’s old centrist instincts seem about to kick in, he quickly backtracks in the face of blowback from his left flank. What then-Senator Biden called a “bonehead” idea in 1983 and an “institutional power grab” in 2005 is now very much in play during Biden’s presidency.

The left sees immediate radical change to the structure and composition of the Supreme Court as necessary to cement its permanent control over the third branch of the federal government. That can only happen, however, after first nuking the Senate filibuster to pass their misnamed “For the People Act.” Also referred to simply as S.1, this bill would federalize slipshod election procedures across the country, eliminating state protections against potential election fraud, voter intimidation, illegal votes, and inaccurate vote counts. Passage of the bill will help Democrats guarantee their enduring control of Congress and the White House. With the filibuster already cast aside, Democrats will then be able to push through major changes to the Supreme Court this term with their slender majority. The result will be the left’s tight grip on the Supreme Court, while ensuring that the other two elected branches remain firmly in their pockets in future elections.

On April 15^th, four Democrats in Congress decided not to even wait for Biden’s commission to complete its work. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Rep. Hank Johnson, Rep. Mondaire Jones, and Senator Edward J. Markey introduced the Judiciary Act of 2021 to expand the Supreme Court by adding four seats, creating a 13-justice Supreme Court. This would represent the first change in the size of the Supreme Court since 1869.

“Some people will accuse us of packing the court. We’re not packing the court, we’re unpacking it,” Nadler sneered. Markey claimed that the “legislation will restore the Court’s balance and public standing and begin to repair the damage done to our judiciary and democracy, and we should abolish the filibuster to ensure we can pass it.”

Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not willing to oblige these demagogues just yet. Pelosi said that she “has no plans” to bring their bill to the House floor at this time. She wants to wait for Biden’s commission to finish its work before taking any further steps. But Pelosi has not ruled out supporting such a change down the road. “It’s not out of the question,” Pelosi said. “It has been done before.”

Yes, Congress has the constitutional authority to alter the size of the Supreme Court. However, it has chosen not to do so during a span of 152 years for good reason. When FDR tried to push forward his court packing scheme in 1937, the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee issued a report at the time declaring that “we would rather have an independent Court, a fearless Court…than a Court that, out of fear or sense of obligation to the appointing power, or factional passion, approves any measure we may enact.” FDR’s plan was shot down by his own party.

Democrats in Congress today no longer show such respect for the independence of a co-equal branch of the federal government. They are willing to increase the size of the Supreme Court solely for the purpose of turning it into a rubber stamp for their radical agenda. So long as Democrats succeed with their strategy to lock in continuing Democrat control of Congress and the White House by doing away with state law safeguards against election shenanigans, they have nothing to worry about. There will be no future Republican Congress and president elected who will be able to add more conservative justices.

However, there have been a few liberals with a conscience who have spoken out in recent times against court packing, as Joe Biden did when he was his own man in the Senate.

The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – the liberals’ heroine replaced by Justice Amy Coney Barrett – told NPR in July 2019 that “Nine seems to be a good number. It’s been that way for a long time. I think it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court.” Justice Ginsburg worried that court packing “would make the court look partisan,” adding that “it would be that — one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.’ “

At Harvard Law School’s annual Scalia lecture on April 6^th, Justice Stephen G. Breyer warned about how court packing would “reflect and affect the rule of law itself.” Justice Breyer added, “If the public sees judges as ‘politicians in robes,’ its confidence in the courts, and in the rule of law itself, can only diminish, diminishing the Court’s power, including its power to act as a ‘check’ on the other branches.”

Progressives dismiss such arguments, of course, and indeed are pressing for Justice Breyer to retire so that a much younger and more left leaning justice can replace him. However, a few moderate Democrats in the House may be wary of supporting a bill to pack the Supreme Court, fearing the issue would be hung around their necks in Republican ads during the next election cycle. Democrat Senator Joe Manchin has declared his opposition to court packing legislation, which means it would be dead in the Senate even if the filibuster were eliminated or severely weakened.

Court packing also does not have widespread public support. In a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted last October during the height of the presidential campaign, a question was asked: ”If Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed to the Supreme Court and Joe Biden is elected president, do you think that Democrats should or should not increase the size of the Supreme Court to include more than nine justices?” 58 percent said no. 31 percent said yes. 11 percent said they didn’t know or refused to answer.

Thus, Democrats may decide to rally around a seemingly less drastic alternative to immediately expanding the Supreme Court to 13 members – term limits for future Supreme Court justices. There is more public support for term limits than for court packing. But the proponents of this idea are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Term limits for Supreme Court justices are arguably unconstitutional since Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution states that “The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour…” Except in the case of impeachment or early retirement, this provision has been interpreted to mean a lifetime term.

The term limit advocates try to get around the constitutional issue by arguing that their reform would only apply to future justices. Moreover, they propose that, after a future justice’s Supreme Court term has expired, the justice would be free to remain in the judiciary as a senior appellate judge. They believe this demotion would satisfy the Constitution’s good behavior term language since the justices would still be judges. However, the Constitution’s text appears to tie the “good behavior” term for Supreme Court justices to their specific “Office” of Supreme Court justice, not to any post in the judicial branch. In her interview with NPR, Justice Ginsburg said that the term limits idea was unrealistic because of this constitutional provision and because, as she pointed out, “Our Constitution is powerfully hard to amend.”

In any case, on a policy level, Democrats proposing term limits for future Supreme Court justices are selling snake oil.

Take, for example, legislation proposed by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) that would apply only to future justices and would limit their service on the Supreme Court to 18 years. New justices would be appointed in the first and third years of each presidential term. Since, under this plan, none of the current justices would be forced off the Supreme Court, there will be a period during which more than nine justices will be serving at the same time. It is just a slower way of achieving the same objective as court packing.

If something like the Khanna-Beyer bill is passed in 2021, for example, President Biden would get to appoint one justice this year. This would expand the Court to ten until one of the current justices retires or dies. By a simple majority in the Senate (with Vice President Harris casting a tie-breaking vote), a progressive will be added to the Supreme Court. Biden’s next appointment would occur in 2023, even if there is then no vacancy on the bench. That could mean eleven justices until one of the current justices retires or dies. Assuming the Senate remains in Democrat hands, with the help of vote cheating enabled by the falsely entitled “For the People Act,” another progressive will be added to the Supreme Court. A Democrat White House and Senate in 2025 will ensure yet another progressive added to the Supreme Court, tilting the Supreme Court in a leftward direction. And so on. If a vacancy occurs during one of the off years, it would be filled temporarily by a lower court judge, until the following year when the president nominates, and the Senate confirms, the next term-limited justice.

The combined effect of the Democrats’ federalizing of elections to slant the outcomes in their direction and the passage of court packing or term limit legislation for the Supreme Court will be to institute permanent one party rule in Washington D.C. for all three branches of government. Separation of powers and checks and balances will be dead.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” Ronald Reagan once said. We are at that crossroads right now. We must fight the leftwing progressives’ attempt to turn this country into their tyrannical domain lest, as Reagan warned, we “spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”

US Supreme Court: Gun Licensing Fees Are Unconstitutional

American Thinker

By Civis Americanus

While I am not an attorney and cannot give formal legal advice, a 1943 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Murdock v. Pennsylvania, may give Second Amendment–supporters an overwhelming legal weapon with which to destroy every single firearm ownership (although not necessarily concealed carry) licensing scheme in the country.  This includes those that require licenses to own or purchase firearms.

• License to own: IL, MA, NY
• License to purchase: CT, HI, IA, MD, MI, NE, NJ, NC, RI

The executive summary of the ruling in Murdock v. Pennsylvania (1943) was that it is unconstitutional for a state to levy a tax on people who want to sell religious merchandise.  “A municipal ordinance which, as construed and applied, requires religious colporteurs to pay a license tax as a condition to the pursuit of their activities, is invalid under the Federal Constitution as a denial of freedom of speech, press and religion. The mere fact that the religious literature is ‘sold’, rather than ‘donated’ does not transform the activities of the colporteur into a commercial enterprise.”

What does this have to do with fees to obtain a license to own or purchase a firearm?  The USSC also found, “A State may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the Federal Constitution.”  This means the entire Bill of Rights as opposed to just the First Amendment.

It is similarly unconstitutional to charge a fee to exercise the right to vote, AKA a poll tax.  This could well be the reason why states with voter ID laws must provide free identification cards to qualified residents who do not have driver’s licenses, as shown by Crawford v. Marion County Election Board.  “The law’s universally applicable requirements are eminently reasonable because the burden of acquiring, possessing, and showing a free photo identification is not a significant increase over the usual voting burdens, and the State’s stated interests are sufficient to sustain that minimal burden.”  States can charge fees for driver’s licenses because driving is a privilege, but voting is a right.

Gun Licensing Fees Are Racist

The racist nature of many gun licensing schemes is meanwhile underscored by an amicus curiae brief filed by the African-American Gun Association (AAGA) against California.  “African Americans have been the target of some of the oldest and most odious attempts at forced disarmament[.] … NAAGA has a strong interest in this case because taxes and fees imposed on the right to keep and bear arms disproportionately affect African Americans,

 due to the average lower income and higher rate of poverty in the African-American community.”  White supremacists once argued openly that this was their intention, and I recall that the complete quote, while it did not use the N-word, did refer to the “son of Ham.”

It is a matter of common knowledge that in this state and in several others, the more especially in the Southern states where the negro population is so large, that this cowardly practice of “toting” guns has always been one of the most fruitful sources of crime[.] … There would be a very decided falling off of killings “in the heat of passion” if a prohibitive tax were laid on the privilege of handling and disposing of revolvers and other small arms, or else that every person purchasing such deadly weapons should be required to register[.] … Let a negro board a railroad train with a quart of mean whiskey and a pistol in his grip and the chances are that there will be a murder, or at least a row, before he alights.

The same went for a Virginia poll tax on the right to vote.

Discrimination!  Why, that is precisely what we propose; that, exactly, is what this Convention was elected for — to discriminate to the very extremity of permissible action under the limitations of the Federal Constitution, with a view to the elimination of every negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally, without materially impairing the numerical strength of the white electorate.

The same applies to laws that require gun-owners to buy expensive liability insurance that might be affordable by people of the middle and upper classes, but not by low-paid workers among whom are many black Americans.  While these laws cannot discriminate openly against black people (just as Jim Crow gun taxes and prohibitions on inexpensive firearms known as N-word Saturday Night Specials did not specify any race), they can and do exploit the economic disparity that unfortunately prevails between Caucasians and black people to disarm the latter.  Perhaps certain elements of the Democratic Party have hidden the same sheets and hoods they wore openly 70 or 80 years ago instead of getting rid of them entirely.

An Illinois Court Questioned the FOID Card Requirement

More to the point, however, is the brief’s citation of Murdock v. Pennsylvania and the phrase “[a]cross constitutional rights, the courts have consistently forbidden the use of special fees and taxes on constitutionally protected conduct to generate general revenue.”

Even Illinois’s own courts appear to be finding issues with the Firearm Owner Identification Card per Illinois v. Brown.  “The circuit court was correct that the FOID card requirement impermissibly infringes on law- abiding persons’ rights to bear long arms-in their own homes for self-defense.”  The court filing also argues that the FOID card fee violates not just the U.S. Constitution, but also Illinois’s own laws: “a person cannot be compelled ‘to purchase, through a license fee or a license tax, the privilege freely granted by the constitution.  Thus, Brown, who was merely exercising her right to keep a long gun in her own home for self-defense, cannot be made to purchase a card or obtain a license to exercise this fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution.”  I do not know the outcome of this case but the bottom line is that an Illinois court had problems with the FOID law.

This article has hopefully provided Second Amendment–supporters with a valuable legal tool with which to attack all state laws that require people to pay for licenses to own or purchase firearms, and potential jurors (i.e., every citizen in the country) with information to use if called to serve in cases that involve these laws.

Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way.  The author is remaining anonymous due to the likely prospect of being subjected to “cancel culture” for exposing the Big Lie behind Black Lives Matter.

Image via Pexels.

Permission Slip

Gun control first for Biden executive orders

thedailybeast.com

Washington Examiner

by Paul Bedard, Washington Secrets Columnist

Joe Biden plans to move quickly against guns, adding the issue to his list of first executive orders, according to his top policy aide.

Stef Feldman, the national policy director of Biden’s presidential campaign, included the Democrat’s gun plan in a list of initial executive actions set to be unleashed after Inauguration Day.

Speaking in a Zoom briefing hosted by Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service, she said that Biden is planning to “make big, bold changes through executive action, not just on policing and climate like we talked about previously, but in healthcare and education on gun violence, on a range of issues.”

She added that “there’s really a lot you can do through guidance and executive action.”

It is expected that Biden will use executive orders, especially if the Democrats don’t win both Georgia special Senate elections. Even with those, however, it would be a split chamber — making it difficult for him to push through liberal elements of his agenda, including gun control.

The mention of guns in his initial executive actions is already sparking concern in the industry, which is readying an aggressive lobbying campaign. “I’m going to be pretty busy,” said one top gun lobbyist.

During the campaign, Biden won the endorsement of former candidate Beto O’Rourke, who famously promised to grab everyone’s AR-15.

While he calls his plan one aimed at ending “gun violence,” most of Biden’s ideas amount to limiting what people can buy or have. For example, he wants to end the sale of AR-15-style firearms (the most popular in the nation), regulate those that people already have, and limit the size of magazines those guns use.

I’m not doing it……….

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Why Republicans Shouldn’t Cave To Democrats On Guns

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It’s not only to prevent a Democrat landslide in 2020. It’s because Democrats will settle for nothing less than gun confiscation.

The Federalist

Mark Overstreet

It has been said that Republicans are the “party of stupid” and Democrats the party of something worse. In their reaction to Democrats’ demand for gun control several weeks ago, President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared ready to prove the comparison about the GOP.

Soon after the multiple-victim murders in Dayton and El Paso—the former by a Democrat and self-described leftist supporter of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the latter allegedly by someone who, for the sake of the environment, theorized “if we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can be more sustainable”—Trump and McConnell said they were considering two elements of Democrats’ decades-old civilian disarmament agenda: “universal” background checks and a ban on so-called “assault weapons” and ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, including those for handguns.

If Trump and McConnell, encouraged by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, who supports susceptible-to-abuse “red flag” gun confiscation laws; Rick Scott, who as governor of Florida signed legislation prohibiting young adults from buying firearms; and Pat Toomey, co-sponsor of a version of “universal” checks, cave to Democrats on guns, they might alienate enough voters to assure that Democrats re-take the White House and Senate, and hold the House of Representatives in the 2020 elections.

However, there are more important reasons Republicans should reject Democrats’ demands on guns.

Answer me this……….

NZ Hunting Supplies

Wanna See A Real Constitutional Crisis? Here It Is!

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DC Clothesline

The Common Constitutionalist

 

For as long as Donald Trump remains president, Democrats will not stop trying to remove him from office. They will never admit defeat and will never cease trying to undermine the president at every step.

And, because of this, a new precedent has been set in the political arena. We said early on in Trump’s presidency, that everyone will eventually be forced to pick a side. Neutral bystanders will no longer be allowed to exist. Partisanship will be forced upon all the citizenry.

Shortly after Trump was elected, the attacks on him started to ramp up. So nakedly egregious is the injustice of the left that people who were not previously Trump supporters are beginning to come to his defense.

At first, many conservatives defended Trump regarding policy alone, but now, it’s just full-throated defense of a president who deserves none of the slings and arrows being hurled his way. The attacks are so virulent that they now threaten our republic. The attacks against Trump are no longer just directed at him, but at the very office itself.

Here we go

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Remember, Democrats want your Guns

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