Dodging the Merrick Garland bullet
The Friday Letter / No. 447
The more we learn about Merrick Garland, the more relieved we are that he was never confirmed to the Supreme Court. Merrick Garland is a dangerous individual, an existential threat, to use one of the Left's favorite terms, to the survival of our constitutional guarantees.
Our nation hasn't had good attorney generalism in recent years. Jeff Sessions, a decent man who served Alabama well as a U.S. Senator for 20 years, could have left the Russian collusion hoax dead in the water, but didn't. He was a disappointment to both President Trump and the nation. William Barr turned into a shrinking violet, unable to bring a single charge of corruption against an array of profoundly corrupt statists – some of whom we listed in last week's Friday Letter. He must have cowered at the
Democrats' warning that the attorney general serves only the country, not the president or his agenda.
Merrick Garland has no such qualms, and state-run media have no trepidation in agreeing with his support of the Biden Administration agenda. At his confirmation hearing he openly admitted that he supports gun confiscation. Like Eric Holder, who bragged that he was Obama's wing man, Garland is unabashed in pursuing the party's political aims. Only Republican attorneys general, apparently, are supposed to ignore the boss who appointed them.
Gun confiscation is an unequivocal violation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution and prima facie evidence that by supporting it, Merrick Garland is unfit to serve as attorney general or in any other federal capacity.
And yet, 20 Republican senators voted to confirm him. Back in March we listed their names on our How They Voted page at the News-Guardian. Recall, please, that almost all Democrat senators voted against every one of Trump nominees. Let us hope that occasional, inattentive Republican voters remember that in 2022.
Now Mr. Garland is suing Georgia because the state enacted a tepid election law that asks voters – politely, as we previously reported – to show a photo ID. How rude! Never mind that many states have more stringent laws, including tighter limits on the voting time period. We can't say for sure, but this smells like a plot to gin up support for HR 1, the unconstitutional bill now before the Senate that would federalize all elections, in clear and non-debatable violation of Article 1 of the Constitution.
“Recent changes to Georgia's election laws were enacted with the purpose of denying or abridging the right of Black Georgians to vote on account of their race or color, in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” Garland said Friday. There is not a scintilla of truth in any of these words.
Let us pray for the health and resolve of Justice Thomas, who is 73, and Justice Alito, who is 71. They owe the nation nothing, no requirement to stay on. But let's hope they do, until President Trump returns.
Garland would easily be confirmed to SCOTUS with votes from Republicans like Romney, Murkowski, Collins, Burr, Cassidy, Portman and McConnell, even Grasley and Ernst. Conservatives don't yet understand that they have little voice in the U.S. Senate. If change is to come in 2022, they had better start paying attention.
In the news . . .
Bureaucrats at the National Park Service wasted no time killing the planned Independence Day fireworks celebration at Mount Rushmore. Gov. Kristie Noem says the celebration will go on, the fight not over. She sees the denial of a fireworks permit a political move to erase U.S. History. Elsewhere, the U.K. Express reports that President Trump will kick off his comeback campaign Saturday with a rally and fireworks show in Sarasota, Fla.
Where is the curiosity? White House press dupe Jen Psaki says Joe Biden will look into the condo collapse in South Florida. What she didn't say, and what no journalist asked, is whom Biden's puppeteers will blame for the tragedy: Trump, DeSantis, or both? How about Jimmy Carter? It was built on his watch. Can anything get sillier? You know the answer.
And they wonder why their ratings are in the tank. To celebrate Pride Month, the NFL is running a 30-second commercial with this copy: “Football is lesbian. Football is beautiful. Football is queer. Football is life. Football is exciting. Football is culture. Football is transgender. Football is queer. Football is heart. Football is power. Football is tough. Football is bisexual. Football is strong. Football is freedom. Football is American. Football is accepting. Football is everything. Football is for everyone.”
Help! Call out the social workers! A week ago Thursday, the Oakland, Cal., city council cut the police budget by $18 million and partly replaced it with a new Department of Violence Prevention. On Monday, its chief, Guillermo Cespedes, was giving an interview to local TV outside City Hall when two armed men tried to rob the camera crew of their equipment. Police – what's left of them – are still trying to identify the robbers, who left empty-handed when a private security guard chased them off. – from a story at the East Bay Times.
Election fraud update: Texas has 510 pending cases of election fraud against 43 defendants and 386 active investigations, the state attorney general's website says. Read more on this at Just the News.
Links to follow: A Rumble reporter lays out growing evidence that the Jan. 6 incident at the Capitol was an intelligence operation involving FBI undercover agents and informants. Moderator Steve Bannon asks why, as commander-in-chief, Trump wasn't informed. The answer, Darren Beattie, explains, is that Trump was the target.
Two high school sweethearts ended their separate church missions early to be married, after doctors told Gracie Jeppsen, 20, who suffers from a brain tumor, that she has only months to live. What was planned as a small family wedding became something bigger when Gracie's social worker at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital became her self-appointed wedding planner. “When St. Jude called and asked if I could pitch in, I said we were not going to pitch in, we were going to sponsor the whole thing,” Chris Hope told NBC. Gracie and Seth Madsen, 21, were married June 17 in Memphis.
Black power revisited
A woman who placed third to qualify for the women's Olympic hammer throw team showed her appreciation for the privilege of representing her country by turning her back on the flag during the National Anthem. Afterwards, she held up a t-shirt that said “Activist Athlete.”
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who lost his right eye in 2012 while fighting for his country in Afghanistan, wasn't amused. He wants Gwendolyn Berry kicked off the team. “The entire point of the Olympic team is to represent the United States of America,” the former Navy Seal officer said on “Fox and Friends.”
Berry's insult found favor with White House press flack Jen Psaki, dodging her way around the only question asked by a real reporter, Peter Doocy of Fox News. Biden, she said, is “incredibly proud to be an American and has great respect for the anthem and all it represents, especially for our men and women serving in uniform all around the world. He would also would say of course that part of that pride in our country means recognizing there are moments where we as a country haven't lived up to our highest ideals and it means respecting the right of the people, granted to them in the constitution, to peaceably protest.”
How they voted
The Supreme Court ruled that previously deported illegal aliens who re-enter the country are not entitled to a bond hearing and may be held for “a period reasonably necessary to bring about that alien's removal from the United States.” Chief Justice Roberts joined conservatives Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett in the 6-3 decision. Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissented. See more SCOTUS news on our How They Voted page at The News-Guardian.
Our web domain willsoon be changing to votetrack.us, as we expand reporting on important votes in Congress, the federal courts, and state legislatures. In the meantime, the Friday Letter is published at substack.com and at The News-Guardian.