Thursday, May 19, 2022

Senate Passes $40 Billion Ukraine Aid Package Expected to Last Five Months, Vote 86-11


The $40 billion UniParty aid package for Ukraine pass the senate this afternoon in a vote of 86-11 (vote tally below).

The Biden administration had originally requested $33 billion, but congress did not feel he was spending enough. The House added an additional $7 billion and passed the $40 billion legislation last week.  Today the Senate voted 86-11 to approve the package which is targeted to last 5 months and includes U.S. taxpayers funding the salaries and pension benefits for officials in the Ukraine government.

11 republican senators voted against the massive money laundering operation. They were Senators Blackburn (R-TN), Boozman (R-AR), Braun (R-IN), Crapo (R-ID), Hagerty (R-TN), Hawley (R-MO), Lee (R-UT), Lummis (R-WY), Marshall (R-KS), Paul (R-KY), Tuberville (R-AL).


What Great Replacement? Oh, That One!

Americans have every right to be steamed over the cynical use of de facto open borders to establish a permanent Democratic Party majority.


In an exercise in guilt by nonassociation, Associated Press reporter David Bauder explains in what pretends to be a balanced news story that there is widespread, “right-wing” hate behind the Buffalo shooting. This misfortune, he says, is related to Joe Biden’s decision to open the southern U.S. border to those who may wish to join us in this country. Lots of unkind Americans have questioned allowing millions of illegal aliens to enter the United States and providing them with de facto amnesty, together with government-financed transportation to the interior of the country. Tens of millions of Americans, apparently quite irrationally, view these steps as an attempt to create a permanent Democratic electoral majority.  

For Bauder, such speculation is evidence of widespread bigotry, and he cites Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism about a “mainstream view,” which “baselessly suggests that Democrats are encouraging immigration from Latin America so that like-minded potential voters replace ‘traditional’ Americans.”

Many of those who hold such apparently baseless suspicions also adhere to a “great replacement conspiracy theory,” which argues a concerted effort is underway by American elites to use immigration to replace a predominantly white population with a nonwhite one. The chant by Charlottesville demonstrators in 2017 that white Americans would not be replaced was only the tip of a racist iceberg; and Bauder and Pitcavage link this war against being “replaced” to among others Fox News host Tucker Carlson and U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.). Both have accused Biden and the Democrats of using illegal immigration to establish a permanent Democratic majority. Stefanik, although depicted as a very centrist Republican, delivered a supposedly frightening tirade last year about how “radical Democrats” were engaged in a “permanent election insurrection” by granting amnesty to undocumented immigrants. Bauder and Pitcavage associate such rhetoric not only with the Buffalo shooting but also with white racist violence in Norway, New Zealand, and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018.

Equally dangerous, it would seem, was the book Le Grand Remplacement published by the gay French deconstructionist Renaud Camus in 2011. According to Camus, “Europe was being invaded by Black and brown immigrants from Africa;” and this was creating a cultural and political crisis. Camus, whom we are led to believe published something comparable to the pro-Nazi Turner Diaries, allegedly provided a theoretical foundation for the recent disturbing manifestations of white supremacy ideology that Bauder and Pittcavage see all around us.

Except for the following facts, that Camus published Le Grand Remplacement, that Stefanik did warn (and quite properly so) against the use of illegal immigration as a Democratic electoral tool, and that the Buffalo killer hated blacks, there is nothing in Bauder’s partisan propaganda that is even vaguely true. 

Americans have every right to be steamed over the cynical use of borders kept open to create a permanent Democratic majority. Among the prices being paid for this outrageous, unconstitutional action are the flooding of our country with fentanyl (much of it originating in China) and Central American criminal gangs. The attempt of Biden and his administration and their media drones to link these justified complaints to psychopathic mass murderers (mind you, only the white racist not the black racist ones) has left me livid with rage.

Moreover, Camus’ book, which I have actually read, is not a racist tract but a careful examination of the implications of the demographic changes that France is now undergoing. A detailed literature on the correlation between increased crime and increased African immigration into France already exists, as does printed evidence of the increasing Islamization of the country and the weakening of its Christian or traditional republican character. Pointing out such problems is hardly an invitation to murder. It is data that citizens should be able to weigh in making electoral decisions in a country that still describes itself as a constitutional democracy.

Finally, and most irritatingly, the “great replacement” rhetoric in this country arose on the Democratic Left as something to notice and celebrate and is now being opportunistically pinned on everyone to the right of woke Democrats as an indication of their racism for noticing. The Emerging Democratic Majority by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, first published in 2002, laid out the Democratic blueprint for achieving a permanent Democratic majority by encouraging the arrival of loads of Latin Americans as future Democratic voters. As the country became less white, so this thinking goes, the more the Democrats would benefit. And the faster this could be achieved, the faster the electoral transformation would occur. 

This idea went from strategic planning to the later Democratic practice of dumping on white people. On August 12, 2021, Washington Post celebrated “the end of white America,” and its star “conservative” columnist Jennifer Rubin announced “the fabulous news” that white American society was now shrinking. If this does not describe a gaudy celebration of “the Great Replacement,” I’ve no idea what does. While Camus may have warned against this development, the American media and Democratic Party are rejoicing in it nonstop.



X22, On the Fringe, and more- May 19

 



Finale update: Entertainment Weekly posted 2 pics of that planned proposal, which was very nice. And it just needs 1 big thing: A surprise wedding crasher! #NCISLANeedsHetty

Here's tonight's news:


No More Letting Them Slander Conservatives


 

Article by Kurt Schlichter in Townhall


No More Letting Them Slander Conservatives

It's been a few days since some freak decided to go on a shooting spree, and the left told you it was all your fault because this toad scribbled an incoherent series of idiot ramblings blaming people of other races and ethnicities for his own total failure at life. No mystery about motive this time; the FBI was right on the case, and shame on you for drawing the obvious conclusion that this was because the administration felt this incident could be exploited for cheap political gain. Except it hasn't worked the way that they hoped. Their lies aren't cutting it anymore, even when they carted Grandpa Badfinger out to the scene and got him running his fool mouth about the lies du jour. 

No more. 

They are so bummed that we're not hanging our head in shame for what the *consults the moron's manifesto* green, fascist, socialist who hates Fox News did. It was like the libs were sitting there just waiting for some creep to go kill-crazy, and they must have been frustrated lately that Team Tucker has never been behind any of the recent atrocities. Waukesha, the Brooklyn subway – the last few creeps who did this have been pretty much down with the CRT agenda, and that had to be disappointing to the progs since their idiotic ideology made them useless for propaganda purposes. After all, the proper thing to do when innocent citizens are mowed down because of the color of their skin is, in the eyes of the left, to try to leverage the mayhem to disarm and disenfranchise normal people who had nothing to do with it.

The Democrats are more excited about this event than Jeffrey Toobin when he gets a Zoom call. No wonder President Crusty even found time in his busy schedule of Cornholio-esque tirades and "Matlock" marathons to go to Buffalo to distract people from issues like baby food shortages and $6 gas. Biden's flacks claimed he wanted to grieve, but that's a lie like everything else the glorified zombie says. He wanted to go claim that you did this thing that someone else did because you refused to submit to pinko domination. 

No more. 

We've seen this bull before, and we're tired of it. And this time, we responded better than we used to. See, because we are decent people who are horrified by racist criminals instead of delighted at the chance to leverage them to support our ideology, we often reacted in the past by failing to aggressively push back in the wake of such tragedies. We considered it unseemly to argue as bodies were being hauled to the morgue and families were shattered with the news that their loved ones had been slaughtered for the "crime" of being as God made them. 

Well, it's still unseemly, but better unseemly than serfs. Our impulse to be kind and polite became a cudgel in the hands of our political opponents, who showed no hesitation in using killings that our ideology had zero to do with to shame us into silence and acquiescence in our own oppression. Remember all those Republican pols who suddenly embraced "commonsense gun control" after some freak used a gun on people who often were not allowed to have guns to protect themselves? 

No more. 

The narrative manipulation that followed the killing by that nameless scuzz – never give these scumbags their jollies by repeating their names in public except on the day they are sentenced, as they would be in civilized states that punish criminals, to die – did not inspire surrender and self-doubt among conservatives. The Big Lib Lie was that somehow because Tucker Carlson cited the Democrats' crowing about how they intended to import millions of foreigners into America to swing the demographics to what they thought would be more Dem-favorable groups, Fox News was responsible for this massacre. It's morally illiterate and just plain stupid, but once upon a time, these gambits worked. 

No more. 

This time, there was no sissycon reticence about fighting back to get the truth out. Immediately, conservatives read this illiterate's stupid manifesto and found that not only did it have nothing to do with Tucker Carlson, but that it included some sort of reference to Fox News as a Jewish conspiracy. That's not the kind of thing a Fox fan scribbles in his dumb dream journal. Moreover, the mutant jerk embraced some neo-Nazi Ukrainian militia – wait, aren't cons supposed to be in love with Putin? Can't the left settle on a consistent lie? 

That this goober was the antithesis of conservatism was clear, and conservatives did not hesitate to push back against a synchronized bull-Schiff narrative designed to let the immoral left lift the moral high ground from the people it belongs to – us. In fact, conservatives turned the "Great Replacement Theory" nonsense around, pointing out the popular books by Democrats celebrating it and how the Democrats bragged about it on Twitter. There was no longer the old-school masochistic willingness to be browbeaten into ignoring the very gameplan Dems have been bragging about for decades. Instead, conservatives will redouble their efforts to deal with the scheme the right way – we will continue to make our case to American voters of Hispanic and other ethnic descents. And it is working – Hispanics are swinging hard toward Republicans in the midterms, and they despise Uncle Gropey even more than people of pallor do. 

We patriots are done being polite. If these prog prongs try to stick the blame for these hideous murders on us, we'll stick it right back, harder and farther. No more allowing sorrow to stop us from standing up for the truth. No more using our niceness against us for cheesy political advantage. We've played that game. 

No more. 

And hey, if we can have a great replacement of annoying liberal wine women with hard-working, patriotic Hispanics who don't tolerate gender insanity, count us in. 

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/05/19/no-more-letting-them-slander-conservatives-n2607425



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Is Biden’s ‘Success’ Our Mess? ~ VDH

What Americans see as an abject catastrophe, the Biden Administration cheers on as stunning and planned progress.


If an administration deliberately wished to cause havoc on the border, to ensure fuel was nearly unaffordable, to create a crime wave, to spark 1970s hyperinflation, and to rekindle racial tensions, what would it have done differently than what Joe Biden has done? 

So is Biden malicious, incompetent, or a wannabe left-wing ideologue? 

When pressed about inflation and fuel price hikes, Biden either blames someone or something else, gets mad at the questioner, or claims Donald Trump did it. 

His administration apparently believes things are going well and according to plan. 

When polls disagree, his team either believes the American people are brainwashed or that they themselves have not supplied sufficient propaganda. So they never pivot or compromise, but rededicate themselves to continued failure. 

Why? Apparently, what most in the country see as disasters, Biden envisions as success. 

Take the border—or rather its disappearance. 

Never in U.S. history has an administration simply canceled immigration laws, opened the border, and welcomed in millions of illegal aliens. All arrive illegally, and without audit, or vaccinations and tests in times of a pandemic. 

Cartels now import lethal drugs at will into the United States. We have no idea how many terrorists walk across the border each day. 

Almost all the millions who break the law by entering are poor, without high school diplomas or English skills, and in dire need of massive federal and state housing, food, education, legal, and health subsidies.

Do the leftists in Washington believe that millions of dependent new residents will look to the Left for decades of support and soon find ways to reciprocate with fealty at the polls? Is that why Democrats brag in unapologetic tribalist fashion about changing the demography of the electorate?

Barack Obama’s energy secretary-designate Steven Chu once gaffed in the 2008 campaign when he openly wished that U.S. gas prices would reach European levels. 

In truth, the Left has always believed the only way to achieve their objectives of discouraging driving, forcing middle-class Americans onto trains and buses, and persuading them to live in urban high-rises rather than drive carbon-spewing cars from spacious suburban ranch-style homes was to encourage high fuel prices.

Is that agenda why Biden, during the current energy crisis, simply canceled new federal oil and gas leases? As diesel hits $7 a gallon in California, why else did he refuse to finish the Keystone XL pipeline or reopen Alaskan oil fields? 

Inflation continues officially to exceed eight percent per annum. Most consumers feel it is double that when they pay for food, fuel, building materials, houses, or rent—the essential stuff of life. 

What did the Biden Administration expect would follow from keeping real interest rates at near zero, while printing trillions of dollars at the moment supplies were short and demand was spiking? 

Or did it think inflation more fairly “spreads the wealth”? Does it prompt new necessary attacks on “corporate greed?” Does it demand more federal intervention and socialist policies? 

If inflation is “bad” for most, it may not seem so to this left-wing administration. 

Violent crime is on its way to 1970s levels. The combination of defunding the police, radical city and county prosecutors who don’t charge or lock up criminals, and emptying jails and prisons have ignited a national crime wave. 

The Biden Administration shrugs. It offers no new federal help to fund more police or charge freed criminals under applicable federal statutes. 

Does it think it is more socially just to let criminals free than incarcerate them? 

Does it buy into “critical legal theory” that laws do not reflect ancient ideas of right and wrong, but instead are “constructed” by the privileged to oppress the already oppressed? 

Is what Americans see as dangerous crime something the Biden zealots applaud as tough social karma? 

Americans are tired of the new woke tribalism. Judging individuals on the basis of their race, gender, or superficial appearance is amoral, and contrary to the entire civil rights movement, and the U.S. Constitution. 

It destroys any idea of meritocracy and divides the country artificially into supposed victims and victimizers. 

But do the Biden people see it that way? 

Or do they promote racial tensions and tribalism, as welcome revolutionary fervor?

In that regard, the Bidenites promote identity politics as a good way to stir up the pot, to demonize supposed oppressors and deify the oppressed—all as a way of retaining political power. For the Left, living in a socialist nation controlled by an elite is far preferable to living in a free and prosperous one answerable only to the people. 

The public believes the Biden Administration has failed America, with disastrous results due either to its incompetence, belligerence, or left-wing zealotry. 

But Biden and his delusional team seem delighted with what they have wrought.

In sum, what Americans see as an abject catastrophe, they cheer on as a stunning and planned success.



Biden plainly wants the border crisis to keep getting worse

Biden plainly wants the border crisis to keep getting worse

A migrant family stands waiting to be processed on May 05, 2022 in Roma, Texas.
Border patrol agents cannot handle and process the influx of undocumented immigrants rushing into the US border. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Illegal-migrant encounters at the US-Mexico border soared to 234,088 in April, a new record for the Department of Homeland Security, eclipsing the March all-time record by 5.8% — and President Joe Biden’s only plan is to make it worse.

Nearly half the April migrants were not from Mexico or the Northern Triangle, by the way.

Team Biden is intent on dropping the Trump-era Title 42 rule, which allows the feds to send many migrants back (97,000 in April) over COVID concerns. His minions claim COVID’s no longer an issue on the border (though they still cite it as reason to forgive vast amounts of college loans, among other areas where they conveniently claim the crisis continues).

So he’s offering potential migrants more reason to come: a far better chance of being allowed in “temporarily,” even if they’re caught. (Tens of thousands make it through each month without an “encounter.”) And this is just as warmer weather alone guarantees an increase. 

Border Patrol holding areas are already at 203% capacity; Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, 68.5%.

This, more than a year after the prez claimed on the “Today” show that “we’ve now gotten control” of the border, not to mention a host of other empty claims ever since. 

Title 42 is set to end May 23, unless a federal judge rules otherwise. And if he does, expect Biden & Co. to find something else to deepen the crisis: At this point, their actions make it unmistakable that ever-rising illegal immigration — total open borders — is their true goal.


Expert Witnesses at House Abortion Hearing; For & Against


In Washington, D.C. yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee held a four-hour hearing about the need for abortion [full video here].  Within the hearing one of the congressional witnesses, Ms. Aimee Arrambide, Executive Director of Avow Texas, was asked about her position.  Her response encapsulates the mindset of current democrats in office.  WATCH (20 seconds):


Comrade Dissidents, if these people think their views are commonly understood, even fathomable, by the majority of commonsense thinking Americans, I seriously doubt they have any concept of what common sense actually implies.   This is just flat-out weird.


Witness at House Abortion Hearing Leaves Jamie Raskin 'Reclaiming' His Time After Devastating Rebuttal
Witness at House abortion hearing leaves Jamie Raskin "reclaiming" his time after being effectively challenged

The House hosted a hearing covering abortion on Wednesday, and the depravity of the left was on full display. In some heated back and forths, Democrat witnesses exposed positions that will make your stomach turn.

For example, an abortion doctor made the claim that someone is not a “human being” until they are physically born.

It’s hard to fathom how someone can so smugly proclaim such evil, but that’s exactly what we see in that video clip. The idea that having a birthday bestows humanity on someone is a despicable assertion. Those are the kinds of arguments that justified slavery. Besides, it’s scientifically untrue. We know that a baby in the womb is a human being, and to say it isn’t is lunacy. But the left will say just about anything to support their lust for abortion.

Later, Chip Roy pegged the same witness down on how late she’s aborted a baby and whether she’s handled baby parts, a common occurrence in abortion clinics. She laughably objected, claiming Roy was using “inflammatory language.”

That’s not the clip I’m writing this article for, though. Rather, I want to point to one of the pro-life witnesses, Catherine Glenn Foster of Americans United for Life, who managed to completely elbow drop Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD). You may know Raskin from his leadership role on the January 6th committee.

This is what happens when Democrats are actually challenged on their views regarding abortion (or any topic, really). One of the most common misdirections the left uses to justify the barbaric practice until birth is the topic of rape and incest. It doesn’t matter that such instances represent a tiny fraction of abortions, with most estimates coming in around one percent, Democrats do not want to talk about the realities of what they actually support. Because of that, they constantly hide behind a facade of concern about rape and incest exceptions.

In this case, Foster was ready with the perfect rebuttal. She immediately asks Raskin, “If we added rape and incest exemptions, would you vote for it?” That left the Democrat rushing to “reclaim” his time so he could keep reading his prepared statement without answering the question.

Why can’t he answer it? Because Raskin knows as well as anyone else that bringing up rape and incest is a red herring. Republicans could come out today offering full federal legalization of abortion in the case of rape and incest while banning elective abortions and not a single Democrat would sign onto the bill. Given that, there’s no reason to even talk about rape and incest in these discussions because it’s obviously irrelevant.

Raskin is a mental weakling, though, and he thought he could snipe at the Foster without getting any pushback. She had other ideas, and watching her smirk in response to his idiocy is just priceless. Make Democrats own what they support. Stop letting them dance around the realities of abortion. The more Republicans do that, the more they’ll continue to turn the tide.



Vangelis: Chariots Of Fire and Blade Runner composer dies aged 79

 

Vangelis, composer of the Chariots Of Fire music - one of film's most famous scores - has died aged 79.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis tweeted "Vangelis Papathanassiou is no longer among us".  


Media in the country said he had died on Wednesday in a French hospital.

Born Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, he also composed the music for many other films and TV shows, including Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.

It was 1981's Oscar-winning best film, Chariots Of Fire, that gave him his breakthrough.

He won best original score for the iconic music, which accompanies the famous slow-motion running sequences.

Its opening piano lines and use of the synthesizer are instantly recognisable to millions of movie fans. 


Vangelis had no formal music training and after playing with rock bands in Greece, he left for Paris at 25 in the wake of a coup in his home country.

He developed a passion for electronic synthesizers - which were new at the time - and used them to fashion the melodic sounds that became his trademark.

Vangelis had success in the early 70s with a prog rock band called Aphrodite's Child, but grew disillusioned with the commercial pressures and retreated to a studio in London.

It was there the Chariots Of Fire music was created.

His Oscar for the hit film followed, as well as chart success; the score was partly a tribute to his father who had been a keen amateur runner.  



However, he once referred to it in an interview as "only another piece of music" and it would overshadow his later work.

Among his other highlights was the score for dystopian sci-fi classic Blade Runner in 1982, and music for the Palme d'Or-winning Missing, by Greek director Costa-Gavras.

Vangelis also composed for advertising campaigns and formed a duo, called Jon and Vangelis, with Jon Anderson from prog rock group Yes.   



https://news.sky.com/story/vangelis-chariots-of-fire-composer-dies-aged-79-12616842   






Black Conservatives Convene for a 'New Birth of Freedom'

Black Conservatives Convene for a 'New Birth of Freedom'

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
Black Conservatives Convene for a 'New Birth of Freedom'

Source: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Recent remarks by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, noting the institutional damage caused by the leak of Justice Samuel Alito's opinion on Roe v. Wade, have gotten exhaustive coverage in the press.

But, not surprisingly, the venue where Thomas made these remarks has gotten little attention by these same journalists.

The event was a convening of the nation's leading Black conservative intellectuals -- from academia, policy institutes, media -- to focus on, as explained in a press release from one of the institutional sponsors, the American Enterprise institute, why "despite decades of affirmative-action programs, wealth-redistribution schemes and other well-intentioned government efforts, racial gaps in educational achievement, employment, income, family formation and crime persist."

The venue, Old Parkland in Dallas, was provided through the generosity of Texas businessman Harlan Crow.

The Old Parkland Conference was inspired as a reconvening of a similar effort organized by economist Thomas Sowell in December 1980 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco -- a pioneering effort, the first of its kind.

At that time, in 1980, Sowell was already making his mark challenging what had become conventional wisdom that it was essential for government to play the central role in dealing with challenges facing Black Americans.

Sowell, who began his career seeing the world from the perspective of the left, changed. He was once asked in an interview what drove his transformation in perspective from left to right, and he answered, "Facts."

The Old Parkland Conference was organized by four of the nation's leading conservative Black thought leaders -- Brown University economist Glenn Loury, Jason Riley of The Wall Street Journal, Ian Rowe of the American Enterprise Institute and Shelby Steele of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Three days of speeches and panels covered the gamut. Why do the gaps persist? Speakers assess the current realities in education, law enforcement and crime, government programs such as affirmative action, and the role of culture and the persistence of social inequality and claims of racism.

Sowell, now 91 years old, did not attend this reconvening of his effort of 40 years ago.

Looking over those who presented at the 1980 Fairmont Conference, we see greats who no longer are with us. Greats like the late economist Walter Williams and economics Nobel laureate Milton Friedman.

The topic of Friedman's presentation then says it all. "Government is the problem."

However, one attendee of both events -- last week's Old Parkland Conference and the Fairmont Conference in 1980 -- is Clarence Thomas, who attended in 1980 as a young congressional aide.

I was honored to be invited to participate and reconnect with admired friends with whom I have worked toward common goals over many years.

It reinforced my own sense of mission.

The analysis and conclusions of Sowell and others 40 years ago at the Fairmont Conference were correct. They saw then that human lives are not liberated by government programs and politics, and they saw then that this approach would make lives worse, not better.

This is indeed what happened.

I began my work in the 1990s inspired to bring the success of a capitalist America to the failures in low-income communities caused by socialism.

What we have today, unfortunately, is the reverse. Mainstream America is looking more like our poor communities destroyed by socialism than the other way around.

The work must continue.

The special responsibility of Black Americans, with their unique and troubled history, is to show that evil occurs because men sin. Not because the vision of American freedom is flawed, as we hear almost daily from progressives.

In many ways, the country is in worse shape today for everyone than where things stood in 1980.

More government, slower growth, family breakdown.

The answer can only be to seek, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "a new birth of freedom," for every American of every background.



The Supreme Court leaker must pay

The Supreme Court leaker must pay

The leaker has to face real consequences

Nearly two weeks after Politico published Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in the term’s big abortion case, we still don’t know who the leaker is. That’s unfortunate, to say the least, not because our tabloid curiosity hasn’t been satisfied but because this is the most serious threat to the Supreme Court’s integrity in living memory. 

The leaker must be found to avoid setting the precedent that decision drafts can be leaked with impunity to influence case outcomes, which would threaten public confidence in the Court at a time when societal trust is already low. It’s one thing to disagree with a ruling, quite another to facilitate real-time critiques of judicial decision-making. If chambers confidences can’t be kept, the judiciary will cease to function as an independent institution.

Security fencing is in place outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Saturday, May 14, 2022, ahead of expected abortion right rallies later in the day. (Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Security fencing is in place outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Saturday, May 14, 2022, ahead of expected abortion right rallies later in the day. (Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

And that means that the leaker, whoever it is and whatever the motive, has to face real consequences. Although it’s unclear whether this person could face criminal prosecution—short of the scenario of a computer hack (unlikely given that the leak came with information about the justices’ initial and continuing voting stances)—this offense should be treated as a career-killer. That holds true whether the leaker is a clerk, secretary, chambers aide, or even a justice.

The most likely scenario is that it’s a clerk, one of the three dozen wunderkinds who do the heavy lifting of legal research for the justices. There’s been plenty of speculation about whether it would be someone on the left or the right—the former is more likely, though it was irresponsible to name and shame current clerks without any evidence, as some amateur Twitter detectives have done—but that’s irrelevant to the ramifications. As one former clerk reported Justice Antonin Scalia having said, "If I ever discover that you have betrayed the confidences of what goes on in these chambers, I will do everything in my power to ruin your career." 

To wit, this budding lawyer should face disbarment or, if not yet a member of the bar, preemptive disqualification during the "character and fitness" portion of the bar-admission process. Lawyers have been disbarred for far less. 

The leaker is no naïf and will likely have decided that this risk was worth the chance to blow up the deliberative process. The leaker may have correctly calculated that giving up the ability to practice law—and even a $400,000 big-firm signing bonus—was a small price to pay for becoming a progressive hero. Indeed, this person would be well-positioned for a cozy sinecure at a prominent institution of left-wing advocacy like MSNBC, CNN, or Yale Law School. But a lucrative career as a partisan hack is reputationally different than one as a serious and high-minded officer of the court.

What if it’s not a clerk? Non-clerk staff are likely to be less ideological and have more of an interest in keeping their jobs than a one-year clerk. They’re also likely to have more loyalty to their justice or the Court. And they’re probably not aspiring to be public intellectuals or activists, so it’s unclear why they’d risk getting fired and blackballed from similar employment, which is what the consequences would be for them.

The leaker could be the spouse or friend of a clerk, but it’s hard to think of how this person would accomplish a leak—particularly of the justices’ preliminary votes, and the follow-up leak that there aren’t any further opinions in circulation—without the clerk’s complicity. 

Could it be a justice? It’s highly unlikely, because all nine have too strong an interest in maintaining confidentiality and the legitimacy of the Court as an institution. Indeed, recent reporting suggests that justices across the ideological map are "uniform" in decrying the leak. But if it were to be a justice, who at this point would be gaslighting his or her colleagues, then it’s no exaggeration to suggest that impeachment is appropriate. 

As we’ve rediscovered in recent years, impeachments are highly political affairs, with a political judgment about whether the given offense rises to the level of a "high crime and misdemeanor." In our history, the House of Representatives has approved articles of impeachment against judges 15 times, including once against a Supreme Court justice, Samuel Chase, who in 1804 was charged with political bias, arbitrary rulings, and generally promoting a partisan agenda on the bench. Chase was acquitted, but eight jurists were convicted and removed, for offenses ranging from public drunkenness and supporting the Confederacy to corruption, tax evasion, and perjury. Only one Democrat senator, Mark Warner, has thus far condemned the Dobbs leak, so there may not be political will in the Senate to convict, but that doesn’t mean it would not be worth pursuing given the gravity of the matter.

Finally, lest anyone accuse me of propagating cancel culture by calling for professional punishment here, let me emphasize that the offense is not some politically incorrect statement but rather an action that damages the Supreme Court’s functioning and thus the rule of law. Whoever did this must pay for putting another tear into the parchment barrier keeping us from tyranny.

Ilya Shapiro is executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and senior lecturer at the Georgetown University Law Center.



How Congress Undermines Constitution, Federalism

How Congress Undermines Constitution, Federalism

The Founders faced the formidable task of creating a government that could operate effectively while respecting and protecting the liberties for which the Revolution had been fought. (Photo: Eurobanks/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

The American republic was created by a remarkable generation of men who turned a rebellion against the British crown into a transforming moment in human history, one based on the revolutionary proposition that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with fundamental rights that no government has the moral authority to set aside.

On achieving independence, however, the Founders faced the formidable task of creating a government that could operate effectively while respecting and protecting the liberties for which the Revolution had been fought.

In doing so, they had no illusions about human nature, the one constant in human affairs. They understood that the drive to accumulate power, whether by an individual despot or a parliamentary majority, is the historic enemy of individual freedom.

So, they incorporated two safeguards into the Constitution: the separation of governmental powers, with its checks on potential abuses, and the principle of federalism underscored by the 10th Amendment’s command that all powers not assigned to the federal government be “reserved to the States respectively or to the people.”

Upon taking office, members of Congress must “solemnly swear” that they “will support and defend the Constitution of the United Statesagainst all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” 

During our first 180-odd years, Washington largely respected the Constitution’s safeguards. But with the advent of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, Congress began a wholesale assumption of the states’ responsibilities.

As I explained in my book “Saving Congress from Itself,” Congress has done that through a proliferation of federal programs that offer states grants of money for purposes that are the states’ exclusive concern with instructions governing how the money is to be spent.   

An avalanche of regulation-ridden programs now provide federal subsidies for virtually every activity in which states are engaged.

Although the states are not obliged to accept federal grants, experience has demonstrated that, politically, it’s virtually impossible to decline “free money” from Washington, however onerous the attached conditions.   

As a consequence, the states have become administrators of programs created in Washington and overseen by bureaucrats the furthest removed from where the money is to be spent.

Regrettably, the result has been the effective nullification of the 10th Amendment.

The Constitution provides that “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” Congress is the sole legitimate source of federal laws.

Congress, however, has developed the habit of enacting legislation for the achievement of broadly defined objectives, while delegating the responsibility for writing the rules for their achievement to executive branch agencies. 

That habit has led to the creation of an extraconstitutional administrative state in which unelected officials both write and administer the regulations that now govern ever-wider areas of American life—regulations that have the force of law.

Procedures exist for subjecting proposed regulations to scrutiny before they can take effect. But the administrative state can sidestep them by simply writing letters, as it did when, without a hearing, it advised schools that boys must be allowed to use girls bathrooms if they think of themselves as girls.

The state gets away with such excesses because they have become so common that they are rarely challenged.

Federalism today is just a memory, but beginning its restoration is simple.

Congress just has to strip the grants of federal regulations telling the states how the money is to be used. This simple reform would allow accountable state and local officials—rather than distant bureaucrats—to determine how best to meet state and local needs.

Unfortunately, simple can be difficult. Restoring the Constitution’s allocation of governmental powers will be a difficult task.

As James Madison noted in Federalist Paper 48, the Constitution’s “parchment barriers” can’t prevent the executive and legislative branches from ignoring its safeguards. Only an informed citizenry can do that.

Unfortunately, over the past generation, our educators have abdicated their responsibility to ground their students in the fundamentals of the American experience.

Too many Americans now suffer from a peculiar form of historical amnesia. They remember all our past sins, such as slavery. But too few have a sufficient awareness of the constitutional and economic principles that, on the historical record, had made ours the most productive, prosperous, innovative, generous, and free society the world had known—principles responsible for the freedoms and material well-being they take for granted. 

I used the past tense there because, thanks to our development as an administrative state, we are no longer the freest.

The challenge to preserve our republic has always been with us. It now faces an unprecedented threat. As Benjamin Franklin reminded us at the close of the Constitutional Convention, while the Framers had given us a republic, it would be up to us to “keep it.”

It’s essential that Americans grasp the significance of the threats to which they are being exposed by Congress’ abandonment of the Constitution’s most important safeguards.