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Our Oligarchy and the 2020 Election

This configuration doesn’t capture the essence of our modern mode of government. The branch on the left is mostly superfluous. The subterranean one and the one on the right hold sway.

Ours is not a limited government founded upon popular sovereignty. It is something unmoored from any sensible reading of the Constitution. Congress, the legislative branch, is a pointless political soap opera, no longer deliberative and relevant for the most part. The real stuff of governance happens in an alliance between government workers in the executive branch and the courts. The same pattern is repeated in the states. The least democratic parts have the greatest effective power.

No better example of this disfigured mode of governance can be found than the actions of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on September 17 to nullify sections of the state’s election law signed by Democratic governor Tom Wolfe last year. The law stipulated that mail-in ballots had to be received by 8 p.m. on election day. The Court supplanted the plain language in the law with its own judgment of 3 days after the election. Why 3 days? Good question. I’m sure that there’s some rationale but I don’t think that it’s far removed from arbitrary.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court: the state’s second legislature.

On what did the narrow majority of four black-robed potentates hang their hat for their edict? Well, it’s the same tack as finding the right to abortion in emanations and penumbras (Griswold v. Conn. /Roe v. Wade). Find some language in the Constitution (state or federal) clearly meant for something else and stretch it to apply as needed. That way, they can legislate but hide it under “interpretation”.

These legal eagles invented an entirely new elastic clause in the state constitution. The relevant passage in the state constitution, now stretched to satisfy judicial whims, reads, “Elections shall be free and equal; and no power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage.” Of course, if a deadline can be annulled by such reasoning, so can any standard to ensure a credible election. Shower the state with ballots – which was done – and let them come in by wind and clutches at times made fungible by judicial flights of fancy – which was also done.

The federal Constitution lays the power to establish the “manner” of elections with the state legislatures. If, as part of their “manner”, Pennsylvania’s powers-that-be are willing to tolerate the transfer of the legislative power to judges, we’re stuck with it.

What a sorry state of affairs. Legislatures legislate, courts legislate over them, and everyone who likes the result yawns “ho-hum”. No constitutional provision can prevent the reality of sorry governments producing sorry elections. What do you expect from a corrupt oligarchy?

RogerG

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This Thing is Going to the Court(s) and Worse

USA. Erie. 3th November. Inside the Courthouse opening mailed votes.

“Beyond the margin of fraud” is a cliché but one more true today than ever. Let me be perfectly frank in saying that, in order to limit the “margin”, not every vote should count nor should every potential voter vote. It’s stupendously ridiculous to claim otherwise.

I am one with Andrew C. McCarthy on this in his piece on National Review online. The Supreme Court muddied the waters in a recent 4-4 vote in allowing the Pennsylvania Court to rewrite its election laws but SCOTUS ordered any affected ballots to be held in abeyance till a final determination. This election won’t stop in SCOTUS. Think of the whole range of state and federal courts that’ll have a say on this monstrous flub of an election before we can put “finis” on it. Even then, the final vote will have the lingering smell of a septic tank.

How did we get here? And no, you can’t blame the virus. We can lay fault with the fact that we have forgotten the sole purpose of elections: to register the voice of the people. But how do we know that the tally reflects the “voice”? We don’t, and that’s because of the Democratic Party harangues to “count every vote” while they engage in a full frontal assault on ballot integrity.

The virus has a role . . . as an excuse, a pretext for Castro-style plebiscites. Mail-in voting has always been scandalous since it destroys the secret ballot and no-one knows what happens behind the closed doors of an address. Now we’ve put the gambit on meth. Obstacles in attempts to match signatures, screams of horror against voter ID, and the demand to count everything no matter how mangled underscore the Democrats’ fixation on the need to pile up the pieces of paper as their route to power. At the end of the day, though, did we have an election or merely a greasy slide to power?

Where’s the “voice”? Is it the “voice” of the profoundly uninterested and ignorant? Is it the “voice” of ballot harvesters? Is it the “voice” of the ineligible? No doubt, invalid votes cancel valid ones. So, we have an election that will satisfy few and has a stink rising from it.

Thank you Democrats for ruining a once good thing. In your zeal for power, you’ll only have made your opponents apoplectic. This election will have produced two types of winners: the kind who won in spite of the fraud and those who won with it. For those who rode the current of pungent malfeasance to office, they could be rightly referred to as “your fraudulency”, with no more validity than that.

Will half the country accept a corrupted tally? I kind of doubt it. The Democrats are responsible for this sorry state of affairs. Here’s an interesting question: What happens when elections lose their integrity? Elections have often been referred to as peaceful revolutions. The peaceful part is only possible if they are popularly accepted as credible. If the process lacks credibility, forget about the “peaceful” kind. Opposition will be left with no recourse but the violent other type.

The Democrats are playing with fire and an end to civility.

RogerG

** Also on my Facebook page.

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Fact Checkers Discrediting Themselves

(AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Some logos lose their currency after a history of clownishness and/or misbehavior. Some examples might be “lawyer”, “college-educated”, “journalist”, “systemic racism”, and “fact checker”.

USAToday’s indomitable fact checker, Chelsey Cox, on her editor’s insistence, looked into a story on the website Babylon Bee, a satirizing website in the mold of SNL down to its marrow, on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to vacate the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Really, I kid you not (on the media’s gullibility, that is).

Chelsey Cox of USAToday
Check out the website.

Here’s a part of Babylon Bee’s story. It’s a hoot.

[Headline] “Ninth Circuit Court Overturns Death Of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”
“SAN FRANCISCO, CA—In a landmark ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. . . .’ Death, at its core, is a construct designed to subvert the rule of law by taking pro-choice liberal judges away from us too soon . . . We hereby rule any attempt by President Trump to appoint a replacement to be unconstitutional. We will block any attempt until we figure out a way to resurrect her or maybe clone her and restore her to her already ‘legally alive’ state. We’re still figuring that part out.”

Nicole Carroll, USAToday editor-in-chief

Our fearless fact checker, after a week of inquiry, concluded that it was “satire”. Without a hint of self-awareness, Cox writes,

“We rate this claim SATIRE, based on our research. A satirical article about the 9th Circuit “overturning” Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death has no basis in fact. It is true that the 9th Circuit has ruled against many Trump-era policies.”

She writes well, but the content was …..

RogerG

(also on my Facebook page)

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McCabe’s Non-prosecution and DC

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in Washington, U.S., June 7, 2017. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

If what your enemies say about you can amount to a claim of credibility, then Andrew C. McCarthy passes the test. He’s been lambasted by the Dem-Left as a hack and Trumpkins as a partisan of the “deep state”.  They are both wrong.  As a seasoned US attorney, he tries to objectively see the subject from many angles.  When looking at the McCabe case, his analysis may not be dispositive but it lacks the hyperbole often found on MSNBC and the Trump-o-philes on Fox News. In McCarthys’ rendering, as I discern it, the McCabe case stinks of DC.

Andrew C. McCarthy

The DOJ’s decision not to pursue prosecution of McCabe has 3 factors swirling about.  First, it’s hard to convict when star witnesses for the prosecution (like Lisa Page) are twisting testimony to the advantage of the defense.

Second, Trump smears the criminal justice process with his Tweet-rants.  It’s hard to convict when all involved are continually exposed to announcements from the White House that the defendant is a “liar”, etc.  The president as the ultimate chief prosecutor is mucking up the constitutional right to a fair trial.  He has a “right” to free speech, as Hannity is wont of saying, but his “right” clashes with the “rights” of others.  If Trump was a prosecutor – which he is as chief executive – he’d be sanctioned by the court.  And he does this in DC, a place already with a deep and popular disdain for him and Republicans in general.

That leads me, finally, to the messy matter of a forever-tainted jury pool in DC.  Overwhelmingly anti-Republican and anti-Trump sentiment are so deeply embedded in the DC population that Democrats are more-likely-than-not to skate.  The story of the jury forewoman in the Roger Stone trial is a good case in point.  For prosecutors of any Obama associate, they’d have to get beyond jury selection from a broad Resistance demography.  It’d be like getting a conviction in a lynching case in the Deep South after Reconstruction.  Currently in DC, a prominent Republican in the dock would get a hang ’em jury and a Democrat would have the advantage of jury nullification (a blanket refusal to convict).  In DC, just remove the blindfold from the statue of the lady of justice.

All the more reason to strip DC of many of its administrative functions.  Ship them out to environs less congenial.  Pick a Midwestern state.  Otherwise, we’ll be saddled with an unhinged and Democrat-dominated federal government for as far as the eye can see.  Elections, all of a sudden, become less important.  Were they ever, at least since FDR?

RogerG

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Biden Bends a Knee at the Altar of Saint Anita

Anita Hill testifies at the Senate confirmation hearings of Judge Clarence Thomas. 1991.

Please read Mollie Hemingway’s piece in The Federalist, “Joe Biden on Anita Hill in 1998: ‘She Was Lying’”.  At the time in 1991, there was good reason for 58% of polled Americans believing Clarence Thomas and 24% Anita Hill.  All this is forgotten in the recent resuscitation of Anita Hill as the patron saint of #MeToo.  The history of the time paints a radically different picture, and exposes Joe Biden to the charge of craven political groveling.  Ironically, the lightweights of deep thought on The View brought it to light.

Joe Biden with the ladies on The View, Friday, 4/26/19.

Hemingway compares Biden’s comments on The View with Sen. Arlen Specter’s account from his 2000 memoir.

Sen. Arlen Specter on the Judiciary Committee from 2007.

Specter (deceased in 2012) and Biden were on the Senate Judiciary Committee considering the 1991 Thomas nomination to the Supreme Court.  Specter quotes the Biden of 1998 contradicting the Biden of 2019.  The 1998 Biden confessed to Specter, “It was clear to me from the way she was answering the questions, [Hill] was lying”.  The 2019 Biden confessed to leftie high priestess Joy Behar, “I believed her from the beginning”.

So, we have A and not-A, matter and anti-matter, and I still don’t know how to bring the two together without exploding.

Anita Hill receives counsel from Charles Ogeltree while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on October, 1991. (Greg Gibson/AP)

Hill’s liberal beatification doesn’t come out of this unsoiled either.  Her answers before the committee on cross-examination were, to put it mildly, disturbing, even to those anxious to “Bork” Thomas.  She tried to deny prior complimentary comments of Thomas that were corroborated by multiple witnesses.  She denied that she knew one witness who said that Hill’s charges “were the result of Ms. Hill’s disappointment and frustration that Mr. Thomas did not show any sexual interest in her”.  Later she was forced to admit that she knew the witness after others were willing to come forward with confirmation.

The contradictions don’t stop with denials of knowing people.  Her statements before the committee were far more colorful and dramatic than those given to the FBI, something she had trouble explaining.

Then she was asked about a USA Today article that described an arrangement proffered to her by a Senate Democratic staffer for her to make a deposition against Thomas and it would be discreetly divulged to Thomas resulting, presumably, in him asking to withdraw his nomination, all done with anonymity for Hill.  It’s a repeat of the 1987 play against Reagan’s nomination of Judge Ginsburg.  She denied any knowledge of the offer and became evasive.  This is what prompted Biden in 1998 to confess to Specter that she was lying.

Robert Bork at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing on September 18, 1987. (CNP/Getty Images)

Remember, the Thomas nomination came just 4 years after the Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg fights.  The Democrats were beginning the slide into the political tar pits for Supreme Court nominations.  What worked against Ginsburg was redeployed against Thomas and later against Kavanaugh.

Sen. Joe Biden confers with Sen. Edward Kennedy. Kennedy would lead the fight to defeat the nomination of Robert Bork.

Anita Hill isn’t a saint.  The 1998 Joe Biden was correct in catching the putrid smell of her testimony.  The 2019 Joe Biden shows another side of the man. He’s a craven politician.  If he has to be a SJW (social justice warrior), he can do that.

Joe Biden ain’t “lunch-pail Joe” since the real lunch-pail Joes are the “basket of deplorables” to today’s “woke” Democratic Party.  Call him shape-shifter Joe.

Kudos to Mollie Hemingway for removing the vail obscuring both the real Joe Biden and the real Anita Hill.

RogerG

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One Final Thought: The Perfect False Allegation

Christine Blasey-Ford testifying on Sept.27.

This is my planned (emphasis on “planned”) final thought on the Kavanaugh fracas since Justice Kavanaugh is now safely on the Court. The Blasey-Ford story was truly the perfect false allegation. She weaved a tale without a place and time, leaving aside the complete lack of witnesses. Thus, how could it be refuted? Any statement missing these details cannot be empirically examined. A defense based on alibis is almost impossible. It’s the perfect charge for igniting the mob for a political lynching.

Blasey-Ford’s tale should be treated no different from a clearly proven false allegation, with the exception of fitting a new pair of handcuffs on the perjurer. The story can’t elicit any action by anyone with adult reasoning, and needs to be handled with discretion and not in a public forum under the glare of partisan predators and their street mob. If it were otherwise, we’re back to political vengeance meted out by the Paris mob of the French Revolution.

A Parisian mob storms the Hotel de Ville in 1789.

Deja vu all over again.

Sad that the Democratic Party has become the leading advocate of mob rule.

I plan no further comments, barring the elevation of Jerry Nadler (D, NY) to the chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee. He promises impeachment-mania to satisfy the bloodlust of the lefty street mobs.

RogerG

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The Wrong Question

Illustration showing a woman executed by hanging, for the practice of witchcraft, 1692. Published in ‘A Pictorial History of the United States’, 1845. (Photo by Interim Archives/Getty Images)

In the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690’s, the judge admitted “spectral evidence” (dreams and visions) into court, something criticized by Cotton Mather. The boosters for the Kavanaugh accusers are demanding the return of “spectral evidence” when they demand the accusers’ stories be accepted despite the evidence, lack thereof, or counter-evidence. They circumvent simple reason with the wrong question: Why would she (the accuser) lie? The proper question is, Did she lie?

Blasey-Ford testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sept. 27, 2018.

The “why” query solely relies upon a window into the accuser’s mind – the “spectral evidence” of 1692 Salem. Rather, the latter question moves us in a fact-based direction, even though the matter still may have no quick and easy resolution.

Did Blasey-Ford lie? I don’t know. That requires some evidence of intent. Though, it must be admitted that her testimony was riddled with an absence of critical facts and the presence of probable untruths. Her role in the saga is increasingly looking like a willing participant in a smear campaign. Her story isn’t aging well.

As for the others (Ramirez, Swetnick), their’s are fictions that belong in the “lie” category. The scorecard: 2 lies and 1 highly questionable tale.

RogerG

*Thanks to Kevin D. Williamson for raising the topic.

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A Preferred-Gender Exemption to the Rules of Decency

The new lynch mob: Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., joined by from left, Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas.

Decency requires much more from an accuser than a ballistic and life-changing charge against another person. Try proof. Instead, we are getting a claim of preference for a person with the preferred genitalia. Lacking any evidence – and as the evidence mounts contradicting the veracity of the accusers – we are asked to jettison the requirement of simple proof and accept the story solely based on the gender of the accuser and nothing else – indeed, in spite of everything else. In the meantime, the accused’s life and name are left hanging in the balance for all time.

Making perjury acceptable? Christine Blasey-Ford, Deborah Ramirez, Julie Swetnick (l-r).

Please, don’t come to the defense of Blasey-Ford’s unsupported story by citing other unsupported stories. That’s just lining up the attention-seeking partisans willing to take one for the partisan team. Their stories are dissolving like salt in boiling water.

Blasey-Ford’s story is taken as “compelling” only because she performed in a sincere manner. It’s a performance-based judgment. If you support her, I hope that you don’t face an accuser who only performs well.

Well, her whole story is teetering like a drunk after the Super Bowl. The fear of flying, ha! (See the transcripts – see my previous post for the reference) The second door installed in her house due to claustrophobia, ha! (See the contractor’s notes) The unfamiliarity with polygraph tests, ha! (Her ex-boyfriend’s letter) The claim of supportive witnesses, ha! (3 denials and 1 “can’t remember”) The claim of ignorance about the Judiciary Committee’s willingness to come to her, ha! (Grassley submitted 4 documents asking to interview her in California)

All she’s got is her performance before the committee … and the zealousness of the looney-Left and their blue-bubble followers in the media. Maybe that’s the crux of the matter. Stories like this can only gain traction among people who lack self-awareness of their social isolation in the Malibu-SF and Acela corridors.

The lefty smear-merchants of today are actually making a case for the white female accuser of Emmett Till back in 1955. He was falsely accused and murdered. Always believe the woman, right? I only present the picture below to drive home the consequences of gender-based “justice”. It ain’t pretty.

Emmett Till’s mother, Emmett Till, Till’s open-casket funeral photo.

RogerG

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How to Create a Furor Out of … NOTHING!

Christine Blasey-Ford as she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sept. 27, 2018.

In their perpetual-motion fabrication of accusations against Kavanaugh, stories stripped of even elementary proof are enlisted in defamation for partisan political purposes. The one labeled “compelling” – Blasey-Ford’s (B-F) – is no more credible than the other Bigfoot-type sightings.

In an effort to legitimize the illegitimate, B-F’s press advocates – meaning most of the press – parrot her best friend’s lawyers in denying their client’s denial of knowing Kavanaugh and the infamous party. Got it?

Yeah, her bff (Leland Ingham Keyser) didn’t contradict B-F; she just wouldn’t confirm the story, nor could she since she wasn’t there and doesn’t know Kavanaugh, according to bff Keyser. Come to think of it, for investigatory purposes, bff clearly contradicts B-F’s tale.

Leland Ingham Keyser (l) and Christine Blasey-Ford.

Judge for yourself. Bff Keyser’s lawyer, speaking for his client, said, “Simply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.” Simply put, how does that sound to you (besides too many b’s and f’s)?

Oh, but bff Keyser believes B-F … but won’t confirm. I think that we’ve entered one of Dali’s surreal paintings.

At Thursday’s kangaroo court, when confronted with her bff’s non-confirmation [translation: “denial”], B-F answered with a loopy, cobbled-together non-response. Judge for yourself:

* Rachel Mitchell, special counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, reminded B-F of the denials of the 4 people mentioned in her written account, including bff Keyser.

* B-F’s response: “Leland has significant health challenges, and I’m happy that she’s focusing on herself and getting the health treatment that she needs, and she let me know that she needed her lawyer to take care of this for her, and she texted me right afterward with an apology and good wishes, and et cetera. So I’m glad that she’s taking care of herself.”

Go ahead, parse that. Bottom line: B-F’s story is one that won’t add up. The best-friend-forever doesn’t appear willing to commit perjury, but the Dem goon squad on the committee and the lefty hive are at the ready to swarm.

This isn’t the stuff that makes for “compelling”. It is good enough for demagoguery.

Read the hearing transcript here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/kavanaugh-hearing-transc…/…

RogerG

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Have You No Decency, Sirs and Madames

Joseph Nye Welch, general counsel for the US Army, at the McCarthy Hearings, June 9, 1954.

I can think of no better response to the shameful display of Democrats at the Kavanaugh hearings than the one given by Joseph Nye Welch, general counsel of the US Army, to Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? Senator.”

No, few Dems in the US Senate have any sense of decency. Following the Lenin/Alinski playbook of the ends always justifying the means, they have championed baseless charges against Kavanaugh. Their goal is to stop the nomination at all costs, even if it means destroying people’s lives.

Blasey-Ford isn’t any help. Still, she can find no one to validate her story other than her personal feelings. Others mentioned in her story deny it. That’s not validation, Christine; it’s therapy.

If anyone thinks that there is any credibility to these wild claims, that person should stay away from the Kool-Aid punch bowl being served at MSNBC. In summary, there is no corroboration for any of it. And if there is no corroboration, there’s no there there. The whole thing is reminiscent of the child sex-abuse hysteria of the 80’s and 90’s and false accusations of campus rape by Mattress Girl, and those directed at a UV fraternity and the Duke lacrosse team. All won $$$$ in settlements for false charges and slander.

The Dems are playing the more-investigation card. Cut the crap. Translation: delay the nomination … forever. Their modus operandi involves making a baseless allegation no matter how wild, call for an investigation by anyone and everyone, gin up more baseless allegations, ad infinitum, till the Republicans or the nominee withdraws the nomination.

The problem for the more-investigations crowd: there’s no limiting principle. Easily conjured and baseless charges can be cooked up at any moment. There’s no end to it, particularly if you’re a conservative and Republican.

These claims would not be the stuff of investigation by a detective division or DA for long. There’s no corroboration and plenty of counter evidence. A statement would be taken and then the person would be shown the door. End of story. And that’s how real justice works.

Make no bones about it. From the gitgo, this is an attempt to prevent the president from exercising his Article II duty. And no concession is to be made for honor and decency.

Don’t conflate the Merrick Garland case with Kavanaugh. Garland’s nomination was treated according to the Biden Rule: no SC nomination approvals during a presidential election year. Sen. Biden (D, Delaware) stated it; the Republicans were faithful to it.

Shame on you, Democrats!

RogerG