RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.newsweek.com/what-scotus-nomination-fight-really-about-opinion-1533688

The coming confirmation battle over the successor to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is about more than future decades of decisions on issues from abortion to the administrative state, or the weeks of litigation that Democrats threaten to bring should the presidential election not go their way.

These are vital matters. But this nomination fight, which on its face involves the Republican Party faithfully exercising the authority the American people vested in it in the face of an increasingly hysterical and violent opponent, is about more than any one nominee.

It concerns the future of our political system itself—whether the GOP will push back against a party increasingly dominated by leftists storming the ramparts in naked pursuit of total power, or be content to serve increasingly as controlled opposition.

Early indications are that Republicans intend to prevail in a quarrel where by all rights—law, precedent and the votes—there should be none.

It is imperative that they are up to the task.

This nomination represents an opportunity for the Republican Party to deliver a decisive blow to a Democratic Party devoted to the complete destruction of its political opponents; to demonstrate that it understands the stakes should it concede an inch of its rightful powers; and to prove it has the resolve to confidently stand up to Democratic tactics.

It is an opportunity to highlight for the American people what is on the line in 2020: our freedom from a Democratic Party that has succumbed at the highest levels to its revolutionary “woke” wing in rhetoric and policy.

https://dianebederman.com/lets-take-another-look-at-antisemitism/

Let’s take another look at antisemitism.

First the bad news: As long as there is one Jew alive there will be antisemitism.

Now the good news: As long as there is one Jew alive there will be antisemitism.

According to the number of Jews in Roman times, there should be 200 million Jews, today. There are 14 million. If Jews were an animal species we would be declared an endangered species and a protected habitat would be found for us. Oh, wait. We found one: Israel.

I suggest that instead of only responding to Jew hatred with counter statements, facts, and exhortations, let’s sing and dance! Let’s celebrate the fact that we are here: still here, despite the thousands of years of trying to kill us. We, the people, who gave the world the ethic that makes freedom possible; the ethic that decrees all people are born with equal intrinsic value and ALL life is sacred. For this ethic we have been attacked. It is this ethic that riled the Nazis for they knew they were superior to all others and today we are up against another ideology that proclaims itself superior: Islam.

As long as one Jew is alive, Jew hatred will be all over the world, in places where no Jew lived. If ever there was an irrational hate, hate for the Jews is it.

The next time universities put on their Israel Apartheid Week, let’s stand in front of them and dance the Hora. Havah Nagilah, “Let us rejoice.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/09/21/support-trumps-move-to-fill-empty-court-seat-as-if-your-freedom-depends-on-it-because-it-does/

President Donald Trump has vowed to move quickly to name a replacement for late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and urged the Senate to vote before the election. Not only is he constitutionally justified in doing so, but the future political stability of our nation depends on it.

The pick, which Trump said will “likely” be a woman, is expected next week. There are a number of highly eligible, Constitution-friendly women suitable for the highest court in the land. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already pledged to move forward with the confirmation hearings, perhaps the most important since Roger B. Taney was named chief justice in 1836 and set the nation on course for Civil War.

It would be nice if the Democrats played a constructive role. After all, they threatened to shut down government in 2016 when faced with a similar situation.

Instead, realizing that the White House will name someone before the election and the Senate will hold a vote, they’re crying foul and issuing threats.

To begin with, they’ve uniformly acted as if Trump is doing something wrong or out of the ordinary in naming a replacement late in his term.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/nevertrumpers_unhinged_over_their_growing_irrelevance.html

Washington D.C. has always been a club, with decorum and strict membership rules. Most of us are not in this club and would have no desire to join if offered membership based on our morals, ethics, and a desire to look at ourselves in the mirror every day without being disgusted.

George Carlin said it best, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.” The club goes by many names – deep state, swamp, uniparty – and the club charter is quite clear, outlined ironically by someone not in the club, blackballed by the membership committee. President Trump, before the 2016 election described the club as follows and offered an alternative for the deplorables not in the “big club”,

Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American People. There is nothing the political establishment will not do, and no lie they will not tell, to hold on to their prestige and power at your expense. The Washington establishment, and the financial and media corporations that fund it, exists for only one reason: to protect and enrich itself.

NeverTrumpers represent the Republican side of the uniparty. They opposed Trump’s candidacy, presidency, and upcoming reelection. As the 2020 election approaches, their derangement is ratcheting up. Any pretense of conservatism being tossed out the window to disparage Trump and prevent his reelection. The passing of Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg will increase their caterwauling by an order of magnitude.

So-called NeverTrumpers are anything but Republican. Trump is implementing everything Republicans have advocated in their columns, books, newsletters, think tanks, and blogs. He cut taxes and took a machete to onerous regulations. He has been staunchly pro-life and nominated two constitutional conservatives to the high court, with an unexpected chance for a hat trick before the November election.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/517266-what-attorney-general-barr-really-said-about-justice

It would be far better to read for ourselves Attorney General (AG) William Barr’s Constitution Day speech at Hillsdale College than to rely on the media-Democrat complex to relate what he said faithfully. The speech is posted on the Justice Department’s website. It is a scintillating explanation of the role of federal prosecutors in a free society, operating under a Constitution that guarantees liberty by dividing government power and making its exercise politically accountable.

What has gotten the most attention is the AG’s supposed belittling of career prosecutors. Ripped from its context, as if he were flipping off bumper sticker bromides rather than developing an argument, critics have feigned outrage that Barr equated the notion of trusting assistant United States attorneys (AUSAs) to make weighty decisions with letting the class syllabus be set by the tots at a Montessori preschool.

You will no doubt be shocked to learn that this is a complete distortion of what he said.

What Barr was driving at involves a significant philosophical dispute about prosecutorial power. Progressives regard it as a mere formality that the Framers vested the duty to execute the laws in the president. In their construct, federal prosecutors are not so much executive branch officials who serve the president as they are government lawyers who serve an abstraction known as “the rule of law,” which is vaguely understood to be laws enacted by Congress and rulings rendered by the judiciary — unless a Democratic president doesn’t approve of the laws or the jurisprudence. Also in their view, assistant U.S. attorneys are supposed to go about their weighty business completely insulated from politics — and, in Republican administrations, insulated from oversight by Main Justice, too. As for the attorney general, he is not the president’s lawyer but the public’s legal agent for purposes of reining in the president — except in the Obama administration, in which it was evidently fine for the attorney general to be the president’s self-described “wingman.”

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/ruth-bader-ginsburg/91263/

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, coming at the beginning of what her co-religionists call the Days of Awe, is a moment to lay aside the politics. The time for that will arrive soon enough. President Trump is signaling he’ll make a prompt nomination to replace the Supreme Court’s most liberal justice. Yet tonight we find ourselves thinking of what Ginsburg meant to millions of Americans, particularly young women.

To them, and not only them, she was an enormously inspiring role model — a fighter who, like, say, Justice Thurgood Marshall, pursued a great cause through the practice of law. Her cause was the rights of women themselves. And by sticking to it, she built historic career in the law that was capped with a seat on the highest bench in the land. No wonder America’s daughters, and sons, admire her and thrill to her triumphs.

We began covering her story in 1993, when, in a gathering in the Rose Garden, she was introduced by President Clinton as his nominee to replace Justice “Whizzer” White. He noted that she had argued before the Supreme Court six cases on behalf of women and won five of them. He pointedly likened her to Marshall. He predicted that she would be a unifying figure on the high bench. When she spoke, the President teared up.

At Ginsburg’s confirmation hearing, there was a remarkable moment. It came when Senator Carol Mosley Braun erupted angrily over something said by Senator Orrin Hatch in reference to the Dred Scott case. Ms. Braun demanded to speak on a point of personal privilege in her capacity as “the only descendent of a slave” in the hearing. Judge Ginsburg sat still, declining to correct the senator. We clapped our head in disbelief.

For Senators Metzenbaum, Feinstein, Cohen, and Specter were, among others present, either Jewish or descended from Jews, and the future justice herself was Jewish. So we thought she could have pointed out that every year, for three millennia, Jews have made a point of beginning the Passover Seder by remembering precisely that they were slaves in Egypt. It was not that we wanted to mark that Ms. Braun was wrong.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/19/confirm-a-justice-now/

The instant Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing was announced, the battle lines were drawn. Or, more accurately, one side girded for battle, while Republicans clucked with confusion about what to do next.

Which should be no surprise. If Republicans are good at anything, it’s finding “principled” reasons to betray their constituents and contradict their much vaunted philosophy. President Trump, naturally, has sounded strong, as, to his credit, has Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). But the majority leader has to manage a fractious caucus and a thin margin. Many of his members either will be looking for excuses not to vote, or for a reason to vote no, or (worse) will be persuadable by sophistical arguments as to why stabbing their president, their voters, and their country in the back is “the right thing to do.”

Herewith, if any of them are listening, are some reasons not to take those paths.

The Alleged 2016 Precedent

All Democrats and a few Republicans are already saying that McConnell’s refusal to advance the nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016 set an inviolable precedent that the GOP would be hypocrites to overturn. But there are differences between 2016 and 2020.

First, Barack Obama was at the end of his constitutionally limited two terms. The 2016 contest, therefore, was an “open-seat” election. Voters are much more likely to hand the presidency to the other party in an open-seat election; they have done so in the last three straight, whereas no incumbent has lost since 1992. A president at the end of his second term is a lame duck; it makes some sense in that circumstance to give a new president, with a new mandate, the chance to shape the court rather than let the outgoing has-been, who’s already had eight years to do as he will, one last shot at a legacy.

President Trump was almost a shoo-in for reelection before the lockdowns crushed the economy, and he remains a strong bet. He’s still immensely popular with his base and his approval ratings are the highest of his presidency—and higher than many of his predecessors’ at the same point in his term. He is anything but a lame duck. He deserves a chance to exercise his constitutionally enumerated powers and deliver for his voters.

Now go back to the basement.

Commenting on the death of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Joe Biden said: 

“There is no doubt, let me be clear, that the voters should pick the president and the president should pick the justice for the Senate to consider.”

Well Mr. Biden, in case you don’t remember, the voters did pick a president in 2016, and the voters picked Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump was inaugurated at noon on Jan. 20, 2017, making him the 45th President of the United States.  

Again, in case you can’t recall Mr. Biden, Section 1 of the 20th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution states that Donald J. Trump’s term as president of the United States does not end until noon on Jan. 20, 2021.

And until that time, President Trump holds all the rights and powers as determined by that same U. S. Constitution.

I’m sure Mr. Biden, since you were a member of the U.S. Senate for many years, and presided over the Senate Judiciary Committee when Judge Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Clinton, and was also vice president for eight years, that you know that “The Appointments Clause” is part of Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, which empowers the president of the United States to nominate and, with the advice and consent (confirmation) of the United States Senate, appoint someone to a vacated seat of the SCOTUS.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/09/18/the_totalitarian_tendencies_of_the_woke.html

One of the best-selling books in America right now, Ibram Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist,” calls for some astonishingly autocratic policies. It would establish a federal Department of Anti-racism with veto power over any local, state, or federal policies considered racially inequitable by its bureaucrats. (No one in the agency would be appointed by or accountable to the president or Congress.) It would also “investigate private racist policies” and “monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas … empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.” 

This proposal to tear up both the checks and balances on executive fiat in Washington and the protections for individual rights embedded in our Constitution is one indicator among many that woke activists have fallen headlong for authoritarianism.

Their very language of group conflict and oppression is of course taken directly from Marxism. And there is a harsh intemperance and lack of proportionality in the behavior of today’s social-justice warriors. They say white supremacism is universal in America, not an aberration. Their favored graffiti spray tag is “ACAB” (All Cops Are Bastards). They want to defund and shut down police departments, not fix them. They call for lawmakers to “abolish ICE” and fling our southern border wide open. There is a growing fanaticism in which gray arguments and toleration for opposing points of view disappear.

If politics is the methodical organization of resentments, identity politics runs on the methodical organization of rage. Rage is an awful fuel for the gradual give-and-take needed to produce social progress in a non-authoritarian democracy. Alas, the Americans under age 30 who are manning the barricades of identity socialism loathe messy give-and-take. They prefer, as columnist Bari Weiss has noted, to squash resisters. Revolution rather than reform is increasingly the goal.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-puts-the-i-in-the-high-holy-days-11600383609?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Lord Sacks was chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, 1991-2013.

This year the Jewish High Holy Days will be like no other. Usually the synagogue is packed on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, with a buzz of noise that is not all prayer. The haunting call of the shofar, or ram’s horn, summons Jews to judgment. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we are on trial—giving an account of our lives, confessing our sins endlessly, going through every letter of the alphabet, including not a few offenses many of us wouldn’t have had the time, energy or inclination to commit. It is powerful, purgative, and ultimately purifying. We need this annual reset of our lives.

The sense of closeness and intimacy that comes with the crowd makes these days what they are: “The glory of the king is in the multitude of people.” Yet that won’t be present this year. Almost everywhere, prayers won’t be like that at all. Some synagogues’ doors will remain closed. Others will have social distancing, face masks, restrictions on communal singing, and other necessary precautions that restrict the number of people present and their proximity to one another. For a community-minded faith like Judaism, this almost feels like an amputation. The services are bound to feel hollow and lacking in atmosphere. This isn’t how the Days of Awe are supposed to be.

In this respect, Judaism has much in common with other faiths. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and others have had to cancel or restrict public prayer when believers needed it most. All religious leaders have struggled to provide the comfort of faith, the uplift of prayer and the solace of sacred space. Yet Judaism, like other faiths, has proved creative in finding alternative ways to create moments of inspiration.