The Left Restarts Their War on the Judicial Branch

When I wrote an article marking the one-year anniversary of the left’s war on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, I thought the left had given up their war on Kavanaugh and the judicial branch as a whole and finally reached the acceptance stage of grief. Apparently, I thought wrong. Just about a year after Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations and a series of far more ridiculous and outlandish allegations threatened to keep Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court, a new allegation against Kavanaugh has emerged; with even flimsier evidence than the largely uncorroborated allegations that dominated the headlines last fall.  

Two New York Times reporters released an excerpt of their book The Education of Brett Kavanaugh last weekend. The excerpt detailed an allegation that a drunken Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself at a party during his college years, where “friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student.” The way the allegation made it to the reporters closely resembles a game of “Telephone.” The authors cite Max Stier, a former classmate of Kavanaugh’s who also happened to work on Bill Clinton’s defense team during his impeachment trial, as their source. Keep in mind that Kavanaugh drafted the Starr report, which ultimately led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. To the untrained eye, this looks like a textbook example of payback. The excerpt failed to note that the woman whose hand Kavanaugh’s penis allegedly ended up in does not even remember the event. Eventually, The New York Times had to correct the record and admit that they left out that key piece of information. For their part, the authors of the book blamed their editors at the Times for deciding to leave out the inconveninent truth.

Immediately following the publication of the excerpt, several Democratic presidential candidates called for the impeachment of Kavanaugh. Democratic Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, a member of “the Squad,” filed articles of impeachment against Kavanaugh. Several high-ranking Democrats have pushed back on the idea; including Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler. Nadler said he opposed impeaching Kavanaugh because it would distract him from his main focus: impeaching President Trump.

While the newest allegation against Kavanaugh coincides with the one-year anniversary of his contentious nomination battle as well as the release of The Education of Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision allowing the Trump administration to deny asylum to any migrant who passed through another safe country without seeking asylum there, where Kavanaugh voted in the majority, probably served as a motivating factor in the Democrats’ latest outrage against Kavanaugh.

The latest accusation against Kavanaugh comes as Democrats have revealed their strategy of making the 2020 Presidential Election a referendum on President Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Kavanaugh. They apparently forgot that nothing unified Republicans like the accusations against Kavanaugh. Even President George W. Bush, hardly President Trump’s number one fan, made phone calls on Kavanaugh’s behalf during the contentious nomination process.

Liberals assume that portraying the Republican Party as the party of old, elite white men will help them with female voters; apparently forgetting the point made by John Mayer that “girls become lovers and turn into mothers.” Many wives and mothers, including the wife and mother of Brett Kavanaugh, do not appreciate seeing their husband or son have their name dragged through the mud in the interest of liberals maintaining political power.

The left went full Alinsky on Kavanaugh in an effort to send a message to the other judges President Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees; hoping that the horrendous treatment of Kavanaugh will cause many people on the list to politely decline President Trump’s offer to serve on the highest court in the land. The left, who always talks about the importance of respecting institutions, has declared war on the Supreme Court by attempting to blackmail the justices into not taking up a Second Amendment-related case and demanding that it “heal” or face restructuring. Several Democratic candidates have shared their ideas for “restructuring,” which include some form of court packing; an idea that even liberals’ favorite Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pushed back on.  

Senators Richard Blumenthal, Dick Durbin, Kirsten Gillibrand, Mazie Hirono, and Sheldon Whitehouse sent an amici curae brief to the Supreme Court relating to the case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Et Al v. City of New York, New York et al. In a strange twist of irony, the first portion of their argument urged the Court to “reject petitioners’ efforts to re-enlist it in a political project.” Apparently, these five Democratic Senators from reliably liberal states have no knowledge of the past half century of American jurisprudence. If they did possess such knowledge, they would know that the Supreme Court case decision that they have gone to the ends of the Earth to protect, Roe v. Wade definitely qualified as a “political project.” The Constitution says absolutely nothing about abortion but feminists in the early 1970s desperately wanted to legalize abortion nationwide.  The revered late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once described the Supreme Court as “a de facto sitting Constitutional Convention, subjecting every law in every state to the views of five lifetime appointees.” Knowing this, the feminist attorneys representing (and exploiting) plaintiff Norma McCorvey in Roe v. Wade decided that they would have an easier time convincing five of nine Supreme Court justices to declare abortion a “Constitutional right” than they would convincing Congress to pass a law or a Constitutional amendment legalizing abortion nationwide. As it turns out, their prediction proved correct.

The second portion of the Senators’ argument lectured the Supreme Court that “Ignoring Neutral Justiciability Principles To Reach Desired Outcomes Damages This Court’s Legitimacy.” I remember studying “Justiciability Principles” in the Courts and Public Policy class I took in college and after typing the word “justiciability” into the search tool on my computer, I came across the study guide for my first exam in that class; which contained a list of terms and their definitions, including justiciability. “Justiciability means that a case is capable of and appropriate for judicial resolution.  The rules for justiciability forbid advisory opinions, collusive suits, moot cases, unripe cases, and political questions.” While Roe v. Wade certainly met the definition of a “political question,” the case had also become moot because McCorvey had already had her baby by the time the case reached the Supreme Court and therefore, she no longer needed a group of unelected judges to strike down a law banning abortion. Nonetheless, seven of the nine Supreme Court justices decided to throw out the “rules for justiciability” and circumvent the democratic process by declaring abortion a “Constitutional right.” Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg admitted that the sacrosanct decision reached by the court in Roe interrupted the democratic process despite the fact that she has voted to uphold “abortion rights” throughout her entire tenure on the Supreme Court.

Let’s face it. Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not live forever. While she has demonstrated resiliency by making it through the multiple medical problems she has faced throughout her career, the left knows that her tenure on the Court could come to an end in the form of a very sudden death; just like what happened with Scalia. Nothing scares the left more than the idea of a conservative justice replacing the liberal icon known as “the notorious RBG.” To paraphrase Bachman-Turner Overdrive, those who think the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to replace swing vote Anthony Kennedy went over the line, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”  

Had Scalia died two years earlier, a liberal justice could very well have ended up taking his place. After all, in 2014, the Democrats had 55 seats in the Senate. The Democratic leadership in the Senate would have surely given President Obama’s nominee confirmation hearings and he or she probably would have had the votes to make it on the bench.  While Republicans could have filibustered the nominee, the Democrats probably would have abolished the filibuster in an effort to confirm the nominee; just like they did for lower court nominees the previous year. 

But Scalia ended up dying in 2016, a Presidential Election year.  By this time, Republicans had retaken control of the Senate and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took a major risk by deciding not to hold confirmation hearings for President Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia: Merrick Garland. McConnell apparently had a fair degree of confidence enough that Republicans could win the Presidential Election and would therefore have the opportunity to nominate a more conservative replacement for the originalist icon affectionately known as “Nino.” Throughout 2016, Republicans did not defame Merrick Garland; they barely acknowledged him at all. McConnell’s gamble ended up paying off and President Trump won the 2016 Presidential Election. Months before the election, then-candidate Trump put out a list of jurists he would consider appointing to the Supreme Court if he ended up winning the election; a list that grew longer over time.

Still bitter over Senate Republicans’ refusal to give Garland, enough Senate Democrats came together and announced their intention to filibuster Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court. McConnell ended up invoking the nuclear option; thereby abolishing the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees.  While liberals definitely did not welcome Gorsuch with open arms, he made it through the confirmation hearings with his reputation largely intact. The following summer, another vacancy on the Supreme Court popped up when Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee who voted with liberals on the issue they care about just as much as abortion, if not more so: same-sex marriage. While Kavanaugh ultimately had nothing to do with Merrick Garland, besides the fact that they both served on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, it seems as if all the rage liberals had billowing inside of them exploded during Kavanaugh’s confirmation process. While Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; the political version of Newton’s Third Law of Motion goes something like this: “For every action taken by Republicans, Democrats hit back with an opposite reaction ten times stronger in magnitude.”

While decades-old sexual assault allegations are very difficult to prove, they are also nearly impossible to disprove; ensuring that, as CNN’s Paul Begala bragged, “there’s a cloud over Brett Kavanaugh.” At the very least, the Kavanaugh debacle proves the wisdom of Bill O’Reilly and President Trump’s decision not to consume alcohol.

After the Democrats lost the Presidential Election in 2016 because of their standard bearer’s failure to win three states that the Democratic candidate had won for six straight Presidential elections, they declared war on the Electoral College. Now that it looks like a solid conservative majority on the Supreme Court may become a reality after decades of Republican Presidents nominating squishes to SCOTUS, liberals have declared war on it. The disgraceful treatment of Kavanaugh and the left’s rhetoric surrounding the judicial branch as of late prove that liberals will stop at nothing to achieve the political power they so desperately crave. The American people should send liberals a message by voting for a Republican House and a Republican Senate next fall, in addition to voting to re-elect President Trump.