By DEXTER DUGGAN
Add to the mysterious traditional closed-door procedures of the mighty U.S. Supreme Court the mysterious way in which one of its most consequential members had the door suddenly closed on his life and work in remote west Texas.
And add to this that the death of conservative titan Justice Antonin Scalia, a Catholic, created a potential opening for a lying, lawless, Alinskyite president who has marked his tenure in the White House by remarkably trampling on the Constitution, on congressional authority, and on the American people.
Even those who find politics boring as compared to empty Hollywood gossip might see the possibility of riveting drama in Scalia’s passing and the contest to confirm his successor.
Barack Obama’s contempt and defiance toward the law long ago disqualified him from having legitimate authority to name a new member of the High Court. But that didn’t matter to a liberal elite that thinks the court itself is bound by no law or precedent but exists to mandate whatever immorality or coercion that radicals think sound good to them at the moment.
It was an attitude that astounded Scalia, which he fought against for almost 30 full years on that court. Following Scalia’s strangely handled death, Obama tried to triumph at locking the court into a guaranteed liberal majority that would overthrow not only Scalia’s legacy but remaining rights and freedoms explicitly guaranteed in the Constitution.
Republican presidential candidate and Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) told national radio talk host Hugh Hewitt on February 16 that Obama is a president with a record of lawlessness and defiance of the Constitution who mustn’t be allowed to change the balance of the High Court in his lame-duck year.
Columnist Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, posted at the magazine’s website on February 16 that the Senate — which would confirm an Obama nominee — owes Obama “no deference or consideration. He has trampled on the legislative power at every opportunity, including attempting to deem the Senate in recess on his own say-so (he lost the resulting Supreme Court case 9-0).
“His unconstitutional immigration and clean-power directives both have been held in abeyance by the courts,” Lowry said, adding that it’s a bit late for Obama to seek collegiality with a Republican Senate after his own behavior caused Democrats to lose their majority there.
To observers who only have puzzled that Obama wasn’t long ago impeached and convicted for betraying his office, there now arose the question of what a potential Obama majority on the court might kindle among rebellious Americans if, for instance, the justices were to declare unconstitutionally one day that there’s little or no right to possess private firearms.
But the immediate question was whether the Senate’s GOP majority would do its duty and show the courage to deny Obama another justice under his ideological thumb in the shameful president’s last lame-duck months in office.
The stakes quickly were apparent.
In his first minutes on the air on February 15, on his first scheduled program after Scalia’s death was discovered on Saturday, February 13, national radio talk host Rush Limbaugh listed his emotions at the shocking news. Among them, Limbaugh said, were “panic” and being “scared.”
In the everyday hustle of national politics, such emotions probably aren’t commonly voiced seriously, especially from a talk host with millions of listeners. There’s always another day and another chance for battle. So this sounded as if circumstances suddenly were dire.
And circumstances certainly had been strange on February 13, when Scalia’s lifeless body was found in bed at a remote Texas resort, not far from where a potential assailant could have slipped back into anonymity across the Mexican border.
It’s certainly possible an overweight 79-year-old man could have died of “natural causes.” But homicide detectives across the nation were left shaking their heads in amazement when they read of the negligent way the demise of one of the most powerful men in the nation was treated. No autopsy, no skilled medical investigator rushing to the scene.
Even an abandoned body on a city sidewalk probably would have received more serious attention. Who can imagine a paramedic called to such a scene saying something like, “Well, he’s an old guy, so he probably died of a heart attack. Let’s just get him buried”? How drug dealers, thieves, and gang members would rejoice in such a neighborhood free from official inquiries.
Yet that was the way the unexamined death of a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was treated when the nation’s well-being stands in the balance. Can an elite that condemns “conspiracy theories” understand how such suspicions might be nurtured on an occasion like this?
Talk-host Limbaugh, like some other commentators including Sean Hannity, noted the hopeful sign that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said there shouldn’t be hearings on a new justice this year, as Obama’s presidency winds down. The commentators also noted, though, that Republicans have a poor record of standing up against Obama.
Limbaugh added that Obama wants to get the most committed leftist he can onto the High Court as soon as possible.
The talk host went on to note that news reporting already was suggesting “gridlock” over the nominee issue this year. And what, Limbaugh asked, is “gridlock”? Another term for the dreaded “government shutdown” that Republicans swear they never will allow to occur, Limbaugh said.
The left-wing dominant media, longtime adorers of Obama, were sure to apply intense pressure to push through whatever justice he wanted. There soon were sure to be carefully manufactured stories about the dangers to the GOP on a host of fronts if Republicans dared block Obama, accompanied by warnings from “experts,” “observers,” and then contrived polls.
It’s a decades-old cottage industry for an intensely partisan, knee-jerk media that, unfortunately, maintain their power to scare Republicans. Indeed, radio talk host Hewitt noted on his February 15 program that the liberal New York Times already produced a story headlined, “Blocking nominee could be a risk for McConnell.”
One reason Supreme Court appointments have taken such a partisan turn is the swelling pride of a few liberal justices that they rightly can order the entire, sea-to-sea nation to obey whatever astounding, immoral notions float into their heads. Mandating unconstitutional “same-sex marriage” last summer is a strong example, powerfully denounced by Scalia.
Writing in dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges, Scalia said he wished “to call attention to this court’s threat to American democracy,” an action lacking “even a thin veneer of law.”
The court isn’t willing to obey precedent, tradition, reason, or any other constraint when an ideological prize shimmers nearby.
Even back during Richard Nixon’s GOP presidency, Senate Democrats were plainly partisan at blocking Supreme Court nominees they opposed, while many Republicans usually have been submissive at accepting whomever a Democrat White House names.
However, the Democrats began a new low for savagery in 1987 when destroying Ronald Reagan’s Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, a widely respected, principled conservative. This even put a new verb into the dictionary, “bork,” meaning to harm someone through unjustified, systematic vilification or defamation.
Who can forget the horrifying, vicious attack by Catholic liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) back then? Said Kennedy:
“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.”
Support And Defend
Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) is hardly known as a conservative troublemaker. Yet when the topic of filling Antonin Scalia’s seat came up, even McCain joined some other Senate Republicans in saying Obama shouldn’t get his wish for a nominee this year.
McCain said the process of filling the court’s vacancies had started to unwind when Democrats targeted Bork, “a totally qualified individual.” “They savaged him and they destroyed him,” McCain said.
If even McCain can stand up for the nation rather than special interests and bipartisan back-scratching this time, then perhaps Obama will be stopped for a change.
Attorney David French made an often-ignored point at the National Review site on February 15, writing that elected politicians’ oaths of office also count, and which senator could be true to his oath to “support and defend” the Constitution by putting another Obama radical onto the court?
As for those who say the GOP will damage itself with the voters by obstructing Obama, what of dedicated Republican voters who’ll think they’re betrayed again by the party? Said French:
“. . . If the Republican Senate hands control of one branch of government to the Democrats — during a presidential election, no less — it not only won’t save its majority, it will likely hammer the final nail in the GOP’s coffin. Given all the advantages the GOP brings to this fight, the Republican Party would richly deserve its painful death.”
The secular radical leftist Obama doesn’t want his legacy undone. But neither did the faithful Catholic conservative Scalia. And they both can’t have their opposing ways.
With his Italian heritage and girth, Scalia probably celebrated spaghetti as one of God’s blessings. But cooked spaghetti has its place, on a plate with meatballs. Not as a substitute for a spine in a GOP senator.
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