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U.S. senators threaten Supremes

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8-13-19

A handful of Democrat senators – those who sit in judgment on nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court – are threatening the existing justices in the hope they will make decisions more to their liking – or face the possibility that the court will be “restructured.”

The threat comes in a brief filed in a gun-rights case, a dispute over yet another gun rule in New York City.

And it comes from Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

They openly challenge the impartiality of the sitting justices, noting that “From October Term 2005 through October Term 2017, this court issued 78 5-4 (or 5-3) opinions in which justices appointed by Republican presidents provided all five votes in the majority.”

They continued with their warning, “In 73 of these 5-4 decisions, the cases concerned interests important to the big funders, corporate influencers, and political base of the Republican Party.

“And in each of these 73 cases, those partisan interests prevailed. … With bare partisan majorities, the court has influenced sensitive areas like voting rights, partisan gerrymandering, dark money, union power, regulation of pollution, corporate liability, and access to federal court, particularly regarding civil rights and discrimination in the workplace.”

The leftist senators charged, “Every single time, the corporate and Republican political interests prevailed.”

They said the justice over that time even “disregarded ‘conservative’ judicial principles like judicial restraint, originalism, stare decisis, and even federalism.”

“Stare decisis” already has been controversial in several recent cases, such as the court’s decision that federal employees no longer would be forced to fund union activity with which they disagreed. In fact, the leftist faction on the Supreme Court said at one point that the court shouldn’t overturn those precedents just because it has the votes to do so.

That, of course, is in direct conflict with the setup of the Supreme Court, in which five of the nine votes rule. In fact, progressives have used that fact to their advantage in cases like Obergefell, in which the progressive faction created in a decision “unrelated to the Constitution” the fact of same-sex “marriage” in the nation.

There has been considerable argument among Democrats running for the party’s nomination for president in 2020 that they’d like to “stack” the court, that is, add additional justices that they would pick to dilute the five-member majority that now rules.

Those include former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California, and Kirsten Gillibrand. They all have signaled an openness to expanding the number of judges on the court should they reach the White House.

They also have been enraged by President Trump’s selection, for the last two openings, of nominees who tend to pursue a more conservative, more originalist, view of the Constitution. They went so far during the Senate confirmation process for Justice Brett Kavanaugh as to track down women who would claim he assaulted them 40 years ago while he was a teenager.

One of the biggest nightmares for leftists is the fact that circumstances are being assembled that could allow the Supremes to torpedo the abortion right-creating Roe v. Wade, which would send abortion law decisions back to the states.

“Today, 55 percent of Americans believe the Supreme Court is ‘mainly motivated by politics’ (up five percent from last year); 59 percent believe the court is ‘too influenced by politics’; and a majority now believes the ‘Supreme Court should be restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics,'” the Democrats said.

Then came the threat: “The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’ Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal.”

Fox reported the Democrats’ brief was filed in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. City of New York.

It involves the limits on where and how gun owners could transport their licensed, locked, and unloaded firearms. The Democrats want the Supreme Court to stay out of the case, claiming the city already fixed its regulation by itself.

They are concerned that if the court hears the case, a ruling against New York City could prevent other cities and states from passing similar gun control laws.

https://www.wnd.com/2019/08/democrat-senators-threaten-supremes/