Is Chief Justice Roberts worried about the politicization of the courts? Plus, ignoring big news. And, free speech on climate.
By Gary Abernathy
When will Chief Justice Roberts finally speak out on the political weaponization of the courts?
Chief Justice John Roberts was motivated this week to admonish President Trump for suggesting that U.S. District Judge James Boasberg should be impeached, after Boasberg ruled against Trump in a deportation case and went so far as to order airplanes to be turned around if necessary to comply with his order.
While not mentioning Trump directly, Roberts’ brief statement that impeachment is not an “appropriate response” to a court’s rulings was clearly aimed at the president.
What would be nice is if Roberts felt motivated enough to issue a statement on the federal court system being frivolously abused for political purposes, specifically by the far left to challenge every decision Trump makes. It would be refreshing if the chief issued a statement reminding everyone that there are three co-equal branches of government, and it’s not the job of the judicial branch to usurp the managerial decisions of the duly elected head of the executive branch.
In fact, Roberts could go so far as to call a special meeting of the Judicial Conference of the United States to discuss the issue and establish some guidance on how far judges should go — or not go — to side with activists whose goal is not to make sure the Constitution is followed, but instead to stop the Trump administration from carrying out policies with which they disagree.
If Roberts showed half as much alarm for the abuse of the court system as he does over off-handed remarks about judicial impeachment he could go a long way toward staving off a constitutional crisis. Does Roberts want the Supreme Court to suffer a backlog of frivolous injunctions and lawsuits designed to gum up the system to thwart the president? Presumably not, but that’s what’s coming.
If there is a constitutional crisis underway — something the New York Times has a panic attack over practically every other day — it’s the fault of judges who are complicit in a political movement to turn the judicial branch into micro-managers of the executive branch, in hopes of bringing to a standstill the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink government and deport illegal and dangerous immigrants.
Clearly, countless local district judges are knee-deep in the cause of defending our bloated bureaucracy from any serious effort to rein it in, as well as preventing the president from carrying out his first and most important duty — to secure America’s safety and defend its borders.
Please, Mr. Chief Justice, when you wake up in the morning and find yourself alarmed by a recent development, demonstrate that at least part of your distress is in regard to the court system you oversee being abused as a political weapon, right under your nose — with a constitutional crisis on the horizon because of it.
Astronauts’ return was big news, except for CNN, MSNBC
When the stranded astronauts were finally brought home from the International Space Station by a SpaceX spacecraft, the high level of interest generated by their months of additional space time made their return required live coverage by our major cable news stations, right?
Wrong. Based on my own channel hopping, only Fox News covered the return live, while CNN and MSNBC were running typical Trump-bashing programming. I’d like to see Fox News’ ratings for that hour, since even liberal viewers undoubtedly switched over to Fox to watch a big event that their favorite channels refused to show.
And why wouldn’t CNN or MSNBC cover the event live? Because it would have required favorable and laudatory commentary about SpaceX owner Elon Musk. Ever since Musk became a supporter of President Trump, and especially since his involvement with government cost-cutting, coverage of the Tesla owner went from favorable to harsh, like day to night.
It’s another reason why the far-left (formerly mainstream) media can no longer be taken seriously as purveyors of honest journalism.
Divergent opinions on climate should all be welcomed
In my latest column for The Empowerment Alliance, I point out that regardless of where you land on the subject of climate change, the effort to eliminate divergent viewpoints is entirely un-American.
Here’s an excerpt:
There are some basic truths about our energy sources that we should never be ridiculed for believing or dissuaded from proclaiming: natural gas is clean, abundant, and affordable energy; capturing methane emissions from landfills and other sources can generate energy and improve the environment; tax dollars spent on wind and solar technologies should be redirected to building U.S. refineries that can handle shale-based light sweet oil; energy infrastructure permitting should be simplified at the local, state, and federal levels.
Along with declaring those and other obvious facts, no one should be deterred from expressing opinions contrary to favored climate change theories. Many scientists, for instance, have long believed that an increase in carbon dioxide levels is making for a greener planet and is particularly good for food production, helping mitigate global hunger. Saying so should not be controversial. …
… Regardless of where one stands on the climate debate, we should all agree that the ability to express opinions contrary to official government conclusions – or even so-called scientific consensus – is paramount in a free society. America has always embraced the notion that in the marketplace of ideas, the best and most factual ones will ultimately carry the day.
You can read it in full here.
Random thoughts on this and that…
A constitutional crisis? Only if enough people believe the far left media.
The far left (formerly mainstream) media keeps insisting that Trump is instigating a “constitutional crisis.” If they say it often enough, they think it might catch on. But what if they declared a constitutional crisis and nobody listened, outside their own bubble? That’s what’s likely to happen, because the New York Times, Washington Post, and most of the rest of the far left (formerly mainstream) media has lost the credibility they once had when they raised such alarms. They’ve cried wolf too many times.
No, Trump did not build on “Biden-era” immigration policies
Even when the New York Times gives Trump a little credit for something, they still find a way to try to give Democrats credit instead. Case in point is a recent story about the falling illegal immigrant crossings under Trump — which the Times, in a subhead on the story, credits to Trump “building on Biden-era policies.” Let’s be clear: Any crackdown Biden instituted came in his final year when he realized that cracking down on the border was necessary for any chance at reelection. In fact, all Biden did was reinstitute Trump-era immigration policies. Those are the facts.
Bill Gates joins the crowd regaining their sanity
In another sign that the climate change hysteria was really driven by a radical cult based on misguided faith more than science, a climate organization funded by Bill Gates has severely cut back operations. It’s amazing how quickly the climate sham is collapsing due to a new administration refusing to pretend that the end-times hysteria was based on real science instead of a political cult designed to empower its followers.
Ruth Marcus’ departure from WaPo is a true turning point
Of all the upheaval and subsequent resignations coming from the Washington Post, Ruth Marcus’s resignation last week — after the Post refused to run a column she’d written critical of Post owner Jeff Bezos — is at the top of the list. When Post publisher Will Lewis — and Bezos— accepted Ruth’s resignation, it was a signal that they’re willing to tear it all down and rebuild it from the ground up, as painful as that may be. Over the course of her 40-year stint, Ruth had become the face of the Post. I can tell you from personal experience that Ruth’s claim in her New Yorker piece that Post columnists “had always been able to assure our readers that no one restricted what we could write,” is not strictly true — I had columns turned down due to my viewpoint (which reinforced a feeling that conservative writers were held to a different standard). Overall, though, my experience with the Post was positive, and my appreciation for Ruth and other editors (including Mike Larabee and the late opinion page editor Fred Hiatt, whose passing in 2021 changed things for the worse) will be long lasting. But there’s a limit on how often you can blatantly criticize the owner — i.e., bite the hand that feeds you. Good luck, Ruth, and thanks again for everything.
‘MAGA Republicans Are Already Normal’ — for yourself or for that friend or loved one confused about America today
“MAGA Republicans Are Already Normal — And Other Shocking Notions” is a great addition to the library of MAGA Trump supporters, or the perfect gift for non-MAGA friends and loved ones to help them make sense of the 2024 election results. It’s available on Amazon. Buy it here.
The book (actually much thicker than the illustrations above indicate — the hardcover and paperback are each 453 pages) is a compilation of many of the nearly 200 columns I wrote for the Washington Post from 2017 to 2023 (and a handful of columns I wrote about Trump for The (Hillsboro) Times-Gazette from 2015 to 2017). The columns cover a variety of topics, but they particularly focus on Trump’s rise to political prominence and help explain his appeal.
Here’s a link to a website dedicated to the book.
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