The real "insurrection" has been in-your-face and ongoing at the Supreme Court for quite some time, analysts are saying.
This week's leaked ruling in which the court appears set to strike down Roe v. Wade just focused the spotlight on it.
"The Left has disrupted constitutional proceedings to confirm a Supreme Court justice, threatened to punish the court if it doesn’t rule the way they want on gun cases, violently threatened two justices over a previous abortion ruling, and moved to pack the court to force its desired outcomes. Now it cheers a leak designed to gin up a mob to pressure a particular outcome on one of the court’s most important cases in 50 years," Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief at The Federalist, wrote in a May 3 op-ed.
Roe v. Wade "will be overturned," Hemingway wrote, adding, that "before the abortion debate returns to the American people, insurrection attempts against the Supreme Court must be quashed."
Leftists are celebrating the unprecedented leak.
“Seriously, shout out to whoever the hero was within the Supreme Court who said ‘f-ck it! Let’s burn this place down,” wrote Ian Millhiser, an activist with Vox.
Brian Fallon, the former Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman who became the leader of a dark money group behind the fight against the nomination of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, tweeted: “Is a brave clerk taking this unpredecented [sic] step of leaking a draft opinion to warn the country what’s coming in a last-ditch Hail Mary attempt to see if the public response might cause the Court to reconsider?”
As if they somehow knew the leak was coming, a mob gathered at the Supreme Court immediately after it was published by Politico. “Chants of ‘fascist scum have got to go,’ interspersed with the names of the conservative justices,” noted one reporter. Signs included, “F-CK SCOTUS,” and “Sam Alito Retire B-tch.”
Familiar tactics, Hemingway pointed out, as these examples show:
• In the aftermath of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation, hundreds of protesters tried to break down the Supreme Court's 13-ton bronze doors. They scaled the building and its statues and threw tomatoes and water bottles at the cars of justices who had attended Kavanaugh's swearing-in. Mobs had also rioted in Senate buildings in the lead-up to Kavanaugh’s confirmation. They had disrupted the official constitutional proceedings associated with his nomination and review.
• In March 2020, New York Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer went to the steps of the Supreme Court and specifically threatened Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Referring to an abortion case, he said, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
• Justice Clarence Thomas has been pressured to follow an invented recusal standard for having a wife with conservative political views.
• Justice Gorsuch was the victim of a made-up story leaked to NPR.
• Justice Stephen Breyer was forced to retire when his decision to step down was leaked as part of a high-pressure campaign.
Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald noted: "Every time there is a controversy regarding a Supreme Court ruling, the same set of radical fallacies emerges regarding the role of the Court, the Constitution and how the American republic is designed to function. Each time the Court invalidates a democratically elected law on the ground that it violates a constitutional guarantee — as happened in Roe — those who favor the invalidated law proclaim that something 'undemocratic' has transpired, that it is a form of 'judicial tyranny' for 'five unelected judges' to overturn the will of the majority. Conversely, when the Court refuses to invalidate a democratically elected law, those who regard that law as pernicious, as an attack on fundamental rights, accuse the Court of failing to protect vulnerable individuals."
Greenwald continued: "This by-now-reflexive discourse about the Supreme Court ignores its core function. Like the U.S. Constitution itself, the Court is designed to be an anti-majoritarian check against the excesses of majoritarian sentiment. The Founders wanted to establish a democracy that empowered majorities of citizens to choose their leaders, but also feared that majorities would be inclined to coalesce around unjust laws that would deprive basic rights, and thus sought to impose limits on the power of majorities as well.
"Roe itself was the ultimate denial, the negation, of unrestrained democracy and majoritarian will. As in all cases, whether Roe's anti-democratic ruling was an affirmation of fundamental rights or a form of judicial tyranny depends solely on whether one believes that the Constitution bars the enactment of laws which restrict abortion or whether it is silent on that question. But as distasteful as it might be to some, the only way to defend Roe is to acknowledge that your view is that the will of the majority is irrelevant to this conflict, that elected representatives have no power to decide these questions, and that all debates about abortion must be entrusted solely to unelected judges to authoritatively decide them without regard to what majorities believe or want."
About . . . . Intelligence . . . . Membership
