Tag Archives: Dobbs decision

Forced To Face The Music

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On Wednesday, The New York Post posted an article about the appearance of Attorney General Merrick Garland before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. A number of Republican Senators used the appearance to point out how unevenly Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is enforcing various laws.

The article reports:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) excoriated the attorney general’s extraordinary inaction over the past 10 months as pro-abortion protesters have harassed Supreme Court justices at their homes in the wake of the leaked Dobbs decision, despite a federal law that bans “picketing or parading” near a judge’s residence.

“When rioters descended on the homes of six Supreme Court justices, night after night after night, you did nothing,” raged Cruz.

“The department did nothing when extremist groups, like Ruth Sent Us and Jane’s Revenge, openly organized campaigns of harassment at the homes of justices …

“When the same groups posted online information about where the justices worship, or their home addresses, or where their kids went to school, you again sat on your hands and did nothing. 

Next Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) pointed out the following:

Next, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) grilled Garland about the disparate treatment of Christian pro-life activists arrested outside abortion clinics compared to pro-abortion activists who have gone unpunished after firebombing pregnancy centers.

He cited the case of Mark Houck, the Catholic father of seven acquitted in January of federal assault charges over an altercation outside a Philadelphia abortion clinic.

Houck was arrested at gunpoint in front of his terrified family in an FBI raid.

“This is a case where a Catholic pro-life demonstrator, a father, was accused of disorderly conduct in front of an abortion center,” Hawley said.

“The Philadelphia DA, who is a Democrat, very progressive, declined to prosecute. There was a private suit that got dismissed. Then after all that, your Justice Department sent between 20 and 30 agents in the early-morning hours to the Houck residence to arrest this guy after he had offered to turn himself in voluntarily.”

Garland said the FBI “dis­agreed” with that description of the raid.

So Hawley got out an easel and displayed a blown-up photo of fearsome-looking FBI agents with long guns, ballistic shields and bulletproof vests.

There is no excuse for this sort of behavior by the Justice Department. If we do not elect people who will uphold the law and who will appoint people who will uphold the law, we will descend into tyranny.

What Happens When There Is No Oversight

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The House Judiciary Committee is supposed to provide some oversight into the activities of the Justice Department. Unfortunately, so far during the Biden administration the House is controlled by the Democrats, so there has been little if any oversight. The result of that was recently illustrated in an article in The American Thinker on Thursday.

The article quotes The Daily Signal:

The Justice Department has been targeting pro-life activists through the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act as a response to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, according to Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta.

Gupta delivered remarks at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s 65th Anniversary earlier this month. The associate attorney general described the overturn of Roe v. Wade as a “devastating blow to women throughout the country” that took away “the constitutional right to abortion” and increased “the urgency” of the DOJ’s work—including the “enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.”

The article at The American Thinker reports:

So, crisis pregnancy centers are being vandalized and burned, and churches are being attacked, and all she’s willing to do is target pro-life activists, in junk cases, for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances for arrest. She’s scored 26 notches in her lipstick case for that one, while utterly ignoring the violent and real violations of the act coming from the other side.

One such example of her 26 scalps is the case of Mark Houck, a pro-life rosary-sayer who got into an altercation with a clinic “escort” in front of an abortion clinic, after the latter began shouting at and intimidating and violating the space of his 12 year-old son. It happened several years ago, and even Pennsylvania’s woke prosecutors declined to prosecute the case because it was so flimsy. But Vanita Gupta, enraged at the decision on Roe, had a partisan agenda, and instead of prosecute the leftist clinic escort who got in the child’s face (turns out he had quite a previous rap sheet), which also would have been applicable under the FACE act, she sent in the SWAT team with 15 squad cars to haul Houck away in front of his terrified kids. I wrote about that travesty here.

There is something very wrong when she is allowed to keep her job after exhibiting that much bias in enforcing the law.

Labels Matter

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On Sunday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about the double standard used in reporting protests.

The article notes:

The Left has a rather schizophrenic attitude toward protests and demonstrations. Some are wonderful, like the George Floyd riots, which were not, in fact, protests at all. Or like arson and other destruction committed at pro-life facilities. Others are detestable, like the Dutch farmers’ protests, or the French “yellow vests,” or the Canadian truckers. Some protests, too, can only be ignored, like when hundreds of thousands of pro-life citizens show up for their annual march in Washington.

Currently the Left is “demonstrating” against the Supreme Court justices who concurred in the Dobbs decision. A few nights ago, as Scott has noted, left-wingers harassed Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other diners at the Morton’s steak house in D.C. Liberals viewed this effort as a triumph–Kavanaugh reportedly had to exit out a back door–and a pro-Democratic Party organization is now offering cash bounties to anyone who sees a conservative justice out in public in time for a flash mob to assemble.

When asked about such tactics, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was nonplussed. These are peaceful demonstrations, she replied, the very essence of democracy!

Creating an intimidating environment for political opponents is a sign of a tyrannical government. Protesting political figures at private locations that have nothing to do with their jobs is a form of intimidation.

The article concludes:

And, of course, all of this discussion takes place in the context of at least one assassination attempt against Justice Kavanaugh, the same man who was falsely and relentlessly smeared by the Democratic Party during his confirmation hearings. I think the leaders of the Democratic Party are well aware that their over-the-top attacks on conservative justices, and the kinds of harassment we have seen in recent days, are likely to lead to more assassination attempts. I think leaders of the Democratic Party hope that one or more conservative justices will be assassinated while Joe Biden is still (at least nominally) president, so that he can appoint a left-wing successor. I think this is why Attorney General Merrick Garland refuses to enforce 18 U.S.C. § 1507, which bans demonstrations at the homes of judges that attempt to influence their decisions. And I think this is why the Biden administration cheers on the mobs who harass conservatives in public places.

If this assessment seems harsh, ask yourself: what other hypothesis is consistent with the Democrats’ actions?

So, are protests and demonstrations good or bad? I think they are good–that is to say, consistent with our Constitution’s framework of ordered liberty–when they are peaceful (not “mostly peaceful”), when they are conducted in public places with proper permitting, and when they do not explicitly or implicitly threaten anyone. Citizens have a right to assemble peaceably, not to form themselves into mobs. They do not have a right to commit mayhem, to destroy property, or to threaten, menace, or unreasonably inconvenience others. Unfortunately, the “protests” that the Left likes most usually fall in the latter category. Let’s just hope they don’t result in even more catastrophic violence than we have already witnessed.

So far, the violence we have witnessed seems to be mainly on the liberal side–January 6th was not a totally peaceful protest, but did not include lighting fires, burning business, throwing molotov cocktails into police cars, or killing those trying to protect their businesses. If the violence on the political left, including antifa, BLM, etc., is not reined in, I fear that there will be violent pushback from the political right. That is a recipe for the destruction of America.