Tag Archives: judges

Still Trying To Honor The Votes Of North Carolinians

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Voters in North Carolina have voted twice to require a photo id during elections. Both times the courts have told the voters ‘no.’  On July 9 WRAL posted an article detailing the latest effort by the North Carolina legislature to honor the wishes of the voters.

The article reports:

Legislative Republicans called on the courts Thursday to lift an injunction and require voter to present photo identification at the polls this November, saying a bill they passed earlier this year should satisfy the last arguments against the rule.

“It is past time for activist courts to stop blocking another commonsense elections policy that is required by North Carolina’s constitution and a strong majority of other states,” House Speaker Tim Moore said in a statement.

There are two lawsuits seeking – so far, successfully – to block the state’s voter ID requirement: one state and one federal. Republican lawmakers filed a motion in the state case Thursday, asking judges to drop their injunction against the state’s voter ID law.

They argued that a provision included in House Bill 1169 earlier this year should satisfy the court.

That bill dealt with a number of election issues, most of them geared toward tweaking election procedures to account for the coronavirus pandemic. It passed with broad bipartisan support.

It also included language adding a new category of IDs to the ones poll workers would accept: public assistance IDs.

That Republican lawmakers hadn’t included those IDs in the bill they passed in late 2018 laying out voter ID rules was part of the court’s rationale in blocking implementation this year.

“With the enactment of H.B. 1169, the General Assembly has adopted nearly every ‘ameliorative’ amendment proposed … and it also has addressed the key shortcoming identified by the Court of Appeals,” Moore’s office said in its release.

This is the exact step some Democratic lawmakers said they feared when they backed off support for House Bill 1169 earlier this year: That the snippet of voter ID language would be used in court.

“That was the poison pill when they put that in,” Rep.

Marcia Morey , D-Durham, said Thursday.

Stay tuned. After a while, you begin to wonder why some people are fighting so hard against voter id.

One Of Many Reasons Why Elections Matter

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Issues & Insights is a website started by the people who used to write the editorial page of Investor’s Business Daily. Today they posted an article explaining what is happening to the people who are rioting and destroying property in many of our major cities. Keep in mind that many of the prosecutors in these cities were elected with money supplied by organizations funded by George Soros.

The article reports:

St. Louis is a case in point. There, prosecutor Kim Gardner let 36 people arrested for looting and rioting go scot-free, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Gardner’s office used the pathetic excuse that it needed “essential evidence” from the police, implying it had none.

One wonders how people caught in flagrante delicto could simply be released. The answer is, Gardner is a far-left acolyte of Soros, having been the recipient during her 2016 election of no fewer than three separate donations from a Soros-backed political-action committee.

It’s not the only example of Soros’ malign influence. Philadelphia District Attorney Lawrence Krasner, who was elected with Soros money, reportedly “has no interest” in prosecuting rioters in the city. As infuriating as this and other instances of prosecutorial misconduct are to many of us, it’s likely we’ll see more of it in the future.

“Financier and left-wing philanthropist George Soros contributed large sums to progressive candidates running for district attorney all around the country, apparently in hopes of changing the law enforcement system at the county or district level,” according to a December 2019 report from the Capital Research Center.

Beginning in 2015, the CRC report notes, Soros doled out more than $17 million “on district attorney and other local races in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Arizona, but also in large, predominantly left-of-center states such as California and New York.”

The article further explains the goal of the political activists connected to George Soros:

What’s behind all this? An attempt to undermine the American justice system at every level. Soros and his followers believe our court system and police procedures are so corrupt, so hopelessly racist, that justice is literally impossible.

In 2014, Soros gifted the ACLU with $50 million to fight “mass incarceration.” Since then, using his own Open Society Foundations and donations to other Soros-linked organizations, such as the Tides Foundation, he has continued to fund his attack on America’s justice system.

Yes, there are rare incidents of racist and illegal behavior on the part of police and prosecutors. None of our politically directed institutions is infallible. And when such things take place, as now seems in the tragic death of George Floyd, the perpetrators should be punished.

But a system that refuses to lock up those who commit criminal acts out of some sense that it’s karmic compensation for “racism” and “injustice” is no system at all. It is legal chaos.

And, taken a step further, the linking of justice to mob-imposed outrage is dangerous. That’s why the statue of Lady Justice, once found in so many courts around the nation, is always blindfolded. Justice isn’t about politics; it’s about the law. Justice is blind, as the saying goes.

The mainstream media go out of their way to downplay the 89-year-old Soros’ role in trying to “transform” the American justice system. It’s to be expected, given the fact that much of the media now simply follow the progressive left’s script in “reporting” the news.

The article concludes:

But like so many others on the far left who have gotten fabulously wealthy in America’s free-market system while protected by our laws and Constitution, Soros hates America. He wants to tear it down.

And no, that’s not an exaggeration. As he himself has said, “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.” He believes that, and is acting on it.

So it’s not surprising he’s funding American extremists to do the job. By seeding local justice agencies and courts with far-left lawyers, Soros is helping to hollow out our justice system, once the envy of the world. Those who are the supposed protectors of the rule of law are actually its enemies.

Just as with recent revelations of misconduct at the FBI, Justice Department and CIA, Americans would be well-advised to pay close attention also to their local races for judges, district attorneys and other positions of power in the justice system. Any interference by Soros is a red flag, pun intended, that your local justice system is being subverted.

I wonder what the people who are being used by the leftists and anarchists fueling the riots think there is to gain. Do they believe that they will prosper in any way in the ‘new’ system they are espousing? Have they considered that fact that the goal of those fomenting the riots is tyranny?

Putting The Safety Of Convicted Criminals Above The Safety Of Innocent American Citizens

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Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article that illustrates the folly of letting convicted prisoners out of jail to protect them from the coronavirus. First of all, the original idea is shaky. In order for a prison to have an outbreak of the coronavirus, the virus would have to enter the prison with someone. Prisons have the potential of being the ultimate ‘shelter in place’ example. If you control the people coming in–limit visitors until the virus is not active in the area of the prison and test your prison guards regularly (take their temperatures in a non-intrusive way), theoretically that would not allow the virus to enter the prison. You can also quarantine anyone with the virus. There is no reason to free convicted prisoners and endanger the lives and property of everyday Americans. Meanwhile, some states are doing really dumb things.

The article reports:

A Florida inmate released on March 19 to ‘slow the spread of the Coronavirus’ was arrested on a murder charge just one day after he got out of jail.

State officials are releasing hundreds of inmates into society over Coronavirus fears while they threaten and arrest law-abiding citizens for violating ‘social distancing’ orders.

What could possibly go wrong?

Tampa deputies say 26-year-old Joseph Edwards Williams committed second-degree murder just one day after he was released from jail.

…“There is no question Joseph Williams took advantage of this health emergency to commit crimes while he was out of jail awaiting resolution of a low-level, non-violent offense,” Sheriff Chad Chronister said. “As a result, I call on the State Attorney to prosecute this defendant to the fullest extent of the law.”

“Judges, prosecutors, and Sheriffs around the country are facing difficult decisions during this health crisis with respect to balancing public health and public safety. Sheriffs in Florida and throughout our country have released non-violent, low-level offenders to protect our deputies and the jail population from an outbreak. Our commitment as an agency is to keep this community safe and enforce the law.”

Letting prisoners out of jail before they have completed their sentences is not a way to keep our communities safe.

We Are Slowing Seeing Admissions About Illegal Spying On President Trump

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Just The News posted an article Monday by John Solomon about a recent statement by U.S. District Judge James A. Boasberg, the new chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Evidently the Judge is not impressed by what went on during 2016 and 2017.

The article reports:

For much of the last three years, key law enforcement leaders have insisted they did nothing wrong in pursuing counterintelligence surveillance warrants targeting the Trump campaign starting during the 2016 election. And, they’ve added, if mistakes were made, they were unintentional process errors downstream from them and not an effort to deceive the judges.

But in a little-noted passage in a recent order, U.S. District Judge James A. Boasberg, the new chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, took direct aim at the excuses and blame-shifting of these senior Obama administration FBI and DOJ officials.

In just 21 words, Boasberg provided the first judicial declaration the FBI had misled the court, not just committed process errors. “There is thus little doubt that the government breached its duty of candor to the Court with respect to those applications,” Boasberg wrote.

Finally someone is placing responsibility for previous FISA abuses on the people in charge and not the people working for them.

The article concludes:

“The frequency and seriousness of these errors in a case that, given its sensitive nature, had an unusually high level of review at both DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have called into question the reliability of the information proffered in other FBI applications,” Boasberg wrote.

In another words, he is worried the bad conduct exhibited by the FBI may extend to more cases affecting others’ civil liberties.

Finally, Boasberg put Wray on notice — even while praising the current director — that process fixes alone won’t suffice.

“The errors the OIG pointed out cannot be solved through procedures alone,” he wrote. “DOJ and the FBI, including all personnel involved in the FISA process, must fully understand and embrace the heightened duties of probity and transparency that apply in ex parte proceedings.”

Boasberg’s ruling was far more than a temporary suspension of FBI personnel’s participation in the FISA court. It is the first and only judicial finding in the Russia case that the FBI vastly misled the nation’s intelligence court and that blame must be shouldered by federal law enforcement’s top leaders, many of whom have spent much of the last three years trying to escape such accountability.

For those who have begged the FISA court for years to more aggressively rebuke the conduct in the Russia case, Boasberg’s ruling was a welcome step in the right direction and a first effort to end the excuse-making. But those critics are holding out for more, including prosecutions or disciplinary action.

In the meantime, those who led the FBI and DOJ through that turbulent time — Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe, as well as former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and Rosenstein — must come to grips with this new reality. A judge has formally concluded that his court was misled by the work product they oversaw and signed.

It’s about time.

Interesting Take

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On Friday, The Daily Wire posted an article about Trey Gowdy’s recent comments concerning the purpose of impeaching President Trump. The article points out that there is very little hope that President Trump will be impeached in the Senate and that there is very little chance that President Trump will not be re-elected. So what is the goal?

The article notes:

Former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) told Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Thursday that Democrats are not trying to remove President Donald Trump with impeachment, but instead are focused on kneecapping his second term by flipping the Senate so he can’t get anything done.

“Let’s skip over the process,” Gowdy said. “The process, the three month long inquiry investigation was laughable. But they voted. That’s the House’s prerogative. They voted, not a single Republican went along with them. In fact, they didn’t even keep all the Democrats. But the House exercised its prerogative and they impeached the president.”

“There is no mathematical way he is ever going to be convicted and they know that,” Gowdy continued. “So their goal cannot be to remove Donald Trump from office, it is to neuter his second term. I think he is going to win in November. It’s to neuter that second term by targeting the Cory Gardners and the Martha McSallys and the Thom Tillises and the Susan Collins and Joni Ernst because if Trump wins and doesn’t have the Senate then he is not going to get any judicial vacancies filled and he’s not going to replace a Supreme Court Justice if he or she retires.”

One of the major accomplishments of the Trump administration is the reshaping of the judiciary. President Trump has appointed a record number of judges to serve in the federal appeal courts.

On December 19th, The National Review reported:

Let’s first put the confirmation results in some statistical perspective. From 1981 through last year, the Senate confirmed an average of 45 judges, or 5.5 percent of the judiciary, per year. This year’s total is more than twice the annual average and constitutes 11.9 percent of the judiciary. It’s the second-highest confirmation total in a single year in American history.

Those 102 confirmations include 20 to the U.S. Court of Appeals, the third-highest annual total in history. President Donald Trump has appointed 50 appeals court judges in his first three years, compared to 55 appointed by President Barack Obama — in eight years. And this is only the second time in American history that the Senate has confirmed double-digit appeals court nominations three years in a row. The only downside is that only one current appeals court vacancy exists anywhere in the country right now, the fewest in more than four decades.

The Democrats understand that the legacy of judges will be a lasting legacy. They desperately need to take the Senate in order to stop the continuing confirmations of judges. That strategy is much more logical than a futile effort to unseat a President who is popular with most Americans (although hated by the Washington establishment).

Can’t Both Viewpoints Have A Parade?

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Last weekend there was a Straight Pride Parade in Boston. A group of people decided that since there have been gay pride parades, they should be able to have a straight pride parade. As expected, there were protestors in attendance. Some of them were not very nice.

The Washington Times is reporting today that some of the people who misbehaved during the parade, who expected to get off with a slap on the wrist after being arrested, are not necessarily getting off that easily.

The article reports:

Two Boston Municipal Court judges refused to throw out the charges against the 18 defendants who appeared Tuesday in court, frustrating defense attorneys and prosecutors who sought to have minor charges dismissed, as reported by local news outlets.

Judge Thomas Horgan also told out-of-towners that they risked 90-day jail sentences if they set foot in Boston for any reason other than court and lawyer appointments, rejecting one defendant’s request to visit relatives in the city’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

“Stay out of Boston,” said Judge Horgan, according to the Boston Herald.

The article continues:

Meanwhile, Larry Calderone, vice president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, praised the courtroom outcome, noting that many of those arrested came from outside the city and state and accusing them of coming to “create havoc.”

He said the four officers injured have not been able to return to work yet, and that the union wants the offenders “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

“A lot of the assaults that happened during the day, you only knew of a few of them,” Mr. Calderone told reporters outside the courtroom. “Many officers were assaulted throughout the day with bottles of urine being thrown at them, bottles of chemicals, bottles of unidentified material, rocks.”

The city is looking into complaints that police used excessive force during the event.

“Multiple times I asked why I was arrested, he said ‘for calling me a pig,’” Joshua Abrams, who was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, told WBZ-TV before his arraignment. “Well, that’s my First Amendment right to do so.”

If Mr. Abrams was resisting arrest, that is a crime. This is how protestors who cross the line from protest to assault need to be treated. Enforcing the law serves as a warning to those who want to cause trouble that they will be held accountable for the trouble they cause. The First Amendment allows protest; it does not allow assault.

As a side note, American Greatness reported the following yesterday:

Far-left Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley lent a helping hand to violent antifa agitators over the weekend after a number of them were arrested on assault and battery charges.

The two “Squad” members urged their followers on Twitter to contribute to the bail fund for the “counter-protesters” who tangled with law enforcement while protesting the Straight Pride Parade in Boston on Saturday. A masked Antifa protester told reporters that the violence was necessary in order to shut up Straight Pride marchers.

This is the fact of the new Democrat party. If you are for law and order, there is no way you can support this. I have not yet heard any Democrats denouncing these tweets.

When Following The Law Is Controversial

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Issues and Insights posted an article today about President Trump’s plan to deport about one million illegal aliens. These are aliens that have already had their court hearings and been ordered deported by judges. The article notes that Acting United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ken Cuccinelli is simply the first federal official, besides President Trump, brave enough to follow and implement the law.

The article notes:

That is what President Trump pledged to do when he took the oath of office. Take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That is why the President is called the Chief Executive. Democrats, and their party-controlled media, find that shocking because they have been in an insurrection since Trump took that oath of office.

Cuccinelli said in a CBS interview on Sunday,

“[ICE agents are] ready to just perform their mission which is to go and find and detain and then deport the approximately one million people who have final removal orders. They’ve been all the way through the due process and have final removal orders.”

If we are not going to deport illegal aliens who have had their cases adjudicated with final deportation orders fully in accord with due process, then Democrats would have effectively opened the borders to Central America, and the entire third world, to just walk in, and sign up for welfare paid for by U.S. citizens. That would amount to a coup against American democracy, as that policy has never been adopted into law by representatives democratically elected by those same U.S. citizens.

Breitbart News reported on July 7, “The latest Harvard/Harris Poll finds that a majority of Americans support Trump’s plan to mass deport illegal aliens following inaction from Congress. This includes support from more than 8-in-10 Republican voters and more than 5-in-10 swing voters. Breitbart News further reports that there are about 1.7 million illegal aliens from Central America and Mexico, alone, living in the U.S. despite already being ordered deported or having pending deportation orders. The latest federal data concludes that there are more than 925,000 illegal aliens, in total, with final deportation orders who have continued living freely in the U.S. About 20% of these illegal aliens have at least one criminal conviction…. Roughly 60% of these illegal aliens come from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

The article makes a very good point:

Ken Cuccinelli and Bill Barr just need to enforce the Rule of Law, whatever it takes, to stop this modern Resistance and Insurrection, and restore Due Process and the Rule of Law.

The Democrats (and the media) have been acting like spoiled children since the 2016 presidential election. It’s time they grew up and realized that America is supposed to be a country of laws that apply equally to all. I guess they just can’t get used to the idea of having a President who actually enforces the law as it is written.

The Logic Of This Escapes Me

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One America News posted an article today about some recent comments by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

The article reports:

In an interview with the Des Moines Register Tuesday, Gillibrand specifically took aim at the pro-life movement. She compared pro-life beliefs to racism, and suggested the ideology is no longer acceptable in today’s society.

Gillibrand vowed to only appoint justices who support Roe v. Wade, and mocked those who disagree with her radical pro-abortion stance.

“There’s some issues that have such moral clarity that we have as a society decided that the other side is not acceptable,” she stated. “Imagine saying that it’s okay to appoint a judge who is racist or anti-Semitic or homophobic…all these efforts by President Trump and other ultra radical conservative judges and justices to impose their faith on Americans is contrary to our constitution.”

Gillibrand just became the last candidate to qualify for the primary debates. She hopes to climb above the two-percent threshold to qualify for the second debate.

So according to Senator Gillibrand, not wanting people to kill babies is the equivalent of racism. Is she aware that in America today, the average black woman is almost five times more likely to have an abortion than the average white woman. Abortion is the current genocide. That would seem to me to contradict the idea that opposing abortion is racism. However, how many Americans will agree with the Senator without considering the total lack of logic?

 

Getting Things Done

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Yesterday Politico reported that Senate Democrats have accepted an offer Thursday from Senate Republicans to confirm 15 lifetime federal judges in exchange for the ability to go into recess through the midterms, allowing endangered Democrats to campaign.

This was not the result of anyone’s great negotiating skills–this was the acknowledgement of a practical fact–the Democrats wanted time to go home and campaign.

The article explains:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would be able to confirm roughly 15 judges if he kept the Senate in session for the next few weeks anyway. So Democrats OK’d an offer to confirm three Circuit Court judges and 12 Circuit Court judges as the price to pay to go home for election season.

Under Senate rules, even if Democrats fought the nominees tooth and nail and forced the Senate to burn 30 hours of debate between each one, McConnell would have gotten them all confirmed by Nov. 1. Democrats could have conceivably left a skeleton crew of senators in Washington to force the GOP to take roll call votes on the judges over the next few weeks, although that tactic is not typically employed by the minority.

The article reminds us:

McConnell and President Donald Trump will now have confirmed 84 judges over the past two years, including two Supreme Court nominees, after the deal. Democrats also allowed a package of judges to be confirmed in August as a condition of going home.

This is important because the Democrats have used to courts to get laws passed (which is not actually the duty of the courts) that they could not get through Congress. Changing the composition of the courts may slow down that process and bring us closer to the government our Founding Fathers envisioned.

Attention North Carolina Voters

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THIS IS AN UPDATE ON THE STORY BELOW–THE BILL WAS NOT INTRODUCED TODAY. However, we are not out of the woods yet. The bill can be introduced anytime in the near future. We just have to be informed voters and vote against the referendum if it shows up on the ballot in November! (Updated Wednesday, January 10, 2018)

 

Tomorrow in the North Carolina legislature a bill will be introduced to allow for the appointment of judges rather than letting the voters elect the judges. If the measure passes the legislature, it will appear on the ballot in November to be approved by the voters. This is a really bad idea.

These are the rules on who may serve as a judge in North Carolina:

Only persons authorized to practice law in North Carolina are eligible for election or appointment as a judge (district, superior or appellate). N.C. Const. Art. IV, Sec. 22. Because that wasn’t always the rule, there is an exception for persons elected to or serving in such capacities on or before January 1, 1981.

The result of this law is that it severely limits the number of people who may serve as judges. South Carolina, for instance, requires that judges have a college education, but there is not requirement that they have a law degree or are lawyers. So North Carolina has already limited the number of people who become judges. What will be the impact of having judges appointed instead of elected? First of all, if the judges are not accountable to the voters, who will they be accountable to?  Second of all, if a lawyer wants to become a judge, but isn’t part of the in crowd at the legislature, does he have a way of becoming a judge? If the legislature is appointing the judges, isn’t that one branch of government having authority over another supposedly equal branch? How much time do the legislators have to evaluate the judicial choices of their leadership? This suggested law seems to be the perfect way to put control of North Carolina’s judiciary into the hands of a very small group of people. That is a very bad idea.

Hopefully this bill will not get past the legislature, but if it does, beware of it in November.