Mitch McConnell did the nation a great favor by keeping Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court. But I repeat myself.On June 16, 2021, I wrote, Mitch McConnell Did The Nation A Great Favor By Keeping Merrick Garland Off The Supreme Court:
Mitch McConnell likes to boast, including recently, that his most consequential achievement in his Senate career was keeping Merrick Garland from filling the Scalia seat after the death of the great conservative Justice….Garland now is U.S. Attorney General. If there were a scintilla of doubt that McConnell did the nation a great favor, that doubt should have been put to rest on June 15, 2021.On that date, Garland delivered an address on “violent extremism and domestic terrorism” that reflects an ongoing weaponization of federal law enforcement and national security apparatuses in a war not just on people who pose a credible and actionable threat of violence, but on people who pose an ideological threat.Garland made clear that he was leading an all-government effort….But the remainder of the speech suggested that promise would not be honored, including by enlisting Big Tech, which has well-documented ideological bias, in the effort:
…. The technology sector is particularly important to countering terrorist abuse of internet-based communication platforms to recruit, incite, plot attacks, and foment hatred.
Did you catch that? “Foment hatred.” Wait, didn’t he just say earlier in the speech that “hateful ideology” would not be the focus? To quote a great sage, “I’ll let you ban hate speech if you’ll let me define hate speech.” The government and Big Tech will be defining “fomenting hatred” in this all-government effort.
It’s pretty clear what is going on here. Team Obama, which weaponized the IRS against political enemies, is running the show, and the guy they wanted on the Supreme Court now is leading the charge at DOJ. Garland is a functionary in this regard, anyone Biden nominated for Attorney General would do the same. But we are much better off grappling with Merrick Garland as Attorney General for a few years, than with Merrick Garland for life on the Supreme Court. We don’t need a functionary on the Supreme Court.
This all-government effort will be abused, count on it. “Fomenting hatred” will be defined to include lawful non-leftist political opposition (as it already is on campuses). The ideological purge will make Lois Lerner blush.
Now Garland has proven again his unfitness not only to be Attorney General, but for the role he aspired to on the Supreme Court.
Garland issued a memo bringing together a law enforcement coalition to go after supposed threats to school boards from parents protesting Critical Race Theory teaching and Covid mask and vaccine mandates. Where is the evidence of widespread or coordinated violence such that a federal and state joint national effort is needed?
In fact, where is the evidence of violence at all? If there are isolated instances, local law enforcement is equipped and appropriate to deal with it.
What there is are angry parents voicing their opinions loudly, sometimes in the face of bullying from union-aligned school boards and administrators. That is constitutionally protected speech. But Garland knew that by bringing together a national coalition of law enforcement he was portraying protesters as the equivalent of terror suspects. This was an act of political intimidation, as Senator Josh Hawley correctly pointed out today while questioning the Deputy Attorney General:
Whoever Biden was going to appoint to be Attorney General was going to be bad news. Garland is unfit, but no more unfit than other Biden nominees would have been. But at least we don’t have a terrible Biden AG and Merrick Garland sitting on the Supreme Court.
I know a lot of people like to rag on Mitch McConnell. But give the man his due, he spared the nation a generation of damage that Merrick Garland would have caused on the Supreme Court.
So I have no hesitation is saying:
Thank You Mitch McConnell For Keeping Merrick Garland Off The Supreme Court
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