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“…The Biden/Garland Justice Department has sued the state of Texas over its new anti-abortion law. You can read the complaint here.
Whatever one’s views of the Texas law, the DOJ’s suit is baseless. Its filing demonstrates that under Joe Biden and Merrick Garland, the DOJ has become a hyper-partisan, unprincipled, and lawless tool of the left.
The Department of Justice lacks authority to file any lawsuit unless a statute grants litigation authority to the Attorney General. The DOJ’s complaint cites no statute granting such authority.
None exists. Otherwise the DOJ would have cited it.
Merrick Garland may consider the Texas statute unconstitutional. He may be right. But he lacks the free-standing authority to challenge statutes he deems unconstitutional, no matter how much the Democrats’ leftist base clamors for him to do so.
Congress has enacted various statutes that authorize particular kinds of enforcement actions to remedy violations of the Constitution. E.g., 18 U.S.C. 242; 42 U.S.C. 2000c-6; 34 U.S.C. 12601. If the DOJ can bring a suit like this one, which is supported by no such statute, Congress wouldn’t have enacted these statutes because the DOJ already had authority to bring federal court litigation for any violation of the Constitution.
The DOJ’s lawsuit is abusive. It lacks a sound basis in the law.
I suspect that Garland understands this. I’m pretty sure he understands that the Fifth Circuit, full of Republican appointees, is highly unlikely to countenance the suit. If the case gets to the Supreme Court, the DOJ might get three votes, but it’s possible that only Justice Sotomayor will go along with its lawless position. The DOJ’s case is that weak.
Accordingly, the DOJ’s suit is best viewed as an attempt to appease the pro-abortion Democratic base. If/when it’s tossed, Biden and Garland can say that they at least tried to stick up for abortion rights in Texas, and blame conservative judges for demurring.
However, Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure authorizes sanctions against parties that file lawsuits for “any improper purpose” and lawsuits that are not “warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law .” In my view, the government’s suit against Texas is a good candidate for Rule 11 sanctions…”
Gov. DeSavage CLAPS BACK at Biden for his tyrannical vaccine mandates, says what we're all thinking:
"It's not based on science. He's saying he's losing patience with people?… We don't live with a one-person rule in this country. We live in a Constitutional system." pic.twitter.com/xBYVza8v7P
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 10, 2021
Ian Birrell:
“…There are many things we still do not know about the origins of this pandemic — including the central issue of whether it began with natural spillover from animals or some kind of laboratory incident. But we do know one thing now beyond debate: speculative “gain-of-function” experiments on mutant bat viruses were taking place in Wuhan laboratories.
This research, carried out in labs that did not have maximum level of biosafety, was increasing the infectivity of laboratory-created diseases by constructing chimeric coronaviruses — despite strong denial of such practices by the key Chinese scientists. And the bio-engineering was being funded by United States taxpayers — channelled through a charity run by a British scientist — despite similar denials from America’s most senior public health officials that they supported such science fiction activities in Chinese labs.
The details have been confirmed by the latest batch of documents emerging under US freedom of information rules — which unlike in Britain, actually assist attempts to break through walls of official obfuscation. The Intercept obtained 900 pages of documents detailing two research grants in 2014 and 2019 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to EcoHealth Alliance. This is the charity headed by Peter Daszak, the controversial Briton who led efforts to squash “conspiracy theories” about a possible lab incident after spending years hunting viruses with Shi Zhengli, the now-famous “Batwoman” expert at Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)…
…Anthony Fauci, the US infectious diseases expert and presidential adviser, insisted earlier this year that his country “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology”. His stance led to a furious clash in Congress with Senator Rand Paul, who gleefully tweeted after The Intercept published its article on the papers: “Surprise surprise – Fauci lied again. And I was right about his agency funding novel coronavirus research at Wuhan.”
Paul was backed by Richard Ebright, the bio-security expert and professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, who has long been a fierce critic of such work since he argues that the risks of creating new diseases in laboratories vastly outweigh any potential benefits. “The documents make it clear that assertions by Anthony Fauci and the NIH Director, Francis Collins that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful,” he said…”
There is no greater danger to the country than this effort to politicize the military by ensuring that all officers hew to the political party line of this administration.
“…In the law, it is called an admission against interest or an out-of-court statement by a party that, when uttered, is against the party’s pecuniary, proprietary, or penal interests. In politics, it is called just dumb. White House chief of staff Ronald Klain offered a doozy this week when he admitted that the announced use of the authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for a vaccine mandate was a mere “work around” of the constitutional limit imposed on the federal government. The problem is that the thing being “worked around” is the Constitution. Courts will now be asked to ignore the admission and uphold a self-admitted evasion of constitutional protections.
Klain retweeted MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who posted, “OSHA doing this vaxx mandate as an emergency workplace safety rule is the ultimate work-around for the Federal govt to require vaccinations.”
The “work around” was needed because, as some of us have previously during both the Trump and Biden Administration, the federal government does not have clear authority to impose public health mandates. Authority for such mandates has traditionally been recognized within state authority…
…The move is unnecessary and therefore reckless. There are already challenges to the law which the Justice Department could join as amicus. It would then not have to risk the creation of additional losses in court after the impressive litany of losses of the Biden Administration. This was another filing that followed a public call from the President. It is again politics driving litigation by the Justice Department. The media covered such pressure extensively during the Trump Administration and legal experts objected that the Trump White House was attacking the independence of the Justice Department and other agencies. There is little attention to his pattern that extends from immigration to debt relief to the eviction moratorium…”
Related:
Important.
Foolish RT from WH chief of staff. He said the quiet part out loud.
Biden admin knows it’s likely illegal (like the eviction moratorium) but they don’t care. https://t.co/AlfmYtuvhp
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 10, 2021
The White House staff are experiencing classic emotional transference
By equating the unvaccinated to the Taliban they are able to take out their frustrations on the group they have power over, after being humiliated by the other
Psych 101 stuff
And they're not going to stop
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 10, 2021
Related:
The period after the Afghanistan debacle subsides will be very dangerous. The humiliated regime will be looking to reassert itself, and since it lacks the credibility to act abroad, they’ll look closer to home – like the guy who gets punked at work going home to beat his wife.
— Martyr Made (@martyrmade) August 26, 2021
Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds
“…Former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination and failed New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang will reportedly launch a third party next month.
The plan is being reported by Politico, based on information from two people familiar with the matter.
Yang and his team remain cagey about planning details at the moment, but the launch will likely coincide with the release of his new book “Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy.”
The former businessman provided captivating B-and-C-plot political story lines during his last two races with creative ideas about economics and governance, though he failed to captivate a significant or mainstream audience. Famously, his presidential campaign was centrally predicated on the idea of giving citizens $1,000 checks on a monthly basis — a proposal more closely aligned with big thinkers in Silicon Valley than with lawmakers in either major U.S. political party.
Though the basis of his new party has not yet been revealed, a blurb for the new book by New York Times writer Kara Swisher reads: “Can there be another political party in the U.S.? … In Forward, Yang does not just give us a laundry list of intractable problems, but shows how we can find solutions if we think in new ways and summon the courage to do so.”
Crown, the book’s publisher, writes that Yang’s book is a harsh look at America’s “era of institutional failure,” through which he plans to introduce the people to “various ‘priests of decline'” in America, including “politicians whose incentives have become divorced from the people they supposedly serve.”…”
https://twitter.com/KyleMartinsen_/status/1416094954603044864
I find it utterly abhorrent.
I believe it should be legal, rare, and limited to the first trimester or shorter.
It should be decided on a state by state basis by the voters through the normal process. There is no constitutional right to an abortion.
Related:
National Archives Might Turn Trump Papers Over To Jan. 6 Inquisition
You already know in what direction the politicization trends.
“…Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, told Newsweek these documents show “unequivocally” that NIH grants were used to fund controversial gain-of-function (GOF) research at the Wuhan Insitute of Virology in China—something U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has denied.
Ebright said: “The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement in Wuhan are untruthful.”
“Multiple sections of the grant proposals and grant progress reports make it clear that the grants funded gain-of-function research of concern in Wuhan,” he said.
“Two especially noteworthy sections are page 28 and Figure 35 of the year four progress report on the grant term (1R01-AI110964) and page 3, Figure 6, of the proposal for a second five-year grant term (2R01-AI110964).”
Ebright said these sections of the documents show that NIH grants supported the construction of mutant SARS-related coronaviruses that involved blending different types together. The result was a lab-generated virus that could infect human cells, he said, adding that at least three of the lab-generated viruses “exhibited >10x to >100x higher viral loads in humanized mice.”…”
“…More people “than ever before” disapprove of Joe Biden’s job as president, according to the latest edition of a survey that had been favorable to the White House up to now.
The latest Economist /YouGov survey said that since the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan orchestrated by the White House, Biden’s approval rating has tanked to just 39% while his disapproval has spiked to 49%…”
Related:
Biden dragging McAuliffe down in Virginia, GOP Youngkin surges into tie with 56 days left
