Mediaboss Marketing

Here is news you probably cant use: a new Texas Law Review analysis by University of Chicago law professor William Baude concludesthat Justice Hugo Black, who served on the Supreme Court from 1937 to 1971, was unconstitutionally appointed.

The relevant text is the Constitutions Article I, Section 6, which says No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time.

At the time of his appointment Black was serving as a senator from Alabamaas part of a Congress that had enacted new retirement benefits for Justices, and while his backers argued that the clause did not apply to bar his nomination, Baude concludes that it probably did. One litigant before the high court challenged Blacks right to serve, but the Court chose to sidestep the merits of that claim by ruling against its standing, and the controversydied.

All of this might seem purely academic. At this remove there would be no way to unscramble the legal omelet as to Blacks jurisprudential contributions, even were there a will. (Despite an unpromising start, the Alabaman eventually showed a libertarian streak on many Bill of Rights issues.)

But the issue is not quite so remote as that, because more than a few contemporary commentators have flirted in some cases more than flirted with claims that the makeup of the present Supreme Court is illegitimate.

After the Senate leadership refused to hold hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland, the editorial board of the New York Times repeatedly declared the seat of the late Justice Scalia to have been stolen, and then-Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said of eventual nominee Neil Gorsuch that hes not there properly.

The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the seat vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy brought renewed attack, with former Attorney General Eric Holder declaring that the legitimacy of the Supreme Court can justifiably be questioned and other high-profile figures taking a similar line.

Law professor Erwin Chemerinsky raised the ante with this remarkable assertion in The American Prospect: each of the five conservative justices Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh or someone like him (emphasis added) came on to the Court in a manner that lacks legitimacy. Perhaps at some point it will lead to open defiance of the Court.

Other commentators were happy to take up the exciting theme that future Court opinions written by, or decided by the votes of, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and perhaps other Justices might meet with open defiance or resistance from a future Democratic president, from state officials, or from people marching in the streets.

What can the Supreme Court do? Send its tiny police force to storm the White House? wrote Mark Joseph Stern at Slate. Libertarian-minded law professor Ilya Somin, who does not welcome the efforts to de-legitimize the Court or promote defiance of its rulings, nonetheless found them worth taking seriously enough to analyze at length last year.

Baudes research may provide a bit of reassurance in this respect. The challenge to the legitimacy of Blacks seat fizzled in part because it gained little headway with the public, but much more because the Courts other Justices welcomed Black aboard.

Most of the scenarios in which triumphant Democrats in 2021 or 2022 defy Supreme Court rulings are difficult to reconcile with the reality that the Courts liberal Justices have, to all appearances, been entirely content to regard Gorsuch and Kavanaugh as legitimate colleagues, and would, themselves, neither counsel nor welcome defiance of Court rulings. As I wrote last year, "the federal courts are not as polarized and tribal as much of the higher political class and punditry at nomination time."

Baude puts it this way at the conclusion of his article: the real source of constitutional settlement in our system is not always judicial decision, but sometimes sheer practice.

Read the original here:
Disputed Appointments and the Supreme Court's Legitimacy, in 1937 and Today - Cato Institute

Now, operatives in both parties are readying for an unprecedented fight in 2020 to elect those who will be the mapmakers in state legislative races across the country.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder and his group, the National Democratic Redistricting Commission, are leading the battle for Democrats. The group and its affiliates recently announced they had raised $52 million since 2017. They're targeting state legislative races in a dozen states, with more than half below the Mason-Dixon line.

"I'm bound and determined to make sure that candidates, activists and voters understand the stakes of the redistricting battle and the long-term consequences for our democracy," Holder said in a statement.

On the other side, the Republican State Leadership Committee is readying a defensive operation known as Right Lines 2020 to try and maintain the GOP's successes in 2010, sending out former House Speakers Paul Ryan, John Boehner and Newt Gingrich to raise money and keep the party focused on redistricting.

The Republicans are targeting races in 14 states, with six in the South. They declined to put a dollar number on the effort, but have said they are "planning multimillion-dollar investments in key states."

"We can't just assume that the success we've enjoyed in the states is going to be there," RSLC President Austin Chambers said, adding that he is concerned Republicans are more focused on re-electing President Donald Trump than the fight for statehouses that's so crucial to redistricting. "We're going to have to fight like hell to keep it this is as serious as a heart attack."

While each state's process is different, there are three key Southern battlegrounds next year, experts and party officials said:

Legislatures in other Southern states, including Georgia and Louisiana, also are in play.

Virginia poses a key test for national Democrats, who like Holder typically say they want fair not gerrymandered districts. Democrats have control in the state Legislature and the governor's mansion. If they wanted to gerrymander next year, they'll likely have the power.

"When Democrats are out of power, they say all the right things about gerrymandering," Li said. "But Virginia is a state with a lot of congressional districts and whether Democrats walk the walk when they have power Virginia's going to be a big test of that. Its a big test for Eric Holder."

John Bisognano, executive director of Holder's redistricting group, said Holder has spoken out against Democrats seeking to rig the system and the former AG also has expressed support for nonpartisan redistricting, a concept that's grown in popularity as states seek to opt out of the gerrymandering wars.

In the last decade, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio and Utah implemented changes to their congressional redistricting processes, with some states authorizing bipartisan commissions with the work in an effort to reduce the role of state lawmakers. For example, Missouri will ask a nonpartisan demographer to draw district lines, subject to approval by a commission made up of both Republicans and Democrats.

Still, not all commissions are created equally. In Ohio, voters passed a referendum last year requiring bipartisan support for redistricting plans in an attempt to prevent one party from forcing their House maps on the other. If the parties can't reach agreement, a bipartisan commission would draw the districts, but both Democrats and Republicans are angling for power on that commission and partisans can still push through four-year maps without minority party support.

"We supported an independent commission well, we supported a commission," Bisognano said. "It's a commission of politicians."

Given that, both parties say the Ohio Statehouse is a top target in 2020.

CORRECTION (Dec. 29, 2019, 11:24 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the number of seats Democrats in North Carolina need to gain to take control of the legislature. It is at least four in the state Senate and six in the House; not eight in the Senate and 11 in the House.

Jane C. Timm is a political reporter for NBC News, fact checking elections and covering voting rights.

Link:
Gerrymandering is alive and well. The coming battle will be bigger than ever. - NBC News

(Getty Images)

Commenting on the corruption at the Justice Department and the FBI in 2016, former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova said that then-President Barack Obama "knew all about" the FBI's spying on the Trump campaign and "was more than happy" to violate Americans' civil rights "so he could get Donald Trump."

DiGenova added that the two leaders of the coup to oust Trump are former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan.

People do not have the beginning of an understanding of the role that John Brennan played in this," said diGenova during a Dec. 31 interview with the One America News Network."He is a monstrously important person and I underscore monstrously important person. He has done more damage to the Central Intelligence Agency. Its equal to what James Comey has done to the FBI."

When asked whether people responsible for the spying on the Trump campaign shouldgo to jail, diGenova, a former Special Counsel, said,People should go to jail for the Carter Page stuff, for lying on the FISA warrants, on misleading the FISA courts, submitting false documents to the FISA courts. Those are all felonious acts."

"For me, what matters is accountability at this point," said diGenova. "You have two institutions that are vital to American freedom the FBI and the Justice Department. They were completely corrupted under two attorneys general, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch with the authority and knowledge of the then-president of the United States, Barack Obama."

DiGenova then noted that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice had written an email on Jan. 20 -- the day of Trump's inauguration -- "memorializing that there had been a meeting on Jan. 5 with the president of the United States and all senior law enforcement and intelligence officials" where Obama had claimed that the spying on Trump was done by the book and justified.

President Barack Obama and CIA Director John Brennan. (Getty Images)

"I want to thank Susan Rice for being so stupid and so arrogant to write that email on Jan. 20," said diGenova, "because that is Exhibit A that Barack Obama knew all about this from start to finish, and was more than happy to have the civil rights of massive numbers of Americans violated so he could get Donald Trump.

This was not hard," to understand, he said."If youre a good prosecutor, you look at the facts in the Trump case, and the Page case, the Flynn case theres only one conclusion you can come to. None of this makes any sense. None of these people were evil, none of them. They were framed and the whole process was playing out."

(Getty Images)

"You knew it on July 5, 2016 when James Comey announced, usurping the functions of the attorney general, that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case against Hillary Clinton," said diGenova, who prosecuted Jonathan Pollard for spying for Israel.

"That was ludicrous," he said."She destroyed 33,000 emails that were under subpoena. If you or I did that we would be in prison today. She got a break because she was Hillary Clinton and James Comey was trying to kiss her fanny because he wanted something from her when she became president of the United States."

(Getty Images)

All of these people who watched that news conference and didnt think that was a disgrace for the FBI, and then subsequently watch all this stuff involving Trump and Page and Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn and couldnt see that the corrupt investigative process of the FBI and the DOJ was being used to basically conduct a coup detat --I mean, you have to be an idiot," said diGenova.

Any first-year assistant U.S. attorney would look at all these facts and say theres a coup underway, theres a conspiracy," he said."But for those of us who thought that, The Washington Post, The New York Times [suggested] we were conspiracy theorists. You know what?Pretty damn good theory it appears today.

The One America News Network then asked diGenova about the actions taken by John Brennan, who was the CIA director under Obama.

DiGenova said, "Theres no doubt that John Brennan was the primogenitor of the entire counterintelligence investigation. It was John Brennan who went to James Comey and basically pummeled him into starting a counterintelligence investigation against Trump."

"Brennans at the heart of this," he said.

(Getty Images)

People do not have the beginning of an understanding of the role that John Brennan played in this," added diGenova."He is a monstrously important person and I underscore monstrously important person. He has done more damage to the Central Intelligence Agency. Its equal to what James Comey has done to the FBI.

Its pretty clear that James Comey will go down in history as the single worst FBI director in history," said diGenova. "He and John Brennan are the coup leaders.

DiGenova is a founding partner of the law firm diGenova & Toensing, LLP. He is aa former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, former Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Rules Committee, former Independent Counsel, and former Special Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives.

h/t OAN Network

See original here:
DiGenova: Comey and Brennan 'Are The Coup Leaders' and 'Obama Knew All About This' - CNSNews.com

President Trump is waging a war against the free press, according to presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar, and on the other hand, former Attorney General Eric Holder was its champion.

Yes, Klobuchar seriously suggested during Thursday's Democratic primary debate that Holder did more to preserve the rights of the press than Trump a ridiculous statement to anyone who remembers U.S. politics before 2016.

Trump is certainly no friend to the media, but the comparison is ridiculous, considering Holder was the head of a Justice Department that secretly obtained phone records for reporters and editors that worked at the Associated Press news agency.

There is an argument to be made that Trump has done a disservice to the press in both rhetoric and action. He has regularly decried the media as the enemy of the people and did away with the daily White House press briefings. But to claim he is worse than Holder, who seized private, home phone information from more than 20 individual reporters, is absurd.

When confronted about this violation, Holder insisted the DOJ had done nothing wrong. Spying on journalists was necessary, he said, considering there was a prominent national security leak that needed investigating. But Holder never offered specifics and instead left this as an open-ended, unconvincing excuse.

Trump is disparaging journalists, but Holder did much worse. Even the Left admitted as much when the news about Holders subpoena broke. To suggest otherwise now is negligent at best and dishonest at worst, and Klobuchar should know better.

Here is the original post:
Amy Klobuchar is wrong: Eric Holder was no friend to the media - Washington Examiner

The alarming revelation that Rep. Adam Schiffs House Intelligence Committee obtained and released telephone records of a journalist, another House member and President Trump's lawyers is just the latest in an escalating pattern of abuse by Democrats.

Democratic attempts to weaponize government power against their adversaries have largely gone unpunished, leading to ever more brazen offenses.

Having once held the power to write congressional subpoenas myself, I am familiar with the restrictions on Congress. For instance, the courts have not allowed Congress to compel documents from private entities unless the information informs legislation.

NUNES TELLS SCHIFF HE NEEDS 'REHABILITATION' AFTER IG REPORT: 'ADMIT YOU HAVE A PROBLEM'

There is no legislation under consideration that requires Congress to view call records of the president's lawyers or the media.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff, D-Calif., has weaponized the subpoena power of Congress to collect data to which he is not entitled.

There was no justification for Schiff to use his subpoena power to obtain and publish the records of telephone calls by the ranking member of his committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. Nor was there adequate reason to spy on a journalist or legal counsel for the president.

Though this is uncharted territory for the House, partisans in Congress and the media have bent over backward to defend Democrats' spying.

Schiff's abuse of power follows a much more audacious violation by a politicized FBI, as revealed by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. His recent report detailed numerous egregious abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by Obama administration bureaucrats.

In one example from the FISA report, we learned that the FBI in 2016 sent an informant to ask whether the Trump election campaign was planning an October surprise. That is information that wouldn't be particularly relevant to a criminal investigation, but would certainly be relevant to political espionage.

Though this flagrant perversion of the FBI and the FISA process may yet be prosecuted, thus far Democrats have gotten exactly what they wanted from their Deep State allies a thin pretext upon which to derail the Trump presidency with years of negative stories in the media.

Where did the Democrats get the idea they could get away with such overreach? Perhaps from the success of past attempts to spy on adversaries and weaponize agencies.

Democrats have certainly not had to worry about prosecution by their allies in the bureaucracy. Hillary Clinton famously destroyed her smartphone with a hammer and wiped her hard drive with Bleach Bit despite congressional subpoenas to prevent investigators from legally accessing evidence of wrongdoing. She got away with it. Why would anybody expect to be prosecuted?

But the spying even candidate Trump and the Clinton email investigation. In 2013, we learned the Obama Justice Department had spied on journalist James Rosen, accessing his emails, tracking his movements and collecting his phone records.

The spying on Rosen was revealed just weeks after reports surfaced that Associated Press reporters had been spied on when phone records of more than 20 lines were secretly obtained.

Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder made a show in 2014 of signing new rules to assure journalists the Justice Department would abide by written guidelines. But no one was fired or disciplined by Holder.

Just two years later, the Obama Justice Department would change tactics, this time using the FISA Court process to spy on political adversaries,

Concurrent to the Justice Department spying on the media, the Internal Revenue Service was targeting conservative nonprofits for unprecedented scrutiny, requiring them to submit answers to detailed questionnaires about their donors.

This information was not required of left-leaning nonprofits. Like the spying at the Justice Department, this process produced information that was more useful for political than for regulatory use, and it deprived the applicants of their First Amendment rights.

Though my Republican colleagues and I pushed hard for consequences, including the impeachment of the IRS commissioner, the Obama administration held firm against holding anyone accountable. The Justice Department would later pay out millions of dollars to settle claims by the nonprofits.

I even had my own personal brush with Deep State spying when more than 40 members of the Secret Service unlawfully accessed my personnel records. In an effort to intimidate and embarrass me during an investigation of their agency, some leaked my personal information to the media in violation of department policy.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR OPINION NEWSLETTER

In this case, the agency did ultimately mete out soft consequences, but nobody was prosecuted and nobody was fired. Little did I know then that this was just part of a pattern of abusing surveillance.

These are just some of the corruptive acts we know about. What else is out there?

If we don't take action now and prosecute, the pattern will only continue to escalate because federal officials wrongly using their powers will continue to know there are no serious consequences.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

In the long run, that's an outcome that will be bad for Republicans, bad for Democrats and bad for all Americans.

Attorney General William Barr should be applauded for taking this threat seriously and assigning U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing committed during the 2016 election campaign. But thus far, the Democrats have not been held accountable for their brazen spying on their political opponents.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY JASON CHAFETZ

Original post:
Jason Chaffetz: Democrats are working to weaponize government power against their adversaries It must stop - Fox News