———
The Supreme Court Must Unanimously Strike Down Trump’s Ballot Removal
Donald Trump is an astoundingly dangerous candidate for president. He is a pathological liar, with clear authoritarian instincts. Were he elected to a second term, the damage he would do to the institutions of our republic is profound. His reelection would be worse than any political event in the history of America — save the decision of South Carolina to launch the Civil War.
That fact has motivated many decent lawyers and law professors to scramble for ways to ensure that Trump is not elected. On Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court gave these lawyers new hope by declaring that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars Donald Trump from the Colorado ballot. That decision will certainly reach the United States Supreme Court as quickly as any. And if that court is to preserve its integrity, it must, unanimously, reject the Colorado Supreme Court’s judgment. Because Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not apply to Donald Trump.
The puzzle in Section 3 is that it seems as if the framers of that text were just sloppy in their enumeration. The clause bars insurgents from being “a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or [to] hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State.” The obvious question is why they would enumerate “Senator or Representative” — not to mention “elector of President” — but not the president.
Defenders of the Section 3 argument suggest this was a mere drafting error but that the clause applies to the president nonetheless, since the president occupies an “office … under the United States.” And in any case, these lawyers argue, it would be “absurd” to read the clause to apply to every elected official, including electors for president, but not the president.
Law professor Kurt Lash has shown that the crafting of Section 3 to omit the president was not an oversight. As his work shows, an earlier draft of the clause expressly mentioned the president; that mention was removed. And many (digital) trees have been felled to address a related issue: Whether the president is properly described as occupying an “office of the United States”? At best, that work is ambiguous, though the Colorado Supreme Court made a strong argument that the president is.
But what is not ambiguous is whether it would be “absurd” to exclude the president from the reach of Section 3: because it is plainly not absurd. Indeed, excluding the president and vice president from the scope of the clause makes perfect sense.
Lash argues that it could make sense because the framers of that clause likely expected it to apply to Civil War insurrectionists alone. No one, he argues, feared an insurrectionist presidential candidate after 1865. What they feared was insurrectionists in Congress. Other parts of the 14th Amendment are plausibly read as targeting the Civil War alone. This clause, on that understanding, could be so read as well.
But even if one assumes that Section 3 was meant to be prospective, there is an obvious reason why the only two nationally elected officers would be excluded from its reach. It took mere moments after the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling to see why, as Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick threatened to remove President Joe Biden from the Texas ballot as retribution. You see, with every other officer excluded under the provision, the state official or state court effecting that exclusion would feel the political costs of their decision alone. If the Missouri secretary of state decides that Josh Hawley was an insurrectionist — for both advancing a plainly illegal theory under which Congress could reverse the electoral votes of Pennsylvania, and for rallying the rioters on Jan. 6 with his now-infamous salute — then Missouri and its voters will bear the political costs of that decision alone. Its act would not impose a cost on other states. But if state officials from blue states can remove red state candidates, or vice versa, that state bears no cost. Instead, it gains a political victory. In the language of economics, the decision imposes an externality on the nation, which is exactly the kind of decision that states alone should not be making for other states. Such behavior is obvious to lead to a tit for tat and a breakdown of our entire electoral system.
All this will be enough for the Supreme Court to see why there is no argument from absurdity that justifies stretching the words of the 14th Amendment to cover this extreme case. It also suggests the wisdom in the compromise of including “elector of President” in the list of excluded officers. For this language makes clear that the framers of the 14thAmendment — like the framers of the 12thAmendment — expected electors to exercise judgment. In this case, the framers decided simply to ensure that the people who would elect the president were not themselves insurrectionists. But if these noninsurrectionists themselves decided to support a candidate who was, that judgment, those framers plainly believed, was a judgment properly vested in them. Better that the college called into being for the sole purpose of selecting a president decide the matter than for sitting politicians or state officials.
These considerations will lead the Supreme Court to reject Colorado’s judgment. For the sake of the institutional integrity of the Supreme Court, I hope it rejects the judgment unanimously. One does not need to like Donald Trump in order to see that the law does not preclude him from being a candidate. Or at least, such must be true, if the rule of law is indeed about law, and not about this awful man.
No doubt, and again, electing Trump would be the worst political decision of the nation since the Civil War. But excluding him, wrongfully, by a close vote of the Supreme Court could well trigger the next Civil War. We must defeat him politically—not through clever lawyer interpretations of ambiguous constitutional texts.
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Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., seen delivering opening remarks on June 13 at the U.S. Capitol during a Jan. 6 hearing, deliberately edited former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” exhortation to omit the fact that he urged supporters to be peaceful. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
To listen to House Democrats’—and Reps. Liz Cheney’s and Adam Kinzinger’s, but I repeat myself—shrieks of hysteria from the opening nights of the Jan. 6 House select committee dais is to hearken back to the Soviet-era show trials of yesteryear.
Vladimir Lenin, as the veteran conservative commentator Roger Kimball reminds us, referred to them as “model trials,” wherein the “aim isn’t to discover the truth—which was supposedly already known—but to stage a propagandist exhibition.”
For Democrats, the aim of the Jan. 6 select committee’s “propagandist exhibition” is twofold: First, to attempt (in vain) to distract a besieged citizenry from the myriad problems now tearing asunder the country, under their leadership, in this midterm election year; and second, to lay the foundation for a Justice Department indictment against the 45th president that could hamstring his efforts to seek a second term come 2024.
To anyone paying even a modicum of attention—and I’d recommend no more than that—to the committee’s theatrics, it is obvious that the game is rigged.
Consider as but one data point how Cheney, who will be looking for a new job come January, deliberately edited former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” exhortation from that fateful rally so as to omit the fact that he urged his supporters to make their way to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically.”
Or how about the fact that the committee has thus far made no effort to subpoena the families of the roughly 800 people who have been arrested—and sometimes placed in solitary confinement, per columnist Julie Kelly’s exceptional reporting—for wandering in and traipsing around the Capitol, often shepherded right in by Capitol Police? Curious, that.
A legitimate committee interested in investigation and arriving at the truth would surely want to call some of those families as witnesses. Perhaps that hypothetical legitimate committee would also be interested in hearing from the family of Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran fatally shot on that day by a subsequently exonerated Capitol Police officer. Alas.
Instead, to take Democrats at their word—an always-dubious endeavor—is to believe that Jan. 6, 2021, represented the closest thing to an “insurrection” since the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861.
To be sure, some—a very small minority—of the protesters who made their way into the Capitol on that day did so with malicious intent. And that very small minority should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But as a whole, Jan. 6, 2021, looks something like a limper version of the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, which amounts to no more than an asterisk in the high school history textbooks.
But the Democrats have found their “insurrection”—and they want to make the dreaded Orange Man, conductor of this benighted orchestra, pay for what he has wrought. Or so they tell us.
The Democrats’ obsession with the word “insurrection” raises an obvious additional question, though: How might we describe the recent attempt—thankfully aborted at the last moment—by a deranged California man to assassinate Trump-nominated Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, following last month’s seminal leak of the draft majority opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion case?
Black’s Law Dictionary defines an “insurrection” as “a rebellion, or rising of citizens or subjects in resistance to their government.”
Surely, any sober assessment of the trajectory of events pertaining to the court’s possible overturning of Roe v. Wade—from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer nakedly threatening Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch from the court’s steps to the unprecedented Dobbs leak to the now month-and-a-half of grueling (and illegal) “protests” outside the conservative justices’ homes to the closest thing to a high-profile politically motivated assassination in America since Robert F. Kennedy in 1968—would lead one to conclude that this intimidation campaign against the court, culminating in a literal assassination plot, amounts to a soft “insurrection.”
And it is definitely more of an “insurrection”—more of a straightforward attempt to rebel and implement a coup against our constitutional edifices—than what happened on Jan. 6, 2021.
Nonetheless, after the Senate last month unanimously passed a bill to increase security for the Supreme Court justices in the aftermath of the Dobbs leak, it languished on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk.
That bill finally passed the House this week—against the repulsive dissenting votes of 27 House Democrats. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even openly bragged about her efforts to block the bill’s passage. If she had any sense of shame, she’d hide her head in a bag.
On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement that concluded with this admonition: “The same Democrats who want to make a national spectacle out of their supposed opposition to political violence will not even call out violence and intimidation from their own side. Let alone fulfill their oaths and put a stop to it.”
No reasonable observer of our fractious politics can disagree with that bleak assessment. Because for Democrats, what constitutes an actual “insurrection” is merely in the eye of the beholder.
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The left praises democracy when elected but claims the right will destroy democracy when it loses. Pictured: Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton discusses the 2016 election during her 2017 book tour. (Photo: Bastiaan Slabbers, NurPhoto/Getty Images)
Recently, Democrats have been despondent over President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers. His policies on the economy, energy, foreign policy, the border, and COVID-19 all have lost majority support.
As a result, the left now variously alleges that either in 2022, when it expects to lose the Congress, or in 2024, when it fears losing the presidency, Republicans will “destroy democracy” or stage a coup.
A cynic might suggest that those on the left praise democracy when they get elected, only to claim it is broken when they lose. Or they hope to avoid their defeat by trying to terrify the electorate. Or they mask their own revolutionary propensities by projecting them onto their opponents.
After all, who is trying to federalize election laws in national elections contrary to the spirit of the Constitution? Who wishes to repeal or circumvent the Electoral College? Who wishes to destroy the more than 180-year-old Senate filibuster, the over 150-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, and the more than 60-year-old 50-state union?
Who is attacking the founding constitutional idea of two senators per state?
The Constitution also clearly states that “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” Who slammed through the impeachment of former President Donald Trump without a presiding chief justice?
Never had a president been either impeached twice or tried in the Senate as a private citizen. Who did both?
The left further broke prior precedent by impeaching Trump without a special counsel’s report, formal hearings, witnesses, and cross-examinations.
Who exactly is violating federal civil rights legislation?
New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in December decided to ration new potentially lifesaving COVID-19 medicines, partially on the basis of race, in the name of “equity.”
The agency also allegedly used racial preferences to determine who would be first tested for COVID-19. Yet such racial discrimination seems in direct violation of various title clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
That law makes it clear that no public agency can use race to deny “equal utilization of any public facility which is owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State or subdivision thereof.” Who is behind the new racial discrimination?
In summer 2020, many local- and state-mandated quarantines and bans on public assemblies were simply ignored with impunity—if demonstrators were associated with Black Lives Matter or protesting the police.
Currently, the Biden administration is also flagrantly embracing the neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal law.
The Biden administration has allowed nearly 2 million foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally across the southern border—in hopes they will soon be loyal constituents.
The administration has not asked illegal entrants either to be tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19. Yet all U.S. citizens in the military and employed by the federal government are threatened with dismissal if they fail to become vaccinated.
Such selective exemption of lawbreaking non-U.S. citizens, but not millions of U.S. citizens, seems in conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
After entering the United States illegally, millions of immigrants are protected by some 550 “sanctuary city” jurisdictions. These revolutionary areas all brazenly nullify immigration law by refusing to allow federal immigration authorities to deport illegal immigrant lawbreakers.
At various times in our nation’s history—1832, 1861-65, and 1961-63—America was either racked by internal violence or fought a civil war over similar state nullification of federal laws.
In the last five years, we have indeed seen many internal threats to democracy.
Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to concoct a dossier of dirt against her presidential opponent. She disguised her own role by projecting her efforts to use Russian sources onto Trump. She used her contacts in government and media to seed the dossier to create a national hysteria about “Russian collusion.” Clinton urged Biden not to accept the 2020 result if he lost, and herself claimed Trump was not a legitimately elected president.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has violated laws governing the chain of command. Some retired officers violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by slandering their commander in chief. Others publicly were on record calling for the military to intervene to remove an elected president.
Some of the nation’s top officials in the FBI and intelligence committee have misled or lied under oath either to federal investigators or the U.S. Congress, again, mostly with impunity.
All these sustained revolutionary activities were justified as necessary to achieve the supposedly noble ends of removing Trump.
The result is Third World-like jurisprudence in America aimed at rewarding friends and punishing enemies, masked by service to social justice.
We are in a dangerous revolutionary cycle. But the threat is not so much from loud, buffoonish, one-day rioters on Jan. 6. Such clownish characters did not for 120 days loot, burn, attack courthouses and police precincts, cause over 30 deaths, injure 2,000 policemen, and destroy at least $2 billion in property—all under the banner of revolutionary justice.
Even more ominously, stone-cold sober elites are systematically waging an insidious revolution in the shadows that seeks to dismantle America’s institutions and the rule of law as we have known them.
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The Honorable Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Washington D.C.
Dear Representative Adam Kinzinger,
I noticed that you are a pro-life representative that has a long record of standing up for unborn babies! It was in the 1970’s when I was first introduced to the works of Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I wanted to commend their writings and films to you.
I recently read about your impressive pro-life record:
Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) joined his House Republican colleagues in a press conference urging Democratic leadership to allow a vote on the Born Alive protections. The proposal would protect babies who survive abortion and provide them with the same medical care that any other premature baby would receive. Yesterday, the Democrats blocked the proposed legislation—for the 17th time—from coming before the House for a vote.
Joining the Congressman and House Republican leaders at the press conference this morning was Jill Stanek, an Illinois nurse and pro-life advocate who has witnessed the devastating realities of these pro-abortion laws. The Illinois legislature is currently debating two abortion bills, similar to the extreme pro-abortion agendas in New York and Virginia.
It seems you have a grudge against President Trump while our freedoms under President Biden are being taken away. I recommend to you the article below:
The January 6 Insurrection Hoax
• Volume 50, Number 9 • Roger Kimball
Roger Kimball
Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion
Mr. Kimball concludes his article with these words:
That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.
Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”
Bingo.
You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”
NOW WHAT DID YOU DO TO TURN YOUR BACK ON OUR LIBERTY AND PERPETUATE THE HOAX THAT JANUARY 6TH WAS AN INSURRECTION? Read below!!
9 Republicans voted to hold Trump aide Bannon in contempt of Congress
There were a few Republicans Thursday who surprised observers when they voted in support of holding former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress and referring him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
Prior to the vote, four Republicans were considered a lock to approve the criminal referral, according to Capitol Hill sources: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.
Cheney and Kinzinger are on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and have for months stood alone as the only two House Republicans willing to speak out against former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about the 2020 election. They were the only two House Republicans to vote for the formation of the select committee on June 30.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formed the select committee after Republicans rejected a bipartisan commission that would have been evenly split between five Democrats and five Republicans. Only 35 Republicans voted for that measure when itpassed the House of Representatives, and it was defeated by a GOP filibuster in the Senate.
Upton has served in the House for more than three decades, since 1987, and will face a primary challenge next year because of his willingness to stand up to Trump.
Gonzalez is retiring from Congress next year, after only four years in the House. “While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” Gonzalez said in September when heannounced he would not seek another term.
The remaining five Republicans included three who voted for impeachment — Peter Meijer of Michigan, John Katko of New York and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington — and two House Republicans who did not vote to impeach Trump: Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
Do you realize that Americans rights are being taken away from them and would you like an example? I am going to quote Mr. Kimball again. You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”
Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club.
Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 plus million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively.
Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.
I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years.
Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the Oath Keepers, a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers—agents arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett traveled to Washington from his home in Florida to join the January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building.
As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.
Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have beenbranded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.
Let me recommend that you read this letter below from Senator Ron Johnson and his colleagues:
Sen. Johnson and Colleagues Request Answers from DOJ on Unequal Application of Justice to Protestors
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), along with senators Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), sent a letter on Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting information on the unequal application of justice between the individuals who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, and those involved in the unrest during the spring and summer of 2020. The senators sent 18 questions to the attorney general on what steps the DOJ has taken to prosecute individuals who committed crimes during both events, and requested a response by June 21.
“Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances,” the senators wrote. “This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.”
The full text of the letter can be found here and below.
June 7, 2021
The Honorable Merrick B. Garland
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Attorney General Garland:
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently dedicating enormous resources and manpower to investigating and prosecuting the criminals who breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. We fully support and appreciate the efforts by the DOJ and its federal, state and local law enforcement partners to hold those responsible fully accountable.
We join all Americans in the expectation that the DOJ’s response to the events of January 6 will result in rightful criminal prosecutions and accountability. As you are aware, the mission of the DOJ is, among other things, to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans. Today, we write to request information about our concerns regarding potential unequal justice administered in response to other recent instances of mass unrest, destruction, and loss of life throughout the United States.
During the spring and summer of 2020, individuals used peaceful protests across the country to engage in rioting and other crimes that resulted in loss of life, injuries to law enforcement officers, and significant property damage.[1] A federal court house in Portland, Oregon, has been effectively under siege for months.[2] Property destruction stemming from the 2020 social justice protests throughout the country will reportedly result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion in paid insurance claims.[3]
In June 2020, the DOJ reportedly compiled the following information regarding last year’s unrest:
- “One federal officer [was] killed, 147 federal officers [were] injured and 600 local officers [were] injured around the country during the protests, frequently from projectiles.”[4]
- According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), “since the start of the unrest there has been 81 Federal Firearms License burglaries of an estimated loss of 1,116 firearms; 876 reported arsons; 76 explosive incidents; and 46 ATF arrests[.]”[5]
Despite these numerous examples of violence occurring during these protests, it appears that individuals charged with committing crimes at these events may benefit from infrequent prosecutions and minimal, if any, penalties. According to a recent article, “prosecutors have approved deals in at least half a dozen federal felony cases arising from clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Oregon last summer. The arrangements — known as deferred resolution agreements — will leave the defendants with a clean criminal record if they stay out of trouble for a period of time and complete a modest amount of community service, according to defense attorneys and court records.”[6]
DOJ’s apparent unwillingness to punish these individuals who allegedly committed crimes during the spring and summer 2020 protests stands in stark contrast to the harsher treatment of the individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. To date, DOJ has charged 510 individuals stemming from Capitol breach.[7] DOJ maintains and updates a webpage that lists the defendants charged with crimes committed at the Capitol. This database includes information such as the defendant’s name, charge(s), case number, case documents, location of arrest, case status, and informs readers when the entry was last updated.[8] No such database exists for alleged perpetrators of crimes associated with the spring and summer 2020 protests. It is unclear whether any defendants charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol breach have received deferred resolution agreements.
Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning. In order to assist Congress in conducting its oversight work, we respectfully request answers to the following questions by June 21, 2021:
Spring and Summer 2020 Unrest:
- Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the unrest in the spring and summer of 2020? If so, how many times and for which locations/riots?
- How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020 were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
- How many individuals were incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
- How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement? What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
- How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
- How many of these individuals were released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
- How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?[9]
- How many DOJ prosecutors were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
- How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Breach:
- Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the January 6, 2021 protests and Capitol breach? If so, how many times and how many additional arrests resulted from law enforcement utilizing geolocation information?
- How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
- How many individuals are incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
- How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement? What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
- How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
- How many of these individuals have been released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
- How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?
- How many DOJ prosecutors have been assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
- How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
Sincerely,
Ron Johnson
United States Senator
Tommy Tuberville
United States Senator
Mike Lee
United States Senator
Rick Scott
United States Senator
Ted Cruz
United States Senator
###
[1] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.
[2] Conrad Wilson and Jonathan Levinson, Protesters, federal officers clash outside Portland’s courthouse Thursday, OPB, Mar. 12, 2021, https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/12/protesters-vandalize-portlands-federal-courthouse-again/.
[3] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.
[4] Published in the Intercept, Jul. 15, 2020, https://theintercept.com/document/2020/07/15/preventing-violence-and-criminal-activity-in-protection-of-lawful-protest/.
[5] Id.
[6] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.
[7] Madison Hall et al., 493 people have been charged in the Capitol insurrection so far. This searchable table shows them all., Insider, accessed June 4, 2021, https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-arrests-charges-names-2021-1.
[8] Capitol Breach Cases, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, accessed May 21, 2021, https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases?combine=&order=title&sort=asc.
[9] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.
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I want to recommend to you a video on YOU TUBE that runs 28 minutes and 39 seconds by Francis Schaeffer entitled because it discusses the founding of our nation and what the FOUNDERS believed:
Thank you for your time, and again I want to thank you for your support of the unborn little babies!
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher, 13900 Cottontail Lane, AR 72002, cell 501-920-5733, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org
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|
C. Everett Koop
|
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|---|---|
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| 13th Surgeon General of the United States | |
| In office January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989 |
________________
______________________
March 23, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view. Although we are both Christians and have the Bible as the basis for our moral views, I did want you to take a close look at the views of the pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff too. Hentoff became convinced of the pro-life view because of secular evidence that shows that the unborn child is human. I would ask you to consider his evidence and then of course reverse your views on abortion.
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The pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff wrote a fine article below I wanted to share with you.
Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many cases (Bernard Nathanson, Donald Trump, Paul Greenberg, Kathy Ireland) when other high profile pro-choice leaders have changed their views and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthanasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.
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I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have. Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.
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Jewish World Review June 12, 2006/ 16 Sivan, 5766
Insisting on life
http://www.NewsandOpinion.com | A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son — having heard a word whose meaning he didn’t know — asked, “What is an abortion?” His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms.
“But,” said her son, “that means killing the baby.” The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. “But,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what month. It still means killing the babies.”
Hearing the story, I wished it could be repeated to the justices of the Supreme Court, in the hope that at least five of them might act on this 9-year-old’s clarity of thought and vision.
The boy’s spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.
“That,” he continued, “was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned.”
This passionate reverend used to warn: “Don’t let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn’t a human being. That’s how the whites dehumanized us … The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do — and not even feel they’d done anything wrong.”
That preacher was Jesse Jackson. Later, he decided to run for the presidency — and it was a credible campaign that many found inspiring in its focus on what still had to be done on civil rights. But Jackson had by now become “pro-choice” — much to the appreciation of most of those in the liberal base.
The last time I saw Jackson was years later, on a train from Washington to New York. I told him of a man nominated, but not yet confirmed, to a seat on a federal circuit court of appeals. This candidate was a strong supporter of capital punishment — which both the Rev. Jackson and I oppose, since it involves the irreversible taking of a human life by the state.
I asked Jackson if he would hold a press conference in Washington, criticizing the nomination, and he said he would. The reverend was true to his word; the press conference took place; but that nominee was confirmed to the federal circuit court. However, I appreciated Jackson’s effort.
On that train, I also told Jackson that I’d been quoting — in articles, and in talks with various groups — from his compelling pro-life statements. I asked him if he’d had any second thoughts on his reversal of those views.
Usually quick to respond to any challenge that he is not consistent in his positions, Jackson paused, and seemed somewhat disquieted at my question. Then he said to me, “I’ll get back to you on that.” I still patiently await what he has to say.
As time goes on, my deepening concern with the consequences of abortion is that its validation by the Supreme Court, as a constitutional practice, helps support the convictions of those who, in other controversies — euthanasia, assisted suicide and the “futility doctrine” by certain hospital ethics committees — believe that there are lives not worth continuing.
Around the time of my conversation with Jackson on the train, I attended a conference on euthanasia at Clark College in Worcester, Mass. There, I met Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society, and already known internationally as a key proponent of the “death with dignity” movement.
He told me that for some years in this country, he had considerable difficulty getting his views about assisted suicide and, as he sees it, compassionate euthanasia into the American press.
“But then,” Humphry told me, “a wonderful thing happened. It opened all the doors for me.”
“What was that wonderful thing?” I asked.
“Roe v. Wade,” he answered.
The devaluing of human life — as the 9-year-old at the dinner table put it more vividly — did not end with making abortion legal, and therefore, to some people, moral. The word “baby” does not appear in Roe v. Wade — let alone the word “killing.”
And so, the termination of “lives not worth living” goes on. 
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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
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Al Mohler on Kermit Gosnell’s abortion practice
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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterionand publisher of Encounter Books. He earned his B.A. from Bennington College and his M.A. and M.Phil. in philosophy from Yale University. He has written for numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times Book Review, and is a columnist for The Spectator World, American Greatness, and The Epoch Times. He is editor or author of several books, including The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America, The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education, and Vox Populi: The Perils and Promises of Populism.
The chords and notes flowed out, as if the Lord was literally giving her a gift of music. “At first,” says Annie, “I’d get these beautiful melodies and I’d ask Buck to write the lyrics to go with them.” One day, Buck replied, “Annie, don’t think about writing a song- just sing whatever’s in your heart.” It was this encouragement that opened the way to Annie’s simple, and deeply intimate songs of praise and adoration.
Although the album was completed, the release date of The Roar of Love would be long delayed by contractual and copyright problems. Yet, the detours proved to be providential.
The Daily Hatch 