Judges Courting Condemnation
With his mouth misfiring worse than any gun he’s ever railed against, leftist Senator Chuck Schumer made headlines and hell for himself March 4 when he leveled threats against High Court justices. “I want to tell you, Gorsuch! I want to tell you, Kavanaugh! You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price!” he shouted, rabble-rousing and promoting abortion (better termed prenatal infanticide) from the Supreme Court steps before a cheering crowd. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!”
Well, what hit Schumer was criticism from all sides. Liberal Washington Post writer Ruth Marcus labeled the New York Democrat’s words “particularly egregious,” for example, while left-wing Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe called them “inexcusable.” But that didn’t stop the excuses. Schumer said he used the wrong “words,” even though he was reading prepared remarks (though he did look away from his paper during the offending statement, so perhaps he was ad-libbing). He also claimed he was actually speaking of “consequences for President Trump and Senate Republicans.” Yet he didn’t name Trump — and senators Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were unavailable for comment.
But certainly available was Chief Justice John Roberts. “Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous,” he said, issuing a rare rebuke of a legislator. “All members of the court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.” These are nice words, too. But they’re both surreal and sanctimonious given modern courts’ usurpative disposition.
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