&#8220;In both law and politics, I think the essential battle is the meta-battle of framing the narrative. As Sun Tzu said, every battle is won before it’s fought. It’s won by choosing the terrain on which it will be fought.&#8221; – Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to The New Yorker&#8217;s Jeffrey Toobin, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/30/the-absolutist-2">June 2014</a>
Although President Donald Trump no doubt prefers to vent his off-the-cuff frustrations in tweet threads and campaign rallies, it is the planned teleprompter format in which he most clearly excels. Since assuming office, Trump&#8217;s State of the Union addresses have consistently been visceral, evocative, rhetorically fine-tune affairs that make brilliant use of audience guests to drive home his substantive agenda.
Last night&#8217;s speech was <a href="https://theresurgent.com/2020/02/04/best-state-of-the-union-ever/">no exception</a>, and the president was tremendously successful in framing the 2020 election as a stark choice between two competing visions of American governance: The economic prosperity, domestic security, and &#8220;peace through strength&#8221; deterrence of the Right, and the socialism, lawlessness, and capitulatory foreign policy of the Left. To borrow from Cruz&#8217;s quoting of Sun Tzu, Trump has &#8220;cho[sen] the terrain on which&#8221; the 2020 election &#8220;will be fought.&#8221;
The president <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/05/president-trump-offers-a-sharp-rebuke-of-socialism-at-precisely-the-right-time/">spoke at length</a> about the revving American economic engine, thus placing on the defensive the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-aocs-squad-will-destroy-democrats-2020-josh-hammer">toxic brand of socialism</a> that has come to dominate the modern Democratic Party. The Democrats are a political party with a <a href="https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3633/Who-will-win-the-2020-Democratic-presidential-nomination">statistical frontrunner</a> of a presidential nominee who is a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-bernie-sanders-entire-worldview-grotesquely-josh-hammer">lifelong communist activist</a> — a man who literally honeymooned in the Soviet Union and infamously hung a hammer-and-sickle Soviet flag inside his Burlington, Vermont mayoral office. They are advancing that nominee (and so many others who now mimic his economic illiteracy) in the context of an American electorate that, according to reliable pollster Gallup, is the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americans-are-more-optimistic-about-the-economy-than-they-have-been-in-decades">most optimistic</a> it has been about the economy in decades. Americans <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval_economy-6182.html">currently approve</a> of Trump&#8217;s handling of the economy by over 17%, and Democrats&#8217; solution for that is to stage a presidential primary where one of the leading &#8220;intellectual&#8221; debates among the candidates is whether to literally abolish private health insurance in favor of a government monopoly.
Good luck with that.
The president also spoke about the gruesome horrors of sanctuary cities, the great majority of which are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-why-no-one-pointing-out-sanctuary-cities-josh-hammer">clearly illegal</a> under a straightforward reading of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1373">8 U.S.C. § 1373(a)</a>: &#8220;Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the [Department of Homeland Security] information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.&#8221; The president masterfully provided gut-wrenching details of the crimes committed by illegal aliens mollycoddled by sanctuary jurisdictions — thus seemingly borrowing a tactic from Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, each of whom has at times provided vivid details of the underlying murders of those defendants whose capital punishment appeals reach the Court. Trump forced Democrats in the House chamber to retreat to the unenviable position of loudly booing his oratory assaults on criminal aliens and the sanctuary jurisdictions that harbor them. It was a remarkable sight to behold.
The president has thus successfully framed the 2020 election as a referendum about whether the nation will reject the Left&#8217;s two most profoundly ruinous current hobbyhorses: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-a-political-wish-for-2020-less-socialism-more-law-and-order">Socialism and lawlessness</a>. He also spoke directly to the heart and mind of the proverbial <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-who-will-stand-for-the-forgotten-american">forgotten American</a> — the tax-paying, church-attending, law-abiding American who still has an innate love and appreciation for what has always made America great. Say what one might about Trump, but one cannot plausibly deny that he is an &#8220;Americanist,&#8221; properly understood.
The American people will head to the ballot box this November with an exceedingly straightforward choice before them. Here is hoping they make the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-here-are-three-reasons-why-i-plan-vote-josh-hammer">right decision</a>.

President Trump Delivers State Of The Union Address

HAMMER: Trump Successfully Framed The Stark 2020 Election Choice During Last Night’s SOTU Address

2020 Election

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Clarence Thomas

Communism

Democratic Party

Donald Trump

Economy

Law Enforcement

Qassem Soleimani

Radical Islam

Quick, guess the movie under review here:
<blockquote>What makes it memorable is its portrait of a woman with an exceptional intellect, to be sure, but also a lifelong capacity for staggering amounts of minutely detailed, unswervingly purposeful work. – The Wall Street Journal</blockquote>
And here:
<blockquote>It gives viewers a deep and multi-layered sense of the times in which the subject lived and the cultural forces that she had to struggle against to achieve what she did. – The Baltimore Sun</blockquote>
And here:
<blockquote>With the #MeToo movement occupying our culture, it&#8217;s easy to say that this is the perfect time for a detailed, thorough film on [Blank]. But frankly, anytime would have been a good time. – AP</blockquote>
Give up? It’s “RBG,” the 2018 documentary about liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Critics fawned over the film, giving it a <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rbg/">95 percent “fresh” rating</a> at <a href="http://RottenTomatoes.com">RottenTomatoes.com</a>.
Why bring up a two year old film today? It’s worth comparing the tone, the adulation, afforded Justice Ginsburg compared to the reception for “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas In His Own Words.”
The new documentary finds the reserved judge narrating his remarkable life story, from enduring an impoverished childhood to becoming, at 43, the successor to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Justice Thomas, of course, is a conservative. Which means the critical knives are out for the film, in limited release this weekend.
Thomas, like Ginsburg, powered past significant obstacles in his youth. He faced direct discrimination early in life. Later, in a supposedly more evolved America, the bigoted attacks came from media outlets and Hollywood. These justices are so very different in style and ideology, yet each rose above discrimination in powerful ways.
You wouldn’t glean that connection after reading reviews for both films. For example, critics are obsessing over the funding behind “Created Equal,” as well as the cozy nature of the storytellers in question.
Consider <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/created-equal-clarence-thomas-his-own-words-1274926">The Hollywood Reporter’s review</a> of “Created Equal.”
<blockquote>If you&#8217;re wondering why Thomas is finally breaking his vow of silence, it may be due to the fact that he felt comfortable cooperating with Pack, a conservative filmmaker who&#8217;s collaborated with Steve Bannon and was nominated by President Trump for the position of chief executive officer of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. So it&#8217;s not like he was walking into the lion&#8217;s den.</blockquote>
Does anyone think “RBG” directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen plotted a hit piece on the elderly justice? Many reviews described that film as a hagiography. So, why snark about a “lion’s den” at all?
The THR review mirrors the media’s attacks of Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his own contentious confirmation hearing.
<blockquote>What comes through loud and clear during the documentary is that Thomas has lost none of the anger and bitterness he displayed during that time.</blockquote>
Reporters mocked Kavanaugh for getting emotional when absurd charge after absurd charge smeared his good name and threatened the most consequential gig of his life. The THR critic offers up a similar line against Justice Thomas and what the conservative famously dubbed a “high-tech lynching.”
Is there an expiration date on the fury one feels for being dubbed a sexual predator for all to see?
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/movies/created-equal-clarence-thomas-in-own-words-review.html">The New York Times’ review</a> name checks the “friendly filmmakers” meme at the top of the critique, too.
The critic also pings the film for mirroring much of the content from Thomas’ 2007 autobiography. Should he have re-written his life story for the big screen? Or isn’t it obvious that most people haven’t read that book, and documentaries reach entirely different audiences?
Once again, the Times critic notes the funders behind the film, a tactic rarely (if ever) done when critics consider a liberal documentary.
Who funded “RBG?” Or, more recently, who passed the hat for Hulu’s multi-part Hillary Clinton documentary or <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/miss-americana-critics-taylor-swift/">the woke Taylor Swift film</a> “Miss Americana?”
Do critics even care? If not, why now all of a sudden?
The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/clarence-thomas-speaks-but-leaves-many-questions-unanswered-in-documentary/2020/01/27/fb6a22bc-411a-11ea-b503-2b077c436617_story.html?arc404=true">critic isn’t impressed by “Created Equal,” either</a>. What’s interesting about what the Post critic ignored, along with his peers, is the racist media attacks on Justice Thomas included in the film.
The political cartoons shown in “Created Equal” are so over the top they seem like parodies, but of course they’re not. The critics’ reviews also forgot to address an infamous “In Living Color” sketch included in the documentary. The clip showedd David Alan Grier portraying Justice Thomas as a lazy clone of his peers.
It’s unfair, inaccurate, and degrading.
What’s clear from reading reviews of both “RBG” and “Created Equal” is how mainstream movie reviewers hold right-leaning documentaries to a different standard than their liberal peers.

Justice Clarence Thomas.

TOTO: Critical Reviews of Clarence Thomas Doc Show Media Bias in Action

Hollywood

Media Bias

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

A new documentary is currently making the rounds of limited release that explores the life of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. &#8216;Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in his Own Words&#8217; offers its viewers a unique perspective on one of America’s most contentious and quietly brilliant men.
Thomas has, of course, been a contentious figure in American politics ever since his confirmation hearing in 1991 — when President George H. W. Bush nominated him for the position of Supreme Court associate justice. Thomas was quickly accused of sexually harassing a female subordinate, Anita Hill, earlier in his career. While the FBI quickly ruled out the claim, her testimony was leaked to the public and devolved into a heated series of public sexual harassment hearings prior to his confirmation.
The movie doesn’t pretend that it isn’t taking a stance on Justice Thomas’s innocence. If anything, his accusation draws immediate comparisons in the movie to the conspicuously similar accusations made 27 years later against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Alas, in the scheme of lionizing Supreme Court justices, a single documentary about Justice Thomas pales in comparison to the multitude of biopics and documentaries made about progressive darling Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
&#8216;Created Equal&#8217; is a documentary that merely puts his perspective in the spotlight. It’s primarily composed as a one-on-one sit-down interview with the now 71-year-old justice as he reflects on his life, politics, and his stances on constitutional law. Anyone who has read his memoir, &#8216;My Grandfather’s Son,&#8217; will likely be familiar with some of the highlights of his journey — but for first-time viewers, his life will likely be rather striking. Born in rural Georgia during segregation, Justice Thomas endured both poverty and unimaginable racial prejudice.  He was largely sheltered from the worst of it via his relationship with his grandfather, who put him to work as a part-time laborer and a farmer with strict standards and expectations. After a falling out with his grandfather, he underwent a period of radicalization amidst the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement and moved politically to the far-left. After graduating from College of the Holy Cross and subsequently Yale Law School, he eventually received a job working with the attorney general of Missouri, and future Republican U.S. senator, John Danforth.
While most of the back half the documentary deals with the results of his Supreme Court nomination and subsequent confirmation, the first half ends up being the more revealing half. Seeing his path from the most oppressed rungs of American society to becoming an associate justice is nothing short of inspiring. He is, in every respect, the embodiment of the American dream. His position of power now is a reflection of a lifetime of struggle, hard work, and self-reflection as he grew into the man he is today.
Seeing him grow from a leftist into the most famously conservative man on the Supreme Court is equally fascinating. That journey, though less fraught than his upbringing, required years of intellectual wrestling with his leftist tendencies as he developed his originalist stance on constitutional interpretation. After years of attending political conventions and arguing with friends, he developed a strong sense of constitutional fidelity birthed from his love for the Founders and their vision for an American government.
That immense wellspring of knowledge about the nature of the American Founding subsequently gives Thomas&#8217;s perspective of his confirmation hearings a rather hilarious undercurrent. Watching him explain how then-Senator Joe Biden’s (D-DE) contortions of political theory amounted to little more than an attempt to make him reveal his positions on abortion is nothing short of hilarious. The Democrats&#8217; line of interrogation during the Senate confirmation hearings was clearly nothing but an attempt to make him stumble as part of the Left’s effort to destroy a black man holding, as Thomas puts it, the &#8220;wrong&#8221; opinions.
Being black and a conservative always put Justice Thomas at odds with the progressive Left. Given his Catholic faith, as well as his personal stances against forced busing and welfare, he drew immense amounts of acrimony from those who hated him well before Anita Hill made her accusations known. Thomas is, in every respect, the kind of public figure the Left should hold up as a success story for the black community. Yet the Left casually dismisses him as a race traitor. Thomas is clearly still bothered by some of the horrifically racist rhetoric that has been used against him throughout his career.
For bringing much of this history to the public’s attention, &#8216;Created Equal&#8217; is a vitally important piece of both journalism and history. Thomas’ stories feel all too familiar in an age of #MeToo accusations and racial identitarianism. Much of the vitriol he spent his career fighting sadly remains a stubborn fact today. The perspective he brings to life, law, and morality is immensely valuable and inspiring. To this day, his name is invoked on the Left as an example of a prominent man being let off the hook for sexual impropriety. The film makes clear Thomas’ name, reputation, and beliefs were dragged through the mud. Thankfully, such a horrific show didn’t destroy the man. He is today as humble, intelligent, proud, faithful, and patriotic as he’s ever been.

US-JUSTICE-SUPREME-COURT-GROUP-PHOTO

HUMMEL: ‘Created Equal’: New Documentary Sheds Light On The Life Of Justice Clarence Thomas

Abortion

Blacks

Conservatism

Constitution

Judicial Branch

Judiciary

Leftism

Progressivism

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning heard oral argument in the crucial First Amendment religious liberty case of Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. The legal issue, as framed by <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/espinoza-v-montana-department-of-revenue/">SCOTUSblog</a>, is &#8220;[w]hether it violates the religion clauses or the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution to invalidate a generally available and religiously neutral student-aid program simply because the program affords students the choice of attending religious schools.&#8221;
Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/01/argument-preview-justices-to-consider-dispute-over-tax-credits-for-scholarships/">contextualizes the importance</a> of Espinoza through the prism of the Court&#8217;s recent First Amendment religious liberty jurisprudence:
<blockquote>Two and a half years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that Missouri’s policy of excluding churches from a program to provide grants to resurface playgrounds violated the Constitution. In a footnote in their opinion in <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/trinity-lutheran-church-of-columbia-inc-v-pauley/">Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer</a>, the justices emphasized that their decision was limited to the facts before them and did “not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.” [In Espinoza], the justices will return to the question they left open in Trinity Lutheran, when they review a decision by the Montana Supreme Court invalidating a tax-credit program because the scholarships created by the program could be used at religious schools.</blockquote>
The Montana state constitutional provision challenged in Espinoza is a so-called &#8220;Blaine Amendment&#8221; — an unfortunate area of law that has its insidious origins in blatant anti-Catholic bigotry. <a href="https://firstliberty.org">First Liberty Institute</a>&#8216;s Jeremy Dys explained the sordid history yesterday in a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dys-its-time-to-end-the-bigotry-of-blaine-amendments">Daily Wire op-ed</a> calling for the Court to end &#8220;Blaine Amendments&#8221; once and for all:
<blockquote>In 1875, &#8230; [James] Blaine introduced a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would prevent any government aid to “sectarian schools,” targeting Catholic schools in particular.
His federal amendment failed, but various states borrowed his proposal and their own constitutions were amended instead. Today, almost 40 states have a constitutional provision that prevents government aid to religious institutions. These state constitutional amendments have empowered states to legally discriminate against religious organizations when they perform the same work secular institutions do.
For years, activists have used Blaine Amendments to successfully exclude religious individuals and organizations from benefitting from public benefits. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote of Blaine Amendments in the 2000 decision of <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/530/793/">Mitchell v. Helms</a>, “This doctrine, born of bigotry, should be buried now.”</blockquote>
Ilya Shapiro, who filed a “<a href="https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2019-09/Espinoza-merits.pdf">friend of the court brief</a>” on behalf of Cato Institute&#8217;s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, is optimistic that the Court will do precisely what Justice Thomas called for it to do in Mitchell. Speaking exclusively with The Daily Wire, Shapiro opined: &#8220;The Supreme Court has the opportunity here to remove the last legal barrier to school choice, and I think it’s poised to do so. Constitutional principles of free exercise and equal protection don’t allow Montana to exclude religious groups from public benefits solely because of their religious nature. Similarly, there’s no room in Supreme Court precedent to exclude religious schools from programs structured around private choice (as opposed to, say, direct taxpayer funding of devotional education).&#8221;
In an additional <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/slugh-jewish-groups-must-support-ending-the-bigotry-of-blaine-amendments">Daily Wire op-ed</a> published this morning, <a href="https://www.jcrl.org/">Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty</a> (JCRL) General Counsel Howard Slugh also lambasted the bigotry of Blaine&#8217;s legacy. &#8220;Espinoza has a strong legal basis for her claims,&#8221; Slugh wrote. &#8220;The Supreme Court recently <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-577_khlp.pdf">indicated</a> [in Trinity Lutheran] that excluding a religious organization &#8216;from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely&#8217; because it is religious &#8216;is odious to our Constitution … and cannot stand.&#8217; The Supreme Court should strike down Montana’s Blaine Amendment based on the same reasoning.&#8221;
Slugh, who filed a “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-1195/116233/20190918141339707_No18-1195JRCL.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2-39Qgpp2Hc2MEbPaRhiXeeFVGOgNpEWF0_5AMTEa6onbe90Xbsc5_yzU">friend of the court brief</a>” on behalf of JCRL, was in attendance this morning at the Supreme Court oral argument. Speaking exclusively with The Daily Wire, Slugh described what he saw: &#8220;I was very pleased with how the oral argument went. It seemed that at least five justices understood that the key issue in this case is whether it was permissible for the Montana Supreme Court to act pursuant to a law that, on its face, requires discrimination against religious people without even considering whether such discrimination is permissible under the U.S. Constitution. The answer to that question is that it is not permissible, and at least five justices seemed to support that position.&#8221;
Proponents of religious liberty and school choice ought to hope that Slugh&#8217;s intuition proves prescient.

The U.S. Supreme Court Building

Supreme Court Hears Blockbuster Case On Religious School Choice

Education

First Amendment

Lawsuit

Religion

School Choice

Supreme Court

James Gillespie Blaine led an interesting life. He served as speaker of the House of Representatives and in the United States Senate. Twice he served as secretary of state, holding the position under three separate presidents. He even sought the presidency, losing to Grover Cleveland.
Blaine’s most notorious legacy, however, is an amendment bearing his name.
Blaine got his idea from a fiery speech delivered by President Ulysses Grant at the height of a national controversy over whether religion had any place within the nation’s public schools. In 1875, President Grant declared, “Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.”
Days later, Blaine introduced a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would prevent any government aid to “sectarian schools,” targeting Catholic schools in particular.
His federal amendment failed, but various states borrowed his proposal and their own constitutions were amended instead. Today, almost 40 states have a constitutional provision that prevents government aid to religious institutions. These state constitutional amendments have empowered states to legally discriminate against religious organizations when they perform the same work secular institutions do.
For years, activists have used Blaine Amendments to successfully exclude religious individuals and organizations from benefitting from public benefits. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote of Blaine Amendments in the 2000 decision of <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/530/793/">Mitchell v. Helms</a>, “This doctrine, born of bigotry, should be buried now.”
But Blaine’s legacy still lives. Just a few years ago, in <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-577_khlp.pdf">Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer</a>, many who hoped to attend the funeral of Blaine Amendments were disappointed when the Court stopped just short of killing Blaine. A frustrated Chief Justice John Roberts observed in the majority opinion that the Blaine Amendment at issue in Trinity Lutheran put the church to the choice of either operating as a church or “automatic and absolute exclusion from the benefits of a public program for which the [church] is otherwise fully qualified.”
How can that still stand in the year 2020? Place two organizations on equal footing — one of whom is charitably motivated because of its secularity and the other by its religious convictions. Yet only the secular organization qualifies for participation in public programs.
In fact, government officials need not rely upon the overall ability, educational or professional qualifications, financial stability, or facilities of a religious organization to decide whether it may participate. Rather, they may exclude religious organizations because they are religious organizations. Their religion may be the sole criterion for exclusion.
This week, the Supreme Court justices will have another crack at Blaine’s legacy. In <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/espinoza-v-montana-department-of-revenue/">Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue</a>, parents of young children challenge the state’s denial of the use of scholarship funds for their children to attend a religious school. The funds come from private donations for which individuals and/or organizations receive a tax credit. Montana contends this administrative act of government conceding taxes for charitable donations necessarily excludes the religious from participation.
First Liberty Institute, where I work, has experience with this. In fact, we have a good friend with more than a little personal experience. The state of Washington used its Blaine Amendment to deny Joshua Davey a promise scholarship that he intended to use to study for religious ministry at a religious college. His case went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, where the court upheld Washington’s decision in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/540/712/">Locke v. Davey</a>.
But, Davey, inspired by the attorneys who helped him with his case, went to Harvard Law School instead and now has a thriving law practice in North Carolina. He partnered with First Liberty to draft a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-1195/116222/20190918134556011_18-1195%20Amicus%20Brief%20Forge.pdf">friend-of-the-court brief</a> in support of the Espinozas.
We argue on behalf of another client from Benton County, Washington, Forge Youth Mentoring. There, county officials ultimately decided not end their grant to Forge, which was among the only mentoring groups lending help to the troubled youth of their community. But that came only after First Liberty got involved. Otherwise, Blaine would have claimed yet another victim.
Religious organizations are as deserving of participation in public programs as anybody else. It was wrong for Blaine and his ilk to insist upon excluding Catholics from such participation in the 1800s. Insisting that we sanitize the public square of religious organizations merely begets a government intent on enforcing what Attorney General William Barr <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jeremy-dys-liberal-attack-on-barrs-religious-freedom-speech-shows-hes-right">might refer to as</a> “militant secularism.”
Rather, the promise of the First Amendment is — at the very least — that government will be neutral towards religion. This welcomes religious organizations to compete in the public square on equal footing with other organizations. If they are to be denied, let it be for legitimate reasons having not the whiff of religious discrimination. Government should never tolerate the codification of religious bigotry.
&nbsp;
Jeremy Dys (<a href="https://twitter.com/jeremydys">@JeremyDys</a>) is Special Counsel for Litigation and Communications for First Liberty Institute, a non-profit law firm dedicated to defending religious freedom for all Americans. Read more at <a href="https://firstliberty.org">FirstLiberty.org</a>.

SCOTUS

DYS: It’s Time To End The Bigotry Of Blaine Amendments

Discrimination

In the soon-to-be-released documentary about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, &#8220;Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,&#8221; the jurist has some harsh words about former vice president and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/who-will-win-democratic-primary-latest-2020-josh-hammer">current leading</a> 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden. At the time of Thomas&#8217;s infamously raucous confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden, a Delaware Democrat, was the committee&#8217;s chairman.
Director Michael Pack, <a href="https://video.foxnews.com/v/6124958353001">speaking this morning</a> to Fox News host Steve Doocy on &#8220;Fox &amp; Friends,&#8221; described the much-anticipated documentary as a chance for viewers to &#8220;hear [Thomas&#8217;s] whole story&#8221; from the famously reticent justice himself. Pack noted that Justice Thomas and his wife Ginni are the only two people directly interviewed in the film.
Thomas, a black man who grew up in extreme poverty in Jim Crow-era Georgia, endured an extraordinarily nasty Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing following his nomination to the nation&#8217;s highest court by then-President George H.W. Bush. Thomas famously described the efforts to derail his nomination, in the aftermath of the public airing of allegations of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, as a &#8220;high-tech lynching.&#8221; Thomas is seen in the film&#8217;s trailer telling the camera: &#8220;We know what this is all about. This is the &#8216;wrong black guy.&#8217; Just say it.&#8221;
In December, The Daily Wire&#8217;s Amanda Prestigiacomo <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-trailer-for-new-clarence-thomas-documentary-drops-justice-says-liberals-worse-than-the-klan">highlighted</a> how, in the documentary, Thomas also claims that modern-day liberals have proved to be a bigger &#8220;impediment&#8221; for him throughout his meteoric rise than has the Ku Klux Klan itself:
<blockquote>“I felt as though, in my life, I had been looking at the wrong people as the people who would be problematic toward me,” Thomas reportedly says in the documentary, according to <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/justice-clarence-thomas-rebukes-biden-led-confirmation-hearings/story?id=67235780" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ABC News.</a> “We were told that, ‘Oh, it’s gonna be the bigot in the pickup truck; it’s gonna be the Klansmen; it’s gonna be the rural sheriff.&#8217;”
“But it turned out that through all of that, ultimately the biggest impediment was the modern-day liberal,” the justice continued. “They were the ones who would discount all those things because they have one issue or because they have the power to caricature you.”</blockquote>
That Thomas excoriates Biden in the documentary has been previously reported. Earlier this month, The National Interest <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/we-watched-new-clarence-thomas-documentary-its-not-good-biden-113466">wrote</a> that, &#8220;[a]t one juncture of the film, Thomas was asked about a colloquy with Biden over natural law philosophy and the Constitution. Though he did not cite Biden by name, Thomas lamented that lawmakers do not seem to have full command of the subject matter during judicial confirmation hearings.&#8221;
In a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-2020-democratic-field-will-come-down-josh-hammer">Daily Wire op-ed</a> last March, I noted the leading role that Biden had similarly played in the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2012/12/19/167645600/robert-borks-supreme-court-nomination-changed-everything-maybe-forever">vicious 1987 smearing</a> of then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Robert Bork:
<blockquote>Biden simply has too much baggage, in the current environment. Who in their right mind thinks that coquettish <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/joe-bidens-woman-touching-habit" data-reader-unique-id="48">creepy</a> “Uncle Joe” is a good fit for the current #MeToo moment? Who in their right mind thinks that Biden’s formerly held views on <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/joe-biden-record-on-busing-incarceration-racial-justice-democratic-primary-2020-explained.html" data-reader-unique-id="49">race</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/21/politics/joe-biden-criminal-justice/index.html" data-reader-unique-id="50">crime</a> won’t come back to destroy him in the minds of the increasingly dominant hard left faction of the Democratic base? Biden has simply been in the national spotlight for too long, and has too long a track record to cleanly avoid opposition research-driven scrutiny. And, amazingly, the man who once tag-teamed with Ted Kennedy to vilely <a href="https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/america-freer-with-bork-on-supreme-court/" data-reader-unique-id="51">savage Robert Bork’s</a> judicial career is almost assuredly now too “moderate” for the batcrap crazy hard Left.</blockquote>

Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearing

Justice Clarence Thomas Blasts Joe Biden In Soon-To-Be Released Documentary

Fox News

Joe Biden

U.S. Senate

In a soon-to-be-aired documentary centered around U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his circus-like confirmation process, the conservative justice reportedly rips into the the &#8220;modern-day liberal&#8221; and suggests that the Left has been more of an impediment to him over his career than even the Ku Klux Klan.
&#8220;I felt as though, in my life, I had been looking at the wrong people as the people who would be problematic toward me,&#8221; Thomas reportedly says in the documentary, according to <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/justice-clarence-thomas-rebukes-biden-led-confirmation-hearings/story?id=67235780" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ABC News.</a> &#8220;We were told that, &#8216;Oh, it&#8217;s gonna be the bigot in the pickup truck; it&#8217;s gonna be the Klansmen; it&#8217;s gonna be the rural sheriff.'&#8221;
&#8220;But it turned out that through all of that, ultimately the biggest impediment was the modern-day liberal,&#8221; the justice continued. &#8220;They were the ones who would discount all those things because they have one issue or because they have the power to caricature you.&#8221;
The documentary, titled, &#8220;Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,&#8221; is set to air on PBS in 2020, according to <a href="https://www.manifoldproductions.com/aboutus.html">Manifold Productions</a>, an independent film and television production company.
&#8220;Although Clarence Thomas remains a controversial figure, loved by some, reviled by others, few know much more than a few headlines and the recollections of his contentious confirmation battle with Anita Hill,&#8221; the production company describes the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCmfX4hQwZw">documentary</a>. &#8220;With unprecedented access, the producers interviewed Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Virginia, for over 30 hours of interview time, over many months. Justice Thomas tells his entire life’s story, looking directly at the camera, speaking frankly to the audience.&#8221;
&#8220;Unscripted and without narration, the documentary takes the viewer through this complex and often painful life, dealing with race, faith, power, jurisprudence, and personal resilience,&#8221; Manifold Productions adds.
The trailer for the documentary was first released at the end of October, though it&#8217;s received new life since ABC News&#8217; scoop on Justice Thomas&#8217; harsh words about the &#8220;modern-day liberal.&#8221;
In the trailer, Thomas claims he was targeted by the Left because he dared to think in a way a black man was not expected or allowed to.
&#8220;I mean, come on, we know what this is all about,&#8221; he says at the end of the trailer. &#8220;This is the wrong black guy; he has to be destroyed.&#8221;
Thomas, who was nominated for the Supreme Court in 1991 by then-President George H. W. Bush, underwent a rocky confirmation process after he was accused of dubious acts of sexual misconduct by Anita Hill.
“Senator, I would like to start by saying unequivocally, uncategorically, that I deny each and every single allegation against me today that suggested in any way that I had conversations of a sexual nature or about pornographic material with Anita Hill, that I ever attempted to date her, that I ever had any personal sexual interest in her, or that I in any way ever harassed her,” Thomas said before the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 11, 1991, according to <a href="https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/clarencethomashightechlynching.htm">American Rhetoric</a>.
Thomas went on call the hearings a &#8220;circus,&#8221; a &#8220;national disgrace,&#8221; and most memorably, &#8220;a high-tech lynching.&#8221;
“This is not a closed room,” he said. “There was an FBI investigation. This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace.”
“And from my standpoint as a black American, as far as I’m concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you,” Thomas declared. “You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. — U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.”
WATCH:
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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

WATCH: Trailer For New Clarence Thomas Documentary Drops; Justice Says Liberals Worse Than The Klan

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

On Friday, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer — a Federalist Society <a href="https://fedsoc.org/contributors/josh-hammer">speaker</a>, frequent <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-draw-right-lessons-kavanaughs-bad-start-no-josh-hammer">commentator</a> on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-kavanaugh-and-gorsuch-have-issues-john-josh-hammer">legal</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-conservatives-how-much-longer-are-you-josh-hammer">issues</a>, and a <a href="https://firstliberty.org/team/josh-hammer/">constitutional attorney</a> by training — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHhrDLqyWpY">joined</a> &#8220;The Conservative Review with <a href="https://twitter.com/rmconservative">Daniel Horowitz</a>&#8221; podcast for a wide-ranging conversation about a whole host of legal and judicial issues. The duo discussed the current <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-supreme-court-term-begins-today-here-is-what-conservatives-should-look-for">U.S. Supreme Court term</a>, the merits and flaws of the Court&#8217;s current &#8220;conservative&#8221; members, what to expect from the Court&#8217;s attention-grabbing cases this term, the strategic and visionary short-sightedness of many on the legal Right, the lay of the land of the modern &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-judicial-crisis-networks-open-attack-sen-josh-hammer">conservative legal movement</a>,&#8221; and the ultimate problem of reclaiming the Constitution from our culture of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-it-past-time-trump-openly-defy-court-order-josh-hammer">judicial supremacy</a>. The lattermost, judicial supremacy, is a topic on which Hammer has <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1151536557079375877">announced</a> he will have a piece of legal scholarship published this spring.
After Horowitz initially set the table for discussion, Hammer began the extensive chat by discussing why, on a first-principles level, the American people and the legal profession alike have lost a proper conception of what &#8220;the judicial power&#8221; in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii">Article III</a> of the U.S. Constitution actually means — including the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-pence-promises-challenge-nationwide-josh-hammer">extent and scope of the judicial branch&#8217;s binding</a> (or lack thereof) authority:
<blockquote>What we&#8217;re lacking on the broader 35,000-foot altitude level &#8230; is that we don&#8217;t understand what &#8220;the judicial power&#8221; and the Vesting Clause of Article III actually means. And contrary to to the judicial supremacists — contrary to the people who will elevate the 1958 judicial atrocity of <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/the-one-court-precedent-that-matters-in-the-scotus-debate/">Cooper v. Aaron</a>, which established judicial supremacy to the highest paean of the judicial totem pole — [what they say about judicial power] is actually a direct contravention of the expressed text of Chief Justice Marshall&#8217;s famous decree in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/5/137">Marbury v. Madison</a> itself. &#8230;
In Marbury, Chief Justice Marshall famously says: &#8220;[I]t is emphatically the province of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.&#8221; That&#8217;s what everyone always quotes, but what they never quote, Daniel, is literally the very next sentence after that, where Marshall also says: [&#8220;Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret the rule.&#8221;] &#8230;
[T]he crux of &#8220;the judicial power&#8221; &#8230; applies obviously to the parties in the suit [but] it goes no further whatsoever. &#8230; This ultimately gets you to Abraham Lincoln, who obviously <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/02/lincoln-on-judicial-despotism">defied the Court</a> in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/20/lincoln-versus-judicial-supremacy/">Dred Scott</a> and all of that. So on a broader level, we as a society are &#8230; completely missing the scope of judicial power in this country and the legal academy, the legal profession — as someone who went to a top law school, I can tell you it is generally inculcated in the rising generation of law students this erroneous belief that is the basic nature of the binding authority of the courts. It&#8217;s very tragic.</blockquote>
Later in the dialogue, Horowitz and Hammer discussed and previewed the current Supreme Court term, discussed the problems in the juridical approaches of each of Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Neil Gorsuch, and explained why Justice Clarence Thomas — the purest originalist on the Court — is a unique and irreplaceable figure. They explained why the federal judiciary will always be a losing &#8220;one-way ratchet&#8221; for conservatives unless and until the &#8220;legal conservative movement&#8221; awakens, en masse, to the danger of subscribing to the judicial supremacist paradigm.
WATCH:
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CR podcast screenshot 10.11.19

WATCH: Hammer On ‘The Conservative Review’ Podcast: Everything You Need To Know For The Supreme Court Term

Brett Kavanaugh

John Roberts

Neil Gorsuch

America&#8217;s reigning conservative Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, issued a blistering attack against &#8220;erroneous precedent&#8221; and the adherence to the legal principle of stare decisis in a decision on Monday as an obvious veiled attack against 1973&#8217;s Roe v. Wade, which enshrined abortion as a constitutional right.
Though the 7-2 <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-646_d18e.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">concurring opinion</a> on Monday had no relation to the issue of abortion (it focused on double-jeopardy), Clarence Thomas used the court&#8217;s deference for precedent in that case to attack &#8220;demonstrably erroneous decisions&#8221; the courts had made in the past. According to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/clarence-thomas-calls-for-abandoning-demonstrably-erroneous-precedent-touching-off-intense-roe-v-wade-speculation">Fox News</a>, experts have largely seen the justice&#8217;s blistering comments as laying the groundwork to overturn Roe v. Wade.
&#8220;When faced with a demonstrably erroneous precedent, my rule is simple: We should not follow it,&#8221; Thomas wrote, adding that precedent &#8220;may remain relevant when it is not demonstrably erroneous.&#8221;
&#8220;The Constitution tasks the political branches&#8212;not the Judiciary&#8212;with systematically developing the laws that govern our society,&#8221; Thomas continued. &#8220;The Court&#8217;s role, by contrast, is to exercise the &#8216;Judicial Power,&#8217; faithfully interpreting the Constitution and the laws enacted by those branches.&#8221;
The decision on Monday &#8212; Gamble v. United States &#8212; determined if it would not be in violation of double-jeopardy if individuals were tried by the state and federal government for the same crime. Thomas sided with the majority while Gorsuch sided with Justice Ginsburg. Much of the decision hinged on decades-long precedent that Thomas did not find &#8220;erroneous.&#8221; On the issue of stare decisis, Thomas noted that the courts tend to invoke that principle with such strong fervency only in the cases when precedent seems &#8220;least defensible.&#8221;
&#8220;As I see it, we would eliminate a significant amount of uncertainty and provide the very stability sought if we replaced our malleable balancing test with a clear, principled rule grounded in the meaning of the text,&#8221; Thomas said. &#8220;The true irony of our modern stare decisis doctrine lies in the fact that proponents of stare decisis tend to invoke it most fervently when the precedent at issue is least defensible.&#8221;
&#8220;In my view, if the Court encounters a decision that is demonstrably erroneous&#8212;i.e., one that is not a permissible interpretation of the text&#8212;the Court should correct the error, regardless of whether other factors support overruling the precedent,&#8221; the justice concluded. &#8220;A demonstrably incorrect judicial decision &#8230; is tantamount to making law, and adhering to it both disregards the supremacy of the Constitution and perpetuates a usurpation of the legislative power.&#8221;
Several legal experts have been attacking Justice Thomas for writing these words, saying he has laid a dangerous intellectual and legal groundwork for courts to uphold blatant attacks on Roe v. Wade, such as the laws passed in Alabama and Georgia. Kristen Clarke, the President and Executive Director of the Lawyers&#8217; Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told Fox News that the justice&#8217;s timing to issue such comments arouses suspicion.
&#8220;One can&#8217;t ignore the timing of Justice Thomas&#8217;s concurring opinion which comes at a moment when we are seeing a coordinated and relentless attack on Roe v. Wade across the country,&#8221; Clarke told the outlet. &#8220;The laws that have been adopted in several states violate the Court&#8217;s settled precedent in Roe. In his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas has made clear his willingness to reject precedents that he personally deems incorrect, a position that unnecessarily politicizes the Court.
&#8220;Justice Thomas&#8217;s view is fundamentally at odds with the way in which the Supreme Court has generally operated,&#8221; Clarke continued. &#8220;It is a view that threatens to further undermine the integrity of the Court and weaken the stability of the institution.&#8221;
Neal Katyal, a Georgetown Law professor and former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, said that settled precedents could theoretically be attacked based on Justice Thomas&#8217; words. &#8220;Justice Thomas is essentially laying the intellectual groundwork for a massive revisiting of settled precedents,&#8221; Katyal wrote. &#8220;This can prove to be very, very dangerous.&#8221;

Justice Clarence Thomas Attacks ‘Erroneous’ Precedent, Hinting At ‘Roe v. Wade’

One would be hard-pressed to utilize adjectival alarmism that could sufficiently describe the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48075/full-crisis-cbp-records-yet-another-new-monthly-josh-hammer">outright national crisis</a> that is currently transpiring at our inundated southern border. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, over 144,000 aliens were apprehended between ports of entry or deemed admissible at points of entry in the month of May alone &#8212; thus representing a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48075/full-crisis-cbp-records-yet-another-new-monthly-josh-hammer">32% month-over-month increase</a> from the already-record-shattering April monthly tally. Looking solely at apprehensions between points of entry, May&#8217;s total of 132,887 was more than double the number of apprehensions from just February &#8212; the month when Trump declared the situation at the border so dire that he declared a national emergency to help allocate funding to construct a wall and begin the slow process of ameliorating the influx.
<a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/unprecedented-uncharted-largest-border-surge-border-patrol-history/">Uncharted</a>. Unprecedented. Unsustainable. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44291/data-suggest-no-relationship-between-central-josh-hammer">Bonkers</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/NickMiroff/status/1136331236593586176">Full-on emergency</a>. <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-releases-march-statistics-southwest-border-migration">System-wide emergency</a>. One can insert any phrase of choice, but no phrase can truly account for the magnitude of the current problem. <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/shock-over-1-of-guatemala-honduras-entered-us-since-september">Over 1%</a> of the entire nation of Guatemala has entered &#8212; legally or (usually) illegally &#8212; the U.S. since September and, even more amazingly, <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/a-third-of-guatemalans-plan-to-immigrate-to-the-us">one-third of the entire impoverished nation</a> plans to immigrate to the U.S. at some point in the future! Along with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46457/amidst-unprecedented-border-crisis-united-nations-josh-hammer">unvetted bogus asylees</a> coming from fellow &#8220;Northern Triangle&#8221; nations El Salvador and Honduras, the summation of this mass migrant influx is social transformation without republican representation that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46609/report-smugglers-and-cartels-profited-23-billion-josh-hammer">massively enriches</a> Mexican transnational cartel syndicates and leads to exacerbated <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/huge-sophisticated-operation-mexican-cartel-meth-lab-busted-atlanta-suburb/">narcotic</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47735/ice-tears-washington-state-enacting-sanctuary-city-josh-hammer">crime</a> epidemics in our nation&#8217;s interior.
Ideally, the Department of Homeland Security would begin by immediately acting to finish the job on its <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46601/hammer-why-did-dhs-abort-its-re-writing-infamous-josh-hammer">(inexplicably) aborted re-writing</a> of the erroneous, sovereignty-infringing Flores consent decree that dominated so much of the immigration-related 2018 media cycle. But the reality is also that President Donald Trump has many unilateral, statutorily delegated, and/or constitutionally inherent powers at his disposal to quell, contain, and ultimately stop this influx. As Ryan Girdusky recently tweeted, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182">8 U.S.C. § 1182(f)</a> tops the list:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
There&#8217;s a long list of existing statute that gives <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a> to power to fix this problem on his own: 
8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) 
8 U.S.C. § 1222(a) 
8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(1)(A)(i) and (b)(1)(B)(iii)(IV) 
18 U.S.C. § 1001 
8 U.S.C. § 1158(a)(2)(C) <a href="https://t.co/nTHwmGFBXc">https://t.co/nTHwmGFBXc</a>
&#8212; Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) <a href="https://twitter.com/RyanGirdusky/status/1130891759393943554?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 21, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
If properly enforced, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) could <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/we-can-keep-the-ports-open-to-commerce-secure-our-borders-and-eat-our-avocados-too/">single-handedly eliminate</a> this Central American-originated, Mexican cartel-orchestrated, <a href="https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/09/where-is-metoo-for-women-at-the-border/">harrowingly physically dangerous</a> assault on our nation&#8217;s collective sovereignty. Here is the relevant statutory text (emphasis added):
<blockquote>
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
</blockquote>
It does not take a lawyer to read 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) and conclude that it is a wildly deferential statutory enactment. Indeed, pursuant to the text, the president can &#8220;suspend the entry of &#8230; any class of aliens&#8221; by mere &#8220;proclamation&#8221; if he deems the entry of those aliens to be &#8220;detrimental to the interests of the United States&#8221; (itself a non-justiciable legal standard that is necessarily solely within the ambit and discretionary judgment of the president). Congress could not have possibly made its deference to the president more emphatic. Indeed, in the &#8220;travel ban&#8221; U.S. Supreme Court case last term of <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-965_h315.pdf">Trump v. Hawaii</a>, Chief Justice John Roberts <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46068/hammer-yes-united-states-was-right-deny-entry-bds-josh-hammer">said</a> that § 1182(f) &#8220;exudes deference to the President in every clause.&#8221; Justice Clarence Thomas, furthermore, noted in a Hawaii concurrence that &#8220;Section 1182(f) does not set forth any judicially enforceable limits that constrain the President. &#8230; Nor could it, since the President has inherent authority to exclude aliens from the country.&#8221;
That inherent constitutional power on the part of the president referenced by Justice Thomas, furthermore, has long had a firm and indelible place throughout Supreme Court case law. In 1892&#8217;s <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/142/651">Nishimura Ekiu v. United States</a>, Justice Horace Gray summarized well the plenary power doctrine of the political branches over immigration policy when he opined: &#8220;It is not within the province of the judiciary to order that foreigners who have never been naturalized, nor acquired any domicile or residence within the United States, nor even been admitted into the country pursuant to law, shall be permitted to enter, in opposition to the constitutional and lawful measures of the legislative and executive branches of the national government&#8221; (emphasis added). Furthermore, in 1950&#8217;s <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/338/537">Knauff v. Shaughnessy</a>, Justice Sherman Minton observed: &#8220;The exclusion of aliens is a fundamental act of sovereignty. The right to do so stems not alone from legislative power but is inherent in the executive power to control the foreign affairs of the nation&#8221; (emphasis added). Justice Antonin Scalia echoed this sentiment in his epic dissent in 2012&#8217;s <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/11-182">Arizona v. United States</a>, wherein he properly described &#8220;the power to exclude from the sovereign&#8217;s territory people who have no right to be there&#8221; as &#8220;the defining characteristic of sovereignty.&#8221;
Mr. President, you have abundant power to stop this migrant influx on your own. All it takes is the proper unilateral invocation of 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) and the issuance of a far-reaching proclamation pursuant thereto. You should not waste a minute&#8217;s more time.

HAMMER: Trump Has The Unilateral Power To Stop This Migrant Influx. He Just Needs To Act.

Illegal Immigration

Immigration

Mexico

Southern Border

Trump Administration

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

On Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas denied rumors that he is planning to retire soon.
In an interview with financier and philanthropist David Rubenstein for a series of lectures sponsored by the Supreme Court Historical Society, Thomas said he had &#8220;no idea where this stuff comes from,&#8221; reported <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/us/politics/clarence-thomas-retirement-from-supreme-court.html">The New York Times</a>.&#8203;
&#8220;I really don&#8217;t have a lot of stress,&#8221; Justice Thomas joked. &#8220;I cause stress.&#8221;
Having joined the Court in 1991, Thomas is its longest-serving current member.
During the rest of the interview, Thomas reportedly reflected on his clerks, his frustrations with his fellow justices, and his original goal to become a Roman Catholic priest before dropping out of seminary. 
&#8220;I got angry with the Catholic Church over the issue of race,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I thought that the Church should be the leader of the moral crusade against segregation and discrimination.&#8221;
Thomas also discussed his frustration with identity politics, as a black conservative. 
&#8220;People who will get very upset if someone said all blacks look alike are really comfortable saying all blacks ought to think alike,&#8221; Thomas reportedly said.
&#8220;If you said that blacks should not be allowed to go a library, you&#8217;d be against that,&#8221; he said. &#8220;If you said that blacks couldn&#8217;t read certain books in the library, you would say that&#8217;s wrong.&#8221;
&#8220;But now we are so comfortable saying that blacks can&#8217;t hold some of the ideas in some of the books in the library,&#8221; Thomas added. &#8220;That&#8217;s absurd.&#8221;
Last week, Thomas warned about abortion being used as a tool for racists and eugenicists.
On the subject of a feisty Thomas concurrence in the Court&#8217;s case about an Indiana law which restricts abortion and requires aborted babies to be either cremated or buried, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47755/justice-clarence-thomas-abortion-could-become-tool-emily-zanotti">reported</a>:&#8203;
<blockquote>
Thomas agreed with the Court&#8217;s 7-2 ruling that Indiana was free to require medical facilities to provide a dignified burial or cremation for children aborted under their watch, but dissented from the Supreme Court&#8217;s decision not to rule on the part of the Indiana law that banned abortions done on the basis of gender, race, or disability.
Thomas cautioned that if the Court side-stepped the issue permanently, it could open the door for abortion to be used as a tool of racists and eugenicists, in line with the wishes of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and other early, prominent abortion activists.
Thomas agreed that &#8220;because further percolation may assist our review of this issue of first impression,&#8221; the Court was smart to pass on ruling on the Indiana law, <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/445744-thomas-cites-eugenics-says-supreme-court-will-have-to-address?__twitter_impression=true">The Hill reports</a>, but the Court can&#8217;t ignore the issue forever.&#8203;
&#8220;Given the potential for abortion to become a tool of eugenic manipulation, the court will soon need to confront the constitutionality of laws like Indiana&#8217;s,&#8221; Thomas wrote. &#8220;So long as the Supreme Court forces a policy of unfettered elective abortion on the entire country, it ought to at least allow for states to protect babies from unjust discrimination.&#8221;
&#8220;Although the court declines to wade into these issues today, we cannot avoid them forever. Having created the constitutional right to an abortion, this court is dutybound to address its scope,&#8221; he added.
The Indiana law is targeted largely at preventing the selective abortion of babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome, but it is based on model law that could move forward in more than just a single state.
</blockquote>

Clarence Thomas Mocks Retirement Rumors: ‘I Don’t Have A Lot Of Stress, I Cause Stress.’

Catholicism

Indiana

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas issued a stinging concurrence Tuesday, in the case of a comprehensive Indiana law greatly restricting the reasons a woman can obtain an abortion and requiring that all aborted babies be either cremated or buried.
Thomas agreed with the Court&#8217;s 7-2 ruling that Indiana was free to require medical facilities to provide a dignified burial or cremation for children aborted under their watch, but dissented from the Supreme Court&#8217;s decision not to rule on the part of the Indiana law that banned abortions done on the basis of gender, race, or disability.
Thomas cautioned that if the Court side-stepped the issue permanently, it could open the door for abortion to be used as a tool of racists and eugenicists, in line with the wishes of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and other early, prominent abortion activists.
Thomas agreed that &#8220;because further percolation may assist our review of this issue of first impression,&#8221; the Court was smart to pass on ruling on the Indiana law, <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/445744-thomas-cites-eugenics-says-supreme-court-will-have-to-address?__twitter_impression=true">The Hill reports</a>, but the Court can&#8217;t ignore the issue forever.
&#8220;Given the potential for abortion to become a tool of eugenic manipulation, the court will soon need to confront the constitutionality of laws like Indiana&#8217;s,&#8221; Thomas wrote. &#8220;So long as the Supreme Court forces a policy of unfettered elective abortion on the entire country, it ought to at least allow for states to protect babies from unjust discrimination.&#8221;
&#8220;Although the court declines to wade into these issues today, we cannot avoid them forever. Having created the constitutional right to an abortion, this court is dutybound to address its scope,&#8221; he added.
The Indiana law is targeted largely at preventing the selective abortion of babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome, but it is based on model law that could move forward in more than just a single state.
&#8220;Indiana does not allow a fetus to be aborted solely because of the fetus&#8217;s race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, or diagnosis or potential diagnosis of the fetus having Down syndrome or any other disability,&#8221; the law reads.
Babies diagnosed with Down syndrome already face a staggering 60% &#8211; 80% abortion rate, based on a study from Planned Parenthood&#8217;s former statistics arm, the Guttmacher Institute. In some European countries, Down syndrome has been all but &#8220;eradicated,&#8221; not through cures, but through selective abortion.
Unborn girls are also at risk of sex-selective abortion. In countries like China and India, early gender detection has led to the widespread practice of aborting female fetuses, leaving both countries with heavily lopsided demographics. The <a href="https://www.unfpa.org/gender-biased-sex-selection">UNFPA believes that as many as 160 million girls</a> are &#8220;missing&#8221; because of sex-selective abortion and population control programs abroad.
Thomas referenced genetic screening in his concurrence, noting that a baby&#8217;s gender can be determined by an elective blood test given between 7 and 10 weeks, and that disabilities like Down syndrome can be detected before the end of the first trimester. Pairing these tools with unfettered abortion access paves the way for &#8220;modern-day eugenics,&#8221; Thomas says, and states should have the right to protect unborn children from such abject discrimination.
&#8220;So long as the Supreme Court forces a policy of unfettered elective abortion on the entire country, it ought to at least allow for states to protect babies from unjust discrimination,&#8221; Thomas wrote.
Such practices aren&#8217;t foreign even to the nation&#8217;s foremost abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. As <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/28/justice-clarence-thomas-blasts-abortion-tool-racist-eugenicists/">The Federalist points out</a>, Margaret Sanger, the group&#8217;s founder, was an avid fan of eugenics &#8212; and particularly birth control and abortion programs that directly affected minority communities.
Such discrimination runs counter to America&#8217;s constitutional guarantees of civil rights, Thomas said.
&#8220;Enshrining a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;In other contexts, the Court has been zealous in vindicating the rights of people even potentially subjected to race, sex, and disability discrimination.&#8221;

Justice Clarence Thomas: Abortion Could Become A Tool Of Racists, Eugenicists

Planned Parenthood

In 2016, then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence <a href="https://rewire.news/article/2019/01/09/supreme-court-weighs-indiana-law-requiring-fetal-burial-after-miscarriages/">signed into law</a> an omnibus pro-life bill that had two particularly noteworthy provisions. First, the law required that unborn children who die via miscarriage or abortion be either cremated or buried &#8212; and not incinerated along with other medical byproducts. Second, as <a href="https://rewire.news/article/2019/01/09/supreme-court-weighs-indiana-law-requiring-fetal-burial-after-miscarriages/">described</a> by Rewire News, the Indiana law banned &#8220;someone from obtaining a pre-viability abortion if [the] decision [to abort] is based on the race or sex of the fetus or concerns that the fetus has a diagnosis or &#8216;potential diagnosis&#8217; of Down syndrome or &#8216;any other disability.'&#8221;
Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which has appellate jurisdiction over Indiana, <a href="https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20180419/news/304199802/">upheld the ruling of a lower district court judge</a> that halted enforcement of the provisions for alleged unconstitutionality. Notably, the Seventh Circuit panel included a <a href="http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&amp;Path=Y2018/D04-19/C:17-3163:J:Bauer:aut:T:fnOp:N:2142678:S:0">stinging rebuke</a> from a dissenting Judge Daniel Manion, who objected that the Indiana law&#8217;s fetal remains provision ought to be easily upheld under federal courts&#8217; highly deferential &#8220;rational basis&#8221; standard of review. &#8220;Under traditional rational basis review, if state action doesn&#8217;t infringe upon a fundamental right or affect a protected class, we will uphold it so long as it is rationally related to a legitimate state interest,&#8221; Manion wrote. &#8220;The fetal remains provision easily satisfies that extremely deferential standard.&#8221;
On Tuesday, in an unsigned Per Curiam opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court vindicated Judge Manion and <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/052819zor_2dq3.pdf">reinstated</a> Indiana&#8217;s fetal remains disposal law. Notably, seven justices of the Court signed onto the reinstatement &#8212; with only far-left Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor refusing to join.
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Note that Justice Kagan (and Breyer) apparently join the Court in upholding the IN fetal remains law. 7-2 (Ginsburg and Sotomayor). <a href="https://t.co/1RPR8TNHgS">https://t.co/1RPR8TNHgS</a>
&#8212; Casey Mattox (@CaseyMattox_) <a href="https://twitter.com/CaseyMattox_/status/1133372787966582786?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The Per Curiam majority clarified that the fetal remains disposal law did not implicate the &#8220;undue burden&#8221; constitutional standard fabricated in the Court&#8217;s landmark 1992 case of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, but instead relied solely on &#8220;rational basis&#8221; review.
The Court also upheld the Seventh Circuit&#8217;s invalidation of Indiana&#8217;s race/sex/&#8221;abnormality&#8221;-selective abortion ban &#8212; a ban that the Seventh Circuit&#8217;s prominent Judge Frank Easterbook previously <a href="http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&amp;Path=Y2018/D06-25/C:17-3163:J:PerCuriam:aut:T:npDp:N:2176287:S:0">described</a> as a &#8220;eugenics statute.&#8221; As Easterbrook powerfully <a href="http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&amp;Path=Y2018/D06-25/C:17-3163:J:PerCuriam:aut:T:npDp:N:2176287:S:0">opined</a> last June in dissenting from the Seventh Circuit&#8217;s decision not to rehear the case in front of the full court, &#8220;None of the [Supreme] Court&#8217;s abortion decisions holds that states are powerless to prevent abortions designed to choose the sex, race, and other attributes of children.&#8221;
Today, in a lengthy concurrence that will surely be discussed in abortion litigation for years to come, originalist stalwart Justice Clarence Thomas took pains to outline the history of the 20th-century eugenics movement in America and to connect it to the Indiana law at issue. Here were some <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/052819zor_2dq3.pdf">highlights</a>:
<blockquote>
The use of abortion to achieve eugenic goals is not merely hypothetical. The foundations for legalizing abortion in America were laid during the early 20th-century birth-control movement. That movement developed alongside the American eugenics movement. And significantly, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger recognized the eugenic potential of her cause. She emphasized and embraced the notion that birth control &#8220;opens the way to the eugenist.&#8221; &#8230;
Whereas Sanger believed that birth control could prevent &#8220;unfit&#8221; people from reproducing, abortion can prevent them from being born in the first place. Many eugenicists therefore supported legalizing abortion, and abortion advocates &#8212; including future Planned Parenthood President Alan Guttmacher &#8212; endorsed the use of abortion for eugenic reasons. Technological advances have only heightened the eugenic potential for abortion &#8230;
Abortion advocates were sometimes candid about abortion&#8217;s eugenic possibilities. In 1959, for example, Guttmacher explicitly endorsed eugenic reasons for abortion. &#8230;
Judge Easterbrook was correct. Whatever else might be said about Casey, it did not decide whether the Constitution requires States to allow eugenic abortions. &#8230;
Enshrining a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement.
</blockquote>

Pro-Life Victory: SCOTUS Reinstates Indiana’s Fetal Remains Disposal Law

Fetus

Mike Pence

Dr. Jill Biden, wife of former vice president-turned-2020 presidential candiate Joe Biden, wants the Democrats to &#8220;move on&#8221; from her husband&#8217;s role in Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas&#8217; 1991 confirmation hearing, and his handling of sexual harassment claims made against Thomas by law professor Anita Hill.
<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/05/07/720696969/jill-biden-says-it-s-time-to-move-on-from-anita-hill-controversy">In an interview with NPR</a>, Dr. Biden expressed a view very much at odds with mainstream Democrats, who are more concerned now than ever about sexual mores and ethics, in an apparent attempt to deflect criticism from her husband, who Democrats now say did not do enough to ensure Hill was heard and respected.
&#8220;I watched the hearings like most other Americans, and so I mean Joe said, as I did, we believed Anita Hill. He voted against Clarence Thomas,&#8221; Dr. Biden told NPR host Rachel Martin. &#8220;And as he has said, I mean he&#8217;s called Anita Hill, they&#8217;ve talked, they&#8217;ve spoken, and he said, you know, he feels badly. He apologized for the way the hearings were run. And so now it&#8217;s kind of &#8212; it&#8217;s time to move on.&#8221;
Martin followed up by asking Dr. Biden why her husband waited until right before he launched a presidential campaign to call Hill and apologize &#8212; something Joe Biden admitted to on ABC&#8217;s &#8220;The View.&#8221;
&#8220;Well, I guess it was just not the right time maybe,&#8221; Dr. Biden replied. &#8220;So, he wanted to call her. I think he didn&#8217;t know whether she would take his call, and he was so happy that he she did take his call, and they spoke. And I think he was, you know, I think they came to an agreement.&#8221;
Joe Biden called Anita Hill sometime in early April as he was preparing his entry into the 2020 Democratic primary. Biden claims that he &#8220;expressed regret&#8221; for the way Hill was treated by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Hill told The New York Times, in response, that she &#8220;declined to characterize his words to her as an apology&#8221; and urged female voters not to support Biden&#8217;s run.
Hill&#8217;s relationship with Joe Biden is likely to come up again and again across his campaign, and Biden clearly plans to be asked why he, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, didn&#8217;t stop Republican members from asking Hill personal questions and probing into why Hill didn&#8217;t report Thomas&#8217; &#8220;suggestive&#8221; and &#8220;harassing&#8221; behavior to human resources at the time, and whether Hill had fabricated her story from whole cloth after being turned down by Thomas for a romantic relationship.
But Biden isn&#8217;t just under fire for what Republicans did; Democrats seem to believe that Biden abrogated his duty to protect Hill when he joined in questioning her. When Biden appeared on The View, host Joy Behar prodded him to apologize to Hill, to which Biden responded, &#8220;If you go back and look at what I said and didn&#8217;t say, I don&#8217;t think I treated her badly.&#8221;
Dr. Jill Biden also brushed aside questions of Biden&#8217;s personal behavior and whether his habit of being overly &#8220;affectionate&#8221; towards women should factor in to an assessment of his fitness to hold office.
&#8220;He connects with people. And I think that&#8217;s one of his strengths. And he heard [Lucy Flores] loud and clear, and he said he would take responsibility and he would you know honor people&#8217;s space,&#8221; she said, adding that Joe Biden&#8217;s whole family is strangely affectionate. &#8220;And now these are different times. Joe realizes these are different times. And believe me &#8212; he&#8217;s very conscious of, you know, how he interacts with men and women today.&#8221;
The same critics aren&#8217;t likely to be happy with Dr. Jill Biden telling them to &#8220;move on,&#8221; especially those who would prefer Biden lose the 2020 primary to someone further left.

Dr. Jill Biden: Perhaps It’s ‘Time To Move On’ From The Anita Hill Controversy

Jill Biden

Sexual Harassment

The first segment of former Vice President Joe Biden&#8217;s 2020 presidential campaign has escalated into an apology tour rather quickly. Now, having ducked the #MeToo allegations of inappropriate touching, he is now courting feminists by taking full responsibility for the alleged injustice that happened upon Anita Hill at the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Appearing on ABC&#8217;s &#8220;Good Morning America&#8221; alongside his wife, Jill, Joe Biden said that he believed Anita Hill&#8217;s allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas &#8220;from the very beginning&#8221; but ultimately failed to give her justice.
&#8220;I was chairman of the committee,&#8221; Biden said, as reported by <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-anita-hill-hearing_n_5cc82dcbe4b02791823ecdf8">HuffPost</a>. &#8220;I believed her from the very beginning. But I was chairman. She did not get a fair hearing. She did not get treated well. That&#8217;s my responsibility. As the committee chairman, I take responsibility that she did not get treated well. I take responsibility for that.&#8221;
Back in 1991, on the eve of Clarence Thomas&#8217; confirmation to the Supreme Court, Anita Hill alleged he had sexually harassed her several times while under his employment in the 1980s. Her credibility did not survive scrutiny when evidence revealed she followed him from job to job, along with phone records showing she had called him multiple times. Speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Clarence Thomas denied all accusations against him and famously referred to them as a &#8220;high-tech lynching.&#8221; In the end, Clarence Thomas went on to become the second black man to serve on the Supreme Court. Feminists have criticized Joe Biden for not allowing other women to testify in Hill&#8217;s favor.
According to The New York Times, the former vice president <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46441/biden-calls-anita-hill-express-his-regret-nyt-it-james-barrett">called Anita Hill several weeks ago</a> to apologize for her 1991 treatment. The apology apparently did not go over well.
&#8220;In a lengthy telephone interview on Wednesday, [Hill] declined to characterize Mr. Biden&#8217;s words to her as an apology and said she was not convinced that he has taken full responsibility for his conduct at the hearings &#8212; and for the harm he caused other victims of sexual harassment and gender violence,&#8221; the Times reports.
&#8220;I cannot be satisfied by simply saying, &#8216;I&#8217;m sorry for what happened to you,'&#8221; Hill told the Times. &#8220;I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability and real purpose.&#8221;
Though Hill said that Biden&#8217;s actions in 1991 should not disqualify him for the 2020 ticket, she demanded that he apologize to the other women who were not allowed to testify at the time.
&#8220;The focus on apology to me is one thing,&#8221; she said to The New York Times. &#8220;But he needs to give an apology to the other women and to the American public because we know now how deeply disappointed Americans around the country were about what they saw. And not just women. There are women and men now who have just really lost confidence in our government to respond to the problem of gender violence.&#8221;
In the same interview on &#8220;Good Morning America,&#8221; Biden cited his record of staunch feminism to fend off attacks on how Anita Hill got treated. When asked if he would pledge to have a female running mate, he said he will have to wait and see. &#8220;It would be a government that would represent everyone,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Who that would be if I were fortunate enough to win, I haven&#8217;t made that decision.&#8221;
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EXCLUSIVE: Former VP <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JoeBiden</a> tells <a href="https://twitter.com/RobinRoberts?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RobinRoberts</a> he takes responsibility for Anita Hill&#8217;s treatment during Clarence Thomas&#8217;s confirmation hearing. <a href="https://t.co/ensTb4AANb">https://t.co/ensTb4AANb</a> <a href="https://t.co/dULbojA99i">pic.twitter.com/dULbojA99i</a>
&#8212; Good Morning America (@GMA) <a href="https://twitter.com/GMA/status/1123183697874698240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
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WATCH: Biden Takes ‘Responsibility’ For Anita Hill Not Being ‘Treated Well’

In an announcement that will elicit gigantic sighs of relief from conservatives across the nation, last weekend Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told attendees at a Pepperdine University School of Law dinner that he has no intention of retiring.
As <a href="https://freebeacon.com/issues/supreme-court-justice-clarence-thomas-squashes-retirement-rumors/">The Washington Free Beacon</a> reports, Thomas was asked which person he would want to speak at his retirement party 20 years from now. Thomas answered bluntly, &#8220;I&#8217;m not retiring.&#8221; As <a href="https://www.law360.com/california/articles/1142647/thomas-rejects-retirement-says-faith-enhances-his-oath">Law360.com</a> noted, the moderator, who was Professor James Allan Gash, Pepperdine&#8217;s incoming president, according to <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/02/clarence-thomas-retirement/">The Daily Caller</a>, pressed Thomas, altering the date of the party to 30 years from now, prompting Thomas, who will be 71 in June, to laugh and respond, &#8220;Nope.&#8221;
Rumors of Thomas&#8217; retirement have been rife in recent months; CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin speculated in The New Yorker magazine in February:
<blockquote>
The more complex drama involves Clarence Thomas, who is seventy years old and the longest-tenured Associate Justice on the Court. With fifty-three Republicans now in the Senate (and no filibusters allowed on Supreme Court nominations), President Trump would have a free hand in choosing a dream candidate for his conservative base if Thomas were to retire this year. The summer of 2019 would seem an ideal time to add a third younger conservative to the Court (along with Neil Gorsuch, who is fifty-one, and Brett Kavanaugh, who is fifty-four). It&#8217;s true that Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, would likely violate his Merrick Garland rule and try to push through a nominee in 2020, an election year, but 2019 would be much easier to navigate. So, many conservatives are asking, why shouldn&#8217;t Thomas leave now?
</blockquote>
Nine days later, CNN followed up with a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/22/politics/clarence-thomas-supreme-court/index.html">article </a>titled, &#8220;Is Clarence Thomas headed out or just getting started?&#8221; It huffed, &#8220;[Thomas&#8217;s remarks] even reignited a whispering campaign among progressives that the 70-year-old justice is preparing to retire. The thinking goes that he had launched the opinion&#8212;joined by no other justice&#8212;as a kind of last salvo as he prepared to relinquish his seat to a younger Trump nominee.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/ng-interactive/2018/jul/09/supreme-court-justice-trump-third-pick-possible">The Guardian</a> wrote last summer:
<blockquote>
Breyer and Ginsburg are both Democrat-nominated judges but there&#8217;s a small chance that we could see a retirement on the Republican-nominated side. Clarence Thomas, while relatively young at 70, has already served for 26 years, just one less than the average and four less than the recent retiree Kennedy. So it&#8217;s entirely reasonable that Thomas believes he&#8217;s served his time. If he decided this on Trump&#8217;s watch, the Republicans, while they wouldn&#8217;t gain a seat on the conservative side, would be able to lock another seat down with a younger judge.
</blockquote>
As far back as 2016, <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wife-of-clarence-thomas-dismisses-justices-retirement-talk-as-bogus">The Washington Examiner</a> wrote, &#8220;Justice Clarence Thomas, a reliable conservative vote on the Supreme Court, is mulling retirement after the presidential election, according to court watchers. Thomas, appointed by former President George H.W. Bush and approved by the Senate after a bitter confirmation, has been considering retirement for a while and never planned to stay until he died, they said. He likes to spend summers in his RV with his wife.&#8221;
Thomas&#8217; wife Ginni<a href="https://www.facebook.com/GinniLThomas/photos/a.649025938463595.1073741828.645562822143240/1217081578324692/?type=3&amp;theater"> responded</a>, &#8220;For all those who are contacting me about the possibility of my husband retiring, I say &#8212; unsubscribe from those false news sources and carry on with your busy lives. IT. IS. BOGUS!&#8221;

GREAT: Clarence Thomas: I’m Not Retiring

Speaking at the Biden Courage Awards in New York City, former Vice President Joe Biden harshly criticized &#8220;white man&#8217;s culture&#8221; as he recalled what he described as the refusal of white senators to believe Anita Hill&#8217;s vicious character assassination of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during the hearings to confirm Thomas to the Supreme Court. Predictably, he also used the hearings last fall for then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh as he made his attack.
Biden began:
<blockquote>
28 years ago I chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing, the first of its kind, the Clarence Thomas hearing, the appointment of a lifetime appointed to the Supreme Court, and a brave lawyer, a really notable woman, Anita Hill, professor, showed the courage of a lifetime talking about her experience being harassed by Clarence Thomas. We knew a lot less about the extent of harassment back then, over 30 years ago. But she paid a terrible price. She was abused through the hearing. She was taken advantage of. Her reputation was attacked.
</blockquote>
He moaned, &#8220;I wish I could have done something. I opposed Clarence Thomas nomination. I voted against him. But I also realized there was a real and perceived problem the committee faced.&#8221;
Biden then blamed the white senators on the Judiciary committee for their response to Hill, whose testimony has been thoroughly debunked <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/jill-abramson-smears-justice-thomas-again-part-2-anita-hill/">here</a>:
<blockquote>
They were a bunch of white guys. No, I mean it sincerely, a bunch of white guys hearing, hearing this testimony in the Senate Judiciary Committee. So when Anita Hill, when Anita Hill came to testify, she faced a committee that didn&#8217;t fully understand what the hell it was all about. To this day I regret I couldn&#8217;t come up with a way to get a kind of hearing she deserved, given the courage she showed by reaching out to us. The hearing she deserved was a hearing where she was respected, where the tone and the questioning was not hostile and insulting, where the fact that she stepped forward was recognized as an act of courage in and of itself. Because let&#8217;s face it, back in 1991 it took a lot of courage to take on a man who was so much a part of the establishment and the power structure.
</blockquote>
Biden then cited the Kavanaugh hearings as another example of a woman supposedly being ignored when she claimed sexual harassment.
He later cited English common law going back to the 1300s as a reason for senators allegedly ignoring women&#8217;s complaints:
<blockquote>
You all know what the phrase rule of thumb means? Where it&#8217;s derived from? In English common law, not codification or common law, back in the late 1300s, so many women were dying at the hands of her husbands because they were chattel, just like the cattle or the sheep, that the Court of Common Law decided they had to do something about the extent of the deaths. So, you know what they said? No man has a right to chastise his woman with a rod thicker than the circumference of his thumb. This is English jurisprudential culture, a white man&#8217;s culture. That&#8217;s got to change it&#8217;s got to change.
</blockquote>
Biden should be the last one to speak of morality when it comes to judicial appointments; his history includes his nefarious attack on the leading conservative jurist of his day, Judge Robert Bork, when Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan. As Bork wrote in his <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tempting-America-Political-Seduction-Law/dp/0029037611/ref=sr_1_1?crid=32JDFDB9XJ1OG&amp;keywords=the+tempting+of+america&amp;qid=1553705670&amp;s=gateway&amp;sprefix=The+tempting+of+%2Caps%2C193&amp;sr=8-1">classic book</a> &#8220;The Tempting of America&#8221;:
<blockquote>
The Biden Report, issued on September 2, stated that &#8220;Judge Bork&#8217;s extensive record shows that he has opposed virtually every major civil rights advance on which he has taken a position. . . . . &#8221; The Report also converted my remarks some sixteen years earlier about advocacy of law violation into opposition to civil rights &#8230; Here, as elsewhere, the Biden report so thoroughly misrepresented a plain record that it easily qualifies as world class in the category of scurrility.
</blockquote>
Video below:
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WATCH: Biden Rips ‘White Man’s Culture’ For Mistreatment Of Women

Then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) said during the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991 that FBI reports were useless because the &#8220;FBI explicitly does not, in this or any other case reach a conclusion, period.&#8221;
The clip has resurfaced as Senate Democrats are desperately trying to delay the confirmation vote for current Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after allegations of sexual misconduct were recently made from over 30 years ago &#8212; without evidence or corroborating witnesses.
&#8220;The reason why I have worked so hard to keep FBI reports totally secret is because they have little or no probative weight, because they are hearsay,&#8221; Biden said. &#8220;The FBI does their interviews by walking up to person A and saying will you speak to us, and the guarantee is anonymity. That is what the FBI tells the person, and the FBI speaks to the person. Now, for us to summarily go back and say, as a matter of policy, that we are going to break the commitment the Federal Government makes to an individual, in order to get that individual to cooperate in an investigation, is disastrous.&#8221;
&#8220;And the last thing I will point out, the next person who refers to an FBI report as being worth anything, obviously doesn&#8217;t understand anything,&#8221; Biden later said. &#8220;FBI explicitly does not, in this or any other case reach a conclusion, period, period. So, Judge, there is no reason why you should know this. The reason why we cannot rely on the FBI report, you would not like it if we did because it is inconclusive. They say he said, she said, and they said, period. So when people wave an FBI report before you, understand they do not, they do not reach conclusions. They do not make, as my friend points out more accurately, they do not make recommendations.&#8221;
&#8203;WATCH:
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Here’s What Biden Thought About Using An ‘FBI Report’ To Clear Clarence Thomas

Actress Mia Farrow, mother of Ronan Farrow &#8212; the journalist who published the flimsy second allegation of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh &#8212; is now calling on Justice Clarence Thomas to resign. 
Taking to Twitter on Sunday night, Mia Farrow said that the Kavanaugh situation proves that Justice Clarence Thomas should not sit on the Supreme Court because he escaped allegations several years ago. 
&#8220;And another thing is painfully clear all over again Clarence Thomas has no business on the Supreme Court. He should resign,&#8221; Mia Farrow wrote on Twitter just hours before her son published the second accusation of sexual assault. 
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And another thing is painfully clear all over again Clarence Thomas has no business on the Supreme Court. He should resign.
&#8212; Mia Farrow (@MiaFarrow) <a href="https://twitter.com/MiaFarrow/status/1043898061574074368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 23, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Farrow was, of course, referencing the #MeToo-style allegations made against Thomas in 1991 by Anita Hill, who claimed he sexually harassed her while she was under his employment in the 1980&#8217;s. Hill&#8217;s story, however, did not hold up to scrutiny; evidence revealed she followed him from job to job along with phone records showing she had called him multiple times. Speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Clarence Thomas denied all accusations against him and referred to them as a &#8220;high-tech lynching.&#8221; In the end, Clarence Thomas went on to become the second black man to serve on the Supreme Court.
As the accusations against Kavanaugh crumbled last week, Anita Hill made several media appearances demanding that the Senate postpone the vote on Kavanaugh.

Ronan Farrow’s Mom Mia Farrow: Clarence Thomas Should Resign

Ronan Farrow

Anita Hill, perennially painted as the &#8220;Rosa Parks of sexual harassment&#8221; by the national press, is back on the scene as the media push the unproven teenage-groping accusations against Brett Kavanaugh. The New York Times asked her to write an op-ed on how we can get these next Kavanaugh hearings &#8220;right.&#8221; The Boston Globe put Hill on the front page, lecturing about a better protocol in Congress for sexual harassment claims.
Asking Anita Hill how to get a fairer congressional hearing is like asking Janet Cooke how to get better newspaper reporting. If you&#8217;re too young for the analogy, Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer Prize for selling a fraudulent story in The Washington Post in 1980 about Jimmy, an imaginary 8-year-old heroin addict who &#8220;lives for a fix.&#8221;
On ABC, George Stephanopoulos sympathetically asked if the prospect of hearings for Kavanaugh&#8217;s accuser Christine Blasey Ford was meant as an intimidation tactic. Yes, that&#8217;s right &#8212; the same Stephanopoulos responsible for running &#8220;bimbos&#8221; into the political ditch for Bill Clinton.
Donald Trump could tweet it: Anita Hill&#8217;s 1991 accusations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas were &#8220;fake news.&#8221; The American people sided with Thomas. Even The Washington Post editorial board sided with Thomas. Her stories were never proven. But to this day, the media treat her as if her accusations were precious jewels of truth.
Even after her million-dollar book deal &#8212; after she pledged she would not cash in on her story &#8212; she is still portrayed as the victim, not the victimizer. Even after she dismissed President Clinton&#8217;s accusers in 1998 as unworthy in The New York Times and on &#8220;Meet the Press&#8221; &#8212; and that includes an alleged rape victim &#8212; she&#8217;s still the poster girl for &#8220;Believe Women.&#8221; Even after she donated $1,000 to ultraliberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2012, she&#8217;s still somehow nonpartisan, not a liberal Democrat.
News reports on Kavanaugh have routinely, shamelessly jumped from 1991 right to 2018, and skipped over the Clinton years. These Anita-boosting journalists still expected everyone to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, because unlike Trump, she somehow had a sterling record on sexual harassment and assault. Senate Democrats, especially the women righteously elected after the Hill-Thomas hearings to be the alleged guardians of women&#8217;s rights, were never there for Bill Clinton&#8217;s accusers. They were treated like they never existed, or as trailer-park women selling tabloid trash. Only St. Anita was worthy, and she got the standing ovations and the front-page tributes.
If you want to hear echoes of 1991 in the character assassination of Kavanaugh, try this one. Anita Hill gave the Senate the names of two supposedly corroborating witnesses who would back her sleazy tales of Thomas &#8212; Nancy Fitch and Allyson Duncan. Both disputed Hill&#8217;s allegations. Fitch actually testified for Thomas.
It&#8217;s happening again. The liberal media are very silent when Ford&#8217;s alleged corroborating witnesses are denying her accusation, siding with Kavanaugh, and suggesting she&#8217;s making it up.
Not one co-worker of both Hill and Thomas at the Department of Education or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission &#8212; and she followed her &#8220;harasser&#8221; from one agency to the other in the Reagan years &#8212; testified on her behalf.
But her feminist fictions have been made into glowing liberal TV movies by Showtime and HBO. The media eagerly forwarded Hill&#8217;s latest statement: &#8220;I have seen firsthand what happens when such a process is weaponized against an accuser, and no one should have to endure that again.&#8221;
To them, the &#8220;truth&#8221; always has a liberal bias. These guardians of &#8220;facts&#8221; cannot imagine that the accusers of Thomas and Kavanaugh have been &#8220;weaponized&#8221; by liberals to spread lies about offenses that never happened. They can&#8217;t say, &#8220;No one should have to endure that again.&#8221; Kavanaugh is having to endure the same punishment as the man we hope he joins on the Supreme Court.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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