Kavanaugh Hearing Set for September 4
Judge Brett Kavanuagh’s confirmation hearing is set to begin on September 4 as announced by Judiciary Chairman Senator Chuck Grassley today.
Grassley predicted that the hearings will span three or four days, starting with opening statements on Sept. 4 and questioning on Sept. 5.“As I said after his nomination, Judge Kavanaugh is one of the most respected jurists in the country and one of the most qualified nominees ever to be considered by the Senate for a seat on our highest court,” Grassley said in a statement. “My team has already reviewed every page of the over 4,800 pages of judicial opinions Judge Kavanaugh wrote, over 6,400 pages of opinions he joined, more than 125,000 pages of records produced from his White House legal service, and over 17,000 pages in response to the most comprehensive questionnaire ever submitted as a nominee.”“He’s a mainstream judge," Grassley added. "He has a record of judicial independence and applying the law as it is written."
Despite liberals claims of rushing or anything similar, Kavanaugh’s hearings will be later than the most recent Democrat nominees and the overall average.
Please sign the RNLA’s letter to support Judge Kavanaugh here. RNLA will continue to provide information until the hearing.
Desperate Bill Nelson Claims Russians Have Penetrated Florida Elections
Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) is arguably the least accomplished Senators in the U.S. Senate and he is currently losing in his re-election bid to the successful Governor Rick Scott of Florida. The desperate Nelson has turned on his friends in an appeal to the far left. Now he is making wild accusations:
Russian operatives have "penetrated" some of Florida's voter registration systems ahead of the 2018 midterms, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Wednesday, adding new urgency to concerns about hacking.
However, Nelson offers no proof.
"They have already penetrated certain counties in the state and they now have free rein to move about," Nelson told the Tampa Bay Times before a campaign event in Tampa. He said something similar a day earlier in Tallahassee but declined to elaborate."That's classified," the Democrat said Tuesday.He is facing a re-election challenge in November from Gov. Rick Scott, whose administration said it has no knowledge of the allegations made by Nelson.
Nelson’s reason is simple:
Trailing in most polls and being significantly outspent in a U.S. Senate race that could top $200 million in campaign spending, three-term incumbent Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson strayed momentarily from hammering challenger Gov. Rick Scott on his personal finances this week to suggest Florida’s 2018 elections have already been "penetrated" by Russian hackers.Nelson made the vague claim during a Tallahassee campaign stop Tuesday and repeated it Wednesday during an interview with the Tampa Bay Times.
As Secretary of State Ken Detzner elaborated on the latter (emphasis added):
Detzner’s office Wednesday said it did not have any new information regarding threats to the state’s electoral systems from DHS, adding in a statement that it has “received zero information from Sen. Nelson or his staff that supports his claims. If Sen. Nelson has specific information about threats to our elections, he should share it with election officials in Florida.”
Either way, this does not look good for Nelson. He is either wrong and fabricating the allegations for political gain. Or he is hiding information from Florida election officials they could use right now to combat Russian meddling or hacking.
There is a reason why Desperate Bill Nelson is losing in the polls.
Ruth Marcus' Partisan Analysis of the Steele Dossier
Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post needs either a law degree or a course in logic if she intends to comment intelligently on the legal issues presented in the Mueller probe. In this video commentary, Ms. Marcus, sounding like Edith Bunker, strains the law and principles of logic to argue that Donald Trump, Jr. committed a crime by engaging in a conversation with a Russian lawyer but Hillary Clinton did nothing illegal by concealing campaign expenditures to pay Christopher Steele to reach out to Kremlin sources for dirt on Donald Trump, compiling that foreign-derived information to paper, and then shopping that information throughout the media corps to influence the outcome of the presidential election.
Here's Marcus’ argument:
In one case, Trump’s, an emissary of a foreign government – have I said that enough? – foreign government – came to you to offer you dirt on your opponent because the foreign government, it was said in the emails, wanted to see you elected. In the other case [Clinton’s] a campaign was doing actually, as the President has said, what campaign’s generally do. They investigate their opponents. There is no rule that says if you investigate your opponent you can’t make overseas phone calls, you can’t talk to overseas sources. You are allowed to collect information. You are allowed to pay somebody to do that collection. But asking for it is really very different from being the ‘if it’s what you say I love it, bring it on attitude’ that the Trump campaign had towards information that as far as it knew and was told was being peddled by the Russian government. Big difference!
Where’s the logic in that distinction? If you take a meeting to listen to information being peddled by a foreign government representative you are a criminal, but if you conceal an expenditure to a foreign citizen (Steele) to “make overseas phone calls” to Kremlin-linked sources and then distribute that information to American press outlets like The Washington Post to influence the election, that’s different? Marcus’ argument makes no sense.
Mr. Mueller should listen closely to the logical errors one must commit in order to contrive a crime here. Mere conversations become “things of value.” But one conversation is a crime, because your name is Trump. Other conversations, “overseas phone calls,” are not crimes, because your name is Clinton.
Meanwhile, Ms. Marcus, and presumably Mr. Mueller, will turn a blind eye to Clinton’s knowing and willful concealment of her campaign expenditure to Christopher Steele and Clinton’s knowing and willful peddling of the Steele opposition research report, containing information from Kremlin-linked sources, from American media to the FBI and federal courts.
Judge Kavanaugh Will Help Restore Our Government to the Way the Framers Intended
In drafting the United States Constitution, the framers intended a nation with three equal branches. In large part due to judicial and executive ‘activism,’ America has lost its way and the effectiveness of the legislative branch has suffered as a result. As Peter Wallison explains, the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will go a long way in restoring the framer’s initial aim.
Brett Kavanaugh—President Trump’s most recent nominee for the Supreme Court—could return legislative authority [to] Congress. His confirmation will add a fifth vote to a conservative group in the Court that seeks to take power away from the agencies of the administrative state and put it back where it belongs, in the legislative branch.
In the past seventy years the liberal movement in the United States has done everything it can to decrease individual liberty and increase the size and scope of government.
The reason for Congress’s weakness today is a failure of the courts over many years to carry out a role that the Framers expected them to perform: to keep the elected branches within their assigned responsibilities.
The Framers designed a system of separated powers—a Congress to make the laws; a president and executive branch to enforce or execute the laws; and a judiciary to interpret the laws—because they believed that was the only way to preserve the peoples’ liberty against the encroachments of government.
In his recent op-ed, Wallison details exactly when the progressive left began its assault on the constitution.
The Framers’ structure remained in balance for almost 150 years, but everything began to change during FDR’s New Deal. In 1935, the Supreme Court declared two congressional actions unconstitutional because they violated the separation of powers by delegating legislative power to the executive branch. But after his landslide election in 1936, FDR retaliated with a proposal to increase the size of the Court to 16, allowing him to appoint seven new members.
This opened a wide field for both the creation of new administrative agencies and empowering them with wide-ranging rule-making authority.
Completing the Court’s surrender to the executive was the 1984 unanimous decision in Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council. In this case, the Court directed lower federal courts to defer to administrative interpretations of their own authorities, if that interpretation was “reasonable.” This allowed administrative agencies to reinterpret existing statutory authority in new ways and again substantially increased administrative power.
The confirmation of the highly qualified Judge Brett Kavanaugh would reverse the massive growth of bloated government agencies and overreaching executive power. Judge Kavanaugh would cement an ‘originalist’ view of the Constitution and restore our republic to its initial ideals centered on liberty and freedom from government.
Recent Left-Wing Attacks Distort Judge Kavanaugh’s Views on Voting Rights
In modern Democrat politics, anyone who supports measures to enhance voting integrity and decrease the likelihood of voter fraud should be labeled an ‘extremist.’ Hillary Clinton went as far as to say Judge Kavanaugh will bring the United States back to times of slavery. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker said if you support Judge Kavanaugh, you are ‘complicit with evil.’ As election law expert Hans von Spakovsky points out, these vicious attacks by top Democrats are totally baseless.
The latest bizarre claim laid against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is that his confirmation would “spell the end of voting rights.” This ridiculous charge has been spun up from two of Kavanaugh’s writings: a 2012 opinion upholding South Carolina’s voter ID law and a brief he filed as a private attorney in a case challenging Hawaii’s practice of preventing residents from voting based on their ancestry.
In both cases, Kavanaugh’s views were — and are — quite mainstream. More importantly, they have been affirmed.
In fact, Judge Kavanaugh’s key rulings on voting rights have all beenaffirmed by the Supreme Court.
In South Carolina v. Holder, Kavanaugh (joined by two other judges) held that the state’s voter ID law was not discriminatory and did not violate the Voting Rights Act.
Kavanaugh noted, South Carolina made it even easier to vote by providing a “reasonable impediment” exception to its ID requirement. This allows those without proper identification to vote anyway. All they need do is sign a simple affidavit stating the reason they have not obtained a photo ID. Do that, and they can cast a ballot immediately, no questions asked.
Hans von Spakovsky's recent piece for The Hill illustrates the sad state of our political climate. For supporting a measure that would actually make it easier to vote and increase election safety, Democrats and major left-wing organizations have labeled Judge Kavanaugh a ‘racist’ trying to take away voting rights. Thankfully, history and facts have proven Judge Kavanaugh right.
Opponents of the law claimed it would “disenfranchise tens of thousands of minority voters,” but it never happened. The law has been in place since 2013 with no problems and no effect on turnout. No disenfranchisement. No voter “suppression.
Oddly enough, none of Judge Kavanaugh’s critics has bothered to mention that, in a subsequent voter ID case, the Obama Justice Department agreed that an ID law with a “reasonable impediment” exception was not discriminatory. On Aug. 3, 2016, the parties in Veasy v. Abbott penned a “Joint Submission of Agreed Terms” in which they agreed that Texas could apply its photo ID law in the 2016 election as long as any resident who signed “a reasonable impediment declaration” would “be permitted to vote using a regular ballot.”
Judge Kavanaugh is one of the most qualified nominees for the Supreme Court in modern history. Democrats have no viable explanation for opposing his confirmation. However, they have so much animus for President Trump and the American people who voted for the president that they are willing to harm the judicial system and attempt to trash the reputation of an honorable public servant for political gain. Thankfully, it does not appear their scorched Earth tactics will work and Judge Kavanaugh will be confirmed.
Letter from RNLA Founding Chair Bob Horn on Ron Hicks Winning Chairman's Award
Dear Michael,
I am especially pleased that the Republican National Lawyers Association has selected Ron Hicks to be the second recipient of the Robert J. Horn Chairman’s Award. Ron personifies the attributes and skills that all of us at RNLA value in terms of insuring the accuracy and honesty of elections and the election process. The RNLA has a targeted set of missions - all complementary, and none of which duplicate missions accomplished elsewhere. From my perspective, its most important mission is to ensure open, fair and honest elections at all levels of American society in a non-discriminatory manner and to provide access to the polls to all qualified and eligible voters.
Your participation in this Seminar evidences your desire to accomplish this mission by receiving election law training from our members who are among the most qualified election law professionals from all over the country. Through the efforts of volunteers like Ron Hicks, we have been able to respond to requests for assistance from Republican Party organizations and its candidates by communicating the requests to all of you and having you volunteer and work pro bono to address these concerns.
I was introduced to Ron by Heather Heidelbaugh, on election day 2004, when I went to Pittsburgh to help out by working in the call center they created to protect the honesty of the presidential election process. What I discovered, was an efficient and well run operation that anticipated many of the issues that arose or could have arisen as a result of Democrat initiatives to change the outcome of the electoral process. Ron and Heather were the lead counsels at the time and Ron represented the campaign by requesting expedited decisions from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court under the Pennsylvania Election Code. His success in handling these matter before Democrat Supreme Court Justices contributed greatly to ensuring a positive electoral outcome.
Since then Ron has continued to contribute greatly to the Republican Party in Pennsylvania and to the RNLA. In addition to having a successful private practice, Ron has worked as Co-General Counsel and as a member of the Board of Governors for the Republican National Lawyers Association. He is a founding board member and former chair of the RNLA’s Pittsburgh Chapter. He serves as the Deputy Solicitor for Western Pennsylvania for the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee, and is an elected member of the Republican Committees of Allegheny County and Pittsburgh, and the County Committee’s Solicitor and chair of the City Committee’s 3rd Council District in Pennsylvania.
As a result of what he accomplished and for everything he has done, I am especially pleased and honored that Ron has been selected as the second recipient of the RNLA’s Robert J Horn Founding Chairman’s award. Although I am saddened that I cannot join you at the conference this year, I wish you great success and hope that I can join you next time. Best wishes to all of you, especially Ron and hope that all of you will find the time to help the Republican cause in the upcoming mid-term election.
Sincerely,
Bob Horn
The Importance of Protecting the Privacy of Non-Profit Donors
The IRS recently defended the privacy rights of non-profit organizations by declaring they would no longer collect the names and addresses of donors. Detractors of this new policy, mainly coming from the far-left, argue this will lead to an increase in foreign spending and so called ‘dark money’ in American politics. The Institute for Free Speech's Luke Wachob explains in The Hill why this complaint is not based in reality.
First, nonprofits can accept money from foreign sources, but they are legally prohibited from using it to support the election or defeat of candidates. The ban also applies to broadcast ads that mention the name of a candidate in the time near an election.
Second, a donor name and address does not tell you whether it is a U.S. citizen or green card holder. Many Americans live abroad, and many people in the United States are not citizens or legal permanent residents.
One of the most important results of the new IRS policy is groups will no longer be targeted for their political beliefs or agenda, something conservatives say was commonplace during the Obama administration.
The rule. . . should prevent the IRS and partisan state attorneys general from targeting conservative groups, Republicans say, such as the government scrutiny of tea party groups during the Obama era.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said the move was a victory for free speech and a “straightforward, common-sense policy decision.”
“It’s particularly welcome news to those of us who are intently focused on defending the First Amendment, for those of us who raised concerns during the last administration about activist regulators punishing free speech and free association,” Mr. McConnell said on the Senate floor. “The IRS will no longer pointlessly demand private contributor lists from whole categories of tax-exempt organizations.”
Unsurprisingly, since the decision was announced liberal outlets have painted the picture that this move favors conservative organizations in a disproportionate manner. CNN recently ran a piece insinuating this policy change only benefits the NRA and other conservative groups. This is flat out not true, and Charles Cooke at The National Review explains how the change benefits the majority of non-profits on both sides of the political spectrum.
The change applies to every single 501(c)(4) in America. CNN could just as easily — and just as misleadingly — have placed the story under the headline, “NAACP will no longer need to identify their donors to the IRS.” Or it could have mentioned, say, Planned Parenthood. Or SEIU. Or Everytown for Gun Safety. Or the Sierra Club. Or . . .
Regardless of how the media is portraying this important policy change, non-profit organizations finally have their privacy rights protected. American elections were always meant to defend against intimidation and discrimination against a set of political beliefs. Thankfully, the IRS moved our nation a step closer to that goal.
Not Just Kavanaugh: Democrats Obstructing Virtually All Trump Nominees
In order for our country to function, the executive branch must be able to appoint qualified nominees to critical positions. It appears, however, that Democrats have no interest in what is best for the effectiveness of our nation. They have one goal, obstruct President Trump at all costs. As Hans von Spakovsky and Thomas Jipping explain at Fox News,
More than a year and a half after the inauguration of Donald Trump’s presidency, the left continues to obstruct the confirmation of nominees to critical posts in both the executive and judicial branches. The unprecedented obstructionism denies leadership to executive branch departments and agencies and impedes the fair and swift administration of justice.
It is also an abuse of the Senate’s constitutional obligation to provide “Advice and Consent” regarding presidential nominations of judges and key “Officers of the United States.”
How bad has the obstruction gotten when compared to President Obama’s nominations?
As of July 17, the Senate had confirmed 515 presidential nominations. That may sound like a lot, but it’s nearly 30 percent less than the number confirmed at this point in President Barack Obama’s first term.
And it’s not that Trump hasn’t given the upper chamber plenty of nominations to act on. A whopping 371 nominations are now pending in the Senate, including 90 judicial nominees.
Trump Judicial and Executive confirmations have not just slowed compared to Obama.
According to a one-page White House memo obtained by the Washington Examiner, each of the last four presidents had confirmed hundreds more judicial and executive nominees than Trump by the second July of their presidency. For instance, the Senate had confirmed 75 and 87 percent of former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton’s picks by this time in their term. They have confirmed just 58 percent for Trump.
Democrats have forced Republicans to dot every procedural I and cross every parliamentary T before getting their nominee a vote. As the New York Times reported last year, that means calling for a cloture vote which in turn requires an “intervening day” to allow the request, in parliamentary parlance, to "ripen." After that, the rules require 30-hours of “post-cloture” debate before a final vote.
This Democrat obstruction does not only hurt President Trump, it harms the country and the American people most importantly. Let’s hope the Democrats rethink this politically motivated tactic before too much damage is done.
More Obstruction: Democrats Demand Millions of Documents on Judge Kavanaugh
Judge Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit after being nominated by President Bush in 2003. It took all the way until 2006 to confirm him due to the heavy scrutiny that included two Senate hearings levied against the Bush appointee. As Tom Jipping wrote in the National Review,
[Judge Kavanaugh] also spent “four years in private practice, one year in the Office of the Solicitor General, four years in the Office of Independent Counsel, two years in the White House Counsel’s Office, and three years as staff secretary to President Bush.”
Judge Kavanaugh is a Yale Law school graduate and has taught at Yale, Georgetown and Harvard Universities. Even the left-leaning American Bar Association gave the Judge its highest qualification in 2006. One could argue there has never been a nominee with more exposure than Kavanaugh over the past decade of his work. Yet this is still not nearly enough information according to Senate Democrats. They want millions, yes millions, of documents. The USA Today explains just how unusual this search really is.
Senators have begun the deepest dive ever into the writings of a Supreme Court nominee, digging into a record 1 million-plus pages of legal opinions and emails from Brett Kavanaugh's career as a federal judge, White House attorney, and assistant to the prosecutor who investigated former President Bill Clinton.
The massive volume of Kavanaugh's records dwarfs those of the last two Supreme Court justices to be confirmed – Neil Gorsuch and Elena Kagan. Senators reviewed about 182,000 pages of documents on Gorsuch and about 170,000 pages on Kagan.
Even with the unique volume of documents the Senate already has on Judge Kavanaugh, Democrats even want more.
Despite the mound of electronic paper that senators will soon get on Kavanaugh, Democrats and Republicans are battling over whether they should have access to more as they debate the merits of President Donald Trump's nominee.
The fight centers on whether senators should see emails and other documents from Kavanaugh's time as staff secretary to former President George W. Bush, from 2003-2006.
Tom Jipping points out that this is pure obstruction.
Unfortunately, many of Kavanaugh’s critics have already announced their opposition, some even before President Trump announced his selection. That makes their demand for documents and other material unrelated to Kavanaugh’s judicial service more than a little odd. Obviously, the information will have no effect on their position.
So here’s the current state of confirmation play: Senators and groups that already oppose Kavanaugh are demanding access to the least relevant part of his record, much of which was available during the extensive scrutiny he faced for his appeals-court appointment. If that’s not obstruction for its own sake, what is?
The RNLA has always supported a proper vetting process for every judicial nominee, particularly one for the highest court in the United States. However, in this case it is obvious to any objective observer that the current tactics used against Judge Kavanaugh are a politically motivated obstructionist strategy. Unfortunately, the nation and the integrity of our judicial system is being harmed as a result.
Chuck Schumer's Obstruction Tactics Failing as Three Democrats Set to Meet With Judge Kavanaugh
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to do everything possible to block the confirmation of President Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Unfortunately for Schumer, it appears a handful of his Democrat colleagues are ready to break ranks and consider voting to confirm the highly qualified Kavanaugh. The Hill reports,
Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Democratic-allied advocacy groups are using the lightest of touches on Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) as he considers voting for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Manchin will meet with Kavanaugh at 2:30 pm Monday and could embolden other Democrats to announce their support for President Trump’s conservative nominee.
Since the U.S. Senate currently consists of fifty-one Republicans, Democrats will almost certainly need zero defections to have any chance of blocking President Trump’s second SCOTUS nominee. As the Washington Examiner reports, things are starting to look grim for Schumer and his obstruction strategy thanks to a handful of Democrats in states that President Trump carried in the 2016 election.
At the moment, Manchin is one of . . . two Senate Democrats who have scheduled meetings with the judge. Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., is scheduled to meet with the Supreme Court hopeful Aug. 15.
Others are in the process of scheduling meetings, including Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., whose office is working with the White House toward setting up a meeting with Kavanaugh. With the upcoming meetings, the ballgame for Kavanaugh will begin in earnest.
With President Trump winning handily in all three states of the aforementioned three Democrat Senators, it would be politically risky for them to disregard the wishes of their constituents and cave to the liberal elite and oppose a nominee as qualified as Judge Kavanaugh in such a pro-Trump state.
What is clear is that the Democrat obstruction strategy is beginning to crumble right before our eyes, and that is bad news for Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.