Glenn Greenwald: “Roe denied… the rights of citizens to decide democratically.”

By Rubashov

Glenn Greenwald is decidedly a man of the Left. He comes from that American strain of the democratic Left that once informed so much of the Democratic Party. Wikipedia’s entry on Greenwald notes that he is “an American journalist, author and lawyer.” It continues:

In 1996, he founded a law firm concentrating on First Amendment litigation. He began blogging on national security issues in October 2005, while he was becoming increasingly concerned with what he viewed to be attacks on civil liberties by the George W. Bush Administration in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. He became a vocal critic of the Iraq War and has maintained a critical position of American foreign policy.

Greenwald started contributing to Salon in 2007, and to The Guardian in 2012. In June 2013, while at The Guardian, he began publishing a series of reports detailing previously unknown information about American and British global surveillance programs based on classified documents provided by Edward Snowden. His work contributed to The Guardian's 2014 Pulitzer Prize win, and he won the 2013 George Polk Award along with three other reporters, including Laura Poitras.

Greenwald is married to David Miranda, a Member of Brazil’s Congress (affiliated with the left-wing PSOL party)... Greenwald is a vegan and an advocate for animal rights. He and Miranda have 24 rescue dogs. He is the author of seven books.

Glenn Greenwald has written a timely and balanced column on Roe v. Wade from the perspective of the democratic Left -- or what once was the democratic Left, before it embraced faith-based irrationality. We think Greenwald's column is worth reading and considering:

The Irrational, Misguided Discourse Surrounding Supreme Court Controversies Such as Roe v. Wade

The Court, like the U.S. Constitution, was designed to be a limit on the excesses of democracy. Roe denied, not upheld, the rights of citizens to decide democratically.

By Glenn Greenwald, Esq.

Politico on Monday night published what certainly appears to be a genuine draft decision by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that would overturn the Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. Alito's draft ruling would decide the pending case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which concerns the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi law that bans abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy except in the case of medical emergency or severe fetal abnormalities. Given existing Supreme Court precedent that abortion can only be restricted after fetal viability, Mississippi's ban on abortions after the 15th week — at a point when the fetus is not yet deemed viable — is constitutionally dubious. To uphold Mississippi's law — as six of the nine Justices reportedly wish to do — the Court must either find that the law is consistent with existing abortion precedent, or acknowledge that it conflicts with existing precedent and then overrule that precedent on the ground that it was wrongly decided.

Alito's draft is written as a majority opinion, suggesting that at least five of the Court's justices — a majority — voted after oral argument in Dobbs to overrule Roe on the ground that it was “egregiously wrong from the start” and “deeply damaging.” In an extremely rare event for the Court, an unknown person with unknown motives leaked the draft opinion to Politico, which justifiably published it. A subsequent leak to CNN on Monday night claimed that the five justices in favor of overruling Roe were Bush 43 appointee Alito, Bush 41 appointee Clarence Thomas, and three Trump appointees (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett), while Chief Justice Roberts, appointed by Bush 43, is prepared to uphold the constitutionality of Mississippi's abortion law without overruling Roe.

Draft rulings and even justices’ votes sometimes change in the period between the initial vote after oral argument and the issuance of the final decision. Depending on whom you choose to believe, this leak is either the work of a liberal justice or clerk designed to engender political pressure on the justices so that at least one abandons their intention to overrule Roe, or it came from a conservative justice or clerk, designed to make it very difficult for one of the justices in the majority to switch sides. Whatever the leaker's motives, a decision to overrule this 49-year-old precedent, one of the most controversial in the Court's history, would be one of the most significant judicial decisions issued in decades. The reaction to this leak — like the reaction to the initial ruling in Roe back in 1973 — was intense and strident, and will likely only escalate once the ruling is formally issued.

Every time there is a controversy regarding a Supreme Court ruling, the same set of radical fallacies emerges regarding the role of the Court, the Constitution and how the American republic is designed to function. Each time the Court invalidates a democratically elected law on the ground that it violates a constitutional guarantee — as happened in Roe — those who favor the invalidated law proclaim that something “undemocratic” has transpired, that it is a form of “judicial tyranny” for “five unelected judges” to overturn the will of the majority. Conversely, when the Court refuses to invalidate a democratically elected law, those who regard that law as pernicious, as an attack on fundamental rights, accuse the Court of failing to protect vulnerable individuals.

This by-now-reflexive discourse about the Supreme Court ignores its core function. Like the U.S. Constitution itself, the Court is designed to be an anti-majoritarian check against the excesses of majoritarian sentiment. The Founders wanted to establish a democracy that empowered majorities of citizens to choose their leaders, but also feared that majorities would be inclined to coalesce around unjust laws that would deprive basic rights, and thus sought to impose limits on the power of majorities as well.

The Federalist Papers are full of discussions about the dangers of majoritarian excesses. The most famous of those is James Madison's Federalist 10, where he warns of "factions…who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” One of the primary concerns in designing the new American republic, if not the chief concern, was how to balance the need to establish rule by the majority (democracy) with the equally compelling need to restrain majorities from veering into impassioned, self-interested attacks on the rights of minorities (republican government). As Madison put it: “To secure the public good, and private rights, against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our enquiries are directed.” Indeed, the key difference between a pure democracy and a republic is that the rights of the majority are unrestricted in the former, but are limited in the latter. The point of the Constitution, and ultimately the Supreme Court, was to establish a republic, not a pure democracy, that would place limits on the power of majorities.

Thus, the purpose of the Bill of Rights is fundamentally anti-democratic and anti-majoritarian. It bars majorities from enacting laws that infringe on the fundamental rights of minorities. Thus, in the U.S., it does not matter if 80% or 90% of Americans support a law to restrict free speech, or ban the free exercise of a particular religion, or imprison someone without due process, or subject a particularly despised criminal to cruel and unusual punishment. Such laws can never be validly enacted. The Constitution deprives the majority of the power to engage in such acts regardless of how popular they might be.

And at least since the 1803 ruling in Madison v. Marbury which established the Supreme Court's power of "judicial review” — i.e., to strike down laws supported by majorities and enacted democratically if such laws violate the rights guaranteed by the Constitution — the Supreme Court itself is intended to uphold similarly anti-majoritarian and anti-democratic values.

When the Court strikes down a law that majorities support, it may be a form of judicial tyranny if the invalidated law does not violate any actual rights enshrined in the Constitution. But the mere judicial act of invalidating a law supported by a majority of citizens — though frequently condemned as “undemocratic" — is, in fact, a fulfillment of one of the Court's prime functions in a republic.

Unless one believes that the will of the majority should always prevail — that laws restricting or abolishing free speech, due process and the free exercise of religion should be permitted as long as enough citizens support it — then one must favor the Supreme Court's anti-democratic and anti-majoritarian powers. Rights can be violated by a small handful of tyrants, but they can also be violated by hateful and unhinged majorities. The Founders’ fear of majoritarian tyranny is why the U.S. was created as a republic rather than a pure democracy.

Whether the Court is acting properly or despotically when it strikes down a democratically elected law, or otherwise acts contrary to the will of the majority, depends upon only one question: whether the law in question violates a right guaranteed by the Constitution. A meaningful assessment of the Court's decisions is impossible without reference to that question. Yet each time the Court acts in a controversial case, judgments are applied without any consideration of that core question.

The reaction to Monday night's news that the Court intends to overrule Roe was immediately driven by all of these common fallacies. It was bizarre to watch liberals accuse the Court of acting “undemocratically" as they denounced the ability of "five unelected aristocrats” — in the words of Vox's Ian Millhiser — to decide the question of abortion rights. Who do they think decided Roe in the first place?

Indeed, Millhiser's argument here — unelected Supreme Court Justices have no business mucking around in abortion rights — is supremely ironic given that it was unelected judges who issued Roe back in 1972, in the process striking down numerous democratically elected laws. Worse, this rhetoric perfectly echoes the arguments which opponents of Roe have made for decades: namely, it is the democratic process, not unelected judges, which should determine what, if any, limits will be placed on the legal ability to provide or obtain an abortion. Indeed, Roe was the classic expression of the above-described anti-majoritarian and anti-democratic values: seven unelected white men (for those who believe such demographic attributes matter) struck down laws that had been supported by majorities and enacted by many states which heavily restricted or outright banned abortion procedures. The sole purpose of Roe was to deny citizens the right to enact the anti-abortion laws, no matter how much popular support they commanded.

This extreme confusion embedded in heated debates over the Supreme Court was perhaps most vividly illustrated last night by Waleed Shahid, the popular left-wing activist, current spokesman for the left-wing group Justice Democrats, and previously a top aide and advisor to Squad members including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Shahid — who, needless to say, supports Roe — posted a quote from Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, in 1861, which Shahid evidently believes supports his view that Roe must be upheld.

But the quote from Lincoln — warning that the Court must not become the primary institution that decides controversial political questions — does not support Roe at all; indeed, Lincoln's argument is the one most often cited in favor of overruling Roe. In fact, Lincoln's argument is the primary one on which Alito relied in the draft opinion to justify overruling Roe: namely, that democracy will be imperiled, and the people will cease to be their own rulers, if the Supreme Court, rather than the legislative branches, ends up deciding hot-button political questions such as abortion about which the Constitution is silent. Here's the version of the Lincoln pro-democracy quote, complete with bolded words, that Shahid posted, apparently in the belief that it somehow supports upholding Roe:

It is just inexplicable to cite this Lincoln quote as a defense of Roe. Just look at what Lincoln said: “if the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, [then] the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.” That is exactly the argument that has been made by pro-life activists for years against Roe, and it perfectly tracks Alito's primary view as defended in his draft opinion.

Alito's decision, if it becomes the Court's ruling, would not itself ban abortions. It would instead lift the judicial prohibition on the ability of states to enact laws restricting or banning abortions. In other words, it would take this highly controversial question of abortion and remove it from the Court's purview and restore it to federal and state legislatures to decide it. One cannot defend Roe by invoking the values of democracy or majoritarian will. Roe was the classic case of a Supreme Court ruling that denied the right of majorities to decide what laws should govern their lives and their society.

One can defend Roe only by explicitly defending anti-majoritarian and anti-democratic values: namely, that the abortion question should be decided by a panel of unelected judges, not by the people or their elected representatives. The defense of democracy invoked by Lincoln, and championed by Shahid, can be used only to advocate that this abortion debate should be returned to the democratic processes, which is precisely what Alito argued (emphasis added):

Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views. Some believe fervently that a human person comes into being at conception and that abortion ends an innocent life. Others feel just as strongly that any regulation of abortion invades a woman's right to control her own body and prevents women from achieving full equality. Still others in a third group think that abortion should be allowed under some but not all circumstances, and those within this group hold a variety of views about the particular restrictions that should be imposed.

For the first 185 years after the adoption of the Constitution, each State was permitted to address this issue in accordance with the views of its citizens. Then, in 1973, this Court decided Roe v. Wade….At the time of Roe, 30 States still prohibited abortion at all stages. In the years prior to that decision, about a third of the States had liberalized their laws, but Roe abruptly ended that political process. It imposed the same highly restrictive regime on the entire Nation, and it effectively struck down the abortion laws of every single State. As Justice Byron White aptly put it in his dissent, the decision Court represented the “exercise of raw judicial power,” 410 U. S., at 222….

Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences…..It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives. “The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.” Casey, 505 U.S. at 979 (Scalia, J, concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part). That is what tho Constitution and the rule of law demand.

Rhetoric that heralds the values of democracy and warns of the tyranny of “unelected judges” and the like is not a rational or viable way to defend Roe. That abortion rights should be decided democratically rather than by a secret tribunal of "unelected men in robes" is and always has been the anti-Roe argument. The right of the people to decide, rather than judges, is the primary value which Alito repeatedly invokes in defending the overruling of Roe and once again empowering citizens, through their elected representatives, to make these decisions.

The only way Roe can be defended is through an explicit appeal to the virtues of the anti-democratic and anti-majoritarian principles enshrined in the Constitution: namely, that because the Constitution guarantees the right to have an abortion (though a more generalized right of privacy), then majorities are stripped of the power to enact laws restricting it. Few people like to admit that their preferred views depend upon a denial of the rights of the majority to decide, or that their position is steeped in anti-democratic values. But there is and always has been a crucial role for such values in the proper functioning of the United States and especially the protection of minority rights. If you want to rant about the supremacy and sanctity of democracy and the evils of "unelected judges,” then you will necessarily end up on the side of Justice Alito and the other four justices who appear ready to overrule Roe.

Anti-Roe judges are the ones who believe that abortion rights should be determined through majority will and the democratic process. Roe itself was the ultimate denial, the negation, of unrestrained democracy and majoritarian will. As in all cases, whether Roe's anti-democratic ruling was an affirmation of fundamental rights or a form of judicial tyranny depends solely on whether one believes that the Constitution bars the enactment of laws which restrict abortion or whether it is silent on that question. But as distasteful as it might be to some, the only way to defend Roe is to acknowledge that your view is that the will of the majority is irrelevant to this conflict, that elected representatives have no power to decide these questions, and that all debates about abortion must be entrusted solely to unelected judges to authoritatively decide them without regard to what majorities believe or want.

+++++

To access Glenn Greenwald’s full article – with links to what he references, and to the numerous speeches Greenwald has given over the years about the anti-majoritarian and anti-democratic values embedded in the Constitution and the Court, including his 2011 lecture at the University of Maryland, his 2012 speech at the University of Indiana/Purdue University, and his 2013 lecture at Yale Law School – visit his page on Substack:

https://greenwald.substack.com/

Repeal the income tax and provide quality education

By Professor Murray Sabrin

In a recent Star Ledger column conservative pundit Paul Mulshine argues that Gov. Phil Murphy’s proposal to increase the income tax to 10.75% for individuals making more than $1 million a year so he can hike property tax rebates is terribly flawed.  Right on. 

The property tax rebate would only available to a senior homeowner or a disabled citizen making no more than $75,000 annually.  In New Jersey that would exclude a substantial number of homeowners, even those who make $75,001. 

New Jersey's income tax, which was enacted at the end of Gov. Brendan Byrne’s first term in 1976, although politically unpopular, set the stage for the governor to send out property tax rebates in 1977 just before his reelection.  In short, the governor deftly used homeowners’ own money to bribe them to win a second term. This is a classic example of democracy in action – – fooling people that they're getting something from the state, when in fact what the state was doing was taking money from the people’s one pocket and putting it in their other pocket.

The current debate over hiking income taxes on millionaire earners and increasing property tax rebates underscores the fundamental issue that both political parties are unwilling to address, namely how education should be funded and who should pay for it.

Although the state Supreme Court effectively imposed the income tax on the people of New Jersey, because the New Jersey Constitution calls for the state to provide a "thorough and efficient education" to all students especially in urban school districts, with the promise of property tax relief, the more than four decade experiment in the income tax has been a colossal failure. 

The first question that needs to be tackled is who is responsible for a child's education?  In a free society that means parents using all the skills and tools and resources at their disposal would educate children up to a certain point, when schooling would become more appropriate. 

The current model of public—compulsory--education is nearly 200 years old.  At one time public schools did a relatively outstanding job of teaching youngsters the 3Rs so they could become productive and financially independent individuals.  Under the auspices of so-called educational experts, social justice cultural warriors and massive political interference, especially from the federal government, public schools have become “politically correct” institutions for the past several decades.  In addition, the cost of public education in New Jersey has skyrocketed well above the rate of inflation since the income tax was enacted more than four decades ago.

The results in New Jersey urban school districts, where the cost of education rivals that of elite private schools, have been abysmal. Unfortunately, the clamor for more taxpayer dollars to prop up the expensive and relatively ineffective urban school systems needs to be questioned.

The lessons of the past four decades regarding funding New Jersey public schools should be obvious to any objective observer. First, the income tax should be repealed.  Two, teachers and parents should create nonprofit educational organizations in their communities to provide high-quality education to youngsters from K-12.  In addition, school property taxes should be repealed as well. There is absolutely no compelling reason for taxes to fund education.  Funding would come from fees, tuition, grants and other voluntary means.

The assertion that education is a "collective" responsibility is a bogus proposition. If this assertion is true, then the state should not stop at education but provide healthcare, housing, transportation, supermarkets, entertainment, and all other goods and services that people want.  In other words, is socialism the answer as Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez assert? 

Socialism is not the answer whether in education, housing, transportation, medical care and the dozens of other programs that all levels of government currently fund.  In a free market both the nonprofit and profit sectors would provide all the goods and services the public wants. That has been the history of America for more than 200 years.  But government has co-opted the free market for decades. 

Gimmicks like property tax rebates to soothe the pain of income taxes are counterproductive. The state income tax has become a political football and avoids the most important question in our society: what is the role of government in a free society?

With another financial crisis on the horizon as the current "everything bubble" will burst in the not-too-distant future, it is imperative that we look at the big picture, how can we create a free and prosperous society with an educated young generation without an income tax?  This is the debate that should be front and center in Trenton.   

Murray Sabrin is professor of finance at Ramapo College and author of the forthcoming, Why the Federal Reserve Sucks: It Causes Inflation, Recessions, Bubbles and Enriches the One Percent.  Sabrin was recently interviewed about his new book, http://www.sanfranciscoreviewofbooks.com/2019/05/cottogottfried-does-federal-reserve.html#more

Bill Hayden: On 2nd Amendment, Lesniak is “laughable”.

By Bill Hayden

Former State Senator Ray Lesniak believes the AR15 is an assault weapon, only owned by white supremacists....laughable.

There are several things wrong with his assumptions.

First, he is already assuming a certain class of people own a product, hence profiling.  A form of racism from the Left?

Secondly, and AR15 assaults nothing, only a person can assault. My rifle can sit peacefully in the corner and not bother anyone for days. The Left’s assumption that you can legislate evil away is insane.

Think of this, the new craze is red flag laws. They come because they believe you have a defect that would prohibit you from owning a weapon. Yet, once gone with your guns, they leave you with the most dangerous weapon known to man, your car.

But let's get to the core of the Second Amendment, freedom. Because at the time of its writing, Americans had just won a revolution against tyranny, using the same exact weapon the tyrants had. Take a look at Venezuela for instance, a country that had all private guns taken away in 2012, and you see that an unarmed citizenry loses its voice, and freedom slips away. The Second is all that keeps the Leftists from really screwing life here in America up. It's the great equalizer.

The Senator also forgets that more people are killed every year with a hammer, than all rifles combined (FBI data), and I haven’t seen a hammer buyback yet.

Maybe the good Senator should read several Supreme Court cases that codify the AR15, as a protected weapon as it is in common use. Heller, and Miller come to mind.

Ray Lesniak should pick a battle he has some level of knowledge on.

Bill Hayden is President of the Skylands Tea Party in Sussex County.  Bill is a leader in the petition drive to Recall Governor Murphy.  On Saturday, May 11th, at 11am, there will be a rally to Recall Murphy on the Newton Green, Newton, Sussex County.

Don’t they teach about the Scottsboro Boys case?

Is Jeff Van Drew a racist?  Does he not understand that every lynching in America involving a white woman started with an unquestioning belief in the accuser or, if he prefers, the “survivor”.   There was a lot of “solidarity” going around then.

Are these two young women so much different from the two who, in 1931, accused nine Black men of raping them?  They too were absolutely certain.

The case was investigated and brought to trial.  Based simply on the testimony of the women, all but one of the accused was convicted of rape and sentenced to death.  The last was spared simply because of his age (he was 12).  Medical evidence suggested that the nine had not raped the women, but that was dismissed in light of their testimony, which was considered very credible.

The case was appealed to the state Supreme Court, which affirmed seven of the eight convictions (in the eighth case, granting a 13 year-old a new trial).  The dissenting judge questioned the impartiality of the process.  The case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which ordered a new trial and led to a landmark decision on the conduct of trials.

The case was returned for trial to a lower court, with a change of venue.  During the retrials, one of the alleged victims (who would today be called a “survivor”) admitted to fabricating the rape story and testified that none of the accused touched either woman.  The other woman continued to claim that she was 100% absolutely certain that she had been raped by the men. 

At the new trial, the jury found that second woman to be a compelling witness and adopting the motto “believe women” they found the Black men guilty of rape once again.  Fortunately, the trial judge set aside that verdict and ordered yet another trial.  After a public outcry, that judge was replaced by another judge who tended to be more favorable to the prosecution.  For a third time, the jury believed the now lone “survivor” – adopting the iron-clad assertion to “believe women” – and returned a guilty verdict against the Black men.

The case was sent back to the United States Supreme Court on appeal and the Court again ordered retrials.  The state finally dropped charges against four of the nine accused.  Sentences for those remaining ranged from 75 years imprisonment to death.  All but two served prison sentences.  One was shot while being escorted to prison by a Sheriff’s deputy.  Two escaped, were captured, and then sent back to prison.  Clarence Norris, the oldest of the accused (and the only one sentenced to death in the final trial) jumped parole in 1946 and went into hiding.  He was found in 1976 and given a pardon by the Governor.  At that point the case had been thoroughly examined and shown to be a farce.

The last of those accused died in 1989.  On November 21, 2013, after an exhaustive review process, the state parole board formally cleared their names.  They were innocent, but had spent their lives under the shadow of a gross accusation.

What this sad lesson in our history should teach us is that an unproven accusation should not be treated as “fact” and that an accusation alone should not be the basis of a criminal conviction.  It should also teach us that blanket assertions about truth or guilt based upon gender or race (or anything else), are the beginnings of a lynch mob and should be avoided.

Do you get that, Senator Van Drew?  Or are you down with a fashionable lynch mob?

Booker’s “Spartapuss moment”. It was all a fake.

The philosopher Christopher Lasch predicted this.  Way back in 1978, Lasch wrote a book called “The Culture of Narcissism” in which he predicted what would come from “the dotage of bourgeois society.”  Lasch saw the coming man-child, the “narcissistic personality” of our time… “their emotional shallowness, their fear of intimacy, their hypochondria, their pseudo-self-insight, their promiscuous pansexuality, their dread of old age and death.”  People who had lost their memory, without history… “a culture that has lost interest in the future.” 

Even before social media made it possible for anyone/everyone to become an overly self-regarding, self-celebrating, living-in-the-moment celebrity – Lasch saw it coming – and he saw “leaders” like Cory Booker, once himself king of the Twitter realm, a politician who offers his childish “feelings” and a false intimacy in place of rational discourse.  A Peter Pan. 

Forty-years ago, Lasch wrote that the cultural Narcissists’ outlook on life was revealed in “the new consciousness movements and therapeutic culture; in pseudo-confessional autobiography and fiction; in the replacement of Horatio Alger by the happy hooker as the symbol of success; in the theater of the absurd and the absurdist theater of everyday life; in the degradation of sport; in the collapse of authority; in the escalating war between men and women…” 

Last week Senator Booker contrived an “I am Spartacus” moment, as a juvenile would, not to teach but in order to attract a moment’s satisfying attention.  His ego sated, to boost celebrity his acolytes sent record of the moment to the four corners of the globe.  But it was all play-acting, make-believe, false, fake… more like playing dress-up, as children do.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Senator Booker threatened to release confidential documents relating to Judge Kavanaugh's service as a lawyer in the Bush administration.  "I understand the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate," our brave Booker said, "This is about the closest I'll probably ever have in my life to an ‘I am Spartacus' moment."

For his “I am Spartacus” moment, Senator Booker posed that he was in real danger – that he could be prosecuted for revealing confidential correspondence that had been provided to a Senate Committee by someone facing confirmation hearings.  Booker was acting against the kind of basic confidences most small town council members understand when they enter into “executive session” to discuss a personnel issue.  Booker called another Senator a “bully” (shades of the school yard again?) for suggesting otherwise.

Except that it wasn’t even that, because Senator Booker had sought and received permission from committee counsel of both parties.  There was never a “Spartacus moment” because – like a true Narcissist, Booker loves himself so much that he would never place himself in such danger.  He just likes the celebrity that comes with pretending to do so… and so he made it all up.

No less than the Washington Post reported that the so-called "confidential" correspondence was already cleared for public release before Booker's floor show, confirming the fact with both Democratic and Republican aides on the judiciary committee.

"We cleared the documents last night shortly after Senator Booker's staff asked us to," confirmed Bill Burck, Bush's presidential records representative. "We were surprised to learn about Senator Booker's histrionics this morning because we had already told him he could use the documents publicly. In fact, we have said yes to every request made by the Senate Democrats to make documents public."

A confirmed narcissist never likes to be called out, and when Wall Street Journal reporter Byron Tau questioned Senator Booker’s actions and suggested it was a stunt, Booker accused him of violating the U.S. Constitution and threatened the reporter with prosecution.  Yes, Booker probably is a few bricks short of a full load. 

What this all shows is that someone on his staff needs to provide the Senator with new reading material.  This way, when he is dreaming about the kind of super hero he would like to pretend to the world he is (and that he would like the world to celebrate that he is), he’ll get it right, and keep it closer to reality.

So no more “Spartacus” by Howard Fast for Senator Booker.  There are too many words for a start.

From now on, his staff should have him read “I am Spartapuss” by Robin Price.  It is something a Peter Pan will understand.

Hasn't Sen. Lesniak ever heard of a jury?

Senator Ray "Lord of Ass" Lesniak is preening and posturing again.  His lordship is preparing to run against a couple of heavyweights and a self-funder for the Democrat Party nomination for Governor next year.  He's worried, because the pay-to-play that once feathered his nest, the unethical practices that he once defended as business as usual, don't produce what they once did.  For him anyway.  Ray's snout has been squeezed out by a lot of newer, more aggressive snouts.  It happens, Ray.

So now Ray has gone the reformer route, playing the "good government" routine.  And there is nothing wrong in this.  In fact, his lordship has come up with an interesting cost-saving measure.  Ray wants to replace the $120,000-per-year members of the State Parole Board, with $300-a-day part-timers.  So far, so good.

The problem we have is who he wants to give those part-time jobs to.  Yep, you guessed it.  Ray wants those part-time jobs to go to scumbag lawyers. Worse still, he wants those jobs to go to the politically connected scumbag lawyers who score judgeships.  Like the one they approved a year or so ago while the organization he ran was under federal investigation and the FBI were crawling up its arse.

Ray argues that men like Labor Commissioner Hal Wirths are "not qualified" to sit on the Parole Board to determine whether or not a convicted criminal has owned up to what he or she has done and is ready to re-enter society.  In Ray's world, you need a law degree to make judgments like that.

Well hell, if that's the case, then juries should be lawyers only.  What "qualifications" do the average members of a jury have to determine the guilt or innocence of someone in the first place?

Either Ray didn't think this one through, or someone's taken a dump in his brain and forgot to flush it.

Have you ever read the crimes of those people the highest judges in the state have allowed back to the bar to practice law in New Jersey?  Have you read the b.s. excuses that the state's top court gave when they voted against disbarring a convicted sex criminal?  Yeah, we know, he was a well-connected former legislator -- but that still didn't make it cool. 

Nah, let's not let have judges making those moral judgments.  We're even squeamish about allowing anyone with a law degree near it.  Let's just go with regular people.

Besides, our government is already too lawyered-up.  Attorneys hold a majority in both houses of Congress.  They have the White House and, of course, the entire Supreme Court.  This trade association owns our federal government and most of the nation's state legislatures too. That's too much power for any group.  Imagine the outrage if the insurance industry or medical association held all those elected positions? 

So on top of all this, Ray Lesniak wants to provide $300-a-day part-time gigs to legal retirees so they can top-off their earnings while maintaining their lifestyles.  Screw that.  A homeless veteran with PTSD would provide better insight than most in the legal game.  At least he or she would be a human being.

As for Hal Wirths.  Well, he's a pretty regular guy.  And nobody has ever questioned his humanity, his honesty, or his decency.  On that score, Ray Lesniak can't hold a candle to him.