Democrats currently have a majority in the U.S. Senate, which means they also have control of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, where there has been a flurry of activity and finger-pointing in recent weeks.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, has been out since early March dealing with what her staff describes as a severe case of shingles.
Feinstein is a member of the Judiciary Committee, but she’s been at her California home recovering all this time. She hasn’t been able to participate in committee votes on judicial nominees, which means the most radical of Joe Biden’s picks are unable to make it past the committee because it now sits at a 10-10 Democrat/Republican tie.
Though there has been a lot of grumbling from Democrats about their inability to ram through those nominees — to the point that some high-profile House Democrats have called on Feinstein to resign ― an even bigger “issue” has emerged for Democrats which has severely complicated their efforts at delegitimizing the Supreme Court.
Judiciary Committee Democrats want to subpoena Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over alleged “conflict of interest” and “failure to disclose” issues, attacks that are bogus to the core considering that successful real estate developer Harlan Crow, the longtime close family friend of Thomas who reportedly has paid for family trips for the Thomases, has never had any business before the court.
Committee Democrats can’t subpoena him, though, because of the tie-vote situation. So, the next thing they did was to write a letter to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and request his presence at a sham hearing on “Supreme Court ethics reform,” which Democrats conveniently have only been interested in since conservatives took the majority on the nation’s highest court after Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation in the fall of 2020.
Roberts, considered by political observers as the weakest “conservative” link on the court, said no, and in response pointed to the Statement of Ethics Principles and Practices, a document to which he informed Committee Chairman Dick Durbin that “all of the current Members of the Supreme Court subscribe.”
Though Democrats can’t subpoena Thomas as it stands now, that hasn’t stopped their attacks on him nor other conservative members of the court who mysteriously have all been hit with similar style media “reports” of “failure to disclose” over the last few weeks in what are clearly coordinated attempts at delegitimizing the Supreme Court.
What’s fascinating about the predictable “gotcha!” reactions from Democrats to all of these hit pieces as though they are the gospel truth is that what they’re doing is exactly what they’ve been lecturing people for three years now that we should not do: cast doubt on the legitimacy of our “sacred institutions” and “democratic norms” or whatever.
We’ve heard such things nonstop since the Capitol riot, with Democrats and their media allies suggesting Republicans didn’t respect historical “norms” in this country nor the “rule of law” because they had concerns over the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.
And yet they turn around and relentlessly attack the Supreme Court with ruthless precision, using their willing accomplices in the media as well as gullible far-left activists as tools to get their message across in the court of public opinion.
It is something to keep in mind the next time you hear any of them get on their soapboxes about respecting our “sacred institutions.”
As always with Democrats, it is different when they do it because of the “D” that is beside their names.
North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.
