Editorial-Opinion – October 2018

In John Grisham’s excellent novel The Pelican Brief, powerful organizations acted to change the make-up of the Supreme Court of the United States. The reasoning was that the existing court would rule against those organizations, but new and different members of the Court would rule in favor of those organizations to make what those forces want to do legal and doable.

It was a bold and intriguing notion for a novel, and it also was plausible. So it was a good thread of logic for a master story-teller like John Grisham.

Today’s fight in Washington over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh is rooted in the same logic.

If the combined view of the Court moves to a more individual freedom point of view, and away from an identity justice point of view, it sets the direction of the country in a certain way.

The outcome of this battle is truly a tipping point for our country. To be clear, I would vote in favor of confirming Judge Kavanaugh.

What follows now is a review of how and why the Courts have been used to nudge us into such preposterous notions, and why this abuse of the legal process must change if our freedoms are to be preserved.

The Master Manipulators of the court system were the Clintons.

There are three branches of government. They are (1) Legislative/Congress, (2) Executive and all the various Branches of the federal government, and (3) Judicial, the federal court system.

The Clinton Administration used the courts to make regulations under the Executive Branch and to harden these regulations with legal precedent. Here is how they did it.

Step 1 – Appoint leaders of organizations who want to make the changes you support to head federal agencies. For instance, Clinton might appoint a president of a labor union to head the Fair Labor Relations Board, or someone like the leader of Green Peace to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

Step 2 – That individual would find the best, small case of some infraction they could use as a basis for a decision, and privately the federal leader would work with (conspire with) an activist group. The activist group would file a lawsuit against the government for not doing its enforcement job adequately.

Step 3 – Once the lawsuit was filed, the issue was seemingly transported from the Executive Branch to the Judicial Branch, but functionally, it never was.

Step 4 – In the court room on Day 1, the government and the group that filed the lawsuit would tell the judge that if the judge allowed it, the two parties would engage in arbitration to see if some equitable resolution could be found. The judge would agree that compromise was better than a court fight for everyone, especially the court.

Step 5 – The Smoke-Filled Room. The agency head and the activist group head now had free reign to write new rules, which they did. These rules affect all Americans, and these rules do not go through any legislative process.

But wait, there’s more!

It turns out that someone is required to monitor and oversee the implementation of these new rules. But Congress has not authorized any federal funds to pay for such oversight and enforcement. Oh my, what will the poor agency do? The agency cannot require Congress to authorize such funding, can they?

Nope.

Step 6 – The Agency agrees to pay for the oversight of the agreement, and the court accepts the agreement. Now the agency is under court order to shift funds from how Congress intended they be spent, to what the Executive Branch has engineered. Further, the agency hires the activist group to do the overseeing!

These simple steps have been used to create huge NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations; think Planned Parenthood). And these huge NGOs know the hand that feeds them. They are frighteningly political. They supply warm bodies to events like protest marches and poll workers during elections. This process was also rampant under the Obama administration, and it has been reversed under the Trump administration.

A Kavanaugh confirmation stunts this process, if not eliminates it totally.

That is why the Democrats and the NGOs are screaming so loudly against a man who seems without fault.

Are you listening John Grisham?