Klobuchar Struggles to Defend 2016 Position on Filling Supreme Court Vacancy

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) on Sunday struggled to explain her reversal on supporting a Senate vote for a Supreme Court nominee during an election year.

Klobuchar said Sunday that the Senate should wait to vote for a new Supreme Court nominee until after the November election. In 2016, however, Klobuchar pushed for a Senate vote on Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland ahead of that year’s presidential election.

Asked about the reversal from her 2016 position, Klobuchar told CNN, "We are in modern history where literally just in the last time a justice was considered after someone died unexpectedly, Justice Scalia, a new rule was set by our colleagues."

The Minnesota senator also said Senate Republicans can’t use "raw political power right in the middle of an election."

In 2016, Klobuchar said the Constitution required a Senate vote on a Supreme Court nominee during an election year.

"The Constitution is clear: The Senate must consider the president’s nominee and then choose whether to vote yes or no," the senator said at the time. "We must do our job, hold hearings, and vote."

Republicans held a majority in the Senate when Barack Obama nominated Garland in March 2016 to fill the seat of late-justice Antonin Scalia. While Democrats pushed for a Senate vote on the nominee before the presidential election, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) refused to hold a vote on Garland’s nomination.

McConnell said Friday that the Senate will vote on President Trump’s nominee. Trump is expected to announce his nominee this week.

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Biden In 2016: President Has ‘Constitutional Duty’ To Fill Vacant Supreme Court Seat

If you’ve been following the media coverage of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death, then you’ve heard a million times what Republicans like Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said in 2016. After the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, both the Senate majority leader from Kentucky and the South Carolina senator said a replacement should […]

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Trump Identifies 2 Women as Front-Runners To Replace RBG on Supreme Court: Report

Two women are emerging as the front-runners to replace the late Justice Ruth Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. There’s not much doubt that President Donald Trump will nominate a replacement. The president on Saturday tweeted his commitment to move forward with a nomination, even as some Republican senators balked at a confirmation process prior to…

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Black Lives Matter Activist Wearing ‘Justice for Breonna Taylor’ Shirt Walked into a Louisville Bar and Murdered Three People

A black male walked into a Louisville bar owned by a retired police officer and shot three random people at point blank range on Friday night — while wearing a Justice for Breonna Taylor shirt.

The suspect was smiling from ear to ear as he was arrested for the shooting at Bungalow Joe’s Bar and Grill.

Michael E. Rhynes Jr., 33, was arrested just after midnight Saturday after police found him crawling in brush near the restaurant, according to a report from WDRB.

The shooter was wearing a “Justice for Breonna Taylor” t-shirt. Naturally, the national media has completely ignored this story — which certainly would not have been the case if a mass shooter had been wearing a “Trump” shirt. Taylor became a Black Lives Matter martyr after being killed by Louisville Police during a “‘knock and announce” drug raid, during which her boyfriend shot at police.

“Nobody had ever seen this guy before,” the owner of the bar, Joe Bishop told WDRB, referring to the shooter. “It was a totally random act.” He explained that the men did not exchange words at any time prior to the shooting.

Two of the victims were white and one was black.

Toreon Jermaine Hudson, 26, and William Scott Smallwood, 48, were pronounced dead at the scene, while Steven Matthew Head, 24, died from his injuries at University Hospital.

One of the victims was the fiancé of the bar manager and all three of the men worked together.

Hudson has a young daughter, per the GoFundMe for his family.

A joint GoFundMe for the victims families has raised over $20,000.

Police have not yet announced the killer’s motivation for the attack.

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Pelosi Stonewalls Bill That Would Crack Down on Chinese Influence in U.S.

House Democrats are blocking a bill that will curtail the influence of the Chinese-government-funded Confucius Institute, stymying bipartisan legislation that unanimously passed in the Senate.

Despite bipartisan support in the upper chamber, House Democrats—including a cosponsor for the bill—voted against placing the CONFUCIUS Act on the agenda in late July, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) has yet to announce plans to place the bill on the floor. If passed, the legislation would require all federally funded universities with Confucius Institutes to assume "full managerial control" of the institutes, a move that would limit the Chinese government’s influence over the program.

Frustrated by the lack of action, congressional Republicans are blaming Pelosi for blocking debate for the bill, criticizing the House speaker for putting politics over national security.

"I regret that Speaker Pelosi has still not scheduled the CONFUCIUS Act for a vote," said Rules Committee Ranking Member Tom Cole, who introduced the July vote. "This isn’t about politics. It’s about holding China accountable, and Speaker Pelosi clearly hasn’t made that a priority."

This is not the first time Democrats have opposed bipartisan legislation that sought to hold China accountable. In March, House Democrats railed against a bill that demanded Beijing disavow its conspiracy theory that the novel coronavirus originated in a U.S. military lab, labeling the bill racist against Asian Americans. House Democrats also dropped out of the then-bipartisan China task force in an unexplained, last minute decision in February.

Pelosi’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

At its peak in 2017, Confucius Institute had branches in more than 100 universities across the country, allowing Beijing to teach Mandarin to thousands of U.S. college students. The government-vetted teachers are not allowed to discuss topics deemed sensitive by the Chinese government, such as human-rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet.

A bipartisan group of legislators have long worried that the program gives the Chinese government undue influence over campuses, prompting legislative action. The CONFUCIUS Act—which stands for Concerns Over Nations Funding University Campus Institutes in the United States—required universities to uphold academic freedom and prevent the exercise of foreign law on American campuses—a key provision, since Beijing often required Confucius Institute teachers to abide by Chinese laws. The bill, introduced by Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.), unanimously passed the Senate in June.

The House companion bill initially received bipartisan support, recruiting Florida Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala as one of its sponsors. "The CONFUCIUS Act will support important cultural exchange with China while strongly protecting the values of American public higher education," the Democrat said in a July statement.

House Democrats, however, refused to put the bipartisan legislation on the agenda. On July 29, Republicans introduced a motion to approve consideration for the CONFUCIUS Act, but Democrats including Shalala voted against the motion. The bill is currently stuck in committee. Rachelle Peterson, a Confucius Institute expert and senior research fellow at the National Association of Scholars, said it is "truly astonishing" that Democrats will not advance the widely supported bill, which asks for "basic assurances of good faith from Confucius Institutes."

Republican supporters of the bill accuse Pelosi of ignoring China’s growing influence in academia.

"If Speaker Pelosi is blocking the CONFUCIUS Act in the House after every single Senate Democrat supported its passage, it’s worth asking why," Kennedy told the Washington Free Beacon. "Do House Democrats and the speaker want to give Xi Jinping more influence over what gets taught on American campuses? Does academic freedom annoy just their caucus in general?"

While House Democrats hesitate, the Trump administration has taken action to rein in the Confucius Institute. The White House declared the program’s D.C. headquarters a "foreign mission" in August, which designates Confucius Institute a direct appendage of the Chinese government. The Department of Education has also uncovered millions of dollars worth of previously undisclosed donations from the Chinese government for Confucius Institutes. The concerted push has convinced a record number of universities to drop their ties with the controversial program.

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) said the pandemic has forced a nationwide reckoning over the state of U.S.-China relations, and Democrats must keep up with the new consensus. The vast majority of Americans—including 68 percent of Democrats—have an unfavorable opinion of China, according to a July poll.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has proved the urgency with which we need to reevaluate our relationship with China," the senator, who cosponsored the CONFUCIUS Act, said. "Steps must be taken to protect the academic integrity of our educational institutions."

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‘We Have Our Options’: Pelosi Discusses Possibility Of Impeaching Trump To Stop SCOTUS Nomination

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) addressed on Sunday the possibility of impeaching President Donald Trump as part of a ploy to stop him from filling a recently vacated Supreme Court seat, saying that Democrats “have arrows in our quiver.” ABC News host George Stephanopoulos, a Democrat, asked Pelosi about the possibility that Democrats could […]

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UFC Fighter Stuns After Victory: ‘If You Thought That Was A Beating’ Wait Till Trump ‘Landslide’ Over Biden

UFC fighter Colby Covington gave an impassioned post-victory speech on Saturday night, saying that President Donald Trump’s victory over Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden would be more impressive than his own victory during the fight. “Ladies and gentlemen, the silent majority is ready to make some noise,” Covington said. “If you thought that was a […]

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‘Wake-up time’: Voters are waking up to the stakes in the presidential election


Polls show a fast-growing voter trend away from Joe Biden and towards President Trump’s reelection.

The ‘why’ of this is simple — and predicted by many knowing people.

Basically, it is that we have reached “wake-up time.” People, including those with at most a passing interest in politics, are now starting to seriously consider the choices in November’s election.

Simply put, how can anyone actually support what the Democrats have been offering? Crime and violence. Rioting and looting. Disintegration of the family. Rewarding irresponsibility. Punishing policemen and women who do what they have to do to defend themselves while arresting repeat criminals who have in some cases been preying on society for years. Outsourcing American jobs and making that profitable for a Democratic Party candidate’s family members. Keeping schools closed. Keeping businesses closed — with exceptions for, again, politicians and their own families. Endless nastiness. And the pitting of one American against another — against our own neighbors!

And along with all that, there is now the growingly obvious contradiction between what people see with their own eyes and what the media tells them is supposedly happening. There’s the realization that most of the “news” is a twisted lie. This, while real news, important and often uplifting stories (such as the winding down of foreign wars and entanglements and the start of true peace in the Middle East) are being ignored and buried.

America has worked for nearly two hundred and fifty years because most people are not only “smart,” but often way smarter in a practical way than those who pride themselves in their own elite “smartness.” And indeed, those supposedly “elite” people are often shown to be quite stupid.

Open eyes show all the above. And that the division that has already taken place shows a dividing line between failure, widespread poverty, devolving morality and broken communities — many of them large (our nation’s cities!) and other communities — those outside of the grip of the experts and the “woke” and the “now” — that are peaceful, prosperous, safe and, despite all the world’s problems, still relatively joy-filled.

You see this, don’t you? So do I. How can anyone not see it unless they simply refuse to?

And so it is happening.

And once again this leaves me to say it: Smile, people. Smile. And keep busy and open and frank about who is on America’s side, and who simply isn’t.

The latter these days sadly includes most of the Democratic Party.

And thus, we shall and must soon vote them out.

Image credit: FogCityMidge, via Twitter, screen shot

Polls show a fast-growing voter trend away from Joe Biden and towards President Trump’s reelection.

The ‘why’ of this is simple — and predicted by many knowing people.

Basically, it is that we have reached “wake-up time.” People, including those with at most a passing interest in politics, are now starting to seriously consider the choices in November’s election.

Simply put, how can anyone actually support what the Democrats have been offering? Crime and violence. Rioting and looting. Disintegration of the family. Rewarding irresponsibility. Punishing policemen and women who do what they have to do to defend themselves while arresting repeat criminals who have in some cases been preying on society for years. Outsourcing American jobs and making that profitable for a Democratic Party candidate’s family members. Keeping schools closed. Keeping businesses closed — with exceptions for, again, politicians and their own families. Endless nastiness. And the pitting of one American against another — against our own neighbors!

And along with all that, there is now the growingly obvious contradiction between what people see with their own eyes and what the media tells them is supposedly happening. There’s the realization that most of the “news” is a twisted lie. This, while real news, important and often uplifting stories (such as the winding down of foreign wars and entanglements and the start of true peace in the Middle East) are being ignored and buried.

America has worked for nearly two hundred and fifty years because most people are not only “smart,” but often way smarter in a practical way than those who pride themselves in their own elite “smartness.” And indeed, those supposedly “elite” people are often shown to be quite stupid.

Open eyes show all the above. And that the division that has already taken place shows a dividing line between failure, widespread poverty, devolving morality and broken communities — many of them large (our nation’s cities!) and other communities — those outside of the grip of the experts and the “woke” and the “now” — that are peaceful, prosperous, safe and, despite all the world’s problems, still relatively joy-filled.

You see this, don’t you? So do I. How can anyone not see it unless they simply refuse to?

And so it is happening.

And once again this leaves me to say it: Smile, people. Smile. And keep busy and open and frank about who is on America’s side, and who simply isn’t.

The latter these days sadly includes most of the Democratic Party.

And thus, we shall and must soon vote them out.

Image credit: FogCityMidge, via Twitter, screen shot

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It’s imperative that Congress immediately confirms a new Supreme Court justice


Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death didn’t just leave a vacant seat on the Supreme Court. It left a court evenly divided Supreme Court between four leftist justices and four strict constructionist justices. With his usual acumen and clarity, Ted Cruz explains why an evenly divided court is a recipe for a civil breakdown.

We can all understand the reasonableness of having an uneven number of Supreme Court justices: It substantially diminishes the likelihood of a stalemate. However, Ginsburg’s death means that, as we head into the most contentious election process in American history, the Court has eight justices. Worse, the justices are split evenly along ideological lines.

On the one side are the so conservative justices. In this context, conservative means that they believe that the Constitution as written, and as its authors intended it to be understood, must be the single-most-important document in any judicial analysis. Next in order of importance for analysis are acts of Congress, again to be interpreted as Congress intended when it passed the documents.

Regarding that last analytical metric, Justice Gorsuch failed horribly when he imputed transgenderism to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, despite his monumental slip-up, Gorsuch has mostly been a reliably “strict constructionist.” The other strict constructionists on the Court are Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh.

On the other side are the justices who, like Ginsburg herself, believe that their responsibility is to achieve certain political ends that align with “justice” and “equality,” as those terms are defined in the leftist rubric. They’re the judges who, when the Constitution proves unhelpful, will look to Europe or Africa for “norms” upon which they can rely. There’s always a lot of navel-gazing going on. Their decisions are often fraudulent and almost invariably turgidly written. The leftist justices are Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer, and Roberts.

You may be wondering why Roberts is on the list, given that he was a George W. Bush nominee. It’s true that, in matters that are inconsequential to American governance, Roberts is a reasonably conservative justice. However, on any matter that is of great moment to the left, Roberts will invariably side with the leftist justices. Nobody knows why although there are a lot of theories ranging from his being a RINO to his being blackmailed.

We already know that the fecal matter will hit the fan after this election because the Democrats have told us that it will. Unless Biden wins on election day (which he won’t), Democrats will take the matter to the streets and the courts. They’re already laying the groundwork.

Leftist legislators and judges across the country are ensuring that votes can be cast by mail and counted after the election. The voting and counting will stop only after the late-mailed, late-discovered, and late-counted ballots have pushed Biden over the top. Meanwhile, the left’s BLM and Antifa foot soldiers will be escalating the domestic terrorism we’ve witnessed over the summer.

In that chaos, imagine a stalemated Supreme Court. That’s what Sen. Cruz warned against when he spoke to Sean Hannity immediately after the news broke that Ginsburg had died:

I believe that the president should, next week, nominate a successor to the court. And I think it is critical that the Senate takes up and confirms that successor before Election Day.

There’s going to be enormous pressure from the media. There’s going to be enormous pressure from Democrats to delay filling this vacancy. But this election, this nomination is why Donald Trump was elected. This confirmation is why the voters voted for a Republican majority in the Senate.

And I’ll tell you one reason in particular, Sean, why it is tremendously important that, not only does the nomination happen next week, but that the confirmation happen before election day. Because Democrats and Joe Biden have made clear they intend to challenge this election. They intend to fight the legitimacy of the election. As you know, Hillary Clinton has told Joe Biden, “under no circumstances should you concede, you should challenge this election.” and we cannot have election day come and go with a 4-4 court.

A 4-4 court that is equally divided cannot decide anything. And I think we risk a constitutional crisis if we do not have a nine-justice Supreme Court, particularly when there is such a risk of a contested litigation and a contested election.

Sen. Cruz is right. It is to be hoped that people like Lisa Murkowski and Lindsey Graham, who seem squeamish about voting before the election, or Mitt Romney, who’s petty enough to destroy America to feed his ego, understand that it’s up to them to stop what could be a total civil war.

The other reason, of course, to confirm a new justice instantly is that it removes the Supreme Court as a hot-button topic in the election. The Supreme Court should be the least political branch of our government because the justices are not elected, and they serve for life. By getting a new justice seated quickly, the Court will (one hopes) recede into the background where it belongs.

(One more thing: Contrary to what Cruz says in the video below, and others are saying, there’s nothing historic about being the second female justice on the Supreme Court. The only one who matters historically is Sandra Day O’Connor, a Republican.)

Image: Ted Cruz talks to Sean Hannity; Twitter screengrab

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death didn’t just leave a vacant seat on the Supreme Court. It left a court evenly divided Supreme Court between four leftist justices and four strict constructionist justices. With his usual acumen and clarity, Ted Cruz explains why an evenly divided court is a recipe for a civil breakdown.

We can all understand the reasonableness of having an uneven number of Supreme Court justices: It substantially diminishes the likelihood of a stalemate. However, Ginsburg’s death means that, as we head into the most contentious election process in American history, the Court has eight justices. Worse, the justices are split evenly along ideological lines.

On the one side are the so conservative justices. In this context, conservative means that they believe that the Constitution as written, and as its authors intended it to be understood, must be the single-most-important document in any judicial analysis. Next in order of importance for analysis are acts of Congress, again to be interpreted as Congress intended when it passed the documents.

Regarding that last analytical metric, Justice Gorsuch failed horribly when he imputed transgenderism to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, despite his monumental slip-up, Gorsuch has mostly been a reliably “strict constructionist.” The other strict constructionists on the Court are Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh.

On the other side are the justices who, like Ginsburg herself, believe that their responsibility is to achieve certain political ends that align with “justice” and “equality,” as those terms are defined in the leftist rubric. They’re the judges who, when the Constitution proves unhelpful, will look to Europe or Africa for “norms” upon which they can rely. There’s always a lot of navel-gazing going on. Their decisions are often fraudulent and almost invariably turgidly written. The leftist justices are Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer, and Roberts.

You may be wondering why Roberts is on the list, given that he was a George W. Bush nominee. It’s true that, in matters that are inconsequential to American governance, Roberts is a reasonably conservative justice. However, on any matter that is of great moment to the left, Roberts will invariably side with the leftist justices. Nobody knows why although there are a lot of theories ranging from his being a RINO to his being blackmailed.

We already know that the fecal matter will hit the fan after this election because the Democrats have told us that it will. Unless Biden wins on election day (which he won’t), Democrats will take the matter to the streets and the courts. They’re already laying the groundwork.

Leftist legislators and judges across the country are ensuring that votes can be cast by mail and counted after the election. The voting and counting will stop only after the late-mailed, late-discovered, and late-counted ballots have pushed Biden over the top. Meanwhile, the left’s BLM and Antifa foot soldiers will be escalating the domestic terrorism we’ve witnessed over the summer.

In that chaos, imagine a stalemated Supreme Court. That’s what Sen. Cruz warned against when he spoke to Sean Hannity immediately after the news broke that Ginsburg had died:

I believe that the president should, next week, nominate a successor to the court. And I think it is critical that the Senate takes up and confirms that successor before Election Day.

There’s going to be enormous pressure from the media. There’s going to be enormous pressure from Democrats to delay filling this vacancy. But this election, this nomination is why Donald Trump was elected. This confirmation is why the voters voted for a Republican majority in the Senate.

And I’ll tell you one reason in particular, Sean, why it is tremendously important that, not only does the nomination happen next week, but that the confirmation happen before election day. Because Democrats and Joe Biden have made clear they intend to challenge this election. They intend to fight the legitimacy of the election. As you know, Hillary Clinton has told Joe Biden, “under no circumstances should you concede, you should challenge this election.” and we cannot have election day come and go with a 4-4 court.

A 4-4 court that is equally divided cannot decide anything. And I think we risk a constitutional crisis if we do not have a nine-justice Supreme Court, particularly when there is such a risk of a contested litigation and a contested election.

Sen. Cruz is right. It is to be hoped that people like Lisa Murkowski and Lindsey Graham, who seem squeamish about voting before the election, or Mitt Romney, who’s petty enough to destroy America to feed his ego, understand that it’s up to them to stop what could be a total civil war.

The other reason, of course, to confirm a new justice instantly is that it removes the Supreme Court as a hot-button topic in the election. The Supreme Court should be the least political branch of our government because the justices are not elected, and they serve for life. By getting a new justice seated quickly, the Court will (one hopes) recede into the background where it belongs.

(One more thing: Contrary to what Cruz says in the video below, and others are saying, there’s nothing historic about being the second female justice on the Supreme Court. The only one who matters historically is Sandra Day O’Connor, a Republican.)

Image: Ted Cruz talks to Sean Hannity; Twitter screengrab

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