Sen. Britt single-handedly unearths DoJ scandal (March 29): First-year Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) embarrassed Attorney General Merrick Garland and exposed intentional dereliction of duty by Justice Department officials telling federal marshals not to arrest people illegally demonstrating at the homes of Supreme Court justices.
This should be treated as a real scandal, and an explosive one.
At a March 28 appropriations subcommittee meeting, Britt showed slides used “to train and prepare the marshals for their protective detail at the home of the justices,” through which they were “actively discouraged” from arresting protesters for violating 18 U.S.C. §1507 of the U.S. Code. That statute makes it illegal to picket, parade, or demonstrate outside the residence of “any judge, juror, witness, or court officer” in order to influence a court decision.
For weeks after the leak of a draft decision in the Dobbs anti-abortion case, pro-choice activists picketed outside justices’ homes, often quite loudly. One loon even planned to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, but fortunately lost his nerve. Kavanaugh, it should be noted, had two minor daughters who presumably could feel intimidated by the targeted protests.
Yet the marshals’ training wrongly said the pickets were a “1st A[mendment] protected activity.” Even strong free speech advocates know this is risible nonsense, as courts repeatedly have ruled and as even liberal news outlets have emphatically acknowledged….
Biden team is stonewalling Intel committees (April 11): In today’s politically polarized environment, a presidential administration that has united Republicans and Democratic against it is almost certainly doing something wrong.
As Sarah Westwood reports in these pages today, the top GOP and Democratic members of both the House and the Senate and the top members of both parties of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees all are exasperated with the Biden administration’s stonewalling over access to classified documents found in the homes of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump…..
