Deranged Media. A Shirking Generation. The New Way Liberals Steal Elections.

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Nothing Like a SCOTUS Leak to Bring Out the Deranged Media 
By Brad Slager
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And Now the Left Is Going to Stomp All Over Ruth Bader Ginsburg
By Matt Vespa
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I too was drafted:

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Alito's first draft is a good one. But first drafts change.

by Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe

Supreme Court police officers set up barricades on the sidewalk as prolife and pro-choice activists demonstrate in front of the high court on May 3.

NEAR THE end of their bombshell story reporting that the Supreme Court has voted to repudiate Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Politico reporters Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward quote the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who took pride in the culture of tight-lipped confidentiality that has traditionally surrounded the high court's deliberations.

"At the Supreme Court, those who know don't talk, and those who talk don't know," Ginsburg often said.

But that hasn't always been true. The leaking of a complete draft opinion while a case is still pending appears to be unprecedented, but this is not the first time that the court's decision in a key case has been disclosed to journalists in advance. Indeed, the result in Roe v. Wade itself was leaked by a Supreme Court clerk to a reporter for Time magazine, which published a story — headlined "The Sexes: Abortion on Demand" — in an issue that hit the stands before the court's explosive ruling came down.

The difference this time is the motivation of the leaker.

The clerk who gave Time a heads-up on the court's intentions in Roe intended only to supply information on background that would be of help in reporting the story after the decision was public. Whoever leaked the draft of Justice Samuel Alito's opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the Mississippi abortion case, almost certainly wished to unleash a whirlwind of fury and political pressure. Was the goal to generate political blowback so intense that one or more justices might have second thoughts about jettisoning Roe? Was it to wreak havoc on the integrity of the court's deliberations and thus undermine the authority of a decision that many liberals are dreading? In a tweet that went viral Monday night, reporter Ian Millhiser of Vox hailed "whoever the hero was within the Supreme Court" who decided to "burn this place down."

But the leak was no act of heroism. It was an egregious betrayal — perhaps even a crime — that must be investigated. To catch, expose, and punish the leaker should be an urgent priority. At a time of such profound disenchantment with America's political institutions, the Supreme Court has managed to retain at least a measure of public respect. We cannot afford to lose that last oasis of esteem, civility, and probity in the federal government. On Jan. 6, 2021, our nation experienced a humiliating and shocking assault on one of its oldest, noblest traditions: the peaceful transfer of power to leaders chosen by the voters. Are the deference and trust accorded to the Supreme Court next on the list of targets?

To anyone who has followed the legal and political arguments over Roe and its impact, nothing in the purported Alito draft opinion should come as a surprise.

"Roe was egregiously wrong from the start," he writes. "Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division."

All true. Even ardent defenders of abortion rights have lamented Roe's embitterment of American political life — by abruptly yanking abortion policy out of the political realm, it made the whole subject vastly more toxic. Roe "halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction," said none other than Ginsburg in a 1992 lecture, and thereby "prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue." Far from settling the matter once and for all, Roe turned abortion into perhaps the most unsettled subject in American law and politics. Returning abortion policy to the process of democratic lawmaking will at long last detoxify it, as legislators in the various states work out for themselves whether and how it should be regulated. For all the hysteria on the left today, overturning Roe will not mean outlawing abortion across America tomorrow.

The first page of the leaked Alito opinion is clearly marked "1st draft."

That said, Roe hasn't been overruled. Dobbs hasn't been decided. Two of the most important words in the Alito opinion published by Politico appear at the top of the first page: "1st draft." Alito's text is dated Feb. 10, and much about it may have changed since — including whether it still has majority support. "Deliberations on controversial cases have in the past been fluid," Politico notes. "Justices . . . change their votes as draft opinions circulate and major decisions can be subject to multiple drafts and vote-trading, sometimes until just days before a decision is unveiled." All we have seen is a first draft. And first drafts, as even schoolchildren know, can be edited, revised, or torn up and rewritten.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).

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Does Biden intend to raise an entire generation of shirkers?  Is that The America he envisions?  Liberals were enraged over Charlottesville but remain silent over "SCOTUS LEAK." More hypocrisy from the Leftees.

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Students Must Take Responsibility for Their Debt

By Star Parker

A child growing up in America today looks around and finds himself or herself in a nation where debt is larger than the entire economy, and still growing.

But just as inflation shows that the costs of fiscal irresponsibility cannot be hidden, so the costs of teaching our youth that personal responsibility is irrelevant cannot be hidden. It manifests in the destructive behavior we see now.

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Is this how liberals have learned to steal elections?

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Leak of Supreme Court Abortion Decision Threatens To Upend Coming Midterm Elections

Politicians in both parties seemed caught off-guard, and political analysts began rethinking their predictions for close races across the country if abortion becomes a central focus.

The leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion decision sent shock waves through America’s political classes Tuesday and threatened to upend the conventional wisdom about the prospects for both parties in the coming midterm elections.

If issued as a formal decision, the draft majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito in February, would end the court’s protection of a woman’s right to an abortion and relegate that authority to legislators in statehouses or the U.S. Congress.

The opinion itself was not entirely unexpected, but the manner in which it became public — via a leak to Politico — was highly unusual. Politicians in both parties seemed caught off-guard, and analysts began rethinking their predictions for close races across the country if the abortion issue becomes a central focus of the fall campaign.

A formal opinion in the case, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, is expected in the next two months. The outcome of the case and the language of the draft opinion could still change before its release.

Republicans generally welcomed the prospect of a decision overturning Roe, but instead of celebrating spent most of the day excoriating the person or persons responsible for the leak.

In a written statement, Senator McConnell called it an “yet another escalation in the radical left’s ongoing campaign to bully and intimidate federal judges.” At a later press conference, he urged reporters to focus not on the draft itself but on the fact that it was leaked.

Democratic strategists professed to be unsure how the issue would play out at the polls. President Biden, when asked about the potential political fallout from what he called a “radical decision,” demurred, stating only that he had not thought through such things.

His office, however, wasted no time in attempting to rally its base around the cause.

“It will fall on voters to elect pro-choice officials this November,” Mr. Biden’s office said in a written statement released moments before his comment. “At the federal level, we will need more pro-choice Senators and a pro-choice majority in the House to adopt legislation that codifies Roe, which I will work to pass and sign into law.”

Vice President Harris leaned in even harder, accusing Republicans of “weaponizing” the law against women and calling on supporters to “fight for women and for our country with everything we have.”

An email sent shortly before 10 a.m. by a political action committee affiliated with Speaker Pelosi suggested that the best response from Democrats to the opinion should be to send money.

“The only — ONLY — way to get justice is to win this election, protect the Democratic House and Senate, and replace every last anti-choice Republican who made this happen,” the email said.

Polling by Gallup on the issue dating back as far as 1975, two years after the decision in the Roe case, has consistently shown that a majority of Americans support some form of abortion access.

Between a quarter and a third of Americans have told pollsters they believe abortion should be legal in all circumstances, Gallup said, and about half support the right under certain circumstances. About 20 percent of Americans believe abortion should be entirely illegal.

A spokeswoman for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, Laurene McIlvaine, said the issue resonates strongly with Democrats and now has the potential to be a key issue for independent voters as well.

“I think abortion rights will be a very mobilizing issue at every single level of the ballot, including state legislative races,” Ms. McIlvaine said.

The 2022 election season kicked off in earnest Tuesday with primary elections in Ohio and Indiana. Eleven other states have primaries on subsequent Tuesdays this month. Republicans had been aiming to make big inroads in both houses of Congress in November given Mr. Biden’s abysmal approval ratings, rampant inflation, and global security concerns.

Abortion rights advocates, among them Planned Parenthood and Naral Pro-Choice America, had already announced that they were funneling some $150 million into the midterm elections in key swing states such as Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

A strategist with the Democratic American Bridge PAC, Julie McClain, said her group is spending $100 million on the midterms and said that, while it is too early to predict the impact of Monday’s leak on the races, her group will be redoubling its efforts.

“Women voters were the driving force behind Democratic victories in 2018 and 2020,” Ms. McClain said. Now “it’s on all of us, and particularly the Democratic Party, to tap into that and communicate that and stoke that fire between now and Election Day.”

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