Kennedy Rips Democrats For Continued “Assault” On Supreme Court

There was yet another hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday on the supposed corruption of the Supreme Court, and just as in the previous such hearings there was very little revealed to justify the level of manufactured outrage being belched into the media space.

The Democrats aren’t pushing ethics investigations on Supreme Court justices, and in particular on Clarence Thomas, because they actually believe there is anything actionable to be found. In fact, yesterday’s hearing was a rehash of old material that had already been disposed of in Thomas’ favor. The witness involved, an old federal judge named Mark Wolf, has been the subject of a good deal of scrutiny in his own right and appears to be a partisan hack rather than a jurist. Any real hearing on ethics would have more credible people testifying.

But John Kennedy, who has decried this campaign in clear terms since its most recent wave began, hit very close to the mark when he characterized the hearing as an “assault,” and in particular when he described the Democrats and the Left in their motivations.

“If you can’t control it, burn it down,” was his formulation.

And he’s correct.

The only thing that he’s missing, and eventually we expect him to get around to lighting upon it as the “assault” continues, is why.

It’s not a general distaste for conservative governance on the Supreme Court, which certainly does rankle the Democrats who run the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Democrats’ leader in the Senate Chuck Schumer, who as Kennedy notes made threats of violence against the Justices on the steps of the Supreme Court back in 2020 and has still not faced consequences for it even though multiple justices have since had to deal with credible assassination plots and threats against their lives by individuals who might well have been inspired by Schumer.

The Democrats don’t need specific motivation to assault a conservative Supreme Court. But in this case they have it, and while it’s being given very little play in the media it tells you everything you need to know about why these hearings are continuously pursued and the temperature at which they’re proceeding.

This is an attempt to delegitimize and intimidate, because there are two cases in front of the Supreme Court which will be decided this summer that are quite likely to dismantle what’s known as Chevron deference – the presumption in federal law that regulatory rules and actions by the federal bureaucracy are legal and that the agencies in question have the power, in the absence of a clear statement of Congressional intent, ceded by Congress to make and enforce the rules they dream up.

This has led to a runaway expansion of the regulatory state, to such an extent that most of what the federal government does is not authorized in federal statute but rather in the body of administrative rules and regulations promulgated by agencies in which not a soul has been elected.

When Chevron deference goes away, it’s going to be open season for the trial bar in going after federal agencies for abuses of power previously sanctioned by legal doctrine, and people harmed by stupid and counterproductive regulations will have those struck down all over the country.

The two cases will change American law and our economy if they’re decided the way it’s expected they will.

And the Democrats are utterly terrified of what will happen.

We haven’t seen much on this, but for one thing you’re likely to have a whole lot more plaintiff attorneys siding with the Republican Party, because a lot of the work for the trial bar will be conservative work – it’ll be suing the government to recover freedoms with respect to land use, to buying and selling goods, business operations and so forth. That’s a big shift in politics, obviously, as trial lawyer money is overwhelmingly Democrat. If they lose that, it’s very bad.

But the other problem they have is that leftist policy fetishes like DEI and climate change would then be subjected to congressional review, where most of them are dead on arrival. Subject those initiatives to the necessity of Congress passing them before the agencies have the power to enact them, and the enterprise of “wokifying” the federal government grinds to a halt.

So much of what the modern Left does in America happens quietly and out of public earshot. Things just appear, and people are simply expected to go along with them after the fact. There is little public debate about the new rules, because most of the new rules wouldn’t survive that debate.

All of these things are in jeopardy, at least in the part which involves the federal government, if the basic underpinnings of the power to make them actionable are taken away.

Which is the specific reason for the assault on the Supreme Court.

And as good as Kennedy’s speech was, we’d love it if the next one picks up on it.