Quote of the day—Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse

The Supreme Court is not well.  And the people know it.  Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be “restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.”  Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse
August 12, 2019
BRIEF OF SENATORS SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, MAZIE HIRONO, RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, RICHARD DURBIN, AND KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS
[See also Senate Dems deliver stunning warning to Supreme Court: ‘Heal’ or face restructuring and Gun-control backers concerned about changing federal courts.

This is in regards to the case of a law that said you are not allowed to take your gun out of New York City to compete in a match or to protect yourself at a second home, or while camping or traveling. That SCOTUS might rule against this law is proof, in their minds, that SCOTUS is “not well” and must be “restructured”.

What if a case went to SCOTUS regarding the 13th Amendment and the respondents were afraid the decision would conclude the 13th Amendment meant what it said? Could one also conclude this was also evidence SCOTUS was “not well”?

I conclude the Senators are “not well” and this brief should be used at their trial.

This is what they think of the 2nd Amendment.

This is how you get a civil war.—Joe]

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13 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse

  1. I have to give Whitehouse credit; he doesn’t do crazy half-way.

    I can’t think of a single action that could be more detrimental to the leftist, gun-grabber cause than this (at least in the context of a court review and decision). By publically filing this, the decision will be irrevocably tainted if the court finds for NYC. People are going to straight up say, ‘They only decided that way because Senator Whitehouse threatened them’.

    Either Whitehouse is discarding propriety in favor of naked force — always a possibility as the left is desperate to gain as much control as they can — or he’s a complete moron — also a possibility.

    • Then again, Roberts rolled over on Obamacare without any real adverse consequences for his or the court’s reputation. I’m worried he might do so again.

      • Oh, it hurt the court’s rep, but the media simply didn’t talk about it, and the left (but I repeat myself) celebrated the successful use of kompromat.

        Yes, the left wants a civil war, because they think they could win (for some sufficiently broad definition of “win”) and will be in charge of a better place when the dust settles. Yes, they are that ignorant and delusional.

  2. I just very quickly skimmed the actual document (the SC brief). It seems to be making an argument about “actual controversies” vs. hypothetical issues — which is a fair point to make. The counterargument says that NYC has only changed its law temporarily as a tactic to moot the case and will go right back to where it was.
    But then they add that threat as the closing paragraph. One wonders what (if anything) they were thinking.

    • I read the entire brief fairly closely and mostly agreed with what appeared to be their main point…until I read the end. I ended up concluding the talk about the case being moot was a just a cover story for their real point. Had they ended the brief with a wrap up about mootness instead of the court being “not well” I would have conceded they have a valid point that must be given serious consideration. As it is, I look forward to their trials.

  3. The amazing thing is that they threaten SCOTUS to be non-partisan in a brief with the most partisan list of co-signers conceivable, and the threat is that they will make it MORE partisan.

    Even FDR backed down on this move. It’s a civil war triggering third rail. Crazy doesn’t begin to describe it.

  4. Yes well, if FDR got away with packing the Court, and nothing’s been done about it since, then surely it can be done again and again. The precident is well and firmly established.

    As for civil war being a warning, it isn’t. Violence and death is always a feature to the authoritarian side, never a bug. The authoritarians (the Romish forces, i.e. the anti-Christ) believe they will benefit from chaos (Ordo Ab Chao being one of their mottos), and I think they will benefit even though many of their own will be lost. For another thing, let’s never forget that they very much wish to de-populate the Earth, and that they have a long and rather spectacular track record of mass killing. They are VERY good at what they do, even to the point of getting us to finance and otherwise support our own destruction.

    • But FDR did not pack the court. He threatened to and the court gave him what he wanted without him having to follow through on the threat.

      Still, it could be said that precedent has been established.

      But that doesn’t mean the Senate can pack the court without the president, and probably the House, signing off on it.

      • The number of justices is set by law, so to change it would require the usual hurdles for any law. Filling the vacancies created by a law change would require the president nominating justices and the senate confirming them (the house is out of the picture at that stage).
        Changing the way nominations are made, as some candidates have proposed (Robert Francis O’Rourke suggested having 10 justices nominate the other 5, or 5 nominate the other 10, I forgot) would require a Constitutional Amendment.
        An interesting possibility (in theory anyway) would be a law shrinking the court. That would be fine, but it cannot affect the sitting members since they serve “during good behaviour”. So it would become effective only via attrition.

  5. Give in to the left and it will get “restructured” anyway.
    And speaking of packed. Aren’t dikey lesbians already over represented in SCOTUS?

  6. The Wall St. Journal’s lead editorial today is on this subject.
    Title: “Senators File an Enemy-of-the-Court Brief”.

    Zing.

  7. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Mazie Hirono, Richard Blumenthal, Dick Durban, AND Kirsten Gillibrand — Should ALL face FEDERAL charges for threatening sitting members of the United States Supreme court. Everyone should call, email or snail-mail all of your federal officials and push for their IMMEDIATE removal and prosecution. Enough is enough already!

    “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms… disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes… Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” –Thomas Jefferson

    NO MORE GUN LAWS – NO RED FLAG LAWS – NO UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS

    STOP PUNISHING LAW ABIDING CITIZENS FOR THE ACTIONS OF PSYCHOPATHS

    There are NO clauses in the United States Constitution stating if anti-gun extremists use victim’s grieving relatives as a front for their gun banning agenda that doing such would invalidate any laws or any part of the United States Constitution or amendments thereof. The Constitution exists ostensibly to prevent government from taking away the rights of its citizens in troubled times or when certain rights become unpopular.

    Remember: British attempts at gun-control and firearms and ammunition confiscation started the American Revolution. It was not about tea. “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” –Edmund Burke

    Democrats originally enacted gun-control laws to prevent black people from owning guns. No Democrat wanted to be shot while trying to kill, harass or lynch black people. This left black people unable to protect themselves-so gun control laws are actually racist.

    775,000 Americans die EVERY year from heart disease. Maybe we should require universal background checks for food purchases. Or perhaps require universal background checks for food purchases by fat people.

    NO UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS
    NO RED FLAG LAWS
    NO MORE GUN CONTROL
    STOP THE GUN CONTROL NONSENSE
    STOP VIOLATING THE US CONSTITUTION

    From a documentary about Charles Whitman and the Texas clock tower shooting: This tragedy happened in 1966 – “Whitman had the advantage, [He had barricaded himself in a 300 foot high tower and was shooting and killing people at random] but he didn’t factor in the response of the community. The police arrived. They were pinned down [By Whitman’s gunfire], unable to get to the tower.” Then the unthinkable happened-the likes of which that would make Democrat politicians like Dianne Feinstein, Andrew Cuomo, Dick Durban, Bill DeBlasio, Mike Bloomberg, Chuck Schumer, Phil Murphy, Dick Blumenthal, Spartacus Booker and liberal media elites shudder. “Private Citizens came out of their homes with rifles. They [Private Citizens] laid down suppressing gunfire. Charles Whitman couldn’t move. He couldn’t poke his head up without a barrage of bullets whizzing past his head. This allowed two police officers and a private citizen to enter the tower and eventually kill Charles Whitman.” But according to Senator Dick Durban, an armed citizenry is a “suicide pact”.
    Whitman was under psychiatric care and had told his psychiatrist of his fantasy of going to the clock tower with a rifle and shooting people-another example of the failure of the US mental health system.

    ALSO
    Whitman was an ex-marine. Whitman’s father had a bad temper and beat him and his mother regularly. His psychiatrist found that Whitman “seemed to be oozing with hostility.”

    The violence that is embedded in our culture has nothing to do with firearms. If Americans want non-violence and civility we need to be civil and kind to our fellow human beings. If however we continue on with a mental diet of violent movies, violent sports and violent video games, keep going to war and insist on “revenge” against those who we perceive to have wronged us then we will get back what we invest our time in which is simply more violence.

    A large percentage of violence and violent acts are perpetrated by people under the influence of drugs or alcohol yet we saw the debacle that occurred when we banned the legal consumption of alcohol. Perhaps all of the pompous, extremist gun-control celebrities and actors could stop promoting the use of recreational drugs and alcohol if they were really concerned with the level of violence in our society. Perhaps they could also stop producing all of the violent entertainment filth that many of them earn an immense amount of money from.

    — 40 Percent of all convicted murderers were using ALCOHOL when they killed their victims —

    Maybe Bloomberg should start Mayors Against Alcohol Violence or Everytown for Alcohol Safety?…

    Where are the calls for investors to divest their holdings of beer and alcohol companies? Where are the calls to boycott beer and alcohol companies? Where are the calls for companies to divest their holdings of the stocks of violent video game companies including Microsoft-which by some strange coincidence both Bill and Melinda Gates and Paul Allen are pushing for gun-control. (A little secret here -The Gates’ and Allen want to deflect blame from the graphically violent video games filth they produce for contributing to violence and perhaps encouraging some of the recent mass killers since they would take a big financial hit if Microsoft was found culpable in any of these cases.). Same goes for why the media blames guns and the NRA for the violent behavior of individuals-to deflect blame from themselves.

    PREVENTATIVE mental health services, among other things, needs to be the focus instead of merely creating a list of “dangerous people” not permitted to have firearms. Those same firearm banned “dangerous” people would still be able to own and operate cars, trucks, heavy construction equipment, transport gasoline, buy unlimited propane, etc. If someone is deemed to be too dangerous to own a firearm the need to be locked up period! Either in a jail or a psych ward. Do you really want an enraged or dangerous psychopath driving a truck filled with 10,000 gallons of gasoline or piloting an airplane full of passengers?

    All gun laws infringe on the RIGHTS of Americans to own guns.

    ALL gun laws VIOLATE THE US CONSTITUTION

    No caving to the lunatics and violent Democrats whose goal is to confiscate ALL privately owned firearms in the US and leave all US Citizens at the mercy of violent leftist thugs, violent criminals and dictatorial government bureaucrats.

    Violent PEOPLE cause violence – inanimate objects do not.

    The ACTUAL problem is an American society that promotes violence through sports, TV, movies, first person shooter video games and even in cartoons geared to young children.

    According to April 2013 reporting by The New York Daily News and PBS Frontline:
    …During a search of the Lanza home after the Sandy Hook school shootings, police found thousands of dollars worth of graphically violent video games…

    …A close friend of Lanza’s mother told The News that the troubled boy was a target of relentless bullying when he attended the Connecticut school [Sandy Hook Elementary School] years ago…

    …Nancy Lanza was so incensed by the school’s [Sandy Hook Elementary School] failure to protect her son that she sometimes showed up unannounced to watch over him, LaFontaine said. “She was so upset that the teachers weren’t protecting him from the bullies that she went with him like a bodyguard,”…

    …Lanza spent much of his teenage years holed up in his home playing war-themed video games, including Call of Duty. In the months leading up to the massacre, Lanza would dress himself up head to toe in a camouflage military uniform…

    So it is hardly a surprise that Adam Lanza, who was mentally unstable, decided to take out revenge at the school where he was viciously tormented when he was a child given the sad state of the United States mental health system.

    AGAIN:
    If someone is deemed to be too dangerous to own a firearm the need to be locked up period! Either in a jail or a psych ward.

    Instead of trying to take away even more civil liberties (Second Amendment, First Amendment, etc.) from American citizens why isn’t something done to fix the broken mental health system in this country?

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