Briefly Noted: Legal News--And Russia

I had occasion to point out yesterday (An Independent Judiciary?) that President Trump's (and Mitch McConnell's) strategy of concentrating on confirming appellate level federal judges is paying dividends. Not all is smooth sailing, of course. The 9th Circuit can still be a problem (as recently in a 2A case), but it's still far better than when Trump took office. A couple of cases on this relatively slow news day (so far) illustrate the impact Trump's appellate judges are having.

Since I mentioned the 2A just now, a case from New Jersey is a good place to start. Defense Distributed is a TX company that distributes various 3d print files for firearms and firearm accessories. New Jersey's Attorney General, Gurbir Grewal, sent Defense Distributed letters in TX attempting to restrain Defense Distributed from doing its business in NJ and threatening to prosecute Defense Distributed. The federal district court in TX agreed with Grewal that those letters were insufficient to provide the TX court with jurisdiction in the case. However, the Fifth Circuit disagreed. The SCOTUS has now--by declining Grewal's petition for certiorari--agreed with the Fifth Circuit.

The practical effect of this jurisdictional decision is that NJ will now have to justify its conduct to an unsympathetic federal court in TX. The Truth About Guns points out that the Fifth Circuit

has already made it clear that it believes that governmental efforts to restrict Defense Distributed’s distribution of 3D files have very serious if not fatal First Amendment implications.

This complicates anti-gun matters for crusading officials in anti-2A states. The SCOTUS undoubtedly knew this.

There's more good news from the 6th Circuit (which includes Ohio). You can read a longer account here:

The Internal GOP Struggle Intensifies

With the forces of Big Tech and Media behind them--as well as those of the Army of the Potomac still present in the Imperial City--the Zhou Baiden regime is seeking to persuade We The People of its legitimacy. It remains hampered in that regard by the fact that it dare not put its figurehead--Zhou Baiden himself--forward in public to do the job of persuasion. That would, in the American tradition, entail responding to random questioning in a free wheeling press conference environment--a non-starter for Zhou.

The GOPe has stepped forward, however. Mitch McConnell may have suffered a significant setback in the Senate vote regarding impeachment, triggered by Rand Paul, but he hasn't given up the NeverTrump cause. Within the Senate itself, while McConnell has had to deal with public warnings from established senators who are not normally aligned with Rand Paul--Lindsey Graham and Ron Johnson, for example--he has other tools for control. It appears that Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz--certainly among the most politically ambitious as well as (objectively speaking) intellectually accomplished Republican senators--have been sidelined, at least for a time, by an ethics complaint based on their objections to some of the electors (really). I don't claim to understand Senate rules but, until persuaded otherwise, my working assumption will be that the ethics complaint has McConnell's blessing, even if it was brought by Democrat senators.

In the meantime, McConnell is also providing aid and comfort to the Zhou Baiden both in his Senate role as well as by interfering in internal House matters. To all appearances, McConnell is attempting to establish himself--if not as actual head of the Republican party, then--as at least the senior or elder statesman for all Republicans. Again, I have a working assumption, and that is that McConnell is attempting to leverage his Big Money campaign finance contacts to muscle recalcitrant Republicans. No doubt he is acting at the behest of major donors and the Bushie wing of the Establishment. The outcome is no foregone conclusion--Trump has changed much in the political landscape.

In what follows, I've selected a list of headlines--several of them drawn from Liz Shield's Morning Greatness for today, with added comments. The overall thrust is the attempt to understand who the players in this high stakes contest are and where the battle lines are drawn.

First, let's start with a broad brush type of article, and I'll select just a few passages to place the political warfare in DC within its proper Globalist context: