Leftist Literati Call for Censorship
A gaggle of 547 leftist "intellectuals" have signed a letter demanding that Penguin Random House cancel its agreement with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett to publish a book she just wrote about maintaining judicial impartiality. The letter begins with a quote from Academy Award winning film producer Lord David Putnam that calls for a "balance freedom of expression with wider moral and social responsibilities."
The "wider moral and social responsibility" which Justice Barrett apparently failed to uphold was her participation in this year's US Supreme Court ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The letter appeals to a "higher authority," citing the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights' "recognition of abortion access as a fundamental human right."
Justice Coney Barrett called the letter "fundamentally flawed and unpersuasive. The US Supreme Court is bound to obey the US Constitution's limits on the wielding of power, not the UN's declarations. The authority to make laws regarding abortion fall under the Tenth Amendment clause 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.' The 1973 Court had no authority to establish either a right to abortion or a regulation of abortion. The Court's decision rendered earlier this year corrected the 1973 error and restored the power that had been usurped by the 1973 Court back to the states."
The Justice added that "since abortion allows one human to take the life of another a human, the assertion by the UN that doing so is a 'fundamental human right' is a logical absurdity. Likewise, this group's contention that blocking the publication of my book is not censorship demonstrates a failure to grasp the meaning of the First Amendment."
Attorney General Merrick Garland criticized Barrett's "out-dated interpretation of the Supreme Court's role in our government. Tying us to a 200 year-old piece of paper is the antithesis of a progressive society. The tragedy of this year's Dobbs decision would have been avoided if my appointment to the Court hadn't been blocked by the Republicans in 2016. As it was, Roe v. Wade was too stingy with abortion rights. It allowed states to restrict abortions occurring in the third trimester of pregnancy. If I were in Barrett's place I would have expanded abortion rights beyond the narrow window Roe v. Wade established."
Meanwhile, Garland's goons in the FBI are preparing dossiers on those who spread "misleading" information about the upcoming elections. In leaked internal emails, agents were advised to be on the lookout for "election crimes that are committed intentionally or inadvertently by making false or inaccurate statements by candidates or their supporters that could lead to votes being diverted to dangerous enemies of democracy."
Could one of these dangerous enemies of democracy be President Biden? This week he claimed that "gasoline prices when I took office in January of 2021 were over $5 per gallon. We have now gotten them down to $3.39." Neither statement is correct. The average price when he took office was $2.39. The current national average price is $3.77 per gallon. The New York Times insisted "this is just good old Joe being folksy--like the time he bragged about having hairy legs. It's definitely not false or inaccurate."
