Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has stubbornly refused to disclose whether he would pack the Supreme Court if he wins in November.
On Friday he even told a local reporter that voters didn’t deserve to know his position before the election.
Now Biden’s turning it around and accusing Republicans of court packing, according to Bloomberg News political re[porter Jennifer Ep[stein.
"Biden is again asked why voters don’t deserve to know his views on court packing," Epstein reported. "He responds: 'The only court packing going on right now is going on with Republicans packing the court right now . . . I’m going to stay focused on it so we don’t take our eyes off the ball here.'"
First, nominating and confirming Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, whose hearings began today, is not "unconstitutional." It’s what the Constitution requires.
Second, it’s not "court packing." It’s filling a court vacancy. Packing is increasing the number of sitting justices from nine to 11, 13, or whatever, and then filling those new seats with like-minded justices.
But instead of calling Biden out on it, media figures are going along, beginning with the "Father of Fake News," journalist Dan Rather, who lost his cushy job as "CBS Evening News" anchor for peddling a fabricated story about George W. Bush.
"Can we at least recognize that 'Court Packing' at all levels of the judiciary has been the Republican playbook for decades?" he tweeted “Asking for Merrick Garland."
Merrick Garland was an Obama presidential-year Supreme Court nominee that the Republican-led Senate refused to consider.
Washington Examiner reporter Jerry Dunleavy described Rather’s statement as "gaslighting," adding that "it’s also the new talking point."
And indeed it was, beginning with the Center for American Progress (CAP), a leftist Washington, D.C.-based public policy and research organization.
CAP put together a graphic it called "Conservative court packing in one chart," except it depicted nothing of the sort.
The chart merely indicated the number of appellate judges confirmed in select years during the administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.
Both Rather and CAP can probably be excused for their deceptions; the Associated Press cannot.
The AP claims to be “an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting.” One that “remains the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in all formats and the essential provider of the technology and services vital to the news business.”
While Democrats are referring to vacancy filling as "court packing," they’re also redefining actual court packing as "depoliticizing the court," as though they’re correcting a wrong.
Senate candidate and Gov. Steve Bullock, D-Mont., made that claim Sunday, and the AP initially appeared to go along with it.
"Bullock said that if Coney Barrett was confirmed, he would be open to measures to depoliticize the court, including adding judges to the bench, a practice critics have dubbed packing the courts," the AP reported, according to Tom Bevan, RealClearPolitics co-founder and president.
Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., wasn’t buying it, and he believed the American people wouldn’t fall for the Democrat Party’s new euphemism either.
"Adding Justices to the US Supreme Court would be the most political, radical, partisan power grab possible for the Judiciary. That move is the polar opposite of 'depoliticizing,'" he said.
"I’ve got very bad news for those pushing this new 'depoliticizing' spin, Americans aren’t idiots!"
After that and an avalanche of other complaints, AP corrected its story and included an editor’s note at the end.
"This story has been edited to make clear that it is Bullock’s opinion, rather than a fact, that adding justices to the Supreme Court would depoliticize the court," the AP wrote.
Other than the editor’s note, the word "depoliticize" now appears nowhere in the article.
During a 1983 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, then-Sen. Joe Biden called court packing a "boneheaded idea."
"President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt clearly had the right to send to the United States Senate and the United States Congress a proposal to pack the Court. It was totally within his right to do that — he violated no law, he was legalistically absolutely correct," Biden said.
"But it was a bonehead idea. It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make, and it put in question, for an entire decade, the independence of the most significant body—including the Congress in my view — the most significant body in this country, the Supreme Court of the United States of America."
He was right.
Court packing amounts to hijacking one branch of government — significantly, the only one specifically designed to be non-political — in order to turn it into another partisan, political body filled with activist justices having no respect for the Constitution.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter, who can often be found honing his skills at the range. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.