In retrospect, it seems that writer Ambrose Bierce was ahead of his time when, in 1906, he defined "Lawful" as "Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction." When he went on to define "Justice" as "A commodity which in a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service," he left Lady Justice blushing. These days, if she removed her blindfold long enough to read the latest spasmodic outburst of Chicken Little syndrome at The Atlantic, she'd be tempted to slit her wrists.
Written by J. Michael Luttig, "The End of Rule of Law in America" contains a stupefyingly lengthy rendition of "the sky is falling," utilizing the weighted jargon of the left to make the case that Donald Trump is about the worst thing to hit planet Earth since Lucifer. Luttig's catalogue of President Trump's mortal sins is not terribly different from the incessant nagging one can hear any hour of the day on MSNBC or any second of the day from progressive oracles like David Hogg and Representative Jasmine Crockett in their ongoing contest to see who can sound the most moronic. Throughout the article, Luttig rained so much thunder and lightning down on President Trump's supposed constitutional transgressions that I wondered if his relationship with the presumption of judicial supremacy was more than platonic.
Sure enough, at the article's conclusion, we read that J. Michael Luttig is "...a former federal judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit," a member in good standing of the Royal Order of Robed Regents. If Hizzonor is displeased with any of the approximately two dozen national injunctions that Federal District Judges have levied against President Trump's policies in the opening months of his second administration, he failed to squeeze that displeasure into the 6,000 words of his ponderous essay. Then again, why should we expect Judge Luttig to admit any incidence of judicial overreach? As I recently observed:
One act of irresponsibility is an anomaly, after all. Two is a trend. Add in a judicial robe and it becomes an everlasting catastrophe. A popular vote, an electoral mandate, or even a democratic uprising means nothing to this class of self-appointed experts and unelected philosopher-kings who neither suffer the consequences of their prescriptions, nor give a fig about those who do suffer.
Judge Luttig appears to be the embodiment of H. L. Mencken's definition of a judge as "a law student who marks his own papers." But let it go. Most jurists never met a mirror they didn't like anyway. In a lengthy preamble to his many grievances, Judge Luttig writes:
Thus far, Trump's presidency has been a reign of lawless aggression by a tyrannical wannabe king, a rampage of presidential lawlessness in which Trump has proudly wielded the powers of the office and the federal government to persecute his enemies, while at the same time pardoning, glorifying, and favoring his political allies and friends -- among them those who attacked the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection that Trump fomented on January 6th, 2021. The President's utter contempt for the Constitution and laws of the United States has been on spectacular display since Inauguration Day.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, "Me thinks thou doth project too much." It was, after all, Joe Biden's lawless and tyrannical refusal to enforce America's immigration laws that enabled millions of unvetted illegals aliens to pour into the country to attack, rape, and murder innocent American citizens across the country — citizens who looked first to their president for help and saw only a decomposing husk of a corrupt politician who was unable to speak coherently or govern effectively. They then looked to the judiciary for help and saw that it was busy concocting bogus prosecutions of Donald Trump.
Speaking of which, it was Joe Biden who relentlessly oversaw the persecution of his political enemy, deriding the Republican nominee as the incarnation of Hitler as the then-former president was perp walked to one corrupt prosecution after another, vilified and castigated. They tried to break him legally and financially while slandering him with such withering and hyperbolic vitriol that their bottomless invective found a receptive home in the deranged minds of two would-be assassins, one of whom actually shot him! Yet Judge Luttig maintains that it is Donald Trump, who survived everything, including a shooting, who is the tyrant? Ironically, it was Joe Biden who wound up pardoning nearly everyone in his family, some preemptively, yet Donald Trump is corrupt?
It's this weird inversion of sanity that is on "spectacular display" in J. Michael Luttig's article. So that when the Biden Department of Homeland Security facilitated the human tsunami of military age males who flooded into our country and our cities while evading due process in blatant violation of existing immigration laws, not a whimper was heard from the legal beagles who now howl the loudest about due process as President Trump tries to get people out of here who never should have been in the country in the first place. It's like a burglar breaking into your home only to be hailed in the press and legal circles as a presumptive family member until some black-robed wonder deigns to make a ruling on the matter.
Apparently, the process is only fair when it advances progressive causes. By this thinking, it is conspicuously "fair" and "just" when violent gang members are protected by sanctuary cities, or when a judge whose job it is to uphold the law decides instead to aid in the escape of an illegal alien facing domestic violence charges. Ah, but when that judge is arrested for helping a violent offender escape, Judge Luttig gets his knickers in a twist and warns that this, "...is where rule by law ends and tyranny begins." Was it an act of tyranny for a federal grand jury to vote to indict Judge Hannah Dugan on charges of concealing a person from arrest and obstruction of justice? I gather Judge Luttig thinks so.
But the Royal Order of Robed Regents prefers its democracy on the backs of those who suffer the most from its rulings. "As Trump turns the federal government of the United States against Americans and America against itself, the bill of particulars against him is already longer than the Declaration of Independence's bill of particulars against King George III and the British Empire," writes Judge Luttig who cannot grasp how an administration that grouped its citizens, soldiers, and civil servants into color coded boxes labelled "Oppressor" or "Oppressed" to inculcate hatred based on skin color was much more treacherous than anything Donald Trump proposed.
"For not one of his signature initiatives during his first 100 days in office does Trump have the authority under the Constitution and laws of the United States that he claims," writes Judge Luttig. Apparently, encouraging American energy independence; setting consistent standards of readiness for military personnel; ordering government agencies and entities that receive federal funding to abide by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which prohibits discriminating against employees or applicants on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin; increasing America's mineral production; reviving America's coal industry; lowering prescription drug prices; allowing schools to discipline students on the basis of conduct rather than race; insuring the all trucker's in the U.S. speak English; or fighting over-criminalization in federal regulations are all initiatives which are beyond the constitutional power of the President, according to Judge Luttig.
Because in the regal robed world of J. Michael Luttig, it is the judiciary that reigns supreme, not the Constitution, and any upstart of a President who actually carries out the will of the people and prioritizes the safety and freedom of American citizens is a "tyrannical wannabe king." What part of the Constitution establishes judicial supremacy, and how does that concept square with co-equal branches of government? It doesn't. As Ronald Reagan said, "We are a nation that has a government, not the other way around." Let Judge Luttig file that one in his legal briefs.
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