OPINION:
When left-wing extremists vow to achieve their goals “by any means necessary,” believe them.
They’ve made that shockingly, appallingly clear in the seven weeks since May 2, when Politico reported on a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion of the pending ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an abortion-related case that could overrule Roe v. Wade.
Since then, pro-choice extremists — groups with names like Jane’s Revenge and Ruth Sent Us — have been protesting menacingly outside the homes of Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. (who authored the draft opinion), Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, and of Chief Justice John G. Roberts’. That’s in flagrant violation of Title 18, Section 1507, a federal law that criminalizes parading or picketing in front of the homes of judges with the intention of influencing the outcome of pending litigation.
Regardless of one’s position on abortion rights, that’s not just illegal and unethical, it’s indefensible.
What, in some respects, is even more deeply disturbing than the illegal protests themselves is Attorney General Merrick Garland’s deafening silence and craven cowardice in his seeming unwillingness to condemn the unlawful activity, much less order the arrest and prosecution of the lawbreakers.
Mr. Garland’s inaction is all the more reprehensible because, as a former federal appeals court judge himself, one who was nominated in 2016 for a seat on that very same Supreme Court, he obviously knows it’s wrong. (Perhaps he views the refusal to do his job in this case as some sort of perverse payback for being kept off the court by a Republican-controlled Senate. But if that’s the case, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, did the American people a public service by preventing the ascension to the highest court in the land of such a petty, vindictive man.)
Last Wednesday, Mr. McConnell and 11 of his fellow Republican senators co-signed a letter to Mr. Garland, demanding to know why his Justice Department was MIA on the matter and had yet to arrest or prosecute any of the illegal protesters.
“We continue to be baffled over the lack of prosecutions under Title 18, Section 1507 of the U.S. Code,” they wrote. “We understand it is the policy of the Justice Department not to discuss any pending or potential investigations, but this is an urgent matter of national importance.”
Just as an aside: Did the other 38 Republican senators — those who didn’t sign the letter — not consider it “an urgent matter,” or were they just not asked to do so? And did their 48 Democratic and two nominally independent Senate colleagues not consider it an issue of sufficient “national importance” to be signatories to the letter?
If Democratic senators weren’t invited to sign it, that was poor judgment, because concern for the personal safety of the justices and their families — and concern for judicial independence — should be completely nonpartisan. On the other hand, if they were asked to sign, but refused, shame on them, because, as Plato once observed, “Your silence gives consent.”
On Thursday, just one day after the Senate GOP letter to Mr. Garland, a coalition of 25 pro-life, religious and conservative public-policy groups sent the attorney general a letter of their own, demanding action in the face of dozens of instances of pro-choice terrorism and intimidation. These include documented cases of graffiti, firebombing and other forms of violence and vandalism against pro-life groups, pregnancy resource centers and churches.
“One extremist group is advocating for violence in response to the final Supreme Court decision on Dobbs, while another group has published home addresses, and encouraged people to show up at Supreme Court justices’ homes, churches, and their children’s schools in an attempt to coerce the justices and influence their final decision,” the letter reminds Mr. Garland. “[On June 8], there was an attempted assassination of a sitting Supreme Court justice at his home.”
That, apparently, is what left-wing extremists mean when they say “by any means necessary.”
Mr. Garland should likewise use any means necessary to shut them down, starting with prosecuting those breaking federal law in protesting outside justices’ homes — and by investigating who illegally leaked the Dobbs case draft opinion and prosecuting him or her as well.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.