It is only Neil M. Gorsuch’s first month as an associate justice on the Supreme Court, but he is already showing just how similar his judicial philosophy is to that of his predecessor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

In several difficult criminal law cases, Gorsuch has asked sharp questions from the bench and cast one of his first votes to deny a stay of execution—moves that echo Scalia’s approach to the law.

The Death Penalty in Arkansas

First, in McGehee et al. v. Hutchinson, Gorsuch voted to deny several Arkansas death row inmates’ requests to halt their executions.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor would have granted their request. Breyer wrote a two-page dissent questioning “whether the death penalty is consistent with the Constitution” (he clearly believes it isn’t).

While the majority did not state their reasons for denying the inmates’ request, it seems clear that they relied, at least in part, on the reasoning set out by Scalia in his concurring opinion in Glossip v. Gross (2015), in which he wrote that “not once in the history of the American republic has this Court ever suggested the death penalty is categorically impermissible.”

“The reason is obvious: It is impossible to hold unconstitutional that which the Constitution explicitly contemplates.”

Scalia continued, “The Fifth Amendment provides that ‘[n]o person shall be held to answer for a capital … crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury,’ and that no person shall be ‘deprived of life … without due process of law.’”

The Washington Post describes votes on stays of execution as “a time when the responsibility of the role crystallizes.” In McGehee, Gorsuch held firm, silently adopting Scalia’s constitutionalist reasoning.

No ‘Linguistic Somersaults’

Second, Gorsuch demonstrated his adherence to textualism through some of the questions he posed to the advocates during oral argument in Maslenjak v. U.S.

At issue in the case is whether the government was justified in removing the U.S. citizenship of Divna Maslenjak, an ethnic Serb from modern Bosnia.

Maslenjak, who came to the United States in 2000 and was subsequently naturalized as a citizen, was convicted of lying to a U.S. immigration official.

During an interview in 1998, she told the immigration officer that she and her husband were seeking asylum because they feared persecution in Bosnia because her husband had evaded conscription into the Serbian army.

In reality, he had served as an officer in a Serbian militia unit which was subsequently accused of war crimes.

In 2006, Maslenjak falsely stated on an immigration form that she had never lied to an immigration officer, and was subsequently convicted of making false statements on a government document.

A key issue before the Court is whether that lie was “material” enough to affect the original immigration decision, which would, in turn, be sufficient to uphold her conviction and her subsequent denaturalization.

As Amy Howe writes at SCOTUSblog, “ruling for the government” in this case “would give U.S. officials boundless discretion to take away citizenship based on even very minor lies.”

In the midst of this high stakes argument, Gorsuch’s questions focused on one issue in particular: The text of the law itself.

The statute, Gorsuch noted, “doesn’t contain an express materiality provision,” and Gorsuch was concerned about having to do “a lot of linguistic somersaults to add” such a provision into the law.

That harkens back to Scalia’s dissenting opinion in King v. Burwell (2015). There, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Affordable Care Act’s “tax credits are available to individuals in states that have a federal exchange.”

In signature prose, Scalia wrote that “[t]he somersaults of statutory interpretation” that the majority “performed (‘penalty’ means tax … ‘established by the state’ means not established by the state) will be cited by litigants endlessly, to the confusion of honest jurisprudence.”

Gorsuch appears sympathetic to Scalia’s disapproval of “linguistic somersaults” and the idea that judges are empowered to rewrite laws that they may disagree with.

The Big Picture

Third, Gorsuch showed a keen awareness of how the Supreme Court’s rulings carry far-reaching implications for future cases in Weaver v. Massachusetts.

That case involved a man named Kentel Weaver, who in 2006 was convicted of unlicensed possession of a firearm and premeditated murder of 15-year-old Germaine Rucker. Weaver was 16 at the time of the murder.

In 2011, he sought a new trial, claiming that his counsel was ineffective because they did not object to the courtroom being closed during jury empanelment, when the defendant, judge, and jury first meet.

Weaver argued that this was a procedural irregularity that violated his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial.

But as Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out at oral argument, the reason the courtroom was closed was that it was full. Ninety members of the public were in attendance as prospective jurors, and they all needed seats.

Weaver objected to this reasoning, saying that while prospective jurors were seated, his mother and his other supporters weren’t able to enter the courtroom during the early stage of the proceedings.

At this point, Gorsuch entered the fray with a big picture question.

He asked whether a “triviality exception” might apply here, or whether the Court should consider the potential unintended consequences that can arise when it tries to prevent every injustice—no matter how small—by imposing new procedural requirements across the entire criminal justice system.

Gorsuch asked whether ruling for Weaver would create a “Professor Stuntz” problem, whereby in “perfecting procedure, we actually result in its denial…”

This reference was to the late Harvard criminal law professor, William J. Stuntz, who argued that by following the Warren Court’s “fetishization of so many formalistic procedures,” the criminal justice system is now overburdened by an excess of procedural technicalities at play.

Berkeley law professor Andrea Roth summed up Stuntz’s argument, saying that these rules “at best indirectly ensure fairness of trial and sentencing outcomes” but have “rendered trials too expensive” and complex for anyone but elite lawyers to tackle.

In turn, writes Roth, this “has driven prosecutors and lawmakers to seek ways to avoid trial and force pleas through draconian sentencing schemes, a skewed focus on easily detected urban drug crimes mostly committed by racial minorities, and ever-expanding substantive criminal law.”

Scalia worked to constrain some of the Warren Court’s excesses in this regard during his time on the Court.

In Hudson v. Michigan (2006), for example, Scalia, writing for the majority, refused to extend the “exclusionary rule” (which requires the suppression of incriminating evidence, notwithstanding the fact that a defendant may be guilty) to technical violations of “the knock-and-announce rule,” which establishes that, absent extenuating circumstances, police officers must knock on the door and announce their presence before entering a suspect’s home.

He also asserted, in a noteworthy University of Chicago Law Review article, that there is a “dichotomy between ‘general rule of law’ and ‘personal discretion to do justice’”—that is, to rule as a judge personally desires rather than as the law instructs—and that the latter may lead to “unfortunate practical consequences.”

So far, Gorsuch is modeling this Scalia-esque approach and honoring the rule of law.

This is the exact approach he espoused in a dissent in A.M. v. Holmes (2016) while sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. There, he wrote, “[a] judge who likes every result he reaches is very likely a bad judge, reaching for results he prefers rather than those the law compels.”

A Fitting Successor to Scalia

Throughout his nomination and confirmation process, Heritage Foundation legal scholars noted Gorsuch’s striking similarities to Scalia, which include a shared sensitivity to overcriminalization, textualism, and the separation of powers.

In these first few cases, Gorsuch is showing just how well he fits the Scalia mold of being a committed constitutionalist and textualist on the High Court. (For more from the author of “In His First Criminal Cases, Neil Gorsuch Already Mirroring Scalia” please click HERE) http://joemiller.us/2017/05/first-criminal-cases-neil-gorsuch-already-mirroring-scalia/

The 2016 elections have passed, but courts still have plenty of work to do sorting out cases of voter fraud throughout the country.

Convictions have continued to roll in this spring, and The Heritage Foundation’s voter fraud database is growing longer by the day.

This week, we are adding 19 convictions, including cases from Texas, Colorado, and Illinois. These are just the latest convictions. Yet despite the overwhelming evidence, the left prefers to bury its head in the sand and refuses to acknowledge the reality of Voter fraud.

Take one example from Kansas. When Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach claimed his first conviction in a voter fraud case against a non-U.S. citizen, opponents of the conviction had no interest in dealing with the facts.

Instead, some groups on the left—like the liberal news site Think Progress—accused Kobach of “voter suppression.” Another Salon article completely dismissed Kobach without addressing the evidence he found, saying, “Someday he’ll have evidence of a problem that doesn’t exist.”

In many states, voter registration requires proof of citizenship. The left calls such policies anti-American. But is that really such a radical idea, that voters in a U.S. election would have to be U.S. citizens?

If liberals want evidence, then Heritage has it. To date, we have documented 773 confirmed criminal convictions in 492 voter fraud cases spanning 44 states.

Here are a few of the newest entries to the database:

Toni Lee Newbill, of Colorado, pleaded guilty to voting twice for her deceased father, once in the 2013 general election and again in the Republican Primary of 2016. Newbill was sentenced to 18 months of unsupervised probation, 30 hours of community service, and was ordered to pay a $500 fine and additional court fees.

Noe Olvera, of Texas, pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge. Olvera, a postman, admitted to taking a $1,000 bribe from a paid campaign worker in exchange for a list of the names and addresses of mail-in ballot recipients on his postal route.

After a two-year investigation into local voting fraud, hidden camera footage surfaced revealing a uniformed and on-the-job Olvera “negotiating an exchange of money for mail-in voter lists.” Olvera is scheduled to be sentenced on May 25.

Steveland Kidd, of Illinois, pleaded guilty to two counts of absentee ballot abuse during a municipal election in April 2013. Kidd took possession of, and delivered, an absentee ballot to election authorities despite being legally barred from doing so.

The crime is a Class 3 felony. Kidd was sentenced to 12 days in the St. Clair County Jail and is now barred from engaging in campaign-related activities or electioneering.

Brian McDouglar, a resident of Cahokia, Illinois, was sentenced to two years in prison on charges of falsifying or tampering with an absentee ballot—a class 3 felony. McDouglar illegally took an absentee ballot from a voter he was not related to, and then placed it in the mail.

Clearly, absentee voting remains particularly vulnerable to fraud.

Simply put, in most states there are few measures in place to sufficiently verify the identity of those casting absentee ballots. Signatures can be forged—a problem that can be addressed by requiring the voter to include a photocopied valid ID along with the absentee ballot.

But more robust identification requirements would only solve part of the problem. They cannot defend against the pernicious targeting of absentee voters by pressuring, coercing, or “assisting” them in filling out their ballots in order to assure that particular candidates or causes prevail.

So long as states continue to allow the names of deceased voters and residents who have moved away to remain on their voter rolls, they are leaving the door wide open to fraudsters who are willing to take advantage of the system by voting in their names.

The Heritage Foundation published “Does Your Vote Count?,” a guide to help voters and policymakers understand the issue of election fraud. That report provides policy recommendations that states should adopt to help thwart illegal activity and ensure that the election process remains free and fair for all.

Procedures that can be implemented include requiring a photographic, government-issued ID and proof of citizenship to register to vote. In addition, participating in an interstate voter registration crosscheck program will help guarantee that people are not voting twice.

Secretaries of state should verify voter registration data with other state and federal agencies, such as the state Department of Motor Vehicles and the Social Security Administration. Such measures will offer a barrier of protection not only to eligible voters, but also to the electoral process in general.

A single fraudulent vote does more than just cancel out the vote of another American. It puts a stain on the results of the entire election.

If voters are discouraged to participate in what they perceive as a tainted process, it only empowers those who would seek to steal elections.

Instead of vilifying those who fulfill their duties to protect the electoral process, the left should embrace the facts. Voter fraud is real, and we must take seriously the task of securing the integrity of our elections. (For more from the author of “While the Left Ignores Voter Fraud, More Evidence Mounts to Prove Them Wrong” please click HERE) http://joemiller.us/2017/05/left-ignores-voter-fraud-evidence-mounts-prove-wrong/

There is no more room in the Democratic party for pro-life Americans. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee has made that clear. As clear as the water Pontius Pilate used to wash his hands. Townhall reports:

Top Democrats recently told their party to get in line with their radical abortion agenda or step aside. As a way to bury the controversy over the Democrat National Committee campaigning with a Democratic mayoral candidate, Heath Mello, who once voted for pro-life legislation, DNC Chair Tom Perez and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) insisted that it was a mistake and that Roe v. Wade is non-negotiable.

The magazine America, whose liberal Jesuit editors are at least pro-life, pointed out what this really means:

Abortion is now the single issue defining the Democrats, and Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, is the de facto head of the party. … NARAL is at least as powerful within the Democratic Party as the National Rifle Association is within the Republican Party.

Bad News? Or Just Reality Emerging?

It’s hard to know precisely how to feel about this development.

We are Christians, pro-lifers and conservatives — in that order. There’s no conflict among those things. In fact they go together. But each is a different angle from which to view political questions.

We live in a democracy. We bear a solemn responsibility under God: making just laws for ourselves. So abortion is a political question. It isn’t in China, Cuba or other totalitarian states. There the people’s masters simply impose the practice on them. (You know, the way liberals want the Supreme Court to keep on doing.)

It’s key to keep our priorities in order. So let’s scrutinize this news about the Democrats under each of those three categories.

As Christians, We’re Saddened

From a spiritual perspective, this is tragic. One of our nation’s two political parties is now completely dedicated to a fundamental evil. Abortion is even worse than segregation. (Democrats defended that for 100 years). It’s on the level of slavery. To be an active Democrat, going forward, is now to participate in evil. If you raise money for Democratic candidates, give to Democratic causes, or in any way participate in that party’s bid for power. … You are implicated.

Our hearts go out to lifelong Democrats who care about unborn life. And to candidates like Heath Mello who tried to save their party from plunging over the cliff. But it has taken the plunge.

And that is something to mourn. It should lead us to prayer. It should lead pro-lifers who’ve belonged to the Democratic party to take a good hard look at leaving. Maybe they should start a third party that’s clearly pro-life, which also represents their views on other issues, where morality is not so black and white: such as poverty programs, immigration policy and other liberal priorities.

But they can’t go on cooperating with the party of NARAL — any more than pro-life Republicans could stay in that party if it endorsed euthanasia to cut back on Medicare costs.

As Pro-Lifers, We’re Conflicted

As citizens committed to protecting the vulnerable from violence, we’re deeply saddened. We honor pro-life Democrats of the past, like the great Ellen McCormack and Robert Casey. They championed the human rights of unborn children in a party that was being hijacked by hedonism and feminism. They fought the good fight. And failed.

Strategically, it’s a bad thing for a cause to be trapped in just one party. Defenders of Israel are glad that pro-Israel candidates exist in both political parties. The National Rifle Association cultivates pro-Second Amendment Democrats. So have pro-lifers, as long as that party made room for differences of conviction. The danger is that Republicans will take our votes for granted, and continue to shove the life issue to the back burner.

But the two-party strategy might be falling apart for other causes too. The anger and intolerance of leftist activists is driving the Democratic party away from a true defense of Israel. Ever more liberal organizations are backing the bigoted “Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions” movement that targets Israel and even American Jews for open discrimination.

On the gun issue, Democratic leadership still prudently allows candidates in selected regions to dissent from the overwhelming party consensus against private handgun ownership. But how long that will last, in our current atmosphere of a rush to extremes? Of hooded leftist demonstrators silencing campus speakers with impunity? Ten years, max, we predict. Sooner rather than later, there will be no more room for Jim Webbs in the Democratic party.

Now the Stakes Are Obvious

On the positive side, the Democrats’ decision to side as a party with baby-parts merchants like Planned Parenthood does … clarify matters. It shreds for once and all the phony “Seamless Garment” that leftists within the churches have used to bury the unborn under a pile of other, more popular priorities.

As we wrote here last summer, members of Democrats for Life were essentially giving political cover to rabid pro-choicers like Hillary Clinton. How? By pretending that issues where people of good will can differ over the wisest policy for enhancing human life were somehow comparable to abortion. No, health insurance, welfare, wages or even gun violence cannot be classed with abortion. Like genocide or unjust wars of conquest, it’s a practice that’s purely evil which no just government should enable. Period.

As Conservatives, We’re Hopeful

Of course, as citizens with strong, clear convictions about the sanctity of human life, we don’t like to see the party that represents half the country oppose us. It pushes the common good a little further out of reach. We wish that Democrats would come around on a whole range of issues. In an ideal world, both parties would accept core conservative principles — as both parties did on many issues, back in 1960 or so. Then elections could be about competency, honesty and character.

Just as slavery and segregation denied the founding principles of our country, so does abortion. It is profoundly toxic to have one of our two major political parties aligned against the nation’s very founding. The Democratic party at first clung to slavery, then to segregation. Now it clings to abortion. How long will it take political reality to peel its white knuckles off its latest fetish of evil? Only time will tell.

That said, from the point of view of accomplishing things: The Democrats’ move is wicked, vicious and helpful. To us. It demonstrates in flesh and blood the left’s commitment to an ideology of suicide.

The left in America has increasingly embraced a whole set of convictions that fit together like a puzzle. What holds the pieces in place is a dark, insidious view of human beings.

We Represent Different Species

Conservatives (especially Christians) believe that human beings are free, responsible creatures — the image of God. We only enjoy our freedoms as part of a compact; each one comes paired with a solemn responsibility. We don’t expect to “get away” with enjoying our rights while abandoning our duties. We don’t want to be paid for work we didn’t do. Nor to fund other people’s willful idleness. We don’t expect to enjoy all the pleasures of life and evade the consequences.

What better example could we find of a reckless abuse of freedom and disregard of duty than the practice of legal abortion? Everyone knows that sex is connected to having children, as eating is to nutrition. But the Sexual Revolution came along and offered us all the “benefits” of bulimia. Contemporary hedonism wants to totally sever that connection — to change the very nature of sex itself. God made it to be the glue that holds two people together in love for life, and generates new lives. Modern man wants it to be a low-investment, low-commitment (but much more enjoyable) game of Twister.

No real conservative can support that. Few liberals today have the stomach to oppose it. So of course the Democratic party is monolithically pro-abortion. It’s the logical consequence of the secular leftist view of man: a lumpy featherless biped who seeks out pleasure. We can win his votes, the Democrats reckon, by offering him a bigger pile of bananas. (For more from the author of “Democrats Are Now Officially the Party of Death” please click HERE) http://joemiller.us/2017/05/democrats-now-officially-party-death/