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Red & Black Podcast: Why Is Everyone Freaking out About Kathy Barnette?

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There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Dr. Oz camp, as candidate Kathy Barnette has soared in the polls, with many supporting her bid for the GOP’s Pennsylvania senatorial nomination. “Red & Black” co-host Priscilla Rahn insists the TV doctor is the best choice, and that former President Donald Trump was playing chess when he gave him his endorsement. RedState contributor Jeff Charles disagrees, insisting there might be other reasons for the skullduggery carried out by some of Oz’s most high-profile supporters.

Hear how the rest of the Red & Black gang felt about the brouhaha, and the ongoing debate over abortion in the latest episode:

WATCH: Pelosi Praises the 'Genius of Our Founders' While Defending 'Right' of Abortion

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Before we begin this episode of “Stupid Crap Nancy Pelosi Says,” consider the following: We’re talking about a condescending woman who not only trots out her faith at every politically expedient opportunity and defiantly declares herself to be a “devout Catholic” — for which she has been admonished by the San Francisco Archbishop to stop claiming — she also refers to late-term abortion as “sacred ground.”

Anyway, Pelosi went full-metal Pelosi during a segment on CNN’s “State of the Union,” as reported by Breitbart News, telling sock-puppet host Dana Bash that the leaked Roe v. Wade SCOTUS draft opinion demonstrates “the first time the court has taken back a freedom that was defined by precedent.”

Well, of course, that, but the fact is we, as a country — this is — let’s just put this in perspective. What we want women and families and everyone to focus on is the nature of this decision. This is — our country, the genius of our founders was to have a Constitution that enabled freedom to expand.

[That is correct — and you have zero idea what you are talking about.] And it did with marriage equality, it did with Roe v. Wade, in many ways, defining freedom more fully. [Including “freedom” for the unborn?]

This is the first time the court has taken back a freedom that was defined by precedent [Sorry, Nancy, “precedents” are not forever etched in granite] and respect for privacy. So, let’s stay focused on who we are as the country … I think that’s all good. It’s helpful to the women, and that’s important. [Um, how helpful is it to unborn children, disgustingly including those right up to birth?]

But it’s also important to know that this is not right. This is not the path of freedom for our country. So they’re putting freedom on the ballot. [Exactly — unfortunately, you are incapable of understanding what you just said.] And our democracy has been on the ballot because of what they have — are doing to elections. [For the love of God and unborn children across the country, please sit down and shut up.]

Wait — huh?

OK, stop the crazy train for a minute.

Yes, “the genius of our founders” not only established in the U.S. Constitution — a document that did “enable freedom to expand,” but the genius of our Founders also established three equal branches of government, critically including an independent judiciary, in part to protect us from overzealous federal lawmakers, by ensuring that certain decisions and responsibilities properly rest with state and municipal governments representing the democratic views of the citizens of our respective states.

You know, that Federal Republic thing? To protect us from an all-powerful “national” government? Anyway, let’s return to the insanity at hand, as Pelosi continued to dig even deeper, as transcribed by Breitbart:

This is a place where freedom and the kitchen table issues of America’s families come together. What are the decisions that a family makes? [If SCOTUS — and our nation — are forever locked into “precedent,” what decisions will American families ultimately be “allowed” to make?]

What about contraception for young people? It’s just beyond a particular situation. It’s massive, in terms of contraception, in vitro fertilization, again, a woman’s right to decide. [Exactly. Unfortunately, you are incapable of understanding the moral difference between contraception and in vitro fertilization, and on-demand murder of unborn children — right up until birth.]

And it’s OK — we want to mitigate for [sic] the damage, but we have to get rid of the damage. [Clueless — and moraless.]

“The ball is this court,” Pelosi blathered, “which is dangerous to the freedoms of our country.”

How ironic. Particularly given the last 16 months of Biden and total Democrat rule.

Incidentally, during a Sunday appearance on a different network, Pelosi went completely off the rails while attempting to explain the cause of inflation, as RedState reported — another “must-see” Pelosi moment.

Related on RedState:

Clarence Thomas Explains Just How Badly the Leak Has Hurt the Supreme Court

The Darker Side of ‘Feminism’ Slithers out in TikTok Rants Fretting Over Roe v. Wade Future

Biden DOJ Fails to Enforce Federal Law Against Protesting Outside the Homes of SCOTUS Justices

Lawmakers issue court-packing threat again

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From the moment the Supreme Court ostensibly became 6-3, Democrats have been pushing the idea of court-packing.

Their thinking is that if the Court’s makeup isn’t to their liking, they can just expand it until it they get a makeup they like.

It’s an idiotic idea that completely ignores the fact that if they can do it, so can their opponents, but they’ve still floated it more than once.

Now, the idea is back, as Larry Keane notes over at The Truth About Guns.

The unauthorized leak of a draft abortion opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court has Democrats up in arms (again) about packing the U.S. Supreme Court. This isn’t a new argument and one gun control advocates publicly pitched before.

Senators are openly calling for court-packing again and that’s before the Supreme Court has rendered a final opinion on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen or finalized the opinion of the leaked abortion draft decision. Even before the nine justices heard arguments on the New York case challenging the states arbitrary and restrictive “may issue” concealed carry permit criteria, there were calls for court-packing.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) filed an amicus brief in NYSRPA v. New York supporting restrictive gun control but took arguments beyond supporting the law with threats to upend the court’s structure. That case was ultimately declared “moot” by the Supreme Court after New York City altered the law to avoid the Court striking down the law.

“Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’ Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal,” Sen. Whitehouse wrote.

What Whitehouse meant was that the restructuring would make sure only the right kind of politics influenced the court. God knows he wouldn’t want a Supreme Court that took the Second Amendment literally or anything.

Moving on…

It’s a fool’s errand to predict a Supreme Court ruling, but the justices’ questions offered insight that they appeared to be wary of New York’s subjective qualifications to obtain concealed carry permits. The decision will be the most significant on gun rights since the 2010 McDonald decision.

That’s got gun control groups acting like spoiled school children. They’re throwing fits. They too want to change the court’s structure. Several of these groups joined together for a discussion on how to change the rules and rig the system against law-abiding Americans and their God-given right to self-defense.

First, go read the whole thing. Second, understand that most of what we’re seeing with regard to court-packing is because of Roe v. Wade. They’re furious that this happened.

While anti-gun zealots are talking about court-packing, most leftists are focused on abortion at the moment and aren’t thinking of NYSRPA vs. Bruen.

That will change, though.

If they get their way right now, the Second Amendment will really be little more than collateral damage. Happily so for pretty much all of them, but collateral damage nonetheless.

That will change when the Bruen decision comes out–though whether it will come out as it normally does or if this, too, will be leaked remains to be seen–and then it’ll be on.

However, for the same reason President Joe Biden can’t ram through whatever nominee he wants to head the ATF will actually put this in check.

In other words, there just aren’t enough votes in the Senate.

Further, with most experts foreseeing a bloodbath for Democrats in the midterms, it’s unlikely those votes will materialize.

So while this is a real threat, we shouldn’t get too worked up about it just yet.

Will Iowa's right to keep and bear arms referendum be out of date by Election Day?

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When voters head to the polls in Iowa this year, they’ll not only have the opportunity to cast their vote for several state and federal offices, but the chance to change their state constitution as well. A proposed amendment will be going before the voters that would enshrine the right to keep in bear arms in the Iowa Constitution, which is one of just a handful of states that do not mention the right to keep and bear arms.

That would change if the straighforward language of the proposed amendment is adopted: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.”

The proposed amendment is getting some scrutiny of its own, including from some gun control advocates who claim that enshrining the right to keep and bear arms in the state constitution would have disastrous consequences.

If Iowa were adopting the Second Amendment, it would say: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Iowa’s proposal has no mention of a militia, no mention of the security of the state. Instead, it refers to Iowa as a “sovereign” state, a term popular with secessionists and anti-government kooks.

The proposal also designates the right to keep and bear arms as a “fundamental” right. That word carries deep meaning in a legal context. It does not appear in the Second Amendment.

Fundamental rights include your ability to move between states and to have custody of your children. Whatever the gun industry might like you to think, taking your gun away from you should not be in the same legal category as taking your child away.

Let’s dispel the myths being advanced here. First of all, there’s nothing kooky about using the phrase “sovereign state,” which is a fairly common (though legally vague) description for states within the U.S. Even the Supreme Court has recognized that the Constituion “preserves the sovereign status of the States” because it “reserves to them a substantial portion of the Nation’s primary sovereignty, together with the dignity and essential attributes inhering in that status.”

As for the columnists’ bizarre definition of a fundamental right, once again they should look to what the Supreme Court has said and done. As University of William & Mary law professor Timothy Vick wrote a couple of years ago:

As recognized in District of Columbia v. Heller and interpreted in the lower courts, the Second Amendment exhibits all the hallmarks of a fundamental constitutional right. It is a non-economic, individual dignity right that is considered ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’

But those aren’t the only objections to the Iowa constitutional amendment raised by the gun control supporters. They also have a big problem with the last line of the proposed change.

Strict scrutiny means that any limitation on “keeping and bearing arms” must fulfill a compelling state interest, and must be narrowly tailored to meet that compelling interest. It is extremely difficult for the government to meet this burden of proof.

Imagine trying to justify a law to the courts that works one way for Black people and another way for everyone else. That’s the level of scrutiny that gun laws would have to pass.

Again, that’s a really weird hypothetical to use, especially when there’s no shortage of real cases involving strict scrutiny, which is indeed the highest standard of review (at least based on a tiered system of “rational basis”, “intermediate scrutiny”, and “strict scrutiny”) that courts use when determining the constitutionality of a given law and its discriminatory impact on we the people. Strict scrutiny has been regularly used as the basis of review in First Amendment cases, so it stands to reason that it would be the default when it comes to Second Amendment challenges as well. Basically, all the Iowa amendment is stating is that the Second Amendment should be treated as a fundamental right by lawmakers and judges alike.

But there could be another issue with the “strict scrutiny” provision in the proposed amendment; namely, the fact that the Supreme Court might decide that strict scrutiny actually isn’t the proper standard of review, and that a “text, history, and tradition” test is the more appropriate standard for cases dealing with the right to keep and bear arms. As Duke University law professor Jake Charles noted back in 2019, justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh have expressed support for using that standard, and longtime Second Amendment attorneys and scholars like Stephen Halbrook also believe that a “THT standard” is the best option for justices and lower court judges to use.

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen concerns whether New York may condition the right to carry a firearm on an official’s finding of “proper cause.” “Proper cause” means an exceptional need, and it excludes, for example, residence in a high-crime area. Possession of an unlicensed, loaded handgun subjects one to 15 years incarceration. The court should decide the case based on text, history, and tradition, the methodology it applied in District of Columbia v. Heller holding that a ban on handguns in the home violates the Second Amendment. In Heller, the court eschewed an “interest-balancing” test under which judges “decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon,” and it should do the same here.

So what happens to the proposed RKBA amendment to the Iowa Constitution that specifically mentions “strict scrutiny” if the Supreme Court comes out in a few weeks and declares that interest-balancing tests, even those that adopt strict scrutiny, aren’t the appropriate standard of review when it comes to our right to keep and bear arms? I have a hard time imagining that the amendment would be pulled, or that supporters would suddenly call on voters to reject the amendment while they work on a new one. At the same time, it’s not possible to change the language of the proposed amendment at this late date. In fact, the issue is only going to the voters now because the legislature in two separate sessions approved the language on the ballot.

If the Court comes out and formally declares that “text, history, and tradition” is the proper standard of review, the best choice for Second Amendment supporters in Iowa this fall would be to approve the constitutional amendment as its written, and immediately get to work on amending the amendment to fall in line with SCOTUS’s reasoning. It may end up being a moot point if the Supreme Court declines to firmly state what standard of review should be used in Second Amendment cases going forward, but given the arguments in the Bruen case and the views of at least a couple of Supreme Court justices, there’s a substantial likelihood that Iowa’s proposed amendment may be a little out of date by the time Election Day rolls around.

Jen Psaki Shows Insane Level of Hypocrisy in Comments on ‘Threats’ to Her Family

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Outgoing White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday complained about the many ‘threats’ she received during her tenure as President Joe Biden’s mouthpiece. While addressing a room of reporters, she recounted how she had to get the Secret Service involved in some cases.

“I will say the thing that has been hardest personally is I’ve had threats,” Psaki said during an event sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington, D.C.

“I have had nasty letters, texts to me with my personal address, the names of my children,” she recalled. “It crosses lines, and that’s when it becomes a little scary. And that has been the most personally difficult aspect of this job.”

Politico reported:

Psaki said the safety of her two children, who are 4 and 6 years old, remains “a real concern,” as some of the messages she received were from “people threatening to come to my house.”

“There have been cases where I’ve had to share information with [the Secret Service], and I certainly have shared information with them,” Psaki said.

The press secretary added that nobody threatening has appeared at her home, but claimed: “there is a circulation of my address among the Arlington Republican Party right now.”

“Earlier this week, amid abortion rights protests outside the homes of Supreme Court justices, the Arlington County Republican Committee in Virginia revealed the neighborhood where Psaki lives,” according to Politico.

At least one Twitter user purported to have published her address.

The Arlington Republican Party provided an appropriately snarky statement to Politico in response to Psaki’s allegation, insisting it “has not publicly disseminated any Biden Administration official’s home address, unlike the hordes of progressive activists online who have disseminated the addresses of Justices of the Supreme Court.”

Psaki’s complaints about threats to her family are rather bizarre, considering the cavalier attitude she displayed when reporters asked how the White House feels about pro-abortion protesters demonstrating at the homes of Supreme Court Justices after their addresses were released to the public. “We certainly continue to encourage that outside of judges’ homes,” she said.

The outgoing press secretary seems to believe that since the protests have been peaceful so far, it is appropriate to continue encouraging them. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that it only takes one or two nutjobs to create a horrible situation. Indeed, at least one act of violence has been perpetrated against a pro-life organization after the Supreme Court’s draft opinion on Roe v. Wade was leaked. What if one of these folks decided to use violence to make their views on abortion known? As I wrote previously, Psaki and the White House are playing a dangerous game.

Unfortunately, it appears that even Psaki’s own experiences with violent threats weren’t enough for her to discourage a situation that could easily get ugly, given the heightened emotions around the abortion issue. It seems potential threats are only an issue when directed at those who disagree with the left.