A powerful Christian nationalist judge goofs the Bible, the law and the Constitution

Among the main strains of authoritarianism vying to kill American democracy and its rule of law is Christian nationalism (CN). CN elites are in the process of building federal government and social infrastructure to transition the US from a pluralist secular democracy to a harsh, bigoted, Christian fundamentalist theocracy. Under the CN vision of America, the law comes from God. CN elites will tell us what laws God wants and who those laws will target for righteous discrimination and sacred oppression. Existing evidence indicates that the CN wealth and power movement is one of the most likely contenders to dominate the federal government once djt is dead and gone. 

USSC justice Amy Coney Barrett is a Catholic zealot. Her book will be released tomorrow. It is entitled Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution, which is an oxymoron as discussed below. Barrett reportedly received a $2 million advance for the book. She has been doing promotional events and interviews about the book, including appearances at Lincoln Center and the National Book Festival. Barrett was (presumably still is) a member of an extremist Catholic group called the People of Praise. 

Reporting by multiple outlets comment on her book. Major MAGA judicial traits exemplify her use of law for political ends. For radical MAGA judges like Barrett, the law is just a means to MAGA's authoritarian political ends.

• Misconstruing the Bible: Barrett mischaracterizes the biblical King Solomon narrative to support her judicial philosophy. She falsely claims that Solomon's wisdom came from internal judgment rather than legal adherence. This interpretation is incorrect. Solomon was not exercising personal moral judgment but conducting factual investigation to determine biological parentage according to the then established legal principle that the true mother deserved custody. The biblical text itself contradicts Barrett's interpretation: Solomon explicitly prayed for "an understanding mind to judge" and received divine wisdom, not personal intuition. His threat to divide the child functioned as a credibility test to reveal the true mother by her reaction. Solomon was applying biblical common law, an unwavering rule (precedent) that custody belongs to the biological mother. He used normal investigative methods to establish facts. He did not impose his own subjective preferences. 

• Laws as just a means to an end: Barrett has a telling but dangerous blind spot about gathering and assessing evidence. She has essentially no academic or appellate court experience with fact-finding.[1] All she has is a paltry three years in private practice and no trial court experience. Barrett has never examined witnesses or conducted fact investigations. Her inexperience shows in her Solomon interpretation, where she portrays factual investigation as personal judgment rather than recognizing it as essential, neutral evidence-gathering. Given their experience, Sotomayor (a former prosecutor) and Brown Jackson (a former public defender) would not have made this same mistake. Their extensive trial court experience pounded home the idea that justice involves more than merely reviewing appellate records. Without reliance on credible evidence, Barrett's assertion that "judges resolve disputes according to the rules established by the people" is meaningless. Her partisan vision of judges more or less unburdened by inconvenient facts contradicts the fundamental pro-democracy principle that legal application first requires rigorous investigation to determine facts and truth before applying law second.

The evidence strongly supports this very ugly bottom line: Barrett's self-described textualism, i.e., allegedly strict adherence to original text meaning, is contradicted by her willingness to misinterpret even biblical scripture to support predetermined MAGA dogma. Her judging is the epitome of unprincipled partisanship. With Barrett and the other six MAGA judges on the USSC, the law is a means to MAGA outcomes. Inconvenient facts and precedents are not significant judicial constraints. Barrett's fake originalism or textualism, like that of the other five MAGA judges on the USSC, is authoritarian constitutionalism disguised as principled law. 

Footnote:

1. Evidence of Barrett's heavy partisan bias include her 100% conservative voting record in contract and intellectual property cases on the 7th Circuit. That suggests she has predetermined ideological positions and does not rely on case-by-case fact analysis. She had a 76% MAGA voting record from her first Supreme Court term compared to Ginsburg's 4%. That shifted the Court from 48% to 62% MAGA outcomes. That was a dramatic change. It very likely reflected partisan legal reasoning, not judicial neutrality. 

Finally, Barrett's record shows that her approach is systematically anti-factual rather than merely inexperienced. That is particularly true where the fact record is unfavorable to MAGA's ends. For example, in her nomination hearings, Barrett falsely claimed that she had always followed or applied precedent on the Seventh Circuit: “I don’t think there’s any evidence that I’ve been unwilling to follow or apply circuit precedent.” However, in the case FTC v. Credit Bureau, Barrett voted to overturn a 30-year-old Seventh Circuit precedent that prevented the Federal Trade Commission from seeking restitution for victims of consumer fraud. She voted to protect the special interests over the public interest. That is pure authoritarian MAGA tactics, inconvenient facts and precedent be damned.

MAGA vs the public interest: Harming the public for special interest profit

Many American claim they believe in an American Republic with a representative democracy, separation of powers, the constitutional rule of law, federalism and civil liberties. Whether they act like that is what they believe is a separate issue. Many don't. Regardless, for most of those believers one of their political principles or moral values is a belief in the moral superiority of government that doesn't lie to the public or act against the public interest. Obviously, what is for or against the public interest is an essentially contested concept. But at least the moral sentiment is present in most (~90% ?) average people who believe they are good people doing politics in good faith. 

A NYT article (not paywalled) reports that djt and his corrupt MAGA thugs have quashed a scientific report that drinking alcohol in any amount is a risk factor for several kinds of cancer and liver disease. The Alcohol Intake and Health Study, stated that one or more drinks per day increases the risk of liver cirrhosis, oral and esophageal cancer, and injuries. MAGA thugs running the government now refuse to submit it to Congress as originally planned. A draft of the report is at this link.

Why do MAGA thugs block the dissemination of this knowledge? For the obvious reason, money. The booze industry lobbied hard against releasing the report. Presumably showering djt and/or targeted MAGA politicians were secretly paid somehow, e.g., by buying $TRUMP meme coin, paying for the farce called the djt presidential library, etc. 

I asked Pxy to look for evidence of the corruption, but all if could find was circumstantial. But it was enough for one to conclude that our kleptocratic MAGA government served the booze industry at the expense of protecting the public interest. Caveat emptor people, this is the new normal.

Pxy's comments about the evidence, in part:

Limitations of Transparency
However, significant limitations exist in tracking influence. As CREW notes, Trump and his businesses are not required to disclose spending by groups seeking influence, making many payments untraceable. The National Academies refuses to disclose who nominated committee members, creating what experts call "a black box" compared to other government processes.

Assessment
The evidence strongly suggests this represents regulatory capture rather than evidence-based policymaking. The simultaneous suppression of an independent scientific study finding alcohol health risks while promoting an industry-influenced study concluding moderate drinking benefits follows a clear pattern of prioritizing industry profits over public health.

While "kleptocracy" and "corruption" are strong terms, the documented evidence shows systematic dismantling of oversight mechanisms, extensive conflicts of interest, and policy decisions favoring major donors and industry interests. The scale and coordination of these changes, as tracked by multiple oversight organizations, indicates this extends beyond typical political favoritism to what transparency experts characterize as institutional capture by private interests.

The public has access to significant documentation of these patterns through organizations like CREW, OpenSecrets, Just Security, and the Brennan Center, though the full extent remains obscured by the administration's unprecedented secrecy and conflict disclosure failures.

Some of Pxy's links: Conflicts of interest (Brennan Center), Just Security's corruption tracker, Kleptocracy Tracker Online (Johns Hopkins U.), CREW's presidential conflicts of interest tracker, secrecy tracker (Sunlight Foundation, now defunct with 2017-2020 data archived)[1].

Footnote:

1. The Sunlight Foundation commented: 

We’ve been tracking the Trump administration’s record on open government since Election Day 2016, when we first posed questions about what open government would mean. Although the Office of the Press Secretary never returned our inquiries, the administration’s actions have answered many of our questions. This is a secretive administration, allergic to transparency, shadowed by global conflicts of interest, hostile to the essential role journalism plays in a democracy.

• After making himself available to the press through July, Trump set a bar as the least transparent modern presidential candidate in modern history. He held no press conference until from July 2016 until January 11, 2017, released no tax returns, and made no proactive disclosures around transition or inauguration. He held his first and only solo presidential press conference on February 16, 2017.

• Ethics: Lack of disclosure of tax returns and divestment in accordance with decades of tradition set up the Trump presidency for the ongoing appearance of corruption, with an unknown number of conflicts of interest around the world. 

• Secret waivers for administration officials, followed by the Office of Management and Budgets seeking to block the Office of Government Ethics from making a data call to obtain them.

OUCH!

 AI Overview

"Whiners on the right" refers to right-leaning individuals who are perceived to engage in excessive complaining and self-pity, often playing the victim and refusing to accept responsibility or find solutions to problems, in contrast to "winners" who take action and find excuses for their struggles. The term is a politically charged pejorative, similar to other labels like "snowflake," used to describe those perceived as excessively sensitive or complaining. 

WTF?

Snowflakes are NOT excessively sensitive or complaining. 

Anyone saying so is just a fruitcake. 

Let me repeat. Snowflakes don't complain, we don't do self-pity. 

We are winners. 

If you dispute this I will whine. 

On a more serious note: Is it true that the Right are a bunch of whiners 

and that those on the Left are

SNOWFLAKES?

OR are all the Snowflakes also on the Right?

Can a liberal be a whiner? 

Dying democracy chronicles: Grand juries

A NYT article reports about one of the last vestiges of meaningful power still standing in opposition to Trump and MAGA authoritarianism and kleptocracy, i.e., grand juries. People on grand juries are resisting authoritarian MAGA overreach. Specifically, federal grand juries in Washington DC have refused to indict defendants at least six times in recent weeks. That is extraordinary. Legal experts describe as virtually unprecedented. Former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou, who served until January 2025, stated: "Not only have I never heard of this happening, I've never heard of a prosecutor who's heard of this happening" 

In the "Sandwich Man" Case, Grand juries rejected felony charges against Sean Dunn, a former DOJ paralegal who threw a hoagie at a federal agent while shouting "I don't want you in my city!" Dunn is a symbol of resistance in DC. The open question is how widespread is grand jury resistance likely to be. Red states are likely going to be more open to authoritarian moves like sending in troops to quell fake emergencies than blue states. Some reporting hints that may be the case.

Grand jury resistance to djt and his dictatorship is likely going to vary widely by location. Grand jury reach is limited by location and its jurisdiction. 

To nullify grand jury resistance to dictatorship, MAGA prosecutors can re-presenting cases to new grand juries until they find one willing to indict. There's no legal prohibition against "grand jury shopping". Prosecutors can keep trying with new panels of jurors, and that is probably what MAGA thugs will do.

Another way to weaken grand juries is for bad faith MAGA prosecutors to flood the zone with shit. Prosecutors can manipulate the evidence any way they want, including presenting all kinds of complexity and confusion. Grand jurors, like other people can be bamboozled, deceived and tricked into indicting someone on crappy evidence. Also, bad faith prosecutors, which MAGA prosecutors are, can legally withhold exculpatory evidence. The Supreme Court ruled in US v. Williams (1992) that prosecutors have no obligation to present evidence favorable to defendants. Even worse, bad faith prosecutors can present hearsay evidence from alleged witnesses without personal knowledge.

That is how weak the grand jury system actually is. It works based on good faith and good will. MAGA is pure bad faith and ill-will. Given how rigged the system is against him, it's a miracle that the grand jury refused to indict the sandwich dude for his heinous sandwich-tossing crime.