Even the universe has borders and limits, both perhaps undiscoverable; so we are told by science. The big bang theory has not only a beginning but an end.
Charles Schumer, of New York, and Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, are two U.S. senators who fervently believe that abortion should be borderless, not hemmed in by reasonable regulations, such as those that they believe should govern the exercise of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Laws are limits to human behavior that, we deduce from bank robberies, rapes and murders, may be overridden in some ungovernable people. The law is a red line saying thus far you may go but no further -- without risking some painful sanction.
Blumenthal knows, perhaps better than most, that one way to set limits to the sometimes audacious behavior of businesses is through the establishment of regulations. As attorney general of Connecticut for more than 20 years, Blumenthal earned his political spurs by applying a legal birch switch to the backsides of Connecticut businesses and others.
When Blumenthal vacated his sinecure to make a successful run for the U.S. Senate, he left behind more than 200 unsettled cases quickly dismissed by the next attorney general, George Jepsen. Blumenthal’s victims, hung out to dry on hooks in the attorney general’s offices for many years, were now free to resume pursuing the American dream if – big “if” – they had not been driven into penury by some of Blumenthal’s punishing tactics, the most successful of which was to encumber a business’s assets until the business compliantly acceded to terms dictated by Blumenthal.
Blumenthal is well known in Connecticut for his unyielding opposition to abortion regulation and two Trump appointed justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. But Blumenthal, the “Senator from Planned Parenthood” has now been trumped by Schumer. Hectoring a crowd of abortion advocates on the steps of the U.S Supreme Court, and sounding a bit like Huey Long at his boisterous worst, Schumer said this: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Schumer’s harangue was intended as a threat; it was directed as a threat to two specific Supreme Court Justices; and it was received as a threat by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who responded with great temperance in a written statement, “Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous. All Members of the Court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.”
Schumer later blamed his threat to the court justices on Brooklyn, according to the New York Post, – “Sen. Schumer cites his NYC roots in non-apology over Supreme Court squabble: 'We speak in strong language’”.
Speaking from the floor of the U.S. Senate, Schumer offered, “I should not have used the words I used yesterday. They didn’t come out the way I intended them to. I’m from Brooklyn. We speak in strong language. I shouldn’t have used the words I did, but in no way was I making a threat. I never — never — would do such a thing.”
Schumer accused Republicans of “manufacturing outrage” over his own threats to Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. That fish won’t fly.
In an opinion piece in the New York Post, George Conway III, a lawyer and adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump super PAC, wrote “Schumer’s words, however, were unmistakably intimidating: ‘I want to tell you, Gorsuch.’ ‘I want to tell you, Kavanaugh.’ ‘You (emphasis original) will pay the price.’ ‘You won’t know what hit you if …’ The emphasis is mine, but the meaning is clear: If you don’t do as we say, something bad will happen to you….”
There is some talk of censure in the air. Would Blumenthal support the censure of a fellow senator who has threatened two Supreme Court justices -- not of course with body harm, but with political repercussions -- if the high court failed to decide a pending case related to abortion in a way that did not satisfy abortion-rights extremists?If Blumenthal has been asked the question, his answer to it has not appeared anywhere in Connecticut’s media. Perhaps the media feels it might be indelicate to put such a question to Blumenthal who so far has resisted every effort, however reasonable, to regulate Big Abortion. Blumenthal spearheaded the effort to deny the Supreme Court placement of both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Schumer’s threatening remarks, it may be argued, simply carries the Blumenthal effort a logical step forward.
Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based columnist.
